ok i will call the select board meeting to order and i'll call the essex junction trustee meeting to order we'd like to invite you to rise and join us in the pledge of allegiance plates and if you can remain standing afterwards for a moment i pledge allegiance  i'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's joint select four trustees meeting and ask you to be sure to sign in if you haven't already and just to remind folks to put your phones to silent if you would that would greatly appreciated as well and evan do we have these have some items that are table so but i'm one of them you have seen you received electronically but just in case you didn't have a chance to see it it's tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard if you can state your name for the record i so marketing for high marks for margaret smith and i'm going to say the same thing i said in the last meeting when elaine was speaking right now i could not hear her she's sitting in between two microphones and didn't get picked up so it's not coming through the speaker and it's not coming back here so be nice to hear everyone so they requested me to try to lead into the mikes since we're  think that would i couldn't hear you so i handed out a paper copy of a memo that i sent to the board over the weekend gardening communication on of the governance process and so i just handed out a think ok if there's nothing else for public to be heard then we're going to move on to our business section of the agenda and that's an update on the lyman and colocation so you two had come to us in the past saying here's an idea to co locate both direct departments and we gave you the thumbs up to say yeah go investigate and i know you had set up a series of meetings and meet with staff in kind of our subdepartments was spread out until about march timeframe and with our budgets to this time of year we sped up the process so that we could  add some meeting time tonight and give you a better update so we combined all those meetings in the last six weeks or so and had some really successful meetings of the minds between park staff and our program staff which involved afterschool general program mean senior programming as well as i t and h r and finance and so we also had there were thirteen thirteen of us in mid october that took half of the day and we did a tour of some facilities and we had all completed a strength assessment and so that was really it was really neat from from my perspective we haven't done that on the eighty one main street side and it was really nice to either affirm a couple things or learn a little bit more about ourselves and then compare our counterparts other in our opposites but we found that with a lot of programmers a lot of the after school programmers were similar general program mean administrative assistants had their strengths that were kind of similar and in line so it's just a really neat morning together and everyone is just in a you'll see that this is basically our executive summary of these meetings and our recommendation to proceed we think is wise efficient smart will be will serve the community will provide for one stop shopping will allow for much better collaboration between our apartments departments and you know we kept going through these meetings and we didn't know how they would go and we thought at some point there be a roadblock or like we can't emergency systems or h r is going to put the hammer down or finance is going to tell us we can't do or admin is going to tell us we can't do it or our staff is going to put their hands up and say this isn't a good idea i'm scared i don't want to i don't want to play and  some questions that did come up it was having to remind everybody and each conversation that there's still two separate entities still collecting still operating still running the parks the programs all of that it's just we're all together in the same building it's similar to having finance than it being an afterthought about people coming and going to one place and wanting to come here and then they have to go to maple street if they want to register in the village in the town how many people register online i'm surprised to hear that this is still a a going concern that people need or want to register face to face i would have assumed that by twenty eighteen just about everybody does it online but that's not the case if you see that changing or is this always going to be like this i think from our from  lack we have about sixty seven percent of online registration whether that's women in the end brooke pass renewal or program registration but certain things have to happen in the office like a new in the mail you know so there is that but percentage of working with the seniors more so with a lot of senior programming just like land sees them right in the center we see certain ertainly we had that conversation and elaine is correct that the town outside the village residents who currently are considered non residence for e g r p programming who pay higher fees nonresident fees and also sometimes are not able to register at the same time as residents would be considered residents and from our standpoint to achieve all of those efficiencies and simplicities and then have somebody stand in front of you and say oh you're a resident for this program and not a nonresident for this program and c e o then on resit it it really took the wind out of the whole all the sales you know all of a sudden be telling people that they can't registered a certain time or have to pay more so we feel strongly that in order to do this successfully we need to have one one communication to people and that's their residence if they live in  in we have an expense line in our general fund budget for situations it's its budget at four thousand dollars a year and it's available to village residents to apply for the money separately we collect nonresident visa and  instead of budgeting twenty thousand and nonresident fees we would but we're planning to budget thirteen thousand in the remainder of the thirteen his other communities residents who come yeah that town outside the village residents comprise about thirty five percent of our nonresident fees so the other sixty five percent are coming from willis and colchester  also we talked a little bit about the colocation and what the village is going to offer the town in and ways of facilities and how that works out yeah i mean essentially if we're colocated we would and it's all considered shared space at that point so we met today to talk about the use of our multipurpose rooms of our of our aspire multi purpose slash  workout space so we would meet as a programming team right now we have a programming to maybe j p it would be expanded so that it's one big programming team who's producing one rocher and if they have and so that there e j or p is not losing any program space you know no one's losing anything that they already have just could be a change of location there's about swimming pool at maple street park as i know it's incredibly popular well outside the village residents have equal access to that or that will be restricted no again town outside the village residents would be treated as residents and have access to mean we can't we can't tell you why people currently do come to the pool or don't come to the wall we will do is what we always do is watch trends and community needs and adapt and and village can you just tell me a little bit about what that fee how how you get the money what it's used for today and auto parts so wreck impact fee is collected by the community development department with any residential development new construction that comes along so there's a calculation and based on how many in a dwelling there will be is a certain feel added on for that development and then that's collected and that's in its own little piggy bank but really you know right now the way that the wreck impact fees are it can be used in any way that the community is impacted based on the growth of the community you know it does have to be it's a policy that does need to be refreshed and updated but we're currently using the the study as it had been done and then that's that saved it does need to be used within a certain time or goes back to the developer and it unless there's a like a district claas of a wreck impact feel which there isn't right now that money doesn't have to be used directly on that section of development if that's not really where you know it just means we're having a lot of more a lot more people come into the community than the poor may need something that doesn't mean that the pool has to be right there ok and does it ever help with things like there's more people in this one section of the community and so sidewalks are needed where is that taken out of well normally you would see the impact fee to build a new park ok or to build an addition or build additional parking to a park we just recently used to are using it to upgrade the doors at the senior center to be handicapped accessible and electric because we're seeing a growth in the seniors use of that center and we need to bring the building up to code so that was a use but you'd see it either building a park or a new playground so that that has a expanded use for say the population that is using that park or could be using the park excellent thank you and  one and i just want to make sure we're clear for everyone who might be listening that co locating still means that finance is a separate and therefore debt we are still paying on the pool will still continue to only be paid by the village which is up soon anyway correct  the final payment i think it and on the money aspects we've already talked to vermont systems who is our rex software provider and it's easy to keep our cost center codes the same that they are needed so with the conference room becoming the potential office space can you just make sure there are we talking about the small coffins froome sure right as you walk in or are we talking the big multipurpose room it's a perfect perfect  and then with i see one of the portions talks about having a new position before communications i just want to put a plug in of communication is absolutely key but i would rather see it not be within just recreation but a broader municipality as a whole so of course we need it for recreation but we also need it for many other things too so for looking at a communications person i'd rather see that town village or want to say a wide and we've had some of these conversations with the administration in the last few days and we grappled with the same same issue and rec is such a different beast then than most other municipal departments in terms of we're we're selling things and so our needs tend to be much broader as well as much more specific to certain groups that we're targeting certain programs to as well as more immediate in terms of cancellations closings change locations new brochures coming out  so it would be interesting at that conversation of how that would all integrate but certainly we have expressed some fears of having somebody off site at another another location who's trying to coordinate  communications that are happening multiple social media posts per day front porch warm posts website updates e mails there's just a lot happening absolutely and similar to a public works water main break anything to let people know about that before you know traffic starts it so absolutely are many needs and they probably have one one of those a month and we have five of those day and so that's that's i think the difference and we are we also think it's really important to have one voice you know if there are two people or three people in each separate department that are posting things and ones doing this avenue and the other ones doing that and it's just this it's a mixed message and it just looks murky  if you know we would cope supervise that position but that that individual would be getting things from our parks staff and our programming staff and the childcare staffing and so on so  it would really be someone who who is really well connected to every staff member between the two departments like to circle back to the finance part again the program stan the village and the town have now for fees and all that kind of stuff are two different systems correct ok so can you can you go dig a little deeper on how that's going to work are you going to combined codes but still keep the money separate or how just i'm still not entirely clear on how that's going to work  you know as we look at the ball reserving the first thing we co produced together it will be thirty two pages instead of sixteen and twenty from the two it'll have both of our logos but inside you won't know which program belongs to which we'll only know it internally so all of the fall programs that we did last year are planning to do next year internally when somebody registers they will go to that our pot of money and when they put their programs in the brochure even though they'll be side by side in the same sections they are their programs will go to their budget if we what we think may happen is that we may develop some new joint programs and if that happens we talked