Let me bring the Brattleboro Select Board meeting to order for Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026.

This is a regular meeting of the Select Board.

Let's see.

John, has the meeting been properly warned?

Yes, it was.

Great.

Are there any adjustments to the agenda?

All right, seeing none.

Chair remarks.

Well, um now that the budget discussion is um put to rest for the time being.

And I'm just letting you know what those five things are.

It is increase revenues, advocate for state revenue sharing, work towards child safety zones, expand housing stock, and prioritize financial responsibility and health.

I have been advocating for state revenue sharing, and I'm sure we'll hear more about that.

Um and we will hear tonight about expanding the housing stock.

So stay tuned as we begin that work in the upcoming months.

And let's see.

Oh, and I just uh want to mention that um if there's a lot of people who want to speak this evening, and there's sign-up sheets for each topic.

So if you'd like to speak on a certain topic, um order is preferred if you sign up.

So please do that.

And John, do you have managers' comments?

Yeah, just a couple of things tonight.

Uh absentee ballots for the March 3rd Town Meeting Day and Wyndham Southeast School District elections will be mailed to those who have requested them on or around February 11th.

Voters may now begin requesting their ballots to be mailed by logging into their voter portal at portal at uh vote.vermont.gov, or by emailing the town clerk's office at town clerk at Brattleboro.gov.

Um, or by calling them at 802-251-8157.

In-person early voting will begin on or around February 17, and an announcement will be made once that option is ready.

Uh quarter three taxes and water sewer payments are due on or before 5 p.m.

Tuesday, February 17th.

Uh please be mindful that Monday, February 16th is President's Day and town offices are closed for that holiday.

That's all I had.

Thank you.

Are there select board members who wish to comment?

All right then.

I I would love to.

I um I just want to inform the viewers at home that I uh was snowshoeing with friends and I got a uh twig in my eye.

So if you see me with a very red eye, that's the reason why.

Um gabbing with friends, not paying attention.

Um I also would like to announce that I'm running for the three-year select board seat for the election.

Well, Amanda, uh, there are a number of people on either side of the table who are running for office.

Uh Isaac, do you have would like to make an announcement?

Sure, I'm running for re-election for a one-year seat.

And I am running for a re-election for the three-year seat.

And there are several candidates in the audience I see.

Ken Faye is also running for the three-year seat, Brandy Blogger who's running for the one-year seat, and Dina Chadwick is running for the one-year seat.

Is there anyone else that I have not recognized?

All right, then.

Um let's begin with public participation.

And again, this is for items.

Yes, ma'am.

I wanted to take part in public.

Oh, I haven't gotten it out of my mouth yet.

All right.

Um public participation.

This is people.

Anyone who would like to speak about an item that is not on the warned agenda.

And um, let me begin by by saying that uh, thank you.

Um if there um I will not permit personal attacks of anyone of any kind this evening.

So um let's start our public participation with that.

And Jen, you want to speak.

Oh, once again, it's very short.

Jenna Seymour, representative uh town meeting member for district eight and member of the Brattleboro Planning Commission.

I want to address an issue that came up at last night's planning commission, and that was the fact that I often come to this mic and identify myself as a member of the Brattleboro Planning Commission.

And I want to state to the select board and to the public for the record that at no point will I ever be speaking from this microphone on behalf of the planning commission.

The reason why I d identify myself that way is because I feel an ethical responsibility to the public of this town so that they are reminded of the positions of trust that I hold in this town.

So if anything that comes out of my mouth from this microphone is something that they want to hold against me and when my time for re-election or reappointment comes up, that is their right to do so.

And I feel very strongly about openness and transparency in government.

And so that's why I do that.

That at no point will I ever speak from this microphone on behalf of the Brattleboro Planning Commission without the express approval by vote in council of my fellow commissioners.

Um I may occasionally speak my own opinion as a commissioner, but that should in no way be taken as the opinion of the Brattleboro Planning Commission.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I have two names here.

I'm gonna start with them.

Ivan Hennessy.

Hello, uh Ivan Hennessy.

I have two questions uh for you all regarding public safety.

The first one is uh when do you expect to have the walk signal call button in front of the latches hotel repaired?

It uh lights up and it makes noises and it does not affect the signal in any way.

And the other is um do you expect the South Stairwell in the transportation center to be functioning before the north stairwell has to be closed because of the extensive rust on the railing that is uh it's impressive actually.

It's kind of geometrical and it's growing.

Um it's a fun little science experiment, but it's not going to be safe for much longer.

Thank you for pointing out how well Brattleboro does rust.

Okay.

Um Randy and then Sue.

Hi, Randy Blodge at District 7, Slight Word candidate.

Um I just wanted to invite everybody.

I had the pleasure of going to America 250 um last week at the library.

It's on the library calendar of events.

There are some things planned.

There's more ideas.

We could use more people there to celebrate what's going on this year, as well as Vermont's anniversary into the following year.

Um there's some things at the Creamery Bridge, um, other things on the river with like a boat regatta that are planned so far as my understanding.

So um come out, help, get some more ideas.

I I think it's a worthwhile cause.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak under oh yes, Sue.

And the man behind Randy.

But Sue first.

Zoo Belleville Brattleboro.

Um question um for Monday for the tax payment.

Uh is anyone going to collect from that collection box that's out in the parking lot on the holiday.

Just wanting to make sure if I drop my payment off that it would not sit there till Tuesday.

Thank you.

Jim?

On the spot.

I um not sure, Sue.

Uh let me find that out and I will get you that information.

We we have another meeting on Thursday, so I'm sure that John will be able to get that information to the public by then.

I I may have it by later this meeting.

That would be uh person behind Randy, please.

My name is Wally Blight.

Um it's my first time doing this, so I don't know if I'm doing it right or not.

You're doing s fine so far.

Uh well to make some statements about BCS and some of the things I read online about what was said about them and kind of clear them up from my point of view.

Bradboro Common Sense.

Oh.

Um they were really helpful to me when I was down and out.

You know, they gave me a place to stay, rides the appointments, doctors' appointments and stuff don't me get back on track.

And I just read some statements.

Like somebody said that uh it's better out to sleep out in a snow than in that at that place.

Uh I just wonder if anybody up there had experience in sleeping out, so I don't know, you know, before you say stuff like that.

Well, happily uh Wally, the select board is not the police of social media.

All right.

Um well this is I guess up here to stick up for them and say that you know I think you guys like the town spent a lot of money in like shutting them down and you know going against them when they're a pretty big help.

I mean, you got people outside in the streets.

I understand like I done my own thing to get myself in that situation.

I got nobody to blame but myself, but something like that is there to help.

Like I think that the town would be more supportive of it than against them.

Um I really don't know what else to say.

I hope you understand what I mean by that, but thank you for your comment.

Thank you.

Ken Ken Vay, District Eight.

I would just like to uh say that with the six people here running for office, uh that four weeks from now, four weeks from now is election day.

And I hope everyone here in this room, I assume everyone here in this room will vote.

I assume everybody on uh watching online will vote.

But um I would uh recommend and hope that we get the people who don't vote to vote.

Uh 29 percent last year on a contentious uh year.

Um, you know, isn't that good?

Get our neighbors to vote.

Get everybody probably knows people who don't vote.

Uh ask them why, talk to them, speak with them, uh uh get them to vote.

Uh 250 years, Randy talked about the America 250.

We had uh no taxation without representation.

Uh and now we're voluntarily, voluntarily uh not being represented by not voting.

Uh there's um anyway, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yes, John.

So I have an answer to Sue's question.

Uh it will not be picked up on the holiday, but it will first thing on Tuesday.

And the the deadline is the Tuesday, right?

The deadline is the Tuesday.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that was public participation.

And now we'll have the consent agenda.

John, do you want to do that?

Yep, you want to summary?

Yes, please.

Uh, there's 10 items on the consent agenda tonight.

If you approve this agenda, you'll be approving the annual certificate of highway mileage for 2026 for the town.

You'll be approving a tobacco substitute endorsement permit for the Walgreens on Putney Road and also the one on Canal Street.

You'll be approving first and third class liquor license renewals for midnights at two high street.

You'll be approving the certificate of no appeal for the 2025 grand list.

You'll be approving renewals of first and third class liquor licenses and an outside consumption permit for spring spring marina on Spring Gree Road.

You'll be awarding a contract for um 75,800 to Stantec for the 2024 Transportation Alternatives grant to design a sidewalk on Fairgrounds Road.

You'll be approving a first class liquor license for Halo Hollow at 75 Elliott Street.

You'll be approving a first class liquor license and annual entertainment license for Saffron Restaurant at 889 Putney Road.

You'll be approving a contract with uh Southern Vermont Solar to install a photovoltaic solar array on the roof of the Brooks Memorial Library for a cost of 186,340.

And finally, you'll be approving a parade permit for the Asian Cultural Center of Vermont's February 8th parade on Main Street from the museum to High Street and back.

Thank you, Jim.

Yep.

Is does any select board member wish to pull an item from the consent agenda?

Seeing none.

I move to accept the consent agenda as presented.

Great.

Isaac has moved to accept the consent agenda as presented.

All select board members in favor, please raise your hand and say I.

And that's five-zero.

All right.

On to the regular business.

Yeah, um, I can do a little introduction on this.

Uh so last week the select board received uh multiple messages from members of the public regarding the on-seen management of media by town staff.

And this is a regular occurrence.

I we see media sneaking up on the select board right here.

Um this is a regular occurrence for uh town staff uh in several departments fire, police, DPW, library, and wreck and parks, something that town staff are dealing with all the time.

Um I asked the town attorney to put together information regarding the concerns that were raised.

And um I just wanted to let the board know that all town staff receive training on First Amendment uh rights.

This uh happens as any new employees onboarded to the town, and also has been done for all current employees.

Um staff often get recorded by uh members of the public, and uh they're truly doing their jobs under the spotlight every day, and it's not always easy.

Um, policy is to allow recording while preventing obstruction, uh danger or the disclosure of protected information.

Town staff are available here to answer any questions that the board has about their experience with the public, uh including the media on work scenes, the town attorney can address the legal issues concerning this.

Uh I've been asked by several people on different uh sort of uh sides of this issue uh if we could please avoid personal attacks tonight.

Uh Liz, you mentioned that.

I've also um would ask if we could instead try to look at this issue from a policy standpoint and try to keep our emotions from overtaking our opportunity to really stay open-minded and curious about this, and if there's some improvements that town staff can make, we're we're open to doing that.

So I I would invite uh Bob or Hannah to explain the legal issues around what just the things that we're up against as as public servants.

Thank you.

And and Hannah put together this memo that's in your packet.

Uh, but generally speaking, the right to record public officials in a public place is protected by the First Amendment.

So uh having uh if you want to film so long as you are in a public space and you're not interfering with the emergency uh uh personnel, whether it's the fire or police uh attending to uh a scene, so long as you're not interfering, you have the right to to film.

That's a First Amendment uh right.

Some uh states have tried to put in buffer zones, and at least four uh cases have struck down such buffer zones on First Amendment uh grounds.

So, and then uh John, you gave me a copy of a bill that's been introduced in the Vermont House that puts in a 25-foot uh buffer zone uh very similar to a couple of these others that got shot down.

That so as that bill goes through the legislature uh it's going to have to uh pass any of these First Amendment uh challenges, if indeed it it makes it to being passed.

But from town council, our advice to the select board, both on First Amendment grounds and based now that I know that there's a a uh state bill that's in being introduced on preemption grounds, it is our advice to the select board not to pass such an ordinance with regard to these buffer zones uh based on First Amendment grounds.

Um You have no right of privacy in a public place.

If as much as I might not love it if somebody were walking in front of me on Main Street and had their camera out and videotaping me, I'm in a public place, I have no right of privacy there.

That person can film me and uh as we just all need to remain calm and and respect people's First Amendment rights.

Uh Hannah, anything you want to add?

No, but just to clarify what Bob said before, all of the buffer zone laws that have been passed have been struck down.

There's only been four.

It's not that only four have been struck down 100 percent.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Um do you have any uh anything you wish to say on the topic?

I'd love to inquire of the attorney.

Um Hannah and Bob, um can you speak to private property?

What are um the rules and boundaries there?

With with regard to private property, that's uh a private landowner can say no trespassing, get off my property, etc.

If there's obviously an emergency there and the fire police are responding, they have the right to as first responders respond, but the media does not, and especially if the private landowner says no, get off my property.

That's a that's a matter of a private property owner's right.

Um one more question.

Is it required of the uh is it required that the property owner articulate the no trespass, or can it happen from a first responder as well?

Um it has to be articulated by the homeowner, or it needs to be posted, or there needs to be some notice to the person that's trespassing that they are trespassing, and um if the landowner gives permission, then um law enforcement can issue that no trespass on their behalf.

Got it.

Thank you.

Oscar?

Yes, thank you.

It's it's a really difficult one.

Um I completely share the frustration of everyone who's contacted us as somebody who's um been the target of these sorts of things in the past.

I completely empathize.

It's infuriating.

Um however we don't get to pick and choose what the Constitution protects, nor should we.

And the same rights that protect somebody doing something you might not like here in Brattleboro, for example, are also the same rights protecting people filming um, you know, ice in Minnesota or many other things that people want to have a public record of.

So often governments is is not the right remedy.

Um it's it's difficult and unfortunate, and there are things that we all wish weren't happening, but it's not always our role to legislate that.

Um for to frame the public discussion, the part I'm most interested in.

Well, the parts I'm most interested in are the ones where the town does have discretion.

Um particularly that transition from uh a public space to a private space.

So that's something where I think we could have more uh conversation between meetings about understanding the parameters there, but you know, I I've been wrestling with this for a couple days, and I I'm not sure we have uh an option here and the things we could try to do that would probably get struck down, I don't think I would want to do because of their broader implications.

So sometimes the best remedy is to give things like this as little oxygen as possible, which unfortunately we're kind of breaking that rule here, but um that's inevitable.

And so I'm looking forward to hearing public comment and hearing what everyone has to say.

Thank you.

How about the side of the table?

Nothing at this time.

Peter Um, you know, I'll I'll just hold my comment until um Bob and Hannah.

Let me just ask, can you can you explain or maybe uh someone else uh from the staff a little bit more about what this training that the town staff gets about this topic about the First Amendment rights and so forth?

What I think you're talking about is what was in uh John spoke to with regard to uh the First Amendment auditors who come and will will film people, whether it's uh a clerk or somebody doing a job at public works, uh and the Vermont League of Cities and Towns puts on a training there that essentially says it's their right to do that, you need to be polite, as John said in his memo.

The the the main issue there is be calm, be professional, do your work, uh and and go from there.

So that's the the training that town staff gets from the League of Cities and Towns.

And then that's a little bit different than an emergency scene where the police or fire are showing up and they're trained and have their own protocols with regard to an emergency scene, and and that's where uh you need to trust your your uh experts with regard to that on how to properly assess a uh either a crime scene or an emergency fire scene, something like that.

Thank you, John.

Um yeah, and uh Chief Simons and Chief Hardy are here if you would like to hear uh about their approach on those scenes if if the select board is interested.

Yeah, I would.

Yeah, I would um could we have uh Chief Hardy and Chief Simons come to the table?

Good evening.

Thank you for coming.

Oh, you're welcome.

Um Chief, would you like to begin?

Sure.

Uh so uh it's pretty I think the the dynamics between the fire department response and the police response are a little bit different.

Uh when we have an incident that's I would say large or intense enough for media to be present, we have a command post set up.

Uh and our our experience and how we how the media responds to that is they always come to the command post.

We're very obvious who's who's running the incident.

They come to the command post, they'll ask the instant commander questions, they'll ask if they're allowed to take pictures of certain uh events of the fire of the car accident.

Uh we'll allow them to do that within reason.

Uh sometimes we say, hey, we can't talk to you right now because we're in the middle of an operation, so we never allow it to deter from an operation.

Um my experience so far in Brattleboro, everybody's been very respectful.

They've always respected my wishes when I say, hey, this is okay, this is not okay.

Um, and that's that's been our interaction so far.

Um we have not had a lot of instances with uh like on private property or or where the scene is is like uh just a traditional EMS call that doesn't have a lot of units involved.

