you have one of these you could put it to you turn it off or put it to silent that would be greatly appreciated and if you have not done so already please do sign in there are five members of the select board with us tonight though you will only see four we do have one mike placement on the phone he's actually on vacation but wanted to join us anyway so thank you mike for being there you can hear us i can hear you fine thank you we have presentation from sari's the g m of c s w day and she has a couple of or three of these tonight if it's ok with you when she arrives here if we're still doing the five five and if we could interrupt that to allow her to do it i think it's a ten minute presentation and then our questions is ok ok great so do i have a motion to amend the agenda with these additions for six g the executive session wording and the flexibility to move five b earl ok then we're on to public to be heard and this is a time for the public to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda tonight is there anyone here wishing to speak your republic to be stop basically i have a couple things that i want to say about the decision at the last meeting to reduce the amount of minutes that you plan on doing i saw that and it it really rubbed me the wrong way because these days everybody's talking about transparency and this seems to be cutting down on the transparency of what's going on here i had a concert citizen i'd like to find out what's going on in the town what's going on here but i don't have a couple of hours to spend every other week watching the video or listening to an audiotape it takes next to no time to read what you have in the minutes far to mistake i listen to the whole discussion that you did two weeks ago and it took me forty five minutes to go through the entire thing when i read it it took me like no more than five minutes and that's going through everything twice not to fully grasp it the thing here is so few people really care about what's going on that they take the time to find out things and the  of you should be making it easier for us to take part in what's happening to our community rather than taking the attitude well if you really want to know watch it on t v watch it on the computer or will even give you the audiotape that's discouraging people i think people will spend the five to fifteen minutes reading things but we don't want to just get a capsule i summary we i don't want to hear verbatim i don't need to know every word that all of your say  but i do want to know who said what and how did the decision process when so i could realize what was going on also i am partially deaf and when i'm watching t v i use close captions channel seventeen doesn't have close ups and it makes it very hard for me to digest what's on the i want to watch on the computer i can go back if i don't hear something  you know a number of people have disabilities as you get older you know it happens make it easier for us also at times even though this gentleman sets the microphones very well sometimes some of you don't speak into the mike where you speak fair asked your mother or you speak low it happens we all do that but that makes it even harder for me to grasp what some of us saying sometimes the next thing greg you did a great job  compiling what every other town you know was detailed and showed what they do but i hate to say it i don't care you know what others do is relevant to them but it's not relevant to our community our community has been doing something a certain way for a number of years and you know i haven't heard any complaints that the minutes are too long nobody's ever said that  i don't see why we have to change and to say that we should change it because of all this you know when i misbehaved in a i was a kid i said all the other kids did this and my mother always said to me well if they all jump off the  any longer details where you know i've only been here two and a half years but i guess the ones who've been here a long time they're used to it a certain way and unless somebody could tell me that they signed a petition saying make the minutes shorter because we can't through the whole thing i don't see why we have to change what's acceptable  also that it was brought out that even if we reduced it we would still be meeting the vermont statutory minimum on the meetings on the minutes what we have to settle for the minimum when again it's the same type of situation if something is working why do you have to get a dumbed down version of a just to meet the minimum i don't see the need for that i guess the biggest reason also for it should stay the same is so those of us who care can find out what's going on elaine you said that the purpose of the minutes and i'm quoting on this from reduced minutes were not me to memorialize the board that's true but they're meant to provide an accountability for those of us who are interested we don't have too many ways to determine whether we want to vote for you again and whether you're following the mandate that we voted for to begin were crying seeing the decision making process and seen the names of who said what during the meeting that tells us you know this person is following what i'm interested in following i want that person as my rep for another couple of years if i don't see that they're doing what it helps my interest i'm going to vote against you the next time and that goes for everyone we want accountability and if somebody is not willing to be held accountable then elected offices is really not the way to go that's what we put you here so we can follow you you know i remember the last select were trustee meeting you were coming up with ways to evaluate evidence and including setting goals and everything well you can evaluate him based on the goals we can evaluate you based on any set of balls it's only how you talk the talk and walk the walk that's really what counts are and finally at the list meeting when the public talked about the the minutes there were five six people who all spoke and all six of them said they saw no reason to change but yet you all voted five to change and zero to keep it to me that was showing that if the people who were interested and who spoke would tell when you read that alone you basically said we don't care what you think we're all voting against what all of you said and no one even gave an argument saying you should change it and going through all forty five minutes i didn't hear one real argument from all of you as to why it should be reduced evan you said at a cost x amount to hire somebody to do verbatim when i asked you for that the recording secretary has been doing a wonderful job so i said i look at the minutes and without going through the whole thing i think i understand what went on put that when i would hope that after you digest the next few meetings or using as a trial you go back to the way that it was i think all of the citizens would appreciate that that's my thing thank you  and i would support wouldn't he said but i have a different context i just consider this a matter of respect for the civic process for the citizens of ethics and i don't say that it is how forward does them any good to start printing out what people say and especially leaving out the names of who says what and i got concerned enough about this that i called the secretary of state today and i'm waiting for a call back and then they tell me this is legal and that's fine but that doesn't mean it's ethical or that it's the best thing for the citizens of essex and i have a different context in my head on this but i'm going to tell you about last may i was a conservation committee meeting and something came up about their minutes and it had to do with what would happen if they we formed some committees and whether that would violate the sunshine law and a lawyer gave an opinion that it would be a real problem so i called the secretary of state but i called them for a reason first i emailed doug fisher and i got an e mail back from him that was a real surprise he said that he was very hesitant to give me a ruling on even something that minor because essex has been overruled so many times on these kinds of things by montpelier and he sent me an attachment that is a list of all the times ethics have been overruled in its lawyers statements by the a g s office in montpelier and that's why i called the secretary of state again today because quite frankly in my opinion the lawyer who is paid by the town has been saying too many times what the town wants to hear so if they tell me that this is legal that's fine that doesn't make it the best thing for as that's or make it ethical and the other issue i have with this is that i find this i don't know what word to use irresponsible comes to mind that you are spending so much time on what is basically housekeeping and for the last three years mark collins and i have been trying to get onto the table just on to the agenda a discussion of an affordable housing trust fund we can't get that on here and when i was a meeting with the unified manager about a month ago he said himself that the biggest problem the companies of told him they're having with getting people to move here is affordability and particularly affordable housing we can't even get something that critical on the agenda but you can spend all this time arguing over what you're going to put in the minutes i do find that they're responsible i find it unacceptable as a voter and i'm sorry i'm sounding angry but i'm really angry about it i think you need to get off this and move on but i also think you need to respect the voters enough to give them what they're asking for we elect you and your staff we pay for you thank you thank you is there anybody else  were at the table right over there yes by that microphone we would appreciate it and you're on the library board of trustees and up for reappointment and what we do as a practice is to invite all members who are up for reporting this and whatever committees to come in and let us know how things are going and what you see are issues that you think we should know about your well i think the library is one of my happy places and i i feel very privileged to be on the library board i was a member of the friends of the library for many years before i was asked to be on board i think the board works very well together i think that they listen very well to the to the head librarian and the members of the library staff as to what they see the needs of the library are and respond they give you know they ask questions about the budget and then you also hear what other things the the staff and the librarians the try to accommodate that one of the things that has been in the process and since december and we still need to move forward is looking at some of the policies that govern the library such things as the smoking policy or the non smoking policy in terms of you know why constitutes after all a gold club somebody is in picked up what's the procedure in terms of how we get in touch with parents or you know authority figures to take care of that so i think one thing that that we need to continue to work on and bring to fruition is looking at the policies and updating them thank you and can you just remind us how many how long have you been on the board this is the end of my first term your first or before that i was a liaison between the friends and the board ok great thanks very questions for marie from the board andy i just have to disclose that my wife is a library trustee and