like to welcome everyone to tonight's like board meeting and just remind those who perhaps they hadn't signed in yet to make sure you do before you leave i need that for the minutes and if you could turn your cell phones either off or at least to silent we would greatly appreciate that as a motion to approve the amended agenda zero thank you very much ok now we're on to item four which is public to be heard this is a time for the public to speak to the select board on any items that are not on the agenda tonight is there anyone here wishing to speak during public to be heard martha if you could state your name for the record please i this congratulations so thank you again appreciate that anyone else wishing to speak your puppy to be heard ok i just have so he wanted to share that on april fourth i was contacted by local twenty two news for an interview regarding for monster systems incorporated they recently got a multimillion dollar grant from from the military to do some work  going to a couple of local community events and as a select board member i can't take the hat off so i went to the dedication of the habitat for humanity houses on park street recently since i've also gone to a listening session hosted by the v you know open the public hearing that you want to give us an update or an overview who will see if anyone asked questions you have a long meeting so it's probably better if i don't but just the  for the board hopefully to provide us some guidance with very much like to have to the public hearing today probably have to wait for the main meeting to actually look at the rate but if we knew that we could change the documents between now and then or we've them as they are between now and then it's up to the board and any questions from the board and that member the discussion about the the minimum usage rate and it's been flat for how many years four  or five for i think i would just like to ask whether it would be the board's pleasure to discuss the minimum rate and because it has been flat for five four or five years and the average on minimum users is going up by eleven dollars i just want to know what the board things about the possibility of increasing the minimum charge five dollars or ten dollars as outlined in the memo from denison  if it applies to the would it makes sense to consider attaching the water rate increase or you know whatever it is for the year to the minimum usage rate as a percent increase so that you know it will go up the same way it would all other users but it's the lowest rate as opposed to keeping it flat and then doing it jumping could be a fly in from a predictability standpoint that would be appreciated by rate payers which one have it tied to that it tied so that they know that it's not going to go up ten dollars but it might go up a buck or two annually as opposed to a sudden jump after a long period of having been flat events thoughts on that that some reasonable like so it's been flat for the last five years but we're proposing an increase now so i mean it were there were there market conditions that cause that or was there anything was there anything out of the ordinary that caused that jump you know i think what happened was an on going back for five years i think on the minimums kind of changed almost every year before that as we got up to a point and then i think the board at that time looked at that minimum charge relative to what people were paying overall and that they felt that and at that point time you start to look at where rates were and it's in our report they were increasing pretty steadily upward almost every year for a lot of valid reasons they seem to have leveled off and we hope they stay at this our hope is to keep them at this general level going in the future i just think that the you reach a point where you want to have some balance between what the rate payers are painting and what is being paid at the minimum level and my view is that it's something that the way we present it in the way the board should approach it is to look at it each year we come in for a rate increase where should it be i don't not sure should be tagged to a particular number but that's up to you and i don't have an oar in that water is just that i think that it is something that needs to be considered because in some cases it's small businesses which are trying to encourage in some cases it's people who are living on fixed income which have a limit in terms of their ability to pay so i think that has to and i think that's one of the reasons why it was kept low for a number of years was trying to accommodate that level but at some point in time that's why we tried to present the percentages and where that kind of fell against time at some point in time  the minimums tend to get out of whack compared to the normal with the normal regular rate payers paying because they do get fire protection and other protection along the way and it may be the village has a different system of billing that's based upon a different way to set rates and we talked about this in the past and again this may be something that as we talk about moving closer together we may want to look at how we do set rates and what's appropriate you know one of the issues we talked about in the past and i don't want to go into too deep is the idea of a fixed portion of the fee and that has some merit because a lot of our costs are fixed it helps to stabilize rates because as water use goes up and down it's not  our revenue with floating all over and in some kind of a stabilized restructure you might build a base that back to what is the minimum that should be paid for things like for protection i think we've never really done that kind of analysis  and it's probably worth doing in a broader context and i'm not sure that we're prepared to do it this year but i guess the reason why we presented some ranges is both and i felt it probably was a good year to make a change without actually trying to indicate what that change may be trying to fit it within what i would call the affordability you know whether it's fifty cents a month or more a dollars a month or more to fit in that range which we think is still affordable and provides people the services in the background services they still need i think that if the the average user which is a two hundred gallon per day if their increase is on the order of eleven dollars that the increase for the minimum shouldn't be on the same dollar magnitude value and that it should probably be on the order of half of that so i would be in favor of the five dollar increase here for the year so reason and i would prefer i would prefer a set dollar amount increase also i don't know if it's any easier on your end but when people say to you hey i'm going to florida for the next day months with my minimum just  quote them a number and i just think that's neater and tighter than ratcheting up a partial percent and then you have dollars and cents to deal with in the future i really like around numbers that would be something that would happen if you reconfigure the billing later like that's not something that happens now right if if it's the board's pleasure to raise at the five dollars and then we would readjust our public relations information we put out for your next meeting which does not have to be a public hearing in fact there really isn't a public hearing is required on the water ordinance rates at all but the board's elected to do that so the public was informed that it's a good idea so it would be very simple to go back and just adjust that recommendation that the board would make that what that new minimum charge would be and put that out on the web page and put it out for information for people so again it's out there and then come up the next meeting and hopefully the board vote on it and so the rates in place ok so we're talking about going from one sixty five to one seventy that right are going to give us the yes ok all right and the other questions on this if not i'll open it up to the public if there's any questions on the water and sewer rate bu and we have one new one which is t rex bird as we had here just a few weeks ago so we told them that they didn't need to come back and just hear a rep from t rex here i see peter peter and somebody