Um we also haven't had you know they're not coming to the firehouse and saying, hey, we're we're demanding an interview with your individual people or anything like that.

Uh we do have a media policy that states, you know, any and all interviews are done through myself or the assistant chief.

Uh so we don't, you know, the the uh the rest of the employees aren't to just go talk to the media and share their opinions.

Thank you very much.

Chief Hardy?

Yes, that's uh that's basically um a lot of things that we put in place also that um only lieutenants are able to give uh any statements.

Um it used to be lieutenants and slogans, and then we narrowed it down to lieutenants, or myself, of course, the captain or the assistant chief can give statements.

Um we uh do control scenes and if no one's interfering with the scene itself, then we uh don't interfere with them.

If we need someone to step back, we ask them to step back.

Most of the time, everyone complies with that, so we haven't had to place anyone under arrest for interfering with a scene.

Um and I heard the question come up about private property.

Every private property owner uh can trespass anyone.

And I make sure that I let people know that.

Anyone that contacts me that has an issue with a person being on their property or someone being on their property that they don't want there that may be videotaping on their property.

Um I advise them the same thing.

Any and everyone can be trespassed by the property owner or the person responsible for that property.

And once we trespass them, if they decide to return or not uh leave the area, then they will be placed under arrest.

Great.

Um so let's hear from the select board if they have any questions for the two chiefs, and then I'll open it up to the public.

All right.

I have a question for Chief Hardy just to just to repeat what you said.

So the steps of a private property owner or threshold, you know, they their first step is to um ask the person to leave.

If the person refuses to leave, they call the police department and ask for support in that.

Well, that's I get that right?

Well, the two different scenarios, if I may, because it can be a person like there's no police into going on, nothing going on from the police standpoint or an emergency standpoint.

There's just a person that is on someone's property.

Okay.

That's the in that scenario.

The person can tell the person, I don't want you on my property, leave.

And if the person doesn't leave, they can call us and have and tell us we they want they want someone trespassed.

And the scenario is an emergency situation, and if it's if it's on someone's property or spills onto someone's property, that person may not feel safe or comfortable to tell that person to leave, they can ask us to tell that person to leave.

Gotcha.

And then we can tell that person to leave, and then we will ask them, do you want this person trespassed?

And they can tell us that also.

Okay.

Thank you.

Great.

Oscar.

Yeah, just a question for Chief Hardy, if you don't mind.

Something I'm trying to just wrap my head around is someone who doesn't really understand or have much of a background in this.

Um obviously there's been all sorts of uh media being shared of clips from people's shows and stuff like that.

The scenario I like help understanding is the one where the officers are going into leaving the street, going into a building, and somebody you know, fully out of sight of the street, down a hallway, to an active crime scene, or maybe a person with a weapon or something like that.

What are the criteria you'd use to say to a member of the public it's okay for you to continue in with us or no, this is not the time for this and you need to wait on the street.

What's that?

Well, the scenario you're talking about is a scenario that was approached by us already, and um that was not the case.

And so we would not tell a person to come with us to go search for somebody that has a weapon.

And um I think there's a lot of misinformation out there about that particular situation, which I already shared with uh John Potter this morning from the lieutenant that was on the scene.

And so the misconception was that the person came into the building with the offices while they went to search for a person that they were looking for.

And so that was not the case.

The person was told to wait outside, and there were a bunch of other people that happened to be tenants of the building that were in the same common area that that person was told to stay in.

So when the offices went down, the only thing that we lost sight of and track of, and that's why we have to look at our body worn cameras because that helps fill in a lot of holes or questions when we don't know exactly what the complaint is.

And so what we're doing now is we're viewing the body warm cameras from all of the offices.

But what we can tell from the lieutenant's uh preliminary investigation is that the person may have been in the crowded area and been able to come to a doorway and film down, but nobody was downstairs with them with their permission.

Um because it was a scene where they were busy looking for someone, no one interfered with them doing their job, so it wouldn't have been something that they would have turned around and didn't uh address what the person was doing at the time because they had to take control of the situation and the person who was armed.

I completely understand that and I appreciate the description and certainly I can imagine that these scenarios are very high pressure, and I don't expect people to have eyes in the back of their head.

And I'm not even really um dialing into a specific situation.

Really, I I think it sounds like the answer is that in cases like that uh the officer did try to say, please wait back here, um, please don't come with us, and that something slipped through the cracks, but um we don't even know that yet.

Certainly, sir.

Because we would have to finish watching everyone's body cameras because there are different angles on body cameras.

Right.

But it sounds like officers from your description that officers generally do have or or feel like they have discretion to say, yes, you have a right to film, but in this instance, please wait here, please wait here.

Every officer does have that.

Okay.

And every officer knows that.

Great.

Because they cannot not only put themselves in um harm's way, they cannot put whoever they're dealing with in harm's way, or they cannot put the person that's trying to get the best shots in harm's way.

Certainly.

Thank you.

I think if I if I might just add a little piece to that.

I think it's helpful to think of things, you know, when we do operations, we operate in hot zones, warm zones, and cool zones.

So when we identify a zone that's a hot zone, which is a high security risk, uh, we don't want allow people that aren't part of the solution into that that bubble.

But at the same time, there's a later lot of chaos that occurs in the initial uh starting of a of a scene like that.

So, you know, to your to your story of slipping through the cracks, you know, we do secure the scene and police secures the scene.

Uh so I think as soon as I identify that this is part of the hot zone, we start clearing people out of that zone.

So there can be uh a time where people are in that hot zone once we identify that, then we start moving them out of that zone.

Ulta helps kind of bring to it.

And I just want to say that having watched a bunch of these clips last night, it also makes it very clear uh how intense and uh moment to moment these encounters are and I have I think full empathy for the difficulty of those situations.

So I'm really just trying to look for areas where uh if there are things that need to be made more clear or ways in which the public can be more aware um and uh not uh I I understand that these are chaotic, and I appreciate all the extra detail.

So thank you both.

Yeah, one of the concerns or questions that I had heard was around access to certain materials or time of the first responders by folks who are doing interviews or recordings.

And I wanted to confirm my understanding is that there was a policy put in place about a year ago to where there were would be a designated press hour every week so that there would be that would be open to all members of the of the press.

Is that is that correct?

Yes.

Thank you.

Yes.

So I guess I just have one more question.

You have a variety of people filming.

It's not just one person, right?

I mean, there's all sorts of people filming all sorts of events, or you know.

Is that is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

I I was downtown um, I think I believe uh Friday, Friday evening, I was downtown.

And uh was talking to some people, um some of our people that hang out downtown.

And um I was uh discussing a person that's new to town and is already having a downward spowel.

And um as I was talking to the person, I think a couple of people thought that I was harassing this individual, and they came over with me with the cameras out.

That's not a film with me, talking to the person until the person told them that we were just having a conversation.

I actually was asking him that he eat, but you know, that's just life, you know, and it's particularly life when you're uh not not just the chief, but any first respondent.

That's just we just know that there are always cameras rolling one way or the other.

And especially with us because we have to have our body cameras on and running.

A lot of cameras, a lot of film.

Okay, John.

Yeah, and I I just wanted to add uh one of the reasons that the Vermont League of Cities and Towns has developed this training for staff on the First Amendment is because that there also are insurers, and so many towns were getting lawsuits around the uh how they handle these situations.

So even like that one that Chief Hardy just explained, if she had responded differently, that could lead to a lawsuit and a cost, ultimately a cost to the town.

And as you know, we're really trying to manage our liability costs, um which have been going up.

So um the one good way to do that is to have good training and put that in place on the ground with all staff.

Great.

Um Seth, do you have a sheet for me?

Uh are we ready uh select board to open this conversation up?

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right.

Rusty E.

Sage.

Thank you.

Rusty Sage, West Brattleboro.

Um Elizabeth, as you stated, you're not the social media police.

Um however, I know a number of you have social media accounts and have probably seen some of the comments that have taken place in regards to this.

Um of them are pretty nasty, disrespectful on both sides of the aisle.

Um I think one of the things that that tells you is this this really boils down to who in particular is taking these videos that is the problem.

Um so uh you know, you gotta take that into account is as Bob said, um you can't really take away the first amendment rights, and I and I think it would be a waste of time for the select board to try and change something in a town level that's already written in the Constitution.

Uh as the chief stated before uh when they were speaking, um they have different zones, they have uh different protocols for safety on scene, uh, your fire, your emergency services officers are all trained in scene management.

Um so I I think it would be best to leave that up to them.

Uh a couple of other points that I wanted to point out.

Um, you know, I don't and and Chief Hardy, you may correct me on this uh public information act.

Um I would assume that the cameras that are on Main Street that are recording uh could be disclosed to the public if they recorded something.

Is that correct?

I would believe so.

I mean, we have not run into that, but I would believe if the essay said so.

So if there was an incident right underneath one of those cameras and it caught that incident just as close as Planner Hank did, you know, that's getting the same information as that as Hank does.

Um so you know that could be disclosed to the public as well.

Another thing to think of is the benefit of having media on scene.

Um arsonists have been caught from media being on scene of fires, taking pictures of the crowds, crime scenes, uh criminals have been caught on the scene of a crime by the media.

So you know, keep that in mind too as you go forward with this.

Thank you very much.

Um Mark Coaster on media in the first amendment.

Goodness gracious.

I think it's Article 13 of the Vermont State Constitution that allows freedom of the press.

Um let me give you a little replay of uh media from Brattboro.

We had a beautiful town here.

There were uh cobblers that would fix your shoes, there were women's retail shops that you could get all kinds of clothes, there was Sam's Army Navy, there was uh you know, all kinds of things.

This was the courthouse.

We used to dance till dawn at the church down the street.

There were places nightclubs and Bratboro was a thriving beautiful town.

The Shinlaw was up on Elliott Street and the morning sun was shining the windows.

And what do you really have here now?

You got the first stop coming out of Holyoke in New York City for fentanyl.

You got a junkies on the streets, more male prostitutes and female prostitutes, and you're trying to shut down people's first amendment.

That's not a good thing.

We're coming up on the anniversary of the Constitution of the Vermont State Constitution of Vermont declaring its independence, which actually was declared in Wyndham County with the help of people from Brattleboro and the Vermont State Constitution written in Windsor County with the help of people from Broadborough.

So it isn't time to be treading on the Constitution.

God bless y'all.

Thank you.

Akhil Srivastiana.

It's Rivestava, thank you.

Um my name is Akhil, and I uh um this is an important conversation for me because I actually have my own media channel on Facebook called the Brawlboro Pulse.

So I decided to do my own research and do some digging.

Um cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and New York all have laws that prohibit following people repeatedly filming after being told to stop in the p in the intimidating behavior, exploitation, and targeting vulnerable uh populations.

These apply regardless of whether a camera is present.

They can also be cited or arrested without touching the First Amendment.

Also, commercial filming permits are required if filming is monetized, part of a business or a brand.

This is how Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and Boston regulate YouTubers and TikTok creators.

It doesn't ban speech, it regulates commercial use of public space.

We are trying to regulate Hank's behavior, not his freedom of speech.

Hank is allowed to film, edit, and post whatever he wants for his own political agenda, but he's not allowed to harass, stop, intimidate, obstruct, or exploit people, camera or not.

No personal attacks.

That was not a personal attack.

All right.

But this is you need it.

Hey, hey, stop it.

Thank you.

Uh Marcha Bernbaum.

Hi, my name is Martha.

Proud of our resident.

On New Year's Eve, we had a truck fire.

Took 25 minutes and six patrol cars to show up by what when what we really needed was a fire truck.

Then an ambulance for good measure.

Time stood.

Sorry, my glasses.

Time stood still while we waited for help, hearing airbags and aerosol cans explode every so often.

Then the full gas tank blew and sprayed gas all across our driveway.

Uh the loss of our truck was a bummer.

Though our real concern was the building that it was parked behind.

The glass shop with the thousand-gallon, two one thousand gallon propane tanks uh were connected to it.

And if that building had been compromised, it would have been a serious consequence for all of us in the vicinity.

The recording that was posted that you can clearly see him tripping on the hose that the firefighters were using to get out of the way of the firefighters.

He most definitely shouldn't have been there.

It was noticed by one of our guests that we had this uninvited visitor.

He didn't introduce himself.

He didn't, nobody told us he was there.

He just lurked into our property.

They intervened and requested that the trespasser have a heart and not post it.

He was his reply was incredibly nasty.

And did uh and our guest had asked that he personally leave, which he did so begrudgingly, but decided to post about it anyways because he had nothing better to get his clicks for the day.

If the six police officers who were there had secured our private property with a single lane road and a hundred year long hundred-yard long driveway, he wouldn't have been there.

Especially as a member of the public.

And I say this because if that person really is a reporter, then why hasn't he registered his media as a business?

Meanwhile, using town resources for his own profit while all not paying the taxes to support it.

People in town are not after anyone's first amendment rights.

We would like to add that we have our right to say that we disapprove of his actions publicly.

Especially as political representative who is daily threatening the public and reporting them to ICE or inciting his followers to be violent against people who disagree with him.

If I had a choice, not even on a regular day, would I have a criminal convicted of violent crime of sort on my property, nonetheless during a traumatic experience.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um Pierre Landry.

What really concerned me all of a sudden right now is I thought there was no personal attacks.

The last two speakers, you never interrupted and asked to stop.

I think that was wrong.

I also think it's wrong that we're even talking about this.

I mean, to think that our local town government is gonna create ordinances that go against the Constitution just seems like it's a waste of our time.

I'm sorry, but um the Constitution is there for a reason.

People have the right to film in public places, and I really appreciate um Chief Hardy and Simons with their expertise and knowing that they will if you don't uh put those things down, I'm gonna ask you to leave.

Knowing that they'll ask anyone that's impeding their work to leave, and if that person doesn't leave, I'm sure they'll take appropriate actions.

I think we should trust our our officers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Hank Poitres.

Hello, everybody.

I'm Hank.

I wrote Bratenboro News, Planet Hank, which we're all discussing at immense length for some reason.

As everybody is discussing the First Amendment rules over this select board over this town, over this country.

And so I'm gonna read something here.

I'm Hank, I am known as Planet Hank, a citizen journalist and a videographer at Bratterborough.

I'm speaking in response to Miss Barry's recent complaint, which contains numerous inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and false allegations about my conduct.

This appears to be a personal attack aimed at restricting my First Amendment rights to film and report on public police activities.

There is no evidence of harassment on my part, and her efforts to silence independent journalism are unwarranted and unconstitutional.

Now I'm gonna go through uh specifically via the correspondence that she sent everybody and you know, some of the dialogue and back and forth that we've you know have You've got 54 seconds.

Okay, that's fine.

You don't want to let me speak about me that's I'm letting you speak.

But anyway, uh VSP Directive 350 does not exclude citizen journalists, even you know that was a misrepresentation and a mis uh characterization of the law.

Uh number two, tactical liability and safety.

So I have like over a thousand videos plus a thousand more that I haven't posted for my own reasons.

Uh and this has never come up that I have contaminated a police scene, that the officers, if they felt like I needed to move back, that they didn't tell me to move back and I wouldn't absolutely move back.

The situation with this woman saying that I was on her property, she can hold up whatever sign she wants now.

She should have put those signs up on her property, and I would have been like, oh crap, okay, no trespassing sign.

But in our state, uh, and in almost every state when there's a public emergency, such as a fire, which is specifically listed, someone for the purposes of gathering news information can in fact follow first responders and film it, you know, and then immediately leave, which I did.

As soon as they asked, or somebody I didn't know who it was, they said, hey, you know, blah blah, and I said, okay.

And I just got in the car.

There was no rude anything.

There is no response to that.

Uh moving.

Madam Chair time.

Your your time is up.

It says I have 26 more seconds.

No, it's those are numbers of the buttons.

Uh, you know, Madam Chair Time.

Okay.

First amendment.

All right.

And now we have two more commenters.

Um, Marta, and then I don't know who that other person is.

Uh the second one's Jessica Dolan.

Okay.

Marta.

I actually didn't feel like I the the question clarity from the answer to the questions.

The question I wanted to uh um you know, learn about is someone allowed to follow first responders like into someone's house or into someone's apartment.

And my second question is um in any whether that's true or not, I just want to clarify that it is upon the person who owns the property uh to say that they don't want someone filming on their property, um, and if they do, will the police take action in the moment uh who wants to answer that question?

