City Council - Regular Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to introduce to you the 38th President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford.

I'm not talking to the guy. I know. We will. We'll get to that. All right. He gets boring looking at us. That's what he's saying. You can only look at him. I know. I know. He does that very nicely. But why don't you... I mean, if you want to film them for a while... Okay. I'll stop. You know, but he gets his name in the free press. It's all over. That's right. Now he has an enormous ego.

He thinks he's a creative artist.

All kinds of... Put the camera on this guy. Okay. Go ahead.

That's what happened. I didn't film that Old North End shouting.

I mean, we're trying to make this man into a household word. People don't know who he is.

You were an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.

Yes.

And I remember once telling a story about when you went to see the president, Lyndon Johnson, to talk to him about that.

Oh, yeah. Well, that is, and so I ended up spending, oh gosh, I think half an hour with him, and we talked about this and that, and finally I gathered up all my courage, and I said, Mr. President, I said, couldn't we give some consideration to the cessation of bombing of, I think it was Cambodia or North Vietnam? With that, he turned on me, and he had a way of turning on people, and he gave me five minutes' worth, and then he stood up, and obviously I stood up, and he said, Governor, he said, why don't you go back to Vermont, take care of your affairs, and let us take care of these affairs down here? And I said, yes, Mr. President, and out I went.

Thank you.

I'm practicing with a bunch of people that are going for their black belt, and I'm doing the same thing they are, so I would hope that at least they'd give me a brown belt.

You haven't got any pictures of you doing that, do you?

They've taken so many pictures, and they keep saying we're going to get them.

We never do, so I keep bugging them. I did have some. Free Press took one point, but I don't have them right here.

Mr. Brown, obviously your country is suffering a major image problem here in the United States, as was evident to you this morning when you arrived. And we're greeted by some 40 demonstrators out in front of our studios.

Well, first of all, it's very difficult when you're greeted with the continual type of questions such as, how often do you beat your wife? And that's exactly what happens in our case. We have people outside there demonstrating, accusing me of all sorts of things. They don't really know what I believe. They just assume that I'm a racist, that my government supports racism and so on. Racist!

Racist! Racist!

Racist! Racist! Racist!

The American press has to do it correctly right now. Translate that for me.

They're devils.

You're not in the press, Mr. Baldwin. I am in the press. You are not. Are you a recognized member of the press? I think you'll all recognize this as a communist trick to break up a meeting.

You are out of order. I'm backing up.

Thank you.

I'M GOING TO CALL THE MEETING OF THE ESSEX JUNCTION CITY COUNCIL TO ORDER FOR WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12TH. ANY AGENDA ADDITIONS OR CHANGES?

NONE FOR ME. OKAY.

I'M NOT SEEING ANY. PUBLIC TO BE HEARD. ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO BE HEARD? ANYONE IN THE ROOM? ANYONE ONLINE? I am not seeing any hands online, so we will go to our resolution of the evening.

We do have, someone just raised their hand.

Oh, okay, sorry.

Mike. Hi, my name is Michael Madonna. I moved to AC station and I love living here.

Thank you. Appreciate you telling us that.

Yeah.

Mike, we're having a little hard time with the audio. It's just not quite loud enough. Can you repeat that?

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay. My name is Michael McDonald. And I move back.

Thanks, Mike. We appreciate you joining us tonight.

Okay. I'm moved. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Mike. You're welcome. Alright, now we're moving on to the resolution and Mr. Chawla has been nice enough to agree to read it. Can you hear me now? Yeah, yeah.

Trying to be responsible. Alright. Just wait just a minute.

Go ahead. It was just a mic issue on my side.

Oh, you too.

Yep. Go ahead.

This is a resolution in appreciation of Erna Deutsch. Whereas Erna Deutsch has served as a youth librarian with the Brownell Library for 20 years, first part-time and then promoted to full-time, always showing up with kindness, generosity, and a smile for the youth and families of our community, And whereas Erna has demonstrated a deep dedication to our youngest community members by creating programs that engage, inspire, and enrich young lives while fostering the skills youth need to keep growing and learning. An entire generation of children grew up with Erna through after school programs and story times. She's been a champion of early literacy, planting a love of books, and learning that will follow these children throughout their lives. And whereas Erna has been a mentor to fellow librarians, generously sharing her knowledge, experience, and creativity, always offering a smile and a word of encouragement to new staff, she has helped foster the next generation of librarians. And whereas Erna has been an advocate for community connection, creating opportunities for people of all ages to meet their neighbors, build friendships, and find a sense of belonging, And whereas Erna has modeled excellent collaboration and promoted community engagement by providing space, time, and support to adults and teens who want to give back to the community by sharing their skills and interests in volunteer work. And creating programs which introduce community members to the departments and public servants who keep our community healthy and safe. Whereas Erna has invited the generation of community members and library staff into her love of the outdoors and the environment, teaching them to be good stewards of our natural resources and building systems that promote a sustainable library. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the City Council, on behalf of residents, extends its deepest gratitude and appreciation to Erna Deutsch for her extraordinary service and wishes her a fulfilling and joyful retirement. Adopted this 12th day of August, 2026 by the City Council of Essex Junction. And I do apologize for the cat in the background.

Didn't hear it. Didn't even notice. Thank you. Does anybody have any?

Just want to wish Erna all the best in retirement.

Yeah, I grew up in the library. Erna Deutsch was one of my librarians as a child, so I can attest to her instilling a love of reading in kids. And I also wish her all the best in retirement.

I'll just say that I can completely relate as one of the families that benefited from her guidance and after school programs would greatly appreciate her contributions.

Yeah. Thank you, Erna. We will miss you, but good luck in retirement and enjoy it. We're also a little jealous. All right. We are going on to 6A, which is interview and consideration of appointment to the Police Community Advisory Board. And we have Colby LaMarche. Colby, why don't you come up to the mic there. And we've done a lot of interviews over the last couple of weeks, months, I don't know, the days all run together at this point. But do try to be consistent and give you the same questions that I've given the other candidates. And just start by telling you that we do have your application. So it's in the packet. So we were able to see what your response is to the questions. So one of the questions I like to ask is, is there something that you didn't put in the application that you'd like us to know? AND THEN THE SECOND QUESTION, UNIVERSAL QUESTION, IS IF YOU'RE NOT CHOSEN FOR THIS COMMITTEE, IS THERE ANOTHER COMMITTEE THAT YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN MAYBE LOOKING INTO? I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE IT FROM THERE.

