 Good morning everybody. I will call our meeting to order at 6 30 p.m. It's good good to see such a large turnout tonight. I will start by going over a little bit of the meeting logistics. Anyone who is participating remotely please change your name display to indicate your first and last name so we have a record of of who's addressing us. Anyone who wants to speak you must be recognized by the chair to before you speak and please state your full name and where you live. So again we have a record of who's who's here and who's addressing the council. So you'd ask whenever you speak you keep your comments to three minutes and if you're speaking about a specific agenda item please limit your comments to that agenda item. If you speak at a turn, discuss non-Germain topics go on too long etc. you may be interrupted and ask to adjust your comments. The first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Yep. And I hope everybody got that today. And folks in the room it's it's hard to be heard in this room so really I ask you to have no conversation other than what's going on in the meeting if you need to talk about something with someone else's in attendance please step outside. Okay next item on the agenda is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to make a comment to the council on any subject that is not on tonight's agenda. And again you'll be called on and Councillor Bate will help us keep the keep your comments to three minutes. Tina come on up. I think that makes sense to me. Okay anyone here for general business and appearances and again this is for people who are commenting on something that is not on the agenda. I don't see anyone online seeking to be recognized and I don't see anyone in the room seeking to be recognized. So the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda and for those of you who are here all the time this is for items that are expected to be non-controversial and be able to be supported without debate. Any proposals that we take anything off the consent agenda or are we ready for a motion? Any discussion? I should point out you want to point out the one addition under item G street closures approval. We got a late request a request late today to add an item that for Halloween to close College Street from East State Street all the way up to to the end and public safety supports that so that's part of the proposal. The police department using their sort of safety powers have blocked off the street during Halloween there's so much foot traffic that trying to have cars go through there it's not safe so we fully support that. All right all those in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? Okay thank you. Now let's move right to item eight proposal from the membership of the Montpelier senior activity center. Yes. We didn't really clarify but when you get this it means you have one more minute and when you get this it means you at three you really should stop. Thank you. Good evening. I am Johanna Nichols. Thank you for making the time for members of the Montpelier senior activity center to address you with our concerns. We do understand that everyone is trying to rebuild the city from the flood disaster. We acknowledge that the city is facing financial challenges and we appreciate the efforts to support our senior population. I was the program assistant at MSAC from 2011 to 2014. The senior center is a major reason why I retired home to Montpelier four years ago because I knew that MSAC was here for support just as it supports the majority of residents in Montpelier many whom you see here this evening who are preparing for a healthy retirement and those beginning to experience the normal effects of aging. For some of our older members COVID is not over they are still afraid to come out. As the quote by Haruki Marakami that was posted in the window of the drawing board says when you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. At the annual meeting in June the MSAC director announced that she was leaving. Members were told that the position would not be filled that a team would assess the MSAC programs and budget and that the director of the recreation department would provide oversight to MSAC. In two town hall meetings last august and in a forum with the city manager in September members stated clearly that we need a qualified focused director for MSAC. If as the city says the MSAC director position is not working it may need modification but the city's proposal to reassign parts of the position is not a solution nor is it a solution to reclassify the position. The city might ask what support the current position needs to succeed. Instead the city is proposing to replace the MSAC director with a program and membership director. That term is misleading and may be confusing. We are not seeking a program staff. While we think program staff is a necessary assistant position we believe we need the professional knowledgeable director which so many seniors referenced at the two town halls. I'd like to step back to 2010 when the senior services coordinating committee or SSCC really was formed at the request of the council to bring forward a vision for the future of the senior center. Well I think the vision and values of the senior center stated clearly in the report to the council and approved by the city council in April 2011 established the position of a strong director with parity to the directors of parks and recreation and led to a vibrant community center. I suppose you're three and a half minutes now. Oh so I have to be at five. No no three. Council have any questions. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Is anybody else who wants to address us on this topic and just just step right up. Sure. Yes. We need to make sure we get you recorded in online. I'm George Olson resident of Montelia a member of the Montpelua City Activity Center aka MSAC MSAC. MSAC is a bargain I think. We receive about one percent of the city budget which covers about 25 percent of our expenses. The remaining 75 percent comes from revenue generated from membership classes and some fundraising but I'm not here tonight to talk to you about fundraising fundraising mechanism. Like the city after the pandemic and flood our goal is to rebuild. To do that we need to hire visionary experienced leadership that supports the mission of the senior center. Recent history showed us that due to divided responsibilities the membership declined 32 percent over the past two years that's post pandemic from 1124 to 757. And classes have dropped from a high of 150 to about 45. I'm asking the city council to support hiring a director a dedicated director whose experience and background focuses on the senior center only. Thank you very much. My name is Bill Goldger. By way of explaining why the MSAC needs a director I would like to give a thumbnail history. Twenty years ago my wife who grew up in Montpelua and I retired and moved from the Boston area to take care of her father Stretch Normando a World War two vet. He had been widowed for two years and his health was failing. His idea of dinner was Chef Boyardy in a can or a hot dog. Vital to his activities was drum playing at the senior center in the swinging over 60s band. I would come and watch him play and have lunch. The center was a somewhat sleepy place when I would when I first saw it. Membership was not robust and we had no way of tracking that. There was a TV going most of the time and a few people coming and going. The building was in need of a major renovation. For example there was a huge old boiler with asbestos around the pipes and one thermostat for the whole building. Then there was a thought then there was then there was I'm sorry then there was a growth in programming and activity began picking up. The TV actually came out and retired folks notice what was happening and started coming to sign up for classes. At the same time that classes were increasing we charged relatively small fee for membership and membership and classes grew. Then in 2009 there was a fire that allowed for a complete renovation and the addition of 14 apartments. I served on the senior services coordinating committee in 2010 and 2011 and participated in raising money for a capital campaign and served on the finance committee because of its many aspects managing the MSAC is a complex and caring task that not many can do. As we prepared to return to our new quarters our planning led to the elevation of our director to a department head. Growth became even more vigorous. One quarter we offered 119 classes or events. The budget grew and it seemed to me that the city appropriation to fund the MSC might not be needed. Membership nearly reached 2000. Some people moved to Montpelier just because of our senior center. We believe that the MSAC was the best senior center in Vermont. Then we lost our experienced director and the pandemic hit. Stretch and I were moving we're driving down Main Street and he turned to me to say that he did not know anyone anymore. He worked for Prudential for 40 years and knew most of the population of Montpelier. Now his friends were either dead or largely confined to their homes. The challenges of getting older can be met with protecting one's health. Thank you. Thank you. Okay thank you. Is there anyone else in the room who'd like to be heard? Remarks but I was anticipating without knowing how this works that the two individuals who did have prepared remarks would have more time but I understand. I have been active in the senior center since I was in AmeriCorps in 2001. Over the year over the past almost 30 years I have been an instructor there, a volunteer there, a member there, a donor, a student. Many of us don't know about the amazing facets of Montpelier if we're not personally involved in them. If you haven't been to the senior center to take classes, to teach, to have meals, to be a part of the fabric you won't have a clue as to how important this place is to so many of us. It's critical to the health and well-being of so many and I imagine you all have seen the statistics about how many of us in Montpelier I believe is 42 percent or something over the age of 58 or 50. As our boomer demographic ages that place is going to become even more important so we ask you we are a small sliver of the city's budget. Please allow us to have a dedicated director. Please put that as a line item in the fiscal year 25 budget. It's just essential to the future of the center. Thank you. I think I saw someone else getting up or raising a hand. In the past we've had people with problems with people falling asleep in the meeting so we've made special arrangements to make sure that doesn't happen. And the pandemic was particularly difficult for folks who lived alone because they lost the ability to meet with other people and and I think many of us are paying the price of that. We come out of the pandemic and find out we're talking about the place where many of us went to meet other people is going to be losing a director means losing programs. And it will be devastating I think for this particular population of our city and I think that reason is something that needs to be considered as you're thinking about what what the future of and that is. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Tina looks like you want to step up. Tina Munze again. I don't have anything to say. I'm just curious about your process. So this was an item on your agenda. You heard the comment and somebody spoke to it and then there are comments. What happens next as far as what the council does with this request? We will hear from the city manager and then we'll have discussion. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Is there anyone else who'd like to be heard? I'm Jim Trini. I live on Terrace Town Street and I know many of you and I'm interacting with you. I doubt if many of you can it might be helpful if you could speak a bit louder. I think I've seen that people are having a hard time hearing. I just want to tell you what the senior center is meant to me. I guess for about 80 years I get up in the morning and people tell me what to do. Go to school, learn how to do this, join the Navy, do that and then suddenly you're a senior and you retire and you haven't anything to do. Well, you can go to the senior center, as I did, take a class in water culling and renew your ability to paint that you gave up 15 years ago. You can work on your physical education and take a bone building course from and keep your physical status all right. And if you're curious and wonder whether you can write something, you can go to a course and they'll teach you how to write a book. And if you tire of that, you can go and have a congregate meal and talk with people about all kinds of things that you would never meet. And in short, they can save your life. Don't let it stop. Thank you. Mary Alice Bisbee online. Why don't you come on up so we'll get you next. Mary Alice, you'll need to be unmuted. Unmuting, I think. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? I didn't know anything about this. Was coming up tonight, but I want to put in a word that I am lonely. I miss my senior center. I miss my meals. The meals are the most important thing. We used to have twice a week meals. Now it's down to one or twice a month. And I hope we can get the food system back working the way it was. The person that was hired for a chef made the meals for us. And I think for those of us, I'm 86. I think for those of us in our 80s, we should have meals and we shouldn't be expected to have to pay $15 for every meal. Some of this should come from the city. So I think that if this is about the budget, then I'm all for making as much of a commitment for the senior center as you're able. Thank you. The chair of the advisory council at the senior center. And I think if I repeat anything that other people said, I'm sorry, we couldn't quite hear in the back. But I think Mary Alice and some of the other comments you might hear also to me really reveal the many functions and the real meaning of the senior center. And therefore, because they're so varied, you know, we do people have been mentioning programs and meals and all sorts of things. And that means that the person who's the director has a lot of responsibility. There's a lot of balls in the air. We've had a director over a number of years. And I just want to, you know, again, emphasize that the city has proposed a lesser position, a program director, with other parts of the what was originally the director's position now moving over towards the rec departments had Arne McMullen. It feels like there are ways to support that position, the original director's position that would make sense as opposed to taking away some of the partial responsibility. And we really think that the person who's our director needs to be equal to the other directors within community services, that there are ways to support that position so that they can accomplish the work. And they have in the past, there's been as I think as Johanna said, since 2011, there's been a director and it's worked quite well. We took a real dive as everyone did during the during the pandemic. And we're just slowly getting back to that. We actually had a fairly successful year. I know the budget is just what's on everyone's mind. But last year, the budget shortfall for the senior center, even though it a few months earlier, it looked pretty bad. It was only a few thousand dollars. So we actually made up for that. There was a lot of grant writing and a lot of work done. But the financial piece is not as severe as we thought it was. I don't know if Bill would will agree with that. But back to the position, we just feel that it needs to be a full blown director position that it does. It's very, very multifaceted. There's a lot to do. Someone we hire is not going to be great at everything because it's got so many, as you know, so many aspects. So one thing we would propose is figuring out ways to support that position. If someone comes in and they're not like a whiz about a budget, but they can do everything else about the job well and they really understand what we need, then that person could get some support in terms of training to develop a budget. So I guess that's really I just wanted to clarify what the differences are because we heard the word director in one usage and then the word director in another. And I just want to straighten out that that's what we're looking at. And we want the director to be as they were a full fledged director and figure out how to support them best. So thank you very much. I want to make sure everyone yes come on up. Thank you. I'm Barbara Thompson and I live at Westview Meadows. I would like to point out the number of people who are here this evening. I think they speak that speaks more volume, more words that I could say about the importance of the senior center to this community. It is a vital part of an active civic engagement. And I think you would be very much mistaken to cut back on its budget and not to have a an executive director to help it grow and continue to grow. Thank you. Please step up. Hi. My name is Anne Ferguson and I live in Montpelier on North Franklin Street. I worry about, I worry a lot, but I worry about I worry about men and I worry because so many men don't make the transition from work to retirement very smooth for them. And I think one of the things that I've seen happen at the senior center is opportunities for men in particular to come and join in. You know women, we're great. We're really good about being with each other and stuff. Men have a harder time and I'm sorry, but they come to trash tramps. All right? Is that awesome or what? Right? And they come and they play music and they're just so important that this part of our population not feel like that it's, they're so important that they in particular feel welcome to come. And so I think the programming person that runs the senior center has to really have a good understanding of the special needs of the population. You know, not just men, but also people that are dealing with a loved one that is struggling with disease or the difficulty that everyone experiences through grief and loss. These are really important, important issues. And I think that they should, they should be addressed well by someone who knows what they're doing. And that's why I think we need a dedicated director. Thank you. Hi, I'm Nancy Mono. I live on Pearl Street in Montpelier. And I missed half of what was being said because my hearing aids aren't tuned loud enough. So this is a typical senior moment for me. But I just wanted to say that not only can we get back to where we were in terms of vitality, but the senior center can go way beyond that. I mean, I've heard Mary Alice in one of the group meetings we had talk about, what about transportation? Could we have somebody who actually can make a list of people in a class or for a special event that can give rides and people that need to receive rides? That takes a lot of work. It requires, it's one of many things that require the kind of director that is really focused on the senior center. And I can't talk loudly because I was a teacher for 25 years. A room like this does not intimidate me, but we really, the breadth of classes that we have as wonderful as it is, but there are so many more opportunities of things to teach and people to recruit and events that we can have to get together. And it's so important to our lives. So thank you. I'm Alice in Underhill. I've been an executive director of a few organizations around Montpelier, Barry. And I know that unless you are devoted and understand what your organization is all about, you can't really put the effort into writing grants and coordinating and making that organization better. And that's why I think we really do need to have a separate executive director at the senior center. Thank you. Good evening. This is Nolan Carver from 11 Winter Street. I'm here because I'd like to share my perspective as a psychiatric survivor. How do I spend my days living on my disability paycheck, pursuing my health? It's been nice getting involved with the trash tramps and the seniors there. They seem to have a civic consciousness that is appropriate. And for me, it's really been a lifesaver, really almost literally, just to have a volunteer occupation, something to talk about. I've experienced isolation most of my life actually. It's been hard living with anxiety, you know, asserting myself, whether it's work or volunteering or even just socializing. I've found a resource in another way and the sunrise house at Washington County Mental Health to be a good start. It's not something that I can necessarily rely on only because there is just like difference in culture compared to the senior center and an organic grassroots psychiatric survivor place. The senior center to me looks like an exclusive, beautiful resort club almost in a way compared to other items. You know, you've got clean floors in there. You've got a smiling face to greet you, a professional, you know, the meals, at least you have some elbow room, etc., etc. So I was wondering if there was any room for incorporating the disabled community, including psychiatric survivors with the seniors and with the city ultimately evolve to support one another. It seems to me a central civic sort of issue that hits deeply, I think, into the fabric of our own democracy. We need to see each other. We need actually to support one another. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I see things are kind of dying down. I don't want to prematurely cut off discussion but unless you're stepping forward, I'm assuming that we don't have anyone else seeking to be heard. Okay, well thank you and I don't see anyone else online. So Bill, I'm going to pass it to you. Oh, I'm sorry, we do see, I do see someone and Charles online and you're going to need to wait till you can be unmuted. Can we tell, okay, well let's up. Here we go. I think this person may be trying to get back on. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, thank you. I'm sorry, I was late coming to the meeting and I apologize for that and I'm delighted that the city council is taking up this matter of grave concern. I'd like to remind you all if this hasn't been said that we had several meetings with Mr. Frazier and his staff that were designed to be information meetings and at these well attended meetings, the community, the attendees with one voice said we need a new independent director for all for all the reasons that I'm sure have been voiced so far. And I find it very frustrating that subsequent to that a call went out for instructors of classes with director Arnie, it was like the decision had been made despite the public informed vigorous feedback. So I appreciate the city council taking this up again and I really hope you reconsider what a very misguided merger of these two positions. So I appreciate you're hearing me out and I'm sorry I was late to the meeting. Oh, thanks. Thanks for coming and thanks for participating. Bill. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Is this working? No. Yes. Yes. Is it I don't know if it's coming out to the room. I can't. Okay. I'll do my best. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you everybody for your comments. This is a case where we are actually in great agreement on almost everything. And I think there's some confusion. First of all, the city 100% supports the senior center and agree I agree with everybody about the value of it. And certainly when I met with you all I heard loud and clear about the need for it. You know, I think there was some confusion about what happened between then and now. When there was a change in the director, we saw the same things that you all saw the drop-in membership partly due to COVID partly due to the loss of the pool. The Beals program had changed costs were getting out of whack. And so we decided that we would take a chance to assess the situation to get a better understanding of what was needed and what skills and talents would be needed for the next person to come in. And that's what we've been doing. We've had folks engaged in that process. And I think we found a way to speed that up. The budget is fully funded in this budget. In fact, later this meeting, the city council is going to be considering a recommendation from staff to cut $1.5 million from our current budget. And none of that is coming from the senior center. So the senior center budget is the same. The position is fully budgeted. So there was never an intent or the action to cut the senior center budget at any time. What we were trying to do is to figure out with you how to best provide the services. As you know, we then had the flood. The city is in a bad financial position. So we put on a hiring freeze. That is why the initial call for instructors came out from Arnie because he's the acting director at this point in time. Now, what we are considering doing is moving forward with a plan that we've had for a long time way ahead of this. Someone mentioned community services. There was an active facilitated process. There was a report that came out of it talking about merging parks, recreation, and seniors into one community services department. And at the time, we had Jeff Beyer, we had Janet Claire, we had Arnie, and we said this doesn't make any sense. They're experienced directors. We're not going to put one over the other. So the plan was, over time, we will look to have one director and three program directors that are running those services that are dedicated to those services. We're not taking anything away from anybody. In fact, what you all described as the skills and needs of the person that you want to hire is what we are seeking to hire. We've been working on the job description with people. The program had great success and it didn't succeed because Janet was a department head. It exceeded because there was great staff there and great people doing their things. The same support would have come from the city, the council, I believe, the manager, regardless of whose position. We have a very, I don't want to say loose isn't the right word, we're a very informal type of organization. We don't pay a lot of attention to people's titles. If someone represents a program and they come into our office to talk about it, they get the same respect and treatment regardless of their title. So at the end of the day, we've got the same budget. We're moving forward, despite a hiring freeze, to hire the dedicated position to run the senior center. We're not cutting the senior's budget. The only area that we disagree is what we're calling this position. And that is true. Yes, it is. Well, okay, well, I respectfully disagree with that. Our intent is for the person to be the main person running the senior center under the direct supervision of instead of the assistant city manager, the recreation director. And that is with the idea that it will be moving toward the community services. So that's our plan. We're not taking, you know, people can disagree. We've engaged with folks at the senior center about the job description and what the needs are based on what our assessment is. We want to hire a person who is fully committed to making the senior center a success, that that's their one and only position, that they're not being tied with other things, that they will oversee what's happening. They'll be involved with fundraising. They just won't have to come to city council meetings and department head meetings because they'll save Arnie for that. We actually feel that this will allow them to focus better on the needs instead of having to do other things. I, reasonable people can disagree with that, but I want to emphasize that's the plan that we've developed. That's what we've tried to communicate. There is no budget cut. There is no position reduction. And as I said, we're recommending some major cuts later tonight and none of them are in the senior center. All of us on the council got this document that's titled proposal from the membership of the Montpelier senior activity center to city council dated 10 19 23. And at the bottom, there's a request for two things. One statement from the council for two things. One, we support the city's plan to post a position for a full time senior center director by November 1st and to hire a candidate by the end of December. And two, request that the fiscal 25 city budget maintain funding for a strong full time MSAC director. Is there anything that you don't agree with on those two items? I mean, we're already starting the hiring process. It's scheduled to be posted November 1st and with the goal of finished by the end of the year. We are about to start our budget process. Our assumption is that this position will be in the budget. Obviously we have to make budget decisions, but presumably that would be in there. I don't see us recommending not having it in. I think the only difference is whether they are called the executive center. You know, I mean the fact of the matter is we could call it the executive director of the senior center and still put them under the director and it's going to be the same exact outcome. So it's really about the job title. The REC director community services department director. What role do they have? Like one concern I was seeing in some correspondence with folks is like making sure that the director or executive director or whatever the title is is able to, you know, come in with a vision, put together a budget to match that vision, you know, just like is truly like running it and ideally coming in and you know, creating the vibrant center that I think we all want, you know, for the community. So just like how, what's the role that, you know, right now Arnie would have and like how does that interplay and like what do you see any distinction there? Or do you think like they would have that ability? So like is this, is the parks department going to be similarly? I mean right, you know, I think this is, we had a situation where the senior center director left. There was a confluence of a bunch of things. The senior center director left and there were some issues with membership and as people have mentioned and we wanted to be able to look into what happened. Then we had the flood and we had already had this plan in place. So I think the goal at some point in the future and this has already been many years of the work. So it's not something we're doing overnight is that there would be one position called community services director. There would be a parks director whatever senior center director director that would, you know, people division managers basically under one community services director rather than having three department heads. We have one with people that are actually doing programming and dedicated to those prospects. There's only one person sort of managing the budgets and the administrative staff and those kinds of things. That was the goal set out in the community services study based on, you know, several years ago and we've been saying okay and what has happened already is now some of, you know, there used to be three very specific operations and now some of their admin functions, their, you know, registration for programs, those kind of things have all been merged. Some of their communications and marketing, those were all being done jointly. So we've started to put together the functionings of department while still trying to keep the independent identities of the areas places. So this is a long-term goal to keep every program just as vibrant as they are now but not sort, you know, have people focused on what they're supposed to be doing and not having too much overhead. I appreciate the impressive showing tonight of everyone. Thank you for coming out. I mean, I guess my perspective is, I mean, I very much support, you know, whatever the title is, a director position that is given that ability to be visionary, be involved in budget setting. You know, I'm in a little unclear. You know, I know Arnie already has a very full plate to how this actually works with his role. So just making sure, I mean, it sounds like the budget and stuff are the same as what the previous executive director had, which is great to hear. So I think just my perspective is, you know, just making sure that the position is set up, that it can do what I, what we're hearing from the community and that it's set up for success and that it's not going to be kind of structured in a way that is going to make it harder to build the program up over time, which I think is what we all want. The exact same thing that everyone here wants is a successful vibrant senior center. Yes, thank you all for coming. And I just want you to know, I'm in my 10th year in the city council and I've constantly seen an improved attitude and support for the senior center. When I first came, it was about making sure the senior center was getting money from all the towns and equally, you know, and I feel like we gain more support. And I was here during the community service study and it's a wonderful study. And the idea of it, I mean, I would sit into some of these meetings and realize the rec department, the parks department, the senior center, even the parks commission, they needed someone to help them with social media and get more word out. They needed help with having people apply for classes in one place instead of all the different places. So the overarching community service report really needs to be redistributed because it was a community study. It had a lot of participation of the public and it was really looking forward. But Bill's right, we had three very strong directors and they co-worked and sort of acted as community. Dan Grover came in and was started doing outreach and donations. I mean, both the donations and the media needed more attention than any one department could do. So I really wish that you would realize you are being supported. You are valued. And I certainly want that place there when I'm ready to retire. So please feel appreciated and that we do listen and hope that you'll keep coming and I hope you'll read that report. I believe it's online, but you know, keep the conversation going and make sure that it happens. What we're talking about is where we're moving. So thank you. Thank you all. Anyone else on council? Bella. So thank you everyone explaining your feelings about senior center. I moved a month earlier in 2017 and first year I couldn't find a job and I didn't know anyone because I came from Turkey like really far away from here. Then only one unit helped me to stay sane. It was a senior center. Although my age was not to be a member, I attended most of the classes and it make me leave my home, meet with people, do things. I wouldn't survive without attending all this. So I understand, as you mentioned, senior center and its program because it is not only for seniors. It opens all community, all ages like adults, I mean. So it is important and it is very good to hear budget will be the same. The plans are really parallel and I hope we can clear all the differences and we can be on the same page and thank you all for coming here. I think that's the most crowded meeting I have ever been like at the city council. So thank you again. I do want to add one thing. Your feedback at those meetings really was important and we did amend our thinking as a result of that and it did make a difference and you notice we did get our offices out of there as quickly as we can and we're trying to get the last one out so we heard you and we do appreciate that but we're really trying to we want the exact same thing that you want and we're trying to get there. Well I'm, this is more people than we had to talk about water lines. I'm amazed. But I mean I'm a supporter of the senior center and I've met a lot of you while I was campaigning for this office and got to know a little bit about how important it is to the community. I must say I wasn't surprised when I didn't know the director really of the senior center but I wasn't surprised at the resignation. I don't know why she resigned but when I looked at the job description it was an overwhelming job and I think this new arrangement is designed in part to provide more time for what the senior center needs and let the director of community services handle some of the more administrative sort of mundane stuff. Anything to get that kind of stuff off the plate of someone who can, who really understands the needs of the senior center I think is something we should be moving towards. So I think this, I haven't seen the new job descriptions but if they accomplish that I think it's designed to secure the future of the senior center and I'm in support of that. I want us to miss Nolan's suggestion and I think that was a wonderful outreach of reaching out to people from another way or other organizations that can have an advantage of meeting with you, having some program interaction. I think that's a really wonderful idea. Tim. Just one overarching question for Bill because I keep learning here. So this concept of having program directors and then agency head, how do you envision it city-wide? So we're going to have another layer of people like city manager, assistant city manager, agency heads and then program coordinator? Many of our departments run like we have a department, we have the department of public works and then there's you know head of water and sewer ahead of the plant. So you know there's one overarching director and then you know police chief and then there's different shift commanders. I mean this is very so essentially instead of having department head positions parks, rec seniors, there'd be a single department head and a rec division manager, parks division manager and I mean very parallel to the rest of the structure. The public works, public safety? Well I mean we got. I'm just curious for the big picture. Yeah well I mean we you know the public, both the police and fire department have you know considered with larger staffs and even if we combined all the community services people. So I mean they're kind of a different scale and public works is double that on top of that. So but I mean I'm just saying that that is that is the structure that we have throughout city government and it's designed to allow what we really try to do is get more people to do the direct work that that needs to be done and less people sort of being department heads. Not that there's anything wrong with department heads but you know we want to be more efficient so that we have people using doing the services and providing the needs that