yes we do there are two one is of the money mental gifts that you get this time of the year every year for your holiday reading enjoyment yes the one difference in this year's budget is that the page numbers that you normally find on the lower right are on the upper left and that's and that's the line number which is normally the page so when we go through this when you look at the page numbers it's upper left lower right years the public safety authority so i thought you might want to see he she asked any questions is has anybody approved this yet the answer is yes there is one and there are many people having the topic on the agenda this about any topic set or not on the agenda anyone here today wishing to speak during public to be he thank you and you're here for both ten three twenty three and forty eight twenty seven goes ok very good so i guess we can ask for a motion then we can have a discussion about the application what we normally do and i move approval second class liquor licenses for eastern company incorporated number one zero three two three and walgreens eastern company incorporated number forty eight to seven and we're we're almost through that part of it and then once the department of control approves it you know it should be paid january thirtieth the same date that their actual transfer is closing all the class liquor license for walk means eastern co incorporated number one zero three two three and number four eight two seven six five say hi i post motion passes by zero good thank you and best of luck to you committee so welcome thank you if you could hear was a little bit of your background who is and what your interest is we're being appointed to the energy sure i know you all received greg about my interests and i wrote a slightly different version of that happened to her having attended one of the energy committee meetings and so i wanted to read that which pretty much answers that question of who i am award and was a finalist for the twenty seven team tech g m ambassador award through my roles as director of marketing and p r for burlington telecom and as a b t v ignite executive fellow i consider myself an ambassador from our vermont's tech economy specifically the power of high speed symmetrical broadband as a catalyst for changing the way we live work and play this relates to the areas of energy efficiency when considering smart homes and smart cities so many of the innovations in energy efficiency rely on home and commercial internet to send real time data back and forth to control usage in a way that saves money and eliminates waste my current job gives me a decent understanding around the process of municipal decision making and in reviewing the minutes from past energy committee meetings a need was identified to brand the city as quote unquote current not staci through the use of social media and video and that's literally what i do for a living i find ways to make a municipally operated internet service provider seem kind of cool and interesting in burlington and i believe i can do the same for the energy of essex as a marketing britain and public relations professional with a background in nonprofit administration i bring with me fundraising skills including grant writing event planning skills communication skills like press releases social media and relationships with the media creative thinking on how to do more with less which pertains both to energy and budgets and thanks to my work as a b t v ignite executive fellow i have a strong professional working relationship with a lot of members of the tech ecosystem in the greater burlington area from start ups to the state level my networks pretty wide and i've been deeply involved in the planning and execution of innovation week for the past two years despite all of this i know very little about sustainable and renewable energy and i would love to document my family's journey to becoming a more energy efficient home as a way to engage my neighbors throughout essex i also see a lot of easy and obvious ways to energize and engage the townspeople in city w by leveraging things like accelerate essex essex help for women and steam fast the high school stem academy and so many other community groups for example i know that the essex community players it's pretty much the key to saving taxpayer money at  me more if you want me on the committee my acceptance on the energy committee would be exciting and mutually beneficial i will become a more engaged to send for ethics and learn a lot more about energy efficiency and the town gets to experiment in branding and social media marketing at zero cost so by next october i'd like to see essex involved with an aviation week including a tech g m event about the energy of essex so thank you for your consideration i look forward to hopefully joining the committee and i'm work on that committee as well if my schedule permitted but there weren't any openings on the committee so i jumped at energy because i really think that there's a lot of potential for synergy there i think that if we mail energy efficiency in essex that there is a huge opportunity for economic development so i think they kind of go hand in hand like sammy and the other questions they have you  so like our policy that does apply to all of our committees and it includes you know things like making sure that all your content is factual that you have an unbiased view when that's appropriate you know those kind of things as was just curious if you had if you had seen that and whether whether in if you've done this work in other places whether those things can you know that kind of policy can interfere whether it helps or  the questions i'd like to say thank you for coming stepping forward to volunteer on the energy committee what we'll do is we may or may not have to go to executive sessions at the board  but if we do go into executive session when we come out will make a decision and so on from the better his office will