like to welcome everyone to tonight's joint select board trustee meeting and just remind everybody to please submit your you sign in so that we have that for the record and if you could turn your cell nd then we have a couple of things i see in a play of a few things where you the first is a memo from the police chief about some supplications for backstage and veteran of foreign wars as a junction posts sixty six eighty nine which it should be i'd like to present a petition from two hundred eighty outside the village residents to ask this like or to acknowledge and to remedy the lack of representation they have i would i mean i would propose we do the public to be heard because we won't be able to have a discussion on it today but we can put it on a future i just know that it's representation as i mentioned later on i do want to get on ok so if that's ok with you i could probably so we have these meeting with the trustees but this look board has just a little bit of business to do before we get started collectively so and it's about first class liquor license renewals going to open it up to the board we have  three liquor license renewals one is for back state l l c and we have vents here and the other is for kevin cody incorporated which is cody's and we have chris here and  veterans of foreign wars as instruction post six six eight nine ok i'm sorry yes i missed something i missed the i jumped on the agenda so thank you we need to before we get into the business items i'm going to open it up to public to be heard by bad public to be heard is it time for the public to speak to this like board on items that are not on the agenda all open it up to anyone wishing to speak german public to be heard and if you could just state your name for the record please just speak from there but loudly if you could very well thank you so much for hearing me tonight i my name is mary is doing a statewide survey on the state of women and girls and i have a copy of the serving here as well as the u r l that i can provide to you but i just wanted you all to be aware that both from the junction and the town because it is an effort for us to really cool act in the coming months and find out what the priorities are for issues relating to girls there have been some recent studies released through change the story vermont there really have shown the impact on women and girls economically that there is a lot of economic insecurity happening and so we're really focused on inquiring we're deeply into that and taking those results and having that formulate our priorities and policy making new year to come they're going to be several listening sessions around the state there won't be want to guess experience only because we're really trying to focus on some of our more under served areas the northeast kingdom down in the bennington area and one in central for months at this point but i just want to be aware of it and some of you have generously shared the information on social media which i totally appreciate all provide the u r l but if you can you know on your own social media feeds or wherever please spread the word because we're looking for as much input as possible we just put it out a week ago and already we have over five hundred i would i'm just here because i want to urge the select board to do what they need to do to effect in china change because well i realize it is legal for one person to now serve money both boards i find it very unethical and i would really like to see the people who live in the town outside the village have equal representation in this form thank you thank you for y some you know we are history guy you go through history there's often sometimes multiple people from both the town and village who are powerful she's a special position in that she's something to make sure that there is some kind of a quick woods between you know group of people represented and i hate this term town outside the village and want to see the term go away and nobody  recognizes it like it was one hundred years ago but nevertheless there's a lot of resentment now a lot of fear now that you guys are going to be forced to deal with with two parents from westford having sharing a vote and you have four votes for us from the essex junction school district and you have four votes from the essex towns school district area so the intent still remains and i don't think i'm speaking for the board and speaking for myself and as an individual what i say that i think everybody's got fair representation well as i mentioned earlier this evening i'm here to urge to select word on behalf of the eleven thousand residents or so who live outside the village of essex function and the lack representation comparable to their village neighbors that is there is no one speaking for all of those outside the village residents as these consolidations of town village apartments move ahead this an equal representation should be as much of a concern to everyone here as has been the issue of unequal taxation if you've been paying close attention you know our consolidations have begun to address the disparity in taxes by shifting expenses over the past five years on the other hand the disparity in representation has not at all been addressed the boards continue to pour forth plans for merger and plans for consolidation without acknowledging or attempting to remedy this representation deficit every time a one side proposal is defeated here the finger pointing begins how about we deal with this fundamental problem once and for all so that every voter can feel confident that they have representation in meetings like this fair outcomes will only result from balance negotiations why won't the board members want see equal teams when discussing matters that affect all voters equally and what could be more pressing for all of us than making sure that the voters see that we have their backs and this is the petition on which i have two hundred signatures i'll be glad to get more guys yes the answer is yes as dianne clements who was on the school board said yes there is records for members of the board representing the former essex school district which is outside the village there's four rep on the board on the consolidated board representing the village and there are two from west percheron one vote representing westford so yes there is equal representation today trustee meeting maybe i could help i think there's two different things going on here there that are being conflated being overlapped there's a concern about the school the new school district and representatives to the new school board and what we have heard is that there were four from the former village school district on that board four from the former town district on that board and two from westford on that board but there's a concern going forward that the way elections are held that might not have that might not happen but i don't think that's ever going to change and we can discuss that and in further details then there's a separate issue about discussions between the essex junction really have anything to do with the schools and so there is some discussion and differences of opinions about how we should be approaching this and i think we'll be talking more about this later on but we don't really want to get into it right now so we're go that's can wants to change that it's the four representatives outside a village four in the village in two from west where if the all four from the outside the village become vacant then you need to have four people from the town outside the village representation imbalances that are inherent in some school and municipal frames to acknowledge insists instances of an equitable representation three work to reform our chaotic incomplete and or inadequate government structures in order to provide for example town outside the village voters an independent voice in school  municipal matters on par with their town inside the village counterparts and number four in vinyl make this a priority ok so that's that's this and that's something that would we can have on a future gen and have a complete discussion but since it wasn't war and we just take a public to be heard i mean if i might add a little clarification the select word warned the school vote this year which is something to my knowledge that we have never done before and because the scope of our control is larger than the town outside the village the ballot that we warned was for the entire town therefore people from inside the village got to vote on the seat that had formerly been set aside for outside the village residents only and had anyone been interested in running for that seat from the village they could have run for it so that is the heck up that we face this year and that we will face again unless something changes locally or something changes of the state level which i'm told it is in the works but it has not passed the legislature yet so that is what is behind this concern that more people voted on one seat than we're expected to when we first agree to march and from what i error that was not noticed until it was too late at the legislative level at the state house and they are working on it and the intent is to correct it so that next year we will all vote the way we're used to voting village for village town outside the village or town outside the village and westward for westward so this was a one time thing that the legislature does not plan to let happen again so it's something that this board can't really fix because we the board at the time warned it because the result of the error that was the best that could happen it had to be warned and that this was the body that could do it if all goes according to plan of the legislature that will not happen again and the bill of representation on the school board will maintain the same levels for each community that it currently has in the school board will warn their own the school board will warn their own meeting next year so there's really nothing that this board can do about that laurie do you happen to you know i don't but i can find out and bring it back to the select board but i know it's being worked on we understand it's an issue and it truly was just an oversight or in one sentence in the legislation can if you want more particulars you can contact representative dylan batiste who is one of the village estate reps he's on the education committee and he knows everything about how this happened so he oh it was apologize something i've been away and i believe this is the first joint meeting but how and this is a question for him for probably the town manager because he may or may not have already discussed it with a lawyer but how we'll any votes or any discussion when elaine is involved because she has two positions how will that be dealt with the administrative way i am unaware of any circumstance we are there's a joint meeting where the person has a position on each of the boards when you're in the legislature and you but she also is a trustee and therefore represents an other group at which acts in some circumstances it may not be to the benefit of the broader community whatever is being  i just want to understand how that will transpire administrative weight within a joint meeting if i may give two kinds of answers one will be a technical here and one will be a philosophical ok technically when the boards meet together there is never  as a group of five and then there will be two votes on every action item one for the trustees and one for the select board so that's how that will work there are no action items as far as i know on this agenda tonight to see that  action but other than possibly an executive session but that's technically how it will work philosophically what i can tell you and this is up to you to accept it or not as an elected official on both committees i have pledged to be had as much integrity as human we possible to do the right thing for the entire community it might surprise some pokes in the audience and people watching that when the trustees have conversations and vote on things we don't just think about the village when we vote on them we think about the impact our decisions have on the town because we are part of the town and when i sit as a selectman i think about the impact of everything we do on the town and that includes the village because the village is part of the town so that may feel like slippery logic to some folks to me it's crystal clear that my responsibilities into the is to the entire community and that's pretty much the way which is just to keep hope i would recuse myself from a vote that has to do with me personally benefiting from the results of the decision which is the rule in our conduct our rules of conduct so if there was some reason i might benefit financially or personally by a decision that's made those the grounds under which i would recuse myself and you live i do live in the village thanks ok anybody else would like to move on if we could but  and submit your your input and then it was just out there listen is a b and say start the minutes in the minutes when people speak their identify so i'm still questioning why we do have the name of the person two five seven that they're working to make affect of next year so i don't think we're going to see a vote on this language for what it's worth before the end of the session this month or next month because i think