about creating a new a new enterprise fund where the separation will be among the you know who you who pays who you know who i think you're paid for and who works for whom and those sorts of things and i understand that were anticipating or are outlook is that will use the budgeting process to get authorization from voters or buy in from the voters or whether whatever the right term is my my question is because the town and village budget timeline set out of sync with each other do we have concerns about one going one way and we're on the other just brazen that is a concern and do we need to communicate what we're talking about here you know early or you know i'm just worried about the whole hornet's nest of past wreck experience coming back didn't we didn't go through a lessons learned the last time we went through this is there any is there anything there that you know we didn't we're not considering here when we you know if we move forward with this to make sure we're not and if there are you know that i have heard folks say in this meeting you know in past meetings that you know the town voted no to a merger in this certainly to the typical user looks like a and everything is you know a lot of the a lot of it still in the back you know it's in the background of the stuff that we you know we're going to need to sort out if we're going to make it a true merger at some point or whether you know how the how that will move forward but i you know i don't know how if we're going to we're going to end up with a publicity nightmare or whatever with regard to how we handle this i just want to make sure that we're careful when we move forward it doesn't look like a backroom deal or you know something you know you know words have come out before about this i just want to make sure we're careful  that you want to come and i mean i think looking ahead and being optimistic the goal in both of our departments as it currently is and to continue that ways to serve the customers and most of them are residents and then we serve the nonresidents but we're serving people and that will still be what we do as our priority and we're making it we're giving them a convenience by being in one spot i mean just this it's wednesday and we've had about ten phone calls just this week asking us questions about e now we're all going to be in one place so we're providing another convenience for our customers think the differences before it was that communion plus a different structure and the structures internally will stay mostly the same and we're still just wanting to provide who we do our job for ok you know just if i can add to that a little bit it made me maybe it will look like the merger from the outside in that's something i think that the boards will have to speak to and staff will have to speak to in the questions come up the board is done a good job in the in the past with fresh set of eyes on the whole process is alignment with actually lining up policies procedures fees stuff like that and having the different departments do it the ones that are consolidated like finance now as it is in the ones like recreation and keep telling brad and allie that i give them a ton of credit for taking this initiative and bring it forward and coming over the plans and having the meetings up there they're doing their director from on high to what can you do to align department saudi departments with the best way for them to do this that they're seeing i'm supportive of it think of it as truth is to get into one place where they can more easily share ideas figure out the brochures the few structures stuff like that  you using as you progress toward moving one department into the others location i think recent history has shown that there was a big credibility gap just a couple years ago when you presented a very similar plan somewhere in many ways and i think a lot of voters need a lot of reassurance that this isn't the same thing or just the same thing reworked decided to go to the voters and talk to them about a new police department one of the big gains of that aside from the pit that they were working in was the operating efficiencies that they were going to gain by having everybody in one building instead of detectives up near hannaford and the police down here and just a complete shortage of space but moving all of them to one building was an increase in operating efficiencies the same thing on a smaller degree happened here when we run invaded this building the whole idea was to have the ability to have departments get together and be able to have that same gain of operating efficiencies i see this as nothing different absolutely nothing different you have two different departments yes it's a little bit different in that regard but the gain in operating efficiencies is going to be huge and to my way of thinking it's going to far away there's there's there's going to be bumps  i think the difference between what the few differences between the breakfast and this situation the biggest check and balance is that the budgets are not being combined and so the town residents will pay their budget village residents will pay their budget so i don't know unless i'm misinterpreting the checks and balances that you're asking about but that backend this is a significant  it's significant standard procedure that will not change and so the residents are not going to be charged more because this is happening they're not going to charge less because this is happening but the town outside the village residents are being included in now without being charged extra fees i think that's a goodwill gesture that makes a lot of sense financially as well and the other difference i think is if i recall correctly we talked to the recreation process last time involved the creation of a third governmental entity that would have taxation authority and a separate board and there was a lot of owner voter concern and confusion about adding a third layer of government to our community and that was what people didn't want and that's not happening either so i'm thinking that this is of is what it is on face value for co locating i appreciated the comparison to the police department i agree mike that's very similar to what we're doing here you know as i just wanted to clarify that i think it's the these two boards problem to deal with with regard to explaining to the residents what we're doing and why we're doing it you know i think bradley done their job and i think it's it's a i think we should be back on the to be clear line and others what i'm talking about is guarding against group think i'm talking about being absolutely transparent i'm talking about a very slow process because only slow government can be good government there were all kinds of things that came up six eight nine months into the process that showed residence there w questionable behavior going on at the highest levels that's what i'm talking about exemplary behavior on the parts of everyone here who is accountable to taxpayers not breaching  showing us checks and balances at every turn and how transparent and honest and ethical you are being because those were some of the hugest breaches of trust that many the user of the services with a ten year old son and a husband who still goes in to sign up for everything i will be very happy to no longer have the hour long conversation of where do i go who's bush or am i looking at what on line services my going to have so i think the work you have put forth is wonderful and solid and i look forward to the transition thank you would also just like to appreciate that this is fairly slow in the sense of we're talking about co locating with two completely separate budgets that would be approved by two separate boards possibly a chance to talk about later coming together to approve potential budgets together but we're not saying brad now we go create a whole new entity we're saying come back to us if we need to make budgetary changes let us know otherwise keep doing exactly what you're doing so thank you for taking this place and s impact to be able to align your program so that they're complimentary and not just company by accident or you know or after the fact but actually be thoughtful in that so i see this is a potential positive for the community and i do thank you for taking the initiative and going through the process to to bring this forward at this time so since you know there are questions on the board i'd like to just open it up to the public if there's any questions from the public that you'd like to know but he's talked about day care and one of the issues in the past has been that people in the junction were eligible to apply to the day care programs that they run and people in the town were not able to take advantage of that so i don't know what whether that's even been thought up i'm i'm really concerned with moving in together because it looks like cohabitation it looks like it's becoming one person and people on the outside won't be able to tell it it's two departments still think it's just one department so you know they say they're staying separate but it's not going to look like it from the outside it's going to look like they've merged they've got one budget one maybe two budgets but one brochure one person one website  know how does that not look like one wreck department so the voters very clearly said two years ago don't merge and yet here we are and to me this they may say they're not merging but it sure looks like merging to me and we renovated this building so that there would be space for the town rec department that i guess was money wasted because it's not going to be used for our direct department so  oh and i wanted to tell you my my daughter in law takes my granddaughters to the junction pool because they have a waiting that they really like so for whatever that's worth it i'm not exactly sure which child so there are a variety of childcare things if it's afterschool daycare  daycare they do pay a nonresident fee so and they also we prioritize and rolling residence first so by doing this town outside the village residents would have greater access to and decrease reshaped the update there will be some slight adjustments to budgets because you can have some efficiencies for instance with the brochure although you have one brochure it's not going to be it'll be twice as large postage will be one instead of two and you know again will be identifying more if we really are going to be co locating and finalizing budgets you know one automatic cost savings is we're both separately hosted from vermont systems in the cloud and we would be one system one maintenance fee one hosting three instead of  duplicating that and areas you know not seventy eight hundred that was mentioned in here is you know a quick automatic that we know of but there's still a lot that's on the i have a process question so what is the process for he me so i guess i'm assuming you're tell us the process so so we have this information i'm assuming it goes back to the two respective board separately for discussion or i guess i'm just curious where we go from here well good question because that's why we created joint board meetings so that we didn't go back to the number one and then you have a comment and they respond and then the town has a comment and they respond maybe differently and that's not what you thought so my my point would be that i guess is that a joint board meeting which is also why we are asking for joint budget meetings when things have affects in both budgets it's not appropriate for one day to just act the not the other so that's why we want to start bringing things that have joint impact not that they're together but they have impacts separately and together so i would say that if your joint meeting if this work or the budget to finalize because all of us will be part of the package that goes to the water's correct yes i think  special attorney for advising us on issues all things consolidation and governance in charters thank you for coming dan and everyone's going to get a chance to ask questions in a moment i'm not going to go through this line by line i'll just give a very brief synopsis of what we've done i think most of the board members are aware of what the committee was charged with we saw our charge as to come up with a number of possible governance options governance change rican reconfiguration options which we worked on we put together a crude list then we with dan's assistance we went through it and got legal advice got his legal insight about what would need to be done some of the thing one of the options was eliminated because it wasn't going to be it wasn't legal it wasn't something a legislature would approve i would say at this point what i'll do in a moment is let is let each of you we can just sort of discuss all of these and also invite any of the board members who haven't been who weren't on the committee to  any thoughts that they had about it and add anything i would say that right now what the subcommittee would like to do and irene and elaine and max can correct me if i'm wrong i think what we would like to do  probably is at least have another go around i think we kind of feel that we this is a little bit