Uh like into the house or apartment.

Thank you.

Uh Bob or Norma, you want to answer that question?

And correct me if I'm wrong, Chief, but i no you can't follow an emergency personnel into a private uh uh property during an event or a scene or an emergency, uh that's interf from my standpoint interference with the emergency personnel action.

And and I would expect, though, correct me if I'm wrong, that the emergency personnel would say, stop, we we need to deal with this hot zone, as you call it.

Yes.

And I I think uh Chief Hardy just said that if um someone if there's someone on their property and uh the property owner wants them to leave, that if they don't feel comfortable, uh they can ask the police, and the police will tell them to leave it.

Is that what you is that what you were conveying earlier?

Yes.

Very good.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Uh Liz, I think there was there's a distinction though, which is what the town attorney was saying, if if I'm not mistaken, is that even if the property owner doesn't the property owner doesn't have to say I don't want you coming onto the property, or the expectation to be that if emergency personnel is entering someone's home or private property, they don't the the owner of that property doesn't have to say I don't want media here.

The expectation would be that that the uh emergency personnel would address it.

There is Hannah, you were saying something about no trespassing signs being appropriate.

Yes, this came up in our prior discussions regarding um trespassing.

Uh there needs to be actual notice in the form of either verbal communication or signs or placards or something to indicate that you cannot trespass, but um you you can't get a you can't say like I'm gonna follow first responders onto private property because I have the right to film them.

That that doesn't supersede that privacy boundary, but that there you you you can't be arrested for trespassing unless you've been given notice that you aren't allowed to trust either personally or or posted.

Yes.

The distinction I'm trying to understand is that there's one thing if someone's entering someone's yard, right?

But I think what um the town of Bob was saying was that in terms of entering someone's house or apartment, their dwelling, you don't like you don't need to put up a no trespassing sign on your front door to have the expectation that you would decide who comes into your home, right?

There still needs to be notice under 3705, which is the unlawful trespass.

But I think what you're getting at there is there's also another statute, criminal statute, that if you're interfering with an investigation or a scene, you can be criminally prosecuted for that.

So in that scenario of somebody going right in behind the police officer or the fire uh fighter into the the burning building or the crime scene, uh that I think is interference.

And and I would expect that the emergency personnel would say stop, go back, and if they don't, then they could be arrested for that interference at that point.

Thank you.

All right, let's hear from Jessica.

Can you hear me okay?

Okay.

Dr.

Dolan, District Eight.

Um I just want to point out that the First Amendment constitutional right to free speech is not absolute.

And that when it comes to a question of harming and exploiting people that should not supersede people's civil or human rights.

In fact, the state government is considering such a case this week with regards to the non-consensual filming of minors.

That was then used for personal gain by a person here in Vermont.

Um I also want to bring it over to the fact that some of the media usage has been used to slander people in the town.

Um kinds of people violating our civil rights, as well as um basically amounting to a smear campaign of constantly degrading our community.

And that the media in question could be more supported as an act an action of free speech if it's subject weren't just to denigrate our community constantly.

I think it's bad for our town, bad for our community report, and bad for business, frankly.

It's divisive and negative.

Um and so that's just what I want to say.

I think that there's very good reasons for people to feel upset that there is someone constantly filming people and bad moments and making our community look horrible, and that contributes to the divisiveness and the poor mental health of many members of our community.

And it's something to consider.

I I feel every single confidence from hearing the police and fire department that they have their procedures in place, but I think when it comes to reporting, it's important for reporters to have a very transparent ethics statement and a prevent professional review process that they adhere to guarantee that they abide by their ethical and ethical standard.

Okay.

All right, I will let uh this person speak and then um Marjorie, you may speak for a moment, but Jackie, you could speak too and the late the person in the striped shirt.

Yes, sir.

Um Angela O'Bray.

Uh I know it's really easy to fall back on the constitution, but the reality is we know that every constitutional right has limits, right?

You can't bring your gun with you to the courthouse.

You have responsibilities when you're speaking.

And I'm curious if you can just elaborate.

You talked about people having a right to film public officials in public spaces, but what about private citizens who are being kept in public spaces and sort of displayed to be filmed when they don't have an option to remove themselves?

At what point does the right to not be harassed to for minors for people having medical emergencies?

Um what training do people have on where those rights come together and when there should be appropriate limitations to protect the town?

And then my other comment is just about the person saying that you could just request the traffic camera video.

You couldn't, because if it was a minor, if it was a medical situation, you would redact it and you would say it's not appropriate to share.

So why is it appropriate to share if someone's standing there when it wouldn't be appropriate to release to them?

Above or Hannah, would you like to comment on that?

I'll try.

You're absolutely correct that the constitutional rights have time, place, and manner restrictions.

We also have laws with regard to stalking, so that if there's a course of conduct and somebody is intending to harass and there's a and it happens repetitively, we have laws that address that.

Uh that may be a little different than just filming in in public.

We do have laws that have exemptions to what is a public record based on whether it has confidential medical information to it.

Uh so you're correct.

There are lots of exceptions to a lot of our rules or to to constitutional rights.

But from the standpoint of just being in a public place and being filmed, as long as that is not a course of conduct harassment, uh, you know, and that's a you know, that's gonna be a fact case by case basis on on stalking issues.

Uh but you have the right to do that if you're on public property.

So it's really hard to answer that question with in in a vacuum without a case by case or or specific examples.

But but I real question Excuse me.

Now, did a select board member did you raise your hand?

Yes.

Just a clarifying question for Bob.

In those cases where you know there's a First Amendment right, but somebody is, let's say, committing the crime of stalking, the recourse there would be uh some sort of criminal action, right?

Absolutely.

You would call the police, the police would investigate the circumstances involved involving the alleged stalking, and then if the person if that's sufficient, then the state's attorney would bring a criminal information on that.

Okay, thank you.

All right, we have uh just a few more uh commenters um and then we're gonna wrap this up.

So um Jackie Jackie Reese, District 9 rep.

Just a couple of things.

First, I want to remind everybody that right now this uh the Trump administration is trying to restrict access to filming ice and police.

And uh where would we be with that if that was to happen?

And if it was restricted to post those videos, there would be no accountability.

And this is also a reminder that a restriction is not on a single person.

If you start putting restrictions, you can say this just applies to this person.

It has to apply across the board.

So if you're gonna restrict filming of incidents that include the police and the fire department and other agencies of this town, it's gonna be across the board.

And we don't know what will happen with that in the future.

So as for minors, filming minors in these situations is what brought Liam Ramos home.

Let's not forget that.

And as was as Oscar said, if there is uh an illegal action or that should be restricted or anything like that, you can bring that case to court.

You can call the police on it, and they will respond.

Contrary to other people's opinions, they will respond.

Thank you.

Uh person in the striped sweater.

Hi, Carly Sheckering.

My question is something John brought up.

He brought up the point that we need to limit liability, right, for our town.

And I'm just thinking back on a few of the uh social media YouTuber things that I've seen that have brought that question into my mind.

For example, there was a time when someone conducted a police chase up 91 on his own.

Um thinking about the situation that I think Chief Hardy was probably alluding to earlier, where it appears that someone was filming very close to a scene where there was a weapon drawn and someone on the floor inside a building.

Um and then some other footage that I've seen where someone bragged about being misunderstanding where the police officers were going from one scene to another and getting there before them and provoking the person who is under distress.

And I guess my question is just mostly about, you know, if can any of that be traced back to um you know inappropriate relationships or communication that could become a liability for us.

Thank you.

Uh any motor.

No, I don't I mean I was just referencing what.

Okay.

Uh Gemma, you have two minutes, and then Marja, I'll give you one minute.

Hi.

Uh Gemma Seymour again.

I just want to get uh some clarification on 13 VSA 3705.

Subsection A is very clear about the requirement for notice of trespass to be affirmatively given.

But subsection E reads a person who enters a dwelling house, whether or not a person is actually present, knowing that the person is not licensed or privileged to do so shall be imprisoned, uh, you know, stating that it's a crime.

Uh and I would like uh to get some clarification on what exactly would constitute then a license or privilege to enter someone else's dwelling house in a situation like this, because that says to me pretty clearly that affirmative access would have to be given uh in order for that person to be permitted in within the residency.

You know, our laws treat uh the area around uh a building and the interior of a building very very differently.

I think that's very well established in American jurisprudence.

So thank you.

Uh Bob Barhan, do you wish to comment on that legal interpretation?

What what she read it does say a person who enters a dwelling house, whether or not a person is actually present, knowing that the person is not licensed or privileged to do so shall be in prison not more than uh three years, okay.

Um I don't know uh I guess it's just hard to answer that in in context because the it talks about uh remaining on land and having actual communication.

So if you know that you're not licensed or privileged to be there, theoretically there needs to be some notice uh to that effect.

So I can look into that uh in more detail and and answer that in much better than I'm doing right now, hopefully.

Thank you.

Um but I will look into that.

All right.

Okay, just quite clarifying question.

Sure.

Yeah.

Um so this has come up a couple of times, and a private dwelling means um coming into my home, which I singularly own, that has no common areas.

Um I so I'm I'm a little confused as to what we're sort of gravitating towards here.

Is it are we talking about like a single dwelling home like I own, or are we talking about an apartment building that has common areas I guess I I'm not sure I'm just sort of asking general.

I'm very asking me if if that's okay.

I I would say that in my opinion, an apartment building is different than a private residence in that common hallway would be a relatively public space, but the second you enter the doorway of someone's apartment, that is a private dwelling.

Okay, all right.

Sorry, I was just I wasn't.

Okay, so now we have two people who have spoken before, so I'll give them a minute, but I don't think we've heard from Carol.

So Carol, please join us.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Carol.

Can you hear me okay?

Okay.

So I first all I'm really grateful that we're having this conversation.

More conversations about um what we consider ethical and all of that is important.

I also what I see is that your hands are tied at this point.

Um, but this is the beginning.

I don't particularly I appreciate people that are out there recording.

Um what I don't condone is the manor and the people that are um somebody's doing it.

I don't know.

I would that's why for the same reasons I don't buy the inquirer.

And it bothers me that anyone could not stop and think before entering you know, approaching a fire, a house that's on fire, a person having a mental health breakdown.

All of that.

I know that you feel like you can't do anything about that, but I would ask the town to put that message out there in a politically correct or a proper way, not accusations, not going back and forth.

But let us as a community stand and say we don't like that.

It's not okay.

We can't stop you, but it's not okay.

And that's enough out of me.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Okay, so um Marta, one minute.

So I want to say that it's too late for me in this instant instance to trespass Hank and say that he can't come onto my property because I didn't know I was gonna have an emergency.

And so it's after the fact that he's already taken the tape and he's already made it public, and he's already you know created an unsafe condition in our in our in our property.

And the thing is is that you know, I think all community members who own properties should trespass him ahead of time.

That way that it when they do have an emergency, they don't have to worry about whether or not he's lurking in the shadows because that's what he did.

He lurked.

And I also want to say that as far as the town trespassing signs go, I I went and I got these.

I mean, I have posted my land before, but it's a joke because it's three acres, and in my three acres, that's I'm only allowed to say no hunting, fishing, and trapping.

There's nothing about other people.

It's hunting, fishing, and trapping.

So whether this is posted or not, it doesn't cover Hank.

Thank you.

Uh Bob, um, people have no trespassing signs on their on their yards and property, and that avoids for purposes of the no trespass statute, that's sufficient.

Yeah.

There are uh, and I don't have the law regarding posting your land against hunting specifically.

I think that has to be done according to but uh no trespassing sign does work, yeah.

And and when and when people say, you know, uh a trespass order, that means no trespassing based upon a particular event.

Right.

Uh a no trespass notice or order that somebody has asked the police to serve on somebody is serving on that person, you are not welcome at this property.

And then they're on notice for that, and that's very specific.

You can also be on notice by virtue of a no trespassing sign, you know, on the on the fence or whatever, and you go on, you you know, go past that sign, you're trespassing.

That's thank you by placards and things like that.

Great.

I I do think rereading uh subsection E, I think Gemma is correct with regard to that that will as far as going into a dwelling house, the key there is uh knowing the person is not licensed or privileged to be in there.

So I think you do have like in a common area, or if there was a party going on and you're are you invited to the party, you know, you're gonna have nuances on that, but generally just you don't have a right to go into somebody else's house, period.

That would land you an unlawful uh trespass.

Okay.

So sorry I didn't answer that very well before, but I wanted to look at that.

That's great.

Yeah.

Um all right, so I'm gonna leave the last three commenters to speak.

Marta gets a minute.

Let's start with Marta's minute and then have Zoe and Zoe and Carolyn.

Um because we're talking about law and it's getting a little complicated.

May I ask um or or Ms.

Ms.

Chairwin, may I ask um each of the um chiefs uh to answer?

Is it currently the policy of first responders to actively stop press and others from following them across the threshold of a dwelling, house, or apartment?

All right, thank you very much.

Um so I think that happens in in my realm a little bit less.

Um I've never had to I've never been in the position where I've had to stop somebody from crossing the threshold, but the the answer to the question is yes.

Uh we would not allow uh media into somebody's private residence unless they had explicit uh permission from the homeowner or the resident.

Um there was a situation that that had made me uncomfortable.

Uh I was not present on scene where uh somebody had gone through uh a medical emergency, a traitic emergency on private property and it was filmed, but that patient had given the media permission.

So although it made me uncomfortable, they invited him to to film it, so I had no authority to, and it wasn't unsafe, so I couldn't couldn't stop it.

Interesting.

Okay.

Chief Hardy.

And we run into those two.

I think that there's a misconception that we allow uh people or a certain person that videotapes everything and everyone onto people's private property within people's houses, within people's apartments, which is not the case.

We do not bring uh individuals in that don't belong in people's private spike space.

What I do find is that the owners invite this person into their house, um, which we cannot tell them not to do.

And also uh I think that it sometimes I'm uncomfortable.

I mean, is as recently as recent I was uncomfortable, but the person reminded me that they went adult and they could invite whoever they wanted onto their property.

So I think that uh there's you know that misconception happens that we let a person just come inside while we're doing what we need to do inside someone's private property, and we are bound to protect people's privacy because there is an expectation of privacy within your private dwelling or your private space.

Super all right, uh Carolyn and and and then Zoe.

Um this is very good.

Um I just wanted to uh ask a clarifying question because Chief Hardy mentioned um a little uh I'm having trouble hearing you.

Sure.

Um Key Party mentioned um people besides um formal or even unformal media filming police interactions with town folk and um I really want to point to the fact that there are media personnel who um you know, like many people have pointed out Planet Hank is posting um pretty indiscriminately the footage that he takes, and um I would love to get some clarity on how he finds out where and when to film.

Uh I'm not sure who can answer this question, but I think that that would be some really key information because people who are passers by they're walking past uh an incident and filming out of a sense typically out of a sense of protecting vulnerable people.

Um it's not that they've been tipped off.

So I'm wondering if someone could illuminate how Hank is getting this information.

I find that interesting tipped off.

I find that phrase interesting when Hank will tell you himself that he has a very expensive scanner and he can basically scan anything, even when the calls come in before we they've even been clearly given out to our people.

Um, you know, uh that is how he is knowing how to go to places, that is how he's knowing what the situations are.

And um I will say that uh if anyone thinks that we tip Hank off, particularly the police, then I would uh direct you to any of the uh warrants that we've served, the many, many drug warmers we've served in town, because Hank never knows what we're doing them, and we make sure that until we've already finished doing them.

So everything else that's a clear call that people have for uh and what I found out about Vermont is that anybody and everybody can own a scanner.

We've actually found them on warmers that we've gone to that the uh people that we're coming to get have been forewarned because they have police scanners.

Interesting.

Okay, uh Carolyn and then Marta for a minute.

We're done.

Thank you, Carolyn Conrad Brattleboro.

Um, so my concern as a resident is there's a distinct difference um in the law between my private home and my cartilage, which is the area around my home.

For example, the police cannot, if they see something in my yard, they cannot search based on that, because my yard is considered private property.

However, if I were to have a medical emergency in my front yard, um, that would probably be embarrassing to me and would be something I would want private.

