so the only thing terry and the public comment do we typically i know it's like a political advertisement but he was here and he talked so that's typically we document that we have never had that happen before ok this is a question it's not a comment but under number eight the money brooke crossing bridge replacement alternatives review one of these should mention that you know it was fairly well attended audience p participation wonder that should be reflected in the minutes and i guess it does in a sense when it says others present but  would you like to work something if you you know several numerous i don't know approximately well there's about ten folks from the audience participated in the discussion i was going to i was going to make a comment and i was way way behind you so i was i was looking at the actions and steps and i notice there's no names against anything did we at the meeting and then a file leaders for each of ok thank you very much for inviting me to come in an interview today i had actually saw the position being advertised on the front porch forum and it's something that i had considered earlier and within the last five to ten years considered something that i would be interested in doing so my background is that i am an attorney and i am  actually i work in real estate joy and i have had the privilege privilege of working together in the past but i represent a different facet of real estate i represent title insurance companies so my you know sort of what i do is a little bit different than joy but it's all sort of trending around real estate and i've also had some experience buying and selling properties owning rental properties building and selling a couple of and kind of my condominium  izing so have also had a little bit of personal experience on the development side with my husband and i think sort of and then my other experience prior to working for a title insurance company was as attorney  worked for paging fletcher i don't know if you can put her up or ever represented the town of liston but they represented many municipalities throughout the state of vermont so early on in my career i was a zoning attorney certainly and then also making determinations on you know does something apply doesn't it comply with the zoning regulations so all of those pieces of my career over the last dozen or so years has sort of led me to think ok maybe this is something  that i would have some cough cations to do so that's what led me to interview and that's sort of my background and where i'm coming from greenwich she just a full disclosure thing i don't know if i need to step down joe and i actually shared office space together she's eminently qualified for this but i don't know if our having worked together on a regular basis would need me to you know care to say ok well worked on numerous i'm not like pro development or anti development or there's not there isn't a stance or like a political stance that i come in with i think that i would love to be part of making sure that whatever development occurs and the town that i love and live in is responsible and so to that extent i think that having a voice on a board like that would be is something that's important to me i would say that's my motivation where are you a field hockey coach a couple years ago i started a program for my daughter is in third grade so she's eight i have a younger daughter who is three but i started the program for her last year when she was seven just because there wasn't a youth field hockey program in wellston so i said and last year it was it was good this year it was great and i am looking forward to  different than let's say a developer wants you to interpret those those bylaws and so my question is what do you do in that circumstance what what is your guiding principles  and approaching those decisions sometimes those hard decisions yeah i mean i think well obviously you have to follow whatever the bylaws are for the town so to the extent that there is not ambiguity then you know i'd have to do what the bylaws permitted if there was ambiguity and i think that's the circumstance that you're describing would be that  can't say that my own you know personal influences might not come into play but i would like to think that my guiding principle would be fairness would be able to have an unbiased as much or try to reduce the bias as much as possible in terms of just trying to gather the information and listen to my counterpart from the board listen to the perspectives of others listen to the perspective of the developer  i can't answer that so i'll move on to the second part and you probably being an attorney have a good answer for this and for some reason this falls on my shoulders so i ask that of all applicants i'm not singling you out in any way and it's a conflict of interest question and the question is how would you recognize it and what would you do about it so in terms of recognition i mean there's in what i do there's probably going to be very little conflict of interest because i represent a national title insurance company and making underwriting decisions of this is usually after a project is built it would be the only time that we would be even ever be looking to ensure or something so the conflicts that might come up for me would be much fewer it might be a personal acquaintance or something that where you would i think it would be much more obvious that there be a conflict you know there  certainly if i were involved which i'm involved in very little development although i have had a history of doing a couple of projects but the only other potential conflict is that my husband is a contractor and he has electrical contractor and wilston he owns new england electric and so there could be a potential there where he's been asked to bid on a project but again i would think that that would be a little bit further down the line in terms of a project having been approved at that point so he usually wouldn't you know get it but in terms of trying to recognize a conflict certainly just you know if it's something that i have any kind of  personal or monetary incentive that would be a very clear conflict i would recuse myself jim thornton at forty four chelsea place in williston i have not had a full time professional background in community service so i noticed that was one of the statements made this would be a good position for someone with four community service but i have served on boards with the burlington children space spectrum youth and family services neighbor keepers and scouts and other activities where we were involved with dealing with the needs of other persons have also had red cross training in disaster services response which doesn't really match this except for understanding the needs and the gauge and sees that might meet those needs when you're dealing with someone in a disaster situation i'm retired i have the time i don't need the money and i don't need the salary  liaison for folks and need of social services there might be a inquiry to the town offices that we can refer to the town service officer help connect them with state agencies non profits provide assistance and work to come up with a plan for long term  support to address those needs that the individual may may be looking for help with so that connective tissue liaison person to help out folks in town i guess my question would be is given that explanation are you comfortable with doing that playing that liaison role yes eric actually has been very clear throughout the whole discussion between us via e mail that this is actually a position to sort of morphed over time and it might more some more and as of march it might not exist so i'm very aware of that and of my background is taking a situation and trying to figure out what we're really trying to do here and helping to define what we're doing here two questions one for earth here maybe one for jim here but did we take this out of the town charter is this been removed yeah it's one of those so it would be not requiring the position to be felt but we could bark it still appoint so you were looking for well you know this would replace that no i don't understand that it would no i i very much appreciate and enjoy that opportunity if that's a if that's a conflict and i would a question so i can't imagine a situation where i i wouldn't put myself before someone else first of all and i pretty well take care of myself anyway and my focus would be on meeting their needs not trying to grandiose myself in any way i don't know how else to respond to that i can't imagine having to recruit recruits myself because i wouldn't be involved with any agencies where i would have to do  know the person personally fair enough and i would still follow i'm not the one that would be deciding the response of their needs i would be guiding them to point and i would be careful to guide anyone like i said i i have learned to identify resources over time and i'm going to have to do that in this case for sure but i would be focused on guiding them toward the resources they have had very good communication very clear communication with terri can jennifer they've given me the very best answers they could and that's one of the reasons i'm sitting here if there been anything unclear in those communications i wouldn't be sitting here get to do this wonderful report here once a year so this is my chance to hopefully shine for the library before i get into details i just want to say that part of my job is to travel around the state and i do programs that