ABSOLUTELY. I THINK THE APPLICATION YOU ALL pretty much captures everything I wanted to say. Just a quick recap. I grew up in Burlington, born and raised in Burlington. I moved here probably closer to the end of 22. I was a commuter student at St. Mike's. I graduated in 2024. I wanted to move back to Burlington, but I didn't. I stayed here, and I quite like Essex now. It's a bit more quiet than where I grew up in the south end of Burlington, and I really do like it. I live just four minutes down the street. Really, my application has to do with my time in Burlington growing up in a low-income background. It's a bit different, again, in Burlington than in Essex. But nonetheless, I grew up having a great amount of respect for the police and policing. But like most things in life, it's not always perfect. And I'm just hoping that in those times of imperfection, I can maybe be of some help.

Appreciate that.

And on the second question, there's no other committee at this time. Okay. Thank you.

Appreciate your honesty. Absolutely. Any questions for Colby, guys? No.

I don't have anything. No? Good to see you, Colby. Thanks for coming. I saw your car outside. I love it.

Well, we're getting you off easy tonight, so you can go and enjoy the rest of your night, or you can hang out with us the rest of the night.

I've got to eat dinner. I get you. I hear you. Thank you all. Thank you.

I believe we're going to do an executive session at the end of this meeting, and we're going to make a decision about an appointment, and staff will be in touch. Okay.

Thank you all. Have a good night. Thank you. Have a good night.

All right. Next up, we've got 6B, Department Head Brief to Counsel with Essex Police Department Chief Hogue. Come on down. You're the next contestant. We gave away the cars at the last meeting, so. Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay. The command vehicle.

This is good timing. We have Gwendolyn Evans online as well from our PCAB, so it's great that she could be here to see you interview a potential candidate. That was great. Okay. Well, where do I start here?

Wherever you would like.

I'm going to summarize a little bit of the memo that I sent to you all. It kind of gives a little bit of explanation as to what we've been doing over the last six months. I mean, we've been as busy as ever. As you probably understand, our number one and two problems, I would say, are recruiting new people for the department. We continue to have some loss of people in the department from retirements and people moving on to other careers. So we've been doing a lot with recruiting to try to fill those positions. We've been in the last Over the last few years, we've had a relationship with a company or a gentleman who runs a company out of Albany who's been doing some video work for us to try to create some new videos and some video information for people to understand more what it's like to work at the department. And especially what we're going to try to focus on here shortly are videos to help people understand what it's like for the application process because it can be a bit of a challenge to go through. Before I move on, I probably should introduce Mike. Mike just Delaney as well. He was promoted to lieutenant in June and he is he's our 2nd and 1 of our 2nd in command now along with Paul. So, I think you probably most of you would probably met him before in 1 capacity or another. But I wanted him to be here to see about what we, about what the things that we talk about with city council. So, as far as the recruiting goes, like I said, we're really trying to focus on recruiting more people who would be interested and we've expanded the people and scope of people that we are trying to appeal to. At this point, I think Rick Gary said before me, he was the chief before me, he said, we're just looking for good people and we can train them how to be police officers. We're looking for good people that want to make a difference in the community. So that's really what we're trying to do. Having said all that, right now we are at 25 out of 31 positions. Two weeks from now, that will become 24, as I took a resignation yesterday from one of our newest officers. She's only been there a year, but she wants to move on to get into the mental health field. So I can't blame her for doing that. She's still going to be doing some good work in a needed area. So I'm sorry that she's leaving. She's made a really good impression on everybody at the department in her short time there, but I respect her decision. So, anyway, that's where we're at with police officers. We still have a full complement of dispatchers, part time, police officers. Part time dispatchers and so forth. We, like I said, we've, we've promoted Mike to lieutenant in June. and subsequently we've had a sergeant's process since then to backfill his position. We haven't fully made the decisions on when and where those positions are gonna be filled yet due to vacancies that we've had, so we're being cautious about that and taking more people out of the patrol division. I might actually let you talk about this a little bit. So the next thing I wanted to talk about was our crime reduction team. And we talked about that. I think the last time I was here, we were forming a crime reduction team to try to address some of the property crime that we were seeing at night. And we have some slides to share, but we'll get to that in just a second. Yeah, so to try to address some of the property crime that we're seeing at night mostly, and also retail theft. So Mike has been leading that team, so if you want to just talk about what you guys have been accomplishing.

Yeah, sure. So this was an idea from an officer who I supervised as a sergeant. came to me and said, hey, we have to do something about these retail thefts because we were getting inundated with the same stores being hit, as in being stolen from, day in and day out, week after week, by people that we generally have contact with in some way, shape, or form. And to help in the businesses, we're getting frustrated. It got to a point where businesses would stop calling us because they felt that we couldn't help them. And it's not that we couldn't help them. We would do the best that we could under. The log policies that we could and they weren't seeing any real. I want to say punishment, but I'll use that word on some of these offenders. From the court system, it would be we identify somebody issue us criminal citation for the guidelines of the state's attorney's office. And that person would go to court, they'd get out and then they'd read right back stealing the following week. And so we came up with it. Well, I'd say I give credit officer for near who I supervise. He came up with an idea of getting together a group of people on all shifts. Who are some of the more proactive members of the department who want to go out and try to help curtail these these issues. So, retail thefts. Being a big 1, obviously, when stores are open, the. Attempted or larceny or trespasses into vehicles, which is big. city and town alike, that's when people go into unlocked cars, take items or don't take items, they're just in the car, they rifle through it, and they leave. Anything like that. So we've been working proactively with a lot of businesses. We've made personal contacts in those businesses. We go and introduce ourselves. Kind of give them a plan of, hey, this is who we are. This is what we want to do. And the majority of them have been on board. And it's sometimes tough for them on their end because they have corporate policies they have to follow. So what we advise them to do is say, hey, if you have something going on, call us. we'll get there when we can if it's an emergency you know we'll get there we do follow up um we trespass people at their request if they want to we will issue criminal citations but we have to get the statements things like that we've we've done a decent job there's still a better job left to be done We are seeing a lot of repeat offenders. I'm just talking about maybe a dozen to 15 of the same people. Majority of them are not from Essex. They're from neighboring communities. And they have ties to Essex, whether friends, family, et cetera and. We go out, we make contact when we can, we recover products when we can return to the stores. But ultimately, it's a, it's an uphill battle the whole step of the way. A lot of these corporate policies that we run into from stores is they're not allowed to sometimes call or approach people. They can't call law enforcement. They have to watch the person actually leave the store. They're not allowed to follow them or confront them in any way. And then to get video, we may wait a week or 2 before we get the video that we need to complete our criminal case. So by the time we contact some of these people, it's almost a month out. And then the state's attorney's office is not too happy that we're sending them a case a month later. And sometimes they choose not to prosecute. So then we're just in the cycle of what do we do? So we've done some proactive work. I don't want to, I mean, I guess you would call it a sting per se, but it's not like a real sting. We set up using plainclothes detectives. We use uniformed officers when we usually have a representative of the SSPD inside the store watching the video in real time with a member of the store. identify who we can, and if a crime is committed, we'll intercept them as they walk out the door, get the product back. And that just presence of us being there usually deters it for a few days, and then they're right back to it. So we're working with that. As far as the unlawful trespasses in the motor vehicles, it's hard, especially with the staffing levels we are at. A lot of people are being ordered in currently to fill shifts that are otherwise vacant. Everyone's kind of tapped out at this point. The cases that they're working during their normal shift, they're adding on to that working these overtime shifts. They're still having to work on those, but when they can, they're out there, they are patrolling the neighborhoods, they are patrolling the streets. But after midnight, we usually have two officers on, and if they get a single call and they both respond, that leaves the rest of the town and the city wide open, unfortunately. So, I will say we do have a lot of great citizens here who provide us video from ring cameras from other surveillance cameras to help in aiding. Our investigations, they're giving us great descriptions. If there's a vehicle involved, they're giving us the best that they can monitor those areas. And if we start to see a trend, which we sometimes do, it starts in 1 neighborhood kind of moves. Somewhere else, we'll try to get ahead of the ball, but. it's almost like a shot in the dark of when these people are going to go out there and be involved in these crimes we have been lucky i should say and we've probably interrupted four or five people in the last six months in in the in the uh engaging these activities um so we've been able to take it from there but it's a recurring thing it's difficult

