sue order thank you all for coming in so good to see everybody and the first item on the agenda is public to be heard about things that are not a canvas or anybody here who wants to talk about something that's not listed on the agenda there's asked of the towns to do but this year starting in october there's a financial consequence social not having it in place and the consequences in the event of a declared disaster with the towns applying for public assistance and they're looking for help with  will contribute less if this plan is a place along with some other things it's part of the the raf rules and regulations emergency response assistance funding rules that are kicking in october of this year and so there's been some slight modifications to this plan and they have to change the template a little bit for but in essence it's the same thing they've included time resources in terms of equipment and in this year's land and then the biggest change that they're asking one of the town manager or select board chair that signs off on it to have either i c s one hundred or four or two in their quiver of training with i c s one hundred which is incident command system training one hundred which can be taken online and so the nibs adoption is also part of the actually up this year but jericho's been separate that for a number of years ok have you ever asked how much money the state spends committee meetings and so forth to come up with a name every yeah ok well anyway thank you so much  and you know their terms will just be until the election to me which is tell all right and now we are on schedule to talk about the town recreation committee and first night that second happened because the folks who are going to be on our taskforce for you know creating their roles for cool on an application has to look at all the appropriate zoning regulations and go ahead rule based on what those regulations are a select or it should not get involved at this point let's say you don't need a solvent you know that we should you know they need to consult and we can provide one but it's not you know more appropriate rather than act in an individual case like problem but we ask these people to come in and even if it's enough for the decision to rule fairly and objectively with the regulations the way they are you know if if they need a rule on it and it looked to me like it was potentially a type of because they're worried about why signs were dropped so in nineteen the signs would have been covered by the yorkie so that was why they hunted because meanings and take part in the discussion and especially when they are getting into the nitty gritty on the regulations it's really important to have people's input because you know that they work really hard on that and that you can't find any reason for why it was dropped you know a whole list the school doesn't need a permit but they must follow all the rules landscaping sun means and so the whole list of things ok well thank you so much for giving us that update us a lot of work thank you and i guess the way we're leaving out is no we're not going to do anything at this time except we are just f way i planning on meeting with both the d r v and the they would consider additional import without additional public hearings frankly it's not my business you know but i can't imagine having made a decision not to rule out the you conclude this is business so they did really well the only thing for you is the timing issue because they just can't have one out of the blue there's all computers you know if you need to and they have to look at their schedule how many things  class and then eighteen months later giving a test on that information without any sort of refresher it doesn't make any of that if i really  there'd be five annual payments of thirty thousand one hundred sixty dollars total interest cosa ten thousand five sixty nine so we're recommending that you go with  and there will be a report they have recommended for the crosswalk at river road fifteen that's the third alternative is what they call up basically you know the media and that in the future you could install the beacon well the other thing i'd read in here is that even though there is a recommended alternative and more expensive  even see it frankly because you're i mean maybe after time people get your story but it's so isolated where i guess my point is that one that fanny allen is you know there's a light every eighth of a mile there unlikely that you'd ever get a of war at the dickinson intersection and the discussion was if you waited to for light and had at dickinson street then you could probably at that time off soon cork you'd meet warrants you know further up the road and given where the people live it makes more sense to have that up the road so ok part of this is also creating a crossing presentation public hearing at the june fifth meeting that's required in order to have to apply for the grant for the construction so what i was looking for is are concurrence of the board that the median for teacher we were our lawyers were in this minute one minute two they called spokane washington who had the same problem in two thousand euro two thousand they more dense and i get my garbage pickup every other week and i pay thirty four dollars you think that there would be a whole lot more economy of scale and debt in europe than burlington did you know that is the value of consolidated collection the freeze will keep your market share that's a good something called the dormant cultural she can't do that solely however we can do things with we say it's in her political best interest that we can have small been hearing seattle portland oregon you know they've been doing it for the last two years this is not just wisconsin where they need to do is have a split packers this is kind of an interesting concept part of that packer has or again it's picked up every week the vast majority of that