 All this meeting to order, it is the regular city council meeting of Monday, September 19th, 2022. Our fearless chairperson Helen really is not with us tonight. So I, as her vice chair, will be serving in her stead and we are first going to be doing the Pledge of Allegiance. And Ethan, would you like to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, the nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thank you. All right, and now I'm going to ask Jesse Baker to provide instructions for leaving the building in case of an emergency. Thank you. For those in the room, there are doors on either side of the rear of the auditorium. You can go out either one and turn left or right to get outside. For those joining us online, thank you for being here. If you would like to talk during any agenda item, please feel free to turn your cameras on and be recognized. Or you can put a message to me in the chat saying that you would like to provide comment. We are not monitoring the chat for comment specifically other than your interest in speaking. We'd love to hear your voice. Thanks. Thank you, Jesse. And now I ask my fellow counselors to let me know if there are any additions, deletions or changes in the order of the agenda items that you'd like us to make. All right, seeing none, we will carry on to number four, which is comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. And if you're online, you can turn on your camera and we will be recognizing you. There's someone here in the audience would like to speak up if you would come up to the podium. Be sure that the conference will now be recorded. That's all right. And please state your name, your name and then you can certainly go ahead and ask any questions to Ashley Adams. And I was confused about whether I should speak now, or I'm speaking about the Climate Action Plan draft. It would be later when we have that agenda item. Okay, so there'll be time after the presentation of the draft for the public to speak. Yes. Around what time? Well, we're in for a long meeting. I noticed. Yeah. And it's so it could be, you know, getting close to 10 o'clock. Okay. Okay. So during that seven o'clock to 715 period would not be appropriate. Seven o'clock to 715. And councillors to weigh in on climate change related issues. You certainly could. I would, I mean, within, you know, my discretion, if I see you referring to things in the climate action, you know, plan, I might say we're going to hold off on that. Do you want to speak more generally? It is really directly related to the climate action plan. Yeah, I can wait. Yeah. And you did send us an email earlier today. So we did receive those. And if it's related to that, please know that we have received us that comment. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. And this off now. Sure. Thank you. Thanks. Anybody else who would like to speak on something not related to an agenda item? Okay, we will carry on then. With item number five, this is the time where councillors make announcements and also make reports on committee assignments. Matt, would you have something? Sure. Happy to. We met the committee for common area dogs met and discussed the council meeting was a recap of the council meeting was interesting being part of that. And the committee for common area dogs is very excited about the direction we're heading. They are concerned that the initial date for Middlebury fence company is not until December. And we're still hopeful. Maybe Jesse and her announcements can can answer if we have a better date for returning a Middlebury fence company so we can open up the dog park before the snow flies. But we're still waiting on pins and needles for that return of the Middlebury fence company. Tomorrow, everyone is invited to come out to the new City Hall Park. So we call it City Hall Park to see the dedication of the goose's the art exhibit. Five o'clock ice cream Rainer shine. And as a liaison to the fine arts committee, I will be there. And as we dedicate the geese for the goose's or how do I say it. It's trade marked as goose's goose's. Okay. And the artist will be there. Yes. So it's five o'clock tomorrow down here. A chance to meet the fine artist and the fine arts committee. And have some ice cream. Five o'clock tomorrow. I wish I could be there. My work schedule is such. Tim. You said ice cream, right? I did. That's pretty much said for me. Yeah. So let's see. It was a busy week. I think it was a busy week. I think it was a busy week. The energy committee met on Wednesday, I believe it was. And one of the results of that will be presented tonight. I think. I was able to go to the, um, the SBBA's, uh, annual summer celebration and, uh, at the, at the beta facility and got a tour. This is my second tour. And this was in the new building because the last time I went with Helen in the summer. So this is in their addition. So, um, and if you didn't know, um, previously there, they have, they had one aircraft and it had a propulsion propeller, but not the horizontal propellers. Uh, now they have two. The first one only has the propulsion. The second one does have the, the horizontals as well. And they did have video of it lifting up and hovering for a number of, I mean, you know, an amount of time. And they probably did it several times and they brought it back down. They have apparently as they have not gone up and not gone straight yet with that vehicle. So they're getting there. And I've never seen so many airplanes in one hanger in my life as I did in there on Thursday night. And it was my first time walking through the Eldridge cemetery. I'm sorry. I wasn't even turned on. Um, so that was great. I took some pictures inside in the cemetery and it was a sunset and it was really nice. Um, I also, uh, voted if you didn't, uh, at the Champlain Water District on Tuesday as everybody was asked to do for their bond issue. And, uh, lo and behold, I bumped into our city, our city clerk and two other city clerks went from Colchester and went from Essex, I believe. At that point there were 1300 votes and that was about 6. 15 p.m. And I also went to, uh, Burlington electrics net zero fare on Saturday. It was from nine to one. And, uh, they had a lot of tents set up and demonstrations of e-bikes. You could test drive an EV if you wanted to. There were lots of cars there. More cars than I had seen it at previous EV test drives before. They had somebody from Vermont Energy talking about heat pumps. They had a, uh, like an early, but a children's electrical efficiency education table with a really great poster that I'll probably share later on Facebook. Um, they also had, um, a car share was there and they were talking about the fact that one of the, uh, challenges they have for trying to, you know, turn over their stock to be hybrid electric vehicles is that they, they don't have car charging stations right where the cars are parked. The cars are parked in the same location all the time. So they're behind because of the pandemic. I think they have some, some financing, but they just don't have the people to do it yet. So it was pretty interesting. And, um, it was fun to walk around. They had a big display of, um, of electric, uh, lawn maintenance vehicles. So zero turn radius mowers, uh, you know, a couple of ego mowers, like the one I have. And, uh, and they also had a display of, um, these shopping carts for people to take to, to, to walk with them, you know, doing, they want to go, they get out of their cars and go to the grocery store if it's not too far. And it's a heavy duty frame. It's very light though. And it has a Cordura nylon sack. And there's a two, two sizes, small and large. And they're trying to farm these out to nonprofits because they're a nonprofit themselves. And it's a, it's, it's a very ergonomically designed package. And the whole thing comes apart and you could take it and wash it, put it in the washing machine. So that was really interesting. I talked to Peggy O'Neill about that for quite a while. Cause I thought there was a great idea. You have one of those. They're great. Is it green? Yes. Okay then. Good customer. Um, so I'm glad I went to that. And then also, uh, I did walk to the dog park last Monday night and trace the entire fence and take pictures. And, uh, I could see what, uh, Tony DiPietro was talking about with, uh, challenges with ledge and some steep slopes and the ability to tumble. I did have some questions that we'll, we'll talk about another time about the areas that didn't get pulled out. So, um, that's all I had. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. Tom. So I was too, it was at the beta event, great event and a nice tour to see what they're doing there. And I was at the beta event, which was very populated and I had no symptoms. And I also went out Friday night to the Al Franken show. And I saw some people on this call here there again, a symptomatic. And I actually tested on Thursday and I was negative, but on Saturday I woke up and had a lot of symptoms and I am COVID positive. So I'm isolating for the next five days. I say that only because I see some people on the call that I ran into Friday night. As far as I was negative at that time, but who knows if I just spread it throughout Burlington at those two events. And my apologies if so, but, um, that's all I have. And I'm probably going to keep my camera off because my family has me cordoned off into my bedroom and it's not necessarily the best backdrop for this YouTube screen. So cheers. Don't worry about the backdrop. That's kind of common backdrops during COVID. I just have the announcement that I went to the second chart review committee. And, um, just kind of setting out its timeline and the questions that it wants to, uh, you know, um, review, they'll be discussing more, but they are starting to think about what kinds of questions, um, that they want to, they want to, uh, have the committee review before they hand in some recommendations, one on the, um, the, uh, makeup number of commissioners on the planning commission. That is something, um, that we brought to them after hearing, uh, from a commissioner, uh, during our reappointment process over the summer. And the planning commission will be discussing this and then, um, giving them some input based on their needs and what they see as, as the possible advantages or, or disadvantages of various scenarios. And then they'll be turning to the city council, uh, along with, I think some gendered language and, and things like that that I saw, which, um, I thought we had taken care of back in 2006, but it hadn't gotten done. So it was a, I think a good first, you know, experience for me. I think we have a really good group thinking about it, really good questions that they were asking. And of course we have Peter and Donna and Chuck after and Peter Taylor, I should say Donna Kinville and Chuck after who are, um, veterans and, and these things as is Jesse. So that's all good. All right. And Jesse, it's now time for your, your report. Thank you. Um, just a few updates from us tonight. Um, I want to let you know that our, one of our police sergeants and soy check is retiring at the end of the month after 23 years of service to self-berlington. Um, he also has a long extensive career at Vermont, your National Guard as well. So we will be celebrating him. Um, Dorset Street paving as you likely have seen the milling is complete. The contractor is working on adjusting the structure elevations and the repairing the crosswalks. And right now paving is tentatively scheduled for September 29th and 30th. So that will again be fairly disruptive, but hopefully only two days. Um, our fall street sweeping program has started. I actually was behind one this morning on, uh, Kimball have. Um, so look beyond the lookout for those. Those are really important pieces of our, uh, stormwater mitigation system. Um, dog park fencing right now, tentatively scheduled for late October, the last week of October, first week of November. So that's where, where we are is we won't, we will get a hard confirmation date as we get closer, but definitely not into December. Um, Tom and Adam have done Yeoman's work to get them here earlier. Um, I also want to thank you, Matt, for promoting the Goose's event tomorrow at five. And then just a reminder to the council that you actually have a special meeting next Tuesday night joint meeting with the planning commission to go over the, um, vision and goals as we embark on our comprehensive planning process. So you will see that agenda coming out. That will be seven o'clock next Tuesday evening. That's all I have. All right. Very good. So that takes us to the consent agenda. And, um, here we have several items, lots of reading to consider and sign disbursements. We have three sets of minutes from August 1st, August 15th and September 6th of this year. We received the fiscal year 23 August financials. We also authorized the city manager to negotiate and execute two agreements related to the raise grant award for the East West alternative transportation crossing project. That's the walk bike bridge over I 89. And we also have approved the clean water state revolving fund loan agreement for our three acre stormwater retrofit design projects. And finally awarding the engineering contract for water quality monitoring and testing to stone environmental. So I'd be looking for a motion to approve. Second. All right. And I just had a couple of corrections. And I really apologize for not finding them first time around on the August 1st minutes. I know Sue's not here. But oh, she is online. Great. Um, page three is the first one. And it's just because it really did change the meaning. Where we have. All right, just a minute. Okay, it is the second big paragraph, the one that starts with Mr. Hansen said in new construction in Burlington. So this has to do with Burlington's ordinance on renewable energy. And it is one, two, three, four, five. Let's see, one, two, no, third line down instead of and now one has applied for the exemption and no one has applied for the exemption. Did you catch that Sue? Sorry. So third line in the middle, that big paragraph in the middle on page three. Got it. Okay. And then on page eight, the special city meeting be warned for November 2nd. I just wanted to check, isn't that November 8th? Yes. Yes. Okay. So page eight in the middle of the page, Senator Chittenden then move that the council recommend that ballot language be put on the ballot of a special city midi, that a special city meeting be warned for November 8th, 2022. Those are the two things I saw. All good, Sue. Got it. All right. Fabulous. Anything else? All right. Very good. Really interesting stuff. I thought about this engineering contract going to stone environmental. There was a lot there. All right. I would then call the vote. All those in favor? Aye. Very good. And that was unanimous. So we all approve the consent agenda. All those items got passed. And now we are a little bit early, but this is the opportunity for counselors in the public to share information and resources on climate change. And I'm happy to start out just reading through the climate action plan that the task force put together. They gave several references to organizations that we could possibly join or look at for resources. And I was interested in the cities with nature. And I was inspired, I think, to see that there are hundreds of cities and regions that are working to restore ecosystems within the cities. And many of the reasons are outlined in our own goals and our climate action plan. But that it is something that is for our own health and sustainability that we have to have sustainable cities. And so I just thought about all the things that we have done in our own city that would make us, I think, eligible for being one of those cities that lives with nature. And, you know, that wildlife corridor is definitely a place where our ecosystems can be, you know, one of several, but I'm thinking about the Shelburne Pond corridor there. But there are several that we have within our city where we really are seeking to restore ecosystems, as well as here in city center where you're going to be tomorrow night with the gooses. That whole natural area was restored and bases, you know, constantly having to be managed. But I think that we have really made strides for that, that sustainable city. And I think back also to our land development regulations that we amended in February. And it reminded me of an article that we, someone passed along to me or I fell upon when I was reading the news about, you know, long ago there were cities, and these were cities that were in, I believe, Central or Eastern Europe that they, that they have, archeologists have uncovered. And that they were cities with nature, that they were really, you know, habitations that were surrounded by green space so that there could be agriculture within the cities. And I, and they were, you know, of course putting that into, into everybody's minds as a possible model for the future. So when I see cities with nature and all these cities signing up and really trying to restore these ecosystems, I think there's a, there's something that's being communicated and we're not alone. And I think that that's very helpful to know as we all, you know, face, face a lot of unknowns. It's helpful to know. I think that there are a lot of people working on, on similar things that we are. It takes all of us working together. Yeah, please, Matt. Thank you. It seems timely at the end of the month is the last opportunity for the public to submit comments to the agency and natural resources on the advanced clean car and advanced clean truck initiative. These are adopting California's rules requiring automakers to produce and distribute for sale in cities and compliant, excuse me, cities, states. Cars that will increasingly be zero emission until 2035 when every car on a lot in Vermont will have to be zero emission vehicle and a similar but slower ladder for trucks as well. So the last time to comment is the end of the month if you care about that issue. Thank you. And just go online and seek that comment. That would be available online. Oh, yes, absolutely. Thank you. All right. Agency natural resources. Okay. And this is also open to members of the public. Feel free to come up. Yeah, Tim. Yeah, of course. Usually you're not shy about speaking up. Jumping in there. So this is the item for to share public information right about climate change. So I just thought I'd share a few factoids at this point. If you didn't know oil is down to about $85 a barrel from a high of $120 a barrel in June. Natural gas was up to 950 a therm in the last two weeks. It's down to 788. So there are some corrections going on in the energy markets right now. I'm not sure why other than there was speculation beginning and the war in Ukraine has taken a turn. But, you know, still things are difficult. There are also some headlines in other states that are more dependent upon natural gas to generate electricity where those customers are being hit hard with large utility rate increases because of the price of natural gas going up. And I think that if we're a GMP customers, we're probably more fortunate because, you know, their energy mix is mostly hydro and nuclear from Seabrook and New Hampshire. So we're more protected from that unless there's a really huge heat wave that calls for isonium to pull in natural gas, fired power from somewhere else in the region and or in the wintertime same thing. So I also, like I said, it went to this net zero meeting or fair at BED and they had a great chart about what it, you know, the climate impact of going to school. And one of the nice features of it is it tells you what's the best and the worst way for a child to get to school in terms of the amount of CO2. So obviously the lowest CO2 emission is walking to school. And, you know, it's not possible for everybody. And the worst one is one SUV picking up or dropping off a student. And then towards the better end of that, though, is an all-electric bus, you know, hauling students around. And that was the fourth lowest emissions. And actually we do have two school district electric buses now, correct? Yeah. I think four. Four now? Are they all operating? Yeah. Okay. So you see one of those buses you can tell because they make a funny whirring sound when they go by. Is the blue is the bumper? Okay. That's all I have. Thanks. Thanks. All right. Anybody else like to take this opportunity? This is based on the recommendation by people who work with people who are dealing with eco-anxiety, which is the majority of people in the world, to feel that you're not alone. So if you don't speak up, at least I hope you know that it's on our minds and we're all with you. Okay. All right. Very good. We'll keep going then. So item number eight, receive the chief sustainability officer's annual report on the progress the city has made to enact the climate action plan and integrate climate change impacts into decision-making. And that's with our director of planning and zoning and chief sustainability officer, Paul Conner. Hi, folks. Paul Conner. Thank you for having me here. So really this, as is described in our brief report this year, the big part of the report is the plan that you will be receiving this evening. So that's the big effort that's been a very, very involved effort by many dedicated volunteers, as well as the folks at the regional planning commission, Melanie and Anne, to put this work together. You see the actions, the science-based targets, and importantly behind all of that are the inventory and the targets that are developed in a scientific and measurable manner over time. And that's both at a city-wide level and then importantly in working with Lou Brzee and our staff, the government operations element of it, developing those baselines that can be tracked over time. So that's really the big part of the report this year. Ongoing with our operations are many efforts, including Lou's been working with our various different departments of understanding where fleets are for the coming years. We've worked with our new capital projects planner to integrate into our capital improvement plan worksheets, a box in this first year to give the department had the opportunity to speak to how they've looked at climate change as they've considered the matter and of course the multitude of ongoing projects physically being installed in the city that you've received updates on over the years. So that's really the bulk of the report and just wanted to give you all the opportunity to pose questions and or frame out how you'd like to see this in coming years. We have a product here tonight, so that will all be discussing that. Any other things that we need to know from Paul? And Tom, is there anything that you'd like to follow up with with Paul? No, thank you, though. All right. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. We are so well before 730. I have a proposal. Yes, please. I'm all yours. So technically, although very excited, there are so many people here in the audience, we cannot start our public hearing until the warrant time of 730. Right. So given that we, that is where we are on the, on the agenda. And I am also going to take the executive privilege to say, I think that the climate action plan presentation is a, as a body of work unto itself. And I wouldn't want to interrupt that halfway through. I suggest we skip down to, to item number 13 on the agenda, which is the FY 22 year and financials. Okay. And we can take up that action now. And if we have additional time, Andrew can also do the table setting of the FY 24 budget goal discussions. That is something we could pause at 730 and take up the public hearing. Okay. All right. It's actually good that we're doing this one where I got pressure minds. Yes. All right. So we are skipping on down to the numbers section with dollar signs attached. The fiscal year 22 year on financials. So Andrew Bouldock. Sure. Thank you, Megan. So I think we've been forecasting this since the, our sort of Q3 projections way back in March, but the city is looking at, we're now closing our FY 22, which closed, you know, June 30th of this year significantly in the black. You'll, you can see in the, in the overview that I provide that we actually have a total surplus of $2 million. A huge portion of that 1.7 million of that is being above projected revenues. And I'll kind of walk through a couple of those kind of key, key revenues. One of the big factors that we saw is actually when we prepared the FY 22 budget, we are in October of 2020, meaning we were significant. We were very much on the conservative side when it came to revenues. We did not know where our local option tax would end up. And so in order to, to meet those uncertainties, we scaled back in terms of projected revenues at that, at that time. Also, in terms of planning and zoning, permitting and building inspection fees, we were also very conservative back in October of 2020. Since then we've seen in this past fiscal year, a big boom in those coming in. A lot of that, I think in one of the end of year financial reports is very much that can be very timing based. So if we get a big project coming in, in June, as opposed to July, that can completely sway our numbers because some of these fees are as big as $200,000 or $300,000. So these aren't single family homes being converted to rental properties because both fire inspection and electrical inspections were well beyond there. That is on logic and beta. Those are probably the two biggest drivers there. So just walking through the numbers, specifically local option tax on sales and use and room and meals. We were over 600,000 above our projections. Is that back to post pre-pandemic levels? Yes. It actually exceeds where we were in 2019. Sorry to interrupt. Thank you. Yeah. Fire inspections, as I said, and building and sign permits. That's above, that's 700,000 above projected, which is over 200% of what we initially budgeted. Another thing that has a big impact are unbudgeted revenues. So our FEMA relief came in, that came in about a year ago. So early in the fiscal year, we logged that that was 236,000. Also, we continue to lead the industry in our workers comp claims and low workers comp numbers that led to a workers comp insurance reimbursement of about 100,000 this last year. Is that from the state? That is from our insurance carry from your insurance. