 It is 6 p.m. Monday, September 19th. I'll call to order this regular meeting of the Wyniewski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Councillor Oakley. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, agenda review. Any questions concerns about the savings agenda? Nope. Okay. Public comments. There's no one here in person. Paul, I don't see anyone in Zoom. Anyone signed up? Nobody signed up and nobody in the attendees list. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Second agenda. We have our city council minutes of nine and six. The accounts payable warrant from nine 15. Subsequent to pay out June, July and August and payroll warrant. 821 to 93. Any questions or concerns about the consent agenda? No. I have a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Jim. Oh, it's very quiet. Thank you. Jim is a little quiet. So if you're trying to get my attention, please use the raise hand feature as well. All right. We will do council reports next Aurora. Can I start with you? Sure. So we had our news key pride events. On Saturday, and it was a very big success. We thought of quite a diverse age range in the public. And I've heard nothing, but kind of good comments back on it. So sure. Some others will touch on it, but just want to do a shout out that. It went really well. The other piece I have to report on is at the safe, healthy connected people meeting that we received a report from the library. And I just want to highlight a couple of things from that report. One thing that noted that. There have been over 3,300 patrons currently signed up for cards. There have been almost 400 new card signups in the last year. And there have been over 6,000 in person visits. There have been. This is for also FY 2020. There have been over 442 programs held. Of totaling about 3,200 in attendance. So the library still continues to be small but mighty. And just want to give a shout out to all the work that is being done there. One thing that did come up and I think is kind of a consistent concern with the library is the one issue they're running into. And I think that's one of the things that I would like to point out is that the library is still in the first phase of limiting some of what they can do. But for the space that they have, they're putting great use to it. Thank you. Yeah. Second. It was. The pride event. When you skis first pride event was, I would say a resounding success. Many thanks to downtown. I was really pleased to see that they were supporting with this year, especially with a little bit of short notice. About five, six weeks worth of notice. Craig Mitchell was an essential element to helping pull that off. And of course, representative Taylor small. At one point I asked how like an estimate of how many people were in attendance. And it was easily close to 600. I was hoping for another event next year. So thanks for all the work that went into that for the counselor heard and read her as well. The infrastructure commission met on Thursday and we welcomed a new commissioner, Michelle Metzler. And we welcomed our inclusion and belonging. Commissioner Nick Wolf. We focused mainly on ARPA dollars and some department priorities for the next fiscal year. And a little bit of time was really just spent on getting to know each other and establishing what will the relationship be with the inclusion and belonging representative. And initially we'll have it as a non voting role. And as Nick gets up to speed that may transition. So it'll be something that we revisit. And I believe that the ballots for the Chittin solid waste materials recovery facility are in. So if anyone is doing early voting, please make sure to talk with the city clerk about getting a ballot for that. That's it. Thank you. Thomas. My update was the pride events, but I think it was covered in detail. So I'm also. No, Thomas. What was your favorite part? It was my favorite part. You know, the drag queens did an amazing performance given the surface that they had to perform on. Jim. The only thing I'll report is next month next week. The housing commission is going to be meeting at its regularly scheduled time. I'm talking about protection protections or housing quality and trade off between the two. So look forward to having participation and discussion at that meeting. That's all I have to report. Thanks Jim. All right. Okay. So I had shared previously had been participating in the airport director search. So I'm going to talk about that. So I'm going to talk about that. So I'm going to talk about that. City manager, Elaine Wong also was able to meet with some of the candidates and Mayor Weinberger has appointed former deputy director of aviation and current acting director of aviation, Nick Longo to the permanent director of aviation role. So we've worked with him in the past throughout the noise process and look forward to continuing that collaboration. And then we've also worked with the director, Angela put together sort of projecting out expense and revenue and how the TIF funding will impact that in the next few years. The model included items that we have discussed potentially funding with TIF dollars so that they could see different scenarios there. This information will be coming to us at a future meeting as well. The planning commission continued to discuss historic preservation with a focus on creating incentives for developers to do adaptive reuse of historic structures. That conversation will continue into the next couple of meetings. We had a grand opening event for the butternut grove condos, the affordable shared equity new construction down in front of the O'Brien Center. Very excited to have those family sized home ownership opportunity units. They're also. And then I also attended the town meeting TV trustees meeting where we reviewed their financials. They'll be coming, I believe, to our next meeting to present budget to us. And last, just for public notice, we as a body attended along with our city manager attended first of a two-part equity training. We will also be having the second part later in October. And I will pass it to Elaine for our city updates. Thank you. Greetings, everybody. So COVID wastewater data is still showing increasing amounts of COVID virus found in our wastewater from a new ski. The rates are increasing at different rates over the last few weeks, but they have been steadily, they have been continually increasing over the last three or four weeks. So that generally comes with actual illnesses