 themselves or send me. Welcome to the third marvelous night in May. We have several amazing projects that we are going to review, starting with innovation and technology. We are very pleased to have you here. Please go easy on him, counselors as we go. Take it a long time to build this CIO role. I would not like to go back to it. Also, he's up to a really great start. Hello. Good evening everyone. Again, my name is Scott Parker, CIO Chief Innovation Officer at Innovation Technology. Let's bounce to the first slide. We'll try to move through. So, I don't know, is that just where our window is? That's probably not showing where it is. So, looking now at what we've come into in 2022 in terms of our staffing, we have four people on the technology team and three people on the innovation team, although one person on the innovation team is the one that's here at PatchMits. Our senior GIS analyst and our asset management GIS coordinator are both open. We're actively interviewing for those positions right now. More than anything else, this team did Yeoman's work in 2022 and there's great appreciation, not only by me, but I think from everybody in the city who we've been trying to support. And as you know, last two years with the pandemic, we have kind of done whatever it took to keep the business of the city moving and everything kind of exploded out from to make sure that could happen. What we really want to do now is kind of refocus and make a renewed commitment to bring that technology in and making sure that we can get back to the fundamentals of what we need to do from a technology perspective. That's going to allow us to, as that last bullet point talks about, it's going to allow us to facilitate innovation across the city, not just in the innovation and technology department, but in BCA, in DPW, parks and rec and water resources everywhere, because we'll have a renewed focus and kind of bringing the technology back to the forefront in our world, we'll be able to facilitate a lot of innovation from the groups around. So how do we do that? Four pieces. We're going to be partners in technology by providing the right technology at the right time for the right price. I think all those things are what we're all looking for there. Servants, innovation technology group does all of the or the vast majority of the technical support, technical service across the city. So we want to be servants to people making sure that we can do effective, efficient service, make sure that the right technology is in the right hands. Any CIO that tells you that security isn't an issue is kind of crazy. If it's not number one on your list in technology, it better be number two. And so for that reason, keep that up there in terms of what we're focused on and what we're guardians of the city's data, cybersecurity infrastructure, things like that. And then innovation, as we talked about before, innovation is all about how we leverage data, knowledge, creativity, and relationships across the city to really be bringing innovative ideas to the forefront, make sure that they're happy they can do it. So across the page, we're partners, servants, guardians, and ultimately we're ready to do what we can do from an IT perspective. We're going to head to this coming fiscal year. We're laying the groundwork and starting to build a roadmap, not only for 23, but what is 24 look like, what is 25 like as we keep going. So we'll continue to modernize our fleet of computer resources for city counselors who have machines in front of you that we provided. Those are some of the newer machines, but really 30 plus percent of the machines across the city are more than five years old. And in reality, those become, they're out of warranty, a lot of them that become more susceptible to security breaches and breakdowns. We want to make sure we do what we can to fix that. We're going to continue to focus on continuous improvement across all of the four sectors, technology, service, security, innovation. And I have a nasty habit of leaving a room with a whiteboard in it with a little simple, better, faster, less expensive than the corner. That's kind of the idea that we look at. How do we do everything we do? How do we do it a little bit better, do it a little bit faster and then do it a little bit less expensive so we can make sure we keep that virtual circle going. We'll, we're going to initiate a project to move some critical networking equipment. We're going to replace some of our backbone and technical infrastructure that's out of, out of warranty. We'll update that. We're going to increase our cybersecurity posture. We're going to offer training and better tools across the city and across departments to make sure people have the opportunity to get more education and more insight into increasing cybersecurity. And then we're also going to find ways to leverage systems that we've bought over the course of the last couple of years. NeoGov, OpenGov, ViewWorks, all these different systems that we purchased over the last couple of years. We're really going to be able to focus in this year and next year about how we leverage those to get to bring that innovation out of the different departments. So all of that kind of leads to what the proposed structure is for fiscal year 23. And that is to really, the only real change is going to be bringing some technology positions from another budget from the police department over to this for our department. We'll be able to increase the level of service we provide everybody in the city, including the police department. We will be CGIS certified to deal with cybersecurity from that perspective. And we'll make sure that we can have somebody in the police department on a regular basis. Somebody in our group will be there every day to make sure that we're providing the services for thinking across the department and at dispatch. It's going to allow us to be faster and more responsive to service needs across the city. And then with the two open positions in terms of GIS and asset management, it's going to allow us to maintain standards across how all of the departments are used. Most departments have an asset management resource and many of them have GIS resources. And these will be people that we can make sure that we're doing everything we can to leverage those systems in as much out of those systems as we can. They were big investments. So it would make sense for us to be able to help departments leverage it. All of that kind of boils down to the following. Our fiscal year 23 budget looks a little bit bigger than it did in the fiscal year 22. And the main reason for that are those two bullet points. We've really worked with Catherine and her team, Martha and her teams to really centralize computer licensing and maintenance from across the city, bringing that into the information and innovation and technology budgets. We've got better insight into are we buying things too many times? Are we leveraging systems the right ways and making sure that we're able to keep an eye on not only the budget, but how we're leveraging those. And then we talked about moving the two open IT support positions. Both of those should be as they increase the innovation and technology budget should be convinced or it drops in the other budgets for all those pieces. So that is really it for us. What do you think is our biggest gaps in technology? Security is always a gap. I mean it really doesn't matter how much we do to protect data security cybersecurity. The bad guys are always faster and better funded. So that is always I would tell you that it's always a concern from a technology perspective. It's not that I have any reason to be overly concerned or we're concerned that normally it's always something to look at. And other than that, I suspect I would I think our biggest thing we need to plug right now is the fact that I said 30 plus percent of our computers are five years or older and the older machine gets the more susceptible it is to breakdowns and the more susceptible it is to security and passions. Yeah, there's more of a comment and Catherine's aware of this. We've been massaging data on property tax information and her staff has done a fabulous job but I still think there's another level to take it including coordinating with GIS data. So I'm just tossing that out there because I think it's an important aspect for us to look at it. It came front and center during the reappraisal discussion. So I just think we agree to which a lot of the data we already have could be better integrated. Right and I I totally agree with you and that's really where you see those two positions for GIS and asset management. Those two things really intertwine very closely and there's a ton of things that we can do with that to leverage those pieces of those systems, get information in them and do data mining to do exactly what you're talking about. That's what those two positions are for not to do the mining but to work with the departments as weak as they try to get the data in there and then try to get the data back out. If you don't mind that I think councillor Carpenter also gave us an opening for something that will be in a presentation on doing tomorrow which is potential ideas for how to spend down on a sign from balance. One of those ideas if you've already looked at the presentations of is money to move the city's IT equipment out of memorial just and since you won't be here tomorrow night I wonder if you could just spend a couple of moments talking about that and then we'll also question that. Right now in Memorial Auditorium is where a lot of our networking equipment sits. Most of the city's network and by city's network I mean city halls, 645 power facilities they somehow go through that facility. The equipment there in itself is aging. We know the state of the building and so it's about a 12 to 18 month project to do that the right way. It's not something we can just you can't shut the city down from what we move everything and not have networks so in order to do what we need to do what we'll have to do is we'll have to find a suitable place to move that with options include our server room here at City Hall there's a server room over in the school district building on Shelter Road but maybe some opportunity to pair and partner with PUD to not only have a conjoined data center but also be able to offset costs that way so we'll have to find a location we'll have to get the equipment make sure it's up running lit from Berlin's telecom plenty of power and everything do some testing so that when we are ready to flip a switch the downtime is hours at most rather than days and so we're going to start that work probably very soon here in the next couple months to start all that planning everything it takes a lot of planning to get to that point and by the time we're done planning we should be in a good shape to be able to flip that switch and move us over give ourselves a long-term security from a data infrastructure not necessarily the data security itself that's not going to change much but the actual security of the equipment running the data is going to be much more secure and much much more modern next time great thank you could you uh talk a little bit more about the replacement of the GIS and asset management positions from other departments will they move from those budgets but those were budget those were positions that have moved into innovation technology over the last couple years we just had two openings because jay happens and retired in january and gust of six hour left in april so those are positions that were already in uh innovation technology they're just going to stay there what we'll be doing is working closely with the other groups who have GIS experts water waste water for it's rocky border of what there is over there we work closely with him to make sure that where he's trying to flex and leverage the system itself we're working to make sure that the system is doing what it needs to do and has the right data and we can provide extra training extra services to support so we won't be moving the positions out to other places in terms of financial but we will be working with all the different firms with those positions to make sure that they can leverage the two other so the power systems yeah and the nice thing about these two positions is it allows us to have a little bit of an umbrella standardization across those systems and make sure that everybody is everybody understands how to use it and it's using it the way it gets the most value of benefit then uh tag along the contractor's question around the data accessibility of big families big families we added and the property data set that was there then was much better than we have just even though it's nice to have all the property data online in some unparalleled fashion and the city website is really great to have an open data for them right to get the information they needed and I don't know if there were any plans I would say that we haven't marked it out as okay we need to dig into that but it's definitely something that some of the other initiatives that we've got laid out that kind of fits right into so I think it's something that we can add to that puzzle in terms of okay we're looking at a service to do this how can we layer it on the thing what other what other features does that application have so you definitely keep it simple just as when when counselors have questions about the enemy taking to katherian katherian call scott dot where it's taking your most expensive resource right you know basically trying to answer questions that we could self-serve or have someone more of a business analyst right i like it i like it i do think there's some opportunity there with that asset management few works may very well be one of our answers for that the asset management system because it you can slice the nice data incredibly deep so that may be one of the opportunities we have we can build house layers that may help so it's definitely something we can look at i don't there's nothing in the way other than making sure my right system you know the right people on the other right using okay sorry i know it's a representation but since scott's new and um our could you just come up here so people can hear you i love talking about open data um since scott's new and because our two departments have reorganized some positions in the last year one of the responsibilities that came to planning was the maintenance of the open data portal so we still do have an open data portal and one of the things that like scott was saying we have to work on with the counselors so if there's specific data from the city that you would really like to see there that you're requesting frequently that's something we can ask the other departments in the city to do actually okay and my last question was around a virtualization i know that city has a physical server room things are there efforts underway to talk about longer term virtualizing some of that uh load so that you don't have the periodic replacement and so this is yeah and that's a great question every time we look at a new system if you were certainly as we just went from as we which was sitting on a server in our world that we just shut down because we went to online and uh portal for our gis services so anytime we look at applications things like that we look at cloud offerings and virtualize but