 Okay I would have just gone 200, 300. I would have gone closer to 3,000. Hi everybody. Hi. Welcome. I'm John Kopans. I am our facilitator for this evening. I'm also a Montpelier resident. I live up on Cliff Street. So about a half a block that way. Two blocks maybe. I got a neighbor from Cliff Street. Mr. Anderson. You guys are all up high. We feel lucky to be on Cliff Street. Given what the town has been through. I currently work at a bike shop in Burlington. Old Spokes Home and Nonprofit Bike Shop. But before that, I spent five years working for the Vermont Council on Rural Development with Paul Castello. I ran the climate economy programs there. So I think that explains why Paul asked me to be a facilitator. Not so much my bike shop experience. My VCRD experience. I think Paul teed up pretty well what this evening is about. This is a challenging session, I feel like. And here's why I think it's going to be challenging is because we have someone taking notes for us. But what we don't have is big pads with those notes being visible to everybody. And the goal in this session, it's broken up into blocks. We're going to spend 15 minutes talking about just sort of the lay of the land around city infrastructure. What's going on in Montpelier currently? Then the bulk of our time, 40 minutes is going to be spent brainstorming ideas for what we think we should do as a city around city infrastructure. And then the last 15 or 20 minutes is going to be spent actually doing some prioritization. And that's, if I'm apprehensive about a part of our schedule tonight, it's that last section. Normally what VCRD loves to do is have ideas on a wall and you all have stickers and we go stick those stickers and that's how we come to prioritization. So what we're going to have to do instead is, well partially we're going to have to go with the flow a little bit. My expectation is we're going to ask our scribe to sort of review with us what the ideas are at that juncture where it's time to make prioritization. And then we're just going to have to sort of as a group maybe we'll do a show of hands as we go through that list to try to narrow it down to two or three things that the group feels like are the priorities that we want to bring forward. It is important to note though that everything that we talk about tonight will be reflected in the notes and those notes will be reviewed by the steering committee. And in fact if something you say isn't prioritized tonight but is a common theme that comes up in other sessions, the steering committee may well pluck that thing and that idea may come back before the group on September 7th when we get back together. So just know that even if whatever idea you bring to the table tonight doesn't necessarily come to a consensus decision by the group as a priority, there's other ways for things to enter into the process before the train leaves the station at the next meeting. So we have a couple of resource team members here and I think it's only two unless I'm missing somebody. If there's a third after I introduce the two please recognize yourself. But Eric Law, I'm going to let you introduce yourself and then after that. So Eric Law, Community Program Director, formally, I just left my position last Friday, so I think I'm freer to discussion going to private consulting down in D.C. But I'll try to give the lens of federal, state, municipal sources of funds in this day and age four months later. So formally at USDA? Yes, I'm going to put that as a person. Ben Montross. So I am a city resident and I work for the agency of natural resources. I oversee the public drinking water program. So we regulate the molecular drinking water system along 1360 other public drinking water systems in the state. Is there anybody else who's, oh yeah, sorry. Hi, I'm Hailey Perrow. I'm a Senator Sanders Outreach Director. I work mostly on environmental energy and some payment issues. So hopefully I can be helpful to mostly here to listen and take Reverend back to the office. Thank you. Are there any engineers here? That's what I was going to ask. This is a parent engineering problem. Yeah, I'm, yay. Thank you. We got some hands. So I think before we get started, I might ask, is there a volunteer who wants to read the description of, you know, there's these little blurbs. I don't know if some of you probably have it, but there's a little description for city infrastructure in your packet. Anybody want to just read that aloud? It might help us have a common sense of what we're talking about tonight. Any volunteer willing to do that? I don't read it, but I lost my sheet. City infrastructure, what changes are needed in Montpelier's water sewer and storm water, roads and bridges, buildings, dams and embankment infrastructure to better protect the city from future flooding events? Are there other infrastructure opportunities in expanded district heating, dry storage for downtown businesses, or other projects that could reduce future damage to public and private property? Before we start, like, how do folks feel like that tees things up? Does that feel like it captures? Yeah. Not yes, and one missing thing, which is care and feeding the existing infrastructure and assessment of how healthy it is, and let's fix it. So not just forward looking, not just new, but existing. That part of the project could be, let's look at what we've got to fix it. So inventory and asset management. Other things in that description that you've, yeah. Hi, thank you. Yes, my name is Scott Muller. I've been working in urban infrastructure for 35 years. Some of the biggest cities in the world. Senior advisor with the UN, World Bank, so all day urban infrastructure for me. These transformative challenges are not new. It's happening everywhere. I can tell you that one of the biggest success attributes is to not limit the discussion of infrastructure to hard infrastructure. Soft infrastructure is a really important part of that transition. Most of our government systems were set up for ecosystems and metabolism that was much different. Much different financial situations, management, accounting, transparency, accountability. All those issues should be looked at when you're talking about this rapid shift in infrastructure. So to talk about governance is soft infrastructure. To talk about the relationship between the state and the city and the accountability and the financial flows. All that is soft infrastructure. So I would caution against leaving that out of an intimate conversation with hard infrastructure. That's a helpful, I feel like, maybe framing and expansion probably of what we're talking about here. Thank you. They may not be official resource people. I just want to recognize our superintendent and high school principal are both here. I think they're fabulous and they have been taking care of some of our really important infrastructure already. And probably schools have come into this conversation. Thank you. It's nice to have you both here. Alright, so maybe we should get after it at this point. So what's the lay of the land in terms of non-compliant infrastructure? And I will say for resource people, it's definitely feel free to contribute. You know that. That's why you're here. But particularly in this, like what is the current lay of the land? If you're familiar with what's going on, that's not to limit other people's contribution, but feel free to weigh in there. So what's the state of affairs for Montpelers infrastructure? Well, I'm not sure about anybody else, but I live in a part of Montpelers that had five feet of water in my basement downtown. And I know that the water, it was an overwhelming of the stormwater system. It was all stormwater that came up into our basement on St. Paul Street. And I know that the water needs some place else to go. So I know it's a much bigger issue than just like plaping it somewhere else. But I think that's part of the issue that certainly I'm concerned about here, is that what's the future look like for people who live in these downtown areas and the businesses? Of course, what kind of guarantee or assurance can we get to? Particularly around the stormwater system and the installation. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. You would then come. I'll add to that in that you were lucky because many people not only had stormwater, but had sewage. Yeah. They went to the end of the stormwater. Yeah. Race to God. Right. So it's both stormwater and the sewer system had just too much. You couldn't handle it. Colin and then you. Yeah. The runuski from the confluence of the North Branch downstream is obviously inadequate to handle the volume of rain coming in. It's not the normal river channel, but it was channelized by the CCC back in the 30s. So we know that during that storm, recent storm, we had 21,000 cubic feet per second coming in. The main branch of the runuski, 1,200 cubic feet per second coming in the North Branch, we need at least that much capacity to get the water out of town from that confluence south. And we're blessed in Vermont to have elevation change and gravity that we can harness to get that water out of here. If we have a river channel that's great, they can handle greater than 22,000 cubic feet per second. I have a simple question. I guess, what is the expectation that this is the right place for the four sewer systems in cities? Is it reasonable that if they weren't back up in the houses, they're not closed systems? I don't know. Do other cities deal with this in some way so they can not have that back up in the house? That seems ideal. I'm curious kind of what the options there are. Is that a reasonable goal? Yeah, it's sort of a technical question. It seems reasonable, right? Well, and I know that there's some separation, ideally, of sewer and storm water, right? Maybe Scott can make a suggestion that this group just adopt an informal Chatham House rule, which means people can say anything and you're free to talk about what's talked about in the room, but not who said it. Because there are a lot of officials here and there are a lot of people whose work this is that don't want to talk about the problems in their system. And I think if you can somehow establish, you know, an agreement of the participants that you're free to talk about what people discuss in here, but not who said it. Well, and in fact, no takers don't, yeah, we don't attribute anything. So I'm glad you said that. That is practice here for sure. Just one quick comment in reference to yours is, you know, CSO, right? Combined sewer overflow. The city of Montpelier has been for decades trying to separate storm from sewer, but not all the way there, right? And most of our towns, I think it's safe to say, are still dealing with CSOs, but certainly our larger towns, Ronald and Burlington in Montpelier is no different. So it didn't help. So you've been doing it for a long time, but there's been no solution? Yeah, I'm not the city of Montpelier. But yeah, I think the city has been, CSO is a huge problem. You know, my former role at World Development, we funded a lot of CSO combined with wastewater treatment upgrades, but certainly there's more to do. So it means it's not all separated yet? Correct. Yeah, it's one of those where you resolve one point and there's other points and other points. It's a big, big project with a lot to do. We have six CSO overflow structures currently in Montpelier. Six CSO overflow structures. I mean, six locations where things get overwhelmed, they can overflow. And that's down from the 90s, I think it was like 46 or 50 that we used to have. So we need a lot more? No, I think ideally we have zero structures that overflow. Right, and so right now the two big projects that we're doing is the State Street project that you see out here, which is removing about an acre and a half of impervious area that's directly connected to our sewer system. And then the other project is the East State Street project where we're disconnecting another probably acre or half acre of impervious that's directly tied to our sewer system. And you're just doing that before the flood? Yes, we've been working on this consistently for the last 20 to 30 years. And don't feel like you have to, would you want to introduce yourself since you're a deputy director for City of Montpelier, of the Public Works Department, and my name is Zach Lodger. Other things in terms of Montpelier's infrastructure. So others have mentioned some of the challenges with the floodwater containing sewage, another pollutant was of course oil. And that got me interested in talking more about a resource that we already have in the community, which is the district heat system, both because those institutions attached to the district heat system and making use of that may have had less oil that was spilling into the system, but also it was a way to reduce reliance on oil. It's been a challenging project. I think it's significantly underutilized, but the great thing is it's there. It's working. It has significantly more capacity than the community is using. And I would love to explore more opportunities. Of course now we have the College of Fine Arts up on the green, up on the hill, having sold some of its properties to Greenway Institute, which is looking at renewing some of the buildings. And the idea of potentially bringing, for example, the district heat system up the hill, both for institutional access and I would say more importantly residential access, but that needs to come with incentives. The upfront costs are huge both to organizations, businesses and residents, but I think the benefits are potentially significant and it's right there. It's like right there making heat. Great. And just to clarify for folks that what I heard there was both current state of affairs, we have an existing district heating system and I think an idea for the future as well, which was let's take advantage and expand the sort of reach of that district heat. It's really just adjacent to the service to the elementary school and to others. Aren't there possibilities right now? Unfortunately time is really tight before days get cold, but to incentivize instead of rapidly replacing oil furnaces, which is probably the most logical and immediate solution, but wouldn't it be ideal if there were ways to tap into that system? Because to my knowledge, it's significantly underutilized. Can I ask as we're hitting asset classes, I was waiting for the first asset class of district heat. What is the state of district heat now after the storm? Is there any damage to our district heating system as far as we know? Does anyone know that? Individually, the