you pass it and then it's effective the very concerned about the violations i'm reading about and i just wondered if someone wanted to speak to what type of violations they were and whether there was a recommendation to suspend the license or to deny the license or to restrict the license of morning like in our yes sure now what we're we're probably going to do tonight is is my hope anyway is because we have this information from the chief we don't have any details with respect to yours and we need to do due process so that would allow us the opportunity tonight to say we can approve your license conditionally that we have a hearing at some time in the very near future where then you can come back and explain whatever it is that you'd like to do so i don't really think you need to do that tonight ok at least that's how i'm hoping things will  first if we could and then we can deal with the other two and i move that the select board approved first classical license renewal for kevin cody incorporated doing business as cody's irish pub and grew with outside consumption permit i serve liquor and we expect you not to serve liquor to under aged minors nor to anyone who is obviously in need braided and we really don't expect to see any commercial kitchen as opposed to first class restaurant and that's kind of bookkeeping right so they don't need to be here tonight but we do need to have an approval that for the first class liquor license as a whole already prove the first  by zero excellent so on the as i mentioned before we have these violations that are before us at least we don't have the details but we do researcher i don't think you can do that because their liquor license is before us it is going to the state the question i guess i would have we would ask for him to do is you can take it on his word we've asked for a letter from the petitioner stating that is his request and we can act upon it tonight subject to that letter being done the people thirty has that light what does that do to a change in leadership for lack of a better phrase you have one of the you have a person who's on the application telling you you no longer wants to be on the application so what i'm suggesting is you're taking it on face value that he will no longer be an officer he's going to give you a letter for that if the select board is of the opinion to approve the license subject to those conditions you may do so and then staff will verify and update the record that it is a singular person from the v f w subsequently if the w wants to add somebody to their license they should come back before the liquor commission and get that approval at a later date cheers and i would like to ensure that the party that's going to be taking over is the one that's at the hearing if the gentleman here today is not to make that hearing i'm certainly that other individual is part of the leadership and i prefer to see both to be honest with bud and i think that it's appropriate that somebody from the v f w appear at any hearing at which their liquor licenses that issue i don't believe that will be determined so again can regarding v f w that if we get that letter can we give it the full approval without you without what the condition of getting that letter correct letter would need to be in very soon because at the end of this month the license expires  to be removed from the liquor license of the v f w that is in their position going to the state tomorrow are you asking do a rib be removed this it doesn't matter he's going to be in my view he should he should have been here so what i'd like to throw out to the board to consider is to to give a fair hearing to to backstage and have a hearing put on a future agenda one of the our next if we take this seriously want to do this quickly and approve it conditionally that tonight pending results of that hearing and then we can take whatever action is appropriate whether it's it's non or whatever the the board act is a liquor commission thinks is appropriate so if that's ok but i entertain a motion to that effect hearing will be held at the first available select board meeting see the next solely meeting not first available next police those conditional pending having having the hearing at the next meeting and then we can see what actions we take at that point ok thank you i mean any further discussion is do we have to mention outside consumption p motion that sets differently than you did backstage i don't know but i figured i'd give you the opportunity if you wanted to craft it differently and i want to take a shot at that what that might look like so it's in with friendly amendments if they feel that they're necessary i moved we approve a first class liquor license for the veterans of foreign wars condition condition we approve first class local license based on the letter from the current commander stating that he will be stepping down and that there will be a new leader of the v f w and that that new leader be present at the hearing ok he's good is very good very consistent ok mike with that i'm from an area ok all right so all those in favor of the conditional approval of the veterans of foreign wars six junction licenses very seriously as should be your establishment as well and not serve minors alcohol to minors nor anyone who's obviously  danger we really don't like to see any violations of of any kind but we'll have the opportunity hear from you on may seventh and hope things can work out ok ok that a little longer than usual so we're going to move on now we're going to bring in the the trustees now to the joint meeting together it's now i guess by definition seventy five going on in the organizations some of it relate to alignment some of it is just a notice of some people that are leaving our organization due to retirement so i just want to give you a little bit of a heads up so there's really not much need for if you do want to discuss it is not anybody specific you can talk about generalities of position names listed that that's one person who out there i don't think you need it in this case but the option is there for some reason the board decides you don't talk about all per there's certain personnel items that we don't talk about in public but if the board's comfortable and  to the decision functions team building and succession planning was asked to be added happy to add that to the job description through my second bullet point we would add minutes taking sometimes we need somebody to be the backup or the backup backup or the third backup so we're going to add minutes to the duties assistant to the manager that we are discussing as an organizational change at several of the meetings that have occurred there has been a call to have someone be more in tune with maybe a communications director i don't feel that that's a full time full time position but it is someone who has to have the ability to create the strategy and work with another position or other positions that we have in the organizations to be able to effect that strategy so this position is a lot patty did a lot she is retiring and we're looking at how to best serve to lincoln and other functions so we're going to give it a shot so this has the option because perry's leaving to be cost neutral ok and i know we've talked latest communications position for quite some time so this is it may be a great way to bring it it has the opportunity cost neutral to start what we actually did is there is a to be confusing  not on purpose because i didn't mean to do this but we the select board in the village board in their budgets and said we will have a full time human resources manager that person is also currently a part time administrative assistant so we're losing that part for right now we're trying to pick it up in the new position as well as some other duties we want to give that a shot and see how that plays and if that position can in fact all provide some of the administrative assistance that position as patty did for me so far but also maybe pick up a little bit for greg and others and see how that plays out and we'll see we still have that extra half position in reserve that we're not looking to fill right now i just wanted to say i think asking for the communications position for three years thank you so much for making room for it in the budget and the staff it's outstanding thank you you're welcome we'll be filling it in september have and we really do you know as i mentioned in my interviews and things i've mentioned it to several people that i think the village and the town have a voice you have things to tell your citizens and and listen to them they may not a separate tonight they may not all come out to village or town meetings this is a big crowd for certain meetings and but there's twenty thousand residents and businesses and only a few come out so but they they do have a voice and we want to figure out how to get that voice heard from us and then how do we get our messages out to them in a timely manner an efficient manner and i think someone dedicated to it working on it is the best way to at least start to address that  and other comments on the discussion his leg and sed no i have not yet other questions and the h r director job description mentions town quite a few times and i think it was intended to be a town and village court so just you know i mentioned that that actually in a lot of our job descriptions they need to go back we need to go back through it those were their shared positions need to go back and put in town and village he's well aware of his work to be done since some of the first things he's doing is filling but it's business ok anybody else clarification or for the discussion thank you for putting those items in there it's good to keep abreast of all the the good things that although i still only sort of have to do it once i think they they said well i mean you're not off the but based on the meeting we had the joint meeting we had on the twenty fourth with a lot of public dialogue and some board dialogue and other discussions and also for ongoing historically we charged the staff to come up with some kind of first of all to digest what happened on the twenty fourth look at the facilitators notes in her summary and to sketch out for us for both boards a kind of a plan for how they might proceed with alignment in the coming year or years and so now i'll hand it back over to you o guess in your package is a mom oh it is got my name on it but by no means is it just mine staff greg and lauren as well many people help me craft this because you know i'm here two months you guys have been at this little bit longer and have had many meetings and so one of the first things that you'll note in  it's like board meeting over no this is a joint meeting of the the the trustees tonight's purpose is the trustees and select  this exercise and this work load not to be dust done by the unified manager this is an organization wide activity as lorne can attest from the finance department  and greg and others can say when we look to put departments to work together there's lots of details about how that works whether it's in their contracts their association contracts or pay in compensation or work rules or id you can go on and on so i wanted more than just myself thinking about it and working as a team a culture to to do these things so you see that and then through that we started talking about what would our goals be you know what are we trying to achieve as as staff for the boards and what would be the right outcome so you'll see those points as we move down that that last and it really starts to help us as a staff focus on what the task at hand is and what we should be focusing on and also gave me some great insight into what the the board could be doing as your work plan to help along side by side we're doing things you know inside and underneath you know the the workings and you're up at policy and given us direction on which comes some what next the second one you see is the public works here's a little bit of an update three years ago you did a memorandum of understanding of the town highway and the village public works department to start aligning started to work together back in the fall of two thousand and seventeen you received a report from the group saying that they were working they were making great strides  and that they would look to continue that alignment and that process and in the coming weeks you would see a draft of a extent m o you to extend that relationship dennis lats is working on that and with our alignment group we want to focus some more on the types of places we can share equipment share person now share expertise in fact what happened last night was a perfect example of the town in the village working together the town put out the paving bed for both the village and the town it was done by town staff they put together with the village what streets the village wanted to do what were their lengths what was the with how much as what was going to be needed what was the work product the town but went out to bid which included the village work and the bids came back at sixty dollars a ton which actually produced to the village a seventy thousand dollars savings over what was budgeted and with coordination between the town and the village public works director rick jones rejoinders like a static now he's going to get to do more of the streets that are on our