 Okay, it is 6.01 on Monday, January 24th. I'll call to order this regular meeting of the Winooski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Colston. 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. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, so first up is agenda review. Any questions, concerns about the order of the agenda? Next is public comment. This is a chance for members of the public to speak on an issue not included in tonight's agenda. If you are here for an item in tonight's agenda, please hold for that item. If there is anyone on Zoom who wishes to speak to public comment, please use the raise hand feature or the chat. I believe you are all here for an agenda item. Okay, seeing no public comment, we will move to our consent agenda. We have our council minutes from January 18th and accounts payable warrant of January 20th. Any questions about the consent agenda? Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Council reports are next. How would you like to start? I have no report at this time. All right, thank you. Jim. Sure. Thank you. The housing commission met last Thursday out of cycle meeting this month. We'll go back to our normal fourth Monday meetings after this. The commission discussed the imminent rollout with the housing trust fund. We're waiting on some final pieces around translation but of materials and then it'll be going out and we talked a little bit about other ways to get training done in the community with partners for that. So if there are any groups out there that want to learn more about the housing trust fund being in contact with Heather Carrington, our staff liaison and the person who's managing that will be great. So I'm really excited to see that but I'm gonna give our next housing commission update. We should be seeing a lot more on the housing trust fund which is exciting. The other piece that we discussed was a follow up on our housing quality discussions. The commission focused a little bit more on principles that they want to uphold and support as we go through this housing quality discussion. Those principles really focused on maintaining units and accountability and maintaining units for landlords, residents and everyone who is involved in maintaining units, supporting vulnerable populations and being mindful of which vulnerable populations were excluding when we discuss housing quality and really a lot of time was spent on thinking about education and outreach and resources for landowners, property owners and renters, property managers and how we kind of need to address each of those together and in concert to make sure that we're not letting anything fall through the cracks. So there's a really good discussion around more of the housing quality issues that we've been hearing about and how the commission might move forward on some recommendations for that. Thank you, Jim. Brynn. I don't have much to report tonight. The Municipal Infrastructure Committee has not met yet. We're working through interviewing candidates to fill some vacancies. And so tonight I was hoping to introduce those folks to you but we've had a little bit more time lag with connecting with those folks. So hopefully in the next coming meeting early in February. And then just a special thanks to the fire department for being present at the Red Cross Blood Drive on Friday. Their resources were very valuable to all of the folks that were working there as well as to the folks that were donating. And I especially want to say my own personal appreciation for their work and presence there. So thank you for that. Outside of that, I don't have anything else to report at this time. All right, thank you. Mike. Good evening, everybody. I have nothing to report tonight. All right. I will just share that tomorrow at 6.15 on town meeting TV, Wendy will join me to present the city budget. So that'll just be on town meeting TV and YouTube. And then of course we will join them with the school to do a presentation on the date, the Monday before town meeting day. Hal, I see your hand raised. Yes, I just realized there was an email that I got this morning that I could share. It came from BHFA. There's a new program of, it's the Vermont Homeowners Assistance Program that was finally stood up. They have about $50 million of funds for statewide. And it's designed for homeowners who've had trouble paying their mortgage, utilities, property taxes, and association fees. So I will forward this to Wendy and then you can disseminate it from there. But I think it's a great resource that maybe some of our residents can take advantage of. Awesome, thank you, Hal. Yep. All right, with that, I will turn it to Wendy for city updates. Okay, great, thank you, Mayor. Can everybody hear me okay? Yes. Okay, great. You probably are aware we had a water main break today at East Allen and Barlow Cascadeway. Pleased to report that it is fixed and the contractor is filling the hole now. Staff did a great job of coordinating with each other and with outside authorities and notifying the public. As of 3 p.m. or so, we had gotten about five calls at the town clerk's office. So people were patient and we appreciate that. John is on the call if he wants to add anything. Yeah, no real updates on my end. If one, I guess one piece of information if anyone asks, you don't, there's no water boiled water requirements or anything like that. We didn't have to do an intensive repair. So water's back on, it's safe to drink. You don't have to do anything except maybe run the tap a little bit if it looks a little unclear. Terrific, that's good news and we'll get that out. And thanks to Paul for getting the word out well. And speaking of public works, just wanna give the community and the council a heads up that we are operating with fewer staff than we regularly have due to a number of factors. The market's tight, everyone's facing this. We have had a few medical leaves. So do please understand if it takes longer to plow the streets and sidewalks. We are doing our best and we're advertising for an equipment operator too if anyone knows anyone who might be interested. So it's especially notable that they got the break fixed so quickly today. Regarding COVID and our staff, our numbers are down. We have approximately five people out, which is half of what we had last time I spoke with you. We had 10 out. So we seem to be following the state curve. I don't know if you've seen it recently, but it is coming down. So hopefully that trend will continue. And regarding ARPA, the first community listening session will be next Friday, February 4th from six to 730 and that'll be a virtual meeting and you can sign up online or just show up, but we have information on the website. And also second thing on ARPA, the final rule, which I sent to the council is much more flexible than the interim rule. And we'll have a discussion of ARPA on the next meeting, which is scheduled for February 7th, which is actually two weeks from today instead of the weekly schedule that we've been on. The state, thank you, Hal, has allowed fully remote public meetings for municipalities. And unless you feel comfortable letting me know tonight that you have no objections, we'll put that on the agenda for the following, but again, for February 7th, we'd like to let the individual commissions and committees decide if they want to go fully remote. And what that would mean is that there would be nobody at town hall for the public, but there are several commissions and committees who would probably like to go remote, especially if they don't have the video, the TV. Brent, do you have a question on that? Yeah, was there a timeline put on that, a deadline? I'm sure it's temporary, but I don't know the exact date. Thanks. Hal may know, but I'm sure it's because of COVID, so it'll expire. Yeah, there may be a sunset in April when we have to revisit it to see if we wanna close it up or extend it. Okay, so I'm not hearing that, or maybe I'll pause just for a minute to see if you are, if the council members have an objection to leaving it up to the committees or commissions, to the chairs. I'm not seeing any objections. Okay, great. And if you do have a concern, if something comes up, just email the mayor or me or both of us and we won't implement it for a couple of days. And then the big news today, as you know, was the deadline for candidates to file for the two open council positions and we received seven petitions. And those individuals are Chad Bushway, Matt Crawford, Daryl Desitel, Aurora Hurd, Thomas Renner, David Xavier Wallace, who is also running for the school board, and Irene Webster. So it's a good turnout. And that is all I have, unless anyone has any questions. Awesome, thank you, Wendy. Thank you. Candidates. Okay, we will move on to our regular items. And the first item we have on is for approval, labeled Sally Tips in Resolution. We have invited Sally Tips in here this evening and have a resolution put together to recognize many, many years of service to our community here in Winooski. So without further ado, on behalf of the city of Winooski, we are proud to acknowledge the inspiring legacy of Sally Tipson and her decades of community service, leadership and neighborly spirit. Whereas Sally served on the city council from 2009 to 2015 as councilor and deputy mayor, as well as the board of civil authority, supporting Winooski's public process and elections. And whereas Sally has run Winooski's only flower shop for nearly 30 years, providing excellent service to customers, bringing joy to their holidays and milestones. And whereas Sally is a founder of the Seasons Greetings Community Group, who kept our downtown festive with seasonal themes and events, including the beloved festival of pumpkins. And whereas Sally served as chair and supporter of the Winooski food shelf, providing years of service to neighbors in need. And whereas Sally began her career teaching in the Winooski School District and was instrumental in fundraising for the Spartans football team, which provided scholarships, equipment and lights for the field. Whereas Sally exemplifies Winooski's legacy of welcoming opportunity and is an important part of our community's history. Now therefore be it resolved that residents and visitors of Winooski have immeasurably benefited from Sally Tipson's contributions. And that the city of Winooski officially recognizes her impact and making Winooski a better place for years to come. Residents are welcome to visit the large pine tree at the top of Rotary Park, which was dedicated in her honor. And to view our special feature of Sally's accomplishments through Seasons Greetings at legacy.winooskivermont.gov. Want to take a moment to just consider all that was just shared there, all of the contributions that you have given to our community over the years. And thank you so much for all of your hard work in that time. Thank you. Let's give you a round of applause for Sally. Is there anything that you wish to say or would anyone else like to add any words? How long do I have? As long as you would like. I just want to say thank you to the city for doing this. This is completely unexpected, very much appreciated. 