 On Monday, April 1st, I'd like to call to order this regular meeting of the Lewinsky Liquor Control Board. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Deputy Mayor Hal Costa. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Alright, so it's that time of year where we have many, many renewals here. I think we're taking these in groups, as to like the kind of license renewal it is. So our first item is approval of restaurant-only renewals, first being for Subway at 476 Main Street and Tiny Thai Restaurant at 24 Main Street. So I'm going to have Lieutenant Tarkhalas come up as well. There are some points we want to make about these collectively as a group, so I think we'll just do that first. So just for those, just for the public and the council's information, when annual liquor and restaurant renewal licenses come in, we run them by our code enforcement folks and by the police department just to ensure that our business community is treating our residents and our visitors well as in compliance with things. So Lieutenant Tarkhalas is going to give you kind of a quick overview of these permits for this year. So first of all, James, I've met some of you before, but thank you to the city council and the air and the city manager. We'll meet you here today. So yeah, I would say about 8 to 10 months ago we were approached by the chief of Department of Liquor Control, Chief Geneste. We're starting a pilot program called Place of Last Drink and we are part of that pilot. And it's a good way for us to be proactive in kind of documenting interactions that we have with patrons of, you know, bars in particular to help track like what activity we're dealing with coming directly from these establishments. I am pleased to say that I think for the first time, from what I've been told, that we've had no negative incidents or interactions with regarding, you know, the establishments and the police. So I feel like that this new pilot program has enabled both the PD and the businesses themselves to have a more proactive, I guess, control over, you know, the patrons and attracting mechanism. And we've seen, you know, great strides and just the lack of, I guess, need or involvement for us to get brought to these places. So that's kind of in a nutshell. But yeah, it's been a real positive experience for us. And like I said, it looks like things are looking up as far as, you know, the lack of need for law enforcement to interact with the patrons after they've left. So the establishments are doing a good job? Yeah, so I think this place last drink was a collaborative initiative to say, hey, you know, you know, the bar owners and staff will be able to, if they see a problem, they can track it through the system, let us know before it maybe becomes a repetitive issue. And us doing the same thing where if we have an incident, we can help track, okay, say like this bar had this person last. But I think since we're both more aware of kind of what's going on, we've seen basically a zero report of issues in the last year, which I think is unprecedented. So yeah, so that's good. And the pilot program also involved bringing a lot of the restaurant owners and servers together with the police department and DLC to do some training. So also strengthen relationships between everybody. But I think it's really a testament to our business community that they're, you know, doing the right thing, keeping people safe, keeping their vibrant cool hip place where people want to be. But at the same time, making sure that people are treating each other in the community well. And so that was our overall point we wanted to make. So we have no concerns about any of these permits moving forward as the summary point. Absolutely. It's been really positive for us in the community. That's great to hear. I actually hadn't heard about that before. So thanks for telling us about it. Yeah, absolutely. So I have a question. So is it the communication between you and the establishments? It's a program and we like law enforcement has a login. So if we have an interaction with someone who's maybe let's use an example, someone who's like stumbling as they leave a bar, we can if we can establish that it came from X, you know, example bar that liquor control could document that or we would go to them to document and then they could have maybe like an educational moment saying with the staff, you know how this person present when they came in? Was it, you know, did you tell them just to leave immediately? And then we're dealing with it, which is appropriate. Like don't come in here or, you know, maybe they presented okay. And then after you guys gave them the strength, they started to show problems. And so it's a program of not trying to point fingers or blame. It's just how can we better ourselves to help track and teach at the same time? So I think that's the fundamental point of the program. Great. Any other questions about this program? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Shall we move through our approvals then seeing no concerns from staff about these? I would entertain a motion to approve our restaurant only renewals for subway and tiny tie restaurant. So moved. Second. Motion by Jim second by how all those in favor. Hi. Motion carries item B approval of second class liquor licenses 2019 renewals for beverage warehouse at one East street commodities natural market of Wanooski at 65 Wanooski Falls way. KGR enterprises Inc. at 264 melts Bay Avenue. RL Valley Inc. doing businesses checks mobile at 298 East Allen Street. Shiva Ram LLC Wanooski Jiffy Mart at 357 main. Simon's premium gas. Simon's Wanooski store deli at 262 main. Visina Pamela Jay doing business as chicks market at 60 Hickok. West Coast Inc. doing businesses Champlain farms at 280 East Allen. West Coast Inc. doing business as fast stop at 155 main and Walgreen Eastern Co doing businesses right at 321 main. Any questions or concerns about any of these items? Seeing and hearing none I would entertain a motion to approve second class liquor license 2019 renewals. Second. Motion by Amy second by Mike all those in favor. Please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Item C approval of second class liquor license restaurant and sidewalk usage permit for Dutch delicatessen LLC at 65 Wanooski Falls way. For the benefit of council. Jesse how does the sidewalk permit fit with the liquor license. I feel like I haven't seen that before where they're combined. So I think the. The second class liquor licenses for on sale sales right now consumption. So it's not. It's just what they're looking to secure as part of this year's permitting. So they do have a sidewalk permit to place tables kind of around that corner in front of. Dutch deli which by the way used to be Happy Belly deli same location. But they won't be serving on the sidewalk. So like product product placement basically. Right. Okay. Any questions or concerns from council. Or the public I mean you've already said no. I'd entertain a motion to approve second class liquor license restaurant and sidewalk usage permit. So. Second. Motion by House second by Jim all those in favor please say aye. Motion carries. Item D approval of first class liquor license 2019 renewals for. Asian bistro at 25 when you ski Falls way. Big red represents LSE at 46 Main Street. Do I need to read the full. Okay. Champlain mill DBA water works for quarters brewing. Goucho LSE Dolly Boca Cafe gum shooting business sneakers last stop. Mandarin McKee's monkey house our house bistro Papa Franks. The RV a I'm sorry the regular veterans association sweet Babu and meal bar. The veterans of foreign wars post and juniors original. Any questions or concerns from council. I would entertain a motion to approve first class liquor license 2019 renewals. So. Second. Motion by Mike second by Amy all those in favor please say aye. Hi. Did I hear. Okay. Motion carries. With that we have reached the end of the agenda items for the liquor control meeting and I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Motion by House second by Jim all those in favor please say aye. Hi. Motion carries at liquor council meeting adjourned. All right. So let's move on to our. Regular when you ski city council meeting at 610 p.m. on Monday April 1st. Please join me with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Allison. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands by nation under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. So the first item of business is agenda review. Are there any. Is there any desire to make a change to the agenda order as is. Next up we have a public comment. No public comments. The next item of business is the consent agenda. This is approval of the city council minutes of March. Payroll warrant warrant for the period March 10 to March 24 ending March 29th warrant ending March 29th and approval of the T 60 town highway plan. Are there any questions or concerns about any of these items from council. Seeing and hearing none I would entertain a motion to approve all three items on the consent agenda. The minutes the payroll warrant and the town highway plan. So. Motion by Jim second by Mike all those in favor please say aye. Motion carries city update. Great. Thank you. A number of updates for you tonight. One just a friendly reminder that we will be spending Saturday together at the city's first equity in diversity summit. It will be eight o'clock to four o'clock at the senior center we will have breakfast and lunch. And I Julie sent around some homework to people today so I'd encourage you to take a look at that before Saturday. I think we're up to about 40 RSVPs. So it should be a good community conversation. And I really want to give a public shout out thanks to the group of students who have been working on putting together a lot of materials that we will receive and talk about on Saturday. They're led by Nellie and Luke at the high school they are they've really put a lot of time and effort into it and I think they're really going to add a lot of value to the conversation. So don't forget to come hang out with us on Saturday. The Memorial Day planning parade planning is off and running so the Memorial Day parade will be on Saturday May 25th annual event. You all are invited and encouraged to attend if you can. So you'll be hearing from me. Alicia is coordinating from the city side this year and Craig Levine is coordinating the parade as a whole more to come on that. So there's been a lot of community conversation about the proposed development at Main and Mansion Street which is quite a large building that's under consideration. It is part it is in the Gateway Zoning District so it's considered through the project review team project review committee. So that PRC meeting is this Wednesday at two o'clock here at City Hall so every it's a public meeting everyone is welcome to attend. We do have a very prescribed agenda and materials that are available if people are interested but it will be here Wednesday at two. The planning commission and I don't know Christine if you're going to share this as well but after doing a huge amount of work to get the master plan completed they are moving from a twice a month schedule down to a once a month schedule and giving themselves a little more time to kind of get through the next round of zoning updates and they're also taking April off so there will not be an April planning commission meeting. Heather and some of her colleagues have awarded the Wayfinding Grant or the Wayfinding contract to Land Works. We went through with full RFP process and they got the award. Land Works in partnership with Maha Design. So they are the Land Works recently completed the City of Burlington Wayfinding update as well as the UBM Wayfinding update so they have a lot of experience in our region and we're excited to move to get going on that effort. Just a reminder that the Myers Memorial Pool is out to bid with a bid opening on April 10th so we will be bringing you back more information on that in the next couple of meetings. I want to give you a little heads up about your next meeting on April 15th. So on April 15th we're going to do kind of two larger presentations. One will be an overview of the city's capital improvement plan specifically highlighting the Main Street revitalization project and the assumptions that we've met. We've made along the way so far about that project to give you a little more context about decision points coming up, implications for the city, etc. And then we're also going to do an overview of the history of the O'Brien Community Center and the financial modeling on that moving forward as Lisa's will be coming in front of you in the next couple of meetings as well. So just a heads up on that. And for the last update I'm going to turn it over to Ray to announce this. I do not need to. We're working with IqooAware for the Longtree Veterinary Center of the Nation's Main Committee and this is being done really as a risk-raising effort around the inclusion of concert pathways and pathways coming into IqooAware. So where you're probably not here is something best. Show up at 9 o'clock at the community center and we're going to walk down to the Milwaukee area. And what's the call again? April Stool's Day. I can't take crap today. That's all I had. Thank you Ray. So we'll move next to council reports. I don't know what order I did last time but can I start with you Mike? We have not had a meeting for the Public Sports Commission scheduled yet. We did have a resident reach out to John about applying for the commission. I read his letter of intent and I don't know if I'm allowed to say his name right now. But it looked really good and I'm just glad that someone reached out and wants to volunteer and get on a commission. That's awesome. If I can just add to that. So for those of you who were at the town meeting prep presentation at the school the night before town meeting day, there was a gentleman who was asking very good questions about water resources and whatnot. And so that's the gentleman who has applied. So obviously has a lot of expertise in municipal infrastructure and water issues. And as a Manuski resident and looking for ways to get involved. Actually I have something to add to that. He's actually expecting a baby so he's going to be rooted in Manuski. He's a homeowner so I think people like that are always looking for it. And one more update. I did do the school tour for the bonnets coming up in May. And I suggest if the residents of Manuski are watching this meeting. If you have a chance to get out there and do that tour. It's interesting and there's a lot of stuff going on in the school that needs to be done. And I'm glad I went. Thank you. So I have a couple updates to share one since the last meeting I met with Ray coffee to talk about our senior programming and get some historical knowledge about that. So thank you Ray for meeting with me. I also resigned my position with downtown Manuski in order to serve as the liaison to that group. And as I think most people know downtown Manuski is in the process of hiring an executive director so I've attended