from vesper excellent ok so what we'll do is put it up to questions from the border comments about the the applications before us for the board any issues the in the t rex application in the description of the premises it includes says it stands in words and possible outdoor areas but there's not outside consumption i just want to make sure that it's recognize that without an outside consumption permit those words in the description don't allow you to do that that's accurate that's  as best as pizza pasta and deli with outside consumption per month thank you so those are the two renewals have emotion we have a second on that they carry in any further discussion on approving the first productions doing business as sorry to rick's productions l l c doing business as double eat thank you and you have a second on that thank you for any further discussion on approving the first class liquor license application for very seriously as should the area savage ment's who serve liquor and we expect you not to serve minors nor anyone who is obviously an aviator and we do really appreciate you doing business  essex very much and we want you we hope you have a wonderful and successful year so thank you and peter since yours is a new one what we like to offer if you'd like is to come up here and maybe explain tell us about your business you know when it's going to open and maybe the hours or anything you like it's up to you it's gentle seventeen is ok please  that your name here only some here i guess i give a little more of a bigger picture that is about from the news today we're going to be on all channels today in the papers and all that and basically what i'm what i'm doing is looking to energize the outside and bring community music art dining to the entire center so  be a lot of changes i'll be in front of you again i'm sure one of the first steps in doing that was to look at the movie theater which has a bar and which has a lounge and has a restaurant and we had activated that years ago and had done a very good job of operating it and rather than have a product on the market that i was in proud of and that it didn't like the way it was running it didn't have the the style that i really was hoping for decided to close it and wait until the time that we could find where i could find a good operator both for the food and for the for the for the park and so long story short that has led to a change in everything that i'm doing out there but part of that is taking the theater taking the t rex movie theater which is our largest and it's the largest in the state we have four hundred seats in there and it does a great job for blockbuster movies and people love it for that and will continue doing that but it also provided an opportunity to what i felt was an opportunity to program it for music and live performances so i've been fortunate to tie up with some very interesting characters who know a lot of  and bring them all to essex and i think it's going to really be a start to energize this so i'll take a moment to really give a plug for what we're doing and we'll have our first concert on may sixteenth rex and we've now also put in software to allow us to do online ticketing and sitting very much as if you went to the flint theatre so we'll have a section that will be seated section for music and theater and a section where you can be seated and or dance and that's something new in all of the market you can't do it at the flint you can't get higher ground you can do one of the other you can't do both so will be able to do both i've been i brought in kevin states or who is actually on this liquor he took the seminar i've taken i have to take it again mine's expired every two years got that but i have  to he got he got one hundred on his and he's been at the higher ground for twenty years in operating in he's had zero occurrences of not paying attention and some you know we're proud of that and kevin is just known in the music industry as he's an icon every musician in vermont would laid out for him because he's just he's great so kevin and i and eric paul and coincidentally eric's dad had a shopping center when i when i had it twenty five years ago we tied up to form t rex productions and as part of that we're taking the restaurant lounge in the front and will be activating that as also a restaurant and a bar and bringing in local musicians for small acoustic sets or larger sets maybe taking the small theater to do some music in there and or come in a night or other things so that we have we really have something new and special for the market very excited about for the food operation we want to i want to bring in somebody that also had cache and had their own five and most everybody talked and we're thinking what's easy in the theater what's easy to also all to me take outside and inside and wouldn't make a mess with the seats in the floors they're fantastic they're great operators they know what they're doing and so they're going to be doing very happy to announce we're going to do our our food in there and that will be part of a bigger picture which i'll talk to you about the future as well in the near future so as the first part of energizing the center that's you know what they're excited about and i very it's very full and we wish you the best of luck and thanks for sharing that with us a brief discussion about a particular liquor license case that's going to come before you about two weeks they say they had a hearing before the state and we were looking for some language as to first crew licenses and why if it's required by law to have first class liquor licenses actually attend this meet the hearing and there is actually no law that states that so i in the future if you would like to have a conversation as to maybe if you want to continue that practice or maybe in the you know i just knew liquor license applications you would want to have that but if they have no violations not have them come out if they don't want to and then look at that that process so before we did that we just wanted to see if you were open to that discussion although hillary so there's only one opening on conservation trails committee and we have two people tonight so as is our practice what we'll do is we'll invite the first person up on the list which would be paula and hillary if you wouldn't mind just waiting in the for until paul is down and then we'll bring you in so that you don't have it and advantage by listening to it was before you so thank you for your cooperation on that so yes come on up first thank you for stepping forward to be willing to interview for this position appointed to the conservation trails committee do you want to start with my work of all the pay back to graduate school whatever you think is relevant that you know ok i did a lot of work in nonprofit development and fundraising and baltimore and ohio invited to do things invited to go planning commission meetings invited in to t g i and now what this happened because i want to talk to day one about affordable housing and at the end of that conversation he invited me to do this you're going to conservation meetings previously and last year i went to a couple and i was in cleanup day and sunday will be my third cleanup day and earlier than back when i was in the town and then that stopped this is i grew up in a rural county in northeast ohio like you were and i had farmers in my family and the land and how the land is taken care of and that type of thing fishermen on the lake and they all had to close down their businesses so this was something that was very much in my mind as i went on and i lived in other places where there are other kinds of pollution but water pollution is serious and when i went back to ohio in two thousand i found that there was a group called the river partnership had been working for years to get the river  i don't remember whether i got invited to the cleanup day the first time what happened but somehow i got to the point and so this will be my third one discussion and then we'll come out and make a decision and then somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow on the results so thank you once again paula for being willing to step forward and be on this committee thank you  background about who hillary