the document you have in front of you is a little bit unpolished we would like to maybe work on a little bit more but with your input  i think at that point what we see ourselves doing if you if you scroll back through the document and you can we made up a little flow sheet the idea is that we would use this as a basis for creating a some kind of a public engagement survey or document that we would i believe should go into every home in the community perhaps that's not what other people think but we would use this is a public engagement document let everybody in the village in town look at these give us their feedback give us their insights maybe create a survey form or they could we could have some kind of a structured feedback on it and then we would take that feedback and from there try to pare the whole thing down into hopefully one option which we would then go back out with to the community for a vote but the public engagement piece would have to allow two way conversation would allow us to understand what people think out there and it would also be telling folks out there what we're doing why we're doing it and so forth  so that's that's kind of the thinking i would just want to answer to we've had two concerns that we had going forward that i think it might be reasonable for me to just quickly mention irene has been very concerned about the fact that she would like to have had a presence distinctly and specifically for just four people from outside the village to be involved in the subcommittees work the rest of us  ine and max and i just had a lot of problems with that it seemed like it was kind of being a little bit selective and kind of pushing people who are who village residents who are also town residents not allowing them to participate irene will  present that argument a moment and he was concerned about financial data and why were we asking for financial data and i i wanted financial data because i had noted that in the past past all past merger efforts  consolidation efforts the very first question and i went back over last night we're talking just talking about recreation i went back over the minutes of the meetings and over and over again were people asking they were asking how much is this going to cost how much is this going to cost why can't you tell us how much it's going to cost why is it going to cost more in the town and lower in the village so there are lots of questions about finances so i thought it was important inappropriate for us to have that worked in right at the beginning i think at this point just one second what i'd like to do at this point is sort of loosely go through this but also take note of the fact that d m is here and dan can answer any legal questions that you have  i'll stop there thanks andy i need to highlight that because the financial data that was provided includes the taxes paid by my employer that when we get to that part of the discussion i need to recuse myself and  i i'm just going to say that i don't understand at all how the taxes that my employer pay i relevant to the choice and you don't you can't tell me why otherwise i'd have to leave the room but ok i won't i don't want to be involved in that i know exactly why i took in so the fine all the others but i don't i object to the fact that it was included because it didn't exclude me from the conversation and because i do not believe that that particular if you scroll down through the governance choice options we also made up a list of some way of evaluating each of these and we went through the exercise in a lane put a lot of effort into doing this  and we we the four of us evaluated them on the basis for the back of the ear you went past it well that's it yeah but we each independently went through and rank these about just to give it just to have a sense of what where we were how we thought about them and we we kind of debated whether to include this piece with this document the reason being is that as irene has said we don't want to seem like we're we're biasing anyone's any decision that we're we're we're favoring one option versus the others we really want genuine transparent objective  public feedback on these and so we are a little hesitant that if we go forward with a document saying well we think option whatever x is better than our option why and for this reason and that gets out to the public it could bias the vote on the other hand there is probably a very good argument that you have nine experienced elected officials sitting here in our opinion since i think collectively would probably have about thirty forty years experience  on these boards why not include our opinion so again that's something that we thought we'd leave up to the full boards to discuss how much do we want to include our opinion or do we not want to have our opinion  union included we thought that would be an interesting point to have the rest of you discuss with us thank you so i guess what i'll do is i can throw throw it open and say invite anyone to start asking questions about option a option b c why did we include it and if any if any of you have any questions i can take you through it yet go ahead laura i have more questions for you and if you can start there thing and then option b is a new single target community with a single board and voting districts my question for those is around tax rate and both of them in the options pros and cons or whatever they're called we talk about merging in those and equalizing tax rate so my question is if we created the new single charter and the new board do we have to at the same time tackle the tax inequity the budgets the money piece of it or could we do it in increments where we say well we think we should have one charter because of the type of community  i didn't have a nice pat answer so i went back and did a little bit of research the answer is that you can make adjustments for in let's think about debt in two different ways there's sort of long term capital debt like the i think the recreation department was talking about retiring i think of the debt on a pool you know that type of debt that can be handled in one way and you could create a plan that would do that wouldn't you wouldn't force the new entity or the or the other entity that haven't enjoyed that or voted on that you know they would be burdened with it it could be retired in one way but i think the real question is sort of ongoing obligations could you keep certain services that were delivered in the town outside the village or the village separate as you went forward and in fact under statute it does allow for special taxes for special services to certain districts so you could keep that separate so it's really a policy question from your point of view and you know you take for example the rec department and the question is you know right now you're maintaining it in in the same way that you could after a merger which is as separate budgets separate tax sources under under fourteen eighty three of title twenty four would you want to do that forever and that would be i think a policy question that these boards would have to to wrestle with but the answer is that yes you can have for example if you know inside the village you do sidewalk and you don't do it outside the  village you could have a special service and a special tax that would relate to that it would have to be laid out in the charter plan so that they would have to decide before we get it right in the end  both the charter and what i would call the merger plan so i mean what what what you'll develop if you do go forward generally is two key documents one would be the charter changes but the other would be sort of a master plan that would outline this and explain this to both of you and that would be you know what the voters would be reviewing so that they would understand because having pushed harder changes through i can tell you that it's often hard to explain it to anyone who would be done and then the charter provisions themselves to effectuate it i think i a follow up question here are there any options that were discussed in the subcommittee that would allow us to merge that governance but merge anything else right away you know the problem becomes one of representation so that if you merge a board into one i mean it would it would pose difficulties in this is one of the of sorry this is one of the issues that we i suggested was not a workable option because you have your charter you have your each of you the town and village to merge the governance of the two creates representational issues who's elected whom and and what are they actually representing the well dan now option d we said we could have the village become a special district right and if the village remained especially if we designated the village as a special district it could have separate taxes you could assign separate services municipal services dept that just apply for the village and are only taxed within the village as a way of achieving some of the things that i think both of you were just talking about zach wrecked right right in a special district would be it's often a way to go for municipalities that are keeping not just certain services separate but really a larger department separate in a special district is really water varies the probably the best example currently that has done that where they've taken some of the village services and they've converted them into the utility district to manage and to run those things made special district creates its own governing body and it has its own management structure it's just for a limited purpose  but the sort of breakthrough that i had in research from our subcommittee meeting was that you know for some of these smaller questions which you didn't have the support for looking back into title twenty four there is statutory authority for such special taxation of certain services that do not extend to the other other sections of the of the merge the to continue on that same thought of when you have a special district in any and all cases i think from what i've looked at towns that have special districts their representation all elected at large so there is no unique representation for that district elected there's no election unique elected representation for any of those districts is that correct in that in that the large  governing body decides all of the budget issues for that town including the special district no not not necessarily and i just hate to pick on waterbury but they have their own elected body that's separately elected from that special district that does the act of governing and a lot of times what will happen is with fire districts or special districts they'll have they'll have special they'll have special elections for those if you actually specially elects some of the representatives of that from each of those means polities but they also send representatives from there their various boards this would be an actual chartered special district or at least it could be  for that purpose how would that differ from the way the village operates and how would that differ from the way the village operates now it sounds like we're just changing the name but it's basically saying you know the idea of a special district is an idea of a limited  so that you know i mean they came out for example of fire districts their job is to manage water it's not to provide police service it's not to provide fire departments it's to provide one thing or to provide two or three things and so special districts are often limited in their function they don't provide general governance either so that they're really they're really focused on that service and they're there newer creatures i mean these special districts are  not you know that's that's a trend in especially you don't see it in vermont so much but certainly out west there is a lot of special districts that are created but you know vermont has them as well and i guess another example of this was created on the state level was the regional special districts for solid waste and that's their job solid waste so that the town does not have to dispose of lead paint and other nasty things they do it  remind us i think i have this right in the committee you told us that a town is that large a city has wards they are a town select board all of the members are elected at large and the town doesn't divide itself up into smaller districts for the purposes of representation generally it doesn't and what i was what i was getting at i hope i was this point was that as the default rules for a town its at large select board representation so you know they have everyone from three to five to some places have seven it's all out large representation  south burlington i think is a good example of something that calls itself a city but still has a select board so it's out at large representation but cities traditionally have been broken down into districts and i've called wards to separated out from other uses of our district but specific voting wards that's the way burlington montpelier and i believe rutland have have divided up for their governance because you have these you have dense population but it may not be uniform in the same way that a town does in their voting so