list because of the price so the village paid no more money than it had paid in fact it paid less because the town didn't charge the village for the work and for it to do the bid on to put the documents together so pretty much win win all the way around and i believe that was the intent of the of the m o you and people working together and the and the and the beneficiaries are both of our the municipalities residents and business so that's moving along for and then as you'll see and probably the one you'll probably comment the most on is the proposed staff work plan which presents some days and dates of the work that needs to progress and what we think we could get accomplished in those years and then in the back there is certainly what the village board and town select board could consider to be working on which is page three first of all of course you  can read it for people who may not have it or it tax equalisation you know that is going to be a big issue and it does need to be addressed and i don't think it should sit and wait but it should be an ongoing discussion with the boards and give direction on what you may want to do with that i obviously you hired a unified manager and you are required  jointly provide goals for that manager which is also on the agenda tonight that would be wonderful if i actually knew what your priorities were so that would be nice i generally do but it's better if there are specific specific especially if you're going to evaluate me on it at some point i'd like to know what that is going to be and structure of legislative bodies  again you could call that governance call it whatever you wish but i think it's about representation and what those structures look like are you going to look to combine committees maybe not now but in the future but you may want to consider whether you want to do certain committees or not others and what their missions are for the greater good of the communities representation of residen think that the van is a public outreach and public input on these processes plan commission i believe there was a previous iteration that said maybe doing one plan commission and two d design review boards and i don't remember if it was one z b a or two z v a s i don't i don't know if we have to go over it right now but that's just my recollection that there was a document g how would voting occur in not only as you move forward how do you want to do voting to give direction and to provide consensus budgets yeah and budgets and then penalty risk this one got thrown in penalties for late tax payments sometimes your policies are just vastly different and so that's a big one so do you want you could have discussions on things of that nature and then one of the things that staff was talking about although we i really enjoy going to night meetings  we run a night meetings and we have a lot of committees and they're important and they do great work for the communities but several of them are not staffed by staff members and i think that it's some point we should talk about a staffing component for those committees and commissions to give them help in what they're trying to achieve sometimes they have policy questions sometimes they have procedural questions sometimes they have budget questions  staff is not there to help them with that so that leads to some confusion and maybe not so much to be productive as they could be in supreme back that i received from the chairs of some of the select board  sions and committees is there they they realize there's some synergy between the various boards and they'd like to to have some method where they could actually communicate that and work somehow in coordination and i'm not sure we we don't do that yet but that's something that they said they'd like to see they could be more effective that way so and then while it's on the list space needs study there is money budgeted to do some planning of space teens but as we align if we are still aligning and we start finding out what's best sometimes space becomes an issue for instance this part time administrative assistant  supposed to help the administration department i don't actually have a place to put this person that is near me i could put it downstairs but it's not near as i can so it's kind of like we're do we start putting people where they believe they fit better maybe where space is things people like departments that don't deal with the public nearly as much don't need to be in a public place where they service the organization more than the public we want to look at some of those things we also want to make ourselves more accessible to the public you know and so make sure that our work environments are inviting and open to the public when they need to be for that things so that's my work plan it does take us out a few years and we do have a lot of work as lauren and greg can attest still working on the alignment of the departments that have been aligned public works we're just starting fire the two fire departments which is going to take communication and discussion with our fire chiefs and our consultant that we were using as to what we're doing how we're doing it and for what benefit we're doing it it has already been budgeted that's the good part and so those types of things lauren you can chime in if you wish about just you know finance and how we're going to try to do trying to achieve one of the things we heard from some of the employees or a lot of the employees was can we please get away from the village way and the town way and go to the best way what is the best way for us to do our services to the residents in the businesses of the communities it's some of the ways we've been doing it may be have been in practice for a long time and they may not even be taking into account the changes of what has occurred and so it's a great opportunity for staff to sit down department to department and say what works maybe your policy on this works we should keep it as better than this one and this one's better than yours and why don't we agree that we're going to do this one this way that one that way or change them both that serves us better makes it easier and makes it easier for him ministration not to have to administer multiple policies on everything that the village in town does and we do a lot and we do everything by policy and procedure and there's a reason for that we do not treat people individually if we so we can't give someone a benefit that we are not willing to give to everyone so we have a policy of how we're going to address whatever it is who it is we can't treat somebody is taxes different whether they're in the village or the town or a man or a woman or a senior or a middle aged person it is what it is in the policy and that's how we have to keep addressing things or we will get in trouble and so that's how we look at these we plow streets we have a process in a procedure that's how we do it and there's a reason why we do it that way now and go on and on but i've taken  village in town procedures that are non policy kinds of procedures but there are procedures there spelled out in specific policies and just for everyone's assurance when it comes to changing something that's in a town policy or a village policy you're to have to come to the board the board's going to have to hope to change the policy so i think salute you know i just say reiterating what you're saying so that we have some understanding of some giving giving everyone comfort level that you know there's here's representation is concerned policies are going to be suddenly switched anything like that there's always going to be this is all going to be done in the public policy alignments policy changes will be brought to both boards debated each board votes on its policies independently of the other board just want to make that clear and when there's money involved as well that that has to be addressed jason that i just want to clarify that but when you're talking about these changes in adopting similar policies between the town and the village operations but when you're talking about employees there's a there's a union the union agreements and contracts to all agreements are not going to be changed at this time we're talking good one clear fight for the members of the know not of this time right right but right we are going to be talking with the associations about aligning the terms of the contracts along with our employee manuals so that we're not operating under five separate documents and like to get it down to under three management rank and file may not be having their voices heard and especially with departments like the fire department it's great if the chiefs agree with you on doing something but if all the volunteers don't agree they're gone and we don't have a fire department or two left so i w good point why you didn't talk among very different levels with people about why the issues they have not just within their departments not just with the other department but even with other organizations within or village government because i think there's a lot of opportunities for improvements that may be teased out by talking to different people than is it as a matter of fact when you look at the alignment group there are there are a few people that are not currently department heads and the conversation at our first meeting we've got one our next one's tomorrow timing being everything it'll be fresh tomorrow from this discussion a lot of what they wanted to talk about was best practices culture and how they would that they wanted to meet other people in the organization so people from any one main rarely get out to public works either building they may see them but they don't know their names we've had ginger's of personnel they actually want to events lunches and other things meet and greets where they be calm more of a team and a family than just a collection of people they don't know i'm trying to work on something to gather from different parts perspectives and so some of that is important and sometimes you can take their advice but you still have to take a direction so when i do want their input  i want to say i've had the same conversation with evan about the fire departments and they are kind of a special case because the name of the game is retaining wall and hears and we don't want to make any policy changes in either department that drives away volunteers because they're that's their their key and so i have put i kind of feel that we may want to think that when there is an alignment or a discussion of a possible consolidation that would have where some change m impact service delivery where it touches the public that we have staff that we have boards involved that we have elected officials involved now i know that might slow you down but i think on some of these things it might be a thoughtful way to do it because then we can that we can give that extra level of assurance we can we can we we feel assured ourselves and we can also bring assurance and maybe some public perspective and public oversight to the process so i don't disagree i always mean you're still in the formative stage at this point so i'm not saying we're going to get in there but i do i do make the argument that that if we're talking about paula see practice procedures that impact service delivery impact the public might be a good idea for us to be for one of us or one from each board or something like that to be involved in the in the discussion just some thought here is probably too far down the road right and could save you time because you don't want to go through the period process of you know spending hours working on aligning policies and then you come you know what you would like us to do and then you bring it forward to the board and we say no we don't like that at all so it might be better to have us involved at the ground level and some of these things is that other city councils in the area and select words are very busy doing other things besides consolidation and so i'll though that seems to be a focus consignment can tell a lineman and consolidation for us in e i wonder if you have anybody in your staff who's got the periscope out and looking at what everybody else around us is doing so that we don't miss out because we're so focused for another year or five or ten on making consolidation work there's all kinds of great stuff going on and i wouldn't want to miss out on it because we didn't give you enough freedom in this document to do other really good stuff that has nothing to do with consolidation alignment you know the that's a good point we we've already been talking about you know succession planning both in this and i'll side of this recruitment and retention we're talking about you know we have we have an interesting dichotomy of workforce we have some people with long years of dedicated service and we have some new people in the organization and that balance of you know what's the plan for some of those older employees and how are we going to get the newer employees on board and and even the ones we're talking about development of an on boarding process and also not only of our employees but of elected officials and commissioners for boards and commissions which we're learning from other communities because some of them have wonderful programs already in place and one of my models is still from the best  it's a form of flattery and then don't do things that