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Yep. So all in all, that's 1.7 million in above budgeted revenue surplus. Also a note on cost savings. The significant cost savings this past year was in our captive health insurance. We continue to see incredible savings from this move that we made about three or four years ago. This is the second year we sort of fully realized those savings over 300,000 and unspent dollars in that budget line. So overall, the surplus again is two million dollars back at the council's meeting in August 15th. We had an initial discussion about surplus funding. Council approved three surplus funds funding allocations. One was to fund the trinity education center, $13,000. One was a memo by by chief Locke to meet some critical needs in the fire and EMS first replacement equipment. That was around $60,000. And then we also talked about how the bids came in significantly higher for the Dorset Street paving project. And we asked to set aside 200,000 to fully fund some of our spring paving needs. So the remaining unallocated balance at this point is 1.7 of surplus funds. So tonight we have a couple of recommended actions. We've again forecasted this a little bit in past meetings. The very first is if you remember last year at this time, we set up a special reserve fund for a captive health insurance. This includes tail covered coverage, which is called incurred but not reported. That's because we're self-insured. If we ever were to leave the captive model, there may be a little bit of lag on payment of claims about 30 to 60 days worth of. So our consultant recommended that we increase that number from 148,000 to 175,000 in the new fiscal year. So that would require a council motion to allocate surplus to that for that purpose. I don't know council's preference on whether to hold the recommendations till the end or if you want to kind of move one at a time. Do you have an idea? Wedge question for Andrew. So in the captives, it's just it's city employees. Or does it also include, it doesn't include fire and police? It does. It does. It's all city employees. But it's no other, it's just our city and the captive. No other. No, there are a number of other, both in the state, there are a number of other entities in the captive. Okay. As well as nationwide. I think there are over 500 total employers. Okay. So we're not, we're in a very large captive. We're in a big pool. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Right. So I understand why the consultant made that recommendation. I think it makes sense. So what do we anticipate the medical insurance benefit will increase this year? So we just got the initial projections. 6.4%. That's what they're recommending. Six. 6.4%. Increase. Wow. That's just. So the green mountain care board. Yeah. I'm just, you know, I know that they're asking for a lot more money. At the medical center and that whole system. And so I'm concerned that that will ripple through. And I know that there already have been projections for a specific insurers for individuals. Who will pay large premium increases. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I just want to pay large premium increases. So I'm just wondering if that was so. Six point four sounds manageable. Yeah. Yeah. Just in a, have a conversation scheduled with them on Thursday to further understand their projections. Yeah. But if I can just jump in that to just, to be very clear. That's about our FY 24, but it budget creation. That's 64. decide to leave the captive, we'll have claims that trail for about six months and it's to cover the cost of that trail. So it's setting us up for future options for the council to consider. Is that a forthcoming recommendation from the staff? Creating that fund? No, leaving. No. No. Okay. It's just giving options in the future. If you don't budget for that initially, then you're kind of locked in without a big buyout cost. Yeah. Six months is the tail. That's it. Is that what the, is that what the, that's pretty darn good. That's the industry standard, as I understand. Okay. Yeah. Great. Fantastic. And also there was a contingency funding that we also set up with this health savings fund at the end of the last fiscal year. I believe that was around 300,000 that council set aside as just a reserve on the captive if we do end up having a high claim year in a given year. So the consultant is not recommending increasing that amount at this time. All right. Well, yeah, there are several recommendations here. Yeah. So I can keep walking through the others. Yeah. That's, we still have time. So let's keep going. All right. Tom had his hand raised. Oh, Tom, sorry. Yes. I don't know if this is the right time, but Andrew, maybe if you could reflect as you start to look at next year's budget and the assumptions that we need to make overlaying it with what we made in the fall of 2020, which proved to be not too conservative, but definitely conservative. Do you anticipate wanting to assess our fee structure in these inflationary times? Is that going to be part of your budget considerations? Or is that not really part of the mix right now, our fees across the board and some of these that came in over budget? Yes, absolutely. To answer your question about evaluating fee structures, there are a few of our permit fees that haven't been evaluated in five to 10 years or increased in five to 10 years. So that will actually absolutely be part of the conversation for FY 24. Good question. Thank you. Yeah, good. All right. Let's keep going with the recommendations then. Sure. So recommendation number two. So with the increase in inspection fees and the planning and zoning permitting fees, obviously there's a huge staff burden to that. With the seeing over 200 percent on the revenue side, we feel that we can we have the ability this year and looking at what will very likely be in the pipeline for FY 23 this current fiscal year. We've made the management decision to increase staff capacity in the planning and zoning side by two staff members in order to meet that just increased demand. What we're recommending here is setting aside some salary contingency funds just in case we don't end up meeting those benchmarks in order to fully fund those two positions. We're asking for 150,000 to be set aside for that purpose. With the caveat that if we do meet those benchmarks that 150,000 at the end of the fiscal year when we come to you again in the year would be put back into the city's fund balance. Very good. And then the last is to maintain adequate fund balance reserved to fund the Dorset Street Signals project. We talked about this back in August 15th as well. Our initial projections were that we were going to be a little over a million over budget for that project. If we were looking to move forward with construction this year or at least you know design phase this year, we had the RFP went out in August. We got responses two bids back this past Thursday. We're still evaluating those bids. They're looking to come in at or around projections. We'll come forward with a further discussion when we award the bids likely at the next council meeting. But currently, again, we're looking at at least over a million dollars were we to proceed with that project this year. We've identified it as a very significant community need to move to move that forward. So we're just it's not in the official council action that we're recommending. We're just recommending that we at least haven't that much remaining in the city's fund balance above the minimum fresh threshold that we should be maintaining in our savings account in order to meet that that project. So there will be a later discussion of that. But just to sort of we're putting a lot into the fund balance, but just just so you're aware that if we come forward at a future time, that would be an additional last at a previous meeting. It was mentioned that there could potentially be grants to cover that cost to. Yeah, we already have one grant. It's a million dollar grant with that we received just five or so years ago. It requires a 20% municipal match as well. So the to do the signals has cost that much money. Yeah, so yes. Yeah, very expensive. Just as thank you, Councilor just as a point of clarification, the money can't be spent now. That's why you're asking for this stipulation, right? We can't. Yeah, we don't know a specific dollar amount right now, but you need that set aside for when that dollar amount comes. Correct. Okay, got it. Which is right, the bulk of it. Because when we look at next year's budget recommendations, it would almost be too sweet to kind of move it into next year. But you're right. And then I think finally, it's just helpful to talk about. Oh, I think I'm missing one. Sorry. There's also the South Brownington Pension Plan talked about this a little bit again in the August meeting. The affordable, sorry, not the affordable housing, the pension advisory committee and our actuary have both recommended to Council that we sent about 100, 100,000 aside to fund our long term liabilities in the pension plan. The goal would be that in future budgets, setting aside money now would anticipate savings in the future. This would also increase our total percentage that were funded by a small amount. I have a question on that. Yeah, please. What is the balance on our $8 million loan that we took out back in 2012? I don't know off the top of my head. Do you know Ballpark? Is it like, I don't know. I have no principles like at this point. So yeah, but we did refinance that right with a different bank and we found considerable savings right before Tom left the city. Yep. Yeah. FY 21. We refinanced that with TD Bank. Yep. Was there any consideration to taking some money and paying down principal on that loan versus contributing it to the fund itself? Yeah. The pension advisory committee talked about that a little bit. But in the end, the recommendation was to fund the... Put it in the market. Yeah, put it in the market. I wasn't at that meeting, sorry. Yes, that's why I'm asking. Okay, thanks. And then finally, just on the total fund balance. So last year, Council with the surplus was able to dedicate a large, over a million dollars to go into the city's fund balance. That's... Our auditors have recommended for years and we've scraped and clawed to bring the total amount in the city's saving account to above 30 days of operational cost expenditures. We finally met that number last year. If the city were to allocate the remainder of surplus this year, we would get much closer to the target amount, which is 60 days worth of operational expenses. We still wouldn't quite be there. We'd be at 14.58%. But again, we're in an incredibly sound fiscal position with making that investment into our savings. So know what action is needed on that point, but just wanted to make you aware. What are the next steps here? Will we be revisiting this then in October? So there are three recommendations we're asking for tonight for funding. One is the health care, 27,000. One is for the pension plan, 100,000. One is 150,000 for the planning and zoning capacity. Again, that would be as contingency funding. Okay. And we're still holding off on the remainder. Correct. And with regard to the contingency fund, that would... I'm trying to just see how this all smooths over as we then eventually have to go and ask the voters to cover. We just looked at next year's forecasted numbers. How would that contingency fund be smoothed over in those numbers? Yeah. So we'd have to make up that budget capacity in FY24. Right. So, I mean, there's other funding mechanisms we could look at. Again, I think the fact that we will be receiving revenues far above that amount will be able to ultimately offset that or help offset that FY24 budget planning. So when we're reading the maintained current levels of operations, I said include that 150,000 contingent. That's what I needed to know. It does. Thanks. So one more comment is that I would like to have somebody spend some time analyzing that $8,000,000 loan and what the value to the city would be for paying down some more of the principal and just some more details about the interest rate and where that loan is headed. And could it be refinanced again? Because I don't know what the interest rates are now, but they've been going up, but it'd be nice to know what it was. Just some details would be good. It might be nice to not retire that loan, but pay it down some more. Before having that information, Tim, would you be? Well, we're going to take some action tonight on four items, but this could be a fifth item for another night, right? Because one of the items is putting money towards that pension. That's a different, it's $100,000 right into the SEI fund itself. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I just want to say that I absolutely support the funds for our planning and zoning staff. They are overworked and that is an important job that we have here at the city. But my question is about that is we're adding two with $150,000. What about Delilah's position? Is that include filling that position or has that been reorganized? What's the status of our planning and zoning department, Jesse? Sure. So yes, Delilah's position has been filled, has been retitled as a development review planner one, kind of a more introductory level review planner. The idea would be to hire a second person at that level and then have those two review planners report to Marla. And so creating a permitting team where we could strategically strategically direct certain kinds of projects. So while the review planners would have general knowledge, they would also develop specific expertise on form-based code on other areas of our code. And then the second new position would be a second city planner position. Excellent. Well, I wholeheartedly support that. All right. Well, we have then those three requests. Would you like a motion? Sure. So I move that the city council approve adding additional funds to the health care reserve fund to the tune of $27,000. I also move that we, where's the motion? I was number one. Number two, that we add staffing contingency of $150,000 for planning and zoning staffing. We also allocate fiscal year 22 surplus funds to the south brilliant pension plan to reduce long-term liabilities and the amount of $100,000. And finally to, that's it. That's it. Sorry. Is there a second? Second. All right. Any further discussion, Tom? No discussion. All right. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That was unanimous. Okay. Very good. So with 10 minutes, I would recommend we just break for 10 minutes and not start the FY24 discussion to stop it. That's a pretty big discussion. It is a big discussion. All right. Very good. So we will be on recess for 10 minutes. Thank you. Here before you during the first reading, we gave a brief overview of this ordinance and the purpose of the ordinance is to regulate heating and water heating systems in new buildings in the city. And they would be new buildings that are not permitted by January of this year, 2023, this coming year. And we have essentially mimicked what the city of Burlington has proposed, which is to regulate heating systems to mean that they are 85% of the building's load design is renewable, which we define as by electricity, wood pellets, or other renewable fuel. The ordinance also addresses water heating systems that would have, does not have the 85%, but that would have to be fueled by the same components, electricity, wood pellets, or wood chips, or other renewable fuel. Since we met last time, we've spoken to people who are familiar with the process that Burlington went through and some other experts in the field. And we made some amendments to the ordinance that you had addressed last time. And really, 10,000-foot level, the changes that were made were to incorporate references to the residential building energy standards that we had not incorporated in the first draft, and also incorporate reference to multifamily building energy standards that, as we understand, is going to come online within the next year. So it's a new code book that is going to come online. So we felt it was important to address that as well. In addition, when referring to hot water or water heating systems, we had originally referred to it as domestic water heating systems. That has been changed in the draft before you to service water heating systems. That was done because both in the commercial building energy code and the residential building energy code service water heating systems are defined in domestic is not. Lastly, third, we aligned all our definitions to the terms as they are used in the codes and the standards. And lastly, we added some language to ensure that compliance with this ordinance continues after the initial build. So if you were to change fuel sources or if you were to change heating systems, you would still have to comply with the ordinance. That was a hole in the ordinance that we had patched up. So you'll have a red line version in your packet and for you to consider as you hear the comments today. Thank you. Did you want to say something as well? No. Okay, very good. So I will just like to have a show of hands for the people in the audience here physically with us. How many of you would like to speak? Okay, so that's a fairly lengthy line. If we could just have maybe three just kind of to know who's up next, we're going to alternate between the people online and the people here present. But if there could be some, you know, some anticipation of who will be speaking next that would just kind of facilitate the process and help us get out a little bit earlier. I will do so. Thank you. And when you do come up to the podium, please do give us your name as well as where you live or if you're speaking as someone who does business here in South Burlington, it will be helpful for us to understand your perspective as well as your experience. And I ask that also of the people who are online. All right, so we will start with here in person. Please come up and make sure the green light is on. There we go. Hi, I'm MJ Rial with the South Burlington Energy Committee. This letter was sent to the city council last Thursday. Dear Helen, on behalf of the energy committee, I would like to convey the committee's support for renewable energy heat standard ordinance to the city council. I respectfully request that the committee's statement be entered into the record at the public hearing for ordinance on behalf of the committee. The committee approved the statement with 10 in favor at our meeting Wednesday, September 14th. The energy committee is available to assist and advise upon request by the council. We believe this energy, this renewable energy heating standard ordinance will greatly benefit the community and will help us to meet our climate action plan goals. Thank you for all you and the council members do on behalf of South Burlington. Thank you very much. And someone online. I do want to note that if if folks provided written comment that I would have received if you sent it directly to the council, I may not have received it. But if partners presented written comment, it is linked off of the council agenda as well. So just to note that as you are making your remarks. All right. So Drew S is online and just turn on your camera if you would. Very good. And please give us your full name as well as your perspective while you're here as a resident as someone who does business in South Burlington. Sure. Hey, can can you hear me okay? We can. Thank you. Great. Okay. Yeah. I live in South Burlington off of Joy Drive. And I teach in Winooski directly under the flight path off of Canal Street. And your full name, sir? I just like to. And your full name? Oh, Drew Schatzer. Thank you. I just want to insist that before we accept this climate action plan that we account for all emissions that that come out of our airport and include those in the climate action plan, all greenhouse gas emissions. We can't afford to wait for another agency to do this for us. There really isn't much incentive for them for other agencies to do it. The people of South Burlington are being irreparably harmed almost daily by these criminal assaults on our community members and littles being done by our leaders to protect their constituents. I've spoken to many of our city councilors directly about this illegal basing and have been met with shoulder shrugging and we're outright dismissiveness while thousands continue to suffer. I've even reached out to our chair just a week ago, sharing a clear path toward legal action to begin holding these abusers accountable and have gotten no reply. So this abuse won't stop until the abusers are held accountable for their crimes. And we're asking that you all use the tools at your disposal to hold the airguard accountable for these criminal training operations. And I think collecting data is a powerful way to do that. And we shouldn't bury our head in the sand anymore and show their shoulders at it. It's up to all of us to be bold. And I mean, we can be polite about it. We can thank them for their service. But that doesn't mean that they can continue to do irreparable harm to our community members. As a teacher here, my classes get disrupted almost daily, sometimes cumulatively like over a half an hour each day. And I'm counting on you folks to be this change that we need to make this stop. So please include the F-35 in the airport's greenhouse gas emissions in our climate action plan. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Schatz. Can we make a comment about that right away? I think we're here just to listen, right? So I just want to clarify what this hearing is about. Point of order. This commentary is on the ordinance before us. So I appreciate the previous comments. But I think Councilor Barrett, you're just going to raise that. We want to keep the comments here on the heating ordinance and not the F-35 in the climate action plan, if I'm not mistaken. I think it's responding to the fact that the airport emissions are not included in our climate action plan, but that is not part of the ordinance. So that is a valid point. So yeah, Mr. Schatz, the next agenda item, the climate action plan is perhaps the one that you wanted to address. So that will be after this public hearing. Okay. Next person here. Good evening, Councillors. My name is Scott Gardner. It's been my pleasure to live in South Burlington for over 40 years. I think that this ordinance will make South Burlington a better place to live. And I'm here to speak in favor of it. By way of background, not only have I lived here, but I've worked here for 40 years. For the past 20, I've worked for Building Energy, which is an energy services company. We provide solar, heat pumps, energy audits, thermal reconstruction, and heat recovery ventilation statewide. We are a recognized leader in these fields. I have struggled since 2006 to find answers to efficient and clean hot water in buildings. The buildings we work on and that we remodel or we build are either net zero or net zero capable. The technology is there for us to adopt the ordinance. It's going to be difficult. There'll be a transition period. But frankly, it seems to me this is all about money. I think we all recognize the carbon problem. We recognize that if we don't take action, we're going to be in trouble. We're struggling. I've read many of the comments that have come on the ordinance, and I see you are populated with a wide variety of people who are going to speak primarily in favor, but you have Champlain Housing Trust, which is against the ordinance primarily because of hot water. You have Redstone against the ordinance primarily because of the hot water. We can do this with solar thermal, with pellet technology, and heat pump hot water heaters. Building designs need to be modified. It's not the end of the development. I know from my own personal experience what it takes to make these changes. You can't say, oh, it's more expensive to produce hot water with electricity in a commercial building than it is with natural gas. I mean, you can say that, but it just simply is not true. We are not counting the cost today, the carbon cost of natural gas. So I would encourage you to listen to everybody, but to vote in favor of this ordinance, and thank you for your time. Okay. The next person online is Kai McElforley, and again, this is with regard to the ordinance for renewable energy heating. Okay. Can you hear me and see me? Yes, we can hear you. We cannot see you. Okay. You should be able to see me now. Okay. Just briefly, I've been trying to advocate in my home, my home city of Burlington on issues related to this particular proposed solution, and been meeting with lots of resistance. And I just thought I'd throw out what my feeling is in regards to what you folks are struggling with. And that is just to say that I've encountered an increasing number of people, both owners and or users of heat pump technology who have discovered who are very who realize that they've made a mistake with installing this technology in their home, whether they went into it with the wrong impressions, or they were sold a bad bill of goods. The end effect is that the experience is that folks are having actually increasing their effective greenhouse gas emissions, they're paying more money after installation and or reliance on these systems than they were before doing so. And obviously that's an issue. I'm aware that a lot of the rosy projections that were made over the last decade are slowly being locked back. So I would just urge caution. I would also point out that I think any plan that doesn't focus its attention on massively increasing the efficiency of the envelopes of buildings, you know, we're dealing with a really antiquated housing stock, maybe not use folks so much because you're a newer city quote unquote, but and certainly you probably have some of this problem. And that is that, you know, it's all well and good to develop new technologies and and try and sell them to the public. But if you're dealing with a with a horrible housing stock, how effective is it really to install this, you know, bright fancy new equipment when you know you have buildings that aren't insulated or horrifically poorly insulated. And so not focusing primarily on, you know, bringing every building commercial and residential up to like a passive house standard before you thought before folks are sold this bill of goods, i.e. install this, you know, fancy heat pump or this fancy whatever is is I think that the responsible way to move forward, particularly when we're talking about public monies being part of part of the solution, but also for private monies. And I just don't see a lot of emphasis, both, you know, at the municipal level or at the state level, to focus on the primary problem, which is, you know, the front end, if we can reduce demand, increase efficiency, we can, you know, and I'll just use it. It's not 100% true. But, you know, if you can heat a building with a light bulb, with a single light bulb versus, you know, a massive heating system, we should be going more towards the former rather than pretending like the latter doesn't isn't the reality. So that's all I'll reserve the rest of my comments for later parts of the agenda. Thank you. Thank you. And I just wanted to inform everybody that this is a new construction. So I think that's important to know as well. Next person in line. Good evening. My name is Laurie Smith. I live in South Burlington, have been a Vermont resident since the mid 70s, and not very good. Temporaneously, so I've got something written to read to you. I applaud you counselors in the city of South Burlington for considering this ordinance and encourage its immediate implementation as reinforced by the just released energy action network annual progress report continued business as usual is not an option if we're going to prevent catastrophic climate change. We do not have time to debate this point. The debate has been going on for decades and we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change both globally and locally. These changes will spiral out of control if we do not make systemic changes immediately. And Vermont is already behind on its climate commitments. As a former builder and developer, I know that there is hard work that needs to be done to ensure that the transition away from fossil fuels happens quickly and equitably. But we have the capacity to raise rise to this challenge if we work cooperatively towards that goal. The systems and technologies already exist and are improving rapidly. In most cases, these systems when integrated properly are less expensive to install and maintain them conventional fossil fuel systems. Getting positive results requires a shift in focus and a whole systems approach to our built environment. The time for action is now. I've lived in an all electric house for the past seven years near net zero. Proper installation and air sealing are very important for comfort in a home heated and cooled by cold climate heat pumps. But this is easily achieved in newly constructed buildings. The added cost of properly constructed thermal envelope can be minimal and are quickly offset by the reduced mechanical systems needed and pay dividends over time by the reduced heating and cooling demands. Over the past seven years, we have had no utility bills other than for electricity used by our EV. Even that's been minimal. I've lived most of my life convinced that gas is the best way to fuel for cooking. Owning and cooking on an induction stove has totally changed my perspective and I can't imagine ever going back to cooking with gas. In fact, every investment that we have made in our home efficiency has dramatically improved the quality of life in our home. Where there are economic inequalities, I encourage providing incentives to help offset any hardship incurred by this ordinance. But the transition to renewable energy in our buildings is a critical step in our efforts to reach net zero carbon emissions in Vermont. And lastly, if and when the state of Vermont passes a comprehensive statewide energy policy for buildings, South Burlington can adopt that policy. Unfortunately, unfortunately, the state is not leading this effort. And South Burlington, along with Burlington, has the opportunity to lead by example. Please vote yes for this ordinance. And thank you for your willingness to take action on this critical issue. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And next person online is Nick build. Oh, I'm sorry, John Hemmelgarn. Excuse me, John. John Hemmelgarn. Just on muting. Very good. Good evening. Thank you. You can hear me, I assume. Yes, we can hear you. Right. My name is John Hemmelgarn. I'm a partner at the architectural firm of Black River Design. We're a large commercial and institutional design firm that does work throughout the state. Oops. Couple of technical difficulties here. I'm sorry. They're still coming through loud and clear. Yeah, I know, but I couldn't hear myself. So we have Black River Design Architect support the proposed ordinance to require all new buildings in South Burlington to be fossil fuel free with current technology, including heat pumps and biomass boilers operating buildings without burning fossil fuels is achievable and cost effective for new buildings, which are required already to meet the Vermont commercial or residential building energy standards. Going fossil free, fossil fuel free is an internal Black River Design goal already. The American Institute of Architects created the 2030 commitment program to encourage architects nationwide described for what South Burlington is proposing to do now. That is dramatically reduced fossil fuel usage in buildings in the coming years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The knowledge base among architects, engineers and contractors, along with the technology and equipment available to them are at a level where providing heat and hot water with electricity and sometimes biomass is an easy lift, if not normal practice. The technology available to achieve these goals is far advanced from five years ago and the rate of advancement continues to accelerate. We expect the ability to meet these goals will become simpler and simpler every year going forward and applaud your efforts to encourage this process. The city of South Burlington is in a position to make a difference, both in your own city by creating infrastructure that is compatible with current long-term climate goals and in the region by setting another example, establishing this as a workable strategy for addressing climate change. We encourage you to support this proposal. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next up here in person. Good evening. My name is Michael Bayema. I'm here both personally and professionally. I'm a resident of South Burlington and I work at a company called ReArch which is a construction management and real estate development firm in South Burlington. First, I'm only here to talk about larger commercial projects which is what we have experience and success in developing and building on behalf of our clients. I was reached out to by several members of the community and a member of the energy committee to provide our expertise and opinions on the on the regulation and first I'd like to say that you know we are very proud of being involved in several net zero projects that are coming out of the ground here locally and across the state but I would be remiss to to if I if I didn't mention that these projects are quite expensive and that there are trade-offs always in implementing newer technology. I've heard from several members of the you know community that you know the costs of these projects are cheaper or that they you know are comparable to fossil fuels and while the equipment may be of similar cost oftentimes there's unanticipated costs such as bringing electric service to these properties that otherwise would not have such significant amperage that are now required to have large electric services in order to service their boilers and heat pumps. The additional costs that people seem to be starting to realize now is that many of the models that were created to model this technology are now being retracted because the cost of electricity has increased so much in the past five years and that is likely to continue because we are putting greater demand on our grid we're electrifying all our vehicles we're electrifying all our systems and so that means the demand for electricity is increasing and the cost of electricity is increasing. So if we are to appropriately accommodate this need we need to work on increasing capacity on the grid side and making sure that costs for consumers when it comes to electricity don't significantly balloon and these are all things that are totally achievable and I don't mean to say that we're not in favor of the regulation I think that it's well intentioned and its goals are well meeting. I think that from a macro perspective there will be some projects that don't get off the ground if this regulation is implemented and that will be because both operationally and in terms of upfront cost the regulation is going to cost more and so there will be projects that don't get off the ground as a result and so I think our opinion is that maybe the city should restructure how they're looking at this and instead of mandating that all new construction have all electric heating systems maybe they incentivize projects to use all electric heating systems as many of the members of the community have stated this is entirely possible and can be achieved quite easily and in projects where there isn't a budgetary constraint additional heating systems like geothermal can be added to supplement the inefficient relative inefficiency of all electric systems as compared to fossil fuels during the very very cold months of the winter which is where all electric heating systems suffer on larger commercial projects so um that's all I have to say thank you very much thank you very much all right now Nick Filtgen and apologies for earlier Nick Filtgen very good and we can't hear you we can see you but we cannot hear you okay can you hear me okay yes we can great great good evening yes my name is Nick Filtgen I'm a resident of Burlington and I do business in South Burlington as a consulting engineer I'm personally and professionally committed to environmental sustainability and I've been fortunate enough to help the city of South Burlington with their buildings reducing fossil fuel use by doing energy audits and mechanical system assessments of their buildings two brief comments that I want to make tonight the first is about the scope of the impact of the proposed ordinance so some people have mentioned and made clear that this applies to new buildings and I just want to make sure it's very clear that that is a key point of this and that the state of Vermont has one of the most stringent energy codes in the entire country and with the newest update virtually all cost-effective energy efficient improvements will now be required by code and we additionally have one of the top three efficiency programs in the nation with efficiency Vermont and with green mountain power incentivizing heat pumps so because of all that as people have some commenters have already mentioned that the need the load for heating these buildings is significantly reduced to the tune of 90 to 95 percent so I'm just trying to point out the fact of the scope and scale of the possible impact of this ordinance so it's reduced because it's a new building it's reduced because people are already doing it and it's reduced because it's already being incentivized by efficiency Vermont and green non-power so certainly there are costs to the city to implement this and I just recommend that they weigh you weigh the cost of implementing it versus the potential impact certainly on existing buildings it's a completely different situation and the impact it that's possible is very significant but it's it's different with new buildings and the second point I want to make is more of a as as I'm an engineer and I design these mechanical systems and again it's mostly on commercial buildings I wanted to bring up the point about the technical and economic feasibility of the different options so a lot of people's experience and views are based on the residential buildings that they live in and those are quite a bit more simpler than commercial buildings so implementing the ordinance that Burlington has done is a good step in the right direction however there are still instances of technical feasibility and economic feasibility that are still challenges where the technology we have just still hasn't caught up with what we'd like to do you know a few basic examples are just kitchen ventilation for restaurants heating up the makeup air we don't have a feasible solution for that right now dryers commercial dryers for hotels for multifamily buildings we don't have a good solution so it's really important to um it when you're coming up with this ordinance to consult with people who are technical experts on this and to make sure all your bases are covered before you do thanks for your consideration thank you very much next up here in person hi i'm sam swanson i've lived in south burlington since 1998 um i've served in a lot of different capacities on different programs that address climate change and have been doing so for decades i appear today to just share with you a couple of practical experience from my work on interfaith power and light i serve on the executive committee of interfaith power and light we're trying to move congregations across the state to address climate change to pursue net zero goals and to do that not only to get the buildings of congregations reduced but also the individual congregants and i am a member of ascension lutheran church in south burlington which in 2005 set a goal of pursuing climate objectives and now is aiming for net zero but we have a building that was built in 1970 and we have we've had building energy come in give us an audit we've had vermont energy give us an audit we've had vermont gas give us an audit we've invested in the highest efficiency heating system that we could buy we've installed insulation at every opportunity but as several speakers have observed about the difficulty of dealing with old buildings it's very difficult and very expensive to get anywhere near net zero and going out and buying um and it's just the point that i think this is so crucial for i'll speak in the my experience with the church speaks to a commercial building the problem is that if we don't get the existing if we don't get the stock of buildings built right it's very hard to go back and retrofit the cost is reduced to the initial purchaser or the initial builder but the people who own that building we're spending a lot of money that if the building had been properly uh constructed at the beginning and the heating system was amenable to installing heat pumps or any of the other technologies that are now available to heat buildings we would be able to do that retrofitting with a building that's got a boiler system with a distributed hot water system it's very hard practically impossible to make the kinds of improvements that you want and as a homeowner i've pursued a similar path starting when i bought my current home in 2007 i put the best possible heating system in that heating system is i was reaching the end of its life and i'm looking for a new one i've called in people to look at the installation of heat pumps and on a retrofit basis because the way the architecture of the building is is laid out it is sometimes very difficult to heat a building on a retrofit basis with uh the the current renewable technologies my point is that the stock that we're building in vermont and south burlington is one of the fastest growing communities in vermont where there is a significant amount of construction going on we've got to gradually improve the the stock of buildings so that when people who move into these buildings face their electric bills and their own whether they have a personal commitment or not to achieve net zero you can't get there it is very difficult to get there on a retrofit basis so i think it is just crucially important that you that you establish these codes for new heating systems that will gradually improve the stock of buildings in south burlington thank you thank you and online we have ray ganda if you would turn on your camera there you are yes uh i followed this heat pump issue for about two years now and so i'm i simple oh my name is ray ganda i'm from south roames and i'm a resident um i just simply want to say i support the effort you're going through right now i support the proposal that's it thank you all right thank you it's short and sweet but we see an electric water heater behind you maybe it's gas i don't know hi john boson golf course road um i think i was here on the 15th of august when you all uh heard the presentation first and i spoke at that meeting in support of the ordinance um to have heat pumps and new construction here in south burlington but like some of you um i'm on a pretty steep learning curve here and i left that meeting with some questions uh about how heat pumps can be used in multi story multi-family buildings and um not so much in single homes single family homes but in apartment buildings and large buildings um that houses many families and individuals both renters and owners and i believe some of you um maybe was counselor chitin and i think also had that question and i left the meeting um without very good answers and i think it's a good question and we need to be sure that it works in multi-story multi-family buildings for me heat bumps in those larger residential buildings are important because i'm a very very strong supporter of affordable housing in the appropriate locations i'm a longtime donor of shambling housing trust and been involved in some major projects with them i believe providing a home for people is essential it makes them um better citizens and more productive uh residents in our community and building affordable housing for people uh makes them feel at home in our community and i don't want that new technology uh to be absent from those who need affordable housing so i took it upon myself to learn more about heat pumps in multi-family buildings multi-story buildings and i began to talk with architects who've designed larger residential buildings with heat pumps and then i visited those buildings where the heat pumps are the source for heating and cooling from the architects at truox and cullens and was Lucy and Duncan i learned that the co-efficiency performance with heat pumps is much more efficient than gas truox and cullens will design nothing but zero carbon neutral buildings beginning in 2030 i think we heard that from the gentleman from the other architectural firm in fact they've actually begun doing that now the architects that i learned from the heat pumps aren't what they're going to be in the future they'll probably get better but they work well now they work in multi-family and multi-story buildings sometimes heat pumps are too large for smaller units and sometimes you need two heat pumps to take care of a larger larger unit but buildings all of them have the condensers on the roof and there's one condenser for each unit in the building and they all have wall units up high inside to bring in the hot air in the winter and the cool air in the summer i went ahead and i visited cambion rise on north ave in burlington where one building has 108 units and it's four stories tall all the heat pumps there work well they're all on the rooftop for each individual apartment renters and owners have individual controls for the heat and air conditioning and that comes through the heads that are up high in each room natural gas is now used for the hot water heaters and it's like a hotel residents don't have their own hot water heater they don't want them of course on different floors above the ground but we know that the technology is there to do hot water well differently especially if it's just electricity each living unit i found out has an exhaust system as well to bring in fresh air i wish i kind of had that in my house in the wintertime when we get the windows closed month after month but these buildings are designed to bring in fresh air as well the facility manager says that the heat pumps are highly cost effective for the residents renters play one monthly fee just one fee for heat air conditioning hot water and internet service other very large buildings that i came across out there were one with 70 units it was three stories tall they're all using heat pumps and the other architectural firm was an oski and duncan have that building along with one with 30 units that's two stories tall they found that there were people who were worried about the lines that might leak i've heard this from several people but utility lines including plumbing lines are everywhere in a big building in the walls between each unit especially in a multi-story building the lines for heat pumps are copper they're just like freshwater lines they last forever and they've had no issues with leaks no incidents both affordable housing units that i visited at cambrian rise also have solar on the roof heat pumps are clustered in the middle of the rooftops and the solar is placed along the edges it was interesting to go up and observe that so both heat pumps and solar are accommodated solar covers the common areas in the building the electricity in the hallways and also for the use of elevators and i found that the elevators use 15 percent of the electricity in these buildings it's quite a lot to have for an elevator but it appears that there will always be always be just opinions about what works and what doesn't work and there's no one ideal system for every building but we know that heat pumps heat pumps work in multi-story and multi-family buildings and can be customized for each situation i trust that answer will arrest some of your fears it certainly was an important thing for me to discover and it's very important and concerned to have that question especially for affordable housing and we'd like to think that making this new form of heating and cooling available to those living in those kinds of housing situations in multi-family multi-family story buildings is available to them as well heat pumps clearly is our our pathway forward we cannot continue cannot continue to use natural gas for everything we tend to think of natural gas as clean and inexpensive and in abundance it's not inexpensive anymore and it's abundant but it's not clean natural gas is commonly a byproduct i think you know this of oil extraction especially during hydraulic fracturing and oftentimes is so overly abundant maybe you've seen this that it's vented into the atmosphere and burned off at the extraction site both of which vastly increases the carbon pollution associated with the natural gas process chain we can't do that anymore one of the key greenhouse gases released from venting and leakage is methane and research shows us that methane when released into the atmosphere is more than 80 times powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period it's methane emissions paired with a variety of other pollutants that natural gas releases that packs a serious punch a very serious punch into our healthy to our health safety in our environment we've only got a few years left to get this right and turn the corner to ensure decades of healthy living not just in south burlington but on our planet the ordinance before you helps us get there you need to vote for a please heat bumps must be a part of this equation we know they work and we know they are far better for our environment thank you thank you next online is rosa and greco if you could just turn on your camera rosa and there we are yes i yeah i didn't expect it a good evening counselors my name is rosa and greco i live on four sisters road in south burlington my conference will be very brief and not near as technical as what you've heard i support all of those who spoke out in favor of this ordinance i'm obviously well i'm very much in favor of this ordinance really recommend that the council enacted as soon as they can i don't have the technical data to give you i just have personal experience with heat pumps and with both with a heat pump hot water heater and heat heating in your conditioning we we moved here in 2007 did a lot of efforts to make our house more energy efficient and primarily to save the environment in 2013 we turned in our rented gas hot water heater and bought an electric heat pump it has been absolutely fabulous well going on next year will be 10 years for never never been without hot water and then in 2015 we bought a heat pump heating and air conditioning unit we have a major unit and i don't know the technical terms the i think is tensor outside the house with two lines one on our main floor and one upstairs on our second floor and we have a very very large house way too large sorry we got this large house but it does a superb job it it's incredibly efficient when you're talking about the kinds of heat and humidity we've experienced over the past few summers it's almost instantaneously cool i cannot tell you how much we had expended in these because back in 2012 we bought solar panels and we haven't had an electricity bill since march of 2013 so i can't tell you how much they cost us because they you know they to buy them but we don't have any bills because we generate our own electricity more and more than we use so that's our personal experience with both of these devices they've come a long way i'll bet you they're the technology is is far advanced than it was when we bought it when we lived in maryland there were heat pumps but boy these are way better than the ones that we had when we lived it in another washington dc stop herbs in maryland i urge you to pass this ordinance because i urge you to think long term to think large the alternative to not doing this is business as usual we cannot afford to do business as usual you all know this i know that the climate crisis is so severe we have to do things differently heat pumps are not brand new we're not inventing the wheel many many places use them you've heard examples many examples tonight but lots millions of people are using them across united states in the world so it's not as if oh my gosh this is a brand new thing it's not it's proven and and it will only get better but the alternative is to keep using fossil fuels natural gas is a fossil fuel as you heard it's a major polluter it damages the human beings and the the planet and to continue using that is just going to make make the lives of our children and grandchildren unbearable so thank you very much for listening to me i really urge you to pass this and all bold environmental actions such as renewable energies and the what you're talking about here thank you very much thank you miss him and next here in person hi my name is noah hyman resident of south berlington for about 10 years now and i'm here to talk about a couple things today i happen to have the opportunity to go to the climate solutions caucus i happen to win the primary for chitin eight in south berlington to join the legislature um uh i was there um at the invitation of chris piererson who um was a co-founder and of course a lot of what was happening at the climate solutions caucus is germane to this meeting tonight um i um i did want to uh talk about um a couple of the things that um um we talked about there so there's been a lot of anecdotal conversation tonight and so uh what was just released was the annual progress report from the