they will create these districts to make sure that each area has a voice  and and generally you'll have you know specific going districts and you can either have at large council members and or an at large elected mayor that will represent sort of  whole but that's generally what what what they do with cities because of the population so what you're saying is in general it is not the practice for a select board to have voting warrants or districts no a follow on to that could we create a talent council and remain the town of essex but have a council that has those specific words you know you know that's a possibility it's just not  traditionally done but if that's what works too to make this there's a possibility so it's the name of the entity it's the name of the governing body not legal makeup of the municipality determines that you know generally it tends to have you know the there is a urban or rural or suburban make up but the idea of governance there's nothing that would require and again this is where you know you get into the ability of the legislature to change the governance structure of a municipality the default and generally what's worked is a select  model that's the vast majority of cases but if there were specific reasons driving the decision there's nothing preventing the legislature from ultimately approving if the voters supported  a district based or ward voting ward based representational system and that the absentee where we have a new single charter community with single board and voting districts so that allows us to remain a town but have representation based on two wards so there are a missing something you know it's it would you know i mean the one thing i guess and it is don't get too stuck on the name city town village because those are really there's no legal requirement where if you're a town you have to have this type of government turf your city you have to have this type of government traditionally and generally it's true towns have select boards cities have city council with districts voting wards and mayors but you know if you choose to call yourself a town and remain so you can do that and you can change the governance structure based on your needs and the needs of the that the voters determine to be a political the only caution i have in this is generally out of a conservative lawyers nature is that you know a time you reinvent the wheel or change the wheel radically from a circle to a square you should have a good reason to do so not just simply for the sake of let's see if this will float or roll i think it's maybe and so you know i would certainly caution you that you have these existing models for a reason they've generally worked if there's a reason to change them then that's fine you have that power to do so but you should look i had i thought i had tried to ask this question previously and i think a different question was answered than i and i asked in my written questions and you've mentioned that you can have an entity a town a city or whatever that has a board that runs the entire entity and then have a district inside it that runs itself with its own board can i assume then you could also have another district that's the rest of that town that also has representation its own representation right so that's that's kind of one of these since scenarios here i think was a right was well that was one of them anyway so my question that i asked that i would try to ask was is and i think there was a proposal at one point to have a situation where you had a board that runs one part of the town a board that runs one part the other part of the town and then those two boards merge together to merge to run the whole thing right was what scenario scenario you had then i don't know if it still is my question was what was what was proposed there was that the of the individuals that made up to those two district boards would then constitute the whole board and my question is can you be elected to a district board position and a town board position with a single elected to two governing boards with a single vote is the question so is so essentially setting up and and i'm not trying to change make sure i understand what your question is answered is the idea of you would essentially create two municipal entities the village and the town outside the village or two villages or two villages you call and then and then you have a town and the idea that the governing board for the villages would be elected directly by the the citizens of each of those yes and then those those those trustees would then automatically become the select board for the town over it off the bat is how would you control one village from either expanding or changing their representation if there are separate charter and you know i think it would require you know it more centrally what you're creating is art is another level of government and you know obviously that's the question you have to pose yourself but could you do it in theory we do similar types of things where we send members of select boards or city councils to regional planning commissions  and other boards that are appointed only to the right but i mean it's one of these things of the sort of the boards themselves but you could set it up that way there's it's one of those things ok one of the things that we've talked about and maybe because we're on camera you mentioned montpelier in the state legislature yes and how they view these things from villages and towns could you maybe recap for everybody how are your looks at certain of these options or not specifically but over the past what they've thought of well they've had no problem challenging towns or cities when they've proposed charter provisions before it that the legislature doesn't agree upon and you know that's the sort of number one rule about municipalities is that we are creatures of the legislature and so the legislature has the final say in you know both the government office committee in the house and the senate tend to take very conservative views of you know they want to make sure it works they want to make sure that it's supported that it's the stain  all so they do tend to school a lot of questions they do want to make sure that it's it's clear that it's laid out they want to you know would certainly require any any change is going to have to require making sure that the government office committee understands the purpose of it why it's happening and and what benefit is rendered on it because if the legislature doesn't see a benefit rendered upon the community as a result of it they won't approve it and there have been many charter changes that have died on the government off for not even brought up to a vote and a great example of course is you know the city of billiard owns berlin the outside for one pond except for one strip and they were governing berlin pond under an old public health order from the one nine hundred twenty s there was a supreme court decision that said that's not good law you can't do what you're doing stop so city montpellier past charter change amendments said oh yes we can and they brought it before the government ops committee and the government office committee you know hearing testimony from both the city from other people from voters people in berlin from an are particularly you know let that one die in the committee for because it was inconsistent with their other principles and other ideas so even though it had overwhelming support from the city my failure they weren't going to advance it and i think that does that give a summary of the lines of what you're hoping very much and you also said that they don't like pitting one town or village against the rest of the state right right and causing a problem somewhere else right you know i mean they have to they have to look at the municipalities as a as a whole you know so that if you know one man it's pallet he is causing the other discomfort or pain they do have to you know that  and certainly because it's a legislative process and open anyone who wants to object can come in and give persuasive testimony and you know so you can have one community saying we want to change this charter and do this and it affects another community way your says we just want to send all of our sewage straight down the one who ski without treating it you know by charter and borough and middlesex says hey wait a minute you know they're going to hear that testimony and even if all the people of my failure hundred percent approval for this you know the legislature is going to say yeah but that causes a disproportionate impact outside of your minutes will borders and so that's certainly something that they look to as well no not withstanding dan's warning to not try something just for the sake of trying it i thought it was kind of that fascinating discussion that we had and it about about  towns do decide to become cities and it was and it's pertinent because i think the four of us were surprised when we started ranking these the concept of creating a city with a mayor i won't say where it went but it went pretty high or higher than i think any of us expected it would have so i just like you maybe it might just be enlightening dan if you could just talk about that why why is why is the city with the mayor and we talked a little bit about a strong there in a week in a city council were what are the benefits and the drawbacks of that versus a town of about the same size with the select board so i think it's first important to really start off in talking about the difference between a strong and weak mayor because there's a very big difference between the two of them a strong mayor is the picture you have in your mind of like bill daley the mayor the strong mayor who runs the town and the best example in vermont of course burlington who's a strong mayor in a sense that he that's his job every day he goes into his office he has power to appoint staff he effectively is the both the city manager as mayor and that's a strong of system the weak mariel system is often called the city manager mayor system where you still have a city manager who does the day to day operations of the city and the mayor is  has more limited power but still important powers so city montpelier is a good example of that you have a city manager bill frazier who's been there you know for a long time and he does the day to day running he hires fires of points department heads and and staff organization very much like you have here the mayor of montpellier presides over city council and she has powers to veto  but she actually doesn't vote on legislation until there's a tie or unless there is a tie so if there is a prose will be for seek counsel and it passes you know six zero she doesn't vote or five one still doesn't cast her vote only if it's a three three and but she does have certain veto powers over certain certain legislation and what a mayor system based system does you know a strong mayor is different and that basically what you're doing is you're wanting and this is the older model is to incorporate a certain political accountability in a day to day management you know that comes with both pluses and minuses plus being that you know just as in burlington you see when people are dissatisfied they can cast a single vote and change a lot the downside is that you know it's a very technical job and not everybody who's elected mayor and not everybody who ends up serving as mayor is necessarily someone with that background and so a lot of times you see in strong mayor real systems you know either a lot of the day to day activities not withstanding the fact the mayor is the mayor handed off to people who know what they're doing you know or you know you have a lot of turmoil and the possibility that you know a mayor with a very strong agenda may or may not match the will of the citizens or you know even the structure of the city you know can create can create issues for better or for worse what creating then voting districts in these wards what they do is it gives the ability to have different interests represented so in a case like what you have where you have some some lines that have existed really historically whether or not those change at least from today you can say we're going to create districts so that everybody has a voice and and so that you know the counter example i can offer is you know you live here and chip in and county your state senators all six of them are elected at large you know some people think that's great some people probably don't think it's so great but i can certainly say that all six of them don't necessarily represent all of the different constituencies in the most populous county in vermont you know so it's not the differences if you had representation from districts then you know conservative milton might have a stronger voice or you know liberal burlington might not have as strong a voice or you know joe byrne might you know have a different say in these things and you would have this differently you'd have this difference and it would create different voices it is neither i can't say that's a better thing or worse thing it's just a difference and the same thing with warts is that it gives people the opportunity have