good evening and welcome i'm diane meyerhoff hose for tonight's candidate forum for the ethics select board candidates are vying for two seats for a term of three years tonight's show is being aired live on channel seventeen and streamed live on you tube we welcome your comments and questions please join the conversation at eight six to three nine six six the ground rules for the form of the candidates will make opening statements up to two minutes each followed by prepared questions for also up to two minutes with a possible one minute rebuttal tonight i'm joined by two of the three candidates irene renner the incumbent and patrick murray thank you both for coming out tonight we appreciate it thanks for having us any cooper will not be joining us tonight we're going to begin with opening statements and we're going to let patrick start and we're going to ask why you're running and what qualifies you for the position yeah absolutely so my name is patrick murray i've lived in essex for just about ten years now  was originally grew up in the northeast kingdom of vermont so i lived in the state for quite some time and moved over to burlington area when i came to attend you v m got out of school and went right into the workforce really after that so i bounced around in accounting quite a bit you know burlington and south burlington but when my wife and i were looking to have our first child you know really we were looking for a place that was going to be you know home to us you know the schools in essex were incredibly appealing a nice mix of early area and a little bit more suburban closeness was also you know a big draw in point for us so we purchased our house and have been living here since after that i've always been involved in i've done some charity work done some  different productions theater you know in the last decade or so that i've been living here and i was really appreciated you know the sense of giving back to a community that came with really t charity work that was involved in that part so i began at that point looking into ways that i could help out in the local government that for me began with the school board first i served on the prudential committee in essex junction which was our local k through eight district and then i ran for election for the essex westford school district and i've been on that for two years now which is  where i'm sort of picking up all of the day to day for you know formal local government the meetings three ok irene tell us why you're qualified to run for this position budget of close to fifty million dollars it's also given me the opportunity to represent voices of constituents that i think would otherwise go unheard i've spent twelve years here working to rebuild trust in public servants by setting example through hard work and integrity through listening more than i talk and by seeking to communicate with different generations through different media always a challenge my kids use different media than my parents and we all use different media than each other  o that grows even more difficult than my first set of twelve years ago and i suspect if i'm on the board again it will remain harder than three years when i'm still here what i discovered when i first came into local government was that we have a fine group of staff working at town hall but they're so busy serving the public they don't have time to toot their own horns so i found it was very important for me as i learned step by step about local government to share what i was learning with my constituents and sort of help people understand even as i understood the truth of the town government the village government and how they fit together and things like that because politics hasn't ever been a career goal for me i have felt free to ask an orthodox questions and use uncommon sense to approach issues and the majority of constituents have so that resonates with them that helps them understand things and so i'm running again to continue to do more of the same hopefully and also to tackle new projects have seen first hand that the town staff at the offices are not over staffed and the staff there are not overpaid and i understand that as i hear from constituents everyone would rather to see a zero percent increase in the budget frankly that's not possible the town purchases lots of services and goods on the open market where prices only go up that's a stark reality the two percent budget increase we're seeing this year is the lowest i recall seeing in the past twelve years and that's exciting to me and it is however also very forward looking for example as if you were tuned in to the half hour show i'm sure they were right yet what is to you heard that we are proposing a part time supervisor for our buildings  we've never had one assess and address the state of several dozen buildings that the town and village own and i think it's past time but it's definitely time to have someone do that as a full time job in the budget is proposed as part time for now but that's the one thing on the budget i would change if i were king would be to have a full time position so the person hits the ground running and addresses as much as possible in every hour of the day that they can i think would also be easier to hire for a full time position right now out of the gate rather than a part timer now and then down the road perhaps a full timer but we do want to mention that we are indebted to our public works director for keeping an eye on our buildings all these years he's done on the side while he's managed roads and sewer and water and everything else that dennis letts does but it's time to have more than his watchful eye on it have two eyes two ears and maybe two arms around those investments that we have as taxpayers and have someone really full time monitoring these things ok patrick the support yes expunge it for twenty twenty yeah actually absolutely i do and it's maybe less exciting if i read an in complete agreement in this particular instance you have the budget is absolutely appropriate you know we all want to look at our tax bill and not see any raise at all but realistically you know we essex is no different from the rest of the united states and we do have