seen in subsequent weeks and later weeks. So it's a reminder to please mask up if you're indoors and crowded spaces. And you can get free COVID test kits from city hall from the library or from the senior center. You can also call city hall at 6802-655-6410. We are doing some limited deliveries to businesses for employees. And you can, of course, get a, what is being called a bivalent vaccine, which should be effective with the current variants circulating. You can find a walk-in clinic near you by visiting healthvermont.gov, slash COVID-19, slash vaccine, or just call 211. Aborting commission seats that Winniski currently has open, we are encouraging residents to apply. The Winniski commission for inclusion and belonging needs alternates. Town meeting TV trustee is open. Finance commission, municipal infrastructure commission, these are all bodies that could use your voice. And we look forward to receiving your applications. And if you've never served on a body before, we will help you through it. Let's see. So, and you can visit our news updates section at winniskibt.gov to find out more about each of these commissions. Thanks again, echoing the counselors to downtown Winniski, counselors, Rep. Taylor Small and others for a successful Pride event. And we are looking as a Winniski for an AmeriCorps member for two open positions, recreation operations for 2022 and 2023. Learn more and apply at winniskibt.gov slash jobs. The November election is around the corner. If you haven't yet registered to vote, you can do so at winniskibt.gov slash vote. Or call the city clerk's office at 802-655-6410. Email them at clerk at winniskibt.gov. Or drop in at 27 West Allen Street Monday through Friday, 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. And amendment to act 250 permit for C-0235-5F has been filed with the district for environmental commission, which is the one governing our region. The amendment is for the expansion of an industrial building located at 11 Tygen Street. This project went through site plan review with Development Roof View Board in August. If you're interested, please take a look there to register your concerns. And that's it for me. Thank you, Lynn. So we'll move into our regular items. First up for discussion is the FY24 budget planning. Angela. Thank you very much. So nothing new and surprising here. We plan to present the FY24 budget in the same manner in which we've done in prior years. City manager will present a proposed budget with all budgets presented simultaneously at the first meeting in December. And this will be followed up by individual reports for each department about the specifics of their budgets. This provides the most complete picture of the city's financial position and operation. So what we've included in your packet was an outline of all of the important dates that will be coming, including a meeting in October where we'll be asking for council guidance regarding budget goals. Thanks, Angela. Any questions from council? Okay. I think we still don't have any... Do we have any attendees? Maybe. Okay, we do know. Are there any questions from members of the public? You can use the raise hand feature or chat to indicate if you wish to speak. Let's move on to item B. This is also on for discussion is the ARPA input update. Who will be providing this? Hi. It's Paul. Good evening, mayor and councillors. How is everybody? Before you tonight is our update memo regarding ARPA's feedback and how to prioritize those funds. To date, we have received 65 individual online responses. We've also held a few multilingual sessions at the Wynuski Memorial Library for residents who speak Arabic, Nepali and Swahili. We're also taking into account discussion feedback from a number of our commissions and are looking ahead to continue surveying youth and seniors as well as city staff. I'd say the process has been pretty good thus far. Certainly not a whole sample size, the entire community. We have almost 8,000 residents but good start. Definitely a lot of recurring themes. I think no surprises there. We're certainly excited about collecting more data. As we said, looking forward to different sessions and different avenues to receive more feedback. I think it's going to be the next important step for sure. Happy to take any questions you have. Thanks Paul. I'll just follow that up, Mayor, if I could. Yeah. So to my members of the public, the city received about $2 million in federal COVID-19 recovery grants from the American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA, as we often call it. The city can now use that grant with very few restrictions. Some of it has already been set aside by council for expenses like the COVID recovery business grant and the COVID recovery nonprofit grant. This is an unusually large amount of money from Manuski to receive that we can use with very few restrictions. But it is also not a lot of money compared to some of the needs we know that are out there in the community such as housing, road maintenance, or water line replacements. So the reason why council is going through this process is to make sure that we spend this unusual money wisely and with input as from as much of a community as possible. So yes, the survey actually is still on the website for anyone who is interested in still providing feedback on that. It's under current initiatives and then ARPA. So yeah, we have completed the analysis of the surveys and listing session notes. So in recent weeks, I learned that the leadership team hasn't been systematically consulted nor the rest of our staff. And as Paul alluded to the suggestions come up to allow opportunities for youth and seniors to have a specific voice because they are not sometimes reachable through the venues that we've already provided. So that's partly why we've slowed down a bit giving back to you the results that originally we had planned for today. Yes. So if there are any questions about that, we would be happy to take them or any concerns about the process. Thanks, Elaine. Good. One question I had was I know that we've tried to have sessions with multi-lingual liaisons for Burmese, Somali, and Maimai. I was wondering if there is any, I know we've also passed out some translated paper versions of the survey and I'm just wondering if we've received any of those back from those communities. We have not. I think a lot of those paper surveys we have there were for reference. I think during those specific sessions it was great to receive