don't work from other communities and then when they say they wish they had never done it it's usually an indication don't do it and so you do those things but that we want to you know this is why i think the boards would be better served taking their time dotting i's crossing t's working on policies working on culture and working together to see if this process should continue to keep going on which i believe i've heard from many of you how it should is  important is that it does continue and have goals in mind and i'm a guy that likes to work on goals if you tell me a goal is to be done by this time i will move heaven and earth with our staff to make it happen but if it's just sort of now believe nebulous it could get lost in translation and the wash so i just look at in terms of the keeping track what's going on in other communities we have stuff that is very active regionally statewide that is good public works as are some of the leaders and stormwater there's the regional planning commission organizes a lot of venture around planning transportation and stormwater that are community development apartments any other comments about this at this point there's a couple things i've been really excited about hearing from you today for dementia building a team and not necessarily doing things the village way or the town way but doing things that passed away which it's great to hear that in her earl talking about trying something with a with one of the positions that flexibility that willingness is great to hear and then on a slightly different know in looking at the work plan knowing that we've talked about a lot of consolidation talk a lot about target some of our charge changes we've heard about representation in looking at the timeline one of things we've also talked a lot about is how we don't have a great turnout when it comes to actual voting when it comes down to  participating so in seeing f y e twenty twenty it makes me think of the election coming up in two thousand and twenty i'm assuming that they're going to be quite a few people who might want to participate that november for elections if we can also align any kind of charter changes with that date could really be a great way to entice many many more people to participate and have a lot of people participate in an election for municipal purposes but they typically wouldn't is funnier laughing because i was interesting because typically we tend to ask people to take time out of their day and come to us let's go to when they're already going to be out voting and try to have them vote on things that concern them very very directly  your new alignment group i notice a number of the members are brand new or very recently new to local government and i would just hope that under the other staff heading you would include people who know the history agreeing are many times and can help the newer folks understand why we may or may not want to do certain things because we've tried that before but in their enthusiasm and i love them for it they may not foresee the pitfalls or the quicksand ahead and would just put that out there and part of it is i mean i literally could have doubled the group and part of the problem is trying to get four people in the same room on the same day at the same time is hard to really doing it with nine vacations does that and continuity so i kind of purge it back in a couple of the members actually asked for other members to be added to the list already so and that's why i put in there that people will be added as needed for expertise and some things i will i know this is going to sound i don't even know how lit sa we have jeans day on fridays we allowed jeans to be worn at work on fridays it's just our culture what we allow everybody was worried that when i came here i was getting rid of jeans day it also was bad because on the first friday i didn't wear jeans i apparently didn't get the memo and one of our employees came up with an idea to try to build camaraderie this going to dartmouth or legs or sampling college you can wear the sledger to where your kids are going and were hoping to spark conversation amongst the staff you know oh i didn't know you went there all my son goes there all my daughter goes there and they are excited to do this and ok all right we'll try anything nobody gets hurt i hope you know unless they're due to north carolina  i do the down we are moving on to trustee and select board comments about our part and our vision of what we would like to continue the governance the discussion on governance and i we had asked when we had a meeting on the twenty fourth max and i had ended of the conversation by saying to everybody would you or would you all like to everyone to continue this yes everyone said yes and then would you all like to send us your ideas about what we should do next and everyone said yes and then we sent out a reminder and we got four responses i'm one of them i will i will admit now  defeats the purpose you know it was meant to be not select border board it's just a thought but ok i never said presbury well i but i was thinking of doing was just it once again to try put to have  everybody and since are four of us who some who submitted in the rest of us decided not to for various reasons what we won't go into but i thought that maybe maybe you would like to maybe you'd like to talk about it now maybe we'd go around the room and just everybody give their thoughts about maybe that's not a and who would like to start and so i'll start go for i'll read what i wrote and have it and i know there's a lot we need to accomplish should we continue to consolidate but i feel our most important step is to address the elephant in the room taxes we need a full understanding of costs associated with the remainder of programs and departments to consolidate how they would affect each entity and thoughtful solutions on how to resolve to ensure residen both communities will continue to provide support consolidation if we don't tackle the money slash tax issue we may be spending time working towards the status quo if that is the case i would like to learn that sooner rather than later that a full consultation is not going to happen and move our attention to other important matters we could still continue to work on joint communications and improving what is already consolidated if we can find a solution to the tax equity issue that i would like to  all we do i would recommand that we that that's the status quo we don't go backwards but that's not what this is intended to be but i do think there are two major issues that we need to address and one is tax equity and one is representation and we only do that in mind through a discussion of how we would go over in these communities together and if we don't do those now i feel we're just spin you know our wheels and a year from now from now we'll be back having the same conversation and i know at least speaking for the for as a village trustee we have a lot we could be doing besides that and we've talked about creating a board a downtown redevelopment board the business association you know there's a lot that i'm sure the town wants to do so we need to be clear in our direction and really work on the hard stuff now decide how we're going to move forward and if we're not we're not before moving on to the next person should we just open up for comments or what do you think well someone has a comment i think anyone have a question or comment or do you want to yeah i would like i agree with a lot of what laurie says i'm a little more interested in moving more slowly and deliberately on a department by department basis i realize that tax equity in representation are the two biggest issues that we have to deal with but they break down into smaller things and what i would i'm happy to see what evan had on his work plan which was that there were a bit of staff is going to continue working on aligning organization departments within the organization that have already begun their alignment so i would like to stick with that and start working on public works because there's a lot of financial stuff that has to happen in order to complete the alignment me in the way we pay for our services in the way we bill for our services and the different ways we do our capital budgets and all of those different financial operations that some heavy lifting and some of it will touch tax equity but most of it will touch just the finances and so i'd rather tackle that one big project first and then move on to the next one as opposed to trying to impose a blanket solution to both issues at one time because that's too easy to fall apart that if we do it a little bit at a time as we go on we will get closer and closer to the goal and the more we work with small or smaller chunks the better we'll get at the subsequent jobs so that's my two cents oh i'm sorry one more thing evan mentioned in the at the end of his memo to the existing resources that we have which i'm really glad that you said that because i would like us to consider tapping into heart and soul again it's sort of dormant now and it was such a successful process in the past that when we get to portions of our conversations a alignment procedures that require a public input portion i think it might be a really good idea to revisit how we communicated with the community using heart and soul because that first i think we need every time we talk you all talk we should be working on the same definition of what they mean i think would you mean is tax big kicking around one of the things i've asked warren and her department to do is to give some indications of what that difference is and maybe even so far away you know we have a lot of money going back and forth between the communities and there's still a gap and then ultimately a conversation of the boards of power whether you want staff to take a stab at something or hires someone much smarter than me hopefully to put something together with some stuff recommendations of what to do versus whatever comes out of the mind of me or plan for the board and it may not seem like it at the time but i believe what we've done so far has been the easy work and what is left is really difficult and it in regards to hearten so i think you're going to ask a question so heartens all is technically done with that we were still aboard and we still meet and we are actually trying to figure out a way to resurrect it i mean we have a plan that we eventually will bring before the two words but i know in regards to engagement yes it's still there because that would be a wonderful entity to to reinvigorate for  i won't gain any person advantage by saying these things so i could only help her so i can hear it but i think we need to have a discussion with the state department of libraries or something because they're there you know there are a separate entity they have their own trustees question i have questions about what our jurisdiction really is over them can we tell the two libraries to cons or is it up to the two trustee boards to do that i also i did have a short conversation with someone from the state library and to t whatever it is laws associated with it because it's the way it was formed and so forth so i think there's a lot of from the standpoint of what do we need to know i think we need to understand more about the libraries than has ever been discussed between these boards can and can't do with regard to libraries it may be up to them to decide i just want to add one thing though that i do kind of know if i'm not going to speak for the essex free library but if the village general fund had no money to give to the brownell library the brawny a library would cease operation i mean they've got a foundation that's worth got a couple thousand bucks i think that's it so i don't know if that amounts to governance but if we decide not to give them money anymore then i will have to figure out  thing the one thing that dad and i kind of i've asked as greg and i have in earlier to to try to lay out where we're sharing costs because every time we found pays fifty percent a village pays fifty percent because forty two percent of the grand list is in the village they actually pay seventy one percent of anything and so that's i think part of the you know the crux so but but  of the in equity but i think we do that on purpose so that each entity has a say in what goes on but we i think we need to have that discussion about whether it's really appropriate to be fifty fifty or whether you know we could start transitioning into a year or somehow make them more equitable because it's really seventy one twenty nine it's not if you could you know it's similar vein what is the village tax payer gathering for some of that money that they are providing to the town like i mentioned earlier the town providing a service back to the village engineering to do the bits we should be quantifying that so much resource to one of the things we would i would look for lauren and sarah and the finance department to do is have that as part of the budget document as well i'd like to do that myself but there's a lot of million in taxes and i'm assuming that i mean with discussions that we had on the twenty fourth one of the one of the prime points that people were making was that we should not reducing the services to assume that you can need to take that three point four million and add it to the town budget