 It is 6 p.m. on Monday, October 16th. I will call to order first the meeting of the Wendyski Liquor Control Board. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Deputy Mayor Thomas Renner. 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. Thank you. Okay, Jenny, please introduce our items and our guests. Yes. Well, good evening. I'm here with Sam Nellis, who is from Spex LLC, and we are trying to get approval tonight, hoping to get approval for a first and a third and then a second class, as well as a restaurant application. So that's our first one. Thank you. Sam, do you want to introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about your business? Sure. I'm Sam Nellis, and the business name is Spex S-P-E-C-S, which stands for Specifications, or it's a little bit of like a bartender slang for the recipe of a drink. The concept is drinks from coffee to cocktails with a retail store selling kind of packaged cider, beer, wine, bitters, cocktail ingredients, juices, that sort of thing in the store. So it's two locations. It's where currently Rosie's is, Rosie's Cafe, and that's where Catland is. So Catland would stay as the store. I'll connect them on the inside. Rosie actually has a really big back room that's kind of unseen. So the goal is to bring the wall back, build a bigger bar, but keep the coffee service going as well. Small snacks, never, I mean it's technically a restaurant license you need to have a liquor license, but never full table service, like full meals, just kind of more snacks, and eventually maybe some sandwiches, or small plates or something, but focusing on kind of the drink element. Cool. Thank you for coming in. Thank you. Any staff comment or concerns? No. All right. It's conditional, just because we're just waiting, sorry, waiting for the inspection, which is excellent. Any questions from council? Sounds really interesting. How did you get into this type of, wanted to open a business like this? I've been working in the community a long time. I worked at Pizzeria very tight in Burlington, and then I went with one of the owners to open Waterworks. Actually, I was the bar manager at Waterworks, and for almost six years I've been at Bar Hill, Bar Hill Distillery in Montpelier. Started their cocktail program there. So just always wanted to have my own little neighborhood spot I live right over the river. I'm so unfortunately not technically in Manuski, but I feel like I'm a Manuski resident. And yeah, I've always wanted something smaller. Those were big projects, big capacity, big budgets. I'm kind of looking forward to a little bit more DIY neighborhood kind of community vibe. All right. Hearing no concerns, do I have a motion to approve the first, second, and third class liquor licenses and the restaurant application conditional on inspection? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Sam. Yes. Thank you, thank you. Do you ever serve at the bar in Bar Hill? Yes. I feel like you made me a mock, made up a mocktail for me once. I'm just kidding. Oh no, it was great. One more over there. Thank you. And then item D? Yes, is for Bamian Kebab House, which is a restaurant application renewal. Excellent. Any questions from council? All right, down to a motion to approve the restaurant application for Bamian Kebab House. So moves. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. That is the end of our liquor control agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So now it is 6.05 p.m. and I will call to order the Winooski City Council meeting. First up is agenda review. Are there any concerns about the order of this evening's agenda? Okay. Then let's move to public comment. So this is space for comments or questions for any item not on this evening's agenda. If you are here for an agenda item, please, if you can hold your comment until we get there, we'll have space on each agenda item. Are you here for public comment or for one of the agenda items? I'm here for my speech list. That's what I thought. Okay. Would you like to come up, please? Thank you. And then reintroduce yourself. I forgot your name, I'm sorry. My name's Carol Cannon. Yes. The order is for you. So I was just here to see, I think the last time I was here I asked about because we're gonna be, or someone is gonna be doing the striping if it's possible to put stop before the stop signs. I mean, and do you all think that's possible? Is that a John Raster thing? Yeah. I know John spoke to that last time. Right. John, would you have any update to share? Evening. Sorry, we're working on budget and background. Yes, we can do that. We have our crew out doing some side street painting. So we could, I'll check with our crew to see if we actually have those stencils. So we could order those and get them painted. For both ends of the street, every on Bellevue Street, on Burling Street, whatever you can do. Yeah, I'll have to take a look. I can't remember offhand how many stop bars we have up there. But yeah, our crews are out doing some of those side street painting projects right now. Because I know that coming up Leclerc Street, that's an issue for the people that live on that street. And there's no stop sign, because that used to be one-way street when we bought our house. And it would be nice for me if it was one-way street, but my neighbors that live on Leclerc Street would not like that. I think I said that before. But I'm just here to make sure that things are hopefully moving in that direction. And the answer is yes. That is an easy request. We can accommodate that, yeah. Great, great. And we're still thinking about speed bumps. We're just working with what we can get now. I haven't forgotten about the speed bumps. Yeah, similar answers last time. So we have a traffic calming manual that the city ratified, and we use that manual to evaluate streets. More potential traffic calming. So we'll be reviewing that in the FY25 budget as far as funding those evaluations. I will say one of the challenges we're gonna have next season is that we're gonna be in construction on Main Street, Fingers Cross. So I don't necessarily know that your baseline traffic is gonna stay the same. So it may not be a good year to evaluate. That streets for traffic calming, because it might not actually, that might not be the baseline traffic that you would see. So that is something we'd have to review with, when we look at the contractors' traffic control detour for the project. I think you had said you thought they would detour on Weaver Street rather than Richard Street. We will have to wait and see until we actually get the contractor on board and start having those discussions. Okay, well, I'll be here again. Thank you. We'll see you soon. Thank you, we'll see you next month. Thank you. All right, I don't see any attendees on Zoom. We only have staff here, so. Seeing no more public comment, we'll move to the consent agenda. So we have our minutes from October 2. Payroll and accounts payable and pay out warrants for May, June, July, August, September and October. The public safety and public works administrative assistant job description draft and municipal planning grant application. Any questions about anything on the consent agenda this evening? I'd like to remove item J. The planning grant application. We will pull that. Oh, actually, motion to move J into the break. No, we don't need that. It only takes one. We'll move it to the end. It'll be the new item F. Christine? Yeah. Subsequent to pay out is only May through August. Yes, okay. I get the way I said it was confusing. I haven't quite finished with the bank reconciliations for those of us on Zoom. Subsequence to pay out is May through August. Accounts payable and payroll warrants for September and October. We're gonna pull out item J and make it the new item F in our regular agenda. Otherwise, I have a motion to approve the consent agenda items A through I. So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, council reports. Aurora, may I start with you? Certainly. Last week, we had a meeting of the State Health and Connected People on October 10th. During the meeting, we received a presentation for kind of the final round of feedback sessions on the Winooski Bike Pedestrian Master Plan. Probably saw throughout the city. They did a lot of work kind of getting information from the community and a lot of different community members. And at this point, they're kind of presenting the very draft version of that plan and just getting that additional feedback. I think there might be some additional meetings on this as well as recordings. So check those out on the CCRPC website, again for the Winooski Bike Pedestrian Plan. On October 12th, Inclusion and Belonging had its meeting and welcomed our two new members as well as provided some additional feedback on the summary that has been created for the equity audit. And the feedback is released thinking about ways to better communicate it, such as getting some additional details on what the audit meant by affordable housing, as well as how to communicate further on how the city and school work together and where they don't. And then kind of looking forward to the future of the commission now it's just over a year old is thinking about playing some discussions to check in on the current structure of the commission and how that's working or how it might not be working. Thank you. Interesting. Elaine? Yeah, would you like to report on the ambassador appointments? For those made? The ambassador appointments? Yeah, for the two new members? Yes, okay. Name? So I got my follow up. So we had the two new members on that work we did last meeting. Anna is going to be on the Safe Healthy Connected People Commission and Lily will be on the Housing Commission as