So having said that, if you wouldn't mind pulling up someone else.

Amber Raj has his hand up. Oh, sorry.

Raj?

Yeah, can you give an idea of how much time this is taking for the department? Like what's the, give us a sense of what the pull is from everything else that's going on, especially with your staffing level and also a sense of Sort of the level of theft, what kind of items we're talking about, dollar amounts, what are these misdemeanors or these felonies?

So for the retail thefts specifically? Yeah. Yeah. So retail thefts, I can say ballpark from one individual who actually resides here in town in the last month. We're talking felony amounts. We're talking $1,200, $1,500 total. It's not always one time, like a one batch. You're taking out a whole cartload of items. It's usually what they can run in, grab, and walk out with. And we're talking anywhere $25 to $150 a time. As far as the timing goes, it's officers get there when they can and once they receive the report. For Lowe's, for instance, they'll stack their cases up for us and usually four, five, six at a time call us over there and say, hey, I have six retail theft packets ready to go. Some of those are already three weeks old. So now we're reviewing their information, trying to ID suspects, which is difficult. But we have a way of doing that, of trying with our partner agencies and saying, hey, does anybody recognize this person? And then trying to catch up with a person. Now, if these people do not live here in town, We try to have other agencies assist in locating them, giving them a citation. If our detectives aren't busy, maybe they can go out to a house, try to knock on a door. But that's typically how the retail thefts are being played out right now.

I guess I'm more curious. That's really helpful. And I appreciate that. Just your description of the sort of the level of resources that have been, you know, you described the not quite a sting. And I'm, I'm, I'm, Not floored, but I'm, I guess, impressed at how much is going towards this and a little bit concerned at how much is going towards this. Not that we're overdoing it, just that the severity of it and the amount of resources being put to

So Raj, I will just let you know, the things he's talking about, the special details he's talking about, I think we've only done two of those in the last year. So it's not like we're doing these constantly. This has only been two in the last year where we've had the resources to be able to do it. So we're not doing it weekly. The normal calls are being answered and all that kind of thing. So we're not diverting anything from anybody else to be able to do that. So I can see how that would appear that way. I would say that a retail theft case probably goes anywhere from maybe an hour to maybe four hours worth of work for an officer to handle from the time that it, especially if an arrest is made because they have to do reports and all that kind of thing, and if they have to track the person down or whatever. so it does eat up you know eat up amount of time in the in our work product so yeah thank you yeah okay let me get your presentation up While you're doing that, I just want to clarify. The lieutenant made a comment about ring cameras. People provide us video if we ask them for it. Because there's a lot of talk around this right now, I want to make sure that people understand that we do not have access to ring cameras or any other cameras. People will provide us video at their own volition to do that, right? So, just talking about, I just wanted to bring this up while we're talking about numbers here. So we might as well, we might as well bring this in here. So these are just the example of what we've been from 2025 to 2026. And these are overall numbers. So. For the whole town, this is county and city together and I do have afterwards broken down just the city. So, as you can see, the property crime numbers, other than retail fast. have been coming down or on a downward trend and that's and that's been 2024 all the way down to today um so we are seeing some progress on that and i'd like to say part of that is due to or at least it's due to two things in part is being proactive as we have been making contact with people and trying to get the word out about locking vehicles yeah i think people finally may be doing some of that The other part of that is our officers have been out patrolling around at night, even if they are in between calls. They're patrolling around in some of the neighborhoods. And like Lieutenant said, we have intervened in a couple of these. And we've made it public when we have done that to put it out there to people like, hey, You might not want to be doing this stuff in Essex because, you know, we're out there patrolling around. You might get caught. Right? The other part of that is, I think the, the accountability court made a bit of difference in this for everybody in Chittenden County. In the last year in that some of the folks that were repeat offenders have finally been had a lot of their cases and they've seen. they've seen the you know and gotten the help that they that they might have needed to be able to not have to be out there you know stealing things and committing crimes and that kind of thing so I really attribute it to a little bit of both of those but I was pleased to see when we ran these the other day that our property crime is coming down because I've identified that every year that I've been chief as one of our major issues is property crime we are we are fortunate and In Essex and Essex junction, and we can knock on wood or counter blessings or whatever it is, but. We are not seeing the types of violent crime that other places might be in Vermont and around the country and property crime is our really our biggest issue. So, I'm happy to see that we're making a little bit of a difference in that. Could you go ahead?

Can you see it?

It's OK. So one of the one of the crimes that the lieutenant was talking about were trespasses into vehicles. And we were really seeing a trend there for a while where we're having a lot of vehicles being taken by someone and either Outright stolen, or just taken enjoy rides and that kind of thing. And I think we've intervened in some of that. And some of the people that were committing a lot of those. Have been either arrested and are not in the area any longer or something like that. Or they moved along after being arrested and we've been able to, we've been able to reduce those quite a bit over the last couple of years. So, seeing those downward numbers and that's helping that's helping out. Unfortunately, looking at domestic assaults, those numbers continue to plague us. And as long as I've been a police officer, there have been lots of different efforts to try to get those numbers down. You worked at Cousy for a long time and dealt with a lot of these things. And it's just an unfortunate thing that we continue to see is family violence.