29 years at the flower shop. Many changes have occurred as in the city. People, I don't really want to go out on a limb and start thanking people because I know I will forget somebody, but the two people I do have to mention are my two sons who have always been with me. I'm sure over the 29 years at the flower shop, there may have been a few times when I wasn't exactly on task. I could have been a little bit stressed out. So to them, I want to say thank you very much. And again, to the city, it's been a pleasure working on city council. Season's greetings was a pet project of mine. Doing what I did at the food shelf was always very rewarding. And I appreciate the time. And thank you very much. Thank you, Sally. I just want to give you a quick handshake. I say that it's really inspiring to see how much time and effort you've put in over the years I feel like I'm here. Fairly Scotch of service here. Good to know. Thank you. I thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Now what if this thing doesn't get approved? Oh yeah. Let's do this part. Do I have a motion to approve the resolution? So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. The motion carries. Thank you so much, Natalie. Sally, I'd like to thank you. On behalf of the Myers family and myself and the countless number of people that you have inspired, whether it's a business owner, a visitor that visited Winooski, a Winooski resident, the selfless dedication you put into our community will be felt for years to come. Although your flower shop will be missed, I know that you'll be still available for advice or a phone call if anyone ever needs any Winooski history advice or just needs to have a chat with someone that's been in the Winooski scene forever. On behalf of the city, we really appreciate what you've done for us. Is there anyone else? Any more public comment? I see big things from Ray Coffey in the Zoom chat. I know, I'm sure that you and he have had a lot of contact over the years, particularly with Season's Greetings work. And as Angela mentioned earlier, there's always plenty of opportunity if you get bored and feel the need to do more volunteerism. Okay, come back to the polls and hand out the stickers. Yes. All right, thank you again. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, folks. Okay, all right. We'll move on to item B. This is on for discussion. It's the FY21 audit presentation. So in the attendees list, we have Josh Quinn and John Boulay from RHR Smith, who are here to present the FY21 audit to City Council. City Council approved the engagement of RHR Smith for the FY21 audit on April 5th of 2021. Preliminary fieldwork was done in June with full fieldwork being completed in October. We submitted our financial statements to them just before Thanksgiving and received our full financials back from them just before Christmas. So we were able to submit this to the TD Bank in compliance with our bond covenants. And I will turn that over to Josh and John. Hello everybody, how are you? Welcome. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. Sorry, I can't be there in person. I have three kids and I would swear we probably have a close contact. I wanna say every couple of hours at this point. So, and as usual, I always get to follow things I can never even come close to like the dedication of Sally Tipson. So I'll do my best to keep this as exciting as that was. So as Angela said, we were there in April doing our preliminary audit work and then in the fall completing the audit in time for your submission to your bank. So I wanna see if I can share my screen. I'm gonna share my screen and then walk you through the financial statements. One of the benefits of Zoom is that it makes this process can make it a little easier. I'll also call out page numbers. So if any of you are looking at the document on your own screen, you can check that out as well. All right. Can you see the audit, first page? Excellent. Okay. So the first thing I'm gonna talk briefly about sort of the way the document is the financial statements are arranged. Then I'll talk a little bit about our process and then I'll get into the nitty gritty details. Not too many nitty gritty details because I know that tends to bore many of you. So first thing that we get to in the document is gonna be this table of context, this table of content, excuse me. Starts with our independent auditors report. This is really what you guys are paying us to do, which is to offer an opinion on your financial statements. That is followed up by the management discussion and analysis that is actually done by Angela. And that is not something that we audit. That is her interpretation of the financial statements that we do audit. Next you get the financial statements. The basic financial statements are the first statements, I wanna say they're A through H plus or minus. Then you get notes. Those notes accompany the financial statements and have some details on some of the accounting methods that are used. Then it's followed by supplemental info. So more schedules, more information, more detailed information, and then the federal compliance piece, which starts with the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, also known as the CFA. The way the financial statements are arranged, it's really very summarized in the first in the beginning of the document. And then as you get further down, it gets into more detail. So some people like to actually start at the back and work their way up, because they can see from the revenues and expenses, the budget to actuals, your special revenue funds, which all roll up into the summarized financial statements at the front. So I will jump straight to our opinion, which is on page two. We had an unmodified opinion, which means that we are in agreement that the financial statements present barely in all material respects, the financial position of the governmental activities, the business site activities, and the component units, each major fund, so on and so forth for the city of Winnuski. That is as good as it gets. So congratulations again to Angela and the team there at the city of Winnuski. Statement C. So I usually just jump straight to the bottom line, which is what most people are interested in knowing is what is our unassigned fund balance. And forgive me if this is a little small, I'll try to make it a little bigger. Unassigned fund balance for a year ended June 30th, 2021 is $1,570,000. You had total assets of 6,454 liabilities of 3,577, some deferred inflows of 260 for a total fund balance of 2,618,000. Your fund balance is made up of a couple of different designations. The first one being non-spendable. That is typically your prepaid expenses, your inventory. You're restricted. Restricted are things usually for grants and things that are required to be spent in a certain way. And then your assigned fund balances, which are things that the actual, the board, your city council is able to assign balances. One of the things that you can look for more detail on fund balances is on page 54. Page 54 talks about, oops, excuse me, goes through all of your fund balances. And so there's your non-spendable. So non-spendable, your prepaid expenses and your inventory goes through the restricted, actually identifies which grants and the value of those grants. That restricts those fund balances. Also talks about the TIF, your other funds. And then your assigned fund balances and the general fund. You've got 304 in community development, for example, records restoration of 128,000, so on and so forth. So back to statement C. Statement C also in addition to the general fund shows other major funds, and that's a calculation that is done depending on the size of the funds. And so your major funds are your TIF downtown, your community development loan fund, and then your city capital reserve fund. All the other funds that you have are grouped into the non-major funds over here on this column. And then presented more discreetly in the back as well. So how did you get there? So statement E, which is page 20, this is your income statement, your statement of revenues, expenditures and changes in fund balances. Again, this goes through your major funds. As we get into the back, you can look at any special revenue funds that we wanna look at. Your revenue for, in your general fund for the fiscal year was $8,597,000. Expenditures were $7,141,000. You also had transfers in of $205,000 that came from the TIF fund. Transfers out of $981,000, which went into your city capital reserve fund. So add all those numbers up and you had $680,000 of a surplus in FY21. And you started the year off with a total fund balance of $1,938, and then when you add the 680 to it, you finish with $2,618. All right, moving along. Statement G, this is the statement of net position for your proprietary funds. So these are your business type activities. So your water fund, your sewer fund and your parking fund. This is a little bit different from statement C, which we just looked at because the statement of the proprietary funds, business type activities are presented with net position, which basically means that it takes into account all of your long-term, your non-current assets and your long-term liabilities. So that means it takes into account all of your capital assets or your fixed assets, as well as all the long-term debt that you've acquired to pay for those capital assets. So it's a little bit different. Assets for, I'll just go through one of these since you all can obviously do these as well. Your current assets in the water fund, $790,000. Your non-current assets or your fixed assets, $3,984,000, that is net of accumulated appreciation for total assets of $4,775,000. Some deferred outflows are resources of $34,000. So your total assets and deferred outflows of $4,809,000. Liabilities of current, liabilities of $95,000. Your non-current, which is your long-term liability. So that's gonna be bonds, notes payable, compensated absences, as well as your pension liability. That's $1,092,000 and total liabilities of $1,187,000. Deferred inflows resources of $587,000. So you got $1,188,000. And that leaves you with net position. And so net position is made up of a couple pieces. The first piece is called net investment capital assets. And that takes the total amount of capital assets that you have, subtracts the total amount of long-term debt that you still owe on that. And that becomes your net investment in capital assets. And then you have your unrestricted net position. So in the water fund this year, it was $675,000. As you continue down, similar to what we just looked at for statement E, which was a statement of revenues and expenses for the general fund and the other major funds, there's also a similar document for the water fund, sewer fund and the parking fund. And that explains how you got basically the activity in fiscal year 21. Moving down long-term liabilities, this is in the notes of the financial statements. So this here is a summary schedule of all of your long-term liabilities. So your bonds, your notes, if you wanted to see exactly what makes up all of these bonds, notes payable, those are above this stuff, above that page. And then below the page it talks about compensated absences. And then it continues on to talk in great detail about your beavers, which is the front-end school employee retirement system. And there's lots of documents or lots of pages about your beavers and all those numbers that are provided actually by the actuaries at the state, which are then just, in essence, just kind of regurgitated here in the financial statements. All right, so we're getting into a little more detail. So schedule one, page 69. So this is your budget to actual for the year. So for example, your budgeted taxes were $6,378,000. Your actual taxes that you pulled in were $6,481,000. One of the things that we do as we go through your financial statements and perform our audit is we look for big variances, especially in the budget actuals, for example. So variances here, we actually brought in more taxes than you anticipated. That really was a function of your local option tax receipts. We're just being greater than what you had expected to be, which is not a bad thing. $80,000 variance in your charges for services. And that was more street and