core system is okay, because it took mitigation steps when it was built, but along the way you have all these pump stations that are flooded at individual sites. And are those pump stations associated with buildings that are being served or is it? Buildings being served. Most places lost their meters around the district heat systems. They lost all of their internal piping components. So all of what happened at the building? At the individual's connection. In the basement? Yes. Sorry, we're missing resiliency. They were damaged if you replaced them in our model right now? So I'm not the district heat expert by any way, shape, or form. I just know that right now a majority of our users have issues with their meters and that they're looking to get those replaced and that the city is working to get that stood up before this winter season. The cities in short of replacing the meters at SHERP allow for the building and the users are forced to essentially just change their circulation pumps, which is something you would have on a regular boiler. So you don't have to replace a boiler, but you have to replace all of your circulation pumps. Are people looking at replacing them up higher? I work for free buildings downtown, which is a color-covered library. We won't be replacing moving them, because you could flood 600 times before it would behoove me to pay for the piping and moving it up above, but the controls will be moved up. Yes. But maybe that's something to put on our list. Even though the building itself in the heating system was improved when we made it, or they thought of flooding, the system isn't. So the system is not working. That's one of the major problems with the state buildings. So we need to look at what could we do to make sure that the things that you've spoken of that aren't working are up higher or something because those pipes are underground. Well, and there's different categories of stuff, right? What I just heard is there's controls that they're moving up, which I think is much more expensive to replace, versus maybe some piping and circulator pumps, which apparently, yeah. But if any of that stuff is done in by the ordinary flood. How do we make it more resilient? Yeah, that's about it. I see a hand here. Yeah, thanks. I'm Zach Ford, I'm the president of the Caravan Nuclear, and I really appreciate the comments of my neighbor here talking about our rivers, and I hate to be a contrarian at a viewpoint here, potentially, but I'm not wild about our district heating system. And I'm not particularly interested in expanding it. It was placed in an awful location, and it's exactly the kind of development that I hope we avoid going forward when we want to look at flushing that water-bound stream, letting it go out onto its historic flood plain. The heating system, in all those parking lots, I hope that as a part of this city infrastructure conversation, it's kind of embedded in the description, but not as explicit as I wish it was. I wish we would also, in this discussion, talk about, or I hope we will talk about, the ways that we can multi-solve by restoring our flood plains, beautifying our city, making Montpelier face the river for the first time and take advantage of this amazing location with the confluence of two people rivers that typically you can't even see walking around town. And all the things that that would do for our economy, not to mention for public health and well-being, on down the list. So I guess just to put in the plug for really rethinking our connection to the rivers and then from there, zooming out and seeing how that can benefit so many other aspects of our town. A lot more to say there, but... All right, and let's just... I think... Let's work on not... We're going to have 15 minutes to do some prioritization, and I think it's appropriate at that point to have a little bit of a debate about ideas that are on the table. I'd ask folks to restrain from that response to specific ideas at this phase and things, if that's okay with folks. And I think we probably should shift. I see another hand, but I think we should start to move more towards just free-flowing ideas on what should we be doing around city infrastructure, because we've got... I've got to keep time here, and we've got to keep moving. So I see three hands, one there. Yeah, Colin, and then, yep. So a really key piece of infrastructure is the rice molding. Not in Montpelier, but it's created for Montpelier. And it's performed very well over the 100 years, well, not quite 100, but there can be improvements made to its holding capacity, increasing its discharge rate at a safe time, so it can recharge for the next rain event. We got lucky in this last one that a really big rain event went south of us while the dam was full. So I think we can figure out ways to drain the dam quicker to be able to handle more rain events one after the other. So there's an idea. Change sort of the operating standards for Riceville to maximize its sort of flow of infrastructure. And your hydro plant. As well, so it's not just operating, it's also cement. The way you're presented, it's like the ultimate piece of infrastructure, almost. So I think, yeah, okay. To be debated, but yeah. Yeah, hand, Scott, I think you said your name. So at the mouth of the north branch where the Shell station is, if you look at that from above, that's all fill. And it looks kind of ridiculous. And it's where the river pounds into and it starts backing up the Winooski there when it comes out. It brings up the conversation of the Stroad, right? The tension all along the street there of the street and the road and its speedometer and the commercial versus the residential coming into town. So if you're talking about that river going back to its natural course you're not aware to get off the interstate and come into Montpelier. This is all blue sky ideas, so I'm not holding back, but it looks ridiculous as a planner from above putting gas stations right at the mouth of the river there. It's absurd. So John, we're getting some good asset classes now. Like District Key, the Britsville Dam, Transportation Carders. Maybe you want to hit up on schools a little bit? Yeah, is there a hand over there? Hi. I was raising an answer. All right. Think about it. Think about it. You can say I'm being with roadways. I don't have technical knowledge, but I know that more permeable roadways can be beneficial in increasing drainage and so forth. I also know that maintaining typical asphalt roads in Vermont is basically a disaster. As we all know, it's a real challenge. There's a universe in which alternative road surfaces that are more permeable may be more open to change. I mean, I don't know. We could just have mud in town and mud and really celebrate mud season. Like, go for it. It could be a unique attraction. Maybe, maybe not that. That's hyperbole. But I do wonder if there's a scenario where we can tackle both the really challenging conditions of our roadways and at the same time drainage and allow for water to more naturally be absorbed into this area. Under much of that pay-to-grade cobblestones which, obviously, between cobblestones are permeable. Right. It's an interesting aside that some roads in Vermont, building up to the view of the Air Force Base in the Northeast Kingdom, that don't get plowed. They're