Sorry, Chief. Cousy?

Yeah.

Cousy?

Oh, sorry, it's the treatment unit for special investigations.

Thank you.

Yeah. Handling sex crimes and child crimes and that kind of thing. So so, yeah, we continue to continue to see those. Go ahead. So this is the numbers just for the city between January 1st and August 1st of this year. Again, seeing a little bit of a downward trend in that. We had three burglaries instead of two, so it ruined our numbers there. Again, retail theft, the numbers are up, unfortunately. It's just that maybe it's part of better reporting.

That's the opening of the tractor supply. That's the tractor supply.

That's been a big issue, and we identified some things that they needed to work on maybe to help themselves. Not that they're doing anything wrong, but we identified some things. So we did a walkthrough when they first came here. Myself and another detective went over, introduced ourselves. and just kind of got a layout of the building because it's different than what big lots was right and we identified some some red flags that we would see and be like that's gonna that could potentially be a hazard um i believe they've started to mitigate some of that but there's always a way around it unfortunately and their staffing levels are tough they have sometimes minimum people in there and they can't have eyes everywhere so yeah but certainly that has been the factor yeah absolutely

you And then the same crimes that we were looking at before. Bit of a downward trend for domestic assault there in the city, fortunately. And then the other ones are all on a downward trend as well. So we are seeing some decreases. I'm happy to say that. I'd like to say it's due to some diligent work by our officers being out there and following up on crimes and getting people into court where they will get dealt with. So, yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. And I put this in here because I know that it's a large, large concern in everyone's mind. I hear it all the time. It's probably the biggest thing that we hear about is traffic problems and traffic complaints and traffic violations of various types of things. It's here. It's also in the town as well. But we are doing a better job this year with our traffic stops. The other the other 1, where we're not issuing quite as many tickets and warnings as far as that. I attribute those numbers to be, and you can never tell how many you're going to get out of those stops because sometimes people get issued more than 1 ticket per stop. So, if the officers decide that I'm only going to issue 1 ticket out of this, then those numbers can fluctuate. But. They're pretty close. Um, we, we now have, uh, our traffic officer back as of May. Um, so he's been reassigned back to back to doing traffic and he's been out there doing a good job with that. I think the 2 things that might be helping us are his presence and also the other officers making a making concerted effort to be out there patrolling. And sitting and doing proactive enforcement along with the, um. The traffic calming plan that we that we approved that you all approved earlier this year. I don't believe we've actually have to check with Chris. I don't think we've had any requests for that yet. So far, but it is there, it does give away a framework for people to work through things and it was a model for the town. So I greatly appreciate you guys setting the setting the standard because it has helped us with the towns issues as well. So. Anything about the numbers or traffic or anything like that or crime numbers before I move into just a couple of other things?

Anybody?

Brian? Yeah. Some of these were broken down city and town. And just from looking at them briefly, it looks very, very 50-50. It is. Yeah. So no, I mean, I was pleased to see the domestic one was lower here, but probably statistically insignificant. I guess what I'm saying is, would you agree that it's almost exactly 50-50, your workload?

I wouldn't say 50-50. I would say probably retail thefts are leaning towards the town because we have Lowe's and we have Hannaford and we have the Essex Experience in the town. So other than that, calls for service are pretty close to being 50-50. The responses here to the city are about that. Yeah, I would say that.

Thank you.

Um, okay, so if nothing with that, I just wanted to touch on the just to give an update on that. So, as you probably know, the was transferred over to the Chittenden county. Regina was was a big part of that. Transition along with Greg digging for for our police department and then I was more of an advisor. They really did a great deal of the work. So.

And mostly Greg, but thank you for giving it to me.

Well, you were there for all of it. So that transition took place. Unfortunately, there were folks in the town that worked for our CJC that no longer employed there. But the work has been transferred over to the Burlington CJC. They have been really, really good partners so far in handling cases that we've given to them and also in just in communication back and forth. I cannot complain with how that process went as far as how they handled themselves. And I think so far that that relationship is is very positive. So. We still have have that capability in the city in the town to be able to rely on a to. To handle things, we just sent them 1 a pretty important 1 last week. And it's being taken care of very professionally so far. So.

Yeah, I'd just like to add, it was seamless for officers, the transition. All that really changed was the information on the form that we use. There was no hiccup in anything timeline-wise as far as our officers sending cases down. And they are being reviewed, and they are usually getting a response same day saying, hey, we received it. If they need any information, there's been that correspondence and it's been really well.

Yeah, we do have a representative that's now assigned to Williston Essex and I think there's a couple of other towns. That that person is now sharing, so we're sharing that person, you know, all of us and. She's already made contact about using the building and everything. So, yeah. And then. The last thing I had was just to mention about the dog control thing and the Humane Society. So you saw probably or followed along, thankfully you didn't have to deal with it, with the whole thing with the town and the problem with the dog that we had up on Brigham Hill. And that has opened up a whole effort now to go ahead and change ordinances. As I said in my memo, I think at some point we will probably come to you and ask about changing for consistencies point. That's assuming that the voters approve it in the town. That'll be determined next year. But if they do, and then we see positive things from that, we may come back and ask you to follow suit. There are some things in the new ordinance that will be positive. I think there's some questions too that need to be answered before we finally go ahead and do that. But having a resource in the county to be able to bring dogs to that have been impounded and more of a secure spot for stray dogs would be huge. Since I've been chief, I know this has come up at least three or four times at our chief's meetings over those years. And there's always the questions and concern around, police agencies about how are we going to handle dogs because no one has been able to come up with a solid facility to be able to place dogs. And once the place in Colchester closed two years ago, that really put everybody into a bind. thankfully the humane society came out and and was willing to take on that slack but we have identified some issues that that they are limited by honestly by what they do um and i can't blame them for anything that they that they can't do right it's just what their capabilities are so just to put that on your radar as to things that things that need to be looked at so And other than that, I think I've spoken long enough. There was supposed to be 15 minutes. I think I've taken more than that.

All good. All good. That allows a little time before you come back. Can we have a conversation that's not on your memo about, I'll call them e-motos, but electric scooters, bicycles? Yes.