voices  in these different districts it has the it has a downside in that it can perpetuate the differences you know if somebody is elected from the village and they see the village as their turf and what they have to represent then they become vested in making sure that the status quo or the benefits that they see having being held by them remain with them and so some of the more trade offs that you might from zero at large broader view may not happen at the same time that may be really important to preserve because you know you're entering into a new creation and obviously people want to make sure that they're not lost in a stampede or that there is some  you know change and the best example i can give of that fear sort of coming to life is city toronto a number of years ago expanded the corporate limits of toronto to include a number of different suburbs so the core of toronto was a very liberal you know as you would expect from an urban center that herb bain sort of liberal core and it was now surrounded by much more conservative suburbs and her mayor rob ford who was elected from you know the constituency at large that was dominated by these conservative suburbs and it's still true today i think his brother is actually mayor now and it's because there will always be in toronto a dominant voting block by these by these particular neighborhoods and so you know having a city council make sure that while that may exist you know the the core doesn't get ignored or have no voice at the table and those are reasons why they'll often have had districts so i think that's sort of a meandering overview i don't i'm sure i didn't touch upon everyone but i think it gives you a general sense about what the differences are  we all know where white white river junction is and it's it's not and it's not actually an entity right right what's what's going on there how is that i mean it's there's hartford has five five villages four libraries at the list here but five cemeteries to water districts to sewer district seven historic districts and three overlay districts but it's you know they've got creature and white river junction are both in that t unincorporated they still exist everybody knows where they are god bless them what's you know is there something we can learn there well you know it's one way to go  could do that here you know if you can do that here and it's you know it's interesting in that in the in the town charter of hartford it does call out the various unincorporated villages you know that's interesting that's not what you have here you know it is a sort of it's it's a kind of merged entity where you have these unincorporated village unincorporated areas i don't know specifically how they how they have managed that because i haven't represented the town or given them to them lately but you know they have these very  different these very different areas and clearly they have some planning that highlights them because if you've been a white river junction you see that they've poured a lot of time and money into making that viable and workable downtown and you know there's there's state money there there's you know town resources that are being put into it neva track to some private entities like the center for cartoon studies  know and the question is how have they choose and chosen to balance that with the other parts of hartford that are last rural iowa less or less urban and more rural and that that would really be you know something you can talk with them about  and it may be it may be a way to go what it certainly shows is that simply because something is not incorporated doesn't mean it disappears we still have your junction in the city of montpellier it does not exist as anything other than a sign and a train station but if it persists and people still talk about going out to the junction but you know practically speaking it doesn't have any separate you know it's seven seven select board members elected at large yeah yeah and you know and again you know that's something that they've chosen to go either inherited and this is a classic for our problem is you either inherit these things or somebody makes a choice at some point and such a difficult terrible process you never go through it again residents vote to turn off the lights and become part of the town with out town outside the village residence and what would happen yeah i mean what would village as a municipal corporation it's kind of similar to what happens when a business decides to dissolve they'd have to come up with a plan and certainly the legislature in approving that dissolution would have to approve any you know what do you do with the debt what are you going to do with this what are the assets where are they going i mean there would have to be a plan now would they have to seek approval from the from the town my best read of this is that no  but they would have to come up with answers to those  questions one thing i want to make sure my understanding isn't incorrect with option g where does all the village charter where starts explain how often she changes the status quo i think there's an assumption here i want to just call out where it says that  consolidates all that was department and services into existing town government if we dissolve the village charter exactly to what our attorney is telling us without changes to the town charter we're making an assumption then the town would take that over so if we going to move forward with this option i think means some clarity to either call out and say and have the town take everything over or have two options one town take everything over or we shut the lights off and goodbye i'll let dan answer that but i just want to cut in and say if earlier that's why i said this is not completely polished i mean we we were kind of under a time crunch to try to get this out so we recognize in a lot of the the dialogue in the options and discussion we want to try to you know  up quite a bit so you're right you're absolutely right but i didn't and one response sure and i just wanted to add you know that me and i think part of the reason why there wasn't more put into that is that that wouldn't necessarily require charge changes on behalf of the town you know for asset transfer that would that could be done wouldn't require necessarily legislative approval because you're have a record apartment and so it's just assuming some of those assets maybe a fire sale prices but you know  that you know part of that's unknown and so there might have to be some adjustments if there's parts of the chart town charter or parts that the town would take over that they don't have the authority to do so ye mean point out there's two options really with options which i think you addressed during the other thing i just want to also mention is that in looking at this making sure that we all understand moving forward it's not only one option there are a few of these options where you can actually combine a few of them so that just as we're talking about this it's not that we're saying option a is great and it's the only one we're going to consider or that option b is fantastic but the options like b and h i think yeah b and h could actually happen at the exact same time  yeah just make sure that's right awareness is there i'll mention another thing max had asked this and i was interested in it too right now for if we did nothing if none of if we decide to stop all of this silliness and just stay where we are we have a number of ammo use for example the public we have an m what we have a hand of a quasi i consolidation of the public works departments on the basis of an m o u and we have a unified manager on the basis of an m o u and we asked dan you know how long can we keep this up with m o u's day and we'll answer but it was not infinitely we do have to probably come to some decision and try to do something with these we can't they can't become permanent documents and let you embellish on that a little bit more down here i mean you know at a certain point well there's there's a couple of reasons why and i'll start with the more practical ones i think the city  case i mentioned about the pond is a great example where you know if the law changes and you're relying upon these private agreements that are kind of outside the law you could find yourself without the legal authority to do what you're doing and it could come to a crashing halt  you know on a practical basis is not a it's not a black letter law as we like to say and so it's it's a variable that can affect things like bond ratings  that can affect the stability you know one board that chooses not to renew undermines they're not compelled to renew or they could be you know decide we're going to be harsh negotiators and change it in a way that destabilizes and you know the other the other problem is that i think ultimately what the what both the law and the state favor are if you're going to make something like this permanent that you can't fight so it's clear otherwise you end up with a great deal of confusion and for citizens and the state and you know it can it can along but the bigger it grows the more complicated and unwieldy it becomes so that's my general thank you any other questions for dan right now i'd like to you have something other to ask it well you can they'll be more time we can just but i'd like to kind of maybe move us along to the next steps and i think that what i said in  general sketch of what we would like to do on the subcommittee is we would like to have another we would basically like to keep it going but we are also cognizant of the fact that mike can andy and laurie with all the andrew that you're you're also very interested in this and so we don't want to hog the spotlight if you want to change the situation if you think we want to keep the subcommittee going or do you want to do something else have some other process i'd like to just sort of get your get a sense of that right now any thoughts like i am all for if there is if there's one more meeting that the sub committee feels that they need to do to polish this as to borrow your verb to polish this i guess the suggestion that i would make would be are there any of these options that can be consolidated in any way are they are they so close that you could consolidate them and instead of having eight different options  and then come back and come back with that at the next joint meeting going forward from there i mean i would see  i would see the possibility of the group deciding where to go next but it would be my hope that at some point we would involve the public with  the ideas that we're considering max and i talked about this a little bit i guess the idea the idea that's being floated out there would be grab to create citizen committees again much the same as what we did when we were looking for a new unified manager i think that serves two purposes it involves the electorate electorate and  in a very definite way and number two that process worked very very well the first time around and i would think that that there would be no reason why we wouldn't want to try to do that  again i would only add to that that i think one of the most important things we could do after polishing this would be for all of us too come up with a realistic timeline of what we want to accomplish because i can tell you we we started meeting back in july and all of a sudden it was october and we were scrambling to put a lot of i think this is this with everything else that's going on this is this is a slow moving and there's a lot of documents there's a lot of documents flowing around through e mail and we're trying to on the one hand edit them and on the other hand not violate open meeting law and it's a tricky process it's a it's a difficult process so i think a realistic timeline would be the other piece that i would say we want to do i would like to refer to the document i handed out earlier  i don't think there's any rush for us to do any of the work we're doing and in the the memo i wrote to the boards i talked about the firearms discharged public in gage processed which is ongoing and has been for nine months i talked about the thoughtful growth in action process which went on for five months and reached out to three hundred different people or to obtain feedback from three hundred different people and i talked about the heart and soul process which lasted a year and reached over a thousand people and my point of bringing all that stuff up is that this process that we're talking about right now is far more important than all three of those other things put together and all three of those things had paid facilitators and we invested a lot of money and time and effort in all of them and we got great results from all of them so i don't feel like i'm in a rush to set up a timeline just yet and i don't feel like i'm in a rush to narrow down all these choices just yet what i would like to recommend is that these two boards consider creating an r f p for a facilitator of some kind either a business or an individual practitioner who has expertise in community facilitat for something of this magnitude what assuming we're going to continue on the way we have i think rather than focusing on the ones