two meetings. In terms of looking at hiring in that process but no decisions have been made there yet. And we'll keep you posted on that. And in my role as administrative liaison I met with Jesse we will be meeting once a month to talk about operational items at the city and how they really back to us. And a lot of what we talked about at our first meeting was historical context and just level setting things. One of the biggest things that I think folks should know about is that the city's city transitioned their it. So I think a lot of us here know that but they migrated from a physical old server to being cloud based. And they're going to have much more storage and functionality and a big piece of that is migrating emails and the website. So emails migrated from dot org to dot gov extensions and the website did the same. So we're all encouraged to start using the dot gov extensions. Thank you. Those are all my updates. All right. I'll work back to front. Most recently attended the planning commission meeting. As Jesse mentioned they are moving from a twice a month to once a month schedule and have decided not to have a meeting this April. They are now that the master plan is in place. They want to focus on looking at form based code coming back to that and revisiting and trying to tweak and make it work better. Now that we've had it for two years three years. Two and a half years. Yeah. So they're looking at different aspects of that. You know the last meeting they were talking about parking parking requirements and how that impacts development as well as community neighborhoods. As well as split zoning which is the idea of somebody having a property in the gateway code and purchasing another property in the residential side and where will we draw the line on. You know do they stay the same as their buffer there. So that's something they've been working on. I also attended the housing meeting housing commission meeting where they really dug into the details of the housing trust fund with the high level guiding targets and rules would be with that so that we could start implementing that. Also discussed focusing their energy on that first for the next couple of meetings and once that is solidified then returning to the inclusionary zoning discussion. I also attended one of the meetings for the executive director for the downtown association and just participated in an interview process there. They had invited a lot of community partners to that for input. And Jesse and I also met with the Wendyski Housing Authority in an effort to just establish a relationship and start some relationship building there. That's all I can remember for now. So I just want to plug the upcoming diversity and equity summit that Jesse talked about. It's been in the planning for a number of months and I think it'll be a great experience for those of you out there who are on the fence about attending. I think it'll be a great experience for you to consider to commit to. It'll be a great way to engage in some really great conversation and storytelling and making connections and really getting a better sense of how do we lead in our ways in our work in the city through a lens of equity. So I hope you can attend and it's from 8 to 4 and it'll be well brought. So I have no liaison updates to report. I did want to just put the April 13th eco families of Wendyski celebration on the calendar. I noticed that they're putting together kind of a pre-green update celebration for families and kids and the O'Brien Center and will include information on potential tree planting locations in the city. So it'll be kind of a nice opportunity for kind of getting ready for when things actually turn green. All right. Thanks everyone. We will move on now to our regular items. First up is approval of an event permit for public safety day, which Heather will present to us. Welcome back officer. Hello everyone. So the police department submitted an application to hold the annual public safety day on Sunday May 19th from noon until 4 30pm. They've been holding this for about the past five years. This event involves closure of Wendyski Falls way and possibly over 200 people and so needs to come to you for approval. It's basically a touch and truck kind of event where they have public safety partners. They do grilling hot dogs and hamburgers for the community and bouncy house for kids. We met as a staff event review team on March 20th to go over this and this has been clicking along for a while. So there was no real comment on that. The only discussion point was the fact that this event date coincides with the rain date for the Vermont Outdoor Kids Fishing Derby to be held at Gilbert Pond. But actually that time works out perfectly. So if in fact that were to happen people would be done with the derby right about at the time to go down to this. We actually expand foot traffic. No conditions were required by staff and we recommend approval for this event. Father, I just... Oh, go ahead. I think that's really well explained. So downtown Wendyski may be interested in starting the farmers market a little bit earlier this season. They are interested in potentially starting it as early as Mother's Day weekend which would be the week before this event. And so there is a potential that the farmers market could coincide with your event. Obviously you're submitting this event permit before they've received theirs. But I guess my question for you is do you think that you would be open to having those two events existing on the same day? I think the majority of our foot traffic because the road being blocked would be less on the sidewalk which I think is where the farmers market would have more of their traffic. So we probably could coexist fairly safely. It may not be ideal but I think if that's our only option we could probably both be fine depending on how many... I know the layout usually for the farmers markets primarily sidewalk green space areas so... And we're primarily on the street like the parking area where the safety vehicles will be and we'll have our little tent and grill and that area. So we probably could both coexist without any issues safety-wise and space-wise if needed. We haven't yet received an application for that. Right. I have a question on that. Could we relocate the farmers market for just that weekend to the rotary? Is there enough space there for them? Just so they're not coinciding with all that? Or would they be for that as well? I think we have room but I think one issue might be that because we're initiating the farmers market and that'll be the first time I think we want to get people who are vendors at the farmers market accustomed to what the actual process is week to week. So it may be a little bit disruptive to start them off in a different position. Although you know I can't speak for the organization as well although I am on the board but... It's just an option just so the public safety day could have its own kind of event. And you know I don't mean to put you on the spot obviously you didn't know that they were thinking about this. I just wanted to be able to know if I could go back to say you know you might be open to this and you guys could have a little conversation. I mean it wouldn't be ideal but like I said I'm not trying to prevent because that's a great thing for the city. And it could bring in extra people to our event too which is a win for everyone. Again not knowing the logistics of how many people are going to be setting up in that event. It's hard for me to really visualize at this exact moment but I