exactly what these folks are talking about. Okay thank you and thank you everything everyone for coming out. We'll move to the next agenda item but and of course everyone is free to stay because this is a public meeting but I suspect that there may be people in the room who have other things to do and the next item on the agenda is the rec center report so maybe as people are filing out if they do file out we can get that set up to go. If you're not staying for the rest of the meeting I'd like you to move on out to the hallway so that we can continue. All right so the next item on the agenda is the report on the recreation center and so I can tee this up while Tom's walking to the mic. Some of you may recall that a while back we had commissioned a study on homelessness and the needs in the community one of the suggestions was that we look potentially look at the rec center as a place either as a shelter and or a navigation center you know community hub of those kinds of things and there were a lot of questions about what the actual condition of the rec center was and what it needs and there were a lot of opinions offered about what could and couldn't be done quickly to to make that adjustment so the council I think wisely directed us to get the actual information so we put out our proposals we hire a GBA architect Tom Bachman is here to do a study for us on the structural integrity of the building the systems and what it might take to make some conversions to either multiple uses or different uses and and I will say that the report that was initially in your packet was the one for the next meeting but we do have the correct one in now if for some reason you had the that was changed I think yesterday or today but I also think we'd sent this out to you real so Tom Bachman is here to walk you through the the report about the building obviously you can ask any questions we have some thoughts about maybe where we might go in the future but we're also interested in what you have to say so with that I'll turn it over to Tom have people seen the report I'm just going to give like a five minute overview and then just open it up you can ask me any questions you want so we were asked by the city in start telling people who you are oh I thought build together I'm Tom Bachman Gossin's black rock text we're located here in town so we were asked by the city in June to evaluate the building you just go through it and see what condition it's in and does it have use as a salvageable so we hired um engineering ventures who did a structural analysis and when I say analysis that's that's probably a bigger word than I should use they walked through the building they studied the drawings they determined that the structure is decent we also worked with slate engineering out of northfield they did a mechanical analysis and then also the boys and king did an electrical analysis of the building and then we also looked at all of the architectural components so I'm just going to go through the reports very briefly structural the building is in good shape I mean it's it's got some issues any building that age is going to have issues but the roof the roof framing the floor framing is all exactly what you expect the foundations are very significant it does have some cracking in the buildings but that's not unusual for a building of that age the steps out front are in tough shape but those can be rebuilt if whatever the future use of this building was to include a solar system the roof structure would have to be reinforced to carry that load we also did look just for the fun of it could this building could be out of floor to this you know the idea of keeping downtown as dense as we could structural engineer cautioned us against that he said there's no reinforcing in the foundations or in the walls and it would be just a major structural undertaking to do that the structural repairs to the building and that would be the same no matter what you do with the building are estimated right now in today's dollars at two hundred and sixty five thousand dollars mechanical systems are considered fair to poor I mean it's a very old system the boilers failing a lot of the radiators aren't working the plumbing is the plumbing lines are old none of the bathroom fixtures are ADA compliant so there's not much salvage in the in the mechanical systems what we ask our mechanical engineer could you tell us at that point we were talking about the possibility of a facility for the unhoused in there so what's the minimum we need to do to make that facility work for that he had given us an estimate of three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars was on the low end that would be just getting this building up and running and kind of more than bandated together but in decent shape and it would be about five hundred and fifty thousand dollars to do a complete mechanical rehab of the building and depending on the long term use the building we would certainly recommend that the mechanical systems be updated yes yes electrical it's there's not much salvage there the systems are forty to fifty years old it's old fluorescent technology there's no led lighting outlets are not grounded the wiring is old so there's very little salvage in the electrical but again we ask the electrical engineer what's the minimum we could do to turn this into a potential short-term facility for the unhoused their estimate was a hundred and forty thousand dollars just to get the building you know it's safe and functioning to a complete replacement of five hundred and sixty five thousand dollars so those are the kind of numbers we're looking at for you know the systems renovation we then we didn't have a real program but we just wanted to prove that we think the building is salvageable we think the building is significant so we looked at three different concepts of how this building might be used from minimal to pretty extreme so the first concept we looked at and it is could we make public bathrooms in that lower level where the bathroom where the shower room currently is and we believe you can it's interesting there's only it it looks like you would need a very steep ramp to get down to that lower level but there's only I think it's less than two feet elevation from the sidewalk to the slab in the basement so we're talking about a ramp that would be 20 feet long or so and if you looked at if you've seen the the concept we had in there the ramp came along the front of the building entered on the right of the stairs you know the ramp would be sloping down so there'd be drainage that has to be dealt with but that's not not a difficult thing to do so we could put two bathrooms in the lower level these could be for the unhoused they could be for general public use however we want to use that we did show in the this quick schematic showers in there so that might be a nice thing to help people we estimated that concept and if we did this concept we're not dealing with the rest of the building we're not dealing with all the electrical problems we're just putting bathrooms in there renovating that area and the estimate for that was around $650,000 and again that's in today's dollars I don't have a solution for how that would be monitored you know the possibility of 24-hour bathrooms raises a lot of questions and on how that is how that is monitored and used so let's just throw that out there the next concept we looked at was what if there is a dual use of that building and by dual use the rec department would stay in there but during the cold winter months maybe I don't know if it's year-round we could turn the gymnasium into a facility for the unhoused we think it would sleep about 24 people now there's a lot of logistics with that in that if the rec department's still operating there all the beds and screens and things like that need to be moved on to the stage every day so it's you know there's a lot of work involved with that but we did we believe there could be a dual facility there I think there would have to be a lot of monitoring to make sure that the population wasn't interacting when we had kids in there that sort of thing now with that facility we would have to sprinkle the building when we have people sleeping in the building it needs to be sprinkled we would want it to be accessible would have to be accessible so we are proposing an elevator that would not shouldn't say we're proposing but this scheme does provide an elevator that serves all three floors and if this were a temporary use the elevator would be positioned so that if the building became something else it could serve the rest of that building so what we would be doing in this scheme is adding an elevator again ramping from the front down into the down into uh at grade the elevator then would serve all floors the left side if you walk into the building the right side is Arnie's office and you know dealing with the rec department the left side we would we would use that for two public bathrooms to support the the use of a shelter there there'd be an office and a check-in area so what we did with this scheme is try to really keep the changes to the building minor so that I didn't I shouldn't say they're minor but we're renovating just the left side of the building we would then open up on the second floor there there had been a window there that looked over the gym that would be reopened so that if it were a shelter there could be monitoring you could see what's going on there so that scheme and that that again is not completely renovating all the mechanical systems and electrical systems but it's the next step uh to the point where we could then have a functioning mechanical and electrical system in that and that's concept number two that's concept number two and we call it the dual use facility our budget for that is just slightly over two million dollars and then we looked at a third concept you know just what happens if the city says we're done with this building and they give it to a developer or they sell it to a developer whatever what could you do with that building so we just looked at uh obviously there's a real need for housing in Montpelier so we did look at a scenario that we would take that gymnasium at another floor in the gymnasium so take the double height space turn that into two levels the basement is very interesting not very interesting but it's good it did not flood and it did not take on water in july so the basement is it's good space it's got good windows down there they're they're blocked up now but if we were to do that where we at the floor in the gymnasium we could add eight units of housing per floor for a total of 24 units of that building now they're not big units uh we were looking at possibly transitional housing or worker workforce housing they're about 500 square feet each but they're self-contained they would have you know kitchen bathroom kind of a sleeping living area now if a developer said that's not what i want to do you could make these buildings use or larger and go from 24 units to 18 units or whatever you want to do there's also a scenario where this could be some sort of a um uh i don't want to say communal living but we're looking at a very similar project with dewy hall right now with the greenway institute where we're taking dewy hall and that is self-contained sleeping units some with bathrooms some without but then you share a community kitchen you share a community space so that might be another option for the building so with that and this is these are numbers are very rough but if that building were turned over to developer and they did this thing top to bottom make it a net zero building we're estimating that is slightly in today's dollars about nine million dollars and that's just that's based on square foot cost we've not none of the engineers have gone into enough depth to say this is what the system is anything like that um we did talk to meredith the city all three of these issues really are there no big zoning hurdles the existing building i mean the existing use with adding the bathrooms would be considered a community building which it is now and the other two uses are permitted in this district so there's no issue with that we did a very quick uh code research of the three scenarios and as long as the building sprinkled as long as we provide two means of egress out of that building front and back in a rated stairway we have a lot of flexibility with that building so we do not see any uh big code hurdles with this building either and that's kind of my uh five minute overview of the report but it's all in here so be glad to ask or answer any questions you might have well thanks tom i was very pleased to see this after we've heard we've heard some very dire and drastic characterizations of this building and uh i'm i'm very glad to hear it's not as bad as uh people have been saying it is it does suffer from neglect i mean it's there's a lot of different maintenance here there's a lot of asbestos and lead that has to be dealt with but any building this age and we do a lot of renovations like this this is there's nothing unusual with this building and the bones are good as they say the structure is good it just it just needs some attention the systems haven't been updated for decades but it is a uh in our mind a good solid salvageable building the downside i think probably is parking but you know it's it's a it's an urban site and you have to expect that there's going to be some issues dealing with site with parking in a situation like this i think chris lumber indicated that the gymnasium roof was done in 2011 and the front portion is about 20 years old has been leaking they've done some maintenance on it so the front part of the building definitely i mean 20 years 20 to 25 years is average for a a roof and i think at the same time if if if the city decided they wanted to just stabilize the building put a roof on the front the time that would be also the time to really upgrade the insulation on the roof so i think it'd be really good to do a um once the city decides what the approach is to really kind of think this through so that we're not doing anything that has to be undone during the next phase yeah was there i don't you know i didn't read i read this kind of quickly was there a was there evaluation of the uh insulation about of the building there's almost no insulation and that's going to be it's it's going to be a hurdle with the division of historic preservation because they view the outside of the building important they view the glazed brick in the gymnasium as important but something has to give because in uh 2023 not having insulated walls in a masonry building it just it's unattainable so i think we'd have to there'd have to be some negotiations with that we had done a study 10 or 15 years ago and they were very reluctant to let us put on insulation the outside of the building but i think it's a different time now and uh there's a lot more negotiating that's happening who wants to start i bet there's a bunch of questions so yeah uh thanks tom um i'm wondering if the uh the structural stuff that needs to be done you know the brick work and on the stairs and in the back corner and the roof um and i don't think the heating system is in great shape either did you ever break out uh if we were to give attention to that immediately so it doesn't get worse what that what the cost of that might be it's probably in here somewhere yeah if you look at excuse me each of the three engineers reports okay they give you s almost i wouldn't say it by no means detailed but every component they've got in there listed it's all they break they break it out right okay actually one thing i forgot to mention on the structural one other thing that uh needs to be done the building needs to be repointed but again that's nothing unusual with the building this age right i remember reading that um the the estimates on the uh hvac stuff is it um is is any part of it uh all electric or they assume this they uh david slade assumed that we would be upgrading insulation in order to support air source heat pumps okay and that would provide air conditioning for the building too and windows and all that's i mean there are windows that are do we know what's behind the plywood we don't but i would suspect you know we did 58 berry street the senior center crossed the way those windows were same deal same vintage um so i suspect that what we find behind that plywood would mean new windows and in our total renovation uh let's assume a developer takes the building over splitting the there's enough money in there for uh for we're assuming it would be new windows exactly yeah okay great more will come up that's good for now oh i thought you were raising your hand yeah dana well i i really appreciate the layout i mean i actually did read it i didn't necessarily always understand all the diagrams but then you did the three concepts and that really helped me good and looking at these numbers even the housing when we looked at this other study just to upgrade it was around six million and that wasn't this much housing so it's very helpful to have and those the housing numbers are what we are seeing today yes for new construction blink of an eye of changes but yeah i think that there could be some combination you could do public restrooms and then you could do housing right and still have that entrance from the outside to two public rooms definitely i mean our our goal with the three concepts was just to get the conversation going to show the building's viable there could be 10 different iterations of that it can i just finish one thing before i forget uh between now and whatever we did with it in a major way is there any way to make it accessible with the lift or something i know there's a back door at the stage i think it's also where some of the brickwork is cracking is it is it conceivable that you could do that or do you need to sort of go whole hog with an elevator right from we didn't really look at that i mean we we assume that the elevator at some point the building is is going to be renovated so yeah we did not look at sort of a short gap okay solution with that yeah but that doesn't mean that that couldn't happen we just didn't try to locate a yeah even on a temporary i'm just thinking as a temporary fix okay thanks sorry yeah um i guess not so much a question just kind of follow up on on what you were asking about sal and what you said that we could kind of mix and match and do different combinations of things because as i look at this i think um you know we have this great need for the public bathrooms that this could meet right away and we also have a great need for additional shelter housing um seems like those two could fit together as well as allow the recreation department to continue using it during the day like we could we could have all of that theoretically if we want i don't know if we want to do that or not but that's just when it looks very appealing to me when i look at that and i really appreciate the way you laid it out so clearly and the different options and i'm i'm really excited and optimistic about what we might be able to do with this building now so thank you very much i wanted to wait till everyone's done that that's a perfect tea up to where i was going to say so i'll give you some good news um we are we and