not believe so ok so just move ahead first order of business is audience to be heard and to anyone in the audience have any questions or comments about something that's not on the agenda budget and the reason our operating budget mostly is is increasing is we've added one hundred thousand dollars to our capital transfer our capital find in the water department is in the water is not very healthy it's going to end the year at about thirty thousand dollars and we have a lot of projects coming up so we have started to gradually add money in there this sanitation year ok because that's that's a cost of doing business actually globalfoundries is up slightly in terms of their use they had dropped for the last two years but they've picked that up this year we should finish just about on budget a most exactly and that's we program with about three percent with a lot of the would see abuse tried to do as they retire debt there are projects coming up that need to be done in terms of tank cleaning or tank repa whatever else and so they try to keep that balance so that there is no significant increase in any given year nor any significant decrease and it's we've tried to work through their capital planning so that debt is controlled and that i've learned from many very good finance directors is you need to have an operating reserve just like you have in the village reserves for the entire village we do have a lot of local pricing but probably somewhere between four and five thousand dollars apiece to replace them if something happens you have all kinds of different apparatus that you need to adjust to and any given time and you really don't want to do it in an emergency so i applaud them for doing that i would say this fifty thousand is a great start and instead continue for several years until you get a healthy balance that can  a double digit percentage range of the total of what you know the other thing i would also be concerned with is as everybody in this room knows and maybe the people at home you have a extremely large customer in in the global and you know we we know that they're not going anywhere today but there's always the future and you know want to make sure you have moneys in reserve to be able to deal with any variances of water usage oh we're now that are out of the norm so it's just something we talked about and look at scheduling this one's done already but as we look out into the future we want to do a lot more water forecasting making sure there were financially solvent and can weather homes in the room and that's also part delivery of water you turn on your spec and you get clean safe water at any time of day or into night and when it goes down the drain it goes to our world class treatment facility for which we have all kinds of regulations that it's the availability of it that it costs the same for us to get it to you when taken from you versus a thousand gallons or five dollars it's then you're just paying for the commodity they just slow down it's just a factor i'm sure they've talked about that and so when you have a large customer all you need to keep up on on that flow and so i think gordon said maybe about once every ten years i would look to cut that down by two to five years and then just the process you don't have to do it all in a senior but you shouldn't be putting them out two hundred thousand dollars to go replace you know fifty meters all at once start doing five or ten metres every year and therefore in that five or seven year rotation you'll have have and the new technology is is great nowadays the fact they have some stuff where people can go online and see their water usage in real time and i know that we do a very nice job when people say they bridge and then at the end of the year we can in true up with them so that they don't they don't pay more and we've lost one thing that happened this year they went from telling us that they were going to have three point five million gallons a day again that's three point four do you give them special notice of this potential ready increase yes they actually they we get we send them a copy of our budget when we're working on it and then before hearing we give them notice that we don't have the one thank you very much for any other questions folks ok that i will move to close the public hearing on water rates for your second any furthe would you like to come up here and join us so we can find out more about you commissioned some of its work is outside the village center but i think we're probably if it's hardest it's most complex applications have to do mainly with projects that are going on within the do you have any questions for us i got nothing think you're ready to go for a few more years  if i like dancer's question sort of you can wave your magic wand which i know you have one idea what are some other things to planning commission could be doing and would like things  room so that would be a good time to we go through every single movie and it's come up when you're doing those two to rewrite to replant so that you don't get completely deforested and look barren but that's how we can do certain things on public property is what might be the idea i'm private property well that's the education for instance i worked for a community you know no noise we had them rolled out of an our public works department would evaluate trees as well on private property and we inside like i'm dangerous so i was just wondering if there are any thoughts on your part of the commission's not yet if not but not yet that's it we want to come up with a comprehensive plan educate folks about plan as well in the town and trying to mirror how much of the tree is we're replacing from the ones and making sure that when we do really plant trees that we are species and the species to try to be more resistant to the next wave so don't go just go play out thirty seven animals or thirty seven maples or thirty seven perception about how to mulch around their trees and how to maintain the grass and other things around their trees and just mulch in general of what they should do to help not only their lawn but their trees well it is simple and complicated at the same time the simple part is the agreement that was signed several years ago expires in july one twenty teen  dennis let's took it upon himself to draft a successor agreement