 assuming Tom will be joining us. Oh, there he is. Okay. Order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, October 19, 2020. Welcome everyone. The first item for action is the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in the order of the agenda items? Seeing none, we'll move on to comments and questions from the public. This conference will now be recorded. Agenda. Are there any public members who, Chris Trombly? Welcome. Hi, good evening. Can everyone hear me okay? Yes. Excellent. Thank you so much. So, Chris Trombly, I recently joined the affordable housing committee and I have the honor of serving as chair now. One of my first opportunities to serve South Burlington is to bring attention to a recent draft sewer ordinance amendment that was presented to the City Council. As a committee, we met and we made a unanimous statement that we'd like to share with the City Council. And I'll share that statement to each of you individually after today's meeting. But just we want to express that we strongly opposed the draft amendment just due to its inconsistency with the goals of improving housing choices and affordability in South Burlington. We understand it's under review, but that the way that we understood that the amendment would possibly prevent utilizing the existing infrastructure to develop additional residential neighborhoods that are obviously much needed to ease the tightness in the housing market. So, we'd like to forward a statement to the group for your consideration. And if there's an opportunity to discuss this on a future agenda, or we could provide additional detail. But thank you. Thank you for your time. And unless there's any questions, I'll yield back. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. And I look forward to reading your statement. Any other? Dave? Oh, Roseanne? Yes. Hi, everybody. Thank you for listening to me. I'm once again here to talk about climate change, the climate change crisis and emergency that we're in. And I'm, as I've done in the past, urging the Council to put your good words into action. There are lots of things you could do years ago, two, three years ago. I think you created a position for a sustainability officer, which I think Paul Conner holds. But I mentioned in the past that given crisis that we're in with climate, every action the city takes should be weighed against sustainability and what impact it has on our use of fossil fuels, putting more carbon and pollutants into the atmosphere and furthering the destruction of climate change. So I'm here to ask the Council to plead with the Council once again to put your good words and intentions into actions by actually doing something. So thank you. And please put this at the top of your agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, Mike Donahue. Good evening again. My name is Mike Donahue. I'm a lifelong resident of South Burlington Longtime Taxpayer. And I've been approached in recent weeks by several taxpayers and business owners with deep concerns over this new South Burlington Times, the latest public relations spin from the manager's office. Taxpayers, I know there's another agenda item. I know there's another agenda item, but there's two things that I filed under a public records request that I want to talk about that sort of sparked this whole thing. Is that okay? That's fine if it's not related to the newsletter. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, as part of the investigation into the South Burlington Times, I did file a public records request, which showed a couple of things that I find and other people find disturbing. One concern is the city apparently violated Vermont's open meeting law the day after your September 21st city council meeting. The record show city manager Dorn sent an email the next day, September 22nd to all the city counselors concerning a plan by his administration to start publishing what he called an e newspaper every week and be filled with just government information. He told the individual city counselors, among other things in that email that the city staff had started working on this first edition and everything like that. As city counselors, you were asked your ideas on his plan, but in the same paragraph managers said it was well in the works and they were working on the second one. It sounds like the train was leaving the station, but the bottom line is at least one counselor replied to everybody saying let's invite the school district. That became an open meeting under Vermont's public records law, a public open meeting law. Once you hit reply all and it went to the council, it went to the manager and others. That discussion became an unworn public meeting under Vermont's open meeting law. City manager responded the next day to further multiply the problems by writing back to the counselors about that they had talked internally about inviting the schools and so forth. I think our advice is to keep this municipal for the time being until we see how it rolls out to keep the door open to the school district, evaluate offering them access once we are established. So business with being discussed is no question. Somehow without any real public discussion apparently by the city council in an open meeting in public where people can comment about the merit of the phone in times apparently a thumbs up or thumbs down may have been given and it was emailed less than a week later. Who knows what private emails were going back and forth at the time. So there's that issue of violating the open meeting law. Number two is a major concern over a long time city clerk Donna Kinville. In the public records that I received under protest she apparently believed she was required to turn over to the city manager a list of all emails for city voters that had been provided to the first class to allow them for early voting. Kinville also against her will was apparently required to turn over to the city manager to those residents that have registered their dogs and cats to demand were apparently made. So the manager's office used the private emails to distribute self-broken times to residents even those those city residents never signed up or requested the propaganda sheet in their inboxes. Donna Kinville email response specifically to Kevin Doran and Meredith Rossi on September 25th said and I quote here are the email addresses that I have for voters and dogs and cats. I think she means the owners of dogs. Here I have for voters and dogs and cats. I am supplying them under protest and against my better judgment knowing that when people gave us these emails it was not for any other purpose than for voting or for registering their pet. The manager Doran had made it clear in one of his emails to the city council when he wrote to you a plan to aggregate all the emails and push the email out at quote no cost to the taxpayers well we know the no cost court just is not valid and so forth and you can talk about that later. So I'm wondering in city council are you aware of both or either of these incidents at what point if ever did each of you give a green light to the south prone times and maybe that's later for the later agenda item and did you at any point authorize the city manager to demand the emails collected for other governmental reasons to be sure no and as a city council given up some of its role overseeing public policy for this city thank you. Thank you I believe we can address those on item agenda item number seven are there any other there's some kind of static is anyone else getting a lot of static like someone's running a calculator. Yeah I'm hearing stuff too. Yes I can hear it. The only person not muted right now is Dave not Dave Coffin but the person whose name is just Dave. Yeah does the person he's muted let's see if that helps you just muted thank you. Thank you and Michael Matag you probably should mute as well unless you have a comment under the public comments and questions are there any other public comments and questions all right then we'll move on to the consent agenda I'm sorry announcements in the city managers report so do any of the council members Tim do you have an announcement Megan does I do not have an announcement and we're going to be talking about the airport later but I just wanted to know that I did attend the sound meeting by phone I didn't make my identity known but I just listened in and and I just I guess I'm surprised to see what's in our packet tonight because it maybe was at the beginning of the sound meeting which I did not listen to but it has nothing to do with sound insulation so I was just curious about that but we will get to that at a later time in the meeting okay any other um anyone else go to any meetings I don't think I did okay um then city managers report sorry just a couple things Helen um um we learned today that we did not get the federal funding for the bike and pedestrian bridge oh bummer here so the build grant our third year of applying um we did not um we did not get it and so we have one more year of eligibility to apply and so we're gonna be we're gonna be meeting to evaluate uh whether or not our um applications have been the quality that um they should be we have followed all the rules we've gotten other organizations to um write letters of support and so on but um we have one more shot at this and then then we're not eligible anymore I guess so we're gonna have to pull up the stops and do it right next year and we we will try to apply again but anyway it's a it's a real disappointment that that we didn't get this um just a couple other things I think Megan was alluding to the