building permits than what you guys had anticipated in your budget time. The other $280,000 here, that's made up of FEMA grants, elder grant and insurance claim, and then working communities grant as well. Moving on into expenditures. Let's see, some of the items we picked out. So $24,000 in legal. There were a couple of additional lawsuits that were unanticipated. Administrative services, there was an insurance claim that's actually offset by a revenue that's in this other line up here. And then the $35,000, that's help insurance and workers comp that were over. You can see some under expended budgets. Most, much of the under expended budgets have to do with COVID and with just staffing issues and the inability to actually find people to do the work that was budgeted, which is happening all over the state in both municipalities and schools, and I'd say everywhere. All right, moving on. So schedule A, so as you continue on, now you get into your special revenue funds. This is set up just like we looked at Statement C and Statement E. So it starts off with a balance sheet for your three special revenue funds. And then it goes into your income statement for those three. So you can see what type of activity occurred in those special revenue funds if you were so inclined. And then moving on does the same thing for your proprietary funds. It splits your proprietary fund out into the parking garage as well as the on street meter. Those two funds, those pieces, if you wanted to dive into more detail there. The financial statements wrap up with the compliance audit. So if you spend over $750,000 of federal money in the fiscal year, you're required to have a compliance audit and there's a whole separate compliance supplement that the federal government issues every year that dictates how we are to audit the programs that you guys spend money in or receive money in and then have expenditures in. So this year, I believe similar to last year, we ended up auditing the last page, the Clean Water State Revolving Fund Cluster, which was basically it's a function because that's where most of your expenditures are occurring for your federal. Expenditures. Okay, so that is the financial statements in a nutshell. One last piece that I wanted to mention is we also do a management letter every year and a management letter is basically as we go through and perform our audit, a lot of what we're doing is we are vouching your balance sheet. We are doing tests of your processes, whether it be cash disbursements, cash receipts. We're looking at journal entries. We're looking at your AR lists really kind of just trying to run a fine tooth comb through as much of information as we can so we can then take an idea to say, okay, we picked a sample of cash disbursements and you guys have a process on how you purchase things. And just we make sure that you're following your processes that you have all your sign-offs and things that you say you're doing you're actually doing it. In the event that we find issues when we're doing those tests that sample work, sometimes we find things that perhaps may not be best practice. Maybe we just find, maybe cash disbursements are being, maybe purchase orders are being written after the fact. Sometimes we find those things and those go into a management letter. I'm happy to say that this year we did not have any of those items for Angela and her team, which is great. It does happen, it's somewhat rare, but it did happen this year for Angela and that's awesome. I will say that Angela and her staff, Raul, do a great job. And it's always a pleasure to come to Winooski. They are very prepared. And the city of Winooski is very lucky to have Angela and her team. I will open up to questions and shoot. Thank you, John. And I think this is maybe the second year in a row with no findings. Yes, yes. Yes, it is. Are there any questions from council on the report? All right, any questions from members of the public? I don't see any questions. I think that walkthrough was helpful and we all had some time with this in advance of the meeting as well and really excited about the clean audit results. Good, excellent. Well, if you do ever come up with anything, we're always happy to help and offer our services whenever needed. So it's been a pleasure. I think you guys are going back out to bid this year for audit services. So we will definitely, yep, we will definitely. Third year of a three-year contract. So we'll be putting out the bid. I'm hoping by the end of this month. Yep, so we will definitely be bidding again and we hope we can work with the city of Winooski in the years to go. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. Have a great night. You too. All right, we are on to item C. This is also on just for discussion. The FY22 quarterly budget projections is Alex with us on the line. Oh, okay. He just needs to be brought over. All right. Testing, testing. All right, we see you, welcome Alex. Nice to see you mayor and city council. As always, it's a pleasure. Thank you, Josh and thank you again, Angela. You make our jobs just significantly easier. So appreciate, you know, can't appreciate your work enough to the city council and to mayor, you know, it's always a pleasure to present the quarterly treasures financials report. You know, we sort of skipped over the first quarter and so now we're kind of immediately jumping halfway into the next fiscal year. I think some of the sort of positive highlights include sort of the actual net fund balances are all at a surplus right now. One of the highlights is that the general fund is actually $900,000 higher than it was just two years ago. That was sort of another highlight of this sort of this quarter's report was a sort of a good comparison to sort of the financials just prior to COVID to kind of gauge how far are we, how close are we to just sort of normal? I don't know if we'll ever get quite to normal but we're getting pretty darn close. A lot of the operational accounts are actually above their sort of FY20 targets, which is great to see, as well as it's great to also see that just sort of budgeting is continues to work excellently. A lot of the expensive buy items are like right at 49 or 50% halfway through the year. It's amazing how accurate Angela and her team and all the managers manage to be. Admittedly, there are some more risks to sort of highlight kind of coming into this. You know, the surpluses are admittedly a lot smaller and there's a lot of a lot more pending items kind of coming into this where they're not part of, you know, they're part of the original budget. They aren't part of the projections and sort of my report, but we're looking at, you know, some of the adjustments to commercial inspections, the sale of lot 70, some of these things, or we, for example, the water department, we haven't received biosolid billings yet. You know, there's stuff that's pending that will be in the six figures and certainly could impact the numbers positively or if they don't come in sort of are, could be, you know, disappointing if they don't. So there's a lot of pending items out there. Also likely, you know, we received a lot of savings over the past year or two from healthcare. Likely that won't repeat. And so where those numbers will finalize, you know, that's impossible to say, but you know, likely it'll be a little bit of uphill battle, particularly, you know, we all know inflation's high is, you know, 7% now. So, you know, expect the, you know, things to just hit harder. And as well as we're seeing less kind of smaller grants come in for some of the community based activities, you know, obviously ARPA is huge, but outside of that, we're not seeing the smaller things come in that we're providing sort of a bump to, you know, like the senior center and then stuff like that that we were seeing in the past. But otherwise, you know, because of the strong net fund balances, I continue to have a strong confidence in Muruski and don't really see any concerns, even though I know kind of this next budget is has been a challenge. Thank you very much, Alex. I'll say in the report and what you just summarized was kind of in line with what we've been talking about anyhow. So good news. Are there any questions from council on these Q2 numbers? And I know I always say this too, but I always welcome sort of a working session or a public working session with sort of our tableau reporting. There's a lot to offer there, but it's something that kind of has to be dug in more. So always happy for feedback or ideas on stuff. I just know it can also be very confusing when you start throwing out pages and pages of different reports, but my email is always open. Awesome, thanks. Bryn, I see your hand. Has there ever been an agenda item for the finance commission to see or go over these quarterly reports? They did at the outset when we first started adding the charts in, but I think it's something we could look at like annually potentially. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. The data is all there. There any other questions? Yeah, so thank you for the update, Alex, and be in touch again before our next quarterly reporting. All right, thank you. Thank you city council and staff and thank you. We are moving on to item D. This is on for approval. This is the fire truck bond resolution, which we saw two meetings previous. Yeah, so this is the first part of a two step process in the approval of the fire truck bond question. So what's before you right now is specifically the resolution that should we borrow the money that we would be able to reimburse ourselves for any upfront costs that we incur before we borrow funding. So if we have to make a deposit in order to acquire the fire truck, we would be able to reimburse ourselves once we borrowed funding. So this is language that was drafted for us by our bond council at Paul Franken Collins, Tom Maloney. Thanks, Angela. And so essentially if the council wishes to approve this, this is saying that we approve putting it on the ballot or moving it towards putting it on the ballot for voters to approve. That's correct. You would still have to approve the warning, which includes the bond question as well. But if we wanna talk details around the specifics of the borrowing or the need for a truck replacement, I know that John Audie is also present and might be able to give feedback for council on any questions they might have. Yeah, and I'll share an email with you all later. At the last second I got some information from Chief Audie today about the need for the truck. So I had asked at the previous discussion for some numbers on the buildings that currently the current ladder truck is not tall enough for. And so it looks like we're up to 18. Versus that there were like six high rises at the time of the purchase of the last truck. So now we're up to 18. So we know that there is growth. You know, there are gonna be some more taller buildings coming online too. And then he also shared in the last meeting that the two trucks set would mean we could operate with fewer staff as we're facing staffing challenges. And so 10 years ago we had like nine staff per call and now it's average five and sometimes less. So I just wanted to share that data. Bryn, I see your hand is raised. Yeah, thank you. I was curious. So basically the decision about a down payment would be made after that meeting today. Absolutely, we are just asking for authorization up to the full price so that we have some flexibility but we are intending to come to council at some point in the future. Once we get closer to the borrowing point and we know how much funds we'll have on hand what interest rates are looking like with a request to use reserves to reduce the amount we actually have to