but i think i can act impartially in deciding whether or not and i would agree very anything that we as it's like we're going to help your board work more effectively well one thing that we've talked about is trying to get our own website to get people to want to have to go through the town website to get to the library and that might be something that we might you know i mean it's not for me to speak for the boy because i'm only one person but that's one person thing that i've heard come up several times but it will be managed by t v so we'll be looking at that we don't want twelve or fourteen different websites or say fourteen different web hosts but we will be working on the fact that you could have your the over the years where we've had several different things on letterhead sin and we're looking to unify that yeah we're actually not really excited about having different logos for the different  ds and commissions and committees because we have a logo for the town of essex that it's been designed so before you go too far down the path we should probably have a discussion as a board this if we all agree to that so i would just caution to go before you know spending much time or money at ok when we're looking at actually has the town logo on it because there was another committee  in which one wanted to do a logo and we said you know we have a logo that we're trying to do you know to have a brand and to have too many of them out there then it loses its impact so that's kind of the reason so i want to thank you for your service on the floor of trustees for the library and thank you for your service the process will be we will go into executive session later we'll have a discussion about all the reappointment ok so we're going to move on and since there are three re appointments for the planning commission tonight we have ned jonathan and josh our practice is that we'll have the first one on the on the agenda join us here and we'll ask the other two if you wouldn't mind to step out so that you don't have an advantage of hearing the internet for example so that mathematics if there's if there's three suits there's three in there stories you want you want to have everybody very good mike you go with that to i can i didn't hear it normally when we're appointing somebody to a commission or committee and there's several people we usually have just the one stay in the room and the others leave spirit quested just since it's a reappointment have all three here ok i heard you fine i just didn't hear i agree i think she was saying she'd like million one hundred thirty one thousand five hundred sixty one dollars we are budgeting expenses in the now out of ten million five hundred ninety seven thousand dollars six hundred thirteen dollars and our capital this year the  d expenses are rather large and we are budgeting one million seven hundred fifty five thousand dollars in capital projects this year the bulk of that for our materials recovery facility and we're good into more detail on that as well we are not proposing any increases to these always management fee so that will remain a twenty seven dollars a ton this year we also do not expect any increases to the trash fees at the drop of centers those will remain the same may remember a few years ago we had funded called at the time a double bump so we raised the fees at the drop of centers enough to be able to create a minus or plus that we hope to carry us through the three years it has and this is the third year of that double bump which we compas last year those are made the same as well so those are all the no increases at all the good news we did increase the tipping fees or the disposal fees at the material recovery facility on may first we have a split in county numbers and our members are all eighteen towns in towns of jenin county that belong to the district and it's fifty dollars a ton for out of district seems like a big jump you should know that the regional merce has recently risen anywhere from seventy five to one hundred dollars a tonne so we are still under market and it is that market adjustment there will be seeking over the next few months in addition the administrative fee for by ourselves to go up this year and that is also part probably due to an increased attention we need to pay to our capital needs for the biosolids program but also to a change in how we allocate our expenses across all of our budgets in this year and last but not least we're going to i think for the first time start charging for the little blue beds the sixteen gallon liveth most of our communities do use carts very few still use the blue there and we will be trying to mentioned that is going to eat up quite a bit of the capital this year we have contractual obligations for cap or replace them with our our vendor at the murphy own the building we own the equipment on the land they operated for us so this here is a big so that's going to be about seven hundred thousand dollars just there one piece of equipment is necessary the other big piece that we have to do at the murph is the tipping floor literally the floor that the meter comes out on we're seeing some rebar in some and some areas that cannot be patched it needs to probably to fill least four of them and we also do have in the budget to replace heinsberg which is still closed due to the town of heinsberg building a new hiring garage to restore waiting for them to finish that when they do will be able to look at the  few days so that's that's not an issue at all because we're not having to replace the can very system we did that a couple years ago so literally is just union hooking and wiring moving it out to get in and it would be a couple so maybe down to one day we don't run anything on the weekends anyway so we do have those solid two days we might do maybe a half shift on the friday you know clear thing our mission or everything is ready to go and then have special time but that will be a problem the floor yeah there's a little bit of a different situation concrete obviously needs time to cure so you want to make sure that that's ready to roll and scraped before you do anything that we may need to arrange to have the material go to the right in there for a period of two or three weeks while that floor killers so that we built into the price project that would be the plan for that questions there's bus company question i think i've asked you this before potentially is whether there's ever been any discussion about combining the back office functions like payroll and i t and so forth so that we're not effort in that direction it's a good question and i probably didn't have a good answer for you last year either we one of the things that we are looking at though because of the pressures with chicle the recycling market and really with the need to look at the infrastructure of the murf it is a twenty plus years old really can't be expanded upon other potential regional applications for something like that in that case yeah obviously you would want off of other municipal biz if we want to i don't know that we do nor do others pay back off of our bids so the probably could be more coordination and that's something that i can  that we can better coordinate consolidate on some of these administrative funds we each operate a little bit differently so it's it's hard to to know where some of those might  portion of the finance and yours is very minuscule compared to all the other finance issues that the board is dealing with not that it might save you know a portion of  it exact word meaning and then see what it might be out there one of the things we are doing is we're looking to just in general streamline our finance system so we're looking at ways to reduce the amount of paper a piece of mail that i get every friday that i'm on a bill to unsubscribe from that i would love to not get delivered to me that goes never goes into my house administrator in the recycle bin is there any have a great question and there there are services where you can opt out of certain certain junk mail and yellow pages of people smoking yellow pages and yellow books you can opt out of some of them but as you mention not all there are some pieces of mail that the post office is required to deliver and that would be something that we would put letting them look at when you rent because a lot of those pieces of paper are covered due maybe newsprint which has even less value these days than some of the other pieces of paper office papers it is sort of that just as news that has great value and that's one of those that we are looking at is how can we pull the value out of that next paper that china now changes festive occasion so much to we're really has very very little value this does so if we can pull this good stuff out it would help to buffer the losses on the other side not saying that we don't want to reduce that we do and that really is the key is how can we question or a comment about the blue bins my neighborhood used to just use the blue bins and it's on fridays and it seemed like it was always a windy friday and they were just getting just trashed so to speak we've since moved to the bins everybody and that problem is disappeared so be nice if everybody if there was a way to go to to those other car to the lake carts as opposed to the bins and that is one of the reasons to implement the fee quite honestly is to ok i read you had a question that we took the executive board respected trying to assist low income families or low income households with that we had a concern of conversation on that  we haven't thrown it totally out the door yet but we did talk a lot of issues with management of them you know a lot of our discussion revolved around that a lot of the low income housing in the county is in burlington and if it's in houses that the landlord pays the the trash removal through the rent and so we're where we haven't thrown it out yet but we're discussing it still off and on but we didn't make a decision to do anything she just that was in the context of people illegally dumping on roadsides and things and that was what my constituent contacted me about in the first place was there or is there a way to encourage people to go to the dump rather than leave things vasya thanks mike do you have any questions for sarah or allen why didn't i do is a matter of fact  to be replaced or what which line item was that mike number fifty nine on page by computer systems maintenance  yeah so that could be probably two different things so we have a small amount of that would actually that would be just the finest system so there's just the one thing so that is the does that that line does not include the cost of the consultant to help us just the software just tell us how things are going from your perspective than things you think we should know about that's going on so who would like to go first like you got the a mix of opinions on the war i think all of us come out this whole process with slightly different outlook which which i think it complements the things that we want want to accomplish going forward yeah it's good to have different opinions and perspectives yeah joshua knox i've been on since i think it was the winter of two thousand and thirteen so a little over five years and i would just second these two gentlemen that it's a it's a nice group of people different perspectives and we work together well and i know ned wouldn't say about himself but his idea about the movie nights has been really fantastic and the jane jacobs movie was really