ok we will call the october fifteenth two thousand eight hundred select board meeting to order and invite you to rise in join us in the pledge of allegiance like to welcome everyone to tonight's like board meeting and just remind you did turn your cell phones to silence please be greatly appreciated and it was pretty hard not to sign in this you came in but if you somehow missed that please be sure you do get public to be heard i just wanted to say that we lost a staff member just a few days ago and paella she was director of the essex free library for  six seven years was a wonderful part of the community there service lots of residents helping them with all sorts of research and loved books were very fortunate to have her but she she passed recently what i would like to do if we could just stand i'd like to offer a moment of silence for her please they were going to move on to the public to be heard section and that's a time for the for the public to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda i know that a number of you are here for some for firearms in a that broke probably but this is a time for things that are not on the agenda that you'd like to bring to this like wars attention so is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be h again if you could please state your name and your address everyone in this room is prepared to do you ok anybody else wishing to address this like court during public to be heard ok i actually have just one thing i like to say for the past sue dozen years or so we've had the pleasure of having secretary here on the end and sad to report that this will be her last official schedule its last scheduled time to be taking minutes she's done a wonderful job it's not great questions or comments from the board on this week we've seen this in the past in the car track looking to just allow the unified manager to execute  and for the past many years dennis and his team of put together a detailed plan about how sidewalks the roads in other things will be taken care of this winter so we've had the opportunity to review it  it a couple weeks ago and i think you posted it on the web website ok maybe you can hear officially comments in today we're looking to then adopt it you got the memo that covers the winter operations plan and you know this has been a tough switch this year given the school watching issue and how that's changed we've tried to adjust to that sidewalk ball to hopefully fill in we've also got we've also got a rental unit that we're renting it showed up today it was unloaded it's not exactly a sidewalk plow but it will do until we get the other one in it appears now after going through some machinations with trying to work with that we've also got some temporary help that we're going to use to help with the sidewalk so our plan this winter is to put two sidewalk machines on the road to try to help out where we can in the in winter operations plan and there's a fair number of red marks in there changes from last year that have to do with we're trying to pick up some additional sidewalk coverage where the students are going to have to to walk to school we can't do all of them but we've tried to some of the dead end roads we're not going to pick up but where they loop around so we've increased that coverage this winter it also causes a shift for us most of our priorities in the past have been to open up suzy wilson road with all the traffic keep sand hill road open keep value road open we're going to continue to do that but now we're going to try to shift were some of the flat roads we've always done towards the end of the shift the tanglewood area if you will maple on some of those streets we're going to try to shift our priorities and do some of those earlier so that we can try to get them clear by the time the kids are walking to school because there are some streets that they're going after walking we've not dropped any sidewalk areas there are some areas that we probably would like to expand to but the infrastructure isn't there there are some areas on the western end of town where they're built years ago we're in the process of doing handicapped access ramps but some of those have straight curves and you can take a sidewalk fall off a six inch curb and expect that it's going to survive that so there's areas we just can't get to there's also a lot of our older sidewalks are four foot wide our sidewalk  will go five which means it will be tearing up a whole lot and that's common nice that's anything unique to us some of the areas in the past we've been able to to fix that because we've evolved in a time that that the grass is kind of peeled back at this point but there's a lot of neighborhoods that we would be plowing a lot of lawns out and in fact damaging equipment so it's going to be a transition year maybe we'll be able to get to do more next year price assault has gone up appreciably you saw that in the memo it's a big surprise for all of us we did get a lower price from another vendor and not latch on to the state bid price that will be a minor irritant it's not a hoping the board approves the plan and will go to the trustees next week to vote plan hasn't changed much not as much as the towns with the walking issue and there are a couple things that we feel are very important that we're going to stress  and we put them in the winter operations plan for a reason one is because now some of the bus stops are congregated into an area as opposed to in front of  child's room or kids are it's really important that that not be viewed as a player plows and kids don't mix when they're at the bus stop quite honestly and be pretty blunt a need to behave and not horse around our guys could be extra careful as they approach those bus stops it would be really great if those bus stops were visible but it's not the town's job to make bus stops visible but it is in terms of think parents and kids wearing the right applies the elderly as well as it does to people walking on sidewalks in the winter time you want to wear clothing that can be seen and if you have reflective indicators on your child's backpack that helps so those kind of things can be done by the parent to help protect children we're going to everything we can to time our runs so that we're not at those locations when kids are reading but walking to school in the morning or in the afternoon usually fine in the morning if we're on the roads at seven o'clock we're not going anywhere there's just too much traffic so we tend to come off and do what we can early morning three to seven two to seven get off go back at it after the after that traffic clears out by the same concern in the afternoon when it gets dark at three thirty or four o'clock you know if we have to be out there we will but we're going to be  careful to be part of our safety training the last thing we want is any injury to anyone either our vehicles our plow drivers or residents so we're going to do we can do everything we can to make it as safe as we can but there is responsibility on the part of both the kids waiting for school busses and for parents to make the children visible to be honest those are two things that really are out of our hands but it can be done by other people we'll probably put ads in the paper that effect we always put the ones about not making snow forts and snow banks and those kind of things but we want to emphasize the safety part of what we're trying to do changes and i know the school merger was supposed to save money for school taxpayers but you see municipal taxpayers now pay more it is their way to have the school have some skin in the game before they make decisions like this that cause us and our budget to go up  even as it lowers their budget perhaps have you been meeting with them or will somebody be meeting with them to make sure that this doesn't happen we've met with them periodically you know we haven't we've kind of broached that issue in a very general sense i'll be honest that's above my pay grade as they used to say in the military that is a discussion that maybe should go on between those in charge of school department those in charge of the town and maybe even a school board to do this board especially as we go forward  his appears it's a long term change it came on its rather suddenly so there's not a lot that we can do starting in september other than get employees trained up get equipment ready at equipment do things like that and if we're going to expand coverage if we're going to do other things marking bus stops those kind of things those things could very easily be taken on by the school department but that's not something the public works director is going to call the school department say go do that's got to be at a higher grade than mine and their request came in for to help the school after the town's budget was already you know approved set and approved so this is trying to do as much as we can within the  budget we have that's correct so there's a finite bucket of money so some things will have to come down thank you and the other questions again we've had we've looked at this a while back  no changes from from last time but did you get feedback from having a posted on  that one question that was the only feedback we had the go ahead all right so you know my my my question was there are some neighborhoods that now have both first and second priority sidewalks in them and the question was what that first and second priority really means kind of two sides the same question i left all the sidewalks are doing last year's first priority because they were the ones that covered the major routes like suzy wilson road along fifteen where you just can't have people walking in the roadway and we've got to get out there and that's that's a purty nigh on that purdy from weisser also extended on the same side streets but the intent