good evening see the check in line is we're short and down to just a couple people i want to welcome everyone tonight to the village of essex junction annual meeting i'm steve used share moderator for the evening and we're going to have a little treat here in the beginning to celebrate the hundred twenty fifth anniversary from the first village meeting and so we're going to have a little play reenactment of the first meeting which won't take too long but i need to entertain a motion to recess to have that happen like so temp german makes a motion to recess we have second  good evening and welcome in honor of the village of essex junctions one hundred twenty fifth anniversary we will go back in time to the first village meeting to elect officers and approve the legislature's passage of a bill creating the village within the town of essex in the early days of essex there were businesses on the river but not many people living in what is now essex junction but when the railroad was being constructed in the late eight hundred forty s painesville as we were then called began to grow and a post office was opened in eight hundred forty four by eight hundred sixty eight we were known as six junction and the population grew to about five hundred which was a quarter of the town's total of about two thousand by the eight hundred ninety s many vermont villages and cities were being created to provide more services and relieve tax burdens on those not living in the populated areas essex junction was one of these new charter municipalities tonight you will meet some amazing people from that time  now turn it over to daniel make homer to start the meeting welcome everyone by my watch not my it's not my cell phone it isn't it is two pm on saturday afternoon the afternoon of march fourth eight hundred ninety three we need to see if you will vote to first accept the act to incorporate the village of essex junction approved by the legislature of the state of vermont november fifteenth one thousand nine hundred two in accordance with the provisions of said act second if said action be accepted to elect a president of the village for trustees a clerk treasurer collector or three auditors a chief engineer or a first assistant engineer and a second assistant engineer as provided by said third to do any other proper and necessary business i am one of the three persons named in the act to call this meeting to order our first order of business will be to elect a moderator and a clerk daniel may come or was a long time village resident and leading citizen his general store right next to the railroad tracks and village cemetery stood for over one hundred years where the gas station is now daniel founded and taught sunday school at the congregational church for fifty years he lived in a large house the house which stood where the prouty building now is on lincoln street during the civil war he served his town selectman and was a state representative in eight hundred sixty three to eight hundred sixty four during the heated local debate over taxes to support the war effort he was the first village moderator taking the job at age sixty five it is rumored that he was not quite as tolerant of excess debate and long meetings as is the current village and town moderator this gentleman on the corner here is fred sawyer he was the first elected village clerk fred was the village undertaker i ran a cocker crockery in dry goods store out of his house which still stands on main street right do i have a motion to improve approve the act to incorporate  j w tro was an amazing man an inventor he designed and manufactured water wheels on the river and later made and marketed by mail order millstone picks for giant grinding stones he lived at sixty one park street the house is still standing and is buried and and he is buried in the village cemetery with his family one of its iron water wheels is preserved in a museum in watertown new york honorable marcellus bingham will you read the entire twenty page act of the vermont legislature don't worry we're not reading it tonight but they did marcellus begum with a longtime village attorney and became village president after only one year serving as trustee bingham was a village loyalist and is credited with and i hope in hell their souls are made to al who first invented essex junction being impersonated the more famous alan martin long time village attorney and town clerk but i propose to read the act not now mr bingham will now distribute ballots the box will be held open for thirty minutes mr bring in mr humphrey and mr nichols will act as tellers the results of the vote was affirmative of one hundred forty votes the one hundred two yes thirty eight no to create the village of essex junction the following officers were then president william fletcher william ran the slaughter house off mansfield have accessed by a dirt road which later became pleasant street he was a state representative to the legislature for essex and eight hundred eighty four and five and after being village president for just a year served later as first engineer or fire chief in eight hundred ninety seven his son curtis also served as a trustee and state rep both are buried in the village cemetery first trustee marcellus bingham when bingham kid became president later the trustees often met his office on the new brown the second elected trustee was edward m would come who was related to both the renzo and arrest us with them founders of the great farm which is the last active farm in the village today edward also farmed and his son edward was a world war one veteran the wickham's have a long history of prominence in the village and town to town affairs for those who don't know this is my father in law i'm super excited to see this  with his brother in law william schilens they purchased the old dam renamed it the hunter shyly and am above the current green mountain power to the business was very successful but destroyed by fire just one year after david became a trustee in eight hundred ninety four there were lots of fires back then he lived at fifty seven park street in the house that recently burned down and is now rebuilt as the habitat for humanity house his son claude appears in a photo thousand nine hundred in front of the old house we were lucky to find an actor tonight who own most has his first hand recollections of the first village meeting gates a little action until they received orders on july first eight hundred sixty three to march from the river camp to in virginia to get a spurt pennsylvania they arrived on the second day of the great battle and were and captain john monica of burlington to flank the enemy or close the hinge of the gate which subjected the rebels to fire from both above in the cite