great and and my my personal interest on this is more things like the planning side as opposed to development review and so i really liked a lot of the deep thoughts we got on the box there yeah i really rea sure personally yeah i also doing something like this there are some frustrations some personal frustrations with one and maybe i get part of it from moving to vermont from you know the washington d beltway community but the pace of fear of getting things done is frustrating it takes so long to get things done and i think one of our tasks needs to be to streamline some of this i community went through about four layers of approvals and submissions to get something like this done and it works both on that level and on the larger level of attracting things to own and it's one of our goals i think is to streamline some of this process so that we can get things in place and continue to grow i have a long speech i'll give you the short version i'll save these i think i think it's a town that's on the cusp of making either a great leap forward or stagnating as the rest of the world so to speak make makes these changes and i think we have to adapt we have to find ways to  build affordable housing we need to find ways to make energy efficiency we need to figure out how to reward through density or whatever people who buil totally energy efficient buildings we need to make come up with the guidelines or the regulations to encourage them so that makes it worthwhile to do that i think these these are really some of the things i look at you know moving forward i just and i finish real quickly i am about three quarters of the way through a a book titled our town written by james fallows and his wife deborah who he's a writer for atlantic magazine and they took over the course of four years they flew all over the country visited primarily small towns in developing towns and when you read this there's just such a wealth of things that other towns are doing i would highly recommend that everyone in this this is corner of why you end up promoting movies and stuff because i l to open up everybody's minds to the new things and i think that's that's really what i see is you know part of my role as being the old guy on the planning commission and i have time to do those kind of thin looking to see what you could do and recommend for changes i think we'd love to hear about your ideas yeah abscissa future right sure that's why i'm so interested about the town center same protections that those ordinances and so on are there for and if developers and folks know about those in advance and we follow those i think that would be kind of a win win right part of the base of th is looking at the protections themselves and are they still also valid today as they were clearly five thirty years ago you know the whole concept of that is changed i challenge the assumptions that were made a while ago so any questions from the board i mean our energy committee here in essex has talked about the stretch building codes that sounds really to house have you talked about those are any of you for money with those i mean that's something we could beg borrow or steal maybe from another town that seems to be effective in helping them build more energy efficient we primarily only look at it from compliance with the basic state code i think the next step would be to can incorporate in our building requirements the stretch code and those are those are pretty basic and those are simple steps what we've least breach that we included in any approval now that they submit that certificate  compliance with the basic code before they get a certificate of occupancy and these guys have heard me bring that up more than once before we close out of it and i think that's important but i think i i raise the issue too about sustainable construction for the energy you know what do we recycle how do we recycle and in this crowd leave this to the energy committee t development perspective that book points out that rural areas like ours are actually attractive in a center for innovation small scale businesses that are innovating and that's something that we can keep in mind when building out there to encourage businesses to relocate i would be interested in hearing all of you your opinions on what you would do in the village and excuse me in the town center now that you were working on that plan and redeveloping that plan what are your visions for that would what would you like to see in it that's not there right now what i would what i would say for referring specifically to the town center sort of old mall part i think and i think i said it a meeting when peter edelman came in mixed use walkable density type stuff in that part but where where i expanded on that at our last meeting is i like the idea of then stretching the walkable concept and sort of repurpose and forget that i think is class one road i and route fifteen to sort of extend that all the way to where the library is set and have and i had this idea of extending that almost maybe to sand hill to get this whole like unit up you've got the old old town center with it right there it tonight and you know it blends in you're an old new england and you're in this new thing and that's that's like i said that's what i'm really excited about the potential of that really coming together nicely at all and that'll have to the energy  i think two things i'd like to see out of that one is we need to deliver out of that complex that there changers a way to get some more affordable housing to attract younger families we really here don't want to develop one and i think there's a shopping center here and forget that other rent because it is part of the town and we really need to figure out ways to spruce that up we'll look at look at some of the uses which is get some shops and there's and people are attracted to it and it's all walkable think we have to be careful for moving down the regime corner that we don't end up with sprawl that's something we would we want to be very careful of because the only way to really prevent that is to regulation which we may not have the teeth for are not careful so i will be right those regulations we just want to be really careful that we don't we don't allow that to just become kind of a spread very appreciative of the fact that the street gentlemen want to step up for another term i think that institutional knowledge that they gain with every application that they're looking at just can't do anything but help commission in like the energy committee or some other ones too i had breakfast with the chairs of many of the committees and that's one of the things that they were hoping to be able to find a way to be able to work kind of across the different ones to find that synergy together and maybe you know be even more powerful but i know it's a lot of hours that you put in not just at meetings but preparing for those and i know sometimes you audience can be a little bit rough on you at times and you get paid nothing for this is evident you know the goodness of heart of the community we appreciate that most you know a lot really do so thank you any other questions or comments so you heard this feel about the executive session right now i do all that so you know that we have a package deal ok and last but certainly not least we have greg morgan who is the chair of the economic development commission has been there for how many years  but so yeah i've served for over twenty years and i've been the chair for for quite a while and we have a great commission now there's five of us as you know i'm such you've appointed them all and it's  nice it's a it's a good balance the thing we're working on and one of the pieces that one of the things on my list is sort of the message messaging issue for  essex how we frame who we are in present ourselves so we're we're working on that and found a great resource and pound who has significant g i s experience and  she's working with us to try to do some things that are beyond my my digital id abilities but but i can try to follow along so you'll see some of that as we move forward that's our goal right and we're also trying to align with the states messaging on reaching out so you've all seen the campaigns to attend to attract young families and we actually believe as a commission and talked about this a fair amount that that's one of our target audiences young families perhaps with children and  we will try to promote that as we go along and try to align our message with the states who are adopting the same the same effort so are similar efforts so we'll we'll see where that goes but that's what we're working on now and i would just say on the on the large company front i think i mean it's great to see the economy having changed over the last three or four years we're seeing activity in sand hill that we've never we haven't seen for about an hour get to the over twenty years that i've been watching pretty closely and there's a fair amount going on there right now some of it quite visible some of it below the surface i think but we should see more activity in larger employers so many are except some are expanding building warehouse space that kind of thing and we're hoping that others will find their way with active developer out there on that the other piece that i know i've worked on in and our commission has certainly been supportive of in and worked on to is the notion of innovation and co working that idea of the small companies and the startups so we're actually up to our ears now in trying to recruit for road pitch which several you've attended that'll be i think july thirtieth this year and we've needed to share with launch bt trying to because that they they have attracted a whole lot of more more companies than they could accommodate i think they had eight pitching in their recent competition but we're talking to some of the others who haven't pitched so but they're credible and watch he's been helpful to us around recruiting so that's good same same time same basically same place same story but of course different companies and it's always different so be fun to see what's honesty and and the other thing that i think is perhaps most significant two things have happened one you may have seen accelerate essex moved and they've moved to on earth logic which when i first heard this might happen i got a little nervous but i think if we can energize the earth logic building in the  owner and earth logic principal chris casler seems quite committed to having more activity in his building because right now it's not it hasn't been fall although he does and credible amount of things  there so that's one important piece that that i think is going to end up being a plus although it's a work in progress the other thing though is that the essex hub for women in business have have spun off now three additional co working spaces i find this astounding tremendous energy and so it's main street studios which is a co working space for sort of artists and  craftspeople and that's over the quilt shop i think then words and pictures as across the street that came out of steam fast last year in words and pictures is a is a collaborative of cartoonist and self publishers who knew i had no idea there was a market for those certain interest in this and a terrific young woman is running it so we'll see how that works but they've leased out space in there's going to be a wellness cooperative next door it's where mark keller's offices were if you know me sort of upstairs and that same