whether it's platform as a service software as a service what can we find from there and we just started talking uh last week about long term what does virtualization at the desktop level like it is that a possibility where we can end up with more mobility and more security but on something that we're doing virtual virtualized desktops so you think it i mean it looks exactly like it looks right now when you work on your machine but it's actually housed on a server somewhere so we're looking at that as well i think i think that's a longer term kind of ease into it gradually you don't want because you don't want to replace every computer in the system sit into that too much money but as we start to face it something like that yeah i'm clear with you did you have a question i saw you turn on your camera i did yeah i just had a quick question about um the second line item in salaries and wages the seasonal and temporary um that being zeroed out for f by 23 and i was wondering uh what that covered last year and what is not being covered this year it uh we had i want to say it was 16 000 in the budget for f y 22 and didn't spend a dime it's it's really for it was for seasonal it was for interns and we didn't use it at all last year and that was one of the options that we had that we didn't use the last year we get away with that this year as well so that's why i started out okay thank you thank you thank you scott and i'm glad that you're still laughing since you've been working for the that's great it seems you're loving it i'm so glad you're still here thank you you know two questions and one of them is specific to the language access plan i believe it's um on your purview and maybe you even know what i'm talking about it is not that is actually save that question councillor jen because that is in cito's purview and brian pine is going to be speaking shortly okay i don't know i will say that when the departments have initiatives like that i'm sure innovation technology will be hand in hand with them making sure that we have the right tools the right support to make it happen but that one is specifically not specifically yeah um you mean that brian law used to be my go go to person that's why it's still in my head understood yeah and how about the equity report it seems last in march or we did not have one this year did we have one i think that is also somebody else's purview i think that might be that is true but we have figured out a two councillor jen in case you can't hear in the room i think that that is also not scott's responsibility and we're thinking that it's planning's responsibility but meghan's looking like wow no one ever told me that which is something that has happened to me as cao okay something we're working on it is being transitioned it is being transitioned so it sounds like we are in process which makes perfect sense given um the transition with the leadership there so i think um uh here comes the mayor speak for that that last part is right all right any other questions um no i mean the the one last question that i have is specific to you know moving the equipments from um that memorial auditorium do you think everything will be happening within a year in 2023 or sooner or later i don't i it's possible that the late 20 year physical year 2023 could happen but in reality it's probably early 2024 fiscal year 2024 a move of that magnitude is typically 12 to 18 months we will do it as quickly as we can but we have to do it as quickly as we can while still protecting not only data security but the availability of network to the city so i don't i would hesitate to say it's going to take 12 months or less i think it's safer to say 12 to 18 all right thank you so much that's promoted councillor paul so i want to give her a moment in case she's the most needed for us questions um councillor bergman or president paul any questions on the it budget my ones i don't have any thank you great thank you all right scott i think you're free to go you have survived thank you still smiling like councillor jane said well done i want to say that that's not i talked to cindy this afternoon and told me that she actually had fun doing this and that i should give it as a fun thing to do it's so fun cindy's here for fun so um i wanted to start off by um just talking like up front that um as you look at our bottom line it looks like we haven't made significant cuts in our budget um there are some things in here that were cut free budget like we took the ban out um because there are no vans available and the cost has gone up so significantly so we are relying on all our friends and other departments throughout the city to make for our own steal their equipment which they generously support us with um and then we actually have cut back our impact on the general fund but really what we've done is significantly increased our philanthropy our fundraising for the year and um we've had a very successful fy 22 we're actually ahead of where we thought we'd be coming out of the pandemic um i think you'll see that in our numbers if you look at corporate giving that was not a sector that we expected would come back as quickly um and so we'll be building on that success in fy 23 um so um this is all up on board doc so our presentation we feel like we're not going to take you slide by slide through it um hope that it really is a good snapshot of bca and how we realized our mission as a department of the city of burlington um so i want to talk about um who's running the slides see okay to keep going thank you yes i'm just gonna keep going so we want to stop okay here we go tuples so i think it's important to note here that um if we have um in the last year really looked at um coming out of the pandemic living in the endemic and what will how do we reshape what our goals are for this year and also take a longer view we used to look at a five-year horizon i think um it's probably it's a wise thing to do but really for this year i think we're going to stick in the in the in the three year um a top priority for us is to continue to increase our support for the performing arts through our programming and our grant banking which has been significant has shown significant growth in the last three to five years um with the passage of the one percent for public art i think that it is incumbent upon us um to inventory the public art collection and do a condition assessment so we map out this inventory and develop our maintenance priorities this is a new piece of work not in any of our job descriptions so it's going to be quite quite a new large experience for us um we see that we are very quickly returning to pre pandemic levels in education are we have the largest camp season um with 98.7 percent of our camps sold out which might sound like a really good thing like people get excited and they say that's so marvelous for us there's a little bit of a scary thing because you know we know that parents changes last minute we understand that um like to have a little bit more inventory available as families face changes in their lives we're working very closely with other providers in the city to know what is available to be able to send people to different resources we do hold costs for scholarship that's important piece we also um we also as as sarah was saying whole places for scholarship students and in particular work with the after school programs uh youth programs in the city um we also are back um in terms of the level of activity in our exhibitions um where's um surpassing our numbers um it's going to have some pretty significant visitation in this past period and looking at um where we are this month alone know that our numbers are going to be up and this includes both in-person and online um public programs artists perceptions and talks and then of course our c-think too and all of our gallery education for young people um and tours so sure so um revenue drivers we're going to talk a little bit about how um there is going to be um the increased uh impact of philanthropy on our FY 23 budget and that's largely um based on games that we've seen it over the last couple of years really remain open um and serving the public um throughout the pandemic and that has made it a pretty significant impact on response from um donors and um our success with grants and sponsorships of our event so next year um the uh increase in philanthropy is $128,000 and um in this current fiscal year we faced a $100,000 increase over the prior year so we felt like this was a reasonable um base for us we also have just found out that there's um a significant um new grant program that's going to be available for local arts organizations through our arts council for the next couple of years that will make state funding for the work that we do more available so we're going very comfortable with the increased revenue additionally we were we were told to put our revenue back to FY 19 um FY 19 um goals however that that isn't actually scaring us at this point because most of our revenues are really returning to normal our cost registrations have gone back um to where far above where we expected for this year so we think next year we'll be back to normal um space usage is is back to normal and um we feel like we're already trending as well to meet the goal of the program and this is um just a chart of the uh how our sources are divided up between fundraising and revenue general fund last year or this year so we're um dialing back down our um dependence on the general fund as we increase the other areas we'll actually get into that okay yeah okay oh and this is me too so um yeah and new expense drivers are really um probably not not gonna be that shocking it's really returning to the pre-pandemic programming across all of our areas of programming we're certainly seeing like most uh probably everyone in the country in the world the impacts of inflation labor shortages and supply chain issues driving some of our cost off our events division will be operating with a full year of new positions that were added last year um a full-time assistant and a um support person for um marketing and development support that allows those programs to um both be funded and shared widely with audience and support supports artists in the development of materials um certainly events is an area that is heavily impacted by increased costs it's been harder to get estimates um within in budget and we've added more events uh with the addition of the downtown market and then the last expense driver is that we are requesting a new position added for public garden grants program manager it's the first time we will have had a position focused on that work now that we have the public garden is much bigger responsibility and there's a lot more projects that we'll be working on in the next couple of years both with the reiv department and the airport and through the other large capital projects they say it's undertaking and additional and in addition we're also looking at ways to expand grants programming on the bca so this position will help make those activities possible i think the work is you know even beyond the airport and reiv we've got big projects with parks department they're coming up and uh with the great streets um as well as in with other planning and and dpw so and i did outline that at the end of the presentation more specifics about some of those projects but we're not going to get all the way to every page they're just there for you to do some deep dive into bca yeah so let's go right up so um i know there's um over the recent times uh been communications that city council has received about bca's perceived lack of support for the performing arts and i think it was really important for us to respond to this and to really just give you some of the breadth of understanding of of this part of our portfolio um the performing arts and what we spend on them has been growing significantly year over year um there are a greater number of artists that are being served here we talk about that just in the difference between f y 17 where we paid 192 performing artists and that was 11 of our overall artistic budget that in f y 22 we will have paid 430 performing artists and spend 32 percent of our budget artist budget so you know that's a very significant increase we also did grants very specifically to the performing arts to the artists across all genres during the covid period and received a lot of acclaim and applause for um helping to support people through an incredibly difficult time um we've invested an enormous amount of time looking at public spaces for the performing arts and how to improve the infrastructure so that when artists use those spaces they have a better opportunity to perform and the audience appreciates them um more we have um spent funding to record artists so that they can use when they are they do a performance for bca we videotape their work we create an archive and they can use those um resources then to go out and to continue to get work um city hall park is just really one example of where we invested a tremendous amount of performance infrastructure incredible new power access and data lines and tents and sound and lighting inventory and an opportunity for all kinds of spaces from small you know standing on a small box and reading a poem to a 12 person band um playing with an audience of a thousand just you know spread out on and enjoying this this great downtown um we've created um and maintained a community sound system that's available to the general public particularly musicians for $25 a day for rental and we're continuing to build this kind of inventory um throughout the city in partnership with all of the other cultural departments who have the same intentions um another thing that we did in this um counselor jane um i know this was very important was that when um the north end studio shut down um we were asked to help figure out how the community could search to find places that they could continue to offer classes or to perform and we put together a searchable database of all of the community spaces throughout the city and you can go in and find out who runs the account much it is per hour what uh facilities they have what to access and um it continues to be updated um as time goes on and it's it's a tremendous resource that um the whole community can use and that artists are incredibly appreciative so just thought it was time to just like really focus on that i don't get that opportunity with you to really talk about this aspect of who we are and um given that we're in a bunch of season and looking forward to this this new year um i want to take the time so um we thought we'd end here and make sure that we leave enough time for questions um these are the challenges that we see at this time we're having tremendous difficulty recruiting teaching artists many of them have moved on i think you've seen the greatest number of our teachers they're being hired in the state of vermont um so we're losing artists that would work on a part-time basis for us who are going for full-time positions um we've seen tremendous increase in the cost of goods and services and we're trying to manage that in all of our program um vendor availability the time frames that it takes for the procurement for being able to execute a number of our projects and then of course the increased administrative cost um when it comes to