 Monday, I'm gonna span this out really long Eric, don't worry. Monday, December the 18th, 2017. We will call to order the city council meeting. And we're gonna do something a little bit different tonight to start off. I think most of you have probably been aware that we've had a member of our police department, Mike Cram, who was ill for a while. And unfortunately, lost his battle to cancer over the weekend. It's a small, close-knit community. And it gets even smaller once you get inside a place like City Hall, where people are working together and really look at each other as family members and rely on each other a great deal, both as individuals and professionals. I think anybody who had any dealings with Mike knows he was a really special individual in person. Served the city for 12 years, 18 years. On the police force. Before that, the Burlington Police Force, but also served as a country too in the military. And I'll tell you what, he had an amazing speech for Memorial Day last, go around in two years ago. But just a tremendous light and a person who is a joy to be around and a person I know that everybody and to do a lot of great deal of respect and love for. So our thoughts are with his family and those he loved. And also to all of you and team here, as I know you're all probably heartbroken without loss as well. So we'll actually start this evening prior to the Pledge of Allegiance with a moment of silence and think and reflect back on Mike's contributions to the community. Now I'll ask that you all join us for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Brian Corbyn. 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. Okay, first up this evening is the gender review. And we actually do have an item that we're in the interest of time and city resources. We're gonna bump up. So we have item J, which is the approval of the governor's Highway Safety Program. We actually have our presenter here. So we're gonna take advantage of that and move that to item A, unless anybody has an issue with that. Any issue from council? Okay, so we'll keep the rest of the agenda as stands moving item J up to item A. We'll take on the governor's Highway Safety Program as our first regular item. Any other comments or questions about the agenda? Seeing and hearing none, we'll move on to public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the council on an issue or an item that is not on tonight's agenda. You can find an agenda in the back. We also also please ask that everybody sign in. Appreciate you doing that. There's a sign in sheet in the back too. Any items for council litter not on tonight's agenda? Okay, so seeing and hearing none, we'll move on to the consent agenda. First up tonight, we have the approval of the city council minutes from December 4th, 2017. We also have the warrants for the payroll from 1119 to 12227. Counts payable 1215. 17 is subsequent to pay out for October. And we also have the final volunteer handbook, which it sounded like there was nothing but positive reflection on yesterday. So I thought it can work through the consent agenda. I think everybody can take the full slate. Anybody miss anything? Okay, so hearing and seeing no issue with that, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the consent agenda as presented. So moved. Second. Motion by Eric, second by Brian Corgan. Any further discussion? Hearing and seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries, consent agenda is approved as presented. City update. A couple of updates for tonight. Want to update you on the two big preliminary engineering projects we're doing, the pool engineering and the main street revitalization engineering. So focusing on the pool to start. The contract is well underway. Survey was conducted and completed the week of November 27th. They will be out tomorrow and the following day doing the drilling associate with the environmental work. So immediate butters feel some shaking. That's what that is. We did have good kickoff meetings with the engineer and the pool committee and our staff group on December 6th and 7th. And that contract seems to be moving along quite well. Ray and I did meet with the pool committee. They are having conversations about fundraising at your request. We had originally talked about having them come in tonight and talk to you about their efforts. It's a little slow to pick up. They didn't have any big updates to present tonight. So I'm in the interest of time again through the agenda one to hold off on that. But if people are interested in engaging in that process, please contact Ray Coffey or your city counselor and we can get you connected up with that fundraising effort for the pool. Main street revitalization project also continues through advising and preliminary engineering. The announcement for this is on January 10th, which is a Wednesday evening. We are going to have what we call the preferred alternatives meeting with the planning commission and joint meeting of the planning commission and public works commission to go over the engineering alternatives being considered. So that will be a big public meeting. We hope to do some interesting kind of voting things. And we encourage anyone who's interested in that project to come out. That will be January 10th at 630 here. It's not interesting, exciting for most, but we've been making a lot of internal customer service improvements, Julie and our communications person, Paul Sarn created an intranet for us. So all internal staff people now have a website they can go to and find all human resources, forms, policies, payroll system, benefits system. It's a huge improvement for us. And as employees, we are very thankful for their work. We want to remind you that on January 15th is the Martin Luther King day of service. So in partnership with AmeriCorps, we hold this event every year to celebrate service, celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. There are four different opportunities this year to volunteer. One is build a little free library, work at the Wunewski food shelf, make greeting cards for military veterans or make a community meal. And the day will end with a community meal at the senior center. So if people are interested in that, please register online. So we have a sense of numbers, but we'd love to see you there on Martin Luther King day. And then finally, quick update on hiring. We have internal positions posted right now for fire lieutenant as well as firefighter. So those will be posted internally and then externally following the five day nose period. So if there's anyone in the community interested in becoming a volunteer paid while they're working firefighter for the city of Wunewski, please get in touch. And then following the budget presentation last night in some fall or last two December 4th and some follow up conversations, what I'm hearing from the councils that there is some interest with moving forward with a public works director position. So we have, we actually have two stellar candidates. And unless I hear significant protest, I hope to be making an announcement about that position by the end of the calendar year. So that's exciting and more to come on that front. Those are the updates I have. Great, thank you. I think we started on here last time. We started over here this time for council reports. Not much to report on them. We're continuing to work on the treasurer's job description and a good meeting with Jesse and Angela to get their thoughts. So we're hoping to get something back to council in January with our recommended next steps. Public works. We laid down a lot of foundational information about the main street. It's a word I'm looking for. Sorry, the main street. Reconstruction project. Thank you. And touched a little bit on the pool and hell that's going to shake out. And had some really interesting conversation around taxation and things of that nature around households and stuff. But it was some lively conversation. But foundation will work at this point. People are interested in taxes. So busy time for planning commission and housing commission doing a mind meld. Fortunately, I was on a community visit for the day in Newport, but I think the meeting went well from the feedback that I got. Lots of good back and forth. But Heather, I don't know if you want to say anything else about how it went. Sorry to put you on the spot. No, it's fine. I think it went very well. I think the rental recommendation, the targets, were well received by the planning commission. Had a few recommendations for honing that. And we'll bring that all back to you on January 22nd. Great. So lots of progress made in a really short period of time, really focused work, well done by Heather and that whole team, housing commissions and an impressive group. We have received notice just to keep you up to date. It's appointment again that unfortunately by charter I have to make and you can't involve the counselor. It gets really complicated. But we do have a pending vacancy on the Winooski Housing Authority Board. So just a heads up on that. So I'll be having some conversations about potential applicants for that. But that's something that it folks out there are interested in. Now's a great time to share that interest and we'll be doing some outreach around that. And there may be a temporary appointment. So it may be a little bit further down the road but still a good time to check in if that interest folks. Just following up on Nicole's comment, I think we felt pretty confident about tonight's meeting that on the second week in January we'll have a recommendation for council about a work plan to move forward on the treasurer position as we've discussed previously. And then just a couple of quick items on the airport. Folks did miss it the civil suit that the city was at one time involved in with Drew from upon initial failure of the suit was also dismissed from the appeal circuit appeals court today. So just to follow up on that since we were involved in that legal action to begin with it was the appeal was denied. We had another subsequent meeting with the mayor of Burlington and the chair of the South Burlington select board. And we are going to continue with those meetings on a monthly basis for the next couple of months while we work through some potential different proposals for us to consider for their governments to consider. So some more news coming down the pipeline in regards to airport governance and how that structure looks between our communities. Oh yeah. Well, it looks like the winter community services programming brochure is out. So I'd encourage everybody to go to winnewsdurec.com and sign up for some sort of activity today. Thank you. So at the last public safety commission meeting we had a commission received kind of a deeper dive on the leadership budget proposal that was brought to us was very warmly received by the group. And I'm sure that when that component of the budget comes before us in this budget schedule that we have it's very likely commission members will be here to discuss kind of the deep dive of where they're coming from as community members and commission members in their support for items in that proposed budget. Other than that right now in collaboration with some of the commission members and with the chief they're working on a policing survey to get out to community members in regards to experiences community members have had with our officers. So I believe they have a rough draft of the survey and electronic version. They're figuring out how to get the paper version as well as the outreach plan for how to get that survey filled out. So that's in process. Great. Thank you. Okay, with that we'll move on to regular items. So as we noted we've adjusted tonight's agenda and we'll take on item J the governor's highway safety program first. We are joined by Mr. Kendra. Good evening. Good evening. So I'll give a brief overview and then a few more detailed questions so the sergeant can answer it for you. So this is an 8,000 grant that we receive primarily for our equipment for our participation in seat belt and DUI checkpoint stops over the course of the year. So because we participate we get this equipment, these dollars to be used towards equipment. So traditionally we have purchased equipment that otherwise we would not have purchased with these grant funds. Great. Anything else to add? Is there an anticipated equipment purchase? No, I mean it's specifically one of the things is because of the way the grant's written it's specifically for traffic enforcement of type. So I mean it does allow for a lot of things and we don't quite have anything earmarked for this year's. For example last year's we redid a lot of the stuff of the safety stuff for the motorcycle. You know, upgraded communications, got some more lights on it, you know that kind of stuff. So that's what we, you know we earmarked last year's work. This year we haven't picked what it was, what our need is quite yet. But it will be obviously traffic related. Right. Yeah, a case like this and I think it's good to bring the funds in regardless and if there's a use yet that's okay. You've been successful with the use of this before. Did this fund the bike the first year that we got it? No, the bike was funded by a just assistant grant. Okay, there's Jack. Okay. Other questions? Sergeant Jesse? Okay. Good. We're gonna make this really easy right now. I'm kidding. So any questions, comments from public? Seeing and hearing none, I retain a motion for approval of the Governor's Highway Safety Program Equipment Grants. So who? Motion by Eric, second by Brian Corrigan. Any further discussion? Hearing and seeing that all is in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you, Derek. You too. All right, so item B will go with Community Services Commission Appointments. So we'll have two in a row here. I'm very excited to be up at the table with Mary and then shortly thereafter Courtney. So excited, we have started to see a lot of really good traction and response when we're posting things, volunteer opportunities and commission and board opportunities. So really excited to have had a number of folks reach out about this. I will say we do have one more alternate seat remaining. So if anybody out there is interested, let us know. But Mary was one of the fabulous applicants that we got. Applied on December 18th, I believe it was. Had a great meeting, or not Wednesday night. Anyway, I believe it was. Had a great meeting with her, subsequent to that talked a little bit about the work of the Commission and the Community Services Department in general. I think a lot of synergy between some of the things she's really interested in. New resident to a new ski within the last year. And actually just had a really pleasant conversation