ambassadors. So should have screws folks representing those commissions should have received an email for me about that but reach out if you have any questions or concerns. Excellent, thank you. Thanks. The Airport Commission's next meeting will be November 1st. Regular items always include sound insulation as well as noise exposure map complaint tracking. The contract for updating the noise exposure map is underway. The first technical advisory committee meeting was this past week. Not sure what the frequency is but as they progress along with updating the map there'll be public hearings in 2024 to review the draft maps. There is a proposed lease extension for VTANG that will be going to the Burlington City Council meeting for a vote on October 23rd. And anyone from Winooski is welcome to attend that meeting and provide public comment. The next Municipal Infrastructure Committee meeting will be this Thursday. It'll be a joint committee meeting with the Finance Commission. We'll be reviewing FY25 budget priorities and capital projects for staff, city council and city staff to review as we develop the draft budget. The next bridge committee is likely not going to meet until maybe sometime towards the end of November. No additional date has been set for that just yet. The next public hearing likely will not happen until sometime in January and that will be held in Burlington since the first public hearing was in Winooski but it'll be remote. It'll be in person as well as remote option available. Thank you. Okay. At the last planning commission meeting, the group wrapped up work on a new local historic register and advisory board. A public hearing will be held at their November 9th meeting. The next planning commission meeting however is Thursday, October 26th and this is when they will begin reviewing updates to our regulations that are necessary due to Act 47 and those housing changes from the state. This past weekend, Elaine and I were able to join tenants training sessions hosted at the Winooski School by the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity along with the Winooski Housing Authority and Vermont Legal Services. I think at least two dozen residents attended and several were connected with specific resources for current issues that they needed assistance with. Many thanks to the school, to CDOEO and partners for organizing that. There's plans underway to continue to have a few more sessions go in various languages including English and those that need interpretation. Wednesday I will be attending the monthly Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and we'll report on that at the next meeting. Yeah, nothing specific to weigh in on there. Thomas? So downtown Winooski meets tomorrow so I don't have a report out from them. I will just say Halloween is almost upon us and downtown Winooski and the city will need volunteers to help pick, transport and carve pumpkins. So if you are interested in that and helping out to create our pumpkin extravaganza please go to downtownwinooski.org. I did wanna share over the weekend I volunteered with the Winooski food shelf and I just think it was a great opportunity for myself and for fellow counselors if you are able to find time to connect with residents that typically don't reach out or would even think probably of coming to a council meeting or anything like that. So it was a good way to connect with a different group of people in our city. And then if you are a resident of Winooski and would like to volunteer with a food shelf or can donate, they are certainly in need of volunteers. Most days they are running under what their volunteer quota should be and you can provide help to the Winooski food shelf at Winooskifoodshelf.org. Thank you, Charlie. It's gonna be pretty quick today. On Tuesday, 10, 10, from three to four the Winooski Housing Commission leadership met to set our agenda meeting. We'll meet Tuesday, October 24th at 6 p.m. The Winooski Housing Initiative's director Jasmine Hurley and our new chair Jessica Bridges went over some housekeeping SOP items including a script that Jasmine wrote that we'll use for our upcoming commission meetings to allow for a smoother transition of leadership. Future agenda discussion items include the ongoing conversation and exploration around the impacts of various short-term rental regulation as well as ways to fund the Winooski Housing Trust Fund. The full agenda for our next meeting has not been sent out yet. All right, thank you all. We'll move on to city updates, Elaine. Yes, thanks. So Halloween and Winooski to follow up on Thomas there. Downtown Winooski and the city are excited to bring you our 2023 Halloween and Winooski event. October 28th and 29th. It's a beloved community tradition and a favorite seasonal event, I'd say, for residents and visitors. There will be about 1,000 jack-lanterns on display, so come on by. There'll be music and activities for kids as well and event specials from local vendors and businesses out of their storefronts. For details and to learn more about how you can volunteer, as Thomas was talking about, please visit downtownwinooski.org slash Halloween. And a quick update on the chief of police search. We've executed an agreement with the police chief search firm, JW Leadership Consulting, and we had our kickoff meeting with that firm today. More information, including community input opportunities to come. Note that the current police chief adjusted his last day a bit to November 25th. We are projecting making an offer to a new chief near the end of January, so we will have an interim chief arrangement for two months, and those details are still being discussed. Thank you. So that brings us to our regular items. First up, item A for discussion, our treasurer reports for fiscal year 2022-23 and first quarter of 23-24. Welcome our treasurer, Jonathan. Thank you. Okay, good evening, council. So I'm here to present some key takeaways from the FY23 and first quarter of FY24 financial report. So in FY23, we saw Winooski's financial activity begin to return to pre-pandemic levels with some lingering effects. The general funds growth can partly be attributed to unexpected revenue realized from rising interest rates as well as cost savings from vacancies across multiple departments, which may be due to a tighter labor market. Dips in our enterprise and special revenue fund balances were the result of the development expenses of the Abanaki garage as well as depreciation. Conversely, revenue earned across these funds were on target or even over budget in areas like parking meter revenue. In Q1, the city's general fund is forecasting an annual surplus for FY24 of $255,000 with a net fund balance of 2.3 million, which is about 12%, a 12% increase year over year. For reference, the previous year's ending net fund balance was 2.05 million. General fund revenues are forecasted to total 9.3 million, which is $105,000 above budget. The city's main driver revenue collection, the city's main driver of revenue collection property tax is estimated to bring in 7.3 million for the city this fiscal year. This increase is about 4% from FY23. Like FY23, we predict that external factors in the market will contribute to an increase in net assets, rising interest rates accounted for over 90,000 of additional revenue last year. We are projecting interest earnings this fiscal year to surpass last year. General fund expenses are forecasted at 9.1 million, which is about 150,000 below budget. Similar to FY23, the bulk of these cost savings are due to staff vacancies across multiple departments. Vacancies reduce forecasted salary, fringe, and other employment related expenses. All vacancies are ongoing without qualified Canada pools or are vacant due to disability. It must be held open due to union contracts. We are also forecasting surpluses in the following enterprise and special revenue funds. The water fund, waste water fund, combined parking fund, TIF fund, community service fund, and community and economic development fund. We are forecasting deficits in the following, rental registry fund. In general, we are forecasting increases across more fund balances this fiscal year. As the year progresses, we should continue to monitor the progress of the Abinaki Garage project as well as prepare for future projects. Specific details to support current forecasts can be found within the respective financial report on the City of Abinaki website. Please bear in mind that this is a Q1 report and that projections are a best guess guided by the financial activities we've realized so far and therefore are subject to change as we progress throughout the year. Are there any questions? Thank you. My first question is, if you or Angela could explain what unbudgeted depreciation is in some of these funds. I'm gonna defer to Angela on that one. So we budget on a cash basis, so we only budget for the things that we will actually pay money out of our bank account for. Depreciation is a non-cash expense that's realizing the use of assets that we purchased in previous fiscal years. So it's not actual money out the door. The purchase of new assets was expense but has moved to the balance sheet, so you won't see the purchase of new water lines or new trucks in those enterprise funds in the expenses ever. You'll see it over time in the depreciation line item. And then what was the, does this relate to your next item, the additional revenue from interest in FY23? Is that from investments or something else? So our interest rate that we have been provided just in our general fund checking account has increased dramatically with the Fed increasing the interest rates overall. The investments that we are proposing in the next item will just serve to actually make that higher than what we are currently anticipating. Thank you. Any other folks have a question? Some of the FY23 items, curious just for a refresher on a couple of line items, starting kind of at the top of the page, the delinquent taxes. I mean, I think it's reasonable to assume or to try and predict that we won't have any delinquent taxes but it looks like it's close to 100,000 in delinquency. So that is actually payments that we received on prior year delinquent taxes. So we assume that we aren't gonna receive any payments on delinquent taxes but we also don't assume that any of the current year taxes will go delinquent. The ideal situation is that those things wash out together. Right. And how does that usually look year over year? We have a very low delinquency rate in the city. Elaine was surprised when she came on board. We did have some pretty large payments on delinquent taxes during this fiscal year and those were on properties that had accrued large balances during the pandemic. 