tory sibl tim told me somebody ten pages from company was the tip of the spear and he survived almost unimaginable fury of this decisive battle simply survived and lived in boston for twenty three years after the war employed in various were filled its treasurer tax collector auditors and engineers or firemen is there any other business before we adjourn i hope we'll meet soon to do something about the condition of our streets we have a big problem and also we need the trolley out here the trustees met again on may second and elected a superintendent of streets mr stephen decatur teachout whose great grandson and great daughter may be here with us tonight one of which is my neighbor john booth and marilyn vincent he was paid twenty cents an hour for his service to fix the roads in eight hundred ninety five the village did vote to extend the electric trolley line to e trustees met to take action to provide a better supply of water for protection against fire and other purposes on november twenty fifth they met again and appointed a five person committee to find water but it wasn't until nineteen years later that the saxon hill reservoir was tapped opposition to allowing a mrs a our fish or to operate the hotel and clipping a citizen petition to the trustees they met three times on the issue and denied mrs fisher a license we don't know the details but shortly thereafter walter  johnson bought the hotel and ran it as the johnson house until november one thousand twelve when this beautiful village landmark was also destroyed by fire i'm mrs fischer discriminated against because she was a woman or where there are legitimate reasons for these gentlemen to deny her a license it wasn't recorded in the minutes and we don't know but i have my suspicion well i need to get home and put your some lambs and pigs but don't forget the donation will need to vote on that to make it official a local group called the international order of the king's daughters and king sons disbanded nine hundred ninety three and gave their remaining assets one hundred thirty dollars to the new village the gift was much appreciated the organization was a nondenominational christian philanthropic group which still exists and was active in vermont until two thousand  well what else had happened this year before we've for our first annual meeting report for next year and i don't remember the people's names who ca for this he received one hundred dollars bounty from byron stevens son of our founder founding father abramsky thems answered president lincoln's call and on may eighteenth sixty one was discharged on august fifteenth hats on brothers and other goods which he advertised locally he lived on elm street and also served in the legislature and eight hundred seventy two and eight hundred seventy three upon his death his son archie beach took his position  tyler andrew brown tim german evan teach and dan karen and thanks to all of you for coming and thank you for listening all right we'll get everybody to get their seats up in the front here and we have a couple singers that are going to sing for us they can come down while we're waiting while we're getting settled here and  the first thing we're going to do is stand and reciting the pledge of you can remain standing for the national anthem all right i'm going to start off by introducing village president george tyler who will introduce other members of the head table  evan evan is going to be spending some time at the nest when is that evan i'm told it's next friday and if anybody has any ideas about how things should be run around here  i'm forget that step one of the other jobs she does and i also want to mention very quickly an article for i when we get to it tonight we're going to have a couple of presentations and then i'm going to do a very brief update on consolidation with the village in the town so you if you want to stay for that that would be very welcome also we have some select board members with us tonight i can't see i've got my reading glasses on we've got max levy select for irene two i see you up there right thank you george so i'm going to start by going over the usual reading of the rules of the annual meeting robert's rules is the basic rules of order for this meeting except for where vermont law takes precedence this body cannot change state law that can change robert's rules with two thirds vote if desired motions remarks and discussion should be addressed to me please stand up wait for the microphone then give your name and speak in a loud voice so that your comments may be heard by everyone an article bost be moved to seconded and restated by me before it is under consideration and to be an article may begin articles may be amended and amendment amended once amendments must be germane a division of the house can be requested by the moderator or one voter before or after eve always vote state law also allows seven people to request at the beginning of the meeting debate may be cut off by a motion and two thirds vote by calling the question the person making this motion must have the floor at the microphone which is generously being provided right now reconsideration of an article is allowed by state law until we reach a point in the meeting where another article is under consideration this means if you are voted down an article a motion can be made to reopen consideration of this article by a person on the prevailing side however once i have placed another article before you know more action beacon taken regarding the article at this meeting state law prohibits consideration of articles that have not been warned this means you cannot take binding action during article for other business my role as moderator is to help you accomplish the business you intend to do please raise your hand and ask questions if you don't understand what is happening if you think what is happening is wrong or if you want to do something but don't know how to proceed technically please tell me if i'm ruling improperly above all please be civil and respect your neighbors opinions i would like to remind people who are not registered to vote that they can't and should be in the back of the auditorium right and if that also if there is no objection will have to village employees who are not living in essex junction to speak at the meeting as needed to answer technical questions all right so here we are ready to spread you to go with the meat of the agenda article one shell the voters act upon the report of the auditor do i have a motion for article one your way moved a second chuck berry the second mary jo excuse me all right article one has been moved and seconded and does anybody have any discussion for that and major you may start if you'd like since you moved t it's any