think with proper planning and putting our heads together we could probably make it work safely and it would be a great event for both of us. Okay thank you. Any other questions? Is there any notable difference you want to call out from years past? As far as what's going to happen this year, champs can be there this year. I don't think we've had champs before. Burlington PD has graciously offered their emergency, the ERV, the emergency response vehicle which is a pretty impressive piece of machinery which I think kids in particular like to explore and see what all the little tools that they use. So those are two things that I think we have had in the past. We usually have like a bouncy house for the kids and obviously we're going to be grilling, doing the hot dogs and hamburgers and things of that nature. And hopefully we have a good representation from not just law enforcement but like cultures or technical rescue. Usually offers a vehicle. You know St. Mike's rescue usually helps out so I think we'll have a really exciting four hours for everyone to kind of get a close look at what we do. And if anyone wants to get into a car and take some pictures and have a good time, it'll be great. Awesome. Yep. Nice to hear about the neighboring, our neighboring community partners coming. Yep. Any questions or concerns from public? Yeah, May 19th and the event itself will be from like one to four. Okay, okay. So UBM Commencement weekend? Yeah, it is from Saturday or yes Sunday. And so that whole road would be closed? Yeah, so from Whenuski Falls way to about Cascades usually what we block off. So not all Whenuski Falls way but about half of it. Okay, all day. I know from 12 to probably 430. Okay, okay. Any other questions or concerns? All right, I would entertain a motion to approve the event permit for public safety day. So moved. Second. Motion by Hal, second by Jim. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So our next item of business is a grant. The Northern Border Commission for the abenaki garage again presented by Heather. Yeah. So my apologies on your agenda. It says for abenaki garage. It is not for abenaki garage. That was initially. Oh, yeah. It's initially what we were discussing. And it did not get changed before that. Okay, it's changed on the website. But sent you initially had not been changed. So staff has submitted just a letter of intent to submit a grant application to the Northern Border Regional Commission for an economic and infrastructure grant in support of the Main Street revitalization project. And the reason that we switched gears here is because in looking over the rubric, the scoring rubric, it seemed clear to me that we would be much more likely to win this for the Main Street project than for the abenaki garage. So in order to hedge our bets, we really went for what we thought we could get the funding for. This funding source was previously unavailable to municipalities in Chittenden County, but there's been a recent change to the definitions of distressed communities that allows Chittenden County to be eligible as a transitional county. So this is the first time we've been able to apply for this funding. The city can apply for up to $500,000 with a 50% required match based on our designation as a transitional community. And the application would be due May 10th with award decisions to be made in July 2019. So what I'm proposing here is that we use this application to apply for $500,000, which is the largest award possible, specifically to work on the under grounding of utilities on Main Street because that's one of the areas where we haven't had grant funds to go after. So we would match those funds with the general obligation bond that we're going after and for items such as excavation, materials, traffic controls, duck bank, and road resurfacing. So basically aligning it as closely as possible to the work that we are already doing so that we're maximizing the efficiency of that excavation and doing all the work that we possibly can. In committing 50% cost share, that would be overall about a 4% match of the phase one cost estimate. So that's 4% of the total funds. And it would leave us eligible to still go after grant funding. We could accept another $6.53 million in grants and meet the 20% match in federal funding that we would need. And specifically for something like a build grant, which we went for last year and were not successful in acquiring. So we probably would go after that again. Certainly we could look at that $500,000 for a different application on the Main Street project if that was something that you were interested in doing. But I thought that since we do have, I think, about $3.85 million in grants that don't require a match right now for the stormwater, wastewater infrastructure, this would be one way of going after some grant funds for some of the pieces that we don't necessarily have access to. Just for another point of historical context, when the previous council authorized us to move forward with the bond vote for Main Street, one of the things that Councillor Colston kind of coined was that it was a yellow light. Moving forward with Main Street as a project as a whole, moving forward with the preliminary engineering allowed us to be kind of grant ready when opportunities presented themselves to put together the best financing package we could. So because this is a new grant that we're eligible for that historically we haven't, we want to take advantage of it. We have received some pretty good signs from our delegation and from CCRPC that we would be very competitive for this grant. So when we hear that, we like to go after them to demonstrate that we can handle money well, get things done, and then hopefully get in repeat grant cycles over time. I have two questions. The 50% match, where does that come from? Did I miss that? It's from the general obligation bond. So we're going to be bonding for some of the funds for this and so we would use those for match. So for example, the money that we're using for excavating, the money for resurfacing the road could be some of the match for that. Okay, and then next question is what kind of hurdles do we have to go forth on this grant? Is there any hurdles that we have to cross? So there will be reporting requirements that come with it. We would certainly have to issue reimbursement requests for this funding but that's something that Angela, our finance director and I would handle together. I have a point of clarification. Sure. When you say to apply this towards utility undergrounding and excavation and things like that, are we talking about the work that we're doing? So the current approach that we could shift to but the approach from the previous council was to have like a phase one where we focus on the underwater or underground infrastructure for water and sewer and then potentially move the rest of the project, the streetscaping and above-ground stuff to a phase two depending on the money that we receive. So would this be applicable to the phase one piece of work or would it be saved for the phase two part? The way that I'm proposing it would be to put in the duct bank underground with the water wastewater infrastructure. So it would be setting the stage for undergrounding of the utilities when the utilities were ready to go under there. So we're basically building the city infrastructure that's required for that. So avoiding the need to excavate twice. Okay. That is great. I like that you're looking at it that way. And just from my point of view for all of you is that if this is how we're