with her when we were shooting the breeze about the commission. So I'm very excited about the prospect of bringing her on board. She is being recommended as an alternate as we only had one open seat at the moment. But I suspect we may have a second open seat coming up. So I'll just put that out there now. But for now, Mary is here as an alternate. Awesome. Mary, you're hitting the ground running. I'll try. Yes, I've only been in Winooski for a little over a year. But my spouse and I really love it here. And both of us have wanted to get more involved in city politics and issues. I've recently retired from my position as a professor at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, Canton, New York, where I taught a lot of environmentally themed classes, including one of my areas was the local food movement. But from all aspects, including the economics, the ethics, the supply chains, and students actually worked with a lot of area organizations and farmers. And that's one of my interests. So I know the community gardens are kind of a growing concern. And I think there are a lot of opportunities there. I really like the demographics of Winooski, how varied and diverse it is. And I think one thing, Ray, and I talked about it, is where a lot of people might see challenges there. I think you can turn those into opportunities and a lot of potentials for different kinds of synergies. I've always been involved in boards and city politics a little bit in Canton, New York, not as much when I was working full time. But I think Winooski is such a vibrant and wonderful place. You know, I'm familiar with the O'Brien Center. My partner's in the community choir, works for the community justice department. She's the manager for the restorative justice panel. So I've gotten to know some of the players here already and I'm just looking for a way to contribute, I guess. Sounds like we're really lucky to have you. Yeah, that's tremendous. And following up on some good work that was started on food systems. Yes, we had a great conversation about that when we talked, there's a lot of work yet to do, but good groundwork to go from. Nice, to have somebody keep that ball rolling. That's great. Any questions for Mary? I think we usually ask the question of why you want to do this, but you got that. Any questions, council? Any questions for the public or regarding the commission appointment? Okay, so seeing and hearing none, I entertain a motion for approval of Mary Hossamann for community services commission. So moved. Motion by Brian Corgan, second by Brian Sweeney. Further discussion? Hearing and seeing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations and thank you very much for your work and time, we appreciate it. Have fun. Courtney can come on up. And we'll take approval of community service commission appointment for Courtney Blaisis? Oh, hi, Blaisis, close, close. Thank you. Thanks for your understanding and patience on that. So while Courtney comes up, I'll do a quick intro as I did for Mary. So at first, Matt, Courtney, gosh. Yeah, 2011, so six or seven years ago, she came to us as an intern at Six Chips where I worked before. And I think it's fair to say, basically took the organization by storm and brought a tremendous amount of wisdom and perspective to the work we did there. She's lived here in Muskie for about eight years and we've remained in touch since that point and upon learning we had an open seat. I've been trying to figure out ways to get Courtney plugged in and been bugging her here and there. So excited to, I twisted her arm just hard enough, I think, to get an application. And I will say, having worked with her, just a tremendous human being and perspective to bring to the table. So very excited to have her here and hopefully joining our commission as a member. And just a note, she is filling a vacant seat so that term goes through the end of June of 18. So it's not a full term, but just to be clear on that point. So Ray finally wore you down. I see that I'm very excited to have this opportunity. It's great. Awesome. Thank you for being willing to step up and volunteer and be involved with the commission. My pleasure. Thank you. It's great. Any questions for Courtney from council? Was eight years a long enough break from Ray? No. No, no. No, no. No. No. No. I see him. At the coffee shop. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, it's great to add another dynamic person to a dynamic group already. That's doing a lot of really good work. So. Absolutely. Any questions from council? Questions, comments from the public on the commission appointment process? Good. So seeing and hearing none, I entertain a motion for approval of the community services commission appointment for Courtney Blisis. Second. Motion by Nicole, second by Brian Sweeney for the discussion. Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations. Welcome aboard. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Welcome aboard. And actually, I think you are used to it. I'm not, but I'm going to trade seats because I'm going to, I think, move slides a lot. So. Great. So we'll move on to our good friends at the Winooski Valley Parks District, their budget presentation. For Mike's sake, I'm going to quickly hang out near the mic and do my intro and then I scoot over. So is there a... You're looking at it. You want to do a lead in there? Yeah, I'll do a quick intro. So excited to have Nick and Aaron here tonight from Winooski Valley Park District. I will say, unequivocally, these guys are one of our biggest partners in the work we do in community services. So five and a half years now, we have worked a ton with them. Certainly with Nick, his predecessor, Yumi, Lauren, who's here as well. One of their staff members, Tim Larnett, who's their kind of trail guy. Just an incredible resource for us as we look at managing some pretty complicated properties here. I think it's fair to say that we don't have a lot of trail building and or ecological expertise on staff. And it's super nice to know with an email or a phone call, we can get that resource scrambled pretty fast. So a couple of really big examples. Teen Employment is a place where they've helped a ton with scoping out work and kind of creating work plans for those trail crew builders. Couple of events in park walks that we've done over the years and then a lot of work as we've looked at Cassavan and Memorial Park are kind of two most sensitive, very sensitive areas in the city. So, and we continue to look at work around Memorial, I think in how we can kind of expand or enhance the relationship with the park district around management of some of these properties. So it's an ongoing discussion. It's been a great partnership. And again, when we're really excited to carry it forward. And then in August, August 7th, it's been confirmed. I can't remember exactly, but really excited to have finally grabbed Erin and landed her in a seat of sort of decision making authority for the city. So she is our board rep to the Whiskey Valley Park District Board, Erin Dupuy, and has been just a great get all around. I think Seth and I knew that. We were meeting with her around a couple other opportunities back when I was in Durham and finally found one that I think was a good fit on both sides and very excited. So, I think with that intro, I'm gonna turn it over to Nick and Erin and I will move over into slide jockey mode and try not to get in the next slide. And just to preface on the slides, essentially a ton of them. So we're gonna rifle through a lot of them because with digital technology for you guys could flip through them. So I won't talk over every slide and make you sit here for 35 minutes because we met each other. Couple things that just want to add real quick. I've launched Cody is a Winooski resident homeowner sitting there. She works for us. She's our programs director. I just want to mention the pedal and paddle event that we had this year, which was a real success. We had a, it was you guys, City of Burlington, Alicia and the Friends of Winooski River and the Park District. And we're planning on doing it next year and growing that event. And that was just, it went really well. And also the relationship we have, longstanding relationship with JFK school and we have an AmeriCorps program, an AmeriCorps educator who does a lot of in class work and we have a lot of kids come over to our facility as well. So just want to highlight those relationships. This is our annual checkup. Just briefly, this is who we are. We're a hybrid nonprofit and incorporated municipality with seven municipal members of which you guys have been one of our longest standing members. And we have pretty outstanding conservation assets and we're growing. And you can just keep flipping through these because I don't want to do some key ones later. Really a key part of our being is really the management and acquisition of conservation lands. It's a very bright line around that role along with the education work that we do. We have a very active board. I think Erin can attest to that now. Everyone shows up every month. Everyone's very involved, one trustee from each town. We're really glad that she's on board because that was a big hole in our board for a long time. And you can flip through these slides. I just laid out the different parks we have. Some people aren't aware that we own these parks. And you just flipped through these. Just went through alphabetically. These are the Burlington assets. We own the Ethan Allen Homestead. And these are the park assets that we manage. Sam and Hogue, it's a lot of use from people in Winozki. You can stop right there just for a second. This is an acquisition we're working on. We're on the marina. If you go down the end of North Avenue in Burlington, right where the sewage treatment plant is, there's a little access road there. We already own Derwey Island to the right there. And there's a two and a half acre parcel we have an option on. Right at the mouth of the river. So that's a big deal for us. Go ahead, keep going. In Colchester, we have quite a few lands of people in Winozki access. Go ahead, just keep going. Colchester Ponds, one of our more heavily used parks. Delta Park right at the mouth of Winozki. McCraig, it's a lot of use. This is, I'll stop there for a second. This is our newest, our biggest capital project right now. Really starting from scratch on a new park with a mile and a half trail that goes around it. And just masterful work by our park superintendent, Tim Larnett, putting the whole thing together. And we're looking to open up in the springtime. Woodside's pretty heavily used in Essex. And Jericho, we have one park currently. It's old milk, it's quite a bit of use. It's a gorgeous place. If you've never been there, you should check it out. It's really outstanding. South Burlington, the Winozki Gorge right over the Lime Kiln Bridge. Muddy Brook Park on Poor Farm Road. Wetland Reserve down Van Sicklin. I got it backwards. Okay, Winozki Gorge, that's across the Lime Kiln Bridge. And you stop there for a second. This is a park we're gonna be developing this coming year. If you look at that map, it's an interesting park as it skirts both Burlington and South Burlington. We're getting the smaller parcels being donated to us. And it's right across the river from, there's Catlin Island. And then right, you can see the edge of Cascon on the other side. So you have this ecological buffer strip on the river as it comes into Winozki. So it's a really pretty, I don't know if you realize that Cascon is a very highly ecologically important parcel. And so that's something to keep in mind going forward. Okay, keep on going. Something new we're doing, it's not so new anymore. We're doing actually for about a year now, but South Burlington approached us on doing fee-for-service work, which is something we hadn't done before. And we've been doing it for about a year. It's been very successful for us, especially during the shoulder seasons in spring and fall when our crew has a little more time. We're able to, with a very simple contract because we're under the same insurance umbrella, we're all municipalities, we're able to work on parks that are owned by the city. And we've got a scope of work set up for this coming year and we just extended our contract with them. So that's an area of which we've looked to grow over the next few years. I put this out there because Winozki is in a really unique physical position. And if you look, you know, there's the bridge. Sorry about the orange color, it's harder to read, but you can see Cassavon, Kallin Island, Valley Ridge, and Centennial Woods. You've got this whole stretch of really high value conservation lands. Then you've got the hydro dam and then there's two canoe launches that we've been working with you guys on rehabbing. And you've got Salmon Hole across the river, further down off the map, of course, is Memorial. So Winozki's actually, from an ecological standpoint, I've been discovering is very uniquely possession. It's a very important spot, especially the Cassavon and Kallin Island area in terms of ecological health. Our involvement with you is pretty deep. We've worked on the two canoe launches. We've developed a great relationship with your youth employment program. Tim works directly with your crews out in the field. That's something we'd like to keep going. This is the pedal and paddle event that we had this last summer that we'd like to do again this coming year. Okay, moving into Williston, we've got about eight acres of Williston of the Muddy Brook Whiteland Reserve, which also jumps over into South Burlington. We also do work with them helping supervise crews, building boardwalk. We've done some planning work on Brown Hill Mountain Conservation Area and keep going to the next slide. And we're talking about taking on a new park there, which is called, actually, it's the Jacob Krantz parcel. I want to mention Krantz because they're one of the donors. And this is an ongoing discussion we're having with the town of Williston right now. And that's right across from global foundries off Route 2A just above the hydro dam. I put this up there just, you know, when we take on land, it goes through a pretty tough screen. It has to really be ecologically important to have conservation value and we have to be able to afford to manage it. And all of our parcels have been actively managed. So that's a very big part of our mission. We're in the middle of a five-year master plan update. We've got a survey online on our website. I would highly encourage you going in there and it only takes eight or 10 minutes to complete. We've really gotten some interesting comments which have been really instructive. We're pleasantly surprised at how many people