a lot of that in-person feedback and as you pointed out there are other language groups we have been trying to connect with as well. That has been a number of scheduling challenges. We all know that our liaisons at the school district do more than their share and that's been a hurdle for sure to try to host a lot of those in-person sessions. Not to say that the ones that we have hosted have not been quite excellent. You've been to I think almost all of them, Councillor Hurd, which has been great to see that turn out as well. So we're in a bit of a holding pattern there. We're hoping, you know, again, going back to the school and doing some more in-person stuff there, especially with members of youth trying to capture that feedback a little bit better there as well. Thanks, Paul. You're welcome. I ask a question about the approach to gathering youth feedback. Reaching out to the area schools is pretty straightforward. But this bullet about community services, I'm unclear on what that looks like. Yeah, that's definitely a conversation we want to continue to have with Ray, who's here tonight. We've had a couple of conversations with Ray about possibly stopping by a couple of high-rankles ago, a couple of Thrive sessions, possibly through some recreation and parks programming, certainly at the library through some of their youth programming as well. You know, all of the specific facilities in which the program happens through community services we can certainly need to be there to talk to parents and talk to kids. Yeah, and then the other piece about seniors too, I think worth mentioning, is specifically, Christine, do you remember we hosted, I believe it was, it was during a budget season discussion that we had at some of the Winniesky Housing Authority community programs. I think we're also interested in possibly replicating that as well. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Are there any other questions for this update? I'm wondering, Paul, if you've gotten feedback on the survey itself. Not anything in specific, again, I think the online survey only having 65 responses, you know, the avenues in which that was shared were usual, you know, a website update and then front porch forum and all of our social media channels. We did a few rounds of that. I think, you know, initially the initial question about how did the COVID-19 pandemic affect you, I think the direction at the beginning of this process was to keep it pretty simple, Ryan, to open it up to that little question, which has led to a lot of the responses when looking at them individually. It was great to see that there was more room for people to sort of provide experiential feedback, which was really great. Of course, some people did give one or two sentences, but yeah, so nothing specific about that. Okay, it feels like a very different question than how should the city allocate the available funds that we've been given. It is now, right, because the way it can be used has changed. Right, yeah, and I mean, if we do, I mean, this will have to be a discussion, I think, in a way, and feel free to fill in here a little bit too. You know, if we go back out, either online or if we budgeted for, say, postcards to hit every address in the new ski with potentially QR codes that could lead back to the survey, I will have to be thoughtful about how that could be reworded or reconfigured, because then you may be talking about two different datasets perhaps, but yeah, certainly worth looking at. Well, I do want to layer on to that, that the themes we're seeing are not surprises. They're the same things we've been hearing from other engagements, and when we think about, hey, this money can be spent beyond the scope of our COVID impacts, we also still have our master plan to guide us on that. Those are great points, yeah, absolutely. Does it make does it make sense to discuss having some type of incentive to encourage responses as well? I thought about that, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think like every other question, everything comes down to budget, right, and what we're able to incentivize, it's a really good question, and I think, you know, something I can certainly discuss with some of the other members on staff. You know, I know you see, you often see a lot of stuff, like let's say we did send a postcard to every home in the new ski or something, and it was some sort of raffle entry. I'm not 100% sure how, you know, the municipalities engage in, you know, open raffles or anything like that, but it's a really good question. Something we've thought about a lot, actually. Yeah, I mean, I think we still have some centennial swag left over. Certainly do, yeah, absolutely. But just wanted to mention that as a way to something to consider to help encourage responses. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Seeing no further comments. Oh, I'm sorry, but Mayor, yeah, go ahead. Take this opportunity since the questions have concluded. I just want to mention that in terms of the analysis to date, I don't know how many of you have analyzed qualitative data. It can be, there's a lot of opportunity for bias when you're trying to make sure that you're capturing results from qualitative from qualitative surveys, which is this kind where it's open-ended and people can respond to multiple sentences and paragraphs and essays if they wanted to. So I just want to mention our communications manager, Paul. He's really stepped up. He learned qualitative analysis methods from me so that there are two of us coding that data, which is important because if there's only one, then you have more of an opportunity for bias. So wanted to give him kudos for learning that new skill. Thank you. Thanks for saying that, Elaine. I've been doing some diving into Excel sheets. I almost cried for Angela down the hall. Glad we didn't have to. Okay. Looking forward to seeing that at a future meeting. Move on to item C now, also on for discussion. This is our goal update for municipal infrastructure. Please join us, John. So this is the first infrastructure update for FY23, the priorities planning. So in your packet, there's an overview of each of the priorities and then just sort of a status update on those. So figure I will go over the must do items and kind of cover those and then we can discuss questions. Going through the first one, so the ADA transition plan. So that is our, it's a regulatory plan that we have to complete that we perform a complete inventory