give programs i visit libraries throughout vermont and almost every library that i visit they speak very positively about the willesden public library and many of those libraries do hold it up as an example of what a library can be and in vermont so i think this certainly is a feather in the cap of not only our hardworking staff but also our elected officials that includes the board of the library you and the wilson community at large so we certainly care about this library we support this library and that only makes our community stronger my immediate predecessor as chair of the library board carla kirsten said i have to have a theme to my talk so last year i think she talked about the olympics and medals and all sorts of stuff like that i'm not nearly as creative as carla is but i did get thinking about what happened since we last met and thought that this past year is certainly a mix of trials or at least one big trial and a number of triumphs so i'm going to start with the trial i think you all know about the flood at the library this past  january it closed the library for eight business days ultimately about twenty six thousand dollars in flood damage to the library but that could have been much much worse i think this situation it really showed off our staffs mettle it proved their emergency response plan worked in illustrated how our building an operations are resilient in the face of a disaster so very little material that i think the community cares about the books was lost and somehow the pipe gods decided to burst one week before the anticipated rijkaard bit of the entire building so it just helped with that demolition a little bit ahead but certainly thanks to the staff i received a phone call the day it happened i just so happened to be in town and came down in between the radiant heat heating up the water on the on the floor it was like a scan of a sauna in there and  moving things in and out but worked very well and great job with marty and her staff on that so that was trials so on to some of our triumphs the bookmobile are what will still call it a new book will be able to newer than the old one but it continues to serve the people of williston we continue to add stops if you don't know it does visit the four largest preschools during the school year that provides teaching and reading materials and up to twelve story times for up to about one hundred eighty five children each month so that's that's the kids and certainly throughout the summer hitting neighborhoods and what not to dispense books loan out books and other materials to folks in those neighborhoods but also serving our senior community we focus a lot on children but this book and also serves our senior committee to unity and this year we added  wilson woods community as one of the stops so great work there with the bookmobile we have added a number of new services i think as the face of how people use libraries change one of the things we look for digital services so beyond your traditional print books or even a cd that you can check out from the library with things we can download so we've added a number of services over the past couple of years we just barely added a new service in the the volume of folks who use this is still small because it's a relatively new thing but the growth in usage of this is geometric rather than linear so we keep getting our reports of the library on the percentage growth  usage of downloadable material so for example audio book downloading was up thirty five percent year over year and you want to compare that to the blending of traditional materials which really kind of fluctuates a couple percentage points here and there so certainly a growth area for this library last year we were experimenting with what it means to have the school rate in our backyard dismissing early on tuesdays and how that affects the library i have young kids who love to use the library and go there after school and it's a very common thing for students to go after school and it lets out three but what happens when the students get out at two and they're now at that library for three hours i think i really credit the library staff for saying this can be a positive and working with the school creating great programs there really was a positive my daughter stays there on tuesday afternoon and i love to go in there and just see it's a hive of activity and the kids are great their respect full they have a good time marty and crew put on great programs for them everything from lego clubs to movie afternoons so that is really a great resource for the parents of this community on those were early release tuesdays and then some kudos to library to fly free to marty marty is in her second year of a four year term as the vermont representative to the american library association governing council so this council shapes it recommends policies and best practices for libraries around the world and she's representing our state for that so thank you marty so those are some of our  triumphs you can certainly read about more in the great written report that only putting together for the town of port but looking ahead into the future i think you all participated in the strategic planning informational retreat and were correct in that yes  so you did hear some of the results of the surveys that the library conducted over the past few months so we're in the midst of that the bordley working hard on that strategic plan as will marty and staff so we look forward to what that says in the next couple of months in the short term as a library worse continuing to make adjustments to the current space and furniture working our way room by room through the library to make it more comfortable and accommodating to a modern library user so with that i'm going to end my report thank you early release tuesdays we'll have something that starts right at two o'clock and something else that will start at three thirty the only other thing i think i would add is i wonder recognize that we have had a a lot of long term staff some of you may know debbie's been with us for thirty two years jill cochran will be with us for fifteen years kim heiney has just celebrated ten years select board the policies that you've implemented for the good employment practices here thank you for remembering the library existed just as the ones you all really  a digital sense or does it mean i still go to the library and do my digital downloading at the library it depends we do have a few people who uses almost exclusively for digital services we tend to see them when they come in to update their library card that's a tiny proportion though the vast majority of the people who are coming in are regular library users who are supplementing with the digital usage the digital usage is still a very small portion of our total circulation last year it was just under six percent of our total circulation but that's an increase from two percent of our total circulation earlier yes so there are the e books that are free to they're free to you as a library card holder we actually have three sources now for digital e books and digital audio books and now we also have downloadable music you can borrow a music album for a week that's on hoopla we have digital television downloadable television series and digital movies those are also available on hoopla also offers graphic novels which is a form of e books that we haven't had before because of the heavy content  the graphic content is a little bit different for the service so hoopla is very good for those audio visual types of downloads we've also didn't done a lot more of our communications digitally so we're sending out emails now twice a month that are going directly to people's in boxes and we also have a new service called while barry that sends out an e mail to the people who subscribe once a week that lets you know about all the new materials that have been of the libraries in vermont subscribe to the vermont on line libraries so that has excellent resources not only are things like your chilton's manual so that you can change your change your own oil on your car it has a business of business owners in sections so that you can get articles to help business owners as general reference ads has a section specifically aimed for youth as well as adult juried section your particular focus is and then there's hundreds within each of that and then we have some that are more specific to certain things we've got foreign language learning that's called mango excuse me you can even learn how talk like a pirate if you want to but it also has now passed to narrow big french italian german and the like and that has a feature so that you can speak and get your correct accent if you've got a microphone we've got a dizzy world travel so it's a good travel database if you're going to be traveling you can do some research on place you're visiting currency politics you know try out routes you want to take public transit sitting right now so it depends on what the season is so because of the the season right now we're visiting the four day cares so that comes out as once a week it's going to daycare and we're visiting as of january it'll be three senior facilities so three times a month almost once a week three times a month for two a senior community that's the winter service during the summer you have the senior communities still plus it is out every tuesday wednesday and thursday through the last late afternoon into the evening and then we're also doing community events so if you were at the chatter