which is a thirteen cent thirteen and of course in cost you know tax tax talk too much i'm sorry i'm sorry if you're just remind everybody at the table here to tell them if you're mike's yeah seriously i don't i was thinking i was really going to take it out so i can speak louder there we go now and now now i'm not augmenting myself i'm sorry so increase i think we need to have that discussion i mean we were fooling ourselves if we're going down this road and we in the end don't really want to do that and i think you know potentially we could do it incrementally so that it's not so hard you know this whole question of you know starting to shift some of the costs one way or the other maybe there's maybe there's a way to do it but i think i think that's you know from a tax equity standpoint that's a big thing as well so is my shared my understanding that the trustees have chosen to stop discussion about that and i think and i i believe the concern is related to state statute says that the town has all the responsibility with regard to pointing all of the commissioners to that to a plenty commission and so again this is another thing where we have i mean there's been no discussion about this i only know what i've read in the paper about it and so you know we haven't we haven't in a group like this talked about since the trustees decided to put the brakes on this we even had a discussion about it we did have discussion about you know potential memory will use or whatever to try to even out the representation but i think i think this is something that could move things forward if we had a discussion and came to a came to a resolution just just putting that out there as a potential next step i mean i know i understand that there are concerns with regard to futures like boards may not be as accommodating with regard to representation but i think that's a good that discussion we are going to need to have a simple thing as long as  stewards the last thing i want to touch on is and it was mentioned earlier is the rec department is a big part of the budget we did have  significant amount of activity on that recently during that time period we were told by the rock department heads that they were working on a consolidation plan or a way to consolidate each other i don't recall ever seeing that plan and i think now that both directors work for evan i'm wondering if it was worthwhile  to pull that back out and see if there are things in that that could start happening again it's my feel that the vote against the consolidation of the wreck was relative to the governance structure that was proposed to it  the fact that folks thought that and i could be wrong it's just mind that's my my my my my opinion there but i think it may be again because it's a large chunk of the difference in the tax make if i can andy if i maybe get a comment i'm sorry let me lean into it sorry i'm much better let's just do with thought experiment real quick imagine if the vermont legislature said no more village charters were done and the trustees no longer have any authority and so all assets village assets departments process these have to be handed over to the town i know all of you pretty well and i know all of you are good hearted people and i know that none of you as a select board as a group would say ok we're going to shut down the brownell library to say people in the town money because now that we have to take this on we're not going to you're not going to tell ten thousand families in the village now you have to use the pool up in the town center you're not going to do that i know you're not going to shut down the village fire department cause half the calls it makes are in the town so that it's clearly providing a service that the town relies on and state law would require the town to provide planning zoning and community development within the village so my point is is that all of the services that the village is presently providing are services more or less that the town would need to provide if the village didn't exist yes you could if we said if there was a complete consolidation could you have some could you save some money of course you could you could save maybe tens of thousands of dollars are you going to save millions you know you're not going to save millions of dollars we're probably not even going to save hundreds of thousands of dollars so i just want to clarify that that really is the issue the village we sometimes talk of the as an overlay district or it's kind of like icing on the cake no the village i think we have to kind of get our head around the fact and this is i'm not i'm trying not to make this a political statement and you'll tell me if it is a political statement but i think we get our head around the fact that the village is is sharing responsibility with the town government for providing services for this entire community and yet pete as you point out people in the village the money doesn't we're not being compensated basically get it put it that way the people in the  village are are the only ones being taxed to provide our portion of those services but people in the village are sharing the responsibility for what the town government provides and i don't think i don't want to keep hammering on this because we  the select board is probably sick and tired of listening to us say this but i think it's it's probably important for us to start with kind of a grounded understanding of what it is were about and what the funding issue really is so that's that's my thought and i again hope someone can tell me why making a political statement irene or you see any problem with what i said i would just counter with the same things happening on the outside the village side with no representation because if we combine two things it would be very different but right now evan talked about the town highway department paving town streets and village streets i would beg to differ they're paving outside the village streets and inside the village streets the town highway department like the town planning department only deals with outside the village things but they don't have a board to appropriately manage those policies like the money roads posted roads thing that comes up every year there are things that happen outside the village that this like board does outside the village residence and apartments the favor of legislating on but it is not appropriate if you look at for those lines are drawn for that to happen and we need to revisit that because it's a chicken and egg thing and if folks want to see this go forward i think the most appropriate way would be to get buy in from the eleven thousand or so people that live out there by affording them representation equivalent to the village and then we can move forward by having conversations around a table where there is equivalent strength on each side so i'm i'll just mention that you know we're talking about sort of the silos of consolidation but there was a suggestion a couple years ago that we in the village i believe it was called a cultural district that the recreation apartment in a village aligned with the record with the with the library in the village and become its own district so because they have a lot of things in common a lot of kids recreate through the library and through the right program maybe consolidating the brown a library and easy r p is something that we shouldn't overlook as a possibility because they may have a lot more in common than say the two different philosophies locations and backgrounds of the two different libraries so i would just want to be really broad in our thinking about what consolidation means and how it could happen here because i explore that idea in that are so let's say we did that would you would you look to do a similar thing with the town services in so you would have adjusted tax rates in the village in the town or would you say people in the village have this entity but they're also continuing to in the town how would you go about doing it wouldn't be my decision to make because i would want a room full of outside the village representatives and inside the village representatives to hammer that out because right now having a select word that has the big picture view only doesn't help anyone hammer out those compromises it just doesn't it's appropriate well i continued the conversation but i don't want us to dominate so let's so let's have open it up  problems but that they cannot happen until the select board solves the town outside the village problem is that accurate that's one way of looking at it i don't know that this like word is the only one maybe it's a legislature issue to solve that's why i'm putting it in the select words hands and hopefully our town attorney and our brilliant staff who know this stuff and have our pay full time to look at things like this can actually come back to the select word who is volunteers and provide us some pa what we have we set we said together on march twenty fourth and heard tons of public input about how we're doing it so badly and that they want us to change it and that we need to move forward and we're having this entire conversation about doing exactly that we are working on that problem right this second and what we're dealing with now is not just some capricious set up that this select board decided this is how we're going to do it the state statute i mean we're  working with the charter that is in the essay annotated and it's not something we can just fix we're working on it right now so i'm not understanding and maybe i'm just being bents i'm not understanding how the fixes you're proposing  any different from the fixes that everybody else in the stable is proposing because i said earlier as we've consolidated the other departments so far we have shared some expenses and i believe the village tax bill has gone down to some degree or at least that was the goal of sharing some of those departments but i have never heard someone say oh and by the way this is going to fix or visitation thing or this is going to work on the representation thing that's just not even been part and parcel of the discussion and yet if you go back sixty years i think some of the merger heck ups we've had and the frustration is that we have not had adequate representation and when you don't have equivalent our presentation you set yourself up for these things that are not ever going to work out in ways that are fair to everybody and y is another piece that has to happen but until you have people who can say yes or no to that tax equity i don't believe it's appropriate for the slick board to step in and say that necessarily because we cannot represent the outside the village voters that we all were talking about right now is representation and every meeting we've had for the last several months has been about that so why don't we just focus on the future and get it done right here i just want to reiterate again that i represent the residents outside the village and i resent being told that i don't i really really upsets me when i write here that also let me represent the entire community whether regardless of where you live within the understand the argument and i have to agree wholeheartedly with andy i live in the village i'm on the town select board i'm it's my privilege to serve there and i haven't heard anybody  six years tell me that my opinions are slanted one way or the other it's always been what's best for asics so let's let's get this count on the table and let's get it done because i'm tired of listening to it to be honest with you let's if it if there's a fix that needs to happen let's get it done and let's get it done soon so we can move on sure which comes first the tax issue or settling this governance issue or representation on the town but i'm willing to listen but whichever one comes first that's the one we need to deal with first followed closely by the second i thinks that i think i think lori and andy both eloquently stated that there are tax inequities that have to be dealt with and i think those have to be dealt with before we can take too many steps forward on consolidating because i also agree with laurie i think i think we've picked the low hanging fruit and now we're going to start to get into some really  rny stuff and i i welcome that challenge just speaking for myself but it's not going to be quite as simple as what we've done in the past so i say if you're if you're looking for my top five the governance issue and or the tax issue a thoughtful discussion with all nine of us about where consolidation goes from here do we solve these t and we table consolidation for a little bit or do we continue to try and do it all together those those to me are the three things that we've got to deal with the comments on on than most of the population that we represent probably almost all of it and they mean there are people out there that are aware of what's going on and the process it's you know we're going through but i think there is as we said before pop the number of people come out and vote you hope that they're all well educated on this i'm hoping that this message is being sent through whatever source we have paper the channel seventeen so that they're being thorough with this information so it's out there so those people are lacking for knowledge and that i mean nobody can i don't expect twenty thousand people to show up at our meeting but