packer probably sixty to seventy percent is will pick up either trash one week if it doesn't have a gaming senate and recycling the next works fine so the two weeks that's where most of the north america is going to head to in the next couple of years ahead so use the split package one party going down the road every week and that one packer will pick up that week every week or again the environmental we had we had been concerned that the appeal might be thrown out on technical grounds and the middle court would never hear the issue the substance of the issue and all that since we had never had a warrant discussion of issues we were not in a position to take a position on the substance so we chose to send a letter simply a friendly letter the court expressing our hope that they would hear the issue and member we wrote that they went back and forth  it's my understanding and i think we will hear from them says something whether i'm correct or not but it's my understanding that the court left open left the door open for post trial briefs by interested parties and we are an interested party by virtue a being a town but also by virtue of the fact that todd  of the town did make a presentation at the derby here no i was under the impression ok in any event it i either of those point of saying that's where the matter stands so there's no possibility now that the court is not going to make a decision they are making a decision despite the trouble that you ran into susan so you are going there so you didn't really need to do anything and the slap board didn't i mean didn't have any impact on that they ignored the fact that there was that technicality is that we're saying  testimony not proceeding at the end of the day so they basically in court said they'd waive their right to challenge the standing for the remaining five people but the challenge standing the other what should be in it if not then we should decide not to do that we should decide what we want to do well i have opinions on this but we have the public here so you should engage in what amounts to a hearing well it's not really a hearing it's not hearing their hearings have to have first of all you have to have more than one and they have a different warning the dollar general but that's not what we can do our real issue is whether to intervene in this particular issue or fix the underlying problems with the regulations post trial brief but you really can't it's your limited you can't have any new information it's limited to what has already been presented and they've done you know their due diligence presenting so there's i'm not sure what the value is for us to intervene at this point i think you know it's intervenes to run work out right yeah to file a post trial right for you know to get involved or to write you know to intervenes around work we have no intervention powers well you have the power to if we know how to file briefs or add more you know well i don't think but you know it's i mean certainly you know we can sympathize with the issues i mean i can sympathize with their issues and things like that but you know people are really concerned about these issues and but you know we interview candidates for the d m v we ask if they can fairly and objectively apply the zoning regulations to an application even though it's not popular and that's what they do and so it's really not dollar general sloth it's not the bees fault the problem lies with the regs and unfortunately this is not  n issue that's along to jericho there always is a disconnect between the town plans and the regulations because there is a time lag between when they do they're so susan you're going to get a decision  do was just share some information with you that i think will help you make the decision about whether or not you want to get involved but your information that you're going to share with us is and some of the items are things that are within the selected for its domain name rather then they do your bidding domain and so you know up until now town why importance especially because of what some of the evidence that was presented and some of the concerns that were presented so i think for you to decide if you want to file a post trial brief the information will help you decide argument about it because it made impassion arguments about it before so what's not subjective is wipes in our town claim and what's in our zoning it's not subjective that it says that our where our goal is to encourage village centers discourage commercial strip minimize the appearance of strip development encourage multi modal transportation prevent adverse impacts on neighbors prevent traffic hazards protect natural resources protect scenic views protect historic sites encourage small scale local business especially for local agriculture and products and protect scenic views and roads and i could give you the page citations for those items and the reason why we went forward with an appeal is because our position is that  did not apply all of those standards taken as a whole so yes they applied the lighting standard and yes they applied the setback standards but they didn't necessarily provide the forest for the tree and the reason it's not just about the door it's about what's really important to the town so what are some of the things that came up were that  one of our requirements is for to minimize the appearance of strip development true delhomme to be engineering on the site and they testified that they accepted the new template from dollar general and they made minimal modifications to it to fit the site they cited the well they cited the sceptic they didn't think about changing the orientation of the building they didn't think about moving the building away from the cemetery so the the cemetery is now a public resource and it's the response of the town you just voted to appoint commissioners because you're now responsible for the cemetery and in which