 6.30pm. Okay, thanks. Okay, folks, good evening all, and welcome to my city council. It is about 6.30pm, and we have a quorum. We may expect more council members, but for right now we already have a quorum so we can get started, and I'll start by asking Councillor Brown who is appearing remotely to identify yourself. Hello, Carrie Brown, District 3. Okay, thank you. I will mention a couple of meeting logistics and expectations. If you're appearing remotely, please change your name to indicate your first and last name displayed on the screen. Anyone who speaks to address the council, please state your name and where you live at the beginning so we will have that information for the minutes. We ask you to keep all comments to three minutes, and if you're speaking about a specific agenda item, keep your comments germane to that item. Anyone who wishes to speak must be called on by the mayor. You may ask questions or make comments, but if you have multiple comments or questions, please get them all out at one time. And I think we're ready to go. First item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Any changes to the agenda? Hearing none, we'll move to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is not on tonight's agenda. And again, we limit the comments to three minutes and Councillor Bate will assist us with timekeeping. I don't see any hands raised in the online. So I'll start to see, ask if there's anyone in the room who would like to address the council. Yes, Tom. Hi, my name is Thomas Moore. I live on Prospect Street. You may need to go closer to the mic. Is that close enough? And I should be. Tom, let me hold off for a minute. Okay, you haven't started yet. Councillor Hurl is on the meeting. So I'd ask Councillor Hurl to identify herself. Hello, Lauren Hurl from district one. Thanks. And I'll just a note for the public if, because some of the members are appearing remotely, if there are any divided votes, they'll have to be done by roll call. Tom, you're up. Thank you. I'm Thomas Moore, Prospect Street. I want to bring up a topic about homelessness and a little bit about the other side of it. Because right now, I have taken in a family of three, two adults and a 13 month old baby. Cutest little boy, I'll tell you how the teeth coming in. But I'm 61 and I can't handle a baby. The problem is, is that they're, they're living in my house and trying to get housing for people. The real story on this. There just isn't nothing. Okay, there's nothing I have called every organization. I have gone to these places to their doors. And the answer you get. Sorry, no housing can't help you. You know what, they don't even take my name. They don't even take my number to let me know if there's anything. It's very frustrating, you know, because I don't know if it was a couple years ago, we gave $400,000 for some homelessness and stuff. And I'm telling you, to be paying that kind of money, and these organizations are just, the answer is nothing. It's like, why are we even giving that kind of money for that? And then not to have any call back or anything. And it's just terrible how you get treated trying to help out somebody. And the money that I have seen, it's one place, you know, tells me that, well, they have to fill out a 44 page application. 44 pages. I go buy a house from Tim. I don't, I don't, 44 pages. Come on. Well, it's ridiculous. No wonder they don't want to go into these places. And what I'm trying to keep it under three minutes. We'd like to suggest that if we, we the voters do approve another big chunk of $400,000 to do it. Instead of just handing it out, you call and you get, sorry, no housing. We're not, we're not getting anything for it. What I would like to suggest is maybe we take that, this money, put it to the side and tell these organizations that if you place somebody, we will give you $5,000 out of this 400,000 for placement. We're not just going to give it to you to say, sorry, there's no housing. Fourth, another little suggestion maybe is if we could give maybe landlords a $5,000 credit towards their property taxes for placement. You know, a landowner, you know, might say, well, geez, that would be half my property taxes paid for if I put in. We will see the results. What we get, you know, if we only get 20 placements, you know, we're not going to spend $400,000. I'm telling you, it's so frustrating. I definitely hear you. And we're spending a lot of money. We need real results. Thanks, Tom. Thank you. I'm just, first of all, I agree with my side. Second of all, just so you know, we did set aside $400,000 to be used for some potential project dealing with homelessness, but we have not spent the money yet. So, so we had no money was gone to any agency. State still spend. I understand. I just want to be clear about the final results. I mean, take somebody in and you'll see what I'm really talking about. Okay. Your message is received here and thank you. Stephen. Stephen Whitaker, my pillar. I want to snarkily congratulate you on having tolerated our staff and commissions homelessness task force over four years has accomplished zip towards this effort, not bathrooms not showers not places to plug in phones. Same with the toilets committee year and a half or two they've been in business and accomplished zip. So, I think the failure is on you because you're the responsible parties or your predecessors for having demanded some accountability out of both the city manager and the boards and commissions. And it's just not, it's just not happening. I asked Commissioner Haney to put on amend the agenda to direct staff to come up with public toilet options at the next meeting. I think it's a disgrace that people are still outside in this kind of weather in the heat in the pouring rain, and even in the winter. And we've done no planning. We've got no effective plan to deal with this. I'll switch to public works. I've pointed out they did fix the valve today, but they lift a big gaping hole blocking half of the street forcing the traffic over to exactly where the drainage doesn't work which throws it on everyone walking by on the sidewalk. So, they left it dangerously low below weight, we're not going to put eight inches of asphalt in there I hope that would be a huge ways because we got to tear up the street again next year anyway. So, just the mismanagement the gross mismanagement of our public works, you know, I've two days ago contacted public works and said the drains clogged here. I emailed y'all a photo of the drain clogged yesterday. Now it's backed up all the way across the fire station and all the way up to, you know, the drain at Bohemia. You know why if we had the vacuum truck here in town to work on that. Why couldn't they have sucked out that drain. It's just the oversight and the mismanagement of managing our public works department is the problem here. Our complacent status quo, instead of holding his feet to the fire and get these things resolved. So it's it's disgusting really and it's expensive. Thank you. I just saved but after receiving. So, Mr. Reddick, I think that after they were going to address the trouble first thing this morning, fixed it and obviously the story has caused the problems with the statuses of it now, but they did respond to his concern. Thanks. Anyone else in the room. Yes, climb up. Shorter than everybody. Kim. Kim Ward. I live here on Main Street. And I would echo some of the frustrations other people are talking about tonight. And I have had people who are family members who I have also housed as Tom has and the others we all know are really dire and I feel like some of the problems could maybe be resolved if we did something like a helping people with their zoning or their ability to put an extra apartment in in town. I've been able to put tiny houses on their properties. I've talked to people in town who said they wanted to do that and then the mortgage company wouldn't let them have a second property on their on their property and things like that. So that kind of a solution I think could help us integrate people into the community rather than trying to find a pocket to shove everybody. I think there's a lot of roadblocks to that right now. And then it may be, you know, many cities are dealing with this across the country but it's, but it's a, it seems like that's something we should be focusing on as well. And I'm on the restroom committee and and I would say that as somebody who's worked with last nation and we're trying to get like 24 seven bathrooms open here in the city hall I know that there are concerns about that but we have doors that are still out of the rest of the building so that they could use a bathroom that's got some dignity and some running water that that should be something that we're moving forward more quickly on. Thank you. So anybody else in the room would like to address the council. And I do not see any hands raised online. I don't always see everybody so if anyone else on the council sees someone let me know. We will move on to the consent agenda. There's, we're going to pull off item H water system hydraulic analysis amendment number three. And is any council member want to remove any other item from the consent agenda. I would like to request remove, remove letter I the budget to actual report. Okay. Anything else. Okay, the chair would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of items H and I. Thank you. Is there a second. Okay. Any discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. Consent agenda is passed with the exception of items H and I. Shall we take up item H right away right now the water system analysis. So do you want to start that. Yes, I, I was hoping, hoping I hadn't heard really an update recently on where we've had a couple of reports we haven't taken any action. I imagine we're waiting for something from the state but I was hoping to get a bit of an update. Thanks. So since we've had the last minute. I can show that. That's probably. Further way. Okay. Since we had the last meeting with the state. There has been several back and forth between our consultant state engineers. Last Friday, our public works director met with the director of the water supply division to kind of go through this. And as a result of that conversation, we're expecting to get a new set of comments from the state with perhaps some revisions from the earlier comments. Those can be coming as soon as tomorrow or Friday. At that point, we'll obviously share those comments publicly and then we will respond and that will guide the steps we make. So there's been a lot happening in between. The last time here just not necessarily visible, but those final comments and then that will lead to a final actual engineering report. Once we have the final comments that gets approved and that will then lay out the projects that we are seeking finding for and that sort of thing. Obviously, we're pushing as hard as we can on this. I'd also note that this. In addition to funding additional work as a result of this process taking long this this item also funds designing adjustments to our hydrants so that they are reduced pressure so that the hydrants themselves meet the pressure controls so we are addressing at least the hydrant deficiencies in with this particular amendment here. So this is some of this is in response to the state's comments. Well, some of it is to design. Yes, I mean it's all in response to these issues what some of it is immediately to do with the hydrants and the others to pick up the extra work that we've had to do as a result of the extended process with the state it's gone much longer than it was anticipated it's usually typically state assets for report we provide it we get one set of comments they resolve it and that's the end of it and this has taken longer to obviously more consultant time. Well, I appreciate the update I know a lot of folks are are following the issue and I know it's taking longer we had hoped. It's very much a front burner issue for the city, and it is, but you know, we need to have an approved report that we can then use as the basis for the projects that we do. So the proposal on the agenda is to authorize the city manager or is designee designee to execute amendments to number three and number three and I wonder if there's no emotion to approve that. I'll move to approve. Sarah second. Any discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, thank you. Now we can move on to item I, the budget to actual may report. Councilor Brown do you want to start this off or do you want to just ask. I do. I just had, I just have a question. I appreciate all the information that was in there and the, and the detail and everything that was very helpful. But I'm just kind of wondering what happens if we end the year with a deficit. I may follow on Sarah to help, but I don't think there's a lot of room for deficit. So the deficit would be just that we budget, we spent more and got less than our total budget doesn't mean we need a deficit like we still have a positive balance. Can I interrupt you for one second. It's really hard to understand you bill I don't know if it's your microphone or if you could move back a little. No. Nope. When I'm back. How's that. That's great. Okay. All these years are being told to speak right into the mic. Okay, so there's the budget to actual deficit where you, you know, you spend more than you budgeted and took in less. And then there's an actual deficit where you, you've actually are in the negative in terms of cash we will not be in that situation. We'll. So, and what we would do simply is this if we if we end up in a budget deficit, then that will erode our fund balance by that amount and, you know, last year we added to the fund balance pretty gently. So some of that is offsetting this I mean just the timing of the way some things hit. And typically what we would do is try to manage this coming budget a little tighter to try to catch up as much as we can. We may not be able to get all of it, but that's how we do we will not be in a deficit deficit. Great. Thank you very much. I'm just nodding my head so I must have got it right. Anyone else on the council on this topic. And it looks like this doesn't require a vote. This is just a report. Typically the vote is simply this was a recommendation of auditors several years ago that there just be a record that the council received funny at one point they you know, you are the overseers you need to see regular financial reports and there was no report that you had so now we put them on the consent agenda just to so you receive them so it's in the minutes that we can show that elected officials are getting regular financial statements. Okay, so if you just vote to accept the report. It's all you need to do. Okay. Is there a second. Second. Any discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, with that we've completed work on the consent agenda. And we can move to item six, update from the complete streets committee. Okay, you're on. Thank you. Thank you. I'm poor line with public works. I also in the staff representative for the complete streets committee with us is Holly Fowler member of the complete streets committee. We wanted to do a update for the council about what the committee's been, what they've been doing and what are they plan to do here in the future. Also have a potential funding proposal for the committee to or the council to consider for FY 24. I will hand it over to Holly. Good evening council. And I'll ask people in the back. Can you hear the speakers. Great. Thank you. Okay, great. So if complete streets is a new concept to anyone. It is a well established smart growth approach to planning designing building obviously maintaining streets. And the premise of these is that they are streets that are accessible and safe and still efficient for all types of users. And so sometimes folks thinks that