sort of in a den of denim number one to that agreement looking into the crystal ball of the next several years and the talented reviewed they said they didn't have the issues really here tonight for a conversation and then the plan was to bring it to the joint board on thursday i know that  address and i just note that last october the trustees accepted the recommendations but we didn't approve the recommendations and that it's an important n because some of the recommendations were very sweeping for example one of the recommendations was to consolidate the capital projects for the village in the town and give the funding would be put into one fund control over the village capital fund so there's a lot of policy component to that it's not just something we would want to hand over and be told here's what we've done with the capital fund we would want to be involved in that so on the one hand in my mind we approved it least in my mind i accepted the recommendations but i didn't necessarily say i think each one of these needs to be implicated i'm ok just having someone else in implemented so that goes on to the next piece which is the the agreement that we're looking at tonight which is that on paragraph two it says the manager shall be responsible for directing staff to address the select board in trustees approved recommendations and i don't know what that means what do we mean by address does that mean the manager has authority to implement the recommendations or i'm not sure what address means and maybe claudine can help with that what my interpretation of it is same to me is that the manager has sold forty to implement the recommendations and as i said some of these recommendations are sweeping and they get into policy areas so i would want to i would be in something to do with with the current staff it's just generally in principle it seems to us to be as a board would be surrendering some of our authority and our responsibility to say we're we're not going to make policy and we're not going to be dealing with things like capital projects we're just going to allow staff to rearrange the whole thing anywhere they want to and then inform they've done i think we i would want to be involved with them if that's what address means to me that i would want that were changed or i would want something else in there that says the manager can make recommendations but before i look at every record and there are lots of recommendations in here i mean another one locating consolidated public works department of management and ministration into one location maybe that's a great idea i don't know but it's there's lots of recommendations like that in what the agreement is saying to me if we signed this on thursday night that gives ministration the authority to go out and do each one of these records do just do them and get them done i needed i understand what you're saying about planning and coming up with a a scheme a flow chart and a schematic for how we would further consolidate things and then we would all get involved with it but what i what the what the agreement is saying to me that that that it's not just about planning it's about implementing we're giving by signing this we're giving it ministration authority to immediately begin implementing the recommendations and that's where i'm hung up and i know that that's not your intent but that's how i'm reading the agreement and i have to look at it you know none of us may be here five years from now we could have a complete change aborts in staff so we have to not just look at what we have we understand it but the logic of it has to be contained in back to the recommendations and review committee and to remind everyone that when you leave the trustees accepted the grip of mendacious of me the recommendations were because we're coming up on june thirtieth and we have to make some kind of decision the recommendation was that we extend and then we take under to whatever studies necessary to understand the path forward on accomplishing the recommendations and multiple times within the recommendations it says that there's no timeline that there's no insistence that it be done a certain way and so when i prove he exists when i was part of the acceptance of by this board i understood that we're setting it in concepts and that we are moving forward  research it to figure out how we're going to do it and then the next step we took was when we hired at him and told him please move forward with maybe a plan to do this and he presented his work plan to us at a joint meeting two months ago and both boards accepted the work plan and i didn't get the sense that the work plan stage that and the staff are going to move forward and implement actually in the act changes like policies and procedures training classifications payrolls structures i did not have the sense that evan was empowered to do all that without issue right accelerate so i don't i disagree with your interpretation of  i'm just saying this if someone you're someone who didn't know anything about any of this came in here and read this document and i think that they would say oh you just gave staff full authority to go back to these recommendations and just do them immediately that's what i say said again if we all for some reason or other just disappear in a whole new group of folks came in and looked at the document we're being asked to sign they would interpret it as saying we allow the mia we want the manager to take all these recommendations and just do them and that's what i'm concerned about i need that the i understand you're saying we want to study this we want to think about it and come up with a an overall plan for doing it but that's not how i  paragraph right here so would it be accurate to say that we should look through the document and find all those phrases and ask lundeen to be right were to ask him to rewrite them well maybe claudie has so he has a having the back story i think i would have read it that way too that there were these recommendations we had here was the reports of consolidation and we want you to go ahead and take those steps to work towards doing that whatever that is so i think that is kind of the way this is structure i did they really thought that was the goal and if that's not the goal i think that's usually change but what it will probably