Um the uh citizen media could stand in the road and videotape me in my yard, which is again a place the police could not videotape me um without a warrant, and post that private medical crisis online, and and that's where as a private citizen, my concern lies, not with someone's first amendment rights, but again, if someone is standing on public land but videotaping me in my private yard having a medical emergency or some other embarrassing psychotic break that you know we all could have.

Um that's where my concern lies.

Thank you.

Um Peter, you want to talk about that now?

Because we're gonna have one minute of Marta and then.

Yeah, no, go ahead.

Please let Mark go first.

Well, this is this is what I bring up is that is that there were six cruisers at my, you know, on my one-lane road, and all police everywhere, and and it's a football field's length from the public roadway to where the event was happening.

And yet all those cruisers and all those police officers somehow didn't stop him from coming in.

And also, I would like to ask the fire chief.

Did you recognize that he was tripping over the fire hose?

I mean, he was so close that he was highlighted.

Trying to get out of the way of the firefighters.

It was too close.

We take your questions.

We direct your question, please.

20 minutes.

You talk to me.

No, stay where you are.

I'm just saying, you direct your questions to the chair, not to the individual cheese.

Okay.

But so you're done.

You've had your minute.

And well, I would like to my minute was wasted.

Yes, but this is your third minute.

But in the defense, though, that video that was shown, you can see him tripping over the fire to firemen and the firemen are like trying to like as you said.

Thank you very much.

Well, I think that that's important safety, because if I would I sue the town for not for not keeping him out of the way, what if he got injured?

Thank you.

That's another liability.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Now there's a question for the chief about the tripping, uh, but there's really it's really just the same trespassing question, is it not, Bob?

I mean, does the town assume liability?

That post, so I can't comment on it, so neither am I.

I don't believe I was on that scene.

I'll have to look it up.

I'm I don't recall that scene, I don't think I was there.

Okay, very good.

Uh let's come bring it back to the select board and and uh wrap up this discussion.

We we have five more minutes according to our schedule.

So uh Peter, do you have a comment?

Um yeah, so uh sort of just been quiet on purpose uh throughout this this whole process, um as probably a 30-year veteran in media uh sitting at the table who when I started would come from credible sources of of radio stations and newspapers.

Um the inception of the press pass, which which meant something when I started, um, but you get to shrinking uh newsrooms and um you know thinning uh thinning interest and uh favoring doom scrolling, right?

Um so my job has has changed over the years.

Um I too do a a weekly program in which I invite people onto my show to have conversation that disseminates good information and decent information.

I choose not to make my living in this fashion of filming people at vulnerable points in their life, but that's my decision.

Um, however, they both are protected regardless.

I guess the media landscape has changed.

It's gone from being somebody who is credible to anybody who has a camera, right?

Um there are a lot of citizen journalists out there now, active activists, citizen journalists.

Um, you know, and I I can tell you again, coming from from 30 years of doing this and and finding myself having to defend it more so in the current state we are in a nation with the things that we are witnessing unfolding, you know, every single day.

Um I went from not liking people with cell phones and smartphones to appreciating those people um in this current time and space, right?

And and and given the context of this conversation, it's not an easy thing for me to say.

Um but I I know first, I don't want to say firsthand, but I I've had a lot of friends who have served on the police department on the state state level um telling me what a scene is like and talking about heart rates going up when guns are pulled and they're looking for somebody who might be armed, right?

Uh you know, Chief Hardy can speak to that uh a lot better than I am, and and just you know, they this sort of Hollywood adaptation of how actual police work unfolds is a little unrealistic.

How things at a first responder level unfold um as we sit here not having done it, um I think is unre unrealistic.

Again, I'm just I just kind of want to say this is not how I choose to conduct myself.

I am only responsible to myself.

I am not responsible to the actions of of anybody else.

If you don't like it, you don't watch it.

All right.

Do other select board members wish to comment at this time?

Oscar?

Thank you.

Yeah, I think I'm again really glad we had this conversation.

It's been below the surface for a while.

It's good to talk about it, though it's not pleasant.

Um I know anyone coming here looking for the select board to provide a solution on this is gonna be disappointed or frustrated or angry.

I I really don't know that we have a solution to offer that we can actually do that is actually constitutional, that is within our powers.

Um but I think there were some very clarifying pieces of information for me tonight.

The public private property question I had has mostly been answered.

I think both chiefs and the town attorneys said unequivocally that the entrance to somebody's private dwelling um is important and is not a place that just a random person will be permitted into just because first responders are going in the door.

That is uh that is what I suspected, but it's great to hear it confirmed.

And then also the importance of if you have a wider property.

Um posting signs is a very helpful tool so that first responders can know exactly how to behave and don't have to wait for you to give them a verbal trespass to someone you don't want on your property.

So I hope people can feel that there were productive outcomes here, even though it's not the answer anyone's looking for.

But I'm glad we had the conversation and thanks to everyone who spoke up.

Amanda, do you wish to speak?

Sure, I'll be brief.

I want to applaud the courage of those who came here today to testify.

Um, and I uh my heart goes out to you.

These are that's a really uncomfortable and horrible thing to experience.

Um as a member of the select board, I want to say that what I care about is our town.

And I care not only about our town uh live and in person, but I care about our digital footprint.

And I care about what goes out on the internet that talks about the kind of community we are.

And I want us all to consider that um our choices uh make a big difference.

We want people to move here, we want businesses to thrive here, we want our neighbors to be safe.

So let's all keep that in mind.

Thank you.

Isaac, do you wish to speak?

I appreciate everyone who shared, and I echo Amanda's um appreciation of your courage in in what you shared.

I also appreciate the clarity about the policies from the police department and the fire department and the and the law.

So thank you for the questions that were asked, and thank you for the answers this evening.

Great.

And uh I just um to to wrap it up, I I I assume, select board members, that there is no particular uh motion or policy you wish to engage in.

And um, so thank you for this discussion.

Uh what I heard was that there are a lot of existing laws for all these situations that we're talking about, and also that uh our police and fire department and other town departments work very hard, and they work under a microscope.

And um I suspect that Brown and Roberts is going to sell out of no trespassing signs.

And um I think that the cover when when you get down to it, uh, you know, we're we're not gonna do anything that's against either the state constitution or the national constitution.

You know, like excuse me, all right.

Out of order.

Out of order.

I don't know.

Um everyone is welcome to have discussions among themselves as they see fit.

And everyone is also welcome to continue to write to the select board at any time on any matter.

And let's pardon me.

I guess I wanted to.

If I could I just like this comment because I was thinking about uh what Mata said about it's just too late to trespass Hank, and that's not the case at all.

Anyone can trespass Hank from the Aproperty.

You know, as it's never been a case of too late or what time.

Um, as I as I told other individuals that have written me, anyone can tell us you want someone trespassed and we'll trespass them.

As a matter of fact, we have trespassed them from some places, yes.

But what we're talking what what Chief Party's talking about is you don't have to feel like you can't that you can't do it, that you have no recourse to do it, you can do it at any time.

All you have to do is tell us to go do it and we'll do it for you.

Okay, thank you.

Well, I understand that, but the statement was too late for me to do it.

And Chief Party Legs.

Let's let's let me thank you for your testimony and Chief Simons as well.

And uh thank you all for coming, and we will move on to our next item.

Uh Green Mountain Power.

I'm gonna be we have um we have representatives from uh Green Mountain Power joining us.

Great.

And uh let me look for water.

Why don't you go give me a um while they're getting water?

Uh let me just thank Green Mountain Power for their efforts because what I seen, you know, you came back, you came here in the fall.

Was it the fall?

That was late, late summer.

Okay.

And um, you know, talked about this project, and it's and I don't think the general public really understands or appreciates how great it is that you're doing this underground work, and it's it's costly and it benefits the public and it protects us from storms.

And um, it's a really great thing.

And in addition, I get emails.

I I guess all the select board gets emails and the staff about where you're gonna be next.

You're very diligent about that reporting.

And I just want to thank you.

And now you can begin.

Well, thank you.

Uh it's always nice to be uh thanked uh Tim Jones uh from Green Mountain Power.

Also with me is Don Mills uh from Green Mountain Power, uh program manager uh uh for the corporate entity, Don uh is part of our team, uh our rebuild team down here, but he's also uh the operations supervisor for the Brattleboro District, so known very well to the town.

So uh first of all, we wanted to say thank you uh to the town uh for your partnership last year on our Ames Hill Road project, also uh Department of Public Works as well.

And also thank you uh for having us back tonight and uh thank you to Dan for for making some time uh to meet with Don ahead of time to to look at uh some additional project scope.

So again, just you know, couldn't have done the project uh without the Towns partnership.

Uh Green Mountain Powers very happy with the way uh things came off on Ames Hill Road.

Uh that is wrapping up right now.

Uh a couple of uh loose ends uh to tie up uh on one of the side roads there, but I believe uh we got signed off from the town, Department of Public Works with uh how everything was restored and certainly as uh winter uh sunsets here and and the roads open up again if there's anything that uh we need to go back and address.

Uh certainly have our commitment to go back and do that.

Um tonight uh really is a new business uh request, so we're in our last year of the program.

It ends September 30th of this year, hard stop.

So basically we're uh running against the clock right now to wrap up all the projects we want to do.

Uh we shared three projects that we want to do in Brattleboro this year, uh Stockwell Drive, uh Stark Road, and also section of Marlborough Road, but it's also um Hamilton Road is really sort of the the centerpiece of that program.

So uh mostly some overhead.

Uh we'll need some 1111 permits for that as well, but certainly uh the Hamilton Road project is uh sort of mimics what we did on Ames Hill Road.

It's uh an undergrounding project that will help us uh sort of really get rid of some really challenging uh cross-country right away, but also uh allow uh us to operate that line a little bit differently uh along Route 9.

So uh Dan has uh the information as well, so I think uh sort of the script last year was was to to meet with the board and uh knowing that we'll have to work out the specifics uh directly with Dan on the specific projects and and the agreement that that we uh need to put in place to restore your roads.

So again, really just thank you so much um uh for partnering with us and we look forward to another successful construction season.

So we have a the select board has a paper to sign uh in our package.

You know, I that's the uh model agreement that we came up with last year working with Dan's team, so basically that was so I was just really sharing that as an exhibit of that's where we'll start with Dan and uh we'll we'll work out any other specifics, but it's essentially a carbon copy of what we agreed to on the Ames Hill Road project last year.

So there's no action for us to take tonight.

Correct.

Other than thank you.

Other than that, which I've already done.

And uh just uh sort of uh I guess passing us uh on to Dan's team to to finish uh dotting the eyes.

And this is Dan we're talking about is Dan.

Dan Teller director of Puppet Course.

Director of Public Course.

Uh are there members of the select board who have comments or questions for Green Mountain Power?

I certainly do.

We have a lot of uh property that was right on the project on Ames Hill Road.

You might remember me.

I want to uh thank you for connecting us.

Um Kevin Gragan was a great asset local community member.

You brought him back into the team.

He did a lot of front facing work with community members, and he did it expertly, and he was amazing.

And uh just for the sake of our local contractors, I'd love it if you shouted them out.

So we had our linemen just there today, and they were who?

Who was the main lineman?

You could probably talk to that Don's team.

So out on the field.

So Jared Bristol.

And Grayton is the name of the company.

Oh, Droton Lineworker.

Groton line workers, they were awesome.

The flaggers um were great.

They became like our best friends.

They love my dog.

Adam's excavating was the contractor that put the uh to put the roads together.

So not only did the roads get back together, but the road is wider.

There's a lot of material on that road.

That road is gonna endure the future any future weather incidents or whatever, really.

Um it was a hot, dusty, dry year.

We had plumes of dust, and thank you to Dan Tyler when I said, Um, can we have some water?

But Kevin also really, he's like, I'm gonna get the guys there, I'm gonna get some water, and I think you guys were doing that all summer long on all your sites.

Um so the sensitivity that you provided for the landowners and um the kindness that it was delivered and the attentiveness was awesome.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Much appreciated.

All right.

Anyone else?

My general my original thank you still applies.

And I thank you for coming this evening.

Thank you so much.

You supply the power, and apparently Amanda will supply you with glasses of water.

All right.

So thank you.

Well, that's water for the road.

Excuse me.

There's a person online who has a comment.

Neil, I just sent you a invite to unmute.

All right.

Let's ask Randy if he wants to make a comment and then we'll get back to Neil.

Hi, Brandy Blodgett, District 7.

Um, I live in Olsen Drive.

I was trying to understand um just some of what the drawing is explaining.

If you could just go over that.

Because um, there's polls now that go up on the other side of the road that cross, and it's a little different look.

So I'm trying to understand the green line.

I think that's the new work.

Uh some of it's a reconductor of the existing.

So um, I think when it comes up through Olsen there or along Route 9, it cuts behind the ledges now.

Right, it goes up behind some garages, there's a pole, and then there's one house, and then it comes back across the road towards our house and then up to another house and then back across the road to all the other houses and up to the last two.

It's kind of a all over the place.

Yeah, so as far as Olson Drive goes itself, like there'll be a partial reconductor of that, but everything will stay as existing for right now.

That's why we're and then later on when we have more money and we can work through it, there's a possibility that that area could be put underground at some point.

Okay, thank you.

But just for reference, if you're looking at one of our maps, green usually depicts something that's staying as is.

Blue is is sort of the signifier for for new work, either solid overhead or dashed line would signify something that we proposed underground.

Okay, we just had a line down so we find the last year.

Yeah, I know exactly.

I've been up to your house.

And so um if the public has specific questions, they can get in touch with who?

Uh me personally.

And um your Tim Jones.

Yes, but your email was.

Oh uh it's uh just simply Tim.

Jones at greenmountainpower dot com, all spelled out.

That's a great name.

How about a cell phone?

Okay.

Wonderful.

And thank you very much.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

And thank you to Dan.

All right.

Um yes.

No, Neil just unmuted.

Neil, uh Seth said he couldn't get a hold.

Okay.

So um uh Tim, let's just stand by and see if Tim has a question.

Uh Neil has a question.

Neil?

Basically, Liz, can you hear me okay now?

I can.

Basically I want to kind of um repeat as to what Amanda was saying in terms of these fellows have been fantastic out on I live on Ames Hill as well.

Um the road that got widened got widened out to almost a four-lane highway coming down from Marlborough.

So for those students who are late to school, stand back.

Um they're planning to come there very quickly.

And I mentioned this to us to the the board once before, and um the police department did come out and do some pro patrolling for us, so I thank you for that.

Um the question I have though is that the original idea was to I thought bury all of the lines to prevent power outages, yet I keep seeing a lot of buried lines short term and then come back up out of the ground with with aerial wires again.

How does I uh how does that system work in terms of reduction of power outages?

Sure, it's uh it's a great question and thank you for your appreciation for our work out there.

Uh the goal when we underground is you know, getting into that 90th percentile of of most of the project is underground.

Uh what you'll see overhead is either a culvert that we can't pass underneath, say something that's three feet or bigger, open water, somewhere where we're gonna you know need to set back on either side of the stream and basically fly it overhead.

So there was will still be some uh overhead to the main line and also the way we intercept how a customer is currently served, you'll still see some poles and wires overhead uh secondary services to people's home.

So anything that's overhead on the mainline rebuild, uh if it's not underground, it is built overhead to the most stringent uh storm hardening uh that we can have.

It was three phase, it was it's Hendrix with uh, or if it's single phase again, uh putting a steel messenger or some other protective uh cable over the top of our conductor uh to shield it is the best we can.

So still some risk uh remains with anything overhead, um, but we are finding that uh predominantly the underground uh stays intact and we limit um where we have overhead and and try and mitigate the exposure around that as well, either with you know materials or other methods, hazard trees, what have you.

So great.

I'd like to question I have or comment I have is that I now understand why my bills have gone so high.

That project was incredible.

The number of people that were around the and the uh my imagined cost was just astronomical.

I have no idea what that was, but I now know what I'm supporting.

But thank you for doing it.

Welcome, thank you.

So it's expensive.

Correct.

And and uh the record of your uh I'm sure that's a public uh element if someone wanted to look up the cost and so forth.

It's on your website.

Yep, absolutely.

Well, we have uh I think we'll when we advertised this when we first came here, it's a two-year program that ends, so it was a 150 million dollar investment over two years.

