states of america nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all like to welcome everyone to tonight's elect board meeting and just as always remind you to put your phone to silent if you could doesn't go after the meeting had that happen once it's quite embarrassing ok so even we have a few items at our place so for agenda additions and changes what we have so next is next up is public to be heard that's a ton for the public to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak your in public to be h he could stay your name for the equipment back capital expenditure and mains with another municipality we went down this road several years ago with money for a fire truck at that time i made a statement and i stand by a today if it's something this community as a whole needs than it belongs in the town budget paper or buy it all and only buy all the ammo you is a bad not resulted in my opinion in any significant merger of departments where on tencent purposes we have this we have status quo all we have done is move the budget budget items in the village into the town without merging the departments with minor exceptions inconsistent with the goals of consolidation i cannot support any further consolidation happens unless that you boards commit to bringing it governance proposal to the two  communities into a single municipality with a single charter i have always supported that and i will continue to support that but what we have been doing is not good for this community thank you section and first up we have a couple of interviews first one is an interview and appointment for zoning board of adjustment i'd like to invite tracy delphia to the microphone there if you w that we'd like to say welcome and thank you for being willing to step forward to volunteer in our community so tracy if you could give us a little bit about your background who you are and what your interest is on being appointed to th and twelve i joined the south burlington planning commission i spent four years on the planning commission and three as the vice chair during that time south burlington went through in terms owning a major rewrite of their city plan on multiple amendments to their land development regulations including the form based code that's currently in place for their city center including some transportation overlay districts parking overlay things of that sort and twenty sixteen i met my now husband moved to essex junction in twenty seventeen and we just purchased a home together  over a year ago time flies on old stage road and i've been wanting to dip my toes in to the essex community and i've worked with colin bullard for nine years now at the state  a very welcome step back for a little while but i'm very much ready to get back into community involvement like my question is almost going to mirror that with the little bit different angle i've i've done both i've served on the planning commission and the c b i and the planning commission i would hazard to say it so there's a little bit more exciting in that the applications are more varied and the c p a is not just let it go with them so i hear that you are going to enjoy the slower  pace applications are going to be quite disturbing either and just want to make sure that that was going to be ok with you as well my take on it there is a unique relationship between the zoning board and the planning commission and that there should be regular communication between the two bodies and if the planning commission doesn't know where those pain points are they can improve your code so i i'm not sure if there are regular meetings between the two  bodies but i'm very willing and ready to give that feedback is far is what i see could be approved improved and where and working together is one overall body s so what's the board's push or do you want to go to second session or so as i said to tracy if you could give us a little bit about your background about who your mark is and what your interest is and being in the cemetery sure sure i've been in as extension for about ten years now i'm from austin texas originally  but i've been in vermont for eighteen years by trade i'm a financial analyst for a subsidiary of united health and i work at home my interest in secretaries goes back to a young age an early age i actually was next door neighbors with th that's it's extremely important aspect for me is the history and i've been working with some acquaintances bennington to document some symbolism earlier that's known so that's another aspect of interest to me and i you know i value cemeteries as public spaces sometimes certain communities have drifted away from that so that's a motivating factor for me as well a financial background i feel may be of value to the committee not sure how at this point time but that's another strong suit that i've been to the table intimately at this point i have begun the process of connecting with the remodeled cemeteries association to see if i find some information there i know that just following their social media presence there's been some interesting requests from other communities in the state of vermont for funding and assistance to help improve grounds and  we're going to move out there next item of business which is the five c and that's an annual update from a greater burlington industrial core better known as g b i c welcome courage for you tonight thank you thanks for coming  we focus our our activities on dollar added businesses that are selling goods and services out of state bringing dollar one interim on and it's those those monies once are in that in the state is a new money into our economy or are circulated and expanded so we work with many manufacturers or companies that are selling services are out of state the past year has been pretty adjustment and we've worked with them one of the few things first things was on the increase agree mountain power in the rate power rates we had issue obviously power issue it it global foundries is still something that is of his concern to the company and concerned of to economic development corporations like t v i see you looking out for those jobs there obviously with global foundries to take a little bit different look at their campus they don't have the interest in the the buffer or the campus they just looking at the production facility and so you probably read that we're listening campus they're willing to divest it out to a new owner is also property in essex is well the the so called forty acres where the big parking lot is and programs for economic development and one of those called the vermont employment growth incentive and real quickly it's hard to explain but i'll try to basically the way it works is if a company proposes a project either bringing a business into vermont or expanding  business is substantial way there what the state can do is is valuate the economic impact of that that new project on the state economy the primary generators are pointed at plate payroll tax and also capital improvements and other tax benefits as well so the state calculates that overall economic event benefit to the state they take a piece of it of this new money and then return it a portion of that back to the company for a short period as an incentive to do the project if the company as a company sets targets and if they meet those targets the new money generated by the new and as well is new are going to defer all their having a little trouble finding people and finding a new location so they asked that their their start date be deferred another year until next calendar year to start the project the other the  the vermont training program is basically it's not a training program it's really a grant program to help subsidize up to half of the cost of training of new employees and  it's really a skills development program for companies to to add if they bring on new equipment or sheen re or getting into new line of work or if they want to do leadership training or it is upgrade training of their staff which is a substantial means they're doing like three hundred thousand dollars worth of training over there with all the new ploys that we hire so a couple examples of what we work with and in essex for existing companies trying to keep track of existing businesses back and forth with flex is still a little bit on their they like a new building they'd like to expand to having difficulty doing that and it looks like they're