is and what your interest is on being appointed to the conservation trails committee we'd love to hear about that so i am i grew up in south hero and then i moved  in twenty thirteen actually went to essex high school and then moved away and came back so i just want to get more involved in the community generally and i was actually on the more of an interest we as a young families the trails all the time we live in pretty good manners there's a trail that connects from the back that neighborhood up to like the lang farm neighborhood and we've marked up there and gone to dinner so i just think it's a really important part for a community like essex that has you know such rural areas with like an urban development center and as you're looking to grow that urban development center and just any way that you can connect neighborhoods and encourage people to come to that town center it's just a benefit everyone so professionally i'm  about development in the town and and conservation of green spaces and how all of that kind of comes together you know obviously development is important for me professionally but as an engineer it's also vital to at the end of tonight's meeting we're going to go into executive session because there's two candidates for the one opening and we'll have a discussion the board have a discussion that will come out of executive session make a decision and somebody from the requested that we we give out every year to causes such as b n a and d n a is certainly one of our largest recipients so that's why we really wanted to have you come in so we have a chance to talk to you and a not for profit organization we have a board of directors jim riordan is a member from essex is on our board and we do provide the full menu of skilled care home care services and we bill medicare and medicaid and all the commercial insurances blue cross signal all of that but there are always people who either don't have insurance or they have a very high deductible that they can't meet or the it's medicaid reimbursement and medicaid does not pay the full boat of what it actually cost to provide the care so that's why we always end up with a deficit for the care that we've provided and in this applies to all towns we go to all towns that we serve and so the the remaining balance for essex is that one hundred fourteen thousand five hundred thirty eight so we're asking this year for  contribution of fifty three five seventy to about half of that and that's our goal for each town that we that we request money with the percent coverage so that's so that's just kind of a high level overdue  view and just to say also we do care from prenatal through end of life so it could be you know a mother who's pregnant who's having a difficult pregnancy a complicated medical pregnancy it can be somebody with a child born with problems that the d n a is and help prepare that child for surgery or work with the parents on growth and development could also be any one of us if we'd had a car accident a hip replacement and a stroke a heart attack you know diabetes in having some kind of an infected wound so it's really all of those things and we provide rehabilitation services like physical therapy and occupational therapy as well as nursing and then of course we do and of life care or hospice where we support people in their home at the end of life but we also have the b n a respite house in call chester that is a twenty one bed inpatient facility for people at the end of life who who aren't able to be at home so that's those are services so again you're you're looking at covering that asking us to cover fifty percent of the value of what you're providing to other communities also pay the fifty percent i know that's what you want them to that but at least our goal and you know it really varies some towns are not able to get there other towns actually pay more than fifty percent self that's you know we have fifty amounts to over ten thousand hours of service provided to the yes that's correct and so you can see also that the cost of the services was actually over two million dollars we were we were able to build the majority of that to medicare medicaid and private insurance is but the real the unpaid balance is that one fourteen because that's about five dollars an hour cost then it's pretty impressive for nursing care ok thank you judy  opened up questions from the board anybody so makes mention that we are one percent of our budget goes to human service organization that resulted in quarterly payments to the v n a and i think it has something to do with leaving out your cash flow or something and you know back many many many years ago and we've still kept that quarter we have it for some reason and so when we get to june we're making our decisions we've already given you your money so we can't really make a decision around it's already but it was a it was essentially paid in the past and so my question is whether there would be any severe impact t v n a if we treated you like all other you know it's funny because actually i'm sure it was set up a long time ago by by people who are here today and how when i brought this up to my billing office and said why are we building a six quarterly  a still has its own balance sheet and so i think when you look at this what they have and what the u v and health network really is is it's it's the building of in what we call an integrated healthcare system so it's really asking the providers to work more closely together so that we can do a better job on page on patient care so the network is comprised of six hospitals three of them here in vermont three in new york and then also that green box is the physician group so those are physicians who are employed by those hospitals and so then just in january the v n a came on as community help so that now it is not just hospitals  working together to try to find better ways to do health care but the v n a is now at the table with a voice so that's that's honestly i've been doing home care for almost my entire career for forty years and  this is what i have always wanted that we were actually able to be at the table on par with the hospital systems because i've always believed i had started my nursing career as a in the peace corps i graduated from university of vermont joined the peace corps and i very quickly saw that health care really begins in the home it's at the kitchen table that i was in central america anyway it was always been my desire to be able to have community health services valued at the same level that hospital acute care services are and now with health care reform that's really been you know happening these last four or five years there's this mill is ation that you don't keep people well by having them in the hospital there in the hospital they have an acute event they go home and then they'll end up back in the hospital if we don't really provide the community based services  so the affiliation is a recognition on behalf of the network leaders that they really need to do more outside the hospital care really support community providers to be able to do that care so we still have our own balance sheet just as all the hospitals do we do our own billing we pay our own staff as you know totally separate corporation but we have this affiliation with the network so that means that we're all working together there are certain ways that the network is helping the d n a now for instance one of our programs we do tele monitoring in the home where we have these little they look like little i pads that and they measure a person's blood pressure oxygen levels weight and heart rate so for somebody who has a cardiac condition like congestive heart failure having that information that they can take every single day at home themselves and they're like we have eighty of these tell of monitors it all comes a to afford to buy not to upgrade that system to be able to do video and just you know how it is with technology every so many years you really do have to upgrade it we're not able to do that on our own we have to try to board money so  that instance the network sees that value we show them the data so they're actually going to purchase a new system for us so that's just great so that's the way that financially that the network