of all our mainly transportation pedestrian infrastructure like sidewalks and our ADA curb ramps that have the technical warning to make sure they're in compliance with ADA specifications. So we have partnered with CCRPC to help us with that because that's a pretty big task to look at all of our, you know, ramps and sidewalks. So they have, their interns completed the first inventory of all the ADA ramps. Currently reviewing all the GIS data with them. So the next step will be to work with RPC to bring in a consultant through their grant program to help us sort of write the report and we're also going to do some inventory some additional inventory on our sidewalks. So more to come on that piece but we're well underway on that plan. The second one is the VTranswork that's two projects that we're coordinating with VTrans on. So one, you've seen the Route 2 and 7 East Allen Street resurfacing work that they're doing. So that one is wrapping up we've had a great working relationship with VTrans and their construction crew and making sure they're coordinating with us especially on utilities and like the new development that's happening on East Allen. So that should be wrapping up I would say within the next I think they have to wrap up by October but there's some painting work that still has to happen which you've probably seen out there the pedestrian beacons that are going to be placed at Manso Street and Dion Street have to be installed. So there's still some little bits that have to be completed but overall it's wrapping up and you know the nice thing about that project as I mentioned the memo is it ties to our East Allen scoping study that we performed two years ago now and they took a lot of short term improvements that were in that study incorporated into this resurfacing plan. So you know well worth the investment time to like work on that study because a lot of times you do those planning exercises and nothing comes of it and it sits on the shelf until you have grant money but that one was when we could get our agency partners to actually implement some of those features which is great and then the exit 16 DDI which technically is in Colchester so that the phase one portion of that project has been awarded that was in I think late August so SD Ireland received that bid I think it was like seven and a half million that phase one work is mainly some utility underground excavation work not like full blown we're going to destroy the exit that's that'll happen in phase two which will be obviously a traffic control coordination issue we will have with them but I expect that work will probably start in spring so we will see some movement on that and we're coordinating pretty closely with their project manager on the Mead Street project to make sure those two projects are linked the next one is the tree ordinance update so no real work on the city side to date but I know the tree committee has looked at some draft sort of ordinance language there so that that work is required because of Act 171 a state legislation came out that revised some of the tree laws so we have to align our ordinance to match that so some more work on that forthcoming and then sort of the big one Mead Street so you probably haven't heard much on the project lately because we've been just working in the background on it mainly on right away so that's getting all the easements I know I've mentioned this before but that's been probably one of the bigger lifts on this project is meeting with all the property owners there's 65 parcels along the corridor we have to get easements for all of them some parcels may need multiple easements temporary and permanent good news is we're getting pretty close so there's only I think six owners that we've had some trouble getting a hold of everyone's been incredibly receptive we have you know more than a half in hand and like I'd say another 16 of those easements are the large property owners like the Creets and the Myers that we've met talked through and submitted the easements just waiting on them to come back so really there's like six easements we're trying to grab and we've given ourselves an internal deadline of the end of October to basically wrap that phase up so right now there's a big push to grab all those easements they're coming in every day which is nice and ultimately are we have to be able to bid this winter if we want to get decent pricing from contractors and keep our financiers happy USDA and others so that's our goal that we have to meet and I don't think there's going to be any issues getting there and if there are a couple stragglers we can modify the plans a bit to be able to sign off on the title and get out to bid the question will be what those bids come back but we'll see when we get out to bid right now we are estimating the project is still within budget even with some of the crazy pricing we're seeing we've our consultant has revised the engineer's estimate based on some of the projects that we've seen locally and we're still about $23 million at that bond limit that excludes any of the grants that we have so we still have a buffer but it's a really tricky market right now because if contractors are busy they're going to throw a high number at us so that's sort of we will have to wait and see when we get out to bid this winter what the market looks like some good news on the financing side is I don't think we've actually mentioned this publicly but we did receive a pretty large grant August from the Northern Border Regional Planning Commission $817,000 in some change to support the general fund scope of work so really exciting very needed especially given all the pricing increases lately so we are really thrilled with that and I think that with that additional funding we're up to about $5.4 million in grants on the project so this delay in getting out to bid has helped us grab a couple more grants which isn't so bad John, is the goal then to start construction next year? Our goal would be bid this winter and then assuming we get decent bids bring them to you get a contractor on board and start construction this spring Would we still be discussing a phased approach or would you anticipate tackling the whole thing? We're going to bid it as a whole project obviously we're going to have to work with the contractor internally how you phase the project what end you start at some of that will be just contractor means methods and there are some tricky things like working on the fire department that