contact you more great so thank you so much for being prepared like that to the questions i were ok we're going to move on to the next item of business which is five d and that's discussion about warning the vote to create a public safety authority that we chief rather ro money and along with other communities undertook a study to analyze or the nine one one capacity throughout the region and several regular dispatching services associated with that based upon the suggested operational citizens had a representative of the board so that conceivably would be one eighth or if we didn't put it all in the on the board or if we voted yes and maybe five others did we that document was limited to just this day and this was discussed by the joint study committee i know i race it a couple of months to go and they want to be sure we'll let everybody know that for months and as the local economies falter and maybe even crumble the whole idea of being able to provide for public safety services or public services general may come into question and regional approach it's only one way to spread the cost around many users it would not be out of the question to be looked at that even though our economies robust comparatively speaking to the rest of the state so there are some supporting is recognizing where we are in this process right now we are at the point where it says and first having signed the consent of the respective legislative bodies of the potential municipal members of the public safety authority it also mentions that in the next page at the top and whereas only three entities need to vote in the affirmative to have this authority created i passed out some information earlier  fact that cole chester has already voted to warn this as cold chester goes so goes milton hall chester dispatches from milton so there's two of three right there in terms of raw numbers be voting on so probably by tomorrow morning to be a pretty good deal with how many of the of the eight wish to go forward or need more information before going forward if you don't make a decision tonight the warning has to be approved and ready to go by i think it's january twenty fourth that's the last time we can add items to the morning  means municipalities or public safety agencies that may not have been admitted to this authority pursuant to section twenty two which is on page fifteen by the way of this agreement but they have contracted for public safety communication services with the authority to see translated we could be a contracting in point b after the fact if he wanted to wait and see how things develop they want to think about whether or not it made sense for us in the short on in the homes of the various municipalities how people feel about this that the you know there's been an awful lot of discussion fortunately we can't say this i see what will happen now one a call for service because in some towns homes are defined differently so there are certain towns or to be charged more or less than what we might determine it's fair because we might not be making the rules or someone else but during the rules or we might be so i notice on the next to last page which i think is part of the marketing material there's a list of organizations that have provided letters of support and e noticeably missing from that list so i'm curious if you can you just expand a little bit i mean almost every other community has some somebody to the fire department police department whatever that  feedback to the r t c on exactly that part of the leaflet was it seems a little self serving that they would spend one sixth of their flyer talking about who's endorsed it when i'm not sure how much arm twisting there was or wasn't i'd rather see a flyer that has frozen on and that's really informing the voters of the decision they have to make not some sort of sell sheet which unfortunately i think this is and i disagree with for example some of the statistics here talks about saving up to seventy seconds per call that's only on nine one one calls a large percent while eight percent of the calls that go into your dispatch i now are people dialing directly so they're not losing any time when i call up the non emergency number i get right through whereas ninety one i might have to be patched and i might have a delay but i think this is being simplified in order to sell this and i fre they will vote tomorrow night for the first time whether or not to join if they don't join then my understanding is the savings do not math ask themselves if this organization does not become a nine one one which is also then it doesn't matter how many of us bond together we're not going to save on the one step which is the goal call answering so i think again this flyers getting a little bit ahead of where we all are right now and it's optimistic and i appreciate that but response to anybody who was on the committee were in favor of reviewing this but i don't know that everybody was in favor of painted but i do know that the idea of regional dispatch was was you just mentioned efficiently power and i guess i would like to know from the chief and from the soon to be chief how inefficient do you think we are at processing these calls because again unless we become a piece i don't see any efficiency happening just because we have more people in our room farther away with more maps and new to new software to learn a new script based technology and dispatch to figure out i see there being a ramp up period of a year or two where we're once again i'm just curious how this sits with you because you're right on top of your organization you know whether things are ringing off the hook or what i mean can you conceive of there being a seventy two second delay on average repeated for a second time whereas if it was a one step process the nine one one operator would have dealt with send in emergency services out there in that seven seconds  but that data will be available if we sit on the sidelines