meetings the airport hosted both a noise compatibility program centered uh meeting and also their master plan um I was unable to attend the master plan meeting but Paul Connor related to me that um it was mostly about items inside the inside the fence uh airport improvements inside the fence as opposed to a discussion about outside the fence although I believe there still is a mention about a um connection to the interstate recall that a prior master plan had a um 14 n um that would have gone across our landfill and solar field um and unfortunately that disagreement went all the way to the public service board and so we tried uh Paul reminded them of of what had happened there and they took no to that and I think I think they may um amend that part of the proposed plan so as not to cause a conflict between their transportation plans and our solar field and and our landfill um but besides that that's that's all I've got tonight okay thank you um moving on to items hand up the consent agenda Ellen may I make a quick I'm sorry excuse me Tom so I attended that same meeting and I just wanted to certainly make can you hear me can you hear me I can hear you yes so I attended that same meeting Kevin and okay okay and I too am uh I was surprised that 14 n is still in there when I also heard at the previous one of those that the uh FAA is not going to fully fund that so if it were to move forward it would totally rely on the municipal um area neighbors and so I am somewhat surprised that it's still in their plan and I don't know what the long-term implications or um what the impacts of that is but their plan has it going right through our solar panel so I'm interested to hear more about this as information becomes available Tom we'll keep uh we'll keep the council appraised of that um you'll remember what the problem we had when we had to go to the public service board in order to get our permit for the um it was a contested permit for the solar field because of this um passing reference and all in the prior master plan so uh I think they're aware they're aware of it and I I'm hoping that that comes out but we'll we'll be on it okay thank you any other comments all right uh moving on to item five the consent agenda we have two items the disbursements and approving the grant application for the center for tech and civic life COVID-19 response grant I'll move to approve I'll move to approve the consent agenda second and seconded um is there any discussion okay um I will take a roll all those in favor um Megan hi Tim hi David hi Tom hi and the chair votes aye so the consent agenda has been approved five to zero item six is the presentation to the South Burlington municipal investments and improvements in energy efficiency uh conservation and generation and um Lou Brizisi is going to provide that and we have a presentation you're going to put that up on the board correct Lou I'm going to I'm going to try to put it up let me oh Kevin's Kevin's going to try to I've never done this before so let me and welcome Lou thank you for your thanks for the invite there it is and uh I've given many presentations before sometimes with the slide flipper being in another room but uh not like this so uh anyhow can you guys see this Lou can can you see this I can see it oh okay yeah you could make it full screen though right yeah don't you look to the right hand corner and click the big square uh you know what it's full screen on my screen oh go to slide show isn't slide show doesn't that produce the presentation no oops no escape go across the top keep going to where it says slide show no back to the left on the menu bar slide show down a little bit yeah yeah now say from beginning the front or left yes yes you did it all right well hit next keep moving there we go there we go okay and if you hide everyone if you're watching you get a full screen just by the way at the top is it can say hide everyone there's gonna drink a water anyhow three basic areas where we've been where we are where we hope to go if you've looked at what was sent out in the packet you'll see that there's a whole lot of charts about data collection and uh I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on those and really want to concentrate on the conclusions what I really want to do is set a path that shows you how we get from detailed data collection to deciding what we want to do in the future so next one hold on in terms of the data collection the things in green are files that that I keep they're in excel right now the bottom line of all of that is that basically I'm looking at 165 different bills a month which is sounds like a daunting task and a very routine and lion is anybody bothering to do this it doesn't take very long and it's a good way for me just to have my nose right in what's really going on but they're the cost stuff is really coming from the city accounts and their monthly but that doesn't tell the whole story because the effect of the solar arrays is is in those monthly costs so if we really want to find out what the usage is we've got to go to particularly the electric bills by themselves the four basic categories or the city accounts the cost and data from the actual bills um I've got a chart about greenhouse gas impacts because I know everybody's interested in that I got on early and uh great comments about the revolving fund so next chart hold on you showed up better than I thought they would anyhow the real point here is the center circle and shows that electricity is 67 percent of the total cost which is about a million and a hundred thousand a year electricity is by far the largest cost to us and the nice thing about it is we have lots of ways of making electricity I noticed the little gray thing up there that in the center called vehicle fuel is a pretty good pretty good chunk next next chart and since electricity is big the next chart will be about electricity I told you Kevin I wouldn't spend a lot of time on these little ones unless somebody has a question if we look at the electricity bill it's big you saw the numbers but all of those blue ones between the red lines that's all water treatment operations airport parkway Bartlett bay and the pump stations so again we're honing in on where are we really spending the money and so forth let's go down a little bit further into what's going on with next chart here we go we started poking around because particularly in working with a lot on what was going on with solar there's a little thing called peak hours and off peak hours and the rate structure changes and so forth and what did we discover the peak electricity usage at airport parkway it's a little bit higher during the day than it is at night and so forth but because of the rate structure it's 90 percent higher so what that tells us is we really need to knock down what the what's going on with the peak power cross and so forth most of the operations at that facility occur during the day although there's a lot of equipment that runs continuously on during the night we've got several approaches to do this but one of the things that comes to mind and this might blow your mind if you're not familiar with it but every month green mountain power picks out the highest 15 minute peak amount of power that you use and then you get a charge on that that's stretched out applied to the entire month that is a very big charge that's that orange section down in the bottom of the circle so that's the one we're going to attack we're talking to some people right now to keep the micro turbine running all the time so it doesn't go on and off causing surges we're also talking to green mountain power about the possibility of changing the rate structure that we operate under or maybe I should say add an additional feature to that rate structure that would reduce the impact of these kinds of peaks do they can I ask you do you know what's if green mountain power does that same kind of the 15 minutes of highest power and then it's charged to a greater extent for all businesses or is it just you know the sewer plants no it's associated with their rate code it's either 63 or 65 I believe and but I suspect it's any any large uh shall I say industrial operation okay was that somebody trying to help us or something else a little background noise oh okay next chart unless you have questions on it now talk about natural gas it's not a major contributor but the very interesting thing is again airport parkway pops up as the big user again the arrows show that the airport parkway is well over 50 percent of the total and just as a comparison the little green up in the upper left hand corner is 575 dorset street which includes both city hall and the fire station so it gives you a relative comparison but even more importantly is that great big sky blue area there with the arrow pointing over to that thing called a thermophilic digester that is the single largest consumer of electricity in in city government and in the summertime it represents 90 percent of our chart costs we're going to talk a little bit about that later and again maybe some of those things are hard to read but I hope you can blow them up at home if you want next topic is green greenhouse gas forget the spreadsheet on the left for a minute that's just one it's one I keep that we generated in conjunction with work with the energy committee but the graphs over on the on the right are the things I really want to talk about the one at the top talks in british thermal units that's btu's and it splits it up between as you can see electricity natural gas and vehicle fuel this is the first real time I've talked