we'll have to get through but right now that's the approach if we get some really high bid numbers we may have to look at if we want to go a phasing approach but then that leads to I'm getting my head myself but do you view part of the project and hope you get better numbers later on hopefully we don't have to go down that road at all and we'll get some decent numbers from contractors but that is the approach right now so that's kind of on Main Street and then there's a few other projects La Fountain, Dyan Street, Scoping Study that's the grants planning project from RPC along with the West Island Street Park Plan that's in the capital budget those have not started yet RPC has to select a consultant to do that work so that will probably happen this winter that will start moving the citywide bike headmaster plan so our planning and zoning administrators leading that project RPC has selected a consultant it's Du Bois and King so they're finalizing the scope of work for that so I would expect in the next month or so they'll start putting together sort of what that public outreach plan looks like steering committees, the typical sort of scoping study project bringing commissions and looking at that so that will be underway soon and then next on the the priority list, Elaine I don't know if you want to talk about the OCC sort of that visioning goal right so the anchor tenant there community health centers in Burlington they have finally said we cannot build a new building we have to stay within the footprint of the existing building so that was an important hurdle to get over so that we can now go on to know okay now we're all in the same building what are we going to do next so they're still finalizing the details of the internal layout they have to be happy the city has to be happy so that's roughly where it is great and then the only last sort of goal I was going to mention was it was a may-do that became a must-do it's the Winooski River bridge replacement so obviously given the federal grant funding that has bumped up the list obviously it's going to be a long lead item that's going to probably be on this list for a few years but we have had one meeting with VTRANS and other stakeholders so Burlington and CCRPC more the technical staff just to talk about sort of next steps VTRANS still has to put a team together they've got to figure that piece out on the city sides we've what our concerns are what we think are priorities one is obviously making sure we have an accurate cost estimate given the pricing that's going on so we know if we have the bonds what that number is what is our final sort of bond sharing number that they expect what that schedule looks like when are payment when do they think any sort of payments would be due from the municipalities do they expect the municipalities to pay in on some of the design costs some of those questions and they just they are there yet because they're still put on the team together so we have we've set up a sort of a monthly check just to see how they're doing that project will be interesting because it's going to be you know I think financially constrained the funding helps but there's still I think there's still going to be by the time we get to 2027 actually building this thing and a real schedule crunch because as of right now we're just sort of we have a concept plan based on the scoping study that was done but we have to go through the full design process and we have to basically expend those federal funds by 2030 so it's going to be it's going to be an expedited project for for VTrans and us in Rillington so it'll be interesting but nothing really to report at this point we'll keep checking in on VTrans and see where they're at but that's all I have on sort of the must-do projects there's obviously some me-dos but in some progress there that I've mentioned but open up any questions I have a question going back to the first item you might have touched on this wondering about the if part of the 80 a with the Rams is looking at if they have the signaling like the bumps for someone who is line reasing a cane yep that's part of it so we we worked with the interns and we laid out all the criteria that they need to be looking for to meet sort of the ramp and there's a lot actually so the sideflares have to be a certain width and slope and they all have detectable warning and it has to be in a certain location so there ended up being probably over a dozen sort of checklist items that they had to review on each ramp and then if there's obstructions there you see crazy stuff on the street like a telephone pole like almost within the ramp so things like that they have to be looked at but yeah yep so there's there's a very good criteria that the ADA has listed as what makes it a ramp that's in compliance perfect yeah because I know there's one on main street near the school that has the warning bumps but there's no actual crosswalk it's just very concerning that it's signaling that there's a crosswalk but there is no actual crosswalk so I'm sure there's other areas to improve to but that's good to know we're going to find a lot that are not unfortunately we will find a lot that are not in compliance but good to know where we need to prioritize so definitely sounds like it's a good project and going in the right direction thank you and something that will get baked into our CIP eventually because we'll have to find making those improvements over time yeah in theory I mean most times you do those when you're doing the resurfacing for a roadway so you just kind of you have to sort of bake in like when you're resurfacing a roadway you if there are career ramps are not compliance you rebuild those they're pricey they're like the last bit I saw that was where it was contracted out there about $3,000 each so each one of those corners it's about $3,000 I mean not you know ridiculous price but we have to bake it into the you know the roadway programming so is there no federal assistance due to it being ADA? we will there are grants that I think that we can tap for that like the bike pad grants that VTrans puts out that's partially federally funded we've been successful like on Hickok Street they put out some sidewalk grant programs that we use for that project so I think we'll be able to tap some of those funds as they come out great another question just on the Main Street revitalization project you had mentioned that there were six owners that you've not been able to contact for easements