On June 22, the Trustees held a work session on Essex Junction Independence. The following is what was discussed.
The Trustees reviewed and updated the draft Charter for the city of Essex Junction. They considered comments and suggestions from legal counsel. They discussed the first draft of the transitional provisions in the charter.
The Trustees discussed the draft organizational chart based on their last work session. Previously, the Trustees were interested in short-term sharing clerk/treasurer, finance, and information technology, and long-term sharing police and recreation & parks with the Town of Essex. The Selectboard indicated they would be willing to discuss all of those things, but recreation & parks only in the short-term, and they wanted to add assessing to the list of considerations. The Trustees reached consensus on conversing with the Selectboard re: the following:
- Long-term sharing: police
- Short-term sharing: IT (only until the City can stand on its own), finance (no longer than 6/30/26)
- They are still not interested in sharing assessing, but are willing to hear the Selectboard out on their thinking.
- Based on feedback from the Village & Town Clerk/Treasurer, they are not interested in sharing this department.
- They want the manager and recreation directors to brainstorm ways to codify a working relationship in recreation and parks between the Town and City (specifically related to the senior center/busses and the Tree Farm), but operate as separate departments.
The Trustees postponed a discussion regarding the future of consolidated services with the Town until the next work session.
For more information, please visit: https://www.essexjunction.org/independence
If you have feedback on the work session, you are encouraged to share your thoughts here: https://forms.gle/TvBfsJMGLTbSZAzJ7.
If you missed the work session, but would like to watch it, you can find it here (starting at minute 2:53 and ending at 1:26:51): https://youtu.be/kWlPRLNE9iM?t=173.
The next work session will take place as the first item on the agenda at the July 13 Trustees meeting, which starts at 6:30p.m. The meeting agenda and link will be posted a few days before the meeting here: https://www.essexjunction.org/boards/board-of-trustees.