approaching the work and there's a three-year time limit on this, it's ideal for me to see this money be able to be applied in that first phase of work. Sure. I agree. And you don't anticipate any timing problems with when the wastewater, that timing will align well with this funds. If you get them being awarded in October, you'll still be able to mobilize them by the next construction season? Yeah, actually, this is to be awarded in July. And the project needs to be completed by 2022. So I think the timing works out beautifully actually for us. Sounds like a great opportunity. Love seeing the continued effort for outside funding. Any other questions or concerns from council? Questions, concerns from the public? All right. Seeing and hearing none, I would entertain a motion to approve the Northern Border Commission grant for Main Street for vitalization. So moved. Second. Motion by Amy, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up is approval item for Waterworks, an Act 250 permit amendment, which Eric will describe for us. So we have Waterworks staff here as well. Oh, welcome. You too. I think if you guys want to come up and join us too, it would be great. So while they're coming up, I'll start this quickly. So this is a project that is before you tonight for an Act 250 amendment. There's a memo included with your agenda packet that outlines your role in Act 250, the Act 250 permit for the downtown that was first established in 2001 when the revitalization of downtown occurred. So any projects or any changes or kind of amendments to properties in downtown may require to go through an Act 250 amendment process. This has happened multiple times since the original application was approved and permitted for the city. 43 times, I think? Something like that. Multiple. A lot. So Waterworks is proposing to put an awning over the existing space that they use for outdoor seating. Currently, we reached out to the District Environmental Commission to get their determination on whether or not this would require an amendment to the Act 250 permit, and they said it would. So as part of that process, we're here tonight for your review and consideration of approval of the design and being co-applicant on the application going forward. So I will allow. Thank you. That's pretty self-explanatory. Any questions on this? Well, first of all, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. I don't think we'd bet if you would like to introduce yourselves. Well, this is Sarah Johnson. She's General Manager of Waterworks. And David Abbott, the owner of Waterworks. Thank you for coming in. Pleasure to meet you all. Thank you. Pleasure to meet you. I also, we're doing the paperwork. That was pretty self-explanatory. Eric, is there like a detail of why this has to go through amendment, or is that just the general nature of the permit? So with any project that's under the authority of Act 250, there is the possibility that an amendment is required. So generally the process is set up so that the District Environmental Commission, in our case, District 4, is consulted to the nature of the project. And they make a determination of whether it would be a minor amendment, sorry, an administrative amendment, or a minor application, or a major application. In this case, we reached out to them and they identified it as a minor amendment. Primarily, I believe the justification was at, in a previous Act 250 amendment, I think actually for the outdoor seating at Waterworks, there was, there were some citizens that were, that reached out to the District Commission about the project in some of the adjacent properties. So the opinion was that the, that this would go through the minor amendment process in case there was, there was any concerns still from, from those, those neighbors. Okay, thank you for that. I mean, I personally enjoy outdoor seating. Give it a nice take. And it's three seasons, is that right? Yes, three seasons. Would you be retracting it during the winter? It actually, yes, it opens up and it's sunlight comes in. And the idea is to enhance the area that we have. And actually, I would think probably even better for the neighbors, that it closes over the top when there are a lot of people in there. I think it's, I think it's a big upgrade for what we can do there for the community and for Waterworks. I really agree with the whole situation. I think it's a beautiful project. I hope you agree. I will look forward to it. I believe that historically, the previous issue was concerned about noise. Yes. So to your point, this is a little bit of a buffer there. More control. Yeah. Much more control. And I think, you know, we've, we've reached out and spent a lot of time with our neighbors and I think we're pretty comfortable with each other with how we operate and what we're trying to accomplish with our neighbors and with the businesses of. Awesome. I would also just add that the project was permitted locally through zoning, so it does have its zoning approval in place. So that's not an issue with this project. It isn't allowable use in, in the downtown zoning district. Any other questions from council? I think it sounds like a great project too. Excuse me. And my only question was around dealing with kind of concentrating all the rain runoff that it will happen when you. It'll be done. Right. So that area is already pervious basically because it slaps down the river. Yeah. And so where is it going to be downspouted? Well, you've reached what we can retract it in so it can kind of just come down straight down. When it's raining, you don't have gutters on the side. They run it down basically where everything was on the perimeter. Okay. So it's going to just dance about onto the perimeter on the. Yes. Boardwalk type of material. Into the river through slats there. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions? The public. All right. I would entertain a motion to approve the act to 50 permit amendment for waterworks. So. Motion by Mike. Second by Amy. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. David, when will it be done? Won't it be finished? No. I mean, we'd love it as soon as possible. But right now, because of this, you know, just make sure the process. Yeah, probably not. I would say July. I'd like to be sooner. And if it is, I'll let you know. Okay. I'll give you a timeline as soon as we know. Okay. Perfect. Gladly. I'll bite you down for a cocktail. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening. Thank you. Our next item of business is a municipal town highway grant, which John will be presenting for us. So this is a request for a class UB trans highway grant. So we are requesting resurfacing for East spring street. And what that is, is we're looking to take the top wearing course, roughly an inch and a half, mill it, replace with new hot mix asphalt, using the retrans grant. This does require a 20% city match. So we've estimated total project costs of $180,000. So that would roughly mean $36,000 for city match. For FY20, we have approximately $150,000 for resurfacing budget. So that means we'd have roughly about 114,000 left for, say our local roads. So we are targeting good street, clear street, potentially Russell street. Just so if we're milling that big section of East spring street, we can just piggyback off that contract and do some of the east side streets, east of the street. I'm sure residents will be very excited. I'm sure you'll have the same street dealt with. And thank you for your work. Looking for, again, more funding to help us with these projects. I know the