complete streets are just about pedestrians and people on bikes. It is not. It is also meant to be inclusive of multimodal transportation and as well as motorists driving cars as well. So this is really a concept for everyone to be mindful all ages all abilities, all modes of transportation. So this is a very popular complete streets committee was formed in 2016. And our primary activities are hosting events conducting outreach, promoting education around complete streets safeties, doing advocacy with partners, and basically partnering on other related initiatives. And I'm sure that you're you'll see in this presentation a number of partners that we've been working with a very close ally is local motion, which we're delighted to have based in Burlington and services all of the complete streets related committees throughout the state. Currently we are seven members. I'm here for those who might not be able to see the screen. The members of the committee currently are Brett Apple, myself, John Kim, Hanif Nezarelli who is also our liaison from M tick. David Ori Scott Richardson and Nancy Schultz. We also have two open seats currently on the committee. And we have had up until recently a student representative who was Merrick modan. They were available seats, 10 years are up there, or term dates are up there as well. I would say that after probably an initial my six months on the committee. We were trying to establish some stability of committee members and with that, I think is an indication of why we've been able to get the traction we've been able to get recently in terms of our impact. So the question I was speaking to you was on this topic, but I'm actually going to let Corey speak to the most recent update regarding the very street to a public bike lane. Yeah, we wanted to bring this up the complete streets committee. I was also very heavily involved last year with this project. And it's the extension of the recreation path on the south side of Barry Street in this specifically is the short term implementation with markings and ballards, while the long term implementation is being designed. And with all of the, like I said, the way streets committee did a lot of work on this and we had every intention of implementing this last year. We ran into some difficulties with contracting the work. We are now more well equipped to do this in house and have every intention of following through with that this year. And, and may rely again on complete streets committee to get the word out and prior to to doing if they're in our stops, you know, we'll be out there. Okay, so just to provide you with some highlights of what's been happening. We have been a partner to the e bike lending library that's been conducted with the, the real library. As well as sustainable Montpelier. We've seen the addition of five bike hitches to downtown Montpelier. We helped and supported the screening of a safe streets documentary with well told films they are locally based producer director couple here and we did that in the Christ Church courtyard. We posted a group glow ride at night, just around Halloween, and we did that with local motion. We had about 30 folks all ages come out costumes and all, and basically try to promote both confidence and riding around the city at night, but also making sure that folks are wearing everything they should be wearing to be seen well as it gets dark. And we have traditionally held a be bright at night initiative which again, rewards of pedestrian cyclists etc for for wearing lights and reflective materials to help be seen by motorists. We typically promote safety related public service announcements on front porch forum. I'll tell you more about a couple of recent community based events which have been a bike rodeo and a series of workshops to help folks feel more comfortable in in cycling and being familiar with their bikes. Complete streets participated with local motion at transportation day at the State House. And we worked with Montpelier police department to update the bike registration form to make it easier and more likely that folks would actually fill out a bike registration for when bikes go, go missing. If you missed it in May at the high school, we had 38 young cyclists and their families come out to do a bike rodeo and lots of folks had no idea what a bike rodeo was. But it's basically a series of stations that the youth ride through and get some instruction, things from riding straight, not riding straight stopping at lights navigating when there's a bus coming etc. What was really phenomenal about this is the support that you see there from all of these community partners who got involved. I don't go through the whole list but it's, you know, public and private. And it was a pretty phenomenal day, and lots of folks asked us if we would do it again next year which I hope we will do parents also wrote me personal notes to say that their children felt so empowered after this event that they rode all the way down East State Street and home again all by themselves. Which to me was enough for having spent a lot of hours trying to organize this but we're deeply appreciative to all of the partners. Nancy has helped lead this six series of workshops that have been held here in City Hall. And actually I think the final total was an average of 12 people attending but a total of 22 unique individuals who attended at least one part of the series. And it has definitely helped to show that there's a lot of demand for community rides in addition to what the ones are the Onion River Outdoors organizes and just generally great community for in demand for in person events. So we feel like we're on a roll. I won't go through all of these photos but there's a story behind each one of these the glow ride is there the bike lending the documentary reporting on different issues that show up on front porch forum from from anyone. We cycle those through our agendas we talk about them we relay them to Corey where he's able to help and it feels like we're getting some really nice traction. And we're not doing it ourselves but part of this is to say thank you by reinstating our budget. We have been able to leverage already more than $1,000 and external funding and sponsorship so by being able to say we are able to do this. So thank you to the Kiwanis and Northfield Savings Bank got on board and said we want to help you do this. So it has helped us to produce new programming re reintroduce past initiatives that had gone by the wayside for a couple of years. Attracting the tension of new partnerships the point to point ride has reached out and asked us to support them in September for that. Yeah, it just it feel like with your support we're able to show up in a much more professional and compelling way. And we are now seen kind of as a model for many other cities and towns in Vermont for the work that we're doing. And I can't say enough about Corey. He is continuously present at all of our meetings. He helps in a very efficient way to help us through different questions that we have challenges that we have. And it's been a real gift to have been assigned a city staff member who shows up and really helps. So thank you very much. I would also like to call attention to Evelyn who works with the committee on a few different things and she's really she's really helped them as well. And I also wanted to mention that there's been this I guess unexpected benefit from this committee for staff and that's, you know, when they're out there doing all of this they're having conversations with the general public and those are folks may not be comfortable having with staff or with counselors and they're able to that kind of act as a conduit from the general public to staff to bring up whatever substance may be of those conversations and it's really helped us address some things and have some discussions and and yeah, it's been and like I said it's I don't think we ever really expected it when the committee was formed but it's been great. Thank you so much. Any members of the council have any questions or comments. And you could go ahead and unmute and share. Okay, why don't you share it again bill as a question. Sorry. I was just going to ask. I know so I'm going to ask. I just like to know. I want you to just go. Sorry. Thanks that better. Okay, could you just review the Berry Street project one more time and I asked that is you know that was a decision made a few years ago. And we had an extensive public process. And now we're getting to so I want to make sure that the city council and the public are 100% clear on what the plans are, because we will probably hear about it when it happens and so I want to make sure that we've been. I mean, you, you have done nothing wrong you guys been great but just one more time to walk us through it again. It's, you know, it's, it's been a little while. Could I ask you to wait just one moment. I've been noticed notified that counselor cone is now present so palin if you would just introduce yourself since you're appearing remotely. Hi everyone. This is calling calm district to city counselor. Thank you. Okay. Sorry for the interrupt. So, I'm a few years back, the, as Bill said, the city underwent pretty extensive scoping study that included the barrier main intersection main street basically the entire length to the, to the roundabout as well as the extension of the recreation path and from that study. The short term recommendation was to convert the south side of Berry Street the parking on the south side of Berry Street to a two way bike way in the short term. That would be done with striping and ballards and the city a couple years ago received a grant from the state to design and construct the long term. Recommendation which is an extension of the actual recreation path from main street to the rec center and then back to the to the stone cutters way crossing and that was the recommended. I guess, fill in the gap of the, of the recreation path. So that is under design right now and on track to be constructed next constructed next year. And as I said, our plan is to construct the the short term recommendation this year. Thanks. Any comments. I just want to thank Holly and all the committee can lead streets has been very active, and is an incredibly important conduit for pedestrians and bicyclists with our infrastructure as well as programs to educate it's, it's a, it's very, very valuable. And indeed, Cory, the Berry Street modifications of the stem over putting up. I have brought up a counselor's report, but it's nothing like seeing it. I mean it's really helpful. Your whole slides have been very helpful in your presentation and I would certainly hope that we will support giving you with the money because it's well spent. Anything else, Steve. We see what it comes up to if we should rename it to complete streets and sidewalks we've got an increasing competition between inexperienced users on new powerful electric bikes using the sidewalks, and we have. I'm not an expert on our ordinance, but I know that the old folks that I frequently talk with are terrified of the amount of traffic we, I got almost got clips. Today on School Street sidewalk, somebody who doesn't even announce I'm on your left I'm on your right, but the electric bikes especially. I'm not sure they shouldn't enforce keeping them in the road instead of on the sidewalk, but I think this is a group that could do a lot of education around that. And it, it's a nice fit with what they're doing I applaud their work. Good point I think rather than take the time to look at the ordinances we will look at it because I know there. There are some rules about what's allowed on the sidewalks. Yep. Education awareness. Yeah. Hi. Dan Jones, Northfield Street. I am. I guess there's one street or perhaps two streets that I find do not be part of this because as a bike rider downtown Main Street State Street are shall we say, terrifying oftentimes with the way that cars come very close to you when you're trying to follow the rules. I would like to see if that that could be included in the future. Secondly, where are these bike stanchions that are supposedly downtown life, other than the science I, you know, the square method science posts I have not been able to find any. The hitches. Yeah, they're, they're around Main Street and State Street and a number of locations and there's also a variety of bike stands but we have a. We actually have a map that we've been working on where we can show where different amenities for cyclists are. So we can make sure to share that as part of. I think it's typically included in our minutes because walking a bike downtown is oftentimes a bit of a stretch. Yeah, sure. Is it those ovals that are added to some of the parking meters to say this is a bike hitch, because we weren't sure folks would know that that was okay, right, because we don't assume that it's known that that is okay to lock your bike to but point taken and I think there's a plan for additional bike hitches right, Corey. And I don't know should be saying anything about the relationship between complete streets and empty. Yeah, I think specifically the hitches I think we did five this year and we were looking to do a few more this year we don't have an exact number though. And yes, I guess it goes back to what I had mentioned about the complete streets committee members and the observations they make in the conversations they have with the public and that only gets filtered to staff but we do have a member that is a member of both committees so they're making recommendations or, you know, passing along information to the infrastructure committee as well as well as staff. Miss Colana. Hi, Kim Ward I live on Main Street, and I live at the downstream department and I'm wondering if you could clarify for me where is the intersection between no pun intended. How the Berry Street Main Street intersection for driving is going to end up, as well as all these crosswalks which I almost got killed in the additional crosswalk one night, both me and the driver were trying to be very cautious, but with two crosswalks across Main Street. He looked I looked we both went and he came inches from hitting me. I know that there's more plans but I'm a little. I'm not clear about like all the biking bike passed up as opposed to the driving that's going to go on or the lights. Yeah, I should have mentioned this. When I, when I mentioned the, the Berry Street path but so at the same time that that is being designed, we're also under designed for the traffic signal at Berry and Main Street, as well as the state is also under designed for the reconstruction of the railroad crossing at Berry and Main Street so they're all working together at the same time. And all sort of dependent on one another. And as of now are on schedule to be construction constructed next year, because the railroad crossing has to be done before we can do the traffic signal has to be done at the same time basically the components will interact with each other. And then the detection that will activate the traffic signal if a train is present so that all kind of works together. Okay, got you. Thanks. Anyone else from Council or the public. Okay, we have a request to approve the budget expenditure $5100 from the parking fund. We have a request to approve that. The motion. Yes. Is there a second. I'll second. So any discussion. Seeing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay, thank you. We have. Thank you approve the budget request from complete streets, and we are now up to item seven gov community garden. Welcome Paul. Paul is coming up. I'll mention this is an item that almost could have been on the consent agenda but who was, you know, we can never miss the chance to have Paul regale us at a public meeting so we decided to give him his spotlight. Do you want me to do a little like intro kind of