on the same side as the farmer's market is now on main street studios  any way that that effort is is evolving but so that's three collaborative co working shared spaces for innovators i don't know where that goes but i think that's a terrific s clustered very tightly clustered and frankly we're also now talking given all the changes not that we've done that much but you've seen activity out at the town center already as it's being re rebranded re positioned great questions for greg everybody at first thought i was command you and all of the members of the commission your activity level over the last two or three years has been astonishing and you're everywhere i look and promoting essex and promoting our businesses and it's really impressive and there's not a lot of towns in vermont that have economic development commissions and you guys are really doing an excellent job so thank you for that i would like to what your opinion is on what you need from this board you know i've gone to a meeting or two of yours have had conversations with most of the members of your board and i would like to hear what you need what do you need from us well i think look we get it if we have this communication channel we developed we swear sending you more advisories a couple of years ago than we are now but i think you'll see more of that we have a way to communicate with you  i think you guys hear that i mean i know the board hears it and and i also realize the realities to running a town so but but i think there's interest and we're w we're interested in more people not less thinking and gauging on this issue so we're we're glad to keep sharing and if we see things that we want you to know well we'll sort of send you if a memo send you an hour  committees we wanted our boards to jointly to work on and one of the things that the one committee that i would really think is desperately needed is some conversation with the a d c and both the select board and the trustees on economic development in the entire town i think it's a golden opportunity that we're not quite ready to take advantage of yet and i really would like there to be more cohesion and conversation about where we want to go in the future what kind of businesses we want to hear how we want to support our local businesses that are already thriving thanks to the e t c so i really think that we are an opportunity we're at a point where we need to kind of seize it's great opportunity and make it even better so i would really like to see some day in the near future some dedicated time talking amongst the commission and the two boards and possibly even the planning commissions about economic development in the town it's really important right it may be getting to eventually to the one planning commission so that the rate at that of kind of all t in from robin pier so that we have staffing for our commission from both the village and the town and then given how planning and zoning is set up that's actually pretty healthy and it allows us not i mean we we think of ourselves as dealing with the town as a whole and it's great to have robin in place to go on the great in talking with greg  individuals whose companies are going there to give a little taste and that and then the types of spaces that they are looking for and what we have available well that's a that's a great question actually be th no it is that i mean that the spaces part was the best question but but why start ups and i think most of you know in vermont i mean we're not actually after amazon i mean that's not going to happen and what we've seen is that the incubate small companies some of them take off and create jobs and revenue and vitality can see that in i mean the history is pretty neat i mean you see ben and jerrys you see some of the net was sort of the flagship of them but then you have the more recent ones dealer dot com and well i mean there's all long list stuff but there's a large employers are a lot of them are homegrown and the trick is to grow them and then some ways they are they all get sold but i mean if we grow them it's if it's a way to create jobs and build infrastructure and our tax base so that's the idea and we look for the and that's helpful in terms of space this is and i'm not sure quite what we do about this but there really isn't if you look at when you ski and we don't have the older buildings that are convertible to industrial space or commercial space that you see in some places so we literally had one company saying yeah we really want to be in a in a barn with a view of the mountain and we're we're a tech company and  that's what we want to we want to be in essex and the problem if you start talking to looking around it's hard to find a spot that some commercial with a view with a mountain that you can build a barn on i mean i i know that's a specific and i think that that issue's been resolved but but we don't have some of those older space that i see around and and saxon hill is going to build out for the most part not that i believe i mean it's  because of the our p d i requirements it's it's it's industrial but it's it's also different in and there's an advantage i would just mention the mountain biking piece to it as this board thinks about what we do with mountain biking our commission believes it's possible that becomes a hook for businesses who can offer their employees a world class mountain bike ride after work or before or for that matter there or during lunch hour right so so that attention to that issue is we think important and i and i know that do is go out and meet the business community small medium and large i have met with global foundries to start a relationship i have the beginnings of talking to revision military who is just recently in the news and through some collaboration with the economic development they're providing me with some backup materials and then also questions to ask them to be more business specific in the ship so we're certainly using their value and so i thank you for the service and for your committee because i know they want to do a lot and they're you know not everybody sees every little piece in our thirty six square miles but you know we get enough and we can keep it going and i like the viking thinkers when i was in wisconsin bill and they promoted that as you know within ten minutes you could be on a top ten world trail of hiking and whatnot and people like that and companies following on that note some of the the from motley to cities and towns has their economic development conference on june fourteenth one of the sessions will be about the community of work and how they have leveraged the kingdom trails to improve their community crewe improve their businesses and improve their home values so you might want to go that we have we are going to that several staff members are going to that awesome even though it's way down it isn't killing to get to be back that right about the yeah so again you've been on this for a number of years and chair and i know we're in rotary together and i do get a chance to talk to you at least weekly and you're always thinking about what you could do for essex we really appreciate that percent of their current capacity it's not approval but a manager it's got to go to the board so we're here to request that the select board approve additional wastewater capacity for an additional seven hundred gallons per day for black rock the basically the taking over then the northern lights area and that there was the climbing thing that's now going to become part of that operation which is this continuum of elderly housing moving into other facilities and then eventually to a nursing home perspective in one complex there is capacity in the sewer system to handle and that's not an issue that is significant capacity available they can you just help me understand because this is new to me let's say you have a map of allocation sewer allocation for the entire area out there and so when a development comes in and says we need additional allocation that comes off of the other properties in the entire area no there's there's a very long history when we actually got our grant back in the early eighty's there was a strong commitment on the part of the state planning office to require one of the last three communities to get major junction and they're all tied together and the biggest concern then was the same concern now and that is keeping accelerated growth out of the rural area and so when we did the wastewater system and we looked at the town the town of that boundary we have purchased from the village one point one million gallons per day of capacity our current capacity is about current usage is around five hundred thousand it will vary now within that map we have allocated users we've also actually had people purchase who haven't built yet or in the process of building so if you take that five hundred thousand gallons and add about another eighty thousand gallons i'll tear that we've allocated where people have actually paid their connection fee and they're going through the process of building were about six hundred thousand gallons a day the rest of the map shows based upon maps that go back to the eighty's with current zoning what an approximate usage might be for that and try to find ways to make it more affordable and it's never met the muster of either the board or the users to pay for it and a lot of those are large a lot so we have a few problem areas with small lots but they're managing capacity periodic we do a study to look at where are we with that that study is now my desk it's on aaron's desk two we've both read it once we've got to read it a second time to go through  so we're looking at that now we have capacity within the sewer system and opportunities arise for example and i don't have the exact number but i'll give you an approximate number where the solar panels are going off of river road that commercial zone in there what's down going to be solar panels so there's twenty thousand gallons a day that no one's going to flushing toilets a solar panels so that now becomes available capacity and there is additional available capacity if you add up all the numbers on the map there is additional capacity that the slug board can utilize when requests command so at this point we're not at the point of robbing peter to pay paul so to speak we don't have to do that  if we get to that point that's a totally different discussion and that's why the source that he has redone everything for five years the source stuff source system is very vibrant has the ability to handle significant additional flows it doesn't mean you don't know or does mean you have to replace some pumps you have to do some other stuff but the system is designed to handle a lot more than even one point one million gallons per day in terms of pipe size and layout so the question really utilize this in this particular case black rock is already connected to miscible sewer and we call it a map so there are already shown as being connected they were built they were approved it's done then they're clear the northern lights parcel adjacent to them and so they want to expand their usage so it's not like on the map there was capacity set of i think that because it was a rock climbing facility facility an exercise  it was that type of facility it was in the sewer core but now you have an existing user who has capacity who wants to expand it's a logical expansion to do that for that business or in this case for housing but each each time it goes over