and let that regional dispatch happen then we couldn't answer a lot of these questions right what is the average time savings what is the potential cost in the benefits and so  by waiting and looking at the data right itself right right right a lot a lot of questions could be answered and what i hear is that we're we're not broken we have some challenges as you said but we're they'll be easier to educate the public on that to why we think the there's benefit at weighing the risk the right now i see a lot of risk and potential benefit but i don't really see what you know the real the real numbers  want to warn i think it's a two step we wanted it we want to do the approval and if we approve then we would have a second one to say we want to warn or not but if if the first one if  and so i started to get back to my question so an affirmative vote would mean that we could bring this up again later i guess that's my primary question yeah so  in a sense it's the same as not voting at all if you can just essentially table it to another another meeting is that what we're intending to do here or are we saying no we're not going to do  this until two years from now when you know what's the what's the recall what's the what's the next step i guess is my question if we vote in firm and have to say we're not going to do it at this time how does it ever come back up again or does it whole long we intend to we to part two to be in this pick up again mike what you got i can only answer this is one select for number five in my years here i don't think anybody that i have served with has ever been national about asking to have something like that on the agenda whether it's in consentual or whether it's an action item so answer that question for you  d i would say there's really no timetable nor did i intend one with my emotions my motion is dealing just with the here and now and my motion basically is saying that i for one  say not worn it for the march twenty eighth seen counting it's two different it's two different motions i think by saying that we're not moving to approve that we don't have to say anything about  municipalities are vote right it's a matter of waiting to get the data as far as how it's pushing that that's why i will vote to approve your amendment to say we don't approve the agreement because i want to see the data and i would see that is going to take years to get and i guess i'm always in favor of seeing with the public has to say and and you know much like the well in the the record governance thing our municipal manager is the is the defined to be our representative to this committee so that's a non like did it's completely non elected or appointed board other than they've been hired by by the municipalities and there's a clause in there specifically says that they are not beholden to their their own legislative board so we have absolutely the this board would have no so there's all kinds of that that that that is a i see that as  a problem the other is that there's no and maybe this is just an operational thing there's there's still no fund balance limits that bothers me and then the other thing is that we're getting more and more of these regional entities that perhaps have overlapping functions or repetitive you know they all have i t department they all have payroll the parents and and there's no driving force to drive them to to consolidate those kind of services that they each supply for themselves or read through some of irene's material that she made available to us and for example there's a long california where they have to review periodic lee whether or not there are functions that they can consolidate or whether they're still still twenty one i have plenty of reasons to not to not be happy about the agreement but much  like the you know kind of like the the six governance group wants to be able to vote on the budget and i do it i have some part of me that says that we are to ask the us that there are one bill load of questions nobody has the answer to with respect andy i can't figure out why we want to put this in front of the voters who are going to be looking motion on the table is to not approve the agreement at this time so if by voting i means you are favor of the motion which means you are not in favor hours and i believe that the deserves some recognition for it that that's a very good point and i know the hours and hours of work and dedication that you and the other put into this and i think you heard tonight that we're not against consolidation that's kind of been our mantra but it's not at this time for this particular piece until we're certain that it's the right thing for our community but yeah the x that said there's it is a big jump there are some onetime costs associated with that part of that is salary study that's required with the ask me contract about fifteen thousand dollars towards that furniture not too long ago and declared it surplus so the chance for the manager to set his own tone her own tone in the new the new office some of the other big items looking at are five new positions old needed their overdue for various reasons we've had several retirements in the past year year and a half with people who've been here for a long long time which is in their knowledge in a lot of cases those people are doing more than one job perfect example  also looking at a human resources director where by having somebody a couple people doing that part time in addition to administrative responsibilities that at the end of the office the past couple years we've realized how far behind we are in terms of keeping up with  law constantly changing federal law state law that we need to stand top of well overdue for that to look into to create in the charge rector position to make sure we're staying staying on target there that's another position that can be funded  both would be providing services to village employees tend to their to have the village pick up some of that salary