thing. Yeah, I'll be good. First, I want to recognize we have a number of people from the community garden here. Raise your hand if you're here from community garden. You're all folks. These are all folks that have plots at the garden. And Paul, why do you state your name. Oh, my name is Markowitz resident of my player and one of the members of what we call the coordinated committee for the gov community garden. So I have a few just to give you some context, less than five minutes. And then questions that sound reasonable. Sounds perfect. Great. So we're really excited to be here tonight I was looking through my emails and this process started about a year ago, almost. When we found out that the owner of the gov community garden Donnie gov. was in hospice, and he has since actually passed away. And so we reached out to the person who has a power of attorney and now owns the land, a woman named Tina. And so we approached her and approached her about because their plan was when he died to sell the land and that's what they're playing now. And our risk, our concern was that if they sell the land that the new owners would not, you know, care so much about the community garden and we would lose our access to the community garden. We approached her about the idea we actually originally talked about the idea of a conservation easement. And they came back to us with, well, we'd actually like to donate the land to the city. So just some context, the parcel is about two miles out of my pillar, you know where Pearl Street Motor sign is. It's like community garden right there on the right. So. But really what this project is about is about securing two acres of prime ag land to maintain and perpetuity as a community garden or and or agricultural purposes. Basically we have a parcel that's in the floodway and the flood zone would be extremely difficult if not impossible to build on. You know it floods in the in the springtime. We currently we have about 20 gardeners many of them represented here today about 30 plots or so. The garden's been there about 35 years or so and has been owned by the go family and they have generously leased to us free of charge every year. And as I mentioned, we only approached them because of this. I would call it a significant event in the timeline of this property that the risk of potentially losing this community garden. After we approached them and they said they'd like to donate the parcel, we kind of got our gears in motion. We formed a coordinated committee. There's three of us myself, two other people Michael Verla and just young are on the coordinated committee to give us a little bit more structure a little bit more. What's the word to say organization if you will. We set up a coordinated committee. We have a bank account. Big news, we have a federal ID number. We've established operating guidelines for all the gardeners. We're as close as you can become to being official without being official. And we've secured the land the support from the landowner for this whole process subdividing the land, and then do the donating land to the to the city. We obtained a grant from the conservation commission, which we're very thankful, help cover the cost of a survey that was done by a Gilson survey company. And we basically now have a two acre lot which essentially was the minimum lot size required and actually corresponded with the exact dimensions of the garden so that worked out really, really well. We filed for and we've actually received our subdivision permit. That was about three weeks ago or so. The permit was issued on Friday, we went before the DRB a couple three weeks ago, and we actually now have subdivision permit. We're in the 30 day waiting period right now. And this should be official if barring any comments. This should be official starting on July 23 at which time we would have a signing ceremony with the current landowners for the new deed. We prepared a deed for the new plot that's been signed off by the landowner and city attorney. Hopefully you have the latest version of that. And tonight we're basically seek seeking the city council to approve ownership of this two acre parcel with our goal is to have minimal if actually zero involvement by the city because we have a governing committee to maintain the garden. We're not looking at city involvement except told this land and public trust. What it loses at this land would, it has river access, be welcome for people as parking area, it would be welcome to come go to the garden, go down the river, you know, sit by the river, etc, etc. I want to give special thanks to Chris Hammer, a resident of my pillar who really led the whole process in terms of the subdivision requirements getting the survey done. And my colleagues, Michael and Jess for being on the coordinating committee and basically helping us get our whole act together with making the garden a little bit more official. I think that was it. So, comments questions so I want to keep it short. Thank you for your clear and efficient presentation. Any comments or questions from the council. Go representatives of the go families very nice gift. Yeah, very nice gift. Yes. I just, I think stories, I told a short story because stories say a lot. So, Donnie's father, I can't remember his first name. He allowed the garden to happen in 1995, I believe was about the date. And then, when it became clear that Donnie was, you know, in hospice and had limited time on this planet. We shared with Tina the person has power of attorney. We shared with her a sign that we now have at the garden. It says go community garden assignment. Jess and Eduardo actually made. And we shared a sign and they, for some reason didn't know that we had named the garden that go community guard. And they saw the sign and then she took, I get made we made her copy the sign. She took it up to Donnie who was in the hospital. She took the sign and actually reported that he actually cried when he saw the sign. And at that point she was just like, this has to happen. This tiny switches at this land, you know, continue as a garden continuing his father's legacy. And and we're just almost happy to, you know, make see the fruition of this happening so I don't know if they should be directed to you or to bill, but is there Is there anything in if since the city is going to be the owner of this property. Is there anything that says that the members of that it's going to remain in use as a community garden or Yes, thank you very much. So in the deed, we have a covenant in the deed which restricts the land to only be used as a community garden is actually named the Gove community garden, or for other agricultural purposes in perpetuity. So, basically with this covenant land can never be developed no no permanent buildings can be put on the spot. You know there can be garden like sheds and things like that can be done related to agricultural, but it cannot be there can be no There can be no structures on the land. And is, is it served by the by city water do people just go to the river to get water for their, for their plots. We get our water from what God gives us from the skies which we've had plenty of in the last couple weeks, maybe more than we want, and from the yes. In the future, we're exploring other things such as like a pump in a well and stuff like that but that's, no there's no city water out there. Thanks. Donna. Thank you and all the gardeners because that's what really made it happen the owners and the gardeners so thank you. So, well, I'm happy to support what it appears to be an extraordinarily committed group of gardeners. Would this then become part of the parks department or how would that work. It's really intended to be managed by the community garden we did have them I think you're working up some sort of system for how people can get any. We've had good conversations with them and supported the effort and I think the one, my one request was I said I don't think the city government wants to get into the business of deciding who's, who's gardening which plot. I don't know if you could come up with some system and I believe they've done that. And we're going to work ahead of the parks department like through the, when we had bills we submitted them through Alec, you know, but as I said, this is, we think of ourselves as one to move autonomous. We've been doing this for 35 plus years, and we want to keep it that way. And right now what we have is an assurance in the future that we're not the worry each year they're going to let us garden there. You know, it's like, we're now starting to like, we can have permanent structure, you know, gardening structures at the garden, you know, we can make investments in the infrastructure to, you know, sustain the garden so great. We can move to approve it. Is there a. Yes, I was your move to approve it. Any other discussion. If not all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And anyone opposed. All right, congratulations and thank you. Gardner to do it. Thank you very much. Okay, next up we have item number eight, the decisions on country club road. Okay, you're on. I have a few questions. This is a question from community and economic development specialist with the city month earlier. And before we get into just the last 10 months here for a lot of council updates, I've been sitting next to Stephanie Clark, who's not here. and happy to say that she did finally give birth on June 16th to Adelaide Antonina Clark, eight pounds, zero ounces, and daughter and mother are happy and healthy. So she wishes she could be here, but we have Dave Saladino from VHB, who is just as good. So Dave. Well, that's great. And conveyor, congratulations. Please. Okay, thank you. Again, David Saladino with VHB and I'm gonna try to stick in the theme from the last presentation and keep this relatively short and sweet. The information here is very similar to what we were presenting last month. What's new here is now we now have the final report that has been issued all 300 pages of it. I'm guessing nobody has read through all of it. So really wanted to just walk through kind of a high level overview of the report itself and then dig in a little bit on the recommendations. We've got some slides we'll talk through kind of the next steps where this plan goes. So you can see on the title here, this is an actionable master plan. And so the idea is really to come out of this taking action as we move into the next phases. So just a reminder, you've probably seen this slide a few times. Just this is where we've been. So starting back in last spring of 22, community input started on the, what would happen at the Country Club Road site. Fast forward into the fall is when the consultant team came on board. We had our first round of public input back in the fall, some due diligence that I'll touch on briefly. Then over the winter, second round of public outreach, we looked at opportunities and constraints on the site on Country Club Road. And then we just wrapped up the spring round of the third round of public outreach and integrated all of those comments into the final plan and report itself. And then just to zoom in here on the phase one timeline, you can see here are two, our last two visits here. So March 22nd and May 24th here. Okay. I'll take this guide down. Oh yeah. That's better. Okay, so there are two visits here along with the development of the final report and the public meetings bringing us to here tonight on June 28th, presenting the final report. Oops, I'll jump back here. So here's the report overview. It has 10 chapters and an extensive appendix. I'll just walk through a couple of the things here. Executive summary, first section summarizes the report itself, summarizing the goals for the site that have been developed through public input, staff input, stakeholder input. The findings from our due diligence assessments, the preferred concept plan that was recommended and then a summary of the recommendations coming out of the report. Then getting into the body of the report, starting off with some background and history, the purpose of this study, acquisition of the property, the due diligence and then the master planning process. Then moving into community context, specifically talking about the need for housing, the housing crisis, the needs in Montpelier, of which we've heard a little bit tonight, as well as the needs for additional recreational amenities in Montpelier. And then a detailed summary of the public process. As you can see on the right here, we did have the three rounds of public outreach, fall, winter and spring. Each of those rounds, there were three sets of public meetings. So in total nine touch points in different formats with the public as well as online surveys and other opportunities for input. Then the due diligence summary here, we particularly focused on natural and cultural resources, traffic and the Yelks Club building itself, an overview of that facility. And so those are all summarized with the entire reports, the summary reports included in the appendix. Community response, so all of the feedback that we received through those nine public meetings, as well as online, are summarized in fairly extensive response to community comments. Chapter seven gets into the actual concept plan. As you recall, we developed three alternatives and saw input on those three alternatives and to identify which concept to move forward with. The one we inevitably went with that at your last meeting you endorsed was the concept A, which is shown here on the right. Then chapter eight gets into the costs, estimated high level costs for both the onsite and offsite infrastructure improvements, as well as some of the costs that have already been put into the project and the property. After the costs, then how to go about financing those improvements. And as you recall, Stephanie talking about TIF and the water and sewer fees at the last meeting, those are the two primary sources of revenue in addition to any particular outside grants or general fund dollars. And then finally here, we get to recommendations for next steps. And so here I did wanna go through a little bit more detail in terms of the tiers. And so what we did as a consultant team, we kind of bundled these into three different tiers, short-term, mid-term and longer-term actions. And just to note that the short-term doesn't necessarily mean it's a higher priority, it's just something that sequentially should be happening before things in the mid-term and longer-term. There's certainly opportunity for city staff planning and others to be moving things around between the different tiers. We tried to do our best to kind of articulate when over the next several years each of these actions should occur. So starting off, and I apologize, this is a PDF version, they had an animation that just went bullet by bullet. So there's a lot of text here all at once. Just to kind of walk through some of these, these are the short-term actions. Probably first and foremost coming out of this, and this is already started, but is really reviewing and prioritizing these recommendations and getting them into the work program, staff work program for next year to tackle these recommendations coming out of the plan. Maintaining accounting best practices for the potential reimbursement if a TIF district is sought after, both either municipal or state, having those good financial records will be very helpful for that process. Continuing the recreation community zone process and that working group that is underway. And if you recall, we carved out a 12-acre zone for community and recreational facilities. So wrapping that process up. Another working group here, the Abenaki working group, there were some meetings on site with some representatives from Abenaki Nation and continuing that discussion and talking about ways to integrate whether it's on this