know that we exist and that we're funded and how we're managed because we tend to be in the background. Go to the next slide. Just some comments, you know, people very concerned about hunting and access and dogs and all the same things that you guys hear about probably on a regular basis here. This is just a slide. We are really focused on finding alternatives to asking our towns for money to fund us. And through the work that Lauren has done and what Tim has done on the park side with the fee-for-service work, we've been able to increase our income and we have the same across the board municipal ask this year that we did last year. So I don't know if I can pull that same rabbit out of the hat next year, but we're going to try. And this is our overall approach, you know, try to decrease our reliance on towns and create new income streams that are sustainable in the long term. We generally have a 25-year perspective. You know, the decisions that we make are things that really need to hold over time. And this is how our, this is the formula that is used in order to establish how much we ask from each town. And if you go to the next slide, I think there's, yeah. So we've got 2.4% increase this year, but we're asking for the same amount overall from our member towns. And the differences being made up through our leasing and program and fee-for-service income. And we see some growth in those areas where we're getting inquiries to increase in those areas. And this is, you have to squint to see this, but this is always the most popular slide because people want to know, geez, what are they paying? So there it is. If the bottom right is the overall, the 319-725 is the overall ask that we have from our towns for fiscal year 19. And then those, the actual funding request for fiscal year 19 is in the far right column as well. And this current year is the next column over, just so you can get a sense of comparison. And it's based on a combination of population and grand list is how the formula is put together. And I think that's the last one. I think I have a cool picture at the end, but is there a cool picture? No, that's it? No, I'm gonna go back and look. No, that's all right. Where's that guy with the brain? Yeah, he's got the brain. Yeah, great. So any questions or concerns? We've really enjoyed working with these guys. So you're well-served, I can tell you. Great. Well, first of all, thanks for what you do. I mean, I think we're in a lot of conversations right now as municipalities around regionalization of services. Yes. And I think that generally this has been a good example of the potential to care for some of the assets around it. You know, maybe it would have been a harder lift on behalf of the communities in which they're located to provide, you know, a regional opportunity for recreation. And we recognize that there's value to that, even if there's not partial specifically located within the community. So that's certainly been why we've, you know, felt compelled, you know, in a sense of commitment to be supportive in the past. We appreciate that. And Howard, you're in a half in two years? No, I'm more than three years. Are you really? Yeah, it's hard to believe. Yeah, feels like yesterday. It's like you were brand new, wow. Well, that's great. Well, it's great to see you guys finding new ways, you know, to come up with financial support to a new models. That's exciting. Any balancing land that you manage, which is land that you physically own? Well, we tried it with our operating budget. We tried it 100% focused on land that we own. Yeah. And there's gray area with that because we also want to provide our member towns with support generically for conservation lands. Yep. But we have enough, you know, our portfolio is, you know, over 1,700 acres that we're managing and three full-time staff in a few seasonals. And keeping the level up on that is enough of a challenge. There's also a fairness issue. If we all often do too much for one particular town, we'll hear it from the other town. That's part of why I do these meetings because people always, you know, have questions. But we are, there is a really strong community between the land trust and conservation boards and select boards that have a generic interest in conservation. I think there's a really, it's like preaching to the choir. So we, since we have such a bright line around our organization as an owner manager, you know, we don't hold easements. We don't manage ball fields. You know, it's a very specific role that we have. And we're not a membership organization. We're not going to send you an envelope with that you took your check into. It's a different type of funding model. We're able to work really closely with the various land trusts and Audubon and Nature Conservancy and so forth and partner on projects pretty seamlessly. We have a couple acquisitions that are a combination of three, four different entities. So it's a long way of saying, you know, we're very focused on managing our lands. We do try to provide as much support as possible. We have to stay within a certain box financially. But we are growing incrementally. I think we may potentially over the next few years take on four new properties. So we're challenged enough to maintain the properties that we own. Thank you, Anne, for your willingness to step into the role as representative. I know that's relevant to you. So let's put you right on the spot. What have you, what's one cool thing you've learned since being on the board? Or being a trustee, I believe, is the correct term. Good snacks, right? They do have great snacks at the meeting. They don't provide dinner, but plenty of chocolate. Let's see. Well, I guess just learning about the structure of this entity, I was completely unaware that something like that could exist. And I'm still, I think, like wrapping my head around because it is sort of, it feels like a very unique thing. So it's, I'm glad that it exists because, you know, as I spoke when I was elected to the board, you know, I passionately care about the river specifically, been living on it for 12 years and it's been a pleasure to engage with other people who also care and have so much passion about it. You know, I sort of feel like I'm still in my infancy stage of my tenancy on the board. So, you know, I speak up, but it's, you know, it's coming along as I learn more and more about how it operates, so, yeah. We gave you a good one, Nick. Yeah, here we are. Other questions for? Friends from Valley Public District? Questions from Council? Any questions from the public? Very good. We always appreciate you taking the time to come and present and, you know, keeping that connection and keeping us informed. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next up is Resolution for the Formation of a Union Municipal District to be known as the Chittenden County Public Safety Authority. Can you just, yeah, can you just shut the front thing? I'll figure it out. Thank you. So, what you have before you tonight on the regional dispatch discussion is the resolution to be considered regarding the creation of this Union Municipal District. So, I've talked to you a couple of times over the last six months about the Joint Survey Committee and the work that we have been doing across communities to think about the regionalization of public safety dispatch. The last time I brought, I was here talking about this, I brought you the agreement to form the Chittenden County Public Safety Authority that was under review by the Attorney General. So, he's signed off on that per state statute and we are bringing this agreement and resolution around to all of the communities for consideration by the elected boards in advance of Town Meeting Day. So, I'm happy to, you know, I didn't wanna give you the full kind of presentation we've done now a couple of times, but I'm happy to answer any questions about that or about the creation of the Public Safety Authority. But really what is before you tonight for discussion only is the consideration of this resolution that we would ask you to review and if you so choose adopt before Town Meeting Day and then the sample language for the Town Meeting Day ballot. And just as a very general reminder to people, the concept here is that the Chittenden County communities and those communities that received a dispatching service through Chittenden County communities would combine under one regional new organization and new Union Municipal District, much like Chittenden County Solid Waste or GMT or the Water District and provide this service centrally. Really with the goal of improving services to our residents, giving back up to our dispatchers who right now new ski sit by themselves for 24-hour shifts, don't have backup or support and providing improved service and better professional development for them. Feel pretty strongly that we have spent a significant amount of time on the budgeting factors that this is related to and the content of it, but certainly if there's questions, concerns, this point in the juncture, I don't feel compelled to ask for a further presentation. Oh, I was gonna ask her to go through the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, important for everybody involved. One thing I should mention that I didn't, outset, sorry, is I did meet last week with both our police and dispatch staff as well as our fire department staff to review what's before you tonight as well as what's gotten us here and answer any of their questions. So while this is a difficult conversation to be talking with existing staff about, we have tried to keep that door open as you all go forward through this elected official process. And how was it received? They had great questions. I think more, I mean, I don't want to speak for them and we may hear from them at some point. I think they had really good questions about how they themselves can prepare to enter employment with a new organization potentially. They had questions about what it meant for especially if the Chin and County Public Safety Authority becomes a PSAP, what that means for receiving 911 calls and dispatching at the same time. That's not what our dispatchers currently do. Our fire is currently dispatched by a firefighter. So what that would mean for our firefighters to have that improved service delivery. And then we also interestingly, we have a number of staff who have worked in other communities with regional dispatch models. So there were opportunities for them also to share what they've seen in other larger places, which was really interesting conversation. And there's certainly, I don't want to undersell there's some anxiety and concern, but I think they're also willing to move forward with the conversation. Any questions? Any questions, concerns from the public? So seeing and hearing none, this is on as a discussion item. And you know what? Even when it comes back for approval, I think this is one resolution we might not read aloud. Might let that one go. But sounds, yeah, I mean, we've invested in this path and are looking forward to seeing this progress. Pleased to see it here. Appreciate the front of the staff. Appreciate getting to see a potential ballot language because it's something that we should all be prepared to talk about with the public and engage with people on when we're talking about more fun and interesting things that might be in the budget, right? So we'll think about how to promote that as well and explain that to everybody so that they know what they're voting on. Good. Any other questions concerning before we move on? So seeing and hearing none, let's go to Promise Communities and Child Care Capacity expansion update. I think Ray is coming up for this conversation. Hello, yeah. It's your night. Well, I think for now. You'll be rid of me soon. Do you mind if I poke around? It's narrowly. What's that? Oh no, please. So I think mostly wanted to do a little table setting tonight with you all, give a quick update on some of the work that's been happening to date around early childhood and Promise Communities and then sort of table set some upcoming decision points that I think we'll be seeing come January. So I think the memo hopefully does a pretty good job of laying out what's been happening. But just again, as a reminder for folks, we did put out an RFP back in the fall for the space of the O'Brien Center, which we've discussed here. Got three letters of intent submitted, only one full application and the steering committee ultimately decided that wasn't a viable application. Largely due to the applicants and experience in the childcare field that just felt like a high risk investment. And I think given that this is kind of a one-time shot for us, it felt important to make sure we had a lot of confidence going into that decision. So we sort of circled the wagons and as we've talked about here, are kind of exploring multiple paths. One being that we continue to try to court an operator with the intent of fitting up space at the O'Brien Center for a childcare space. Second being that we look to fit up and then operate municipally around childcare space. Or third, that we ultimately decide this isn't the right time and potentially sum that funding back. I think I want to be really clear that is like absolutely option Z. That's really the last spot where we would want to find ourselves. And I think for anyone who's worked in that field, we know there's a huge capacity issue in the early childhood world. Lots of need in Chippin County. So I do think it's an important opportunity for us to really do our best to take advantage of. So as recently as the end of last week, which is why it's not more fleshed out in this document, we've had some really encouraging discussions with a potential operator. So I do expect that that first option may be a little bit more likely based on conversations Thursday and Friday of last week. But we are continuing to go through the exercise of looking at building up a business model and budget and staffing model for a municipal run center so that in the event we don't find an operator, we're ready with that information to not make an informed choice about whether that's something the city is ready to get into. So I don't know if that sets enough of the stage to kind of field questions or if there's things, I know you've talked about it quite a lot. Yeah, so the only other thing I will add is and Heather can speak to this too. You know, there's a number of significant goals here. One clearly is the expansion of childcare capacity and making sure our community is safe, healthy and connected and having good places for very young children to go is certainly a part of that. This is also a significant economic development issue for the city. We've heard repeatedly from businesses that one