some of that some of the new employees public works is looking for a new employer for water sewer and highway shared between those two they've got a large workload that just never seems to slow down and they're ready for a new employee to help out with the police depart and also is looking further to patrol officers again to keep up with them and help with succession planning we've had the police chief has better attire one of the captains just retired and captain gary is moving up to be police chief so we're going to start succession planning and help some internal candidates move up when the police department last of this is a new position but looking to have the assistant parks foreman who is a part time position right now become full time parks and rec is has plenty to go on our time person is overworked as it is and france are going to keep up with the duties so that's another position that for those new positions the one time cost to make up abode little more than half of the budget increase but all told it is a budget increase of a little over a million dollars seven point three two percent increase if it's fully funded be an eighty six dollar increase for the average homeowner two hundred eighty thousand dollars home those are based on are conservative assumptions that we usually operate on of one percent growth in the grand list and that is what we give you we we budget for across the board salary increase the way the contracts are set up with the ask me is that it's my based so three and a half is the maximum you can receive but again try to be a little bit conservative in terms of budgeting so if everybody stellar then they can get their three and a half percent that's what we strive for it's probably not going to be three and half percent across the board but i wanted to put that up there just to show you where we can good faith that's part of the budgeting for the maximum as well jus not tell us that you had put of procedure in place where that doesn't get bias anymore so there were a couple things part of it was that the website the state website has been improved and randy's not checking regularly that's part of how this was caught and part of it is just better communication with the clerk's office so once they see something that's been filed in the land records they're more aware now to bring up to the assessor's office ok i remember the first one i had forgotten about the connection with the the second if you make any further discussion on this and this is the meeting to adopt them and it's important to get those adopted tonight because there's implications on our insurance correct ok so this is max saw this meeting accepted  then took some comments back and he back the number they gave you this whole list of the different items that are have been changed in the past couple weeks i'll hit on the high ones of a few items related to sexual harassment just the definitions  confirming some of the laws in terms of the questions that came up last time but basically we're going with the legal opinions legal definitions definitions in place for us equal opportunity commission using the terms that have been part of statute and just making sure where we're up to speed the statute and using the same same language you know one of the issues that came up a solicitation distribution within the committee to hand out materials that work that they're working on just to get beyond that issue holidays couple ish questions came up last time about changing columbus day and christmas day  recommending we stay keep with what we have the state laws federal law rather than trying to change all that is that we have just trying to stick with the state and federal definitions and names for those holidays so those are the big ones can jump into questions if you have anything else of us in the other stuff that has come up irene sent over some additional formatting recommendations afterwards i didn't have a chance to change make those changes and get into you to adopt the guidelines to give staff the authority to make any formatting changes as we see fit no content for just the formatting stuff the other option is to just drop them as they are and we can bring it back to you in the near future to prove the formatting st cost of adopting these you saving a little bit of money with out of pocket out of pocket healthcare costs of the town optical would decrease a little bit each year contributions retirement contributions would be going up about twenty possibility if we take that part of the negotiations the next time to change the day it's a possibility i'm looking for a path to do this so that we are less offensive and more case the state of ramadi and us governments to refer to columbus day but the governors of the last two years have changed the name they have proclaimed it to be a different day it takes a act of the legislature to actually change it for the state of vermont holiday so could  at this time or at a future time and change the name so that our public city says for example indigenous peoples day no matter what your contracts with the unions say and do a similar proclamation the way the governor has a would have to get only employees their friends getting any kind of training sexual harassment are you please when they come in so it seems like the hang up is around the frequency that you revisit the training but couldn't the clause in here instead of just referencing new place reference that all employees will receive training on sexual harassment and the policies and not identify with the frequency but if it concerns me that you could have an employee that's here for fifteen years there's nothing in the policy that says that they are ago it is required for all do employees and we did check with the town attorney in terms of making it more of a regular requirement that the hang up as i said in the memo was how do you define regular so we have every intention to make  ongoing training i believe travis