Uh that money was uh put forward by our owner investor.

And as we complete sections of this project, it will then be put uh in front of our state regulators uh to get signed off on, and when that's approved, uh that will be worked into rates into the future.

And I would assume that the um the security of the undergrounding will pay for itself in lack of uh repair and and maintenance.

That was the catalyst for it is the to it switch from storm.

Just so that everyone understands you're not willy-nilly out there.

Correct.

So I think March 23 storm that people remember well was sort of the the the final catalyst that we needed to to launch this program.

So great.

Exactly right.

Well, again, I thank you very much.

I have one further question.

So Hamilton Road, there's a working dairy farm.

Um, and how do you plan to will you able will you be able to have enough width on Hamilton Road to be able to work when that milk truck's going up the road?

It'll be something that we'll have to work out, just like any any place else we've been.

We've been on some other similar roads as well.

So we have a two-look week at you know, two-week look ahead.

So we'll canvas all our customers.

We have this work to do, get people's get the lay of the land and make sure that if we're working around that farm or if there's you know blockage one way or another that will clearly communicate what that is.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Um let's take a break for five minutes and come back.

And what is next?

Oh, yeah.

Let's see.

We are now at item C and Jennifer Burnell, the town assessor, will discuss the 2025 equalization study results, which I explained to my husband tonight, and now I will find out if I was correct.

Okay, you want to do it?

Good evening, everybody.

Jennifer, town assessor.

I was asked to come to this meeting to explain the um equalized study result.

This is a result uh study that's done by the state of Vermont um property valuation and review.

So every year, property valuation and review uh PVR is required to certify the equalization education property value.

The study shows how close towns are to fair market value.

Because Vermont towns do not reappraise properties every year, there is an adjustment to the education tax rate.

This adjustment is calculated by the state's sales study, which takes um three years of valid arms length sales annually.

The resulting factor is the common level of appraisal or the CLA.

This is a percentage that reflects the difference between property values and current sales.

This percentage is then applied to adjust the state education tax rate for all taxable real estate in Brattleboro.

In 2024, the Vermont legislature passed Act 183, which updates the adjustment applied to tax rates.

This uh became effective in 2025.

Previously, education tax rates were adjusted by the town CLA only.

Now the new adjustment factor applied is the CLA divided by the statewide adjustment, which is uh the average level of appraisal for all of Vermont.

I believe this was a reaction to the spike in sale prices for properties in 2020 and subsequent years.

Brattaborough's 2025 CLA as of January 1st, 2026 is 64.94.

However, the state adjustment is 70.33.

So you take the 64.94, divide that by the 70.33, and you now have uh state adjustment of 92.34.

Uh this number is now applied to the state education tax rate.

Um the study uh goes through various um levels of review by um not only just uh the district advisors who work for PV and R, but also um the assessors for each town, they um work with the state in uh finding what sales are valid, stating what are valid.

Most of them are um it's understood uh what should be thrown out of a sales study, family sales, um sometimes uh an estate sale, but not always.

Um so there's there's certain sales that just get thrown out.

Um assessors generally know their town and know this the what happened with um a particular sale that was questionable, and so we work with the state.

State does uh contribute some funds to the towns uh for that work.

Um I have a slide that shows um what our CLA and the adjustments um to the CLA through the state um adjustment what it looked like this current year that we're in uh and finishing up and I didn't really want to do it, but I did make a slide for um and it's in the packet for uh what it would look like um this coming year, tax year.

Um I I don't like to go into predicting what a tax rate is gonna be on a state level because we just don't know.

We don't know what the school um there's a district rate, and we don't know what that is yet.

We don't know what the state rate is.

Um I know that there's been um it's been published uh by the commissioner, uh the potential of uh an a very large increase, and then conversations about holding that down in various ways.

But uh so if all things stay the same, those are the numbers that you would have for a homestead rate, which would be 1.997 and a non-homestead rate of 1.843.

Um there are other um reasons per there's uh other reasons for doing the sales study.

Um it's for determining the education tax rates and liability, uh apportioning uh county taxes, uh determine whether a municipality must undergo a reappraisal, uh equalized education, property tax rates, equalize uh the use values for land enrolled in current use, and equalize the fair market value found in an appeal beyond the listers and assessor level.

Sort of a quick summary of what Elizabeth explained to her husband this evening.

Um so I I can try to answer some questions if you have any.

Um, but it's happy to answer questions.

Um thank you.

Uh the one thing that I didn't explain to Tom was that um you know I guess you throw out these uh wild um they're not average real estate transactions.

So they're an I I would say to Tom, it's like the Olympic skating scores you throw out the high and the low, and then you average the rest.

So I think that that applies here as well.

Yes, there are outliers and extremes as well as the non-valid sales, yes.

Great.

So all right.

So select board members, do you have comments?

God, I wouldn't even know what to ask.

Oh, I have one question for Jennifer.

So you said the state contributes funds for the CLA adjustment or the time for the assessor's office to work on those figures.

It's the time spent that we do uh a sale, we validate sales um when they uh send it to us, and um it's through the VT Pi process, it used to be through NIMARC, now it's through the VTP software, and we go through weekly and validate sales through the system.

Um there is an end point uh and um occasionally we'll have some questions from our district advisor who needs to wrap up that study.

Um the contribution that they make is that dollar per parcel for the assessors to do the work.

So there's the reappraisal fund that you've you might be familiar with.

Um so they they um contribute uh eight dollars and fifty cents per parcel for um reappraisal and upgrading the grant list, and then one dollar per parcel for the work that we do for the sales study because it's the education tax rate.

So they should do that for a few other things.

But did I answer your question?

It does.

I just for curiosity, um, is how long has it only been one dollar per parcel?

Is that an upgrade, or is that just a steady thing that has just been for as long as I've been doing this and a little bit before?

And it's in the it's part of the conversation that's happening at the legislative level right now, is that per parcel contribution?

So maybe to increase that per personal contribution to update it to modern standards.

Yeah, got it.

Yep.

Super Oscar.

Anyone?

Anyone in the public wish to?

Yes, Randy.

Hi.

Quick question.

So the CLA, now when we're reassessing, does that all get re-looked at once those results come in?

So it's a work in progress?

Yeah.

So there's um a reappraisal CLA that we um that will come out.

The reappraisal will hopefully bring us to 100% a fair market value.

That's the point of having a um a reappraisal, and one of the reasons why we are now mandated to do a reappraisal every six years.

Um lacking uh annual reappraisals, there is this adjustment to equalize your fair share for the contribution to the education fund.

Great.

Yes, Dina.

Dean.

Yeah.

Sorry, didn't know that was gonna happen.

I'll just hold it.

Dina Chadwick, uh District 9.

Um, I just have a question.

Is looks like the homestead rate is higher than the non-homestead rate.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay.

Just one that clarified.

Uh Jennifer, do you want to explain what that means?

That that differential?

Um it's different with every town.

Most towns have it.

Um I believe most towns have that, have the homestead rate higher.

I'm not sure why.

Good to know.

I believe it has to do with school spending.

Doesn't it have to do with like primary residence versus secondary residence?

Oh, that's exactly what the rates are.

The difference between the rates, yes, there's the homestead rate is a um rate that's applied to someone who files their homestead in the town.

You can have a residential property, but owned um by someone who doesn't claim a residence within the town.

That would be taxed at the non-resident tax rate.

Why they are the way they are, one's higher than the other.

I believe it has to do with school spending.

Right.

I'm not sure.

The town doesn't decide on the education tax rate is set um by this the governor.

Yeah, and that is the same rate throughout the state, and then every town has it adjusted by the CLA.

Okay.

We have another question, Randy.

I I isn't there, aren't we in the midst of either a law was passed or it's the second year of implementing a law that's going to change the categories beyond just homestead and non-homestead, I believe, in commercial?

It's still a conversation.

It's still okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Anyone else?

Anyone online?

You explained it so well.

Thank you so much.

Um, Sue Phillian.

Is there anything you want to say to introduce Sue?

No, uh, well, maybe just briefly uh so uh Sue has been coming to the board on a bi-yearly biannual basis, I would say, to update you all on the housing action plan, uh, which uh she's here to talk walk us through tonight.

Yeah, great.

Thank you, Sue.

Thank you.

Um I'm Sue Fillion.

I'm the planning director, and this is the housing action plan report.

Um we've continued to have a strong year from housing permitting perspective, um, and I'm referring to calendar year 2025.

Um we issued 125 permits for housing.

Um a hundred and five of the units were in multi-unit buildings, um, 70 at the Chalet property in West Sprattleboro, and 28 for the Winston Property First Phase.

And at the Chalet, we're actually anticipating that 31 units will be will under start construction in 2026.

So they were permitted for the entire project, but it's going to be a phased project.

So one of the things we do to kind of keep track of the cumulative is we're we're always looking at the net housing as well because in any given year we're going to lose some housing units.

It can be from a fire, it could be demolition to build, you know, demolish one thing, build another unit there.

So examples of lost units from 2025, there were a couple of fires that destroyed a couple of mobile homes in Glen Park.

The Wheeler House, which was a single unit on the Winston Pratty campus, was demolished, so to make way for the 28 units.

And then one project that we had permitted in a previous year went from five units to three units.

So we're constantly looking at the net gain in housing units by permits.

And so for 2025, we it's a 77 new housing units.

So we permitted more, but when you look at all the the loss of housing units too, and in the end it shakes out to 77 new housing units.

So as we consider, you know, how we're doing towards the housing actions conservative goal of 519 housing units.

Um in the three years that we've been keeping track since since that plan went into effect.

We have permitted a total of twenty two hundred and twenty-one new housing units.

So we've made some progress.

Um that's that's positive.

Um there remains um projects in the pipeline.

Umes that you know have kind of been talked about publicly that are out there but haven't necessarily come through permitting for us is uh Melrose Terrace is gonna be redeveloped with uh 21 units of senior housing.

Um, and I think they're planning to start construction this year, um permitting a little later this winter.

And then Holton Home is gonna be redeveloped with 21 permanently affordable apartments, including several apartments set aside for individuals with development disabilities in a partnership that Windham Windsor Housing Trust is doing with Black Mountain Assisted Family Living.

Um those are those we we hope to see in this coming year as well.

And then we have a couple of projects that have been permitted in previous years that appear to be stalled.

Um we don't know the reasons for all of them.

We do know that construction costs remain high.

Financing, particularly for individual developers, um, can be challenging.

Um so those those are two things that seem to be some barriers to to some of these moving forward, and then others could be other reasons.

Um I kind of want to speak to some of the ways that the town has given support to projects and and also give you a heads up of some things that you're gonna see at upcoming select board meetings related to some of these projects.

So you might be familiar with uh community development block grants in Vermont, we call them Vermont it's they're from the Vermont Community Development Program, um the VCDP program.

Uh Patrick often would bring um applications before you uh for the town to sign off.

They're basically federal funds that the state has a plan for using, and then they grant those to the towns.

The towns are the applicants, and then we're often passing them through to other partners to do projects, um, particularly related to economic development and housing.

Well, those are like the the two uses in Vermont for these HUD funds.

Um at your February 17th meeting, we're um we've scheduled a public hearing for a development at 33 Oak Street, um, just just around here where there the person needs additional funding to complete the project.

Um the project is a planned five rehab rehabilitated units and eight new units, and so that's that's one project that's in the pipeline.

Um there it there has been a cut to federal funds to HUD funds to the state of Vermont, and so in the past there were often three grant application rounds a year, and the town really managed this pretty well, kind of setting up a pipeline of what are the projects that are gonna be submitted at different times with the funding cuts.

Uh for now we're only anticipating one uh round a year.

So, like I said before, they were kind of nicely managed for the select board to decide.

So you didn't have to make a decision between projects, but that might be changing due to only having one round a year.

The state is trying to work on a scenario where maybe they could accept two applications from a town in that grant round.

It might have to be one economic development, one housing.

But that's just something to keep an eye out for because we were encouraged by the state to allow different applications to at least go through pre-development, which might mean you would have multiple public hearings in the end.

Some might never make it to the public hearing stage, but it could be a situation where you're weighing different applications, you know, for housing projects.

So that's just something to be aware of.

And then Winston Proudy, I think back in December, you accepted a grant to the town.

They basically received 750,000 in directed funding from the state for infrastructure improvements.

They'll be working on the water systems for that, the water infrastructure for the first 28 units, but also expanding it.

They've had capacity issues at the campus anyway, so in order for them to do their kind of full housing build out, they're going to need to improve that infrastructure.

So the 75,000 is going to be granted to the town and then passed through to Winston Proudy.

And that is going to require a development agreement where the town agrees to take over the infrastructure at the end.

Winston Proudy has been working closely with the Department of Public Works and their engineer.

So there's been discussions about that, but we are expecting a development agreement that will come before the select board laying out kind of you know our working relationship and also an indication that the town would take over that infrastructure at the end of the project.

So that may be at your February 17th meeting as well.

Another part of the housing action plan is to kind of improve the existing housing stock.

And we're constantly letting you know homeowners and other people that own property know about the programs that are out there, particularly the Vermont Housing Improvement Program, which has created a little and rehabbed a lot of rental housing units in properties.

One of the areas that we're kind of focusing on, particularly the sustainability coordinator, is a focus on helping low-income households explore portable solar.

It's also known as plug-and-play solar.

And this is an opportunity that we had BDCC received a substantial grant from the municipal investment fund to establish pipelines of projects using clean energy.

And so our focus is to look at this portable solar, which is basically an appliance that can be plugged in and help people reduce their energy costs.

And so we're also looking at that for some of our accessory structures here at the town as a way to just make it more accessible and to help reduce costs.

So over the next three months, this is a pretty short-term project that we're being funded to do this work.

And so we're working with SEFCA, Brottleboro Savings and Loan, and Bright Saver, which is a national nonprofit.

There is work at the state level to ease the regulatory pathway for these projects, but we're trying to build that pipeline.

And Brightsaver is really interested in doing a demonstration pilot project once it's approved by the legislators, or if it gets approved by the legislators, which looks like it will.

Um it's a project.

But it does the same thing.

Basically, you um the way it works is you kind of freeze the um tax value of the property, and then as you know, if say it's a 20-year payback period, you're basically taking the increase of it and paying down the debt of um building the infrastructure for the project.

So and infrastructure here is used broadly.

It can be um water and sewer infrastructure, it can be parking, it can be um sidewalks, other public improvements.

Um it's designed specifically to create housing um and grow the grand list without raising taxes.

So I'm still learning more about it.

There the guidelines have been released, and um for any project that's maybe interested in pursuing the chip, they've got a pre-application form.

Um it's you know, I think that there is interest from some developers.

It's a you know, it's it's a way to kind of bridge the gap of construction costs um and again grow the grand list.

Um but I think it's gonna be complex.

It's gonna be a you know, involve finance professionals, legal professionals.

So just want to put that on your radar.

You might see that there's some training that's out there at this time.

Uh that it's kind of going around from VLCT and other organizations.

Um with that, um that that's kind of what I had prepared for you.

Um I do have two particular um town properties that we could talk about, or we could save that when we come back with um vacant inventory, um vacant lands inventory with some recommendations.

So however you want to do that.

Thank you so much, Sue.

I think we should save the town owned property for another evening because we all want to get our heads around that.

Um but um I will thank you.

And I also want to mention that um uh we are known across the state for our uh inclusive zoning and our and what you've done for the planning and development regulations to uh encourage housing, and I think we can all see that um that and the housing plan is is all coming to fruition, and I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Um but there were two things that I wanted specifically to discuss.

Um is Holton Home.

I thought Halton Home had some sort of uh restrictive covenant on it that would not allow this.

Last I heard it was nurses, traveling nurses.

What happened?

Yeah, um, I think in the I I don't know exactly um why there was I I I don't really recall what the restrictive covenants was.

I do recall hearing about one.

Um and I think that's when at that point MS was working on the traveling nurses, and I think there was, you know, Winam and Windsor Housing Trust had kind of like the first, if I recall correctly, you know, they had some first option for development or whatever it was coming to them.

I'm not exactly sure.

Um, has that gone through the land use review review process?

Not yet.

Not yet.

Um I think that if if I could recall correctly when they went to the traveling nurses, that did.