questions the report of the auditors the book any questions by anyone on  ok it's an easy one seeing none call for a vote on article one when asked for nays all those in favor of article one signify by saying i ok as we go on to article t shell the voters approve an annual general fund budget in the amount of four million nine hundred fifty four thousand six hundred eighty seven dollars for fiscal year july one twenty eighteen to june did you have something very quick you did to say the amount on the general fund here says just for clarity the the budget is four million nine hundred fifty four thousand six eighty seven dollars and then the amount for taxes is three million four hundred twenty three thousand six hundred six dollars i think what i want i'll get right into the i think maybe what i'm understanding about this truck is that we're the budget is four four million nine hundred fifty four thousand dollars but we are raising we're seeking to raise three million four hundred twenty three thousand dollars in taxes and the reason is that if you recall a couple of years ago two years ago we transferred the cost of the village public works department to street department into the town gunnell fund budget and so even though it's we're kind of in a hybrid situation right now where the village public works department is still the village public works department still our employees and our equipment and our property but it's a shared cost now with the town so the cost of the recreate the i'm sorry the village street department which is over a million dollars gets shifted into the town general fund and that is a cost  by the entire community and shared for the whole community does that cleared up chuck ok thanks and i'll get into a little bit more of that in a second i very quickly go through this and  thousand dollars in debt service and then village finances are divided into two big chunks we have the general fund which we use money we raise from property taxes and we spend on municipal services like the fire department administration planning and zoning library and so forth and then the other piece because we own the wastewater treatment plant and it's a shared cost with two other communities essex town and williston we we sort of we weep separate that out as a separate fund called the enterprise fund and the three components of that but because that is money that is under that that's a facility and money that comes through the village we list that as a separate fund and money for the waste water and sewer is paid by your water  bills these are our proposed capital expenditures we have capital funds that are ongoing funds they're basically like bank accounts we put money into the memory year every year we take money out of them to pay for things but the money going in every year isn't always the same as the money coming out we put money in it's kind of like socking money away for into supported large capital expenditures so the number one is the top one is capital reserve those are street projects sidewalk  large we have a bridge repair that we're doing on main street the rest are the next one is rolling stock recreation parks sorry for the misspelling it's not recreation it's recreation and again we acquired the village recreation department when the school with the school merger a year ago and so the village recreation department is now part of our general fund budget and so their capital costs are not our capital costs and the other two one we have waste treatment fund a capital cost and a sanitation capital cost and if i'm going too fast and i can clear anything just raise your hand real quick two thousand two thousand seven hundred seventeen dollars in debt the contributing factors for the increase in number one as usual as salaries salary increases this year however we are increasing salaries for our volunteer fire department the reason is that we are trying to align the salaried training internal policies of the village essex junction lined fire department with the town fire  department we don't we don't have an immediate plan for consolidation of the fire departments but because we have one administration now we're already in a sort of an ongoing project to try to align some of our policies and procedures and make various departments as close to each other as possible when it's possible new shared services these are shared services that we are sharing with the town the town has created saw the need to create two new positions one in information technology and another one in employee benefits and it and so we are paying because those people will be doing those staff will be doing some work for the village we are sharing some of that cost capital contributions were increasing the amount we feel that we really need to catch up more with capital expenditures and street repair sidewalk repairs so we're putting a little bit more money in this year than we did previous year and health insurance and matching grants also we are having a put more money in for another another arts event that we held last summer and we thought it was very successful called steam fest and we're going to do it again this year this is the tax appropriation diskettes to the amount of money that we are raising in jenin property taxes and we see that the the bottom line is is that on the average village home price that two hundred eighty thousand dollars the total impact of the property tax increases that we're proposing with tonight's budget are thirty dollars and eighty cents over last year these are some of the challenges for the general fund our challenge was to maintain services while working again as i said to work more shared services and alignment of the fire departments recognize additional ways to combine services with the town again one of the big ways we have done it is to have a shared manager which we did this year with the with the town we have shared finance director shared clerk and other shared administrative costs so we anticipate doing more of that and we'll try to keep you up to date but so far it seems to be working and we are also we won't need to try to contribute more to find other ways for increasing how much money we are contributing to our capital budget for keeping up with infrastructure repair c these are some of the efficiencies that we have worked on and we'll continue to work on as i said a combining public works we haven't we've combined the public works budget so it's a shared so we now have public works in the village and the town is shared equitably by everybody in the in the community of essex in the town of essex and but we as i said the village public works department is still part of the village we have an m o you enforce with the town in an understanding that that is allowing