r we started this project in december we had two weeks where we really did focus in on the local government and specifically as its junction we started with the concept of representative democracy and what that means surface and got an introduction to some of these really important concepts we started by looking at various levels of government so local state and national anthem the similarities between them and then before the history of essex in particular so that we could understand little bit about much like that in fathers we all need to do some research gather data and come to the proposal that creates a governance structure that meets the following people to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people love the sort of foundational information that they were given and they had to answer the question if there was one governance structure and ethics that factored in the history of our community provided good governance based on a set of principles and could be passed by voters in this community which you think it would be that was their question a know that's been ongoing question students are broken into groups they researched six different municipalities around the state of vermont to collect data and then came back together in teams to design the answer to that question they surveyed council members in those meetings a panel of these they and that is just in case folks are wondering is one in which merits elected but doesn't serve as the chief operating officer as either the state office or they're just an elected person on the election system we asked them to examine and so when we talk election systems in terms of add large forces districts and morgues and minister of the number of councillors ranging from five to twelve and term lines of two to three so ultimately at the end of the day after all the readings survey results interviews so they're prepared we just ask that you keep in mind a couple of things this was an intensive and i say it was a two week long because this is the time that we spent we had to focus on this project in itself but we've been studying civics and civic engagement all year they could have easily spent more service and that's been demanding all their attention so i'm really proud of them for being willing to to dust off their knowledge about this and come here tonight but just please keep those two things right so you can start first group you know  whereas in the district more it's people from those certain districts or words of also have that same chance and also we have to talk about the number of councillors on how we felt would be the best decision community and also the relationship between the council of public and because of this the public will know what's going on it's that everybody will be met which means which meets our principles that we talked about earlier with the idea of pretties participation we're prone to large number of people is that more voices are heard and there is a greater chance that minority groups are represented although this may not necessarily be the case it creates the opportunity  attract the board will be more knowledgeable about contrast in terms of what they need to order to be different the same opportunities as everyone else with this knowledge they're also responsible for looking at the overall picture and consider what changes are fundamental  that leads to more people understanding how the government work our first principle is transparency and transparency is the government's obligation to share information with the citizens and this is really important because if there is a low transparency or no  passed without the citizens knowing about it and then it could be all happening behind closed doors and then the citizens in the community would get out of hand because this is where you know what's going on and then they can start things like an uprising  and this is crucial in order to have good governance because this is need to be involved in the community and what actions are being taken into care and it's important that everyone is involved our second  principle was equity something that's really important that people get confused a lot is good quality versus equity and so you call it he's giving everyone the same tools to get something done her to learn about something b is giving everyone the tools they need to get to the same level and this is important in a governance structure because we need to be able and make sure that everyone has access to the tools that they need to get the knowledge about the community and the government so that they can also be involved in things like voting and we can use this to create the very best structure by allowing people to have the tools that they need and access to knowing and learning more about their communit projects could be getting done people could be getting off track and this is really important because and a community and we need to ask things to be able to flow and we don't want to all be here and there and jumped  s so this helps transparency because we think that people need to know what is going on so they can let the people that will represent them best and make investment decisions on the town manager this because the voters elect councillors actually even be able to best help them and give them the tools that they need to get them to a beast level understanding of their local government by having a simple and yet deep understanding of their councillors they can help them first funding to the issues by speaking out about them and making motions to help get things fixed some pros and cons of the council manger system are that decisions are based upon good judgement and explain to the people that they're ele the council are have more experience and know a lot more than the average citizen about government because they have studied it and they obviously dialect is a council for a reason so they are going to make the most educated and informed decision  manager and the council also knows best what the people in the area meet but some cons of this is that people don't have a direct say in the decision so they elect the people in council but then the council decides who is in their view the town manager on their minimize the cons of both systems this increase in transparency by having less people to focus on and to get to know representatives on a local level as a formal level being just knowing their names and seeing on a piece of paper oh that's our would be able to reinforce with their district what is for with the district was able to put through for everyone in the village