about vehicle fuel and btu's is a fairly common way of trying to get a an impact of how much energy you're using in different forms because we could switch we could switch a lot of things from natural gas to electricity or back and forth and you're still using energy but the real environmental impact as you're well aware is how many pounds of carbon do you produce and interestingly enough because green mountain power is so low in the amount of their energy sources that are coming from carbon-based sources it just falls off the graph and even more importantly you can see that vehicle fuel is the real cause of greenhouse gases as far as what the city is producing I just wanted to make that point and let everybody let everybody see it um and so forth so I'll move on to talk briefly about the energy fund and then finish finish up the status section next chart you've seen seen the graph before because it came up in the solar array discussions the real thing to talk about the energy fund though is over on the right this fund is really supported by the landfill solar array that's why all the lines keep moving up to the right as you move down in time and basically that's about seven we're budgeting that at about 75,000 the year last year it performed a whole lot better than that but then we have the charts you know you don't know but it's really the fund was set up in conjunction with the committee they fully supported it and wanted it created it's a very efficient way to fund small projects um whatever project comes up we can have a discussion either with the committee or with the department head or or so forth and and move out on it for medium size and to cover that there is a I'll call it a bucket fund in the capital improvement plan 40k this year to take care of those kinds of things they can be as small as five thousand dollars even hundreds on occasion but it also is a nice way the solar fund was a large much larger project but we looked at it in terms of what the revolving fund could do the other point that I wanted to make was that I keep these numbers on a month-to-month kind of a basis but once a year we sit down with with Martha and make sure that it's aligned perfectly with the general ledger and and so forth so I think that's all I've got for that and let's talk a little bit about some of the organizational relationships that we have with people in the area next chart Kevin okay the real well continuing driving force is with efficiency from on they have gotten very active in reaching out to cities and I suspect a lot of towns and cities besides us but we have monthly meetings to coordinate activities on what we're doing across a bunch of things and their interest in promoting helping us do energy improvements ranges all the way from you know replacing light bulbs with LEDs and that sort of thing to communication activities like this session we're having today or and so forth so it's it's a very broad kind of a basis they sponsor a whole lot of webinars they've assisted in funding energy studies and so forth Vermont clean cities coalition is really a UVM run activity it really can't concentrates on fossil powered vehicles we aren't doing a whole lot with them because we don't have many of those vehicles but they keep us informed and have workshops and we're invited to them Adam Kate and I have been to take a look at hybrid pickup trucks etc so anytime there's a unique vehicle in town for demonstration purposes we get an invite we go and a variety of other things CCRPC that has come up in a couple of places I just put this graph up here because it's just a sample of the kind of data that they put out and I saw it and says hey South Burlington and so forth but what we're looking at is the average power usage in town as a function of the size of the town in terms of residences and just for the heck of it there South Burlington I turned it red so that you can see it kind of right in the middle of the pack where we are so next next chart Kevin what does that mean average usage kwhr kilowatt hours are well the hours hour it's it's the total total power electrical power per resident per year per year it's what it should be just kwh probably but kwh yeah it's average it's average annual residential kilowatt hours yeah okay thank you yeah and we just fit right in the mixture of the towns that are around us that are about the same size as we are so they have the graphs in there ready and I picked it up and is Burlington considerably lower because they have the McNeil clamp no no it has nothing to do with where they're getting the power from it's oh it's just how much they use huh no the reason they're lower is because they have so many rental units with one bedroom apartment so this is by residents but they're small it's 6,000 square feet or 900 it's a single right yeah you need to normalize to hear you yeah okay thank you yeah they didn't they didn't put Jericho center in the graph because let's say the basic discussion so next next chart Kevin and we'll talk about some completed completed projects let me check time we're doing okay police station lighting been completed for over a year that minus $12,000 in the cost that was in efficiency Vermont rebate that they gave us and I want to give them a little shout out because as we moved through that project for a variety of reasons we increased the scope of the project after we had signed all the paperwork that says this is what our rebates gonna be and when they went through for the final inspection they recognized that and the guy said hey we'll increase your rebate and he did uh I thought that shows that they're really trying to help so forth and so are these average savings then rolled into the revolving fund the the basis is the fund is set up so that 80% of the savings for a particular year goes into the fund and that continues until 125% of the cost of the project has been recovered so basically the answer is yes okay that answered Helen yes yeah I think so okay uh the little picture on the square picture of the square box is not too exciting uh but uh that's a nice little box that cost us $10,500 but it's going to save us about $5,700 a year so the payback was great project life is a long time unfortunately COVID the latest getting installed for about six months but I just I thought you might like to see it in terms of uh street lights that picture got warped a little bit the street light really doesn't hang up that high in the sky but it was a nice cloudy picture of clouds and so forth uh the two pictures on the right are an example of the kind of insulation work we did over public works uh I did not get a picture before they started working but behind that little wooden frame in the upper picture was a big H beam that went from the ground all the way up to the top of the building and because it was in a hallway it never got boxed in and looked nice like it did in the office areas and if you walked in that place in the wintertime even though the temperature at the top of the stairwell might be 80 degrees Fahrenheit you put your hand on that steel beam and it was like ice cold um um so we went in put foam insulation all around it picture at the bottom is finished uh finished product uh looks like the rest of the office areas and uh doing nicely but when wintertime comes over I'll go put my hand on and make sure it's okay um the uh another thing that we have done for the last two years every single building that the city had I won't I don't want to say every because there might be some wreck buildings that I haven't been to but basically all the big buildings with utility bills uh experts in various areas have been through those buildings and looked for cost savings uh the bottom line is that the big ones city hall the fire stations public works uh what we've gotten back is the same thing that the city was told 10 years ago and five years ago in terms of what you need to do to really make improvements and we'll talk about a possibility there in a in a couple of slides the bottom line is in the box if you don't design efficiency into building it's very expensive to get I think we did a real good job on city hall uh the new city hall 180 market street whatever it's being called these days but uh particularly as we move forward and upgrading Bartlett Bay water treatment plant that's something that we've really got to consider and uh stay on top of next chart a little before we go um could you could you explain a little bit more about the street led lights because um that was a big project could you provide the status of the conversion to led uh as thank you it's been a while ago but I can remember the bottom line is that we now believe virtually all of the street lights and all of the traffic lights within the city are led's uh we're doing a mapping project on the street lights there's over 1400 of them I'm sure we'll find a couple that we missed but the intention was to do that and um the uh that basically was completed uh not this past summer but the the spring before thanks lou I think um council members should know some of the some of the challenges with this is that um the city owns some of our street lights gmp owns some of our street lights and we lease back from them it's been difficult to get a true inventory of who owns what and where I think Lou's pretty much got that now but um that was a big project to start with to convert them all over to led's and as Lou pointed out um we think we're we think we're there yes Tom so uh great point Kevin I'm glad you raised that and Lou I love this presentation this is great some real data to look at what the city's been