that to happen and this year the select board in the town meeting some of you may have been there they passed the the the entire general fund budget for the town which included the village these are some of the big capital projects that we have in mind for this year we have a railroad avenue water line replacement the water the entire street is probably going to be dug up to replace the water line to try to align that with some railroad station improvements that amtrak is going to be performing this year we were doing it facilities assessment in conjunction with the town to look at all of our public works facilities and try to get some understanding of where we should go both in the villages and the towns public works facilities are old so we want to approach print perhaps renovating them in a reasonable way and probably in a collaborative way west and west reduce intersection again that just needs some more work and the question connector one million seven hundred ninety five thousand dollars but that is federal and state highway dollars that's not money that's coming from the village that's coming that's money that's coming from the state ultimately from the federal government going through the village and then to pay for that project and we hope that's going to go forward this year the rolling stock budget as you can see we have a back to truck sidewalk plow to more pickup trucks and trailers mounted boom lift i don't know what that you know what that is ok this was i i'm getting near the end this is a this is an important slight this is an important part here in this disc rafiq because it shows you where most of your property taxes go is if you don't know already but it must your property taxes go to school and we have a scheme consolidated school district so hopefully that consolidation is going to try is going to slow down some of the increases that we've seen the orange slice  is the slice we still pay to the town for the town municipal services and the blue slices the remainder of what's left for is essex junction and if you had looked at this a few years ago you would have seen another slice which was the village recreation department as i said when we consolidated school districts we took over the rec department so the villages slice of this pie which was getting smaller and smaller all of a sudden got bigger again so we got to work on pushing it down but this slice also sort of represents in my mind outstanding challenge to consolidation and shared services with the town this is something that we jointly hopefully will be working on over the over the next few years and i'm going to very quickly going to go over this is a waste water plant these are some of the challenges for the wastewater plant i won't i won't read them all but i think the top one we have this wastewater treatment facility is challenged by state regulations and this is we're  this is this is actually kind of serious stuff and this is where our state representatives are are so key we want to we have a very very high quality waste water treatment plant we do an excellent job we've won awards  we have an outstanding staff but every year we are challenge to reduce in even further the phosphorous phosphate burden go with that we're discharging tighter and tighter regulations increased the cost of operating that plant and that that cost gets passed on to you with your water rates and so this is going to be an ongoing challenge one of the long term challenges that we're also hearing is that we may be eventually getting mandates to start cleaning up chloride from a road salt that slowly makes its way into the groundwater and again another big challenge and i would also say that state stormwater regulations we are ahead of the curve in essex in essex junction we have a storm water committee we are out in front in terms of getting grants and getting getting our permits lined up but again it's going to be an ongoing challenge for this community for the entire community in the years  these just show our water rates what are the factors that go into that we take into account when we determine water and sewer rates and i want to ask you to read the entire thing and again these are enterprise funds these are the capital expenditures for the wastewater treatment plants sewer lines and water delivery system in the village and i think it's i don't want to say self explanatory but this shows you how we're actually spending the money thank you come down to one of the two mikes please remember to state your name my name is abigail tyke and i wanted to talk a little bit about stephen fest in the incredible event that was put on last year by the leaders of steam fest i know that this year's theme is the art of possibility and i thought that last year's event and this year's event i'm sure will also remind us all what an incredible community that the village of essex junction is in that we have a reputation of being a place for innovation and forward thinking having to solicit sponsors and businesses and i do appreciate all the philanthropic efforts of our local businesses and i think it's important to have there by and but i know that working in a volunteer to capacity to put on these big events it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of patients to solicit additional donations i know that the steam fest organizers are hoping to get another ten thousand dollars to put on this year's event and make it even more magical and awesome than last year mr moderator i was hoping you could help me that's generated discussion around whether we could increase the villages contribution to steam fest to add another ten thousand dollars and remove the burden of having to get additional funding from local businesses sure the way we would do that is you would make a motion to amend article two to raise the total amount of the budget and the amount raised by taxes by ten thousand so you would have to make a move move to an amendment in that i would like to move to amend the general fund was to include an additional ten thousand dollars can ok and just to be clear before i ask for a second you can your motion is for the total money and we know that that's kind of where you want to go but you can't say specifically that that's going alex and that's ok everyone always thinks that so that's fine so do we have a second for that motion from anybody greg morgan has a second ok so that means we can discuss that  as an amendment so the discussion is only on adding ten thousand dollars to the budget for the idea of it being for steam fast and and you get to be the first person to speak to it and i did i had is there a particular line item in the budget page five seven economic development what line item line on one forty eight so we can see for