aging infrastructure we do have needs that need to be addressed and for a long time you know we've kind of all been looking at let's keep our taxes as low as we can because we know that we are and you know a recession we know that it's been difficult to put that burden on the taxpayers but at some point you know that infrastructure bill comes due for us i know that in the town that for a long time we made do with you know a police department that was arguably understaffed in recent additions in the last few years have really helped with the police presence and you know i that's something that we see i certainly see day to day driving through five corners you know before this year i would never see people who are running red lights get pulled over even in you know arguably the busiest intersection in the state they're in the busiest traffic times people would block the intersection and they would go through that and there would be no consequence this day and age i mean i see police point people over you know it's made for a much smoother you know driving to work you know bring my kid to school so you know i'm really very appreciative that over the years the tax increases have been relatively small but in this case where the efforts are being focused you know with police with infrastructure it's absolutely worth it consolidation efforts to date where do you see it going and do you support a full merger impact are going to stay with you yes i do i do support a full merger consolidation in of itself i think is the ultimate goal and certainly what all of this is kind of leading towards so it would be almost counterproductive i think at this point to have gone through all of this work putting in the effort of combining the the partment that have been combined you know moving parts in iraq together into the same building you know over the years you know the various different departments that have gone together you know certainly there at least in e past history of you know how fashion we do it you know how quickly can it be done and what's the most effective way the most effective strategy so i don't think that there are very many people who would completely disagree that that's where we want to end up it's really just the timetable that i think is the most difficult part for people you know and what i think is sort of good for us to look at is in my experience when we merged the school districts you know essex town in essex junction and westford all came together and then merger certainly has had its bumps because nothing that large you know we're working with a budget  north of sixty million dollars is ever going to be completely one hundred percent smooth but there has been nothing that's come up that i don't think that we as a community haven't been able to handle and i feel the exact same way about individual departments of the extremely different functions to merge them one at a time consolidate is where we are using to thoughtfully just consider what's easier rather than more difficult to combine and i would never say that merging the finance departments was easy but they don't have the same loyalty and some of the same relationships with the community that say the fire department does with the recreation apartments so i think that we did some of the lower hanging fruit as far as  some of the real hard to crack and so that's the challenge for those of us on the board going forward is just you know how do we thoughtfully carefully painstakingly do this keeping the communication lines open with the public to make it happen in a way that works for everyone ok thank you and i just want to also remind folks you we'd love you to call in eight six two three nine six six let's talk a little bit about the town center on your doing in each e c next process  which is mapping out the future of comedic element in town center area and that's from the outlets to town green what do you see are the opportunities and challenges for this area and i mean minister with you well tom planning may sound innocuous but it's not if you grow up in new jersey like i did you know that you can turn a state into a place that's paved over with lots of highways and malls and not much greenery and not much that's distinctive anymore and so when i moved to vermont i thought it was very important to get involved locally to make sure that vermont didn't turn out to wire i left i think as far as e t c specifically goes i'd like to see some zoning changes incentivize developers to include things like workforce housing and the new town center we keep hearing how vermont needs younger people need people to fill all these jobs we see in the classified ads if we can provide some housing that people can afford to move into it socioeconomic diversity it will fill those empty job openings and i think it'll be a win win for everyone including the developers so i'd like to see that happen if you do gents development like that of course you'll need some infrastructure upgrades that is let's came to our money meeting and talked about that recently all kinds of impact fees have been stashed away in preparation for changes like this so it's just once again taking the time to thoughtfully consider what needs to change and it's not just as he was saying the other night that we have need to bring more water in and take more sewage out it's really things like water pressure you have to be aware of if you build a one story building i just learned this the other night there's very different water pressure constrains if you start going up two or three stories you need to pump the water that much faster and and make all kinds of adjustments as the people in charge of the infrastructure so thank goodness people like him pay attention these things but it's there will be some expenses and in addition to that dense development that's probably ahead i think it's also important as a sort of thing back to the beginning of my answer that we preserve some green space you've got to have some visual and natural breaks from all that d the village president her relationship to village government ok so in other words their relationship to the government that they don't live in those those areas is that sort of affair right