Um and so this new plan is basically I think that um well I can't speak to why the traveling nurses didn't work out because I I don't know exactly why, but um but anyway, it's it's the next iteration of the Holton Home.

Okay.

Um and then I have one more question before I let my I was just gonna offer Go ahead.

I think the covenant had to do with um with with health care and and care.

And I think that that's what it is, and and with the code.

So this is a through line.

This yeah, so this and this this follows with with the assistant of designating so many houses for individuals with developmental delays, it it holds that in place.

Thank you, Peter.

All right, and then my last question is about chip.

Um does this mean that the tax benefit, the municipality would get from addition to the grand list that would normally accrue to new housing, would now instead go to paying back the interest on this state program.

It would I'm not sure what you mean about paying back the interest on the state program.

What it would do is it would keep the tax value of the property at, you know, say say in 2025 a project comes before you as a select board because you will you know ultimately get to make a decision if the town would want to support a project using this chip financing.

Um it would kind of freeze the property value at the at the 2025 level, and then you know, say it was an agreement for 20 years, basically that increment would be used to pay down the um the cost of the infrastructure.

And pay down to whom to the developer.

So what this is is a program that lends money for interest for infrastructure.

And but what we really have is the municipality not getting the benefit in rateable in taxes.

We might get the money added to the ground list, but effectively it's like a payment in lieu of taxes, like we had like with the Brooks house and the limiting the taxes that this new building pays.

It limits the taxes for sure, um, you know, for for that that period of time.

But what it does, what it could do is make the project happen so that we would benefit from the full value from its full value at some point in the future.

Yeah.

So for example, we had a payment in lieu of taxes for the Brooks house for 10 years, right?

I think it was tax stabilization.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we had that for 10 years.

And everybody got money from that project, except the town.

The municipality did not get additional taxes from it because it was negotiated.

And so what's happening in this is a state program that takes the control out of the municipality to gain the tax increase from a new development, which I think is a doggone chain.

I think I'm not prepared to respond to that tonight.

Well, that's I think that means I think it's what we were we're gonna need to delve into as someone.

But you know, I I just I question the soundness of this policy because it doesn't um allow the municipality to benefit from the new development.

And that's all I'm saying.

Yeah, and I think my response, I don't know if you don't want to response to it, is that you know, we need housing for economic development purposes, we need children in our schools, and so you know, if a project is not gonna work because there's no you know, there's just this big gap, and you know, so that's the alternative.

Well, that's all very nice, but you know, we suffer we as a municipality suffer.

We're the ones who would be bearing the brunt of it because once again everybody would be you know running around developing, but what we would expect in terms of addition to the grand list would be increase to our tax base.

But that's being stymied.

John, did you want to?

Well, I I I did just want to say that of course the board would approve any use use of this through and there would be a development agreement.

So if you wanted that to be a shorter duration, it would generate less funding, but it might bring it on to the grand list sooner and so that the town would benefit sooner.

Um but if as Sue was saying, it it's really an attempt to try to make some of these projects that have been stalled actually happen.

So well, more to come on that.

Are there other uh select board members who'd like to comment?

Yes, Oscar.

Yes, thank you.

Um, we could probably talk for hours about this, but I don't want to do that right now.

So just uh thank you for all the information.

The success with the housing permitting is excellent.

Um I was here earlier today, so I want to at least mention that ran into Stephen and Brian with a bunch of boxes in the hallway for the portable the plug and play solar, which is very cool, which I didn't even know was physically possible, but it's basically a panel that you know maybe you mount out of your window of your apartment and then a big appliance and you just plug it into your wall outlet and it essentially feeds power um to your uh circuit, which is kind of crazy, but makes a lot of sense.

And I think there's uh quite a bit of money potentially in the offing for that project if if it all goes through the way we hope.

Like I believe do you know the number offhand?

I don't want to misquote it.

Do you mean for like the next phase?

Yeah, for the next phase if that happens.

It's at least a couple hundred thousand, if not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then uh so anyway, that's that's an exciting possibility down the road.

And then well, I also want to talk about chip, but I think it's good.

It's exciting.

Um tax increment financing is a tool that we can use when we choose.

It's certainly not something that's being voisted on us or that would take anything away from us that we don't want to pursue.

But yeah, if it's something like tax stabilization that can get us over the last mile for some project, um, you know, the the only benefit it it is not the case that the only benefit for new development in Brattleboro is just growing the grand list.

So it's uh I'm excited to learn more about it.

And my question for you is where where do you see the town's role?

Is this a thing where we're mostly educating people about the program's existence and the options, and then developers will approach the town or something else?

Yeah, I think it I think it takes place in the conversations that we're having as people are bringing you know development there and they're asking about what tools exist.

Um I think it's so I I think it is going to take education for the community to understand how it works.

Um and I'm trying to get up to speed on some of that as well.

Um initially I think it's it's going to be up to a developer if they want to pursue it with the town.

And like I said, it's it's pretty sophisticated.

It's it's not you know just somebody doing a small there's risk uh for a developer, there's could be risk to the town, so you really want to make sure the development agreement is and like you said, the the boundaries seem to be designed to be relatively useful, sorry, loose in terms of infrastructure.

So for example, I my understanding is that something like new development is going up, there is a sidewalk leading there that is in very bad repair.

That's probably the sort of thing that could be folded into a project like this, which you know, nothing comes for free, but it would be a way to get a bunch of work done on what are pretty favorable terms as far as financing goes.

Yes.

So that's correct.

So there can be the public public benefit that way.

We can improve our infrastructure through this.

Definitely.

Well, awesome.

All right.

Well, I'm looking forward to hearing more about that.

But thank you for the whole report.

It's great.

You're welcome.

Amanda, she's great.

So thank you so much.

It's very inspiring toward the as we look toward the future.

All of this, this is so exciting.

So a couple um, I just a clarifying question.

You had mentioned um we may have to be weighing different projects of in could you clarify what you mean by that?

So in the past, because there's been like three rounds annually for community development block grants, um, VCDP grants, we call them here in Vermont.

Um, you know, it was the case where you know they were just managed in a way, okay.

Um wind and winds are housing trust, you'll apply at this time, and um, you know, community development supporting, you'll apply at this time.

So we were able to put you know several projects up a year.

But I think, you know, and and this is probably a conversation with John as well.

You know, how do we want to manage those projects?

Um, you know, if we're only able to submit one and we have a couple of housing projects coming forward seeking assistance through these funds, how do we want to how do we want to do it?

Um and the other question I had was about the Oak Street property that was referred to.

You just for clarification, you said that they may be needing to apply for additional funds to complete a project.

Is that typical um I think that most of the times the projects that have come before the board have their it, you know, it's a piece of the funding and that's been identified at the at the start.

So it's you know, when Groundworks built their new facility, it was you know, a piece of that funding.

Um I'm trying to think of some other ones.

Um yeah, I think that's the one that's coming to mind, but you know, they it was part of their funding stack from the beginning.

So it's a little different.

Okay.

Um another question.

You mentioned the CHIP program, and I you mentioned about auxiliary costs and needs, attorneys fees, design, etc.

Who takes on that cost, or is that folded into the whole grant?

It will be the developer that takes on those costs.

I mean, I think there's a substantial amount of upfront costs.

Um I think it can get rolled into the eligible costs.

I know soft costs can.

Um, but you know, if you're if the town is incurring bills, we might not want to wait, you know, until that point.

So yeah.

Um one more thing.

Um the whole plug and play solar, which is super cool.

Like, could we maybe warn that to learn more about it for a future board uh meeting to get a presentation on it?

Because it sounds like it's short, it's really happening now.

All right, uh Isaac.

Yeah, well, thank you so much.

This is one of the priorities that we identified that our chair mentioned earlier in the meeting.

Um so good to see the the progress with it.

And one we there had been some discussion about the vacant buildings ordinance.

Is has has where are we with that and enforcement of it?

Yeah, so um it kind of got wrapped up in us trying to roll out open gov.

Um, and so it's it's been a little delayed.

We are committed to having it out this March.

Um it's just doing it at the same time as OpenGov, which is new to us.

So we're sending out lever letters to property owners, letting them know.

In the meantime, we've had a lot of conversations and we've had calls from property owners, and um, you know, we've seen some there there's a property on High Street that was vacant for several years, um, and that actually got sold and is being rehabbed.

So as a stick, I think it it's already kind of worked.

Um but yeah, this March, because the March March 15th is the deadline.

That's progress.

Was that comments, Peter?

Um so just uh 125 permits um and 105 multiple dwellings.

So that's 105 separate.

That doesn't include the amount of possible units within the dwelling, does it?

No, that's 105 apartment units.

All right, and actually out of two projects.

So really, okay.

And and how does like all of that compare to like previous years as far as growth?

Yeah, so I would say for the last I um I don't have it in front of me, but um it'll be in the annual report, I think.

We've been seeing more multi-unit dwellings being created.

Um that's high.

I mean it is the best um permitting, you know, 2024 was our best per permitting numbers since the 80s.

2025 was even better than 2024.

So we are seeing our best numbers in 30 years.

Well, I mean, it's just it's interesting.

I was just reading sort of a a study on on Vermont's declining population.

And um, you know, but these numbers, you know, to me are showing sort of uh an offsetting sort of our household size is declining as well, so I think that's hence the need for more units.

Right.

All right, thank you.

And thank you for the presentation.

All right, how about the public?

Randy?

Hey, first, congratulations, uh, Randy Blogged District 7, but um on growing that.

Are we on plan for a total housing mix of all types?

Um or where are we at with that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So um in terms of the housing mix, um we're seeing both um we're seeing all types of housing, but definitely strongest in the multi-unit area.

Um in terms of income levels, we're seeing a fair amount of market rate in kind of smaller incremental developers, and then we're seeing um some of the affordable and subsidized housing as well.

As um in permitting, we you know, under fair housing rules, we can't stipulate or you know, approve or deny something based on who it you know what incomes it's serving.

So uh we haven't kept great um data on that, but it is something that we could track.

I mean, one of the nice things about the CHIP program is that it's you know, a lot of the state grant programs are for affordable housing.

There is some for the missing middle incomes uh or the middle income housing, which is up to 120% AMI.

Um, but CHIP can be used for all sorts of um incomes.

It's just the the amount that can be retained um drops it you know, depending on the the income category.

So so we're just I mean it I I guess I'm just a knowledge base I'm trying to learn is do do we have a plan like so it's like we're short in this area, so we try to grow that, we have enough of this, like, or is it just like what the developers are?

I'm just trying to understand.

Are we do we try to manage that, or it's a little bit just as it comes in?

Yeah, we've just been managing it as it comes in.

We haven't been trying to manage and and seek out more market rate or more affordable.

Okay.

On the plug and play, it's an amazing thing that a few states like uh Utah have passed up to a 30-amp circuit.

It has a built-in back feed preventer, so it doesn't you know hurt the lineman if the power goes out, it knows to stop.

Um it will use whatever circuit you have, it auto-senses if it's a 15 amp or a 20 amp up to a 30 amp, and then automatically lets that much power go in, and it censors for circuits, it censors water insurance, it's really a neat thing.

Um so you know it it's kind of you don't need to get electrician and redo something because it can use what's there, but if you made it better, it does even a better job.

So it's something really cool.

All right.

Uh Gemma.

Hi, Gemma Seymour again.

I just wanted to talk briefly about um something that I bring up very often, which is um, well, first of all, let me say I am just starting to wrap my mind around the idea of tax increment financing.

This is something that's new to me, but it sounds to me very much like it would have an effect very similar to the program that uh the property tax abatement program that the city of Philadelphia put into place in the year 2000.

And what they did was they abated all property taxes on uh building improvements for both commercial and residential properties.

And and just uh reading from a report from 2017, what they found was that um by that point um new home building in the city had increased by 376 percent compared to a minus 11.25% drop in the surrounding five counties in Pennsylvania, not including the New Jersey suburbs.

Um so what they found was that by 2017 that the uh it was a 10-year abatement program.

They had already increased revenues to the city from property tax from uh uh expired abatements by 41 48.1 million dollars, and they they calculated by 2026 that would increase to another uh 169 million dollars annually.

Now, of course, it's Philadelphia, um and they deal with much larger numbers than we do.

But uh of note, more than two-thirds of the properties under the abatement had assessed values of less than 400,000, which is the lower half of the market in Philadelphia, 25% of which it qualified as workforce housing uh based on the assessed values and and neighborhood incomes.

Um so I think that programs like this can do a very good job of of kickstarting development in a place that really needs housing.

And yes, we would be foregoing some property tax revenue for a fixed period of time, but it also adds value in the long term to the town, and once the abatements expire, it's a windfall of profits for the town.

So thanks.

Thank you, Gemma.

And you know, I don't I I I'm all for development.

I'm just a doubting Thomas and want to make sure that our municipality is protected.

Anyone else?

Oscar.

Uh Jim, I just wanted to ask Gemma, can you send me that?

I'm sure he can sure she can when she's finished discussing.

Okay.

Um are there anyone online?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, anyone.

Oscar was asking.

Oscar wants that article.

Yeah, could you send that to the why don't you send it to all of us?

That would be nice.

Yeah.

Anyone else have any comments for Sue?

Um I won't uh ask her to step away because she's our next speaker too.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Now you're discussing the cultural resource plan.

I am um it's the it's called um, and I have a couple of slides to share with you just to go through it, which were also in your packet.

But um, I wanted to present to you um the collaborative cultural plan for Southeastern Vermont.

You may have seen it.

Um it's got a beautiful design that SEP helped us with.

So that's really that's really great.

But I'm using slides that were from our community launch meeting, so that's why it was the consultant that put them together.

So this plan was a collaborative collaborative plan sponsored by the towns of Brattleboro, Rockingham, and Wilmington, and we had assistance from the Wyndham Regional Commission.

Brattleboro was the lead applicant, and we applied for and received a 45,000 dollar municipal planning grant in 2024.

That 45,000 was matched by 5,000, $5,000 that each town paid a third of.

And so, you know, the idea, you know, we started having these conversations.

People were coming to us and you know, suggesting that we worked on a cultural plan.

And so why did, you know, why did I think that this was useful for the town of Brattleboro and to work regionally with our partners.

Um, and it was partly because arts and culture are critical part of the fabric of Brattleboro, and we're lucky to have a diverse and talented cultural community in our town for for since I started working with the town in 2009.

There's been lots of efforts around cultural planning and creative economy planning.

Um, but we never had like one, we had projects, but not really a plan like this.

And so at its inception, our goals for the plan were to recognize and activate the creative sector's central role in creative capacity and community and economic development, to increase and organize collaborative capacity among creative sector players, uh, businesses, organizations, and individuals, and to kind of foster relationships between them, to strengthen leverage and coordinate energies and resources to address community needs, and to serve as a resource for communities in the development and updating of town plans, which Brattleboro is in the process of doing, and you'll hear about that more at an upcoming meeting too.

Um, you know, we all know that Vermont's an attractive place to live and work.

We have a particular brand and a quality of life here, and the nature of our creative sector aligns with that brand.

And when I was recently doing stakeholder engagement for the town plan, I consistently heard that people were attracted to Brattleboro with the arts and the cultural experiences that they can have here.

So this is town residents saying that this is one of the things they appreciate most about Brattleboro.

Um Peter, you referred to Vermont's declining population.

So just this past week it was reported that Vermont has posted its largest decline by percentage in the country, um, losing more than 1,800 residences.

And this is both due to an aging population and migration.

And so as we think about ways to attract people and investment to Brattleboro and to Southeast Vermont, we need to look at our strengths.

And as I just kind of mentioned, the creative sector and the arts and cultural experiences and the people who do them are one of our assets.

During the project, we confirmed that the creative sector is one of Vermont's largest economic drivers, and we learned that the Windham region ranks very high in national creative economy metrics across the region.

There are nearly a hundred nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in all forms of the arts.

Um, arts education, providing community access and you know, round history and heritage.

And the majority of these organizations are here in Brattleboro.

Earnings across the creative industries were nearly 78 million dollars in 2023, and there were over 2100 creative jobs located here in the Windham region.

That's about 4% of the population and greater than 10% of the jobs in the region.

Um and this is this is in the reporting comes from the US Census Bureau and the Creative Vitality Suite that aggregates all this information.