30,000 came from assistance program and another 10 or so thousand came from one single property, changing ownership and another 20,000 from another property that transferred ownership. Okay. Also, if I could also say that Angela has had a big hand in that. So in terms of trying to serve our most marginalized community members who might not understand assistance programs, she's done a lot of hand holding through that, working people through payment plans. So that's good for the city but it's certainly also good for both residents. Yeah, I think the total amount of delinquency this year was just slightly above the 95,000 that we collected and of that amount that was delinquent at the end of the fiscal year, a large portion of it came in before the end of July. So it was able to be counted as revenue last year. Excellent. It was actually very unusual to not have any delinquencies in this polity. Which is why I would think you'd budget for some delinquencies rather than no delinquencies. Yeah, our hope is that we'll collect as much as goes new delinquent. Yeah. Just for like contingency. That's kind of assuming you probably won't get 100%. But it's good to know that the delinquency rate is low. And major thanks to you in your work. So thanks for doing that. We have had to take a handful of properties off of the tax, property tax base this past year. And I'm curious how much that has impacted the overall tax rate and properties that are not gonna be contributing to the general fund for this coming FY24. So in FY24, all of the properties that came off the tax rolls were already included in the tax rate calculation that council approved. So we came in right around what we expected to be during the budgeting process for a tax rate increase because we did have a buffer in the estimates that we had included. We think, I think we came in at about a 1% increase overall in the grand list. So we were able to absorb some of that decrement from those properties that have fires. Okay. Thank you for the reminder. And I just need to clarify. We've actually, in full credit to the taxpayer base we've historically had a low delinquency rate, which Angela didn't have to do with, but she's been able to make it even smaller and also support specific individuals who've had a much harder time. So that's the kudos that I wanna make sure Angela gets. Thank you. Thank you, Angela. Yeah, I was just saying for like. Okay. Do you have specific questions? Feel free. I'm happy to answer any of the questions, particularly the FY23 year. This is the final tally. We began our audit process. Field work was scheduled for last week and we've submitted all our documentation to the auditor. So these numbers should not change any significance. Okay. Yeah, I think most of my questions are related to the variances for FY23 and how that's accounted for in FY24. So I think I can go over that with you. Yeah, absolutely. And remember that when we generated the FY24 budget in October of last year, we were only a quarter of the way through FY23. So having the year end here may not be really seen in the FY24 budget. The FY22 year ends would have been impacting that. These will be incorporated into the spreadsheet that we use for the FY25 budgeting, however. Okay. Great. Thank you. I wanna share those questions by email and share them back out to full council for everyone's notification. Sure, happy to. Thanks. I have one additional question. So it's noted in here that the net fund balance for the general fund had an 11% increase in the FY23 report and 12% for FY24. Is that ARPA or is that what we're actually trending towards the way that we're budgeting? If the majority of staff, they can seize where we can't budget less than that because we need to show those spots. I don't know what percentage of it is though, is staff though? The majority of this is related to staff vacancies. There aren't really places where we're raking in extra revenue other than interest. And the expenses are not super conservative where people were spending way less than what they'd had in their budget unless it was related to staffing. In fact, some places are overspent because of staffing vacancies. They offset with a contractor, particularly in the public works department in terms of plowing and mowing. That is an important question to ask though. It looks a certain way to the public when we have large balances like that. And in this case, it's not avoidable. So it's important for the public to understand that. Yeah, we talk about being mindful of inflation and keeping up with services, but not raising the tax rate so high that we're building an unnecessary level of savings. Right. Comparatively. We, historically at one point, we were budgeting for a certain portion of salary savings and it was housed within the police department budget because of the highest wages. Then we had a year where we had no staff vacancies and I had to magically find $70,000. So we were able to find the excess revenue to offset that cost, but since that year, we do not budget for staff vacancies that may not occur. Did anyone else have questions? Let me just check Zim. Do we still have no one? Okay. Thanks guys. Thank you. Thank you. Angela will stay with us for item B, investing city cash reserves. So, Alayne. This is such an exciting topic. Alayne asked me if I was able to start looking into investment of city reserves. We do have some large bank balances that we've been carrying for a while. I did review with staff, their respective departments, particularly the capital fund for any assigned reserves that might be able to be invested. We identified about $3.1 million worth of funds that are either unassigned or assigned for projects that will not occur for a period of time for investment. A portion of that is ARPA money. We have set aside at least a portion of the ARPA money, about 500,000 that we would recommend stay only invested for 30 days at a time to give us the liquidity that we need if something comes up that we wanna assign some money to. There would still be other fund balances available to assign to projects if needed. We did an inquiry with several financial institutions that we work with on a regular basis, Opportunities Credit Union, TD Bank, and Northfield Savings Bank to get some rates. There are only a couple of type of investments that are approved in our investment policy by council that includes certificate of deposits and US backed treasuries. We are recommending going with certificates of deposit. They're more common and our principle that we invest would be secure. TD has offered collateralized certificates of deposit. They are the only financial institution that had 30 day certificates of deposit. So we are able to invest for $500,000 more than any other financial institution. In addition, some of the reserves that we wanna invest are from the parking fund. The parking fund has some debt covenant ties on its money. We can only have those monies on deposit at TD Bank until the end of our KIF debt. So that is the recommendation for the financial institution that we should use because we can receive the highest rate of return investing funds there. I'll maintain some liquidity. No, yes. Well, very exciting to make some money on the money we're setting on. To clarify, what is the total we're getting in interest at the end from this recommendation estimate? So the estimated interest by the end of this fiscal year is $108,000 at TD Bank. So it was 31 higher than the other? Yeah, okay. I wanna make sure I read that right. That was just a bananas amount of money. That, what is that? Well, at this point, I don't know, like a 2% tax increase to get that kind of revenue. Yep, and because we're investing it for things that have specific earmarks, so a portion of the money that we're considering investing is for Main Street. Any interest earned on that Main Street money will be allocated to Main Street. Any interest that's earned on Parks Development will be allocated to Parks Development. So it's a way to grow those individual buckets of money while they're sitting for that purpose. So it doesn't disappear into earnings. It will go towards those funds and there are current assignments. Those funds that are, well, maybe not necessary, but are underfunded, potentially. We'll have to highlight this as diversifying revenue, a thing that we really often cannot do. And I did consult with the treasurer. He was the one who left, and made sure that he was willing to do the council report. The investment policy does require an annual report on our investments and how they performed. So you will see that in a presentation next year. Question about the investment policy? Yes. Are there any recommended changes to the investment policy? Not at this time. We've not