of their challenges is childcare capacity in the city and having employees here that are driving from Milton to Shelburne to back to Winooski and if they're gonna get sick, they're leaving and I think we have some businesses who really see that growing childcare in the city is fundamental to them being able to grow and expand and stay here. Having said that, we've really been pushing our partners to say this, sadly, as somebody who comes from parents who were very involved in early care and education, this system is broken across our state. The business model for early care and education is not sustainable right now and how do we balance the priority for that with a reality that the municipality subsidizing this kind of service delivery may not be feasible within our current municipal budget. And what does that mean and how do we balance both the need and the challenges of the municipality subsidizing a service delivery system that's not traditionally a municipal government service delivery system. So that's the line we're walking right now of not wanting to kind of vehemently refusing to give up on this goal while at the same time, really believing that it's going to be hard for us to subsidize this. So I'm gonna underline that point. Yeah, I mean, so I mean, just to back up, and we've all been supportive of this because we understand that it's a need and I think from a value standpoint, I have aligned with it from day one as a need from an investment standpoint for the city. I mean, I'm just in the interest of brevity gonna be really blunt. I don't think number two is anywhere close to a feasible option for us from a financial commitment standpoint. It doesn't feel like a business that we should be involved in just from a functional standpoint. And it feels like if the private market isn't willing with the subsidy of the lease fit up to support it, that that's a bad sign in terms of whether the business model works. So that number two would really, really, really take, I think a heavy lift of convincing as to what the compelling case, because it's not based on need. We know that that's there. It's about whether it pencils out. No, and we very much understand that. And I think the work we're doing is to get it to a point where it looks good on paper, which I think it's very safe to date has not been an exercise that's come out successfully. But I'm personally really committed to this. I mean, I think, like you said, it aligns with a lot of the values that the city, I think we've really pinned down. So I think we owe it that diligence to work through that exercise, but I hear you, I think understand that for sure. Has there been any consideration to altering the RFP that you put out originally? There was a lot of good feedback coming out of that process about why we didn't get responses. I think a lot of it stemmed from within the field, what we heard universally from every person we followed up with, we didn't apply. We talked to about 10 providers and every single one of them mentioned staffing, recruitment and retention. And that's a systemic issue. That's not a WSKI issue. It's not at O'Brien Center issue. It's finding qualified people and keeping that as really difficult in the field right now. So I think that's one area of concern. So we've had some good conversations about potential ways to support that. Partnerships with potential EVM, places where we could start a feeder program to get young professionals in and hopefully get them connected. So I think that's been really encouraging. Certainly some concern about fit up costs and what those ultimately will look like. We've done some preliminary homework and I think the numbers through the grant that we have, it's, I think until you get a contractor and it's hard to know, right? I've said many times at this table, I'm not a contractor. So I do think our initial work gives us a sense that we're in a ballpark that could work for somebody coming in, but I do think there's some question marks there that remain. And then I think one of the pieces in the RFP too that we were perhaps a little bit optimistic about or perhaps a little bit too value oriented around is the number of subsidy families that we were encouraging applicants to bring in. So we had asked for, I believe it was a 40% threshold, which as we've gone back out to the industry, we're hearing more in that 25% being about the max of what early childhood spaces are able to carry. And the primary reason being is that the base rate for reimbursement through the state system tends to fall well below the required per child cost to keep the lights on. And so there's a huge gap there that either families need to pick up as a co-pay, which is often difficult for families who are qualifying for subsidy, or the center needs to eat or find some other way to subsidize. Some examples of that, and I think Jessica got this up, would be partnerships with an employer. So that is one thing we've seen and are interested in exploring more is for an employer to pick up that co-pay is actually a relatively inexpensive way to add that benefit to their benefit package and keep the center solvent. So I think those are kind of the, some of the big pieces that we heard. I don't know, Kirstie, if there's any big ones that I'm missing. Yeah, I want to play, is the Royal Generally Learning Initiative. There are RFP one out two weeks ago now, I think. Yep. And there are some providers who were holding tight to see what was going to be in there. And that also influenced our decision to ultimately not go out for a second round in the RFP because now that the Royal Generally is live, so. Did either of you give feedback about number of Winooski residents that was mandated through the RFP? That didn't come up. Nope, that didn't come up. Because it sounds like the conversation is kind of swaying more toward a, I want to say a transient population of the daycare, but people that would be coming in and commuting to this area. Yeah, the conversations we've had to date have with providers since the RFP process, again, we didn't hear that feedback from non-applicants and I think in the conversations we've had subsequent to that RFP, that hasn't come up as a real sticking point. You know, I do think we're looking, maybe we need to kind of open our eyes a little wider to say, instead of just residents, we're talking about residents and employees, both. But we're still pretty committed to Winooski families. I mean, that's the point of this grant. That's why we went out for this thing in the first place. Yes, there's a regional need, but if we build a center here and it serves 40 kids from, you know, no offense to Burlington, but 40 kids from Burlington, I feel like we've really missed the mark. So we are, I think, pretty committed to some percentage or some way by which we can prioritize Winooski families from an enrollment perspective. And again, being reasonable with an operator about what that looks like. Is there anything from a qualifications or accreditation standpoint that is a sticking point? I mean, I think the regulatory environment right now in the early childhood field is challenging. And that's because there's a lot of requirements without a lot of resources to make those requirements. That does not sound like government. No. No, no, no. So I think that one place you see that is around the credentialing of staff. So there are certain requirements that come along with the staff makeup of these centers that are licensed. And so there is an issue where getting, paying people enough to get that educational step, it's tough. Folks in that field are not making those types of salaries, unfortunately. So I do think that's one piece. I mean, I think generally, while the regulatory environment is difficult, I mean, we run a regulated after-school program at this point. And while there are differences, it's not that different. So I don't think that that's an area where we've seen a lot of concern, but for the staffing element. But so, and just to be specific about our situation, in general, is there anything in RFP that's narrowing the scope of potential applicants? From a regulatory perspective? Yeah, I know very little. No. Okay, yeah. The subsidy piece would be the only, the subsidy percentage would be the only maybe area. And again, I think we're open to re-looking at that now. May I ask a qualifying question? When you're running your Thrive program, the after-school portion of it, are you bringing, having the opportunity to bring in teachers and IAs and that sort of thing to assist you with those programs or is this a whole separate staff? So right now, three of our staff are school day IAs. And we have one who has worked in after-school programs at JFK, but is not currently working for the district. It kind of fluctuates year to year. But they have similar credentials because of what is required in your license. Right, absolutely. So you're saying, you don't think it would be much different to run a day program, but indeed you're going to need, I think that the seven, no, you're going to need 17 of those DIA associates, Qualified Associates to be able to run a program with that size for that span of time during the course of a day. I think the numbers we looked at were, I think about eight to 10 staffs. Eight to 10 staffs. Okay, yeah. And then you need a, a direct program. I think the advantage that we had in our modeling is the city case scale and benefits are significantly different than what most staff are experiencing in other centers in the region. So, you know, if that were a direction that could ever be bound, I don't think we'd have the same challenges than other centers do. Right. Around getting a really credentialed staff. Interesting. We'd be very competitive, but that also makes it harder to make an already hard business model. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Makes it almost impossible. Consumers. Sorry, a little off track. Have you had, do you know if any other municipality runs a child care center? No, in this country. No, it's better. Yeah. Not in many. Have you had any discussions with CCB because they have a new program to give certificates, it's like an early childhood professional licensure program, which... So, they've taken over management of the state's professional development system. Yeah. So, they've taken that over from child care resources and women lights. So, they are basically just in charge of managing credentials, the trainer registry, certificates, like making sure all that stuff gets pushed through the regulatory body. So, they are not, you know, based out of that system along there not doing anything in child care capacity. So, they're not running a course specifically to churn out folks. No, they do run some of the trainings, but it's through their trainer registry. What are those happening? They're managing the administrative functions for the state. Yeah, I don't know if they're happening specifically at the Wunewski campus of CCB or statewide or... It's statewide. Statewide. Yeah, I mean I think, our best option is to try to work with a provider that's looking to expand rather than move. Because I think it is important to increase the amount of child care slots that we have in Wunewski and Chittin County and I think, but I think there's a reason the business model is difficult and I'm not, I think there's a lot of risk associated with the city taking on that kind of a service. Yep. So, I think to kind of preface everything, I mean, I think due to all the challenges that you've mentioned in this environment making progress on increasing child care capacity is incredibly difficult. So, I really appreciate you and other staff's work on trying to take this incredible resource that we have to make sure that we're doing something meaningful with it. I think one of, in addition to echoing the mayor's concern and Nicole's counselor Mesa's concern about option two, I also think that leaves open the possibility of doing a disservice to community members because people do make really big life decisions centered around child care because it is such a huge one for so many families. And I think that if we are then putting families in the position to bring their children to a center that we find we can't maintain as a municipality in a few years and have to close, I do think that that would be really challenging for a lot of families that could become service participants in that model. Yeah, we're absolutely, I mean, and if I say if because I share the concerns that I'm hearing from here, I think we wouldn't want to build something that's a flash in the pan. It would need to be a sustainable model for that very good reason. With any of the providers you spoke with before, did any say, here's my feedback, here's a dollar amount, like we would need fit up to equal X and we would be able to do it in that? I mean, I think with the exception of one request for essentially a free space, which, hey, give them credit. Not any specific dollar amounts, no. I think on some level, while the upfront incentive was perhaps not enough for folks, I don't know that that was the deal breaker either. I think it was enough of those long-term issues that people were, you know, the staffing and the business model in general that were more concerning. We are making some shifts within the grant that are sort of within the approved amount that we can move around between line items, so we are gonna bump that number up, which we're allowed to do for that grant agreement. So I do think that may help, but I don't know that that's necessarily the deal breaker that's gonna get operated across the finish line. And I'm not sure if this is something that you might have the information off the top of your head, but in the field in general, are we seeing a lack of expansion by providers or even providers narrowing down in scope or size? I know right after the new regulations changed, there was a pretty big drop in home providers across the state. We don't know about center-based, I can get that data pretty easily. But there is, in Chittin County, at least a huge interest in expanding. There are a lot of centers we've explored it and started trying to figure it out just because the need is so great. I think it's 67% of infants and toddlers don't have access to any care and 79% don't have access to high-quality care. So the need is there. Everyone knows there's a market. People are just fighting up against space, trying to get affordable, all the same things we can talk about. Is there a connection between the other Promise Grant recipients too? Because I can tell you I spent a day in a community that is having this exact same conversation right now and are struggling in the exact same way. I think the short answer is not a lot, unfortunately. And I think quite