festival actually just had my dad just had my budget meeting with rick today the main thing that you will see is that we're asking for an increase in substitute hours one of those a big chunk of those substitute hours would be to have a summer bookmobile driver what we've been doing is staffing the bookmobile driver by pulling our youth services library and our adult services program librarian kathy  of the library during the busiest months of the year july and august and by far our busiest months of the year and we've been having to reduce the amount of their services by having them do the bookmobile so this would have a substitute driver during the summer months for the bookmobile it also has a one dollar an hour pay increase for substitutes to bring us on par to the competitive price digital services that we just started and there is a couple thousand dollars for each fax system duct cleaning we haven't had the ducts clean since the building was built so that's reviewed it i've spoken with them the end of last week and they had one question about snowplowing that they spoke with bruce about today when directly affect this agreement but just operational had a question for a person i've heard and we spoke they were fine with all the language at this point ok so i just want to make sure i understood this correctly we're still carrying some responsibility up until the time the colbert report is replaced after that our responsibility is we've been in that section but once we fix said this agreement clearly states that we are not accepting any more responsibility at that point rates or transferring the property back to them so basically that point we have replaced and issue impacting stormwater damage arises at the cove or the town would take responsibility for stress that's handing me the lease for if anything happens everybody's up for grabs really i mean i mean that's the reality if for the as eric said a permit extends through december fifteenth so we have to get it done for so you will do with our crew it's going to be would be more than moved on throws the town manager to enter into an agreement with daryl and stephanie lamb better to replace a culvert on the recently discontinued section of chapman line  and i certainly so as you read off in the in the agenda in the introduction these are two proposed amendments to the comprehensive plan one the village master plan is a complete document unto itself proposed to be adopted as an appendix to the existing plan and over time the document is structured such that it would be partially implemented over the lifespan of the plan and further integrated into the overall town plan as we looked at the and twenty four iteration of the complete willesden comprehensive plan the other proposal is amendments to the existing open space chapter expanding that chapter a little bit both in name to cover some of the other natural and resources and in particular to add some language that we know is coming in the required evidence of plants related to forest fragmentation and meeting a requirement to give some thought to how the tao will work to protect archaeological resources that last one was important is important it was the one thing that the state downtown board found the town out of compliance on when we went to renew the growth center just about a year ago and they gave us a year to get something adopted a plan that said we would address archaeological resources so we've now identified that this is your second you're the select your second public hearing mr kagan identified by email and three or four typographical errors to fix i've noted those and would happily make those part of the adopt a draft we've had a article published in the observer or rather an article was published in the observer about this  village project maybe some of you have read it got received a great deal of comment i had one local business owner commented that we weren't going to be able to do enough planning to make a restaurant or coffeeshop actually work in the village took a family to him dim view of it i said well we're going to try to get out of the way at least that was all it really heard since i've seen you folks last in regards to these matters know working out the village master plan over the next couple i guess the next two years and putting detail behind it with the kind of the having some things he had in here and i like the idea of somehow finding a way to put a small amount of we have so little space it seems but for a small amount of commercial something that would bring people in i think the library is one good piece but maybe the coffee shop was probably the best idea if you could somehow put it next to the library without moving the statue great so but but i was wondering if if besides the historic character that you're trying to preserve in the town and a lot of your things have to do with that whether we should have anything that there where we promote you know kind of some of the things that we've been looking for to drive end of the doubt you know conservation energy efficiency reducing light pollution use those as kind of you know we're modern historic town if you will well i think in general that the objectives  this plan that call for looking at the land your standards you know understand that those land use standards or restrictions are in balance with other goals in the plan so you want a place that is statically looks like a historic village but one thing we've recognized over the years is we actually have limited say over what happens with things like rooftop solar so you know you will see houses in the village that have rooftop solar panels they don't come under the purview of local zoning thing the town may end up doing whether it's with through the way it looks at land use here or what the upcoming energy plan says is say you know where we're ok with a historic village but we're ok with seeing some solar panels adapted on to even some of those historic  lampposts but they they tend to signal something when you come into a place that it's you know it's a place that some attention is being paid to that it's not just a strip along the state highway and tends to identify it as a mor historically conscious place so i think i think you know a lot of what the village master plan was about was to set a course of let's make a list of everything we really ought to be thinking about in the village and that let's say we're going to work through those things piece by piece and there's a lot of in the way this is set up for those subcommittees or task forces of the planning commission or plenty commission itself to work out how does this how is this all going to balance with all these other things the town is trying to do so out of that do you think there's a way to come up with a plan that promotes bucko yes historic nature as well as conservation ener efficiency you know the things i think we're trying to go after is a town right work so you know for example one on solar panels just because it's it's easy you know what we're going through the energy plan talks about preferred citing there might be a point where the input to the energy plan from the village plan is preferred citing for solar panels it's generally in backyards because there's a there's a few shed from the road similar to the way the current design guidelines talk about side houses that we would rather have skylights facing backyards not facing the street because it just you know it's a very modern architectural feature it's hard to hide it that sort of thing so i think there's there's room to use those stated desires in this plan and connect it to those other things and there's ways to achieve both types of goals you know there's a tension here with wanting businesses to be able to be viable and not wanting every last inch of the village to be a parking  lot you know the person who was critical of the ideas in here of supporting a coffee shop said well well people are going to go if they can't park and you know there is a there is a limitation there at some point and you have to decide well are we are we ok with parking if it's all behind a building if it's screamed properly like the idea of one maybe a gentleman behind you about the curbs and parking spaces along the road if you think about richmond or some of the other places that have little coffee shops around me behind you have parking spaces rated in you can basically stop when you come to williston it's unclear right now exactly where you stop but it's kind of like a drive through right because everything is kind of off the road except for maybe the town you can i guess you can see some parking in the town offices next to the armory but even the school is kind of care and they may not honestly even have built time into their schedule to stop but we also know that the civic buildings here in the village the library the town hall it set are in the school attract a great deal of their own energy and if you can provide folks who are coming for one of those things with one or two other opportunities that they might take advantage of from time to time that can be really valuable and so you know we hold the coffee shop idea out there not just because we really like coffee in the planning office which we do but because it's an indicator species of a different sort of environment and sort of meaningfulness of place when people say i'll go to the village and have a cup of coffee that someone might choose that over some other location might be valuable so my last question is just on this this framework