really utilized it. We did not have an investment policy previous to the one that was adopted by council. And this is actually gonna be our first time using it to invest any money. So we'll see how it works functionally. There may be some changes in terms of responsibility because the treasurer is such a part-time treasurer. Having him be the one who does the research didn't work out. That's why I passed it through him. Make sure he had seen it because the current policy does require that the investments be made by the treasurer. Correct. In terms of long-term strategic planning, is there opportunity to continue investments beyond this? That would be fabulous. Absolutely. Thank you. And now we've got a few different avenues and people who want us to do business with them. So. Yeah, and perhaps stating the obvious for you, but for the public's benefit, having the major part, the aspect of the policy being just to be very conservative to make sure that the funds are as secure as possible, that is absolutely best practice. So we don't wanna be gambling with the tax for money. Yeah. The NSB proposal was for FDIC insured certificates of deposit and FDIC insurance only covers your first $250,000 of money. So I was a little concerned about that. I would have reached out and seen if they could have collateralized it if they ended up looking like the better option. So. Any other questions? My name's great. Would someone like to make a motion to improve the investment recommendation? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. Well, credit for that. Again, that's to Angela. Yeah, that's great. Okay. We are on to item C, award of Main Street Vitalization Conception Contract. John, you traveled to us. Oh. It's hiding in the back. I think Angela saw from the room up for you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Call me back up again. So yeah, this has spent a long time coming. So this is for the authorization. It's formally to authorize the city manager to award the Main Street Project Construction Contract to Kubricki Jointa Lime LLC for the base bid scope and add alternative one. And I will say this is all, it's still very conditional. So we still need quite a few approvals to actually formally submit a notice of award with our funding agencies, USDA and DEC. So this is just one of probably 10 steps until we actually can officially award. But to give some background, we advertised bid on July 14th. The bids were received on August 23rd. We received three bids. Kubricki Jointa Lime was the apparent low bidder. Our consultant BHB did a formal bid analysis that's attached in your packet. So typically these projects will have our consultant go through and make sure that the apparent low bidder is qualified to do the work and they review all the unit price line items, make sure there's no omissions and errors. So they are recommending we award the apparent low bidder in this case. So the way the contract works is we have roughly 60 days to do the finalized award and prepare the formal bid. So that's October 22nd, but it is very unlikely we're gonna meet that deadline. So we have reached out to the contractor and they have stated that they would give us until basically Thanksgiving to formalize it. Because like I said, we still have some steps to do with USDA. So that is very good news. So on to the sort of financials. So the apparent, the low bid amount for the base bid scope was $23,836, $571.50. $571.50. And then we had two ad alternates in the contract. So one of the main reasons we added these was originally we were hoping that maybe on the water sewer inside we'd have some additional scope we could add because we wanna make sure we use all the USDA funding because there's grant at the end. As time went on, we realized that's probably not gonna be the case. But the one adult that we do wanna keep in is Norman Street. And the reason for that is, so this school did their capital projects. We coordinated them heavily on their water distribution system. And they actually installed a new water main that had multiple breaks on it that we were dealing with pretty often. So they actually installed new water main and tied into our system onto George Street. So that new water main effectively acts as part of our distribution network now. And we are working with them on a permanent easement. So the deal we made was we will take over future maintenance replacements since it's actually benefiting the city at this point because it's providing more redundant service and better flow. So one side of the distribution network is brand new. And then Main Street will obviously be brand new. So there's only like one little, I say one little gap, maybe 200 feet of older six inch cast iron pipe that's fairly old and pretty vulnerable. So we wanna take care of that. So the bulk of that scope is just replacing utilities. So it's trenching, putting in new water main and trenching and putting in new sewer main. We're not reconstructing the entire street or anything like that. It's just that main, just dealing with the utilities. So that's why we are recommending that be awarded. And then since we've received bids, we've been working with our agency partners with a contractor and with our consultant to try to identify potential reductions in the contract. So now that we saw the unit prices and some of those numbers were much higher than what we anticipated. We did what we call value engineering. So what can we get out of the contract that isn't gonna effectively change the work that much? So we've identified 1.4 million in potential reductions to the contract award. So new news since you all saw this memo is our agency partners agreed that they said, yes, the scope looks adequate and correct. Please go ahead and submit it to the contractor. We have a formal submission back from the contractor that they will also accept this reduction. So in effect, we will be awarding the contract for the base bid minus 1.4 million. So I would recommend we just, we still authorized the resolution for the base bid amount because we're gonna have to, that 1.4 million, some of that will be items that we don't award and some will be change orders that we do right after the contract is awarded. So but in effect, we have an approval from the contractor that we're gonna already save 1.4 million on the project. And just to kind of give you an overview of what those are. So one of the bigger ones is when we were going through design phase, we as part of our stormwater purring process, we have to have a stormwater best management practice that treats water quality and meets the DC stormwater guidelines. At the time we landed on, it's called a gravel wetland system that's at the northern end of the site. Basically right in front of the school and we don't have a lot of room in the right-of-way so it's in one of these medians like in the center of the roadway, which operationally is a terrible maintenance wise. So we've been looking for ways to kind of get that out of the contract and do something else after we've permitted it. So we've chatted with the DC and they are open to changing that stormwater BMT to something that's more maintenance friendly. So that could be adding more pervious pavers, which would be a much lower cost option. It could also be doing something off-site, potentially like in our parking area at Cassavent along the east end of it because that's part of the same stormwater network, much easier to get to and effectively a lot less expensive. So that is one item that we are looking to cut out of a project. And the good news with that too is we would likely do a lot less reconstruction north of Tygan Street because the only reason we're really doing full street reconstruction there is to deal with the gravel wetlands and get the grading right. So that's a pretty significant cost savings. The other ones are a little less exciting but pretty large sums of money. So one is the project has this is getting in very, very much into the weeds, but tree grates. So there's these metal tree grates that are on all the new street trees. I think we had budgeted originally like $110,000 when we did our engineer's estimate. Prices came back at around $673,000 for all of the tree pits on Main Street. So chatting with the landscape architects, I mean, we can put in mulch or like a pea gravel or something way less expensive. And it's not gonna really change maintenance activities that much. So that is one item that we would automatically cut out of the award. And that doesn't affect our grant either because I put in there the $100,000 for that we expected for tree grates. So whatever we end up using mulch or pea gravel or something else would cover that. And then the contractor recommended that we actually look at a less thick temporary pavement during sort of the interim when we're doing some of the utility we're going from like a three inch to one and a half inch. So that's great to hear that they're already trying to help us with some of these cost savings. So that is one other item we've included. So things that don't significantly change the project that you would see out there, but those are the ones that we're looking to remove. And then also in your packet, I put together sort of the next steps that we're gonna have to take. So one is I did include finalizing scope reduction so that is checked off. But now we have to submit an increase to the USDA loan because when we originally submitted for the USDA loan it was back in like 2018, 2019. So now that we actually have the number we can submit for that loan extension from USDA. And we're trying to do that before hopefully they don't have another shutdown. So we've been asked to do the hurry up on that submission. And then you'll hear