candidly, that was a really missed opportunity in this grant program. But I know that, I mean, we've heard from other communities that received this funding that they're struggling through the same challenges of, gosh, this is such a huge nut to crack. And while $200,000 is great, it's just a drop in the bucket in some ways to solving this really complicated issue. So yeah, I wish there were some more. I mean, we've had some kind of technical assistance through the state and there's been some sort of cross-pollination there, but it hasn't been as robust as I think perhaps would have been helpful. Is there an opportunity for us to have the state child care resource specifically, I think, to come into the space and kind of map out, not be specific, but map out the necessities for the space to find out what a qualified number would be rather than just throwing $95,000 at the wall and seeing what sticks kind of thing. But actually configuring a space to see if that's even functional. I mean, obviously they've given us some leeway as far as green space and as far as this, that and the other thing in that space. And I'm sorry, I'm speaking because I was actually part of the original group that went through there. But I'm just wondering from a city perspective or from this grant perspective actually, not even a city at this point, what is needed to make that a qualified space for what we're looking forward for a daycare? So we have done that work with some folks from our birth to five, had the fire marshal come through, have done some work with licensors. So we've looked at kind of what the needs would be to get to a point where it could function as a three or four classroom space. Bathrooms is a big one, so we need some bathrooms into the classrooms to accommodate just the regulatory requirements there. What we haven't done is take those number or those requirements and sort of parallel that into a dollar amount. And I think part of the reason we have to do that is that it wasn't gonna be our project to manage on some level. We were expecting we would hand that money to an operator and they would deal with the fit up costs. I think it's an interesting question. From an operator perspective, I'd be helpful to have that number. Well, I just don't know how many daycare providers you have out there that would be comfortable dealing with an engineer contractor that would do fit up in that type of a program. So maybe to have some of that legwork at least started for them might be helpful. And one of the things that, or one of the questions to ask, also I know you need bathrooms in certain spaces. I'm speaking directly to the situation, but could it be a bathroom that is shared amongst two rooms and there's a locking door on both sides so that one side can enter, lock the door. It doesn't have many toilets, you know? It's all based on the number of toilets. So exactly, so I mean there's ways to kind of work your way through that system and I guess I don't know what they would need. We did have a lot through, we know from the square footage of the space and what's required in regulations approximately how many kits we can put in there and what work we would need to do to get certain numbers and all of that. Right. I think what it comes down to in terms of knowing how much it's going to cost us is how putting together an actual design for what that space is going to look like. Right. What walls you have to move to make a classroom and where exactly you put the toilet and how many you can put in a room and all of that. I just think it's a beautiful space. I looked at it. It's opportunistic up the wazoo. However, for somebody that, I mean I do, I've done a ton of construction myself but for somebody that doesn't do that but is primarily a daycare provider that can be a very ominous thing to look at and be like, okay, now what do I do with this? It's a great large space but I don't know what the next step is. So that might be an opportunity for us to capture some other folks that might not be willing to look at it otherwise. Other questions, comments? I just wanna speak to the recommendation in number one in terms of proceeding to fit up the space without a commitment from a provider. That seems to me to be a risky proposition because we could, number one, spend all the money on something that's gonna have zero impact and two, potentially make it more difficult to rent the space to another tenant. So I would not support moving forward with a fit up of the space until we have some serious commitment from an operator. Yes. Yeah, I agree with that. I'm not totally ready to throw option number two out the window and that's probably not popular up here but I think there are potentially ways, especially partnering with businesses. I think it's a national trend to see like childcare facilities spring up out of single corporations and I think to like try to work some sort of hybrid model could potentially make some of the financials work out a little bit better with need from employers in the city now and more employers moving in in the future, larger ones hopefully. I think there's ways to explore that but until the numbers worked out, obviously it wouldn't be something that'd be comfortable moving forward within its current state but I think there are potentially ways to make that work. There's, we have some, we have stuff as a city that just a regular childcare center doesn't have some of the infrastructure that we have, some of the ability to process paperwork to be able to state all the challenging things. We as a municipality might be kind of good at the regulatory stuff. So I don't know, I would be interested in at least exploring it more and saying there's a way to make that financially work. I understand that needs to be really solid financially to actually go anywhere but definitely not on board with spending money to fit up a space without operator. That just seems very risky. Yeah. I think I'm always open to conversations about innovative ideas to meet need. I think in that conversation though, one of the things I wouldn't wanna lose sight on let's say it as a public-private partnership, I wouldn't want us to lose sight of the fact that these are dollars that the city has received to provide to try to fill in the need for Winooski residents and I wouldn't want us to work with a group that says, okay, we'll move forward and helping build out a childcare space under whatever model it would be for our employees only. And that means no percentage of Winooski residents, no percentage of. No, no, no, I'm not suggesting we run a daycare for a company. I'm just suggesting that there might be subsidies from a business for some sort of right to a certain amount of spots or whatever that model could look like. I would absolutely, no, I'm not encouraging us to be the Milo Grocer Daycare Center or whatever. But I think if, again, there was a way for them to subsidize a certain number of spots or whatever, I don't know. I think it sounded to me like the opportunity there would be to speak to those businesses, to see if that interest exists and then hand that package to a private entity and say, and by the way, here's a great business, support, business community support that we think could make a difference in the numbers. I still, I will find it challenging to be convinced that we should be operating a childcare center. It's just, it again goes back to the idea that if the market's telling us it doesn't work, it's telling us something. And I hope it does. I don't want the market that's doing it as municipality, right? So there's, you're not comparing apples to apples, but. But I would also make the argument there's probably a reason why the other municipalities aren't doing that. Because I think capacity is an issue everywhere. Like you said, it's not just Vermont, it's nationwide. Yeah, absolutely. So was that a good- This has been hugely helpful and I really appreciate the time on it. It's complicated and I think, to Eric's point, it's something we've been working on like we're banging our heads against the wall of points, but we're committed to seeing it through and trying to make it work. We're really appreciative of all that work and time too. I know you guys are working hard on something that is a big deal to people. I mean, it really impacts lives. So just- And I should have had Kirstie come, I don't know why I didn't have Kirstie come up here, but this has really been her baby too. So I want to make sure she gets as much accolade if not more. She's been really working hard on this so. One last thing. Has there been conversations with the school so like share space and operate out of the actual school? Like small schools in the state will run daycare centers. So they- Maybe like three and four year olds more than- Yeah, yeah. So they run preschool programming at the moment up there, half day programming, and they have two, one classroom, two classrooms up there and two. Space wise, they're pretty tight right now. And we've found this with Thrive that it's, as we're sort of a tenant of the school for Thrive, there's not a lot of extra space up there at the moment. So I think that the conversation, and Sean McMahon is the superintendent, he's been one of the co-chairs of the group, and that hasn't really come up as an option largely because I think they're feeling pretty pinched, space wise. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you Kirstie. Thank you guys. Thank you. Any other questions, comments from the public too before we wrap that item up? Okay. Thank you. So singing hearing none, we will now open up the FY19 budget presentations with general government presentation use of reserves overview. Hi. Is it too late to call in sec for this meeting? No. Come on. This might be the last time you hear from me about the budget because the rest of them will be more exciting staff. Yeah, I'm not sure that's the way that works. I know it was. The last one? I don't know how they do it in mob killer. So while race tried to help me get this functional again, what is before you today are actually two different things. One is the general government overview presentation that hopefully I will walk through in a few minutes. The other is there were some questions of the December 4th discussion when I presented the citywide budget about the use of reserves and one time, one time money in this budget. So Angela and I have put together a memo for you that calls out every place in this budget where reserves are planned for use as well as a full reserve spreadsheet. So that's kind of supplemental. I've been smart. I would have freehold punched them so you could put them right in your budget books. Thank you, Ray. Very much. So that memo is here. It's also referred to in the presentation. So I'll walk through this and get to that information. And Angela, feel free to jump in at any point while you're at it. So this is per our budget schedule, the general government overview. And just as a reminder, what this is talking about is administration, planning, zoning, community and economic development, parking and the tax increment financing district. So one thing to point out is these are the humans that actually do all the operational work, all the finance and human resources, clerk, city clerk work, office management work that keep the city government running. Also the humans that do all of the planning, zoning, community and economic development and parking work and me. So when you think about those kind of special projects, new initiatives as well as operations, these are the humans you're talking about and there are not very many of us. Just keep that in mind. So as we talked about in the last presentation, budgets are more than just numbers, they're actions. So we wanted to embed this conversation in the context of our... Change the colors, do it, change it. Our work that's been coming up. As a reminder, I'm ultimately responsible for the implementation side of all the strategic vision areas. I have not talked about all of them in this presentation because we'll talk about them through the different specific areas over the rest of the budget discussions, but specifically for operations and planning, community development, things to highlight that you all know and have had lots of conversations about master planning process was kicked off this year as well underway. We are on the brink of receiving the final economic development strategic plan. We finalize the parking study and our implementation focusing on Main Street revitalization and really the professionalization of public works, hiring equipment operators, getting the AFSCME contracts settled, hiring a public works director. And then this team is also focused on the community outreach team proposal in partnership with Public Safety. That's the Howard Center team that will be working with us under the leadership budget. Change the colors. Stop it. You did it. You did it. I'll show this message again. Which one is that? This one. That's a little bit. And the joint survey work that we talked about earlier in this presentation. So for 19, obviously after town meeting day, as we talked about last summer, the council and staff together will review the strategic goals and make sure we're all still aligned and prioritizing the same things, but assuming that some of these goals stay the same in FY19, we plan to complete the maintenance bill budget. This team has a strong priority of doing a non-union wage classification study, implementing performance evaluations, really big step in professionalizing our workforce further, implementing the economic development strategic plan, really thinking about the tax increment financing district, how to fully build that out and start planning for its exploration, focus on capital improvement planning, asset management, et cetera. Work with the housing commission in implementing those recommendations and then implementing the community outreach team and reach on this batch. So you've seen a section of these slides before that this is what is included in the budgets that are before you tonight and related to general government. So specifically what is included in our proposals are maintaining the current staffing for the strategic vision areas that we've built up over the last two years. So the community and economic development officer, the communications coordinator and a full-time planning and zoning manager. We have included in here $3,000 for a grandeur. We've relied on volunteer support for that in the past and to me, early good requirements need to fund that. We are including an accounting clerk at a 0.3 FTE. This is a professional to support our financial checks and balances. A critical thing to know about this addition is that this is an addition of somebody who can't be on the