you have your forget what i there was a name for it at the end here is the implementation table yeah the the framework is basically just it's just a framework in the details behind this will be approved as you come out with the actual plan right correct so these are just ideas kind of each you know each of these numbered items in the list corresponds to a paragraph in the plan that goes into a little more detail but almost all of those paragraphs direct the town mostly through the planning office and committees that the staffs to identify are take on some particular aspect of this and present solutions back to back to you have enjoyed for the most part sometimes it means working with the trans because we do have a state highway here or working with the business community on economic development type ideas but much of it comes back here as policy minute you had upon my one question with the village is what is to be transpire ole in this or if i could ask it maybe differently is having a state highway running through the middle  village kind of a barrier to achieving those goals as a put limitations on it or is it actually maybe a benefit in some ways i mean trying to just figure that piece now well it certainly puts maybe some limitations on the configuration of the road you know if the trans has an obligation to operate the road it did to move people and goods safely and efficiently but you know we've seen examples over and over again those street parking spaces in heinz work in front of the bristol bakery that's in heinsberg it's really stunning to me when i saw those go in and i asked the hired her planner to you know be trans was ok with parallel parking right on the state highway like and they said yeah you know we've worked it out if you've driven through danville on route two and seen all of the traffic calming and all of the streetscape work that was done there that's a state highway just like this so in and has a more local example you know several generations of our own conference planne have identified the climbing lane that approaches the village from south ridge road for removal and reworking of that pavement to provide bike lanes we just confirmed again because we keep asking because we're not we're not sure it's really going to happen and we're told yes that climbing lane will go away next summer as part of the repave and that road section will be restrike to accommodate bicycles and hopefully help calm traffic as it comes up in the village that's v transit agreeing to do something that the town has s is important to us so you know he trains would be happy to give a piece of state highway to williston to have been taken and paid to maintain forever and ever and you know bruce can tell you all about his south burlington experiences of of having things in the city that used to be state highway you do get a little more say over what you do with it but you also get a lot of responsibility so i don't see it as a big barrier to a lot of what we're talking about in here but it is compliance with i guess where the state is going in terms of i soon statute and i'm just trying to get in understanding of what does this mean in terms of the protect somebody trying to put on develop a piece of land i'm just trying to get a sense of the impact on down and i'm not disagreeing or just i just want to assure you well it it depends a little bit on what kind of select board might consider adopting at some point i would generally look at archaeological resource like a lot of our other natural resources that are by law protects where the outside of our growth center almost all of our subdivisions have some kind of open space element and where that open space is placed on the subject parcel is supposed to be under our bylaws informed by the location of all of these different resource areas so in part archaeological resources could just come in as another element of you know what's on the map for the resources that are on the land when you're making those decisions and it's kind of like if you shed where you might have a really really important view shed resources and you might have forest land that maybe it's deer wintering area but maybe maybe we're going to take a look at it really isn't and we really want to protect that view shit on that particular parcel similarly you might have a parcel where some of it's a few shed and some of it's got really important archaeological resources where you where you say we really need to stay out of that area in this case and we would seek help from the state identifying those just like we do for other resource areas so it's another element that gets thrown into the mix and  balancing test when someone's considering development or piece of work that might impact something we look at it on our own talent is we're trying to lay out a trail do we want to cross through more what one buffer or do we want to cross through  an area where there's archaeological resource sometimes you might have an area where the archaeological resource for all it's saying is you need to study it further before you go in and impact it we've we've encountered that with our trails so as much as anything for the private side it's identifying another resource that you know either if they're at the local level now it's going to be addressed if they are going to go for an active fifty permit now they know about it that much sooner because they know about it going through local review received from the state of vermont about a month ago and give you a little history about lake you're going for the viewers you know where two hundred forty one acres lake that been around for over one hundred thirty years and been enjoyed by the residents of the town of williston on a heinsberg town of richmond town of st george and because of the federal  monies that were used back when the lake here corey recreation district was formed the beach and public land is now all used by anybody that comes down the road so it's great i happened to be a resident lifelong resident of the lake of been there for sixty years actually my family has been and so lot of  lot of passion goes into me sitting in front of you tonight we have been dealing with a milfoil regime no foil we'd problem for the last thirty years and it's become more apparent in the last dozen years that it has become such a nuisance that we've had to put methods in place controls in place to deal with it and one of the methods that we were applying for was to use a herbicide called sonar or the chemical called flora don't and that has been commonly used in the state of vermont throughout the last ten with the state or not in the permit process we have thirteen board members on our board our membership consists of seventy approximately seventy seventy members that either live on the lake or reside somewhere around lake and so thirteen of us represent the group on the board of directors and  so that we would be able to both a wine or cells with a municipality but also come to the benefit of being able to avoid a fairly healthy permit application fee and so rick and your town office had agreed with us and with your blessing that's like words blessing to co op co op fly with us and that was back in two thousand and sixteen unfortunately after working two years with the state and what we felt was a very very good application process we were denied the opportunity back in october pretty frustrating because at same time we waited almost two years to get a response from that application process which was unprecedented that that was what we felt was unacceptable and that the state has shifted gears  in using herbicides in the lakes or at least using sonar in the wake so they had been using both renovate herbicide in sonar herbicide in various lakes around the state  for the last ten years but this was a first time in sion and county that a lake had requested a the use of so nerve floored on and so after months and months of waiting we finally got the the opportunity to be denied and so we are here in front of you tonight to strongly support our  endeavors of working on not appealing that application process and we as a board had unanimously decided that we would not appeal  and the reason why we asked for the nile instead of the state recommended that we withdraw our permit the reason why we asked for the denial is so that we could be transparent and really find out created probably the conflict of of the denial and shared many many concerns which we appreciated but it was unfortunate that it took two years for us to  actually get the denial from the state so here we are we're coming in front of you strongly recommending that you support our denial of the application because you are co applicants on the  willesden is cooperation in the meantime we have spent many many many hours in various programs  during the last five years trying to both in educating our landowners in and around the lake educating users in and around the wake with boaters and we have developed a greeter program which as you all know we have you know aston you've generously financially supported with us and the town of heinz berg to build that greeter program plus funds that we've gotten from the state and the greeter program is basically on weekends we inspect boats and we look for any invasive species which right now i believe that there is a den of fide fifty some odd invasive species in and amongst the lakes in vermont so we're trying to prevent all of those from coming into lake you're going our main concern has been that we're trying to prevent