Yes. They are a huge concern for everybody involved. Everyone is talking about, I say everyone, I mean officials who are worried about public safety are worried about those. I believe that you might see this year in the legislature there will be some law changes or at least some efforts to introduce some legislation to take care of some of this. Currently, the current laws that we have right now do cover what we are seeing. A lot of the e-motos that are out there are actually considered motorcycles or motorbikes. The laws are there. I think our ordinances may need to be updated somewhat to be able to accommodate this, but most of the behavior we're seeing is just... It's it's lawless behavior on these. I just saw it before I came in tonight. There was another motor scooter. There's a motor scooter, motor scooter crash, Burlington, you know, and these are the things that we're seeing. These guys are buzzing all over. Steve Greg has been a key part of our effort to try to address this. He, in fact, has been able to. He's almost become a resource for Chittenden County with the information on this, because he went through the statutes and listed, you know. What was what was what because it's very confusing for some officers to to go through some of this and he did a good job with explaining that. So. Yep, I 100% under understand what you're saying. It needs to be addressed. And I think there's, I think there's some definite things that need to be taken care of there. Yeah.

Yeah. Are you all able to. Have any enforcement at this time with what's on the books and what our ordinances say when you see things in the town and the city?

Yes, yes, there are things that we can do right now with those. And as we were saying, that is one of the things that the officer is being told to keep an eye out for and intervene in before someone gets hurt. So that's something that we are trying to do, yes.

Yeah, I think I was mentioning to Tim before the meeting that I think Colchester just passed some ordinances. I think theirs were more specific about bike paths and stuff and having those kinds of vehicles on bike paths. And they said, I think at some point it's going to be one of those things that we have to take up because it's just getting, it's getting worse. It's not getting better. So I have not looked at those ordinances yet.

We're two weeks out from the return to school.

Yeah.

So that's another thing to keep in mind.

I'll add that I am also starting to hear residents.

It's bad, especially through the acres. It's really bad. And then the other piece I just want to point out for public record is the fair is coming. And we know that's a huge draw for your officers. But I just want you to be able to say that those are all overtime hour shifts and don't affect.

I can absolutely say that.

For the 13 people that will watch this later on YouTube?

Yes, absolutely. We had a discussion today internally about the staffing over there at the fair and how we're relying on other agencies as well as ours to work that. So just to be clear, the officers that work at the fair are being paid by the fair to be there, and they're not affecting our patrol shifts or anything like that. We still have our standard patrol shifts, and these folks are working outside of their normal hours to work at the fair.

Thank you. Raj, did you have something? Okay. Anything else?

I SEE YOUR OFFICERS ALL THE TIME. IT IS A LOT NICER TO SIT ON THIS SIDE OF THE TABLE. THANK YOU.

I APPRECIATE IT. I DON'T DO PUBLIC COMMENT DURING THE DEPARTMENT HEAD BRIEFS. I HAVE NEVER DONE THAT. but you can feel free to email us and we can get that question right over to the chief.

Or me, me directly. That'd be great.

Or directly to me.

Sure, however you want to handle it, Margaret. That's fine.

You're going to stick around for the PCAB update?

Yes, yes I am.

All right, we will move into that. Gwendolyn is with us online. You're on mute, Gwendolyn. Technology.

I'm trying to ask you to unmute from my end, but I'm not sure if it's working. You're still muted. Oh, wait.

There we go. We got you. We got you. You're good.

Okay.

I'm glad the chief is sticking around.

Hi, Gwendolyn. Hello.

Hello, Mike.

Hi, Gwendolyn.

Congratulations. I'm so happy you're here.

Thank you.

Thank you. So the Police Community Advisory Board, I'm very excited that you guys have been interviewing, because it's hard to function with missing people. But we're doing good things. We have a firm work plan for this year and that really has been focusing around our visibility and letting the public know that we're here and who we are and what we're trying to do. We've committed to doing at least or going to at least six community events a year and representing the police community advisory board. um national night out was just one of them i heard very good things about that and then we have um a list of events through the end of the year that we'll be at and very exciting we have gotten clothing that identifies we have shirts and jackets and um some little thing that we wear. I can't remember what we call that, but things that identify us in the crowds, which I think is a good thing. I have a sense from the last meeting and beyond that we're returning to a point where the original brochure that we created is probably going to change a little bit as we become more comfortable as a board. So stay tuned for that. We also want to host some events ourselves, something along the same lines as Coffee with a Cop. We won't call it that, but we'll call it something along those lines and maybe do something like know your rights kind of information gatherings, that sort of thing. We have continued to talk about recruitment, but we've also done a few things around having people invite their neighbors or suggesting people come and visit a meeting. There are two, I recall, and Correct me if I'm wrong, Chief. But we've had a couple of members of the public attend our meetings. I think the issues were around traffic. I know that won't be a surprise. But we also had a really interesting discussion with some members of the public that came to us with regard to the incident, the ICE incident back in March in South Burlington. and really just wanted to connect with us and with the police to see what kind of response, if this ever happened here in our community. So I think it garnered really important discussions all around. And I would like to see more of that. I would like to see the public come and just sit in and chime in about these things. Let's see. We don't have a whole lot to say. I believe that our next event is September 19th, the Essex Community Day. And I am unsure, but I'm assuming that the city and the town share that. that right i think it's a town only it's just the town oh well i think the city should have one i think that's a great great well we're doing meet me on maine yeah i'm i'm muted okay see you know i think we only have town things and we should find out more about the events that the city has so that we can If you want us to come in, no, I think we have list.

I think we do have those listed Gwendolyn. Um, I don't know if we've talked about that 1 yet. Meet me on me. We didn't have that list listed. Okay.

Those are the last. Two Saturdays in September and the first in October. Right, right. This is the second year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And part of Main Street is freshly repaved for this year. Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

Just coincidence. But, yeah, no, I didn't mean to interrupt.

You didn't. I'm not sure there's much more to say.

I will say, Gwendolyn, I really appreciated seeing the advisory board at National now. That was a fantastic event. Hats off, Chief. Again, it gets a little bit better every year. But it was nice to have those conversations with members of the advisory board at that event where it was just kind of free and loose and there wasn't really any set. It was just casual conversation and to talk to those folks and to see how that's all going and just make those one-on-ones. So I really appreciated that and that was great that you guys were out there. And so I did just want to touch on that.

I appreciate hearing that. And I think that we are aware that there are some unhappy people, not many, I hope, but some unhappy people in our communities with regard to the police. And I really want to see the board be more of a bridge and a healing resource for those kinds of things. It sounds like... These events are a good way to start that.

And Gwendolyn, if we happen to hear folks express frustrations or concerns, in the past I've asked them to call the chief. But would it, I'm assuming yes, but would it also be appropriate for them to reach out to members of the PCAB to have a conversation?