in perfect condition. They're built and it is impeccable. So it's looking at how do we maintain our roads more than how they're built as well. Yeah, go ahead. This is a quick feedback on Zach's comment and I think one of my big takeaways from our first meeting that we had was that we really need to be thinking of a regional watershed here, and not just like the North Branch and the Wenduski, but what's the big picture in our big central Vermont area that we need to be looking at? As a watershed. Got it. I have two ideas I just want to throw out. One for the waterways when it's coming down from the hills and the mountains. Besides the rivers we had everything was so saturated that nothing, there was nowhere for it to go. Besides the rivers but somebody told me about an idea of making like craters, small craters in the hills that are empty, but when the water starts flowing and there's too much water, they fill. So it slows it. Not the rivers, that's a different issue. And then a completely different idea I have, which I don't know if it's the right place to bring up, but I think we should look at maybe doing like a high line like they have in New York City on state and main and it would bring a lot of people here. People, you know, and then underneath we have pop-ups or parking or water running, the rivers running through it that we can look at and make the town more beautiful and have the river yeah. So elevate at the downtown level somehow bring it up and create stuff. And people talked about filling it up and having the second floors be the level, but I think a high line would work. What is the high line? The high line is in Manhattan on the railroad bed they turned it into walkway, a greenway and then all these stores and restaurants have popped up around it. It was quite wonderful. I think railroad that they just transformed into sort of a walkable usable public space. Did they raise everything else so no, that's what's interesting about the high line is you're sort of like the stores are still vulnerable. Well, I would say that we would do it differently, you know, so that this underneath would be... The idea generally is to sort of elevate and then use the space down below differently. Is that fair enough? Great. Go ahead. Thank you. I think building on the same idea is one of the plans. The highway, where you got the highway. I think 84% of downtown all players parking lots including right up to the waterway on both sides. I think the gas station on one side and the parking lots right in the other, right? There is an immense amount of land we've capped and made so water can't go into that land right in the floodway that water could be there, housing could be there, green space could be there. There's a lot of opportunities in that space that currently is being used for cars. Well, it used to be used for cars. Recently it's not used for not taking their bike. You'd all be here with me. Great. Yeah, amen to that. And I wanted to just check in with our note taker for a second because I wanted to... I was wondering if you wanted to find asset class because I don't know if you could repeat back a second ago some of the categories we were talking about whether it covers everything that I'm hearing so I just was curious. Well, I'm hearing from the crowd so state of the state what's the state of our infrastructure? So the way I think of it is like schools, city infrastructure state infrastructure our water wastewater systems our district heat that's where I was pulling from. So when he said state of the state that we don't have what we want to have. Sounds like I'm hearing a lot about pavement. So I'm hoping that somewhere in that infrastructure, there's something for impervious services of various kinds and I wanted to just piggyback on the comment a second ago that this something a lot next to Corp Street right here is a fantastic location for an elevated plaza of some wonderful variety with shops and a brewery and gosh, so many things you can do you can go to Montilier and I think the best solution to me to make our city more resilient is to get things out of the park in some way so it's not just the more that we can think about right natural disasters are natural to some degree climate change notwithstanding what makes them disasters is putting people in our things in a way and so as I'm thinking about the high school my daughter will be there some number of years I imagine maybe she could go to high school at the PCMA maybe that's where the high school could be located in the future seems like we're looking for a great tenant in that space and turn our high school into a floodplain or a playing field so just another possibility to control over. And just to maybe identify a theme here sort of the relocation of various things in our community to allow for the water to flow without inflicting some of the damage seems like we just think rebuilding redoing yeah I just wanted to speak to the schools there's already a conversation that's happening it's happening very vociferously I don't have an opinion about what the solutions should be but I think we need to have a really thoughtful and gentle conversation about that as the parent of a rising 9th grader who's nervous when she hears things so I just think we need to be thoughtful about it and we need to have a conversation and maybe it could be somewhat student-led as the schools get started I don't know if it's interesting but it feels like that's a long conversation just building upon you know PCFA there is a city goal to start building out housing at the country club which if irrespective of thoughts or opinions on that it goes forward you can conceivably see 300 homes that are potentially the most affordable in town each of those houses has two children all of a sudden in the center of where a child is and a lot of players moves pretty quick they also had a special plan for each former about busing and how difficult to get them to different schools we might have 600 kids that can walk to use 32 I guess there's a path there there are multiple options there I think the future of housing is also a sort of formal housing is interesting to look at and at this point I feel like the idea is there around just like with other assets let's say the school what do we do about the school so let's not sort of I think continue to bathe it here because it's an idea that we can talk about as we wrap things up so I've been through flood events in this town and this one is different it really is I'm not advocating for parking lots I don't like them at all but our ground was absolutely saturated and it didn't make any difference whether it was a permeable surface or an impermeable surface the ground couldn't handle any more water when that rain event happened really while the parking lots probably contributed some it was minimal it's not like Irene it wasn't like this unbelievable rain event when I see what happened I just said we have to go up we have to go up one way or another I don't care if it's Vermont Council of the Fine Arts building or higher ground or it's just the second story but everybody has to no longer view basements as usable spaces in Montpelier they aren't they're trash they're places where water needs to come in and go out and we need to build them so that we can hose them down I