where they're going to be for a while  globalfoundries property is being really has some our future for us to growth and in the areas so we working on the other piece thing you just mentioned as you spend a lot of time on the state level on workforce development big problem for a they need there they need workers and they need to be able to get their workers to a success six junction how does g b i see work in that in that arena we work at their best best guess it way to look at that as we were closely with the chicken and county regional planning commission there the planners where the where the vines the scenes the economic development people we we worked with them on their own they rewrote the reasonable plan we did the comprehensive economic development strategy which is really the economic development strategy for the regional plan we really look for them to to their expertise on the trim the transportation issues they have a whole system over there so we would we would work closely with them charlie baker executive director is on our board so make sure we have good communications between the two organizations and then from your perspective what are two or three of the best things that my my my economic development one o one is it just is to really to create a favorable environment for businesses you don't really try to provide too direct of a control or  active connection with the businesses as much as you're trying to provide a good environment for that business to grow so it's that's an equitable tax structure it's it's it's  predictable and timely permitting process it's assistance with adequate infrastructure so i think those are the things behind the scenes if you create that environment i think and i think you know i don't can't think issues the only issue i think i could think of with with essex is probably it you're not right next to the interstate but there's nothing you can do about that i know a lot of work's been done on on one seventeen and that'll help for traffic going going going south so that's my economic development want to go on so diversify the tax base is really critical to do and that's what you're helping to do so you have an annual meeting in other meetings is that your board meets and who's the rep from essex on your board the evan would be the rep from suits who attend our annual meeting it's and middle of june every year have already set the how you set annual meeting but i'm told you must have quarterly meetings or we have like one hundred a board of i think thirty authorized i think we have twenty nine board members right now throughout the community we try to get young people on the can on our or on board which would it would have were in working with the with frank the president will come up with suggested a new board members and their vote and there's a there's i can't remember all the details but it's as if there's a term so that you know when we have a good good turn over the board meets we don't meet during the middle of the summer because that's a hard time to get people together i think we have like ten meetings a year for the  lastly it's a it's about communication and we talked about this a little bit last year that if a you know a business is in need of something that they're not getting if they need to grow and they're having issues with where they are here in essex i know there's a confidentiality piece but i'd like to make sure that you're working with evan when you hear that there's an issue so that we can he can be aware of it and if restricted and there are items that are not spendable that are part of our fund balance and then we have items that were already assigned last year things have happened to them some we've spent some of it some we've added to assigned some of which you have weighed in on like that one thousand dollars for the steps and violence the money for the police early retirement we are already decided on thirteen three thirty two for fire salaries that was last february and then i think you mentioned that the governance attorney should come out a fund balance so we've come up with this list and are asking to prove it at the end of this is as of june thirtieth twenty eighteen so s s to prove the new assignments are for the whole list all of them because some of them have you know changed since last of the net but i couldn't figure out why there was a line across the box the big box in the spreadsheet is that significant of something above the line is a different flavor than things below this line there's a line between  sixty four hundred dollars last year was there any intent for that at that's an old number and been on the books for a long time and i haven't heard that i'd like to propose that we move that into the future tax reduction since it's just been sitting there we have no purpose for it rather than sitting on the money unexpected things or do you see any problem with that and we also have other funds that are negative do we not that are currently negative on this i mean some of these accounts of some of these need there i mean that without would be another place that this could go i think i one of the items in the budget tonight is actually two of them we have a truck that unfortunately just had engine problems on that we are now going to have to act upon before we subpoenaed it it was going to be in the budget for next year that truck is as is going to talk about that we also have some building maintenance in the public works horizon that is going to be quite  expensive but not anticipated yet this year for future work so while it is only sixty four hundred dollars it is monies that we're going to end up moving around anyway so maybe a suggestion would be to put it in the either the buildings fund or the vehicle replacement fund we're always going to be replacing vehicles and always going to be fixing buildings or is it about the sixty four hundred and the reason i feel that that's really a no brainer in my view is because we have one hundred eighteen thousand seven hundred twenty one dollars for future tax reduction i believe already if we didn't have anything there and we were over the fifteen percent then i would say that might feel a little differently i don't i think the sixty four hundred should definitely go to buildings as opposed to well buildings to new truck i mean wherever we decide is going to be the more important piece to help out ok you suggested buildings i know that the public works building to that second line from the bottom or sixty five thousand at something and i want to hear from you i asked about this number and this is this is really just a what's left number there's unfortunately the list is getting bigger whole story maybe i can talk out here but unfortunately list is getting bigger and not trying to scare you haven't seen the capital plan yet for next year but there are some expenditures in there that  we have our plan is to meet this week because we've done things a little bit differently this year we've had departments had put in requests for needs those needs well exceed the two cents that are available on the on the tax rate some of those involved buildings we're going to have to cut some of those requests back to the two cents or postpone some of those needs we're well over fifty thousand dollars short of the required right one of the requests is six three library building facade is in need of repair i believe the front of the building yes is in dire need of some repair and it's on right so there's always we have parking lots that have need i know that your building still needs some things i know the fire department wants to talk about some doors we've we've worked pretty closely  with the new library and staff when i am left unfortunately but we work with them to try to identify some of those needs which really haven't been identified   and the solution is to handwrite the automatic hander's that you push with heat and get rid of paper towels get rid of dust being called out to fix a problem with the toilet that overflows in that area so those i mean there's a there's a long list that goes on so we're not going to have enough money even in the proposed capital plan some of those are going to be postponed and some can but if there is a place to put it for the future in my  would agree i think that's that's a good there's other needs but that's a good place to put it and you'll see when we get into the buildings and we've