the rule says that you're supposed to mitigate the adverse impact on your neighbors and they testified that they did not make those changes to their to their plan are zoning says you're supposed to minimize curb cuts to route fifteen and roads and have we have the views to the mound report which in our town plan which states that route fifteen is a scenic is a scenic growed and we talk about strip development and i have a written description of strip development in this project the definition of a strip development is single use building low density land use linear arrangement dominated by retail uses individual buildings with direct access to road with front parking along main roads usually state highways plan primarily for automobile store sent back with large parking lots few to no pedestrian facilities i'm saying finding disconnected stores that generate trips to drive from store to store in the situation you're going to drive from jerry to the store a large volume of left turns and cold science oriented for automobiles so our town plan so if we want to see a decline in strip development that's like saying i want to go north and this is taking us so because this project meet every single one of those criteria they're not subjective criteria they're objective criteria and the reason why we should really care about it is because the research shows this is their homeland state legislature and for mark to apartment to help the c d c urban land use american planners association for my planners association that when you have a retail strip development on a ma highway you lose your sense of place destroying your rural character you have environmental impacts the wealth leaves the community the job it'll be outside shareholders instead of local owners lower wages less full time employment and the health impacts of auto dependency it's not a small it's not a small issue some so then you get right to the hearing and you say well was the traffic's the do your be they in they had a traffic study was the traffic study adequate the traffic study was based on the mine transit handbook and extract related theoretical numbers it was two tenths of a mile the traffic study for the dollar general doesn't include the browns trace road intersection and it doesn't include the jerry hill thanks to the way that so in my mind that's an inadequate traffic study the the store is going to predict projects over five hundred trips in a day and most of those are going to be left hand turns coming east on route fifteen at night on a fifty mile an hour zone and we don't have any ability to control that road because it's a state road you guys have talked about that bridge for five years and when this store creates problems we're not going to be able to do anything about it in the traffic study ignored they testified about concepts of queuing in caravans and they said no we didn't study that so the backup on brown's trace road is not included in when the traffic study at all in the council cemetery there is they did geo geometry presentations about the views to the cemetery and if you looked at the plan the building is right in front of the cemetery they didn't turn it they didn't move it they didn't set it back they were there engineer testified on the stand did you consider anything and they said no we took the dollar general template and we placed it and we made it work on the site and that and so our zoning requires that there is no one to adverse effect on the neighbors and that you protect the historic structures and so was there any attempt to improve doocy impact on cemetery and the answer was not so i think that the select ford has a lot of good reasons to file a post trial brief i had one hundred residents you want to know about support one hundred residen letters of opposition to the project in may of two thousand and thirteen and all those letters were filed with the town clerk and recorded and we had nineteen residents appealed to the environment to court we spent over fifteen thousand dollars we have these hearings the post trial briefings are due on june thirteenth so those are your ritual your choice is to stand by and watch this happen or do what you can to try and i don't know if it'll help but i know that it wouldn't hurt and it's not a small door it's potentially setting the precedent because capron you know from being on the d r v everything is evaluated based on if it's in harmony with the neighborhood so that once you put in a dollar general that network or any kind of retail strip development it's not this particular store it's retail strip then the next development will be oh why can't we have another you tell store because there's impression that certainly my position i thought it was yours that this was not an attempt to prove prevent the store from being built but to prevent the store from being built there as opposed to a village center where it could certainly be accommodated the way that it is i mean could you there's a million things you could do to make it better so ultimately if you know you know highway fifty mile an hour so we've we've we've got a town plan that strongly states that we want to see development like this occurred in the village centers there's nothing in the store that makes it inappropriate for let's say the flats are in fact we're seriously considering a grocery store down there and that would be about the same size so the town plan explicitly says this so if they were going to be here and they met all the rules of our village centers then that's where they should be because then you don't have all the sprawl stri a good and everybody says oh it's the commercial district well since the commercial district has had north main street some major street i counted every building in the commercial district and there is not one building that is a stand alone single use commercial building that accesses roof fifteen with front parking so even though it isn't