borrow. Thank you. There is no requirement for down payments with most of your major vendors. I mean, you're gonna do your payment upon delivery type setting. And I believe there is the potential for us to leverage some trade-in value on the existing truck to reduce some of the purchase price. We don't believe it'll be very much but every dollar counts. Bryn, I saw your hand again. Yeah, and then just point of clarification and kind of just making sure everybody's on the same page that with a bond bank there's no, you're basically paying for the lifetime. So of the, what I'm trying to say is you can't, you're not paying it off early. So we wouldn't, we'd wanna put it, whatever down payment we have, we would wanna put it down early because putting ARPA funds towards that for say wouldn't necessarily mitigate the amount of interest. We'd still be required to pay that to the bond bank, is that correct? If we put money towards it, we would have to put it towards it initially. We'd have to spend it, have a signed contract in place. We could not borrow and then prepay. I think the only exception with the bond bank is if you're closing out your bond entirely, they can refund slightly early. Based on some conversations I've had with them recently. Okay, good to know. Thank you. Yeah, and you attached a chart here to the agenda showing a half a million dollar down payment for lack of a better term would save. So that chart is kind of for discussion purposes only. It's really crude. The bond bank charges semi-annual interest. So I have used a 3% marker for every six months. So a 6% annual increase for the interest rate. That's because at this point in time we have no idea what interest rates are gonna do. With Hickok Street, we did receive approximately a 3% bond interest charge. However, the Fed is currently talking about raising interest rate levels one to three times this year, which would increase our borrowing costs. And we're not talking about borrowing until potentially winter of 2023. They could fluctuate highly. So this is a very conservative number so that we make sure that we include enough money in our budget. Mike. Chief Audie, I wanna bring something up. Our last meeting we talked about the availability of these trucks. We're kind of playing in the head so we don't get caught in a situation where we can't get the truck right now, correct? That's correct. If we were to place the order today, it's approximately 24 months or two years before delivery. And they expect that to possibly extend even further due to the demand is way up and then supply chains is like everything else. Everyone is, some of your dealers are only allocated like less than a third of materials that they typically would be able to get from big suppliers. So that's driving a lot of the delays. Thank you. And something that John and I discussed earlier and I've mentioned to the mayor previously that this acquisition isn't just about obtaining a hundred foot truck. The current truck that we have is almost 25 years old. We would need to replace this truck regardless of if we could improve it. But if we're going to be replacing it, we would recommend increasing the quality of the truck that we're acquiring so that we can service more of the community. Correct. And I think it's a good idea to plan ahead right now on something like this, because who knows? The availability might get pushed out even further if we wait even longer with the way the supply chain has kind of faltered. Any questions from members of the public on this item? Are there any more questions from council? Given no questions and the tone of my last discussion, I think someone probably wants to move to approve this. So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed or abstaining? Did I get all eyes? Bryn, did you vote? I didn't hear. Okay, sorry. Motion carries. Thank you, Angela and Chief Audie. Thank you. Okay, so we are on to item nine. A public hearing has been noticed for the consideration of our final FY23 budget approval. I will now, it is 6.51 p.m. I'm going to open the public hearing so that we can take comment from members of the public. We've been discussing this for several meetings. So at a really high level, we are looking at a budget that maintains level services, level staffing, and with a projected tax rate increase of 2.89% due in large part to escalating inflation and the fact that much of our budget is staff salaries. Are there any questions or comments from members of the public? All right, we also did not receive any comments in advance. Seeing and hearing, seeing no comments coming through, I will go ahead and close the public hearing. So we are going to move on then to number 10. Second set of regular items, item A. This is on for approval. This is the town meeting day warning. So we have the language here for what goes on the ballot, right, Wendy? I believe we have to formally adopt the budget. I didn't hear a motion. Oh, is that correct? It was on for discussion. It was on as a public hearing. We're supposed to approve the final budget after I close the hearing. I skipped a step. Thank you for that. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the FY23 budget? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm curious. Mayor, I'll note it was Hal that made the second on that one. Okay, thank you. Um, that also reminds me, I did want to let you all know that I had asked Angela what like a 5% decrease in the budget would do to the tax rate. Oh, the 2% increase? 2%, 2% decrease? 2% across the board. Yeah. And it would have brought us down only to... It would have been a decrease to the tax rate if we had done a 2% cut across the board. I'm sorry, I thought you meant that it would go down to 2.87%? No. Okay. Now I've confused everyone. Yes, you have. No, you had asked me about a 2% cut from all the departments and my response was if we did that, we would not be able to maintain level staffing and services. Okay. So this was the point that I wanted to make was that I did ask Angela because we were concerned about the tax rate increase, but that there's no way to, to avoid a rate of, we would have to cut staff and services if we wanted to do anything lower. That is the point I wanted to get to. Yes. Okay. Yeah, we have a lot of departments where the majority of their budget, and I'm talking more than 95%, is the staffing and benefits cost. So it would be very hard to reduce those things, particularly for departments that also have contractual obligations. We can't violate those contracts. So the only flex point we have is staffing. Okay. Thank you. Sorry for being confusing. Just wanted us all to have that context for this being a little higher tax rate increase than we had hoped for. So now let's move on to the town meeting day warning. Yeah, so this is the language that would go on the ballot for the articles that folks would vote on. We've got our council seats here, the budget that we just adopted. The standard one that says if we get more money that we can spend it. Yeah. And then the bond vote about the fire truck, which we just approved. Are there Wendy or Angela, anything else to add there? I have nothing to add. I worked, Jenny, the new town clerk and I worked or city clerk worked on this. So I don't know if Jenny has anything to add. I think we're good. Most of these questions went through our attorneys or have been drafted by them at one point in time and just updated in terms of dollars. Right. And actually the attorney did look at this and Jenny did add a statement that refers to the all resident voting and that's in there. That's the last line under the introductory paragraph. And I don't have anything else to add to it. Okay. Okay. Are there any questions from council on the morning? No, you know, I have a question. Yeah. I'm back on the budget. Can I go back there for a minute? Is that okay? You can. We already approved it. I know. You can ask a question. Yeah. What I'm worried about is the cost of living coming out in February after we approved this. And if it gets to a point where we can't put it into the budget, I mean, how is that going to work? And is that the decisions that we have to make then in February after we have this? So that, yes. This is once we have the CPI numbers that will be issued in March for the February to February CPI, we will need to reevaluate this budget in that new context. We've had internal discussions as staff about the possibilities. CPI February to February is only mandated by our union contracts, not our nonunion personnel manual. Our nonunion personnel manual can be whatever has been included in the budget. We have done that previously where we restricted the rate increase simply to what was included in the budget. In addition, our AFSCME contract is currently up for negotiation. Their contract expires on June 30th of 2022. So we have the ability to potentially negotiate there and FOP would be a place where we might need to go to them and discuss this further with their union. I'm wondering the top decision that we were talking about making the 2% cut across the board. Well, okay. Now, but the thing is, if the COLA goes up to 6.5%, that 2% might have saved some money to... But we would have had to ask people. So if you cut 2% across the board and we have the CPI come in higher, we actually would be in worse trouble than we are now because we're not able to increase the amount that we spend once it's been approved by the voters. That total is the amount that we can spend. Doesn't say what we specifically have to spend it on other than what's been approved by council. And if we make amendments so that we do come to the council for changes, but cutting would actually put us in a worse position if the COLA comes in higher because we would have had less flexibility. Thanks, Angela. Okay. Thank you. Sorry for the sloppy logistics this evening. Are there any questions about the town meeting day warning from council or members of the public? Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the town meeting day warning? It moves. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. All right. Now we're done with some of our finances. And we're moving on to grants. So item B is on for approval Brownfield revitalization grant. Great, thanks. So this grant is in regards to the lot 70 redevelopment work. So we received the grant from the state Brownfields group in the amount of $78,401.25. So this would go towards work that is required as part of our regulatory, we call it our cap correction action plan for soil remediation work. So this will just help to reduce some of those costs. John, this one had a match, right? 