got twenty seven buildings minimum thirty maybe more he's more like they're spread all over and i may have missed a couple of buildings we've got the but we've we've got them all over in even the new ones have needs ok i stand so and since just to clarify this what this line item says building maintenance dennis has been talking about capitals so are we talking about the same thing or different things that's where i am so are we read redirecting this to building maintenance or are we putting it into the capital to address some of the negative numbers and asking us are there because we talked about the capital funds for building and yet this line at the bottom of the new assignment says building maintenance needs yeah a one of the same yeah they really are and it's a misnomer i think that you can we haven't defined we need a complete overhaul of the capital planning process to serve again we did have a large part of that you'll see this year but we've changed but we've used the term in a lot of different ways we've always had a what we've used in the capital planning to look at the actual definition the library largely deferred maintenance is a capital planning item so is it maintenance or is a capital improvements and we probably need to get the language improved and one of the things we also need to do i don't want to go off in a tangent one things we've needed to do for a long time is that we have a number a large number of capital accounts and we're finally trying to associate those capital accounts with account numbers so we can track expenses better because we've had accounts developers have set aside funds for projects they've gone into an account but some of those account numbers have not been given account numbers that we can then  hate to use the word account account for properly and so what we're trying to do is get that together so the nomenclature needs to be standardized so that we're not using in one case why be deferred maintenance would really mean capital prudent for the library you see that a lot we've we've used a lot of terms that are they shouldn't be used they should be one term one line item that includes those things but it's really one thing it is both and it's it's it's not just maintenance meaning the paint that would be pure maintenance we're thinking more in terms of improvements to the facilities that would add to the value of that building for example so if we say we like to move the sixty four hundred from the border select professional services to the capital funds for buildings and that would then could we change that under new assignments call that capital funds for buildings as opposed to capital maintenance needs with that he then right yeah ok and if we did that it would change it from sixty five zero sixty seven it would increase it to seventy one or sixty seven if you do the math i mean ok so is that reasonable is that people want to do that  right so what do we do that there will scratch the the selectric professional services move that into the capital funds for building for buildings and again change that from sixty five or sixty seven stormwater it was thirty thousand this year where we're doing fifty thousand up on different line items here in this great sheet to just wonder why it's rick the request to include just came from for me and the rationale was that within the stormwater operating budget this year we did not spend all the funds that were available and some of them in the operating budget were professional services some were construction of facilities we had funds in there for that in line items some of those funds a lot of those funds didn't get spent because the state is still behind in terms of defining what the requirements are we have right now we have and these are really rough numbers i'm just i'm at the top of my head but again from the capital plan if you added up all the projects that we have grants for the local shares about six hundred thousand and  change we've if all of them would be if we got a bill for all of them today meaning all done complete we were one hundred thousand dollars short just on grants we've got the thing that saving us is in the capital plan we're putting away funds each year and these projects take three or four years to build when we asked start we've got one of the projects that's i believe i'll talk to later it was a grant that we went for with the village together the voters managing it to do a phosphorus control plan for the town that's the most important piece of work we're working on that was just recently awarded we're going to working over the next year trying to determine what projects do we need over the next twenty years to build and one of the costs of those projects because when i project out what we're putting away now for stormwater and the fact we're going to continue to go for grants might best  there's not going to be enough money there but i don't know because i don't have a project list to go for to say in order to meet our required level fosters remove all this is what needs to be done and this is what it's going to cost and so any fund that we can put into the stormwater account now we can use to leverage for grants because they're still giving out money and we can use that to leverage whatever grants we can get that will work us towards that end while we're trying to figure out what's a longer term plan does it come out of the two cents do we have to add more money to that two cents to four stormwater do we have to bond for those projects i don't have the answer but i know that we're still trying to get more grants and we're already you know if we were today were hundred thousand dollars short so everything we put in is going to help us get the end game that's that's why we're under spent by that amount roughly this year and i my recommendation would put it back where it belongs which is helping us to move forward and still more that again into the future tax reduction category you know fully recognizing we certainly don't and you don't have to use it in the upcoming tax year that as we did last year we defer some of it and left it in that in that future category the reason i think that it it ought to be just thrown in there is this presupposes a merger and i you know putting money into something that tied to that specific event i'm i'm just concerned that i mean is it is it is it ok to do merger doesn't happen these are still your funds that can be assigned or i'm assigned as you choose so again not to be negative as soon as you do you there you are the electorate decide that you are you aren't you can reassign these as you well i think though that while lowering the tax bill for anybody in any one years lot of all on and a good goal there are going to be expenses if you do merge in terms of taxation that you may want to use to feather something in and while one might be to do something in one year one maybe to do something over a period of time and like dennis says when you're trying to do something over a longer period of time and with grants or other things sometimes you need that that pot to be bigger than any one year which would support but those are your funds and you can decide whether they are to be designated or re designated like we just move sixty five a person like to see it kept as defined here because  if we add to that over time i think evan is right if we do get to that point where we merge those funds are going to be very helpful to have them designated for that specific that i would just say that based on what we know right now and what we're working on right now it would seem to me that that makes sense the changes that we're making here tonight as have been said earlier it's it's still our money if priorities change it does not preclude us from moving be my concern is that we only have one meeting a year where we touch these funds and as you know this is typically this first one in december and i guess we could we could be just i mean i'm just i'm just thinking aloud here just as we could revisit whenever we wanted in move fans around whenever we wanted it's right here i apologize for i agree we we tend to you tend to do this once a year probably because there's really no need to move forms as often but there are times when we do look to use those funds during during the year and that is the time to open it up it just is very it can be complicated like the thirteen three thirty two for the fire salaries