and town and it would give them a fair understanding of all the members responsiveness is also increased because district council is came quickly respond to issues in the community report these to the full council then from there they can solve more cops at once so if there's a certain problem in just one of the districts in the village or the town there is just a counsellors can and that different issues concerning only some of these issues can be dealt with and addressed separately like i said before but some concert that it could potentially be more expensive and every dish you can work has to choose someone whether they're fair to the job or not so i have two people councilors they can know who the who they're voting for and if you know why the road before that but this also helps increase equity because it creates enough diversity to help everyone's individual needs and opportunities to succeed so by having seven councillors increase the chances of more people being represented in the community and that they are given the tools that they need to be able to move forward in their lives and understanding what the government is which is really important and having seven councillors also helps responsiveness by having community leaders fascinated data for us to study some pros in this system or that there could be more people to share the workload so by seven people you can have a better amount of each person having a little bit of fresh new ideas where you would might be going really good the first two years then the third here people might be running arab ideas to help the community and if you're a bag house larry people that realize that you have to stay longer here i have a couple of direct actually pretty cool food one on the top the one on the bottom shows if on the next axis there is a number of council members that you would have in on the why there's the late to different political parties in a town and you have an there's only like four council members will be back accurate representation and you can be really easily split and it can be a lot harder to get a policy t than two or three groups used their shows participation as one of your principles what would you suggest are some really good ways to encourage increased participation have i say i i thought you were as i said to evan i thought your your presentation that you gave to us you seemed to hit you seemed to hit all the right buttons on all this the sorts of things that we deal with all the time and it was very impressive with the the upgrade in renewal at the facility that was completed in two thousand and fourteen there is some added value to that house so anything that is on utilized should be reviewed and reconsidered and my recommendation is to exactly where it's out it's a larger facility going to be how the waste water facility is is significantly larger and i can't speak for the town but i believe all of the town accounts are being included but taken in under this agreement and they have additional capacity if that capacity is not utilized under net metering agreement my understanding is it's relinquish to the utility and as private developer nobody wants to do that it is you don't make money when it's really wish the utility we have some surplus accounts some of the larger accounts were tied up unnecessarily under this the on course solar agreement after these water facilities the reason they were tied up on early is we were working on estimates and frankly a lot of these estimates from the solar generation generators are pretty generous and we tend to overbook on a frequent basis solar agreement with on core to be just the waste water facility a cow which has fishing capacity for all of the generating at the site and release the other accounts that were tied up under that so that we can go ahead review quality and had a few questions she just hasn't responded i responded to that but she was tied up right now so you are of a mind to approve it we would like it subject to final review church during the year and now the accounts that village has not assigned will also be determined by the finance director other people directly involved in this we just listed them one of the largest producers of solar energy are also up at the top of taking advantage of getting the solar discounts through our agreements both count as village saving taxpayers money both ends of the any other questions do i hear a motion know we've been researching the new facility and trying to find those limitations and figure out how to proceed to the future without having to on for additional capacity and build a lot of additional treatment that was designed inherent in the facility upgrades that we did and we are meeting the challenge right now but as the community continues to grow we will run into limitations we've identified some of the internal limitations as the phosphorus recycle of what we do with treating the waste water that comes and is captured those nutrients then we process those nutrients to make them safe for recycling back in the climate and by doing so we release the nutrients back to  process so it's it's a vicious circle that is i'd say has been identified as one of the future of the factors on the treatment efficiency so we've been researching a number of different opportunities to remove some of those excess nutrients to internally create additional capacity in kind of stave off the future of great requirements are challenges that were one of the largest facilities stable when we are too small for anybody to consider us being business friendly or cost effective for any return on investment for their products so we've been kind of honorable looking into this we've been looking at a number of alternatives and we came up with one just by chance is a commercial descaler an operation that that's used in europe significantly is invested in utilities with utilities not just only waters and  supply systems but they also own the boilers and you quitman inside the home so they're taking all of this the water hardness and these nutrients they can fall they're they're expensive equipment using this type of technology the project partners would like to kind of turn that concept on its head and use it on a high street waste stream to pull that material out and to make a recycled material out of it in a more cost effective way we've been looking at it and considering this for about four or five months now and rolls as far as was in innovation challenge with the state is sponsoring lead programs come in many reasons nations and go through a vetting process for funds to