the most attractive area in the town it still doesn't the buildings there don't meet this specific definitions of strip the merchant bank has side parking clarks drawn access from fifteen every other building is either shared infrastructure like jerry hill multiple buildings sharing a parking lot sharing a driveway or you have resident commercial mixed use together so we're going in the right direction this is like a big u turn in the other direction that women really want to emphasize and this is opposition to the general emphasis to smart growth in concentrated areas and also adds a new active fifty criteria to discourage sprawl but the problem is the town plan is a vision document and we have our zoning regulations right which they have to look at and that's the process and you know they don't we just  if you look at the table of uses it's a conditional use and they follow the procedures for conditional use which is why they were able to use their argument for you know incompatibilities with the neighborhood kind of thing otherwise you know it was permitted there would be none of this they could even argue anything but at least they could argue with additional the problem is it does meet the conditional use in my fear is if we get too far forward right now compatible with the purpose of the selling just this is something forget the town plan zoning says you have to be compatible with the purpose of the commercial district and the purpose of the commercial district to provide employment opportunities and to locate businesses that cannot i'm quoting i've read this thing so many times no can not or should not be located in the village center that's what it says in the zoning and conditional the village center or something that can't be in the village center is would be something that has a large trucking requirement so our town plan is actually pretty good compared to a lot of them because it gives help objective information that you could compare and development to and it doesn't meet those criteria it doesn't have a trucking requirement it doesn't it's it's not a development that can't be accommodated in the village center jurisdiction which the use is located in by specifically stated policies and standard of the jericho a comprehensive town plan for a minimum of the development review goal of child term they've gone through a whole there's a whole process or conditional use and then you get to this one and it says news  in the court will be looking at precisely that question exactly does this happen under him back on the per on the on the on the purposes and character of the verb which is why which is a this is a zoning rule anything which is why we don't need to get involved because the court is going to read that they read the town plan think read this you can argue our point of view as a very what's interesting is that you know you actually can't to make this arc what i would like to see though is this energy and passion for people wanting to really implement plan is to start when the planning commission works on what the new definition commercial district  you know the rules are based on or the judgments are based on the existing neighborhood and that this would set a precedent and you know i mean it's  press there's cost to the slot for you know involvement in this it's not it's not customary it's we have to pay lawyers we you know there are two sides to every story we have been involved from the beginning we appointed our zoning board our g r b and we give and we have a lot of faith in them and it is quite a statement to say now you know now we're siding with the people with the appellants on this case who think that you made the wrong decision that's that's big that's the big cost there and that's my worry is it because want the best case scenario they threw it back to mediation which is where the slick gets to mitigate it if we come in strong now that might actually backfire would be a larger change then he would you know sometimes they approve it sometimes they deny it sometimes they improve it with conditions they'll say yeah that's fine but painted brown or yeah that's fine but add a bush and one of the changes that day that was being discussed was moving it enough that at least the cemetery wasn't completely right block and the judge said that kind of a change would be something that i would prefer to have  we did have a situation like this when you were chair of well fact is i you know what happened was it went bad it was a man in for four mediation right fact is it would be it was again it was there was other reasons of course but the or be denied the application and one of the reasons was very similar version of ten point one point three point two or three the general her harmony but because it was appealed it was kicked back and the select  maybe that's a sensible precedent here and catherine does have a point since there is that process and it did work you know we all have to make compromises and that was a compromise that worked we might like first of all not to do anything that would preclude that so that's a fair point and number two maybe we might go a little further and say there is this precedent which the judge might like to consider we've been through this secures ago whatever it was this is what happened it's not a dissimilar situation it's at that time the divide this time they laugh but but another all other respects is quite similar to the issues on the on the enabling the kind of reasons general harmony it was all the same stuff and and it was kicked back and we mediated and it cost us a little bit but it cost us a lot less than tearing the community apart over so i'm inclined to think there's that might make some sense and we could if we could write something to the judge that simply pointed to that history and kind of implied that maybe he wants to consider doing that again it wasn't the same good you might not know this is true i