we dealt with in february right so we did and we have done that  i guess the positive would be that you have funds from which to move versus other communities that don't have any funds to move so i don't think there's anything hard and fast and you only have to have this conversation once a year but we just don't always have the need the history behind that as we were it was suggested in prior years that we should wait until we have the audited numbers before we do this so that gives me a little bit of heartburn is we have this this policy these pesky policies can go away all the time right that says and i understand that you know it's says you can have you know fifteen percent fund balance and then anything above that needs to be allocated to something or given back to the taxpayers and i use this this particular line item is intended to be given back to the taxpayers at some point i guess my only so i'm whether it's in this line item or the  the general future tax reduction line item probably doesn't matter and here i am talking a lot it's thinking through this out loud again sometimes it helps to say i'm not but my guess mainly yeah the  undesignated capital funds for additional highway garage repairs and dennis i'm glad you're still sitting there i guess i've got a few things to do to cover tonight this was originally planned i mean if we knew about this i knew about this last july and kind of postponed putting it forward i was hoping that we'd be able to do it during the normal capital plan and and lauren suggested and evan suggested that you know if this is a real need that we should just get it done and i agree with him it's one of those things we probably should not a postponed you know there's a question that i think tim brought out that there was some structure supports that removed probably fifteen or twenty years ago when the doors were put in additional doors were put in there's actually three doors that were added one door on the very far western side of the building never had any cross brac structural support there because that's the main entryway into the lift those doors were a necessity as we increased our fleet if you've been up there when everything is inside could not maneuver those vehicles in that building if you didn't have those additional doors to get in and out of it from a structural point of view those buildings on those metal framed buildings are designed pretty closely their package was built in the seventy's and there's not a lot of free board in there with regard to current safety margins for snow loads and things like that they're designed for the standards are in effect at that time and design very closely to the standards so that it's not forgiving and i think you know tim is a doll is a structural engineer i've dealt with him a long time one point he was we didn't we weren't able to get all of in his he looked at me said the concern would be if you had a combination of a late spring storm heavy snow load on the roof and a combination of some heavy win torque on that building would essentially take down the whole corner some of the building is better protected on the back side because not only has the bracing up but also has the siding there it's safer actually when the doors are down you know because that does provide some lateral support but his feeling is that although it's an old building and we don't know where we're going with all our buildings that from a safety concern he had a very real concern that we ought to put up some additional supports in that part of the building to guarantee that from a structural point to build a building didn't come down under a certain set of circumstances and so when we talk about this and talk about the funds and where we're going the seem to be a logical time to get him back for complete the design get a contractor in and get it finished we're going to have to put some footings down inside the garage and put some columns up and then tie those columns across to the beams his also says further suggestion his is that the columns that support that we have the one that are the two that actually rusted at the bottom that we're really not supporting anything and we got very lucky because everything when he was holding it up was the roof girders holding the beams up with rivets because nothing was really supporting it on the ground so that and that's occurred just because they're metal they're metal frame building the trucks are full of salt  wash them down and nature mother nature is there it's that problem is not going to go away these support to be internal inside that section so they're more protected whatever happens that building in the future  will give a level protection so the request is that we take those funds as recommended by staff to go and get it finished design and build it could get it fixed lucky it was the age of the building built in there were some economic funds or provided back in before i came to town back in the late seventy's i think was about one thousand nine hundred seventy seven and i think that's the age of that building so it's fifty years old so this when the doors were installed that's when the building's vertical bracing and y know is it the responsibility of the installer that they weaken the building was that you know i guess if there's a hit it would be my head because we needed those doors put in and you can't have those those overhead doors are inconsistent with that bracing you have to go to a different type of bracing and we didn't do that so that if there's a hit for that it really falls on my shoulders first off right in the door that's really not over the door people it's we we made the decision to change the  just a curiosity question beginning of the second paragraph of tim's memo attached sketch depicts a concept to install a new structural steel moment frame to replace vertical bracing what is a moment frame please moment frame is a rigid frame if you want to think of it as  support so it locks those up or beams in place and prevents that rule from torquing ok getting that moment there's two types of failures to sure for sure failure were brakes like that and there's the bending failure which is a moment failure and it was that it would be the moment bending failure of that roof that would cause the thing to come down thank you i'd never use it never heard that term used to be from another structural engineer but some things i guess if you sit in class long enough they eventually come back people up on that roof and it's like other things there's a certain degree of risk in a certain degree of luck if you will i think that you know if we had a real combination from heavy snows would probably find a way to get some device to get up here to we could get some of that load off if we don't have that heavy snow and it continues like it is now we just got the work done with the bo ok we're going to move on to a business item five f keep things moving update on status of current capital projects all of them in there i realize this is not a novel but i wanted to provide we've done this every year to provide a word version update of what we've been working on since the start of this physical year where we are with those accounts the capital plan that you'll see coming at you in a few weeks won't have the narrative we'll have the spreadsheet and all the backup sheets explaining what went into that spreadsheet so this is kind of the one time to go through and talk in words about what's going on with each one of the projects it wasn't my intent to bore you by going through each one of these projects but by providing it early if you had any questions i'd be more than happy to answer them i do want to make you aware of one project under highways just because it's occurring today we had a class to painting grant for sand hill road and we did the portion close to route fifteen we probably should have taken a few more feet but we left that portion because that's where the state project is going to come into to improve the intersection so we finished sand hill road down quite a ways we had additional money in the grant we've gone to we originally going to take it all down we do everything we found that there was a more cost effective way to do it so we we actually saved quite a bit of money out of the grant we really wanted to jump sand hill road because there's another section we did out to alan martin that's finished so we want to go