is that going to delay the project at all? no those ones the ones that we're talking about there are temporary construction easements and it's it's not the most common like you know say a bank that you have to find the subsidiary to the subsidiary it's a subsidiary and like if we can't locate them then we can sort of modify the extent of our excavation limits and frankly I think even if we can get modify the plans a bit so that we don't have to encroach by the time we get to that work we may actually have an easement for them it just buys us a little more time but yeah those ones we've sort of talked internally and we're like we will have to revise the plans if there were permanent easements then that would that could if we couldn't shift where we could place like an electrical transformer but that hasn't come up yet correct? thank you it's not mentioned on here because we primarily focus on projects but how is ongoing operation and maintenance needs accounted for in terms of yeah operation maintenance so the big the big issue we currently have is just staffing like every municipality that's trying to find public work staff so we're still about half staff we did we did look out and we were able to find a CDL like E02 operator which frankly was a godsend because we were getting worried about this winter we're training that person up right now to get used to the sidewalk plows or get used to our trucks and plowing so that's one of our big concerns the other concerns that are coming up operationally are just getting vendors in town so for example like line stripping right that's a big issue that we have right now where there's a lot of line stripping that's just stripped away because of winter operations we had a bit out and we received no bids last week however we did get a hold of the line stripping contractor that's doing all the B-trans work and we said and they're basically the only crew that there's the only vendor around that does this work mainly in Vermont and so we did get some pricing from them and it looks like we can move forward with having those folks in town which is good so that's been the big challenges there's still some issues with getting materials we're still in that sort of like post-COVID phase where we're having issues getting materials and lead times on materials and just pricing but that's been the main challenges yeah because obviously there are some really large projects capital improvement projects in this must-do list and knowing like regular maintenance can if it's not tended to can easily become a challenge and a more expensive challenge to address so it's good to maintain a handle on how that's progressing to yeah we are at least with our team one thing we don't want to lose track of is for example like the annual sort of payment maintenance like making sure that we're paving every single year so we don't get we're trying to get caught up with the local streets like that we don't want to focus on just say main street and these big corridors and lose track of some of the side street paving jobs so that is sort of the other big focus in our department is making sure we have a paving program that's going to be sustainable you might see that in our request list are you are you anticipating doing like crosswalks and painting that stuff could you share a timeline for the public yeah so we just got some pricing I got some pricing yesterday I may be coming to you with a fund balance request because we currently have 10 grand in the budget the work that we're doing is a little larger in scope just because there's a need and we did price out some more durable paint so my concern is we getting into the weeds a little bit you put down the water-based paint it's gone by next season so the epoxy paint that they're using on East Island we think we can get a couple seasons out of it so the same vendor that's in town right now we are looking to potentially piggyback to have them do some of the work in town especially at high priority locations like Tygan and Main Street that turn lane so try to get them to do as much as they can before the weather shuts them down and then have them come back in spring to do additional work we would do the high priority locations first hopefully next month and then get as much as they can and does the epoxy paint is that also the reflective paint yeah they throw like the beads on it so it's a little it has a little bit more reflectivity could you also share for public viewing the pivots that are being made on the paving and sidewalk work what was planned this year the see that again it was supposed to be like Florida Gale Bernard but you guys aren't able to complete that as planned um during the budget last year we targeted the east side of the city that there was those groups of streets Florida Gale Bernard that they're due for some resurfacing um we knew there was some curb work and we budgeted a bit of curb work but then when we really started estimating it there's a lot of curb work that needs to be done because most of the curb reveal is extremely curb reveal so the curb reveal is extremely shallow like zero to like a couple inches on some of the streets the issue there is the sidewalks are also probably the worst in the city on that side of the street so if we don't raise the curb you know the sidewalks are going to be down here low and it's a drainage issue so ultimately our goal is to try to figure out how to do all the curbing work sidewalk work so that we can get to the roadway resurfacing work but unfortunately the so curbing is ridiculously expensive when we estimated out all the curbing work that's needed it ended up being close to half a million dollars worth of work sidewalk work wasn't you know sidewalk is less expensive I think that was around 150,000 and we were fully staffed up our crews could handle some of that but we we assumed we were still going to be half staff so we're trying to find some grants to help cover some of that curbing work is that primarily the labor the curbing I don't know if it's labor or just the it's an extruded concrete but it's curbing work is unfortunately very expensive and it's just we're talking we're not talking grant or anything it's just regular concrete curbing but yeah I mean the paving is typical that we usually do like we usually look at in tons so we usually do 900 tons a year ish right now and so that would have been about 150,000 which is in the ballpark of our budget but the curbing and sidewalk were just it kind