that have a lot of yeses i think we should focus on the ones that have a lot of don't knows so we can answer those questions so that rather than making a decision based on i'm not they were making a decision ok i'm sorry maybe that's the wrong wrong choice of words discuss don't know enough don't know enough about that topic and i don't want to make sure that we're not crossing off things because we don't know what i think the thing that we discovered i think when we put the list of you know the evaluation components like what you know like safety does it further heart and soul values does it do this we realized that something like safety is a policy decision i mean any any of these options it's that's how much whatever government entity you created this is you know how much money that entity wants to spend on police and fire and emergency response and it would work with any of these so a lot of these it's not inherent in the governance structure whether it improves communication that's those are more along the line of policy than on the form of government there is and so that's why we had a lot of don't know but i i do agree with you i think it's very interesting because ideally we all should have had exactly the same response to all of these and the fact that there is so much confusion sort of shows where we were not not understanding what what we're saying in yeah there's still a lot of work to be done here grid the other thing i think the to follow along with you know discussion earlier about hartford and white river junction i haven't seen any outreach to other towns that have done a merger i don't know if your there's any plans for the group to do that i think i'd like to encourage that especially to talk to hartford to understand you know what they do their town plan talks about all of their different areas  fact they on top of their unincorporated villages they have hamlets that they identify as well that you know for example but their cars or whatever could be considered a hamlet because it's got a history or something and so i'd like to encourage the group to go you know learn from others who have been through successful and failed mergers if that's possible but just to understand why things were done the way you get it you get a feel for how things why things were done the way they were or   march twenty fourth we had a day long session on this topic we paid somebody to work not mentioned in here by the way but that that information other than i think the representation question is come up pretty clear i'd like to make sure that we go back and review that make sure that we're including the public comment that we've already gotten in discussion and i'll circle back to what i was going to say originally is i'm not crazy about going forward with  hurry and i and i think this is a very good forum i've learned a lot from dan here tonight in the few questions that that he's answered cleared up a lot of things and you know for me it's on the nagin izing over some things anymore the the o not attend the meetings because it's my understanding of open meeting law that if i do show up and i even listen to what you're talking about that i'm a passive participant in that i'm generating and developing a quorum because i can't claim that i'm there as well as a non select word member if i show up so  i would i would go back to elaine's earlier comment i'm not in any particular rush i don't want to make a rush to judgment here but i would also say that coming back with a more polished version of the work that the subcommittee has done so far is our obligation as elected officials i  think i think before we involve the public or go through the money of hiring a facilitator all of us have to know and agree on the options that we want to put out there and right now we are nowhere close to that i think another meeting or two by the subcommittee and then a joint meeting to come back so that the entire committee i do agree with andy i'm feeling left left out a little bit i understood the concept of a subcommittee i think for the work that we're doing now in the work that you have accomplished so far i think that was a good idea but i think now it's time for the boards to get involved before we decide are we going to do a survey there are we going to do a facilitator and then a survey of all all of the what's next steps feel as if one more meeting would be good to publish this thought maybe combine some things like make a suggested but that it is our responsibility to now work on this as a group and i too have learned a lot from dan and i think it's beneficial to hear everyone's comments and discussions and i appreciate the work that's been done so far because i think you have advanced us further than we would have gotten if we were doing this all together i will also say though i'm i also am not in a rush except i appreciate dan's comments on governing by m r u and i really am concerned with our continued efforts and evan's great job continued consent continuing to consolidate and that worries me that were we seem to be running on this path to consolidate but we're all saying we're going to take our time over here and what if we don't get to a conclusion on the site now what are we doing over here so i think we have to keep that concept on track and together and realize that there might be some of us who start saying no to any more consolidation because we're not getting anywhere on the governance side so again having you go you've already cut out a few different sentences of what i was going to say so thank you but i do think that the subcommittee the charge was to was to do the research you're doing the research is not yet finished so please finish the research have a nice polish document and then definitely a feel that we need the need to have the conversation of how do we then involve the broader community in this and in terms of the in terms of the urgency my only urgency is i said this before november of two thousand and twenty there's going to be a fairly significant election we always talk about how we want to make sure that these decisions are done with with as much participation as possible aligning that timeline i think will help to make sure that at least we had the numbers for participation my only concern though is i want to make sure that we have informed as many of those voters as possible so that it's not just a voting one line down and that those check boxes are filled out as intelligent informed as possible ok thank you so there's one more thing i forgot to bring up that i really wanted to mention and that's the number of districts or wards if we're going to go that way we currently actually do have three voting districts now you know from a state and federal standpoint we've got the you know the there was two reps in the village two reps in the town then one up where i live in rural sense perhaps identifying with each of these options what towns or cities or hamlets or whatever in vermont exists and taking and he's suggested in reaching out to them because i think one of the things i'd like to also include with this committee's effort is some pros and cons and by reaching out to the these communities that would help give us i think a good robust list of pros and cons that we could then bring back to the full boards and have a full discussion now with a more complete data set does that sound reasonable yes that sounds reasonable i would only add that we may not be able to get that there maybe some maybe some that are that accommodate us and i also want to add i can guarantee you there is no community in the state of vermont that has more experience with consolidation than us all of them failed of course but we have it goes back a hundred years so we're kind of like the expert and the only thing i was going to add as far as reaching out you know you do have to careful because some of these towns consolidated fifty years ago so they may not have the memory like reaching out to hardwick would be fascinating except ok i just want to confirm with the boards in general that if the subcommittee goes back to the drawing board and does some editing and combine some scenarios and doesn't combine other scenarios that you're not thinking about when we do that we are making decisions on behalf of the boards as to which scenarios are most appropriate and that we are not ranking them in any way and that if we do consolidate some options together that the boards recognize that when we're all together again we could pull them all apart reassemble them i just want to make it very clear that the subcommittee is not making any decisions on behalf of the community right now or not bring any recommendations to the ports thank you at one point we got a memo from evan talking about the top three goals that we all seem to have from a very long list that had been generated and it was tax equity equitable representation an economic stability so i would suggest that as we go combining our rearranging and finalizing what we want to present to the drawing boards that we keep those in mind and make sure that each of our options at least addresses those things wholeheartedly  agree i would like to add that so that colorful list up there has a left column a long series of criteria that we the question was that we were all supposed to answer when we rank those scenarios was does this particular scenario meet this criteria or help accomplish it right and so narrowing the list is a good idea because those are more specific things that a governmental entity could address as opposed to does it meet public safety we don't know it might it might not so i wanted to get back to that comment about the don't know so it wasn't that we just didn't get it it was that we really couldn't tell whether this particular scenario would address that particular criteria so our criteria need to be adjusted  not the scenarios were not her answers i would just like to second andy's comment about remembering that we had a very long meeting with many many residents on march twenty fourth and there's incredibl valuable data there that we need to incorporate well maybe what we could do is if someone staff could pull that out and you know we just get to pull the document out and get the comments or somehow consolidate the comments  some format that we could then you know bring on to the subcommittee and then when we get back to you we include that with the package that we we bring to you so most any other questions from the board so am i so i just want to we have one we have one hand in the audience and i but before i answer i just want to get i'm hearing generally that the consensus here is that the subcommittee should go back and have at least one more shot at polishing this up finishing this off and will the sub committee members can figure out on our own when we want to meet and how we want to meet all that but is that with that i'm hearing it from my every everyone good without andy and i i understand i i don't know what to say i think we've had the dialogue you had the dialogue with dan anything that you debt we can help you with to assuage your feelings about select board meeting versus subcommittee meeting in warning it i don't i'm not it's not within my capacity  to to help you there are we're just we're acting on the advice of the attorney in terms of warnings so far but now staff and andy and dan can have that discussion a little bit more there's something else that can be done i just would like everyone to be comfortable about as we go moving forward by only understanding is that if we warn it is a select board meeting then all of a sudden a whole other things have to happen in terms of minutes and  i mean it well i don't know so that's again that's what i say it's is that it's it's up to staff and you and to work on this like what is just put off finalising in some fashion firms or announce until after budget season and i would suggest that we also put this off until after budget season i think we're going to be quite busy between the holidays and the budget and maybe in april when your meeting is done in your votes and we can certainly we certainly have a lot of other work to do that's not governance we can do you could talk about my evaluation you can start putting up goals for next year right which would start basically march first we can talk about joint budgeting some things that are going on and we can also talk some strategic planning town and villages to where you want to go whether you ever merge or not but we're do you want to go right to the let me just say so the is it you saying that the sub committee shouldn't meet until after budget or we should not that we should not bring this back to the joint boards until after after love to see the subcommittee be able to focus on the budget and the other things that are on our plate right now ok let's have a let's have a separate do what can we have a sever conversation with ok if that is the decision made but i would like to see by our next joint meeting is the timeline from the subcommittee of when they will meet meeting set ok so that it's not april and now we're starting to schedule meetings right ok time i would be great ok said i will just state for the record i'm not sure that