don't know if people were downtown right after the flood but I was there a lot and the yellow red if you went by it on Wednesday they hose that place down tile floors the room was clean it was like you need to be able to go in there with a fire hose and just let the water come in it's gonna be dirty and you gotta get it out so we can't have we can't have anything of value down low that should be apparent to everybody and you know there are a lot of really responsible landlords who are already moving everything up I mean they've been through it three times I just talked to Steve Everett so everything of value in his buildings is going to the second story and we need to encourage everyone else even though it is a big nut it's a big ask they gotta do it they have to do it otherwise we're just throwing money down the drain just hand in the back and then yeah while we're putting all these things in place I just heard somebody say that for the last 20 years we've been working on separating sewer from water runoff I'd like as quickly to solve that problem while we're waiting for other things to happen so alright that's a clear idea I'm really interested in the whole soft infrastructure question because I don't see any of these good ideas get implemented without an effective governance and implementation system and I would I don't have an idea I don't know enough about what's possible it's also easy to decide engineering things in some ways but this is if maybe we could have a careful study of Montelier's governance system the whole manager thing what is working what doesn't work what works in other places we have some expertise in the town but it seems to be that that's oddly a foundation under everything another idea is bios for properties that are located in the city should I don't know what sort of money is available for the state but I know that Northfield did that very successfully I know that our mayor has already got a record being opposed to it I think we shouldn't take things off the table and we should explore to see what sort of options there's a possibility for us to go I heard there's a new hand here that I want to be sure to bring a new voice two things that I thought I would hear about one is actually a question but we still have a high water pressure problem despite the fact that DPW and the city and the state have kind of agreed on a solution the solution is an extended solution and we won't know really if it works for a couple of decades the other thing is when we got close we came to losing the water the wastewater treatment plant does anybody know? the water was pretty close to the top of the road what happens when the water goes over the road? do you cut that plant so long? there's some slight conversations right now about whether or not we should raise that river road up a couple of additional fees in order to make a bigger dam so that you have more protection for yourself? because right now about the very top of the road but never crested over but that's what protected the water and same with the public works garage we were very close to having water in both of those buildings as well in the town of Johnson their wastewater plant was overwhelmed and everything's just going into the limoil river so I mean that's why just to continue I mean sadly we have great points around the water infrastructure while we wait for the next flood to happen water keeps on pumping down the hill at high pressure I believe the state has opinions on to their PSI water in the downtown I think something like 20% of our water lines are past their service age more water breaks than Burlington does those are things that aren't doing fun but are going to get into these projects and we talk about BCFA or downtown businesses that needs to be it wasn't even going to be the flood distracted us, that needs to be back on the radar that those investments need to happen and 90 million dollar investments needs to happen in the next 50 years that is looming and I guess I hear in that current state of affairs and an idea which is to robustly address we need to robust water infrastructure the fix to the the high pressure situation yeah go ahead hi my name is Jonathan resident of the town also civil engineer I just wanted to mention flood storage which I think was kind of mentioned but wanted to ensure just from the infrastructure perspective I think you know as mentioned to look at regional approach right as far as the watershed I think that's also infrastructure discussion I don't know maybe studies have been done since the 30s to see where more flood storage can be gained but seems that would be an important component so a flood storage would be another dam potentially that would be more dams more you know perhaps it's raising dams perhaps it's you know there was to talk about you know trying to make some operational adjustments to the Wrightsville that's kind of along the same idea great, John along the same line I'm John I'm from engineer also you mentioned in the beginning about the the two rivers are greater than the exit right so are you saying that the river was channeled below Montpelier it was de-channeled to return it back to its original corridor with greater capacity if it was expanded to a little more water that would eliminate what happened in Montpelier right so you know the Winnicki proper was full capacity and then the 1200 cubic feet per second coming in from the north branch backed up you know so if we had the release valve it's just well it's not a valve it's just built right in you know we get the hydrologists in here determine what the greatest probable flood you know cubic feet per second coming in the Winnicki would be add that to residual in the north branch and then add a margin for error with climate change it makes the corridor using Montpelier adequate to discharge whatever it is 30,000 cubic feet per second that would be a giant help you know use the reclaim those parking lots the school ball fields and get it out of town I had a business in Montpelier that got flooded but I live in Worcester up 1200 feet and our road was completely destroyed so it had nothing to do with the rivers it had to do with the water running down and that's awesome I don't want to get out of Montpelier but that's also part of the issue is a lot of water and it just destroyed so many roads and properties I have a couple of so one is I think it's really important that we build the structures so that when things like this happen we can help people move to the next better thing rather than replace what they already had I think that's been said before but getting the oil takes out getting better systems in in terms of heating the buildings and we have to be ready for that because even with this happening in early July we're not ready to do that for the heating season so if this is going to happen again we'd be ready to get people set up with better systems right afterwards my second completely different thought was in relation to what you were saying about the basement it does seem like we shouldn't be cleaning down the basements I've heard two opposing solutions one is let the water in make it so we can clean up really well afterwards and the other is fill the basements and I'd love to have some engineering expertise on which of those is actually a good idea or not