 Good evening. My name is Kerubo Albi, your moderator for this evening and I'm so excited because we have very important people today that will present and the first one will be Elaine Wang, the Winozki City Manager and Winozki Mayor Christine Lott. And before we get into it, I will let you know that we are having an ongoing election coverage by Town Meeting Television and this is one of our series forums that we are bringing to you in advance of Town Meeting Day on Tuesday, March 7th, 2023. And Town Meeting Television hosts forums with all candidates and covers all ballot items you will see on your ballot. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connects you with issues that shape your local community. And if you're tuning in for the first time, if you're tuning live, we welcome your questions at 802-862-3966. That's 802-862-3966. And you can watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast Channel 1087 and Ballington Telecom Channels 17 and 217 as well as online at youtube.com Town Meeting TV. Without further ado, I welcome you. Thank you so much, Kerubo. You're welcome. We are happy to be here today to present the Winozki City budget. On our agenda, we're going to start with our strategic vision, run through the property taxes and propose budgets, do a review of all funds, and then emerging issues and upcoming items and then wrap it up with voting information. So to not keep anyone in suspense, this budget requires an 11.66 percent tax rate increase and we are proposing to use reserve funds to actually reduce the impact on your bill to a round of 5 percent tax increase. So as a reminder, everything we do in city leadership is grounded in the community's strategic vision. This was set by the community in 2015. The themes still hold true today with economic vitality, municipal infrastructure, housing, and a safe, healthy, connected community being our primary goals. After that vision was set, we spent several years doing a lot of plans, creating a master plan, transportation plan, etc., and the community took some big votes, the pool project, mainstream revitalization, etc. So we really have a driving vision that we've been focusing on for the last few years and we're trying to carry that vision forward thinking about affordability and equity. So a quick recap of some highlights from this past fiscal year. We welcomed our new city manager Elaine here. Previous to that it had been about a year without a permanent manager. We've been coming out of the pandemic so we have been able to continue moving forward these important initiatives despite some some rocky seas. Main Street project and pool I mentioned, partnership with the school and federal funding. We were able to offer a ton of free youth programming. We also completed an equity audit, launched a new inclusion and belonging charter, and made some important progress on locally addressing the housing issue. So in light of new funds, one-time funds, the American Rescue Plan Act, federal grant money, and upcoming tax increment financing revenue, council gave staff the guidance to potentially right size some capacity in programming and catch up with capital maintenance plans. In addition to that though, we have some some serious challenges with inflation as high as it is. Our union contracts are tied to the consumer price index so we were required to provide a 7.7 percent, six and a half percent increase, sorry, and we also increased non-union wages in a similar vein. Health insurance is going up and we saw only modest growth in our grand list. So grand list is the total taxable value of all property in the city. So we'll continue on. So this budget sees a nearly 12 percent growth and expenses but uses about a quarter of federal COVID relief funds known as ARPA to reduce the tax rate increase to 5.09 percent this year. We also need to raise our utility rates in part to catch up on capital needs for a total impact of about $260.83 for the year for the average home in Winooski for water and wastewater services. We will need to use new revenue from the tax increment finance district in fiscal year 2025 which is after this budget year that we're proposing to cover what ARPA is paying for in fiscal year 2024 in this proposed budget. More on that later. I know it sounds confusing if you haven't been following these last few years. Note that this is the municipal portion of your tax bill. This does not include taxes that pay into the education fund meaning what goes to the Winooski school district. So this is what you're getting for your municipal tax dollars. Just going to show up on the screen here in a minute. If your home is valued at $225,000 your taxes in fiscal year 2024 under the proposed budget would be $2,812.28. Those taxes are shared between the public services shown in this green table. Police and dispatch support the safety of our community members. It's the highest share of the general fund in part because it's the one department that we staff 24 hours a day. Seven days a week 365 days a year. General administration is the next largest share of the general fund. Makes all of the other functions more effective. Things like the city manager's office, human resources, finance, clerks and planning and zoning and communications. Capital expenses of the next big chunk here includes debt service for the main street revitalization project and city vehicle replacements. Next one down is community services. That's not a common phrase around Vermont or even in the country. So to clarify, that's services that include the library, the senior center of recreation, parks, the pool and affordable childcare. And I would characterize those as services that support the vitality of our community by providing green spaces, safe spaces, learning spaces and programming. Fire and