we just need to be better about getting that message out and i think once there's a better understanding i have this discussion with friends in the town outside the village trying to explain the whole process and there is just obviously a lack of understanding by a lot of people  any consolidation that we should do should not hit people outside the village with some gigantic tax increase i think some i think right now the scenario i presented if suddenly the village just disappeared and the town had and all that's all the villagers three and a half million four million dollars worth of services had to get into moved into the town general fund it would be a huge impact on outside the village residence it wouldn't be so much an impact on the village residents because we're used to it but it would be a big hit and for lots of reasons i think for ethical reasons it's not right and i think for political reasons for practical reasons it's not right because if we attempted to do that through some kind of a charter boat  know that it passed the first time around in two thousand and seven but it was contentious and it was defeated subsequently and i would rather see us try to aim towards something where we get overwhelming support from both sides but that means we have to do it so that's a lot of work it's a lot of work but i think i think it's doable i think we're we can be creative about how we go about doing it but i think i would like to say maybe move the conversation all along a little bit i would like to see us maybe discuss what is the process that we see doing do we want to work on this and how do we work on it how do we put our ideas forward and how do we begin to chip away and modify and critique each other's ideas going forward i think and you guys who didn't write something in the mike that you're going to now you're not going to get away with this anymore ok i think we all need to be putting stuff putting some ideas out there and really try to try to see i'm wondering if we all just had a few days to think about it and came up with some kind of a structure and some kind of a way of handling all this if we compare them all i wonder how much overlap there would be i'm willing to bet they'd be quite a bit and we might be able to look at that those areas of overlap and then begin to work on the areas of non overlap and see where where we could get some ideas of how we can put it together  so i just throw that out there i'll go just going to have anything else so the way that i've seen this going is we have as evan has said earlier we don't want to have the village way we don't want to have the town way we want to have the best way in the six years i've been on the village board and prior to then just as a resident nobody i've spoken with has said the status quo is the best way nobody has spoken with has said this works in the way that they want it to be and that something needs to change so whether we do taxation whether we do representation those are the crux of the municipality you don't have one without the other i can't see how those get finalized or those get resolved in any kind of a separate process it has to be a parallel process in sort of trying to be as transparent as we are as i said of the twenty four the meeting on the twenty fourth every day that we talk about what are we every day that we go forward without an actual plan and this is not a judgment call anybody on the board so please don't take it that until we go forward with here's what we're doing here's how we're going to get there here's what the angle is that we're going to work towards until we get to that point those are days that we can't spend on other things like what we had mentioned before at least in the village some of the things that we've talked about doing we had more columns come to us not that long ago about trying to get an affordable housing committee there are other things that we could do that we can't do because we don't have i'll speak for myself i don't have the time to do it in addition to these things from looking at the work plan i don't think our municipal staff have the time to do these things so i would love to get this done sooner rather than later but don't think we can get there until we identify where it is we'd like to see this go accomplish in a meeting just for a year or five a year i just i really i think we are setting ourselves up for this to drag by virtue of the fact that we haven't we haven't accelerated that a little bit like i said i i don't expect a lot of in the document that evan gave us about what our work plan should be the recommendation is that the select ward interest is discussed next steps and on the boards and assign working groups as appropriate we've identified a bunch of topics perhaps we what we're trying to accomplish here isn't going to involve extra meetings and i know we can't do it in four meetings a year it's going to have to be more so maybe we can if we divide and conquer everyone doesn't have to go to every single meeting and they're not as much as i spent time with you all they're not going to happen in the senate of the meeting i mean we are there i think this is the best one we've had because i feel as if we are finally all putting our thoughts on the table it's time to now start working right but i agree i think we should start working i don't want to again i think come back to this and think of a structure in a process going forward but i i maybe it would be helpful if we went around the table real quick each one of us and say what do you what do you see the end goal is to we all see that a consolidated village town government is the goal or do we see do we are we thinking will somehow modify the existing charters what is everyone what everyone like to do that is everyone prepared to do that to have a just sort of played out there and say what you think it doesn't doesn't doesn't mean you can't change your mind and it doesn't mean you can't be influenced by other people's thoughts but if you want to try that should we try to do that yeah yeah that's what i wrote in  comments remember be is actually that we do propose we come to an agreement of the boards of the soon to talk about really what is the endgame and you know identify what the major issues are to getting there but at least to find what the endgame is so that you know when you actually arrived you know we've talked about tax inequity representation the board structure what do you do with assets those are those are things you would have to work on an order to to get to where you want to go but if we could define what it is we see as the goal of where we want to be at the meeting the twenty fourth i talked about i think it's important to make it a sustainable community and that's there's a definitive up there in talks about how you you work together you don't work in silos what an opportunity we have is the village and the town as a whole to become sustainable by working together and we've been on that pa we've done the low hanging fruit come some some tougher stuff but it's not insurmountable especially when you put your high beams on and go i'm not talking about worrying about tomorrow or next week or next year or the next couple years but we're talking about looking out twenty or thirty years are we going to be in a better place if we come together and work together and i think there's only one right answer personally but i would like to hear everybody's view and see what they think the ultimate goal is and if you don't we don't reach it because there are some hang up some that we can't overcome ok now let's define that but working with you know bailing wire and duct tape now with these ammo uses just on ten of all we need to get to the closest we can to our goal and then let's get rid of those m o use and create the charter changes and we have to be cognizant of bringing the public along with us because this is their town and we need to make sure we're validating what we're doing with the entire community whether that's through surveys or some other method so that we do a check and adjust based on what we're going so ideally and i said this on the twenty fourth when you do charter changes as your alternate want and we said we only really want to do this once a lot of moving pieces want to do this right get them all in the right line and do it that requires a vote of the public and i think we can say we were successful not if it's a positive vote but if the vote comes out positive because we already knew it was going to be that way because the public told us they were with  us so if we can work in a way to define that with a check and a just in ballot any with the public but identify where it is you want to go i think we'd have a lot easier time getting there and i can we we see that that there to what you said you were going to do next you were very clear what you mean by you the merger salivation or alignment because that you know you all use those words and i use them and they mean so very different to each of us ok try to be clear what you mean do you mean a merger of like public works with a single public works department under the town or do you mean by the partner that that is works together but still it's governed by two bodies i think that's really the crux of it yeah barbara i think we're trying to figure those that know that at all right now just ask people to give their share their opinions and it would be helpful to me as a citizen if each of you when you say that we need to do exactly that we need to to put definitions to these words that we do throw around so that it's clear when we use a that everybody knows what it means so with that i want to put just a clarification on the same with tax i heard some of you so many times it's like a slogan but i would like to be able to see it put up on that white board there that everybody agrees with it because it may mean different things to different people i would like to know what it is laurie's got a point of view somebody else may have a different one what is it made how is it operational what we can add that to the list thank you george you have you know i think that we so let's so or if you want to sort of thing from the start all come from tokyo first so hoping this is super clear barbara because i really understand what you're what you're getting up my vision for the end of this conversation which maybe ten years from now or five years from now we're three years from now a single community with one board one budget one staff a common set of services and a common set of voting opportunities that's what i see yeah sure andrew you want to go around you sure if that's ok you know what day one voting opportunity do you mean we would go to schools of the same time to well yeah it would be wonderful if what we worked on that what you know what i said was a set a common set of voting opportunities so yes i would love to see one day of school meeting budget meeting and town budget meeting and then we vote on it once i mean village residents have five opportunities to vote and town residents have three opportunities to vote it's too confusing thank you indra i don't have much difference to i feel like i'm screaming into this microphone is a lot out there you know ok i don't know about one  distract me so i don't have much different to say for the lane had i'd love to see one community meeting one municipality i'd love to see one board whether that board is governed by an equal number of representatives from inside the village outside the village with some at large i'm not one hundred percent sold on how that should go i would love to see our voting align with the school votes so that that way we don't have to come out to multiple times for our what our community needs that's it i agree wholeheartedly almost one hundred percent with what elaine and andrew just said the only thing that i would add is i want to see one community i want to see one voting opportunity but i can i'll go on the record now and tell you that i think that the hybrid model for how we vote for town meeting i do not want to get rid of town meeting i will vote against it every single time somebody brings it up but i think  stays but if we do the hybrid we can still have town meeting we can still have input into the budget and then we vote on it and everybody gets a chance to vote on it later on so i  agree with that with the one community i like that i love the idea of one voting opportunity and i have to agree with andrew i'm not sure how the one board i  think that's going to take a lot longer discussion about how that board is comprised but that's what i would like to see i will agree with with the three of you i'd like  to believe we should be aiming towards a consolidated community i have lately had some thoughts about perhaps is there some way we could keep two charters why because keeping two charters might if they could be modified dramatically might provide a mechanism for resolving the tax equity issue you could potentially look at a former village and former town districts or depart departments in one is costing a little bit more it least for the first few years of a merge community it a give you a way of adjusting tax rates you could justify it by working within the two different charters i'm not sure would work it sounds really complicated  also think that probably for the first few years of a consolidated community you'd want to do