doing I saw on one of your earlier slides it just showed FY 20 that we spend 141,234 on street lights you have top of mind or maybe you Kevin um to tell us how that compares to previous years I love this data I'm just curious how longitudinally how we could show the community or give some impressions on how we have reduced our electricity bill with the efforts over the last 10 years any comments on that yeah don't forget that we turn on all the lights on Shelburne road about three years ago yeah um Tom yes I do have comments and you aren't going to want to hear them one the numbers do not drop dramatically like you would hope you take a 100 watt street light bulb and you replace it with a 35 or a 51 and you would expect that it would be one third of the cost the interesting factor is though that when you go to an LED bulb you go into a different rate structure and therefore you don't get that kind of a savings it's more like a 20 or 25 reduction now why do you go into a different rate structure I shouldn't call it a rate structure it's it's all built in one rate structure but there's a different way that they generate costs for LED bulbs versus all the other different kinds of bulbs for the ones that hate you yes yeah okay yeah the other the other thing that's going on in terms of you if uh if you want to track year to year costs because of the development we keep adding street lights so you got a you got a fact of that into it as well that answer Tom Megan has a question yeah can we know about the energy usage though is there because that's also on our bills how much you know how many kilowatt hours we've used I don't know if that's broken down given the special uh I don't know what you call it the category that the LEL LED lights fall under now now now I get to put it to you Megan the answer is absolutely yes and there's like 35 different bills that we get for street lights some of them are like 23 bucks a month and some of them are 1200 a month that might that's that's a bit of an exaggeration but there's one bill that comes in that's almost 50% of the total but doesn't have those kilowatt hours absolutely and we're tracking that and matter of fact uh if I thought we won't ask Kevin to go back but I think that's on uh I think it's sheet five but does it show that we're using less energy even though oh I haven't I haven't tracked it for you folks tonight all by time I could do that be very easily if you'd like to see it the screen and power item lies those bills some to various degrees on on one bill in particular for their own lights what we see is the total number of lights and that's it and to be honest I have no idea where those lights are that's disappointing because one of the conversation that Kevin was talking about as far as the difficulties we had when we started this yeah because it would be good to see and be able to track and show to the public our energy savings in addition to the the financial savings I think that both are of interest and I would hope even I understand that Green Mountain Power has to stay in business it would be better to have GMP sit down with us and scrutinize the bill and identify whether or not the bill is correct or not because as you know there have been utility mistakes around the state over the last 30 years and some of them are really large Tim I was I was on that case big time a year ago I think Kevin can vouch for this and I was very concerned that we might be getting stung the more I got into it the more I think we may be taking advantage of them right now so I've been a little reluctant to move forward no I just know that where I work you know there was an audit done of all the network ports that we had around the plant because we had IBM for them and when we really got down to it like 20 percent of the ports weren't even active and we were being charged for it so yeah good point good point but I hear you you you got to be careful the blade cuts both ways yes it does okay I think I think we're ready for you to go on okay you you know about solar on on 180 market street you folks took care of that last week the work's been authorized battery use is it's still is being reviewed that's a very complicated issue to deal with the energy committee there are several members of the committee who are very well versed in this subject and they're contributing to the work that along is doing and that will continue and that work flows right into the water outlet outflow turbine that has the design is in process the nice thing about the outflow turbine is that the loads are much more constant that makes it a lot easier to analyze and we have existing load data the problem that a lot of has with 180 market street is the building hadn't been built so nobody can look at any historical data and that that just leaves things you know you hope you're doing it right and so forth in terms of I've already mentioned the parlor bay upgrade studies being in process and that's a long going very expensive process similar to the process that was done with airport parkway I think 10 years ago with another upgrade five years after that Du Bois and King right now I just turned them on today to do a small study on airport parkway in terms of gas usage and they'll really be concentrating on that oh before I before I move off of the water turbine lower right hand corner that blue thing is the water turbine in a typical installation the green thing is the generator just to give a little bit of the idea of the size and from the little bit that I know about I suspect that big wheel that you're looking at with a belt cover on it is maybe two feet in diameter so these aren't great big things and so forth um at least at least the ones we're talking about some of them are very big but back on the Du Bois and King gas project study that would get kicked off probably the first and next month uh vermont gas is splitting the cost of that study with us on a 50 50 basis lou can I uh can I just weigh in before we go on to the next slide I just want the council to to know when it comes to Bartlett bay and you saw or excuse me not Bartlett bay but airport parkway and you saw charts earlier on about usage there we're currently operating a small methane fired gas turbine to generate electricity that's utilizing waste in a productive way to generate electricity that goes back to operate the plant the downfall flow turbine will augment that and then we're also looking at solar um in some areas at that plant so it is possible within the next couple of years that we'll have three different types of power generation going on um at that plant and as Lou also said prior slide the best thing to do is design things in when they're when they're under design and of course we're under design with Bartlett bay right now so the timing for these things is is really good so Kevin the adding solar to the the wastewater treatment plants would do a lot of daytime peak shaving is that the intent yeah and and you know we're gonna look and as Lou said we're looking at a battery the battery option at 180 park or at 180 market street the battery option isn't off the table at airport parkway either um the whole but because it is a large user of electricity we want to do everything we can there to reduce that or to generate on site um and so we're introducing most everything we can think about right now but it can't be net metering because municipalities are capped at that is that right lingo right now that's correct Kevin flip the charts and keep talking because you're doing you're doing well oh i'm sorry lou here you go no problem okay i wanted to steal your thunder so go ahead not not my thunder uh anyhow uh yeah we're big things that we're we're looking at in the future and Kevin's already keyed it up but um a local firm did a very quick analysis for us and provided the picture and you're just looking at uh something from um google earth but the blues the blue sections are areas where they think they could put solar panels and i would only point out that the uh rectangular area in the bottom of the picture is three tanks that if you're familiar with the area the driveway goes around the tanks at the top of the picture that he did not cover uh he didn't realize the perspective they're actually uh 50 larger so there is a great deal of uh capacity there to generate power and i put the pictures down in the in the lower side waterberry water treatment plant and bob fisher just corrected me after working with him for a year and a half he he finally decided to tell me hey it's not a water treatment plant it's a waste water treatment plant but uh waterberry uh has done this a couple of years ago uh and uh there are some pictures of the installation the vertical picture is the tanks at the bottom underneath and uh they just build a roof over top and put solar panels on it and they elected uh to put some walls around the side of it so that's what the the little horizontal picture is um but uh back to the point and what catterham was talking about if we're looking at Bartlett bay uh you know we might just as well tell people put the steel beams in put the roof on and uh and let's go and how how solar can be used best in a water treatment plant i think it still needs to be uh integrated with some other things that we're doing particularly the discussions that we're having on uh how we modify the rate section next slide there we go um two other major ideas um i talked about buildings fire station number two uh everybody who has looked at that from an energy point of view from the last last 10 years says if you're going to do anything you got to do