more and milfoil coming into the lake and  so we look at it because of of finances we have hired staff to work on a greeter program on saturdays and sundays which is mainly when most of the boats come into the lake and we identify any problem areas we now have a boat wash station which were using hot water pressure washer to wash boats  and we've prevented problems coming into the lake and i this is our third year on the program and i really appreciate the fact that i can tell you that your your fun's have really been successful in helping us prevent any further problems it doesn't mean the problem's going to go away it just means that we could help as bait the future problems down the down the road and with that we've inspected over levon hundred boats just on those two days a week we're hoping that this year we'll be able to use again federal and state funds municipal matches to add a third day and add friday to our greeter program which we then wouldn't spect more boats and if we can do that that's going to help prevent any problems  we also have utilized funds to have a program funded that's called dash and that's diver assisted suction harvesting have spent over twenty thousand dollars this summer on hiring divers to come into the lake to pull weeds unfortunately it's bits big controversial because the fact that you're not only pulling no foil you're pulling a lot of other weeds too that are help with the ecological balance of the lake there is also a problem when you pull the weeds that you're breaking  pieces and they self pollinate and self propagate and end up creating more of a problem so bit of a we feel it's a bit of a controversy but at the same time our hands are tied to coming in in you know dealing with this weed problem and so twenty thousand dollars this summer i'm going to give you a guess it may be  probably controlling less than five acres of weed problem we are two hundred forty one acres of a lake and we're dealing with over seventy percent of the lake is infested with foil and so that's a big number big nut to crack but we're not going to give up because we need to i'm going to tell you because of growing up on the lake and you know growing up right next to the beach  of users this summer obviously with the weather being it's nice the boat traffic was greater than it ever has been kayaks canoes motor boats great a two hundred acre recreation district that's in back of the lane that is used every day of the year round and you've heard me talk about that many a times it's amazing what opportunity we have as far as natural resources and recreation use i don't want to let this lake die nor does the other seventy want using a chemical in a lake we appreciate that we're working hard to help come up with an opportunity to take care of this problem  come in front of you tonight to bless our decision to didn't deny the the on to accept the then the denial and not appeal the process so that we can move forward at least in another direction we're going to continue to look for opportunities and i'll be honest with you there is another chemical that the e p a has just approved and that the state of vermont is looking corps and it's there are six lakes in vermont right now that have applied for the use of it during the two thousand and nineteen season and the state of vermont is  so going to be looking at the opportunity of using that that were cited in in the leak we're not going to apply for any permit at this point because we feel that we need to let  settle down get a redirect our energies and be able to move forward with a decision in the next to yours in the meantime we're going to continue our dash program we're to continue our greeter program we're going to continue our education program both with our landowners and also work with people like the town of willesden right now we're we're enjoying a opportunity to reach look at it b b lane and the restructuring of b b lane to help mitigate some of the phosphorous runoff and so we've we've gotten funds bruce corps has worked with us and one of our board members and we've gotten funds for a initial project phase to look at work restructuring that that road that's a big piece of phosphorus runoff into the lake we've been testing water quality for forty years i was told by the initial firing how we're reducing our phosphorous runoff with our programs that we've developed in the last fifteen years or twelve years with the board so i'm here to ask a year consideration and i know it's a little odd but you are an applicant with us and the board has unanimously decided that we would not pursue a deal during this process opposite side of the you know there's a green space we're up on the road at the greeter station and so it's there's quite a space between the lake and the road where we're watching the boats but we also are pulling we're pulling the no foil out of the water during the dash the four weeks that we had so we're we're bringing literally trailer loads of milfoil up onto that same road with a don't trailer and so we're you know we collect it at that station and then try to mitigate any problems right there and so to answer your question trees i think i think the combination of all that once the oil dries out it's not going to self propagate so we actually are we've created an area that we dump the milfoil in a pile and let it deteriorate and then  it and then reseed over the top of it each year so hopefully that answered your question and questions for us are quick did and i think i might have seen this and maybe i can ask for a very quick summary of what was the denial based on basically i would say that the denial was that there was a number of of concerns of health even though what a benefit the application process had been approved in other weights in vermont i think the state had a very direct  decision to with management change to shift away from using that chemical in any opportunity any lakes and we being one of many with that the people that did come in front of the border to dispute it they felt that it was necessary to take a shift change and so do i hope that answers your are our opportunities it's pretty are you now use of some sort of herbicides in the future or just not in the foreseeable future because we are pursuing every opportunity that we possibly can in the future we just don't know about this particular newer beside that is going to be available i'm not going to tell you that we may come in front of you and ash you again to cooperate you know why with us but at the same time we really are like taking our time to work through this this program  it's controversial you know how controversial it can be any use of chemical is but this this particular chemical has been fast tracked with the state of  to be considered to use because there is such a milfoil problem in so many lakes in the state of vermont and we're just one of many and you know a night a bit of me responsibility for this but they're not doing that and they're not doing that in any lakes and in our case it took them two years to make a decision on this process that's a bit frustrating for us because we were right here in this building for almost a year with the state to help build that program it wasn't something that we just decided oh what's uses chemical you know and then all of a sudden there was a management change shift change been told by different people in here it's being asked one of the things before we end the conversation that i would like to propose and i don't need an answer tonight you know has been so generous to help us throughout our whole process whether it's rick's office america dealing with you know working with the greeter program and you know we have aligned ourselves now with willie richmond heinsberg and st george but we've also aligned ourselves in an n with l i r d the lake your co recreation district we're working with them on many different programs we would like to create a stakeholders group that is going to develop a direction with us and that stakeholders group is going to include i hope the state of vermont agency in natural resources the d e c but also members of our communities that are surrounding the lake and will assist in being one of them and i know that l a ardi is part of this process we've got jeff davis who lives in heinz burg that's part of laker cory recreation district board but he's also on on our board but i would like to see us develop a group of people and it doesn't have to be a select board member because i know how busy each of you are but i would love to see you and consider at one point appointing an individual that can work with us that's part of the stakeholders group and so that two years from now if we've got a direction that we've dotted all of our eyes and cross their t s and made sure that everybody is informed and i think that that would make a big big impact in this decision making process as we move forward so i throw that up in the air and stay tuned i really would love to past is we've asked for twenty five hundred dollars for the greater program match from each community that we can then you know try to work with money that we get from other grant programs and then we were thinking about asking for another twenty five hundred dollars from each community to use for additional milfoil control in and around the beach area and the access area so i'll just throw it out and then i'll have a formal request to rick here in the next couple weeks ok and thanks again for all your effort and we appreciate the support that you continue to