farther down sand hill road in the state under the grant would not allow us to use the money it had to be a contiguous portion of sand hill road but underneath the portion we completed there are some fifty year old corrugated metal pipe it's in pretty bad shape and so  aaron talk to the state and convince them to put the money into lining that so if you happen to be on sand hill road today traffic was a little back up because we didn't realize that the steam was going to be that bad but what they did what they're doing is are going into that storm it down into one of the catch basins dragging it through the catch basin sealing it and then they split steam and the inside under pressure what that does is for said bag like a balloon against the side and then the oyster in essentially allows it to cure and when you get done you have a fully lined strengthened pipe that's probably half to three quarters of an inch thick and the state agreed that they would allow us to use a grant to do that because it's expensive we have some pipes fired that we wanted to do it and it just happened today because it was so cool that the steam was everywhere actually to traffic control because you couldn't see with all the steam in here what was going on  our plan is we have some problems down in the lower part of sand hill road because those pipes the coal down the last portion are also corrugated metal they're also fifty years old we did televise them they're in pretty bad shape we intend to do that out of f y twenty funds but that's our plan so it was a it's a and they may still be there tomorrow to finish so it's kind of a neat thing to watch but it is a way to expand the dollars that we have use up the grant money that was there for a good purpose so now have a renovated storm drain understand sand hill road near the fire station heading back toward cemetery road just kind of interesting  page four down at the bottom under water lines could you could you speak to you i'm looking in particular for number one and number two no budget expenditure was made in f y thirteen to f y eighteen or will be made in f y ninety two questions number one is there money in there now under these ok so these were created as an anticipated capital expenditure but has not been funded to date these are what i would call legacy projects that we may want to remove at some point on  from the village boundary heading back towards pine crest yeah there is a pressure difference between the village lines and our lines you have to put a bunch of things in there but there was a quest request to put in water and we don't expend water unless the users pay for so we would miss goes a long time back and have a hard time finding reports now we get a cost estimate what it might cost the users and the answer came back we're not interested so there's a few of these in here that we've left as legacy projects they're still in the capital plan they may be a future need but there's no money allocated there's no work being done and maybe when we discuss the capital plan it's time to take them off because it honest douglas to willoughby was this goes back to there was a project to develop when the land was in sore core parallel to route fifteen if anyone's from a with of on call farm and that area off of old stager road that one point in time there was a project to be developed in that area and a water line to loop from those two locations from we'll be at a window will be all the way over to douglas to of fun story water is going over the dam where we don't need it anymore but it's still a legacy project i've left it in every year again maybe it's time to take it out that was the second prong of my two part  question was if if they are inactive and would be foreseen as being inactive for a period of time moving forward you know one of the things that sarah and i work a lot in the capital plan and one of the things that we have all the stormwater grants and they're identified projects and we've decided they should be in the capital plan as identified projects so in the capital plan you have one account that funds these that's money goes in but then all of you have the other counts where you're spending them which and for the public they need to know what what are we spending that money and so we're listing all those as the sheet in the back for it so you're going to find that where we may have had you know how many projects are on this list we're probably going to double that so the question is how do we present that to the voters how do we present that to the board so you have full disclosure on all those accounts because these have no funds them but there's also a lot of accounts that have dollar counts were put in there for maybe by a developer for a very specific purpose that we can't touch because we haven't done anything with it yet it's still there so it's it should be identified as a capital project for a future need so you're going to find some of these may have to come off if you don't have a lot more being added that was information i was looking for help thank oh if they've been inactive for ten years or something is that i mean is there a cut off that would make you want all that traffic coming through the town center or you want that traffic to come up allen martin parkway go on to sand hill road go on to ellen martin drive at a from fifteenth or jericho underhill in the northeast kingdom it was a logical extension there is no circle we're going to be built in wellston from the wilson essex way so you need this other leg given the fact that we have sand hill road and signals now at the bottom of sand hill road so we've made improvements to our infrastructure that at some point negate the need for some of these projects so i think it's a very good question and when we get to the budget discussions with capital plan maybe that's the point where the board i've left a month ok but that's a very good question and maybe some of them should be left on because maybe there's still a need for those in the future and others did maybe it's time to take them off because in reality we're just not going to build them or is there you know i know a building having to be torn down is not something right but but some of those i think we can anticipate some of those better i think that one of the things that you know i thought about that and i think there's three three choices that you really have just one you can do an immediate fix and say well let's take some money out of the un does it mean accounting bring that balance to zero and in some cases you can do that if the counts are small on the other one is that we should be looking at the long term costs for that particular line item and what amount of money is needed per year to substantiate that line item and that's what that really means is we need better planning and some of that falls within our individual departments it's not just public or some of it falls within the individual department so you really have a better feel for where you go in that's partially the argument for building manager but that's a separate discussion but i think you get to a point where you ought to be budgeting for example we might go in the hole in a given year on equipment replacement we're putting enough money over twenty year period you may have one year that gets below but the plan is you're going to have enough money to substantiate that fund for twenty years and there's enough in the fifteen percent funds in the other funds to cover the fact that that account may be just below the line so you need to do better planning so that you i mean it would bother me is if we had an account that was zero it was negative next year we spent more money it's still negative the next year it's still negative that tells me you know when you're not doing enough planning and number two you're not putting enough the right amount of money away to cover that expense so i'm not so concerned i'm not going concern even some of my accounts which ones go below zero as long as over the long term they're solvent if it's a one time event that occurs they figure out a way to do it but it can't it can be fixed immediately by saying let's just plug the hole make it zero start all over but if there's a good enough plan you might have to do that you might be able to just say it's going to come out of the hole next year that's what it is so there's options anything else ok this is currently just information