will help us with it you know every once in a while there may be something that we're that we're able to have as like a one time usually it'll be a capital expense we hope in about four years they'll also help us turn over our electronic medical records system so that we'll be on the same medical record system as the physicians and the hospital so then it will be one medical record that we share in the just the so many you know less chance of any medication errors or confusion of orders or anything because we're all documenting in the same  that would be you know a really great expense but the network will help us with that but they're not providing operating no this is not right that's exactly the thank you good wording that's what i should have s run those remote systems are remarkable my mother in law when she was alive had one of those at the house and they were makes a difference it makes a huge difference it made a huge difference and she was box but so also the new ones that we get will be video enabled so for people who are with truly homebound and they're not able to get out to see the physician will now facilitate a physician visit to that person from the home and to be able to show them like you service piece it looks like of a fair a fair volume of work there can you describe that for me a little better for us and the role of the social workers really is to help people access the many services that are available to them in the community and often a social worker will help a new somebody who's newly admitted to the v n a applied for medicaid services or perhaps medicare disability get food stamps or meals on wheels will also provide counseling for them if that's needed if there's there are issues such as anxiety and depression so it really is unfortunately in today's economy and so much that's going on in the world there we do see a larger role for social workers so is it safe to say then that there's a fair volume of that where that service is provided for someone who's just released from the hospital and goes home and then there's also people with ongoing care and that type of thing ok thank you have is were you were were contributing on the order of fifty thousand in acceptance and slightly over fifty thousand dollars of taxpayer money to subsidize your business i guess the question is what's the has a good insurance and they or they have medicare they can go to bayada and they can receive skilled nursing services just like they could from the v n a but because the v n a is a not for profit we don't look at your insurance first so the v n a does forty percent of all of our revenue is medicaid so we are really providing the services to the people who are the lower income that's in that sounds like a lot but it's really we're talking about a few hours plus the overhead and all that we're paying the nurse to drive there to be in the home for an hour to drive back to do paperwork we're paying the mileage benefits you know all of those things so the medicaid only pays us one hundred ten dollars per visit so for every medicaid visit you know when we lose about sixty dollars so sometimes for you know it could because you know be on is a good company i don't want to say anything negative about bayada but i will say that the v n a does a larger proportion of care that is not reimbursed and that's the only workload on d n a probably will increase as well if you have plans for how to grow to accommodate we really are we are we are really one of the things we're doing is just looking more closely at data making sure that we have data that shows the value of our services just this morning i did a presentation for a group at the medical center about one of our programs that we're doing that really shows that we have decreased hospitalizations and decreased emergency room utilization by this population of people so because i'm now able to provide that data we'll be able to get some funding from one care vermont which is the accountable care organization so we'll get some funding from them for that program what we believe is going to happen is within several years vermont's going to be paid with  or global budget so one care vermont for example will receive and this year the all payer waiver is in effect in vermont so there's a global amount of money that's been received for medicare services so everything the d n a does count against that we're still billing medicare the way we do now and we're not at financial risk but the hospitals are so when that money you know if we all spend more than that the hospitals lose that money if we spend less there are some incentive that you share the excess with the government with the federal government that so because health care is changing the way it's been going to be paid in the future this is our opportunity to really make sure we've got good data we're showing our value we're really doing very high quality services and and really making sure that we're fine tuning what we're doing and we're very very aware of that doing that so i believe that in the future because the health care system needs to do you know i've heard of the trip blame the triple aim is they have to do better outcomes for people better patient satisfaction and do it at a lower cost well you don't do that by admitting people to the hospital so there's going to be more and more of an emphasis in community care and i think that going forward home health agencies but also mental health organizations councils on aging i think will be positioned to receive more funding in the future to support the services we're doing because we are going to be doing more also and the question i thank you for taking time anything to come and have a conversation with us we appreciate you but i answer your questions and and thank you for the services they provide to our well as and thanks so much for because you had these questions inviting me to come i mean so much better than just assuming ordinance discussion only jennifer so greg you want to ensure that you're so generous i sat down after our last meeting and looked at some facilitation options to bring back here and try to come up with a plan to actually start this and given process with the public about how to look at the firearms ordinance and based on the police chief's recommendations came up with two options and you can try to answer questions about under some timelines and here but just the quick overview is basically option  is faster approach that would be jennifer working with the few members of staff it's kind of a small team to to go through and come up with a more specific plan in terms of a community average forums  guiding the survey figuring out focus groups are small they're smaller input options that might be available working through there and engaging the public in all those ways and getting a report back to the select board in time to make any changes before this hunting season if there are any changes to be made now that would be a recommendation never say the recommendation it would it would simply be a summary of the findings based on the engagement options and bring it back to you to see if the board is  ready to make a decision or if there's something that's clearly comes out of engagement pieces avoided that makes it easy for you to make a decision should be is the slower option that would be similar to above except that in addition to just a staff advisory team that would be reaching out finding some members of some residents in town representing a diverse group of people hopefully to come together and be part of that advisory team and guide that process still doing the same types of outreach they'll do in the same types and gauge meant in those types of things but having a broader group of people doing it the idea there would be able to make a recommendation to the select board based on some of the findings in feedback from the public  the issue there is that it be a slower process we'd have to kick it out a few weeks even just to do the interview process the application process to see who's interested in joining on the committee being able to work through it actually make recommendations would take a longer time try to sift through that stuff and see what is viable and make a recommendation to the select board