purchasing and financial management um and uh then we are looking very carefully at what the management structure is that we as one of the cultural departments in the city use for citywide events how do we do this better how does this collaboration this partnership and this desire for both being better um and providing more activities um can be done collaboratively so open for questions thank you noria and sarah um the floor is open um for any other questions in your budgeting process yeah you get a significant amount of revenue-preferring activities do you have a process that matches that with the expense of having prioritize what advance versus what increases revenue or does not produce revenue so you know we we let's take education as an example um education is typically about 50 percent underwritten that's like the national standard art schools a little below that and we always keep a very active scholarship program so that there's continual accessibility and so that we understand what the barriers are to engaging with our programs um I think we have looked at keeping costs minimal whether it comes to a ticket for um highlight um we don't actually have that many ticketed events um most of our events are free um so if we have a certain amount income through through classes and workshops and then mainly what we try to do is get a number of our programs underwritten so that we keep the cost so is that in your the underwriting or underwriting is in the fundraising in the fundraising yeah yeah and like for example art sales is in earned income we run a number of very active programs where we curate different spaces throughout the community and we when we sell work in those spaces a percentage of that comes back to the CA um we actually have 17 different spaces right now some of them are more um larger and more obvious like the hospital as you move to the hospital you can see the five different sites there and it's probably believe it or not where we sell the most art who in terms of your governance who who prioritizes you know something you don't have enough money how are those kind of decisions you have um two boards a city council and a mayor so they sometimes have different priorities for us um the mayor always wins no I'm just kidding um so um we present uh a budget to our board we have a board of advisors and there is different committees on the board that review um you know a three-year comparison and how are we doing and what are the expectations and um how do we make sure that we aren't reaching beyond what our capacity is and um we also have a foundation board that helps in support the in particular the fundraising for BCA and that's always back and forth conversation with um what's the environment that we're living in what's the outlook financially um what's in place how much of your budget is in that 90 percentile sort of guaranteed and where is the risk and we discuss risk a lot your foundation board is a point self-appointed it is a self-appointed yes it's a 501c3 is this a city of point rivers not to the foundation to the to the advisory advisory board in the city it's all approved by the city it's an open process two times a year in a few with candidates um public it's all publicly done and then the recommendations from our board go to the mayor and the candidates are approved by the mayor funded to serve that's about thanks um i had a question about the private donation grants and sponsorships who does that work how has it been done and i hope you pass decisions in the budget now we have a um i would say one of the strongest development departments that we've had in many years it's very professionalized and we've got additional support for the first time to help with our corporate sponsorship and underwriting because that is a very different kind of care and feeding system and bringing donors back into underwriting festivals and events is a significant piece of our fundraising so that's managed by the team who actually does the fundraising is all of us we look at the entire 18 member staff at BCA as part of fundraising but we have um you know two essentially two FT's in in the department that focus here around fundraising don't we have our traffic this person coming on is not really a grant writer it's really the management grant writing is done both by development Sarah Katz here is one of our stars um it depends on which grant is being applied for as to which team members are engaged in grant writing yeah multiple team members write grants usually the person who's the most works on that and you know we all chip in to help make sure that the components they're usually pretty complex to make sure that the components are all there as a development team but other staff members great they're further further questions uh on mine council on mine couple questions thank you Doreen and Sarah for the presentation thank you and also thank you so much for the work that you have done to create that database you know it has been very helpful a lot of people especially when it was really needed thank you I wanted to go to your organizational chart of 2023 right um and just try to understand the color coding that exists so it seems all the pink are full-time employees right some of them are volunteers in blue can you hear me right okay and there are a couple of colors such as the studio assistant teaching artists installation support and gallery staff what are what are those why they code it differently um the purple um the purple boxes are the uh tent procedural um positions um and the pink pink are the regular full-time and then blue are volunteers I don't know where we're very color-oriented in our department that's good that makes sense you know for your department yeah um yes and you know you talked about a little bit the board seats and it seems that you are a five four one c organization that gives you the ability maybe to raise funds and and and all of that and from my perspective this is just an observation that it doesn't seem that the city council is somewhat involved with what's happening in bca it seems this organization was created let's say over 30 years now or nearly 30 years do you see the need of creating a commission uh for the arts maybe in culture you know for the city of Burlington um I think very intentionally when we were we realized becoming a department of the city of Burlington the leadership at that time felt that a commission was the wrong kind of governance structure and that an organization that needed the kind of um flexibility if you will as well as the types of programming and the engagement in such a large and broad community would be better served not by political appointments but by a board that could represent um the interests of the larger community and the kind of professional support that we needed depending on the focus of the programs and activities of that time and our board just to speak to this because I think it's really important is that our board even though it's advisory it acts like a governing board so every everything that a regular 503 would do um with a private nonprofit our board sees as their responsibility in terms of reviewing and approving budgets having committees in the key program areas larger efforts like inclusion and belonging and strategic planning and communications and marketing and in addition to that advisory board which currently is we just voted on members it's currently 18 members it also has members of the public who serve on some of those committees so for example our inclusion and belonging has two community members that are serving on that board and it's on that committee excuse me and it's often a really great way for someone to get to know us better and to think about is this an organization that I want to make a commitment to applying to be on the board and we brought new board members in that way by their experience on one of the committees yes and you know again I do believe that if we have a board and you know those board seats basically don't have a term limit or even if they have they do there are term limits for the board there's a whole public process it's on our website and um yeah I'd be happy to share that you know deeper with you and there is a call twice a year to invite members of the public to come to um put in an application and we always stress where the areas of greatest need are so that we try to attract individuals who can support us in those arenas yeah thank you um yes thank you for and I will share that with you out councillor jen please yes thank you um you know and I feel like you it seems that you're making some efforts here um this year at least I have heard that there will be increase in uh you know funding more the performing arts and you know when you look at the organizational chart as well you'll see that you know most of these positions are just focusing on you know exhibits on galleries but not the performing arts and also this is what I'm hearing from the artists in the city of Burlington yes you are providing some funds for you know artists through the community grants you know but also most artists do not access those funds sometimes they run out right and I was just wondering what will it take at least for the general budget um to definitely include a collaborative development of the performing arts to definitely develop and have a strategic plan how do we better support and not just fund you know through just artist grants the arts is not only performing the arts is also about poet the poets in the city you know are they teaching how how are we ensuring their developments you know I see some of them used to meet at the library in order to expand the horizon of what the artists are interested in this in this field you know musicians as well these arts education that you're providing I haven't seen or heard anybody to talk about I want to learn how to play guitar or piano you know and these positions don't seem to reflect any of those needs in this community you know the theater for example there is some cabaret some people who are doing some type of work and they're doing on a private um from a private standpoint I'm not even talking about the cinema you know the arts is so vast and I do believe that we need to pay a particular attention in supporting the arts and to do it you know we need to fund the art institution and develop a structure that is definitely supporting an ecosystem that supports every single artist in you know in the city of Wellington and I hope definitely that as part of your budget maybe at least the 50 46% of the general fund that you would consider bringing a strategic plan bringing the the art organization in the city and to look into how do we better support all artists in the city I would definitely would want to see this in 2023 as part of your budget and was wondering if that's a possibility how will it look like and how the city council can support um you know that area as well. Councillor Chang you were you here for my present our presentation tonight because I went pretty deeply into how we currently and have increased over the last four years significantly our support of the performing arts and I when I look at this organizational chart I don't see that it may have some people extra people who help in exhibition but when you look at the events division the number of performing artists that are supported through there through cinema through poetry through um musicians through uh our festival of fools through um not first time first night highlight um it it is significant it is significant and so yes I mean I have a commitment we have a commitment as a department of the city to 100 represent and to support all art forms and all medias but we also do this in an ecology of understanding what else is happening in the community so the Flynn and the chamber music and all of the other organizations of which there are 53 art organizations in Burlington we gather and talk and work through things that we collectively do together and where somebody has strength and where they need support and we we know we can't do everything we absolutely you know do our best but we have to do this in partnership with the rest of the organizations and individuals who have strengths um and bring great versatility um and offerings to the community but I I hear your point um Councillor Jenner I hope uh at least I answer your question you got a couple other questions um and we're getting late on time um and I do know that uh stories are uh when this kind of uh interest has come up in the past and worked very hard with counselors to uh to address any concerns there are I'm sure we could have offline conversations as well we'd like to discuss more um there you go to do you have another question or is or is that what you have for now Councillor Tech? I mean I yes I do but I will basically just circle back about you know an interest to look into this further thank you for the invitation okay excellent uh Councillor um President Paul and then Councillor Burtman okay uh thanks um actually I think Gene had his hand up first but that's okay um I have just a quick question which is really a follow-up to the question that Councillor Jang had asked and it was my impression that on the exact on the you know the advisory board that you have or the board that you have that there that there are members of that board who are appointed in perpetuity that they have been given um seats um in perpetuity is that not the case because that's what my understanding was is that there are four or five members of the board that have been there um at least as long as I can remember um and I thought that that was the case so is that not the case that there is no one who has served on your board for say more than I don't know four terms or I and and forgive me I don't know how long the term is the terms are three years there can be three three year terms and after that there is a special class that is approved each year by the board which allows a person to serve another year okay so there are and there are five people in that class right now and in September there will be two people in that class okay so the of the five people three of them have served their 10 years yes and need to and need to get off the board now is there a rule that you have that they have to get off for one year and then could continue to go back can come back on yes that would reapply right okay so I think that might be where I have the confusion because it appears to me that I I sometimes see the same names um for long long periods of time and I think that's maybe where I had gotten the impression that they were being appointed in perpetuity um but that's my mistake um okay thank you um thank thank you and thanks for all your good work thank you great councillor Bergman are you still wishing to wish me your happiness thank you mayor and hi to Doreen and Sarah long time no see um we go back a long way and so it's not a surprise that equity is uh one of the essential um attributes of bca that's the reason that bernie uh created it in the first place so I am wondering I might have missed them in the the 20 pages of slides but I don't think so if there are metrics that you've got related to the number of low income students and other participants uh what I mean by other participants other uh low you know you've got other programs so the number of folks that are would be considered to be low