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, a couple of years ago I had a friend who was not a resident of the town or the city had an incident with her guide dog. And I said, do you want to come to a meeting? She said, no. I said, well, can I take your story and present it? And yes, we did. And I think these kinds of things, any way that we can make it comfortable for people to share, it would be a good role for the PCAB.

Thank you, Gwendolyn. I'm just going to add that I see Nancy on a regular basis. And I thoroughly appreciate your guys' enthusiasm for the work that you're doing. The last time I ran into Nancy, she did show me. She was very excited about picking the colors for the shirts and had to show me all of that on her phone and stuff. So I'm very excited to see that you guys are getting along and loving what you're doing. Thank you for your time.

We've invested in materials for them to have their own table set up and everything. That's what identifies them and all of that. So it's been really good. And they've been great about volunteering their time to do that. And I say thank you to them every meeting that we have for volunteering their time. Appreciate it.

We feel really legitimate to have our own clothing.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie. We don't even have clothing, so... I was going to say, I'm jealous, but... We'll get there.

Stop talking about that.

We'll get there someday.

You're light to beat the head of us. Stressing Regina out.

PCAB leading the charge. I think it's great, honestly.

Anybody else for Gwendolyn?

No, I'm... Go ahead. Sorry, are you... Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. I just also wanted to say, you mentioned some sort of Know Your Rights training. I think that's a wonderful idea. I just wanted to express my encouragement.

Oh, great. Great. I was also thinking about that with regard to the issues around e-bikes and all of that. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

to have something like that.

Just to add to that, I second completely maybe some kind of role in helping communicate some of that to the community. what's recommended, if we're talking about youth and e-bikes and stuff, what's recommended, what's not. I've seen some stuff come out recently that was excellent. There was also an email I saw back and forth with a resident and a police chief, with Chief Hogue, and this is something I've had people mention to me before, like to what extent do we, do the police use some of the surveillance tools we're seeing about in the news? um around the country these days and i thought the response um was i like the response but i think a lot of people um would be interested to learn that essex police doesn't use a lot of that technology and there might be a rule there for pcap to help get the word out of that and that too you know some kind of i don't know if there's an faq opportunity maybe a web opportunity or just kind of some kind of communication opportunity if that There just might be an opportunity for PCAT to be a voice that is not directly the police department, right? Yes. And it might be taken a little more in a neutral way. I'm not saying it needs to be neutral. I believe the chief when he says it. I'm just saying.

Well, we do try to walk a little bit of an online because we're not the police. We're not the community. We're kind of both and neither. So I like that idea, though.

There you go. And we should have a PCAB member picked for you this evening. And so... stay tuned for that okay not literally because it'll be it'll be it'll be a little while before we do that yeah but we'll we'll let you know we'll let you know i mean you can certainly stick around we've got an absolutely fascinating 2026 legislative update that's coming up next um but if you want to go enjoy the rest of your night we will let you know will that bring us up to our full capacity

Yes, with the person that was just appointed from the town, yes, that will bring us to six.

All right. Beautiful. Well, thank you. Thank you, Gwendolyn.

We will, everybody.

You too. Have a good night. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you coming on over. And, again, you can feel free to hang out for the legislative update if you would like. Thank you.

Thank you all very much. Have a good night. Thank you. I think we'll get e-mails on those anyway.

Thank you. Have a nice evening. Thank you.

All right. The Regina Show. Okay. Let me get this going.

Okay, so we've been doing this for the last couple of years. This is 2026 legislative update. As always, thank you to VLCT's legislative wrap-up. A good majority of this is coming from that resource, as well as Department of Housing and Community Development's legislative revisions memo. They put out a good summary every year as well. And if you look at that, they thank all the people that helped them put that together. So all kinds of people try to summarize everything that happens in the session each year. So a lot of the legislation is in this kind of broad category, planning, zoning, housing, and energy. First up is the housing omnibus bill. There have been a number of pretty big housing bills over the last couple of years as the state continues to try to sort out how to get more housing built and address our challenges. So a couple of things to point out from this, there is a special assessment bond authority. So we have on our to-do list to figure out different kinds of revenue streams and thinking out about how to try to fund some of our infrastructure needs that we have in order to continue to support additional housing. I have not looked at this yet. I don't know if it's something that makes sense to us, but it is another tool that we'll look at, which is helpful. Um, we are also, this bill includes additional requirements for municipalities that when you're putting your comprehensive plan together, you not only identify those housing targets, but you specifically identify any constraints that we have in order to meet those targets and how we intend to address those constraints. Um, so, uh, West street force main is a project that comes to mind first and foremost. Um, Also continue to be, there have been bigger municipal zoning reforms in the past. These are just a couple more tweaks, one being addressing the variety of housing materials and production innovation that's happening out there in the world and just trying to stay ahead of that. And you can no longer have the owner occupancy requirement associated with ADUs. Also, the state is looking at a couple of different studies to address some other components, including, again, that offsite construction accelerator pilot, again, trying to sort of stay ahead of the innovation on housing construction. Okay, so big bill sort of redirected where things were going as Act 250 was changed. This really, the biggest thing out of this bill is repealing the road rule and Tier 3. Those are really very rural things, not much of an impact for us. Essex Junction. And there's a few other things in those first bullets as well from a big picture that this has changed. Particularly for us that I think is relevant is the prior bill had some Act 250 housing exemptions. They extended that now through 2028. Bill also describes a process that if a municipality is eventually getting to a place where really there is no Act 250, one of the questions that's been kind of confusing is what happens to the conditions of prior Act 250 permits? Who is supposed to make sure that those are still held in place and followed? So this bill sets up a process for how the municipality would take that over. And also they've got a report study to look at limiting housing permit appeals and discretionary reviews because that has also been identified as a holdup to additional housing growth in the state. Agriculture. This is a bill created as a result of Essex Junction. So this bill attempts to clarify municipal regulation authority over agriculture and clarifies the legislature's intent that generally municipalities do not regulate farming activities that meet the required agricultural practices. um, set up at the state, but it also clarifies the exceptions where municipal zoning authority is permitted. Um, so essentially municipal zoning authority is allowed, um, for, uh, prop agricultural practices on properties that are less than an acre. Um, there's also an additional, um, authority on properties between one and four acres. Um, It also clarifies that municipalities cannot prohibit or charge fees for keeping poultry and you must allow for at least 12 chickens. Um, so that's a pretty big change. Most municipalities have had, um, chicken ordinances that are in the four to six chicken category. Um, And then there's, you can also prohibit, you can set up specific numbers for additional poultry types based on acreage. Then it also clarifies that no bylaw can prohibit the cultivation of land for growing plants, food, fiber, Christmas trees, maple, and other crops with the exception of cannabis because that is regulated under a different section of statute. That last section really I think the intention was that they did not want to get into a place where municipalities would be prohibiting the growth of food in any way. And this all takes effect July 1, 2026. But there are some zoning regulations that folks will have to figure out in order to move this forward.