by we i mean chris lumbra has been working with efficiency vermont and we are um pretty much teed up for a grant of about 1.5 million which would be with a 300 000 match from the city which could do all the which could do all of the hvac and electrical upgrades uh and possibly the bathroom upgrades we have got to figure out exactly what includes we have 1.8 million dollars total so we would be able to get that all done with primarily grant funds and to get the energy efficiency to where it needs to be so that um we really want to have this conversation first before we brought it to you uh even in our budget rescission our team opted to leave enough money for that match even though we're making other discussions we realized it was so important the other concept that we wanted to throw out and i i just emailed tom about it today and of course he gave us all kinds of great options then you think of more afterwards but our staff suggested following up on what councilmember brown said is could we look at the the basement area which is pretty large and has windows if we were to do that ramped entrance in the bathrooms to convert that into the shelter and navigation space keeping the rec center on the first floor or the upper floor as it is now until we decide what we want to do with rec center and then potentially have the two floors of housing maybe transitional housing there in the future with the you know to help the folks in the shelter move up to transitional housing to move out um so that it would be you know kind of that would be a future vision or not or maybe it gets converted to housing but that we would be able to have get the building upgraded a lot of the systems have used the basement space more efficiently than what it's being used for right now meaning a very urgent need and that could probably be a permanent year-round shelter and if we were to do that I suspect and I have no no knowledge officially of this I suspect that the state would participate in upgrading and re putting what in is needed to that space if they thought it was going to be a permanent long-term shelter as opposed to you know a one winter only kind of thing so we would probably get funding for that as well so we would have the bathroom space we'd have the the utilities done we'd have the basement converted to a shelter area and then the gym and everything upstairs would stay as is until we make future decisions about rec so but we wanted to throw that out and see if there was any thought you know if people liked or didn't like that or you know there's a lot of other things we could do in this building including 24 units of housing which we desperately need so do you have a sense of how many people could sleep if we did the lower level the lower level I mean we don't because we haven't done the study but based on the size of the upstairs I mean it's the same footprint more or less I mean with the exception of the you know but the the boilers where the offices are and that kind of thing so I mean it would probably be similar I think it would just be if I were to work in this good American haven or somebody who knows more about this than I do what's the what's the right number for a facility like this that they can manage and does it get out of control and of course one of the things we always hear when we're talking about shelter is that their physical space is one part of it but staffing and services is equally important Sal and then Donna I was just thinking in connection with the shelters space in the basement I remember when when we were looking through the building Rick I think you mentioned monitoring the gym it would have been it was easy because you could you could be up have someone staff on the second floor looking down the basement's a different situation I think those two long walls are structural are there it's it looks like there are columns in there so I think most those walls can come down and if I think the only way I mean Rick correct me if you're wrong but I think the only way for a decent operating shelter is to have a big space like that it just doesn't work to have separate rooms where you can't monitor what's going on still it's a pretty big space taken all together so it sounds like an interesting option yeah yeah but the basement is the one that had the rifle range yeah so it has the most investments right so you have to do that right yeah as I said I don't think there's any yeah I don't think there's any more contaminants in this building than you would expect to see in a building this age I mean you know the firing range has got lead but that's that's almost every building we work with has some abatement in it so just not a showstopper so there's enough material in here to pull out that idea or do we have to add some more time to your contract I think we you know I suspect first of all we need to make sure that the state and Good Sam and other people are actually interested in this proposal so that would be a start and then figure out what is needed so I'm not in a position to make any kind of statement yet but probably we would need further review at least of that basement just to make sure we know what codes are needed down there and you know we'd have two different uses in a building so I think those have something so I couldn't I can't say for sure but I suspect we'd need a little bit of review there and it could be that the state or somebody partners in that because it would be for those people sleeping in there the division of fire safety is going to look so closely at how that is separated from everything else so but it's it's all doable I think just curious do we have any sense of you know knowing there's a lot of pieces to line up but like how quickly could we move on this and actually be offering shelter services as a first step at you know as we looked at transitional housing or other housing options for a longer term project I don't know the answer to that I think we could assuming we get a grant for the building systems that could be done you know in a few months we could get that work started you know I'm looking to rick but he didn't come here prepared to answer that question my guess is we would have first of all what we're already providing a shelter at Delks Club this winter so that's got to be the focus for service I'm just but I'm guessing that we would need to get figure out the funding we need to do the review of what needs to happen design that bid it so you know maybe by I mean optimistically by next winter if all went well but I think that would be optimistic you know if everything lined up but I don't know for sure I think there is a desire from providers and the community the folks dealing with the unhoused community and the state to have a sort of a longer term shelter area in Montpelier not one you know not bouncing around from church basement to Elks Club to here and there like this is a place and particularly one with bathrooms and showers and that kind of thing so it's possible but we haven't had this conversation with anybody so this is our idea and we wanted to make sure we ran it by you before we do anything else if you see the council came to agreement that we wanted to to move towards the basement as a shelter with the idea of going the next step to upper housing then you could go off and do that without spending any money we can find out the next steps yeah yeah ideally we'd find someone else to spend yes yes money but if we can't you know we may it may be that we have to chip in for the at least the study of what has to happen I you know I don't know I can't promise that that you mentioned though we have at least this and if we go on to the next step that we're presenting them with that we're really looking at this seriously we deal with all the all the systems that Tom talked about the electrical HVC mechanical all that kind of thing so that would be great those would all be brought up to modern standard I don't know if it would deal with insulation we have Chris isn't here so I can't ask him that you know that's different from renovating the basement area converting the basement area doing that ramping upgrading the bathrooms that's a whole different project really so we'd have to figure out how to make that project happen and who was funding it and what the ultimate uses and purposes were so you know they're not really the same thing have you had any success with design review boards on solving the the brick on both sides problem actually this is the first time we've ever heard that where you had brick yeah because that brick on the inside of the gym and I said this was 10 or 15 years ago we had the brick tested at that point to see how moisture migrated through the brick yeah the front brick was a front brick was okay we could insulate from the inside the back brick could not be insulated because it from the inside because of the way the moisture was migrating through the brick so the solution was to put on like a drive it wrap the building and some sort of drive it insulation and preservation of that point said no but again that was 15 years ago and it's a different world than it was 15 years ago and I think you could open up that conversation again is the unreinforced the fact that the brick widths are unreinforced does that demand that the insulation be on the outside so that the brick can dry to the outside I guess so I won't talk to my structure I can't answer that yeah okay actually one more thing I just want to say in favor of the building it's one of the few buildings that's downtown that didn't flood so to me that has a lot of value yeah are you looking bill for like whatever clarity you wish to provide it's always helpful uh I want I want to make sure that other that people in the public who are here or online have a chance to be heard but uh because I see a couple of people in the room probably are interested Rick you're one of those people and Dan you're next thank you Rick DeAnchilis on the co-executive director of Good Samaritan Haven uh having a year-round low barrier shelter is our number one priority and um you know we've done these uh seasonal overflow shelters for the well we we uh we're technical assistance last year but we've done them over the last six or seven years it is a really difficult thing to pull together every year and uh and by the way thank you for approval of the lease for the Elks Club um very much needed so we're very interested in this opportunity um it's a great location it could be a great space um so we're looking forward to talking with you know continuing the conversation with the city staff the one concern that we have is the dual use aspect and particularly particularly if young people are in there during the day um it's one thing if you just have people they're sleeping at night during the winter and then they're gone um it's another thing I think if you have a year-round facility and even if people are leaving during the day they're probably going to be congregating nearby to some degree and so I just think we have to look at that really really carefully um so but uh we're glad to be part of that conversation and just one note on the funding we met with the commissioner of children and families just a couple of weeks ago they're the agency that funds all of the homelessness programming they are desperate for more shelter in the state and um we mentioned this the possibility of this location they seem very very interested and um so um bill you might want to follow up with them or we can do it jointly uh they very much encouraged us to put forward any ideas that we had so thank you how much time do I have three sorry that ain't going to cut it oh yeah I'm ready Dan you ready okay um well first of all thank you so much for for doing this report um I should start by saying I'm Dan Toll I'm here primarily wearing wearing my hat as a resident of Montpelier 1st Avenue but of course um I'd be remiss and to say that uh my firm also was the firm as you all know that did the homeless housing study earlier this year and one of our three major recommendations was this housing hub concept so first of all thank you so much for doing this project so my first question for you is did you and and the other contracts have an opportunity to read the study that we did yes we did okay because um I really love the this idea of a housing concept by the way I think it's you know the fabulous that this is part of the mix but the one thing I wanted to point out is that in terms of the up the concept too you know you talk about you know overnight shelter we the housing kind of missed at least part of it and the housing hub concept was a winter overnight shelter to start with but also having administrative space for the service providers to be able to come to the housing hub so there was that element to it just you know yeah reasons we thought of the basement space being better because then we could have office space in there too to to meet that housing hub need um rather than the open gym okay yeah unfortunately as as you mentioned that I didn't even see the report till this afternoon I went to the website and yesterday and it wasn't there unfortunately Kelly caught it and posted it so I have not had a chance to read the whole report but I have been able to skim the second thing in terms of the cost of the housing um when you when you did the estimate was this based on uh private market hub construction costs as opposed to uh down street because as you're probably aware down street has a lower cost of capital and tax credits so they can they can typically do a project like this for significantly less than a private developer we didn't get into that detail we carried the price we've seen on recent yeah big-scale affordable housing renovations that we've been involved with so I don't I don't know about all the funding I know down street yeah we're down street all the time yeah so we know what their project cost per square foot right so you know it could be significantly lower than nine million I don't believe so you don't believe so no okay based on what we're seeing today okay well as Donna pointed out the costs keep going up day by day so the sooner that we can address this the sooner we can get a cost that's lower than it will be tomorrow um the last I guess I'll keep it short uncharacteristically but the last question I had we were talking about the funding issue how much of the 425,000 that was allocated for how a homeless in public bathrooms is left that could be allocated to any of these concepts for this grant that we're having a hard time hearing I'm sorry that would be where the three hundred thousand dollar match came for this grant that we're talking about would be toward this project to do all the renovations in that building the three hundred dollar three hundred thousand match for the that one point five million dollar grant to do all of the renovations to what about the 425 how much is that well that's three hundred of the 425 hundred okay I thought you were saying that was the match no no no that is where that match would come from okay presumably great well I concur with Rick's comment about the permanent overnight shelter being a priority going forward I love this idea of hadn't even you know we my partner I had thought about long and I think we talked about you know medium to long term thinking about housing but I'm really delighted to see this as part of a proposal right now so I'd encourage the council to consider concepts two and three but in the in terms of concept two um think about the housing hub concept that was in our proposal our recommendations thank you thank you I'm looking at the at the zoom and I'm not seeing anyone online trying to raise their hands I'm sure that someone will correct me if I'm missing somebody but so that I think that gets us to the question Lauren was starting to ask which is are you are you looking for a motion saying to go ahead are you looking for the council members to all say boy this seems like a great idea and and just start investigating or yeah I mean you obviously we don't have any funds and we don't have any we're not asking to commit anything I but to the extent that you wish to go on the record is saying this is a direction whatever the direction is that you'd like us to pursue to come back with more recommendations or you know funding requests or grant funds or whatever I mean you know we came up with an idea based on after we saw Tom's report obviously we know and we'd heard from Rick that there might be some interest but we wanted to follow that up but we you know we don't want to get out ahead of you and and recognizing that we're in tough times right now too so but it is an important community need so whatever whatever wherever you feel whatever you want to tell us we'll we'll listen cool Lauren do you want to make your motion so I move that we direct city staff to seek state and federal funding to help support advancing shelter and housing at the rec center site any any discussion by members of the council so right now it's the building is still functioning as a recreation center and we'll need to we'll need to continue functioning that way so you know this will need to be staged one way the other idea I assume that people remember that but something I've been thinking about and it could be for a number of years under that situation carry it in Donna we direct city staff to seek state and federal funding to help support advancing shelter and housing at the rec center site okay so that sounds good to me and part of what I like about it is that it gives us room to not do that but it's giving the city it's giving the city manager to go ahead to go ahead and look for money and get started with that does that kind of capture what the intent was okay then it sounds great well just to remind people my understanding is that basement right now is storage it's not used for any programs or classes so that basement could possibly go in advance of anything else we do for rec somewhere else I just wanted people to understand that obviously I think like having some that involves like planning it like thinking through the steps that would be needed which of course you'll do so just just to state the obvious that part of as you speak that's the thing it's no idea this is the direction we want to seek and that will look forward to hearing the updates on what would be needed timelines all the things to give us this decisions to make in the future yes many many decisions I just sort of want to remind the public and one of the things to look ahead and I think our staff is so good about looking for grants is that the state does have money that they're offering people dealing with shelters so this is the time to really invest and see what was possible while the funds are there are we ready for a vote yes so all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed all right thanks Tom I think this is great I think this is a real opportunity to address a terrible need in the city so thanks for the report thanks for the vote all right we are up to item seven Richard shear on communications since I'm on the agenda you don't need your signs might I say but but I will point out that we do have a busy agenda and I will be brief might I say that in my over 20 years living in this city this is the first time I have ever appeared on the council agenda