income the number that are getting scholarships I'm trying to really just see if we can put numbers on the um the notion that we are serving poor and working people which is a big um concern and interest of mine um and then to the extent to which we've got um free events and you talked about that um and so that is open to everybody um it might be also helpful if there were any ways to get estimates on those that may be harder in something like the festival of fools where you've got an open air you know downtown um event but where where we can do that so we can put some numbers on the people that we're serving for free um I would appreciate that and if you'd I would love it to be part of the the budget narrative if it's not um and if it is if you could just point me to that place it'd be great and that's the only comments questions that I've got so we can add it and we do actually uh Jean have numbers sometimes they're estimated based on you know sort of how you do a account for all of our festivals and when we can like any event city hall park for example where there's free programming we always do caps for that and now there is a new system or the system is back up um downtown and we are able to do more significant counts of crowds that come to larger events and then very much down into the weeds we can tell you how many scholarships we give over over the year etc how many young people are being served in program how many classes we've served etc that would that would all be great I'm actually a fan of universal programs as opposed to means tested programs um don't know whether you've ever piloted um such uh an approach that just uh lets people know what the cost is but then uh doesn't require people indeed to uh say that they're indeed and apply for scholarships I think it's actually a disincentive but that can be a conversation for another time um that I'd love to have and promote yeah sounds interesting thank you thanks jean all right um I am not seeing any other hands uh in the room or online so um all right thank you um I would just uh just know that um if I were to just add now I would just want to be um uh you know for the years uh really since um starting since 2018 I believe we've had a real focus on equity in the youth programs and how to ensure that our um programs are serving uh Burlington kids uh low-income Burlington children and there's been a dramatic change in the numbers that we've documented through btb stat effort and um and I think it's still a rich rich conversation to have and one that we have a lot of work to do but I think to come uh to come a considerable distance and continue to uh be focused on the same goals the counselors just started with that I think uh we will close out the pca here's orian sarah and then okay so um thanks tonight is um not my first budget presentation but my first budget presentation to fully encompass essentially um the work that my team and I have been doing for a little over two years now um uh we are codifying this under the title um department of business and workforce development um and uh um so to give you an idea of how our department is structured again this is nothing new this is how we have been operating for the past two years um one arm is the tertiary marketplace which as you know has its own separate budget um due to its uh self-funded department so it's most of its fees uh most of its revenue rather is raised through marketplace fees um and then also for um permits and other revenue streams that we have created the center section of this slide you'll see is the work we've been doing um in business development citywide we've run for example the micro business development um a lot of micro business alliance um we'll be bringing to tomorrow a revolving loan fund focused on women and um bi-pop owned small businesses because as we know the recovery is still not over we do a lot of direct training technical support um working on recruitment and retention and we have many incubation programs trying to get a lot of our small home-based entrepreneurs into brick and mortar um we've also branched out into workforce development um uh when this body moved to the early learning initiative over to my team um we find that the early learning initiative is um one of our most impactful workforce development tools um and so we have been running training programs for child care um givers through that program uh and we are working and coordinating with new and expanding businesses to help them identify their needs so again a new department name but essentially the same work um a lot of the synergy that we are discovering is some of the work that we do on the church street marketplace can easily be scaled up and applied to businesses in other areas of the city um we this allows us to give sort of wraparound support so we're going to provide technical needs uh technical support training grants loans uh workforce development this way we can approach businesses from all sides to help them the team is also still along with Catherine's office managing the ARPA funds um and managing the oversight of a lot of the projects that have um already been improved approved by this body and um and working on community engagement and um after REID was formed we definitely learned through our trainings to uh try and tailor a lot of our support and offerings to meet the needs of a lot of our diverse business owners um just a couple highlights from this past fiscal year we have 47 children uh enrolled in our early learning initiative program our largest grant was uh the hundred three thousand dollar grant we recently um helped support the opening of the one arts children's center um and uh in terms of the economic recovery work as I said we're managing the the 27 million with Catherine's office and um we had uh our uh ARPA survey that went out it was our highest response survey for the city including our highest BIPOC response and in terms of business development we do administer a portion of the CBBG grants that um in collaboration with CEDO that the city receives as you know that grant money flows directly into CEDO and we apply for some use of that to support small businesses so we dispersed approximately 260 000 this past year 195 which went to um BIPOC owned businesses a few more highlights continued um we can name 50 local businesses that we've provided direct support to uh mostly to stabilize a lot of them that we're struggling after um the pandemic or during or ongoing um and we also keep a commercial database of commercial spaces so we find if businesses will contact us if they're expanding or moving um and we help them um and then we produce the one world markets both the summer winter we do the pop-up markets in the park um we do the winter market and in collaboration with BCA and also in collaboration with BCA the upcoming summer market on the marketplace side some highlights are just um we've got voted the best public square in America we've hosted over 30 events and um we're happy to say that 85 percent of the businesses reported this past holiday season after their first quarter was done and they filed their taxes they could really take a look at their holiday season and they reported that they were back to pre-pandemic levels of sales which is a great indicator. Structure of the department I will get into all of these you can see them online the staffing for funding comes from basically an amalgamation of ARPA funds general funds church tree marketplace um CBBG funds pilot funds which are used solely to fund our early learning initiative program and our early learning initiative manager and um our earned revenue and then highlights for the marketplace for fiscal year 23 still planning to host at least 30 events or more um we've revamped our cart vendor program to provide some training and mentorship matching so that businesses that have been successful as you all know skinny pancake and honks dumplings we're all carts on the marketplace that are now fairly successful brick and mortar locations so we're having them mentor some of our new cart vendors in the hopes that we can use this as an incubator feeder program um we are supporting BIPOC business owners looking to operate on the marketplace right now we have placed three BIPOC business owners in our downtown which is new for many of you who may or probably know this um the majority of downtown and church tree marketplace business owners are white and not part of our minority community and we're working to diversify the business owners that are in our downtown um as we work closely with the Howard center and the various branches of the police to um work on safety and security we work with um I guess what I'm trying to show here is our inter departmental approach to work with DPW on parking concerns and we are looking forward to launching a new website and marketing efforts to drive more tourism um what to expect in the coming fiscal year for business development um we have uh technical support including classes loan education marketing targeted towards BIPOC and women owned businesses along with Burlington City Arts we're hosting 18 weeks uh 18 Saturdays of the summer market and four weeks of the winter market and um we work with the old north end arts and business uh group to produce the one world markets with them and we use all of those to highlight um a lot of businesses that are home based that don't have access to the type of customer base that you might have in the downtown um it allows them more exposure than they normally have and through our love Burlington um marketing arm which is a website and an Instagram account we're able to promote the small locally owned businesses off of church street to give them more of a highlight than they're normally used to we are um using a small business revolving loan fund which we'll discussing tomorrow in our ARPA discussion in a little more detail um and through real estate and business recruitment and retention um those programs we are working on to expand in fiscal year 23 um more uh in in terms of the ELI program we really do view this as one of our most impactful workforce development programs um in terms of we we do speak in our intake with all the families we found that 82 percent of the families that use this program would not be able to work without ELI funding um so we are we are having a direct impact on increasing available workforce out there uh we are looking to expand our child care provider partnerships recognizing that we do have um due to the labor shortage we are fearful that some child care providers may be taking in fewer children and to keep our numbers up and to be able to allow these parents to go back to the workforce so we are going to increase the number of child care providers that we work with we only work with high quality providers so four and five stars on the state system um and uh we're continuing to structure individual grants as needed as the landscape for um child care changes i believe the state is changing their approach and the federal government is changing their approach we're hoping this might free up more funds for us to in the new fiscal year study the gaps that the state's universal pre-k program has so that we are finding that some families once they age out of the ELI scholarships um they have to leave the workforce until their children are of school age so we're hoping to fill that gap as well um and we'll continue to run our training programs which are social and emotional training for children child care providers rather um and it matches um the Burlington school system social and emotional training so that the children in our care system have a continuity of care um and we're planning to launch two more workforce training programs this is the tertiary marketplace budget um the gap in this budget was i don't know if we want to address it so the gap i left in these two high charts was because um as you know i don't draw on the general fund for the tertiary marketplace and i'm trying to leave some room for um possible labor cost increase based on our cola negotiations yes kevin's nodding um and you can see the revenue structure broken down not much of this has changed in terms of the breakdowns we are um finding new revenue streams however um and we have a good pitch deck knowing that if if a local business does um advertise on the street we track the foot traffic on the street and we can price it letting them know how much additional um visual engagement that they do get if they're on the street the workforce and business development budget includes ELI um ELI is all pilot funds um previously i had worked under the title of uh business support and economic recovery but also had a separate budget um separate from the tertiary marketplace um and this budget it involves a 210 000 decrease in our draw on the general funds while still trying to expand our programs um and as i said before funding staff is funded from a very diverse pool of funds um and that and that's it the interest of keeping it short great the floor is opening the counselors for questions counselor bergman go ahead uh thank you and i just want to first say um how much i have appreciated working with uh kara and uh will on the north winooski avenue corridor issue i really really appreciate that and i think that the work that will is doing out on the street with businesses is really really important and really good so um and actually my my comments are not so much about the the ongoing work but a continuing question that i've got about the governmental structure that we are uh moving into and this may be more directed to the mayor and uh the city attorney who probably is not there and that relates to the relationship between the non church street marketplace aspect of this department the the business support etc um and the um and the cito charter that uh that we've got so i i am just really confused about the authority to take functions from cito and bring them over to a new department um and perhaps there is a charter change that i should be expecting as the chair of the charter change committee and would welcome cleaning this up and making this uh really clear but um you know i i believe that uh cito is also got some workforce development um work uh i i've mentioned a little bit of this uh with with jillian or she is actually chatted with me a little bit about it um and so um perhaps this is more of a um a flag and not a a request for any you know much of a discussion on this but i i i'm troubled i just want to lay that out and has nothing to do with cara it has everything to just do with the the big picture and but on a particular thing leaving that to the side um in 2018 the city allocated funds for jobs with people update it's a study that deals with the economic development strategy and demographics and assortment of other information and recommendations that is really a comprehensive economic development strategy and that was never undertaken and i've very much interested in getting an updated jobs and people um report when i have inquired with cito which was the first place that i thought to go uh it was not clear what department was supposed to be uh uh engaging on that and so i i'm using this as the first opportunity i don't know what department r e i b cito this business support it does sort of blend in with my problems with the uh the governmental structure that we are evolving or devolving