And so I'm just pointing these out as to the economic reasons why Brattleboro and Wilmington and Rockingham were really interested in looking at this sector and figuring out ways that we can leverage it and strengthen it.

So that's kind of what was behind.

Um next slide.

Um this was the planning process.

Um it shows you the timeline and the phases of the work that was undertaken.

Um we hired with the grant funding a firm Cultural Planning Resources Inc.

And um our consultant was Martin Cohen, who I can't speak more highly of.

He he was excellent.

Um the engagement took place between October 2024 and um January.

Um it was really into 2025, um, probably through July 2025.

We gathered diverse stakeholder voices through interviews, discussion groups, and gatherings in numerous locations throughout the region, including here in Brattleboro.

And these were mostly creative sector artists or arts organizations that we were meeting or that he was meeting and talking with.

We also set up a steering committee that had 18 people representing cultural organizations, individual artists and creative entrepreneurs from across the region.

The steering committee met least six times over the course of the project.

And then we had a launch event in October of 2025 that was the conclusion of the project, and that brought in an additional 35 people who hadn't participated in the interviews.

And next slide, please.

Next slide.

So what we learned from individual artists and creative entrepreneurs is here on this slide.

So in their feeling in isolation and a lack of connection, they have challenges to economic stability from an economic perspective.

Many of them find it difficult to sustain their creative practice and have it be their only source of income.

So sometimes they're working in multiple jobs just to be able to continue to do their art.

And then obviously economic conditions and housing costs compound some of that.

And then we were looking for avenues to support marketing to strengthen their marketplace.

Next slide, please.

From the arts and cultural nonprofits, we heard a lot about the need for greater regional coordination.

We heard about the challenges to financial health and organizational sustainability.

And we heard about the need to integrate arts and culture more strongly and greater community and economic development.

And what I would note about particularly the arts and cultural nonprofits is that there's they're experiencing some transitions.

Some of it's due to retirement, some of it's due to just you know coming out of the post-COVID experience and the whole federal change in funding and stuff.

So there's a lot of stress.

Some of its infrastructure, their own infrastructure, their facilities, aging facilities, or you know, expenses of operating their facilities.

So there's a lot of economic pressure that kind of that they're facing.

And then funding, obviously, I mentioned federal funding cuts that have happened over the past year, and then you know, even just maintaining their own donors and cultivating it.

And you know, we well, we are in a philanthropic area because we're so diverse and spread out throughout the region.

Like we don't have this one, we're not like a city where there's a you know big philanthropic speak at this point.

Philanthropic, thank you, organizations that are you know constantly supporting.

So, you know, that that's a challenge that they have.

Next slide.

Um, so these were just some of the cross-cutting themes.

Again, regional identity and coordination, um challenges in capacity.

I mean, over and over again, and I'll talk about this a little bit at the end is who owns this plan, who's doing what, uh, that kept coming up, the the need for economic development integration and um equity and access issues.

Um next slide, please.

And so with these themes and and what we heard, uh, the plan contains four goals that focus on the first one is focusing on artists and creative entrepreneurs.

The second focuses on the arts and the cultural organizations.

The third is basically enhancing the brand of the region as a creative hub.

Um I think Kate Traskis from DBA likes to call us the Cultural Corner of Vermont, um, or yeah, some creative corner of Vermont.

Or yeah, some creative corner of Vermont.

You know, finding some way to kind of elevate our brand as you know, having a lot of arts and culture here and it being really important.

And then fourth is just strengthening the creative sector.

And so each goal has action steps and kind of strategies or tactics that could be pursued.

They're a framework for a coalition of leadership and a path for implementation.

It's designed to be flexible in the hope that we can capitalize on opportunities as they come up, particularly because we lack a central organizing and capacity for that at this time.

And so as I mentioned, there's tactics and approaches that can be used for implementation.

Next slide.

So what's next?

I see that says what next.

What's next?

So as I alluded to, we've identified several challenges to implementing the plan, and we've tried to tackle them head on in the process.

We started down this one path of the um arts council, uh the Vermont Arts Council had these zone agents that were working in the regions, and we were like, well, could we build on the zone agent?

And then with all the federal cunning funding cuts, the zone agents went away.

So our real struggle was who was going to own this plan and who's going to implement it.

And so where we've kind of settled is it it needs to be collaborative because it's not the town of Brattleboro's plan.

Um it's not the town of Wilmington's, um, and it's you know not one nonprofit organization.

Um since the culmination of the plan, we've had two meetings with some members of the steering committee and other um people and some partners to kind of figure out how do we move it forward.

And you know, BBCC is acknowledged there's a place for them, and um, you know, as simple as making sure that their workforce um and business kind of tools are accessible to artists.

Um we're gonna do a session or two at the Southeast uh Vermont Economic Development Summit in May to kind of elevate it in the economic realm as well.

Um Windham Regional Commission is going to do some workshops and and or you know, this there seems to be interest in doing some workshops and sharing town plan language.

I've already been sharing language with some other towns in the region who've asked about it.

Um the downtown organizations, particularly DBA, are pretty excited about you know, it dovetails nicely with the work that they do.

Um, you know, can we have a little bit of coordination between events that are going in the region so that somebody that's coming to Brattleboro can stay longer and maybe use Brattleboro as their hub and and have other things to do in the communities because if we all you know, if we can be successful together, that that helps the entire region.

So, you know, ultimately it's going to depend on this um continued engagement, um, not only from municipal officials but also from the creative community and the supporting organizations, but it seems like we're we're setting out on a path for that at this time.

So with that I'll leave it open to questions or comments.

Lovely.

Thank you.

Um colleagues, you want to start?

Yeah, so this is great.

This is exciting.

I like the collaboration.

Um that's key to forming strong um uh strong momentum moving forward.

I think that's so exciting.

Um you just um just quickly uh the you talked about our creative economy metrics.

Is this in the um plan?

Is that that data's in the plan?

Um and you also mentioned Southern Vermont Economic Summit.

Where is that?

And when is that?

Oh, I don't know where it's held this year.

In the past, it's either it's usually held in Dover, Wilmington.

Um I don't know where it's gonna be this year, it's in May.

Um BBC sponsors it.

So it's a it's an excellent conference.

It's usually at Mount Snow.

Yeah, it's been at um Hermitage one year I went there, but usually it's Mount Snow.

Yeah, so this is great.

I mean, I think it's such a strong part of our economic development plan, and it's great to have some building blocks to go you know, to work through and follow a plan.

Let's do it.

No comments other than this is exciting, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

It's great.

Peter.

Good, thank you.

Yeah, yeah, great to see this vision.

Well, I have a few comments.

First, just thank you always for your hard work and and leadership.

Um, I also want to thank uh all the neighbors and friends and some of my friends on the steering committee.

It's really nice to see them.

Um it's really a worthwhile effort.

And as Amanda said, collaboration is always the key.

Um I also want to continue to salute uh the arts as a means to economic development, and I think we've all recognized that.

Um the other day we I had the opportunity to meet with Zon Estes, and it reminded me of uh the cultural inventory that took place what was that 10 years ago soon or maybe 15.

15, yeah.

So that was a worthwhile effort.

And um, you know, one of the things that that identified was kind of uh succession planning for the arts.

And I don't know if that was discussed, but that's a really right up there with collaboration in terms of an important element.

Yeah.

Um I know Martin did have a lot of conversations with the nonprofit um about secession, you know, particularly because we're a rural area.

Um it's a lot of one or two-person show managing these nonprofits.

And so that is a concern, particularly, you know, our wages are not necessarily as competitive.

And um, so and you were talking about all the economic pressures on the artist, too.

Yeah, yeah.

So um, you know, I think that's I I think it's addressed in the plan a little bit with some with some tactics around that.

Um yeah, great.

And then in terms of uh engagement, I just if there's any anything that the select board can do to assist in that process, uh please let us know.

Okay, and thank you again.

Now, is there anyone from the public, Kate?

Kate O'Connor, and I want to make my comments as the executive director of the Brattleboro Regional Chamber of Commerce.

We are on board as one of the partners that have been participating in these meetings that Sue was talking about.

And you know, we represent the towns of Brottleboro, Vernon, Guiltford, Putney, Dummerston Townsend, and New Fane.

And it's a it's great, there is like momentum for this, which is great.

In fact, I was just talking to our web designer last week to make sure that the cultural plan is highlighted on the chamber website so that people can see it.

If you don't know the plan exists, then you don't know that there's a plan.

So it's great.

Sue's done a lot of work.

The people that were involved did a lot of work, and I think there is a real strong momentum, and we see it's the whole rising tides lifts all boats.

It's if all of us do it together, we have a better outcome.

So I just wanted to get up and say it's a great plan.

Sue did a lot of work, and there's a lot of people invested in it.

Thank you, Kate.

Anyone else?

Anyone online?

Kate T.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great.

I'm not gonna turn on my video.

Um I just also wanted to say uh of the steering committee of the plan that um I'm so excited about the outcomes and the work and the collaboration in building the plan.

Um as you all know, I have said loudly, I feel like uh Brattleboro is the arts and cultural hub and capital of Vermont.

And our creative corner has an outsized footprint when it comes to arts and culture, and we should be really proud about that.

Um we are also currently collecting some data um from the Festival of Miniatures, which I think again speaks to the creative sector and the economic impact we can have when we are all working together to highlight that creativity and welcoming people into our town to experience that.

So we'll be sharing more data um around that piece soon.

Um yeah, just to echo also what um what Kate O'Connor was saying, that the DBA feels really strongly that one of our roles is to amplify the work of um others in the region.

You know, we we create events and and do that work, but so many others are doing that, and so the more that we're sharing and amplifying and promoting that work, um, the stronger we will be.

So thank you so much, Sue.

And um looking forward to helping implement the plan.

Thank you, Kate.

Anyone else online or in here?

And anyone here on the this side of the table, wish to speak?

I will thank you once again, Sue.

And let you go home.

Before midnight, I might add.

Well, I think you will as well.

Thank you.

All right.

So uh John, one last item.

Yep, uh, one last item, and uh I also wanted to thank Seth for his uh work on that plan as well.

So great, appreciate that.

Um yeah, so the last thing you have on your agenda tonight is a long-term financial projection for the general fund.

And uh I put together a projection of revenue and spending in the general fund for basically the next five budgets.

So F fiscal 28 through fiscal 32.

This uh this projection is it's not a budget, it's it's a five-year forecast.

And um it's based on kind of incorporating the most current thinking on what the future may hold.

Uh I'm hopeful that this exercise will um inform the select board about areas that may require proactive policy decisions to maintain service levels, uh, to manage risk to the town, and also to reduce volatility over time.

When ever you're doing any sort of financial modeling, it's really important to state your assumptions.

And in this particular approach, I went line by line in the FY27 Select Board approved general fund budget and made what I hope are reasonable assumptions about future trends, and these are based on our recent experience.

Um they're based on current policy direction from the select board and also sort of likely future policy direction that may or may not happen, but um I had to make some some guesses about that.

I did uh I did write them all down.

They're in this projection.

Uh there's a column in the table that's called projection assumptions, and that uh that lists out all of uh for each line item what the supposition was.

This model is driven by 40 growth factors, and those are uh included separately in the projection, and they can be adjusted in this model.

So if uh if you wanted to develop an alternative scenario or um a contingent a different contingency, it's possible to do that using this this tool.

Uh the uh Seth has posted this as a spreadsheet on the town website.

It is available.

Anyone can download it, they can change the assumptions, they can mess around with what's in there and come up with their own uh projection.

And I would encourage anybody to do that.

Some of the key takeaways that I had from undertaking this exercise, which was actually more fun than I thought it would be, um, were that b based on the stated assumptions in this model, um, including some significant ones around the adoption of new revenue sources, which has been a uh focus of the select board, uh the overall property taxes needed to cover projection expenditures would increase an average of 4.9% per year, going from 20.9 million in fiscal uh 27 to 26 million in fiscal 32.

This would continue our run of single digit tax increases that we have seen over the past five years.

So it would be able to extend that out over the next five.

The property tax trajectory is of course conditional on policy successes that really are not guaranteed, including the creation of new revenue sources, which as I mentioned has been a uh priority of the select board over the past several years.

The focus and the in the assumptions in this projection are in two areas.

A local option tax on fuel, which um Molly Burke is working on uh in the state legislature this session.

And uh also the concept of state revenue sharing.

So both of these things require future policy actions.

Non-tax revenues such as rooms and meals and sales tax are projected here at uh 5%, which is modestly above expected inflation.

And that reflects an optimistic but plausible scenario tied, at least in my mind, it was tied to anticipated economic recovery from the select board's recent public safety and economic development investments in town, and the potential for some minor local option tax uh rate increases, which I think is another revenue enhancement area that we should be looking at and speaking with the legislators about.

For many years, the town really limited its investment, it's a capital investment in uh infrastructure, uh spending as little as $350,000 a year on a very sizable capital capital asset base the town has, which is estimated around 181 million.

And that lack of investment in the past has led to it's created deferred maintenance and it's also created some capital risk around the fact that we haven't addressed this, and it needs to be addressed over time.

This financial projection would allow 2.2 million of investment per year across the time horizon in capital capital spending.

This projection also it makes no use of uh fund balance as a revenue source, so that means that all the annual savings, any annual savings every year, uh as well as uh a built-in growing contingency and reserve building line item in the budget, uh which is something that the select board had asked for in the FY26 and FY27 budget, those together could really help uh build our reserves towards the select board's goal of maintaining a fund balance at approximately 10% of operating expenditure.

Assumptions in this projection regarding staff salaries are made at 5% and 3% for department heads.

This will, of course, depend on collective bargaining negotiations and also the competitive uh hiring environment that the town operates in.

The overall increase, in case anyone's curious, in salaries from FY26 to FY27 was under one percent, so I feel like this is a conservative estimate in this fine uh financial projection.

And it also reflects the management effort and policy attention that's been going into this area of managing salary increases.

The projection also assumes that uh no additional staff would be hired from fiscal 28 through fiscal 32, and that of course would depend on future service demands, any regular regulatory requirements or other mandates from the state, uh as well as community expectations.

Health care costs, retirement costs, and workers' compensation are uh projected in this in this projection to increase above inflation, and uh they are also areas I believe for ongoing management attention, and also represent one of the most significant long-term cost pressures in this financial model.

So, what I assumed was health care at 12 percent, retirement at 10 percent, and workers' comp at 15 percent.

So, being pretty uh pretty pretty healthy in those uh assumptions.

Um the projection also assumes the restoration of a modest investment in human services in fiscal fiscal year 28 at 100,000, and seeing that rising uh by 3% in out years, and this the accuracy of this assumption will also depend on community expectations.

Fuel, electricity, and utilities costs are projected to increase at 5%, and that's based on our recent experience in those areas.

It's another area for ongoing management attention and sustainability investments, like we've talked about a little bit tonight.

The model itself and its flexibility, I believe, will help support the select board in evaluating future policy directions.

And while this is optimistic by design and dependent on key policy assumptions, this model uh illustrates a plausible scenario in which current service levels can be maintained with relatively modest growth in required tax revenues.

And I'm happy to answer any questions about this.

Uh it was uh quite a bit of work, and I think that um I I'm hoping it will help you all.

Thank you very much, John.

Um, which one of my colleagues wants to begin commenting?

Isaac?

Okay.

Well, thank you so much for putting this together.

It was something that we had voted on April 15th unanimously that we would like to see.

Um I'm curious this projection includes line items for revenue from a fuel tax and revenue from increased revenue from the state revenue sharing.

Yes, like like I mentioned, this includes two assumptions around revenue enhancements uh that are would be policy new policies, and that is the uh fuel tax bill that Molly Burke is working on in the legislature this session, and also uh an undefined uh state revenue sharing starting in fiscal, I think the assumption was starting in fiscal 29, so that's not in the session in a session in a bill right now, but it is something that we could bring to the legislature proposed to the legislature next session and potentially have in place for fiscal 28 or 29, I'm sorry.

Based based on the input that we have gotten from the legislators when we had that meeting with them, that I it seems like that might be a little bit might be optimistic.

Um that's I think overall that's my my concern.

I'm really glad that it spells out here what those assumptions are, but it does feel a little bit um like a little bit more hopeful than I think what we might actually expect.