give us so thank you and he just brings huge enthusiasm to the work of willesden and the work of media making and really very lucky to have him as we wish every community haven't eric because it's just a pleasure know i'm sure you don't want to let him go so again just to recap for the viewers and for yourselves we've we sent you out a memo which i think you may have had a chance to read and if you have any questions we'd be very happy to answer those as you know we come try to come annually to visit with you channel seventeen has been in operation since one thousand nine hundred ninety eight and this election season that makes it something like our forty second election season if you add all the town meetings and all the general elections not even the primaries so this is a very exciting time and over the past month we've covered about thirty one in the last year year and a half to cover your meetings live and i think what's interesting about that is that the regular membership is sort of steadily increasing but more importantly when there is something of great significance in the community people are tuning in and i think significant numbers not only to the live you tube coverage but to the archives where we channel seven hundred on t v so we also i think i would just want to also mention that on  you tube you've got now the transcripts so you can search the meetings by transcript as a little there's a little box so that's a great feature a lot of people find that quite useful but the bigger picture that i wanted to address with you tonight is that as you know over the past well since one nine hundred ninety since we started we've been aware that cable revenue is was going to erode in the last eighteen months has really been the time where cable revenue is starting not only to plateau but to decline and this is been at exacerbated by a fairly big adjustment that comcast made in january of this year according to their accountants they had to reclassify some revenue and this was a gap decision it was a one time adjustment but it resulted in about a fifty thousand dollars decrease in revenue for channel seventeen and also for our eighteen and became respectively the other two the public and the educational access operations so we've been assured that that adjustment was a one time  thing and in order to address it we are coming to request that you consider in your budget process increasing the contribution that will assist in makes to channel seventeen which is currently six thousand dollars and increasing that to twelve thousand dollars and if taken together of each of the member communities were able to do that which we would consider to be quite generous we would be able offset that fairly significant gap in terms of the overall revenue decline it's like half a percent of quarter it's sort of steadily going down doing due to cable cord cutting where addressing that and augmentin that with annual campaign and membership drives along the lines of what you might see in vermont public radio so we're changing and adapting our revenue model we haven't raised lots of money that way in the past but we're getting quite focused and our goal is to start to really significantly increase fundraising in that way as well and that will help offset our operating and capital needs which is you know you know we're delivering i think great value for the work that we do but it's a very capital intensive business is there any way to get to understand what our viewership is or will still be so we have internal web numbers which i didn't have ready for you for this memo we have the you tube numbers but we don't have any way of knowing any cable subscribers tune in we sort of extrapolate comcast won't even share the number of cable subscribers in the service area anymore with us and we're going to  because your allocation of resources are essentially based on the number of subscribers you have relative to the other members you know we don't think those have changed dramatically but in the past we received those numbers in order to make sure we were providing service and representation in an equal way but comcast is very close now about the information that they'll share so we we don't know what we do know is that when there a i've mentioned before when there is an event of significance people tune in and we also know that the more minas polities help bird which i think will list and gives it its effort the more we're able  on the right i mean so it's very hyper local i'm reluctant to use that word but it's that's the case this is extremely grand granular media to the community that served we were just  minuscule this evening and you know essentially they have the similar experience oh i saw you all you're doing this oh i'm nuts and i mean it's a really important gesture to open the doors and it's also really important for the community the question that you're asking but anecdotally i understand so i think thank you for answering you know the best you can i mean i'm always looking for we can get more dissipate from the public it's channel that has certainly try it with more frequency this is going to be more interesting about ninety five percent of cable programming right now so they've got really lazy and cable programming so i think the only reality y the reality television exactly right and i think that when there are issues that people i mean you always hear from people when they're not happy they're here they come right i mean i imagine why are going to be interested in the presentation and they may be watching it tonight or they may go and watch it later on so there are ways i think to work with individuals who come here and ask them to promote things and maybe that's something we could we'll talk with eric little bit more maybe in brainstorm some innovative marketing because that's a question we have also but we find that when people once people start paying their taxes that's when they start really caring about what goes on in there in a small government you know i mean you say oh could we get more twenty year olds watching channel seventeen well you could be until they're really paying th they're not going to be paying too much t formula and it is based on the subscriber numbers so essentially burlington gets six meetings a month south burlington get five meetings month and the other communities get three meetings a month so that was based on the distribution so those so your formula and will stand is the same as ethics and that's a junction a wineskin so those communities are each right now paying six thousand dollars into the pot broiling tin is paying twelve thousand dollars into the pot and south burlington is paying ten thousand dollars into the pot so it's you can see have a mouth is working there so we're asking all the communities to double their contribution so it's not based on population service that's sort of commensurate with their numbers and i mean i missed the part about the meetings per month of three six what does that mean those are based on the original actually probably the most recent analysis was in the mid two thousand of how many subscribers each community had and so burlington's is by far like one and a half times what everyone else says at least so and then the other communities are roughly the same however many those are they used to add up to thirty thousand labeling of a segment within a sketch that could affect the the square footage so that's what we tend to key in on if someone does come in after grievances and we will sit and discuss their situation and we al structure and we had a labeling problem with that one the second one was an old older construction that somewhere along the line the sketch was mislabeled with all two story in it should have been one and a half and we agreed that we should change that to sheer the last one was the solar sense  determined that was a new parcel for a five hundred kilowatt solar array facility on fontayne property on north west and road and the communication between bill and i i guess went went south or north wherever and we missed that and we discovered we had done so so and that number of eight hundred thirty five number two thousand six hundred twenty dollars is their number so i don't think that's not a number that we created that was their number that they sent to us in the letter that we missed so so the net effect i think on one page at the end of and again that one is tax only at the municipal level the state collects the education funds in another  platinum transfers something that we do every year about this time when we budget for meriting pieces or any union negotiation dollars where was put that in the manager's budget under discretionary wages and then this time of year i come to you and say this is how we'd like to allocate those funds within the different departments most of these increases are the two percent increases for all town staff that happened on july first that was in addition to the cost of living increase this was a merit increase granted by the town manager with board approval we budgeted a wage increase for the fire department of three percent was in their actual budget after the union negotiations that increase ended up being six percent so this is an additional three percent that we have in here something that we'd like to do effective november twenty fourth is increase the starting wage for our public works crew and we've gotten the most recent wage data from the vermont league of cities and towns wage survey that they do and we're very far behind we have to