the whole thing and basically this is it's a great big house and it though the way to treat it is exactly what my youngest daughter did with her place up in Jericho and that is uh you get efficiency experts in they give them a quote and you say fix it and what we're talking about is a fair amount of money i suspect um but for the size of it the utility costs are pretty high keep in mind it does have a garage in it where the doors have to get opened and so forth but that's not that's not the real cost the real cost is in the living spaces on the build end of the building that you did you see um i uh i think in the next uh in the next year we ought to be taking a very very good look at the possibility of doing that down at the bottom is electric vehicles and equipment and i wanted to get back to that subject because of the graph on greenhouse gases down in the the picture of the car if you notice right over the wheel that's the port where you plug the city's only hybrid vehicle into um department heads that i've talked to public works fire they use big vehicles they have a very legitimate concern that they don't want to be the first in the world to use a new technology because it has to be dependable and and that's that's very real i think that's my phone i'm sorry the uh not my own phone it's upstairs the uh but the city of burlington and uvm in the last five years have really delved into electric vehicles and that means the knowledge base is increasing it also means the service capabilities exist who are being created and therefore uh i think the city really ought to be saying if we're going to buy a new vehicle i'm not talking fire trucks and so forth but all the way up to maybe including dump trucks that we use for plows uh we ought to look very closely what's available both in terms of the technical um applicability to the use and also what kind of grants are available and that sort of thing it just ought to be part of the purchasing process like you do anything anything else next chart we're back to our old friend in a minute there he is that's the tank that i said was using all the energy and so forth and i just wanted to let you have a few look at some facts that tank is big you can read the numbers inside of that tank has to be maintained at about 138 degrees Fahrenheit that's that's plus or minus a couple of degrees Fahrenheit to keep the little bugs that are working that produce the methane gas that runs the micro turbine operating and so forth um these uh it's it's a real challenge um that picture was taken in March but i understand you will never see any snow within five feet of that tank all the way around it um the uh there's a note down there at the bottom that says will Vermont allow future use uh this tank is critical to the fact that South Burlington can produce class a solid waste uh we ship it to uh various places in primarily Addison County to be used as agricultural fertilizer it has some small amount of phosphorus in it there are people in the state who are very anxious to eliminate phosphorus period but if that happens one that same waste with with more not as good a quality waste ends up going all the way up to Coventry or maybe even to Canada at three times the cost and you still have the phosphorus in there the what's in the green block says it all uh I'll a thing that Bob Fisher mentions the people frequently what we put out into the Winooski River is three times cleaner than the river the river water that's coming by the outlet pipe so I think the city should be very proud of the fact that from an environmental point of view uh this thing provides a very cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to do things the use of thermophilic digester I have looked they are nationally there are several but they are very very big I mean you know five stories high and that kind of thing they are also used in some of these farm applications that you hear about on the news every once in a while when somebody brings one online there are no other municipal plants in the state that are using one I understand one was built in one plant I want to say Bennington or Brattleburg but I'm not sure and for some reason it has never gone into operation okay thank you so Lou is the study to look at how to maybe insulate the tank and and keep it from melting the snow five feet away oh you set me up fine Tim that that gray stuff that you are looking at is 12 inches of foam insulation as you see it and as a matter of fact the dark streaks down the side if you look right in the top you'll see the little orange uh that's where there's been a failure of the insulation because we had an internal leak the engineers tell me that that is the optimum amount of insulation that you can put on I'll I'll go ahead and float my crazy idea but if you build a greenhouse over top of that thing in the wintertime you could probably generate enough heat so the air on the outside of the tank would be as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit don't know what a greenhouse would cost but I've talked to somebody about it and it's more feasible than you might think anything else on this one could it eat an indoor pool you don't want to swim with that you don't you don't you do not want to swim in there or anything else inside that fence last slide I think wrapping everything up what we're doing performance-wise it's being monitored and uh Megan to your point uh we can do some uh versus time curves easily happy to do that um the revolving fund is we I can honestly say that a year and a half ago when we started talking about it it was a you know a dream a good idea how does how do we make it work with the years worth of experience I think everybody that was involved with in creating it is very happy with how it has evolved uh I'll make a picture of the third bullet uh the role that I'm playing right now really ought to be expanded as far as the city's concerned they really need like a full-time facility manager particularly with 180 market street coming online um and uh you know that's just something to look at in the in the future as as as we move forward um and the last bullet is said it before gotta say it again uh you gotta do it up front so it's awful hard to redo the play I did overshoot my time I'm sorry well thank you um I guess just one observation I I think the the more information that we can distill that really shows the cost savings relative to the investment both administratively and building the things and and then what the payback is um would be critical to determine how we continue to go forward I mean I think the public needs to in the council I need to know a little more granular what really are the savings what what have we done it's been you know reduced usage and saved money and um made the the project really worth continuing I mean I think this is a lot of um impressive and important information but it I'd love to see it in a way that's easier to present or more direct or something to the public yeah I I think what you're looking for is a long-term graph that shows that we're saving money and energy and yeah it's saving money as well as energy because apparently there's different costs to um the actual energy that we're saving so I mean just looking at cost isn't Kevin Kevin and I have been discussing this for the last 18 months and yeah I've certainly gotten the message that we need to do that the fact of the matter is that the when you generate that data it's not as dramatic as people would like to see because one population is increasing I mentioned the street lights that we keep adding so if you track street lights I wouldn't be surprised with all the work we've done if it's not still a flat line um but then compared to the number of street lights if you can compare you know just put it all in proportion I have no idea how many street lights we had I get your point Megan we need to come up with that story that's the best way the best answer Tim Barrett so one of the things about energy is that I mean it's just it's right in your lap it falls right in the first thing to do is to is to identify the waste if you identify the waste first and identify the costliest waste first of all you'll get the biggest return so that's the that's the chore right is you know is is looking for that sometimes it's not a needle in the haystack sometimes it's a whole swath of of wet hay in the haystack you know I'm sure that you probably have the data and you understand what the city needs to work on first I mean you know one thing that comes to my mind and this we've talked about this before is do we always have to send a fire truck out with an ambulance on every call I mean that comes up every you know a couple a couple times a year in discussion and we never get anywhere on that and there's a lot of other instances too how much idling goes on with public works vehicles versus actually driving to a location you know that's the question is is where is the waste and like in that that fire department building that station if it's that old I mean it's leak and heat everywhere because it's probably has you know poor it has infiltration from the outside of the cold air and doesn't have a lot of insulation and it's a good candidate so well this day yes the citizen the citizen out there your comments about how to get this information out one of the reasons I was sitting in the background and and this meeting was I wanted to hear this energy report and I think Lou has really done a fabulous job as a role into the next item of you know how do you get the information out and and when you're talking about the the item seven