be awarded to implement this so the whole idea with his presentation is to on how some project partners we would be the host of the facility partners on the project would be the genus all of was destroyed who was involved as the waste water biosolids of the by product of the treatment process contain phosphorus that has to be managed under the contracts that they involved an ultra filtration in reverse osmosis and this is something right up his alley with the type of filtration where both with this unit and the third person involved is dr morris who on james morris used to be with the ok so it's not i was it i misspoke when i put it there in the transmitted via the connection with cornell so at this time we don't have any direct cause we're still developing a project but i'm going to be out of the on the office for a good portion of the month of june so i'm here to request your support and are we starting the process forward and if there are any costs or anything related to the village outside of hosting this we will be back to visit down quite closely it is and so our charge over the coming years is to figure that out how to reduce phosphorous going into the news game going into the league and this is the first and best are the best we've seen so far as an opportunity there are other opportunities out there but they involve millions of dollars of construction just really this is this is a much smaller scale we didn't right as a water flows through that different frequencies of particles in water are excited chemically in physically right and if you have the right mix of chemicals with it you can take things that won't normally settl and force them to collect with it what's the recyclable product that you would get out of this is it would be a phosphorus base material that should be sterile sterile or sent for reuse it may require further process and we really don't know that that can be marketed year just one little carboy stuff cost four thousand dollars they have go through one every two weeks so even if this scale doesn't work in fails miserably we'll still have a piece of equipment that's going to go in to going it should be relatively quick we have storage tanks are ready and we've also talked to the wood comes because they also have phosphorus compliance requirements they're going to great job they're probably exceeded their requirements but they're always looking to do better interrupt operations you know it's a whole lot of the xyrem there rassilon off to the to the west of the facility oh so i guess what we're looking for baby is to have the village help with notifying the businesses and residents on road avenue whether her yeah well the problem procedure has been a letter that we last year we handle limited to all of the businesses and residents who would be affected by the road closures or every business on the street plus the ones around the corner  and we you know we had some pushback from one business who really who presented an argument that they felt like that it was definitely there is like some  know we didn't do did to but when we do like the block party to do you are having a go around specifically and talk to each group because it's not like there is tons it's there how many businesses are the first like six or eight w say so do business so now we're on to the discussion evan you missed a great meeting i thought i thought the meeting last week was really afterwards and touch a lot of different things i think a lot of these things were things we've heard before and i tried to write them down and i didn't know you know i didn't want to i didn't want to just say we had a great discussion great presentation great discussion now on to the next thing right enough there was something else and i also wanted to just i had meant to meant to say it last week and evan doesn't know this but now there's a tradition in the trustees we normally have a retreat somewhere in april or may usually it's closer to june where we kind of we kind of don't have a regular meeting we just kind of stop and talk about stuff and we talk about the initiatives that we would like to see go forward so i'm going to suggest that we i think we don't need  retreat this year i don't know what seems like we're having a lot of the lot of the stuff we normally talk about is stuff that we're actually doing in terms of consolidation but i throw that open now but the reason i'm mentioning it now is that i thought maybe a lot of this stuff is kind of stuff that we talked about in the past after retreat and i didn't know if we get it in terms of a follow up on some of these things if we want to make that like our retreat but those who might that was my thought on this stuff  five minutes on a topic whenever means that isn't jam packed full i think is more beneficial than doing a whole day what i do want to make sure that we do though in the end there are two things on here especially the housing committee and the pricking committee you know i did regional meeting so i got a taste of it i don't know exactly how she did the same presentation will be no more tailored but one of the things that came out of that was you know back to work communications and communications strategies the village already allows excess restructures which is beneficial not only say the workforce housing take things where but it's also allowing some of our elderly homeowners to stay in their homes and be able to afford that by supplementing it with an income while the  number of affordable housing units or human maybe qualify for affordable well whatever that level is but it can be workforce it can be people who are downsizing you can be people who want to live in a certain maybe a one level platform or in their case start a workforce housing like some of the positions we have here the village or the town or in our school systems where that is something that we can bring in people who could afford to live in our community and not have to drive thirty or forty minutes from where a lot of our workforce comes from so i encourage that and we need to do a better job of communicating those benefits and those those regulations that are available to people they may not even know that we have that availability so i would encourage that from my staff as parking committees i would want them to have a specific challenge right now in this body right now what we want them to look for right so that there's some direction right nothing about the retreat it does seem like all of the topics that we've discussed in previous retreats have caught up to us and we are actually doing bill which