information  and it's i would have when we give you we're going to still use books the capital plan we haven't quite gotten to the point where we're going to put it all in spreadsheets the plan will be in a spreadsheet but ultimately our individual sheets in the back we're going to try to put into x l and link them so that's easy to change stuff and add things but the book that you'll get this will be one of the inserts in the book will do that so you've got what's proposed what we're doing now and where the money's being spent this year so you can kind of compare apples to apples thanks ok we're going to move on to business item five gene which is approval of a grant application for the school we have a storm water improvement project on tanglewood dr and he came to me with this i told her she didn't have to show up tonight since i was going to be here if you could cover for her ross been a good boss but anyway she said she put this together we've been working we've been looking at that the line that's at the far end of tanglewood it's a similar thing it's all metal pipes but it's over time because over time has caused significant erosion down and for hollow and that whole area very  we've done all kinds of things down there with the conservation corps of waterbury that we've not really richmond that we've used they've come in they put up check dams and it just doesn't work there's too much storm water getting down there we had we had the u v i'm students look at it when you're in run some numbers for so we've got a little bit of background in the meetings that we go to with the c c r p c any  conversation that in the current year they may have some you p w funds that they hadn't allocated as a unified planning work work program and every year and you'll see us in january will come in with a request i think your first meeting in january or second to go after funds for next year for certain things we've got some projects lined up we want to do deplaning projects that it's a twenty eighty percent match i know any put this together and actually the cost estimate is probably more than we get from the match but we still get twenty thousand dollars for the work what we really want to do is have this is one where we probably will not get grants to construct it but we will have enough done under the conceptual plans that we could build ourselves the thought process there that it's a pretty simple thought process but a bunch of it and i'll do this i think i'll try to explain it without putting it on the wall but you've got a bunch of catch basins online that goes out to some work educations that runs down for all it's an old line it's a metal mine it's all rusted out the road meet will need to be redone anyway the road is forty feet wide curb to curb or standards thirty was built a long time ago it's at the far end of tanglewood where the road doesn't narrow down after this intersection anyway and this will go through a public process so the residents will have no say in anything else the whole idea would be to reduce that with to thirty feet which gives us ten feet to play with and within that ten feet put a path because there is no path on tanglewood and that's you know work from our back to the front in this case but use some of the storm water front of you may be able to get a grant for the storm water portion i'm not sure but take that storm water pipe take it out put a much larger pipe in much much larger pipe with flow coming out of the catch basin into that pipe so you store that water and then coming out you put a much smaller pipe with an overfull so central using a large pipe to store water during those intense rainstorms you're letting it go out at a much slower pace which means you're cutting erosion down below and you have an overflow that if that storm continues for two hours it's going to run over the top and civil like it's always been but if if you can catch that one or two year storm you reduce the amount of erosion that's occurring down below we may also be able to put some stuff in that system which would help us get some credit for fossil fuel so if we can get conceptual plan this is the case again where's the where can we go get money to get work done that we need to get done that we can get grants for or cut down our costs we had planned to go  do this ourselves with our own cost this summer to hire an engineer look at it this way we can get twenty thousand at least out of the dollars the last two years we've not spent it in the professional services so we could make up the difference we won't know what the final cost of this is until we get an estimate from from where it would have engineer they pick engineers and then assign him to the project the regional planning commission does we have a say in that but they'll actually s engineer as opposed to bit so when we negotiate a contract if it's twenty five thousand under then it's five thousand and cost us if it ends up being this type of estimate we've got that difference between the five and will be twenty of the five in the seventeen additional which we have funds in the operating account to cover leverage this fund lever it's another way to in the questions that's when the path goes in and i've talked to you before about this the distance between the curb and where that path is to make sure it's why nuff so that when the snow plow comes by with the wing out to clear the road and push it onto that land that it doesn't that there's enough there that it doesn't cover the the walkway right and we it's actually a wider right of way but if we took the existing curb out one you know which side of the street who wants it who doesn't want it but i think that particular street as we work our way from the back end to the front you know that's in the area where the kids are walking to school and there is no sidewalk there is no path so it could be a path could be a sidewalk or a group that we need to we need to know storage but to me it's a logical progression if we can get storm water to fix part of it no by the way get a path in at the same time to get this part way closer to getting something built  to sand hill road where we then have a path where there ought to be a path or of course sidewalk along that there's too many houses there without that amenity and as you said this being a public process so the neighbors there big pipe that's just slowly draining out from the rainstorm a couple days ago so i had solve the mystery for he's on the board could be an undergrad it could be a hundred from someone's house who's tied into it there's a high ground water table and it's leaking into the storm drain we have a lot of storm water that runs through our community and we ever done that calculation you know just to see  mean i'm amazed two days after a storm i mean anybody who goes and looks at the the dam on the bridge on the list you know are worse than you you can figure out because we're downstream from everybody else when that when that down there is wide open you know we have creeks in the of the creek and stuff you could sit out here and listen to the water rush i do have said along with that one of the things that's required is for the chair to submit a letter of support yeah i've got their original ok yeah we can leave that here thank you they put you got like five that we brought on in the beginning right ok yes the last friday was not a good day and i just got this i'm going to have to go through it a little bit slower than maybe the other stuff but and those areas we've got five major large trucks that clown trounce of this one is the one that's right in the center the operator realized that the engine was overheating he turned it off got a hold of the mechanic on the radio mechanic told him to go outside and check to make sure there's no coolant leaking on the ground to make sure there wasn't the coolant had gone out on the ground waiting to a cold he says get it back to the at that point was that there was no coolant visibly leaking but there's two and i'm not a mechanic there called e g our exhaust gas research elation coolers and they were added to diesel trucks to try and improve the emissions from those trucks and when they checked those there were down three and a half gallons of coolant and at that point i have to be in the garage when they started it up and there's this white smoke black smoke the whole garage was filled and we shut it off got a hold of clark's