maybe there's a way you can figure out to package this stuff so that the public can see it in some sort of good way if there's a you're doing a heck of a job but I can't imagine very many people know about it thank you okay thank you any other next part pardon me a good segue to our next agenda item right okay Kevin do you have any wrap-up comments or no I just want to recognize Lou Lou for his work Helen um and and counsel who's doing a great job I think working with the Energy Committee and the discussion you had a couple weeks ago about a climate action plan I think we're moving forward with some great stuff thrilled about the solar we're going to try to make the solar and battery working in tandem at 180 Market Street really be a showcase for how this these two technologies can work for well beyond the city and into the private sector so I really want to congratulate Lou and his work I would agree and Dave who is from the public can you please share your last name for our minutes or for the rest of the public some understanding you willing to give us your last name it was Dave Crawford was it Dave Crawford yeah it sounded like him but I wasn't for certain okay so if there's no other comments thank you Lou and this obviously is a a topic that we aren't just kind of going to let go and go away we are interested in I think Kevin Kevin's comment to sort of tie it into a climate action plan I mean there's a lot of pieces and I think this is an important piece so we need to really think about that baby of your light on is it Dave Crawford maybe not okay well we'll move on then to item seven which is the council discussion regarding publication of a bi-weekly municipal government e-newsletter called the south Burlington Times hey Helen can I sorry about that the interim zoning application item number eight was actually right so if you can substitute or turn those two around I think we'll be consistent with the warning okay I'm sorry I forgot about that all right so let's scoot down to item eight the interim zoning application IZ 20-02 of the Eastern Development Corporation for development of all sorts of things on 600 Spear Street so Frank is shown his face hi and Lucy there are you part of are you tagging with Frank yes all right okay um and Deb and Abby you are also okay Megan you want to make a motion to yes so I will move that we enter into a public hearing in order to consider interim zoning application number 20-02 at 600 Spear Street second and a second every is there any discussion okay all in favor thumbs up okay great all right so we Marla's on the Marla Keene is on for the city as and she'll represent the issue for the city so okay great so do we start with the city or do we start with the applicant and we have to swear I'll leave to swear you all in too which is sort of weird to do over the over zoom but I guess you can so I guess you have to raise your right hand and whoever is going to be speaking and do you promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help your god I do I got three nods okay so do we start with the applicants typically we haven't done one of these in so long I can't remember we can help um so the first thing to do would just be check that there's no disclosures no one on the council has any conflicts with the applicant are they right now okay okay okay um and then you've sworn in the applicant the I can read out the project description um and then I would suggest you invite the applicant to describe in their own words what they're planning on doing I can take over the screen and show um what they've presented for slides I also have a couple other things that were in your packet um and then we would invite the council to ask them questions um public comment and then allow the applicant to respond to those things and then the board the council would decide whether to conclude or to continue the meeting okay all right so the project description is interim zoning application i-z-20-02 of eastern development corporation for development on existing 8.66 acre lot developed with a single family home in 7000 square foot storage building the development consists of one 6.68 acre lot containing 36 dwelling units in three family buildings a 1.38 acre lot containing the existing single family home and storage building and a third lot containing proposed city streets at 600 spear street so frank I will put up your application if you would like to describe it sure I can start with the existing conditions plan or whatever you like okay that's great thank you and thanks for the council uh to make room tonight on your agenda to hear us um we are very excited about this project that we're proposing at 600 spear street um as you'll see tonight it has some features that we think are interesting for us as proponents but we also hope that the city will agree that that some of these ideas are really forward thinking and and something that we hope the the council can endorse um I also have to say if I don't get a chance to say it later that the conversation you just had with the presentation that Lou made about energy efficiency efforts in the city really resonates with us um because our vision for this project is to make it a a real example of a modern day housing project that would incorporate all of the things almost all the things that we heard about tonight um in Lou's presentation and then ideas of our own which could make this we hope close to a uh possibly a net zero uh type of housing project so just by way of introduction again my name is frank von turkovich I live here in south burlington and I've been involved in real estate development in shitton and county and in vermont for a number of years um also with me tonight as you heard earlier abbey dairy and lucy there from trudel consulting engineers um trudel has been instrumental in helping us pull this together um from not only a civil engineering standpoint where we've done a an in-depth site investigation to make sure we understand what all the conditions are on the on the parcel at 600 spear street but also really most importantly from a design standpoint lucy there is a professional landscape architect who has helped us develop a concept that we'll show you tonight that that we think really fits this opportunity and hope that that you like what you see so um marlowe sir is there a way for you to expand the screen to make it full screen just curious you can also zoom in yourself there should be a button on the right hand side of the screen but what what everybody can see on the uh on this on the screen that's in front of us tonight is the um is the parcel at 600 spear street there are uh you can see spear street going north and south on the left hand side of the uh of the slide and uh on the right hand side between spear street and the interstate is this 8.6 acre parcel of land which today has on it a large colonial house which is at the bottom of the parcel it's a um it was built my recollection is 30 40 years ago it was a it's a large two-story colonial and behind it is the steel building that we refer to when the information that's been submitted and any of you that have driven up and down spear street have seen this this is a sort of a tan color big steel building that's behind this this house and the two other houses that are located to the north on um on spear street so today this land belongs to the culliard family uh the culliards um were in the um underground utility business they did uh installation of lighting and other utility installations over the years the senior culliard died a number of years back and the heirs have um been winding up the affairs of the company and put the property on the market and we became interested in it because we thought that its proximity to the university campus and to the medical center hospital campus uh was really compelling um it is zoned residential it's r4 and um just as an aside uh we we have had discussions uh early on we first became interested in the land we talked to the university university of vermont that as you know as you may know owns land on on both sides actually three sides of this parcel including to the west uh to see if the university was interested in the parcel and whether or not they would have any concerns about ideas for residential development and the university uh declined the opportunity to work on some type of land purchase idea and uh is aware of our presentation tonight and is aware of our thinking and planning for the project so where we would normally talk to all of our neighbors surrounding a parcel this one is relatively easy because the university owns everything around us except for the interstate um so what we have here is uh the house the steel building and then all of the land to the east of the steel building is land that uh we believe in the 1970s 80s timeframe was filled in uh in other words fill was brought there by the culliard family and was used to build up the level of the of the ground behind the uh behind the buildings uh we have done an extensive investigation of the of the material and of the conditions and uh have determined that it is uh buildable uh and it can be done safely but it is uh in effect a brownfield site and we will have to take special precautions to make sure that that all of the environmental conditions are carefully considered but we have taken those steps we've done a thorough uh environmental study uh uh phase two if you will epa investigation and uh believe at this point um that this property is safe to develop um so moving on from here uh our first thought was how to envision a collection of residential uses