town, my understanding is that these municipal town highway grants are very standard and something that most communities are going through from time to time. Any questions from council? Have we had any trouble before? I don't know the last time we submitted for the grant. I think it was probably the last time we used that funding. Which I don't know where that was quite a few years ago. So again, these are kind of statewide dollars that are available almost on a formula basis, but you have to apply for them for your class two roads. And we haven't applied in the last couple of years. So as we saw this need is this was identified through the CIP, we are going after the funding to. I think it's great. I think the residents would be really happy that live in that area. The other ones at home are going to be calling us. Because I hear it every day. When are you going to fix the roads? A lot of people get frustrated with the potholes. Just because of the winter we've had, it's normally as well. But it's the number one topic that I get when I'm in the public. When are you going to fix our roads? I'm glad this is, it kind of, I heard a lot this past week. So our last week, I'm glad that this came out on the agenda because I'm like, all right. I guess the answer is for people. Will this include any curb reconstruction or maintenance? That's a great question. So we, a couple of weeks ago we went out and internally with our DPW crews, we've got that skill set where we can do some curb repair work. So in-house we're going to do some of that curb work ahead of the mill and fill. So we're trying to keep costs down a little bit and use our enforcers for that. Excellent. Thanks. To jump off that, we'll let the sidewalks. Any work on those or just road right now? Yeah, right now we're just doing the road work. I think we did identify some sidewalks where we can do some slap jacking, which it's a low cost road to kind of get the sidewalks are in good condition up to grade. So we might, we might look at doing that. Any other questions? Seeing none, I would entertain a motion to approve the municipal town highway grant. So second. Motion by Mike. Second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Next up, we have proclamation of day of recognition for national service, which Ray will explain to us. Well, in addition to being April stools day tomorrow, it is also the national service recognition day nationally. So this had been in the past of mayor's day of acknowledgement for AmeriCorps and it's now moved to just a general community acknowledgement. So we have benefited here in the city for a long time from the service of AmeriCorps members certainly through the city programs and also from partner organizations that work here. So it felt like a really nice opportunity to highlight the service that those folks do and really the sacrifices that they make to be here, give a year, or if we're lucky too, of their lives to kind of contribute their time, energy, wisdom to the city. And yeah, I have a proclamation here that I'm hopeful you all will be interested in reading and adopting and we'll go from there. Yeah, I mean we met some of our latest AmeriCorps in a recent meeting. Yes, Sarah was here. Yes. And have had several excellent additions to the staff over the years that the three short years I've been involved. Yeah, so Paul actually was a VISTA here for two years. That's right. He stayed on as full-time staff. Yeah. Olivia who's here now is actually just recently committed to the second year with us, which is a fantastic volunteer service. Sarah has been here since November as in the Rec Department has been awesome. So yeah, we seem to attract really, really good members. I have to say it makes me feel old to say it, but this is I believe my 16th year managing AmeriCorps members because I had members in Essex when I was there too. And it's just such a valuable program. So definitely want to hope to keep going for a long time. They also helped paint our O'Brien Community Center for our MLK Day of Service. Oh, nice. What's the idea of recognizing the service that we are receiving here? Yes. Questions from Council. How can you not support it? Good questions from the public. I would entertain a motion to approve the proclamation of Day of Recognition for National Service. So moved. Second. Motion by House, second by Mike. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Our next item of business is the introduction of a potential tree ordinance, which Jim will present to us. Yes. Thank you. So this is a new ordinance that's been about two years in the making. And we, the reason being behind it is to kind of instantiate some standards and commitments towards urban trees in the city, specifically trees that are publicly owned, owned by the city. This includes street trees and trees in parks and managed areas owned by the city. And this is really stemming from kind of a lot of research that shows there's a lot of benefits to cities from urban trees, from traffic calming to air pollution mitigation, stormwater runoff mitigation, increasing property values. The trees have a lot of benefits and they don't have a lot of voice without some structure to manage them. And the city's been doing a great job with the resources it's had, but this ordinance kind of instantiates some standards that are pretty common in other cities that have ordinances. It provides also increasing transparency in public engagement for management of trees. So when trees do have to be removed, there's a process that has to be included or conducted so that the public's engaged. And it provides some guidelines for how trees are maintained, how construction has to happen near public trees, the ability to plant trees and monitor their condition over time. One big component of this I think that's really warrants consideration is that this supports about one out of every six of our 59 goals and objectives in the master plan. So it's a pretty, it weaves throughout all the topic areas from land use, economic vitality, municipal infrastructure and safe, healthy, connected people. So having this ordinance supports our master plan in all these different ways. And it also gives us pretty much the last piece we need to apply for TreeCityUSA designation. We have a tree advisory committee that's been active. We have an Arbor Day planting. We need a tree policy and we need a dedicated budget. And with a budget that just passed, we actually now have all of those pieces minus the tree ordinance. So this is kind of that last piece. Once we have TreeCityUSA designation, there are additional funding opportunities that we can apply for being a low income community that are not accessible. They're only accessible to two other municipalities in the state. So there's one grant opportunity there that could provide additional funds. And it also gives the city coverage for showing that they have a proactive tree management strategy in terms of hazard mitigation and potential litigation. So I think there's a lot of good things about the tree policy. We're sorry, the tree ordinance. In terms of history, it was developed by the Winnowski Natural Resources Conservation District. They received a grant from the state to help write it. We worked with the state urban and community forestry program to write the ordinance. And it's been to the Public Works Commission. It was presented there in March of last year. And there was a round of edits and kind of final, okay, this looks good enough. And then in November, it was revisited and they decided to move it forward once the