10% match? Yep. Yeah. The actual work is much greater than $78,000. So there's no concern about meeting that 20% match requirement for this. And so we already had budgeted plan for this work. Yes. I mean, this is part of the public-private partnership with NETI. So there is cost share with both parties. Are there questions from council? Other questions? Questions from the public? Bryn? Yeah, I do, is there, sorry if it's already in the packet here, but is there a timeline when it needs to be sent? When it needs, when the grant has to be sent? Spent. There's no, oh, it's spent. Yes, there is. I think it's, I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's like a three or four year requirement in the grant. Is there any reason why we would anticipate missing that deadline considering workforce challenges? Yeah, not currently. I mean, we, as you all know, we're working together with the NETI team. They are moving forward on pushing this project to try to get it to construction potentially next spring where we're still in early discussions with them on how the project will develop. But three to four years, I'm not concerned that we would, if we're moving forward this project, that we would use those funds. And this would be early in the construction project for Brownfields. Yep, absolutely. Will some of this mitigate any potential vapor intrusion into the building after construction? So not really. So the bulk of the work, there's not heavy contamination or so contamination on site. It's mostly just urban, old urban contaminants. So the bulk of the work is putting a clean fill cap on the site, whether it be like a payment or like a two foot soil. Great, thank you. Any other questions on this one? Would anyone like to make a motion to approve the Brownfield revitalization grant? So moved. Second. Motion by Mike. Second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Item C, also on for approver, V-Trans grants for the Tygan Street traffic signal. Great, thanks. So this is a grant for $300,000 from V-Trans for the Main Street redevelopment project. So this work was actually, the Tygan Street work was originally part of the exit 16 project. As we've continued coordination with V-Trans, we've both parties sort of realized it makes more sense that this work would be incorporated into the Main Street project versus, them trying to do it as part of the exit 16 and not really matching up with our schedule. So we came to the conclusion that, we came up with a cost estimate for the scope of work. They agreed to it and they're willing to pay us the $300,000 to cover that scope within our project and it'd be performed under our contract work. All right. There any questions about this one? Public comment. Do I have a motion to approve the V-Trans grant for Tygan Street? So moved. Second. Who did I hear? I moved at half. Motion by Mike. Second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, John. All right. And welcome, Heather, for item D, the ARPA business relief. Hello, I hope that my internet is okay. I'm actually running it off my phone. I am in Savannah, Georgia and that here is horrible. So I hope you can hear me. So far, decent. A thumbs up from anyone if you can. Okay. So we'll do the best that we can here. I have a little bit of a lag in your voices. So please bear with me if I'm cutting you off, not realizing it. I do have Meredith Bay Tyak here as well to assist in this and she's aware of my internet issues. So I hope she can step in where needed. Paul, if you could bring her over that would be fantastic. And what you have before you is a request to allocate some portion of the municipal ARPA funds that we have received for urgent need for the business community. And I realized that this is coming forward somewhat unexpectedly, but as part of the TIF reporting process, I look at the Vermont Department of Taxes, taxable receipts for all of our businesses specific to Winooski. And I saw there are some trends that very much concerned me. So while I was seeing that in Chittenden County as a whole between FY 20 and FY 21, there was a bounce back in sales of 5%. In their reports, Winooski actually continued to have losses during that time period. So between June 30th of 2019 and June 30th of 2021, there was a 26% decrease in taxable sales. And when you see that's both sales and use and meals and rooms tax. So that was a little bit concerning to me. And as we continue these sustained losses for our businesses, we're now going into the winter months with a new Omicron cert. Well, at the time when I was analyzing this, a new search following on the heels of Delta, an issue with people getting the help that they need with Vermont having two jobs for every job seeker. And some of the types of work that we have in Winooski are frontline low paying jobs. So it's really difficult to get staff. So I felt it was important to bring forward a request to put aside some funds for urgent need. That is for your discussion. Initially Meredith and I had recommended $250,000 when speaking with the finance commission, but in subsequent conversations with the mayor, she recommended more along the lines of $100,000 with an understanding that if there's an overwhelming need, we could come back with a further request. So looking at that demonstrated need first. With the work overall, it is a loose structure that is based on the Winooski small business loan program. Of course, with adjustments for what the actual needs are and the goals of this program are. But we don't want to design that with the credo of nothing about us without us. And I think we have a very different set of businesses in this community. So we want to be hearing from a variety of different businesses about what that need is. But we would be, we are on standby to, for Meredith and I to sit down, start talking with businesses immediately. Although I am Savannah right now, probably Meredith would do the outreach in the initial term. And then we would turn that around really quickly to bring back what the rubric would be with the program guidelines would be. But what we are recommending is up to $10,000 grant for business. Meredith, anything that I've missed in that very brief overview? No, I'm sure that other questions will come up. And like Heather said, if she cuts out for some reason, I will do my best. And I believe that you guys do have quite a bit of materials that Heather submitted and Wendy in advance. So hopefully that also will help to bolster this path. I think it would be helpful, Meredith, for you to share what you are hearing from actual businesses more specifically. Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy to do that. And actually I was going to have a business owner on tonight, but she was unable to make it. So I do have a statement to read, which I think would be helpful to read in advance of me sharing what I've heard from a variety of businesses. So Laura Wade, the owner of Missouri Love Company, and she is also the Downtown When You See board chair, full disclosure. She was going to be joining us today to discuss what she's been hearing from her colleague and from her fellow business owner. So I'm just gonna read her letter and then I can email it out to you guys as well, but I just received it. It says, Mayor Lott and counselors, over the past two years, when you see small businesses like many across our state have been incredibly hard hit. Basic things like paying rent, making payroll and purchasing goods have become increasingly difficult and unsustainable. We have had to be scrappy, resilient and flexible. We've had to make difficult decisions. When talking with my colleagues, it's clear that we've all just been hanging on. This last surge of the pandemic has really put us all in a very vulnerable position. And I imagine that this season, we will see many of our small businesses close as a result. When you see small businesses urgently need help, we need help with new technologies to get our businesses online, with employee attraction and retention, with overhead costs, with marketing to let our greater community know that we're still here and still open. Thank you for your consideration. Laura Wade from the Drayless Company. So I didn't coach her what to say. I just said, if you have something to share, please give it to me in writing. But what she's hearing from people is exactly the same as what I've been hearing. We are not looking at people who have kind of sat back and waited for assistance. A lot of the businesses that I'm talking to that are fearful now, have taken advantage of many, if not all, of the opportunities that have become available to them. Whether it's at the state level, federal level, independent grants, there have been quite a few businesses and different entities coming forward to try to help restaurant industry and other small businesses with various grant programs, many of which get depleted very quickly to our frustration. And we do know that there are SCA loans still available. We know, for example, the Wanooski Small Business Loan still has funding available. However, a lot of the businesses are not able to take on additional debt at this time. They're completely maxed out. A lot of small businesses have a small margin anyway, but they were amazing during the pandemic, the first two years, okay? You know, in 2020, we really rallied for our community. And in 2021, we continued to make sure that technical assistance was there. And like I said, a lot of our small businesses were very lucky to receive quite a bit of funding to help them stay afloat, to make changes, to pivot, to help their employees, to protect their employees' safety and their customers' safety. But to be completely frank, a lot of that was scaffolding. It was holding everything up until we could breathe again when everything was back to normal and open again. And unfortunately, we saw Delta come through. We had an okay holiday season from what I can tell. But with Omicron and with the continuing employee shortage and just other crises that are coming up, we're hearing fear for the first time, I'll be honest, from a lot of our businesses in Wanooski. And that is across the board, not just one type of business. So to echo Laura's words, the needs are great, the needs are immediate. And they go from everywhere from paying their rent, which is a basic thing, to helping pay for or attract new employees or things like technical assistance to actually do the things that they wanted to do, maybe in 2020 or 2021, but we're just hanging on for dear life. And now they really do need to pivot to better point of sale or online systems in order to make their businesses really function for the next year plus of the pandemic or however long we have looking down into the future. So yes, I understand that there will be ARPA discussions coming up. And obviously it's wonderful to have as much public input as possible, but considering, looking over the original ARPA considerations, this does seem like it's within the usage for this. And because we're hearing this all of a sudden kind of this growing concern, we wanted to bring it to council, like Heather said, we did bring it to the finance commission in December. So we're just looking forward to your questions and to hopefully getting this off the ground with like Heather said, a lot of input from our business community. Thanks Meredith. So for counsel's sake, as you heard at the beginning of the meeting, there are some community listening sessions planned for ARPA to help inform ARPA decision-making, allocating that funds, those funds. Over the course of the next month, and then we still hope to launch a community survey in March. And so we could have public input coming in in February, March, April. Ideally, we could then when we get to like our strategy and priority session in June or May, I'm hoping for May this year, take that sort of bigger picture, look at our upcoming strategies and priorities at whatever community feedback we've gotten around, you know, pandemic impacts and make some really informed decisions about how to allocate ARPA funds. We did however, in a previous discussion say, if there was a more urgent need that couldn't wait for that timeline, we would want a chance to consider it. And so that is what Heather and Meredith had brought tonight. I had suggested starting if we, if we choose to move forward with this with a lower dollar amount to actually demonstrate that there's need there before we start pre-allocating big chunks of ARPA funds. And as was shared, we could always allocate additional funding if we so chose to. I think, and I must admit, I didn't read this again this weekend. I saw a previous draft earlier this week. I believe there was gonna be a qualification that applicants had already applied for the state bridge loans, is that still included? I took it out, Christine, after speaking