Sorry, can I ask a quick question?

Yes. At any point, please stop me and ask a question.

And maybe this is a bigger question. What steps are we going to need to take to make sure we're in control?

Um, so for us to get into compliance, there are, um, some zoning changes that we'll have to put into place. Um, just to clarify the particular instance that is the result of this, um, Supreme court decision is still actively being litigated. Um, so, but wait, yeah.

Can I just one more quick, this might be two in the weeds, but so with the, let's say the poultry numbers going up and required the RIPs being kind of the governing rules, for lack of a better word right now, what ability does a community have to mitigate nuisance issues between neighbors with that? Where does that go? If something just out of curiosity, it doesn't have to be a deep discussion.

I'm just kind of, yeah. Um, it's a good question cause it's confusing now with four chickens and it, I think it's still, I'm not sure anything in this legislation has clarified or helped define that. Um, yeah.

Okay.

Okay. Um, This is an interesting one. So portable solar energy devices. This act allows the installation of these small plug-in solar devices without having to go to the Public Utility Commission. It does not allow you to get net metered or have any sort of kickback on your utility bill if you're generating any electricity, but it is possible. Interesting. And the law prohibits municipal regulation of this as well as prevents private deed restrictions that would prevent installation. Potable water supply and wastewater connections. So this bill... Addresses a housing reform item that's been on the table for quite some time as well. So essentially in municipalities like ours that has a wastewater treatment facility and professional staff that is reviewing developments and making sure that we have adequate capacity in our plant before we issue permits. You have always had to go both to the municipal authority to get a permit as well as go to the state to get a wastewater connection permit. So this bill sets up a process, and it's not the simplest process, but it is a process for a municipality to essentially take over delegation and issue permits. Basically, the way this ends up working is that the municipality ends up taking control of the state permit and issuing the state permit directly. So it's set up as a general permit that the municipality would get and work that way. And the A&R needs to set up rules before this can even be implemented. So they're intending to set up their... NEW GENERAL PERMIT AND GUIDANCE BY DECEMBER 1, 2027 AND THEN WITH FULL IMPLEMENTATION BY JANUARY 1, 2028. SO ONCE ALL OF THAT STUFF GETS SET UP, WE WOULD HAVE TO ANALYZE THAT AND FIGURE OUT WHAT THE REQUIREMENTS ARE AND IF WE CAN MEET THAT AND MOVE FORWARD WITH THIS PROGRAM. OKAY. THEN THE REST WERE NOT EASILY CATEGORIZED, SO MISCELLANEOUS. Fire warden, as long as I've been here, we have not designated a fire warden. I don't know if we've supposed to have been or not, but this clarifies our fire chief is the fire warden. Capital construction. So this clarifies that municipalities retain the authority to establish and operate a local stormwater utility, even when a regional stormwater utility exists. Big picture of this bill and the intention of it has very little to do with us. It really was set up and intended to deal with the three-acre stormwater permit and how that applies to many existing subdivisions that no longer have an active homeowners association. So there is no body that can actually pull everything together and do what you need to do to apply and meet the three-acre stormwater management permit. But it does just clarify municipalities' role in having stormwater utilities and how you establish those fees, which we already do based on this bill. It also does continue to provide money into clean water investments, which the state has been doing for quite some time.

Can we use some of that $10 million for the pipe out of West Street?

So almost all of this funding tends to go through the clean water state revolving drinking water state revolving phone loan fund or clean water revolving loan fund. Um, and that is the program that we use for, uh, most of our, um, infrastructure projects in those categories. Um, it tends to all be loans. Though with each year they work things out a little bit differently. As an example, the lead service line program, when we first had to do that, the loan forgiveness, we didn't qualify for as much of it. Each year they kind of tweak things and our median household income for the community They adjusted that threshold, and we did qualify for an additional loan forgiveness. So it kind of all depends. Yeah.

And we kind of are, right? Because they're throwing money at the fund from which we would issue bonds against if it eventually passes with the voters. Yes. Thank you.

Transportation program. So a big one for the state this year. Well, for a number of years, I guess, because we continue to have low gas tax revenues and trying to figure out how to solve this problem. And I'm not sure that they've solved the problem, but they have taken a step towards a mileage-based user fee for fully electric vehicles. So that system will now be set up. And then there is also a plan for creating a similar system for hybrids and even fuel-efficient gas vehicles so that the gas tax itself is not the only problem. revenue stream here. Other thing to point out under municipal impacts, I believe that is what GMT was talking about when they came to us and thought about requesting some funding from the school district for our bus service. So that is in place, which is helpful. Whether it makes a difference, I'm not sure, but another tool in the tool chest. Another big one, education and property tax reform. So there's a whole lot in this bill that I did not put in here. Really what I think is important though is those two bullets down there for municipal impacts because we are currently in the process of sorting out what the BCA's role and schedule will be in terms of hearing appeals on grievance. Decisions as we are going through a reappraisal right now, what this is talking about is there will be a completely different system, um, for how those appeals are handled in the future. Um, and really it's this concept of a regional assessment district. Um, and the, uh, the concept is that those assessment districts match your school district boundary. Um, and this is not a new rule from this bill. Um, but the concept, but the rule has been now reappraisals will need to be done every six years. Um, so, uh, just some changes there in terms of how those, uh, regional assessment districts will be set up. Um, so lots to unpack there, but we've got to get through our current reappraisal.

By the time it's over, it'll be six years.

Yes.

Just in time. Well, it felt like six years.

I believe Karen is already working on trying to figure out how that's going to work out for us, given the timing of us.

Yeah.

With us literally going from one to another. I think she mentioned that in the... public forum thingy, whatever that we had a couple, like a month and a half ago. So stay tuned on that.

Yeah. Um, okay. Uh, so the big budget bill, um, just all kinds of stuff in there as well. But, uh, thing I did want to point out is, um, so VLCT, uh, worked a lot on, um, trying to think about the local option tax, how the increment of that that goes to the state, and how that funding is used. And.

Sorry to interrupt, but yeah, this is the, For those that are listening and not aware, we only get 37% of the local option tax comes to the city and the rest of it goes to the state. This is about the portion that goes to the state.

So the opposite of that, and it changed last year. So it used to be that municipalities retained 70%, the state got 30%. Last year, it changed in our favor. Municipalities retained 75%, 25% goes to the state.