we need to have a formal vote so the consensus of the board is that the sub can subcommittee us want to say for the record the subcommittee will continue with the process for at least one more go around to finalize the government governance option list and bring it back to the full ward and then the full board will then decide on the future course of action in terms of public engagement and timeline and so forth is that correct everyone yeah ok thanks yeah we have we've had it someone in it with their hand up in so i'm going to take a question from the audience go ahead bruce hi i'm bruce posts from out there is somebody said earlier  brother is the premier of ontario now came near drano sorry which is truly a frightening thought sadly there there was a book written a few years ago called the paradox of choice consumers are presented with so many choices that they get that deer in the headlights look and fried so you can't make choices or then go back to what's most familiar the so i just think there are i would never put out a survey with ten different choices of the people of essex and this is not brax and what you're treating it like a plexi it is not that complicated we've gone through this stuff before in my lifetime you know  the i think the andrew setting it for november twenty twenty is a good idea but you're going through contortions what do you want to do the old arab saying if you don't know where you're going any road will get you there what do you want to do reaching out to shaftsbury or hardwick when you're a municipality of twenty one thousand people i don't find particularly useful because their circumstances are are different so i don't see why you have come to some two or three options you can then entertain discussions among the public facilitators surveys public meetings say i think we agree with you what this we're trying to do but what we're trying to not do is fail because as you did you've mentioned that and i was right there with you with the others and and they failed and what happened is we're trying to learn from past mistakes and not fail that's our that's our probably our most important goal why do you think they failed well i prefer not to discuss that right now and leaving  off the table then you're taking out a central thing i mean my wife will say all those crybabies in the village and marries all one of the person you know they just want us to pay more their taxes and they want to keep their own separate people like me who live out there and i don't have any say over the village matters i barely have any say over the budget because we keep so many people out of it so do we want to have a community that comes together that can try to reach some officious sees that obviously we'll have some shifting in tax burdens that can be phased in over time this is not rocket science i said it's not rex said to me to say you don't want to discuss why things failed in the past is to overlook something that's very important i just meant tonight right now  again i can tell you the vast majority of people who work felt very strongly that we need equal representation i feel strongly that we should have that in the subcommittee and of course were present haitian peace i haven't heard anything i don't know what you know it feels like that's everything else now is being considered and maybe you know there's a lot about merger there's a lot of sickly areas being discussed but  what happened to that idea and i guess i haven't i haven't been to the meetings you know meetings so i don't know maybe i'm wrong and but we're talking about equal representation i think that's important i wonder if there would be that would be consider why why are we talking about this change it might be different than a concern that's maybe seen as you know trivial anyways i guess i just want to say that rather then it feels like the sort of people who are as a representation might kind of come after everything as an afterthought i thought that was the most important part of that meeting in marks and i'm disappointed that it doesn't sound like that's really on the table i don't know how my face i missed something a lot of the options are talking with you talk about district or you talk about ward took were all that is actually talking about representation and equalizing the representation over thirty six square miles but in that thirty six square miles there's dense parts and there's why you don't have parts so how every you have to think about how you're going to do it you could have the same ones who are a mile north of one twenty eight and fifteen and you might have one hundred fifty people that live in that one square mile but if you take one square mile in the village you're going to get three thousand people so you either have to read thousand people in one morning and three hundred in the other that's not equal representation necessarily how people think of it or the boards one of think about all of that so they they have been doing it and they've taken it very seriously back most of the months has been spent talking about representation as well that is what will it look and what are the tax implications of merger alignment consolidation and also that to bruce's but how aside how long do you take and how much can people accept of some tax increases to equalize town and village for the services they want and then how to do it here you know i would like to confirm something  about the process tonight actual obligation that we do this and as i mentioned it would be great if at that evaluation or really soon thereafter i had goals for the next year instead of getting later in the year and only having a couple months to actually get  recommendations to us it's it's our job to do this now and i don't no disrespect to the subcommittee that put the smart goals together but they they did their job they did it very well you know it's our job now so number number two it allows us to get after it in time and be able to give him his evaluation on time i agree which i think is and i think it's a good so it's hard work i was just going to say that one of the central tendency to us being in these positions is that we evaluate our manager and while i like work certainly has its time i don't think this is one of those times i think that it is a common upon all of us to evaluate evan within our role as elected officials and frankly with the goals i don't remember them verbatim but i seem to recall that they're fairly easy to measure and it wouldn't take us that much time to really figure out whether he accomplished them or not and so if everyone were to come to us with those goals how he felt he did we can comment on that meet without him then comment how we want  evaluate him i can come back in and have a conversation i don't think it's going to be that difficult i just want to raise one point with him i'm sorry i know we're meeting jointly but i'm going to speak to the trustees now because we have a little bit of a different deal in terms of evaluating the manager and i'm i'm a little bit of a quandary because we want to a joint stuff that we've done unified managers a joint hire and we want to talk about this but on the other hand it's there is there is a difference in the difference let me state it is that in our charter we are allowed to talk to staff and our charter says you got to go out which  have to but we are allowed to go out and talk to department heads in the village and say how is the manager doing because in the logic is if we only see things through the perspective from the perspective of how do we if we're not allowed to talk to staff how do we know what kind of a job the manager is actually doing i mean in in the working world it's you know three sixty evaluation and that's the concept the town doesn't have that you guys don't have that you technically are not allowed to talk to staff or department heads so i mean i sort of throw it open because i i i i actually think it might be valuable for us to talk to village department heads and staff and they're all they're pretty sophisticated smart group of folks and i think it might be very valuable for evan to hear what they have to say it's worked well in the past it's never been bad it's always been pretty positive helpful stuff but on the other hand that's something that that would be different from that would be a difference in the process so i don't know how you want to if we handle it in how to talk about it here if we have to have a separate conversation with the trustees or go ahead laura what i was going to  the orders to go through the manager be forced i don't know how we would get that feedback so we so we have to so there's two percent to component you're seeing a two component evaluation goals are one thing we do that jointly to be based on those four goals with the metrics of those four goals now to gloria's point and next point i think you can still talk to department heads and staff to evaluate his managerial component and give them feedback on that but it's not part of the development of the unanswered bonus that's fine i think that's fine for us i think that's what we just wanted to but i also i didn't want to talk i was concerned about the trustees talking about this separately from the select board that's that was really my biggest gripe and i caught that and what i would say to you is i welcome you to the reason that you're not supposed to talk to the staff is about day to day operations you are not to direct the staff a go do jimmy's driveway and you're like no we don't do work on private property go do jimmie's prop you know we don't do that you i direct the staff in my evaluation i'm absolutely comfortable with you talking with department heads i'm not so sure rank and file staff are comfortable doing certain things and then maybe as time rolls on we develop a process we seem to like the word survey tonight where people can can say things but they may not be comfortable saying them if their names attached to it either way i've been through it three sixty i'm ok with them i'm a big boy so he's got some to say let's hear it and whether you're going to talk to all of them or pick a few you know but you know there are seventeen of them so we don't want to line people asking right out these questions we need to focus what those questions are and then can't direct stuff you can't evaluate stuff no where in here does it say you can't talk to stuff about heaven so it's well doesn't directly give you the permission it doesn't say you don't have the permission for i wish i would only at ours was put in there specifically because in the past there was a manager who said oh no you're you can not talk to stand for any where you cannot talk to staff to evaluate me he was of that opinion so we it was put into the charter to to persuade him that actually said yes they did i mean precedent there i know exactly were some of this comes from i mean if if the manager is the one creating a bar ral issue if the messenger is you'd like to find out have all this questions and process down already in the village simply to share it with the town and see if it is something they would accept to do the same to them so how do we do that because we have a joint meeting every when  kind of why we try to make sure tonight's agenda so that you're all together in iraq when we started this process as the trustees that you seared with us a list of questions that you were going to go talk to all the department heads about more we ok with independently of what you do but if i can except for the four goals that we do need to have a joint thing question for the village how do you do the questioning of the department heads do you just have one of the select board do it versus five thank you i appreciate we've done it different i think one year we split it up didn't we always done it you know i would really rather it doesn't but i'd rather it be consistent yes if it's going to be say the chairs then have the chair of the village do it for the village department had to have the town or whatever they w whatever two people get put into this horrible role they do it and then they compare their notes and move forward but it was it was really it really focused on just on on getting some statements about this and this and this and then i believe i showed it to the department heads to make sure that you know as i was transcribing that i didn't mix up their words you know really said really president and another member or to do the work you know do this and they make a report it gets done some places they just do it by the village president or the town like either way you do it but if you're going to go however many department heads of all of them or some of them you've got seventeen to go talk to so if that's what you're going to plan a lot of time you have to be able to get all of them and schedules and stuff like that don't extend the dialogue but it's for the child it's a bigger task because you've got extra departments that we don't have and so you know i don't have to tell you i have a question on the process for the for four goals so you're going to send us the information when we come in with our own evaluation ready to discuss are we meeting as a board before hand i don't