of the purdy was to plow to the center of the development so that people could get to that center so those are still our priorities but we did the second priority was the ones we had to kind of take into account those areas where we knew kids were going to be walking to school so we had them as a second prairie in reality once the sidewalk clouds to shop there we're going out and running routes so in reality it's not going to change anything the only event that might occur and i don't know if we've ever had this happen where the snows built up so fast that we've got to stop doing a neighborhood and go pick up some of the other streets genuine we start we will follow the routes through and complete the work and then move on to the next neighborhood so from a daily operational point of view one and two are in the in the box we're going to do and we're not going to differentiate differentiate between them but if you want to be a purist you would probably say yeah after thirty thousand cars on a day or twenty five thousand cars on the wilson road it's probably got a higher priority than a road that's got one hundred cars a day on it but from a practical point of view we're going to cover those on the list thanks you know with the boards and if you wish to move a move that the select board approved the winter operations plan for two thousand and eighteen two thousand and nineteen subsequent to hearing him put from the public a one this come up in a number of times since last year i'll be honest given what's occurred in and with the work that's going into it it was an issue that once we got the complaint we probably should have turned over the police department and say go for it because enforcement of laws is their responsibility and not public works we decided to take that out of their hands to assist them and wrote letters to the people that were parking on the sidewalk over all the brookline basically saying i shouldn't park there it's illegal under state law it's on it's illegal under town ordinance and we did it fairly soft y we didn't get the police to go after anyone last winter when we just kind of made our way through this occurred in late in the spring a result result of a citizen complaint i've not provided the name of that particular citizen and i hope i don't have to and i don't think it's necessary it's not intent to have neighbors fighting with neighbors but when we get a complaint it's got to go someplace so it was going to come to us to handle or the police department and you know maybe being ignorant we took it on ourselves to try to to resolve the issue since then the individual least one of the individuals or two of them i think came to a previous meeting and wanted to have this issue reconsidered so we spent some time on actually quite a bit of time over the last week two weeks looking at what the situation was and we prepared a memo for you that stated october tenth that you should have in front of you  we we went out the very first thing we went out and checked on was what are the slopes or who had the steep driveways there are many of them in town there are many in the village we just took those that were on all the brick road we can try to do a town wide survey i'm aware of a lot of others but i just didn't do that some are uphill from the road some are downhill from the road i'm not sure which is more problematic uphill or downhill  i live in an uphill so sleep with steeply sloped driveway as an example i came home one night and got out of my town car went to go in the house and next thing i know i saw the town car sliding down my driveway catching the back bumper of my own car which then caused it to slide down the driveway and i was about four years ago since then i have made sure that the driveway is totally shoveled and salted so that that doesn't occur again and i haven't had a problem since that's anecdotal but that's my own driveway so there are some ways to handle it if you if you have to so we looked at some options and first of all s tried to think of any option we could that might present be available to solve the problem one of them was to legally close a section of sidewalk if the sidewalk section is closed is it in fact  sidewalk we wanted to run that by the town attorney but we just provided that as one option and then we don't plow that sidewalk this year we may in a future year because of the issue of bussing and what happens next year but for this year we don't plow that we didn't have it for quite a long time if at all we'd have to put up barriers we would want the select board to approve that action because we're legally closing something that is supposed to be open for the winner and we ask the town attorney for an opinion which we've got today and we can go over to that second option would be and some of these are pretty severe but remove the existing sidewalk on the south side take it out and let people park on the grass where they want to park you've got to do some eighty a compliant sidewalk ramp some both ends but that's possible you could remove the curbing there and provide some additional pavement subbase to create a a a parking zone on the street winter and then we had another one which i guess was a one a which is if you're going to block it off and you want to really close it off throw some soil on top and so you can't see the sidewalk which is kind of ridiculous but that's an option we ran through some costs on those signs sign  in closing is about a thousand dollars if you start to do fancier things like putting material on the road or on the sidewalk it's a couple thousand you start to rip up sidewalks at fifteen thousand if you want to add another wayne it's about fifty seven so considerations and i'll take time to go through these i think it's important driveways are private access ways onto a public street and they're exclusively the responsibility of the owner to owners have in the past elected to park on a public sidewalk and this didn't come to our attention doesn't mean that they should have any will right to continue this practice and many other landowners and so were streets with similar steep driveways in both a town and a village the found ways to keep their driveways passable during the winter following an application of the icing self's can keep these driveways open most of the time if not all the time when nice with lots were proved we didn't have driveway standards through the community development officer the deep and the buyer the seller we were owners are notified early in this year the problem they would encounter of parking on a sidewalk in the winter there's been adequate time for the impacted property owners to add fill create a parking area near a lot adjacent to but slightly off the sidewalk why knowledge no property owner has done this there's a couple they're difficult but some would be relatively easy to to do with increased the number sidewalks being plowed this winter there's likely to be increased pressure to further expand the town sidewalk plowing next year and in the coming years the area under scotian is a liquid area for expansion this coverage given with coverage ends today and ends at all to brooklyn greenbrier just right around the corner there's also piers during the winter from early november to mid april when snow doesn't fall or melt so if you close the sidewalk we're not going to out there picking up the barriers and putting them back down every time it's nice out once it's close to close which means for the rest of that winter you're not using that sidewalk even if there's no snow on legally it's closed from from a on street parking issue this is really not acceptable and p d weighed in so did hours and you're tired you've got a car there we've had some in the past we've taken off mirrors don't like to admit it but it happens the drivers get tired it's dark out things can happen so you're putting the owners car in a place where we're more likely to hit it we can buy with a plow the snow is going where it's going and when it goes it'll go in the car will feel it going in between the car if you park on the road and the owner gets up then races i'm going to shovel it i'll sell it out leaves he's going to leave the windrows in the snow on the road it gets cold in that day gets down to twenty degrees that's frozen hard we can't go by and get that back up it's there it's probably there for the winter so you can end up with an obstacle in the middle of the road on one side were some druther drivers going to come along into the soft snow hits an ice patch and you've got a problem so parking in the street is not an issue if there had to be parking on the street the only way to do it and it can't be done for this winter would be expend the money and actually create a parking space another a third line off the road and put parking there it's the same problem is going to occur with people being plowed in but at that point it's their problem not not my problem not the public works pro were responsible for a problem that legally rests with the property owner we're going to be setting a precedent and i think the town attorney weighed in pretty heavy on that for further exposure on driveways with inherent steep grades and again and i need to be repetitive but it's this issue is not in this apologies area of responsibility so it may appear to be a simple solution to close the sidewalk as one of the cheapest options it's a staff position and   i think the property owners that bought along that road made that decision with their eyes wide open or should have and it's not the responsibility of the town  all the work they put into this because i know you didn't anticipate going to generate options and measure dry ways slopes and things like that i think the writings on the wall i don't expect the select board to go against the staff's wishes on this i do hope that