something where you have voting districts where you have a former town outside the village a district a former village district and maybe one at large person just to give people confidence that there's not going to be domination over representation from one form or part of the community or other i don't know how you do that but i think it could vent eventually go away but basically i'm in agreement with single sustainable community working together with one tax rate for all one governing board perhaps with districts if that makes sense based on  size and i disagree with mike little bit i think it's time that we do put the budget on a on a on a ballot is sad is that is i i like town meeting i like the opportunity to take people through town through the through the budget so it's clear what they're voting on but i get a lot of input that says i think that people think otherwise but this idea of sustainable community is really working together working in silos isn't going to get you into the future and if you think about what do you do next after we're consolidated new you're probably going to need the next set of boards are probably going to need to look beyond our boundaries into other communities to see what additional things could be consolidated further with them just looking even way down the road so yeah put me on record for for a single sustainable community in the future pretty much all of it and community one by just one board representation structure we have to figure out one prefer the town meeting hy representing everyone and i have heard my peers insist that they can or can't represent people from certain districts depending on the issue or not and i just think that if we could have ideally in my fantasy it would be a large select word that could somehow meet as hybrid individual boards while we're still working out the kinks such as while they're still in e j arpita the village needs to manage your budget for those four or five members of that larger select board would be able somehow legally to meet and determine their direction what needs to happen with those village only issues same thing with the outside the village members who would be equal in size to their counterparts and yet that whole group to get together as we do on a joint meeting and meet as ten people to discuss the town wide issues and we would ideally in my mind have new terminology so that when we say the word town it doesn't mean fifty different things to fifty different people depending on what sentence we're using it in so that's and i would also ask please that we while the new merged school board is still new and fresh could we please consider a low hanging fruit to be finding a different voting day that is not right after the winter school break and it is conducive to all of us holding all of our meetings in a compact voting day or days because right now having them stretched out to me has just gone on for way too long and i'm not sure what's holding up our having those conversations with our good friends on the square thanks so if i could just clarify i mean you also agree to a single municipality absolutely you are talking about how you eventually get there with these subcommittees that's a very common in this formative period like you know absolutely so that we can get to the place we all want to be with people feeling their act adequately represented and getting to that in do away with the identity identity of the village in the town and just whatever i think the last time it was brought up the name of the community became a big issue are we essex are we essex junction i really don't care you know i'm a vermonter i'm an american i'm a you know whatever let's look at what brings us together as opposed to what makes us different i think we've got enough divisive act activity going on in this country already so we need to look that way so i think it's possible i want to see it all done together and not what i heard from irene i see that more of this of the status quo in continuing  a slow pace instead of moving forward quicker i'd rather see this go faster than slower but end up at the same place at the same place and whether it's whether it's a board you know you know it's phased in as far as the board their historic district whatever and this fire is outside the village center i'm not so concerned about what would change whether it was you know members of the community outside of what we call the village right now as a whole voting on those matters i just want to see that we preserve what we have here the historic village center of essex junction more than everything else  that's been at least how do i add to that ok so i guess my thoughts of what we should be working toward would be a single community a single board all members voted at large whether there's a transitional board structure getting there but i think you need to have a single board again everybody elected at large the  elected officials are certainly beholden to those they like them and need to be responsive to members of the community in that regard another thing that i would like to see and i'd like to see you know like to have considered sooner rather than later is the question of whenever we have a town like vote whether we should commingle the ballots before we count them so that we're not getting the faction implications of who voted how  because we can see how the village voted how the town outside the village voted and you can see the i'd rather get that input from him from voters directly i'd like to have them tell me what was on their mind and i think we should com home i've lived here come on fifty years and after the high school open if anybody would have told me that in two thousand and seventeen we have a single school district out of told them to go suck their head because that was the most divisive tarn that happened when i lived in new south and i can go into the history of what happened what i know about that but i don't think you really care we can do this on the other hand i'm an old bureaucrat by working for three almost thirty years his staff has tons of i mean you when you would be in three of them on a committee there were reports to this board on a subject and you have one committee for every game subject who think  the libraries the rec the park public works i like your idea of public works make me one thing work that's show success when you show success people think you're doing won something may take a couple of years but it's worthwhile he's got a huge problem he needs a lot of help figuring out if if you if the tel calls at one stage in the village calls another it make budget crazy you have to resolve those things she needs about one hundred people did she pay   and of course those definitions are all important too but when the merger vote went down in was it two thousand and six is that when the votes and i took the i took the town in the village to court over it because of some things contained in the new charter but it didn't need to finish because the revote one of the things that was said is well maybe if we could learn to do things together over the ensuing years then it would be easier to merge later on so i have no idea really exactly what it what has been going on and what the cost implications are been and i have there been any savings usually merger of results and some efficiencies and consolidation of things and maybe even reduction in the number employees but that's tough stuff i would prefer to use the word municipality rather than community because under the them the vermont statutes community is not defined municipality is a very specific thing and we're in now have two municipalities if you're going to talk about one municipality then one of them is going to go away and people have to understand that but  i don't think this is needs to take all that long you didn't have a citizens committee before the merger that held a series of hearings and had participation four years ago you had a lot of recommendations from up with is called the essex governance group and and i really i don't even know if the new town manager of the staff even know what that comprised of but there were a lot of good ideas a lot of people who worked hard so we don't have to invent a lot of new things out of whole cloth we have some experience we have had some citizen surveys recently through the governments were we can start putting this together if you figure out a process for doing so but you do have to i agree leaving this i'm going to leave the question of tax equity aside because if you have emerged community then that goes away the question might be though do you face it in over time grads so you don't have a shock to your system but how much of my taxes have gone up because of all these consolidation agreements i don't know but this is the kind of stuff i would like to know i'm a data geek as well but i can think big too but you need to know this stuff but we don't have to thrash around you we make a decision that the thing that i've heard in the past was that we would have a new charter but then there would be a special carve out for the village and that's more hatfields and mccoys stuff if you want to have a historic district and have your own way of doing it that's fine but i think you're going to have one municipality you have one when it's healthy you don't have any carve outs for special sections you might have just drinks i would they were that because i believe i've had people come to me when i was on the board who live near me they've had an identification with the and i with them if they had gone across to day rogers and they might not have gotten their same result because he was all the way on the other town but that's that's an issue within the you max you did mention that finally someone said something about public and i have been going to meetings lately but i'm not going to blame anybody except myself but i know it is hard sometimes to find out exactly what you folks are talking about because it's so vague and i just think that you know all of a sudden i started thinking are we talking merger here what you're using euphemisms like alignment i mean what is it and i think that the townspeople i mean i think the whole both municipalities need to know what we're talking about and you talk about well we're hoping that people are someone here said i hope that people are educated and that we are getting the word out we're not educated because we're not getting the word and then i believe that i'm hopeful that we can change the way things have been done in the past a lot of us that used to put a lot of time into meetings would find that it was like for nothing we come to meeting after meeting after meeting and working it was just it was worse than nothing it was being treated as if it didn't matter and so there would be people would say well we could start from the staff here and say we want you to come to our meetings we want to hear what you want your part of this town while i'm gone to all those meetings and whatever we said that we wanted and they wrote down half the time was never even looked at in the opposite would be done and i could you know i can give you examples i can do it off topic i have no but i'm just hoping that maybe things will change and that if we all get involved again it'll be in a really good positive way and  if we're going and wasting our time and nobody's listening to them there's a lot of anger that comes out but if we could have some real honest good meetings in committees and where you actually would hear what people say doesn't mean you have to do what i want but least i felt like i was that's so you know there are so many telling charters out there you don't have to create your own out of nothing and to get what you have you can look at what other people have done and how does that work for you tom charters are looked at regularly at the state house and it doesn't take that long to get them through it takes long to get the people to agree to it because there are certain things you have to  do as some of the they have gone through that process before you know but you have to cross your t s and dot those eyes and make sure everything was warned in the right amount of time but if we want anything i would think it would be one charter to charters it doesn't you do it by you prolong the misery just get it over with and jump in and let's do it because it is a community and the community could have a town center in the town center could be where you have your historic area it does how you name it everyone's going to call it like butler's court you know it's top of the court or where it is you just have to agree that this is what we're going to become and i think that people want that unless i knocked on doors people were you know why don't we do an australian ballot for our for our budgets and everything and that would be  about it got to tell meeting and forget the next day and then when we have the school vote that's thirty days later that's perfect for doing the recommendations from the budget it all works i think you just have to as been said get small ad hoc committees together and ask people that are in the community who would like to work with us you've got so much expertise out in our community that you would it might not be as hard as you think it is ixteen months worth of engagement involvement with a success on a new arrival here but i came with the