ok we'll have them both answer that thank you for your question town residents understand that there is a completely different dynamic when you live in the town you know the rural versus urban is a it's a it's a real difference and people feel that you know when the development up at saxon hill happens you know when people are seeing acres of land being cut down that's not something that a village resident is typically ever going to have to deal with you know being sensitive to the needs of individuals who live in the rural parts of the community is something that i'm very aware of one thing that i think really honestly can sort of unite us as it were because we have had a us versus them mentality certainly at points and i haven't lived  consider myself an os or of them you know just long enough to fall in love with the community but what we really i think are doing is that it's going to be advantageous for us to remember that  state that is honestly losing population whose population is getting older we do live in one of the few counties where we're attracting individuals who want to come and live here so we need to compete not necessarily with one another but you know we're one of the few towns that i think can provide either an urban feel or a rural feel and you can still come to essex and you can still live here what we need to do is equalize the opportunities that you know one of the town or the village is not getting internet infrastructure i'm a telecommunications guy that's where i've worked in my work at sovern at for fifteen years and i work for a company called first light now so i'm pretty familiar with the internet infrastructure across the state and right now large swaths of rural essex don't have internet they can't get a high speed access which is in this day and age if you want to tracht somewhat useful internet electricity was in the last and last century i would love to see you know a part of the town governments working together towards bringing something like that and where we can expand the sort of infrastructure base for what i would consider to be basically a utility at this point so i think it's a long answer for me saying that i'm i'm aware of the problems that you know those of us who live really in essex you know have to deal with and i like to think that i'm a good enough listener that when someone comes to me it's not going to matter where you live i mean i mean talk about you know you live in the village outside the village ok so then you're relationship with the village yes ok ok so the first house that i that my husband i've been on when we moved to vermont was actually in the village we were tractor the walkability and so many of the other amenities but that was not meant to be so i have had a little village and view over time but i do live outside the village in a fairly walkable area for considering where it is as someone who got involved in local government before i was elected to the select board it was interesting to me that at the time that i was thinking about running for office there were no village residents on the select board and i thought that that was unfortunate because i kept hearing that it was a time when board and i thought this has to be remedy and i did some research with the town clerk at the time and she showed me that yes over time there had been village residents so that proved to me that that could happen so i worked very hard to encourage village residents to vote in march because a lot of folks that thought well that's a town election it doesn't have any to do  i did a lot of outreach just as a private citizen to say to people you really do need to vote it is your town government as well it includes you in and in fact you can run so i'm glad you're ok and others from the village have stepped up to make sure that our town my decisions include input from all parts of town as somebody who nevertheless lives outside the village it's very important for me as a slight board member who has a village constituents to pay attention to what's going on in the village and although i do a lot of business in the village like everyone else going to the bakery or you know going to the dentist or something there are there are things like the village governing issues that i pay attention to by going to the trustee meetings and i make a point to be a regular attendees there just so i'm extra tune into what the governing body is doing there especially should we be merging with them any time soon i want to be up to speed also as an elected official you probably know this already we have access to all of our board forums so every day nine forums flood my inbox but it's a great way to see what's going on because people outside the village aren't usually bothered by train muscles but the people in the village might be and so you get a really good sense of just what the issues are in the distinct neighborhoods across town ok great thanks and thanks so much for the call we appreciate it we're going to hop back to our discussion about the town center and the next process and for the future of commu development in the town area and patrick you're up yet so i spend some time going over the large one hundred page document that contains the recommendations for the next and one thing that kind of struck me as i was looking through it was the scope of it extending from the outlets all the way out to the you know towns and that's that's all a large area to consider as part of a development you know this is not  walkable like church street and burlington and you know it's not a mall area like south burlington i mean arguably it's even difficult for us if you're going shopping up ahead of her and i can't think of a single person who's going to walk down to the mini golf course to you know just  right through that there's there's a there's a fundamental lack of connectivity there and i worry looking at the project in the recommendations about just the sheer scope of it i do agree completely with irene that the number of you know families who are getting jobs jobs very similar to mine you know they're good quality jobs but you know i'm not going to go buy a million dollar home anytime soon  also raising a family so one bedroom