in the future the planning commission will be more aware of a plan for proving a lots of questionable integrity i understand that we want to keep the developers happy when they come asking to build houses we want to build more houses in essex because there's always a high demand for it and so the pressure is on the planning commission to say yes and yet the group that said yes in one thousand nine hundred five clearly could have said no if they were looking at the slope through the eyes of people now who would say no that's too steep and the same thing with the flood plains i believe there are lots in the town village that are in the floodplain and is it the homeowners problem yes it is they bought in the flood plain but one could also say that maybe those lot should not have been approved for building in the first place and i trust to wash our hands of it to say gee it's like by buying a house near an airport i think that's a very different thing those are sort of ambient noise concerns if you buy a house in the train tracks i think this is a really distinctive thing and it is on us to remind those of us who look at potential building lots to consider the integrity of the lots as well yes this is water of them it is now the homeowners who are stuck in some ways but i do believe there it is on us to rethink what we do in light of this example and perhaps we do want to sidewalk policy perhaps we do want to find a way to close sidewalks because after two hundred fifty plus years i find it hard to believe we've never closed the sidewalk and maybe we need a policy of doing that going forward so we can when so i would just i would take that a step further and now that we do have standards in place i don't see where this is going to be an issue moving forward i think this is an issue from  has suddenly come to the fore and i for one don't think that it is going to resurface in other areas everybody else  would just caution that yes the planning commission falls is owning our eggs and the zoner eggs are developed out of experiences and things but the energy committee of which david scope is a member i don't think he's still here the energy committee kind of scoffed several years back when members of the energy committee came to them and begged them to consider climate change as something they looked at very carefully when they had to make decisions and then a few years later there was a tropical storm and then the state insisted that some of those climate change things be considered so what i'm asking is not for the planning commission i what i'm asking is for planning commissions and other committees and commissions at the town to just be aware of sort of common sense what's ahead of us things even if they haven't yet been codified in law because i think having steep driveways in one thousand seventy five back when we used to get big snow storms might have been a clue even if there wasn't a law on the books about steve driveways that someone on the commission might have said maybe this isn't so smart i understand they are bound by certain laws but why not think beyond them thank ok other comments questions ok i'm of the mind as well to you for the homeowners i understand but i see it's their responsibility so yeah there's no other comments from the from the board so you were able to park their last twenty five years is because the police don't go out and look for those while asians but so many brought it to their attention and then they had no choice but to go and see hearing from me anyone else would like to comment on this issue ok i'm going to bring it back to the board and any other discussion questions comments very curious if there are other streets you know people are parking on the sidewalk that's not something i'm going out and checking be out of here i'm sorry i honestly don't know and when just so everybody knows for clarification when we received the complaint it was two parts one part was your trucks are going too fast but we have g p s now on a truck so we could check and the second was do you realize that people are parking on the sidewalks in on all the book road and i knew we had a town ordinance i wasn't really clear where it went from there so i had to do research on two things one get information a g p s in the truck to find out if they were speeding and i found they weren't and that i talked with department to find out that there is a state law under motor vehicles that talks about parking in state sidewalks and so occurs once you receive a complaint my training has been you have an obligation to answer and so that's what we did and that's what set this thing in motion but we're not and we're not out driving around looking for violations i'm driving ar looking to see why we aren't we plowing where we should be plowing in and are we going to get the kids safely to school and those kind of thing that's that's my primary concern they have other things to do i'm sorry what i can say is i will talk with the chief of police as our police to make the rounds we one of enforce our ordinances equitably they will more than likely get a warning to let them know that  and what they're doing but if they continue to find them there they will ticket them public safety is our number one priority whether it's our fire trucks ambulances police cars and our kids going to school we do this so we will when we do go out there the chief is in the audience tonight he's hearing me directly when our officers come upon it whether it's either by complaint or in their patrols the first time the probably get a warning the second time they would get ticketed and beyond that they would get towed and in addition in a week and a half or so we do our winter snow meeting and we put that in in this year's winner operations plan about parking on sidewalks and and our operators routinely call in if there's a car parked on the road in terms of the winter parking ban again we're not the police officers we don't decide whether to ticket or told we just reported and if our drivers are out there and square mileage right now but it's about five of the thirty six square miles of the town but the police patrol thirty six square miles in any given night we may have a couple of officers on duty those types of things with the call volumes that we have we are not doing as many patrols currently as we'd like to and i think we would say that this is not as not been our priority of the last several years but if we are going to enforce it on all of brooke we will have to enforce it everywhere we in terms of where just urge would be honored to access expansion no discharge areas where that would be focused on two areas that the discussion on the sixteenth of august i was looking at indian brook park and s sixteenth but that's another another change in their what do you want to apply to just the parks or the parks plus a buffer area i know there's been some questions about that so beyond that just the minor changes we did notice that the language of the firearms destro edge ordinance did not match up to the the map and i'm trying to just show that it's probably easier where it's this is the current map and it's tough to see right here  but the language that describes the earlier talks about how it comes down colchester road and then it comes in here before coming down like that the map actually shows some around here the map actually shows this a few parcels in here as being in the know just charge area especially if you're adding in the tree farm made sense to me to include these parcels in here the relatively small parcels so i modified that language accordingly just one to call that out to your attention so you are aware of that change and what's written but and then on section nine of the ordinance talks about parks that are have no discharge allowed and it says exemption actually looking at the map there's two other small parcels that meet the definition of a park and outside of the no discharge area one of them is meyer's natural area which is this little parcel the other one answer any questions if you have any ok first i'd like to just address the many people who are here tonight for this item to talk about kind of how we're going to handle it tonight as we talked last so  reiterate this look what has received a lot of input in this process not just in the past couple weeks but over the many actually many years more recently we heard more from more than two hundred residents over six plus week timeframe in this summer with the help of a hired facilitator to try to make sure we're getting input from both you know from from all sides there was a two thousand i'm reporting from the farm's taskforce that we've had and considered and again we hear from residents throughout the years on all sides of this traditions that many people have that go back a long time that need to be respected we also want to use some common sense in any changes that we do  so on aug sixteenth that was the time when we focused just on this ordinance we discussed limiting the discharge of firearms of the ten on town properties of any in broken saxon hill and certain times of the year we didn't define what those times were and something i'm hoping we can do tonight so no dates were defined we also discussed creating a five hundred foot no discharge buffer around the perimeters of these properties but that's something we need to talk about as well and there's no no discharge of will be allowed on the tree farm property at any time that's the soccer fields there so one goal for tonight a status like war define the the buffer zone and the time windows the time window that firearms discharge will be allowed on town properties of any unbroken saxon hill and after the select boards to find this window and the buffer zone when that discussion at this like or love was done we're going to open it up to the public