budget was approved. So the Public Works Commission has reviewed it twice or three times now and thought it was looked good provided the budget was there to support it. So I think that this point that's brought us to this situation. I've spent a lot of time with it. So I'm happy to answer questions, but I know also that staff is requested to have time to review it as well to make sure it works well with all the other ordinances and pieces that are in place. So at that point, that's kind of my brief overview. I can talk anymore about some of the specifics if there are any questions about that. And I'll just jump on the process piece there. This is just an introduction. So it's a chance for us to ask questions and provide feedback to Jim's point. Staff is also going to do that and bring this back to us. And then there would be an additional chance for us to do like a final decision and make it and decide to move it to public hearing. And that is the process to actually where an ordinance would be established. So there'd be a series of additional times this would appear on the agenda. I have a question. Would this only be for city owned property or would a resident be able to call if they had a disease tree or a hazardous tree to get their opinion, the city's opinion? Only if it was a tree on city owned property. Only on city owned property. This only covers public trees which are defined as trees on city owned property. Okay. Would they regulate the woods in the castle? Would they help out that whole wooded area? It would not. I don't want to really check the definition to make sure I'm going to say something that's correct. Yeah, it's any city owned or managed property so it technically could include those trees in wild areas. How are things being handled right now if there was a disease tree or if a city owned tree was encroaching on someone's property? What's the process right now? John, maybe you want to speak to that? John, why don't you just come up? Yeah, you might as well. I didn't know you were here. So for stray trees and trees in parks, typically it's pretty reactive. So if we get a resident or a community member that complains about a tree that's unhealthy and I'm not a tree expert and we currently do not have anyone on staff that's an expert or an arborist, if we can't visually see something that is very obvious, we'll have an arborist come in and do an inspection on a tree and then give us a report. And then based on that report, we'll typically take action whether it's remove, trim, or keep in place. So it sounds like it's more of a reactive situation versus Jim's proposal is more of a proactive overview, making sure that we're maintaining things. Well, the tree ordinance, the way it would change that process essentially is that it will require we have a tree warding in the city and if there was going to be a removal. Well, first of all, the inspection has to be done by a certified arborist and then if there is a recommendation for removal there has to be a public meeting to warrant that this tree will come down and there's a period to appeal and this process is described there. So it still could be reactive. There are other elements of the tree program in Munozki, including a rotating inventory to actually visually inspect all trees on an eight year cycle that is currently being done by staff and volunteers from an entry management plan. That's an unofficial document developed by the tree committee given to the public works committee that described the proactive management plan for the city trees. So those two other documents are kind of outside the ordinance but the ordinance provides some of those structures for appeals and public engagement that aren't currently there. Would the city be able to enforce anything? For example, the woods on the end of Orchard Terrace, not city-owned, correct? The businesses on Tygan own those woods. So if an invasive species came into those woods would we have anything to say to the landowner to try to rectify that before it caught on to the Landry Park? Yeah, so we're actually, I've been talking to Jim about, we're looking to put together some information for animal dashboard and it would be more of a, here are resources that you could utilize more instead of say, you know, you must cut down these trees but we would offer the businesses sort of like what those resources are for an old dashboard. Use some recommendations basically before. Okay. Yeah. Anything? I can just send a check back to Amy's point. I think we do want time to kind of go through this carefully and make a recommendation but I think generally speaking having more structure in place would be helpful for us. You know, we had a situation this past year on Maple Street with some beautiful old trees and I think John and Public Works Commission did an excellent job trying to be responsive and bring the community into that discussion but we really didn't have any bumpers. We were kind of creating that as we went. So to have a document that we could turn to and say what is our process, how do we move forward? I do think would be helpful. I think it's a good thing to consider. In terms of the tree warden that would be that position. Is that typically a paid or volunteer position? It varies. So this is a Vermont statute. It's a pretty old statute that allows a designation of a tree warden. It can be a citizen or it's often a director of Public Works or an arborist if you have one on staff. So this ordinance is written to have the tree warden that could be a citizen and not be a volunteer position and not be a paid staff member. Although Jesse has raised a good point about the potential, if there's a financial component to tree warden activity that might not be something that can be done. So I think part of it will come through in staff review. But it doesn't have to be a paid position and it can be similar to a code enforcement officer and that is something that's done on top of an existing staff position. Did I explain that right? Yeah and just jump on that point. That's probably the, I mean, we've spent a lot of time with the Tree Ordinance and Public Works Commission and it is typically pretty standard language that you'd see in other ordinances. The tree warden is pretty Vermont-specific from what I've ever seen. So that's where a lot of my time is going to be spent talking to other communities to see that half tree warden is how that works for them and what experiences they've had and report back to you all. So would the city be interested in educating a deputy tree warden? So someone on staff would have knowledge of certain aspects of an armist. I mean, would that be something that we as council or city would want to train someone to educate them? Someone that's already in our regiment? So to speak. That would be our goal, yeah. That would be our goal, yeah, perfect, yeah. So I had a couple of questions which you kind of got through Amy's questions. Like this ordinance actually says, you know our current municipal code and land use regulations have provisions around the care of trees and so I was curious what the difference is there. It sounds like they're just less defined. Yeah, I mean as far as, so the example I gave was an unhealthy tree. We do perform some minor trimming. We don't have like a bucket truck or you know the typical tree trimming devices that others would have. So we do some pruning but it's basically ground level with like a sawpull type maintenance. But that's, you know, and we rely on the inventory that some of the community members have put together to kind of