I'm sorry. I apologize for getting the numbers backwards. But this special fund is coming out of the state's 25%, the state's portion of it, not ours, right? Correct. Yes.

Yep. And there's a surplus in that account and has been for quite a while. So there was some thought about what should be done about that surplus and then what should be done going forward. So What came out of that is this new concept of a transportation special fund. The interesting thing here is not every municipality in the state of Vermont has a local option tax. But the communities with a local option tax are supporting this fund that is then going to be used statewide. But at the same time, there are some additional revenues that will come into these programs that will probably be helpful for us. Then just two others that are of interest. There has been a county and regional governance study committee, I think around two years, maybe longer than that. There were some sort of leadership changes there and it didn't end up coming up with any changes. recommendations, this bill revamps that county and regional governance study. And then there is a new requirement or a new allowance, I'll say, that cannabis can be sold at events, but that requires permission from the municipal cannabis control board. So if we get any of those requests, those will be coming your way.

Is that something that we should find some time to talk about or like learn more about in terms of what the, only because it would be a little last minute to get a permit and then be getting educated on what all of that is, right? As we're trying to decide whether we're going to allow.

Excellent suggestion.

We haven't, well, I haven't been around for a while, but even when I was, we barely ever met as the, is that committee usually was consent. So it just might be a good 20 minute discussion.

Yeah. And it's interesting because the, you know, your, the general role role as a municipal, sorry, municipal cannabis control board, um, is very simply to sort of reiterate it's either meeting your zoning or it's not meeting your zoning. This is fascinating. And I haven't read this bill at all yet. Um, I don't know what our role is. I don't know what the parameters are. And it's possible that all of that no one knows yet.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. And absolutely fair enough that we have a major event space in our community. Yes, exactly. 100% on top of this.

Yep.

What the ramifications are, any police concerns, any enforcement concerns, any of that. Yeah.

At the very least before the next CVE concert season. Correct. Because I doubt, I mean, nothing's going to happen this one. I haven't received any applications yet.

I can say that.

In the past, though, people have approached CVE and CVE has quietly approached the city about expo type things and things for the industry, which are perfectly valid requests, but now those are Presumably possible so that could come I Mean, I don't know when this went into effect, but it could come any time regardless of concerts or anything else. So They can't separate events or it could be a bar that wants to do it. Who knows like Could be a booth at Mimi on me

Yeah. I don't know about that. I would assume that these would be for like events that would, that were 21 plus.

Well, we sell alcohol at Indiana, right? Mm-hmm. So I don't see why you wouldn't expect that.

We do at the CVE, so therefore.

Yeah, the CVE has like roped off areas.

Yeah, these are probably the things that we would be regulating, I would imagine.

Good question. Yes, all excellent questions. We'll definitely take a look.

And I think that's it. Fascinating stuff.

Another wonderful year of legislative recap.

That was only a portion. Thank you, Regina. Appreciate that. Raj, what?

Just want to say the new color scheme and logo and stuff looks great in your presentation. So just put it out. Good visuals in there. Awesome.

Thank you. Can't wait.

Small thanks.

Can't wait for further rebranding.

Yeah, I did get a constituent request recently about the city line signs. Do we have an ETA on? Have those been ordered?

Do we have a rebranding update at your August 26th meeting?

Yes.

Sounds good.

Okay.

All right. That is it for the business items. We are gonna do an executive session, but we'll come back. What?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we're gonna do the appointment for the PCAB.

Move to approve the consent agenda?

Motion to approve the consent agenda. You want to suck it? Yeah, I'll suck it. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

All right, that is unanimous. Councilmember comments and city manager report. Regina?

So, tax bills were mailed on August 7th, last Friday.

Also with a pretty new logo, well done.

Awesome, thank you. There are four pages of information in the tax bill insert. All of that information is also available online. A few things I just want to make very clear. If you are somebody that did file a grievance with the assessor's office, the tax bills are based on the original abstract filed in June. So your tax bill does not include that determination. You should go forward and pay your tax bill as it is in the bill. Also, in the city, the first installments must be received in the clerk's office by 4.30 PM on September 15th. Postmarks will no longer count as a timely payment.

That's it. Thank you. Anything?

I'll tip my hat. I wasn't there, but the fire department had a pretty devastating fire at 197 Pearl Street. What was it, Monday morning?

Tuesday. Well, I guess it was Monday into Tuesday, right?

Yeah, Monday at midnight. It sounds like the building was struck by lightning, and the lightning traveled through the HVAC unit into the void between the rubber membrane roof and the truss system. It looks like it was pretty difficult to put out. They did a fantastic job along with all the resources that came in from all over the county, including as far away as from Hinesburg and Burlington. I talked to the property owner quite a bit on Tuesday. He was extremely grateful for the actions of our folks. So I just wanted to publicly acknowledge their job well done. Sorry, I missed that one. But best possible outcome for an act of God sounds as though the residents that were displaced in the five occupied apartments have found residents either at the hotel or in other unoccupied units within the same buildings or adjacent buildings. So just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge that it's not often we have those types of fires in this community. AND IT WAS A REALLY GREAT RESPONSE.

THANK YOU. BRIAN, ANYTHING? RAJ? MARCUS, I SEE YOUR HAND UP, BUT IS THIS ABOUT LIKE CAN'T HEAR OR SOMETHING? WE'RE NOT TAKING PUBLIC COMMENT.

Just a question about since Regina brought up the tax bill, I wanted to ask whether or not, because this was brought up last year, and I'm wondering if the city clerk's office would consider an extended hour or two on a couple of dates in order to help folks out to have a little more accessibility on a couple of days.

We can consider it. Though we already wrote all over the place that said got to be in by 4.30.

Thank you. Did you want?

I was just going to say if anyone is worried about being able to get their tax bill to Lincoln on time, we have a drop box up front and we'll put a stamp on it the following morning that says received.

Thank you, Brian. Okay, who's got the...

I have the... Okay. I move that the city council enter into executive session to discuss an appointment of public officials pursuant to 1VSA313A3 to include the city manager.

Seconded.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. It's unanimous. Okay. We are going to go into executive session. We will come back. It should be relatively short, I hope. Thank you. I think hope. See you all soon. It's always those meetings that you think are going to be the shortest. Recording in progress. No, it's not. It's okay.

Pessimists have. Okay. You're good? Okay. Great.

Pessimists are never disappointed. Everyone's good. All right. So I'm going to call us back to order here. We are not going to make a decision on a PCAB appointment for tonight. So with that, I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Seconded.

All in favor? Aye. Have a good night, everybody.