every one of the audience the proposed budget is a thousand two hundred eighty to start  so anything else you'd like to say on the topic  i just think that steam fest is just like tree hop in the farmer's market part of what makes the village of us extension there really special place to be and it's also just sort of has an impact on reminding the state that we're at the end of beaten center of vermont thank you all right who else would like to speak to the amendment on the floor go ahead greg so all oh expand on that just a little when he was craig morgan on the street and i chair the economic development commission but i want to be careful because my commission always says make sure you don't speak for us if but but our commission is supportive of this event and i would go a little farther than abbie did i mean what's happening in five corners now is quite significant  there are three centers of innovation where just a year ago there was only one there's something called accelerate essex which is a house you may have seen sign it's just next to the fire station and that's a co working space were people can bring their businesses or their ideas and get fairly inexpensive space based and develop those ideas and help grow enterprise in that six but what spun out of steam faster two other spaces one is over on the quilt shop it was started by the hub for women in business and that's it and that's a place where as i understand it five artists at least five  others have space to do their craft and and that that is another co working space so that's two the third one is just launched a kickstarter  six thousand dollars home today they finished it out and it's called words and pictures and as i understand this it's a place where you can self publish and with membership you get a membership you pay to be in this space it's above more tons and you can also use printing capabilities there so what we're seeing is the emergence of this center of innovation not just because we want to be an innovative community but there are innovators and people building spaces and paying to be here this is terrific i am blown away by what's happened so in and lot of it came out of steam fast i'm sorry to go on so long but steam fest sort of prompted the other to say the last two spaces to be there and i think it's a who knows where it's going to go but i think it's a great investment so that's my sense right thank you part of our common right thank you greg anybody else like to speak to the motion ok thank you and then hopefully that can get answered in a minute here if i want to get all the people to talk first and then maybe have a can come back after going to have the chance to ask their question and answer  abby do you happen to have the answer to the question on what the ten thousand would be used for i don't have specific information about the budget but from what i do know what i've learned from talking to the steam fest organizers so far is that event essentially events such as steam fest are not inexpensive to produce and those of the funding would go to things  like advertising messiah nature but also there's permitting i'm stages that have to be erected on audio and visual equipment that sort of provides the funding to meet the needs of the the the people involved in steam fest want to make happen there's also an important things like of providing like t shirts that help people identify the volunteers involved that can give perfectly thank you it's tough when it's not being run by the head of the table that's roughly my time of working quietly in the background is over so i'm actually miller johnson i'm a village president and have been the managing director of steam cast last year and doing it again this year and i will say i was a little unprepared for this level of attention so the steam passed last year we had a boot strap budget of about nine thousand dollars which was which covered the cost of any marketing materials we had any which we spent that money on advertising promotions and printing really we didn't pay for anything else we didn't pay for our musicians we didn't pay for them and even our artists paid us to actually be in this event so it was a really bootstrap she string thing this year we would like to be able to actually rent a couple of tents so that our music stages can be covered in case we income that whether last year we were very lucky to have sunny skies so that would increase our budget right there my probably six thousand dollars or tens we would like to be able to have the money to pay for some of our new systems because it's hard to ask people to play music on a friday night for free so that and then much more significant advertising to take this event from sort of a shoestring operation to sort of the next level a little more professional not professional but a little more polished artistic i don't know how to adjust this thing yet last year we did get a significant portion of our budget to make here i think well one third of the budget right does anybody else well want to make any comments on the motion on the floor and i see one more thing yes go ahead so i just want to be clear that my original request to the village was for four thousand dollars which is now there's talk that there's no line item i don't think in the budget so just w and be best if you could go to the mike if only we had aisle seats only if this is a question directed i guess to someone who can answer it which is what other events is the village putting money into village why the bounce ok and also could you s with the village recreation department but the block party is something that's completely village and i think me if i'm wrong or not i think we are still contributing to the train hop in tree four thousand two hundred eighty the mile day parade i think that we don't pay much for that because we get reimbursed from her own work says a lot of the work comments anybody else has a question yet you may go ahead does that mean so it's just a little confusing for me and i'm wondering if there is a process they go for to submit this this just seems like we could have five more events coming up proposed the steam fest and described it and then she came back and i don't know how many times you came back to italy but she was she was requested she requested to have her to put into a question on the village trustees agenda and she went to see the village manager and the village manager poured her on our agenda for an upcoming meeting so that we could warn it we could help warn people who might be interested in explain to people so the public could see what was happening and i think she came to with at least two or three times and then we we agreed on an amount and at that point then she had to also work with the