next agenda we have to finalize the interim financing that we use before we get to the USDA loan closing. So that is something we're working with MCM on in our city bond council with. And then we also have to finally get concurrence from our funding partners. So that is getting the final USDA authorization. They wanna see that we have all the funding in place and all our financing ready to go same with the state revolving loan fund folks. So we would be tapping the state revolving loan funds as well for clean water and drinking water construction along the USDA funds. So there's still quite a bit to do. So that is just kind of one step in the process. And then at the very end I do have sort of a sources and uses table that is draft. It doesn't include any of the reductions but this is something we continue to update. So this is sort of the pencils down version when we put this approval in place. So you can kind of see the different buckets of funding that we're looking at. So in here you can kind of see we're targeting about on the sewer fund side 7.9 million, the water side 3.8 million. And then the big cost is on the transportation utility undergrounding side that's like almost 14 million. So that's sort of the bulk of the project costs are. And then below that are the different funding sources including all the grants that we've received today, including the latest USDA tree grants award that we received. So one thing to call out, we do have to, one thing that's not in the actual construction contract work is the work for GMP to relocate the overhead lines into the new conduits that are part of the construction contract. We've had pretty steady coordination with them and negotiations with them throughout the project but now we have to actually get into negotiating with them what that cost will be. We have an estimate from them and it's around $800,000. And so right now we are calling out potentially using some of the ARPA funds for that so we don't have to finance it. Because that one is I think a little unclear to us on how that, it could be a commercial loan because it's for paying an entity to do work that we won't own. So that might be a candidate for basically just a payout to get that work done. However, there's still negotiating to be done there too. That is the high end. So hopefully we can reduce our costs on that. And that is sort of like the last thing that will get done. So we do have some time to sort of negotiate that work. So I guess with that, any questions? For Green Mountain Power, is this standard that the city would be covering so much? Like we're putting in all this underground utility on our own dime that makes their maintenance costs lower. That is our argument. So they are doing a bunch of work on Weaver Street to us at no cost. So they're gonna be running their main high tension line down Weaver Street. And basically what they've told us is that they're like, we could charge you for this. We're not going to consider this, you know, some of our match and then some of the secondary, the secondary will be down the main street. So that is one of the discussion points we have. So we haven't, like I said, we haven't entered negotiations with the higher up. So we'll have to bring a lane in and start having those discussions. Now that we kind of, we have our, we know what we're dealing with financially. Okay. Thank you for walking through this. This was voted on in 2018. So we're so close. Other folks have questions? Yeah, John. One of the items that's not in your initial pages. Let me get back. One of the items that is later on in BHB's review, but not on page two of the proposed value engineered items is changes to the lighting poles. Is that actually part of the pose? Yeah, that's definitely still in play. So we've asked our landscape architect to look at that because that's similar to the tree pick rates. Those came in way higher than we expected. So we are looking at using either a lower cost pole or trying to locate some grant funding for that. So that is definitely still in play. Yeah. So I, to me that stands out as something I would wanna try and see if we can find some additional funds for. I think lighting choice really adds to streetscaping and the sense of place, the sense of how welcoming the space is. If you haven't reached out to GMP or to Efficiency Vermont about this particular lighting project and opportunities, there might be a long shot opportunity, but it's always worth asking earlier than later in the project. But I think that lighting plays is a big contributor to use of the space. And I mean, we're already reaching into the darker times of our calendar year. And I just would hate to not have more consideration for that aspect than it deserves. Yeah, no, that's a great point. Just remind me too. So we actually have, when we were back in design phase with the Infrastructure Commission, VHB's Landscape Architect came in and we focused when meeting on some of the landscape features, including lighting, and we gave the Infrastructure Commission a bunch of potential options, like types of lights. Actually, the one that the Infrastructure Commission, like the most that the actual contract that's been around is in the lobby, it's been there. I keep telling Landscape Architects to let their vendor know, because it's still here, but if you wanted to kind of get a sense of what the lighting looks like, it's that's what's specter right now. 14 foot tall, they call them post-hops and it's all downward facing, but I believe there's like 90 light poles up the whole corridor. So pretty significant increase in pedestrian level lighting along the corridor. So, but that is something we're taking a look at. We're not talking about reducing the number of lights, right? Just changing the pole choice? Correct, right, just changing the pole choice. I think some of it, we're talking about did we spec it too tight to a specific manufacturer and then we have to sort of like open it up a little bit so that we can look at other pole vendors and things like that. That's what we're talking about, yep. Any other questions, comments? Still no public, okay. Well, I am not hearing any concerns. Do I have a motion to authorize the city manager to award the Main Street Revitalization Project Construction Contract to Kubricki Joint Align LLC for the base bid scope and add alternative one? Council approval would be conditional on receiving USDA and Agency of Natural Resources concurrence of award approval. So moved. Backing. I have one point of clarification. Sure. So the, we're talking about needing to reduce the bid amount with value engineering by 1.4 million but you're still asking for the base bid. So I might be a little confused as to why we're working on value engineering but still paying the base amount. So you could revise the resolution up too and then, so as part of the USDA process we have to reduce the project down as much as possible as close to the engineer's estimate. So they're ultimately gonna be the ones that tell us. The reason I didn't change the value is one, as I mentioned, some of those items are gonna be a change order after we award contract. Some might be reduced. So we're kind of waiting on USDA to tell us like to meet your requirements, how do you want us to award this project? So that's why we're asking for the, basically the original base bid. All right, it's procedural. We're not expecting to pay that much. Okay. The base bid. All right. And if we can cut a million four out we're definitely gonna cut a million four out. Yeah, I wasn't really following. So I have a motion by Charlie and a second by Aurora. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, John. Congratulations to everybody. Yeah. For your years of labor and that hours you've spent describing this project to city council. Okay, item D on for discussion approval mainstream vitalization interim financing resolution. So council has previously approved financing for this project with USDA in order to move forward with the project USDA is requiring us to obtain interim financing through a construction period that is estimated to be about three years. We have exhausted our ability to do bank qualified tax exempt borrowing this calendar year with the abnaki garage borrowing. That really limited our ability to go out to commercial lenders. HEDI bank was unable to meet any of our terms Vermont Bomb Bank was unable to come up with something that would work for us. We were connected with municipal capital markets by the school district that utilize them for their capital project when they had USDA financing involved. Municipal capital markets believes that we can do direct sale of bonds. They are not bank qualified tax exempt but they are able to be tax exempt through another means. This is something that is not routinely done in the state of Vermont but it is done by the city of Burlington. We would be obtaining our own credit rating for the city of Winnowski and doing direct placement of bonds through municipal capital markets. These documents that are before you were drafted by our bond council, Thomas Maloney. This is a notice that we will be selling bonds and authorizing us to get that credit rating. This is just the first step in the process the actual sale of the bonds would also come back before council. Where are we selling these bonds? Just on the open market. Okay. There are people who specifically look for municipal debt because they consider it safer than some other debt. Of the many things that we do when comparing Winnowski choices to Burlington choices. I can't remember the actual situation but I think there was some mismanagement funds in Burlington for, I don't know if it was city place or something, some other large project. Well, there