window and servicing customers to ensure checks and balances. The accounting function needs to be separate from the function of the people who receive the money. So we really are building up that financial checks and balances and freeing up Angela's time to do some of that larger picture financial strategic thinking like planning for the TIF expiration, potentially managing significant federal grants that have a lot of financial tracking requirements, et cetera. We have included $11,000 in our technology line for much talked about cloud and exchange server solution. And we have included a salary contingency line for that wage classification study. So again, you've seen parts of this slide before. So these are the reductions we have made to achieve the level of tax rate budget, the smaller reductions we would make or we would add back in with the leadership proposal and then additional areas for you to add within just this general government area. There are more of these in the spreadsheet related to the other service delivery areas. Does that make sense? I can walk through these later. Do you want me to walk through them? So what do we get to ask questions? Yeah, well I think, let's, yeah, I'm sorry. I see some knitted browns so I want to stop now. If you don't mind, if it won't throw you off too much, I think while it's up in its freshman people's mind, I think talking about the transfer and the movement of people into different budgets and not being able to see that right above is probably point blank one with the thinking is there. Sure, so just to walk through these all quickly, to achieve the level tax rate budget, as you'd already say on the December 4th, we had to cut out $350,000 out of the existing budget. So the numbers you see in parentheses are the costing out of these ideas. So to walk through this list here, the first three relate to our office manager position. So the first proposal is to achieve a level tax rate to reduce that position to a 25 hour week position from a full time position. The leadership proposal is to bump it back up to 30 hours a week, which is, or cut it 10 hours a week, depending on how you look at it. And then there's an additional ad to maintain it at full time. We have cut back overtime lines, so we've level funded all overtime lines in the city for public works and public safety and eliminated overtime lines for all other departments feeling like we can manage staffing hours to achieve those needs. We had originally wanted to bump up our professional development line, our training line, and had bumped it up in a level services budget and then eliminated it. So that's the $8,000 there. We're recommending moving 25% of the planning and zoning manager time to the community development budget with the rationale that a lot of that person's time in FY19 will be around the master plan effort. And we had formally funded part of that and the intention of that work through the CDC budget. So moved over that staff time. We moved the parking enforcement positions to parking, which is a revenue increase to the general fund. We moved the communications coordinator 20% to the on street meters budget. Obviously the communications coordinator, what it was thought of was thought of to help improve how parking was communicated in the city, how we communicated about where parking was available, how the system worked, made systematic improvements to that. So that was our rationale for that change. HRA projections, so historically we've budgeted that at 55%. So the HRA is the supplement that we give to provide for health insurance coverage. We have historically funded that at 55% usage, 50% is closer to what we've actually seen in the last couple of years. So it's a little risky, but we feel pretty confident with that. And then we are exploring a different non-Vemur's retirement system for the city. Currently we have a $10,000 administrative cost associated with our current plan. And if we move to a new plan, that cost would go away altogether while providing arguably better service to our employees. So that's the, that elimination of $10,000. On the expense line, we've reduced the legal contract line to closer to what we've actually spent in the last couple of years. We've maintained how we funded the Winooski Valley Parks District. And at the same rate, we've funded in the last couple of years, not the fully funded amount that you saw on next slide earlier. We had originally intended to include $5,000 for what we're calling the Winooski Legacy Campaign, which is the part of what you'll hear as a result of the branding and marketing study building up to our 100th birthday in 2022. So really using that centennial event as an appreciation in the next five years of Winooski and telling the story of who we are and our brand. We think we can find grant money and other revenue sources to fund this line. And then finally with a leadership proposal, we are recommending $12,300 to fund the community outreach team in partnership with the Howard Center. So the 20% is, can you remind us of the communications coordinator, the total percentage that was in general fund versus CDC? What percentage of that was CDC? It was only 12% out of the general fund. It is 50% of the CDC. I mean, is that right? Is that the percentage you paid for? Yes, it's on page eight of your budget book, 50%. Yeah, the 38%. Some of it is in the parking garage for the outreach to garage customers and notifications regarding work. And I think the remainder is in the on-street leaders. I don't believe we just pulled that anywhere else. But as well as development of promotional materials, I think there's gonna be a large portion of the communication coordinator's time that will be spent on putting together things like a parking map, parking brochure that we'll have as part of our welcome packet for businesses and for residents. But so when we're saying move communication coordinator's 20% to on-street meters. So when I read this the first time, I presumed that that met 20% was being removed from the general fund. If there was only 12% to start with in the general fund, that's not accurate. I'm interpreting that incorrectly. So can you explain what 20% is moving from where to what? I think it's an increased to 20% from the on-street meters. Okay. That's similar to the planning and zoning manager that was previously funded partially out of the CDC budget just not at 25%. It's increasing the percentage to 25%. And I do wanna know the net impact to that CDC budget on that too. That is the net impact of the 25,000 is the change. 25,000 just represents the change. And that's inclusive of all salaries and benefits. And the same with the 11,000s of money. That just is the change. Other questions on this screen? I mean, we're gonna get more opportunities for questions. So we do have a spreadsheet that has how each position is spread out of that opening into this question. Yeah, and I think it goes back to looking at the Angela spreadsheet, where we can see that net last value where you can see the percentage change in the columns between fiscal years is really helpful. Cause that language is challenged is, I know that I presumed some things incorrectly. And look at that. Maybe I was the only one to interpret that incorrectly, but. Well, it's I'm a little wanna make sure I'm reading the numbers correctly, but I had a bigger picture question, which was, could you just talk about the office manager position and what impact that has on operations moving full-time to 30 to 25? So the office, so there's two full-time positions within kind of the front office of city hall, the city clerk's office. So it's the city clerk and the office manager. The office manager position is the office manager of the city. So does most of the invoice paying for a general government services, does the staffing of the front office, does some of the kind of legal tracking of claims against the city does some of the backside of the invoice processing system, et cetera. We have then have two part-time staff who are also able to swing their hours to cover the heavier impact hours in the city. The leadership team, as we were thinking about what staff to cut because to get to $350,000 productions, we have to talk about people you can't just talk about things around the edges. We felt like we had some extra capacity in that staff that may not be the case as we go into regional dispatch conversations and future service demand conversations. But right now we have some capacity in that area. And with part-time staff could use those hours to flex differently to ensure that we all had those peak hours covered but had less staffing sitting there in the early mornings or the late afternoons when we don't see the same demand on the front office window. And then the Wanooski Parks District Appropriation, can you tell me what the leadership proposal is for the actual appropriation? 4,000? 4,000, and that is what we did last year. So the leadership proposal line is variance from last year's, but this year budget. So the level tax rate and the leadership proposal recommend funding it at the same level as last year. Right, so let me just restate my question. When I'm looking at the numbers in the leadership proposal column or the level tax rate column, that reduction is a reduction from FY18. Nope, not necessarily. It's a reduction from the level services budget. So when staff submitted their budgets to me and Angela, they submitted what do we believe we need to maintain the current services we're providing with the values that we've heard from the council and from our team over the last year. So in that level services budget, we had fully funded the Wanooski Parks District because it's been on the ad list for several years because they are a critical partner with community services because we're the only community that is not currently fully funding the Park District. So we had put in the full funding in that level services budget. So in order to cut from level services to level tax rate, we had to reduce that line by 13,000. This is a, I fully admit, this is a different way that I have historically budgeted than the team has. So the same thing on, for example, the professional development training line budget, that is level funded from last year, which is why the percentage spreadsheet, I think, is what you're looking for. So we're not cutting $8,000 from professional development. We're not adding $8,000 that the staff proposed. What we wanted to do, yeah. So it would be, I think, really important, and I'm not sure, because in the budget book, we have the roll-up budgets. Yeah, so we don't see a lot of these line items, and so the public doesn't see them. And so I think it's very easy to interpret some of these numbers as a cut, rather than a variance from what staff proposed. So I don't have the best way to... We can look at, we can think about how to call those out for you. So you can see, because some of the 18 allocation, right, FY19 leadership proposal, level tax rate proposal, just so we can see in actual dollars what the difference is. Because there are some things, I mean, in your narrative, you explained it, but you talked about what was pre-baked in, right? Like there was already some things that you guys baked in to that proposal, even on the level tax rate perspective, that is a change in this area that is not represented up here too. So I think that's back to that point of having the breakout specificity so that you can see when the line item changes. This is where we ran into a couple of years ago voting for a budget and then saying, oh, we didn't all recognize we were eliminating a program. And we did, it was something in community services. We underfunded something at any rate though, but the learning experience from that was, we're gonna create this extra column on the spreadsheet that denotes like, here's the change between this fiscal year and last fiscal year and here's a summary of what that change is. So that we have a total understanding of, okay, this is something that's been altered in the proposal because it's fine that there's a proposal but understanding what changed from the previous year. Is that other important link? I think that. So happy to provide that for you. I do think, and I wanna own this, not put this on staff. So there are several significant ways this process is different than you all have done in the past. I feel like I have an obligation to present to you a budget that I believe is logical and meets your needs and that's why we have baked in some of the things into it. I think really to achieve the strategic goals that we've established together, there are some things that shouldn't be on an ad cut list. We just need to do them, which is why we've tried to call them out here. We've tried to not make any changes either in the ad or the reduction side that aren't clearly called out in this document, but it does look different than you are used to seeing. So we certainly can try and meld those two processes together. Yeah, I'm not looking for an ad drop list necessarily with the one we did before. I'm just looking for real clarity around, is this a cut from FY 18? Is this level funded? Maybe not where we would, I do ideally want to see the investment, but I just, I need to know that. Yes, certainly there needs to be. And I think that just a big component of that is transparency for the public, because if there is a line that for whatever, level service funded from last year, but because of whatever changes between years would still be an increase, but then the way it would be presented here makes it look like it would be a cut, I think could be really confusing for members of the public who aren't sitting in this room and having this discussion where we understand that $8,000 for training for professional development was an additional ad, so that $8,000 cut reflects returning to the level services. So I think we can parse through the nuances here, but I think for a lot of the public just pulling up the spreadsheet and reading through it, they don't necessarily get that same picture. Are there questions or comments before we let Jessica get back and read them? Oh, no. The discussion's great. The whole line of this is down to discussion. Because we kicked off some of the discussion in regards to the officer, office manager position, are there opportunities in other budgets where that 10 hours, for instance, there might be need for some administrative support where a portion of that position could be moved into that budget? That's alleviating some of this impact on the general fund while still keeping that position full-time. That's a good question. I will need to think about that a little bit. And then, do you mind just talking a little bit about some of the details behind the pension