site or elsewhere in Montpelier. Looking at the permit implications, so reaching out to the Natural Resource Board, DEC and others to talk about the permit implications on the site, engaging Washington County Railroad from on rail to talk about the grade crossing, initiating the rezoning process for Country Club Road to allow for dense mixed use housing, community facilities and so forth. Engaging with ACCD to talk about either extending the city's growth center or applying for a neighborhood development area within this district which helps to streamline some of the permitting and opens up opportunities for additional funding in this area. And then as needed, recurring additional professional support to move some of these steps forward. That's tier one, so tier two midterm. So starting those conversations with potential development partners, if you recall, this is not gonna be a city constructed development, really be looking for development partners, whether that's one or a series of several development partners at this point really engaging with those partners to talk about potential development opportunities, creating mobility working group and hearing about the complete streets committee that could potentially serve as this working group, but really an opportunity to talk about opportunities to enhance the accessibility to the site, not just for automobiles, but for all modes. Continuing conversations with the butters, they've been very active and participating in the conversation. So continuing those conversations, there were some tanks that were found on the site. So conducting additional environmental assessment and remediation for those sites adjacent to the maintenance garage. Continuing or conducting that feasibility assessment of a district, whether at a municipal level or state level, and then continue to integrate parks in the discussion about recreational uses and trails and potentially other uses on the site. And then finally, the longer term actions starting here with the housing needs assessment, this would be really important for any development partners to have a better sense or for you, the city to have a better sense for what the exact types of needs are on the site and so that you can help guide those development partners in that direction. There were some potentially sensitive archaeological areas kind of outside of the areas that we had identified for development, but should something happen that comes close to one of those areas would need to conduct a phase one archeological assessment to do some actual in the ground digging to see if any remnants or relics are found in those locations. Looking at subdivision alternatives that comply with the zoning and also can align with the discussions with the development partners, a secondary access so a secondary roadway that you may recall up in Northwest corner, we had two kind of dotted lines for potential connections. So further exploring the feasibility of those connections. And then these last two are really getting into the nuts and bolts of the actual development itself. And so developing a request for proposals in RFP for those development partners soliciting input feedback and the proposals from those development partners. And then developing that clear process kind of an open and inclusive process to evaluate and select development partner or partners who then can move forward with the project. So that is kind of in a nutshell of the report. And I think we'll just end here on the questions. Again, you've seen most of the content at previous meetings. We just pulled it all together into this report which has been is available on the city's website and this point I will stop and take questions or comments. Great, thank you. I think that this gets us to where a number of members of the council of the community have wanted to get to for a long time which is we've heard for a long time, we've heard people say, well, there are all these questions that we don't know the answers to and how can we possibly go forward unless those questions are answered. And I don't see you providing the answers to those questions tonight, but you're clearly laying out what you think the questions are that would need to be addressed and how we're gonna go about addressing them or how you recommend we go about addressing them for the next stages of the process. And so I think this is very productive to have brought this to us. And so just with that comment, I'll start to see if there are any members of the council who have questions or comments that they'd like to raise. And I'm particularly interested in if there are people who think that there are questions that are not really addressed by the plan that you've brought to us. Tim, should we start with you? I don't wanna put you on the spot. I just thought I saw you raising your hand, but okay, sorry for a prohibition. Sorry. Yeah, no, this is a good outline. Questions, the numbers, the potential costs. Where did those numbers come from? Are they just? The infrastructure costs? Yeah. Those were primarily, we worked between BHB and Black River Design. We worked on costs. We did most of the kind of roadway utility costs, Black River looked at the building costs. Again, very order of magnitude at this point, but those were based, their engine costs are based on linear foot, based on bid prices, unit bid prices. Great experience. Yeah. Thanks. Folks, I think we should unshare so that people can see each other at this stage. If there are people who would rather have it on screen, that's fine with me, but okay, thank you. The other question I had just in terms of the outline, so it looks like within the topic of permit assessment, is that, I mean, that's the piece we need to get to next in a lot of ways to guide whether we need the second road down. Yeah, there's a couple of things. There is, this is a Primag, it's designated Primag land, and so that's maybe one of the more important conversations to engage with the Natural Resource Board and the EDC and agency of agriculture on those, that question. So just like the water sewer utility piece falling under that, or it's not anywhere else known as, I'm kind of curious as to where all that fits in. Yeah, the water sewer is more of an engineering problem, or not really a problem, or an engineering feat as opposed to a Primag soil, which is going to be much more of a back and forth engagement with the regulators. So that engineering is certainly complicated, but that's pretty standard to design and get an extension of water and sewer. The negotiator's back and forth on the Primag, that could be a little bit more nuanced. So where do we start assessing what it's gonna take to get the utilities to the sites, we can get a sense of those costs, is that? Those are in here, yep, yep. So actually in addition to our, so we had estimated the costs from route two to carry the water up through the site, and we worked with GPW to get the costs to extend to meet up from the country club roadside to the existing facilities. So we did get costs from GPW and ourselves, all of those costs are built into the 18 million. Okay, all right. Thanks. Sal? Couple of things. This is probably impossible to answer, but maybe an estimate. There's a lot of stuff on these three tiers. You folks have some experience with this, the project of the scale about how long is the timeline for these three tiers? I'm just trying to set some expectations. It's a good question. And I guess you're thinking about when do we get to a shovel in the ground? Is that kind of the finish line? It's hard to tell because there are a lot of unknowns. You know, the Primag soil, the development partners, how engaged are they? How fast do they move the TIF district? If there's a TIF district, that's a process in and of itself, rezoning. So I mean, I would say three to five years would be my guess and look at that feel about right to you. Yeah, I mean, I think we were initially thinking that we would be able to begin sometime in 2025. That's quick, but your guess is better than mine. I was thinking it would probably be three to five years. I mean, it's really a question, coming right now out of the gates, it's really how much focus is on this process. You know, and certainly it could be done in two years, but it's just a matter of how much, there's only so much staff time that can be dedicated to these next steps. And so that's part of the question. And then some of this is out of control. You know, the TIF district, the application, that takes some time. Resoning has to go through a public process. So there are some variables in there that could take longer. And would it be possible for certain parts of this, say recreation and community to happen earlier? Absolutely, yes, yes. I think maybe that's what might happen in 25. Yeah, yeah. The other, Mike, can I have an answer? Do you want to fill in on this one? Yeah, Mike, another question. I just wanted to, our goal has been, and my experience has been from working in various city on a number of large projects like this. We try to break them into bite-sized pieces, plan, prepare, implement. We're just wrapping up plan. You know, I always say one year for planning, one year for preparation, and then you move to implementation. This is going to be a little bit bigger, but we did get our planning done in one year and we're moving into that preparation step, which is going to be all that permitting and engineering and designing and, you know, TIF districts. There's a lot of moving parts here, but, you know, as Josh points out, you know, we're going to be sitting down in July to start to lay things out. And you kind of start, you know, what do we have to get done to put shovel in the ground and then work your way back to where we are now? And so we're going to be putting that goal of getting a shovel in the ground in 2025 and then working back. And the reality is it may get pushed for some reason, but it will never happen in 2025 if we don't plan on it being in 2025. If we just leave it open and say, we'll get to it, when we get to it, it tends to then get left off. So this has been a priority. We want to keep it a priority. To keep it a priority means, you know, we have the time and the resources of staff time to continue to press things forward and to bring them back to council. The key of having this document, having this master plan is that we can now come back and say, you guys have agreed what we want to try to do as a community. Now we can start moving forward and say, to do that, we need to rezone. Here's your new rezoning that would make this happen. To make this happen, we need to go and do a TIF district, which means we first need to do growth center designation to change our growth center. Here's your growth center application, we need you to approve it. And we're just going to keep coming back with, here's the next thing, here's the next thing, because we've agreed on what we want, we can move forward without, and if we reach a roadblock where we say, all right, we've hit something that's an issue, we can't do this, we need to make a change. Then we'll come back and say, here's the adjustment we need to do to keep moving forward and advancing the project. But our goal is to sit down sometime in July to lay out what we need to do and our target is going to be 2025. We'll let you know if there's something that says we can't do. But I found that in my experience, we've done a lot of big, I've done a lot of big projects and it's just, just from my experience, I was on the city place project in Berry City, that was built in three years, from idea to getting it built. Enterprise Alley was four years, that one took extra long to, it was a Brownfield, almost a Superfund site. Each project is going to have its own special thing. I see a reason it should take six, seven, eight, nine years. We should be in getting started. We should be shoveling the ground. It doesn't mean the whole thing's built in 2025. There's a shovel in the ground to start building in 2020. Well, it's good to set aggressive goals. I agree with that. Yeah, that makes sense. And I understand the purpose of the public process. I think it was successful in many respects. And I'm happy to have what appears to be a fairly comprehensive list of actions that we've also been waiting to take to see what will actually happen. What does worry me is the term master plan. Everybody I talk to takes it just plainly too literally. They think this is what we're gonna build and we're not. So I think if we approve this, we ought to approve it with a different name, frankly. I mean, I know it's part of the parlance of the work that you do, but to our constituents, it's the plan and it's really just the beginning of the plan. And I would like to suggest that or take ideas on an alternative so that people understand that this is just a step along the way. And when we have the actual plan, we can call that the master plan. Actionable plan. Work plan? How does work plan sound? Action plan? I'm happy with anything. Do you have a thought about that? I'd point out that it's actually what these are called. This is our capital district master plan from the year 2000. And we also have a streetscape master plans and I've done a number of these types of things are always called master plans and I recognize that it is kind of the lingo. But the plan that came out, you won't be able to see this was a picture of what our downtown would look like with the master plan and some of the things got built. Number three is the transit center. The bike path was supposed to come up and go across the railroad tracks. It didn't, went along the river. Does that mean the master plan was bad? No, what was decided in here was we want to have the bike path and the bike path eventually got built. Didn't get built exactly where it is in the master plan, but the master plan lays out what we want to see and then we start working on advancement. We want a transit center. The parking garage was actually behind the positive pie and that Jacob's parking lot. That was where the parking garage was supposed to be. We had to actually plan for it eventually in the end to be behind the basher. Things move, but the idea is a master plan as landscape architects and planners refer to them are kind of generalized plans that give you the momentum of knowing what the public wants so we can start to advance ideas. We don't want to spend time each step planning, preparing, implementing each step costs more. It might cost you 50 or $100,000 to make this plan. It's going to cost you $500,000 to do your preparation work and millions of dollars. If you start doing preparation work, the plan for things that eventually you don't do because the public doesn't support, you're spending those $500,000 into advancing things. The idea of doing a master plan. And if you choose to give it a different name, that's perfectly fine too. I'm just pointing out it is a fairly common term that we have used in the past and that for landscape architects, it's going to cost you $500,000 to do your preparation work and millions to build it. If you start doing preparation work, for landscape architects and planners, it is what we use. A name, it's name to name. If it helps us move this project forward to change the name, we move the project forward and change the name. Thanks, Mike. As while we're talking about terminology, it's what we want to do. Council chamber is frozen. What we call the master plan for the city is not called the master plan. I can't hear anything. I don't know if you all can hear me. Yeah, same for me. Okay. Yeah, sometimes this computer just assume just crashes for some reason. Kerry Brown, I see you. You hear me say something. I've texted them. I assume they're working on it. We heard you. Great. Oh, I can hear you now. Okay, great. Seems like we may be back in business. Thank you. So the last thing which people in zoom land may or may not have heard was that I, the question I directed to Mike Miller, which is that what, for many years we've been used to calling the master plan for the city is now called city plan. It will, when it gets readopted, it'll be the Montpelier city plan. Okay. So we terminology. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Any other. Mr. Whitaker, would you please have a seat until you're called on? It's, it's a yes, please do that. It's, it's in our standards of conduct and there are people who find it intimidating when you're standing and moving over them. So please take a seat in one of the. Okay. Well, well, I think we're going to get a little bit further back then, please. Any other questions or comments from members of the council? Carrie, were you raising your hand? Nope. Okay. Donna. It's so helpful to have it. And I read some pages in depth and others I skimmed, but it's all there. The charts, all of it is very, very helpful. Great. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Okay. I agree. I think this is very, very useful and productive. We'll take comments from public starting the people here in the room. Steve Whitaker or you were, go ahead. Okay. I'd like to request a paper copy so that I can read it. I can't study 300 pages in a PDF. I would suggest a provisional conceptual plan. As a title for this document, it needs to be linked to and consistent with the downtown plan, especially with regards to recreational needs and demands, which should not, you shouldn't have to jump into a car to go get your recreation. But I'm concerned that the due diligence around soils and high geology and railroad crossing and second egress, those all are things that could totally rearrange. I think we rushed into three site plans based on. None of those constraints and reserved a big chunk of. Primag or whatever used for recreation. I think to cater to a tennis club, you know, and I just think that's totally inappropriate. And I think many of the counselor said so at the get go. I think it feels like it's being slipped back in here, but without the railroad and being addressed, which I've warned before we made the purchase, that that's going to be a problem. And the cost of a secondary road. I just feel like we're, we're getting our cart before the horse that the due diligence related to the actual buildable capacity, subtracting out wetlands, subtracting out primates, subtracting out, et cetera, et cetera, we're going to. We're going to lead people to believe that this is what it's going to look like before we know the constraints on the land and the costs. A lot of, a lot of these pie in this guy. Concepts on that three charts could, could become unfeasible based on the costs. I'd like to know how much white and Burke has already been paid and has been contracted for on this, because this thing could. We used sunk a million dollars in a garage that never got built. And I'm afraid we're going to sink. A million or two into this. And it may or may not come to fruition. Um, oil, geology railroad, access roads, and then the housing assessment. I think we need to seriously consider and discuss interim emergency housing. There's very few places that have. Could accommodate shelters for the. Hundreds of unhoused people in central Vermont. There is plumbing there. There is restrooms there. I don't know if there's a shower there. But that, that needs to not be. That needs to be front of mind for people who have a conscience. Um, I was, I heard that all this community input was put, but we talked about community buildings, workshops for people who live caregivers who are caring for elderly there. I didn't see any of that in the. Three scenarios planned. It might be in the 300 page report. But, um, again, I'll reiterate the relationship to the downtown master plan and what we're going to do for recreation downtown is a prerequisite to committing. You know, a significant chunk of that land for recreation, but I don't think it's going to be a good idea to do that. I don't think it's going to be a good idea to do that. Other than cross-country skiing or. You know, something like that. So. I think you're. You should be wisely to the folks who have development experience and say. This is, this is not cooked and we should not be calling it or leading anyone to believe it's a master plan. Thank you. My name's Lisa Burns. I'm in district one. Um, my. My name is Lisa Burns. I'm in district one. Um, my name is the, the tier one, tier two, tier three. Um, it. It does, um, kind of echo what. The previous speaker said is that to have the housing needs assessment as tier three. Seems, uh, absolutely backwards, especially at this time. And that also in light of the fact that most community members have, um, as the top above recreation and above anything else, housing was what the community said they wanted out there. And to have it as a tier three thing after already, they've done the. The TIF districts and all of this other stuff really seems backwards. And it seems just totally, um, I think that that's the point of the council to, to put recreation. Above housing of, of any type and especially affordable housing. That's my. Thank you. Yes. Um, hi, Kim Ward. I live in. I don't want to kill you. Um, I would echo the last two people in that the housing feels like it really needs. I'm like where else. There's so many places in town that I can recreate. There are so many people without roofs over their heads. But I also noted in the plan that I didn't see a single version of like studio apartments or co-housing where there might be an ability to house more people on less land with maybe like common kitchens or something when in the whole state is just so tight for housing. There's plenty of places, in my opinion, as a citizen that people can recreate without adding. That's. Okay, thank you. Anyone else in the room would like to make a comment to raise a question. And I've been keeping an eye on the participants, the remote participants. I'm not seeing anyone raising their hand. Oh, Rick Brock. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, loud and clear. Thanks. All right. A very small footnote. Both Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr. Whitaker have been suggested that the railroad crossing is a problem, but I think that railroad crossing is a siding. I don't think there's much traffic on that. I just wanted to make that point. Thank you. Anybody else online whom I'm not seeing? I don't think so. All right. So council, what's your pleasure at this point? Thanks. My question or pleasure at this point, is to try to figure out what our role will be as we move ahead with this and how it works. We've listened to a lot of people, taken a lot of testimony and we really haven't discussed this as a group. I mean, I really have no sense of how any of you feel about this project or details about it, other than a really big, big picture of what that we've got now. But I think there, we should, this is a point where we should get into the details a little bit and start talking about just the concepts, because we haven't, you know, I've tried to lay out a few of my thoughts, to give you a sense of like, I'd like to see more phases. So if we bring in development partners, we can bring them in incrementally. It may be one partner, but it may be several. And within those, we could define types of housings we'd like to see in each phase. The plan, this actionable plan that we're talking about has a lot of road and it gets pretty expansive as it goes up into the other phases. We haven't talked about it. To me, I'd much rather see something that's more dense, more down toward the lower end and in phases rather than spreading it out. I think the more we build all that road and all that asphalt and all the utilities that go with it, it really flies in the face of having any chance to create affordable housing, because we're thinking so much money in the ground. So I think those kind of conversations, we just haven't had and I'm wondering when and if that's gonna happen. Have some of those, but it wasn't since you've been on Council, Tim. Well, I guess maybe Michael could correct me, but even when you talked, I still get the feeling in my senses, this actual plan, I would support that we approve it tonight and that we use it to have the discussions you're talking about because each of these pieces have to be talked about in depth as we get more information. And so, when we talk about a plan, it's not a plan that's in concrete, it's a plan to say a structure to move and discuss ideas in an orderly fashion, a meaningful fashion. So I see where you're coming from, but I think it comes- We're not guiding it Donna, we're just listening and I think it's our turn to give back here a little bit and try to help guide this. Yes, and I think us and the staff, Mike says, we decide this is what we're gonna do. He comes back and says, well, if you wanna do this, this is what it'll take some zoning. And other staff will come the same way, whether it's the roads or the utilities. I think we hear from people and then we have these kind of discussions. That's what I see, but- So I'm helping for- Carrie, Izzy, you have your hand up. Yes, thanks. So I share Tim's concern. I think it's, I've been feeling this a little bit myself that we're not exactly guiding this, we're really just kind of saying, okay, as things come in front of us. And I'm okay with this master plan because it really is sort of like a plan to do more planning. And I think that the pieces that have been laid out make a lot of sense, but I do think that we need to be a bit more hands-on with this city council does. And so I would vote to approve this with the idea that we're gonna be really engaged with each one of these working groups and processes that we're setting in motion so that we can have those conversations about, do we wanna do this in phases? I think that's a really interesting idea. I would love to see somebody lay out what it would actually cost and how that might work if we just did a piece at a time or any other alternatives that I haven't thought of because I don't know about this stuff, but I think they're really important to talk about. So that's where, you know, so that's where I would come down in favor of this, but I do want us to have the opportunity for more in really engagement with it, and rather than just kind of saying, yes, okay, to something that comes to us fully formed. Thanks, Carrie. Yeah, so I had thoughts along the same lines. I was wondering if there was a way that the council can participate more frequently in what is really a substantial planning process, and it just seems like it would be to our advantage to keep up with it in a sort of day-to-day, not day-to-day, but more timely fashion instead of every other meeting or every couple of meetings. I don't know if we've ever done a project of this scale where we've had council sort of embedded somehow, if that's a term we can use. So I think there seems to be a final amount of talk. The council trying to define the outcomes and the vision and not have seven people voting on, debating and voting every decision that has to be made. So I think it's finding what that balance is, and I think we have had several big projects and typically the council is involved more at the front end in laying out the plans and those things. And then clearly when big changes come up or financial decisions, those kinds of things, then we come back to, I think hopefully we have a council rep should be on the committee, but I would suggest to Tim's point, yeah, it sounds like it hasn't happened yet, we've got to figure that out. I think to Tim's point, it may just be that maybe we can schedule a workshop meeting if you can maybe one of the meetings in July or the August meeting where we right now don't have a lot and just kind of kick around where we want to go and what is it, the different ideas that people want to see and if there's those kind of connections and figure out where the council would like to land on that. I think it won't be done in 2025 or it won't be started in 2025 if we're debating every step at every meeting. I would just say that. So I think you've got to lay down your marker early and then get updates as it goes. Yeah, no, I agree, I'm not saying you're not. That's sort of trying to figure out where the road is. And so that would be my suggestion and that way we can have more time devoted, maybe in a round table session to ask the kind of, get more detail that were questions ratio. For example, I heard concerns about the soils and the wetlands, one of the reasons the sites laid out the way it is is those were analyzed and the choice that the eligible building spaces were chosen, so that work has been done. I don't know if railroad work was done but I'm sure it was looked at and we can find out what was done. And I think we can knock out some of those questions but I think to a more practical basis, questions about what would phasing look like, what are the different types of housing? I would also say to the folks that talked about the priority of housing, just because something is a third tier doesn't necessarily mean it's a third priority, it's just the sequencing of things. So if there's a TIF district that's going to create a mechanism for funding the housing. So you've got to do that. You can still be thinking about the types of housing that you want to do. And clearly housing was the number one priority and the plan calls for like 290 some odd housing units on the site. Now those could be changed somehow, those could be different styles of housing but absolutely the tier of things rolling out isn't necessarily a priority. I think people just need to understand that. It doesn't mean it's lower priority, just means this is the order we've got to do it. And I don't know, I'm speaking, I'm the least knowledgeable person of our team, maybe the consultants or Mike or somebody might want to tell me what I just said wrong. Just one adding, it was great. The one addition on the housing needs assessment, the idea is to get that, have that done as close to the issuance of the RFP as possible because housing needs change over time and you don't want to do the housing needs assessment now and then two years later usually the RFP and all of a sudden there's more studio needs for studios and one bedrooms and not as many two bedrooms. So that it certainly didn't mean it was less of a priority it was just trying to get as close as possible to that RFP. What do other council members think about the idea devoting the bulk of our August meeting say to a real discussion of this stuff at our level sort of as a policy guidance level. And Carrie, you see you have your hand up. Yes, I am in favor of that. I think it would be really helpful to have some guidance for that discussion so that we can have, so we can talk about housing and then in terms of, what kind of housing and affordable housing or that kind of thing and recreation and some kind of structure to it so that we have a chance to really discuss all of these in an open-ended way, but also with some hopefuls be some direction at the end. If we set up the August 23rd meeting is tentative workshop a couple of things we can do is make sure but nothing else substantive gets on there. And the other thing is then that gives us full time to work through kind of an issues list that we can circulate and get feedback from people and but to structure our conversation and not just have it, just not just wing it so we can spend a couple of hours, two or three hours on this with what do we want to get out of it? What's the outcome we're looking for and those kind of things. Donna. Motion that we go ahead and accepted this actionable plan do you want to put a name on the name to it? I call it the actual plan for now if that appeases people. Are you meaning forward to second it? I will suck about. Kay, just to have a comment. I see Pelin has her hand up. Okay. So why? Go ahead. Yeah, thank you. I just want to ask in that workshop can we bring all the questions we are receiving from people who live in our district? For example, the last question I received if there is any plan to create transportation to downtown if people want to do shopping, if they want to go and do things because it's kind of far away. And if people don't have their own car, questions like that and we can answer all the questions all together in our August meeting. Is it possible? I would say not only possible but it would ideally we could get them all in advance. We could organize. Great. Organize topics by what people are interested in talking about. Perfect, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It looks like you're in the airport, so good luck. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. So I just wanted to clarify that I have no interest in micromanaging the process. What I'm most concerned about is just communication. More frequent communication, the better is the outcome. My 50 year career in housing and trade publishing had to do with remodlers who all make the same mistakes. They can't estimate, they don't show up on time. They don't finish on time and they don't communicate. They just don't let you know what's going on until it's all done. And that's a problem. We can't manage that on a project of this scale. So I just would like to find a ways where the council could at least be informed of progress in a more frequent fashion. Totally fair. Lauren. Sorry, just trying to get off mute. Yeah, I mostly just want to echo, I'm really glad that we're gonna move in this direction. I think it's been hard each meeting to try to have the kind of discussion that it sounds like we're gonna set up, which I think will be really helpful at just laying out a bunch of these issues and ideas. It's like in the interest of making sure that we're keeping everything moving and taking the actions that the staff and consultants wants us each time. It has felt like it's kind of precluded to the kind of conversation that we're now queuing up. So just echoing my gratitude that we're gonna take this. Great. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, we have adopted the actionable plan. Thank you. Yes. I'm Dan. I'm recording yesterday. Two, I'm with the hub, but I'm just speaking as a citizen right now. I'm absolutely flabbergasted for lack of a better word to hear that the goal is groundbreaking for housing in roughly two years. I'm glad to hear this, but I must say I'm skeptical. Before it's always been, I attended almost all of the public sessions and the estimates have until now always been in the three to five year range. And I've heard several people speculate about it's really likely to be closer to 10 years when there's groundbreaking. Now, one thing that I did not hear that I expected to hear tonight was an RFP or some sort of process to hire consultants for phase two of this process. You know, phase one is now complete. My understanding. So is it going to be White and Burke again for phase two? What might that look like? Or is there going to be an RFP that goes out for consultants? Those are all actions that need to be taken that are in the list and things that we need to lay out for decisions. I don't think we're prepared to make those decisions tonight. Not before when? August? Well, maybe. I mean, we were thinking of having it by July. And I'm like, we didn't know if the council was going to approve this tonight. So. Yeah, so our discussions we've been having is that as staff, we're going to be sitting down in July. Once we've had this definitively closed and the project planning step over, we could start laying out and that walking back or put the stake in the ground. This is where we'd like to be able to break ground and work our way back. We had conversations earlier or late last year that maybe we could be breaking ground in 2024. And again, that's, but the reality is is probably going to take longer with the number of hurdles that are still sitting out there. And I have heard people say, three to five years or longer than that. And a lot of that, I mean, frankly, it's just it happens when you don't have good organization and good process about working through public process, projects. That's what takes longer. And I have some experience doing this. I have some experience getting these things moving and keeping them on track. And we'll see how this one progresses and see if any barriers come up. It's all going to be depending on what gets thrown in front of us, you know, as we saw with parking garage, it takes one lawsuit and there's nothing any of us can do about that. So, but yeah, regarding phase two contracts, we're going to be sitting down to have that conversation of what it's going to take. Phase one was done under the umbrella of White and Burke, but we actually signed three separate contracts. We expect phase two is going to probably be very similar. We're going to be signing separate contracts and we're going to decide we need more engineering work on the roads and we're going to have a conversation with you. Do you guys want us to invite VHB to continue as our engineer for the roads and the utilities? They are not doing the housing. They're looking at the roads and utilities and those types of features. Will we bring on White and Burke for phase two? It's an open question. You know, they are the experts in TIF. We're going to need TIF, but there are lots of these questions and these are the questions we're going to have to be bringing back to you guys. And as we said, we're going to be pulling together and August will probably be a big opportunity for us to go and lay out a bunch of these to say, all right, we have a number of these decisions. What's the path we want to take to get us to that next step? Thanks, Mike. Okay, it's 8.17 p.m. It is time. I think this is a good time to take our 10 minute break and we'll reconvene at 8.27. Okay, welcome back everybody. Just two minutes past our time. It is, we're now up to item number nine, outside agency funding. And I assume the manager will be kicking that off. Yeah. You know, I sent you a pretty extensive article paper about the history of how we got to be where we are. And I think the reason this is on the agenda tonight, you already approved the grants that the community fund recommended. So that's an important piece of business. But last winter, when we were doing the budget, there was discussion about how we do this process and how things get on the ballot and how did we get to where we are now? And the council at that time said, so we had basically just taken the prior years, approved budget number, put it in the budget and allowed the two agencies to go onto the ballot, even though they had increased us because of COVID. And I think there was a sort of, well, what's the rationale behind this? So we said collectively that we wanted to talk about it again during the summer or some point when we didn't have budget decisions facing us and it seemed like it made sense to do it the same night that we approved the funding. So I've outlined for you the history of how we got to be where we are. I'm happy to answer any questions about that and gave you a list of my thoughts on it, but really there's what you think is what matters. Okay, anybody on council have any comments, any thoughts to start out with? Obviously the easy thing would be to just say, well, it's working, we'll keep doing what we've been doing, but I don't wanna foreclose discussion that anyone might wanna have. Okay, I'm not hearing. It seems like it's kind of the kind of issue that more experienced counselors who have been through this cycle would have better feedback. I've only watched it from the outside so I did and tried to understand it. Well, I'm not a council member, but I have certainly watched it. And as you can see from the memo, there were a lot of different iterations of this and we spent a lot of time in this room talking about this issue, about what the right or wrong thing to do. So I just offer, my advice is in the memo, but I'll say it out loud is, I think the community fund generally works really well. We haven't had a really hard working group of individuals that spend time going through these applications. I think the amount of money that goes into the community fund, that is a process that hasn't been as well defined. Some years we've just stuck it as the prior year. Back when they made their recommendations in January, sometimes they'd come in, we'd be toward the end of the budget process and they'd say, well, we'd like another 12,000 to fund everybody we recommend and the council would say, okay. And then that kind of messed up, or not messed up, but they just changed the numbers we were working with for the overall budget. And so I think some clarity about how we reached the amount of money that goes in and I think the simple, that the only way that can really work because you can't predict way in advance what it's going to be and be to actually ask that group to make a budget recommendation or request at the same time everyone else makes a budget request. And then that can be viewed, they can give their reasons. We had $270,000 worth of applications this year. We only had $134,000 to award. Looking at our history, maybe 170 would be, they could give their rationale and the council can then make their decisions as part of the whole budget process. So that's one part of it. I do think that we ought to split out the $10,000 arts fund and kind of it got pushed in when this was created. And I'll think it's never ever really been a great fit. I think the community funds worked really hard at trying to make sure they fund arts things but giving them a set number of services for community services and then decide whether it's that group that does it or public arts commission or go back to the system I used to run a group that did it. I don't really care, but just be clear that these are separate pots of money for different purposes. And then I think the last question is really the one that we get faced with. It's interesting how much airtime it takes but is about these items that go on the ballot, the library. And at this point, it's really CVHHH. So the wrong standing library policy was, if you're asking, we'll put you on the ballot if you're asking for the same amount, if you want more, you petition to go. And essentially that became the policy for Central Vermont Home Health. Because they petitioned, they didn't use the community fund. And last three years, because of COVID, they've asked not to petition for health reasons, understand them. And I think the main decisions we have to make, whatever we make is, if we make a decision now or by August or something, that the rules are clear for all the players going well in advance. So you don't, I mean, you still may find someone pleading a case in here, but at least, you know, we can say, we gave you a lot of notice about what, what the needs are gonna be. So those are my thoughts on this. Thank you. The committee does such thorough work. I mean, that was one of the things, is that we wanted to have a hands-on approach to what the organization was actually doing. But when I looked down the list, there were over, there were 10 that asked for over $10,000. And to me, those groups should have to do a petition. I don't think this, they should be part of the community fund. The community fund is, I mean, I know I thought I'm proposing for the council just to think about we don't have to decide tonight, but I do think these larger groups in the library and home, central Vermont, home health and hospice is a similar, but there are others here that are some that we would probably support, like just basics or the teen center. I mean, like that's ours or not. I don't think it's a matter of the community fund to decide. That's all. Thanks, Carrie. Yeah, Bill, would you mind just talking a little bit more about your proposal to separate out the arts funding? I know that it used to be separate and it's been combined and what's the rationale for that? I think the rationale is only that you're sort of creating a situation where people are applying for one, you're kind of comparing apples and oranges in the same pot of money. It could certainly, it could still be done by the same board. I think just being clear that we're setting 10 for arts and everything else for community services. I care less really who then makes those decisions. It was more because at some point you're asking the same board who's looking at $270,000 worth of applications to decide whether an affordable housing project or a shelter project is more important than a public arts project. And so if we think funding public art is important then we should just separate it out and call it that and say that's how much goes to that and everything else goes to something else. That's my thinking. And I actually argued that at the time the community fund was made but the council decided to put them together at the time. It's not the end of the world if we don't do it. They've been doing it that way since 2016 or something, but I just think it's clear. Yeah, I think there's a lot of value to the way we've been doing it. And I know in the fall or when we were doing the budget I was saying, well, geez, this was done as a way to take it away for take these decisions out of the politic or out of the democratic process. And I think of it, I think that was not really the best way to phrase it because I think that it's not feasible. The city council doesn't have the time to go through a list like this and make decide every $500 or $1,000 expenditure for all of these organizations, many of which are certainly worthy of support. And I do appreciate the work and the scrutiny that the community fund board gives this. And by the same token, I remember when there would be 20 or 30 different tiny items on the ballot. And for one thing, they virtually all passed anyway. And for another thing, I don't think the voters liked having the opportunity you're having to go through 20 or 30 different $500 or $1,000 appropriations. And so I think that I do think that what you suggested, Bill, is a way to keep what's good about what we're doing now and treat some of the bigger items with the attention they deserve. Donna's one that proposed. So I just wanted to deal with the two that have been habitual ballot conundrums, but. So 30,000, 17,500, 21,000, 13,000. I mean, those are large requests that to me don't belong in this small pot of money. We're probably not at the point to say, here's our policy and we're gonna vote on it. But could I get a sense from the council on whether you think this is, Bill suggested it's moving in the right direction. Nods, thumbs up. Sal. Well, not really having had any experience with it. Certainly the board sounds like a good approach. I mean, a long list of things on the ballot. People have no way of evaluating any of that stuff and to put it in the hands of a responsible citizenry, right? People are volunteer for this work. I'm sure they do a conscientious job. I think it just makes sense. I imagine that the library is almost always successful in getting their petitions and in getting their increase passed, right? So maybe we just put them on the ballot. I'm only telling you what has happened in the past. And in fact, for a long time, if you go through the history, there was a period of time when the library was in the city budget. Then there was a period of time when the prior year's library was in the city budget, but the increase was on the ballot. And then the next year and then at some point, the library budget got so big and I think the city council, and I kind of agree with this. You know what, it's not