that if it's one hundred twenty five percent it will get a lot of cases where there's five hundred gallons and they want to add two more seats to a barbers are something you know something like that you never see those because they're below that one but the white ones a commander above that number in the ordinance have right now have to come to the board and that's why that's why this one is for you it's true that it's a long way there are certain assumptions that are made as far as gallons per day for uses such a hundred gallons per day in a multi unit building in a single home i think is about two hundred yes  you revalidate those assumptions and see how accurate they are we've done it a couple times and every time we've done it we validated those numbers within reason so if you take a single family house you could have a two bedroom house you could have a four bedroom house you could have four bedroom house where the kids of all move delton only mom and pop are still living there and and so and so those numbers will change from time to time so you can't go by bedrooms you really have to go by you look at the flows you can look up  we used to have categorized properties by e u so you could look up every e u which was a single family house of one and you get out of the flow now we've got to go back at the data to say ok to the finance department give us all the single family billings we can back that out and we have done that the last time we did that it came out to be like two hundred twelve gallons per day at two hundred gallons a day and we did look also at apartments because apartments  tend to not have gardens tend to not water lawns tend to not do other things that require smaller usually and we ran those numbers that was back in one hundred gallons per day range and we've done it probably in the last five years no so as part of the study that hamlin has done we're going to look at that as well just to validate that those numbers are in the right right range it's going to do periodically is probably more important as you get closer to the end of you when you start to get down to the point where you're saying hey we were running kind of short of capacity i mean we thought we built a sewer system in the mid eighty's that in twenty years two thousand and four we're going to be at the passive we're two thousand eighteen and we're still only using about fifty to sixty percent of our wastewater flow but one caviar that's based on normal domestic waste you get two or three breweries move into town with deal level because you not only look at flow at the treatment plant you look at organic loads so and we've had some users in town fairly large companies that we've encouraged to come in but we've also had to go back require pretreatment  because of the higher gana clode a place in the system again little bit off the topic but we have developed a system whereby a small brewer comes in we want them to come in with good business hopefully it's good beer but you but would you want to do is encourage them to come in but require them to pay a surcharge until they reach a certain capacity so if they come in they pay the surcharge we're using that money to kind of offset their extra b o deal go to the plant but at some point they're going to one of two things well three things go out of business which happens move which happens or expand and if they expand in town then they have to build a pretreatment system and that's fairly expensive so we're trying to establish a threshold social from the economic development side that says we'll let you come in early but if you're going to you know really build you're going to put a tre fifty thousand do you do you do you have them or not relief we've done it more from the other and there aren't that many out there think this they think that may still show up on our capital plan as a project but in the same way with the aerial from pie crust that substantial it's very expensive and the system is set up that if you want sewer you pay the cost to extend the sewer and it is a net range of twelve to fifteen thousand dollars a lock to put in sewer and in some of those cases if you have to today replace a septic system you may pay that same amount the problem is on semitrailers for houses and so if all four system failed at the same time we'd have sure what happens if one and they've got to pay ten thousand three place or septic system they're going to go ahead and do that because they can't pay the forty to sixty it takes to put the sewer up the street and they can't convince or other neighbors that it's time to do it that's been the dilemma so we've had a few residential expansions but not many that's the problem but it a move that this like for grant blackrock l c a waste water allocation in the amount of eight point five either you seventeen hundred gallons per day for the proposed essex residences municipal road grants in aid program any road up the memo that accompanies this bottom line is last year on the state provided grants to communities we elected not to participate and one of the reasons we did that was it was tied to some of the state designated areas on these hydraulically connected segments and a number of communities were concerned about that and it also was tied to class for roads and a lot of other other issues this year that is cited to come out with a program obviously the state wants to accelerate what's done with improving the lake and this was a means to get state money out quickly to communities they've changed the requirement now where they're much we can essentially decide been we've already worked on that with them what areas in town are hydraulically connected the village can also but of the village grant is much smaller it's about three thousand and change  thirty four thousand dollars i think i've come to a couple meetings and said we're up to a neck with storm water grants well we are but this is the type of grant where it's you don't really have to apply it's like they're giving you money we do have to apply but it's it's it's free money to do i'm most free money to do what we're going to be doing anyway which is working on sections of the gravel roads so a section of gravel road that we would work on this summer anyway instead of using town funds to buy the gravel put the stone in the ditch hire an excavator we can do it under this program and end up having costing us a twenty percent match so it's a this is a win win to go after it  have the application to do sign here that they didn't give enough space but they said duly authorized representatives and since we didn't participate last year i'm assuming it's the board so like the actual document if you do approve it to sign that there are some conditions but there are there are easy conditions putting up a signed indicate where the money's coming from and a surge of other things but the request is that you go ahead and have us apply for doesn't use those funds i m we did it with the regional planning commission and actually field work going out looking at the various areas and so it got to be very complicated in terms of what they were tying us to they released those restrictions and so at this point it makes sense to take the money and use it on something going have to do anyway right it's twenty percent match that means we need to find six thousand one hundred forty four dollars in wages that that would come from the capital stormwater account that we've set up in the town between the town in the village and that's when we looked at where and when you look at the if all the grants we got today had to be built today we would go broke truth the matter is those those who grant projects take three to four years to get to a point from conception to actual construction and so when when we did that and provided that when we did the capital plan we showed a five  year costing out of when those grants would come in for construction money and as long as we continue to put money away at the same rate we've been putting it away we are more than solvent over that five year period so we have room to afford this within the financial session yeah just looking for a clarification because the the recommendation of the motion says authorizes the public works director to sign but then as you make my recommendation would be to actually have the board sign it says duly authorized representatives that's more than one person so my assumption is rather than jeopardize getting the grant if it was signed by the board it would probably be more appropriate so that is a change th of the wrong term but they have started to work together quarter need together and do projects together but they're not consolidated but they are aligning and there are agreement  original agreement expires on july one twenty thousand so dennis took it upon himself along with rick and others to start meeting about what is going to be necessary over the next couple of years to continue that work and as the boards have come together and said they want to do one community one government that process has to go on inside of public works both at the village level and at the town and then in the other departments as well so we put together a draft of a map the extension of the memorandum of understanding we sent it to the town attorney and to the villages attorney they have both opined and edited the document that you see here the thing of probably the most significant other than asking for five years which could be less depending upon what actions are taken by the board and village board select board is item number three item three in this agreement other tasks actually spells out the work over the next several years that we believe the public works committee and others should be working on to get ready for a full consolidation the committee and the departments will be coming back many times to the select board and to the village board with those work products to be discussed adjusted agreed upon may be agreed upon maybe not agreed upon and brought back and so this is basically just a continuation of your original memorandum have a question about part three when the committee on the public works consolidation today met made recommendations that met last summer that's right and we presented findings and the boards both accepted them one of the recommendations was to have all of the employees in one agreement and i had understood that that might not be a thing that we could do but i'm seeing on an item three here the hierarchal hierarchy the chart describing employees positions in a fully consolidated public works department and job descriptions and such and so is there is there is part of your considerations for this going to include agreement an agreement or reconfiguring existing agreements i'm not sure if i'm treading on labor discussions i shouldn't be saying in this forum but i just am curious about whether there's an issue there well we have union agreements and and things and you cannot violate them just because you merger or consolidate so you have to work with them i think what we want to do is what does the animal look like you know forget you know who is where but what's the best structure to use our assets that we currently have and by the way some of our best assets are the brains and that are sitting right across from the table in the people that we gave the night off for you've already heard of any kristin the you ginger tourists ricky jamie in the village department you have air and you have so many good people and what does that structure look like