energy action network the energy action network is um it's berlington electric efficiency from our green mountain power from our electric power from our gas from our public power supply washington electric co-op it's uvm it's dark myth um it's like seven or eight of uvm's colleges and of course businesses and just about heat pumps if i can approach you if you can have this copy here's the data real data it goes back to 1990 most of that data and besides the cost being better with a heat pump versus oil or gas those other fossil fuels will produce roughly 60 tons of co2 60 tons versus less than one with a heat pump and we haven't even talked about that part of the climate crisis um also um what was what did come up a lot is another one here this has to do with the uh the president's new um and these are the extra incentives incentives that will be coming to citizens now this is roughly the real dollars um the um the fact that we already have the fact that we already have incentives from our utilities and um and the state this is extra money that will reduce the installation of appliances heat pumps electric cars and ways for the state of vermont to meet its its climate goals um i believe in this change locally because it will lead the rest of the state i think it's an important step such a an important town in the state i mean we are number two now behind burlington as of january first ahead of rutherland um and i think it's a real big signal that to the two largest um municipalities in the state are adopting these these measures um this information i also sent out to i just passed up to you guys is also available on the white house's website and the u.s. house of representatives um also supporting this specific um endeavor in south burlington um the vermont league of cities and towns uh recent climate action municipal paper uh it's number two um i'm sure it's available for you as well is asking us to reduce our fossil fuel consumption by 40 percent by 2030 as regional um global warming solutions as the regional global warming solutions act of 2020 um is encouraging us and encouraging the use of energy efficient um appliances specifically in homes and cars which is about 75 percent of our statewide emissions there's extra money that is one time um we don't get this kind of influx of money uh very often in vermont and to assist the state this would put you if you were to buy a heat pump for your house for your new construction this would reduce the payback time on that um by roughly 20 to 25 depending on the size that you you did also to some more anecdotal stuff um i had a mid-century modern house that was hemorrhaging electricity and heat in a way that i couldn't even comprehend when i bought the house i was getting gas in electric bills in excess of a thousand dollars a month um so much so that green mountain power thought we were a business i had mr gardener and his company out to the house he did an energy audit and i think he said it was the second worst he's ever seen in his career and i scarcely have an electric bill now and i use heat pumps and my house is cozy and comfortable i'm raising my children in it they love it and i do too and i hope that you adapt these adapt these changes thanks thank you thank you and the next person online excuse me amy amy demetrovitz and i hope i pronounced your last name correctly close it's demetrovitz hi um i'm amy demetrovitz i'm with the shamblain housing trust uh and i want to say we uh support this ordinance as it relates to single family homes commercial buildings and small multifamily buildings especially single family homes i think the technology is very much tried and true including with domestic hot water and i think generally um per person single family homes absolutely use more energy than multifamily housing does we have issues with the technology as it relates to multifamily housing larger buildings we do own one of the buildings out at cambrian rise both there's two affordable housing buildings out at cambrian rise uh we have a 76 unit multifamily apartment building and cathedral square has a 70 unit uh senior housing both buildings are cooled with heat pumps but we both have um hydronic natural gas fired uh heating systems in those buildings um we ourselves shamblain housing trust we only have two buildings that have heat pumps it's the one out at cambrian rise and then we have one right there in city center garden apartments both of them are just used for cooling not for heating um because we have been nervous about taking that leap and using the systems for heating uh we have not heard good things frankly from other owners of multifamily buildings as to how they perform and we also know that the maintenance costs uh have been higher as well so um as we more and more are realizing because very much because of climate change that we will need to include cooling in our buildings i do anticipate that we are moving towards uh installing heat pumps in our buildings and will be heating and cooling with heat pumps but i but you need to understand that the technology um is very complicated and that the the technical and financial calculations as it relates to multifamily housing are much more complex um again with single family homes absolutely and and to include we support as well the inclusion of building inspectors who will be looking at single family homes the way that they already have been for for decades multifamily housing to make sure that they're complying with energy code um so we're we're a little mixed i can't say that we're necessarily completely in support of the ordinance we have concerns about how it relates to multifamily buildings and especially we have a concern would really hope that you would um remove the requirement for domestic hot water uh being fueled by electricity in multifamily housing buildings thanks thank you very much and next here in person i'm kala more i'm here to speak from the perspective of a resident and homeowner in south berlington who wants to get off natural gas uh i've been a resident of south berlington for more than 10 years uh we bought our initial home in um 2012 in the laurel hill orchard neighborhood it was a 1959 ranch house um we loved that house and we made several energy improvements to it while we lived there um yet it was never going to be highly efficient because of the way it was built in 1959 um even though i had um heard natural gas was clean i had no qualms about using natural gas at that time in my home i even upgraded my stove to get natural gas range because i liked cooking with gas um and we even swapped out our wood burning fireplace for a gas fireplace um in that first home uh a couple years ago as our family grew we decided we we needed a little bit of a larger living space and last summer we moved across town to a larger house um we built we bought a 2014 um 3600 square foot colonial house um although it's newer and is more energy efficient than our prior house um it does heat with natural gas and it has two natural gas fire places i was hoping because it was newer and more energy efficient that would be easier to scale down and get off in natural gas but having contacted several contractors um i've just i've realized that is actually very difficult even for a newer home built in 2014 to retrofit after the fact um so that's why i think this ordinance is important to adopt retrofitting um is very costly even newer homes that are built today um if a homeowner wants to get off natural gas in the future it's going to be very costly and very expensive and wasteful um because you're going to be swapping out newer systems um and so i think today with the design standards and the construction um and the uh technology that's available today to continue building um with uh natural gas systems is just irresponsible um i can tell you from my own perspective um based on the size of our home and the existing duct system we're told that um to add the the five ton compressor heat pump which will require plus an additional mini split it will cost us over 13 000 after rebates to retrofit and that is not going to provide us enough heating in the winter unfortunately and this is because of the way our home was built and designed in 2014 again if this ordinance was in place today houses would be built a little bit differently i'm confident maybe 3600 square foot homes would be a little less common and i think that's probably a good thing um so um unfortunately because of the way my home was built i may never be able to get off natural gas um which i find extremely unfortunate i'm hopeful that's not the case um but i think that there are countless examples of newer homes being built today that are more energy efficient all electric or using um high efficiency heat um uh pellets um and and other sources of renewable energy and i the solutions are certainly there today um our burlington neighbors are just one example i think if this ordinance is not adopted builders will certainly keep doing what they're doing because why change the routine if you don't have to and for every new home or building designed to heat with fossil fuels tomorrow the consequences of inaction today will only be compounded we are already facing an enormous challenge retrofitting buildings after the fact is exceedingly expensive at best and with the hundreds or thousands of new buildings in the pipeline i urge you not to make this mistake i'd like to think that the future holds some promise for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and for my children who are facing down a future that is all but certain to be filled with extreme weather events and the countless challenges that will inevitably come with that i'd like to think that we at least try to do our part and i urge you today to put to pass this ordinance thank you thank you and i believe that there are no other people online so we're going to be continuing here in person if there is still someone who'd like to speak online please put your name into the chat um my name is hailey shan i live in south burlington and i've been living here for four years and speaking as a private resident of this town we had two heat pumps installed one last year when the year before and one was in the basement that was the first one we installed and the basement was very cold before that and the other one was in the study and we found it very comfortable to have that situation because we could heat the room that we need and the distribution of the heat is much better that way when we have it installed in the end of the line of the heating source so we wish that we could install two more one in the upstairs bedrooms and one in the sunroom which is at the very end of the heating line the sunroom right now is pretty cold but we were told it's impossible to do that because we're living a duplex condo and the way that this layout is impossible unless we have very extensive duct work so i'm hoping that the new constructions will consider this and i'm pretty sure that with four one in the basement one upstairs and two in the main floor we will be very comfortable just living with the heat from the heat pumps and away from the gas totally and compared with the budget of electricity plus the gas of the past two years which is unfair to do a very short-term comparison but i i guarantee that it's going to be probably better if we can keep the same temperature we do find about five percent more of the total utility with the gas plus the heating from the electricity because we have increased the winter temperature by four degrees after we have installed the heat pumps because my husband likes to have warmer climate so it's it's difficult to do a fair comparison between the two but i'm sure that it will be very comparable just from the cost of keeping the house warm and comfortable with the two and i know that the gas prices is going to increase i don't know about the electricity will increase at the same rate but i think because everybody is going in the direction of putting more electricity and increasing solar and other source for the electricity generation so in the foreseeable future i think the nation is going in the direction that the gas price will increase faster than the electricity so i think that this is the right way to go thank you thank you hello hello for the record uh dylan jametista i'm with vgs from on gas and uh i'm here joined today with a colleague mike gifford mike is an expert who works with commercial customers at and vgs and he is an efficiency lead on that front so we certainly welcome an ongoing dialogue recognize this is just an opportunity to provide some feedback for the public um but certainly vgs you know we're right down the road on swift street we've had a presence here for many years and we're a large employer about 130 employees who work in the thermal energy space and that includes working with customers every day i'm sure many of you are customers here tonight but also working in our energy efficiency utility to try to provide services to folks help them improve the efficiency of their home it includes uh maintaining a safe system uh and working with folks on a policy front to ensure that as vermont makes its energy transformation we're part of that solution as well so just real quick um want to let you know that we have 55 000 customers across northwest vermont that comprises franklin county chitlin county and aniston county with regard to south berlington we provided some written comments where we gave an overview of our business profile and so forth but there's about 7500 premises here in south berlington that we serve and of those uh about i believe it was 83 percent as residential so a large residential footprint but 17 percent would be commercial or industrial customers uh just as a baseline uh vgs is fully committed to the state climate goals and we recognize that this is a very dynamic moment we have initiatives at the federal level of some have mentioned today certainly there's been a lively debate at the state policy level with regard to adoption of thermal sector policy because we know that thermal sector emissions account for 34 percent of vermont's total greenhouse gas emissions um and then at the local level there's an emerging conversation uh and last year we we had a long lengthy dialogue with uh the folks down the hill in berlington about their proposed renewable energy ordinance and the adoption that came after and now the implementation of that ordinance so we have a lot of experience here and we're certainly happy to share feedback uh just as a sort of a baseline what we do is we focus on three key ways to try to help our customers adjust to this energy transformation that's underway the first is really around efficiency as many have spoken to tonight it's critical that we weatherize homes and ensure that those shells are such that we are keeping the energy and reducing usage so that's in our future state we see that is the first piece of the puzzle the second is to really increase access to the latest in-home technology and believe it or not uh at vgs we actually are offering technology that we've talked about tonight electric heat pump water heaters for certain residential applications uh we're exploring a number of new technologies that we will see contribute to reducing emissions as well some of those might include say geothermal in which we are very excited about but also uh things like in-home technologies such as perhaps hybrid heating solutions which might involve heat pumps in the future so we are actively working on that and you'll be hearing from us soon if you are a customer on that front and then finally the other is just how do we displace for that remaining energy use in our system the fossil fuels that are there and that will require innovation and will require different types of alternative fuels put into our infrastructure but I just want to call out here that we have a lot of pipe buried underground in Vermont most of it is high density polypropylene pipe it's very safe we have one of the tightest systems in the country and those pipes can carry different types of fuel because the pipe itself does not care what flows through it to a customer's home so in the future we see different types of fuel coming online there's a lot of talk about renewable natural gas hydrogen and other technologies and in fact we're working right down the road at Global Foundries on a project to displace fossil gas in their production process by creating green hydrogen so these are the types of technologies that are underway I just want to say that recognizing this is a rapidly changing policy environment we stand ready to assist however we can and we generally support policy that is first aligned with our state policies and that would include the Global Warming Solutions Act we're on board we need to reduce emissions we're going to do it we also support policy that sets a clear performance standard and what that means is a percentage of renewable that we can aim for and try to adjust our practices to or in the case of a statewide clean heat standard for the thermal sector it would be setting a performance standard for all energy providers statewide in the space that's something that we can support we also will support policy that is technology or fuel neutral and as written the current proposal speaks to a renewability that is defined as multiple technologies and it sets that standard that we would have to meet so in general we're supportive of that concept but I will say that the last piece that's critically important and many folks have spoken to it tonight it's ensuring that Vermonters who are most energy burden for whom the cost is the greatest can partake in the change that is underway both statewide and in communities so as you way propose thermal energy changes at the local level we would encourage you to think about what the cost impact will be for individuals be it those who might be income qualified for housing but also for businesses manufacturers and others it's critically important to think about the cost folks ability to afford it in this environment and how we can work together to make this transformation work for everyone so with that I will conclude my remarks I don't want to take a lot of your time you have a lot of written remarks that we've already provided in your packet but certainly as the conversation unfolds I just want to commend all of the local stakeholders who have so far reached out to us or participated in this conversation we have felt that we've been accessed in terms of folks reaching out to get technical information to ask us about our services and we remain eager to be part of that conversation so thank you for having us tonight and just commend the community for coming out and showing up for this discussion thanks thank you and next please nobody yet that's Ziegmund 338 Golf Course Road I first want to say thank you to the council I'm very grateful to live in this community where this issue has been taken so seriously and your approach has been so thoughtful and I am so grateful that you're giving it the urgent attention that it deserves I strongly urge the council to vote in favor of this ordinance in fact the most robust ordinance possible I'd also like to express my strong support for the hiring of additional staff I know this is a little off the you know off the main topic which was suggested by Jesse Baker including administrative support building inspection capacity for single and multifamily homes which I think is long overdue and support for our local developers and property owners in adapting to the new ordinance I think that's an important request I'd also like to urge the council to consider the the fact that you know some of the testimony that we're hearing tonight is clearly very favorable in terms of the feasibility of multifamily construction with under this ordinance and we've heard some testimony that's against it and I would just urge the council to consider the fact that those who those who tend to speak against this sort of ordinance are those who don't have any experience doing this so you know we would not ask uh the the makers of horse and buggies to advise us on how to construct you know how to build electric vehicles for example so I you know I would just like to throw that out there as a little analogy you know we might want to give a little more credence to those who have actually got experience in in building this sort of stuff but anyway um specifically though I'm here I wanted to ask the council um we we heard some testimony in the previous meeting on this subject uh asking the council to provide a special exemption from the ordinance uh for multifamily housing if the exemption were added to the ordinance uh I have a question and a comment would it apply only to buildings that were 100 percent or majority affordable units or would it apply to all multifamily buildings I think this is an important distinction and maybe I'm just not um expert in this subject but it seems to me that um developers generally push as hard as they can to maximize the number of market rate units in those multifamily buildings so we set this uh you know this ordinance such that it would allow for an exemption in multifamily buildings we would be giving exemption to buildings that are primarily market rate units with a few affordable units thrown in only because the city council has basically forced the developers into including those affordable units um so that's my first point um my other concern is uh that allowing an exemption um that would that would amount to lower building building standards for affordable housing or multi-unit housing I think threatens to perpetuate inequities in the long run the reason I think that um is that today's construction is not just today's housing these are these are buildings that are going to be around for 60 to 100 years I've seen estimates that that's you know again I'm not an expert here on this but um you know any any you know reasonable reasonably trustworthy uh source says that you know these are buildings that are going to be around for many many decades so um I think the arguments we've heard about affordability need to be seen in that context the primary reason is that the future owners of these buildings that potentially could still be using fossil fuels if they're you know still putting in gas furnaces um are going to be subject to the ongoing historic volatility of fossil fuels for heating and cooling and cooking um sorry I just have to ground myself again um for example remote gas increased the cost of natural gas 27 percent between July and August of this year that's an enormous burden uh for for low-income people the bird's eye view of this issue clearly indicates that the upward that there will be upward pressure on fossil fuels into the future why because as the climate crisis intensifies global pressure is going to increase the prices of fossil fuels due to a variety of forces including international carbon pricing mechanisms federal and state policies growing recognition of potentially massive financial risks associated with fossil fuel investments etc as well as local actions like these therefore by allowing special exemptions from the ordinance for multifamily buildings or you know other considerations we'd essentially be saddling future generations of owners and I mean you know 10 20 30 years down the line with having to do retrofits um because the costs of fossil fuel or they're they're going to be stuck with fossil fuels and the costs are certain to remain wildly unpredictable and escalate relative to renewables which have done nothing but come down in price in recent decades uh the developers and builders I want to mention will bear none of these future costs zero once these buildings are built they walk away and they pay none of the costs for the retrofits the other point I'd like to raise is that retrofits are expensive obviously we've heard testimony on this already um by allowing exemptions presumably to save on construction costs today and in the near term which is a point that's you know been debated by some of the other testimony tonight we would commit future owners to expensive retrofits to use my own home and as an example and we heard we heard a little bit about this from um uh from Kayla we are trying to get our house off gas as well um but the cost is exorbitant well over ten thousand dollars um and we also live in a fairly leaky house we've already had it weatherized to the tune of you know uh I can't remember but it was it was not inexpensive um and then I want to add one more point I know my my comments are going on and on but I want to add one more comment it's minor but I think it's worth mentioning um I'm a physician as some of you know over at the hospital and I'm a uh uh a lung specialist and I I'm also involved in various sustainability projects one of which is a weatherization health initiative which is funded by the Department of Public Services um it's still in a very early phase and it's focused on the health benefits of upgrading houses for a cohort of about 50 non-smoking households who have children who suffer from poorly controlled asthma which is known to be exacerbated by certain housing conditions one of the upgrades to be made for the participating families is a conversion to electric cooktops there's a small but growing body of evidence that gas stoves during cooking and also uh it's thought to be to a greater extent from fugitive emissions from the the gas valves or pipes um which results in indoor air pollution in the form of a variety of toxins including volatile organic compounds and a recent very strong study out of stanford showed uh that also there are some dangerous carcinogens like toluene and benzene um that are part of that mixture um which you probably already know have been shown to cause uh cancer and also um exacerbate lung disease existing lung diseases interestingly these effects are believed to be more severe in smaller kitchens and somewhat paradoxically in units that are more heavily weatherized and less leaky like the ones that are currently being built um so I don't want to overstate the existing evidence on this and probably no one in this room really believes that our gas stoves are making us sick um but this is an emerging field of study and the reason I'm bringing this up is that I think anytime that we allow for a differential standard between things that are built for people who have money and people a lot of money and people who don't have as much money then we risk perpetuating or even creating inequities in the future um so again I think that we need to look very far into the future not just next year or five years or 10 years but we need to look at the impact of these buildings 20 30 40 50 60 100 years from