two to hear from them and i'll have more on that when we get to that but after  the public has been able to see what they need it's going to come back to the to the select board at that time and will then direct the staff to update existing ordinance cordingley with these dates for review for that for these dates and for the buffer zone if we want one at a future meeting there's a long process before an ordinance can become law not only do we need to review the the language as a board we would then have a public hearing to hear from the public once again to look at what the actual language of that ordinance is then it goes back to the select more to see based on that do we want to make any changes and so on  before so there's it's a long a long process and the potential changes to the ordinance as it relates to shooting ranges however we are not planning on discussing shooting ranges tonight we at the dislike or decided to hold that off until november fifth where part of that meeting will focus on the on the the shooting ranges so i just want to make sure that that's clear about how we're going to proceed with this particular business item is there any are there any questions ok great so again i'd like to then bring it to the select board here we know we've had the opportunity to breathe through the language that was drafted again where we need to define the date at which firearms would be allowed on these properties and if five hundred foot buffer around the property of in brooklyn saxon hill is something you want to see so all put it up to the board to hear what you'd like to do who like to go first and and money when we when we had the discussion at the last meeting we talked about being consistent with different types different parcels so we wanted to have the the saxon hill and the indian brook parcels handled in a consistent manner and then we talked and we also talked about the so called blue zone where we said that was private property and we didn't want to make any changes there so i am not at all in favor of the five hundred foot buffer around the parks because we're then would be treating those pieces of property inconsistently with how we handle the blue zone  and i ask you questions that ok max i'm just looking for some clarification an opinion the entire firearms discharge area that is not in question in the village in the other areas of that covers a lot of private property so i'm curious to know your opinion on why that's ok but a five hundred put buffer in the zones is not i have not said that that's ok so we're the discussion here is about the changes that we want to make around those parks i did not say i have haven't said either way right i think that say that we should remove it from all private property i'm saying that we please do not add it to additional private property parcels so you're not questioning our right to do it you just don't want to do it i have not question that i know the question in the right to do it and that there's i now understand that the arguments either way with regard to whether it's legal to remove the property rights of folks who own those properties in those five hundred foot buffers my position is that even if it  and i wouldn't want to include it in the blue zone because of that is personal property private property and in the village there's all private property that's that's covered i don't see i think that property that's owned by our municipality has the ability to extend into personal private property for safety so i'm just going to leave that that regarding the dates in looking at the fish and wildlife schedule for this year realizing that the dates can change from year to year if we limit firearms discharge to deer season there are four different deer seasons that would apply and in two thousand hundred it goes from october sixth through december ninth for simplicity's sake we could say october first through december fifteenth would be a ballpark yes that a covert one is the owner are not talking about th other hunting seasons as well so i would be in favor of allowing hunting in indian broke and saxon held during the season only because it does overlap with other hunting november so perhaps to rember first is the best start date there were at the ballpark start date and after muzzleloader correct w to do buffers around publicly used land i think that is a very clear distinction between public lands and privately owned property so i do i do not have a problem with a buffer around the two parks as far as dates are concerned i think if we are going to put that level of protection in which i believe is needed i am in favor of expanding the season and would recommend that hunting season go from one november to thirty one march as a proposed timeline for dates ok so you say with booker yes yes i think i'm sure there will be disagreement but i think there has to be some give and get on both sides  k with the dates of my proposed so just to clarify that's november first to march thirty first because as i want the bulk of the use of the parks to not be hearing gunfire or feeling as if they're in the middle of one hundred zone even though it will be better signed and from this experience i hope everyone will have a raised awareness of the fact that there has been hunting all along there and i use your mike they can't hear you you can hear me i'm sorry i agree with the dates and my proposed i think it's important to have the signage along with reduced access to hunters which is i think new compared to what happens now right now hunting's allowed all year round except for that five hundred but buffer around the res have been mentioned here tonight because it's significantly different than what we talked about at the last meeting and the and i'm just i don't understand what's changed but my understanding of what her my are memory of what we were talking about was  allowing hunting during the peak you season starting you know june first until september first and then allowing hunting other than those dates so the hunting season that i remember is talking about of the last being would would have been from september first to june first to allow of a small game hunting and so forth that was discussed at the last meeting and i don't understand why the days of change for everybody because we couldn't agree on the dates at the time there was there was i didn't change what i wanted and that was november first december so that's why we haven't discussed night because that was not the full range or decided several dates were were trying to figure it out tonight the data andy i eat you're not you're remembering correctly that we did have that conversation it did go that far in terms of limiting it to just the most heavily used times  my concern at the time was i wasn't entirely familiar with the dates of the hunting season the full calendar of all the different seasons and i thought that the seasons did not overlap and so therefore it was concern that hunting would be limited for various groups but in looking at the dates in that i can see that there's a great deal of overlap with all the different types of of game and small animals that are allowed to be hunted especially in the fall and so that's why i went back to my original stand of the deer season because it overlaps with hair rabbit grey squirrel grouse and bear so it overlaps with multiple seasons but i want to remind folks too that there are over four thousand passes in the envelope that's a crowded that's a crowded area of the town a lot of also dogs running running through there i was just there this weekend and it was like a traffic jam and it was packed and just because the town doesn't have an attendant there to take attendance during the winter it does mean people don't go there also and enjoy that spectacular place in in the winter so i was of the mind to say no honey at all or throughout the year but i understand there's a need to control deer population and one affective way is to allow the hunters to be able to help the town out and take care of them but with so many people in that park throughout the year i'm just trying to use what i see is common sense to say there's so many people there in a park that we're not saying that people can't use it you're in the hunting season you know non hunters but i really think it makes sense to we didn't touch the blue zone the the private land that's what the public land i think we have an obligation to public safety you could argue that look we haven't had any accidents great can you guarantee that going forward in the future nobody can i respect the hunters i know they take  you know class and i'd say ninety eight percent of them follow things to the t there's traditions going way back and deer hunting is is is a big one this allows deer hunting to continue and it allows the rest of the community to enjoy the park without haven't even to hear gunshots near them i could go either way on the buffer but i think if we could limit to just the deer hunting that goes a long way in you know we haven't addressed the shooting ranges and there may be some shooting ranges in that buffer zone so putting a buffer zone out there may create some problems in the future until we look at that area but anyway that's why i'm thinking that the deer hunting the november first of december fifteenth as a good compromise but so far it's just two of us we don't have a consensus yet so we need to work on it to come up with some real dates the only counterpoint i would make mr chairman is that after deer season and after long rifle the caliber of weapon goes way way down and that in in my view that in conjunction with the buffer makes that safe in my view if i think that that people will still be able to enjoy the  parks and like i said the caliber of weapon is considerably reduced from your season that's the kind of points that