take about fifteen twenty minutes to these you all here as trustees know i've been advocating for poor governance conversations for quite some time for me the last couple joint meetings have been very informative and hopeful as we've talked about what should be next and what big hungry solutions we still need to have i also stand by what i said a few minutes ago which was that i do believe that essex needs to be one community with one new charter with legal representation and equal taxation i know our residents are really tired of paying for duplicate services i am too experience every day our parks our libraries our community programs and our streets i wouldn't as a paper with keep the status quo if we did nothing further but what is remaining to consolidate is at the heart of each of our communities it may not be easy it doesn't table it we need to that is why i fairly believe we should pozen further consolidation of any individual departments until we make strides toward solving world governments with equal representation and why i won't be but for now i would like us to see as extend the current public works after you have possible encourage continued progress of the two departments that they're making well we as our ten members focus on the top three priorities that we've outlined for a joint meeting package on thursday and for those who don't know their enhanced governance framework and structure of the legislative body with equitable representation benefits of economic and overall sustainability and tax equity and their taxation and i really feel  sort so that with number two what i would do is i would change the word approved into except earth except that i would change of address to research steps to implement and then i would remove at the end of that  recommendations but at the end will not be updated on the actual implementation but be updated that we would then be updated on the study of the progress being made of the research because again some of what  that meeting and i asked the question i'm happy i said i'm having a hard time getting my head around how you have a totally consolidated public works department that's responsible to the legislative bodies how is that going to work and it was like well that's not what the plan is and it's so good my point is that i accept these recommendations they're fine but we also have to we can't let the tail be wagging the dog we have to be we have to be to not you know i thought by july of two thousand and eighteen we're going to be a lot do is have fully i don't know what a fully consolidated public works department is doing you still have two independent you know legislative bodies that independent authority and that's that and i think you see the some of this is words on paper and style and expectations i did not take this because it's not my nature to say oh here is i can go do it be hundreds of thousands of dollars of consequences and legal issues but i'm going to go do it because i'm the manager that's not how i operate but i also didn't read it exactly that way consolidating any department has costs and opportunities and other things and when you take a poll or worse for example it's union contracts it's property it's quick  capital etc it is and for quality in who's going to do submerge the thing i would suggest that most of this be a recommendation to the boards for any plan or that plan and put it into place and he'll be updated should there be any conflicts and other things that need policy direction so that's just something i think i agree departments for the public workers and buying ways to work together for the betterment of both communities and i've told you even before you may get incredibly close that were there specific recommendations that you wanted to focus on as opposed to others or is this kind of blanket reference to the recommendations that were contained in there or park so if there are some that are are good recommendations and they're generally acceptable but they have a lot of good locations they could they could mean a lot of different things they could be interpreted a lot of different ways that is so in a bleed into policy areas i could think of so i it's not a specific thing it's just i want to make sure that before any of the recommendations go forward we the elected bodies are hauled in the in there are consulted with that involved in the process  just say that there were just says here are the recommendations it doesn't say how are you going to implement these are still time like you said here's what we think you should do and that's great and then all the sudden we have a document that says here's how we're going to do all these recommendations and it was an so can we do that by june thirtieth we have a joint meeting on thursday i'm not sure of that the necessity of having  in place when the two parties are not in disagreement some form of continuation or are in this case you know an absolute dissolution of the original agreement leave that to  did basically the status quo cooperation that's happening now we're not looking to to disarrange that that's fine and we you know the original document we're looking we continue now and in all the other aspects of it that place i think it's began it's just with the implementation of the recommendations that are in this new piece and that's really where i'm coming in we're going on here and i would imagine that that's this is exactly the kind of dialogue that we're supposed to have apart so worst comes to worse if we don't reach some agreement on thursday i can't see it happening but maybe if that does happen it's still not the end of the world would still have another couple of weeks i don't i think would we could get it want out of this is that something would want to put it in here or does this or that you know we can't get out of this agreement for five years i think again i draw that up to the rest of the trustees how anyone feels about that i don't i don't really hung up on that particular but  just kept it five years but you had a potential terminations at one border another decided something was not quite right and they could terminate right so you have either a shorter term and you know if you know a lot and or you have a lot you can have a longer term with the  have a vote and we have the money we would have to lurch town and