behind the steel building and uh we looked at a number of different ideas but ultimately settled on a plan that uh we'll ask um marlita put up now this is uh this is the site plan showing it probably would be helpful for all of you to see this in a little larger scale i don't know if i can blow it up on my screen or not i think i can but oh here we go and now it's in color so this is better um lucy do you want to take over and walk us through the sort of organization for the project at this point or do you want me to continue i'm happy to but you're doing very well frank well all right i'll talk a little bit about the um the buildings maybe and then if you could take us through the site plan um what i'd like the council to know is that we looked at a number of different building types uh and have ultimately settled on buildings that you see on the plan in front of you um and in a few minutes we'll show you another of you that actually gives you an idea of what the architecture would look like but these buildings each have four units in them uh connected by a breezeway so uh there's a first floor apartment first floor apartments and two second floor apartments organized in eight buildings so that brings us to a total unit count of 32 units the other uh four units that our law referred to a few minutes ago would be used three of those units would be used in by reconfiguring the um existing single family homings on the on spear street at 600 spear and we would have one extra unit to use in the future um um so that is uh a description of of how the buildings uh were approached um lucy why don't you talk a little bit more about about our layout and then we'll move into the architecture if the council is ready for that absolutely so what we've got here is you could tell from our overall plan we've taken a lot of care to cite our entire development everything we're proposing all of the units towards the western end of the parcel which is really important um for a couple of reasons one reason is that we are really looking towards uh we realize we're in interim zoning and that's why we're here so um looking forward we're really trying to cluster development avoid resource fragmentation um and create a really vibrant liveable community which we know are all goals of the interim zoning so to do that like I said previously we've cited everything to the west end of the parcel uh away from i-89 um where there's already access to spear street there's already development there the way we're proposing to do this is to turn that existing driveway that accesses that storage garage into a um city road that is you know built to standard we've got a 50 foot right away here um we're proposing that it would be built to city standard but be maintained privately so it's not to burden the city and have ownership of that until the time that the city and frank um thought it was appropriate to transfer that so the city street starts at spear street it goes east west and then a little ways in between the residential component and the existing buildings we take a turn and go north south providing a potential future connection to those uvm parcels you know if and when that time occurred um so our layout is clustered we have uh four plexus essentially we've created a little bit of a grid pattern here um with these units we've really emphasized trying to create a unified streetscape and a street front along this even though um you know we only got some you know city street frontage it really feels like a really unified community we have provided a central community space uh for that's a green space for folks to gather um we're trying to strike a balance between having a appropriate density in this small footprint compared to a maybe a more traditional development because this is we're not asking for any density bonuses on this this is the amount of residential units that are allowed with the current zoning which we don't understand is changing so that is the same so um by creating this central location where we've got our common space everybody's also got their own private spaces we've taken great care to make sure that there are porches and uh accessible outdoor space that is both private and public so whether it's a private porch or patio off of your unit or the common space in the central where there can be more gathering you'll notice it's articulated kind of it's not very articulated that's because we're still in the initial phases and don't necessarily know what that would look like but we have reserved that large block um for a community space additionally I think it's really important to note that we have um in the vein of resource protection we have really tried to reduce the amount of impervious surface that as part of our layout why it's so clustered and tight and also to reduce any extraneous parking we're trying to provide that sweet spot of just enough so we're really going to encourage and anticipate that folks given the proximity to UVM to the hospital that folks will be able to use the bike path so part of our proposal is to extend that ten foot wide bike path into our project site so that it's really accessible they were encouraging folks to use um multiple forms of transportation and hopefully reduce emissions and other sorts of um you know driving and necessarily um a couple other points let's see yeah I think that those are those are the big ones um did I miss anything Abby Frank no Lucy I think I think you uh I think you've said everything that uh I think you're helping your comments for great so at this point uh I know that we have a fairly short amount of time on your agenda for the council so would you like to ask us questions or should we move ahead and show you the perspective of the buildings and give you a look at that are there questions yeah I have some questions okay let me turn on my camera and then show everybody so one of the questions is the the the perspective here is the the eastern most edge of the of the residential buildings are about um like 600 feet from the interstate is that true that that I don't think we've measured in Tim but that sounds about right yeah it's about right what provisions are you going to have to reduce noise from the interstate for the residences well uh you'll uh maybe it is time to put up that view Marla if you could of the uh the 3d view of the project because that'll help us answer Tim's question okay I had had some other questions too but I'll wait so here's a perspective view showing some con our concept for the architecture and and I'd like the council to understand that this is not fully formed yet these are just preliminary ideas and this will all warm up as we uh get deeper into the process but one of the things that you can see looking to the east of the site Tim is um there's a there's a relatively large burn showed on shown on the property right now we um Marla can you pull that up to a larger scale or maybe everyone can do that for themselves but anyway there's there's a berm that's behind those buildings and that together with the existing vegetation and some additional landscaping that we'll do will help uh to some extent attenuate the noise that you do get from the interstate um visually there aren't any real um visual cues to the interstate being back there because you don't see much of the cars going by uh even in the winter time but um the noise issue would be helped a lot by the construction of a berm to the east of the houses uh so we plan to make that a feature of the project to some extent size will be determined um the other point I would make about noise and we thought we thought about this very carefully Tim is that the prevailing winds as most of us know from living here in Vermont are from the west and it's only when the wind blows the other way from the east that you really do get a significant amount of interstate noise and even up here where I live on Spears on Swift Street um if the wind is blowing right at us yeah I can hear the trucks even off in the distance but it's it's buffered a little bit by the ambient noise that's that's existing all around us so we are thinking about that um and uh we one of the reasons for clustering the development closer to the west was to try to um pull all the community closer uh together so that the noise isn't as obvious okay Tim you had some other questions yeah will the open space be accessible to the residents it will uh we do plan to um install um solar on the steel building which we'd like to talk to you about a little bit tonight the big the seven thousand square foot steel building but also just as we would install some additional ground mounted solar uh between the between the development and the interstate to help generate the power to for the project but will the residents be able to go walk around in the open space that where your red dot is right now yes yes and the other question was will you be paying for a solar powered flashing light as a crossing aid where you're you're going to have the connection to the rec path well uh we would be happy to do that if it's warranted uh we haven't talked to uh Justin or any of our traffic consultants about that but if it's warranted uh certainly we'd be happy to do it uh what i've found in my experience is that the um warrants for um lighted crossing signs are um regulated by specifications but if it's if it's possible yes we'd love to I mean people at the speed limits 35 but people normally go between 45 and 50 in that section I think so you would want to have the ability to to warn people that somebody would like to cross the road safely so and my last question was