into so can somebody there maybe it's not cara talk to me about jobs with people jobs and people thank you councilmember happy happy to speak to uh to everything you just uh thank you raised although um perhaps as you suggest some of it um this may be initial conversation some aspects that let me i'll speak to jobs and people uh first you are correct that we did budget 25 000 four jobs and people study um i believe for the first time in the i may not be quite right about this but i think it was a f y 19 budget um and uh there were two things that happened that delayed that work from starting one was a transition within cito leadership um and then secondly was the onset of the pandemic and the kind of cessation of a lot of non-essential activities um talent director i was not aware you had been raising questions about this uh council bergman um but my mind was on this uh as well councilor pine and i actually discussed this uh this week and um we uh you will see tomorrow day in the um i i believe it's tomorrow day we have a review of uh several one-time money um expended uh kind of uh areas of the budget the um arpa spending as well as uh um our unassigned fund balance spending as well as our it's actually three different areas uh we are we are taking we're proposing taking things out of our assigned fund balances and updating that all this creates potential for quite a bit of one-time uh investment capacity and we will be proposing adding to the initial $25,000 another $75,000 to give cito up to $100,000 to conduct this jobs and people study um i think this is uh a critical i think it's in some ways maybe it's fortuitous that um this delay has happened in that i i think a report right now post pandemic grappling with what the pandemic has done to the economy and changed the nature of work may result in a very different kind of roadmap for the future than we would have done perhaps before the pandemic and i'm i'm really eager to see what a good team can come up with to help us rethink you know what does the economy of the of burlington look like we um after uh you know after going through the traumatic events the last couple years we are already one area that never i never really fully understood about our economy that surprised me frankly was the softness over the last decade of our office market um despite the fact that many downtowns across the country have had a fairly thriving office market in recent decades ours really hasn't been that and that always bothered me and felt like something maybe the city could intervene into a way and have an impact on um that is even more a question now we've seen a further softening of that market um uh since the pandemic i think it really does raise um the question you know what are the jobs that the future in burlington going to be and that's my understanding of what a report like this will will create so i think we're very much aligned there hope you find that a satisfying uh response and yes i can speak to it further if you have further questions would be just his presentation um the uh with respect to the this new new department i be and i did note and you telegraphed and i appreciate it that you would be asking this question i don't take that i think this is an entirely fair question and i appreciate the i appreciate it and i appreciate the sentiment with this offered and i had not and i appreciate the uh willingness to consider a charter change if that's necessary um my my belief is that that is not necessary um i don't have a city attorney here tonight to speak to this apart because we don't have a permanent city attorney right now it's sort of unfortunate um i and so we may i'm not sure how much more i will be able to provide to you before the vote on the budget and and i let me be clear i do think um we cannot create this new department just by mayoral fiat i think our the uh presentation tonight is hope to be a step towards the council approval of this new uh new department structural change that is the way uh that we have created two other new departments over the last decade um one being the uh the innovation and technology department and the other being the the racial equity inclusion and belonging uh department um i so we have at least you know through ilean's time um you know that that has been the way we have we have made these significant structural changes to the government based on mayoral recommendation and council approval um there was one that we did differently because it did i directly involve charter uh re reorganization of charter responsibilities which we're specifically spoken to uh with the department of permitting inspections and i do appreciate that you certainly are raising a fair point that there is some language in the charter already about um economic development and the authority of cito to to work on that um our read um and again this is a little bit of the mayor playing a lawyer which is i don't have to see attorney here to speak to it but i do not um see uh the language in the charter is being it certainly says that cito has the authority to work on economic development it does not uh it does not have language that um suggests to me that that is supposed to be exclusive authority of cito that no one else in the city is to work on economic development or forced development issues um moreover um uh and i recognize that you carved out in your question the tertiary marketplace but i think it's it's an important point that the charter um explicitly recognizes that there is you know further kind of reinforcing the idea that that wasn't meant to be an exclusive ability to work on economic development uh is the fact that the charter um that there is this other city department the tertiary marketplace uh that has certainly done economic development activities um uh throughout its four year existence and frankly um part of what is bringing has led to us bringing forward this proposal is that um that um dual the fact that more than one department has worked on economic development issues over time i have long found to be um a source of some uh there would be some gaps and there would be some um lack of clarity as to who would do what and some missed opportunities and those uh during the pandemic we couldn't afford those missed opportunities we needed to be really communicating and supporting very extensively uh the business community to help them survive you know it was really a matter of survival for uh business in this community that they get that kind of support and we made these changes and from my perspective they worked i think we are doing you know i can only speak to the last decade but i really feel strongly that we are doing a better job uh supporting and serving our businesses than we have ever done during my my time in this office and that's why i i want to codify it and make it permanent um i do think this is a question of interpretation uh certainly if there was you know a majority of the council that really was uncomfortable with this approach and felt differently and wanted to take it through a charter change you know let's keep talking about that i i do see that as a significant um you know i just uh it's let's i made my case basically i've laid this out to you let's i think let's not fog down the whole evening and debating it further tonight at length maybe you want to have any reaction i'm not cutting that off but i would say we have a month to pass the budget and i would welcome i know you and i have some meetings coming up i'd welcome the ability to talk further with you about how we get get to a meeting on the lens of this i i i i welcome the the the opportunity i will not bog down uh my uh the emergency is over and uh the time to get clarity is um at a hand with regard to this and i would be open to a conversation uh and uh i reckon that uh i will accept your invitation to talk with my fellow counselors about this as well as uh uh your your invitation to keep talking about this my my goal is to um to make sure that we're doing the right thing going forward and there's no reason why we can't chew gum and walk at the same time so uh thanks for the explanation and i have no other questions or comments regarding this important uh endeavor that we have excellent thank you councillor bergman and again i appreciate the spirit and uh the opportunity to to have a good also conversation about this um are there i or i don't have to sorry you're i didn't mean to cut you out of that no you don't you don't have to all like i i just wanted to because i have some confusion and i really respect councillor bergman where you're coming from um i think my confusion is around there uh my confusion is around that this body and the full council voted unanimously several years ago to reorg all of the business economic development work onto my team and they also voted unanimously this body and um council to re or all the ELI program under me so just to add that as a layer of complexity for me that i just wanted to to be clear that it wasn't that this came out of nowhere there this was that i have given presentations and come to board of finance and council and had votes to have this reorganization including votes that our current CEDO director voted for so i'm just i'm i'm just that's all expressing my confusion but i do appreciate your candor without a doubt and i know that will have a great afternoon with you on friday and i do look forward to furthering the discussion with you i will pass up the opportunity to uh to pontificate about the differences between actions taken uh during a a national and international emergency and the status that we are in now and look forward to a conversation because i think we all have the same um interest which is to have a vibrant economic development office and strategy and activities and make sure that all of our businesses are and the workers are well supported so i look forward to continuing to to have this conversation great thank you so much yep are there any other questions from kester barrett thank you um thank you for the important work you do um i had questions about the business recruitment and retention efforts yes and we've seen as the mayor pointed out softening um the office market you know the big employers that used to be the elder plant of rda yep they're not here um and we've seen even some of the retail retail so yearbells leave lo beans leave them to have their new story post and i'm wondering if there's part of your effort would be to attract businesses small maybe region only international to the downtown we need we need those sort of anchor businesses and i you know is is there any effort there is there any camera in the your budget coming here to yeah there definitely is and i would love to undertake that i think a lot of the a portion of that a large portion that doesn't need actual funding i think that involves staff time so i think where you see those funds as you see them in staff time um i have for example well let me back up yes we i do think we have a soft office market i don't think this whole work from home stands has helped that um gallagher flinn uh my accountant is now in colchester and one of those industrial parks um i my personal opinion is that burlington its office market the way it's set up should be attracting some different sorts of businesses so i have um had a couple meetings with hula as they they're a full occupancy and as they so to speak push some of these smaller businesses out of the nest where these businesses want to expand they don't have the space within hula we are orchestrating a warm and off to burlington and hula themselves they're interested in keeping these businesses within chitenden county or um you know at least the state of vermont especially because of the way their investment fund is structured um and we want to make sure that first we're there with burlington and we've spoken to some of these businesses that are looking to leave are um having struggling in the work in terms of workforce looking for basic coders um which i think we're reducing at a high rate from champlain college so some of those could be retained we keep um a database and i work with property owners about spaces that are available so those are the pieces that i would put together um in terms of recruitment and retaining um we did speak with a for example the coffee cup facility which is quite a large facility which is still vacant we got pretty far um burlington was chosen as one of the three finalists for a tech company that for lack of a better description splits shifts into very fine and that's as far as my knowledge went um and they ended up taking um a space in texas but um but we are communicating with them and when we can't find who we're struggling to answer some of their questions we have a good communication with gbic to try and loop them in their expertise in the larger regional area um i do think i see more businesses coming to town that are smaller that are tech focused um we obviously have a little aviation niche right now that i think needs to be supported um we definitely have a niche in medical technology whether that was started with idx or not and i think that needs to be supported as well um so those sort of outreach recruitment efforts from my perspective need sort of a multi-vested approach but do you have you have money in your budget for the kind of near to sort of support that activity of staff yes of staff availability my other question was around um and came up in the mayor's panel meeting this morning it's like church street a number of businesses that are still operating under sort of limited hours yeah days is there anything in the business and workforce development effort that needs to be addressed marketplace specifically yeah i i mean i'll be candid if the the tight labor market is almost unbearable for most of us including the city of berlington um the limited hours are completely and solely related to the tight labor market um i'm hoping that now that final exams are over we might have some more of um our university students that are available to work for the summer hours um we have worked with uvm um and connecting them in terms of they do grant a job fair and making sure that the marketplace businesses are at the job fair and linking them um the tight labor market i read about constantly i don't have a solution for it i'll be frank that there are resources in the upcoming budget to continue that definitely around connecting connecting yeah and again you'll see and aside from the pli pilot so pli is a lot of funds outgoing right grants and scholarships but you'll see that that for the rest of the business workforce development budget it's staff heavy um and for example where i am looking to i have at the budget someone would be an assistant to will to do some of the i think we'll spend some time on outreach that that is very time intensive and he has a great policy mind and i'd like to move him into that more so trying to restructure through staffing so that we can develop more policies to address these issues which are critical and not going away yeah any further council questions okay seeing none we will close out this section thank you very much Cara yeah and um next we have Bill Ward and the department of re-inspection she'll set you up and then that's before we're back yeah happy to have you up i had my paper that's pretty like you when i turn the paper you yeah and i