code enforcement protect our safety and health related to buildings and road hazards. Code enforcement our officer hours include enforcing city parking regulations, which is mostly about safety and most of Winooski and in the downtown it supports our economic vitality because it ensures turnover of parking spaces for business customers. Second to last year on this in this green table is regional programs. They're listed there. These organizations provide additional public services to the community and or support city staff in serving the community. The city has limited control over the fees charged by these organizations because they are independent and they have their own boards that set their own budgets. The last group here is in the general fund is the O'Brien Community Center. That's the building that houses community services operated by the city or other organizations and many of you might be familiar with it because it houses the library and publicly rentable spaces. Could you speak a little more about the public space usage? I think a lot of people in the community don't know about it. Sure, so there's a couple of thanks for asking that because I think you're right. So there are a couple of rooms in the O'Brien Community Center in the back where the gym is with that nice glossy floor and the basketball hoops. And then a room in the front where the COVID test and testing clinic was for a long time and the community used to have many gatherings. I understand before I got here in that front room and in the back. So that is available for rental use. However, we have limited staffing. So I'm sure it's there's more demand for it than we can actually staff. But if you are interested, you can contact the community services department. Actually don't remember their phone number, but if you call City Hall, we will absolutely transfer you to them. So that number is 802-655-6410. There is a rental fee. I think it's $15 for residents and $25 for non-residents. I think that's right. So per hour. So we'll get back to the slides here. So the previous slide with the green table was about where your taxes go by service type. This slide shows where your taxes go by expense type. Most of Winooski's government services are provided by people. It's not like, say, a manufacturing plant where maybe most of the expense is in machinery, for example. That's why so much of this pie chart of Winooski's budget are in salaries and benefits. That's what it takes to staff these services that are provided to you by local government. So yes, again, the context for the budget is what services those budgets pay for and what it takes to deliver those services, again, for the most part, it's people. So I don't know if you can see this at home. This text is very small. But basically, this is the organizational chart of all the people that serve you. And I want to note that the very top of that box, the people who are in charge, are actually you, the residents and voters. So everybody else below that, we work for you and don't forget that you have a right to ask for services. And even if we can't provide it, at least you have a right to ask for an explanation about what's going on and why we're spending the money the way we are. Actually, I think for the sake of time, I'll move on from there. But if you're interested in any of the particular services, your presentation is available on the town website, or the city's website, at WinooskiVT.gov-town-meeting. Thank you, Elaine. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what is changing in this budget, what's driving that increase, and what you can expect to see. So over the last year, year plus, we have actually been able to add several positions to staff to increase programming using grant funds. So we are, those grants are ending, and we are proposing retaining some of those positions. And so we're going to need to fund those with general fund revenue from property taxes. So I have an overview here of some roles and the operational impact so that you understand why we are making these investments. So this is primarily a community services investment. This is a substantial investment in our community services department, which we haven't done in recent years. We haven't done a lot of growth in that area. So we are proposing to retain our youth interventionist at 28 hours a week. This person is able to work with dozens of youth in our community and bring a positive impact to their life. We are able to expand hours for our children and family program manager to expand access to your around childcare and summer camp for working class families in our community. We have added community services admin and outreach coordinator and recreation assistant who are supporting some of that work, as well as making it easier to provide hands on support with paper applications, for example, to make sure everyone can access programming with the city. So community services, recreation, this, we believe this is intervention and this is equity. This is where we build connections and get kids and families involved in local government. This is where people are really going to feel the day to day interactions with the city and make sure that we are expanding access to the services we provide to include everybody in Winooski. In addition to those roles, we have some other service expansions. Part of those are partner support. So we have a previously funded community economic development officer role that was vacated and we chose to pivot that role to become a housing initiative director to support projects to create more capacity for the single biggest concern that we hear from residents and one of the primary priorities coming out of our equity audit and that's addressing access to safe and affordable housing in our community. We have