and not something that general i feel can be done in terms of this hunting season so those are the two options staff recommendation is to go with option a it's the faster option it's a little bit more responsive in case there are anything that does come out is clear and can be done this year trying to leave some time to make any changes if any are necessary or that's where the public put select board was thinking about making the decisions ourselves i think wa and we said no let's get more input so what's the board's who wants to kick off this between option and the discussion  and i see any hang up so let's start with you as i said before i don't think i do i'm not in support of having yet another committee formed i think we did that the last go around and i think it's time to collect inputs difference between the public input process that would happen an option and the public input pop sions per process for option b and what the results would what would happen with those comments the options would be pretty similar jen jump in if you feel differently but the options for the actual engagement would be very similar where the idea is to do kind of a community kickoff event at some point have an online survey and then do some smaller groups of focus groups forums as necessary if if we get to the point we think that's should be should happen option a or option b that's the same the difference is that an option a would be staff and jennifer putting together those options but option b would be jennifer staff and some residents who are interested and want to form a advisory committee or want to be part of that advisory committee the end result the difference between the two option is that the staff and jennifer the staff advisory group would summarize the feedback from the community form from the survey from the outreach and provide that report to the select  board under option b the advisory group with the residents on it would be sifting through some of those some of that feedback seeing if those recommendations that that group can make to this like board option a means that this board and the staff and jennifer will make the decisions jennifer will help guide us make the decisions this if i can interject that the board make the decision jennifer would guide the process facilitate the process staff would be part of that and we'd be presenting you with a summary report but the decision would be the board with whatever we're doing so that the select what is actually deciding a town white issue because we're a timeline board and don't have the ordinance in front of me as i'm not exactly sure how it's written but i'm pretty sure that all ordinance are almost the same between the town the village because the police are usually enforcing it so i thought again without having the ordinance in front of me i can't say exactly what the village is but i think the town ordinance says no shooting in the village no discharge in the move to take action sooner rather than later in the event that something else happens consider taking action and we don't know what consider taking action with the goal of taking action sooner rather than later two sounds like a is the option but what i'd like to hear from mine anyone in the audience i think we have some people who are interested in this topic so i'd like everyone to who wants to speak to be able to speak at least just once and keep it br i just like to expand that in there i referenced the march twentieth fourteen seventeen select board meeting where we discuss you know it was discussed how we were going to go forward with this  so basically first the former chief bradley rhodes he says you've got to be you've got to get public engagement public forums and hearings we need to be flexible and you and you can always take this to the bank no one of us said that i stood right there and i posed the following to the select board i said could part of the forums be how the public wants to go about this whether we want to do it in sections or at all or if we want to settle it once and for all i would like to see part of those mean in the forums be to decide what we want to do the response back to me quote from the select board was yeah that it will be the public say and how they would like to go forward that will absolutely be part of the process one of the first questions perhaps the option a in the select board package tonight is not consistent with what was stated that select board meeting on march twentieth twenty seventeen because of the last line in the requires the select board to make ordinance changes based on the police the police chiefs potential recommendation the chief himself even stated in that meeting that is ideas as i said were not so much recommendations but options and he emphasized the public in gauging it to craft the recommendations and i just want to urge the select board to stay consistent with what was portrayed to the whole public in that meeting about the intended process of the public engagement and that recommended option a does not do that if you look at option b although it's a slower timeframe it says that the process may allow for more nuance recommendation to emerge from the police chiefs report i i don't feel that the public should be locked into what the what the police chief stated back then that's not what the select were told us that night and that's not what the whole public to it was in attendance left here you know believe  thank you thank you there for you the difference between of today and the you get the public input it's just that the select gore would take that input and decide what to do with it as opposed to giving that to a handful of another board to do that for us so the public engagement piece is vital to us and we said that in the meeting on the whatever date that was and we mean that today as well we haven't made any decisions about what changes we would do we're going to wait to hear back from from you from from you all in this in this process and maybe it comes up and says there's no change i don't know  no decisions have been made in advance so this is something we were going to do on our own without any you know additional public input but we said no we want to make sure we get help from the public to do that and i think action a allows to get that input from the public to evaluate the different options that the police chief put out there they weren't recommendations he just said here the different sounds here are things you could do you know to something and we're saying we'd like the public to help us decide what to choose if changes need to be done and i was thinking based on the disk to congress that were just me that perhaps we should change the last word of option he from in the chief's options for proposing options rather than potential recommendations because that i think the interpretation is that we're going to best that was limiting us to only those changes or maybe we also put in other or potential options or others that may come up during discussion and i think i think there's a valid point that there may be there are a be other ways that are already documented in brand the roses eat the memo that that we could consider but i think we had that discussion with jennifer and we were saying that that's a different process than if we say here are the options or make one up that's a different process is there right then looking at the the reason i suggest separating them and not trying to do them all the same process is that if you want a quick decision i would say get a process of integrity one be very clear one thing by the public to do or not do any given time so if i want input i people need to make an informed decision about what they're showing up for and it will change what they say and when they choose to say it so i don't want to shift gears mid process but from the very beginning make it very clear that the limitations of the input that you want are not time should we see that there's a need for that and you can also frame out what that conversations go absolutely so if there's any decisions to make you can make them in the short term and in the long the more creative work that you're talking about where you actually take the time for a group to walk i now have a young son who passes under