now um so in conclusion um again thank you for for all the effort and time and passion you put into this and um I urge you to vote in favor of the ordinance thank you thank you and we do have someone online thank you again Keith Epstein hello I'm Keith Epstein I live in South Burlington in a home that I upgraded to net zero energy a few years ago and I got off natural gas I'm also a member of the South Burlington energy committee and I appreciate you taking this public comment heard a lot of really good things tonight and I encourage you to vote yes and if you're thinking of voting no then I ask you to think about how else will South Burlington meet our climate commitments that we've made and we have a draft climate action plan um and so yeah if you're thinking of voting no then you know what what else are we going to propose uh to meet our our goals and our commitments and I see this as a large step forward towards meeting those goals and encourage you to support it thank you thank you very much next to your up in person thank you very much my name is Chris Snyder and I'm with Snyder homes we're a home builder and also a multi-family builder of homes within South Burlington so thank you for your time um and I do have a lot of experience associated with construction construction techniques and also heating and cooling and hot water within uh different types of homes with uh both within South Burlington and other areas in Burlington uh in Williston uh I think there is a um piece that we are all need to focus on and that is efficiency of buildings and efficiency of new buildings and that is really the ultimate goal of all of the code changes that have taken place over the last 10 years uh that we've seen both from the state and also from the local municipalities and I think that uh and I'm going to use in a quick example about a building in which we constructed recently here uh within the city center and that is called Dover Place and in that particular building uh there are 43 apartments uh located in that building and the air changes per hour was 0.08 which is extremely low for a um multi-family building of that size and so what that does and proves is that we're already building extremely efficient homes and apartment buildings within the city uh based upon the existing code and so we haven't seen all of the positive results of all of that work that is already transpired and that we've changed to and so I do think that we need to be focused on efficiency of the um exterior wall sample uh as our primary focus of how to utilize uh our resources uh so that's number one uh the uh I think in terms of multi-family buildings in particular uh the uh goal to electrify you know multiple systems within the building I certainly understand and do you think that it is possible to electrify the heating system within the buildings there are costs associated with it not only in initial costs but also long-term maintenance costs that people are uh not discussing uh one of them um is that the heat pumps typically last about 10 years and uh in terms of they start losing some efficiencies um but they do tend to need to be replaced more often than a natural gas boiler does um now that will improve over time and I realize that that will change but people do need to understand that there is a cost associated with uh using the many splits in terms of the ventilation and domestic hot water within the multi-family buildings uh there are products available very limited that have been used in a very limited uh amount within our marketplace and that doesn't mean we shouldn't go out and pursue other places that are using these for both ventilation and domestic hot water but I do think that we are pushing the envelope uh further than what the technology is going to allow for within the multi-family buildings and as a side note within Dover Place here in South Burlington uh we do use natural gas uh to both produce the heat and domestic hot water within the building and there are a total of three boilers associated with that building for the entire 43 units and there are two water storage tanks that is it the water storage tanks I believe are 80 gallons so there are two 80 gallon tanks and that store the hot water and then a boiler that essentially works um and creates the hot water throughout the building that's for 43 apartments and so that is extremely efficient use of whatever type of product is creating the heat or the domestic hot water so I just wanted to point out that there are already we're already doing a lot of the efficiency things and that the focus should be in and with the current systems that are available the heat pumps are capable of being used for the heating system more uh transferably or more easily and then but in terms of the ventilation and domestic hot water that is not the same so I would recommend that you uh if you do choose to adopt the new ordinance that you do follow the Burlington exemptions in which uh both ventilation and hot water were not included based upon the existing technologies in place I would also recommend that you hire some consultants I realize that uh this is a big change um both for the uh for the city council but also for residents and also for people who build within uh South Burlington and that you hire a consultant who's really going to follow through and formalize you know some of the details that need to be incorporated into a potential ordinance that I feel yes the city of Burlington did their own study but maybe you know it maybe is time for the city of Burlington to do some study as well the other um uh one point that I think is a valid point as well is you know in terms of projects that are already permitted and the question is when is this going to take become an effect and uh in what type of projects that it becomes uh effective to is you know a very interesting discussion because it's if there's projects that are already approved and actually have Act 250 approvals and some of municipality approvals and also agreements in which they provided natural gas to the neighborhood or extended lines or in terms of power needs none of the power needs associated with going all electric probably have been considered in some of these pieces in terms of the infrastructure so my recommendation is to uh you know really uh think about what types of projects or what projects that um are fall under this new ordinance so thank you very much for your time appreciate it thank you we're still here in person hello my name is Steve Cordell I'm an architect here in Vermont with GBA architecture and planning up in Montpelier and so I'm here in support of the ordinance and we have I think advancing this move away from fossil fuels is commendable and something we have to do in the current climate where we are in my firm has recently finished and is currently working on a number of different commercial and multi-family buildings where we are have gone all electric for heating and we've done that with using heat pumps and we've done it in a variety of different ways so there really is there's not a one size fits all for these but we've been pushing for god the last decade or so to go all electric and as sort of the push and as more products come online the systems just keep getting better and better and better and so I think as the demand for electric increases and the demand to get off the fossil fuels increases that the systems that are available to us just make it that much more possible I think Nick had mentioned the energy standards for the residential residential and commercial building energy standards that Vermont has adopted they're incredibly robust and they have made it so that the demands of our energy for heating and cooling systems is actually much less than it was much longer ago with much leaker much leaker buildings and so with the tight envelopes that we have it's much easier to satisfy with heat pumps and compressors and so we're looking at different ways in some of our buildings where and we've done this with multi-family buildings that are new and we've also done it with some renovations so 49 unit new multi-family building we have all the units with fan coil units on the roof and they serve each unit and then we also have been doing this with some commercial buildings and we've done it with renovation as well as new so we've done it with a banking institution where we just removed all their fossil fuels and just pulled out the propane tank which is kind of a big a big move to make and and then we've also done it with a homeless shelter that we just finished where we've gotten off all of the fossil fuels there too and gone all electric now we are just starting a new building that we're just beginning it is or it's in construction and it's 19 units and that is going to be the first building that we're doing where we're completely confident that we can meet the the heating and cooling needs as well as the hot water domestic hot water needs and and partly that is a hot water definitely it gets trickier the domestic hot water and it's partly because of the peak load the demands like if everyone gets up between six and seven has to get a shower or bathe it's going to take a long time for the hot water tank to recover and so there's different solutions for that too and for some of the new multifamily that we're looking at we're looking at using small inexpensive individual hot water tanks in each unit so that's one way of doing it we looked at looking at commercial hot water systems and they just they're out of whack in terms of the cost but again i think with ordinances such as this and pushing this forward i think all those costs are going to just continue to come down because the improvements we've seen over the last decade are amazing so i i truly support this and hope you vote yes for it thank you thank you very much still continuing in person hi i'm paul engels south brungton resident also a planning commissioner and i just wanted to share the latest information from the inflation reduction act about heat pumps heat pumps for heating if your household income is 80 percent below your area areas medium income medium income you receive the maximum rebate covering your new heat pump at a hundred percent up to eight thousand dollars if your household income is 81 to 150 percent of your area's median income you'll receive up to 50 percent of the heat pumps cost if your household income exceeds 150 percent of your area's median median income you receive a 30 tax increase up to two thousand dollars a new heat pumps the rebates are significant for low income homeowners according to home advisor heat pumps cost an average of five thousand seven hundred ninety two dollars in most cases low income households will get a new heat pump for free heat pumps for hot water the act also provides a rebate of up to seven one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars for heat pump water heaters induction stoves dryers there's also a rebate of up to eight hundred and forty dollars to offset the cost of heat pump clothes dryers or an electric stove including induction ranges how to get a heat pump rebate state governments will execute their rebates the department of energy will likely issue guidelines to the states in late 2022 the heat pump rebates will apply to equipment purchased after january 1st 2023 thanks thank you and we are still in person is there one more person here hi my name is james do for i'm del developer in uh bernoynton and it's the first time i've ever talked at a city council meeting ever welcome uh do for d u f where you are so i've heard a lot of pro uh heat pump and pro legislation comments and i agree with almost all of them the only things i hear negative are from developers who think that uh electrification costs money um and uh i i think if i look at my pro farms i live in all those spreadsheets i don't look they've been a world of anecdotal data so i i tell the historians not to i want to just prevent slideshows and things like that but if you can develop in a world where lumber prices go from 300 to 1400 dollars to square like a hundred linear feet and we're interested in three percent to six percent the challenge of electrification isn't that big i mean it takes more time it takes more effort but there's a lot of support in the community there's a lot of support from energy monitors from developers uh i mean it's real it takes time it takes more effort but it's not something that is something we should avoid i mean there's a lot of challenges developing in vermont there's act 250 there's permits there's zoning approvals etc etc but this seems like something that's really worth it um and part of what we're really talking right now because i skipped uh putting my kid to bed to come here to this meeting and we pay for things now but we can have a better future and that's what this legislation is it's uh it's making these a little more challenging right now so that in 40 years from now we have slightly less extreme weather events but hopefully pioneering the way in vermont thank you thank you all right i think that draws to a close our public comments and i wish to really thank everyone who came out this was a really uh very informative um um hearing and i i especially appreciate um the the specifics that were brought forward very very helpful in terms of people's experience both as residents and as professionals in in the industry so i am just very grateful to you all um i think we need to have a motion to come out of the public hearing so moved second and all in favor i that's unanimous and again just to reiterate what our city manager said before um we will continue we now have a time for us to actually ask our staff to follow up on some things um so that's the next agenda item and so just for all of you who have come out um this will lead to a second hearing and then we will have a final decision at that point but let us move on to the next agenda item where we could provide staff some direction based on our preparation for tonight's meeting as well as the comments that we just heard so um in linked to the previous agenda item on the public hearing is our revised draft ordinance with language that at a minimum we are recommending based on our conversations prior to this public hearing um i know uh counselor really also wanted to have the opportunity to watch this public hearing and be part of the discussion so if there's additional comments um the council would like us to integrate into the next draft to bring back to you we certainly can hear those tonight we can also put this on your agenda for your next meeting to have a more full conversation if you wish council member yes councillor chitin and senator chitin in the interest in the interest of time and how late it is and since you're really just looking for general thoughts i just wanted to state the following in a small request of staff similar to how it was warned here and just to start off i want to state clearly i support enacting the same regulation that burlington put in place requiring renewable primary heating sources for new construction it makes a lot of sense and i'm very close to supporting the language on hot water heaters i the testimony tonight from amy dimetritz from champlain housing trust eric snider with snider properties was compelling for me and i hope for us to consider a temporary time limited waiver for hot water heaters for just multifamily housing units the written testimony from bgs also spoke to the same concern raised by those both for large commercial buildings with multifamily housing units the other written testimony from ever north eric hotra redstone and cindy reed from cathedral scale also raised enough concern for me on the availability today a current electric hot water solutions electric hot water solutions that will work for large commercial buildings and multifamily buildings and john basonja's very thoughtful testimony already highlighted how cambrian rise of other new net zero buildings still have natural gas water heaters because the technology just isn't there yet hasn't been for large-scale hot water heating but i'm optimistic that the technology will get there i just don't want to delay or fort sensible development with relatively new relatively very efficient hot water heating using gas lines that could be used in the future for more renewable sources so for those reasons this is my ask to the uh to staff and since helens not here i'd love to have language that could be considered as either an amendment or as something that could be added to this ordinance for our next discussion to see language that would have a time limited limited a sunsetted waiver so we would add a waiver for hot water heaters just hot water heaters for two years from new multifamily complexes and large complex buildings at the end of two years that waiver would go away that would give enough time i think for the shampoam housing trust as well as developers as well as for the technology to get to where it needs to be and that matches with the amount of time why burlington din adopted when it was and i think that would also give enough flexibility so my ask of staff and i don't i don't know if we need a vote on it and if you want me to draft it myself jesse i will uh but i'd love for the future meeting to just consider language that would allow for a waiver that would expire after two years on just hot water heaters for large commercial complexes and multifamily units that'll be done yeah i think that's a reasonable request and i i share your sentiments i i would say that i'm very much where you are tom if people could just not all take showers at the same time in the morning that'd be great maybe we need a phone app to schedule showers for everybody mine says mine's at seven oh two you have to be in and out when i'm just kidding i take nighttime shower i'm not going to get into people's personal shower schedules right now but i share a counselor chitin and council memories concerns about the effects of the hot water part of the ordinance this is separate ordinance right and i would like to explore that further and i'd like to get more information about the cost differences you know on new construction for a domestic gas fired water hot water system versus um what i would assume is a technology that's not quite there for the whole building but as we heard from somebody in the public hearing you know there there it is possible to put in a small hybrid heat pump water heater for every unit that would then you know give its own hot water so i think there are alternatives but i i have no doubt that um non-profit um you know organizations are have a greater challenge right in in terms of financing and the costs regarding uh heat you know hybrid heat pumps and and how it would service the building because i mean it's one thing to say you could do it is another thing is what the service would actually be for everybody taking a shower at the same time and i know that from my discussions with eric ferrell on the camry and rise that they of course they they used gas for the hot water system but they also used gas to preheat the air in the heat exchange system as well because they they didn't have an alternative at that time when they built so maybe that exists now i'd just like to know what those technologies are and and and how how viable or ready they are for implementation on new construction that we might see in the next you know year or two and some it might be a good source of information because at their um in their testimony at one of our last meetings um it was stated that the new structure that they're building here in south brillington that it's all electric for the heating and cooling for heating and cooling but i don't remember what they said for hot water not for hot water for heating and cooling and for stoves yeah and they said it was all split systems on the roof yes yeah so that would anything else from councillor chitin i guess okay yeah no i i really think that tom hit it on the head in terms of you know what i would just want us to think about yeah otherwise i i do feel comfortable going ahead with new structures i thought that the testimony on the retrofitting was was quite compelling and i would like to hear from summit if possible to know exactly you know that's an affordable housing development that from my recollection is all electric for heating and cooling so that's and i think that this is an investment in our future and we have to move forward okay thank you thank you thank you to everyone who's been working really hard on this um the next item is the climate action plan task force and i know for people who have been here waiting for this this is it's getting late so let us go ahead and ask our chair ethan goldman to come up and speak to us and present this draft plan yeah sure we'll take a two minute break running to present it to you tonight so just i'm going to start out with a couple of broad background things context that i don't think are are new certainly no research that we've done but just to sort of put this all in perspective climate change is no longer something off in the future although we do expect it to keep getting worse we're already seeing some of the effects they're already touching vermont some of these things sound very vague and abstract about spring arriving earlier and later but if we think practically about the economy of vermont and the things that we enjoy to do in the snow there's a real impact on what that looks like in the future my snowboard and would like to be able to continue doing that i also like maple syrup and these type of climate changes could really impact a lot of the you know natural economies and services that we take advantage of in the state now and could look very different so what does that mean right the the goal that we're shooting for based on the best signs that we have in front of us a lot of it coming from the international plan of panel and climate change is to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees celsius about three degrees fahrenheit which doesn't sound like very much but it's the you know the total effect that it has on the amount of water held in the air and things like that and so when when do we forecast we're going to get there right so on the trajectory that we've been on um we could hit that by 2040 and that sounds like it's a ways off but when you're heading for a cliff you don't wait until the wheels start losing traction before you hit the break right we need to start making these adjustments now and i'll i'll show a bunch of examples as we're going through about but what does this mean like what kind of effort is it going to take to get to this goal but i just want to show that sort of global perspective slide please so there's some examples again from the most recent report from the ipcc i won't go through these all in in detail you can probably find a much longer list if you go looking for you know again things that are already happening and things that are expected to get much worse as we continue to see warming in the coming decades it's kind of scary frankly right it it can be paralyzing actually to look at the magnitude of some of these challenges and i think it also can sometimes be a little uh disheartening to think about like what can i do as an individual or what can south burlington do as as one city but i think it's also important to look on the other side right i mean how can we in clear conscience knowing that some of these things are going to happen if we don't take action sit on the sidelines and say well i i hope someone else does something about this so here's our plan for what we are going to do about it so the process a little bit that behind this plan started a little over a year ago in august of 21 when the city council passed a resolution calling for the creation of this climate action plan and chartering the task force for all of us to get together and do this work um that task force held 13 meetings we did a whole bunch of research we were heavily supported by the jimmy county regional planning coalition who um i want to stick it out with us here uh did an awful lot of work to produce the the report that you see and we particularly highlighted some high impact actions um there's a lot of different things we can do but we really want to draw attention to the things that are going to have the most impact on our emissions so here's what we're looking at as an inventory and these scenarios and i and i do want to give you know credit to all the the folks this is not i'm presenting but this whole committee worked very hard on this all year long including not only melanie but but and janda at the ccrpc and then of course paul and helen is not here um so one thing i i just want to start out with because this is one of the most challenging aspects frankly the the science and the engineering and the the you know the mechanics part of this in some ways is easier than the social and community parts of this and figuring out how do we you know balance some of the competing challenges for people who um you know need to solve their you know issues with transportation and housing and and other things today and um even as we want to be part of the solution we have to appreciate the diverse challenges that folks in our community have right not everyone can tackle this problem in the same way and while we went into this process with a great resource from the vermont climate council with these guiding principles for a just transition which had a bunch of great recommendations we ultimately found it to be somewhat challenging at the stage where we're working in right now at the plan right which is still at a very high level of conceptually we want these things to happen but we don't necessarily spell out in the plan what the implementation is going to look like and again there's some implementation plans to come we're going to get to that later we feel like that's probably the place where we'll really be able to get to the meat of how we deal with equity so next um the simple takeaway here is uh there's a lot more work on equity and we did highlight that in the um the letter introducing plan to you that this is one of the areas that still needs some real attention before this is an effective plan of action next slide please um there are a couple quick takeaways that we did highlight again at the high level on equity so I would say just at a general level buildings and thermal and renewable are both areas where there are large upfront costs and there are also investments in homes and businesses that then realize the benefits you know economic benefits over a number of years and so that's particularly challenging for folks who you know don't necessarily have the capital to drop 20 000 on a large project or