set aside funds for translation and interpretation, which apologies don't appear on the slide here, but that is to actually put some resources behind a language access plan will be developing again to increase access to local government and make sure we're supporting all residents. We have some funding for a new pilot program. We're calling mediated community voices, which seeks to invite community members we don't often hear from to share their experiences with local government in a safe and supported way. We are adding some funding for St. Mike's Fire and Rescue, who have been a critical partner for years providing side by side fire service for us and also 100% of our emergency medical responses in the community. Then we have some smaller dollar amounts here for town meeting TV, which obviously is helping us connect people to local government. And then Winooski Valley Parks District, who support some of our trail maintenance and improvements. I should note that these dollar values for our partners are lower than what they request and what other communities are providing. We are trying to catch up. So to balance out some of these expansions, you know, we try to be sensitive to affordability. We also have some reductions. So we had a grant funded equity director role that has been vacant since May of 2022. We were planning to refill later in FY 24. Now we're pausing that for FY 25. We are still doing equity work to be clear in all of our departments and we believe the investments I spoke about in community services are laying the groundwork that will expand capacity and really support this role when we refill it in the future. May I ask what you're doing, what exactly is it that you're doing to make sure that this happens? Do you want to talk about the work you're doing with the leadership team and staff? Sure. Which this do you mean in terms of equity efforts? Yes, that's exactly what I mean. That's a great question. So what I've been trying to do since our equity director quits is to make sure that the new equity director, if we can fund that, is not put in the same position that the last one was, which was that we were not ready for them essentially. So what readiness means is that everyone knows that equity is part of their job and what that actually means. So a lot of communities around the U.S. are not necessary. Oh goodness, okay. Thank you. A lot of communities around the U.S. are still trying to figure this out. Unfortunately, we are also trying to figure it out. So, you know, it could be like, how does planning and zoning understand that equity is part of their job? How does the clerk's office understand that, you know, how to treat people when they come in in a culturally competent and sensitive way? How does the police department interact with the community in a way that's really fully informed by individual experience? How does my office reach out in a way that people don't feel intimidated by in talking to the manager? How does it can go on and on? How do we plow the streets in an equitable way? How do we make sure we can put enough money aside for sidewalk maintenance? Because that's absolutely an equity issue that affects a lot of different groups of people that have been historically left out. So those are a lot of details to try and figure out over time. So, you know, an equity director, there's a few ways they can add value to city operations and enhanced equity. One of them is policy advice and actually our last one left us with a lot of great suggestions and they take time to implement. So we've been trying to work through those and it does take time. The great thing about Winooski that I so appreciate when I landed is that I don't have to convince anyone in the leadership team, meaning the department heads or the council or any of the commissions, that this is important work. Racial equity, we know we need to be doing it. Other kinds of equity, we also need to be doing that. Disability access, LGBTQIA plus equal treatment, you know, the list goes on, right? And age, those are often, you know, discriminated categories. So, you know, national origin, immigrants, all those things. So I don't have to talk anyone into it. Everyone knows we got to do it. Their question is, how do we do it? So until we have some start of an answer for each department and each person, each position, the new equity director, I will guarantee you they will be in the same situation. Too much work to do faced with, you know, with potentially a racist environment, which is not conducive to a healthy job. So I was hopeful that we would be ready in this fiscal year, but unfortunately the budget is not conducive to that because we want to try to be affordable. So the budget is always the drill back. Yes, and I know how that sounds and I get it. But yes, we are still trying to make progress as we go, trying to figure out those pieces. Like, what does it really mean? We have, we get all the training, we understand the concepts, but what does that mean? Yeah, the how, exactly. Well, thank you. I'll give one example, actually, because I know that's all very hand wavy and very conceptual, right? So one example is we put in a scholarship program so that actually we modified the scholarship program so that they used to require more documentation. And it turns out that we didn't really need that documentation and it was creating a barrier for people to apply for scholarships to participate in recreation programs. So we just got rid of the documentation requirement. Another example is, again, through those grant funded positions, especially the Community Services Administrative Assistant, we set aside some of the program registrations for paper. So we open it up. It's like this many slots are for electronic. We know that not everybody finds that user