because they do that kind of maintenance force it's an international they came down picked it up brought it up i've given you a copy of their bill they did a diagnostic on it and they said just to get at what has to be gotten at in terms of the visible stuff those those two coolant devices had leaked into the engine so you were essentially had any for any freeze in the engine and you were burning diesel fuel you're basically burning any freeze so what happened at that point is they don't know if the they know that it's going to take at least that i've given a copy the rest of it to basically fix the seal of the coolant systems the cylinder head gasket the other pieces but they will know if there's any damage to the engine meaning either the cylinders getting or in fact if the head was cracked until they get into it so it's a little bit of a crapshoot we know it's going to cost ten thousand their estimate it's might cost another five and might cost ten or it might cost another five to ten more so you've got a ten to twenty thousand dollar range for repairs so given the fact that we asked them to park it  know that they can't get to it right away if they're going to fix it so that leads to three or four week the way they've got their own schedule of stuff that sitting there to get it to a point where they can work on it so we know we're going to be out for a period time with that we started doing a whole lot of other stuff if you order a new truck you're not going to share a new truck to largest so that doesn't work for the winner the issue is how do we get through the the rest of the winter because we're actually even though we've had winter we're just starting so we can purchase a new truck we checked in new england to see if any other trucks were available that maybe the dealers had prepared prepped and got ready to sell nothing was available so that that was out  we got to that point the question is and we got the actual trade in value from quarks of that truck if it was in good shape and we traded in tomorrow it's about a thirty eight thousand dollar trade which surprised me it was that high but that's what it is but are we go twenty thousand dollars into an old truck that we're going to trade so i think we got maybe got lucky coach esther just purchased a new truck and there should have been delivered in november they didn't get it answer came back if they were using the truck for plowing it's in good shape they think that sometime in the next year it might require some brakes and maybe some clutch work but it's been on the road top aeration it's fully equipped it can run  jury estimated that if those that the clutch and the other pieces the brakes had to be done it might be another three thousand dollars so clark's quoted colchester forty eight thousand dollars as their trade in and they said they would sell us that truck for forty eight thousand dollars now so the next step was what's our truck worth so they looked at it and they said they would give us thirty eight thousand dollars for our truck less than fifteen thousand dollars to fix the engine so the difference when you get all done is that we could pick up colchester truck for twenty five thousand dollars the other thing they indicated is that and we've bought almost all were trucks for them and that's probably where it's going to go in the future that they would in the spring if we ordered a truck after approvals and tell meaning all that they would  forty five thousand dollars on the trade on the forty eight thousand dollar truck so the net difference is three thousand dollars on the trade would you can look at a lot of different ways and if you had to put in the three and somewhere between three and six thousand dollars for three to four months rental on a truck and the thought process was once you get through winter we take it up to quarks and do the trade right then we go back to four trucks for the spring and summer while we're waiting for a new truck to commend let's not structure a lock any let's not put any more money into it than we have to let's get the maximum trade work with the trucks we have because in summer if we have to use trucks we can rent trucks from anybody to do projects and that gives us a vehicle to use from now until hopefully spring there's in my view there's no difference i've given you a copy of our equipment replacement plan that you also see in the budget for the three thousand dollars if if we had to put repairs into it it comes out repairs and maintenance there's money there the three thousand dollars difference in the trade right now in that account as of the as of now given what money has gone into and what we spent we have one hundred eleven thousand dollars in the account so we can decrease we by twenty five thousand for the truck you'll see different numbers next year because the trade will actually occur differently in two thousand and twenty so the numbers will change down but the net effect on our overall capital equipment that we've placed on plan is n and there's always to be a risk what if that truck blows up i don't know or building collapse doesn't know you don't know so you play the odds and i think the odds say this is probably the best place we could be  the other option would be and we we talked about this is park it and work off the trucks we have and that might work difficult because we're using a lot smaller trucks  to capacity to do it disciplines doing it means longer time for plowing could we make it if we had to we probably could the problem becomes one if anything else goes down for any period of time then you're really in a world of hurt because then you don't have enough to put on the road to do it or you think a service that it's a key service in a key area and so that's why we're lucky i think we got to a solution in a very short period of time and we're lucky t weather is playing nice to us for the next few days because we could we can if the board approves we can get this done this week the truck will be in in or said this week and we can be back to where we were great thanks for that background and his questions about that seems pretty yeah genius i think you've done your due diligence tennis as usual of i have a question a little surprised to see that the coolers were down by three half gallons you just wondering is there a checklist that your folks go through before they hop in there yeah i think i talk to you the question i might tack was a little bit different to start with is this operator error and that's a question i asked jerry and he said no he said they've had troubles with this he said what happens is you it can happen first suddenly because of the the way the newer engines that we buy are cummings engines and they don't and i can't tell you what the name of the engine in this truck is it's another brand but they've had problems off and on with this and it can happen very quickly very suddenly where you get a leak between that particular device in the engine and quite honestly that truck had been out plowing doing everything and have been the issues with the so you and i asked her that i said which should be operative known this ahead of time he said not with this particular situation is this is not a question of operator error he says it's a question of if anything else faulty design with the original truck and i've got to believe that i mean jerry's pretty honest and i think if he felt it was operator error we would have had a long talk with the operator about the problem but i but i mean is there a checklist that there yes interest you know  morning and be broken afterwards or if we end up putting brakes and or a clutch into this new used truck from call just or would there be a reason the mainland why they might want to hang onto it for a year or so we've talked about that i think i've not seen the truck back to take a look and see what the truck is i think we start we need to anywhere from you know seven hundred to one thousand dollars a month that's what your dealer's going to get you we're going to have a truck parked over the summer because we don't use them as much in the summer and devalue it by five six seven thousand dollars and then you play that game and it's just and it's back to one how long are you keep an eye on what you're useful thing technology you have the e p a who has its standards and depending upon whether this one is or isn't in the new standards it's just how and what