safety ten years old and i'm trying to give him those experiences well and one of the things that we've always wanted to have our family is a place that we could do that ourselves  a lot a lot of my life i spent six junction i recently moved to the town and i bought one of the bigger residential parcels of land in town not the biggest but it's one of the biggest i have forty three acres it wasn't in the zone when i bought it but two years ago it was a win when it's so private it's undeveloped is surrounded by undeveloped wooded land in fields with large large continuous par perfect it's perfect for us to get out and enjoy that wildlife experience and just the land we listen to mr jones who is buying her spot on the trails committee earlier telling everybody how she loves to necessarily take into account the size of the parcel and what's around it is it contiguous to a bunch of houses or as it continues to hundreds of area of acres of open land i'm not saying he did look that it doesn't appear to be so based on that on the highlight i would definitely encourage you to go on a field trip and i will volunteer to have you all out and we will go over walking together and show you i have walked the land i walked off of my property you can walk for hours and not see anything it's wonderful zoellick a lot of my land is on conservation you can't do anything with really walk a line recreate on it that's why i bought it for me that's exactly why i bought it because nothing else can happen so we could continue that that experience that i experienced when i was younger and i'm passing on to my son and the rest of my family finally i just want to say that i firearms is a tough subject especially right now but safe firearms can happen safe shooting can happen need to be responsible safety is always always always number one priority with us we pick up one of those firearms that has to be the first thing that goes through your mind and it's taught at the hunter safety course her safety course doesn't necessarily mean hunting and only hunting it  it's a lot of the course and i would say the majority of the course teaches about guns and safety of guns and those consequences of every time you pick that firearm up that has to be just imbedded in you and it is i that for everyone in this room has done so i just want to stress let's be careful let's think about this responsibly because say firearms and shooting an the body else serve david scope and i've been a shooter also for probably the last twenty five years all my shooting has been safe because all of my shooting is man a range the range was set up for ultimate safety and use of firearms i love to shoot i love the target shoot i am not a hunter but the thought of going out anywhere during hunting season in a state that has a reputation for on occasion having a stray bullet take down a civilian scares the daylights out of me i hope everyone shoots safely at a range they do exist they're not that far and they're available for all of us to use and that's what i would hope that we would concentrate on thank you is there anyone else here today wishing to speak who hasn't spoken yet ok thank you  rose's recommendations were some of the uncomfortable without having those recommendations fresh in my mind to constrain myself to only those recommendations if that's the path that option well it could be that none of those options are good and if that's the case then it says we have more homework to do and we could have another process but we may get some clear guidance from the public for other areas you know maybe india broke or maybe saxon hill or something that we could take consider taking action on others that for whatever reason are going to need more time so i don't think this is go yes well that's coming up is one of the comment you mentioned shooting ranges we don't have jurisdiction over shooting ranges we can't tell you you can't shoot on a shooting range this is strictly a hunting question  point out is there a map that points out there was a map that had indications of areas that were mapped for additional development in the future and is there one that overlaps that with conservation zone or are there either does either map offer that it might have been from an earlier version of the report given a different report l residential that's three acres owning so that brown overlaps with this future development in significant portions largely yes the brown and little bit of the green could be potentially based on future development  just want to see if there's anything that here that's restricting us and how we deal with that blue park you know the general recommendation to hear which talks about some of the potential options refers back to two thousand and two thousand i report to your earlier statement it's safe to say that if we come back with accepting none of the cheech recommendations that we're right back to square serial again info comes back and it's not it's clear that the recommendations are not anything that the public wants to consider then yeah we're going to need to consider doing so but remember there's different zones and some of on the board to either do that as you know act on it or or not so i think we know that it's been kicked down the road for a while and we're you know we talked about wanting to do a because it's can impact this coming season if we decide to make any changes to but i think anything that's not clear we don't want to just make a decision we'd want to be able to figure out what to do to get a better handle on what might need to be done and i don't see us waiting another five or entertain a motion if there's no further discussion well it depends on what the more i know we already had the input from the public then we had a discussion about going for option a at least that's what seemed like the majority was what i'm asking based on hearing what we heard is there any change to that and if there is fine but some asking just what the board's pleasure is regarding option a or b is it would be nice to be  second so any further discussion and choosing option and yes want to say that i think that the recommendations in the discussion that we've had about them i think there's enough wiggle room to look at other options if we need to i know the preference would be not to extend this any longer than possible so i'm back in the option in a box so you could comment if it is the majority who want to move to a and i know i said i favored a the beginning i just wanted on the record that i'm going to be obnoxious if we don't get far enough thank you all for coming in ok we're going to move on to business item six eat that's a proposal for green lantern solar for net metering project and we have david here we do and they went ahead and approve the project because they would be also another off taker so we're in less you have questions i would simply say that i think we're in good speed to go ahead with the project board to sign off on that if you do we can go through and get the contract cleared up make sure it has a legal review and everything else tied up to redact you for final approval if you're so we're looking tonight to see if you're supportive of the concept  i printed out here is the real quick kind of like powerpoint presentation but basically project as proposed when it was originally presented to you has been approved as presented in the certificate of public good was issued just a while back about a month and a half ago so we're moving towards that actual construction right now as david said we did meet with the village trustees made the same presentation offer them the same net metering discount as we're offering to you whereby when the project is completed the town and village would both be off takers and potentially based on the west for school system they would be of the third off taker and we're working through there are surrounded out all of the net meter credits that are going to be produced by the facility will be kept in the town so the town village and the school and then as a recap of what the town stands to benefit from by entering into this arrangement is roughly an equivalent savings of seventeen thousand seven hundred dollars a year on y forty thousand dollars over how many or twenty years the other benefits