was the Tiff district and then also Burlington telecom. Okay. Could have been one of those. I think it was the latter. Do either of those relate to this alternative option for? This is gonna be very small in scope. It's very limited for duration. These are very short term. So, and they're gonna be very closely monitored by USDA. We currently meet weekly with municipal capital markets and USDA on our interim financing. I think that monitoring piece is what makes it different from Burlington telecom. Okay. So essentially what you're picking up on is how do we avoid lessons learned and just make sure that we're being really diligent and mindful of any potential drawbacks of going this route. Any idea of what our credit rating may be? I have no idea, although Chris Perlitz with municipal capital marking is very optimistic given our financials. We hear great things about them every time there's an order or even state order. Echo financial services also said that the reason that we got the rates that we did for the Abnaki garage were those financials. So I think we'll be well placed. Tom Maloney had put out an interest rate not to exceed 6% and Chris Perlitz did not think that that was a problem. He thought that we would do much better than that. Great. Angela did poke her head in my office the other day. I'm very curious to see what our monitoring's gonna be. It'll be very rewarding, I'm sure. A little side commentary, it is interesting that we are maxed out on short term borrowing. For me, this just feels aligned with being maxed out on projects in general and how many very large things we are trying to do. You're only allowed to borrow $10 million bank qualified tax exempt in a year and we are at 9.9147. We're maxed out. Good observation, Mayor. Any other questions, concerns? Would someone like to make a motion to authorize the attached notice of sale bond resolution? Second. Motion by Aurora, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Did everyone say it? Okay, motion carries. Thank you, Angela. Item eight for discussion, strategic vision area goal update on housing. Welcome, Jasmine. So our sole housing goal for must do for this fiscal year educate both tenants and property owners of changes and updates to the public building registry. So as many of you are aware, the ordinance changes were adopted earlier this month with changes to the housing ordinance forthcoming. Education for both of these ordinance changes will initiate this fall once we've had a little bit more time. So moving on to the recommended section. We have fully implement changes and updates to the public building registry. Again, this was adopted earlier this month. So moving ahead as expected. Next, we have implement of plans review process and fee structure. So staff initiated conversations with the state but the administration put a pause on the discussion. City staff will continue to follow up as necessary. Next, we have informing outreach efforts for a point airport noise mitigation program. As counselor Oakley mentioned earlier, there have been regular airport commission meetings. The airport recently held a public hearing about sound insulation work in September and the noise exposure map technical advisory committee had a meeting in October. Some initial communication from airport staff suggests the potential for some Winooski homes to be included in the next phase of the sound insulation program. Though the timing and selection of homes is still pending decision. And again, counselor Oakley continues to attend the airport commission meetings for Winooski. And then we have continuing to explore updating ordinances and unified land use and development regulations to address housing priorities identified by Seizi council, including renter protections and short-term rentals. So changes to the unified land use and development regulations are currently in process with the hearing date set for November 6th. Renter protections are a continued focus for the housing commission. And I will continue to be available for education and support. If just cause eviction, municipal charter change is approved by the state legislature this legislative session. The housing commission has spent the past few months discussing the issue of short-term rentals, their positive and negative impact on the community and potential action to be taken to protect our long-term residents and housing stock. Me, the housing initiative director, has completed a preliminary draft ordinance that will be shared with the housing commission next week. This ordinance is an amendment to the existing public building registry. It would add additional registration requirements and fees for short-term rental owners. The draft ordinance lays out a process to issue licenses to short-term rental operators and authorizes city council to cap the total number of non-owner occupied short-term rentals within the city. This process has taken many inter-departmental operational discussions to ensure feasibility with current staff. The housing commission aims to have a completed draft ordinance ready to present to the city council before the end of the year. Yeah, if I could tack on that. Yeah. So you'll notice that we're, that requires reopening up an ordinance that you just finalized. And I did consult the mayor on her wishes on that when we realized that that was happening. And it did seem cleaner to wrap up one set of related changes before tackling a very different set of changes. Yeah. Sorry. No, this is what you were talking about. Okay, other housing-related operational updates. So myself, along with the housing commission, have been working on ways to improve the housing trust fund program offerings and reach within the community. An interest rate buy-down program has been drafted and will be coming to council for approval in the coming months. Improvements are also being made to the down payment assistance program and the home improvement program to promote utilization and administrative feasibility. An application is being drafted to apply for a municipal planning grant, which is due at the end of the month, which I know we will discuss shortly after this. The idea is to contract with a consultant to conduct an equitable housing needs assessment, focusing on affordable housing stock and future planning, senior housing, accessible housing, and recommendations to achieve housing goals for these communities. It may be part of a broader report that includes review of how growth and various housing types supports and or challenges city services. Landlord survey data collection is complete and is being combined with data that I have collected from larger affordable housing partners. Once the data has been analyzed, it will be formatted into a report and made available to the council and to the public. The reappraisal is continuing to move along. There are four assessing teams at this time with one team assessing the multi units, one team for single level condominiums, one team on the northern end and the last team just crossed over main street onto Weaver Street. With the goal of promoting the usefulness of property in the city, a list of vacant and abandoned properties has been created thanks to teamwork between housing, planning and zoning, code enforcement, public works, and finance. Preliminary steps have also been taken to explore ordinances and other municipalities for vacant and abandoned properties. Thank you. Questions from council? Yeah. You've been up to a lot. In terms of the short term rental, awesome to hear that there's been a lot of progress there. Do you have any idea at this point of how many Airbnbs may exist in the city? Yeah, so at the peak, which was this summer, I think it was about 83, which was up, I believe from 50 something in 2020. Summer of 2022, so up quite a bit from just one year. Right now, I think last time I checked, it was closer to 60 something. It does fluctuate seasonally, so obviously we're kind of nearing 66 season, so less people, but yeah, you can actually, if you're ever curious, AirDNA is a website that's free to people. I think it's actually technically like for people looking at investing in communities, which is kind of ironic, but it does have really great data and tracking mechanisms that anyone can use, so a lot of communities have been using that. And AirDNA aggregates between verbal and Airbnb, those two, I think, is all of those? Yeah, it's like 99% of listings are on the two websites. Awesome, thank you. And then this might be more for Paul, but I frequently hear, and I've tried to do it myself and can never find it, the noise complaint form for the airport, would there be a way to get that on the city website somewhere with the instructions that are here in the packet? So that, yeah, to answer your question, Councillor Render, that does exist on the sound mitigation page that we have on the website. It's not the clearest inroad from the front page, but if you go to how do I, and then I think it's learned about airport sound mitigation, all of those resources should be there on that page. And actually just to second your request, I'm on the airport commission and I've had a hard time finding how exactly to submit comments as well. It's actually also important to use the form on their website. There's a couple of phone numbers, but if the complaint goes to VTANG and not to BTV airport, it won't be incorporated in the monthly complaints. That's good information to know. Yeah, yeah, I just learned that recently myself. Saying on the short-term rental, does Winooski, have you discussed as part of your policy how long of a short-term would qualify as short-term versus long-term? Yeah, so I've done quite a lot of outreach with other kind of crowdsourcing with other communities. I think I've spoken to maybe like 10 now, just because I also find it interesting now, but it's pretty universal that everyone uses the state definition. So anything under 30 days. So I think a lot of people think anything not year lease is short-term, but even kind of the 60 days, 31 days, kind of what you would think for. Travel nurses, things like that. Those all constitute as long-term rentals under the state definition. And as long as the rental is rented for more than 14 days cumulatively throughout the year, then it constitutes as a short-term rental. So if you have your house and you leave for 13 days and you rent your house out for 13 days in a year, that doesn't count as a short-term rental. But if you rent it out for three weeks, then that would count. And that aligns with taxes too. Good to know. Is that, so when you said you've talked to other municipalities, has that just been in-state municipalities or out-of-state municipalities? I have exclusively talked to in-state municipalities, but I mean I've poked around and looked at other. What other places have done? Things really run the gamut right now. Just curious because we, I agree, would want to be as stringent as the state, but we have the opportunity to be more stringent. And considering we've seen a significant jump from 2022 to this past summer, was just kind of curious if there's any variation that we would want to have that's more specific to our community needs. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Pretty much every municipality that I've spoken to, everyone has little nuances that are kind of tailored to their community, which is interesting. And obviously Husky is quite different than, like for example, I talked to Chester and Morrisville and lots of kind of more tourism oriented municipalities. But it really does vary, but it's hard to balance that with the operational requirements and the capacity that we have currently. Since this will, being public building registry fall primarily on like code, maybe a tiny bit on myself ironically, but not significantly, maybe on the clerk's office. So we're still kind of navigating later this week we're meeting to talk a little bit more about the operational kind of flow because it is quite a bit more complicated even than what is listed in the ordinance. Just who sends what to who and who has the capacity to, you know, procedures. Yes, so we have been working through that, but it's looking like we do have a good path forward, but it is definitely a balance of policy aspirations and operational capacity, which I'm sure you all experience regularly, help. We really wanted to make sure in our commission work that it's something that is sustainable and enforceable because there's really no point in having ordinances on the books that you can enforce because they're just, it's just a waste of time. So that's something that we spent a lot of time looking at making sure that it's something we can actually do. And it feels bad for residents to see it and then have real action taken. Yeah, and there was a, even Burlington's, there was a report on compliance. I think they were quite low and they have, I think, I've spoken to their division director a few times. I think they have six people dedicated to that. So definitely it's nice being able to look at other municipalities that have done this work because they have a lot to say in terms of their recommendations. Have any of them, it might be too soon to really tell, have any of them seen more housing stock kind of go back since they've implemented? So realistically, only Burlington has gone as far as making existing non-owner-occupied short-term rentals effectively illegal once the ordinance went into effect. So I feel like that's probably the only case where they could measure we regained this amount of long-term rentals. They are also dealing with a lawsuit right now because of that. But besides that, most have done either a grandfathering in kind of situation for existing if they're deciding to do a ban for non-owner-occupied moving forward. Yeah, so I think Burlington is really kind of the only example of that. Otherwise, yeah, I'm not sure. It's pretty new for most. And ironically, we're on the cusp with a lot of other municipalities. Montpelier and South Burlington, I've been talking to frequently and they're both in similar spaces. And I feel like I see a new one every day like I saw Charlotte this morning. So a lot of these really small municipalities are beginning to look at this too. Speaking of lawsuits, has our legal counsel reviewed the draft policy yet? No, so I'm finishing it. It will go to the Housing Commission next week. We're gonna finalize the targets that we want for registration fees and for fines and penalties kind of structures. And then I think we will preview it once the Housing Commission approves it. It will get previewed here and then it will go to the attorney and then back here for a final. I think we wanted to make sure it looked like something that you are all happy with before we brought it to the attorney. Okay, great. I think that question about what do we wanna do with pre-existing non-conforming is something we would wanna discuss with the caveat that the operational side of that you understood before, if we can't even have that discussion, let us know. Yeah, yeah, so I think that's where the cap is hopefully going to come in. It was actually Eric's idea so that we didn't have to deal with the pre-existing conforming. So essentially everyone has to get a license, but city council can determine based off of recommendations from Housing Commission if they wanna cap it at, we can either do a total amount or a percentage of housing stock and then it would be up to your discretion. Obviously you could cap it at where it is now, which would essentially be grandfathering in. You could make it higher if you wanted. If the housing market ends up changing, if we're not in a housing crisis, which would be a fantastic thing to be dealing with and we needed more people to come into the city. You could raise it even higher. So the cap is kind of an effective capability to ban new, but I think maybe softer language and then we would not have to deal with the pre-existing. Okay. Yeah. Also the way Jasmine's drafted it is that it would allow you to set a cap. You wouldn't have to figure that out right now through the ordinance change. You can set it annually or again. So it could be done. This would go into effect July 1st with the new public building registry. We would collect all the information. We would have then a registry of how many people are in compliance, how many short term rentals we have. Theoretically we can kind of look at Airbnb or air DNA and see how we're doing in terms of compliance and then give you that data so that you have the data before you make the decision. Yeah. And it was suggested that potentially we could do a percentage of total housing stock so that it doesn't just seem like a random number. And so I think I've asked you this question before. Do we tax Airbnb's as like a business? They do. They do have to pay the extra blockage tax as well. Okay. Moving off of short term rentals. Vacant and abandoned properties. Do you know the number of hand? You saw the one? Not with me. And it's fluctuated. Some of those have now plans for identified some that have no soul. Yeah. Was it like 12? Somewhere around that. Yeah. There was a lot of different categories. Angela brought some that had zero consumption and some that were vacant potentially. The few that were obviously in the buyer. So we kind of tried to categorize them all. And I'm looking at, I know Berry and I believe it's Rutland both have vacant and abandoned building ordinances. So they have a set criteria for what would constitute a building under those categories. I think there's the potential interests that we would love it if we could ask them if the owners, you know, if we could give their information to interested buyers, like if we wanted to prioritize certain buyers over others like CHT or when you ski housing or something like that. And, you know, ask for their permission to share information because maybe they don't realize that they could get quite a good offer on this abandoned building that they have. So just kind of thinking of creative ways that we can utilize the space that we have because obviously no one wants empty buildings. But some of them do have like plans. So we're categorizing those differently. Like I know one of Handy's buildings that has burnt. He has theoretically like a plan for that. So some of them fit into different categories. Yeah. We're trying not to interfere with folks that like they have the right to do whatever they want with their property. So actually it narrows down the list quite a bit in terms of like, well, we actually don't know what's going on. There, maybe they're delinquent, maybe they're not delinquent on their water bills so forth, but it's not even as many as 12. And that's not even a huge number. Yeah. Yeah. Which is not a bad thing. So that's good news. That's 12 units or 12 buildings? 