I've appeared speaking before council but this is the first time on the agenda and when I came in I was thrilled at all the people who came to hear what I had to say I feel like the opening act at Koachilla now that means that I'm coming out at noon and the concert starts late basically I think it was interesting on the agenda that I was between the senior center and the recreation center because those were both projects that had very long histories uh and in fact Tim is a good part of that history because he was school board president and these were both with the school board for many years Bill was involved in this and intentionally I was involved as well uh when you talk about um the there was a study of the facility by Don Lorenovich uh I don't know whether that was referenced it was still in the school archives but probably not in the city archives what I can what I'm here today to talk about is the website and again I'm looking over at John Odom and Bill because they were part of the transition from the old website to the one that we're in right now which is the city's new old website and basically a decade it's been about a decade since the website's really been addressed and uh in a fundamental way and the website has grown in a sense it's grown deeper there's more documents in that website than there ever were before it's just getting at those documents is very impossible it's it's not it's not indexed to current standards when I went to look up the rec center and I went to look up the senior center it was very difficult to find my way through that Tom wouldn't have had to ask Chris if our capital budgets were indexed correctly he would have found out exactly when that roof was replaced because the cap it was in our capital budgets but our capital budgets are not indexed that way what I'm here to request of city council is yet another citizens committee and it's a citizens committee that will study the city's website and how the city's website can become more functional and more reflective of the ability to frame municipal discussion in coherent policy terms so it doesn't end up in front page forum with people yelling at each other and trading pseudo faux facts that's what I'm interested in is how can our city website become more modern more accessible and more policy focused so that people who have an interest in the issues of policy can follow them historically so that we're not constantly pretending that this is new when it's not and the one particular area I had an interest in was the presentation of the city budget and the discussion of both city budgets capital and operating so that people can understand the current city budget where we how we got to the current city budget and how that differs from the proposed budget so that the city's presentation of budget isn't a series of show and tells with no one here except for people who want to yell for their own parochial interests so that people who are interested in the budget can intelligently not only see it online but ask questions online that are answered so that other people can see what questions have been submitted and answered so that it isn't focused solely on these city council meetings so I propose yet another limited city committee I think it should take about five months to really sit for a group of people to explore this and make recommendations as to what a different version of a city website the functionality might actually look like and I think there's skills in this city to tap on and I think there would be interest in this and I if this council were to recommend such a committee I would put my name in there to work on the budget section but we wouldn't be tied notice that Evelyn is sitting in on this Evelyn's work in social or if she's here Evelyn's work in social media wouldn't be touched the Facebook page the Instagram the mailouts all of that stuff it's really good and really present but it's not archival it's the present moment and the present moment wouldn't be addressed that would be left to her but I think that 10 years really is a long time on a website as important as a city website see I kept it brief for me is there any question coming up that you guys have of what I'm proposing anyone have any questions before I ask Bill to give us his take on this you know I can tell you my my question about this is kind of fundamental which is that what you're talking about this committee doing is really what our city government and our paid staff who who run the webpage do and what they're paid to do and so that's you know I question you know every every citizen committee we create requires staffing by by paid city staff to do it and so I I'm really questioning well what is there that this would do that we're not already doing and they're obviously they're always going to be people who think city is doing some things better or worse than they they would if they were in charge but but you know we don't have a committee to tell the public works how to pave roads we don't have a committee to tell the fire department how to operate and so why is this different it's different because our city staff in terms of web are not talking about the fundamental concept of how the web is designed of what the web is designed to do and how it they are a maintenance crew that makes sure that our website continues operating and functioning which is a perfectly valid staff position and staff usage every website needs its technical support but realize that that is technical support of an existing system and it's what we're talking about is the same thing in a sense as what tom was talking about which isn't keeping the recreation center in its current technical state we're talking about pushing that use to a different functional level to address different functional needs so it isn't duplicative of those people those people if we were to change this website their job would be the same it would be to make sure that that website is functioning and that that website is actually updated and things like that what this is is it's talking about the use of the city website and a decade is forever in terms of websites you know I guess what I'm I'm not sure we need a committee but I certainly think we could take suggestions and you have some great ideas we'd love to hear them you know we we have just recently completed an upgrade of the website and one of the things that Evelyn and and Mary in my office have been tasked to do is going through and trying to do the exact things you're talking about you know pull the inventories together fix broken links up upgrade it we've added things you know the budget for example we last year went to new budget software which is far more user friendly and we also started the the budget videos which we're going to do more of this year so people can actually listen to those we've now added the Zen City platform which does have the interactive piece so I think our plan for this year's budget is to have places where people can ask questions offer comments answer survey questions those kind of things so I mean we're we're pretty moving pretty actively to trying to accomplish the goals that Richard is saying and Evelyn's really been leading the way but certainly I think if folks like Richard or anybody else have really good suggestions let's have them you know we want we agree but I I'm not sure website by committee but that's really up to you and update you know I don't want to write whatever you think but it sounds it sounds to me like you're talking about developing a new taxonomy for for a certain portion of the site not not being a new technology doesn't necessarily have to be a new technology I design websites not a website I mean a new tech taxonomy a way of yeah a new way of looking at what we have at our archive massive archive and how to make that massive archive more accessible and I think that making a suggestion an email is dismissive and and saying that basically the status quo is the best that we can do we had a committee on homelessness why because a group of people felt that the city could do better why did we have a committee on parking that I was a member of because we felt that the city could do better why did we have a committee on energy because we felt that the city could do better that's what I'm saying if I could just finish my question um so what sort of access to the website content would you require as a committee that you don't have now just to accomplish this I think what we would not if I were you know the god of this committee you know which I certainly wouldn't be I would be one of of a of a group of people but where I structuring this project I would start with what do we and I would look at other towns and what they have and look at functionality what does our website cover what do their websites cover what do they what are the gaps that we might have right now that other cities don't and I recall my conversation with bill when we did this I had one suggestion when we put this in and that was do a page counter so that we can figure out what pages people are using so that we can figure out where we might want to invest our resources to go more I don't know whether you remember that conversation but that was my only suggestion I made when the website you know was proposed and what I would like to do is take a look at what other cities are doing to see if there's gaps then I would go in and take a look at our core documents that are beneath this and what can be indexed in those documents so that we can do a query against that so if you're looking for a certain thing you can find it in zoning you can find it you know so that you can dig into many different areas and get keywords in this to be able to find it it's not the documents themselves it's how we choose to query into that for informational purposes so I'm not talking about necessarily changing the whole website I'm talking about changing how we query into this for informational purposes it's it's it's a lot more specific than that it's being able to narrow in and focus in on information from the past to shape our present knowledge and and it's it's like when you listen to the business about the rec center we've been talking about that for years you know what was that discussion for the years the senior center as well what you know we're approaching this as if this is new territory it's not and if people were able to query in they'd be able to more intelligently discuss this disproportionately without calling other people's liars or other people's shills or whatever that's non-productive so that's what I'm after so since public has a chance to come here and share their ideas with us how about having a like an independent work group or work group instead of establishing another committee what is the really difference of this project needs to be in a committee but not a work group you know you can just work it makes no difference to me that's semantic if it's a work group that's fine if it's committee that's fine that's semantics I mean like we don't have to do anything about you can always you know organize your own work group and do whatever you want to do and just like share the insights with the city and could you imagine the frustration of a group of people who put in their time and go to city council having that for months or whatever and then I use that that police the thief on the police people who had that group they were sanctioned by the city council they did an excellent report but could you imagine doing that report and having the city council turn around and saying well that's your work well I'll point out that was not a fund the police group it was a police advisory commission carried yeah so this is the direction that I've been thinking also that I'm not sure so first of all let me say that I think that your your thoughts about what kind of access to information we want to have on the website are really interesting and I would love to be able to to have that kind of historical record that you're talking about too I'm not sure that that it's such a priority of this of the city council right now that we would be directing the city to do that and then create a committee to help that happen but I do think that you have some very interesting ideas and could have some really valuable input and I think that you might actually get further with it I don't know but by doing it outside of the structure of a city committee that because we're just you know it's adding more bureaucracy it's you know it's it's not it's not coming from the city council it would be something that could be coming from citizens saying this is what we observed and these are the suggestions that we have yeah there's no more assurance that the recommendations of a committee would be taken than the recommendations of a group of concerned citizens who put in the effort and just for the record a recommendation right but for the record Kerry they had people the homeless task force got the study I'm sorry so so I would encourage you to pull together people who are like-minded as you are who want to work on this and see what you can come up with and I think you'll get a lot farther questions on just the base we're really starting all this from too I mean I'm a company managing websites that people search for data all the time and watching that evolve and I use the city website frequently researching for real estate information daily and it's it's very and I also go to sites for every other town around here and do it so I have a pretty good basis of who's got a great site and whose sites aren't so good so I guess my questions for us are do we who hosts our site do we have someone that we pay to host our site that keeps it current I assume we do and then there are major municipal government website provider which is what I was hoping you'd say because in real estate when we go through there's a great group in Burlington, Vermont it's like it's nationally rated company that does real estate websites and I assume they're had to be an equivalent for municipal websites and those people know what they're doing and keep it current because I have seen a lot of changes over 10 years at least in the research site I'm on it it hasn't been stagnant so I think there's a good basis here that may be getting that information first before you kind of look to change it you should know what the problem that council's not seeing Tim that's fine yeah but I will remind Jack that the homeless people got to get the homeless advocates got together and ended up with this study they weren't told sit in your own group and come to us the people who are concerned about police brutality in Montpelier weren't told hey talk amongst yourselves you know I'm just saying that there are certain groups in this city that are able to sit and access a council concern so do not be dismissive immediately and say that information access is less important but I can understand what everything you're saying okay we've got a member of the public you'd like to speak I'm Meg Baird and I've lived in Montpelier since 1979 I don't understand all the procedures but if Richard formed this group at in his living room and he came to the city council would they have three minutes to speak because it wasn't something that the city council asked to have happen whereas Tom Bachman my understanding is the city council asked him to do research so he got to speak for a bunch of minutes and as someone who is trying to get factual information to form my opinions instead of going with the rumors from from porch forum or asking someone who doesn't really know I would like to be able to find stuff easily on the webpage I would like to have been able to go to the webpage as someone who's not really computer competent and to be able to type in senior center history of it what's the budget so that I would have been going with the factual documents in the archive versus someone who's annoyed and may have the facts but I'm like do they really have the facts of the history so I think it's a great idea I don't understand why people are so let's not have another committee that the council is asking for and I think it makes sense for you to have a lot of information versus not a lot of information when you're making decisions I think having excess an overabundance of information is better when you make decisions versus a minimal one perspective amount of information thanks I'd like to bring this to to the point which is that there's a proposal before us to create a committee and along the lines that Richard laid out in his memo and I'm wondering if there's interest in moving forward on that proposal okay thank you thank you very much for your time thanks Richard for bringing this in and I know that if you wanted to if you had a list of things that you wanted to get improved that you could make an appointment to sit down with Bill or sit down with Evelyn and raise them but but but we're going to move on thank you thank you Jack for putting me on the agenda yeah no and I appreciate it too it's just is not where I want to put on another committee because the committee has a we have a lot of obligations about and I do think that you directly as your information with our staff that a lot can happen but I also wanted to talk to to make in that I really apologize if I guess I misinterpreted if the senior center individuals were coming for a presentation versus that they wanted to have a lot of people speak so a presentation gets a certain amount of time depending on what the chair allows but then individuals who want to comment about that presentation only get to three minutes so okay see that's where I think guess I I thought she wasn't so that I missed that and maybe jacked in too so I apologize if that's what she was doing but I think that's the kind of thing having that information easily accessible because now I think there are a certain number of seniors who are irritated with the city council and feeling like why did they get treated differently in tonight's meeting than if other groups get treated okay thank you we obviously had a lot I was about devoted a lot of time with that but now it's time for our 10 minute break um I see 837 so back here at 847 thank you thanks for coming next item on the agenda is item nine water service line inventory process over here so which are consultant Patrick smart who is online and kermotica is also online this is one of these projects were required to do by the state and we're required to provide you an update so I don't occur if you have any more word you want to offer we're going to go straight to mr smart this project is a water to line service inventory so essentially inventorying all the service lines within existing links within the water system and this project consultant was selected through an RFQ process previously approved by city council and we just wanted to provide some information to the public and council about the process that will be involved the public outreach that we'll be doing to the water system customers and with that I'll turn it over to Patrick smart with MSK engineering thanks Kurt oh you can hear me here and see okay great um thanks for the introduction my name is Patrick smart with MSK engineers as Kurt said I just wanted we wanted to come tonight to give a brief overview of the service line inventory project and the next steps um like