from this project are going to be adding to the local tax base a split between the and the state and the education taxes that will be paid by the projects roughly about ten thousand dollars a year for a project this size we're also vermont company employing for minors live right down the at the village presentation you also mentioned the state's goal of getting to renewable by a certain date and how this impacts that as well yeah so under the new net metering rules the renewable energy has three things that are produced from the facility it's electricity that goes back into the grid meter credits which we produce which we're going to place with the village town school and then renewable energy credits which get retired back to green mountain power  and those renewable energy credits go towards a tier one tier two noble energy portfolio for the utility which goes towards our renewable energy standards making this project renewable energy project and counting towards our twenty forty goal yeah the the document that we were given has different numbers than the table that you hand four hundred twenty thousand to the town and the balance goes to the village so if you give me just a second to do a quick mouth and i can send the news that is the correct sheet of the so i did a cumulative she apologized for that that she has the four hundred thousand which is eighty seven hundred a year and  time we made this presentation the psych ward is we will be covering the legal expense for the review of the contract so there is no out of pocket cost other than your staff's time to review this and we've made the same offer to the village and the school will show us these may contact too if you do decide to go with us to streamline that if there's any way to share legal review of sponsors and were in we may just look maybe to do town review and then as long as it is a legal review for a municipality such we may make a recommendation just to go with one so what's the risk to the tariff blame him for this it says here there is no rest that state you never get a free lord so this got of opportunity cost in the time that you've taken with us to review these contracts and then going back to paying just your delta green mountain power bill a predictable bill on a monthly basis from our amount of working with public institutions came the conversation of wealth we don't want to carry you through your non production months like during the winter where we may not use the power on our bill so we move to an actual billing you only pay for what you use and then our promise to use the amount of credits that we reserve for that based on the depth energy study that the energy committee has done and then i worked with dave and company to make sure that that was in line with what is available for the town to say ok observation correct me if i'm wrong specially members of the energy committee but essex is already home to one of the largest solar arrays in the state and adding this into it will that's all people that were doing business well that's a partial list of off takers that are currently working with us but on this project now you know now just in general so back before this work were before final approval we got we still were looking for a motion to proceed with the contract negotiations to come back to this like board for approval ye everything hard as fast as you can work and then i was told that there are sometimes joint meetings with when the trustees and the sort of winds up but that happens at the same time maybe we can all meet at that meeting if not will plenty great so every year the town is asked to approve able to emergency operations plan the time is now to to do that response to approved before may first each year it's a prerequisite for applying to certain types of grants it's also necessary if there is god forbid a disaster and emergency need to request funding which it's happened before before to request reimbursement from the state or fema it helps tremendously to have this in place on in terms of recouping some of that money so there's a plan before you it's been vetted by the police chief the fire chief public works in the manager's office and it's recommended that the select board adopt the twenty eight thousand local emergency operations plan and authorize h shattering by any stretch but how did the educational center get picked to house fight is it five hundred plus hats or is that five hundred people and pets are allowed there has been a very large movement to make sure that people do bring their pads on him oh yeah i know will one of the reasons they don't leave their homes is because they do not want to leave their pets behind and it adds up creating more burden on the on the on them on the responders and it also has people wanting to go back into their homes faster before that is actually safe for them to go back i which understand i'm all for it i'm just wondering how the school got picked over the exposition which would seem to my memory have quite a few kind of rough buildings without cutting down  that's true but that is if they thought about it i don't know if they volunteered because they're the one really public entity as opposed to the church and exposition but that's just speculation on my part that i should do it in other comments or questions before we  main changes i think one was going from having a vote unanimously to continue from midnight we leave that to eleven and in order to do amend the agenda we had a seventy five percent requirement and we're saying let's just make it a majority jerry the majority those are to do me any concerns about that we all agree to last and i think is on saturday may nineteenth the park's rec department put this together for the moment together and presented you with the memo apologized to them on the packet had a couple of typos it listed sue is still being on the board and of the duties if you don't mind if you would read the proclamation of kids to park day certainly proclamation kids to park stay saturday may nineteenth two thousand and eighteen whereas may nineteenth two thousand eighteen is the six kids to park day organized in launched by the national park trust and where as kids to park stay empowers kids and encourages families to get outdoors and visit america's parks and whereas it is important to introduce a generation to our nation's parks because of the decline in park attendance over the last decades and where as we should encourage children to lead a more active lifestyle to at the issues of childhood obesity diabetes believe this hypertension and hypercholesterol emia and where as kids to park stays open to all children and adults across the country to encourage a large and diverse group of participants where as kids to parks day will broaden children's appreciation for nature and the outdoors now therefore  result at the select board of the town of essex hereby proclaim to participate in kids to parks day we urge residents of the town of essex to make time may nineteenth two thousand and eighteen to take the children in their lives to a neighborhood state or national park and in reading through the minutes i felt like perhaps if they could be a little bit more vetted for accuracy based on the conversations we had and the recording of channels  so i would like to request you know this is unusual i don't need to burden the staff of a lot of extra work but i would request if staff could review the video and make sure that these minutes or more accurately reflective of the conversation in engine so they seem different than the others somehow not different but some context is not as accurate as it could be present for a meeting of such importance i feel like it should be a little bit more comprehensive is there any particular areas you'd like us to focus on or the whole thing i thought well that iran has already put together a great deal of edits and so in terms of presenting the information i think it would be a good idea of someone with more familiarity with the topic reviewed the tape and confirm that what was represented in the minutes is truly what happened because the topics are very they're based a lot on the notes that were you know the the white easel pad notes that jennifer put up and everything i just want to make