well maybe in that is an idea which is like that's a question facing many homeowners and building owners in town what is the process by which we collectively learn and then share that learning and then provide the resources to sort of implement whatever it is that the learning brings sort of so we have a challenge here and it's different than the challenge in Berry so Berry is fast water buildings get hugely damaged but here it's like a bathtub we just fill up so I'm not an engineer and I don't know but I think that we can let it come in and let it go out that's just my sense but something just happened where we have an investment in our wastewater recovery facility that everyone needs to understand how dynamic and astronomical it is our biggest asset and I didn't realize how close it came so that needs to be our number one priority is protecting the wastewater recovery facility if it's a berm if it's raising the road it needs to be protected more than I was just told it if it came that close that's a $50 million investment there's no bigger investment in this city so we need to think about that how to protect that so the question now would that facility flooding cause $50 million to damage that's a little hard to say I mean it would be pretty catastrophic if water had it'd be terrible I mean pollution pollution is bad not kind of a facility is even worse other facilities to raise things up as well as to put berms in or is it just stuck to the ground that can't be moved I mean how the system works it's the lowest point in the city that's how the sewage gets from all over town to its final destination so the piping is very that all of that stuff is set so the only thing you can do really is to protect it more at least more two points I'm really surprised that nobody has brought up a few years ago Dan Jones in the 501C3 about re-envisioning downtown where an architectural prize was given some of the most prestigious firms in the world redesigned downtown Montpelier for free to convert those parking lots into public space thousands of people participated in that process a huge amount of enthusiasm was generated and then nothing and it's all those designs should be revisited because it is a very forward making cost effective way to rebuild downtown into public space and improving water the second quick point is more towards helping steer the direction towards a soft governance conversation why didn't those plans go forward you know what happened to that there was no receiving sort of put that into two hands in the ground it shows up in schooling it shows up in the right to housing aspects of Montpelier that you're feeling the commercialization the financialization of real estate in Vermont has sort of run havoc in a lot of cities unchecked from the point of gerrymandering a TIF district across 22, 23 cities in Vermont that wouldn't pass a freshman level college city planning to in the last six, seven years in Montpelier the housing stock effectively hasn't changed only a very, very small percentage it hasn't changed but the ratio of renters to owners is changed by 30% so there's many more second and third home owners in Montpelier there's no institution that's addressing that so that school teachers can afford to live in the city where they work that ratio in Montpelier is obscene the same with public employees they can't afford to live in the city where they work you're saying there's more private homes that are owned second homes so renters, there's more renters of the constant population in Montpelier it's shifted to renters by about 25% in just the last five, six years and that trend is active it's not over like 55% I don't know almost, yeah a little more yeah, there's ways to control that the other cities are actively involved with so what you're describing just to try to add into an idea is this is in that soft infrastructure category of sort of having stronger policies that would address those sorts of trends let's say I just want to try that but when social norms get regularized they become institutionalized and these things become institutions we don't have institutions yet around this issue of housing around this issue of transparency and accountability of ethics and governance a lot of these mistakes we're pointing out we've been working on these infrastructures for 20, 30 years or a million dollars in legal debt for this failed thing or on and on so what's the here's the thing is something come back to the group in a couple of weeks as an action item how might we what is the action item that is sort of within our control of Montpelier to sort of address what you're describing like what is that what's that applied to well it's some process of this but it gets into good governance which has its set of metrics which can be looked at very clearly it's another conversation but it affects everything from transportation to schools to redesigning downtown buying out homes so sort of a re-envisioning and restructuring of governance in the issue is Vermont is a small population and so the logic used to be that because these towns are small they don't need strong mayor systems they just need a council manager system but if you look around Vermont and you look at some of the cities that have gone through rapid transformations the waterfront in Burlington the street in Barry and onwards you're looking at more of a system of weak mayor, strong mayor systems of accountability systems of transparency that are helpful to financing infrastructure just one question that public envisioning process on that from Montpelier so the public envisioning process was in circa 2020 longer that was in 2015 at least eight years you could refer to it as Montpelier but it was like then it was gone just to go a little bit on the same theme of things that have been done already and then sort of dropped after Hurricane Irene 2011 State Department Housing and Community Development commissioned a committee to come up with a plan to avoid what we just experienced it's called the Vermont Economic Resilience Initiative the word flood doesn't appear in the title, maybe that's why nobody's heard of it but it's like 800 pages and just to give you an example of what's in there there was confusion as soon as people started cleaning out their basements about stacking stacking the trash in categories so it could be picked up easily and faster, guess what it's in this report a chart tells you exactly how to do it that was seven years ago what happened to that I just chanced upon it the name of the report the Vermont Economic Resilience Initiative G-E-R-I anyway we need to realize that this has been done before to a certain degree we have a new circumstance but we ought to look back at what's already been done so I just want to second that when I went to my business when I was allowed in we all were just throwing everything out nobody told us anything and you know I would have to say Montpelier Alive was amazing and all the volunteers were incredible but nobody was directed by anybody on how to do it and to have protection and people were mucking this stuff with no gloves, no mask and nobody was telling us later after we were all done it was suggested that we sort it we are at 15 minutes to go and so it's time to coalesce just one quick summary to make sure we have and that is financing