village presidents that the budget is changing and we would have to move that money back into the village budget i mean that's a significant undertaking so i don't know if that language covers it's needs to be that soon that it's just there and the keeping in mind that it's a massive undertaking to undo what we've already i know ok and maybe i can address that y there was also the comment of this wall and not going back so if the implication of that clause is such we're not looking to move forward we're also not looking to take back anything and we've seen some of those benefits already in the work that it's being rigid still and there's more to come on it is  emerge you guys have heard that before there's lots of reasons why it might be a whole lot easier if you guys were you know a couple or five hundred or thousand person villages but if you're not near together the second largest community of them on that have co existed even and amongst each other for over two hundred years lot of people's time with cost money and you know folks get nervous and you know do you have to do things that you know so so pretty much the board functions i think you know the way it should and i'm thinking like three hundred dollars a meeting the way real appointments except for the young lady who caitlin hayes who came from the plane commission right the one question i guess i would have for the village board is we've received one application a month so far has not been posted very long do you want to hold it open say for another two to four weeks see if anything else comes in write interview any of those candidates and position we want the best qualified and for the right reasons will you get that if you hold it open for the next month may get no other applicants but at least you've given people time to put their thoughts together puts the posts the opening on the village website as they come up i still you know i don't know where else she posts star do you know if you maybe you could help us with this do you know how long  reviewed housing and we we've been talking about affordable housing and housing needs and so forth and i think from that discussion we decided it might be really interesting it might be a valuable and useful to create it as it needs community to look at various things and i think the focus would primarily be on affordable housing but i don't want to say that that's necessarily true and the other question was do we want to include the town into this here asking you to create the one thing you do you are all a lot of wonderful things but the one thing you are is doing something unusual so i just want to say that you would be following in the footsteps of many communities the change in county which is our largest growing county knowing the retail strength that they have they really want to love just it having creating a housing trust fund and so they knew the policy lever they wanted to pull and they did indeed dive into that and what would it take to  create one different models the different funding streams of thing and then move forward in that direction south burlington think it's a little more than what i've heard you all do are talking about witches let's study the needs let's figure  and full of that and they continue to have a commission that looks to the question of religion town and elaine you said you know pretty much is decided that was my record nation when i first came i approached both the select board and the trustees in some one time frame asking to create a joint commission mainly because i am a fan of regionalism in general when it comes to housing all housing is local but there are real when you're talking about development patterns you've got to really be mindful and so definitely always keeping with then coming regional planning commissions playing in their housing needs assessment and staying alignment with those goals but also in partnership with both the planning commissions for the town and the junction you don't want a housing commission saying we need to move forward in this direction and have the planning commissions with other agendas over here which i don't think would happen but you really need to maintain alignment and so you're thing i you know if you most communities will read the charter and the charter would be accepted by  of knowing the discussion you all just have about really focusing on board governance and not trying to say that you lead with that change i'm just saying that any i would recommend that any char that you put forward  have those the big vision of all those things so that we're not step on toes right off the bat with this but the goal would be theoretically to assess the needs in the broader essex community for housing where are those pinch points and then the hardest part is and what policy levers do you want to pull in response and not all leave but this way i get a lot people emailing me a lot of great ideas that they read about in the morning or you talk to her it happens and they're wonderful and a lot of times we do in a minute or month but they're not always appropriate for that community's needs they get hung up on one thing and it sounds great and this is a win win but that's like a dying shrinking community not a vibrant growing one so you have to really not just look at your needs but look at where you're going and what your demographics are going to be in the future and respond appropriately in a way that terms of just actual structure of the committee what in your opinion works best it's usually a lot of citizen participation and their staff support for it  usually separate from the planning commission separate from any governing partly because it's a national project and so the planning commission is and that's why there are these housing missions are created as plus people with other visitors like me showing up and brought in speak and present focus on things and that lived for less than a year and then they came out with said recommendations the city council approved some of those and then a much smaller ongoing mission remains of five ish people are being reported in the wrong but it's much smaller and they continue to look at the impact of those policy changes and see how they're working and honestly they did a little inclusionary zoning and the new city center and stuff going to happen from wanting