sure that there were there were many comments about people's feelings about the situation between with the village in the town and some accuracies about history of what had you know i don't i don't i promise i will not make this a habit but i really would prefer if someone with knowledge of of our process and our work to date on consolidation would watch the video and confirm that these minutes reflect accurately what was said i'm not looking for a transcript definitely not voice went right and the rest of the board's ok with that then we can we kick that one down the road as we get a little extra time we will when he comes back next week i have will put some together i'm not asking for it to come back in any particular time honestly i just it's an important meeting and i want to make sure that the minutes are understood ok we had emotional to  ok so how do we know we do that well you asked the first two amanda motion as a friendly and then the second a second set and that's when you  sorry i would just like to request and see i wrote this up i'll give it to you after the end of line forty six i would like to add the following sentence sentences this render question the validity of  election to the select board the subject responded that she won the election by a margin of eighteen votes which was confirmed by official recount disprove that i do not question the validity i just question plurality versus majority that's all i pointed out i didn't validity of anything i was pointing out and lardy i guess we disagree on the intent of the comment but that's what i'd like to change it's on the tape i didn't say i question the validity of this i said the one was want i didn't question mark we're told that we're not allowed to rewrite history paragraph where you see the asteroid has run up an example from the summer there's somebody background information but we're not to be part of the conversation nor was the chair supportive of an executive session ms objects just or that the full one to seventy six i was the first person to suggest eleven o'clock it's good to have them especially when you get the whole package because it's a big thing and there's a number there are a number of organizations that were on the list last year that didn't have applications we've had organizations that have applied in the past but we haven't but their applications are missing we may reach out to them specifically to say hey did you did we lose yours or did you forget their due because i know something occasionally an organization will say yeah we blew it we missed the deadline welcome back the next year and i think that's what prevent child abuse did  if we didn't give them money last year did we actually ask them if they wanted money this year this year the question i would i would raise sure prevent child abuse but we can track it down i'm almost positive that we reached out to everybody  agenda i panicked that was supposed to read all the stuff we get so but i just have a request and greg thank you for the answers you sent me i just have a couple questions about when we do discuss it would it be possible to receive a aggregation of all of the applications like the name of the organization the dollar amount that they're requesting so that we have it in one place and then would you mind please providing maybe i would be in that same chart but it would be helpful for me to understand the criteria that the board uses to make the approvals or disapprovals and whether there are policies in place and what kind of what kind of procedures and standards we follow to award these amounts we don't have a rubric per se but one of the requires is that ever all of them have five a one c three to be considered and the manager makes the recommendations and then we review them and see if we agree or disagree we did have a discussion about maybe going and having a citizens panel do it and so on it kind of circle back to say it's our respons years i've shared it with a select board as a potential way to paradise but you're free to use your own methodology as well i think that's really excellent and i wouldn't want to add to that the heart and soul community values we both boards i believe adopted those six community values and agreed to set policy based on those and so we might want to bring those back out and make sure that we're following those kim kye asked more questions about th time to do it how do organizations know that january is the time when it's time to apply  although we have always a lot of exceptions especially for ones that are lost or or missed the the other thing i guess to say is it's because you don't know this you didn't we could of course this like work could make an exception and allow somebody to come in this late in the process depending on what the organization is you have that discussion but typically it's you know january first beginning  one of the reasons i'm on the select or is that process is not very well known and so it's it's it's an organization that serves individuals and six may not know that there's funds available from the time unless somebody tells them and so then do we tell them is there does this their announcement to say that it's grant period is open and we have in the past published they put something out asking for a forget detail they have a memory of us doing something to publicize this to be totally honest it's pretty of the bill people who used to handle this have moved on so  i would think that any nonprofit organization that happens to know that approximately one hundred forty thousand dollars in grant money is available on in the old basis and doesn't apply for it that's a they're falling down but we're not sharing that enough i would say that we're not sharing that enough like for example i was surprised to see a couple different local charities like dots not on the list so you know i think again i'm new i'm not trying to critical the process but those are the questions  touch has reached out the touch base after the deadline i will have to check and see if they actually get around to submitting anything if they did will bring it to you if not they are aware of it for the future check on the evidence and on my villainess list of things to learn and do is to find out about this process and work with staff and how to you know try to improve upon the communication aspect as as you all know one of the comments from the twenty fourth meeting and stuff is to have someone more dedicated with a communication strategy i am working on that as well with a position that will be coming  e in october and working on how we get out to the public and where you know where where we need a pap and where we need a little more of this and it's an interesting thing that town does give out this type of money but we also want to see where it's going how it's going what its impact is and you could hear tonight with the v n a you know you people change in their organizations change over the years and how they get funded sometimes changes and you're like well you're part of this organization well you're affiliated with but maybe not funded by them and when you hear what they actually do you say oh interesting that's well done and ok our money is going you know the people's taxes is going for that benefit but we do need to figure out how our message is getting the meaning of a task force that we had that includes like where members probably five years ago now looking at some of the very questions you're raising and so we may be timely revisit some of them but we did go through a long list of if i may follow up the heart and soul some of that stuff is i think what we also need to do there's a little far afield of this but we need to go back and and do a better job of communicating what the town and the villages accomplished since that meeting about six years ago because i went back through it this weekend and congratulations you have done a lot of them maybe not completed but worked on a lot of issues in that report and it may be time to maybe look at doing a refresher on heart and soul and keeping that we do need an executive session and if i move that's like lord enter into executive session to discuss the proposed public official appointments pursuant to one vs a section three thirteen a three to