open positions right now and rather than hire those positions at a lower wage we'd like to post that job at the higher the new increased age and in order to make that fair for the employees that have been here for multiple years for increasing wages for five percent for all employees in that department we still have some work to do in the budget process but this is what we felt like we could do now with those discretionary dollars we did do a wage analysis that is not one of the positions that we looked at and this year we're in when you say we're behind what does that what does it mean  nature are starting wages at sixteen twenty an hour right now and the starting wage average starting wage is about one thousand dollars an hour for the same other places rather than just we determining our budget maybe not for today but maybe for a budget process sure we did that in great detail for the fire union negotiation i think we share that with us well i'm but yeah looking at that whole amount it's about thirty percent our benefits are about thirty percent of salary or an additional thirty percent value that what you're suggesting th problem is it's extraordinarily difficult to we can calculate a road but then to look at every town every town has a different mix and it's not quite as easy maybe we should ask the league of cities and towns to us with one point they did do this for a limited number of communities and they charged extra for that service that was not part of their regular service i was just wondering with the with the i think they did provide that information in this year's survey we just got that a little over a week ago and so i haven't really dug into it that much but i think they did ask us for a lot of benefit information so and they were trying to ask for it in a consistent way so that we to do this again so i'm just going to take a moment to say i am asking that we are moving to a plan that has less cost for our taxpayers it's not very often that we get to do that but we are currently embroiled in  gold plan from blue cross blue shield and this year once again for that same plan within the exchange they increased their premium a small amount three percent but then they increased  again which is that happened to us last year and that's very costly for the town especially with our union contracts if the deductible goes up that h r a funding that the town does also goes up so the town covers that difference for our town employees we don't have that in place so ten employees would then be required to pick up that difference which is about two hundred fifty dollars for a single plan and five hundred for a family plan so we worked with the vermont league of cities and towns their health advisory insurance services or health insurance advisory services and they shared with us two plans that are available that we qualify for as a group  and the one that is the most like what we have right now is the one that's offered through business resource services so with that plan we can stay in still a gold consumer directed high deductible plan it does not offer the blue rewards but it is a very comparable plan there's one small difference in the plan and we can  have lower premium rates for employees who contribute to that amount plus the town picks up a large portion of that premium and are deductible rates stay the same which is a huge bonus and so we are asking to move this plan over the course of a calendar year it is about a forty thousand dollars savings to the town twenty thousand of that will see and this  the employee pays we do we pay one hundred percent of that yes so for oh so for two people it's twelve fifty one months which urgently employer the employees text him percent hundred twenty five that person gets double the benefit benefits wow so it would be like forty percent but week we somehow through the demographics of the entire staff we only have an overhead for all benefits on top of salary of only course  union was just negotiated at six hundred dollars and up we're going to be changing we tell the employee stipend up to put the police in the short so we give the employees that money if they don't use our insurance and they need to have proof of insurance was someone else they can't be part of the exchange on their own and getting a discount from the state they have to be part of a another plan so if my husband has a plan i can be on his plan i have to show the town that i have that insurance and a copy of  but the rates he said that we are going to are lower than that six twenty five so if you look on the second page there are the b r s association rates of everything that we would be eligible for this year they don't have that rate so if you are a two person if you're an adult and one child you move to a two person plan if you're an adult and more than one child you are family and right now we don't have anyone primary is that common is that and that's the option that we have because we are a group with the exchange rate any person can opt in to exchange a single person can opt into that exchange realize that aspect of actually join an organization so you get access to those i'm sure which products if you will and actually we do fairly recently joined the chamber of commerce and they have another that's a separate group and and we could have bought insurance to them but the problem with their plan is that the doctor ball is going up the same rate as the exchange but my last question is is are we getting in front of the budget by when we approve this are we proving a budget life for the next year ahead of time  twenty twenty so you know it's always kind of i think that we are hoping to use some of those savings that we have this year to do some in house monis initiatives i'm to keep does not raise any legal concerns inform staff the policy in its current state does not explicitly impose liability for failure to adhere to its provisions or attempt regularly anything other than this is a making process around traffic calming has some additional comments from mr fletcher took under advisement in this latest red line version you'll see notably section one point three that's been added in we want to reiterate that nothing in this policy is meant to or will diminish or interfere with the and responsibilities under vermont law to control town highways the ultimate lee we're looking at having collaboration good dialogue with these communities but the powers of the select board fault regulate town highway so we don't want to have anything appear in this policy that would differ from that and along those lines with mr fletcher suggestions trying to make sure there is language in here that doesn't look that someone could perceive that some of those powers of the border being taken by  there were three things i was wondering about so want to as it's unclear on the process is that bruce wrote how the select board gets involved in deciding if the same way some of that was that was in here but should that should the should the process be more clearly articulated that you know before bruce starts talking to home groups residential groups about things that they might have been things that they you know asking them about the kinds of traffic calming things we should install or within the like should we as a select board look at those things first otherwise it seems like we're getting behind all right he goes and meets with a coalition or a group of homeowners says do we want to put in speed bumps in the way the process is written he does all that and then comes to us for approval and it seems almost backwards it seems like he should come to us before doing an engineering study to make sure we agree with you know the  purpose or the reasoning behind the study and then secondly if he thinks there's the study warrant some kind of improvement or some list of improvements we should review and approve those before he proposes them to residents in that way we're not put in this you know we're not because coming up against something that the town public works director has already agreed to with a bunch of residents is that would you want to do let's go get it stamped by the select for it seems like we should be part of that process in my last comment was it seems like we need in this is something you're brought up at the very first meeting i just haven't seen anything coming here yet when we see a study from bruce you know however it's done it should it should have at least a few aspects in it before it comes to the select board definition of the problem how and how effective are the solutions to the particular problem he's trying to deal with with some reference rate you know how in other words when we saw the solutions from i forget the name of the company while in town or maybe i don't remember to be honest or maybe it was a consultant i forget  you know they come up with a bunch of different suggestions they didn't really have anything behind those as to what how effective they were with any reference the end the effect of the solution on the surrounding residence with references in other words maybe if we had something like that out the speed bumps go up the front of forget mr the gentleman's name whether those would be you know are would that be problematic in the last is the effect of the solution on pedestrians and others risk is yours to me this is a small piece but each of these should be covered in with every showing to us and that way we can make kind of an informed decision great we can you can ask th questions whether it's you know so that's