who might not have the you know the right to make modifications to the building or you know might have other challenges with the way that those things are situated so those are there's are some commonalities between the equity concerns that we had with both buildings and renewable energy um transportation has uh you know some capital costs but it also has like access to infrastructure issues we'll get into the charging ev charging challenges and that was certainly highlighted for folks who are in rentals or on street parking or in multifamily buildings and things like that so there's some specific issues that we're calling out transportation and natural areas we're going to talk about this you know both from the perspective of emissions and how we can you know improve or harm our emissions profile but also we don't primarily focus in the climate action plan on addressing adaptation right we're mostly talking about mitigation trying to reduce the harm from greenhouse gases whereas the adaptation is well it's it's a little too late to totally avoid this right I often give the comparison like we can't have the y2k experience where after a whole bunch of people worked their butt off for a couple of years before y2k nothing bad happened everyone's like well that wasn't much of a disaster that would have been awesome for climate change right if we all worked our butt off starting in 1980 and there was no disaster everyone's like I mean someone brought this up online recently like what about the ozone hole like you used to hear a lot about that now we don't hear anything anymore it's like well yeah well we figured it out we did the science and we did the policy work and we fixed it and we don't have to talk about it anymore because we fixed it right it's done so we'd like to get there with climate change but we're not going to get there in time to have no impact right we can already see a lot of the heat waves and flooding and fires and droughts and you know not as severe in Vermont as in other places but starting here too and natural areas is one of the places where we do identify some of the mitigation and resilience considerations we could probably find more of those in some of the implementation plans next slide please so to give a little perspective on the historic emissions and where we're going so in this chart the blue line here is looking at the south burlington emissions going back as far as 1990 and then forecast out as what we call the business as usual scenario where we don't make any changes to the way that we you know heat and drive and all the other issues that we're tackling here and then the green line is the the goal the target right these are what we call science-based targets because they're constructed with guidance from primarily ickly which is a tool that that we've used to figure out you know what is our portion of greenhouse gas reductions based on where we are and what we are and and what are we going to have to do in order to hit these these targets you'll also see in the notes here that they align with the global warming solutions act which is part of Vermont state policy which is important for us to align with and so we have milestones in 2025 2030 and 2050 and you can see that it's a steeper descent to get to 2030 and in fact it's a little steeper even than what that graph shows because this was all based on the baseline forecast of 2019 data and so that goal is actually currently anchored at 2019 and so we may have made some improvements between Ben and 2022 where we're almost finishing up now but probably most of the distance to that 2025 goal still lies before us so it's an even steeper path to try to hit that 2025 goal I do want to say that as much as it looks like oh that's hard and why don't we just smooth this out and like let's let's just hit the 2050 goal like let's can we just restructure this I want to point out I don't have a lot of charts on this I'm not going to go into the math of it this is a cumulative problem right this is you know every year we go by the amount that we're putting out that year we're going to live with for hundreds of years and so it actually gives us a better endpoint if we cut emissions sooner because that means we're working at a lower rate of emissions for all those years so from a cumulative perspective there's a reason why we're heading so fast there's also a technology reason right the good news about this this work is that we have a lot of the tools right yes it's a scary place to be in but we have heat pumps and solar panels and electric vehicles and a lot of incredible technology that is becoming much more cost effective and so this is really just about let's adopt the future as fast as we can because it's great technology and also it's going to give us a livable planet it's kind of a win-win right and the first piece of these reductions in some ways are going to be the easier part right part of the reason why that last part is is so long is you always do the easy stuff first right that's what's cost effective and then you get down to like industrial processes that need 3000 degrees to melt titanium and we don't have heat pumps to do that yet right it's going to take us a little while to figure out how to get to that stuff and so that's the hard work we're going to have to do between 20 and 30 and 2050 and why we can't kick the count can down the road on the easy stuff next slide so let's look at where these things break down right we actually have a different sort of profile than a lot of parts of the country do because our electric grid has already been decarbonized so much so most of the work to be done is in fossil fuels right so roughly speaking about two-thirds of that is transportation right cars and trucks and buses and the remaining one-third is pretty evenly split between residential buildings and commercial industrial buildings and then on the right hand side you can see just sort of rough orders of magnitude of how much we're trying to reduce from each where we're taking roughly and even percentage of each I'd say you know maybe a little more transportation but would both of them need to drop a lot in the next you know that's 2030 right that's a that's a big chunk right it's coming out of both those areas next slide so we're going to go through the different sections right we've got these different pathways within the different areas of the plan that that take on you know different portions of our our economy and our landscape and so we're going to start with the big one transportation this is 65 of emissions the the two big areas that we're looking at here are switching over to electric vehicles it's awesome that we have four electric buses in Burlington it's a great start and other electric vehicles and vehicle miles travels right that's about shifting the trips that we do either to you know virtual meetings or to walking biking public transportation right and we're looking to reduce that by 2.5% annually which sounds small doing that year over year is a lot of shift to those other forms and we know how hard those patterns are and those patterns the reason land use as part of this category is that those patterns are largely embedded in where do we live where do we work and where do we shop and all the other things that that we have to do to travel between and how are the location of those different activities aligned with the alternatives for public transportation or you know bicycle and pedestrian modes so we have some some recommendations here about what specifically the city can do to try to accelerate progress toward those two goals on the next slide i'm just going to show a little bit of like i want to try to show some scales for each one of these right we have these these kind of dry lists of like numbers and facts and lots of things to do i part of what i want to convey tonight as we're like looking at this giant document is the speed that we need to move at and what that what that's going to feel like so 75 percent of vehicles by 2030 need to shift over to electric vehicles and we're talking about both plug-in hybrids and all electrics right we include the news category because really you know a lot of the miles can go on to electric and most of the modern plug-in hybrids that sounds kind of crazy i think to say 75 percent of vehicles right there's two percent of cars in south brunington right now this sounds absolutely impossible and what i'm illustrating here is the exponential growth curve that gets us there because really this isn't a linear growth curve right just because we put on another one percent of cars last year doesn't mean it's going to be another one percent of cars this year and another one percent the year after that and in fact if you go to the next we'll see a chart of the fermant wide numbers that have been tracked where you can actually see the trajectory over the last 10 years and what we've seen in the last couple years is that the adoption rate has really accelerated we're seeing more than 50 percent increase in the rate of adoption in vehicles between 2021 and 2022 and so if we see that 50 percent increase year over year we get the curve on the left and that actually gets us to above 75 percent by 2030 so it sounds really crazy but you know most of the cars on the road today that about 10 year turnover will be different cars in 2030 and there's a lot of demand so the challenge before us right this isn't to say it's all done right it's great that the car makers are doing this work and vermont is pushing to you know phase out through regulation the work that i want to highlight with this chart is how are we going to support that rapid growth what kind of support do we need for the car dealerships what kind of ev charging network do we need and how we change the way that we build our homes and businesses what is it going to look like for the the service technicians right who know how to you know fix your uh what internal combustion engine and now have a totally different set of systems to deal with we need to think about like how do we support all of that local work that will uh deal with the life cycle of these cars that get manufactured off in michigan or you know texas or wherever um and still we have to get operated here so we got to start now that's a really fast curve next um so buildings in thermal is the next big section um this is uh about a third of the emissions two big areas are heat pumps and weatherization um we uh we have a lot of homes that we need to to do you know both electrify and weatherize 600 homes a year um to weatherize the bigger chunk of it is actually the um the heat pumps we need to do 360 homes um a year and uh so the ordinance that we just spent a long time talking about is a big piece of that there's some other work to be done there to support that in terms of weatherization workforce um if we go to the next slide um just to put it in context right so looking at some numbers right now and it's a little it's a little challenging right now to compare the advice that we're giving here about the number of homes with most of the data that we have which is the number of heat pumps but making assumption that's roughly about two heat pumps per home some will be one some will be three or four or five but if we figure roughly that the heat pumps that we're seeing about 200 a year sold right now in south burlington figure that's covering about 100 homes a year our goal is to go to 360 homes a year by next year that's a big jump that's a really big jump right um as someone who's been trying to get heat pumps put in my house it's not like there's installers sitting around twiddling their thumbs we need to support the the whole lifecycle of this uh and weatherization is an even bigger challenge right um that's like an infinity percent increase i think roughly when i do the math uh this is just a sea change right and what we're doing with weatherization and we know that there are huge bottlenecks here as well so we need to think not just about like oh let's make things a little bit better we need to think about how do we revolutionize our ability to deliver these things right we need to look for those type of changes or there's no way we're going to hit any of these targets period next slide renewable energy um this is not a huge part of the overall plan again because the electricity that we're using off the grid is already renewable but as we add all these new loads for electricity we need to do our part and frankly um from the perspective of act 174 enhanced energy plans which south berlington still needs to file with the state if the city wants to have a say in where renewable energy is cited within its boundaries it needs to have an advanced energy plan on the books and um so we use the goals for what the state is asking south berlington to do based on our size um it's a pretty huge change we can get into the details here but mostly um we're talking about solar because of where we are and it's a lot of roofs and a lot of parking lots um so again without getting to the numbers we'll go to the next slide so generally um what we're looking at here there's a low and a high goal in the enhanced energy plan um so again just some some very rough estimates that I put together from this you know right now we have less than 20 percent um of the roofs if we assume that most of the renewable energy that we're seeing right now in the books for south berlington is rooftop and parking lot and um there's probably actually some fields so this is probably even a little generous right it's less than 20 percent we need to go to between 50 and 90 percent of the rooftops and parking lots in south berlington in order to meet the goals that we're going to have to commit to for this enhanced energy plan um that's kind of incredible what would it look like for half the roofs in south berlington or all the roofs in south berlington of solar on them right there's a lot of funky roofs we're gonna have to deal with huge change next slide so again natural areas and adaptation we heard a lot of very strong support for protecting the natural resources within south berlington not only because of the greenhouse gas benefits but also because of the support that they provide for some of the climate um impacts that we're going to see from flooding from heat um from droughts um so there's a lot of reasons why we want to protect these and um you know I know there's been a bunch of work done on this already we've highlighted some some places where we could even further enhance this um and again we're looking at this on both sides right if we can protect the carbon sequestering um you know forests and other natural lands then we're continuing to remove greenhouse gases if we go the other way and we do the wrong kind of development where we're cutting down too many trees we're gonna you know reduce our ability to sequester greenhouse gases and we're gonna release the carbon in those biomass so again a little lower down our list just in terms of absolute magnitude um for our carbon goals next slide city government operations so on the positive side this is a place where we can make a lot of difference right this is somewhere where you and the city council and in the city staff basically hold the reins right you can decide what projects to prioritize and how much money to spend on different things and what type of technologies to put in place and so we did spend a lot of time um breaking down you know the um solid waste processing and um some of the you know vehicle usage and you know to understand where those emissions are coming from um it's also a really important place for uh showing leadership right it's very hard to tell everyone else in town that they need to go invest money in their buildings and their vehicles if the city is not walking the talk first um I do really want to highlight on the left it's 1,431 tons out of currently this is our current inventory out of 196,000 metric tons so it's about one percent of the city's total emissions so the two sides of this are we need to do it we need to show leadership we need to you know help demonstrate what work needs to go in um and do our part as a city government um on the other hand we can't just focus tunnel vision wise and say if we just make our buildings perfect maybe we'll achieve our goals right this is just doing our one part we still have you know regulatory goals we have you know financial incentives and taxes that can be used to to create the other changes next slide um so again getting down into some of the the smaller impacts but that are nonetheless important where we have opportunities um few different categories here small engines waste agriculture and food systems there's a number of different opportunities in here um things like the you know electrified lawn mowers and leaf blowers that south berlington has required I mean sorry that berlington is required could similarly be adopted by south berlington um there's some other opportunities around uh waste pickup schedules and things like that next slide so just before we wrap up and go to questions hopefully we'll still have some time for a little dialogue um I just wanted to share a couple of the findings that we got from the the survey that we did we put out a survey with a few questions and a bunch of free response opportunities um we put that out on you know facebook and through a number of other channels we also did outreach and encourage people to go and fill out the survey or just talk to us about what responses they had one of the quantitative pieces that we asked was how concerned are you about climate change and next you'll see that uh 75 responded eight or higher there's only about 10 that responded less concerned that frankly mirrors roughly what we see in numbers for the population at large um if anything I would say it skews a little heavy toward the extremely concerned end of things there's usually a little more even distribution in those top categories um again this is people who are motivated enough to take the survey so it's going to skew toward the ends but you know the the short takeaway from this is that um you know while not 100 percent of residents in town put this at the top of their list there is strong support for the type of aggressive action that we're going to need to take and that's great we're going to need to get people involved so it's really important that we're going to be able to connect to people so we did ask them specifically what sort of things they would support and next slide um and we got a whole slew of answers here again I'm not going to go through all of these there's a lot of overlap with the recommendations that um that we made um and we certainly took some of these um you know some of this advice to to heart as we were finalizing the plan um but I think there's a there's a really good alignment with with what we're recommending and good to see that folks in town um are thinking of some of the same ideas that we are these are transportation ideas on the next slide we got a lot of ideas about um formatting slides that's interesting there's also transportation ideas um and and uh heating and buildings uh all right next we can provide the full list it's uh it's actually kind of interesting to read the they take it from the fire hose and and read all the the ideas so I'm just going to leave you with these these sort of three um thoughts which were the same ones that we put into the cover letter when we provided you the plan which are the next steps implementation plans which are about buildings and thermal transportation and government operations I know there's been a lot of work getting ready for those and still some more planning and funding that needs to be answered but that's the next area of focus um plus equity plan being part of that and really engaging with the impacted communities finding ways to bring them to the table early on in the process so that we're not trying to make assumptions about what these different populations in our community care about and are challenged by but they were hearing directly from them about what solutions are going to work and then incorporating climate planning into strategic planning um I was really glad to see the the first annual report on sustainability uh in the city and uh also really happy to hear how some of the gaps in this year's report about you know all the different major issues um what was considered about climate and what was the decision you know what was the ultimate decision vis-a-vis climate in all those major decisions and hear how there's some new planning tools coming to bear next year that can make uh you know can help us even more broadly track that not just the you know marquee items about climate specific projects happening in town so really sort of incorporating that in the city strategic planning and helping the community do the same thanks thank you thank you all right so this is our chance to ask questions we're not going to be taking action tonight but we can certainly follow up we also have um I would say a wonderful memo prepared by our city manager on implementation plans I am always impressed by how much you all do um perhaps we'll look at that first and then we might tackle the question if there are questions that counselors have we could do that after after we look at the memo um is that something we could do yeah I don't need to spend I don't need to spend a whole lot of time talking it through it was um staff's attempt to you know say what happens next you know this is a huge amount of work that many members of our community have participated in it's a really policy document and as that moves to an implementation document and therefore how staff can help drive this I think especially in the transportation realm we do have more expertise on staff to help with those those aspects so I wanted to or the team of us who met wanted to put some thoughts on paper about what those implementation plan um what that process would look like we won't start that until the plan's adopted but want to start that conversation um so I can talk through it more but that's really just to give the not have it just be like okay we have this great plan that we need to revolutionize everything to do now what trying to get that get to the now what portion of that conversation well I was curious you had talked about oops just escaped me here um here there are three implementation plans outlined in the draft climate action plan and then you also talk about the funding and I was you know very curious about the funding and how I mean do we have any notion about how much funding will be available to because we did have some dollar signs I don't know if that's like a restaurant $20 to $30 but there were some dollar signs on well so can I can I just ask to clarify are you asking the cost for creating the implementation plans or the cost for doing all the work you had some dollar signs next to how much it would cost to do these some of these things or if it was going to be expensive or not expensive something that would require us to think about equity versus you know you had so just looking at this memo I just wanted Jesse to explain a little bit about how currently funded through the CCRPC's UPWP program that's for the transportation implementation plan so yeah so there's I think Ethan brings up a good point well you both bring up good points there's two different things that need to be resourced here I would argue there's the development of the implementation plans which is so what so we have these policy documents what are we what are the actions who's going to do it on what priority level how are we integrating equity into that and two of those plans are funded so the transportation implementation plan and the government operations plan Paul and his team have gotten grant money to support whether there is likely some local match we're going to need to do the kind of public process we want to do around those implementation plans but those are funded in the next year I think the much bigger question is funding how we are successful at being revolutionary and that is a question that I think you all will need to seriously tackle during the budget process you know I to put my thumb on that scale right now and I think Helen may have just joined us and something I have said to her you know if you think about you know our current tax rate is 42 cents on the on the dollar that means we spend 42 pennies on core municipal operations every year this is not something historically we have thought of as core municipal operations to address climate change there are a few quarters of pennies throughout there where we think about energy of this building or we think about our fleet or whatnot but if we really are going to revolutionize how we as a city are going to operate around climate change which is historically not core government core municipal government with the adoption of this plan the council needs to think seriously about how those 42 cents are allocated and are there additional cents that are needed to fund the humans who are going to do all of this work and fund the incentives to our neighbors and fund the communication and the outreach and the the education I mean I think one of the things I'm taking away from this is that the municipal part of this what we know how to control and change a manage every day is a minuscule part compared to you know 20,000 residents making personal life choices and that is done in partnership with volunteers and residents and in partnership with the state and in partnership with cvo eo and other other organizations but somebody needs to be pulling that all together and have owning the implementation plan and and charging you know creating the tables and the opportunities where that change happens and right now we don't have the capacity to do that so it's a very long-winded answer to to say we have a little money to do implementation plans and I think once this becomes the policy of the city if the council adopts this plan how we resource that is is the next policy question for the council okay can I just share the way that we divided some of the recommendations in the plan we're into three different buckets right there's three different ways that the city can potentially influence emissions to reach these goals so one is through policy right setting rules and regulations like the ordinance that we just discussed tonight the next is through financial levers right taxing things we don't want and providing incentives for things we do want right there's limit limits to how much of that we can we can do like within the tolerance of a democratic society and then the third is through communication right setting an example giving people guidance about what other resources are out there and one of the other