so if you brought both of them together what would it look like who reports to who what buildings are they in where are they going to be located and then how do we start working together both in capital planning and whitman purchasing and things of that that's just planning of what it would look like and then ultimately as you start thinking about it we have people who are going to retire so what positions do we need to refill which ones would we adjust to maybe not fill that position but go to where we think we need some more presence for instance neither the village nor the town has a need body who does property maidens we do not have like a building superintend that we have no one we ask our librarians to watch their buildings we're not to make person who used to do that and learned a lot of more than anybody should about h b a cs systems we all have busy jobs so we don't really have anybody dedicated to any of the buildings both village  town so as people maybe retire or we have positions available or the ability to acquire some skill sets in our workforce what's that going to look like and where does that fit so that's a lot of what will be doing everybody and we've had a couple of sessions work sessions and i think there's maybe an upset a lot of there's maybe a mistaken impression that we're one commute one family yet we're not you know we're working towards that and we've done a lot but but you start to get into the weeds and you find there's a lot of things that we have to work on so the question that i raised to the group and it's kind of a prelude to this is where we now and this you can think of i t you can think of communications you can think of buildings you can think of water sewer funds you can think of capital all of those things i mean there's there's all of them out there so where are we now what does your ultimate objective solution look like and that's not the big picture that's maybe within buildings you know what  would if we were going to run this as a aligned complete community what would you need to basically maintain your buildings that's outside and inside and not have an answer yet and i'm saying that's that's what would it ultimately look like and that's i think what happens that we're intermediate steps that could be taken and one of the short term things we could do along the line to get to a point where if the decision was to merge one if your decision is not to burgeon you still got a better community because you're operating together in a lot of areas if you do decide to merge then it's easy to kind of flip the switch turn the lights on and things are working if you get the time we flip the switch and you haven't worked out all those details you're in trouble and so i think that's what we're trying to do and then what are the impediments what are the problems what are the attitudes that hold the ultimate solution back what's preventing us from getting to that alignment thing and then what's the timeframe and time frames are different things might be very different depending upon the opportunities that that that we get in terms of retirements or whatever else i mean there may be a if we had a person retire in a particular position and it was a way to work it you know bill it's still being village employees towns that being down employees but you could work a way to have a building to person that maybe did which are sidewalk land i don't know but you know i'm saying some way to look at that you might not have to go to the budget to to find the money to hire a building's person you might be able to utilize that existing workforce what do we do want to a long term super promote from within do we hire off the street at the lower level to get to that if you're thinking not just in terms of what do i need for to laurel for next winter storm in progress how they trucks do you need so many how yeah everything intent was to come up with basically what i would call of the number of documents that it is that moves you towards that solution where you want to go but provides that opportunity for the manager and us as he needs us to come back to say here's here's what we're doing is progress here's the next step here's what we think we want to do to get to that point and to bounce those kind of things because ultimately those decisions rest at the policy makers not their rest with ricky or main they resume at a much higher level it enabled through the budget process yes you know we started talking about process procedure you know if ricky's guys come over to do a project with dennis one whose rules are we doing well if the rules in the process were more aligned we wouldn't be asking that question they would know whether you go there or you go there this is how you do it when you go over there this is how you do it and you come over here it is now you do it and they're  that dissimilar but they do have some quirks and our systems and our equipment are a little bit different we have different things but i give you for instance i've talked to th they're all bright and shiny and they're all in the right places and with a good plan instead of having barricades that took forever to set up and take down in traffic show it was because there was a rational reason to do that resulting in more efficiency because we had the truck you know hit the trucks and we'd have that made and every inch of you really didn't have to use his crew every year to spend another two hours my whole crew works on  under our guidelines the village of working under its association agreement it's guidelines but we work together and nobody's looking to say and how come and the more that we communicate work together the more projects we realize we could be doing together and the more the more savings there is snow in the knowledge of what grants are out there what what what assets we have in the house already that we don't have to go out and get that we already have and that the taxpayers are already paying for so and the lesson the hard part of it is from our perspective is at some point you know it was going to produce as we probably need to document what the savings were i mean quite honestly we did it there were savings inherent we know there are savings in here and it's a pain in the butt to do but if it again but if the residents want to know information and if you've heard me say i don't know if we'll ever truly document everything about did we save money because it is you guys realize things change over time the regulations change over time have needed to have you know it was state regulations and federal regulations you need people on staff whether you hire him or you hire and out to just keep up with those types of things a new gramp program comes along and all of a sudden we're doing certain things because they're going to give us money for something we really needed to do anyway we've probably needed to adjust our workforce for what is needed to be done and haven't done it but now we're doing it so did did we add a position to do we save a position or did we always need the position it's hard to to do those qualifications but watching these guys work together and start thinking together and start finding not inventing reasons to be together but finding out which where they can make a phone call to good to be better and more efficient it's been very nice to see and to have riki here after eight o'clock says this is going to cost me going to be like you have any questions or comments well i'm good chairman thank you ok so this is really kind of an information for now we don't want to sign this tonight i take it we i thought we were going this is going to go on the joint meeting agenda this is going to go on the joint meeting but we wanted any comments or direction it will go to the village board next and then to the joint for discussion and hopefully approval right we're going to move on to five f now and that's negotiation and use of suzy wilson road corridor impact the evan about this was that we've been there's a personal property on susan wilson all that's been been sitting idle for a very very long time and the biggest issue with that whole piece of property has been traffic and the impact on the intersection we've also been working with the state to implement the suzhou wilson quarter project which is that seven to ten to fifteen million depending upon where it goes down the road to improve the whole intersection the state's project is five to seven years out and we have levels of service f right now on to turning movements that conflict with each other the left turn on susie wilson road and the morning is not near so bad  is works the evening the left turn on susan wilson road into the village conflicts directly with the left turn from cars coming from burlington in and those two conflicting movements use up your time on the in i don't know if the really part of the capital plan but that's where they are that's where they sit and they're enough to be able to afford us some fixes we did not do the study but an athlon came up in came in to to to work with that particular parcel we've been six months and probably for three or four reviews between myself and a traffic engineer that we hired to help us all t traffic study first one was a definite no go with some issues with significant issues they went back we met back we've been meeting with the planning department commuted almost the same time because this applicant has kind of done a concept sketch to show what they would like to do it's a it's a use that would impact not really impacts significant of the am traffic but pm but it could have an impact of pm traffic because it's already so bad so there engineer went back with our suggestions and looked at what could be done in that five to seven year period so you've got two things going we could make that ourselves using all or impact fees and fix that and bias that five to seven years you could use some of the developer impact fees which would enable that development to come in the door the problem is that actual project hasn't fully come to the planning commission yet as a as a project and we have to staff public works has to do a review or and if we can't provide additional funds to fix the problem the review letter is going to say don't approve the project which is crazy where if we combined both their funds and our funds we still have residual funds left over in our in our account but will allow us to do that so the intent was to provide a little more detail on specifics during the executive session and to  get the board to enable us to negotiate using some of our funds and some of their funds so when we do a review letter we can essentially say we would be able to match some of those funds to solve that problem otherwise it puts us in kind of a dilemma not knowing if we can get at our own funds because they're really funds that fall within really your purview to release or not but if the development doesn't come in we would then you don't do it so we would we would be we would still want to have if that development were to not pass planning commission muster i would still want to implement this because of buys us that five to seven years with what needs to go in to our system if it's not what we're doing for another party it's our system that needs to be fixed to the signals need radar work together and we need to have them work both together and separate because if they work separate you can free up the timing that you need to make things work and the controller boxes and the yes it could be an open session