friendly. We reserve a certain amount for paper and then there's a lot of hand holding to make sure that if there's a language barrier or just like I don't understand this form, there's somebody spending time with those families and making sure that they also have access because otherwise all of our programs would fill up electronically and it would be gone. So that's not equitable. Thank you. I'm glad that you're looking into every last detail. We are trying. Yes. Thank you. And we're also looking for feedback. You know, if you see something we're not doing, we absolutely want to hear that, especially me because the Chief Equity Officer really should be the city manager. So I want to hear from everyone. Thank you, Elaine. I want to make sure folks understand too that that's not the only thing that we are pausing on here. You know, we do this unified work plan program. It's a grant that comes through our Regional Planning Commission. We normally set aside funds for that every year. We are pausing that in this budget and just carrying forward the work from last year. We paused increasing program supplies and materials and community services. Now that just means that we won't be able to add new. We are still able to carry out our existing programs. And then we did cut two positions, one of two AmeriCorps roles that we have. We had found the second one very challenging to fill. And then one of two library circulation assistance. This does mean that the leadership in the library has to spend a little more time on circulation than programs. But in order to make space, you know, to balance the options we had here, Council decided there was more, it was more priority to invest in the youth interventionist and in some of these other roles. Last, in order to try to balance, we have added some new revenue. We have a plans review fee. We're working with the state on an additional local options tax. So what that comes out to as shared before, this 11.7% increase like that's the growth. However, we're buying that down with the fund balance so that you would actually only see a 5% increase. And what that means because this is one time money, that fund balance, we have to close this gap in future years. And so this is where we're proposing using the TIF revenue. So we'll be seeing next year a large amount of new tax revenue from the investments we made in the downtown. We're finally paying that debt off of investing in infrastructure to spur growth in our downtown. That new revenue will close this gap next year. When we stop paying that debt, that revenue comes into the general fund and will cover this gap for us. Historically, we have talked about using that fund to using that new revenue to catch up, maybe do capital, mitigate tax increases. And so that's the way it's being applied to this budget so that we can see this growth and reduce the tax impact that you will feel. Okay, so with the use of $409,000 in fund balance to get to that 5.09% tax rate increase, a Winooski homeowner with a home assessed at $225,000 would pay $136.35 more in property taxes in fiscal year 2024 than in the current year fiscal year 2023. I'm going to breeze by this slide because we're getting short on time. Do you want to maybe do emerging issues? Yes, sure. And we'll go by these slides as well, emerging issues. So this slide describes some uncertainties that have the potential to impact the city's financial picture. There's six I want to describe. Recent news stories indicate inflation may continue. Obviously, that's not news to anyone during the grocery store trying to buy eggs. So costs might be more expensive than we budgeted for. City plans to sell the O'Brien Community Center to the Champlain Housing Trust. We will still continue to occupy space in there. We'd be paying rent. There's just some uncertainty in those plans there. For Main Street, we do have some concerns that that revitalization project will result in higher bids than we planned for. Recruitment continues to be very difficult for police and fire, especially for our fire department. It's a paid call model and that's just difficult to recruit for because people need to basically have a job with income and then work part-time. So if you're interested, it's a rewarding line of work. You can contact us at City Hall. Regional Dispatch, that's a service that we've been trying to work with neighboring communities to stand up a regional center for dispatch services. There's just a little bit of uncertainty in that future, but we have built into the budget the option to participate if it turns out that that works out. If not, then we can reallocate those funds for another purpose. And finally, unfunded priorities and future needs. You can just breeze through those real quick. Sure. We can folks can ask questions about these in the future. So let's just wrap it up with what you're going to see on the ballot. City and school budget to council seats to board seats. Real quick, a charter change for just cause eviction that residents petitioned onto the ballot. If voters approve that, it'll go to the state legislature for further consideration. There'll be a lot more opportunity for input along the way. Well, you wrapped it up. Thank you so much for tuning in to Town Meeting TV's ongoing coverage of local candidates, local budgets, and ballot items. And you can find this and more forums on www.channel17.tv and don't forget to vote. It's on or before March 7th and ballots are not mailed automatically. So please check with your local clerk to request a battle, to request a ballot, or make sure to get to the polls on March 7th. Thank you so much for watching and sharing Town Meeting TV. And if you're not already, please subscribe to our Town Meeting TV YouTube channel. This has been your host, Kerubo, and have a good night.