Kurt mentioned it's a federally required project the goal is to identify all of the service line materials throughout the city's water system and to do that we're going to be reviewing whatever records are available and we'll also be reaching out to all of the customers of uh of the water system to solicit them to either take a photo of their service line right next to the distribution meter where it enters their home or also to schedule an appointment and one of MSK's field technicians can stop by to observe the service line materials and record them for the inventory one important note is part of this project where especially interested in determining whether there are any lead service lines that may be present in the city and if you know anybody or if you find that your home itself does have a service line a lead service line please tell me uh currently there are significant amounts of federal funding that are available to every state and Vermont is receiving about 28 million dollars a year for the next five years of federal funds that can only be used to identify and replace lead service lines that's part of the funding source that we're utilizing for this inventory project I bring that up because if we do find lead service lines then the next step is to capitalize on this federal funding that's available to put together a project and hopefully replace those lines at low to no cost to the home and property owners so uh that's the long-term pieces there is a plan if we do encounter any service lines that that need to take we need to take action for over the next couple weeks we'll be coordinating with Public Works and Evelyn to we'll also be sending out letters through that coordination to all of the customers of the water system informing them about the project and giving them options to either click on a hyperlink email a photo of their service line directly to us or also to schedule an appointment and we so that we can come by and complete this work I really appreciate your time this evening I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about the project thank you so this is not a sampling survey you're intending to get the information about every single customer in the water system that's correct yes we're we're looking to get information about every single service line is the goal and what's the time frame to completion right uh the deadline is to have the completed inventory submitted to the state of Vermont by October 16th of 2024 so we have a little less than a year to complete it currently I believe we're on track to produce a draft inventory to share with the city uh late spring early summer next year anybody Lauren yeah just curious so you said if people think they have lead lines like what would people be looking for or is that if we send the picture would you notify somebody that it looks like a potential lead line yeah that's a great question so uh lead itself it looks like a dull silvery metal it's really soft you can easily scratch it with a penny those are a couple of quick easy tests you could do if you're looking at a pipe and you're thinking oh I don't know if this is galvanized or or if it's maybe it's lead that would be one way you could tell we also have little swab tests they look like little paint brushes and you may be familiar if you've ever tested your home to see if you have lead paint in your home it's the same exact test you can swab it on the surface of a pipe and if the pipe is lead the swab will turn red it even rhymes um but that's another method that you could use I would say if you're a resident or a homeowner if you're looking at a pipe and you're concerned or you're uncertain just reach out either email or call me and I'll be happy to come over and and have a look at it and tell you what the materials are and what next steps you could take or would be appropriate I think I've lived here 40 years I don't I'm not aware that this has ever been done has this been done in my career before um I don't believe so this is the first EPA passed new federal regulations in 2021 called the lead and copper rule revisions and these are the first sets of drinking water regulations that have ever formally required a public utility to go through and actually inventory their service line materials in previous years um I believe the lead and copper rule was established around 1994 at that time there was a requirement for utilities to identify the presence of lead service lines but that was only limited to if they knew they had any they had to self report and say that there wasn't a requirement comprehensively review records or develop an inventory uh in the fashion that's being required now so Patrick uh what is what is the plan uh for disseminating the information that you just gave us to the um to the citizens of Montpelio great question so the initial plan is to send the letter to everybody informing them about the project and explaining what we just discussed I'll also be coordinating with Carter and Evelyn to get some social media postings up uh those will be uh a lot deeper than what we just discussed tonight it'll be focused on bringing up awareness about the project and providing resources so that people could look on a link or be on the look up for for a letter ways to get more information if they want and it'll have our contact information in there anybody else okay thank thanks for coming and doing this thanks for having me appreciate it all right we're up tonight item number 10 revisions to the fiscal year 2024 budget so Sarah McCoy finance director is on her way up uh we've talked about this a little bit over the last few weeks and Sarah will give the detail this is the budget we are in now and uh our recommendations for how we manage it for the time being while we are anticipating shortfalls so I will let Sarah uh who actually knows what she's talking about walk us through this I'm Sarah McCoy the finance director this is the FY24 deficit mitigation plan that we've come up with internally and would like to present to you our current circumstances in 24 are a bit difficult we will likely experience a shortfall from two different sets of circumstances one is the citywide reappraisal yep that's the right set of slides been a mistake so dear that's mine that's the right one so um like I said two different sets of circumstances the first is the reappraisal we will experience some tax revenue loss there the tax rate was set in late August based on the grand list as of that date the board of civil authority is currently reviewing the 69 appeals and any assessed value that is reduced during that process will result in tax revenue loss in 24 um we also experienced the July flooding event which devastated the downtown and severely impacted um everyone involved this from this we expect to see a significant number of abatement requests which will also result in tax revenue loss we also have lost meals and rooms tax related to the downtown businesses and have seen a big decline in department related fees so here's where I'm showing you the projected revenue shortfall um and so here I've broken it down to property taxes local options tax which is meals and rooms and then department related fees um and I performed estimates to come to these numbers based on what we know now um that so these don't include an abatement of education taxes so I project we will have a $1.6 million loss in revenue um we have two different items in the budget that are coming in over budget right now in revenue so that offsets that slightly to get us to 1.5 million which we will need to mitigate in order to avoid a deficit but what's not included in that 1.5 is an abatement of education taxes if the education taxes are abated the city won't collect that revenue but still is required to turn that over to the school and so that could be an additional 1.2 million dollars um discussions are in the legislature right now about relief but that's currently not known but that is also something on the radar but not included in this deficit mitigation plan does that typically there's probably no typical but would we anticipate going for this in the budget adjustment act rather than the state did adopt a bill to help relief the education tax it was a little bit more restrictive than what we would hope for you had to meet four criteria in order for it to be exempted so the league is active we've been active there's already been a bill submitted what what we would hope for is that you know any properties in a flood plain that achieve balance the state would pay the make up the ed tax difference you know who knows so but it is you know significant because it would be 2.7 instead of 1.5 um so then we've come up with some proposed cost saving measures of those we would see department wide reductions of around 330 000 we would pause spending on the country club road earmark we would reduce capital projects funding by 519 000 we would repurpose some committed fund balance and we would repurpose some ARPA funds to get to that 1.5 and still be able to preserve our our unassigned fund balance and provide services to the community we are working internally to scale back as much as we can and still provide the services that are expected and we all met and have agreed upon these proposed cost saving measures for you and we've only been making purchases necessary to operations that were already under contract for projects and then for flood recovery so I've outlined these a little further for the reductions by department you can see the breakout the general fund wouldn't pay the parking fund for employee parking different departments have deferred supplies and maintenance we have reduced the city hall maintenance and services budget because right now we're primarily focused on flood recovery and those would be female eligible so they wouldn't come from the general fund budget we expect to see some savings from the vacancies we have in the open positions we continue to keep those positions open and again I've broken down we had three different lines where we were funding expenses related to the country club road in 2024 and if we pause on the use of that funding at this time that would help cover that gap in addition we reviewed what was in the capital fund we carried over approximately 618 000 from the prior year so if we partially fund cip this year in the amount of 500 000 and reduce it by 504 470 that will also help us close that gap and I've gone through the projects we have outstanding and under contract to determine how much I have felt we needed to fund the capital and cover those and leave the rest for reserve so to do this we have as I said reduced we've repurposed the fund balance that we carried over and are deferring projects and equipment until the funding can be restored and this was a decision we made immediately following the flood to try to conserve financial resources and be able to focus on flood recovery and so I've also proposed repurposing 269 000 worth of ARPA funds the yellow items in this presentation or in the agenda packet are the items we would place on hold in order to keep this money set aside as it is now allowed under the state and local fiscal recovery funds to be relieved for disasters as opposed to just relief from the pandemic so it is dual purpose now and so if we can hold on some of these expenses and use this money to cover any shortfall we have that would be my opinion a great idea and I have left a few items here one is the housing trust fund the first 60 000 I've spoken with planning a bit we need to do a bit more research but that's potentially money that could be used for the country club road expenses and then as we talked about earlier there's 300 000 left which would be a great grant match for the rec center improvements that we discussed and then the last item I believe was a general fund committed fund balance so not that long ago I came to you with a list of items you approved one option we would have is there are three items in there that aren't restricted by other outside sources they are just committed internally by you as a council and that's for the HRA reserve the public works pavement marking and planning professional services and those are all things that could be repurposed to offset the impact this would have on our unassigned fund balance so the main goals with this deficit mitigation plan are to continue to provide the community with essential services be prepared for a 1.5 million dollar revenue shortfall and mitigate its impacts preserve our 720 000 unassigned fund balance that we're carrying over from FY 23 that number is still unaudited so it's not final but it is roughly where we will land avoid reductions in personnel closely monitor the budget and provide you out with regular updates and then restore the repurposed funds to their intended use as we learn more and if it doesn't turn out to be as bad as I have projected it to be so at this time the recommended action would be that you review and approve the fiscal year 2024 general fund deficit mitigation plan as presented and outlined in the agenda packet and I'm happy to answer any questions I mean this this seems like a good plan to me I guess just a couple so all the positions will be held open so we're not cutting positions we're just not filling them but the plan is not to reduce staffing once we can get back to full budget right and I guess my other question is just are there other opportunities either in addition to the education fund advocacy for trying to you know not be on the hook for that additional 1.2 million from the education fund are there other things or can we team up with other cities that have experienced revenue loss to try to get more state support and help and then just the other thought is are there projects that we're putting on hold where there might be state funding or where we'd miss kind of opportunities where we might want to like rethink timing of different projects or something because we could get state or federal funding that's available in the short term that won't be there in five years if we put it on hold so yes I think with regard to the last question first I mean you know as you see even with keeping the funds in for the the rec center project like if we see an opportunity to spend small money to get big money to do projects you know obviously that's how we're going to manage that so absolutely if we can move some of these forward because you know one of the the challenges we're going to have in the next agenda item is you know now we're going to have this backlog of projects next year if they don't get done so then it becomes a burden on future budgets to get them done just like we did with COVID so how do we how do we get those back so yes by all means if we can find funds secondly you know I think I've copied you on it if I didn't I'm sorry but right at you know not long after the flood I reached out to our delegation and basically said you know can you provide us assistance for revenue loss much like the federal government did for everybody with ARPA they said you know you have these revenue loss and I know Berry City has done the same others you know and I think you know if you look at the hand the handful I mean there's like 20 or 30 communities that were heavily hit you know I mean they give 20 million dollars which I wholeheartedly agree with two businesses why couldn't they give 20 million dollars to 20 communities you know allocated some pro-rata function but you know we specifically asked for a million which would go a long way toward mitigating this and that was before we had hard hard numbers so I don't you know I don't know how that's going to play out but like I said the league is on it and you know we're specifically in with Berry and trying to you know get together with the other hard hit communities so yeah that's absolutely an angle we're working and I think you know the important thing too I mean again the wild card is the education tax because that could make this go in a really bad direction but notwithstanding that I think you know Sarah's been very conservative with with the numbers so you know if things get a little better we can try you know we'll certainly try to put particularly the projects back because that way they don't pile up for future years but we'll be keeping you pretty well informed and not the place we thought we'd be in October but here we are so I know that we approved some bonding at the last town meeting at that we haven't actually we haven't actually borrowed that money yet is that right so part of it was Confluence Park could have been covered under that as well some other things we we passed a the city passed a you know ballot item that said right we could borrow all this money use it for a variety of things so I'm just getting clear we we have not actually borrowed that money right and I'm wondering how that fits into our current budget situation but then also for next year so those are two two separate questions I'll do my best to answer them so you know the bond money then shows up as the debt service payments in future budgets so you know the annual payment oh sorry yeah the bond payments show up in future budgets you know as the debt service payments over time so you know we borrow a million dollars then we pay you know so much per year for 20 years so we don't start paying until we actually borrow and we have that debt authorization there's not really an expiration to it so you know we can delay those and so to our point we aren't doing any projects we haven't already signed you know anything we hadn't already signed a contract and committed to do as of the flood we're not doing so that includes those types of projects now you know the very main intersection others those are important projects we've got to do them at some point but we can push those off until we know but you know in terms of next year I well correct me if I'm wrong I mean I'm assuming we will at least start preparing next year's budget with the assumption that those payments are in and then that might be something that we choose to do is delay those through the budget processes how we stagger those I'll look to the public to see if there are any comments or questions I'd like to add two more comments if I may one is that we review this with our entire team and everyone supported it you know some people are getting hit harder than others and it was very clear it was said not by me but by others in the room like when we walk out of here right we're 100 percent on board with this and everyone was and that just kind of I think speaks to the team that we have and certainly I want to call it Sarah you know Sarah just started what February and has yeah and you know she her her knowledge of our budget and handling all the FEMA stuff and being able to put this together with everybody has really been incredible and she's been a huge asset to our team so I you know she's she's done a lot of heavy lifting under I'm not sure exactly what she signed on for but she's doing a great job just thinking of staffing that has capacity to actually go after other dollars like are we it seems like a wise investment to put knowing that there are parts of money so like that might be a place where you might want to hire capacity so that we could actually be seeking that money because if we don't it just means we're going to