of threw us off and now we have to find some additional funds so we we ended up so we could keep paving this year and not miss a year we ended up pivoting to Bartola Street and the northern section of North Street that curbing is in pretty good shape and it didn't require a lot of work and I will say kudos to our public works team so we internally save a lot of money because our crews do all the manhole adjustments so they raise the manhole structures and make sure they're level they spent a good chunk of the summer getting Gal Bernard and all that ready for paving and those structures needed fixed anyways they quickly were able to get on the Barlow Street and North Street structures and get those adjusted and replaced I don't have a full tally of what that probably saved in contractual cost but it was anywhere 75 to 100 grand that would have cost us to get a contractor to it so they really worked hard this summer getting those structures ready so good news is that section of Bernard and Gal and Florida they're ready for paving it's just we're trying to figure out what to do with the curbing sidewalk thank you any other questions on this update any questions from members of the public raise hand or chat okay let's move on to item D this is on for discussion or approval the traffic calming manual and policy which we saw at a previous meeting this might be shorter so back at the August 8th meeting you all saw the initial manual and policy we heard the feedback on the manual policy so we made a couple revisions on the manual we updated some of the truck road typos and we saw we eliminated there was some confusion on the gateways gateways aren't included in this manual because they have a dedicated sort of scoping study attached to them so we removed that from all the tables we revised there was a kind of confusing description of bike lanes and what the cost was that wasn't really correct and then on the policy side we added some language about how the city reserves are ready to install temporary traffic calming to sort of do a pilot before maybe do a permanent one that's more costly because that wasn't really mentioned in the manual it also included language and policy about not having an appeal process currently because it puts you all in a very awkward position because we're looking at sort of raw data on these things and not to say like this is a living document so I'm sure the manual and policy will change but that's how we that's how we're looking to start it off Thanks did anyone have any outstanding questions or were the items we raised last time addressed? There was a question that came up during the infrastructure but did you have something to add to that? So one of our infrastructure commissioners was asking about funding for the traffic calming projects and John do you want to get into your answer to that question? I'm sure you remember what I said it's like a lifetime ago you'll have to remind me I'll jag your memory but I'm sure you'll have more detail I believe your response was essentially that there's no dedicated fund currently for the traffic calming to execute we won't include that's right so the intent would be for FY24 budget that we're working on is we would include sort of a line item and we may have we may have to utilize might add some seed money to start that I don't think it's going to be a to start off and do the studies it's not going to be obviously expensive the permit conditions that will be an expensive piece of it but similar to the ADA crosswalks all that sort of gets timed with a paving program did you say permit? permanent so for example if we're doing curb bump outs or something like that we would have to time that with our paving program but in the interim we could absolutely do the ballard planters as a temporary condition to see how community members feel about that speed humps is you know when you see around town that's a pretty easy one we do that in-house if that's an appropriate treatment yeah well it's another one that we'll just have to you know look at how we budget those in the future there's also another comment from the commissioner about share rows and how the traffic calming plan mentions them but the importance of having physical barriers yeah one of our commissioners was an advocate for protected bike lanes versus share rows I immediately signed him up to the bike ped master plan committee so I think the bike ped master plan is going to drive a lot of so for example if there's a street that we find you know a bike some sort of bike treatment is appropriate we would look to the bike ped master plan to see what that treatment is and so I think that commissioner will be a good advocate to say like he feels very strongly about certain types of treatments but yeah we would definitely use the bike ped master plan as sort of the guide if we do and I think context to his comment was that it gives a false sense of security any other questions Elaine I will provide the comment that I do want to thank John and our partner CCRPCN Stantec for getting this across the finish line assuming you adopted you might not although there are other parties have taken center stage for the city speeding is always a complaint residents have from all walks of life it's one of the top ones that I've gotten even in the four months that I've been here despite all the other things going on so having this manual and policy ensures that we do have a systematic there and informed way to address those complaints which is important step for us well said would someone like to make a motion to approve the traffic common manual and policy second all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries thank you thanks John okay item E on for approval is the I can't remember what ask me stands for oh gosh American iteration of state and city making it up municipal yeah yes the union contract that applies has applied to our public works department non management please and now could apply to our non unionized staff or not managers so you did already as council ratified the scope of the new agreement with public works and actually covering these other people it's taken me a bit to finalize the word smithing to share with the union they did respond timely so there are no changes from the scope that you ratified earlier this summer unless you have questions I do ask you to authorize me to sign the agreement thank you one question I had was on page 19 I think it's article 2 n I noticed there was no training slash