a city library. It's a public library. It's really just between the voters and them. It's really, you know, we're not. And so the council just said, we're gonna put their entire budget on the ballot. And the only attempt at budget control that they exercised was we'll make it easy for you if you don't increase it. You can just put it on. If you want to go up, then you'd get a petition. But that was a choice. And that's the same as Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice. And then it ran certainly a little different than the 450 or 500,000 of the libraries. I mean, I think you could split those two and consider them in different categories, particularly if Donna's idea of everything above a certain amount has to be petitioned, then that captures CDHH. If that matter may capture the library too, I don't know. But the opinion is that you'd be within your rights to sort of have one set thing for the library. It isn't our public library, even though some of the city versus other agencies. I don't think that they necessarily have to be grouped, but often they have been in this conversation. And, you know, as far as your suggestion, Donna, maybe we should ask feedback from the board what they think about that, you know, and get. Well, the other piece when it was early on the council and this had just started being formed and this push to have everybody accountable to how many monthly rights they served, when the library last gave us their numbers, our percentage of money totally outweighed our percentage of users. So yes, it is our library, but their actual users are more non-monty rights than monthly rights. So it's just hard for me to have that standard when somebody comes for 5,000 or 500 versus this huge library. Yeah, that's all. I think consistency is a really valuable thing when you're dealing with this kind of process. And it feels like you've been very consistent for a decade and that's good. So maybe if it needs to be tweaked a little, but it generally sounds like it's working. No, I carry. Yeah, I agree. I think it is working. I think that the suggestions that Bill has made, the one is to keep the community fund process in place. I think that's a good idea. I reaffirm the current award schedule. I think that's a good idea. Verify how the budget funding is established, inviting the board to request an appropriation in November with other budget requests, that makes a lot of sense. I think we should do that. And as far as clear policy about the library and the home health and hospice, I think that they are two different things and the library feels to me more like I wanna be able to be sure that we're gonna provide funding to the library because it is a public library. Home health and hospice feels a little bit different. I don't feel a great need to change the policy that was in place. I would probably approve if we did change that, but doesn't feel urgent. I wasn't in favor of giving them the exception to the petitioning last time around. So I agree with consistency. We're gonna make everybody follow the same procedures. But the question for me is about the arts funding. I think Bill has a point that they're sort of, arts compared to housing. Maybe housing is always gonna win out, but I don't, so I think the question for us is, do we wanna guarantee that there's a certain amount of money available for arts? Yes or no? And then if so, then how do we make sure that happens? And that's a question that I don't have a clear answer for yet and I think needs a little bit more discussion. That is 100% a policy question for sure. Yeah. Yep. So where are we? Do you feel okay with suggesting to Bill that you take the feedback that he's gotten, talk to the board and maybe the Public Arts Commission too to see, because I don't think the Public Arts Commission existed at the time. No, they did not. This was created, so that's another. So yeah, I would seem to me that if, at least based on what I'm hearing, what I think I'm hearing is that the real decisions left are amount or presence of arts funding and then once that's decided, then how that gets funded, those are, if you don't set aside arts funding, then it doesn't matter how it gets funded. And then the second is the petition versus library and everything else. So I mean, it sounds like everything else is okay. So maybe what we can do is, and then the idea of maybe asking the larger ones to petition. So maybe we can put those questions on the next agenda, just narrow it down to those and get input from all of the next, well, either the next agenda or the July 20, I'm just, because of the holiday week and everything, but see if we, whenever we can get enough feedback, one of the July agendas, and then just walk through those decisions and the council can make your decisions and then we can communicate to everybody what it's gonna be. So. Didn't we hear from the Public Arts? So the Public Arts Commission, yes, we did hear from them. So they do exist now. They didn't exist. Yeah, and as I recall, they do a remarkable job of leveraging the funds of students. So this 10,000 is specifically for small arts grants to the community. If not, it's not for us to do arts projects. It's for people to apply, whether it's for a public art piece or a performance or those kinds of things. And typically, I think we're only to 1,000 or maybe $1,200. They're not big grants and they're just meant to kind of have some public art in the community. Now, it was 10,000, you know, 20 years ago when we started and it's still 10,000. So that's another question. But so the further kind of found, it was actually a community of, it was many folks from Lost Nation Theater, if I'm in River Arts Council, if anybody remembers those, my particular life, and I think the curator from the city hall, because those people all got money elsewhere and so they couldn't, they were prohibited from applying for it. So we would do it and make the recommendations and award and it worked pretty well. And then when the community fund was created, the council said, let's put that in. And I, like I said, I said, don't do that. That's a separate thing. They're not, but they did. And so that's what's happened. So since then, the community fund board has been making, you know, arts people still apply to that and they get some funding from it. And I just don't think there's a hard line that says this much goes to art. I think they just try to balance it. And so that's kind of the history. So then, so A, should we fund arts grants that way? How much should we fund it? And then last question is who manages it? Carrie. So to clarify, the public arts commission has a budget that's separate from this. Okay, so we're putting money towards arts. And maybe if we want the, if we want there to be money available for individual grants to artists, the public arts commission might be a better vehicle for that. I mean, people could still apply to the community fund board if they want. But if we wanna make sure that there's arts funded, we already have a, you know, maybe that's the way to direct that. And Donna, you have a thought about that. Now individuals are going to the public art commission because the public art is things outside that get shared by the public. Whereas what the Montpellier fund is the city capital fan, city concerts, arts for center for arts and learning. I'm reading them down here. There's a music group. There's a, the summit to school, traditional music and culture. There's the wood art gallery. There's a fiddler orchestra and the Philharmonic. So they're very different than public art, I think. And I don't think our public arts commission has been heavy on wanting more administration. Okay, thank you for that clarification because I was under the impression that people were individual artists were applying to the community fund board to further their own work. What about performance and those kinds? Okay, and it sounds like they are being funded. Yeah, I think my only recommendation was saying, if we're going to do it, let's make, give them, you know, just separate a number as much as for art so that they don't have to make the decision distinction between or not, or maybe just leave it as is. That's also fine. Nope, I'm not dying on this hill. Okay, well, that'll be part of the discussion next time. Is that okay, Carrie? Or do you want to? No, that's great. Yeah, thank you. Okay, I think we're set on that then. Thank you. Next up, district heat budget and rates. I'll turn this one over to you, Sarah LaCroy. And that's why you're here until, well, it's almost only nine, but it could have been much later, right away from kids. Sorry, hi, I'm Sarah LaCroy, the finance director. And this is going to be a pretty brief presentation on district heat, its budget and its rates for fiscal year 2024. Is it not shared? Okay, so this is the fiscal year 2024 district heat budget and rate presentation. This first slide basically outlines the customer agreement, article six and article seven, within the signed customer agreements defines what's included in the capacity-related charges and the energy-related charges. It also provides a timeline that we're required to provide an estimate of the cost to run the utility to customers, which is by June 15th each year and the rates are supposed to be set by June 30th each year. Article six defines capacity as costs other than energy, which these costs are the operating costs, admin, legal, debt, working capital and capital replacement and improvement, where article seven defines energy-related costs as the customer's thermal energy use from the heating system based on heat the customer's building. This is based on metered flow. The energy-related charges are from the state of Vermont and the city for consumption of fuels, including but not limited to wood chips, oil, natural gas and purchase of thermal energy. And just a touch back on the capacity charge, this is allocated to each of the 17 customers based on their maximum thermal energy demand during any 15-minute period throughout the seven-month heating season. This next slide is the annual debt service for district heat. It's made up of four different loans for fiscal year 2023. The debt made payments totaled 190,000. It's estimated that for 2024, the debt payments will be approximately $187,000. This slide is a presentation of the audited district heat financials. It recaps the income statement. For each year, the district heat has been in operation. This utility operates at a loss annually. At the end of FY22, the loss for that fiscal year was $150,675. FY23 is not yet available because the year is not completed nor is the audit. So we just don't have accurate numbers provided at this point, but we would anticipate that it will also end in a loss consistent with prior years. The main reason that this fund operates at a loss is due to the city's budgeting for debt service instead of for depreciation. Debt service, as I mentioned before, is $187,000, where you can see here depreciation is 325. So we're doing this in order to keep the utility affordable to the users. Best practice would be to budget for the higher of the two, which would help you build a reserve and keep the fund from operating at a loss. But at this point, that's not something that would be reasonable to do for the end users, but a reserve would help for future replacement costs. This slide is just a representation of the budget and its breakdown as well. It's history. The FY24 budget that was originally proposed, which was using our estimate of what we thought state charges would increase to was $734,445. After review of the state's fixed income or fixed and energy charges that we received in early June, we were able to reduce the budget to $689,589. This is actually $31 less than the FY23 budget. What this means is that for capacity and energy rates based on the proposed budget, $482,867 of that is related to capacity, which will require $6.90 per MMBTU rate, which is an increase of five cents over the prior year. The energy rate we would need to cover the difference from that in a total budget of $206,722 is $15.65 per MMBTU. And as I mentioned before, these states are reflective of the state's projected operational costs, as well as the evergreen capacity study that we had performed for the FY23 usage. This slide is a spreadsheet and basically it shows the capacity in MMBTUs for FY23 and FY24 as it's allocated to the customers and then how that relates as a monthly cost for both FY23 and 24. So I just wanted to show the comparison and how the deck shuffles based on peak capacity that's allocated to each customer. So basically to wrap this up, my recommended action for you is to approve the district heat budget in the amount of $689,589 and establish a district heat capacity rate at $6.90 and energy rate at $15.65 for fiscal year 2024. Thanks, Sarah. Do we have any questions from council members? Tim. This is on the first line on the list here. Sorry. Yeah. So we're doing $150,000 a year loss for this. In terms of the debt service, is there a point at which you see where it will catch up and be okay or do we just need to add more accounts and get more people involved to make sense of this? Yeah, so really what we need is to add users to this and we are pursuing new customers and we were talking about a snow melt system which would take a share of the capacity cost but until we can add more users, we can't budget for more expenses or else the share just increases the cost of the current users on the system. And to be clear, Sarah is giving the absolute accurate information that from an accounting perspective that's operating as a loss. From a cash perspective, it's basically breaking the event because we're not spending $325,000 in depreciation we're only spending the debt. So I just want to be clear that we're not actually losing cash every year where we are not, we should be budgeting just depreciation. So it's a fair act but I do want to just for those that are this, you know. Sorry. Yeah, well, it's fine. Yeah, that was the most important question she got in her interview so. Don't really understand the evergreen report. So could you sum up their recommendations? So evergreen energy is the consultant arm of the St. Paul district heat system. And as you know, they were our main consultant on designing the system and the engineers that really oversaw the project and helped us put together the operating costs. So because they have an expertise that we don't have two or three years ago. So one of the things that we were supposed to have done after three years was to do an annual reappraisal but updating of everyone's energy use. And for whatever reason, that didn't get done. So we finally did it up like six or seven years in and it changed everyone's rates. And you can, you know, just like a real appraisal you can imagine how that went. There were winners and losers and you know. So I think there was a question about our methodology and so to increase confidence from the users, we said, you know what, let's go get the experts. So we contracted with evergreen to do the capacity study of how it's calculated according to the contract and to give us recommendations for the allocation of the funding. And as it turned out, it was pretty close to what we had come up with on our own but it was important to get the validity. So what we promised our customers was that we would have evergreen do this for at least three straight years. So this is the third year of that. And I think just because to the good, you know, one of the pluses that it has created is customers have some customers have really aggressively looked at how they're how they can manage their capacity. And so they've dropped their rates but of course, because it's kind of a zero sum game that means, you know, what they're losing gets spread out to other people. So, but ideally everyone will