village manager and staff to make sure that all the insurances and permits and all that sort of thing were in line so that that would be the process and not that that clears it up and but usually these events that we're talking about i have some kind of a history like that starts with seeing the village manager then that yes it can happen so all right anybody else that hasn't spoken yet ok go ahead abbie i just wanted to clarify to to further into your very legitimate question here and that i am not asking this making this request on behalf of steam fest nor did they ask me to they follow the proper channels in their official as it was for four thousand i'm just as a as a resident of the village and a fan of the event asking if we could support them with an additional ten thousand dollars because i think it's a really cool event that could only get cooler that said you know the vote is the vote and i love you all and thank you theoretically you're supposed to be at the microphone if you'd like to walk because we don't want people calling from the back of the room and identify yourself please bob like to book that question all right we have a motion to call the question which means that we're not going to talk about it anymore if passed we're not going to talk about any more just bow do we have a second for that motion i can't remember which name again john were all right so we were a motion to second so voting  yes means we're going to stop talking no means we're going to allow more discussion all right all those in favor of calling the question signify by saying i oppose nay th question is called all right so that means we are going got to take my notes so we have an amendment on the floor of the amendment is to and to for article two to add ten thousand dollars to both the general fund budget in the amount to raise in taxes by ten thousand dollars each and we're going to vote on that so voting yes means you're in favor of adding the ten thousand no means you want the budget as it is and he questions all right all those in favor of the amendment signify by saying so that takes us back to article two as written in same amounts and i know you've been waiting very patiently to talk about something besides the amendment so please go ahead just you ma two fifty four in fifty six so this goes back to the discussion where we bought the park street school building for a dollar last year thousand dollars i asked if we have in the budget is that sure we'll find it in noting that we are looking that we're going to be overspent on the estimated expenditures for f y eighteen  math seven thousand five hundred sixty one over which is great they control the cost of that one thousand dollars but if you really break down these expenditures that are broken out for the park street school that are on line items one overages about two thousand dollars in line and in one of six which is maintenance buildings and grounds you come to operating cost of dine thousand eight o six which was an excellent estimate from last year's meeting now  one thousand nine hundred sixty nine don't use it with the intent or interest of adding that funding to our operating costs of the park street school building ok so let me repeat that so the motion is to add eight thousand nine hundred sixty nine dollars to the general fund budget and taxes with the idea that it would be moving and in that area of the lincoln  is there a second to that motion maybe second all right you already talked to it certainly is there anyone that wants to comment on this and do you want to say anything about why the numbers are what they are george  s so we decided to put the park street school in with lincoln hall because it made sense because it was a building that we were supporting now the things that were in lincoln hall last year some of them have gone down one of them was liability insurance where we're trying to spending less maintenance on that building in particular we don't have any capital outlay in projects for lincoln hall next year and so even after we add the park street school into it we've remain thousand maintenance buildings and grounds we estimated that that would go down about five hundred so that there are things that dropped in the lincoln hall budget that allowed us to put part street school costs in there so we give some rough numbers of of where things were reductions that we can haul you know i was just inquiring if those numbers are do they come out to the nine thousand dollars it little warmer lincoln street i just want to say that a budget is a guesstimation of how the money is going to be spent it's not it's not a checking account with a limited amount of money in it and then it looks like we're going to need more we have to borrow or something like that and if you look at number ten on the green sheet it talks about the fund balance vallance that the village has and we have for four hundred fifty thousand dollars which is nine point five longer serving school in the state continually in educational use and it really is a beautiful building that said i don't support putting more money into it for the reasons that i've been given and harking back to the last amendment to which i also think is a great event but i'm not a great fan of adding moneys in or taking them out from what we have great trustees they're elected they work really hard for us same thing with a select board and i think we need to respect what they've done and they have to measure all these different cause they know the ins and outs against each other particularly the the community service type of events and we have so many different things all of which deserve a lot of money and deserve money than they get but i think that's your job to do that you do a great job at it so you know i wouldn't support doing more for this but i'm so happy that we're here talking about doing more for the perks through school and our historic buildings it's great  thank you and the other comments all right seeing non we can move to vote on the amendment so voting yes would mean the move the amendment is to add eight thousand nine hundred sixty nine dollars to the general fund budget and the amount to be raised in taxes with the idea that it be spent on making home park street area if possible it's voting yes is to increase the budget no is to leave the budget won't just like the last amendment all those in favor of the amendment signify by saying i oppose nay you don't often have that silk i know we really don't want to add money to our budget we've gone over this now twice but this was something that actually was requested so the fire department actually requested the budget to make sure that we aligned with the  fire and to make sure that we match their wages for four thousand