staff development leave I notice there was no text following that I was wondering how it is oh goodness look at that the killer that they're often having going to an earlier one I don't believe we changed anything in that one so let me see if they're original it's possible it was eliminated a long time ago in a previous session and it defaults to the personnel policy regarding training leave and then the header just remained we tend to have formatting issues during contract revisions gotcha here's the I should have just opened the the current contract or not really current but the one that was the last one that was approved so see if I can find it there if not then it's as Angela said that one is blank so we miss that I guess we're going to take that one out then right there is that we do have a provision in the personnel policy for that that makes sense thanks Angela another very brief question that is just a curiosity I noticed that in article 1 n there's a safety committee I assume that's something outstanding but it's usually in place I was just a little curious about it yeah John could you speak to that yeah so that is an active will you join the thank you yeah so the safety committee is active they meet I think it's it's either quarterly or monthly I would go with the contracts but our utility manager is the lead of that and things like go through the buildings and check for any you know potential safety issues they work with VLCT to do some training so that is that is a pretty active I was curious because I've served on one before so I assume lots of checking on making sure everything meets OSHA requirements correct yeah and it will comment that our insurer does provide a pretty nice walk through service for that to you know when we walk things every day by things every day we might not notice it so it's good to have that third party that's vested in our safety our employees safety okay drive a motion to approve the authorization of our city manager to sign the ask me contract for FY23 to 25 with the one with the one correction still move still say okay Thomas second by Aurora all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you thanks and mayor if I could so I do want to thank the management and staff negotiating teams for their diligence reasonableness civility and collegiality during negotiations it did feel like an opportunity to understand each other's perspectives better and to codify that understanding which is really what negotiations should be about okay okay we are on to item F this is on for discussion approval the VLCT passive and verb annual meeting voting delegate so Vermont cities and towns more acronyms passive is the insurance verb I can't remember your employee those are something benefits the benefits yeah okay so this amalgam of entities has the annual meeting we need to every year we assign a delegate we vote for a delegate to represent us at that meeting Elaine has offered to take that role given she will be attending anyway it's happening during business hours we have historically nominated our city manager to take this role for us so that's the action we're looking for today at that meeting which is October 6 they one of the content areas that are voted on our policy priorities that the lead puts together as a representative of Vermont's cities and towns we don't have that document yet right Elaine no I've been looking and looking and it's not it's not available okay when it's ready when they have that final one ready to go we can provide direction to Elaine as needed and so she or I whoever receives that first will make sure to distribute that okay any questions about this action I think it's might be noted in other meetings but I did see that Jesse Baker our previous city manager is the president of the LCG so it's neat as well it's a great group yeah okay hearing no concerns can I have a motion to approve our voting authority to city manager Elaine one second second by Thomas all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you okay so we are on to our final item this is on for approval the energy efficiency day resolution would you like to introduce absolutely first I want to thank council for the consideration in adopting the resolution the city has indicated in the master plan that was adopted a strategic priority to focus on renewable energy energy efficiency weatherization in our homes and in our businesses and this past May it was one of the highlighted priorities that council we wanted to put some more effort into the city has already invested some work into energy efficiency goals with electrifying some of the city vehicles placing an EV charger in the garage working on the housing trust fund and having the home improvement housing improvement program that allows a maximum loan up to $30,000 of which eligible activities include energy related repairs or improvements to increase energy efficiency and as the infrastructure commission looks to increasing awareness amongst the businesses and residents this is an opportunity to highlight not only what we already are doing as a city but as well as opportunities that we have with that I had for reducing the energy demand we have as well as decarbonizing and electrifying our homes and businesses to move off fossil fuels so thank you again for the opportunity to bring this forward this resolution forward thank you and so this resolution would declare October 5th 2022 as energy efficiency day and urge our residents and businesses to join us in support of cleaner more efficient energy goals now and in the future any questions comments about this resolution do we have any activity or event plan for October 5th there will be a media campaign Paul has already received a media kit to leading up to that day and around the day some of the limited time incentives that are available through the communities program that efficiency Vermont has notified the town manager and mayor about as well as hopefully some other engagement but no particular event and also additional awareness and outreach to bring attention to the day any questions comments from members of the public do I have a motion to approve the energy efficiency resolution second second by Thomas all those in favor please say aye motion carries this brings us to the end of this evening's agenda thank you all for your time so moved motion by Jim second by Thomas all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you so much everyone thank you everybody have a good night