can still do that if you like and it's cool paper we have many options there welcome bill thank you mr mayor good evening everyone and uh i'm going to try to be brief that's not one of my strong suits but i would do my very best um i want to start whenever i think i would like said you're long-winded to my wife mr mayor keep it short bill is a common phrase yes so i start with this first photo i feel like every year because it's a opportunity to show our housing staff at work and it's also a chance to give a shameless plug for our spring moveout project which we do every year in concert with the university university march and college as the students are moving out it helps keep some of the junk out of the greenbells in the neighborhood and it'll be happening this friday and then next tuesday friday on luma street and uh fuel street on tuesday the core functions of our department are similar to last year but for those that are used to just the code enforcement functions we do not only the rental housing inspections of the just over 11,000 rental units in the city now we do housing inspections which include health inspections health inspections primarily are those things that are part of the healthy housing code from the state of vermont and that work is done in coordination with the board of health our zoning team led by scott gustin works on the zoning development review that work is done in coordination with among other groups the development review board our trades permit team building plumbing electrical uh that work is done in coordination and if there are appeals of those things they're done in coordination with the department public works commission and the final major task for the core function of our they get building enforcement the organization for the department just so you have an overview uh the person on the left hand side is sort of a catchall admin person celeste is the front facing person that someone would see when they walk in the door in office she's sort of a master of all the different things um handles a lot of the primary trades issues but can handle just about any other task that comes in the door the trades team is in that next column we have two building inspectors one plumbing mechanical inspector and new this year we have a second electrical inspector the zoning team is in the next column over again led by scott gustin he has two planners that work with him along with uh zoning clerk or i'm sorry i should have listed that that's inappropriate i said clerk but uh joseph is actually a tech he is a technician who we hired about a month ago and handles permits that come in routinely on the front and if they need for the review go to the planners 10 miles in the middle of that column is our sort of go to enforcement person on the zoning team and charlene is our admin person for the uh zoning group patty wayman who i believe is listening tonight uh but not here maybe available if we have questions about the housing team but i can't answer uh she's the the housing manager for that group with four inspectors an administrator and in that same column just for organizational purposes i've got the three seasonal graffiti removal staff um the big sort of high level changes i mentioned the electrical inspector was just added two months ago and that started to have a big impact on the wait times i checked last year i'm sorry last week to confirm that the wait times for inspections were previously were up to six weeks um the both inspectors had available time within a seven day period for inspection so feeling much better about our ability to respond quickly when there are requests for electrical inspections this upcoming budget does maintain the current personnel and resources a small caveat to that is that you'll see in the budget line for the housing division if you will there is a reduction of uh fy 23 uh 83 thousand dollars which is primarily the elimination of what i would say is an effective management position when we transition to the department of permitting inspections we transition 10 miles into what was a management position as the enforcement officer that council helped with the reclassification and voted on that position he vacated a union position as inspector and became a union person a union worker in the position that was previously a management position so effectively we were union neutral but that vacant inspector position hadn't been filled the last few years and i have recommended not filling it going forward and moving it from the budget so that's one significant change there uh we'll be continuing with three graffiti removal staff we had three last summer season and one just left us within the last month and in april we posted jobs for three more people similar to what cara just mentioned we have had a difficult time getting a lot of applicants but um we do have some people that will be available as soon as the school year ends um this photo i chose those for a reason because that was last year when the graffiti removal team was on uh south union street by a consolidated communication so they got to meet the mayor and talk about their work and then with capsules yang out in the new north end there was a school incident involving one of the playgrounds having some pretty horrific graffiti they worked the art graffiti staff worked with the school department staff to get that cleaned up the same day that we got the report from council ashay we expect we'll be able to do the same thing in the upcoming year um and the last thing for this i would say we will be returning in 2023 to what we consider pre-pandemic levels with some addition we do think that there's room for growth with that i would say part of the change in the building permits and zoning permits the work that through the permits is done uh the the cost of the permits is related to the estimated cost of construction probably seen that construction costs have sort of skyrocketed there's no mean for us to raise the traditional building permit fees we expect that those are going to be increased just by nature of the increased costs for construction the initiatives we'll be working on this year actually this is more of a continuation but we just really started that weatherization initiative with the ordinance change that occurred at the end of last year but that work will continue over the next three years we'll be working on the charter change with Darren and his crew of decarbonizing new construction and i hope that and i told the mayor by June 6th i will have a council resolution to bring forward some electric permit amendments which would eliminate some of the lower end electrical permits give people some of the hard times with uh sort of getting through the door and getting simple projects done that most people think they can do without a permit now we agree it's like in-kind replacement of permits i'll get to that full resolution in june but i just want you to know that that's coming and the last item there is council the council had heard some of this discussion it's been on the shelf waiting to get implemented but i'll be coming back with an update to the housing ordinance to raise the standard for mental units for FY 23 and i'm happy to answer any questions great bill thank you floor is open any councillors uh great questions for council bergman but my my goodness you'd think that somebody else would have some questions on these things actually the the only question is a follow-up on the report that was published i'm looking at a cax report from april 27th regarding the weatherization ordinance and it noted that only 50 of the landlords had eclipsed their compliance records have actually scheduled a free energy audit and the rest are being fined and i am wondering one if you have got an update on that and two your assessment of the resources that you can bring to bear to upgrade the the weatherization condition of our apartments which i think are fairly pathetic sure i will say i was very pleased with the news story because the news the evening news was not even over when one of the people who had to comply called my cell phone to explain it would be on the phone the next morning to get it resolved that confirm with the mock gas that that's happened i think there are a few people that have dates to come compliance dates and they've been with that council bergman but are complied by dates on the last few people still have in the next week or two they they have a little bit of time i think we're closer to 90 percent compliant at this point but if i were to use the comply by date i would say it's 100 percent compliance from my gas saw a big spike in the number of people after that news story that got their weatherization work scheduled so i think we're on a much faster track to get that accomplished and i met with darren's team earlier this week to talk about working on the 2023 compliance group starting on july 1st so i think we're going to have a much better roll out of that and give that group of uh property owners a lot more time to come into compliance because we're going to get them noticed six months before they even need the comply so i think that transition will be a lot smoother excellent perhaps another news story that would put a fire under them would not be a bad idea thank you i'm good thank you councillor bergman um further further questions looks like you are off the hook um bill really great news about the electrical sections in the wild side uh check on that and um that's important for us so thank you um okay next up we have brian time and cito welcome brian can you make believe me kathleen it's a cute up or do i get myself i am killing forward button that i push yes unless you like we can take control we're going to drive receipt okay great um i would say thanks the uh opportunity to sit in on this side of the table is um is an interesting perspective especially preparing for uh how to describe a department that says really kind of fast as cito is not that we're huge in terms of staff numbers but we cover such a broad um mandate or mission really and i know it's been a year of of building and rebuilding that um has not necessarily um been a we've not been able to necessarily advance all of our goals and initiatives as much because we've been really focused and busy on staffing up and we'll talk about that but i think it's important just to always revisit you know what's your charge what's your mission and cito's mission to engage or community to build a vibrant healthy and equitable city or our sort of vision for what that will look like when we are ultimately successful is to make brilliant and most livable just the connected community in america by empowering individual voices in the life of our city by fostering healthy neighborhoods and housing choice and advancing people's center development and we do this sort of throughout the range of programs and initiatives and sort of projects that cito advances we have our city charter which helps us at cito at least keep focused on you know what our city whole city council and city voters have essentially charged us with as far as carrying out the public's work with a charter that essentially says work on behalf of our city to stimulate investment retaining attracting and retaining and encouraging the development of both existing and new economic enterprises to develop coordinate implemented and minister of economic community development strategies and projects for the city and to develop coordinate implement minister comprehensive programs to address the city's housing needs and lastly at least on this list to develop coordinated implement and administer waterfront development activities other than those activities which the planning commission city council must exercise while planning development this charter was around 1993 i think the voters put it into the charter i was involved at the time and can tell you that they've been talked about sort of maybe sort of merging cito back into planning or doing something else with it or putting a commission over cito that would get to decide what the department's efforts were focused on and this is probably a response to to that so we are now organized under four teams or divisions administration and finance which really is is where a lot of our housing programs reside and Todd's with me tonight serves the right now the acting assistant director for that team community justice headed up by rachel jolly i think everyone knows is essentially we're trying to address and demilitarate the effects of crime and conflict in our community community works which is cement the dunce team facilitate relationships doing private public entities to bolster economic development and improve the quality of life and invest in place an opportunity engagement which was headed by jillian nanton focused on creating opportunities for connection engagement to advance economic racial social equity within our community our work chart has already changed since this slide was only put together a couple weeks ago where it says at the top there's the director there's the assistant director's position that's listed as vacant as sarah rossel in that position in purple and the position of assistant director of grants and finances currently being filled by Todd at the acting hall so we have to just point that out and confess we didn't upgrade the the work chart on this page anyway you will see that we have the teams that are organized with the addition of a new team that is the special assistant and homelessness with a real focus on systems level changes that are really what are the hallmark of cities which have addressed homelessness in a successful way that actually brings us to what is termed functional zero what that means is that you created a pathway for people to go from homelessness into permanent housing and you are ensuring that those who re-enter the sort of the ranks of the homeless that that is both rare and brief that folks have a really clear pathway. Sorry to interrupt these two moments one of our attendees our favorite Sharon busher has raised her hand and I just want to make sure there's not a logistical problem. Sharon I've enabled your microphone um is there a problem do you have a problem hearing or some other problem that we can address? I'm I'm so sorry I was scanning through the org chart I must have hit Britney's hand. I just want to make sure everyone has all the info I'm going to lower your hand and let Brian keep going thank you. Thank you. I thought maybe since there's a couple big positions. Yes. I'm wondering whether any of these jobs are really available um the current uh vacancies at CEDO that are being filled again is Katie Kinstead's position as assistant director for grants and finance as well as um Pitki Ammanavan's position that is currently in the process of being filled those are the there's other positions here but they will probably continue to remain vacant until we uh you know if we if we see the need to make a case to the mayor and the council that we need additional funds but right now there's some positions on here which we're keeping vacant but we keep them on the org chart just to make sure folks know they still still exist on our organizational chart. I'm going to point out that the the next chart is uh not working I'm trying to click it getting there uh is really focused on um there we go uh okay so this is the CJC which as