and resources for all these things they're saying move your stuff upstairs who's going to pay for that we need to talk about financing all of these things I just want to add a couple points of detail to what I already have suggested to bolster the argument in favor of widening the river channel from the compliments out of town 30 years ago we had an ice jam flood in town so if we take care of that river channel edging town we're also reducing the chances of another ice jam flood a lot of you probably weren't here 30 years ago maybe you were but totally different scenario from this one no rain just a backup because it's a narrow not natural river channel and then to go over to right still damn flesh out quickly that once the water level reaches 665 feet they have to shut down all of their turbines in the high ground station because they're not they're not the turbines can't handle greater head pressure above that so right when we really need to be able to get water out of the dam and we have the greater potential to generate electricity we shut it all down and we reduce the discharge rate by 20% so if we have the ability to a public private with a Washington like a co-op to invest in new turbines they can run right up to the full head of 685 feet and we can turn it off and on shut it down as the rivers are flooding or potentially flooding once the rivers have proceeded turning right back on and increase the discharge rate by 20% so we're then recharging the retention capacity for that next rain event and we got lucky this time it didn't come but in the future I'm going to just caught you there because I think that falls into that more general idea of like at rightsville addressing the operations such that we're sort of maximizing its flood control potential I just want to make clear that I'm not discussing building a new higher dam it's just a turbine mmhmm we now need to decide on some priorities as we get ready to go upstairs and so I'm actually I'm going to ask for Eric's help because Eric actually has some this is I'm giving Eric an impossible task but I think it's a team effort here that Eric and I and frankly all of you will do I think we want to coalesce a lot of different ideas into some key themes and make some decisions about what you all feel like are the priorities of this group let me try with a couple of categories that I feel like I've heard that I feel like are very much related but distinct and you tell me if I'm getting this right or wrong one is about the water itself and sort of allowing there to be space for that water to do sort of what it needs to do while sort of minimizing damage so like that and I'm trying to categorize that as one thing versus something that is related but distinct which is that we essentially relocate and elevate things out of harm's way those feel very similar and in a way very related but also distinct one is about sort of to some degree right spill and the river channel and what we do and one is about like how we use our physical space particularly our physical space that is exposed to flooding do those feel like to sort of distinct I know there's a lot of overlap between them but do those feel like two distinct areas of I'm seeing mostly nodding heads what's that the dam seems like a third to me the dam actually feels distinct from those other two so I'm going to you'll tell me otherwise so relocate dry proofing wet proofing I heard Paul Bovarez and another architect from town they had an excellent vpr but I think that's the second one relocate maybe upgrading dry proofing right wet proofing that's the first floor and not use everything in our basement definitely a distinct idea so I got that captured and then there's a heavy emphasis on soft infrastructure which I put into lining the corridor you know river management totally different maybe the ultimate piece of infrastructure that's a constant theme I'm getting from the group especially the right happens can you add that we make the river a nice place to be that recreational asset although can I just say I think there are two different ways of thinking about soft infrastructure which is I think you're describing sort of the ecosystem and the waterway whereas I'm here and you use the term soft infrastructure to talk about governance so green is actually maybe what you mentioned by that second category and then and then I would say another sort of theme we've heard here is this one around soft infrastructure or we could say governance more simply like do we have the government that can get these things done for us and can lead us through to these new opportunities so that's I think a third is we would say governance there and can I also come back for you what's that I really think our number one priority needs to be the wastewater recovery facility I mean it needs to be number one and it's not because of anything other than the amount of we have invested in this facility and how close it came to catastrophic consequence I know and we want them to invest more which probably hasn't that zero but we're actually making it more sustainable but it's okay for us to have some big ideas and some relatively narrow ideas that we're prioritizing here so separating the wastewater from the overflow just for that fall in that same category because we're protecting the plant from all this water I would definitely say this so we would say the CSO goes into but that really is something that they've been trying to deal with we've been trying to deal with for decades we are dealing with it as much as the citizens of this city are willing to pay for it I mean we're all paying a huge ticket for this so we all have to recognize that there's bills to be paid for separating stormwater from our sewage system and what is priority for how you spend your money? I agree I couldn't agree more I would prioritize it but that's been a discussion that's been going on in the city for 30-40 years I mean I will say it seems to me there's two distinct things here one is protecting the wastewater plant and the CSO the separation of stormwater and so but I'll look to you all because if you merge them to some degree they get a little bit less impactful whereas if you call them out as individual ones so like do you all show hands who thinks those should be one topic raise your hand who thinks that you want to consider them as two distinct things okay so that's pretty clear that we would list the CSO separation I'm not sure if I'm even saying that CSO is already at its own going it is it is on going but you all could decide here that it's really important that we do it quicker you could say that tonight you could say that belongs to the top of our list the separation can I suggest potentially the district heat plant together in that they are both huge investments that have been made existing functional resources that we rely on extremely heavily in the case of the wastewater treatment center and maybe less than we could in the case of the district heat plant but they are there they function and they cost a lot of money so can we look at these as existing resources that we both need to examine protect utilize care for I mean I think the answer is you can you can do whatever you want strategically my advice to you all is that again you lose some impact if you lump those things so like