to stand there now looking to grow that so that that ongoing mission that would live on into the is some time to sit down with more of the others and kind of kick this around come back to the boards with more of the a terrible term holistic idea and a plan the other thing is you know have to also think about do you want this committee in commission to do is work make its recommendations and then disband or do you want to live like a south burlington and how's that going to work a little bit further back i appreciate the comments that people come up with great ideas or thoughts it is the first one is what is even the definition of affordable and is that the return anymore or is it more like work for us is it the work force see the people who work in or around our community and taking what our rates are locally and trying to figure that out because if you're trying to put in some other type of housing putting in six or eight units in terms of twenty thousand doesn't remove  needs and so i would start with a more simplistic charge of really getting your arms around what the housing needs are in the community and get into evidence point of you know where are the income levels that are most in need and where is the growth going to happen and things like that sometimes we do get a little hung up on the terminology of things you know we're talking about different income strata you know  people talk about for low housing i know what they mean but i'll say you know i wouldn't qualify for many of the government programs that my agency hands out but affordable housing is more important to me than this but you know we just need a formal housing just like all of us do and the fact that seventy six percent of the people who live in the government subsidized housing that supports seventy six percent of our working means that is workforce housing so we can really differentiate affordable housing  am i could make recommendations as someone who works in the affordable housing industry what i think you should do to me those would feel very solitary and that would be state where to go and so the question of what should you do next most often what i see i guess my recommendation would be if i did one thing would be study the housing needs and and when that's done then you can have the next conversation about who is who is the best sat to figure out the policy tools that you want to respond to those needs and whether that be staff or housing commission i mean live on or some like that because that would be a good first step if you were only willing to go so far at this point knowing all the other things you have on the table and i'm familiar that the town of us six has just got the regional  mission drew view their housing policies and look at where maybe some of the barriers are and that's going to be the results of that will be discussed in the two weeks with the plank commission and so you know that'll be really  curious to follow that and see how that dovetails you know maybe the junction wants to do something similar i don't know what region found but  it's living here and working somewhere else is i teach it you know i'm a housing policy class and so the city when you ski i taught a bunch of graduate students how to do a housing needs assessment by doing one for when you ski and there was this citizen involvement in that was limited to when we surveyed citizens to ask why do you think of the housing needs in the four quadrants of when you ski and on the down time but besides that was the city manager council and then from there they create a housing commission with any year to then look at those recommendations and start an acting so that it absolutely can happen here's the trick had a robust enough committee i would be happy to leave a group of ten through how to do this and i don't want to say i'd like because that's really presumptuous of me but i would with the experience just timing it was a semester so that's about four months that we're meet weekly about it and i don't know if the volunteer group of individuals if you could find ten who cared about this issue would want to meet weekly about something for i have no scope so work of many housing needs some spending should i mean it's really going to be if you went down this road you'd really be looking at a half dozen examples of other people that i can imagine a yellow highlighter a yes to this moved out farther to the rich man's the milton's and driving in is is difficult as anything but then you also have we've had this really you did this while i started by saying there are many other communities that have gone down this road before you know i don't want to take away from the fact that it is the right time for you all the tax time and i think that exciting effort if the town the village can look at this to gather knowing how close the markets are with each other i really think you are looking at it and i look forward to giving my time to what i can offer to this but i really think what i really hope that you  and based on some staffing self we use lauren on a part time basis here and there especially during people's vacations and stuff and working on our transition plan to our new date just many things that rick was in the doorway for most of the evening their work public works all working together both groups have been finding projects to work together on  applying for grants we we are very good and apply for and actually receiving grants so and for those of our board members and select board members who work for state agencies just keep coming in with the ideas of what was my what we like using other people's money on screen the blinky science are important on one of the things that i've been talking to the very diligent about our pedestrians and people who don't stop for are just dreams and finding ways to do that i think we've had two weeks or three two weeks of farmer's vendors or they can't keep coming back still put it straight up you know buy something there or they they do come out and they have to pay their employees so  we just are continuing working on a lot of our projects why we are putting out just put out a derby just let her our first employee newsletter  so try to keep the employees communicated and give updates of what's going on both with alignment with benefits with with programs of what's going on so