look at okay what trees should we kind of keep an eye on that we should prioritize trimming. But to the extent that's our program currently. And then thinking about the provision where any third party, any like vendor that we have contracted with, they must have an certified arborist on staff which I can see the value in them actually knowing what they're doing. But I'm curious if we think that would limit who we can contract services with with that. I don't know if you would know like historically like who we currently work with or have worked with for city work would this cause a problem with us trying to hire locally or statewide and actually having to go further out to find some of the credentials on staff. No, I don't. I mean most the tree services we work with they all have certified arborist on staff. I can't actually think of, I think all the ones that I mean I think there are some that don't but there's certainly several locally within 50 miles for sure. If you go on the essay website of the International Society for Arboric Culture has a list and there's dozens that are listed on there that are located in Vermont. So I don't think finding a certified arborist or a company that has a certified arborist on staff is a critical problem and that's really just to ensure that if you need to elevate to actually getting structural pruning that has to be done correctly there is someone on that staff that can advise on that that doesn't mean that that arborist will be out there doing that job every time. Right, that makes sense. Right, you have to hire a professional in terms of liability and safety-wise. You know, I mean the two big ones I can think of right now are Barrett's and DJ's are the two that I've seen them in action and they're professional and they know what's going on. They wouldn't be in business for the last 30 years if they didn't. And so my last concern was around a private person having to abate a hazardous tree. So I think it says in here there's a 15-day window for a private resident to abate a hazardous tree and then there's some fines beginning at 110 per day working your way up to 550 depending on the number of offenses you've made. I would just be curious to see that compared to other standards or, you know, those dollar amounts look in line with what we have as far as penalties for other ordinance issues. I just picture a scenario where a resident is informed they have a hazardous tree that requires abatement and then within 15 days we're telling them you have to come up with the money to pay for this and find a contractor to hire and I wonder if it's a little too tight for our residents. I'm not saying we need an answer right now, but something to consider. That's a big consideration because it's not very it's very expensive to do especially if it's a a 100-year-old tree that's a couple of stories high. So it's not as simple as taking a little song with a pole. That I'd be really careful about having private citizens if something happens. I don't know how you can force them to pay for something that it's a natural event. Could we maybe just amended to say that they had to have a plan within 15 days? Is that reasonable? I don't know if you end up with a lot so if the city notices that this tree could potentially fall and kill someone on our street and we gave you warning and you haven't done anything about it. How much liability is the city carrying? I think that's really where it comes down to it's trying to make sure the city is trying to limit damages to people from trees and I think similarly if there was a portion that was about to fall down and you said the owner has to come up with a plan to fix it to keep it from falling on somebody I think that said there's going to be a historical component that I can think of a tree next to my mother-in-law's house that it really needs to come down and this would actually probably end up and now that I think about it affecting that tree so I don't know how many of those are out there in the community so certainly something to think about in terms of ways to get around it if the fines can be used for it I'm not sure like that's some sort of abatement for people who can't pay the $300 to take down a tree but those are good questions Any other questions or concerns? That could be a good thing actually it really could because and you have to prove I think you have to watch the language on that if you're in a financial hardship if you can prove that and if it's a real serious situation I think maybe the city tries to help that's what we're here for but they would have to prove that financial hardship I think I think it would be worth looking into putting some language in something like that I mean because I know it's not just $300 to take a tree down I had some pieces of personal experience I had some big limbs off of Maple that's about 5 feet in diameter taken down and it was only $300 and that was like $500 so it's not the $300 project me taking the full size tree that's been in the ground for a couple hundred years so I think that might be something interesting we can work on Is that something that we can ask staff to provide potential solutions to you as part of the review? That seems like a good plan Any other comments before we move on from this item? I just want to thank everyone for all the questions it's nice to actually have the thought on that so thanks so much Well this is cutting your wheelhouse Jim isn't it? You were only involved a little I just Yeah thanks for oh and just as a point of learning for other members of council this is Jim who is right as a councillor to request items on the agenda as part of our policies and procedure um if there are no more questions or concerns about item F the next item we have on the agenda is an executive session pursuant to VSA 313 penning litigation to which the public body is a part UMB Bank NA versus the city of Winooski which is about negotiating a real estate purchase or lease option so it's something that we wouldn't do in a public forum because that could compromise our negotiating power um we would so moving into this executive session um well I guess first I'll ask for the approval or for a motion I would entertain a motion to move into an executive session to VSA 313 the negotiation of real estate purchase or lease options motion by Hal second by Mike all those in favour please say aye aye motion carries we will move into executive session we'll return from the executive session only for one additional item which is potentially to approve the documents that we are discussing in the executive session so whatever the outcome is of the executive session we'll come back here decide what we're doing about these documents and then in general we know the business discussed this evening being the regular city council meeting for our final regular item which is approval of documents from the legal litigation settlement with UMB NA I would entertain a motion to approve the settlement documents so long as the final versions thereof remain in substantial conformity with the documents reviewed the city manager is hereby authorized to negotiate ministerial and substantive changes to the documents and when completed to execute them on behalf of the city the document shall be released as public documents upon execution so moved motion by Hal second by Mike all those in favour please say aye aye motion carries I would entertain a motion to adjourn this regular city council meeting so moved motion by Amy second by Jim all those in favour please say aye aye motion carries thank you thank you