condo isn't going to cut it for me and what we need to do is we need to be a look provided back into ram space and i think that the project is perfect for that i just worry about the size of the scope of it i think that we should focus on a smaller area first those surrounding the outlets where we can really sort of make a walkable sort of neighborhood to someplace where you can go and do your grocery shopping and walk over to the movie theater and then you know maybe catch rock climbing which is all within probably thirty seconds of one another but i can't like i said i can't think of a single person that actively does that right now it's just the infrastructure is is really not laid out terribly well and i think that it needs to be sort of redesigned and really looked at and taken a look at into a smaller scope maybe than what you know is is currently being thought of ok good financed particularly in light of the consolidation efforts that are underway in patrick you'll start us off and so i know that we we the town and public works department has you know sort of a four year plan as it were there are efforts where they'll go out and they'll rate the roadways and they'll decide you know what needs what improvements you know at what point what sort of most critical and there are a lot of factors that sort of go into that decision and those are made by people who honestly have much more familiarity than i do you know but i think it's our job as select board members we don't go out to make those decisions what we do is very fond of saying this as a school board member is that i don't run the schools i make sure that the schools are run well you know the important part for tackling these infrastructure problems is not me going taking a look at a roadway and deciding it is a pothole here you know we really need to get on top of this quickly you know it's in the managing of the department the oversight and it's you know in talking back and forth with public works  know to figure out realistically from the experts what needs to be addressed and what needs to be tackled when we do have some pretty devastatingly bad roots especially this time of year i mean it is absolutely horrific and pretty much every part of the town or you know in less your road was repaved a year ago you know you're going to see potholes you're going to hear that claim as you go over and you apologize to your car even though it's an  inanimate object for devastating it so much but what is that and the boiling down to i mean cost price and you know we talked about how we are trying not to raise taxes terribly much but  warre about tackling the infrastructure problems and not being able to do it in a timely enough manner with how minimal we're trying to keep the tax increases one idea that's been proposed that i think has potential but it is one that sort of needs to be studied would be looking into a local option for a sales tax with an essex i would really love to see a study done on the numbers that could raise because right now all the communities around us do have that local option in place you know when you're going to buy a t v at best buy you're spending extra money and that's going to williston you know i mean we do have the e outlets we do have shops in our area and if there's a one cent tax on you know goods or purchase that that might be a way for us to sort of close that infrastructure gap which is something i would love to love to take a look at  i think it would be a way for those who kind of have more of the means those who have the ability to make a larger purchases you know or typically would do that you know we're putting the tax burden for that on the people who are most able to make those purchases and it just it's something that makes sense to me but it's i know barely in any planning stage right now but it's definitely something i would like to take a look at going forward if i were on the select board thank you i mean we're talking about infrastructure how to prioritize it how to finance it you know i too like patrick won't second guess the priorities that our public works director has sent of course when there's an emergency we certainly need to fix the force main even though it's below freezing temperatures as it was last week or stopping the sewage from flowing up to the sinks that lincoln hall as they were in december so yes indeed we have aging infrastructure and when people wonder why the budget goes up we can certainly point to some of these things and say well you know pay us now or pay it later sometimes we have to be we want to be proactive about these things and that's where some of the extra costs come into it not just fixing emergencies so there's this juggling that goes on and we hear pretty often about what it's going to take to fund fixes before they become dire and then of course there are always the surprises that are coming up i guess this harkens back to the buildings manager that we've talked about hiring once again if we have someone who's on top of that who's looking at the new buildings and tweaking the to make sure that they're running properly and then looking at the older buildings and making sure that we're not pushing them beyond you know when it's time to have a new roof i think that's just a really smart decision as far as a local option tax i believe it was two thousand and nine town meeting the population of essex was asked to vote on that and it was resounding  defeated there was a very strong feeling that essex wanted to be different that we didn't need to tax people any more than they were being taxed and this select board originally was very strongly behind it but that's the beauty of time meaning if people don't feel hurt they come out and they let you know and so we can repeat history or we can learn from it we can re examine what brought it down that time and try again but it has as legislators in their own town they like to legislate ok i like to act as legislators so we're just about out of time so i want to say to remind everyone to vote on presentation of school and municipal budgets so vote on tuesday march fifth and also watch our live results show that night beginning at seven pm so we look forward to seeing you then