part of the purpose of our retreats was to do a little blue sky conversation about what we'd like to see in our community and we were making all of that come to pass so it's really great the one thing that our retreat we tried to do also was to assess our performance and how far we've come whether we need to keep going on certain things it would be useful for this body to assess our performance for example that's left what has what they call a radar list which is a consistent list of projects that they are that are of importance to them and  some of them are very different from what our we're trying to accomplish but they all have a percent complete which is which i find a little arbitrary but at least there's progress noted on it so i don't know that we've ever been that formal about it but i do think it's do how do we thought through how do we do that we make up a list and well i know we had it we did we have a ritual last year yes we did it up as a great i would say we go through the minutes because generally the minutes were very reflective of what we talked about that if you create a housing for many it becomes a permanent housing committee and you know you don't want that to happen you want a housing committee with a with a short half life and one that gets as you said which is you know you give it a charge it does the work it gets done but it doesn't become a permanent entity here a loss we want to but that's a separate decision but don't don't let the thing morph into a permanent housing committee let it let it accomplish the things that you want to accomplish is that's a good approach find out what you really want to have a lot of what i would suggest in the news is you establish something right not only what's the mission but once a day that they dissolve unless  through raised the point about affordable housing and affordable housing for a lot of the horrible housing is single person young up and coming person kind of affordable housing but not affordable housing f amilies how do we get around that and i thought there was a connection there between what some of the things regina was saying which is that for developers but that because they don't make it so it's a much harder hill to climb to make back their investment before the presents presented by affordable housing one of the things that helps lower their initial cost is if they can do business with the municipality and not be trying to purchase the property privately i did it's not like i'm going to i think we should run out and buy property but i thought it was an interesting point and something for us to talk about do thoughts about that anyone's thoughts about that is  burlington or maybe it's when you ski but overall for the whole county to grow economically you need to provide affordable housing work for you for new people to move in help power and drive the economy and because it's because it's one community versus another everybody's benefit now maybe there's some specific offical political leap of faith in the i get so i think that's a that's a word that's where the onus falls on the county or forty five minutes or more to come were or being able to address the hall is high on the list so it is is economic development in and of itself is needed in development it's a lot of things as s you use and which you're trying to attract but affordable is in the eye of the holder too and there's the government version of it and there's a local version of it so i think that all be part of necessarily dredge up any information background reading stuff that we need for parking for the housing committee anything that you folks want to contribute to that and then we'll put it on the upcoming agenda and have background  and others because of recent events in the other communities and other parts of the world how we take that and our plan very seriously and when you go closures and lots of people hands on deck but hopefully the weather will hold out and have a lovely touring all the facilities that they never had to go to and meet the people that they never get to meet but as it is a work force showing them what it will be is the buildings we work out of the digs that we will have  lunch as well that the fire department is going there bring out the grills so that it's nice we are going to have an employee newsletter on that to be able to tell people about the progress we're making with alignment and merger new employees anniversaries changes the benefits that because we feel that working in the kitchen is needed as you guys are stated back to the public and so we're working on a lot of almost two of everything but we also have different ways each of them is doing certain things that affect the finest apartment that affect the age of our department that affected ministration in our ministr trying to figure out ways to standardize how we do things and so a lot of this will also that come back before the boards as policy changes or changes to the employee manual or just to contracts when they come out so that we are standardizing things and so it will be a long process but we work on daily monthly maybe they'll make it to a progress report like you just m came to us from discussing it but depending on the weather there's so many things that play into it and how far away so certainly you can create a sound but then you have the environment with which you hear  whether it's in this room whether it's outdoors whether it's humid out whether it's windy with what effects the and you know and so it really is is there a lot of variables you have a on because they know they're g s into residential neighborhoods they also know very well that when they have her out they only have a couple the exits and those crowds then leave their facility he i think he would be amenable that maybe even we could do something at a sound check or something like that so that you would get that and how they do the reads it just please all of this is not to say i think so i think that you should you should educate yourselves on what's going on and to see the went to one of their shows just recently had him shades and retain a share of what goes on spare grounds on any given day during the week or the weekend and how many thousands of people at the economic activity that is occurring out that they knew they had the timber with would show section three thirteen the trustees go into executive session to discuss the real estate matter where people premature public knowledge would place a village of essex junction at a substantial disadvantage in to invite the unified manager an assistant manager and i