things that we really emphasize is we're thinking about what the city's role was to really be aware of who the other players are who are also trying to get to the same goals right we have a statewide energy efficiency program several statewide energy efficiency programs right that are already providing incentives and providing a bunch of services right so we don't want to compete with them we want to figure out how to partner and do complementary things so I think that that kind of perspective those are the issues that we're going to get deeper into in the implementation plan and try to figure out you know where can we focus our efforts where they'll do the most good I don't think it was ever our expectation in this plan that the way the city was going to accomplish this was go out and hire hundreds of people and buy all the heat pumps and install them ourselves or become a car dealership and sell everyone a car or buy everyone a car right those are are really not feasible within this kind of city government so we need to think about the levers that we do have so I don't disagree with any of that and it takes effort and resources to partner so if I'm held accountable to implementing this this policy plan without there is nobody on our team now who can do that relationship building and and pull all of that together and market things for our communities and whatnot that's where I'm not saying we start installing heat pumps at all right now I'm saying we try and figure out how to support our community to go access all of those resources and I think our perspective is entirely in line with that right but if we took the same dollars that we could spend to weatherize you know 10 or 20 homes and spend it on resourcing some you know staff and some you know technical support tools or something like that we might actually get a lot more impact right it's going to be hard for us to do all the work it's a much better use of our resources to create the structures that will support all these other systems to move in the right direction so I think what you're describing is exactly the way that the conclusion we came to in the plan so could I just ask you we do have a few people online but if I might even ask you to just address there were I have to go back here there were in the plan the draft plan if we were to look at for instance um so here I am page 22 in the plan just as an example just as an example so city to adopt green operations purchasing and investment policies and here we have cost a dollar sign is that dollar sign linked to any kind of like number you know like with the restaurant you know you have one dollar sign two dollar signs because I believe that there were some that had more than one dollar sign yeah yeah if you could just yeah here on page 20 for instance the ensure resilience storm water infrastructure has two dollar signs so yeah so uh the dollar signs are are a relative assessment we you know we didn't have the the time and resources to go down the whole process that we hopefully will be getting further into an implementation plans of figuring out exactly how much each of these would cost so I would take them exactly like restaurant ratings right uh two dollar signs is bigger than one dollar sign but also when you're in san francisco two dollar signs is bigger than two dollar signs when you're in south burlington and so I wouldn't even compare between the different categories and say oh well this one's one and this one's two these are these are just rough um to give a sense of some RNA they don't have a cost right there or the cost is is sort of de minimis in the context of all this it's like we just need to you know spend some time and put the word out or you know share this information versus some things that are actually going to be buying stuff and are the dollars are those like tax dollars are we those are funds that would come from our taxpayers I'm so to go through our city to I mean these things are as as Jesse pointed out this is city government operations but here the natural areas it still has the open space funds the resilient stormwater infrastructure I'm just I'm trying to imagine so the way we the way we looked at costs for government operations yes it would come out of the city budget and whether that was tax dollars or grants or federal funding or you know that you're more familiar than I am with all the different ways that dollars can can flow into the budget if it was to flow out here in the other categories the way that we looked at cost wasn't just the city's cost out of pocket it was the whole community's cost okay generally speaking is this a you know easy or hard okay so for instance for small engines we're we're also talking about for the homeowner or the person who's doing the lawn work that's the curtail or ban small gas powered equipment and ban leaf blowers is this I'm sorry I missed when you're scrolling this is 24 this is a new and that's waste small engines and agriculture okay yeah so this this would be the cost for whoever's buying it right mostly not city you only have a couple lawnmowers okay okay but yeah as far as revolutionizing I mean we're gonna have to deal with that as a society I mean right how to weatherize 600 homes per year right there is Ethan said to get a heat pump and to do that what is it over 300 to 300 homes per year yeah 360 so one thing I want to encourage us to think about you know and maybe this is guidance for the implementation plans I feel like it's much more tangible to think about the costs and it's very overwhelming you're like $5,000 in home for a heat pump oh my gosh and what we're not necessarily trying to quantify here but it's just as valid is all the the benefits right we heard all sorts of people stand up tonight and say my own is more comfortable I've been able to reduce my costs you know I solve this problem right we also heard about people who had other challenges and weren't able to solve the problems but the the goal of doing all this work and the way we should be thinking about it is not how do we dump tons and tons of capital resources into maybe solving this one problem it's how do we use all these new technologies how do we accelerate their adoption think about it holistically how how many jobs are going to be created in order to do this number of weatherizations a year and this number of heat pumps a year right where are the dollars that are saved going to ripple through the economy where you know what are the other benefits that we're going to get from improving the air quality from not having tailpipe emissions out of all those vehicles right so we need to think about what are all the improvements that we're making what is the total benefit this is one of the great things about trying to solve this problem from a government perspective because you can very much consider health benefits and quality of life benefits and reduction in residents you know out of pocket costs right you don't just have to look at your own balance sheet and say well I can't spend money on that because it isn't going to save me as a as a business entity money right we can take the big picture which allows us to take a lot of things that are typically externalities and say nope that all counts reducing the number of storms per year having you know better resilience in those storms because we have more local renewable generation those are making people's lives better and costing us less to rebound from those climate impacts so we should really think broadly about the benefits I know the costs are easy to quantify and and very daunting but from a policy perspective if it saves money over the lifetime as we look at it broadly then doing it faster isn't spending money faster it's saving money faster right why would you wait to plug a leak in your tub that costs you more every day than it costs to plug it you're not saving money right so that's why it's actually good news that we need to do these things faster other people have questions yeah so one of my concerns is if you so in the transition to lots of de-gasification and then going to heat pumps and and and that technology what is what is green mountain powers position on this increase in demand for for power I mean do they do they have they stated a position and if they look at a at a potential graph and increase in power demand from from gmp's you know service area what do they have any kind of a statement on that or I mean they've been very supportive of all this kind of work and and one point that I think is really important to make you know we we heard some comments tonight on the the ordinance discussion about how we should anticipate that because electricity demand is going to go up in this context that the price electricity is going to go up electricity is a funny commodity right partly because it's regulated and partly because there's a huge amount of cost that comes from the fixed costs in infrastructure and that's true already today with transmission distribution lines and big generators in the future as we move toward more and more renewables it's becoming almost entirely true right it doesn't cost any more to use a hundred percent of the power coming from a solar panel that it does use half the power coming from the solar panel right so there's definitely a cost to the peaks but in general when you look at a lot of the the plans that might my day job I work with utilities doing this kind of planning increasing the demand on electricity often decreases the cost per unit of electricity because you're using the infrastructure that we already have more fully right you're spreading that cost over more services that you're delivering right think about if we build a billion dollar transmission line and run one light bulb at the end of it it's cost a billion dollars per kilowatt you know that's like a ridiculous amount right but we don't do that in this state we're actually very fortunate because with efficiency vermont's work over the last 20 years we've really drastically reduced demand so we have excess capacity already in the grid yes we're going to electrify we're going to build a lot more out we will have to invest some in capacity but generally speaking I don't think green mountain power is concerned about it they've been very bullish on this and they're already taking actions this building is one of the participants in the peak load management program that you know uses flexible loads to to help deal with the most expensive parts that would cause us to have incremental investments in infrastructure so yeah I don't think we should be worried about electricity capacity we'll either have to build more renewables in state and or we'll have to build transmission lines to be able to shift around bring in offshore wind power that's being built off you know New Hampshire and Massachusetts and Connecticut but if you if you throw in a requirement for a certain amount of solar right over the next x number of years that has to be created you know in in the city that could be a large offset for that right yeah so more local solar more storage either through batteries or through connecting vehicles and also thermal storage with the heat pumps and water tanks and homes being able to act as thermal storage and help shift that to when we have their renewable energy being generated by the solar panels exactly thanks anything that no anything Tom or Helen welcome this is great work too I forgot to say and thanks for all the hours spent on this great presentation lots of and this is setting the footprint for us yeah and a great presentation too that you could actually scratch below the layers of this very simple seeming document you could see how much thought yeah Helen do you have some I just yeah thanks I'm gonna be in and out the kids will be coming home in about half an hour for dinner but I just wanted to hear as much as I could um you know I think there's a lot in the plan and we have to remember that it really is a plan and not get too focused on the weeds right now I think the implementation plan development will is a place where we start to address what's the cost what's the capacity who does what um and I totally agree with um Jesse that um when we I don't know if you've had the conversation about goals for next year's budget but I feel really strongly that we need to think about the um investment of city dollars in personnel to help us go for grants organize this and work on it so that it's a policy that has can be realized and not and it can't be I don't believe with our current staffing but that's probably another conversation and I do want to really thank the task force it was a remarkable group of people who spend an inordinate amount of time um sharing their expertise and reading all sorts of things and bringing the perspective of all the committees that they represented to the conversation so it was a you know I think a really nice um way it was organized well thank you Helen all right we do have some people online who wanted to address us um the first one is Ashley Adams hi there good evening thank you first for your presentation and everyone's hard work on this um DAP I'm here tonight to urge the city council though to send this final draft back to the task force because it does not include airport emissions uh from ground and flight operations emissions from the airport the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the city must be included in the greenhouse gas inventory if it is to be used as a basis for mitigation efforts so I was very surprised not to see that included F-35 trainings alone from the Burlington airport are estimated to create around 100,000 tons of CO2 emissions a year this is a conservative estimate it doesn't include any other aviation or ground emissions originating from the airport without airport emissions this plan does not represent a data driven approach that was promised by the authors and it really is false and misleading without this information on page seven of the CAP the authors state that they excluded airport ground and flight emissions from the inventory because they do not have the quote authority to regulate these emissions and that activities at the airport are not quote under their jurisdiction and this is just simply not a valid argument in fact the international local government greenhouse gas emissions analysis protocol the IDAP specifically states that in their emissions analyses local governments quantify airport emissions that is a protocol that the authors of the climate action plan should have been using in drafting this plan instead the authors of the south Burlington climate action plan essentially say it's not our problem in the midst of a climate emergency not my problem is really an indefensible position we've known about climate change for many decades and our leaders have consistently year after year decade after decade chosen not to act the entire globe is reaping what we have found we're now in the midst of a climate emergency in which people all over the world are literally dying due to a problem that most of them have no hands in creating the actions we take or do not take materially impact the habitability of the planet species extinction or survival and the most vulnerable among us so while we may see our maple sugar industry disappear others will lose their food crops their drinking water their homes their lives there's no additional authority or jurisdiction needed to include aviation emissions and ground transportation emissions associated with the airport and the cap so i'm urging this council to insist that the authors of the climate action plan follow the protocol of the i a e p international local government greenhouse gas emissions analysis protocol and include aviation emissions in the cap inventory without an honest accounting of greenhouse gas emissions the cap becomes a piece of propaganda and i'm sorry to say that after i know a lot of folks put a lot of hard work into this but this is a problem that must be addressed so before you review this plan counselors please ask yourself what your legacy will be thank you yes thank you is there a response to that comment yes can i respond to that yeah so it's um it's an issue that's been raised before it's a lot of emissions that comes out of the airport and i understand why it's um a valid place to to look for opportunities to improve and a valid question about you know the boundary that we chose and i think for for most cities including the airport would be an obvious choice and it would be completely consistent with the scope one approach to emissions inventory we're in a unique situation or at least an unusual situation i don't know that many other cities that have the type of arrangement that we have where the neighboring city though the land lives within the south burlington's borders the neighboring city is responsible for operating the airport so there is already a sustainability plan that is underway for the airport coming out of burlington the airport is included within burlington's climate action plan if i recall correctly and so it's not that the airport is neglected um but that from an inventory perspective it's sort of double counting for us to include it in our inventory and i would put it more in the category because it's true that it's possible for the city to um advocate um although the role that we have in the airport you know management um board i forget the the term for it is a non-voting seat as i understand um so i would i would say that the opportunities for taking action are similar to the opportunities that we might have for say trying to get the clean heat standard passed um at a vermont wide basis or trying to get federal legislation passed right that we have lobbying opportunities to advocate and and use our voice as a municipal body to try to encourage other policy makers to also do their part for climate change but it's not something that we have direct control over and it's already being included in burlington's inventory so it's not just that it's hard and it was convenient for us to throw it out it was that it it doesn't sit within our jurisdictional borders the way that all the other infrastructure does and the way that most airports do for the cities that they live in so i realize it's frustrating for us as south burlington residents it seems like we might be able to do something about this really large source of emissions um but i think it would be um you know not unproductive essentially to include it in the inventory if we didn't have the opportunities to do things about it every year like we do with everything else that's included in the plan and i'll just follow up on that it is not included in burlington's inventory that's publicly available um information okay well we and and and another it's a curiosity here you know i you don't control my business and yet my emissions from my manufacturing business are included yeah we our director of planning and zoning was going to respond thank you councillor i'm right i just wanted to add to what uh ethan was saying which is that i spoke uh today with the acting director of aviation at the airport to confirm that they are developing the sustainability master plan for the airport which will include a inventory of emissions from all ground transportation all buildings and all civilian aircraft as well as a plan and implementation actions for how to reduce emissions they're expecting that to be complete by the end of the the year so um thank you thank you all right the next person i i think we'll go back and forth donna if you could introduce yourself and donna leban um i was a member of the climate task force but this comment was kind of generated just this evening and uh as ethan was um so eloquently bringing so much information to you so quickly and it's just one overriding concern that i've had in listening to a lot of news reports about the number of young people who suffer from mental health problems and i think climate change is a huge issue for young people and you know in many cases they feel doomed because they just don't see anybody doing enough to solve the climate crisis and i think if anything it's an important message to send to young people that you know we are going to even if the state hasn't acted quickly enough that you know municipalities and cities um are taking climate action seriously and that the mental health of our young people depends on not only seeing that we are collectively willing to spend money and take action to deal with this um you know impending disaster really um but also that we want them to become involved because 40 years ago um i saw i saw fossil fuel the the oil industry as being a real problem that we were going to run out of fossil fuels well i was wrong we didn't we haven't run out but we found other problems that are equally as serious that require us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and i devoted 40 years of my life to trying to come up with solutions for this and i think that other young people will be encouraged and go into areas where they can personally and professionally make a difference and i think that'll really improve the mental health of a lot of young people to see that they can actually do something with the change the the change in the workforce that we were talking about earlier is that your what your it's it's not only changes in the workforce but it's just changing in the way everything is done you know it this literally affects you know it affects almost everything that we do in some way or another um and it is going to affect you know our population um i spent you know chris nider was here i happened to go through one of his model homes up at quinney asker ridge over the weekend and asked them there and they said well we talked to one of the residents too when we came in and i just said hey who where do you come from that you can afford these seven hundred thousand dollar homes and they said oh well he pointed out to all his neighbors they none of them are from vermont they are all from out of state and they all you know they this was not their first home uh that they were buying um and then i went and looked at the model home and it was beautiful it was really nice but the person showing the home she said oh we heard that south burlington is going to ban the use of fossil fuels for heating so i kind of set her straight on that and i said you know it's it's in effect it's not an outright ban there are systems that you can put in that use predominantly um um heat pumps um cold climate heat pumps but you know um do allow for for those coldest periods that you can incorporate some some uh some gas or some backup fuel into that system and she seemed satisfied with that answer and i said that would you know those are approved um you know those would be appropriate under under um south burlington's ordinance um because it's not the primary fossil it's not the primary heating fuel and um you know so those systems exist i mean you know i i checked with um chucks heating and they say they're putting in a lot of those right now you know it's just it it satisfies people's fear that they're not going to have heat in the coldest uh temperatures but they're probably not going to use nearly as much natural gas as they think they'd have to because the climate is warming and you know we'll still have some you know below zero days but i think in a lot of ways it's kind of passing this ordinance is passing the ordinance and passing the climate action plan is to help people help help people cope with the fact that things are changing and that we don't have to be afraid we know we know how to handle this thank you dana so there are four more people who are online who would like to speak i just want to mention that the hour is getting very late and the city council still has business left to do i will um permit uh shorter shorter uh comments and i i want to just let you know this isn't the last time that we will be discussing the plan because we will be uh not passing it tonight so i just wanted to encourage you all to do a minute and a half all right a few words oh amanda yes i haven't timed mine so i don't really know if it's going to be a minute and a half and i also um in response to ashley's and um comment and paul's response i um i'll change my comment a little bit and um i would also like to thank the task force for their work i think it's obvious it's a huge amount of work and um and it was relatively easily understandable um for someone like me um but um so and i appreciate that the plan emphasizes science-based emission targets um because um snow for our ski areas and and snowboard areas and maple trees don't care whether the co2 is accounted for in the climate action plan or not you know they just care that it's there and um and so i and i also don't care if the emissions come from civilian aircraft or the f-35 so i think um i think if i understand that um burlington's that burlington's climate action plan is going to include um the airport emissions and if that's the case then we don't want to double count it but i think it's important that any admissions that's not counted for by the airport in burlington's plan should be accounted for in south burlington's plan and hopefully the f-35 will be included with the airport with the airport emissions as a whole but if it's not i think it's got to be accounted for someplace it can't just we just can't pretend it's not there so um i urge the task force to um make any revisions necessary to south burlington's climate action plan to include emissions from airport that is not included in burlington's thank you amanda and carl martin thank you can you hear me yes i appreciate uh you're taking the time to allow comments uh my name is carl martin i live in montelier and i'm a member of people's green new deal vermont a local advocacy group i'm obligated to speak of this many because climate change which i will refer to from now on as global heating does not recognize municipal county state or national boundaries let's know that this is climate action week um in coordination with the un gathering in new york city where it will address the climate catastrophe hitherto neither the city of burlington nor the city of south burlington or the state of vermont has honestly and proactively accounted for aviation emissions i strongly urge the city of south burlington to make up for lost time and include aviation emissions including those contributed by the f-35s in the climate action plan because aviation contributes significantly to carbon outputs and to serve the desires of a relative minority for context international aviation which refers to flights that take off in one country and land in another is generally not covered by countries nationally determined contributions or n dc's even though