with you because you were not certain of it, but yes, that was what we were considering is that they must have applied for the bridge loan in advance of this, that we are replicating efforts. Yeah. And so, you know, that's also been part of the conversations is like, there is assistance out there and we shouldn't be duplicating that. There is still state funding available, but if we wanted to do something locally, it would fill in gaps where that isn't meeting the need. So, opening it up for council questions. I think we should. I got a quick question. Yeah, go ahead. It says the eligibility criteria has not been developed yet, so should that be something in place before approving funds for grants? It might help the decision making on what kind of criteria you're looking for. That might help. Mike, yeah, I provided an overview of basically how we would be looking at it, but in developing these criteria, it's really important that we hear from businesses and because businesses are overstretched and understaffed right now and just trying to stay afloat, I felt that it would be an inappropriate ask for us to go to them and ask them to volunteer their time to help develop a program that may or may not be funded. So what we would do is, if there are funds that are allocated, we would then go to those businesses and before we would ever roll out a program, we would bring that program back before you for your approval. So it's a two-step process to do that. And also, if I can step into the program, there are examples of this too, the small business loan rubric and the eligibility requirements are obviously not exactly the same as we would put forward for this program, partially because we want this program to be a little bit more open-ended to cover potentially, to cover what we hear from the businesses, but we wouldn't necessarily be starting from a blank page. We would be starting with language and with eligibility requirements and with a rubric that has already been proven to work for this community. And also has been approved by City Council, Mike. So the Winooski Small Business Loan Program, if you'll recall, we shifted that slightly and changed the rubric for the emergency bridge loan program that we rolled out at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. So we would use a similar approach to what we did then. So at that time, we came back with, okay, here are the new guidelines for what we would be using this for. But we certainly wouldn't roll out a program without City Council's approval of what that rubric is. Jim, go ahead. Thank you for bringing this forward. And I wanted to ask two separate questions. So first off, you have alluded to this additional eligibility requirements that could include having already applied to the bridge loan, but that's not considered at this point. Could you say a little bit more about whether that's completely off the table or if you're expecting that to be part of the discussion of the business community in terms of either explaining that they already have a sought loan funding or an explanation of why their current debt load doesn't allow them to seek additional loan funding because you kind of brought that point up Meredith. So yeah, could you say a little bit more about the status of that thinking around that eligibility criteria? Yeah, so what had initially been written in was that they would have to have already applied for the Economic Bridge Grant Program through the state. But we could certainly include in the eligibility why they can't take on more debt load. So, you know, some kind of explanation of why a loan wouldn't work for them and a grant would be necessary. And that can, you know, if we need to take that through a credit analysis, through Opportunities Credit Union, we could certainly do that where they could confirm that, you know, they can't take on additional debt. I would prefer to keep it simpler rather than more complex so that we can turn them around more quickly. But certainly that can be part of the conversation, Jim. Go ahead, Jim. Okay, thanks. That does answer my question for now. And then the other topic I wanted to ask about is if this is under-subscribed in committing these funds, can we pull them back if it isn't used within a certain period of time? I mean, when we see numbers decline and usage go back up, or sorry, attendance in restaurants and businesses go up again, do we have the ability to program those funds for something else? Absolutely, we can put a deadline on it. And I think that because this will be a competitive program, I expect that it will be oversubscribed. But if we have a timeline on it, then it's not the people who have the most resources getting all the funds because they can turn around an application more quickly than some other businesses. So if we put a cap on that deadline for applications, then we can allocate, we can weigh them against each other. So it's a more competitive process. And if after that application deadline has passed, we want to recoup those funds if there isn't enough interest in them, we could certainly tie that together. And on the flip side, if we decide that we have received an absolute mountain of applications for this relatively small amount of funds, especially if you're looking at $10,000 for each applicant, that we would come back to you and say, hey, this is a competitive process and we have allocated these grants to these businesses, but we have a lot of businesses that applied and weren't able to get the funding. So that could also be the flip side of that. Also, I just want to make, oh, sorry, I would make one point to Jim's point. I also wanted to say that one of the reasons why the thing that you have applied for the bridge loan is really important is to Mayor Lott's point about there is some funding out there that would be appropriate for some of our businesses, but we also are really interested in equity here because we see this time and time again with the programs that are coming forward from all different directions, that there are certain sectors of the business community that are left out for whatever reason. And so this process hopefully would address some of that inequity as well. Thanks, Meredith. Brandon, go ahead. I already expressed kind of over the weekend similar concern to Mike about requesting funds without having some type of criteria set out. So thank you for giving some frame of reference to the small business loan. I'm also just kind of curious about you know, why up to $10,000 per grant? It seems like only helping 10 businesses if that's the case, that doesn't seem like that's distributing the funds as far and wide as there may be benefit to. Yeah, I think you're right about that, Brynn, but when we were initially talking about it, we have businesses that have lease payments that are $2,500 to $4,500 a month. So that is just one piece of what we're trying to do with this. With the dang issues people are having, if they were able to increase over, at least during the Omicron surge, that pay scale, that would also be necessary. So $10,000 is really only doing one or two of the three pieces for any given business that we want to do. So we could technically reduce that, but I don't know that we would be providing the assistance that's needed if we did that. I think $10,000 is actually fairly low for these grants. So you know, if $100,000 is what we can approve, then we can help 10 businesses and truly help them. But my fear is that by making the grants too small, we won't be providing any of the assistance that we actually want to provide to keep businesses afloat. And I won't provide the benefit of keeping businesses in. Will this be available to all businesses citywide? All businesses citywide, but there will be a requirement that they have to demonstrate losses during the pandemic. So there are businesses in Winn-Winn have done better than ever during the pandemic. It just depends on the business type. So yes, it's citywide. We would also be discussing within that rubric, again, leaning a little bit on that small business loan program, how we would address businesses that opened potentially during 2021, how we would address their applications because they wouldn't be able to demonstrate or submit information from 2019. But again, you know, that would be part of the application process in the rubric trying to make sure that we're, like Heather said, actually helping and digging out these people that are on the brink of closure. I'll, Mike, ask his question. So you bring up the small business loans. So I'm assuming that we're going for all high-risk businesses. Is that the assumption right? No, Mike, that's very different piece of the Winn-Winn small business loan. It's very specific to that. So no, these grants will be business across the board. And just for the public's knowledge, our Winn-Winn-Winn small business loan program is specifically targeted to those who don't have access to traditional forms of credit. So people who are turned down for loans. But that would not be the case with this program, Mike. Okay. The reason I was asking, because I was thinking if we did the more lower, the money might go further with the low-risk businesses than the high-risk at this point. And I'm not sure if that's a criteria that you wanna implement, or if you're just gonna go across the board. I think we wanna talk to businesses about what the needs are. And certainly we want to maximize the impact of these funds. So we want to be saving businesses that we believe will succeed with no criteria. So the criteria will be part of that. One of the things, in looking at previous pre-COVID numbers, we'll be able to see businesses that are successful, were successful, up until COVID. And that would give us an indication that they may be successful again. With that being said, there are other criteria as well that would certainly be on my radar. One of them being that, and we use it as part of the Winn-Winn-Winn small business loan program. We did an economic development strategic plan that identified some of the primary goods and services that are desired by this community and needed by the community. So I think that one of the scoring criteria would be that. So anything that is a highly desired business type, but maybe the only business of that type in the community would probably score higher than something that we have multiples of. So for example, Sagramatha, I'm just pulling a business that I can think of that provides a very specific set of goods and services to our population that they are not able to get in other places. So that's one place where people can get the food that they want and that they can eat and that would end without that business may create a food desert for some portion of our population. So I think we'd be looking at all of that, but we'd wanna work that out with our businesses. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Bryn, go ahead. What precautions do the taxpayers of the city have that the money won't be pocketed and the businesses will close anyway? I think that there is a guarantee of that, Bryn, but I think that if businesses close, the taxpayers will get hit one way or the other because the local option tax is part of what we have budgeted for this coming year. So $450,000 is what we expect to come in this year. And if we continue at the losses that we currently have of 20, we're down 25%, if we lost 25% of our local option tax, that would be over $100,000 that would not come into the city budget and either would result in us having to decrease services or increase taxes. So I think that we're really trying to mitigate the impact to the taxpayers either way. And why is this the best method to provide support to businesses as opposed to something else that may be a bit broader as far as the impact to the community? I think this is one of the tools for providing support to our businesses. I don't think it's the only tool that I am at all promoting, but I think it's one that having the ability to stabilize themselves financially is absolutely crucial to being able to move forward with other supports like technical assistance, that we would have to rely on partners to bring. So I think that it's, I think we have been so fortunate not to see widespread closures of our businesses and they have been hanging on by the skin of their teeth, but I believe this winter is when we will see widespread closures of businesses if we don't intervene. And just one more follow-up question. I think about all the conversations I have where Angela tries to remind me like the use of one-time funds for salaries and how that doesn't mitigate and omit the need going forward. How will, what assurances are there that this, it doesn't sound like the funding would really be enough as it is, considering you're crossing more than just the 100,000 that was basically brought forward to us. And the limited breadth of the availability to maybe just 10 businesses for one-time funds, what assurances are there that these one-time funds will really have the desired impact? Yeah, I mean, I think that you're right in saying there are no guarantees. However, with this being the season that is notoriously the slowest season for businesses, and demonstrably so, and with a surge going on, which is keeping people out of businesses, which is keeping people from taking jobs at businesses that the staff that they need to be able to reemerge from this, I think we're looking at a one-time issue. When we get through to the spring again, what we saw with the numbers over the last spring was there was starting to be a turnaround when people could dine outside, could shop outside, could be outside, and people were much more secure as vaccines were rolled out and people were able to go back out and support our businesses. I think we are looking at bridging people through these winter months, and I think you'll see that turn again. And just to add to that, this is not a normal time that we're living in. I don't think Ender in 2019 would have ever suggested let's do a one-time grant just to see what would happen, see what cool stuff businesses can come up with. I mean, I kind of love that idea, but that doesn't really make sense. Like you said, one-time influx to, even if you're talking about employee attraction, that's not going to be sustainable, right? If you're offering bonuses or if you're offering sign-on things, that's not sustainable. But we are not in a place where the normal way of doing business is possible. So that's what we're really hoping to do with these, and that's why we are looking at that $10,000 cap, because we're seeing people who have been quite frankly successful throughout the pandemic all of a sudden having to cut their hours, seeing their staff half, seeing the rising costs of PPE again, and all of this kind of thing, and just rising costs of goods. And that's where this worry is coming from, and that's where I think this program would really shine. Again, this is not a normal time that we're living in. I know we would love to get back to the precedented times, but we are not there yet. And so that's where this has come in. And quite frankly, I think we have seen over the last two years a ton of amazing funding and support coming out for businesses, but pretty much it's gone now. And so having, or the people that could be eligible for it have taken advantage of it to the max of their capacity. So the opportunity for Winnie's P to take this step to support the businesses that do qualify and are awarded through the rubric, which I can imagine would be pretty well-tailored to what would be appropriate for an acceptable from council, I think would just have a tremendous impact on our community and also just be the unknowns. You know, yes, it would be able to pay their rent, but then they're also able to have the headspace to be more creative about other things. There's a lot of things that you also just can't put a dollar amount on when you're helping these business owners that are often sometimes the only employee in most of the time from staying afloat, giving them that little bit of breathing room and that little bit of air, I think is gonna be absolutely necessary right now. I do appreciate that my message of not using one-time money for operating costs has been heard, but in this case, this is rather than funding operational costs, we are covering revenue that has never come to fruition, which is considered to be a short-term, hopefully, repercussion of COVID-19. So this is a one-time use to cover revenues that never came into fruition. Jim? Along those lines, I know we couldn't have our Q4 results for meals and alcohol revenues or receipts. Do we know when those are expected to come in from the state? I won't have those. I don't know off the top, and I haven't heard anything from you, Ari. I used to get them a month in arrears. Businesses are filing their quarterly reports right now in January, and then the state will process it and send us our report in February. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm very interested. And it'll be available at the same time. Yeah. I'm very interested to see that paired as part of any future requests. It would be uncomfortable increasing this amount, given that we did see an increase over pre-COVID times and Q3, as we were in between the Delta and Omicron waves that we actually have an increase in receipts from businesses. In meals and rooms only, not in sales and use, Jim. Right, yeah. That was the community. Meals and alcohol. Meals and alcohol only. Yeah. Right. But I think that it would feel hard to justify continued allocation. We've already taken 5% of this recovery money to justify additional allocation while you also see increases in receipts is gonna be hard to explain. And so I do want to just point out that I expect like you have said that if Q4 will probably not look the same as Q3 did in this one area and that there's only a subset of our business community, but I guess I would just ask that they'll be included in future requests as an analysis of how things are progressing when it's available. And also as we go into our kind of bigger picture community visioning for our book fund expenditure, continuing to track this as a portion of already committed funds rather than talking about what remains and how to allocate. So I think we have to balance that there are other emergent needs that we are hearing around housing and opportunity for unrelated to businesses that we haven't been able, that are COVID related and that aren't being addressed in our community. So I guess I think this is a sensible investment in our business community. They're like you said, they've put through a lot to try and maintain and stay and keep going in the city, which has a benefit to the people who go there and the people who are paying taxes in the city. They make our job easier as counsel to balance the budget. So we definitely need to invest in that. But I think there are other aspects that don't generate tax revenue that we should also be keeping an eye on that are emergent and not able to wait for a longer process. So as we talk about if there isn't a request for additional funds after this, I would just like to keep that perspective in mind. Yeah, and Jim, we did talk about should there be some similar approach for like partner non-profit orgs? Like what could we do for people and residents? It's not as easy. Like there's not some analogous program like we have the small business loan program, right? Like it's easier to stand something up here. But staff are talking to partners like currently to try to see like are there emergent needs? Is there something we should address rapidly? So that is something that, like that is a personal reaction that I had is like we're giving a leg up kind of early entry to one sector that's been impacted. What are we doing for others? So that is something that I struggled with here. I see. Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Heather. I'm sorry, I have such a lag. So Jim, that is something we had talked about. And I think initially in bringing this forward, what I was considering is, you know, just setting aside a pot of money that is for urgent need. Unfortunately, we don't have built out programs for some of the other things we were talking about. But as a staff, we are absolutely talking about those other urgent needs. It just was that this one was, it was much better developed at this point. So we brought it forward as a separate item. But I think the approach was really to look at having some set of funds put aside for urgent need. I will turn it to, we have a hand raised in public comment. Aurora is joining us. Hi there. I was just, thank you so much. I've been listening into this and I do notice that part of the grant is, as Ben said, for employee allocation or allocating funds for employees. And I'm wondering, could there be a priority for employees giving additional, say hazard pay or bringing on more employees and or covering PPE? That feels like it could both really benefit the businesses as well as possibly bring additional funds to the residents if they are currently employed in these businesses of when used to be, as well as PPE would be helpful for those who are going to these businesses. So I'm just wondering, could there be, I guess a higher priority put on something like that or would that not be as useful? Are you suggesting, Aurora, I think you're saying exactly what we're talking about, that all of the things you're mentioning, I'm sorry, the lag, I apologize. Aurora, that's exactly what we were talking about. And one of the things that could be a criterion would be how many of your employees are. Newsy residents, so there could be higher scoring to ensure putting it out into our community as well. So I think you're hitting the nail on the head with what we were thinking about. And certainly there could be a higher level of priority there, but I think what we'd wanna do is talk with businesses to make sure that we are actively doing the things that help to keep them here in the city. I'm sure that that is a piece of it, but I wanna hear from them before I sit in an office by myself and say what those criteria are. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other questions, thoughts? I have a thought. Sure. I think we're on the right track here to help people out. And I think I'd like to see more of the criteria. I really like to think that I don't know really how to say this, I don't wanna make the suggestion. Or, but I think the criteria should stay that it's to keep the lights on or keep the rent paid, right? And not put a new mirror in behind the bar or make upgrades. It should be for essential use where if you get the $10,000 grant that could keep two employees working for five months. I think there needs to be more to this story here and on the usage that I'm not seeing. And I know we're trying to get it going but it's hard to get behind something when we don't have the background on it. And who's to say that they're gonna take $10,000 and repaint their business with $10,000? That doesn't really help keep the lights on or clean their business with it. Yeah, that wouldn't be an allowable use, Mike. So I think that all of these that we're discussing right now would be things that would be keeping the lights on. So what we've suggested to date, and this is without the business input, so there's more to come, would be making their lease payments so that they aren't evicted from their space, providing assistance for competitive pay and or bonuses to employees who are working in frontline situations that put them at higher risk and technical assistance to support modernizing businesses online presence. So there are some businesses that have that technical ability or more staff that they can throw at things and they've been able to make that transition. But what's happening is some of the businesses who don't have as much as many staff people who don't have that technical expertise are being rendered uncompetitive because they don't have the ability to truly make that transition. So those were the three things that we were starting with, Mike. But I want to leave that open to finding out from businesses if there are other things that are important to keeping the lights on. We are certainly not allowing people to upgrade their space or do renovations or anything of the sort with these funds. And these are grants, so they would still require people to file documentation at some point telling us what they spent money on because we're going to have to, in turn, report to the federal government what we spent the money on. Brynn? Thanks. I also have some concerns just in uneasiness around this core group developing their own criteria and evaluating the applications themselves. I don't know, it feels like it doesn't pass the straight face test to me. And I know that it's so- It wouldn't be downtown when news, I'm sorry, Brynn, but I'm not sure if it's going to happen. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry, Brynn. Go ahead. I know that the criteria will be developed with input from downtown Winnowsky and will be brought to council for input. And maybe I misread your materials in the packet. It sounded like the downtown Winnowsky group would also be the ones that are evaluating the applications and then final approval would be with the council. Downtown Winnowsky wouldn't be developed. Meredith and I would be holding focus group meetings with businesses, not downtown Winnowsky board, different businesses, so across the board and gathering feedback there. And then you using that information, bring it back to you for approval. And then any recommendations would then, for approving these grants would have final approval from city council. So that's where something like Mike is concerned about them doing leasehold improvements would be declined. I think that I feel safe to say that city council would not give that grant. So I think it's definitely not all in the hands of downtown Winnowsky at all. That would be a much broader set of businesses that would be developing the criteria with Meredith. And also in terms of the process, we are again leaning on the small business loan program which has a staff or internal team that reviews, well, Heather will take a look at things for that important information that identifies and then go over the application with the rubric and then bring it to the team. And unfortunately that team, there is no such team or availability at this time. So downtown Winnowsky would essentially be utilizing our own board meetings or convening for additional board meetings in order to complete this task. And again, there would be a lot of other steps before we got to it. And then there would be going back to council with the rubric, with the applications, with the recommendations and the scoring and all of that. So hopefully there would be enough information and enough checks and balances so that you're right. It wouldn't be a few people coming up with something and then a few people getting the money which I agree does not sit well with me. Are there any more council questions or thoughts? We've heard from one business. Have we heard from any, maybe I missed this in the beginning of this. We've heard from one business. Have we heard from any other businesses? Yeah, Meredith, do you wanna speak to in how many? Kind of the volume of what you've heard? Yeah, again, I am collecting feedback just anecdotally and that's why this came up in December at the end of the year. And we did hear from one business like formally today but like Heather said, because we are coming to this group, to the council to ask for us to move forward with creating the program when we, if we are approved then we would go to a more formal gathering feedback process. But yes, I've heard from businesses anecdotally I'm not gonna name them here but across the board, smaller businesses, a little bit larger businesses, people that have our sole proprietor, people that have 15 staff, different areas of the city. So not just the downtown core but all over the city. And like Heather said, some businesses are doing quite well and some businesses are realizing now the reality that they were holding themselves up and just waiting for something to get better. And they're staring down a bleak, next couple of months. And so that's what we're starting to hear where in 2020 and in 2021, I wasn't hearing the same kind of chatter that I was at the end of 2021 and now that I have from businesses and certainly the types of businesses that are talking to me are the ones that are comfortable coming to me. So I will be making sure that if we, when we are moving forward to gather more feedback that we'll be making sure to reach out to a wide variety of businesses to make sure that we're gathering their feedback and gathering their largest need. Because like Heather said, we can sit in a room, just the two of us and come up with ideas, but we need to make sure that that's actually what the businesses in Manuski actually need. Brynne. Do we know if there are any businesses, obviously not to be named that are currently in arrears with the city? Not off the top of my head. I don't have that information available right now. I would say as part of the criteria that if a business is in arrears that the money goes towards the city to pay off that arrearage first and foremost. We could absolutely do that or we could make them ineligible in the case that they are in arrears with the city. Either way. My problem could be to make the city whole. Great. And I would also want consideration of whether or not there are any violations, health and safety violations that have been raised from our public safety teams. So would you then want grants to go toward remedying those or would you want them not to be eligible? And I don't want to think about it a little bit more, but I do think it should be part of the consideration. Yeah, absolutely. I think it depends on the gradation of the violation. Like if it's minor or more significant and if it's more significant and they can't operate until they address the significant violation, then I would say it's fine to have some funds go towards that. But again, I think I would need to think about it more. Or if it's putting their staff at any kind of jeopardy, I would think we would want those grants to go toward fixing those violations. Yeah, I mean, I think I need to think about that a little bit more in the implications with it, but I do think it should be part of the consideration. Absolutely. Can I just speak to that point too? I do think that if an application comes forward where there are violations, I think there would also my assumption and obviously this may not be true across the board, but my assumption would be that there would be other flags or other things that come up in the person in the application that make us question potentially moving forward with the grant to them. So there are a lot of considerations. The rubric and the application process will be, we wanna make sure that it's inclusive, so it's not too long. We wanna make sure it's long enough and intense enough that people are giving us the full picture of what they need and their business situation. Yeah, I think it's a matter of ensuring that we're supporting the businesses that have fallen on some recent hard times and not necessarily bad actors. Mike, go ahead. I can piggyback on that, Bryn. I think if you look at it as a whole, if they had violations or in the rears pre-COVID, obviously that's a problem, but if their problems have all stemmed from COVID, I think we need to have some compassion. Maybe they fell into hard times and they weren't able to fix or remedy their situation or maybe they're in the rears because of COVID because they paid their employees instead of paying their taxes type of situation. But I agree, I think pre-COVID conditions, if they're in some kind of violation, then I think we worry about the people that have been impacted by the pandemic. Yeah, that's essentially what I'm looking at is since March 2020, essentially. Also my understanding that that's the allowable use of ARPA funds would have to be a COVID-related need. Jim, go ahead. I just wanted to speak to the health and safety violations piece. This is something that was discussed and baked into the Housing Trust Fund where there's kind of a similar, this is before the pandemic, but we'll persist after that there could be places of persistent health and safety violations that are a result of just a lack of capacity and the Housing Trust Fund chose to treat those as points towards the application rather than marks against because ultimately if we fix those and find ways to fix those, it does lead to better outcomes for people to live here. Likewise, if we have businesses who are struggling to make necessary life safety improvements to their facilities then supporting them to fix those also benefits those who need help most in working here safely. So I think that's something that we should keep consistent between our housing assistance and our business assistance. So I believe I'm hearing general support to move forward conditioned on the fact that we expect to see a really fleshed out program outline for final approval. So before taking any motions, Heather Meredith, do you have questions? Is there particular feedback from us that would help you advance? I feel like I've received a lot of information here about some of the concerns that city council has and thank you for that, that was my hope so that as we go forward in talking with the businesses we will have a much better sense of what your concerns are, what your goals are and what you would like us to avoid with this program. So I feel very confident that we can come forward with a rubric that will work for you and having been the staff person who facilitated the housing trust fund I'm very familiar with how we did the code piece there. So happy to integrate the comments that we've heard here today. I just wanna thank all of the counselors for being really like really enacting our due diligence here to help structure something that is good and works. Jim. I asked for clarification on what we would be approving tonight, it sounds like we'd just be approving allocation of funds but not actually launching of this grant program or is the expectation that we're approving allocations of funds and between now and our next meeting those funds will be made available for application. I believe we are allocating a program. Okay. So would someone like to make a motion to approve the allocation of $100,000 in ARPA funds to business relief? So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Jim. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? You said aye, Bryn. I don't know why I can't hear you. Okay. Then the motion carries. Thank you again, Meredith and Heather. Thank you. Get to your vacation. Oh, way Heather. Thank you guys so much. We really appreciate your time. Thanks Meredith. So that brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So will. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Bryn. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you everyone. Good. Good night. Good night.