that's if if the board were to decide that you would allow us to utilize that money then we can utilize that money but still go through the process so is the intent to preserve some confidentiality of the business that wants to go in there so that we can have the discussion so that we can feel more comfortable to understand what's going on and all of a sudden oh that's what we approved or alternatively we could just be present without that without that knowledge i think i didn't want to presume what was going to occur because the actual application hasn't come in the door yet but you need to know at least maybe more of the background of what's going on with  says we can participate in this process and here's what we're go clean yeah i think i think i think it's without disclosing the use or whatever on and i just really didn't want to do that in the open session i don't want to prejudice the decision that the planning commission might have to make and we got that package that was a thousand pages i think back in eighty nine and we had a lot of time to review it and i want to thank andy and i think it together to i just want to say you had time my girlfriend recently hired by where the companies that are requesting funding i don't think it's going to have an influence on me being here but i wanted to bring it up just in case you want me to leave the room or anything you   i think there are a couple of ones that some members of individually expressed their opinions on this particular year we actually had two new submissions one is easter seals and the other one was the six historical society and we actually had also apologize and so with that we also had more requests than funding when i first made we were talking with the essex historical  actually in the town's budget they do get a small amount of money my think they get like a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars from us they are looking to get some greater insurance which is a cost to them for their board members they take in funds they have a collection they have a fiduciary responsibility and then the village or the town does some internal work for them on their bills we don't really think it's appropriate for us to do some of their postage and some things anymore we don't do that for anybody else so we were looking to separate those activities and at the time said well there is at the time when we had this conversation we thought we had a little more money than we did total allocation so that's one thing with  then when we did this we took the total amount of money and what was over and to did some mathematics and basically lowered everybody by the same amount a percentage to get to the totals where that we see the actual amount in the fund to the actual amount being given out and then of course again with the historical society there people have reached out to me that you don't couple people don't feel that they should be in this grant fund and then there are a couple questions so with that i open up the discussion to the recommendations and i will accept any changes you make because it's really just my recommendation as an you know been here three months the only people that i'm not familiar with a few of these people oh and let me go back one step inside your packet is an article how interesting timing is in life from there was in the burlington free press about how the united way is has cut back on some of its funding and i would imagine some of these agencies are funded from united way because they are probably the largest the funding sources to agencies such as these not to be little the town of essex and one hundred forty thousand but the united way gives away is is a clearinghouse for millions so ok thank you so with that thank you for going through and making the recommendations for all these comments on any of these concerns really ok really get like good and want to and one of the things think you i was so yes and thank you for disclosing that i think in this maybe in this particular case if you don't personally benefit everybody knows somebody or is married to someone or in that respect and so i appreciate that but if you don't personally benefit from it i don't think there's a conflict and if there is money that if you use decide not to give someone something what i would suggest is that we just go back to the formula where we took the total and whatever's whatever you move we will reassign how we assigned it this way we'll just go back into the formula because we'll drive ourselves nuts that are moving fifty dollars and hundred dollars around and so first i need to apologize for you for providing some misinformation in email that i had sent out that ended up in the i'm a twenty one packet where i stated that we were actually four thousand three hundred eighty two dollars under requested and i made the mistake of using the f y e nineteen budget number rather than the f y e eighteen budget number so instead of being forty three eighty two under requested  source of travis spending a couple hours trying to figure out why is numbers didn't come out correctly but that's ok it was me he learned a lot and then and then moving on if i  can in twenty fourteen there was a a committee that had been commissioned by the select board to review the funding process and that committee  came up with a definition that was proposed for what human services are and i don't believe that the essex community historical society  fits into the category of human services so i i would be in favor of not providing that funding through this budget for the community historical society w and i'm sorry i didn't i didn't bring copies of the definitely human service definition that was generated by the committee we can i can certainly make out of it i got it from my reaction i'm about to read i  go out with an r f p in fact we did go out with an r f p and i my smiter standing there was no responses came back from that at the time but the the definition that was proposed was human services are organizations that serve to meet human needs and prove the overall quality of life of residents through knowledge prevention remediation direct service and improved accessibility accountability and coordination of services social service programs info and facilities include but are not limited to those that address transportation nutrition medical child care and other rehabilitative services for persons with low incomes senior citizens children disabled persons drug and alcohol requests from new organizations we generally haven't taken money away from others we've we've underfunded the new ones in their first year and with the intent to try to fund them fully in the next year or so i would like to propose that we except the that we fully fund everyone is request with the exception of cutting out the six community is just historical society i would like to increase on dot's placed to twenty five hundred so that it's equivalent to what we provide to the essex jericho underhill ecumenical ministry food shelf so we're we're at least funding them to the same level that we're funding that your food shelf that operates in jericho and i would like to reduce the easter seals from three thousand to five fifteen hundred fourteen dollars the the that organization or that the intent for this  two years ago we funded vermont vet to vet and they went out of business we've funded them at a level of five hundred one thousand dollars so it's my intent i'd like to propose that we go to fifteen hundred as a step up from the thousand that we funded two years ago to the other organisation that serves veterans so this is this is for easter seals i'd like to propose it increase to fifteen fourteen i'll just give the justification why it went i simply cut them in half and give them the extra fourteen dollars and ends up end what's that so there was two years ago we funded an organization called vermont bed today that they're out of business and so we funded them for a thousand dollars last year we funded the  blue ribbon mothers which is also another veterans organization they didn't ask for funding this year and so mike my intent for going from a from to fifteen hundred from three thousand is to put it closer to where we had fun and provided veterans funding previously again i the intent would be the next year that we could try to fully fund the three thousand so i may be going along we did in my explanation but that's why it's there's so and that's that's why i asked that the other the other change would be to reduce the vermont family network from twenty five hundred to fifteen hundred and i believe that gets us to the amount if you do that because they need because there are new organ and new requester and rather than you know as i said in the past we've we've got a new requests we haven't generally haven't fully funded them i make any i'd like to make an exception for our place because i don't want to fund jericho food show at a great higher level that we're funding when that's in our own town  o i'm proposing a five hundred dollar increase to place a fourteen hundred and eighty six dollars decrease the easter seals and a one thousand dollars decreased of or my family network based on their request well i'm concerned about the fact that that and and and and i have no connection place i will confess that i have been a past board member for the  emergency food shop but they do other things other than just provide food they also do job training and there are other other other things that they do there but i guess i'm just saying that the using essex town tax dollars to  twenty five hundred dollars going to a food shelf that resides in jericho i'm just i'm proposing that we fund the food shelf in essex to the same level if that's the most of these deal with a lot of these dollars but they do serve us or so i don't have a problem having the big what what if we fully fund those that have been funded in the past and we how much is chips i think and place other entity on this list that actually serves only essex actually i don't know that doesn't serve other essex but it's based in e primarily essex and i think it might be safe to say that the intent of the voters when they approve this is to the this one percent is that emphasis should be on e secondly because we're struggling with affordable housing and we're struggling with lots of other issues i think improving the contribution to end dots is a good precedent we want to encourage this food shelf to stay in business i just think it's a i would not have a problem with with increasing the contribution to equal the amount that's being given to the non a six day as if the it as six jerricho under last thursday and you know they don't have a five a one c three nor are they really applying for one overhead so i don't see them coming to us in the future least near future i guess little bit of trouble following the logic of well the money quite frankly i'm glad we're having this discussion because i have a little bit of trouble following the logic you know i'm just i don't like the practice of giving them more than what they say they they need things that other other organizations that we're underfunding you know could use that money because they're saying that that's the money that they really need from us so that's my view and we've done that in the past where we've we've given more than was requested in fact chips never asked for twelve thousand dollars we give we move it up to there and then they can they've they have they actually lowered their request