seven hundred ninety nine dollars that we would be able to actually align this year with them that budget was cut three thousand or thirty three thousand nine hundred thirty five dollars which think you got a problem the concern is to align budgets you actually have to align voters and so at one point the town had its budget also reduced but those funds are actually added back in for the town fire department so they'd be able to move forward at the same meeting were couple meetings later it's decided our budget would be lowered it was never added back to it so the town is prepared to line budgets and the essex junction fire department is not prepared to be current with the essex county fire department hearts just keep going and then i'll answer ok so when we look at it we are going to come up short thirty three thousand nine hundred thirty five dollars on eating what we needed to to actually align our budgets add thirty three thousand nine hundred thirty five dollars to the general fund budget and the amount to really raise to taxes the idea that it go in the fire department area to align the budgets as a originally proposed is there a second to that motion not the budgets it is the salaries that are taken to the food on call firefighters that they would both be i believe it's twelve dollars and fifty cents and do a deal with one of the entities gets paid for treating the other one does not get paid for training and so we are trying to figure out how we would deal with that and so there was a certain amount of money that was put in back by the town that was in fact correct to be done and we looked at it and from the village standpoint you know corrections need so patch i doubt you know motion to this is like going to put in thirteenth to take thirteen thousand dollars out of fine balance to pay to raise the base rate for the town firefighters to twelve fifteen hour and a life for your life first but do none of the rest of the alignment so the rest of the ali nt which was mine jeopardy pay officers admin pay nothing else was going to be done at the july line and then that thought was to completely aligned the departments at january one  that was that was what was done so yes we're all in way and everybody we're the department that's not paid for training so that's why when this goes about that's where that thirty three thousand dollars comes up our department does over three thousand hours of annual training to meet change so those historical facts we heard earlier about all those buildings burning down doesn't continue to happen in the modern century all right anybody else  like to thank you for the motion anybody would like to speak to the amendment on the  me three four thousand extra dollars has to do with discrepancy in whether the alignment happens on july first or general first so the the pay rates of the volunteers are planned for july first we have many things to do between july first and a couple years from now to align the departments so it's not waiving it's just the money for the salaries get done on july first and we have our i'm sorry the town's salaries get adjusted on july first and then there are other things within the budget that are scheduled to occur on january first but is it that if we don't spend this thirty four thousand extra dollars a line that will happen as of january first next year anyway and the thirty four thousand extra dollars will just make it happen sooner like on july first is that because of the aim of the extra thirty four thousand dollars from a misunderstanding january one thousand nine hundred if we don't have this money up to that yes thank you very much like anybody else that hasn't talked to the amendment yet anything like burning down the thirty three thousand the thirty three thousand ok so in other words we can have that alignment portion and happen starting january oh  first july first ok and then there will be other alignment pieces that we ran today between both in the starting january first on both sides i'm assuming that's correct ok so everybody then so if we add thirty three now our guys and gals who protect our problems from burning down will be on par with their essex town compatriots correct so when she comes to my house she thinks is really great like why are they screaming down our street well i don't live in the main drag but she does so i appreciate that you guys in the fire department because whatever her house i hear you guys a lot too appreciate the fire department gung ho thank you very much lets appreciate them as and vote yes thank you diane folks up front here have worked extremely hard on this they're not trying to figure one department over the other they're trying to get it all set by january first and my recommendation is that we not try to redo this they are hard work in the middle in the middle of the meeting and by the way i call the question all right so there's a motion to call the question which we went over already is there a second to call a second to call that question paul paul bell of all right so voting yes means we're not going to talk about it anymore all those in favor of calling the question please signified by saying i oppose nay all right the motion passes to call the question ok so now we're just going to vote on the amendment the amendment is to add thirty three thousand nine hundred thirty five dollars to the general fund budget and the amount to be raised in taxes an article t with the idea that it goes towards the fire department budget all those in favor of the amendment signify by saying i oppose nay the nays appear to have it the do have it all right the amendment fails we are back to article two as written again go ahead diane diane st i think called vertical to all right we have a motion to call the question for the entire article to do we have a second for that second bit right we know what we're doing now for calling questions all those in favor of calling the question signified by saying i oppose nay the question is called all right so this means we are voting for article two as written which i will now read to avoid any confusion with shell the voters approve an annual general fund budget in the amount of four million nine hundred  fifty four thousand six hundred eighty seven dollars for fiscal year july one twenty eighteen to june thirty twenty nineteen three million four hundred twenty three thousand six hundred six dollars of which is to be levied in taxes against the village grand less all those in favor of article two was written signify by saying i oppose nay the ayes appear all right takes us to article three shell the voters approved holding the twenty one thousand and you will meeting on wednesday april third twenty nineteen to act upon any articles not involving voting by