you can see is uh almost the same size as the rest of CEDO and we refer to ourselves as CEDO north because we're a block north of them so that's what we say in houses there's there's CJC and then there's CEDO north um this is a department or a division of CEDO that is grown um really considerably over the last couple of years because of the fact that court diversion which used to be a separate entity merged with the community justice center and I like to when I get a chance to mention that these functions are carried out by the community justice center are while they have a major emphasis on Burlington have sometimes a more regional impact and there are community justice centers in I think five chintin county communities and it in my mind it begs the question about is this the best way to operate these functions at each community having a community justice center are we getting the best services the community does it result the best outcomes is it cost effective I'm not necessarily saying it's not I'm just asking that putting it out there that I think it deserves more examination and that's probably done at a state level because it's funded by the department of corrections and the attorney general's office that provides the vast majority of funding about 90 percent of the CJC funding comes there from those sources and the rest comes from the general fund so it's a you know it's I think it's important question for for policymakers to be considering and I and I'm urging and Rachel Jolly fully supports this and a few of the other CJCs do so I think that conversation if we're successful will be underway in a more focused more meaningful way of coming here. I wanted to show you just by comparison the last year the or the fiscal year that we're in now these are the numbers that are attributed to Zito's budget with the blue being our grant sources about you know 88 percent grant funded general fund is represented in the middle and then the RRC which was a combination of it's primarily ARPA funds but we wanted to include that as a breakdown and just be a little point that out that that was FY 22 and FY 23 is a we've lumped into general fund the RRC costs costs for this purpose here so it's not quite apples to apples but you will see the numbers you know proportionally it's about the same terms of the relationship between general funding grant funded sources we have a significant increase in funding for ARPA related projects and programs that are affected in the 8.4 million dollar number we also have the addition of new federal funds under home ARP shows up in there as well and that's ARP which is the sort of shorter acronym for ARPA but it's the way I chose to call that program or name that program wanted to give some RRC context as to what kind of information is being requested by the public so this is when you think of constituent services that really launched under you know during COVID as a way to respond and ensure that the public was getting information about resources and programs and opportunities that we were able to give people a level of service and support they wouldn't work previously get it and so calls continue to come in very regularly with a heavy numbers leaning heavily towards sort of COVID related I think if you added up all the sort of COVID categories here it lands on about 90% COVID related that has been that has been the case really since the pandemic began that's the vast majority of both calls and emails that come in through the RRC went ahead and some highlights for the fiscal year that's ending in June as I mentioned earlier we have 38 full-time equivalents 16 of those positions have been filled since I arrived last June so 11 months we have two vacancies but it has been a year focused on reclassifications and creating positions and getting through the process of hiring so it's been very busy year in terms of that and in a challenging labor market we've done very well but it hasn't been without extra effort to get and recruit people to take positions within our office completed phase one of the grant frame development phase two is being sort of planned and mapped out right now we were at very instrumental in securing voter approval for the downtown tiff main street great streets project a 25 million dollar new bond approval ended to the existing 5.5 million for a 30.5 million dollar overall project securing 3 million in our funds focused on the issue of that homelessness we assumed management of the HUD permanent supportive housing voucher program because it was at risk of being lost as a housing resource for those experiencing homelessness that is a new role that the cities took on the city took on because our local partner that was doing it was unable to continue we have operated for the last two years the community resource center we did succeed in getting a special appropriation cds stands for a congressional directed spending of $400,000 through senator plated this bullet here has really been Todd's baby since we got word that HUD was providing us with this home art funds one and a half million of new dollars coming to Burlington for permanent affordable housing with an emphasis on serving those we're experiencing homelessness with a requirement that they be in our coordinate entry and that services be included in the provision of the housing that gets funded launched and continue to provide um forced development services both in the construction trades as well as in the healthcare sectors 20 trainees in the construction industry and 40 in the lna program um trying to build a career ladder for folks to have access to both high demand and higher paying jobs uh and as you see the recovery center rrc um handled 340 unduplicated contacts so our goals heading forward um launching the high road to the jobs program to train 35 individuals over an 18 month period for really jobs in the net zero energy workforce that we at least so badly need to meet our own goals our 2030 goals um that this is a BED partnership um to develop and hopefully the financing that will allow us to relocate the CJC and to do space if we're successful in the bfw redevelopment site so that would be a big excuse building that would have offices bfw co-located on the first floor uh the idea right now is cjc would be on the first floor as well with four levels four stories of housing above no ways to go on that but that's that's a project again deploying that one and a half million of home art maybe some of that will go into the bfw site um updating jobs and people which um concept bird been raised earlier and the mayor spoke to that was part of our plan and that is the focus on a comprehensive economic development strategic plan um this item here is really a um kind of a transitional position really a opioid response manager which has been working under reiv and um you know we i think it's safe to say that the pandemic has taught us that having some local capacity beyond what we have now for public health is is really a need i don't think there's necessarily a clear path forward for how to create more local capacity within city government for public health but this our opioid response management role has been um you know in the past has had some really good success and the administration feels that it's a priority to deserve support and will continue to be supported right now it's going to come under cdo um as an interim plan for um for how that's going to operate we're going to undertake an equity audit of the cjc that will hopefully serve as a blueprint for how other departments can perform equity audits which really focus on what does your department currently do uh and what is your culture and your practices your procedures and and what could you do differently to create a more inclusive equitable organization and also outcomes based so it'll focus on both the internal operations and your outcomes in the community we're going to do an upgrade at the cd website um we're aiming to it becomes in you know conjunction with the council um to both develop and implement an action plan for memorial auditorium and the gateway block as you know the bond question included a million dollars for stabilized memorial so we'll be bringing that issue forward um phase two of moran rezoning trinity and portions of south end for housing development um i think the mayor's laid out pretty clear telling agenda for looking at our land use policies and the need to to bring those into sort of so modernize them and make them um possible so that we can create significant new housing in burlington bringing city place from its uh where it is today to fruition remains the top goal for everyone i think um and we have a new customer relations management platform that is city will become citywide but it's basically it's a it's an add-on to c-click fix called conversations and it gives us the ability as as customers our customer service staff will have a much greater way to link its relationship and communication and public engagement to ensure that city services are best delivered in most efficient and responsive manner because this is a new a new tool that we were just learning about right we have it now but we're um getting to implement just want to share some sort of some photos of activities that staff in our office that evolved in there's a company in the south end called forbidden factory which really focuses on sustainable production it's an apparel manufacturing facility that ourself and or its district keep going past it just i think just yeah yeah time for our councillor questions okay so our l&a program up there the graduates um through one of the cohorts um a pretty pretty amazing program in terms of providing access to key jobs that are going to be jobs for people to have this more family future or for the sustainable future um we've been engaged in lots of community dialogue around the Elmwood Avenue shelter project uh we don't necessarily have everyone on board but we're engaging people everywhere we go many many meetings and we'll continue to do that the CJC continues to um do lots of training the the mediation training that the CJC has engaged in i think the counselors will be interested to hear because it's going to really try to prevent crime through mediation and get community members to learn those skills so it's a bit of a training the training the trainer i guess you will spreading those skills throughout the community and this is really just a recap of the money you've already approved but going forward this will be really important for us as we focus on homelessness through the use of our funds so you've you've approved this already so this is not new but it will be implemented coming this year and i just wanted to highlight that and close on a visual of what um this isn't exactly what it will look like but the the shelters that are planned from Elmwood Avenue will have um you know there's other examples in other parts of the country there's 80 communities that were featured the NPR and this company was featured on NPR last week and there's 80 communities that are in all kinds of climates and all kinds of locations try to address the immediate needs from shelter in this manner and this is something um you know we as a community i think are there's at least consensus we need to do something and so great thank you friend and um people there are more visuals um for the shelter hike you can uh find see a closer look it's really quite a thoughtful same plan i think from that it's a problem for me you know that that's a way i also jane did ask about language access i thought i should i did add to my slides but um it's about in the in the current budget or for a FY 23 it's about 100 000 dedicated to language access and that is really city-wide though it's throughout the city departments it's not just a CEDO it's it's every department it's it's translating balance it's translating surveys um not just a translation but actually ensuring we have a way to get them into people's hands whether it's digitally or paper or hard copies and then get them back so it's it's pretty intensive um efforts involved and um so language access is very much a key part of our um come up coming to the land i didn't mention as well that CEDO went from being a um totally exempt department to having a bargaining significance in the presence of marketing unit positions about half of our staff are now part of AFSCME which has happened during this fiscal year and i just thought that was really that was the change for quite a significant change yeah thank you for mentioning um floor is open for councillor questions um just wanted to say thank you president um director pine for circling back on that question appreciate it any councillor jane and i think councillor barlow has any questions uh yes i'm i'm interested in hearing more about the training programs and how you choose the uh the areas to train in and um and whether or not the people that are trained are burlington residents and they stay in burlington businesses and is that i seems like you're ramping that up in the coming year so uh great question about how the sectors are chosen for where training occurs um vermont has done a fair amount of work through the department of labor about where the job sort of the job growth is going to occur and where the job labor shortages work this is pre-pandemic how this is informed by old data that we do need to revisit some of that but it is largely driven by the department of labor there's some there's a pretty good body of research around uh where positions that will provide maybe you can you can acquire them through training program not having necessarily gone to college basically or even to a technical program um after high school but going through this program um you will have an opportunity to to obtain a job that you can support yourself and your family it's intended to really be um career opportunities that need to self-sufficiency and health care um the need is significant the fact that the construction trades uh the average age of construction trade worker is 58 years old and that's a need that will not be going away because we're not seeing a lot of folks entering that field but the need is going to continue you can't really outsource people to build next year building them um yeah the the trainees are Burlington residents where they end up working is kind of what we're like a regional we really are the regional labor market so we wouldn't be um prescriptive about where they end up going but we are the job center still even though some of the suburbs are competing with us in that regard we still are largely the certainly the health care jobs are heavily focused on Burlington if not the Burlington area um the net zero workforce it's a real it's going to be a real bottleneck for me and our goals as a net zero city and so it's really connecting to that policy that we're focused on the net zero jobs and BED here's repeatedly from contractors of all types in that broad energy related everything from weatherization and air sealing buildings and installation to installing homes and more technical principles so do you have commitments from any employers to say but you train a person well or whether you have those I can get you the statistics on how that's going it's going incredibly well the um the basically the residential care homes the these and our residents for example Cathedral Square um TLC the