is setting something up for early twenty eight eighteen years to have it done again for all employees in the near future but in an instance of hard fiscal times i'd heard financial times if something has to get cut from the budget and happens to be sexual harassment training are we then at risk of violating our own policy so the legal legal recommendation was that we did not put that in there i understand the legal recommendation was not put in and be transparent about what happens and this is one of these executive sessions that i think went late into the night about the time we had here and requiring sector is no longer there and i think there was just you know a slip up and getting the opposition name type ten and as i said in my memo next on the right side of history and i think that the minute sharif like that as well as being transparent and since out is still with us and he likely remembers that  have about this memo is that it references discussion during executive session implies that we had a discussion recently about local option tax the in the well there's two two things there one is it is revealing stuff that was s personally is that if we ever had a discussion earth we do discuss local option tax either in open or closed session i cannot participate my employer requires me to recuse myself so i just want to make it clear that you know i'm very concerned the way that this memo is now part of public record and if somebody picks this up and reads it they could think that i participated in a discussion about legal option tax and i could be fired  i'm i'm i just have i just want to raise that concern and then get it into the minutes at least that i did not participate in the discussion about local option tax and and you know you can you can do whatever you want to me but this week we brought up three we just came up as a phrase as a potential thing that someone might be interested in the future there was no discussion among the select word about a local option option tax we never did so there was never a discussion to civic about local option tax we were talking about hiring a new manager in the phrase local option tax came up during that discussion that's that's what happened and in anything i mean why this one is my question the the i looked at the statute so you're talking about it only says you know it says that if a roll call was taken is the only time you bad precedent to to update minnesota than previously approved i definitely will not support this ok what side of history i was a very so i have here the minutes of february ninth two thousand an i say it was me nor did anyone else on the select or point the finger so because the public was eager then to know and we've been asked since then who was the opposition on this vote i think it's only fair to the public to answer that question on the reverse side you will see minutes from earlier in two thousand and eight once again mr levy opposed the motion passed for one on line two seventy three and you'll see that that is the practice and we were told last week meaning how important it is for the recording secretary to be consistent in what she writes in the minutes and that's the only reason i'm offering this forward if max does not want his name recorded for all time snow it still should be part of the record as to when well if it was about you and it didn't matter then i believe you would have piped up when the public asked you who opposed it and i think it was an appropriate time for you to keep it a secret and i'm no longer willing to keep it a secret from the public i believe from this vote was not to succumb to the kind of pressure that i think one member space a lot of the time when there's a big push to do something when it came to the local option tax and yes and he was not here and no and he did not offer any decisions or input on it when we talked about an executive session i will second that when we talked about this in two thousand and eight i felt very pressured to go along with what saf was pushing and i had constituents who were ranting about this will be a problem for i b m has staff looked into this why haven't they looked into it and i was assured by staff it was all fine several weeks later this hit the papers and i b m went ballistic so the lesson that i learned from this whole episode was to do my own homework to do my own research and to make sure that if i didn't feel comfortable in something i said no and i wanted to compliment max in public for doing the right thing in this instance and i'm just sorry that he doesn't want to name attached to it entire section is bald faced and i just wondered if gray or anybody else knows why this is and if we can change mind to forty five rather than anything it didn't need things we don't have to us when i said ok so on to twenty eight instead of how fun it day what i read into another one of the months now and three i wanted it should say mrs runner asked to change the name of columbus day to be less offensive mr watts asked about christmas day examples of sexual harassment not honda that they are a sampling and not a comprehen of what it says to say this this language for new employees to receive training on sexual harassment and suggested right and if you go back to the i think at line three zero one twenty five the marker mr watts makes his proposal and mrs runner says i accept that friendly amendment to my edition and no one said anything and because no one reinforced for me that oh no wait where you said isn't being accepted i said i accept and he's addition to what i have just said right that's why i said that because it had been a few minutes since i made my proposal and i said that i would accept what mesereau was saying in addition what i was saying because the controversy was could we say anything about something that we didn't know and that's the only reason i approve the min was because no one rejected it away understand understand sewanee comments on consent items