opportunity to at least contribute in some way to the economic development which forces one to take an external look that's my audience out there it's not i've not mirrored in the history and in the issues that all of you have lived with all of this these past decades  i've just assumed that what i'm representing out there is a single entity i've pursued all of the efforts that we've made thus far in development on a range of issues of being at the table as essex as a single entity and just ignoring frankly a lot of the issues and so i'm just a turd that i just have witnessed a very single point of view which i have always felt was our charge and how we want to represent this community to be because we're competing with a lot of people out there for resources and we can't do it with this division so i encourag and whatever help from my supply standpoint we can bring to the various committees you decide to set up i'm delighted to purchase  putting them together and submitting their own ideas that i think that would be and i'm feeling a little overwhelmed in terms of the quantity of ideas that have come forth and it's late and we have two more agenda items and i think we need to take a breather and think hard about this one come back so you're proposing that people do submit in writing to the manager's office about what committees are needed and perhaps how they should be who should be on them you know what number of people from the trustees look for perhaps from the public which there is a wealth of talent out there that we need to tap yeah that's what i'm recommending and so what do you want to put for your idea for what what we for not just the process for how to proceed but what you would like to see a theoretical that if we can put a draft model in front of the public it focuses the discussion because too frequently it is not to keep the public out but too frequently we're starting at ground zero and we've we've made i think a lot of progress here and i think sometimes if you put a model in front of the public you can say then you say well why are we doing it that why do you have them because this addresses this problem and this we're doing it this way because it addresses this problem it addresses this problem it focuses discussion that's why i keep pushing this concept but so so we could create a model and then validate it with the pub something that is a very general idea but let me go around  andrew do you do you have thoughts about how we should proceed what we should do i seem to recall at a previous joint meeting before the twenty fourth one of the things that we talked about was having aid from sultan to come in and talk to us about the different types of models because sure i can i can brainstorm some i can look at some of the other charters that are on the web site but that's just the way what i can get this is what i can come up with i wonder if models were proposed to us if that could then be a more of a dry race board move some things around a group activity that we could do so that way it's not just you know i don't want to say that the ideas i put forward are the only ideas i'm willing to go to but it does work towards because of my own knowledge gaps that i may have in terms of musical structures so you would define what your thoughts are for the model and then some perhaps tools or methods of how because of me putting on a piece of paper only going to allow for what's up in his brain first thing i would say is it's way too early to start talking in my view it's way too early to start talking about committees made up of members of this board until we decide how we want to proceed i just i'm i'm hearing a i'd like i'd like to get the public's input but with all due respect to the people sitting here we we talk about this all the time we ask the manager's office to put ads in the paper asking for volunteers not off or very very few and you just you do not get the kind of participation that you would love to have so i'm i'm willing to give it another go but i'm i'm just i'm here to tell you that aside from the people sitting here there's not a lot of additional involvement so i i'm i'm not ready to talk about committees yet i just i still would like to see the nine of us sit down and figure out what are we going to tackle first makes sense because i'm winding down here i think we should cement our one to three what we feel needs to be tackled whether it's  and order or alignment parallel conversation and i think we met a list of committees that we feel need to be created to tackle those top three things i think the staff should do as well you know at least the department heads should do as well and i think we should bring all that data together and and what rises to the top you know what are the top one two three things and start working thank you are productive and as long as we are not staffed not consistently putting together so much information time after time after time while we're still trying to do the business of the town in the village that's ok which also means that like separate question separate process you know stuff that we do on a daily basis we just have to prioritize what's making representation a priority right now as we set up committees i don't care what board you sit on but i'd like to see one outside a village person one inside the village person on each committee and then fill in with equal numbers of people from each district to make sure that we are right now from the bottom up looking at having fair teams negotiating whatever it is that each of these committees is working on and i think that that will go a long way to building confidence in whatever that committee comes up  thanks i agree with irene saying that she wants the committees to be broken up very whatever representation you equal on both sides but i agree what we want to comp we have that we have to come to an agreement on what we want to accomplish and i think one of the things that that evan brought up earlier we're going to have somebody hired as an assistant to be public relations and doing that but that's not  september i'm concerned about the message that's being brought out the woman brought up there just as i said before meeting we had a march twenty fourth there was nothing nothing in the essex report on that meeting nothing everything was said we had a facilitator there there was not a article at all about it and that i was astonished and the people i mean i appreciate john seventeen being around but for the most part people though that paper gets around the community much better or is reviewed i'm sorry that's a fact and i know you as a board did it before they checked to see where people get most of the information and i think the study done back george you can correct me it was maybe ten years ago yes and the majority of people get the information through the essex quarter so that i was stunned some concerned about that i want that to be taken care of ok so again i know i know well i just think people  i just think i think we need to do we need to press least we need to make sure we're getting stuff out to the people so that the people are aware as we heard before from the women out there that they're not a very thing and the other thing i want to clarify for everybody here and everywhere that we know just because you don't get what you want doesn't mean you weren't heard so that's a that's something that i heard from a lot of people say we were against this we were against that so we want heard you know you were heard it's just you didn't get what you wanted so that's that doesn't mean you weren't heard everything is considered but with there's rules in this there's ways things operate and i just want to clarify that as well i think they just want to make sure that it was given due consideration it is but may not speak things up also partly concern you know very concerned even gave us a work plan for the staff it seems pretty busy already and then we were trying to layer some additional committees on top of that i think we need to you know maybe this is getting off topic here but i guess i guess what i would propose for this homework assignment is that  we make comments on the work plan and and also as andrew said comment on the things that we don't think we know you know where do we need more how i mean there is a list of those on the bottom page one identify areas th require outside consultation i think that's the list that we need to make sure we have fleshed out so that we know what we need to talk about or what we don't know enough about to talk and you know in a reasonable method  which is fine i don't need to be at every meeting but just if you have some frequently you may never hear me say this again about extra meetings but i don't i don't mind the extra me the idea of extra meetings because i think this meeting was very good and it brought out a lot of good karma and a lot of good suggestions and i would hate for that to dissipate for the for the period of tarim that is in between your select board meetings so i might suggests something we insert the next meeting and maybe have a potential second date to fill in between the meetings and then let's see where we go with those and then if we comply with dates to insert great because the momentum is what's important it's this camaraderie and and what you're talking about with each other that is so important including some of the public's comments that are helping to focus that car the conversation and andy i think you're dead on i did give you things to do you have a assignment i'm not sending you out a reminder i do think part of your homework for this thing is please look at these definitions and write what you think they need they could be sent to a committee to hone but you need to be talking the same language when you say alignment what do you mean when you say quality of life what do you mean because that's the communication you're going to give back to the community you're going to go and tell the community we're in this is what we mean by service level this is what we mean by it it's just something so that they understand what you're talking about and we want to add tax equity to that tax equity what is the vision of these boards of what that will mean and if you don't know you don't know and we hire a consultant that's not that's not village it's not staff that's not biased it's just someone who wrote the book as a professor of something  actual somebody who knows this field so you want to know i thought maybe i could try to just wrap it up yeah so i want just to wrap it up that we're going to what's the home of somebody let me let me go let me just try to get if i can just give you a big summary of everything i heard really quick synthesis see if everyone would agree on this so unfortunately it sounds like for andy's plate sake we do want to have another meeting we're probably going to another meeting like this we want to maybe dedicate it specifically to this discussion and not do other things make comments on the on the staff work plan we like it we don't like it what's good and bad about it but how would we modify it not that's number one our thoughts about committees what i mean i don't think we have enough substance at this point to say what kind of committees we're going to form i think we need to discuss more  thoughts about what committees should be should we have committees what would they work on how that how that works so where do we need help do we need a consultant do we need to consult a lawyer up as evan said a professor of philosophy you know i'm sorry he said not a professor i don't know the do that would really make a late meeting and ideas about our ideas about solutions for governance and representation and we don't have to do this but any ideas you have sketched those out include those priorities what we're doing is laureate and i getting this right so right right right down our priorities one two three what we hope to accomplish  if we you know in the coming as if we move governance forward and then lastly write down what we think each want to write down the definitions of these terms that are that reasonable ok so just going back to the whole thing of defining these these terms and the language we poured so i assume we all do that we come up with were selecting a manager and we put all our eyes the ideas together we came to one agreement on who we picked what we're going to do we move forward with that we can keep you know moving forward you know picking from a hole in their owing it down to to a single or just wanted to buy because you know like you said with all these different committees and mike you asked for public input i think public input is great but it can also slow down i mean sometimes you can slow the process down but we need to move all done right that's we might need to make it sounds like if we had a different day yes it's we're going to be adding potentially this one ok it is late rather if you ok everybody ok with with i was much more concerned with the first part of this meeting and so as part of your list for homework and other things let's make sure that the totals get it taken care of maybe first on the list ok and if you all add that evan and i maybe take dan's suggestion take the whole and condense it down please don't give me like that does mean like number five has seventeen parts right because i know you guys yeah this is my first year so you know