district heating is a standalone thing and I think we should sort of entertain that as it it's up to you but it should go on the list for you all the district heat infrastructure is owned by the state it worked it is not vulnerable the waste treatment plant was vulnerable the history de-location is not vulnerable well okay let's not alright we got a what am I missing we're missing can we look at the plans that all those people who are very talented did so let's just say bring back net zero Montpelier plan that's its own and I would say it's different from governance a little bit I heard that pretty at least my years revisiting good planning that's already happened and it looks like it's got a couple of forms here along with the net zero I mean there's like so that sort of a category is not just net zero but other good plans that have happened for Montpelier there's also a down time resiliency as well for the architecture of downtown resiliency and re-utilizing the utilities that are connected and how do we change that that's an immediate thing right now as the buildings are being restructured how do we fix that I mean it goes into the the yellow mustard flooded but they closed it out because it has a concrete slab they filled their basement already or they didn't have one getting rid of those stone foundations bringing utilities up I think that's part of the results well I think it is we kind of lumped it into the relocate which we also include dry proofing and wet proofing so maybe we're guilty of lumping I think it's a totally separate thing because I think that has to do with city planning and zoning and approvals as things get built not the city being not the actual function of doing so I would say that's part of the reason that should be its own distinct idea that you all consider we actually have to get to voting on this like the idea is essentially through code to require people to rebuild in a more robust way so that the water doesn't inflict the same yeah we actually do you can't build views out and you can't do substantial improvements without there's not a movement towards it and I think back to zero the longer strategic vision is still a unique thing that could be where are we going in 50 years was what that was about snap your fingers and change downtown enough in a decade but longer term what governments do we need to have that bigger vision to have a resilient downtown that looks like one of those huge ideas is code just for clarification is code hit rebuild yes does it hit rebuild though totally I forget the name of it river what is the city right the trains get ready to leave the station so here's what we have to do very quickly I'm going to try to read through what I heard is the ideas and you all get to raise your hands only twice are we going back upstairs with how many priorities well I'd say we're going to see based on how well things coalesce I would say anywhere from two to four priorities so no you can't have all of them sorry that's the that's a hard thing so you can raise your hands twice read through the list first I'm going to read through the list first was flood storage infrastructure within can we combine them all now I know I shouldn't use it we can't combine them all I'm going to try to read these under a loud space okay here's relocate is idea one which is essentially moving things buildings in particular outside of the floodway rebuilding to me relocating can be up as well as I'm sorry up or out I mean both of those thank you for clarifying yes was another one which is much more about focusing on the water and helping the water move such that it does does last year governance is a third I think we've sort of talked about that waste water plant protection is its own the dam I think is what I heard from you is that should be its own thing and that's both operations and a little bit of investment as well right water dam and watershed we could say yep CSO separation districating and net zero Montpelier and other sort of visions for the future yes what's that we really got to make a decision here why are we living now isn't that the next step well our job tonight is to come with three or four things all of these things will go before a steering committee but like I think we are stronger if we narrow this list if we can't then I'll go upstairs and read them all if you guys say I'm not we should not narrow I'm not narrow I'm easy because we have to give it down without governance we're just going to do a show of hands and help us all know how we feel okay I just see one last hand well so I guess I'm just concerned with the part of this is that I think there's a thread here that's kind of missing which is maybe the net zero terminology just really throws me out because that means a lot of different things I think we're talking about re-envisioning Montpelier's dam and green infrastructure is like a tactic for re-envisioning Montpelier's dam so are some of these other components but I'm not quite hearing in there something that is about actually kind of getting at I think with the vision I really want to like the vision piece I think is missing to me somewhere there so if we change that net zero Montpelier which was a vision to a more general re-envisioning sort of Montpelier's downtown does that is that a we've got to get upstairs guys well it was a lot of visions yeah there were like 15 what year would that happen and some of them have been some of them have been let's just go through this exercise of showing hands for these I'm going to change that one to re-envisioning Montpelier's downtown there's a small how many votes do you get you get two on the system we're going we're going the target open you did say if we don't agree on you right so let's go through this exercise and the final decision can be John your job is just to read them all and not narrow and that's that's a final decision come on alright first the first one is this concept of relocating either up or out moving our buildings out show a hands for that I'm quick count of three thank you the green infrastructure much more about focusing on the water I'm seeing one two three four five six seven eight ten ten that's okay don't worry about that governance I'm seeing one two three four five six seven eight okay wastewater plant protection haha one two three four five six seven eight nine you guys you're spreading them all dam plus watershed above uh one two three four five six seven I believe CSO separation as like an immediate like moving ahead on the list alright there we have something off the list anyway uh distraining two uh okay and re-envisioning Montpelier and the down tap see him my fortified I know hey guys I said the other time one dollar alright so I guess here's what I'm hearing which is we have the water infrastructure governance wastewater plant protection the dam and the watershed above and the re-envisioning downtown as five clear things that got over five hopes everything else really didn't get to that point they will all go on the list and it sounds like protecting the wastewater plant is a little bit improved I mean it's well it's well when you speak we need it to raise the height of that road to increase the dam we can all hey you've done is you've elevated it 10 dollars thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you