and we ended up giving them twelve thousand and there's i believe the request in that year was only ten thousand i don't remember howard center also we gave a residual money to give more money to because there was concern about the other folks that are on the street that we joined that other program that has the other you know people right so there was there was some funding that was lost for them we ended up giving them more than they they asked for so we have in the past list nor will they be right and i told them that if they that this money is available but one of the criteria is having a five a one c three designation and they don't have it so they're they're aware  to make just just if we're going to talk about ethics based thing i i think it comes out to eight hundred thirty eight per of those that if you give if you give eighteen thirty eight on dots place easter seals in vermont family network it and fully fund the rest of it adds up to one thirty also gets it to where we are not giving people more than what they've asked so that probably solves just about everything it does except we're going to deal with historical society in the budget we'll have  minutes of may twenty first two thousand and eighteen with select board corrections so changing the word verbatim to pages and then it says there had been instead of less mistakes fewer addition think that's a much this this is where we were going with this conversation last time this this is not concise enough in my opinion i wouldn't agree to that change so you know a one one seventy seven doesn't make sense clarification of the town's jurisdiction on the town's liquor hearings and in fact there were towns on set one seventy seven was not use this this isn't a quote is that in quotes because it was a quote it's in quotes because it's what's been changed but i don't care whether the second towns is in there or you gave that second towns come out differently comments on the check warrants or the removing the band and so i don't know if we talked about how  for approval or are we well you can keep it in the consent yeah i know that i know i know the how that works just that in our in our april organizational meeting we established our rules  of orderly conduct of business we didn't bring up the concept of changing how we handle the agenda and i'm just want to make sure that we actually have that discussion and not just do it and assume that we all understand what the intent here is and and how it works for business agree that this is the way we're going to do it going forward if that's what you're proposing that's has been proposed or or what's been implemented i guess is that you're standing what's different so yes right so so in in previous agendas because this this particular item specifically asks for select board approval of an action right as that in the past our history  that i've been involved in any any agenda item that specifically asks for select board approval has always been in the regular it's in the business agenda always there's this is this is and this is a new way of doing of doing it for this board that i've seen i've never seen it done before where it's asking for approval i recognize that we have proved that i know the procedure that yes he was in the consent in jenin and we any of us think that it should be pulled into the regular genda we can ask that that's be done that's how the planning commission does it we've never done it that way and we've never had a discussion about changing our process i just want to make sure that we're all ok with changing this approach the way that  and therefore we approve what was requested to be approved by the so i think we've done that many things if i may speak to the whole thought process behind this a little bit i can't think of a specific example you've had a big action item to make a motion to approve the grant funding application for such and such a project this was looking at it and i thought maybe we had touched on it in the meeting that maybe it was internal discussions that was getting hung up a little bit but part now and so the reading file used to be consent agenda we had sort of talked about creating a reading file to ease up on the consent agenda so you're not just approving the fact that you've read certain things that are kind of more just  look through the rules regulations for orderly procedure i didn't see anything about specifically consent agenda and how it's processed one way or the other you know historically you're going forward so the thought here was kind of just try this out try some stuff that stuff thinks is relatively minor that can get approved by the select board they get free of the memo properly they've got part of the cause for concern asking for approval from the select board for a specific item but that the reasoning i thought was that for these kind of what staff thinks is might of things to put on consent agenda just have a proven approval processes part of the group the consent agenda like the check warrants but but the option there being if you want to discuss it further pull it off and we can go through some more details so that's the reasoning i apologize if i jump too far ahead but that was that's what the thought process we everybody we have checkpoints in there those require so wonderful yes and we and we sign him before the meeting started so there's an action that we take that yeah and then and then and it's the thing that concerns me is it's a change of our procedures that we've not discussed that we don't necessarily  this strikes me also as something new especially because there's a cost attached to it and i would appreciate seeing things like this on the agenda because i think it pulls it out for the public to view as a business item as well as for us to draw attention to it as opposed to something that's just sort of checked it's been in the past practice for as long as i can remember on the village trustees and it's been many many other boards i've served on consent agenda lumps together minor administrative things that might have lower costs or no costs that just require an awareness on the part of the board members and a blanket approval and the materials are in the packet so it's not like they're not being shared with if mike was like i can see your hands raised or not so when i go to you and see if you have a comment on this i don't i think i don't think we're giving anything short shrift by why changing it a little bit so i agree with the change i really don't think i don't think i don't think there's as much  ok thanks thanks mike and i don't object to doing it this way object to the fact that we change the prost process without having discussions about it that's the thing i'm out of jail i agree with putting small items in the consent agenda and if i think it's a big deal at the beginning of the meeting w changing the agenda i can say hey i think this is one we have to talk about pull it out put it in the agenda i agree with that but i don't agree with this changing how we we how conduct our business without having discussion about it and it sounds like you're having a discussion i mean i believe this is the second go round from not mistaken so i certainly i certainly think there's been enough dave light shed on it yet that we we can't be accused of not having a discussion about it that's for right to be able to pull it out and beginning if we want to and we still do so yeah but first andy thank you for that last clarification that's fine we were talking about it's a minor issue in many respects except that it's a change not only for you but for us because i didn't know that there was a auction list and there was an activity where you guys specifically wanted to do that if this was just to fix a vehicle it wouldn't come to you at all i'm right it's in my purview and we needed done the actual actions to take it off the oxen list and hold onto it for a couple years but it is a change and the only way to actually do sometimes a change is to show what it is and then have the discussion so i again i appreciate the clarity and the conversation and we'd be happy to do consent how the board feels about it but they have a conversation first it was one of the bit on the agenda but you have to have the first one to notice the difference ok so and the for the it's very significant from the cemetery commission we had a candidate who were interviewed for the deposition and we turned down and she was very disappointed or she was very excited she wanted to be on that and i don't remember her name it was the jim jones right the woman who was taking classes working on a degree and with the i don't remember what her last name is great she she was very excited she wanted to be on the planning commission i was hoping we could reach out to er and let her know that there's a seat available now and ask her to come either come back to interview or do we just can we decide just that well i guess we'd have to she'd have to apply for us to fly and i think the recommendation i think i remade is can we keep these open for a certain period of time and then at the end of that see who wide and then through that one as opposed to saying the first person applies gets the interview so this is probably a which one i think if you go too long people may just find something else to do with their time and say you did that which i would propose for weeks out of the thirty millions that it certainly longer than we've i've worked with the finance director and there's some questions about how how the cemetery commission is funded where the funding goes for senator kerry bunch of questions about turf and the field in the cemetery and their quality of it so we've  been answering questions that have come up and trying to find some solutions and work with the cemetery committee commission and we've been offering exit interviews in many people have been taking them i've been collecting them and sharing them with staff  say so i'd like to offer one to to what you gave me just that jody thank you yes and i did ask her if she would reconsider to stay on a little bit longer and apparently that was going to cause some type of problem at home so she had been frustrated a little bit so we're working on some of those issues of frustration of the operations and of the comm make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the town's position concerning the proposed contract discussion would place the town at a substantial disadvantage the second emotion one thank you very many for the discussion about motion seen if i was saying i i i i move that this like board made this make this specific finding the general public knowledge of confidential attorney client communications regarding pending civil litigation to which the public body is a party would place the i move this like board enter into executive session to discuss the proposed public official appointments pursuant to one b s a section three thirteen eighty three to include the unified manager and the deputy town manager contracts pursuant to one vs a section three thirteen a one a to include unified manager deputy town manager and public works director and confidential attorney client communications regarding pending civil litigation to which the public body is a party pursuant to one vs a section three thirteen a one easy and one vs a section three thirteen a one f to include the town manager deputy town manager and town attorney second of second billing and a further discussion of motion three all those in favor seen if i was saying