fall behind on everything and we're already behind from the pandemic and all that well and so to that point because for you you know we're trying to be strategic I mean obviously when this first happened we just called an immediate halt to all vacant positions because we needed to stop the bleeding but you know as the year goes on we're trying to be a little bit more strategic about it as you heard you know we're moving forward with the senior position because it's important and it's an important function and they don't have a lot of other staff so they need that public works has two vacancies you know winter's coming we've given them the go ahead to you know hire one of them because they need it for plowing and so we are trying you know when it makes sense either for delivering services or for a need you know we're trying to be strategic about it but obviously it's also the biggest way to harvest savings is through you know not having those payments you know salaries and benefits and all of that so but not when it costs us the other way so thank you and the way you laid it out was made total sense and nothing that I objected to that I wanted you to put back in and so I would make a motion that we accept your FY 24 mitigation plan the deficit mitigation plan is a deficit mitigation plan for the country club money so does that mean that project is basically just stalled out or what what does that mean for that project so it means that we will you know right now it's one of the staff and of course we're really working with FEMA so that in itself has created some opportunities as well as you know one hand we think we'll be able to move some infrastructure ahead faster without us having to put money up on the other hand it will tie up some space for a period of time before we can move so we think we can manage most and if we can keep that 60 thousand in you know if we need consulting help that's we you know we can do that if we were if we were going full bore ahead you know we'd want to do all the full you know we've got a long list of things of action plans that need to be done and will cost money but I mean something's got to give so you know like I said if we can get a water line put in which we think we will then that's eight hundred fifty thousand dollars that we didn't pay for and didn't have to design and all of that so you're ready for a vote if so all those in favor signify by saying aye any opposed all right thank you thanks sarah now we'll move on to item 10 or item 11 budget preview for fiscal 2025 okay so still sarah groin that's my instructor um here's the fiscal 2025 budget development presentation um it's going to sound a lot of like a lot like the deficit mitigation plan um for fiscal 25 we expect to face a lot of challenges um in the budget build thanks sorry so the july flooding has caught a caused unprecedented damage to the municipal and private buildings and infrastructure the reappraisal appeal outcomes and flood related abatement will reduce tax revenue received in 24 and by default increase the tax rate for 25 without any increase in municipal spending the impact on this is still unknown the local options tax receipts for meals and rooms and alcohol are expected to be significantly impacted by the temporary closure of many businesses during this current fiscal year and the unknown timeline for their return to normal operations in f y 25 um also many infrastructure improvements may be deferred as the city continues to focus on flood recovery and restoration 3.75 or excuse me 3.7 percent cpi will likely only cover the increase in personnel and benefit related costs the city is expected to incur for 25 and not inflationary increases in operating supplies and services for the budget build we've made some assumptions for 25 as we do in every year at this time we've tied growth and revenues to the consumer price index at 3.7 percent we are assuming no change in the grand list at this time when we're contemplating this but we know that there will be a reduction in the grand list value based on the reappraisal and the flood we are not budgeting to use any of our unrestricted fund balance salary and benefit projections will likely be absorbed by the cpi increase but other expenses likely will not our health insurance is up 1.3 percent in the calendar year of 2024 they were originally projecting we would be 12 or 15 percent so i signed the letter immediately when i received the 1.3 percent increase um but the second half of f y 25 is still unknown and our average is about 8 to 10 percent so we just will need to plan accordingly for that our cip and equipment plans are going to have to be recalibrated due to flood recovery as i just spoke about in our deficit mitigation planning and then funding for community enhancements will require will require contemplation as we address flood recovery and core operational costs so in addition to the challenges assumptions there are pressures our capital improvement plan has a 2.4 million dollar target this is an increase of 246 500 over the fiscal year 23 capital plan our personnel also with cola adjustments related to the union agreements and other impacts are expected to be an increase of 310 000 gross 250 000 in the general fund over time is 36 000 of that 250 000 in the general fund our wage-based employer costs will be up another 54 000 gross and 43 000 in the general fund um and these estimates here exclude the costs associated with filling the current vacancies and we presently have eight that remain vacant under our post flood hiring freeze um should they be filled that forecast would also increase um our other operating equipment building maintenance utilities fuel costs are all on the rise as well as supplies road salt and asphalt um if we increase tax revenue by cpi 3.7 percent it results in a roughly 425 000 additional taxes raised if we fill those eight vacant positions we will likely have enough funds available to cover personnel increases um but not other inflationary costs or additional funding to the capital improvement plan so here um you know we really are looking from guidance from you all um we are very early in the budget development process we have some preliminary estimates and we are building those around cpi which is 3.7 percent right now as well as our personnel costs from the contract agreements and our health insurance rates as i said this is very preliminary and departments have not reviewed their budgets or made submissions and there are significant challenges and pressures on the f y 25 budget um recent direction provided by council has been to build the budget and come in at cpi um and i obviously i've already said that that may or may not cover the the things we will want or need to do and so we are looking for guidance from council on their budgetary targets priorities and expectations for this upcoming budget cycle so here we are folks we're we've done this obviously we're going to spend a lot of time over the coming uh couple of months going over what uh what we want to see in the budget uh and at this stage we've we've done this a couple of different ways including uh having people say if they have any particular target budget target number in mind or whether you have any particular uh programmatic and other priorities in mind and this discussion is going to proceed no matter what we say tonight no decisions are made tonight but but this is an opportunity for anyone to uh to get out your initial thoughts if you have them very so i'm thinking about our overall budget process and so we're right at the beginning of it and i would i would think that now would be a good time to get public input rather than waiting until we've already pretty much got a budget hashed out and then asking people what they think about it so i would love it if we could do that right away before we get too far into setting priorities and we could talk about our own priorities but i really want to know what everybody else in my pillar thinks and what their priorities are okay and so the way you would structure it would be would you get word out for for a public hearing i get our next meeting i think that would be great yeah budget budget forum yeah what about lauren i like the idea of public input sooner i'm wondering if we might want to have a little more information like i could see everybody coming in and be like i want lower taxes and more services and like there like we can't have both and like that's what everybody wants we would love to provide that but we like just can't and so i feel like there has to be more like to me i would rather have the process you know have our departments and looking at our strategic plan like what are the needs that we identify and then maybe have like a better understanding of that without being tied to a specific number but then knowing that we're going to have to make hard decisions and it's going to be a tough budget year and so you know if we you know i know there's always some screening that happens by all the departments of some hard decisions before like we get to like you know what's what's critical to provide the services at the level that our residents deserve and expect it's a time it's been a hard time so like cutting back on services right now seems like the wrong thing for us to be doing like our community needs our city government right now to be stepping up not stepping back so i i would rather approach it that way and know i mean you know we there becomes a reality check of like you just can't like we don't want to raise taxes any more than we need to to provide really good services so and and i think within that kind of like projects and stuff again i think there could be things that could be like on the wishlist or we're going to seek outside funding for certain things that like or if we could find it then we would pursue it but it would be more you know the if if stars can align but it's not going to go into the base budget so i don't know i just want to start out with like a massive austerity mindset that we have to be cutting services and and things and i know we're going to have to make some really hard decisions and i do think we're really going to have to cut things to be realistic looking at just basic our biggest cost is labor and the labor agreements it seems like we have and the cost of increase just for that alone it's going to be really hard to keep all the programs running the question becomes do you do this little cuts everywhere and deliver programs or do we set priorities and say these are the programs we have to provide we want to do really well and some of these others rather than cut everybody a little we'll have to drop some because my failure has approved basically everything and on the balance recently we all know that and everybody wants to be affordable and more services for less but we just had really big tax increases this year ours would weight above cpi on our properties and i can't pass all those costs on the tenants for rents and there's a place where it breaks and i think we're there so we need to be realistic and so i do think we have to talk about cuts and how do we align some priorities and is it programs or cool versus just a lot of little cuts that just keep diluting i came on to the council in 2014 after council had insisted on staying at a certain percentage and they did a lot of cuts and they had inherited a lot of cuts and that's why we were so behind on the roads and they instituted the study state that said every year we're putting 175 thousand more dollars into our roads program so you know if we cut programs you say okay not the paving not the police not the fire it's like what do you have left you just want more communication people want more communication takes money it takes a position so i mean i really would like people to look when they say cuts and if we have public input early then come to say what do you want cut what can you accept accept cut from the budget i'd rather hear that if we're going to have public input early than what they want to have versus what are they willing to have us cut we couldn't even get them to take away snow plowing of sidewalks that we could all possibly take over the responsibility of shoveling ourselves so when i hear cuts i just i have a hard time visualizing what is it a service that's necessary um and you yourself talk about economic development so it's like and that's really hard to see the dollar right away so i i'd like to have a little more like what norm was talking about that we formed some set deaf people react to fairly early but not right off the top that's just all mentioned a couple times about federal grants so is is there any possibility that we can see what are available and how much of them we can get so i think it can give some us idea to understand the budget right because now it is only oh we can get federal grants there are grants there but there's no specific numbers so is it possible to have some numbers and then we can understand yeah this will go here this item so it will make the budget like better or yeah so grant funding typically comes with a specific project so um it might be that if we were successful we could reduce i mean i'm making this up we usually get paving grant but let's just say we did we got a million dollars for paving grant for paving then we could maybe not fund that at a million dollars next year but really so usually it's very discreet like doing the senior center uh excuse me the rec center all that we know we may or may not have budgeted for that next year but this is an opportunity to get something done with a grant project our operating costs personnel salt sand you know equipment police cruisers trucks those typically are not grant funded those are our operating costs so you know we have this is what we need to do to sort of meet the goals and priorities and we're going to talk about the strategic plan next how do we implement all of this and what's the what's the right cost you know how much are we willing to pay for it and so what what is included in that and then sometimes we can get grant funding to do a work that's consistent with what we want to do above and beyond that but it usually doesn't just fund a position or something like that inevitable then uh tax increase because we cannot find grants for operating budget then we will we need to use tax right to make or or reduce expenses i mean it's you know you mean if you if the council were to say we're not going to have a tax increase i think what you basically heard was that's at least 425 you know we're expecting this growth so that you know that would go away plus as things go up we'd have to cut to accommodate for those so i mean there's always a choice and it's always a policy and a priority choice that you make and one of the reasons we had this conversation early is we want to make sure we are thinking and working along with you it's one of the reasons we do the strategic planning to make sure that what does get in the budget reflects something that you want to do not something else so and it's all you know it's always you know i think way back in when you all first started we did that orientation and we talked about the council's role as policy and the two you know the two biggest roles that you know the two biggest policies things you do are spending other people's money and regulating other people's property or their behavior and so this is this is really this is where you choose what's important for the community and how what that blend is and we're here to help you do that um and obviously you know the the public process is great and it's really important and i do think having chunks of choices because some there are some things that are very visible to the public and are very popular and there are other things that aren't as visible but are perhaps as necessary you know the the accounting office right people you know cut some of the people at city hall well you know sure but we have 20 million dollars and FEMA and ARPA and all these things that we're managing all these grants so you know that's a that to an individual that doesn't mean you know well that's not going to affect my road plowing or anything but it's still an essential service so to some extent we have to think about what's important for operating the budget as well as um but certainly packaging choices up like if you had this or this or this or you know and you know we actually realize a lot on that survey that we just went over the last meeting or two where the people kind of listed their highest priorities in their responses so um it's you know there's no perfect way to do we do have the ability on zen city now on our website to get feedback from people and i think that would be one way to maybe start a little bit early as we think about how to structure that so one of the things following up on what what sarah said for in a 2024 update but also for 2025 is that we've got bonded bond approvals that we haven't taken the bonds yet we haven't started paying yet and and so that's something that we could decide to push back a year or two or three years or whatever however the biggest bond well we've got the sewer plant and then the other biggest bond after that is the east state street project which is a huge project and and where do we hear the complaints the condition of the roads and the water breaks yeah and and those are both things that are addressed by that bond well and as you push projects off the price goes up too so there's you know there's that cost you know you're hedging one choice against the other again that's what you have to do something we all do it with our own homes and you know can't do the roof this year i know it's going to cost you more next year but i can't do it this year so i'm just going to deal with a leaky roof for another year you know i mean i think that's where people are at so it's it's not magic you know just in a little bit of a reality check about timing and not that we and i do think we have the opportunity to get some early input but you know you have two more meetings you have november 8 november 15 we have the Thanksgiving holiday the next meeting after that's december 13 and that's when present the budget so you know it's six weeks from now but it's you know we're really going into our work right you know part this is the first part of our process really is getting having this conversation to get a sense of where people are at but it's going to come fast from from here on out and so you know our opportunity to engage with the public is probably between the beginning of november and before thanksgiving you know maybe right after three i mean by the time we get to after thanksgiving we almost got a fully baked budget which is what we don't want to get to so i mean we just need to be think strategically about that and we'll we'll put our heads together about how we can do that i'm guessing this is my first budget process i'm guessing it's an iterative process um given what what people have been through i i think it would be a good first step would be a budget that doesn't increase taxes and see what that what that means and then go back and take a look rather than the other way around i don't know how how you've done it in the past since we're going to go through a process several times we need a place to start are there other other places we've