think i would say probably doesn't know this is process process for me and i am so thankful that you have got a hundred people interested in this process because we're three people and you know we you know we do our best but the more people that get involved in this and the more you know insight and you've got a lot of insight it's incredible how much insight you have really for just you know your i mean if you don't live like the secretary do you dollar my and how it's trying to come into town up and down the state so for background as you do your homework please consider reading this ok i'm beth this has and this has nothing to do with the specific company and preserving the vermont downtown and the problems of sprawl and how how this kind of development the roads basically never want him you know that our competitiveness sounds like an interesting you want to we had an emergency meeting just i want everybody here to know about this we are after you came to our last meeting and i didn't know anything about this issue at all before that meeting and so you know i got all the information that i could from you but of course you never know what it is you need to know if you don't know it so afterwards i had a lot of questions and we call them urgency meeting because you work for the time to do anything legal we have to have a board meeting and we're allowed to have emergency meetings for that purpose and we drafted a letter and you know i was uncomfortable with the way the letter was worded and i i i mean we did some rewrites and we all came to a decision in the end we're all on the same page and we all signed the letter and the letter said to the core to the judge basically  that we hope i mean if there's nothing else we could do then we hoped that given the given the fact that this you know case was perhaps going to be not even consider because of the technicality of the well it's not really a technicality frankly it's a rule it's a law but because of the fact that he didn't meet those requirements of having those the people listed know we want to avoid this in the future want to make sure that the town plan is you know clear that this vision makes sense to everybody and that everybody is on board with and frankly we want everybody to buy into it well it takes time to write doping you're going to think about it and and deliberate you know kind of decide would it be i mean i have a feeling a couple of other people here came because they're interested in the topic well i wish to hear from others or not they were whatsoever on that and it's not and frankly just talking about a specific business like that is not really that helpful i mean because if the dollar general you know was in a mixed use said it and was in a village place the role in this concept of the of the court system sure like the supreme court there is no mayor in this town so we play the role of the administration and the congress so we have the president and the come like a parliamentary system like those like b u k it is not unknown in fact happens quite frequently that the congress and or the present united states disagrees with the decision by the supreme court i'm told time when they do let's take the administration because it's a little more common for them than the attorney general they bring suit and they appear before the cut the  supreme court and say we would like you to overturn and if it's the congress they'll write a new law no overturn a court right there by the right a new war absolved no there's nothing improper unconstitutional for us as effectively for congress to decide that this time the war made decision which we saying is not in the best interest of the  ar entirely conforming to the to the loss of it to things we can do we can start changing those laws but we can also challenge the court just like the attorney general on behalf of the of the present united states does all the time so i think it's important generally speaking the president also points to the members of the supreme court so the fact that he points and doesn't mean that he has to greet with everything they decide o he's precluded from disputing oh we're very careful about this and so we don't do it lightly and we don't do it but we do what we do with a heavy heart when we do but from get it decided they're part of the process of mediation so that is why the mediation took place and it never went to court because the sides agree but it was not thrown by the right by the court and  supper we complied with everything that the board asked us to if they wanted to build a certain color they wanted trees certain ways or anything it was brought up we tried to comply i am not against susan cobb and her variety and the others to appeal the decision she made her case the people that sided with her but there is an opposing view said two sides i encourage what i'm here for is to say to the town select board that i do not feel this proper for you people to get involved it is for you chance and so forth to do it and  you don't have the information you're almost trying to hear tonight should we do it and you're hearing the same arguments into here and a court case and i don't feel that it is proper your town in your town representative has looked at i'm just like running this i'm not sound you know this isn't a fight john you guys are the town and everyone is and you know all it takes it takes a village to write a town play and it  and i say on the record that they're smart they're thorough they're their stamp they're not perfect but they are smart thorough and fair and they work really hard the same with the staff same with the  that was the concern but you know now it's process and i think it's important to follow plans on the town plan and on the nobody comes and it's not that nobody cares no it's great to see somebody who's chairman people don't really care now back to the meaning of it to the impact on the town and so this has been i