health care provider that's home health providing um and um the UDM MC all of them are ready to take everyone that comes through the program to be on the program they all have almost a direct path and they and they actually do um clinicals at a facility whether it's which our facility works out so they go into their clinicals there that does need to do a good job of getting the cancer screen um and not seeing any more raised hands so uh we'll close the CEDA section thank you both and our final presentation is from our director of planning I can tell us as Catherine is pulling up my slides um I just wanted to open by saying I know that um counselors are probably familiar with certain aspects of the planning department's work um the planning department has definitely undergone a number of transformations in the past several years starting with the creation of the department of permitting and inspections back in 2019 um really leading to the creation of the office of city planning as a um obviously primarily focused on comprehensive and policy work um I would say that we've gone through some other minor iterations we have certainly um in an unofficial capacity served as a major part of the city's COVID response for the last two years and now more officially with the adoption of last year's budget we're now the home of many of the city's analytics and data programs um so some of the other things that came up tonight like the open data program BTV staff um the equity report we're now the home of the data analyst that does the analysis and that report um so we have lots of different um analytics and data kind of programs that fit within the scope of our department now as a result of last year's budget adoption in terms of our priorities coming here we are going to continue to work on a number of large long-range planning projects and major policy initiatives primarily housing policy initiatives that we started this year that were either part of our FY 22 budget or were introduced throughout FY 22 and I'll talk about that a little bit more here in just a second um and really continuing to support and reboot a lot of the data initiatives that used to be part of the IT department now live in our department um we've been working methodically over the year to reach staff and reboot a lot of these programs so we're going to continue focusing on that rebuilding and onboarding of our team our department's budget is pretty straightforward um the overall budget is about $900,000 for city planning we are largely a general fund supported department um we are anticipating in FY 23 that we will have two different grants one from the state of Vermont and one from the regional planning commission that will make up about 10 percent of our department's revenues um and this is a welcome increase from the revenue the grant revenue that we actually saw last year and a big help to the projects that we anticipate doing on the expense side two-thirds of our department's budget covers just our salaries and benefits so we're a small department and the majority of our money goes to just supporting our staff and we are anticipating continuing the staff that we have developed over the course of this year and continuing to share part of a position with CEDA that helps with administrative support so just for reference about what our staffing level is I thought it'd be helpful to quickly go through a couple of org charts to just illustrate how our department has changed over the past year at this time last year when David White was presenting our budget this was our org chart it was it was just David and I and we just had two full-time employees in the planning department and we have largely been focused on COVID response and recovery for the last you know 12 months prior to that and continue largely to this last year we were anticipating a leadership transition in November which was part of our budget presentation so this is the org chart that the city council approved or the funding was approved for this org chart in our budget last year which was actually to create a new part-time senior advisor position that we were really anticipating would be a role that could help to provide some long-term institutional knowledge and high-level support through our leadership transition in this fiscal year we also had a budget that was approved that included the relocation of two full-time employees from INT that do all the work to support those data programs that I mentioned at the very end of the discussion of the budget last year there was also some funding added to support these commissions kind of staff role and to do some other work within the city that was later moved to the clerk treasurer's department so that's not reflected on the org chart back in December I think it was we brought you a proposal to actually take and convert that senior advisor position into a full-time junior planner position that would be able to support a much broader range of work on the planning side of our department so we've been really happy to have actually filled that role as of last week and are now finally fully staffed as a five full-time employee department as of just last week so we are continuing to maintain that level of staffing through this coming year and we also are looking to formalize a staff share that we have started to do informally with CEDA this year we have not had a staff support role within our department since 2019 so we are going to help kind of offset the cost of about 10 percent of the CEDA employee next year to support some of our admin teams the other major part of our budget uh this 30 percent of our budget expense side of our budget is for really helping our small team tackle the big work plan that we have in front of us so this money helps us to bring on consultants to help extend our staff capacity and expertise for specific usually major projects so in our budget for this year we will be expecting some revenue associated with the grant for the missing middle housing reform project that was started at FY22 next year so that will continue and we are looking at funding for two new long-range planning projects next year one is a historic preservation plan this is something we've long identified as something that's really necessary for us to think about how we steward these resources going forward but also how we help facilitate their evolution related to our housing goals and we also have funding in our budget to support a new north end planning project this is something that we've talked about like two of our new north end counselors that are sitting here we actually submitted a request to the regional planning commission for funding as part of their both FY23 and FY24 budgets I think they're approving that budget tonight but we have so far been given a positive indication that we should get funding over the next two fiscal years to support that next study so just to kind of highlight that point about how we use consultants I think I just want to briefly share we look out a couple of years at our long-range planning projects need some of our policy work these are usually multi-year initiatives and we did have a very long list of projects that we were anticipating starting in FY22 this was prior to the Delta and Omicron surges which continue to occupy a lot of our staff's time and before some of the changes in terms of our leadership transition so really FY22 has been a rebuilding year for us in a lot of ways and for the last six months in particular with my move into the director's position hiring my previous position and bringing on our new planner has pretty much been a season of onboarding so a lot of the projects these blue projects it's way too much to read you can look at it on board docs a lot of these like major long-range planning projects and housing related zoning reforms that we were anticipating starting much sooner in FY22 really got pushed back over the course of the year just given our capacity so many of them will continue into FY23 some of them do have both revenue and expenses associated with them so separate from the budget that's posted on board docs we will be asking you for a carryover of some of our funding from this year's budget into next year to help us continue that work and as a result we will still have a very full plate next year in terms of the projects we'll be working on so we're only anticipating really just a couple new major projects starting in FY23 and then just to wrap up here our department is actually almost exactly level funded our proposed budget is almost exactly level funded from last year I think there's a difference of a thousand dollars so really the reductions that we've been able to find in our operating expenses from FY22 is helping to offset the projected increases in our staff benefit costs for next year and ultimately when we account for our grant revenue that we're bringing in next year we will actually see our department have a negative negative we will be reducing our department's impact on the general fund in FY23 from FY22 so that's all I have great okay the floor is is open sorry any questions from councillors councillor bergut and then councillor jed I think councillor bergut yes yes um just quickly I want to make sure Megan that I have uh read the task list correctly and see that the TDM study and the impact fee studies are part of the work plan is that is that right yes that's correct they both got delayed just because of our staff capacity but they're both still on our radar and just in in terms of their status what I mean what can we expect in fiscal year 23 with regard to both of those so um in regard to the impact fee study um we have been able to share part of the scope of that project with the regional planning commission so we will be getting our respective pieces of the research on current you know development or anticipated development impacts and potential impact fee implications I would say the bulk of that work will happen we both have RFPs developed and we're just kind of waiting for the capacity to get them out and actually do the recruitment process the TDM and multimodal transportation study will happen at some point after we get started on those projects we have been working closely with all of you on the major zoning amendment package for our parking and TDM system and so we're working on getting that through the council and then that will help free up some of our capacity to be able to focus on thinking through what a scope looks like for that TDM study okay thank you very much you know my interest in all of that I just want to let you know if you haven't heard from Katma that our previous TDM ordinance changes have made had an impact on people joining Katma and it so I I look forward to carrying on in that vein thanks thank you Councillor Bergman Councillor Jake thank you thank you um yes so Megan I mean I just want to say that how appreciative I am that you are using your connection with CPR in order to secure fund for the new north and you know much needed you know revitalization thank you so much and also I have to say that you are the only department here that I heard you know talking about staff use I mean using staff is around the department I think in terms of looking into the future I mean this is an innovation and I wanted to say that I appreciate it a lot and also you know just wanted to talk a little bit about the the senior advisor it seems from my perspective that this was allowed this was allowed by the city of Burlington by the Board of Finance a long time ago and it seemed that the former director was going to use that position to fill that position you know can you tell us a little bit are you going to hire somebody else that's new or will that same person I mean plays this role yeah that's so in our budget last year the budget was approved with the anticipation that we would create that senior advisor position back in November David decided that he was actually ready to move on from the city rather than moving into that role so we actually brought that back to the city council at that time instead of moving forward with the creation of a senior advisor position we repurposed it and we were able to create one full time more a more junior level planner position that was able to serve a much broader range of projects for our department and that was ultimately approved by the board of finance and we hired for that position and it filled it so we are not at this time anticipating creating or hiring for the senior advisor position thank you so much for clarifying and now for the revitalization of the new north end what do you think the new north end city councilor in particular can start to do in terms of bringing people together and start to think about what are the hopes and dreams for that yeah that's a great question as well so um I know we've had some discussions in the within the past year just about what our goals are for what a new north end planning process looks like and how we can all play our part in that process so I would say after the budget approval process um assuming that we're successful in having the funding on our side and the RPC side we can start having conversations both about what the timeline looks like for that project because for our our staffing purposes there will still be several months off before we can really start that and we can talk more seriously about how you all as councillors can start to have conversations within your neighborhood about what the scope of this planning process looks like and who the partners are that can help join us in that work yeah finally thank you again for your work let's just appreciate it thank you councillor jane um just you had a question earlier in the night about the equity report and the administration's plans for that and maybe you can speak briefly to that sure yeah so I mentioned that there are several reporting data reporting and data analysis projects that um were formerly housed in iad that we've been working on transitioning over to the planning department um so that is one of the projects that we are looking to get back on our radar um and make a plan for in 2023 um really because the focus of our data analysts had been primarily on COVID um for the first half at least of the fiscal year um and then really on reorienting and removing to all of the different um reporting that we were doing through the PTD STAT initiative uh we're working on trying to get all of those things back up and running so we'll be looking forward to making a plan for that this year great um there I know all right I'm just looking at the council's online again and I'm not seeing any other raised hands so um we will be adjourning in one moment before we do um I do just want to make sure all councillors who are logged on um you may not have seen this email yet there is a communication from me about an addition to the agenda for tomorrow night's final budget meeting um a executive session that would happen at the end of the budget meeting um this uh it is important that we get a sense we will need a form for that executive session so people could let Jordan know whether or not you're going to be able to make it that would be helpful um and councillor jing I I have a lot of answers to your questions shortly that you know um um without further ado let's do there any objections I think we will adjourn for the evening at 744 p.m. thanks everyone