started that worked better than that we've started almost any place you can imagine yeah um we've started at that we've started at you know inflation that's been the most common one we've started at just bring us your best guess we've started at just the council saying well we'll accept some increase but only like one and you know they've set a hard line bring us a budget that matches this and then take a look at what the impact was um so you know we i mean it's really how you want to proceed as a group what what you design with um i'll say this and it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it but i think i'd be remiss not to say it um if if we say something like a zero increase that almost certainly means staff reductions and you you go through a process where you have to make those decisions and identify certain positions and now an employee knows that they've been put on the list and then it comes to the council and it's like oh well we don't really want to do that after all and it gets put back so it can be i mean it's it's what happens we're a public process it's part of the deal but it can be very difficult and so if you know we could probably say something like at zero percent this is the the magnitude of reduction and these are the areas that we could see but again it it kind of goes to tim stoke mineral or how do you want it do you want it to say it comes from capital or no we want to fully fund our capital plan no matter what which means then which programs how do you prioritize your program so these it's it's there's all sorts of choices in there that are you know that you have to provide us along the way and that will suggest to you but we can always change it based on what you want to do what the way i've been thinking about this and i haven't spent i'm not down the road very far far yet but you know i think the last couple of years of maybe last year i was just saying well you know we we can't take on anymore we don't have the ability to ask people to ask our staff to do more than they've already done and ask taxpayers to spend more than they've already approved i don't i don't feel like we have a lot of extraneous stuff in the budget i don't think we have stuff that people don't value and so i think it's hard for me to say well to want to go into this planning on cuts cuts and services and so if that means taking more money out of capital and out of services that's probably my inclination lauren i'm just thinking like a range like you know if you wanted to come in at no tax increase it would mean this kind of cuts if you wanted to come in at cpi it would mean this if you wanted to double cpi it would be this and then like we've got the menu we've got a better sense of the choices to make and you know and i'm saying we can do this one of the things we've done in the past in fact we would probably do anyways you know sort of come up with like if we if we could fund everything what does that look like and then you know then we have a number that says all right this is this is fully funding everybody this is you know fully funding the capital plan fully funding everything in the strategic plan this is kind of full and then we'd say okay that would take a 10 increase or whatever because it will be something like that and then we would say you know from there to get to you know inflation would mean cutting you know five hundred thousand dollars to get to zero would be cutting another four hundred thousand you know and and you could at least see where those things are and you get order of magnitude dollars without saying specific proposals of and then you know we could highlight where some of the big pockets of money are and then you could have policy conversation about prioritizing so that i mean we typically do that anyway because people are going to submit their budget requests and you know we we whittle them down a little before they come to you to try to get to whatever target or expectation you know that we have we we have typically try to take it upon ourselves to not bring a budget to you that exceeded the inflation rate just as a staff extra given lacking any specific direction from you that's probably what we would do if you didn't give us a different order but we would also provide you know this is what's not in there some of you have done before you know you get the budget we say here's what's not funded in this because we're trying to stay in then here's the things that are or here's things that are increased during those kind of things so you can really see the change but it's there's no perfect system other than working through it my sense is that more than i don't want to prematurely cut off the conversation but my sense is more than most years lately people are all over the place there's so we can we can keep talking for longer but i don't think it's going to get you any more clarity on what the it's fine where to start yeah that's fine but i don't want to cut people off so carry um my my preference would be an increase that's aligned with cpi and have that be you know the place where we start i would love it if we could spare you having to go through the exercise of coming up with multiple budgets at different levels but i would calculate the numbers that's nice it would speak it would be very interesting but you just where i'm personally coming from is i think it's not unreasonable for taxes to go up like everything else is going up but not a lot more than that but i'm open to to go in either way too tim i think the thing to be careful of with cpi is because i looked at your report i thought okay 3.7 is interesting you look at the chart and there's no cpi there's like a phone book of cpi's there's all kinds of indexes that you use northeast and even within that group it was like 3.0 or 3.7 so there's a range um so do we get something in the realistic range i think makes sense and then a lot of people in the community their lives their incomes don't increase by cpi and so i think we've got a big cognizant of that i think last year cpi was used right that was the base so those i think what happened i'd have to go back confirm but we presented a budget at what and it was a high cpi last year and then it got added to after it got to the budget so it was more stuff was put in um so i think that's what happened so right it's going up 5 or 3 and right cpi went up at he or he points something and that's so i don't i think we've got to be careful with cpi it's just not totally realistic for everybody in our community for you maybe most people we actually didn't use the cpi until actually we put things in and put things out and then we measured it against whether it was reasonable within the cpi it seemed to me we did a lot of exercises specifically moving because we had that wonderful spreadsheet that allowed us to play with some of the services and we could take things out take things in and we would see the impact on the taxes and then we went to the cpi i didn't feel the cpi led us there but it's just my impression maybe that's how i used it yeah i think yeah i'd have to go back and check i don't but it gives us a you know someplace to go i like that idea all right well your direction is as clear as you possibly want right um it's it's as clear as it usually is on october yeah okay yeah i just got like carrie asked about public input earlier are you feeling nobody about that are we gonna need to discuss it anymore i think it's a great you know we'll we'll try to come up with something that we can recommend to you is how to do that given the timing and what we know where we know and all that kind of stuff it's well sometimes we have workshops that we add extra meetings for that really by a lot of public input but do people ever come out before they see something they want that's being cut on the shopping blog whatever the term no i would say at least a half a dozen and sometimes more we haven't had a large number of people oh yeah sometimes we get 20 yeah i mean the you're right usually if there's something targeted to be cut people will come out there is occasionally sometimes if something's proposed people come out and say you know we think you don't need that you shouldn't do that but we don't usually get a lot of people but so i think that that leads to we need to think about a different way to reach people a lot of people coming out was not when it was a budget hearing but it was sometime about 20 years ago when we had this whole session of public meetings about looking at looking at city government and how we should do and we went through one of these dot exercises where people have the dots and and there were a lot of people there was one of the sessions was at capital plaza i'm not sure we're all there and it turned out that people mostly don't want to cut the services they get and even though a few people come in and say well we've got too many city employees or whatever there weren't really people weren't wasn't that much constituency for doing something that's not what we already do because i the fact that people always vote yes on the budget and on the other things it is an indication that people value what they get and or or at least in large numbers even this year i think our our yes vote went up no no okay okay all right thanks i think we're ready to move on gary had her hand no i'm sorry gary i i just thank you next up we have item 12 strategic plan follow up so now we'll spend about two hours on the strategic plan everyone good for that wrap this up now that we know we can't afford anything that's in it so thank you for last week i sent out notes this morning trying to reflect what you had said and like i said in my email these aren't you haven't voted on any of them and i said there were a couple things i wasn't even you know we weren't clear on from our notes so we just put in what was said there um i don't expect that we're gonna get into a substantive conversation right now i guess i'd ask you just to look at these and see if they generally reflect what you think they're supposed to reflect and how and ask how you want to move forward with this you know do you want to schedule another special meeting do you want to put on the next agenda i mean how do you want to handle that or do you want to discuss some of it tonight it's really up to you we want to get it right and it's um and it's also important to as we think about the budget we we certainly will go through the budget and say is this in here is this in here and then if something isn't we'll tell you you know you had this in your plan but it's not funded because of xyz my personal feeling is and i don't have in my head a clear idea of what's on our agenda for our next meeting but but my thinking my suggestion would be that we people take this home spend more time than they've had so far to do it and put it on the next agenda if we if we can and but i'm happy to hear other suggestions and it looks like i started talking while lauren you were raising your hand no any other thoughts all right other business and bill not bill you and i've talked about something under other business didn't we you know i was gonna do it under management okay you it's fine yeah all right city council reports it's starting in your end okay i do did have a meeting with parks commission and they have started opening new trails that are going to increase some of the parking on the street of neighborhoods that aren't used to having cars parked on the street going into the park and so they're going to be planning ahead for some public announcements and interface with people to hopefully not have to have it go smoothly and as those become more solidified i'll bring the names of the trails and etc and then the central remont public central remont regional planning commission transportation advisory group trying not to use the initials we got talking about dam removal on tuesday night so that was interesting and all of us felt that the regional tack should be the one to really support the towns and cities that want the dam removal so at least investigated to put pressure on the state and they all quoted their own little reports for their towns or their villages having that heard about this issue but not getting any state response so uh just wanted you to know that's alive and well and going to be growing i just want to report a little bit on the public restroom committee meeting um the the committee looked at talked a little bit about the proposals for the the rec center building and thought that sounded great um but also wanted to make sure that any cover any uh the process for rebuilding city hall um keeps the idea of publicly accessible restrooms in mind and i know that you know the the proposals have come in from the rfp and the rfp didn't specifically say anything about fully accessible you know 24 hour a day public restrooms um and so we just the committee just really wants to talked about they didn't make a formal proposal or anything but that was the strong sentiment of the committee that that should continue to be part of those conversations that's it so i'm not pretty sure good um so and i um meet with our um constituents people who live in district 2 by monthly and after the flood we haven't done it yet so this saturday we will meet at the library at 10 a.m so it will be soon on the front porch forum and um i hope um people who live in district 2 can and can come and share ideas with us so far we have been learning so much things by listening to them so that's all from me and also yeah all right great just wanted to share um the commission on the recovery and resilience for our community has been meeting we've had two meetings so far there have been communications out to the public through press releases and some and like i know that they reached out to everyone whose email address they can collected through the various forums so hopefully people are seeing those um but so far it's really been kind of organizational and looking at the priorities that the community had identified in those processes and thinking about structurally how can we set up work groups that have been to broad expertise so you know if we're looking at dams we've got to connect with this uh our regional planning commission group that that donna mentioned so it's a lot of kind of mapping right now of different priorities and who can be helpful to pull in and then um the goal is then to reach back out because people at the forums had identified interest in volunteering so um just look out for opportunities to engage in that process once there's just a little more structure to plug into so we can move the community priorities forward great thanks um i have very little to say other than that i think it is it's very the report on the recreation center was very encouraging tonight and if we had the opportunity to meet some very fundamental uh needs of people right in the center of town i think that uh uh we will it'll be a great thing for the city if we can move forward and do that city clerks report just reminder to keep coming to the assessment hearings for losing a couple it was pretty close to a quorum last time and we're losing a couple of our work courses for at least next week for this week but this week will be nothing but traditional normal uh the assessment hearings and there won't be a lot of strange math although next week they're good and just to mention that uh november second since there's a conflict at the senior center that thursday we will be meeting here okay i got a few things um i think what jack was referring to you guys forwarded to you notice we got about the stump dump from the state both from solid waste and wetlands don't have a huge lot about of specifics we have sent a letter back we were asked to respond in the wetlands within 15 days so basically saying you know we didn't know there was a wetland there it's not mapped uh and basically what we're asking for is a meeting with wetlands people and solid waste people together so that we can figure out what you know that one solution doesn't get the other and what is actually needed uh and what we may need to do including whether we can continue keeping that open long term or open only for city functions so there will be more to come on that it will have an it will have probably have some costs and we'll certainly have some service impacts as we go because uh at least until we make corrective actions so more to come on that i don't have a lot of specific um just heads up we don't have this yet but not next the next meeting is on november 8 that'll be here the november 15 meeting because the week after that's thanksgiving and we're not meeting then that's a school board night so we will have to find another place so i don't know where we'll have that's also got the cable maybe it'll be the senior center again i don't know but working on that um the next meeting you met we just talked about the strategic plan just so you know uh the the resiliency commission a couple of members will the chair and i think deputy chair we're going to come just to connect with the council i don't think it's going to be long but they'll uh we'll be going through the rec study about recreation services ballard and king study so mr ballard will be here and the housing committee's recommendations will be coming up so they've talked about regulating um short term rentals a couple of things so they're coming to present those to you so those are the next along with strategic plans probably something else but those are the ones that are remembered off the top of my head um homelessness task force right got it offered them the opportunity to be on next week rather than next time we're in tonight there we go legislative slash advocacy committee it's been lauren jack and it was connor and me do we know who this year's version is i couldn't remember you is it you i don't let's usually three council members of me so we should probably get together soon because we have a lot of asks i think this year and um you know i think normally we do that in november right before the budget you know we try to we try to set our legislative priorities and then ask our delegation to come in pre-session and go over them with them so um so if we can get together so is it is it council member brown okay great um okay and lastly city hall um to to carrie's point the rfp was searching for qualifications that met the fema requirements but we have talked about when we're doing that what other things can we do would it make sense to do that aren't like a new bathroom wouldn't be fema eligible but does it make sense to do one while we're doing all this work in city hall so that would be part of that process but uh it's specifically to deal with the minute flood mitigation and all that stuff and we did get the the bids in yesterday we were going to try to have a recommendation for tonight which was had been our original schedule but we had three bids in two are very strong so they're going to do interviews and do more detail update for you so that we'll be on the next agenda as a recommendation so puts us a couple weeks behind but I think it'll be give us a better choice and more solid information to make a decision from because like I said there that our team was really excited so we had great proposals so that'll be good all right that's all I have and we are adjourned right at 10 p.m