international aviation as a 2018 contributed 1.2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions or about 600 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually according to the i ea from which i say all my data thank meanwhile total aviation emissions international and domestic combined contributed approximately 2.4 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions as of 2018 thank you carl i i'm sorry but we i need to come i have waited i understand i understand but we still have an hour left of our meeting sir and i need to you can continue at a future date sir please thank you otherwise i have to say that we won't listen to others please we need to have we need to have some appreciation we have an hour left of our meeting to go and we do want to hear from everybody and i would ask that you write to us if you need to have us hear it immediately otherwise we will have a future meeting and you are definitely welcome back it's just it's a late hour and and we need to continue our work and i would like to then hear from james lees and again in a minute and a half and i know it's short but i want to give you all i know you all have waited and i wanted to give you some time is james lees online okay hello hello so i appreciate the work of the task force but i think like several other people that omitting the aircraft uh is a big mistake uh the uh the airport is located in the city it's one of the biggest areas of business activity in the city it emits a huge amount of greenhouse gases and it's apparently gonna be the only one where the business itself makes its own plan why should why should that be why what is there so special about this airport that it gets to do its own inventory it gets excluded from the south burlington plan and it makes its own plan and can exclude the f-35 it just doesn't make sense this is this should be equal treatment for everyone they shouldn't be uh discrimination against ashley's business and she doesn't get the opportunity to make her own plan for her business but the airport which emits a million times more they get to control it doesn't even make sense we should have one plan for everybody or one overall task force and planning system for everybody in the city and uh it just uh it should be uh should be equal treatment for everyone and certainly it shouldn't be left to the airport to make its own plan because what we know about the airport is they want to expand yeah they're interested in thank you jimmy thank you jimmy we will be discussing this in the future spring with our airport jimmy i'm sorry but i have to cut you off this is your voices are coming through and i do appreciate it this is not a public hearing so i i still do want to hear because you have waited this much time but like i said we will have a future opportunity to to hear more and to have us think about what you're raising here with regard to the airport and drew i i just assume it's drew schatzer who spoke earlier is he still online yes hey and i want hey hello again drew schatzer yes i know i spoke before i said mostly what i needed to say and sorry for speaking at a turn but um i wanted to just highlight that if what i heard was correct that yeah they said that they wouldn't account for the militaries pollution you know the f-35 pollution just to remind folks the u.s. military is one of the largest polluters that has ever you know graced our planet they're also the most well-funded organization in the history of the planet these people that are perpetuating these abuses on our on our global population can't continue to do this and it's up to us at the local level to do what we can to hold them accountable and collecting this data is in my mind one of the best ways we can do that so please insist that we include at least the f-35s emission data if not the entire airports in our climate action plan thank you all for what you do thank you drew much appreciated and isaac yeah can you hear me yes okay i'll try to be really quick um i just i really agreed with ashley i appreciate everyone for their work and time with respect to the sustainability plan specifically there was a proposal that did was passed out of whatever the airport committee to fund that plan and i believe all it was doing was dealing with ground related transportation and all of that which they've been trying to address all along and then basically doing a carbon credit program for voluntarily for air traffic or for air passengers which is a pretty weak way of addressing aviation which is also not addressed again as people said in burlington's actual climate action plan and the only other comment i had was that net zero by 2050 is too late and we know that based on the latest science and so we're basing all of our recommendations and projections and electrify single occupancy vehicles and all of these plans on projections that we know are outdated those are from 2018 from the ipcc report um it's way out of date um so i i don't really think that we're basing this plan on the latest science which is unfortunate uh and that's all yeah thank you isek yeah i very much appreciate your voices and i i like i said this is not the last time we'll be discussing the plan um tell us about that the next time we'll be discussing this plan jesse this plan will be back on your agenda for discussion on october third and i believe at that point we'll have another draft another version of the yeah so for your october third meeting you're going to have the version of the plan that is more formally graphically laid out the rpc wanted to wait until after the uh climate action plan task force had voted on the document to then send the graphic designer substantively it'll be the same but it's going to look a lot more engaging very good so at that point you can provide feedback or adopt all right well thank you i i think that this is uh myself an excellent basis on which to start uh the the end zone is constantly shifting as we know and of course we all are very aware that the airport is here within our boundaries um but i i just want again thank you as other counselors have done um i didn't want to to end this discussion without really giving you a very sincere thank you because clearly the the amount of data that was crunched and and in terms of even discussing the the curve and what went into that curve i can only imagine you scratched the surface i'm sure tonight but you gave us a glimpse into all of that went into it so i just want to thank you for for giving us that all that was a lot well thank you for the time and for the opportunity to serve thank you yeah yeah very good so we are moving on to our next item which is item number 12 which is the fiscal year 24 budget yay yeah right just the budget at 1037 on council night um well well thank you i i think it's uh it's probably a cliche every budget year to say this is going to be a really hard budget year but this is going to be a really really hard budget year yeah um we have a number of key concerns which i outline in the memo the purpose of us coming before you tonight um is we've already outlined and provided sort of initial spreadsheets and rcip documents to city leadership team they're currently developing out sort of what it what it will cost to maintain core government services um but uh tonight we were going to uh like to get your feedback on um any sort of you know bumpers or things you'd like to see included in the budget um what some of those tax rate goals might be in order to provide leadership advice to our leadership team um including the climate action plan so sort of the the three main considerations that we're seeing in fy 24 number one we've talked about it a few times before but we entered fy 23 in about a 600 000 hole um a lot of that is due to inflationary impacts the most significant of that being our uh from when we initially put the budget together in october november of last year to the significant inflation increases we saw um by the time we closed our collective bargaining agreements and settled those um one of the uh the successes in that however is in this uh upcoming budget um we were able to negotiate a cap on what those cola increases will be i'll talk about that a little bit more um so that's the first how do we build out of uh the hole that we entered in fy 23 because of inflation impacts number two we've identified over our last uh jesse in my last few years and i think a number of leadership team have talked with you all about some of the gaps in core governance uh services that we have that's you know maintenance to our city parks that's uh you know the increased roadway infrastructure that we have pump stations um and we have you know for example we have you know the same number of dpw highway staff that we did 15 years ago and our inventory city streets is much higher than that um our parks inventory is higher you know there's those types of considerations that we've seen almost a little bit like the climate action plan that slide um that was presented about you know what are our goals and where are we at i would say the same could be true for some of our you know what the expectations are for maintaining our parks for maintaining our roadways um and how we've been funding those same is true with our capital improvement plan and our capital investments and our maintenance and facility needs so that's number two um number three is the one we've been talking about for the for the last hour it's about um how we will fund a climate action plan initiative um and what that will look like through the budget process whether that's something that we talk about separately um in our discussions whether something you'd like to see built out separately as part of um or a little bit more um ingrained in the core government discussion so i'm going to skip ahead i provided a lot of sort of background data that i hope was um informational around some of the um you know how we fund different departments um what was uh where our revenue sources come from uh i sorted by grand list what the tax rates are for other municipalities neighboring municipalities um we are the second lowest on that list um uh second only to willison which has a huge revenue source from their local options tax so i'm going to jump right ahead to what we're seeing in terms of projected expenditures i um for f y 24 so in order to maintain the same level of service that we're providing now where the types of costs increase that we're going that we forecast the first is what i already talked about that's the shortfall that we had in f y 23 on employee salaries it's looking about 330 000 that's what we're currently forecasting that we're going to need to make up in tax capacity talked about the f y 23 the planning and zoning capacity that we've had and that tax capacity will need to uh need to subsidize and then that increase that 4 cap is about a little over 500 000 and what that will cast for employees salaries another big highlight is the group health plan currently forecasting that as we discussed earlier at 6.4 percent i also included just a just a select number this is definitely not all inclusive but of the uh inflationary impacts things like our highway paving uh in order to meet our needs or what we're doing currently in f y 23 um increases we've seen in vehicle parts fuel and utilities uh for 180 market street two other things it's important to track for this upcoming year as we do have some ARPA funding that will um that we've been phasing out in order to smooth the tax rate increases that's at about 100 000 of an increased impact this year so total that we're seeing for um increase in expenditures we were to maintain core government service at the current level it's 1.8 million dollars but there's really good news on the revenue side um as we talked about earlier on the uh close of f y 22 surplus uh dollars of a 1.7 million dollar uh revenue above what we budgeted we're anticipating that some of those some of that revenue will be maintained into f y 24 so this is very conservatively uh estimated at the moment i have a footnote about how if we were to more aggressively estimate those numbers based on our actuals in f y 22 um that we may see a significant tax rate offset based on those forecasts so as so as a net again these are very preliminary very early projections we're looking at 715 000 in order to maintain an increase in the tax rate and um in order to maintain core government services that's 3.74 increase i have a note here on i want to note that that is without the leadership team weighing in at all on new things that we don't know about yes i talk a little bit here about the the city's capital improvement plan and the way it's been funded in the general fund i think at a prior meeting i talked about how there's a 3.1 million dollar gap between what we're funding through general fund and f y 23 and uh what's in f y 24 a lot of that is you know deferred projects that we knew we weren't going to fully fund and f y 24 knew they wouldn't all make the list but i think it goes to show that even if we spread out those capital costs over the 10-year life of our cip we're still looking at a very a an average cost that is not funded at the rates we're currently funding so we had an incremental improvement last year we went from 2.55 million dollars of general fund funding for the city's cip we went up to 2.69 million um but we also leveraged 722 000 in one time arpa expenses to fund the ambulance as well as the the dispatch consoles and a couple other improvements um so with uh so so without that funding the overall for the cip next year if we were to maintain it at level funding would absolutely not meet what our current cip has one comment i make here and i think is an important decision point for how we decide to build out the f y 20 or propose an f y 24 budget to council is whether or not we continue to leverage arpa funds to fund the cip and there's a way that we could do this similar to how we refunded city staff positions back in f y 22 and phase it out over the lifetime of our schedule that we can expand arpa funds um a way we could do it as well as we could target these arpa funding to specific cip expenditures that align with a lot of the funding needs that were identified in the community survey so that would be towards parks improvements towards sewer and wastewater infrastructure improvements there would be a way that we could tie those directly with those expenditures so that's one comment that i have i kind of put together a sort of a rough draft spreadsheet talking about different cip variations council could consider i'm happy to walk through those options looking at somewhere between you know a 1 percent to to 3 percent increase in uh in just funding the cip in terms of a tax rate impact and whether or not you want to include arpa funds in that or not to sort of maintain closer to level funding to what we did last year or i guess it's this current fiscal year so back to talk about you know what our you know priorities that we've been tracking for the last year or so number one pending adoption of the climate action plan um you know realizing the goals and investing in the municipal capacity in order to implement that plan successfully number two investing core government municipal services that have been historically underfunded begin to incrementally meet those needs and sort of close that gap between funding and community expectations along that strategic plan to meet fire ems capacity needs maintenance needs and uh in making investments in the modernization of core systems such as in human resources communications the city's financial systems uh plan for and continue to build adequate tax capacity to meet the city's capital needs um and then of course bring bridge this gap in the inflation shortfalls from f y 23 and then just just the note that we are going to be talking about the Bartlett Bay wastewater facility bond vote in upcoming council meeting and we are anticipating or we will be going to the voters for a tiff bond vote in march so in summary in order to maintain current levels of government operations we need an estimated $715,000 on the operation side to begin to incrementally build out of the cip funding deficits from covid budget years and keep place with inflation we need an additional 330,000 the difference between those two is somewhere between uh 4.79 percent that's the 700 and 15,000 plus some minor cip adjustments to 5.48 percent increase in the tax rate i also just for council's consideration included um if we were to have a dedicated one cent for climate action plan implementation that would also that would increase the tax rate 2.14 percent so all of those things combined um without some of the uh investments and historically underfunded operations that's between us about a 7 percent increase to the tax rate again of course all of these numbers very preliminary forecasting and i just want to say we're not thinking of a penny for climate change we're thinking about that as a penny on the tax rate in the general fund to support municipal operations to really embed how we address climate resiliency in all of our operations but we would talk about it like you know a penny for a percent for climate change or two or three or five or whatever you want to do okay this is uh where the rubber hits the road um i uh i see that tom has turned on his camera so that generally means he's got something to say go for it sure so just two things and i'm sort of look i'm looking at the questions you framed in your memo which again was exquisitely written so great work Andrew but at the end is uh you're asking are there any new initiatives or programs you would like to consider building into the proposed budget i've been on this council for eight years and one thing that's raised multiple times that i think factors into some of the recent discussions is one thing burlington does that i think we could do and uh i think we should look at it is a rental registry that would collect revenues and fees that could actually support how burlington does it use those fees in order to fund their enforcement officer so when you do the math out for rental those rental properties that they pay a certain amount every year that can generate 50 to 100 thousand dollars and that can be used to pay the salary as somebody that could be an enforcement arm on some of the ordinances that we were discussing earlier as well as on a rental stock so that's one thing that i've been abdicated for over the years and i think even more so this day uh looking at where the state landed on the rental registry it's worth south burlington considering and the other comment i'll say and then i'll stop talking but back to the earlier one as you're doing this budget estimates and i didn't really see it in your memo or not andrew if you are factoring an increase in fees a modest increase in fees just to keep pace with inflation and i don't recall us going through any methodical mechanism of looking at ratcheting up or keeping our fees at least tracking somewhat over the years as prices are going up as well hey tom yeah just to echo what i said before i think it is something we'll be looking at this round especially on the on the well on the general fund side um begun to have those conversations with our leadership team but um more particularly i think we'll be seeing it a lot more on the enterprise fund side what our rate you know what our rate structure is that's something else that has not been changed in a in a long time i think there'll be further conversations that will be coming to you within the very near future about what that's going to look like is that as as hard as the municipal side of this is our enterprise funds is going to be an equally heavy lift this year um we have not been investing in our capital needs and our enterprise funds nearly to where we we need to be in order to fund those improvements i i i have to say that looking at these numbers i went back to our our balance and um you know a lot of these things are legacy like the climate action plan that's legacy um and i think you know helen's not oh she is online um not wrong in saying that looking at staff members and how to be able to really equip our city our city services with you know the hours and expertise it will take in order to leverage all the opportunities out there um that that i i could see the smoothing over um some of it at least coming from those army funds um i i and and because it i think falls in line um with what the goals of those funds are um when we put it in perspective right when we look at the the numbers with that i mean yeah there's what is that the maintain current levels of operations with cip adjustments and phasing use of our public funds for capital investments i would like to see that um let's see options one two or three above with cap plus additional investments in historically underfunded operations is recommended by uh the leadership team that's i i guess i'd have to hear more about that i'm i'm more the option four with option three and then spending towards the climate action plan implementation but i'd like to hear more about option five about what is historically underfunded here according to the leadership team yeah so and we can certainly go back to the leadership team say you know what are your what are your ideas about you know bridging these funding gaps um you know council has some interest in having that discussion so what are your what are your thoughts um i think the you know what what it could look like for example is you know we have a we're trying to look at something like parks maintenance right now from a staff hours standpoint to um to what we're currently you know what we're funding what we're going to need and what that bridging that gap will look like over time it's not going to happen in year one um it may be a five-year plan it may be a three-year plan um but i think that that uh you know with council's direction you know come forward and um and sort of give you some of those some of those ideas some of those options Helen yeah i i'm i'm gonna have to um bow out in a few minutes for a little time and then come back but um i just i i think that it it's time for the council to really have the you know come to jesus's conversation about what it is we we've grown we have lots more housing roads requirements and we have an increased staffing and in a number of areas and i think we have to really consider as a community what it is the public um expects and i'm not sure we're able to deliver on all those expectations with the current staffing so i would like to see the leadership ship team come back with you know this is the staffing the additional staffing and the funding that we think we need to deliver on a lot of the concerns all the concerns i guess although you can't never can you know meet everyone's expectations but you know the really important concerns for this community i'm just i'm so tired of you know we don't have enough people to to take care of the parks you don't have enough people for planning and yet we move ahead with you know new plans and city center and development and no one wants to put up you know uh or many people don't want to put the brakes on that yet we don't have the staffing to um respond adequately we look at climate change and to me that is incredibly important and unless we i mean i'd like to know do we need eight staff person to just go after grants and organize our implementation plan so that it isn't just taxpayers dollars i mean i think um ethan laid out you know that this isn't just all taxpayer dollars there's a lot of money available and i think matt kota can probably speak better on that than i but it needs a a live person working for the city looking for those grants and winning them um so we can actually make good on the policy decisions that we have um enacted and i think by in large those policy decisions do reflect what the community wants and we keep sort of let's make it really skinny let's you know do it with less and at some point you can't do it with less you got to figure out how you have i mean we've grown we're 20 000 people we're not 15 000 people and so i i guess that's a roundabout way or a long-winded way of saying you know i'm in for some significant increases and if it requires tax increases um that's where i think we need to be and that's the direction i personally would give the administration but this is our first conversation so but that's how i feel thank you anybody else i hate tax increases over three percent but i know inflation is running well that's this comes up every year for some reason yeah it's part of the budget discussion right but i recognize inflation is running between eight and nine percent and there's a lot of one funded capital improvements that need to be made and then if you're going to put your money where your mouth is with climate action you're you're gonna have to spend some money and and not just money on on what you're talking about which is like a position or somebody to you know do the work but you're gonna it it costs extra money to to buy that zero turn all electric you know mower that's a lot more expensive than a gas powering right so there there is added cost to doing some of these things you know you're the next vehicle you buy for the city i mean not not police or fire but if it's going to be a pluggable hybrid it probably would cost more than but not a lot more and there's probably a tax credit on it too you know so um we're gonna we're gonna have to figure out what to do but just i like option three but it doesn't include the the climate money that if we bring in the arpa funds i like using the arpa funds for the climate could do that too we have until 2026 to use the use it up but you got to allocate it by 24 so by calendar year like Helen suggested we're willing to hear what the leadership team would suggest for those unfunded priorities i think that makes sense okay okay helpful direction thank you all right all right fun meetings ahead fun meetings ahead all right other businesses item 14 is there any i have 12 items for other business i want to talk about the just kidding where's the hook you have a motion in front of you for item 15 i think yes i do have a motion in front of me where is i have the language right here uh so i move that this public body enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing the negotiation or securing a real estate for purchase or lease by the city of south riland and inviting in jesse baker andrew bulldoke paul connor and collin mcneill is there a second second all right all those in favor i i tom and helen right that's good sir all right yes yes i all right that's all five of us off we go is that it we will not be returning we will not be returning 201 yeah okay