mean this is better i think for people really an eye opener whether you know whether it was the project proceeds exactly as and take part i stated different ways with committees and some of the planning and some of the citizens i mean because for example i know when they made a decision to put a dollar general where it is they could have been  doing i don't hide any of the business that i do when i conduct with whomever for a grocery store or the retail spaces or whatever it is and i'm willing to share all my thoughts on that or the roadways film working on the consistory or any of the projects that i've worked on but i just honestly feel that it would be a heck of a lot cheaper for myself and people in town in fact that we could work together but i haven't found a way to get the input from all the amenities in the town but i encourage it maybe from this meeting and what's up and maybe we can find a word way to work together i just there's kind of like it if it's instantly it's a sore spot for me because i know you know my own hesitation earlier in the process know so i just kind of like you know it's kind of like a trigger for me but i do want to say that when i go down to bombazine as i do twice a year and it's one of my favorite you know beautiful spots and you go into fairhaven which used to be a thriving little tiny down town there's a square in the middle there's a town green with a disease and there's there's like almost brownstone i don't know if they're four story but they're like three story at this little dense downtown with nothing and then a little ways away from that little downtown that's all empty retail space is the dollar general what that's like but i don't know if it's dollar general i think that you know i think it's the townsfolk and i don't think it's fixed sad but actually our fault it's our fault it's all of us it's not the select board should have done something it's all of us i need to be involved or people who care about this talent and want to see you know and have a clear vision and make sure that that's you know in first of all through the regs i mean it's not we're mistakes and i think if you're not the kings but you are people in power and you have and there are things that you can do and i think it is i agree it is not to be done widely to just say to so i don't think that you'll question their decision is disrespectful of them and i and i would argue that you are in power and that it's an appropriate response of this elected body given this innocent concerns the judge that we think there are more matters that should be brought into consideration either by him or invite him to remand that to the d or b and then go before the d r b and say ladies and gentlemen we think there are some considerations that you perhaps didn't give full account to last time and we hope you do this time that that's entirely in our power and entirely appropriate it is not disrespectful if done in the right way and this is a big enough deal this is a question i mean of course our town isn't completely destroyed by a dollar general but we shouldn't be too hist about it but but it is a big deal and it's a big deal not just because of itself but because of what it will do to the future of development that won't be so easy to just rule out future things like guy for being here and everyone's very compelling arguments i share the view that this is an exceptional character of a presidential nature and that's why i would also ask the board consider weighing in on this issue meeting that was a joint meeting with the commission with the table and then there wasn't any place can we do our round robin because it's going to be a lot of people and i was out of middlebury and event and there they it's it's possible that it will be done sooner than when school starts but it's hard to tell because we don't really know the extent of the repairs until you get into the deck so i don't really want to put road than brown strace you don't you don't mark it as a detour but people still be able to use it so obviously if you want if you live north of the bridge and want to get to the center you have to go up to fifteen come back down only river week before the bridge closes that you have both ends of brown's trace alerting him that the bridge is going to close starting june eighteenth and then this bank back here last summer in the storms  we have an out fall from the drop in let's hear it created significant amount of bank or ocean so we're we need to fix that it's not our property but we caused the damage because it was our outlet but we need to get permission from the landowner over there to access it because of the septic system we have no way to access the bank on our property so it's so we're working on that  fifty yeah once we have an idea cos we can see if we can put in we can put in a claim but first we have to get permission to get back there and fix it fifteen cross walk it got a price for the solar powered flashing  it's six thousand dollars which isn't that it's only a couple few thousand more than what we pay for the feedback science lets that's pretty reasonable so we're we're working on the permits to get that  project permitted creekside drive you recall that's the little street near dickinson that we took over a couple of years ago and we had told the network and it was it could be on the paving schedule any time soon and it's actually to the point also and i will not be here we need to look at setting the tax rate so maybe that we delay of the july third meeting to the following week maybe not the ninth or tenth  warded us fifty so that's half of what we are in the overage so i'm going to go back to the transportation hansen's program see if i can get the rest of the fifty that's that's a devices which by state law we need to follow are there any other signs on the road on that road that are that size some are some are like what i can't picture what that looks like well