administration and kind of, you had mentioned, obviously the cost savings for the city, but that could potentially mean increased services for city employees in regards to those pensions, some of the details behind the reasoning there? Sure. So this is a little preliminary and we'll come to you in a separate vote. You will have to take a vote to authorize us to change this benefit if we change it in the future. I think Angela and Julie and I are pretty confident that this is the right choice for the city, which is why it's on here. I believe we will be coming to you with that proposal before the end of this budget cycle. We just got those documents back. So for those employees, so some of our employees are in VEMRS, which is the Vermont Municipal Employees Retirement System. And when that was set up with the city, it was decided that some employees, some classifications of employees would be in that system and some would be in a separate traditional investment retirement system. So the, and I'm gonna try and say this kind of generally without throwing people under the bus or throwing companies under the bus. So the current system we have is fine. It's a decent system. We've had it for a while. We are not getting a lot of service from them. They don't come in and meet with staff. Their online interface is very challenging to work with. They have these administrative fees that we pay from the city side and then there are also fees associated on the per purchase side of things when you're laying out your portfolio. We are exploring moving to a system that is specifically municipal employee focused. So has national experience running retirement systems for municipal employees, but not through a state operated system. It's actually a service that's operated, offered to other municipalities in Vermont. And so one, this administrative line will go away. Two, we believe the fees charged to our employees will be reduced. And three, we believe that the customer service our employees will get with their retirement planning will be greatly enhanced. But as I said, I believe we'll be before you kind of laying that out in more detail before the end before you have to take a vote on this budget. Great, thanks. Good catch, you turned over a lot of stone, sir. Thank you. Good. So the next slides, we've taken screenshots. Don't try and read them on here. Go to the budget book. That's either in front of you or online. These are just for illustrative purposes. So this is the general fund pages associated with the general administration sides of things. So total revenue coming in through the people running the operations in the city is about 6.5 million. We're spending about 1.1 million on general administration charges. And then another 252,000 on those regional programs. Now, because we are doing all the funds together, I've also included here the parking budget on street meters and garage. So just a few things to call out. Again, these are in your budget books in a much more readable way. In the on street meters, budget we have included new money for wayfinding signage, which is a priority of the parking study. And then in the garage parking budget, we have included funds for an access control system, which again, recommendation of the parking study. Other than that, other than the staffing changes we previously talked about, these are both level funded operations budgets. So I want to spend a few minutes talking about the community development and the TIF budgets because they are very related this year. Everyone okay? So community development budget, we are recommending funding this only at $150,000 in FY19. So as you may remember from last spring's conversation of the community development budget, we had planned to fund it in the first year at 400,000 and made the decision to fund it at 300,000, but not fully appropriate all of those dollars to create an initial fund balance, which we have done and believe that at the end of this year we'll have a fund balance of 162,000. That decision as a reminder was made to keep some funds more solvent for incentivizing development. Based on the realities of the TIF budget, in order to meet our external debt obligations, we reduced the payment to ourselves. So the payment of the money flowing into the CDC budget is that TIF payment to the community development fund that you are all now the trustees of. So we've reduced that to 150,000. In order to do that, we are recommending the use of $25,000 of fund balance of which we have 162,000 at the end of this year to fund the operations of the CDC budget. So what's included in here is part of Heather's salary, part of Paul Dreyer's salary, part of Paul Sarn's salary, the operational expenses associated specifically in this budget that's materials for a new website for promotion, et cetera. One of the things we will need to do is fund $6,000 for the municipal planning grant match, which I don't think I actually called out in the memo. I will do that. So related to the CDC as the CDC is related to the TIF budget. So this is the TIF budget proposed for FY19. So you see here what we are anticipating on the revenue side from the property tax and pilot, charges for service, et cetera, 3.1 million, operating costs of 3.16 million. So the need to use almost $64,000 in reserves to fund the obligations in FY19. With this budget, we still do have a small fund balance at the end of FY19, $50,000 and $54,000, and we need our one-to-one debt service coverage ratio, which is required under the Covenant. Also included in here, just to call it out in the CIP, which is also in your budget book, we have included funds to think about bringing power around Rotary Park, which has been a request we've received a number of times for ease of actually using that as a public space, fixing the wall lights, as well as doing the improvements to the lights on the street poles, street lights. But this is, we wanted to include these two slides on this TIF challenge we have coming up. So Angela and I have spent a lot of time rebuilding the revenue project for the kind of forecast of the TIF district, and this is the high-level projection shot. So this model assumes absolutely no growth. So if we stay right now, no new development in the TIF district in FY20, we have a decent problem. We will not meet our debt service coverage ratio. That's the red number you see at the bottom. So what this tells us is we really need to get moving on development projects in the TIF district, which luckily we are doing. So if we completely build out the TIF with what is currently on the table for proposals, we will meet the debt service coverage ratio and the TIF district with a fairly healthy surplus. This obviously has significant assumptions based into it, built into it based on assessed value, et cetera, but I think is relatively concerned. So this is that spreadsheet I talked about about the overview of the reserve funds. This is what, these are all of our funds. The reserve balance as of the end of FY17, what it means to hold 30 days cash on hand, what's restricted, in what ways. And then the proposed, so the last two columns are the proposed FY19 use of reserve balance and then the remaining balances, assuming that all of those move forward. So assuming that we continue to use, assuming what's included in here will still have a million dollars remaining in the general fund, 1.3 in the water pollution treatment fund and then you can see the rest as they go down. Community development reserves note that there's a negative number in there because we didn't have funds, that didn't exist at the end of FY17. So with the 18 budget, we have built up those funds. And then final slide and then I'll stop talking. Hopefully you'll start talking. We want to call out some emerging issues related to these budgets. So obviously many of these, you have heard us talk about a lot and I talked about the beginning of the project, some of the different efforts we're making under the TIF district, Main Street Project, initiatives going parking. We are starting to see development East Allen Street, which is not specifically funded or supported anywhere other than our regular planning and building community economic development staff. That is something we're starting to see. Obviously we need to continue the conversations about the OCC planning and City Hall, the pool and then there's always this question about the impact of decisions made at the federal level and how those could affect us at the local level. I just threw a lot at you. So can we go back? Thank you very much. Thank you for putting out the presentation of all the information. Could we go back to the overview of reserve funds? So a few of these are uses of reserves that aren't related to operations though. Can we astro size uses of reserves that are funding operational? Because I think that's the bigger question. It's like I don't question $304,000 for the wastewater, you know, the water treatment plant upgrades and issue. I think the concern was using reserves and operational spending. So that is what we have tried to call out with this memo. Yeah. So for each use of reserves in this memo, we've explained what it is. This community historically has funded CIP with reserves. So the vast majority of these expenditures, but for community service and CDC are for capital not operations, but we certainly can call that out more in a more targeted way. My take was that there are $25,000 in the CDC budget. That's pretty much all for $11,000 in contract services, but the remaining costs are personnel. So that's a substantial portion of staff. Full time, three full time positions that we have on staff that are being used, we're using reserves to fund. And if for some reason the TIF doesn't get built out on the timeline that we're hoping for, that places those positions at risk. Is that a reasonable way to read that information? I think structurally those decisions have been made. I think we last year had the beginnings of this conversation, but that's a piggy bank, right? That was set up with a specific vision that we have adjusted the vision on, which is okay from operational perspective. But in case I don't get to come back to this seat in the future, I mean, I think we have to realize that we are mortgaging future tax revenue towards today and lessening the back end impact of the TIF benefit to the city. And that's something that we've done with our eyes wide open and done for good reason and for good expenditures. I understand, but let's not dress it up as anything other than that, because that's what it is. Even $25,000 of additional expenditure towards that is half of the penny on the future tax rate. Right, but we're moving more and more positions and more portions of positions into that fund. And I think even more through this, some of these are decisions that have not yet been made, but are being proposed. And I just think we need to recognize that that's a risky way of staff in operation. So it is, and I think that statement is accurate. I think the flip side of that is at least for two of those positions, those are positions that are actively working on the full buildout of the TIF. So if we're going to reduce the bodies to work on that effort, we're going to make it harder to achieve that goal of full buildout as well. And did we, have we run planning zoning manager through legal from a, is that an acceptable use of those funds? Yeah, I figured, I mean, it's pretty justifiable, but what does everyone want to talk about? A little bit lighter question. The fire equipment that's in the memo. So we moved in the public works department to municipal leases for vehicles. Can you lease a fire truck too? They're like, are we looking to just buy that outright? I was not buying it outright. That is paying a pretty significant down payment to a 10 year, $27,000 payment. So it's a lease, not just a down payment on a purchase. And we would own it at the end of the lease. So it's similar to what we're doing. Okay, all right, okay, gotcha. I wasn't totally sure. Yeah, the fire truck does not cost $230,000. No, no, no, no, I wasn't assuming that, but I thought it was financing, just financing the rest to purchase outright instead of actually working through like a leasing. It's a municipal leasing model from a company. Okay, gotcha. Can't find a $200,000 fire truck, what the heck? I mean, we might want to own a $200,000. Yeah, okay, gotcha. We can, but only one of us can ride. Thank you. You know, we're kicking the community center down the road another year. I would, well, so from a fund structure standpoint, this is going to, it will be separated in the general fund as well, the OCC. So it will be in some department the way that it previously functioned. And this is at the recommendation of the auditor. So you will see it when they come to get their report. It is one of two recommendations that they have made. It is not self-supporting at this time. And we don't currently see a way that it can self-support. And it's reserves are going to transfer with it in its own special departmental reserves? We will currently maintain those reserves in the existing fund and transfer them in to cover operations. So we are going to transfer in, I believe, just over $30,000 in FY19 under this proposal to make up the shortfall so that the taxpayers are not paying the extra burden for bringing the OCC in that particular fiscal year. The intent with the discussions that we've had at leadership is to phase in the O'Brien Community Center over time by phasing in smaller and smaller reserve amounts. We did this similarly with the library rent. The Stonehouse money was running out and we started to phase out the use of that reserve. That way it wasn't a one big giant impact at one time. It was something that we could manage in mites. Okay, but just so everybody's aware, we're signing ourselves up for at least starting with a $30,000 problem next year's budget. Kick in the can. Well, assuming we don't have a space more fully leased. Is this built around space fully leased? It is assuming some may can see, but it is assuming that the former Y space is leased, which is the largest piece. Not that I don't doubt that this is gonna be the year that we figure this all out, because I have the utmost faith that we will. But in case it's like the last 10 years. We may find ourselves back in that place where we're talking about use of reserves again for next year. Anyway. But I have faith. So this, one thing that is tends to be unique. I mean, I'm assuming that this is our shot to talk about revenue or in this depth. Where we typically end up talking about it the most anyway. Can you talk a little bit about some of the projected increases in revenue that were made in here and how confidently feel in supporting some of those