i would like to get on the record and that's where you know everyone to march thirty first that's right  i would just add that while i understand the caliber of weapon goes down and that's helpful to know usage of the park by people who do not use firearms continues the same way it always does and it's a safety perception and a concern and people who use the space for recreational purposes from what i've been contacted by people you have gotten e mails i've gotten conversations conversations with people they don't feel safe when they're recreating at a place where they hear gunshots it doesn't necessarily matter what kind of gun is being used and it doesn't necessarily matter where it's being fired because if you're running or biking or cross country skiing and you hear that you're not going to know where it's coming from or who is firing it or that it's in a particular zone or that it's a particular weapon of a particular caliber it's frightening so from a safety perspective to make our residents feel like they can recreate without concerns for their safety i think that limiting it to deer season and putting up proper signage would go a long way to ensuring the safety of the entire community because we are responsible for making these decisions for the entire community community ok to try to look and see where we have common ground i can see that at least four of us are saying of ever first as a start date you know and he said september one but elaine you said november first and  was to have the three summer months ok so ok so let's say we have colorado reason of everyone you know maybe not ideal but we can all agree to and can we talk about this arts are not all that  that you said with the without the right with but it is it is in conjunction with a pending the season and i'm i'm i'm not going to vote for the buffer if we're going to keep it from november one to december fifteenth if we got rid of the bumper mike the five hundred puffery just did it to the property line is that something that you could agree to bring in to the deer  the public will be wearing orange during that month and a half and i think it only gets easier to see people at indian brook as the snow falls as the leaves fall and as people are getting used to wearing orange so i'm not seeing a big issue with continuing allowing hunting into the spring and i'm i'm dismayed that select board members that showed support for shotgun small game hunting during other months  time window and the the no buffer i think we need to also consider i think some set up before we sit on the sixteenth have signage at the at the different parks but so have the town develop policy to say what kind of signs and where they should be would be helpful i'd also like to see the town develop an educational outreach plan regarding far as ordinance should it be updated to make sure it's clear to the public whatever update that turns out to be and again if we go forward tonight says looks like we have at least a majority of the board saying november first to december fifteenth without the buffer we still have the public hearing process to go through we're more input and we're not locked in until we approve it so but this is least gets us on the path to get there it's not unanimous i know but that but before we do a motion it was any other discussion on the from the board or are there other items in this mornin so we can discuss such as raising the price of the fines because i don't think twenty five dollars fine discourages anyone  if i can comment on that i think as a whole there's a lot of fines in different areas that all of the deal because if they're not acting as a deterrent which is what they were set up to be it's worth looking at i  think that's something that we ought to put on the on the on the front i mean the list of many things to do to have to look at that is there anything else or yeah just some simple wording right now it says this nice paragraph like greg wrote about the dates wrong which the discharge is permitted and in the i'm broke right now it says shall not apply to the hunting safety zone described in section nine dash eight blah blah blah if we're going to refer people to another ordinance i wish we at least encapsulate what that means so maybe we can say the discharge of firearms is permitted and neighbor park shall not breach the five hundred foot hunting safety zone or should honor the five hundred foot hunting safety zone but to make people go digging up a second ordinance to figure out just what we're saying mary think is unnecessary i'd rather be more i think as a practice what we've said because those ordinances do tell me tell me the procedure again here one more time before we open it up to the public it will be well but we will there be a motion and then we open it to the public or no we motion afterwards will motion it very well brief and focus on any new things that we haven't heard we've heard quite a bit and please do not interrupt or have any side conversations while others are speaking just to show the person who's speaking the upmost respect that we have that they have our attention direct all your comments to me as chair of the select board please not to anybody else in the audience or at the table speakers will be given a limited time for their comments and if time runs out either i or evan will as politely as possible cut you off it's always irritating to be cut off and will always seem impolite but it's to be respectful of others time if anyone before you says something that you wanted to say it's perfectly great to say did zero for what that person said or i agree with that person and this like normal listen to what you have to say but we want to let you know this is not  and it's not a dialogue we will hear your comments and concerns and know that we may not produce the outcome that you want and we know that's painful it's actually probably excruciating for many people but we've listened to input we read input we get e mails every week from a lot of people on this and we go through  those and know that the select board's job is to try to balance all of all these things and there's opposing you know sides of many sides and there's no way we're going to make everybody happy but we're going to do the best we can to balance the interests of their safety and rights and tradition that we try to balance again i know it's painful to watch it happen but it's our job to make these decisions and we invite your your input tonight so if i could have a show of hands so i know how much time each person can be given who would like to speak tonight sure well we're talk we're as any was saying we want to treat both the same the saxon hill and indian broke so it would be the same dates and no buffer on that and the only difference with the tree farm is there's no firearms any time and again no no buffer on that ok now you're i don't think i was explicit on that so thank you for having me clarify that ok so one more time show hands so i can count you  please one two three ok yeah how about two and a half minutes per person than if you could again direct your comments directly to me and this is for essex residents so we're going to ask you your name and your address to make sure that it's you know speaking at the meetings this is the residence meeting so i'd like to alternate you know proa comp and i don't know what's in your head although i do know some what side you're on so again if you could please be respectful again of just listening no side comments and stick to the two and a half minutes and we will as politely as possible cut you off if you do go along ok so who would like to be first yeah yes  me well we'll do the best we can to keep it brief but it's really to to hear your you know what we just said we said in the in brook saxon hill no discharge except during november first and december fifteenth tree farm no discharge at all no buffer yeah the buffer we were discussing but we decided not to do so far was at the property line of the indian brook parcel saxon hill parcel and the tree farm parcel there is a boundary line that of town property we were talking about extending beyond that property like five hundred feet of no discharged during that time to find but what we back what we changed to was there would be no buffer so the discharge no discharge would be just to the property line of the town these three town parcels that i'm sorry yes yes there's this good point at indian brook at the high water mark there's been for many years five hundred foot no discharge buffer along the water during this november first december fifteenth there's still no discharge in that five hundred foot buffer around the high water mark as there has been for the past many many years ok sorry didn't include that yeah i guess we'll start this way and we'll go to the left i counted nine so if you could please step up to the mike state party sure state your name for the record and your address so we know you're a resident which  town highways are property laid out constructed maintained altered why didn't and operated when the safety of the public requires that and this is please all  folks with very severe can do attitude i doubt it but i feel like it needs to be grounded in some public policy public safety facts evidence something not just chinese media everybody  happy we do need to protect everyone who uses those parks and also to homeowners and not to hear that there was a bullet in somebody's house is terrified and i just i don't know if that again it's not something that we can we can really do away with we have other sharon towns to allow shoot you can hear the shots from miles and miles away you know if you're going to be limiting certain weapons you know or you know this want to respond to something that was said about buffers around residences and the resident can establish you