condition is it and are you willing to put good money just like your car or are you willing to put good money now into  eight or ten year vehicle or would you rather put that money into a newer more dependable vehicle and they play that i don't say it's a game it's not a game but it's it's how many do we have what kind of vehicle is it is it the one vehicle you can't do without this time of year this is the one vehicle you can't do without this time so that's that's the equation we can buy and we have been buying extended warranties which want to seven years and they're a little pricey but they're not you know they fit into the budget we've already got a budget in to do that but there's a reason why they extended warranties only go out some seven years and when we're doing ours our trucks are ten to eleven so we need to go down and then the question is how do we get them down and the only reason that i would look at what you're suggesting i mean is that if there was a year we could do that that would build up enough copper reserve in the capital account that then we could start honest seven or eight year of the terminal but you've got to make sure you've got the right vehicle to extend that you're with us and i'm again i'm i don't know the vehicle for many things but we haven't seen this you know the others we've grown up with we've jerry's work on this is one we don't know and so i it's maybe a little riskier but i think the idea is a good one and maybe that take a look at one of our better trucks and say let's get one more year which might allow us to bring everything back if you go forward for the next fifteen or twenty except the trade in value keeps up the trade in value there's there's some things that when i say we need some we've got a lot of players in the fan but this is one we need to look at to see if there's a way to bring these bring that if women replacement plans with less years so is this for information purposes a committee where it's a recommendation because we are going to be spending the money from the capital plan that was it's over the unbudgeted and not in the original plan to clark's truck center for twenty three thousand dollars and purchased a used coal chester truck from clerks at a cost of forty eight thousand which results in a net twenty five thousand dollar cost transaction further pending budget approval a town meeting the town would trade in the used culture esther truck for a new truck replacement as outlined in the vehicle equipment replacement plan like second any more money into it than we have now and other than to make it readable we have to do something we may have to find you know and it something that we can only cover or some way to do we have to do but we also don't want to devalue the tru no that's true yes very well i've seen colchester cop stopping people with an essex proper so we've cooperated with them before like i think linda meyers might have some of her old magnetic signs that a staff team that would view the two applications and the town in the village go with scott and partners the trustees would do this last week the also approved the scot and partners because the bid came in at forty five thousand six hundred fifty dollars it's above that forty thousand dollars threshold for the purchasing policy which is why it's coming back to you in just some reminders on the project it's it's just a speech needs analysis it's not going to be making recommendations of whether there should be one building or two buildings or where they're going to be free of these departments is just kind of looking at what are the needs going to be for staffing for storage for equipment for programs for going out for thirty years thirty years ye which is it's it's you know get that far out it becomes a rough estimate thirty years from now but it's a planning tool for going forward and a lot of that will probably weigh in on where the board stand with them solid nation and merger and everything else but at the very least it's going to give us a sense of what we need to start budgeting for in playing for well there is one facility or two so that's where we stand staff recommendation is that the board authorized the unified manager to finalize execute the contract with scot partners happy to answer any question questions for various anybody we kind of had a lot of discussion about this before just about adding a couple other things and since over the forty case got to come back few reasons one of which was that the state was concerned about future development potential so the un's worse decided to approach the town to see if the town is interested in accepting a donation of one hundred and sixty acres of the property to but bring it to you there was a draft warranty deed would go through that just figure out any tweaks make sure there's nothing there with the attorneys but just ready to to move forward with it and get back to the  study for the firearms ordinance this was not included in any of those discussions it's like i said it's somewhat to that port property which will not be affected if recreation becomes more of a heavily used recreation area that's by the time there is it is i was saying i owe my post emotion passed unanimously end if you could send them our deepest thanks for that very generous donation and we will be happy to call through his fourth parcel ok great that brings us to the last business item in five which is five k in this approval of minutes by the motion to approve the minutes of december third i would propose the minutes of december third with like one member collections and page to ones particularly line sixty nine i want to put words in mr watts mouth but i think it is ok to say and you watch had a question regarding nonresidents fees if your question regarding other fees i don't recall ok thank you at the end of line eighty six i want to thank context and the words as happened several years ago which i was saying at that meeting on line eighty seven at the end mrs reiner asked who would be the checks and balances it would have issues with eighty six thirty seven to for this is just make it more readable thank you george tyler on line one of four provided a brief synopsis of the subcommittees charge an activity period and then mr post added that the current situation is not as complicated as breck's it yes with the joint words one and added that he felt reaching out to much smaller communities and i should have circa one sixty six as well as opera and finally i should one sixty eight because i want to add also that the boards learn from past failures in hand your child had a little dialogue about that after much discussion the boards decided to have a press release edited and presented for review to would be joint board members i'm not sure why certain names were put in there but it came to me i did get it and review  you'll see that i put a just a draft of our outreach thank you and you know there was there's a lot more lines on there and that's not saying that we need to populate all those but i would hope we can do like we've done in previous years try to popular at least ten to twelve and if you could take that and see your calendar and what you'd like to possibly do we can discuss that that will be on agenda item probably in january and if you have other suggestions and that's fine and we may have his discussion in past years and i just don't remember where we ended up the question of having select board members who are tomorrow night will be your last official meeting with mark i believe right so unfortunately but will try to either do a cake or something as well with no ok and if we can do it later when you pan it i just want to again most people may know this but i don't either but you know this she was interim manager at the village along with susan there for a while which is a huge on i believe we have taken some and that we have other trees of other species that are slated to come down one of the things that's occurring is that the village in the town of public works got together both have an emerald ash were tree plants and they basically i'm basically they use the same question so our crews are going to start working together on trying to maximize the effort because both of which have about well over one hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of trees each that have to come down over a period of time before the little bug actually does get here so that we