And I think um that's a good point, Isaac, and I think it really will take leadership from the select board and others in the community to have to see some of this happen at the state legislative level.

And um, you know, I did uh we I've had some recent conversations with both the state um uh state administration as well as uh members of the House Human Services Committee about the idea of revenue sharing, particularly uh around the um the situation with the motel program and how much that's costing our town, and I have had some uh receptivity to the idea of well, if we're gonna put a lot of people in the motels in Brattleboro, perhaps there should be some offset um of municipal costs, and that would be the state revenue sharing idea.

Again, I think it would take leadership from members of the select board to really see that happen.

Um, but and I think this identifies the importance of taking that leadership on.

So thanks.

Peter.

Yeah, I was just gonna um mention to to that, and John sort of spoke to it himself that uh the one assumption that this doesn't make is assuming that we have the leadership to sort of reinforce that with our delegation that these are things that need to happen for our town.

So this is well, you know, part of all the talk that I um I I do around raising revenues and kind of lowering some of these other numbers through those revenues, and John's you know putting a little pressure on whoever sits at this body to keep that pressure on.

So I thank you for that.

It's a constant reminder that we need to constantly advocate um advocate on uh behalf of our town and making sure that we are um adding to the pot and not just taking from you know from the tax base on this thing.

So I mean it's not an assumption that you're gonna see in a line item, but it is an assumption that that we need to follow through on as a board.

Thank you, Peter.

Amanda?

Yeah.

Um John, thank you.

This is great.

This is a helpful start.

Um this is a process question.

So, how often in this with this process are you thinking we revisit it?

How often do we compare it to actuals when in the course of the budget year do we um do we review it and kind of alter the numbers as we're seeing them?

So one thing that strikes me is like abatements is at 2%.

And I'm assuming that that's in tandem with what we saw as actuals for this year, but that is one of those variables where you just don't know, but we saw a lot.

We saw a big increase in them.

Um the current tax situation in regards also to how people are doing economically in our town, we might see that be at a larger percentage for certain years, maybe it'll level back out.

So is the 2% like an average you're thinking over 25 years?

That sometimes it might be a little bit larger or smaller.

Yeah, I mean, um that's a great question, Amanda.

I I think uh uh i it's so hard to predict.

Like it's hard to predict in a one-year budget.

You know, the the budget we just just approved.

I mean, if you think so I started to work on this projection back in the spring, and uh then we were spending all of our time focused on building the uh fiscal 27 budget, and even that process assumptions changed all over the place during that whole conversation, and you know, as you know.

And so um so what I did was I built this final projection based on the select board approved budget.

So that at least we were starting with what we knew at the our best information possible moving forward.

So I think I think having doing it at that point is a really good idea.

Um you might that we might learn more things over the course of the spring, and um could potentially re-run a projection in uh the summertime some at some point to inform the building of the fiscal twenty-eight budget.

Uh frankly, it's it's structured to be able to run any time we might get a policy uh a policy question.

You might want to uh you know download this spreadsheet and tinker around with how a certain policy decision of the select board might affect uh this long-term projection.

So yeah, so post-audit we we kind of we play with that as well, because then we'll have some actuals going forward.

And um and yeah, so I would like to see a just uh a plan for how we'll this can be used moving forward, like within a year would be cool.

Yes, thank you.

Um I'm very appreciative, John, to have this and for all the work you've done in it.

I uh more even more so than uh a budget, which is estimation this is sort of that times 10.

Um so I think it's excellent that you stated all your assumptions.

I think it's great.

Uh the fact that you went line by line with them is great.

Um I'm not gonna nitpick too much.

I mean, I we all have our own um we we can all have our own guesses of what we think is going to happen with fuel tax or with revenue sharing, all that stuff.

But because of the way you've made it available, if I feel a certain way, I can go download that spreadsheet, pull those numbers out, and see what that future looks like.

So I I think this is going to be a really helpful tool.

Uh it sounds like from what you said to Amanda that it's going to be relatively easy, like if you just needed to drag this out one year further.

In six months, that's something that you can easily do.

If we find out that hey, uh revenue sharing is happening and it's a million dollars a year, we can drop that in if we figure out oh, health insurance is gonna be way worse than we thought.

Those are adjustments we can make.

Um I also think it's uh has a ton of value, however, accurate it ends up being just for uh sort of planting a marker at a point in time, and we can look back in the fall and say, okay, what do we need to reevaluate about our assumptions?

So that'll be really useful.

Um other two comments are just that even with this sort of optimistic version, 4.9% a year, that's a pretty challenging environment.

It doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.

It may only leave negative wiggle room, in fact.

Um I'm not sure uh how the town would take 4.9 percent a year for five years.

So I think even now we need to start thinking in terms of okay, we may have five years straight of challenging budget years where we have to make tough decisions.

So I think that needs to be on our horizon, both us and the staff and even the community in terms of their expectations.

And then you mentioned it, but just calling out that these numbers rely on more or less unless we find money somewhere, no pool, no DPW facility until after FY2 uh 32.

Which is a big ask, which I assume means that the assumption was that we would not uh like go to a bond in the uh until fiscal 32.

Right.

And I'm talking about major grants and you know how good our staff are at getting that kind of money, so I I'm uh you know modestly optimistic about that that we could do something sooner, but you're right, the this assumption was waiting, which is not ideal.

So, for example, if in August we haven't found anything, that probably means no pool or DPW facility in the FY28 budget, unless uh the town wants to pay for it.

Um, this is great to have.

So thank you, John.

That's a lot of work.

So um, John, I thank you.

And I I can't believe you're you got me right back on that horse to finish the one budget and start the other one.

So I applaud you for that.

Uh but in particular that you said it was more fun than you thought it was gonna be.

And so I I it's a challenge for all of us to play with this because there could be fun.

And um, but also I think most importantly, this is a tool and and it'll we could learn from it and it'll inform our policy decisions as we go forward.

You know, and I I I think um, you know, we we did kind of uh miss an opportunity when you know the department heads came in November, December to actually uh look at the cost of things and the policy determine determination.

So you know, we have to redouble our efforts to do that.

Um but I do want to talk about um uh lobbying the legislature because really that is our charge.

And you know, uh Molly Burke has gone to um a great effort um in the legislature with her committee.

Um she said the other day at the legislative breakfast that that she was surprised how well received it was it was, especially with her within her um department, what do you call that committee?

So we need to thank her and and tell the legislators how important this is to us.

And uh similarly, um we had a meeting with the uh John and I had a meeting with Zahn Estes, who's our uh a Guilford legislator who's on the Human Service Committee regarding uh the motel program.

And in the months since uh I guess it was last May, I think the legislature has learned that there are real expenses to our community from the hosting of the motel program in our town, and they're getting it.

And they're hearing from other like towns, and so it's also incumbent on us to uh provide that leadership, as Peter was talking about, to our legislators to make sure that they understand what's going on in in for our legislative delegation, what's going on in their town, and then from that tell them that we we are aligned with our sister host communities in this effort.

So that's on us.

And I just want to point out that that revenue sharing from the state has changed our budgetary structure from FY 19 to FY27.

Uh we have a 6.4 percent decrease in the percentage of the budget that's dependent upon the taxpayer.

And that's our mantra.

We have to keep that drum beat because you know, right, we have we have the 1% tax and we have uh the rooms and meals tax.

And and of course, we don't get the rooms and meals tax from the people that were hosting in the motel program.

Um because the state doesn't tax themselves.

And so that's where what John was was saying about we need the state to understand that not only are are we expending tax dollars, but we're also losing this revenue from the rooms of meals tax.

So, you know, um representative Essius was very clear in in recognizing and understanding the needs of Brattleboro, and I applaud him for it and and I hope to continue to work with him on that.

And you know, this there's so much in here that we need to play with and look at and understand.

And um I'm sure the people on the other side of the table will have the same level of fun and enjoyment that we're having as we go forward.

And once again, I think are the members of the public wish to speak about this?

All right, we'll start with Gemma.

So as you might remember during the budgeting process, I did some back of the envelope calculations on the the increase in overall uh property values that would have to occur in this town in order to fund continually increasing budgets.

Um those again, they're back of the envelope calculations, they shouldn't be taken too seriously.

But I just want to talk briefly about something that I brought up in the planning commission meeting last night, which is that um you know I was reading the Vermont Futures Project Economic Action Plan for Vermont, and they call for 7200 new homes annually in Vermont for the next five years.

And uh, you know, just doing the calculation, uh Brattle Rose population constitutes about 1.895 percent of Vermont.

And so that would amount to 137 new homes per year in Vermont.

And you know, as I did my calculation before, just to cover a $2.4 million increase in the budget, we would be looking at 268 new homes every year in Brattleboro.

So my question uh as far as these projections are concerned is um what growth in the um overall assessed value of property in Brattleboro is built into those assumptions, if any.

Uh so thanks.

That's an interesting question.

Yeah.

Um so none.

Um all I'm talking about is what i in order to meet the expenditure what the um current taxes would need to be.

So yeah, how those are spread out, what that turns into in a tax rate is just a whole nother question that I I didn't get to that level here.

So said there were what 221 new units proposed this year.

No, I think that was over 25.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If I could just add to that, um we were discussing this as part of that the housing uh chapter of the upcoming town plan.

And over the last five years, Brattleboro has permitted an average of 27 uh 24 new units per year.

And the draft town plan as it stands right now calls for the increasing that by 75, which would bring that number up to only 99, which is why I brought up the you know, Vermont Futures plan being so much more than that, and then we probably need even more.

So thank you.

John, yeah, and I would just um comment that of course the grand list is built on things other than residential units, and uh and so I think some of the economic development work that the town should be looking at as well is how how do we increase uh that commercial side and um and and that's a that's a big question and a and a big opportunity, I think for the town.

So and also the uh the uh demolition and uh no the cat that carrot and stick.

I have one question for Jenna.

And just for clarification, is it 220 units or 220 people per year in Brattle?

That that would be units.

So at the median household site in household size in Brattleboro town is uh 2.12, I think uh for the entire town and 2.04 for Brattleboro CDP.

So thank you.

Oscar?

Yeah, so that's a good question, Gemma, and one I feel like I should have thought of, but just to confirm, so John, you didn't this projection doesn't assume any change in the grant list, right?

Correct.

Right, it does not.

Okay.

So that's essentially good news, it makes the projection conservative in that way.

So if there was new development, it would make these numbers better.

No, the numbers would be the same because it's just like what would be in a budget.

Um how that's spread across a tax base would be different.

So basically it's outside of the ground list.

Like this is a steady projection from this year plus all those assumptions.

And it doesn't talk about the explain, I think.

Uh sure.

So like for fiscal twenty-eight, it's twenty twenty-one million eight hundred and ninety-five thousand, and then that would go up by three point nine percent projected in fiscal twenty-nine.

So that additional one million dollars or so there would that's needed to fund current services.

That additional one million would get spread out against whatever is in the grand list at that time.

Right.

So I guess right.

The the point I'm more making is that property taxes would go up four point nine percent a year if this projection holds, but people's property taxes would not go up by 4.9 percent if the grand list were to grow.

Exactly.

So that's so like that's right.

We everyone always gets focused on this current tax number, and we always say, like, well, we estimate that it would have this impact on 100,000 or something.

But that's always an estimate.

And like last year, we we saw how you know this number was at 8 percent, but it ended up only being 2.8 percent increase in the tax rate.

So, you know, we've had very modest um, you know, below inflation increase last year, even though we were looking at an 8% increase in this in this number on current taxes.

So that that's part of like how it gets spread across the tax space and also uh interacts with uh uh school rates.

Yes, and there are a couple different interactions there which we don't need to get back into now, but yes, I take your point.

Um so that was a very helpful question.

Thank you, Jen.

Randy.

So if I was allowed to applaud, I'd applaud you, John.

Thank you for this.

Um whether it's I might make an exception.

No, no.

Because this is I I don't think everybody in the room and up there appreciates how useful this will be.

And it's gonna be on everybody involved to use it.

Um it is optimistic, I get why it's optimistic.

And the 4.9, I you know, we all have to realize the baseline budget keeps going up.

So when the school tax catches up to us, yeah, we lucked out last year.

But thanks for that.

Um, you know, I I think some of the things are a little high, some of the things are a little low, we're still above inflation.

All the things that people came in and talked about in April and May, and they talked about this budget season.

So I would urge everybody to keep that in mind that you know we need to look every year, but now we have a great tool that you can say, okay, inflation is 2.6% this year.

We'll know at some point in the next few months what our contracts are with the union.

So we'll know all that, and then we have that for three years.

So then you can plug that in and we'll then and we know where we are, um, except for obviously insurance liabilities and those variable things.

But hey, it's a great start, but we can't get off the gas.

We got to keep going.

Um some of these things, there is software that will update this daily if it ties in with the right things from open.gov, just as a way to look forward at something that may be a really good thing.

Each of you has a tablet and it's gonna update right in front of you.

Maybe we'll have you know game night and we can all come and look at it on our laptops, yeah.

You know what?

That's right.

Um I'm just going across the room.

Pierre, did you Kate?

Can you I will be one of the people that goes on and messes with it, John.

So thank you.

Two in the morning, I know what I'm gonna be doing.

Um I just want to two quick things.

As somebody who spent 12 years in the State House in a very unique position, things that seem logical to us that should happen get mired in a thing.

So I'm just I I have stories I could tell.

Something that's normal is not normal up there.

Um and then second of all, while I do really do appreciate this, I'm I'm going to come back here when the new board is sworn in, because our finances are more than our budget.

And I think you folks need to start in April and then May, June, July, August, September, October, once a month, start dealing with our overall financial picture in this town.

You need to go back and look for at a 10-year, what has our budget increase be been percentage-wise over the last 10 years?

What is that meant for the tax parent actual dollars?

What is our personnel expenses look like over the last 10 years?

You need there's a whole bunch, I won't go through it all.

But when we saw the department heads here in January shocked that we were going to ask for budget cuts or budget cuts were being asked for, no one should be shocked.

So I think you have to spend April, May, June, July, August, September, October while the budget is being put together so that there's a mutual understanding amongst the select board, amongst the town staff, and amongst the tax, the people that live in this community, what our real financial picture is.

Because we've deficit spent, we're probably gonna do it for a second year in a row.

We've used down our rainy day fund.

We don't know what's in the RLF or in the special projects fund.

So I'm just saying there's more to our financial picture than just our budget.

So I'm I'll be back here when everybody gets sworn in and say this again and really encourage you to take what John did, but then layer it on this bigger picture that we need.

Thank you.

Tina scared of everyone so dull.

You and Gemma have to work that out.

Yeah, I guess so.

Sorry, I was around again for 20 years, so okay, Dina Chadwick.

Um thank you, John.

This is gonna be a great tool.

So I just have a quick question about it.

Um I'm gonna piggyback on what Kate said.

Is there a way to take the 10-year previous budgets and plug it in to really get that accurate information?

Because that might be also a tool of what Kate is saying is how you know we can see a bigger picture.

So, but thank you.

I think this is I I'll be the person that's playing with this as well because I think it's neat.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Um line.

I think we've lost our audience.

Um more question.

Yes.

Um the item that has to do with the restoration of or rebuilding the reserves for this the goal of maintaining fund balance at approximately 10% of operating expenditure.

Really glad to see that included here.

Um I was curious at the rate that this projection goes about building that.

How many years would that actually take?

That's a great question.

Um it would take quite quite a bit beyond this projection if we depend solely on the 50% increase I have built into that contingency line.

Um the unknowns are what the uh uh what the fund balance would be at the end of each year.

So how basically how well do we do on the budget plan every year?

That's I think impossible to predict, or very I mean, we could make some assumptions around that and maybe come up with something, but trying to figure out that sort of timeline is is uh probably more we need more of a palantier than I've um got in my office.

So one more um I will uh thank John one more time and um bring the meeting to a close if I have one more motion.

I'll motion to adjourn.

Great.

All in favor of the chairman, please raise your hand and say aye.

That's Sarah.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, B C T V.

Thank you.

Is that what I'm doing?

Anything to say.

Apparently not, but that's a good question.

Yeah.

I'll probably start one.

And uh Johnny John, uh there's gonna be many.