what i read in rather than going through i noted in the plan all the places that they found these things but it seemed like he was the process was kind of doing all the stuff with the homeowners and then coming to us to get it approved after they've approved whatever things they would like to see it seems a little backwards here and i don't you know it's get you know we have some headlights went into we're going to go do engineering studies and an x y z neighborhood and this is why we want to do with them and because doing an engineering study implies we're going to spend some money and do some things that we should at least get you know some headlights into that and why we want to do it and and then before we i don't want to say make commitments to homeowners because we're not that imply we're making commitments you know basically meet with them on a bunch of solutions without any feedback from the board that we would agree to spend money on those i think the ones with the humps were maybe the same way aren't they they we this is the process because it doesn't read that way entry point for this record should probably be a little bit earlier i do i don't probably agree with the idea that the engineering alternatives should be presented to the board in huge detail as a matter of policy because you know i don't want to get into the weeds on stuff like that basically and i'd it's not just that i don't want to i don't think it's a good idea but but that being said if there are sounds like it's possible maybe it could be finesse of the board comes in faster in the process and then that way you know board members and not be us forever can you know if there is a inquiry that needs to be made with more detail that needs to be brought back to the board they would have quicker or to you know we did we talked about public works kind of defining which level of response of  boss i would merit a study with that staff recommendation that having to come to the board to say this is what i recommend doing this study for x y and z reasons ask the board to support that and then move forward the study then it will continue while with the results we agree that some action should be taken some physical action right either signs or pumps or whatever they're the right thing and again i and i'd like you to consider and i'm not looking for huge amount of detail but enough that would prevent the kind of situation we had just that he's looking at the different areas that could be trouble right but estrogens you know really call those people that are cars using the roads it's a riskier use you know it's a at risk kind of they don't have a five thousand pound metal cage around them right so and the effects of you know it's running residents of th just doesn't have to be an infinite detail looking to do engineering but just want to make sure we don't create another situation and that you know can't stop everything obviously we can't into subpoenaed everything but we can s these are all good points there isn't a whole lot you can do with it you were doing it during the norco during select board meetings rather than not entirely you know the real soon let's see december eleventh meeting is devoted entirely to budget ok and it's we're proposing to start the meeting early and run to about nine o'clock so running from six to nine that meeting there in the december eighteenth of december fourth the past have three meetings a budget big big budget kings in two and a half or write a history and then there will be opportunities during the month of january for shorter discussions to or longer depending on which direction where we can if we get if needed we could even schedule a special meeting in january just to talk about budgets beyond what we already have schedule no possibility to do a saturday meeting a long eight hour than i just started late and i had my first you heard i had my first look at jennifer and i had our first budget review session this morning and we've got a bunch of apartments to get through and then we've got to put it all together make it into a cookies and document struggle but in the reactions to what eric's proposing interactive my budget are you talking about the pathway methods or the yes ok with the interactive outline budget simulation there's different tools out there that one has a cost component to it i know there's different modules out there maybe some different price points i'd look to see what kind of other strategies people have used in the country for for engagement and thought with the survey mechanism is a good idea what members the community and want to engage with  e we use staff resources to develop those outputs if we get overwhelming response on a couple of these it shows us where to focus our energy and then not supposed to kind of throw things out there then ok maybe a couple people engage in this we've used dozens of staff hours at the ballot and i think the third bullet is has the potential for a lot of input and that's great i also think  this kind of saying we've you know we've done these different output methods we've done a b and c or reach x number of people and then there's the way of getting people to get feedback as well the inputs method is you know are the board more interested in kind of the output matrix the input a combination of both will be i think an output just kind of one way communication where you have your on the fly or a video that kind of the close in the loop on it would be an opportunity like the mapping thing we did for the sidewalks where they could engage and provide feedback as a part of it will definitely the latter is desirable but i'm not sure what co moneywise over time wise it comes at a time which from staff perspective becomes but the concept of providing an import and then having town the i i want a huge amount of input i want people to show up and at the meetings and them but you know a couple things of first of all i don't know i don't know how much we should expect from people made everybody super busy these days it seems like everybody's overwhelmed and i think the electronic media just makes the feeling worse the other thing is that you know we are we are elected to represent the  third thing is they get to vote on the budget and you know they get to say you know he has got it wrong or you got it right so am i i want a huge amount of input but that being said i'm going to understand if if you know my neighbors say you know as as wicked cool as it would be to go to a budget meeting but you know i'm i'm i'm going to i'm going to go to my kids play instead to do a graphic presentation of the voice over there you put that out on the town website or town facebook page or whatever you put it out on the front porch forum and at the end of the three to five minute presentation on the police budget or the you know partial recreation budget you have a you know go to the town website to our for your input in our you know access portal whatever that might be a way to get people to engage what's really what's really important terms of budget feedback it's not i don't know if it's caught you would call it fixed spending but fire departments too expensive well we're we're doing our due diligence we're checking you know would we have an answer for that but to me it would be nice to get feedback on the discretionary things in their budget rate those things that we spend money that aren't necessarily you know we have to do that kind of like spending twelve thousand dollars on c c t v i'm a big proponent of a public television  and try to kind of it's going to be a process that works when i could have in place you know for this particular budget i will that's we will be able to do for sure but i think this is something that's going to grow over time and between discretionary things and  that there was a good interesting discussion so we'll have to see there's some changes they're working on  lectricity just across the lake they can buy it cheaper than they can buy it here so that's kind of things so if there is any red flags that it's in that kind of area  but one thing that we talk about during the retreat was having representatives from lake champlain care workers come to this work working and so i wanted to give them some guidance as to what the border is looking for it's what were the reasons did they do well the exit interviews are confidential vied one i can tell you no one is retiring sixty five and the winter months and the plowing is wearing on people so the other one's leaving because he is in a serious relationship with his girlfriend serving his job a got a fairly unusually high turnover rate within the department partly because the labor markets tighter and we're hiring people that we wouldn't necessarily hire you know they're marginally and that's on top of the two openings we have so if i think you have a picture we're struggling to figure out ways around it maybe bring back a retired employee or two to help out in the storm maybe contract out some additional work from whatever it takes we're going to try to get through it but my concern is that the level service is going to be less than what we would hope for if we had a full stuff i thought about it and rejected it it's a it's a slippery slope and what have ends up happening is if a bunch of communities do it and we all want to do it and then you don't to where people now work for private companies that are doing construction work you know if those companies are don't have as much work then suddenly people are looking for more stable type employment