know shooting zone around their own property there are very specific rules about how you can do that so there  with with our community and i just wanted to say thank you to the speakers and to the audience for during this this time of help polite respectful you are even though you're feeling this incredible passion inside you you're very respectful to us and that change i don't want anybody to think that you're safe there's still risk involved no matter what changes we do to try to get toward something that we consider safer this is by no means i'm just saying that the comment was that if we make a change we're going to be preventing any accidents and i'm saying that accidents happen and even if we have a change of the ordinance it's not going to guarantee anything address there we don't really know where that bullet paper that was unclear in the report when you talk to the officers that know what can be done there any of the comments about that left i didn't want it to be inflammatory i just want to make sure people don't think we can make people say i know you well enough that i'm really positive you didn't mean it to be but it it came out that way i apologize because there's no other changes that are made about it we will ask the language then in the ordinance to be changed to say november first through december fifteenth to allow discharge of firearms keep the five hundred foot buffer around the high water mark of no discharge at any time and no the public vs direct and no shooting at the tree farm at a time with no buffer might come in i believe we had language in there from the earlier meeting about revisit that again i remember the difference but is that when and if i remember it differently to remember that we said no metric but that we we we would review the  thank you all again for being respectful i'm sorry i didn't get so passionate about this larry you know that we can't guarantee any one state that we do our best but it's not guaranteed process for fiscal year ending twenty twenty seven think and when the other night at the joint village board select board meeting we discussed priorities but prior to and give staff that opportunity to look into it we thought we give you the opportunity to do that i'll touch process so if there's any big you know ten thousand foot goal that you're thinking or goal for this year i'll give you one that came up at our joint meeting is we adding police officers for the community which we started last year but if that's a continued call please say so and other that you know obviously through the year many things are said but if you put us on the right direction that would be great ok all right let's open it up ideas irene your hair came up  without another senior boss i would just request that we somehow increase pay or do something to make sure we have enough drivers to stop the two of us as we have every day of the week before we look into getting a new bu that i agree we should explore the bussing for seniors but we should also explore whether contracting out to a company to handle that duty for us would be more affordable i don't know i'm just you know want to know that i know that training drivers and insurance liabilities that go along with the expense of is there another alternative one comment i want to make though about our hired staff to do it their we call bus drivers but they're groceries in there and actually then bring them into the house so the big they're there more than bus drivers they really are and drivers exhibit on a day in and day out basis in the care that they give for their their passengers i'm sure there are some companies out there that will claim they can provide that i'd put our drivers up against any company but i understand the question one of the things from staff perspective in terms of the seniors trips we would like to look at some options for that so that our drivers are available rounds i have ever few when it comes to the additional police officers we know that when we compare ourselves to other communities per how many officers for thousand and we're certainly below that doesn't mean that the other towns are at the right level either but my my my point is it's clear that we need additional officers it would be interesting to be good to know if there's a way for us to determine how many were  by not by comparing to other towns per se although that's a metric we can look at but from our internal perspective what number would be the optimum one to be able to do some proactive work that's not getting done and what ever else you think isn't happening so we can see that and then maybe come up with a plan about how we could staff that over time because we probably can't do it in one year or two but if we knew where we were going we could figure out a way to get there  that's that's one for the public works if there's any additional cost we think the schools going to have to drive us because public safety is key and if there's an issue that we need to do a departments if that turns out that piece of if that feasibility study looks good is there something in there that we want to make sure we put in the budget what about the a t o or main sign is that an eyesore for long enough is that anything at least and that's going to make the sign so i thought i thought that was already done as part of the renovation so you might just want to check the records was it electronic was it proposes aleck tronic or static decide well now it's boys are in violation of village code messages you want to present and i hate to make a bad joke but if you're sitting in traffic going bumper to bumper you miles will see three messages as you go by i'm just saying hey but if you're going twenty five mph you're going to get one message anyway i have a few more things right t v if you're going to twenty five or so we heard that it take care of each building it's sort of up to whoever is working in that building to do and that's probably not the most efficient or effective way to do it so we i think i recall talking about a superintendent for buildings perhaps it would be interesting to see if that's something that we want to include in the budget that might help us spend the limited dollars we have in maintenance and so on more effectively and allow the people who are in the library say to do library services as opposed to roofing ins septic or whatever they're doing any and maybe let the police chief actually be the police chief instead of the building superintendent is here that's why i'm using  if we just said let's put denver just in a retainer so we need to make sure we have the funds there i don't know what the number would be but some like twelve thousand i would think is in the  ballpark and then we have the opportunity now to do the budget a little bit differently than we have in the past so we might want to think about saying as far as  operational cost increase in percents that we haven't done that in the past we've always said no pat we want to maintain the same of services you know and then that will cut if if where we think it needs to be but what about beyond that if our priorities are or in conflict with that and we have union contracts that that kind of drive the majority of that we say we want more police officers who say w so but he may be able to balance it with other things if we give him that direction is that something you want to try this year which we have in the past when i would just note that in general the trustees over time ha done directed path to two three percent or cost of living so you know we've we've been a little bit more specific in that respect to it wouldn't be unusual and that's that's operating budget operating budget that's not a tax rate increase no e twenty fifteen or twenty seventeen our budgets were under spent by an average of four hundred twenty three thousand and if you look that's the last six years we're under spent by a little over three hundred thousand so if i took that to heart and i think that well we strive to get our budget close as to what we predict i think the chief would've traded his surplus for the officers that he was big that had vacant when they happen but it even at ninety eight percent effective the fish and see accuracy we still would have ended up with two hundred seeds one hundred forty thousand every one percent so you would have had a surplus of two eighty if everything went right everything went your way and we still had some things step perspective we do try for that accuracy the second thing is as i understand and i've read the budget a little bit more recently you don't actually fund a contingency you use your for your fifteen percent reserves that are undesignated and so i would say that staff does a really nice job of making sure we don't go over budget and you guys and the public get the benefit of having a very healthy reserve that can weather the times that you are really going to need it like if you do get that storm like killington did a couple years ago where it washed out roads and you're talking hundreds of thousands if not a million plus dollars to replace sections or road or like what happened to the village just this last winter where you had a major water main break that was hundreds of thousands of dollars and you got to deal with it right then and that's when your reserves are really there for you so there's a balance with that i think we need to cause of it and try to strive for that ninety eight ninety nine in happen because we do we do have a fund balance policy and where we're floating are close to twenty percent in our policy is fifteen and we struggle with giving that money back because we don't like to give money back and one of the things that i would like to look at all that up faster than we have there i would like to the select board to look at where some of those funds should be designated we