calibrate. Anyway, long story short, we've agreed to have evergreen come back one more time just because the capacities are dynamic. The plus side for the city is those that have been around a while when we first started the system, you may remember we were pretty close to our total system capacity and we were talking about having to buy more from the state and all this stuff. The cumulative effort of customers to reduce their capacity has now brought us down we're late about 50% of our total capacity. So our ability to expand a new customers is not really an issue now. We don't have to assume those additional costs. So I think, you know, by having the proper data people are making good decisions to manage their own systems. And so that, you know, ultimately we're hoping everyone will kind of get to an optimal amount that won't necessarily save the money but it will be the proper distribution of the actual demands on the system. And then people will get really stable and people can count on that. And then as we add users that will just drop everyone's rate. And we do have three or four potential users and then the snowmelt, which is our own which we need for several reasons for the city including the side benefit or we would help to distribute system. But it's, as people may know we don't have a lot of options to dump snow anymore when we clean snow. And so we either run it out to the stump dump or we run it out to under the interstate but we can only do that during the day because the noise bothers people across the river. And it's, you know, we used to have 10 snow dumps when I started, you know, we have two and it's very inefficient. You have to fill trucks, they drive out, you know. And so having a downtown location where we can dump snow not only would make our snow more efficient but it would mean it was going into the drainage system which means it's going to the treatment plan and being treated. So the salts and all the crap that's in it would actually be better environmentally as well in addition to being melted with wood chip heat and financially benefiting all the other customers because the city would actually be taking on it's going to be a high capacity user. So it, you know, we'll be helping other customers but also doing a good thing for ourselves. So we're looking at various locations including potentially partnering with the state because they clear their parking lots too. So it might be somewhere in a state parking lot and we can both use it and that would be, you know and then they're like I said, a couple, one big user or a few smaller is the East state expansion. There are three, I think potential new customers that once we've got this road dug up we can connect a couple of your neighbors. Oh, just the people right here. And has it. Would it be a good deal for a building owner to come on the system and get their heat this way instead of fuel oil or whatever. So that's been the struggle is, you know I think we're, when we put the heat on, the system and heat was fuel was like 365, 375 a gallon and then it dropped to about 175. And so it wasn't a good deal, quite frankly. I think it's getting more competitive and the more users we can, the more users we can put on, the lower that cost will be and the closer to oil it will be. And it does have the benefit of being a lot more stable without the spikes that oil has. And everyone's making their own decisions but I think it has the potential of reducing or eliminating the cost of replacing furnaces every so often and those kinds of things because some people have chosen to keep their furnaces as a backup. Others have just taken them out. So I think there's other benefits but right now it is a little more expensive just calling it like it is but with these users we think we can get it back. I mean, I don't think we're ever gonna match $1.75 but get a more reasonable oil price, we can be competitive. Okay. Anybody else? And I'm not seeing anyone on screen. It looks like we may have dropped to both the councillor Cohn and Hurl. Lauren texted me, yeah, Kerry's still on. Lauren texted me to say that she was just about out of power on her phone. So we probably lost her. So. And Helen's flight might have been coming. Yeah, I hope so. I hope she can be on the plane on the way back. Yes. Yes. And the budget and the rates. Thank you. That's what I was looking for exact wording, budgets and the rates. Yes. I just don't have it up here so I can't read this. Man, is there a second? Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. We have adopted the budget and rates for the district heat system. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks. This is very good. I give hats off to Sarah. This is a pretty complicated thing and she came in in the middle of it and has really put a lot of sweat into this to understand it and now speaks as intelligently as any of us about it. So good work on her part. Okay, let's move to council reports. Started Tim's end this time. Nothing. Sal. Just that the energy committee, of course, is engaged in trying to help attract new customers and they're looking at some things that help to reduce the initial setup costs and that sort of thing. So, and as well as the, keeping an eye on the melt project which has some good potential. So this situation may get better. With the melting project, if we were to get the state in on this, would we charge them to dump it on our land so that, because they would be using our heat to do it? Possibly. I think we, it also might be one of those things that if it's on the early end, maybe they allow them, we'd have to work that out on how that would work or maybe there would be a way to figure out who's dumping what and who's paying what share of it. I don't think we've gotten that far yet. It's really been, hey, we think we need this. We were actually looking at it in the parking lot out back here. And there's some technical concerns with that, the line that runs through to the police station made up big enough to handle the capacity needed. So we started looking for other locations and said, well, hey, maybe the state would be a good partner on this because it's downtown and we have common needs. So it's really just been a, would you like to talk about it? Yes, let's talk about it. As far as we've gotten, so I don't know what that end decision would be. Cool, Carrie. Yes, I am on the Public Restroom Committee and I just wanted to report on what's going on there. So we've been talking about how to meet the immediate need for public restrooms and how, and kind of following the principles of let's try to serve as many people as possible and use what we have as much as we can. And so we asked the staff representative who was with us to look at what it would take to keep the City Hall restrooms open on kind of a trial basis just during the day on weekends. So they're already open during the day and in the week, they're often open in the evenings if Lost Nation is here or if there's a meeting or something like that. So let's just see what does it take to just have them open during the day on Saturday and Sunday and to try to, we got, we were given a budget of $180,000 that it would take to keep the, to keep them open 24 hours a day all week long. And that was assuming a full-time attendant on-site at all times other than during the business hours. We thought that seemed possibly excessive and maybe there were things we could do rather than have somebody actually sitting outside the bathroom 24 hours a day, something that might serve as deterrence to vandalism, which is what we understand from the City is the primary concern. So we talked about additional surveillance cameras. We talked about asking the police and the fire department to just kind of swing by and check in. We talked about signage indicating that there was surveillance and that police and fire and city people were coming in and to think about other ways to kind of try to deter any sort of problematic behavior and then just see how it goes. And so we're hoping to hear back from staff about what that would take. We also talked about looking into alternatives. Like, you know, we've got the Portland blue kind of on our radar or trailers or something like that, all of which might be expensive or might, we don't know yet, we're gathering information about that. But we kind of had this priority of getting something in place as fast as we can. And we've got porta-potties, which is good for now. We did hear that there is a plan to keep at least one setup over the winter, probably behind the rec center, which is great since they can't stay behind city hall or behind the senior center, which is where they are now, they can't stay there because that's where snow gets dumped. So we could at least have a porta-pottie, but that doesn't allow a place for someone to wash their hands and, you know, obviously they're sort of gross. So it's not a great solution, but it is something, it is something that's available. We also have, I think we, you might have heard about this already, but there's a list and a map of all the restrooms in town that we know of that are currently public, publicly accessible and Montpelier live has printed that out in brochure form that's being distributed to like the transit center and the tourist center of the state and city hall. And hopefully it's going to get into the hands of outreach workers who are working for Good Samaritan so that unhoused people can know where they are as well as I think we're going to have them all on Google maps pretty soon. So people can just search on their phones to find a public restroom. So there are things happening in the public restrooms in Montpelier realm just to reassure everybody about that and more will be happening soon. That's it. Thank you. Thank you so much. We just had a recent Regional Planning Commission Transportation Advisory Group and those of you who are new to the council may not be as familiar with the complete streets policy that the council adopted in the public safety, I'm sorry, Department of Public Works follows when they're dealing with roads and sidewalks and bike paths, et cetera. And there was a big discussion that those policies are there but that we all need to be much more aware of making sure we follow them every incident we have including when we're doing projects with the state among the tack, all these towns we had like 20 in attendance last evening and they all were concerned that maybe the state was not doing a share on state projects like route two. When they come through State Street I look at the bike paths there on both sides of the roadway and they seem smaller than they were before they repaved and that concerns me. So I don't know exactly how we get more pushy about it but I think we really need to when we have these projects with the state that not only for ourselves but that the state needs to be held to a higher standard to actually implement and not just have the words of complete streets in your mind. So that's a to-do sort of. The parks have been really busy adding more trails on all this wonderful newly acquired land the last couple of years and the one thing they've come up against so I'm begging the public and all of us to stay on the paths that public go into a woods and they decide I'm gonna take a shortcut. Well that damages wildlife plants and gets us into trouble. So please stay on the trails. Stay on the trails. And I wanna say I'm sorry I do not remember Stephanie's last name from White and Burke. Clark. Clark. But I just really wanna salute that she did an outstanding job dealing with the public constantly. I just feel we were so very fortunate to have her on this phase one project and whether we could send her not only a congratulations to mother and baby but a big, big thank you. She did an excellent job. I'll be happy to share it. I think that's totally up. Since it's time up, I think that's totally right. I think we've all developed not just incredible amount of respect for her work but a great personal fondness for her for everything she's done for us. So that's great. Mayor's report, a couple of things. One, I did take the time to look at the ordinances and we already have an ordinance that says that bicycles are not allowed to be operated on sidewalks in the downtown area. And I assume, I don't know if there's a definition of bicycle in the ordinances but I assume that that applies to electric bicycles too. It does seem like enforcement is a good idea. The other thing is July 3rd is coming up on Monday and get out there and enjoy the community. I think it's not gonna be raining all day. Can't promise good weather but get out there to the parade and to the events downtown. And that's all I've got. City clerk. Oh, there's something you told me to remind you of. Oh my God. Oh, yes, just wanted to note the passing of Catherine Simpson who was a longtime Justice of the Peace and an active person in the community. I only heard about this very recently and the process will begin to replace her in the ranks of the Justices of the Peace but she's just been absolutely wonderful to work with and to talk to for many years now and she's already very missed. Thanks. Yep, I agree. As I've been for years, the chair of the non-familiar democratic committee and tried to recruit people to get on the ballot for Justice of the Peace. I have always appreciated it when people were willing to get on the ballot who are also gonna be willing to do the work and come to all those meetings and work on the tax abatement appeals and everything else. And Catherine's willingness to do all that was definitely appreciated and I'm hoping we can find someone who will also do that. And city managers report. Just had a couple of things. I hope everyone has a great holiday. With regard to July 3rd, just to the point someone mentioned the weather, I would note that we are our emergency folks are planning with not to be allowed. Some of you recall a few years ago, we did have lightning and we did have to call it. And so we are going to leave that on the hand. I mean, in the hands of essentially the emergency management people, the police chief and fire chief. So just that's who do you know that I think. If maybe I'll just say I'll be consulted in Kelly but at the end of the day. So I think that's just, you know, hopefully we don't have that happen but we also can't have 10,000 people downtown and you know, dangerous lightning going off. So we're watching that closely. Hopefully that won't be the case. A couple of things about the bikes. We talked about those a little bit. And I think that I didn't want to belabor the conversation but I do think we need to get a lot is from those bicyclists not following who was running road lights and those kinds of things. And so perhaps we can ask the committee to as if the courage of people to have sidewalks is also to follow the rules. Obviously we weren't safe biking for everybody. And the reason I asked Corey to repeat the trap is I just want to be clear. We're talking, we're taking out the parking from one street to the rec center on that side of the barry street putting in. And it's a great plan but we're going to hear about it and I want to make sure that everybody understands loud and clear that that's what we're doing and that it was spoken fast and repeated. So that's what that plan is. So those two things can't be in the same place. Exactly. And so obviously we're going to have to do some outreach to the folks that are going to be impacted by it because again, that we had a very extensive process an excellent public process maybe in 2017 or so 2018, something like that which decided these things. And here we are at 2023 doing it and people forgot. So I am sure we will remind people that it's you heard it here first. So that's all I have. Hope everyone has a great holiday. Okay. And we are adjourned at 923 p.m. Thank you everybody.