know  the joint meeting as in february so my thought at this point is that we would get to that evaluation material by early january in the january steve a chance to review it  so if this were or you could see in the questions that you've come up with to great can we put that on an agenda next agenda say those look forward to look them over make sure that those are what you do whatever adjustments we think is appropriate and then we can decide at that meeting who's going to be the one to go to talk to that the department heads that maybe right and then just sort of the four five of them something manageable for me now piers you know for me and you know old keep it in the same vein they don't have to they don't have to be the same ones but i'm sure you guys can come up with a whole list both town and village and then maybe at the next joint meeting or sooner we can cement those goals any other questions about this from board members we had a hand in the audience i'll take that now evaluate and yes it is generally this point it was the agreed goals for the year that they were valued we again plus the goals for the district as the others would be at that point  so that's a different process different process big process something together quickly gets immaterial to the boards whether it's in december early january then maybe that would give enough time for the board to meet separately at the end of january going to discuss together before going together jo really good it's one hundred percent more than there were here about two years before pat left maybe a year or two before he left we each got a binder called how to evaluate your manager so there's a lot of paper that's already been allocated to this and some is actually still have it get together and discuss some of the joint budgeting items that are coming up in twenty or fiscal twenty and that could be some of the record carbon stuff you heard earlier i would tax and the village highway budget  senior issues other items that might come up so hoping to get you in a room together and know it's another meeting and short notice but opening get you in a room together to take a look at these things scheduling is a little bit tricky trying to fi something in prior to the trustee budget day not a whole lot of time in there i know and at least on flicks that makes it tougher one option and irene pointed out that the board of civil authority meets on this coming monday so one option is to do it on december eleventh which is before the trustee meeting and he would not be able to make that another option is to leave it in the hands of staff and schedule a better next year but we do think it's so the thirteenth doesn't work on me like we could do it i'm not saying no but but it's going to be a long i came to the thirteenth and our all day budget session is the nineteenth and of how how critical is this that you know for staff how important is it that we come together what what's going to what would what bad thing would happen if we don't do well the highway and the highway tax is probably the big one you've got in the preview memos and it could be done separately but it's a pretty big concept and these issues affect both budgets it would be nice to have a consensus that we're going forward with them you know we get that the village went on and then the towns now i mean him maybe another example there's something there right the building fund and the building superintendent that's an interesting issue the highway tax and the rolling stock issue there are percentages that go forward on who's paying for what and we're doing it thinking we're doing it the way we think you want to do it but if you change it it ripped repercussions in both of your budgets and so that's why we want to make sure and then maybe a cobol we probably should have thought of this with a bunch of other things to do this earlier in the maybe even next year we do it more of the pre budget meeting but we don't sometimes even know what the independent departments are thinking unless we give them that direction so it's just some is like wait a minute this highway tax thing gave us the thought of wait a minute we need to talk to both of you and it's a whole lot easier to talk to you when you're to gather than to talk to you when well let's see if we do right now  moved up from the reading file the approval of joint meeting minutes right ok so that you call me from the reading file i would like to discuss it you can move you can adjust the agenda and the agenda at the meeting whether or not you want to take action on it or table it based on the information all the up to you but i would like to bring it up for discussion and the option of potentially action so this is talking about how we're going to prove the point meeting minutes rather than doing it separately which is really awkward because you end up with two different sets of minutes out there for the same exact meeting right and so in the charter doesn't limit us by having the joint board approve the joint minutes so right he would and so far the chartered in any plan of the south that's a nice catch step of the brilliant idea of just waiting until the next joint meeting to approve the joint minutes because we have that if it's no word here where there it's not that substantive but if it's who's making motion there's two sets of two two stories of history happening that's a bigger issue so our idea was to just wait until a the approval of  so i can walk through we're going to get some options this is the updated memo we can keep doing it the way it's done and approve the minute separately at the next board meeting for each board then you continue to potentially have differing sets in minutes you could approve them separately at the next meeting of each board and then send the corrections to the other board so they have a chance to see those and that they might make their changes that goes back and forth and it becomes even more of an administrative nightmare than we have already another option is to have the select board approve the minutes at the next select board meeting the village charter is not as restrictive so once the select board minutes are approved we could bring that to the next joint meeting let the then you're via you're breaking the law and censuring what we're doing you doing what you're doing and the differences are some punctuation and spelling and a few words are added on here and there or sometimes even a line but sometimes but sometimes it's a legitimate error that one board catches and the other one doesn't so stuff recommendation is the select board approach prove the minutes at its next meeting in the trustees wait until the to do i'm going to make a snarky comment is that ok ok you know to select or you do  we over at lincoln hall we asked him dan you know do we have to keep meeting a separate boards or when we get together does it constitute an individual board that can have its own sort of rules and he and he could because we really are thinking of consolidating and doing a lot of stuff together and then said yes you could do that and then we said great we're going to keep doing that we've been doing it for the last couple years but you know it was it was an opportunity and i think is an opportunity here for us to think outside the box and maybe if we acted as a subcommittee we could check with dan and maybe if we declare ourselves to be a something you know and not a subcommittee a joint meeting maybe we could have our own minutes rules i would look into that i would like to throw that out there as an idea it might help you it might help staff out in terms of minutes instead of saying when we meet jointly we still have to maintain the same rules as the trustees and the select board you know maintain for all their other meetings we might be able to streamline things a bit if we were willing to think outside the box just an idea a lame one possible refine it to one that might make it a little simpler number three if the option to catch there's that if or it's option one but the question of that is if the trustees make any corrections to the minutes for a reason of a bunch of very easy out from say thank you though thank you for coming to a decision but i would check the thing out with dan and see if we can't get around a lot of this just by saying yes yes we can meet as as a separate entity we don't have to follow the  rules of separate boards that's what he seemed to be saying to us it's a possibility release about what the subcommittee has been doing coming from the two chairs of the two boards and i would like at some point in the very near future thank you to have a communication of some kind from our boards go out to the public to share what we're doing doesn't have to be what i wrote but i think we should be starting to share what we're doing at least providing an update from this from these bodies not necessarily waiting for others to cover it  that's all you feel free to discuss what i wrote or not or and write something you're not using it it should be going well i mean this is what i did write is very neutral and brief and vague which is what most press releases are and it's it talks about that we have met we had a joint meeting on december fifth so it could conceivably go in next week's paper if we wanted to do that but i just say whether or not it to this this press release is used or something else happens and i feel strongly that we need to start consistently and regularly communicating with the public what we're doing and i can i i know it's late i know it's tired i know we want to stay in the box ok but i you know elaine obviously you spent the time putting this together and i'm just asking i'm wondering if we can't just all just take a minute and read this and give lane elaine an answer yes or it looks to me like it's pretty neutral i don't think it's walking any political lines it's not an answer for me it's like if you're happy with this then you and max need to submit right but i want to make sure everyone else is comfortable with it is that could i could we do that you're comfortable with it ok and it was great we said across saying that we're doing this oh yeah the microphone got away from me i don't want to come across as saying that that we've already decided we are consolidating i mean this is a just want to make sure that it's although it may be balanced it also needs to not be a sales job you need to be an informational thing and i did and i'm sorry i don't have recommendation for how to change it to make it that way if it is there is say that this is needs to be a public process and it we need to make all efforts to not have it be a sales job that would make sure it's informational i mean we had i mean we've been through this in other scenarios where we put out things to the public and then there are all kinds of concerns about well this word is biased or this one is in or i maybe i'm being too picky here but i think i think we i respectfully disagree and to put this in the middle first of all this is the first one if this was the second or third then i would say fine let's get it let's go to that next step but i think this lays out the history of what we've been doing for the last five months and at the end i wouldn't change a thing we're excited to move on to the next stage of this process and begin to engage the public  once the boards jointly decide which scenarios are the most promising it will be time for the public consider them i don't i don't know how you see  again given what we talked about tonight i think this is a little premature it talks about both wars discuss the committee's findings and next steps well yeah but the subcommittee going to meet one more time so i'd really like to hold off until we meet one more time and the have a more updated communication to the public and i also feel like the month of december is not the time to be engaging the public was on me like this in adult arms of january they might pick up the essex reporter it's a lot harder for people to find time to really read something substantive and i want people to really focus on getting this i disagree sorry i disagree what i think i'd like to do is i'd be happy to update this a little bit to say that  adjust what and andy suggested but when the sub committee meets again that's not pursue nitty for another article to update them on the next things we did we need to constantly communicate what we're doing to the community because they're not going to know otherwise yes so the second from the last paragraph says we are excited to move to the next stage of the process and to be going into exchange two and begin to engage the public tyler said that will be a true statement  month we're not moving to a next stage because the subcommittee is still working we are not ready to begin to gauge a public because we have not whittled those down and prisms of the joint board so i do feel this is a lot i can definitely add it that that would be accurate and i'm happy to make that change and irene on board well i mean i could turn this around tomorrow but i don't know if either of them would want to look at it before it was part of the package but if i could send it to you guys after i've edited it as long as you re