12 properties, yeah. How many units? No. I don't know. How many single-family homes is a few that one multi-family homes and have future plans? Except, I guess, the East, I wouldn't fire one at a small time. Yeah. Okay. And do you have a proposed, are you working on a proposed ordinance that's in line with Barrier-Redlands or? Very early stages. Very early. Yeah. You've had one meeting. Yeah. It's kind of a side project right now. But I'm looking at them. I think they have much higher rates of making an abandoned building than we do, which is, I guess, fortunate for us. But it does definitely come from a public safety perspective of not, you know, because having abandoned buildings is a public safety issue as well as a practical issue. And I know that the two of those from what I read were very from the public safety perspective. That's less of a concern here. So, I mean, there's less pressure because of that. We're really looking at it because we have a housing crush. Right. I think, yeah, those were the two primary interest areas. For me, it was short-term and then the vacant and abandoned spaces as well. And just second, Thomas, it's clearly been very busy. So thank you. No more questions? Just check the Zoom one more time. Okay, let's move on to the new item F, the Municipal Planning and Application Authorization and open it up to questions. Brynn, why don't you start? Hey, thanks. For me, this just is very ambiguous, which is why I wanted it to come off the cassette items. I feel like I'm not really sure what the deliverables are going to be and what to expect. Yeah, that's fair. So just wanted a little bit more clarity. Yeah, for full transparency, I really, well, it was never really on my radar, but I was kind of bopping around the state website and then I saw that this application was due at the end of this month, or yes, at the end of this month. So then I was sort of thinking, I was like, oh, maybe we should apply to that. And then I started, my wheels started turning, so then I looked at Heather's last application and kind of rethought what a new iteration of that could look like for us. So I met with the CCRPC like literally last week, so this is all very early stages. But essentially with kind of being on the cusp of all of this redevelopment, there have been conversations of, we know that Winooski is already representing the highest percentage of affordable housing. There are kind of back and forth considerations of at what rate should we continue or at what rate should we let market housing continue to be built. I have concerns that with all of this redevelopment that we could see kind of a new push of gentrification essentially in these corridors. So I have been feeling like the potential for looking towards a little bit more significant interventions in terms of affordable housing requirements and provisions could be something that would be great in this kind of new era of development, especially since a lot of the buildings that are going to be getting redeveloped are older, which are more likely to be naturally affordable. So I think that looking towards this new kind of era with attention is really important. We were, not we, but UVM, MPA program did a nice housing needs assessment that got delivered in April of this year. It is all quantitative data, so it's great. It's all kind of secondary data sources. What I think is really missing from the perspective is the qualitative data. I know sometimes some of the quantitative data historically has said Winooski's not gentrifying that we have enough affordable housing, but that doesn't seem to be the lived experience of the community. People, obviously we're in a housing crisis, people are paying more than 50% of their income on rent. It's seeming like the qualitative and quantitative are kind of in different spaces. So I think my hope with this project is to be able to harness a very in-depth community engagement aspect where we could really capture a lot of this qualitative data in relation to housing, and then be provided with recommendations based off of both the quantitative data and extensive qualitative data, since I think that is even more important in some way like Winooski, and then be provided recommendations for potential policies, programs, something maybe along the lines of like an inclusionary zoning policy, or maybe they will come back and say you are already overperforming with affordable housing and you don't need any more. I don't think that will be the case, but I think that having a much broader understanding of both the qualitative and quantitative is really important, especially since it is a product of white supremacy culture to really only emphasize quantitative data. And I think that looking at the equity audit findings, which was an MPG grant as well, one of the main recommendations was looking at affordable housing provisions, and that was something that was heard from the community. So I think a deeper dive into that is warranted as we kind of move forward into this next era of development in the city. Yeah, I don't know the data points in the UVM assessment, but I do know speaking to the affordable housing providers working in Manuski, they have based need measurements off of wait lists and everybody is not on a wait list, right? So. Also, to back up Jasmine's point about the need for qualitative data, the city's former equity director also made that same point, that our gentrification report has historically been only quantitative and that wasn't sufficient. Kind of tied to that something that I think has come up before as well thinking about the equity lens as areas of the city feeling kind of segregated. Yeah, I just actually like two hours ago put that into the body of the grant application. So yeah, there were some areas that were 63% white and then I forget which area, one area was 100% white. So definitely for the most diversity in Vermont that's quite segregated in terms of neighborhoods. So I think being intentional about these redevelopments and making sure that their mixed income is a great way of not only providing people with increased opportunity and access to resources, but also ensuring that there's not over concentrations of poverty in kind of segregated areas of the city. I also have to say that not to set expectations unreasonably in one direction, that there is still question, open question. I'm not saying it's resolved in my mind yet, but there's still an open question about what the city can afford in terms of the biggest area that comes to my mind as code enforcement. Can we even afford to inspect the number of units and then pay for the staff to keep inspecting those units and address complaints for those units if we keep growing at the rate that we're growing or the rate the market would grow or put in more affordable, I don't know. Like inclusionary zoning, we might not be able to afford that, but we need the data in order to have that position. So I just don't want to imply to anyone that we are absolutely going to increase the ratio of affordable housing unfortunately in the city. And this data will make zoning decisions through our commissions easier to get to. Yeah, yeah, I'm fully open to, you know, the recommendations can be a little bit open and it doesn't need to be just inclusionary zoning, it could be zoning recommendations, ordinance recommendations. Heather had written a kind of similar, similar looking grant in 2021, technically. But some of it were things that now we have done which is nice to see progress, yeah, with Act 47 and with reallocation of funds like my role. So it was kind of nice to look and see the changes that we have made since then. And that grant didn't end up being utilized by the city because I wasn't here, Heather had left, Elaine wasn't here, Yasmine had left. So there was quite a gap in staffing, but hopefully this can kind of pick up where the internal equity audit last left off and move forward in one of the recommendations from that audit. And I will say, I debated whether or not to have this pulled off into a regular item versus consent and you have to accept it once it's actually, if it's awarded. So I figured we would have more detail than it. So you'll have another chance to review. Looks great. I think Elaine, the mayor know I'm always talking about how we should pursue grant money. So I was very happy to see this. The $30,000, would that be used for you to be able to hire a contractor to do this research or would it be so that you could do the research? So it will be all through a consultant. So we would go out to bid. The RPC potentially could bid on this if they decide that they want to. They did mention to me that if no one bid on it that they would take it. But yes, so and they did suggest in terms of the budget since there is a really large community engagement aspect of this that we want to make sure it's really done well and not just halfway done that we matched it with more than was required so that we could do it service with the amount of hours that would be available for them to be in the community and interact with the community and form a plan to interact in the community, especially if it ends up being not, it will have to be someone from inside Vermont, but if it ends up being someone not in this community, it gives them time to formulate a plan before they interact in the community. Thank you. What's the proposed source of the matching funds? So what do you find in this matter? Both the community development fund. There are two liners within the community and the economic development fund for a grand match specifically. Okay, so it wouldn't be from the funds that council approved for other community engagement? No, we're not dipping into that yet. Okay. And not for this. Okay. I also want to say again, echoing Thomas, very excited to be applying for grants and I am also very excited that you saw an opportunity even with a short window of time and they're taking advantage of that, so thank you. Nice work for four days. Yeah. I know, I was like, I think I need to turn in this paper. Like, yeah, you do. Any other questions? Would someone like to make a motion to approve municipal planning or application authorization? Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. That was the end of this evening's agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, meeting adjourned. Thank you all.