are doing some space need studies for sure it's going to come something to the effect of not only in the fire department but in the public works garage i believe they're dealing with one thousand nine hundred forty s era building i don't know what its lifespan is going to be past this but i wouldn't suggest it's another sixty years so those are the types of monies you're going to need to start allocating either to studies or ways to address how to keep those buildings as long as you can in on that note evident in the past the town has reserved for many years reserve money for the renovation of eighty one main so i mean is it time to formalize a similar program and set aside some carry over funds for the next wave of buildings that we're going to need i will also give you two other areas we have several people getting close to retirement we have benefits people have accrued vacation time and sick time that are in their contracts for that we should make that a liability on the tile and it needs to be paid  second we have buildings we have that we also have while it will come to me i apologize so that the policy with the with the fund did you have two small things one is that certain committees would really like to have small budgets with which to do things so if we get include some of our committees in by getting that would be great also i believe is going to require a considerable amount more of money from us this year so just so that were aware of that before they shop and ask for it we'll need they're going to ask for twelve thousand a year as opposed to six thousand as well i had mentioned that at the excuse me the trustees me i'm remiss in not bringing it here so i can explain why that is now or are you well we're talking about the budget so this is ok sure so the channel seventeen is funded almost in its entirety by user fees that are generated by comcast and burlington telecom cable users the tendency of society now is to use to do cord cutting they're not subscribing to cable they're going directly on line to get their programming and so they've seen a significant reduction in the amount of subscribers and in this past fiscal year it has resulted in a fifty thousand dollar decline in revenue and six another significant change which is the one time change was that general accounting practices have changed so that telecom companies have to report their bundled services differently and so they removed about twenty five thousand dollars from the column of funds that go to the public access stations into a different column so we took a large hit one time hit as well so the resulting request is going to be that we increase our contribution to twelve thousand dollars then going forward hopefully we will do an annual increase of predictable three percent big no go for it if you're mentioning retirements triggered something that the discussion i had had with with your predecessor at one point was the the fact that we have been in our contracts the ability to work accrue our large payment at the end but we never budget for it there's there's two things to consider there right is one is there a way to budget for that boy's claim that there wasn't and that we that was one of the advantages of having such a substantial fund balance was that we could pay to make those payments out of out of out of that i still that you know if you have a hurricane come through and you can afford these retirement years you're borrowing money to do to pay for something that i don't understand why we can't budget for and so you know i know this is not probably not a contract year but is that i really think that when next time we do these contracts we should consider some way to turn that large lump sum payment into part potentially in an annuity rather than one time payment or an installment payment or some way to make it more both so that we don't you know have this you know three people retire that you don't expect and suddenly you've got this huge payout that you've got to begin to deal with with no no budget back and so they said  i was going to just do a variation of that same thing i really don't want us to put ourselves in a position where we have a deficit balance going i mean we do that at the state level it fries my cookies every single year and i just we we have always been very at least in my six years here we have always been very responsible with our money i just think you know whether it's andy's suggestion that maybe it becomes a negotiating tool when the contracts come up or whether we just plain set aside money for it  and elaine's idea was a great one to start accumulating money for some of the buildings that we know were going to go down sooner rather than later i just i guess those would be my suggestions i i hate deficit fun if you go forward with the village and and consolidate you may want to keep some of that money to feather in how the tax rate will affect the residents it will it can be used in that way i believe we already use a little bit of our budget to do that so there was a one effort so it's just a question when we have the audited amount for  and the auditors aren't the actual ones who tell us what it is we actually know with the numbers they just verify it has i don't want to put any number out there but  have a good idea and when we talk about our next topic i'll give you a better idea so what about the idea of the per n they love the service except for these areas are we just increased in come up with that hit list of items that staff decides that these are important but if you're going to sacrifice of a sacrifice these first and that's what i've done the past but might be an opportunity to be different and make it more targeted for their staff to come up with a budget that  would be more in line with where we know we want to be anyway and i don't want to see you know a six percent i'd be happy with you know i get nervous when it gets near for me are voters would be appreciative of knowing that we're working within a certain increase amount and even though the board when when an unexpected increase occurs the board works very hard to walk it back to a reasonable amount it's still a shock for residents when they find out about the initial price tag so working within confines i feel is responsible and it's what three percent i would go closer to four i believe the town is taking on some of the village expenses with all this consolidation so i don't think it's realistic to piece of our increase is salaries and benefits i mean i'm struggling with three percent of the you can't get there because your contract we are going to actually i'm going to give people raises and services probably bigger that you'd have to cut something else right or not add the staff that we just asked you  even saying four percent is tight if you're trying to add a person but i don't know i don't know how to do it but i think if we can say if we saved four and we already talked about these other things we'd like to see in there then they at least know kind of where our heads are and then they come up with some kind of proposal that tries to honor both in some kind of compromise way and then we can just maybe hopefully just tweak it a little bit is what you said your goals are you know contractual obligation blah blah blah we get through all that said now do you know here's your goals here's what you said you wanted to achieve here's where it is at three percent here's where it is at four percent and here's where you start reaching your goals at the at the village board meeting the other night we talked about the capital plan and this is what you're doing at seven and a half percent increase which is where you said you were comfortable with but you go negative in three years here's where you are at ten percent and we show you what your options are in a total budget that's a little bit harder but we can give you some idea of where we land at a base budget where we add which of priorities and where we get every everything and you probably at the end at the end of everything you go all right let's bring it down to we don't get everything but we get enough for this year and keep the ball rolling  do have our priorities and so as long as you stick to some of those we'll get you a good balanced budget that shows that we're meeting your goal as many of your goals as we it's a lot to look at i mean we we really don't want to go into the weeds so we do want to stay sort of at a policy level but we have to talk about how we want to do the review whether it's a regular you know multi going through the budget in recent years and i was a little surprised to read what i saw was some inflight implied inefficiency or maybe i read this wrong but i think that spending nights with three or four department heads each given the size of the town budget given the responsibilities the town has and continues to take on more and more each year i think that gives us a chance to be really focused on and prepare for and talk about certain things without trying to swallow the whole alphabet as a former selector memories to say on one day it's a huge budget and i like dividing it up into bite sized chunks consider it but mike i want to tried doing it in a day just to try it because i'll tell you all the evening meetings and stuff  people can plan for it so that i sit in the library so it occurred to me that as i was reading this you know functioning less on small expenses only get to town meeting people go line by line and ask for stuff and i just personally wouldn't feel prepared if we didn't have the chance such a survey questions of specific department heads as we have in the past but then again that's my cover all the way just to share my experiences in doing it one day i realized that the villages budget is smaller than the town's budget but  we managed to squeeze in all of the departments