numbers. And I guess I would start with the charges for services at 94,000. So those, if you remember back to the manager's presentation those, when we redid the fee structure ordinance last summer, Paul, one of the significant places we increased or changed fee structures were around zoning permits, building permits, et cetera, to become more in line with what our neighboring communities were doing. So we have increased those fee structure lines given or those revenue lines given the new fee structure lined up with what we anticipate coming online in FY 19. So the growth that we believe will happen in 19 and what will the permit charges associated with that growth be? So no projected on the actual or growth that you have on the books anticipated for? Well, I mean, it's all projected because what they're saying now, six months out is not necessarily actual, but it's based on that those development trends that we anticipate seeing. It is also more in line with the past couple of years experience. We have budgeted very conservatively for permit revenue and we've seen huge amounts over and above like to the tune of 300% revenue collection in permit lines. I mean, it's not a scary jump you know, between our actuals and what's being budgeted. The first place you always look in a budget is to make sure that people didn't go backwards and start playing with revenue or expenditures, but connect the two. And then just to, I know you called out that line specifically, but to set it again, the grand list growth projection here is based on a 0.8% increase in the grand list from this current year. And again, that's going systematically through what we think is going to come online between now and April 1st with the assessor, with Paul, with Heather. Also reducing it by any properties that were destroyed to create these new expenses. So during last year's budget cycle, the instruction was to fully integrate all payments to the WCP into parking. Has that been effectively accomplished too? Quite 18 budget all in parking. Yeah, okay. So what are your maintains in a sidewalk fees thing? Sidewalk fees are run from one on one. We don't budget for the sidewalk fees to come in in any of our budgeted departments. Right. And can you remind us what that number is now? Well, not the sidewalk fees, no, no, no. One is our fund for reversible items. I don't know, but what is the same one? Sidewalk fees? No, no, no, I'm sorry, I don't need that. I know that's like $7,000 or something like that here. What the budgeted amount in the parking for the standard do? I think it's 12 or 12.5. 12.5, right, because our goal was to get 19-ish, as I recall, or 20 right below that, to be on par with the state recommendation. Okay, I just want to clarify that that's in there, baked in in there. Okay. What else, guys? I mean, it's not the last budget conversation. This isn't the end-all be-all, the power forward. Is everybody had enough information on this this evening? And I guess too, just from a strategic standpoint, I think it's important we not forget these TIF budget worksheets, because I think some of those decisions are coming down the pipeline. And I know that the last time we had an opportunity to do something on 70, the last two times, we've thought about taking action for very good and valid reasons. We decided to let some dust settle one time, and then to wait for the administration to change the second time. But what this is screaming at us is no more waiting. So that's a luxury that we do not have. Well, but I also think it'd be useful to have an update on those other projects, because they've been in the works for quite a long time. And part of the thinking around Mock D was we've got a hotel and another sort of scene where things settled out down there. So why don't we just, we can put that as a geni the next time, and that would be great. I think we should probably put it as an executive session of geni. Fair enough, great. Okay, if there are any, you know, I know this process is new and different. If there are other requests for information people have or ways that would be helpful to see things slightly differently as we go through or doing community services on the second and the rest of them, if there are other ways we are more than willing to amend how we're doing this to get our message across the viewer. Let me, let us know. Any other questions, concerns, comments? Questions, concerns, comments from the public? Seeing and hearing none, one down. Well, that's a good one. Great job. Okay, item G, approval of the Small Business Loan Program Committee structure. Thank you, Jesse. Hello, everyone. So this is round two with a charter for the Mooneesky Small Business Loan Program. As you recall, we approved, you approved a charter for the Small Business Loan Committee on April 17th and staff has since put out several calls for volunteers to sit on that committee. I did receive two applicants, one of whom removed themselves from the process and the other was a no-show for the interview. So that has been the full extent of the applicants I've had for the last eight months. So in order to get this program moving because it really has been just sitting dormant for eight months, I've come up with a hybrid structure for the committee that would allow us to have a staff quorum of three staff members that sit on the committee as well as two seats for community members on the committee and two alternate seats for community members. This structure allows for community participation, but it also ensures that a quorum can be maintained so that the program can continue even in the absence of community interest. So I will accept any questions that you have and this was really the best structure that I could come up with. The staff members that I would have sit on this would be the city manager, planning and zoning manager and the staff accountant. I would not be a voting member. I would be the staff liaison reason for that is to maintain my relationship with the businesses. So I wouldn't be making decisions about who received the loans. I like that idea. So first of all, great job. And I'm sorry that more people that come out of the woodwork excited to review your application. This is not the exciting one. Yeah. The one thing that I'll just point out and I'm sure you've thought about that is the sensitivity around a body like this operating under open meeting law. Yeah, most of them operate they operate in executive session for their deliberations and then they come out to make to vote. Yeah. And because I think it's always gonna be public record if people want to know who we made a loan to but I would just encourage you guys as you think through like we're voting on policy here. You guys are, that's your bailiwick the operational procedure standpoint but just highly recommend insulating that from an exposure perspective for a business because that's not something everybody's comfortable with. It's exempt from open meeting law and can be held in executive session. So that's written into the program policies and guidelines. Great, thanks. I figured you'd thought about that. How long? Sorry, the body is exempt from the open meeting law or the discussion? The discussion, if it covers confidential information tax records, that sort of thing those are all exempt under open meeting law and can be done in executive session and should be done in executive session. But the meetings would be warned. The meetings would be warned and we would open, move into executive session or are needed to come out to take a vote. How long do you anticipate it will take us to put this structure together and actually be able to loan out some money? Well, I will say that I have since coming up with this hybrid structure, I've received two applicants that are good applicants. So should this be approved, I'll then immediately contact those two applicants and bring them forward. So we should be ready to roll this out in January. Awesome. Excellent. Exciting. Very. Exciting. And then just to remind you, just to say it aloud in a public meeting, like this was designed and constructed before you were on board. So I think too, I know that none of us are going to hold specials, especially the idiot that wrote it. That was me. Well, hold no sensitivity around authorship as you guys get into this. You see changes that need to be made to make it more effective as a useful fund for the community. So I think encourage that open line of thinking. You're always so shy about it. Another questions, comments, concerns. Oh, excited. Questions, comments, concerns from the public. So seeing and hearing none, I retain a motion for approval of small business loan program committee structures presented. So motion by Brian, second by Eric, Brian Corgan sir, any further discussion? Hearing and seeing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. As opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Item H, discussion for proposed change to personnel policy manual article two and article five. Julie is thankfully here tonight. So this is a recommended change to the policy to be consistent with law and to allow Wynoski to take advantage of all of the aspects of the FLSA, including special rules for public safety. So our policy currently says that overtime is paid on hours over 40 in a work week that is part of the FLSA. The FLSA also allows for public safety employees to have their overtime calculated on a paid period instead of a paid week. So for Wynoski, that would mean calculating overtime on 80 hours in a two period instead of 40 hours in a one week period. It affects one employee immediately, a fire captain or only full-time fire captain. And it would allow her to flex her schedule so that she, without incurring overtime costs and so that she doesn't have to use CTO in a week where she might work less, work more in the next week. It would or could potentially affect other part-time police or fire employees, but they are mostly reservists and on-call employees. So they rarely, if ever, meet any overtime threshold. So it's unlikely. So who would, if she's going to change or flex her schedule, who would authorize that? As the chief, who would she? The chief, she's the captain. She's the captain, I'm sorry. Okay. All right, so she would authorize that. So part of this- So there would be representation, which was my only concern. If she worked 50 hours this week, because it's a busy week and then 30 hours the following week, there would be representation for the fire department regardless. And part of the solution is actually to ensure that there's good staffing coverage. So on weeks where there may be other coverage in the city to allow her to take time, but then cover what others can't be in the cities, in part to enable that flexibility, as well as get more regular presence in the fire house specifically on weekends. Yeah, I just think this is a good practice to give some flexibility for sanity and the pork life balance in a good way. So other questions, concerns from council on that one? Thank you very much, Julie. But the affected employee, sorry, the affected employee knows about this change and is good on board. We had a conversation with her and it was posted for the playtime too. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions, concerns from the public? Okay, so seeing and hearing none, thank you very much for that work. And then finally this evening, goal update, municipal infrastructure. It's all good, right? Thanks, nothing's breaking. No. What? What? Sorry. So this is our first update on the municipal infrastructure, strategic goal area. Again, you've heard, I think it's useful for us to do this exercise and to provide it to you, but you also hear a lot about this between meetings as well. I will call out that in this particular document, and I hope it came across to you all in color, it's not this, it's not the color here. This document, there is a lot of yellow. A lot of this is behind because of the absence of public works director. I would give enormous credit to John Cho and Joe Shaw for keeping the operations of public works going very smoothly. I think one of the things that we've had suffer as a result of not having a public works director is some of these bigger picture strategic items. So we have called out in here where, if that position's not funded, that we'll need to kind of scale back some expectations, but also where in the specific narrative where efforts are needed. So we talked about the Main Street Revitalization Project, the Asset Management System implementation, you can see kind of where we are in the implementation of that in the memo. The need to connect that to our CIP planning. Give you a few sentences on municipal infrastructure. Talk a little about the Winooski-Berlington Bridge Repair Project, which is on schedule for completion in 2018 that is the replacement of some of the archways along the sidewalk, not the full bridge replacement. But a shared grant, or a shared effort with the city of Burlington and Ryan Lambert and Heather have been instrumental in that effort. I'm going, we've talked about the wastewater treatment plan improvements. Obviously more to read here, but specifically for your consideration, obviously before you now is the budget with the CIP and staffing levels anticipate coming to you in the next month with a headworks project engineering update and potential requests for a bond vote. OCC, we talked about that tonight, but additionally potentially request for us to enter into a contract for the fit up if we have this provider identified and then of course the Street Revitalization Project. Have any answer specific questions, but also there's a lot of information there and it's late. I think these are really, really important and very valuable and appreciate the work and time that's gone into them. Cause I gotta tell you, the first thing, we do a community visitors in there for work, the first thing you find when you go into places that are really struggling as a lack of narrative about the successes in the work progress taking place for people and for the public with just a real lack of understanding of what's being done towards things. So I find these to be immensely valuable and appreciate the time and energy you put into them. Yeah, good. Thank you. Other questions, comments, concerns from council? Any questions, comments, concerns to the public? Thank you very much. Thank you. And so seeing no other items for business this evening, I obtained a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Motion by Brian, second by Brian Corgan, second by Nicole. Any further discussion? Experiencing none for the last time in 2018. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. And those in favor? 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17. 17.