australian ballot and to reconvene on tuesday april ninth twenty nineteen to vote for the village officers and transact any business involving voting by australian ballot to have a motion in article three berry do i have a second mike munson anybody have anything to say seeing not all those in favor of article three has written signify by saying i oppose nay article three passes by voice all right now takes us now are speeding right along here article four to transact any other business that may lawfully come before the meeting and i'd like to mention first of all   to elect moderator to village trustees and a couple different library trustees and a school director so please come out if you can for that australian ballot voting  now i think george wanted to say a couple things first on article four and then we'll open that up to again any non binding business that people would like to bring up we have three items i think first  i should note that i'm quite hoarse and i'm quite sick and we've been sitting here a long time so i'm going to get right to it in a nut squeaking with excitement to get out of here so but you know one of the things that laurie and i get to do in the state legislature is acknowledge  significant achievements and one of those is the one hundred twenty fifth anniversary year of the village so we have a rather lengthy resolution i'm not going to read the whole thing because again i'm sick and i sound like i'm sick but it is notable that whereas on april fourth two thousand and eighteen assembly commemorates the one hundred twenty fifth anniversary of the village of essex junction a bit further result that the secretary of state be directed to send a copy of this resolution to the essex junction village clerk so with that i'll hand this over to the village president for no congratulations so i have another resolution that i am going to read because it's about neighborhood community and parties which i particularly like so stuff to lee who's standing here with me tonight gabrielle smith couldn't be with me but they came to the  this really incredible idea to start neighbors day in vermont so i don't know if anyone here participated i know i did we had breakfast in the park and it was great we just hung out and talked and  so i did that it should be a vermont thing and so this is a resolution and i will skip some pieces of it whereas neighbors or the persons who reside in our immediate vicinity and who we encounter on a daily basis their contact with their neighbors may be frequent we often remain under quite unacquainted perhaps not even knowing their names and neighbor day is intended to develop bonds of friendship between neighbors and the girls of neighbors day include developing a stronger sense of belonging mutual support safety and security in neighborhoods establishing connections with neighbors that can be helpful in a time of crisis creating families of choice and promoting opportunities for enjoyable neighborhood events and in the late one nine hundred ninety s an early woman died in the seventeenth paris and her body was not discovered for months and as a result of this tragic occurrence in one thousand nine hundred nine the deputy mayor of the seventeenth establish neighbors day on the first saturday in june with the hope of fostering a sense of belonging and lessening the likelihood of a similar occurrence that first year ten thousand neighbors in paris participated in two thousand and the neighbors say grew as it was celebrated in thirty french municipalities and has expanded across europe and eventually to five continents in two thousand and seventeen thirty million persons across the globe participated in neighbors day celebrations including groups of neighbors in essex junction as neighbors day in vermont and urges from artists to organized labor day celebrations and i want to personally thank staff who created this here in this extension and i hope all of you will find a way to participate that has some information about it so you can see her if you want to get involved and obviously you can ask any of the trustees as well thank you for thank you lori so i just very quickly wanted to tell you where we are with consolidation i know a lot of you are interested i hope you are this is your community it's not ours it's we're kind of trying to decide what to do we think we know what of you want to do but we also need to hear from you we need you to stay engaged with us and let us know what we're doing right now we're doing wrong i borrowed this from max max had this and greg dugan deputy manager for the town gave the sli shows previous consolidation efforts clearly since we're still not consolidated none of they all failed you know these are consolidations to date and this is not by no means  seamless list as we just heard with the fire department discussion we are working on some of these departments are our aligned and right now we're working on the lining them it's probably going to take like for the fire departments there are a lot of internal policies and procedures pay scales and so forth that have to be lined up so we're working on that and in the upper right hand corner these are the big  village departments that are still independent of the town community development of planning fire department libraries and recreation we don't know where we're going with this we can't say but i can tell you that we are continued the alliance alignment of these departments we anticipate with the new manager that we are going to continue to align policies and procedures that will help make his job easier ultimately where we're going we're not sure but as i said we need you to stay engaged please call us right to us e mail us talk to the manager if you have ideas and stay engaged because this is your community thank you and included on that or early twenty eighteen was repaving one seventeen which is kind of a disaster right now do we know if that is still planned to be repaved the spring for so i know it is scheduled to be paved and where it when it will be paved whether will be this year and next year we don't know and sometimes we don't know right up until the last minute and i don't use that to get my making an accurate statement there r get one seventeen in the village was recently done by the state so outside this our jurisdiction we have no control over that would be something the state would do we should be i know it's not on the schedule but they had a schedule to we got blocked out quite a bit years he has grown chemistry he invented can preach he enhanced star expandability kids to include a fourth site with two busses he created the after school enrichment program he runs that if a operations are busy office and he's fostered a culture of continuous improvement