and what i find valuable is that what i learned a morning from whichever department heads come first i still have in my head in the afternoon when the other department heads are there and it's a holistic view of the entire budget which is very helpful and i'm not saying that it's not possible to remember these things from meeting to meeting but it's helpful to have it in compassed in one day that s certainly understand that the town budget is quite thick we do take the time to talk with every department head in great detail and some department heads bring staff and we have we have really good conversations about what the departments need they're very honest with what they need with what they can give up if we tell them to they are used to working within a x percentage increase window and so when they come to us there that's already there and so we freak we don't have the hear the necessity of parsing through every single line item to find when we trust the staff to do that and they do it to the letter and we have good conversations about goals at the same time and about challenges and hopes for the future so we do it's a long day but it's important and i  find it i find it valuable to do it one day but of course what the board's preferences is what's best given the length of the book that we need to look at you know generally i don't i only read the sections that i need to read before the meeting where it occurs i don't you know if the intent is the that i have to go through the entire book before we have the first meeting you know that's that's a swallowing the elephant yeah absolutely so i'm i i wouldn't mind doing more content at each meeting having fewer but but again that you know that i would stress to staff that as stressed  do also have this eleven o'clock rule that you can't go past eleven o'clock without unanimous consent and i guess i would be born favor of continuing in the fashion that we have before because it's easier to for me to be familiar with the content because i don't have to read it all at once i think i would shortcut if i had to read i would skip a lot of it if i had to do it all in one shot i mean one thank you for your comments to staff they spend a lot of time put in those books together and all of it is electronic is there a possibility that we could provide you just the electronic version thought this what we decided we were going to do this year last year was the transition with tablets and we said the book at all this year we're going to say just the electronic research has shown that reading comprehension is much higher than the piece of paper that a screen so my preference if i as a slike or member i'm supposed to be looking at a budget on behalf of my constituents i want to look at it in the best possible way for me to on earth anything in advance of town meeting that might be questionable or need to be pulled out more detail so i would request paper know in all my years of doing this work i've never had a paper it's always been a letter and anything i needed i print myself but i think we've made it a policy that say for the meeting that you could have an electronic don't mean to add tons of clerical work i have all budget binders i can sift things into the proper places feel free to give me a stack of paper and i'll sort through it and staple and whatever that i have to do because i don't want to cause extra work that a lo but maybe someday we could figure out a way to do that so it is a transition year at this time to be all electronics so that maybe we should ask everybody to pay attention this year and take notes and think of ways just talk about it here just a high level and yes we will do it at the end absolutely ok then we're going to want to five g and that's the minutes of october  members just noticing it's not a problem for me that it sometimes is indeed sometimes xander i don't know do we have do we i bet if you said what your preferences we can let the i don't have i don't have a preference i just asking if there was so it's been a certain way mr watts miss a miss runner for many many years this was a deserves a different different note taker but it's in so i just notice that sometimes  things but yes but certainly i can i can if there is a preference i will pass it on to the new recording secretary and then we can start doing it personally i've been fine when it says you know mr mr water mr levy this rain or  the consent agenda looks like board member comments are second sagen and you comments on the check warrants of october fifth or october twel  the one of the concerns i wanted to bring up in that meeting was that the the so called sub committee has asked for a long list of financial information legality of different options of governance i understand that there are certainly legal implement the implement implications to finances but i don't think the exact dollar amounts are necessary and especially from a historical standpoint  seems like a lot of information was asked for everything even agreed to pay over time to to collect that data and i it looks to me like justification for one choice of governance over another and it's not related at all i don't believe it's related to determining which of the scenarios are are legal or are possible i don't believe that the mission of the so called subcommittees to come back with a recommendation is to come back with information and facts about the different governance options so i was and beyond that i was dismayed that we didn't have any conversation about governance in that meeting and that i was told that my only way to put him put to the so called sub committee is in writing i'm concerned that we've sacrificed transparency for the sake of meeting expedien y by you know having you know not allowing conversation if the intent of the agenda item was to only provide a report from  from george it should have been in the in the reading file for comment only rather than being listed in the agenda with the phrase in parentheses no action i think that's an inappropriate offended every time i hear you call it a so called sucking me you may not agree with it but the board decided and you said it the creation of it so if you could that but that's how it comes across so max thank you for saying that i agree one hundred percent regarding the fact that we didn't get to discuss the subcommittees activities at the joint meeting i understand your frustration with that andy and i would not i don't think that our purpose is to restrict board members questions or comments to print only i recall asking at the meeting that one of our upcoming joint meetings have just the sub the governance conversation on the agenda so that we would have enough time to talk about it at length and i think that will happen and i think will be multiple subsequent opportunities for both boards to discuss it at length regarding the objection to the subcommittees requests for information regarding finances i think our subcommittee would be extremely remiss if we did not investigate the costs associated with various potential governing scenarios i think the public requires us to do that kind of information gathering and c r p c and in the case of c c r p c would that imply that we would be forfeiting millions of dollars in construction grant money i would want to know that before approving any particular scenario and the subcommittee is not going to say i don't we're not going to do this one because of this financial impact we're doing the due diligence that's necessary for both boards to find out the financial impacts of these scenarios and bring them to the boards for further discussion i think it's absolutely essential that we gather this information i appreciate your comments andy about the data the trustees at their last meeting spoke in person with charlie baker and he insisted that there would be no difference in any way that he could foresee so i really would like to not keep hearing about that particular issue because i believe it has been  aware if i could chime in that same item i believe i didn't pass on the notes to travis quickly enough that the april joint meeting is going to be on the tenth month third so if you notice that typo that is a typ reading sorry the other comment i intended to make about the back on the topic i referenced before as i i am worried that we are traveling down a similar path that we did was right governance and that we have a  makes it a select board meeting i've always been told by vermont league of cities and towns that is your presence in the room that that initial that constitutes quorum not your participation or your intent and so although orderly conduct of business we talked about the possibility of having the select board chair relinquish the gavel when discussions are about a committee that that  individual is a member of and so the next time this board talks about the governance so called sub committee i'm going to ask that we consider removing the gavel from the chair and turning it to the vice chair because that because of very evident bias that's been shown in this meeting and others in the other comments other way i just addressed the concern that the subcommittee is heading towards a pre determined conclusion as frustrating to hear from a fellow board member we do not have the authority or the permission to make any conclusions about anything our goal is to bring to the boards a list of potential scenarios with the least amount of of harm to either entity either the village or the town so  how a pre determined conclusion can be determined from that where we are bringing up a menu of choices after doing due diligence i don't understand but i want to assure members of the board and the public that this subcommittee is being conducted with the utmost care and we've hired an attorney who is widely considered to be one of the experts in all o