um does UVM regularly spread manure in the three fields surrounding it um it does um certainly um it is a farm to the north and even the fields to the south they're all still cropped um and uh yes and I live next to some UVM property up here on swift street and I'm it's one it's something that we all have to get used to as Vermonters I just want to make that point that if you with these 32 units there there will might be people there who aren't acquainted with the fact that there could be manure spread throughout the year and might not be happy about it so I just want to bring that to our attention that's true and I'm sure that they will um at some point realize that that is one of the features of living in that community I had a quick question for the open space in the back is that um in the future I know you've done all the um you know understanding the land and where the wetlands are and there's it looks like a significant one about halfway to the interstate is there the possibility that there'll be more development there I mean you have to get I guess get some buy some TDRs or something um there is not in our thinking uh Helen um there we have left access points to allow like vehicles to get back there for whatever purposes might be needed in the future but it it is not our concept that there would be additional um housing development but it's possible it is but it isn't a part of our our pro forma or part of our concept but there is the option looks like there's future roads going I guess that's north and south in case UVM wants to develop their farmland yes there is um that was something that the planning staff had had asked us to include was a dedicated uh street and you can see the street between the um the steel building and the first row of buildings that is a genuine city street that could be interconnected to the north and south in the future okay and then in your write up I did read and I'm not going to find it this quickly but you know your intention to make them net zero um so what is an intention to make something that zero really mean well I mean I intend the left to be a hundred but you know maybe not that old but I uh it's more than an intention uh we are um as was stated tonight during the earlier presentation designing a project with those goals in mind is uh makes it much easier to actually achieve the goal than trying to retrofit later so some of the things that we will do are built in would be built into the project certainly an energy efficient shell for a building is something that a lot of builders can can accomplish today but actually generating enough power on site to um to actually uh meet all of the energy needs of the housing is our goal and I say it's a goal because we would have to get permission to actually build some solar facilities behind these buildings presumably to the east on that land that we're talking about is being right from the housing in the interstate um and on the rooftop of the steel building we would also like to put solar on it we think we can generate enough power on site to serve all of the electrical needs and that means um heating systems that are air to air heat pumps on demand hot water heaters that are located near the fixtures so that you're not waiting for minutes while your hot water heats up in your in your apartment all of those kind of features are things that we can supply with as part of the rent for each tenant so in other words tenants would not have to pay additional utility bills this would all be included in their rents and it would be supplied on site we wouldn't have to buy any energy okay thank you why don't you keep going because we are running over but I want to hear all the information so Marla could you put up that perspective slide again sure sorry I flipped to the text part on my screen so it takes a second and maybe okay there there's the entire project so what we what you see here again are buildings that are connected by these breezeway connectors behind each building is a green a green area that would be sort of a semi-private yard area for the clusters of buildings that are directly connected to it there would be the second floor units would each have covered balconies so that you can get outside to to enjoy fresh air and and not and underneath each one of those is a patio space that the ground floor units can enjoy here is a street view that would give you an idea for our current thinking of how the buildings might look you can see the connector between the two buildings inside the connectors and those are wooden screens that are that the architect has shown going across the front of those connector spaces inside the connectors are is one set of stairs that goes up to the second floor of the buildings and connects the two top floor units but those connectors go straight through to the backyards so when you walk down the sidewalk you can actually see through those connectors and get a glimpse of what's going on in the backyards also inside the connectors are bike storage areas there would be lockable bike racks inside there for people to keep their bikes near their apartments you can see from just this view of the streetscape that there are sidewalks and pathways where sidewalks shown on these on these slides giving everybody easy access throughout the project and I don't know that the the next slide Marla shows just a little different perspective this is looking down the center street and you get an idea of what the porches and patios might look like again these designs are preliminary and and we'll have a chance to flesh this out as we as we go through the process but it gives you a feel for the the the street space as opposed to the private spaces they're located behind the buildings the the one thing I did want the council to to hear from us tonight is that the the steel building is an interesting opportunity we looked at it originally as being something that we might propose to tear down and eliminate steel building from the site but the more we thought about it and the more we looked at it it is a really it's in really pretty good condition and and and it's built on a on a on this heavy duty industrial scale foundation actually so the cost to demolish it would be would be really substantial and one of the things that it that it presents as an opportunity is we could use storage space for the tenants inside that building there's around 7 000 square feet of space inside the building and we could dedicate as much interior storage space as tenants might want to have for things like snow tires and skis and all the stuff that we all accumulate in our lives when we're living in apartments we would also propose to build a like a shop space inside there where people could use a heated space to work on bikes and sports gear equipment things that you're always looking for someplace to do when you're living in an apartment situation so that the spaces inside the new buildings can be dedicated to just living space and if you need storage space or you need a shop space kind of arrangement you can look at the steel building for that we're also talking to the planning staff about what other uses might be compatible for the additional space that would be left over in the steel building we would need some of it for you know site maintenance and facilities that the project itself might require but but there would be leftover space that might be repurposeable as a you know maker space or a small brewery office space or something with with many of us working out of our houses today that building might present an opportunity where people could you know walk 100 200 feet and get to a small office space that they could either rent or have their company rent or someplace where they could work out of while uh while they live nearby so these things are all coming out as for all of us uh kind of quickly these days but those are some of the ideas that we're looking at okay or how about some pickleball pickleball would be great but we hope the council we hope you like what you see tonight um we're anxious to to move ahead with this project you know we we we fully understand the um the process the city is going through with interim zoning and some of the limitations on what the city can allow people to move ahead with but this project would benefit from unlike some of the other ideas that we've had for south burlington that we have to be patient we'll wait to see how things evolve but this project is ready to move forward and if the council sees something here that they they agree with um we'd like a chance to present it to the development review board and and try to push this ahead because uh right now um some of the things that really impact affordability and feasibility are low interest rates um access to some financing that that that's available now and we're worried that you know in the future some of those opportunities might might diminish or go away completely and um this is something that uh we think fits the the vision that the city has for future uh pud developments thank you megan you had your hand up well he answered my question i was asking about the timeline because we are so close i mean to uh having the puds finalized um and we're here right on you know the cusp of winter um and so that was that was my question is with regard to ldr's this were to go ahead would be grandfathered under the older ldr's uh whereas the new puds might have different features and i guess this is a question for marla um um how different are the ldr's to you know what the puds that seem to be coming into focus here right but they will be um so as you know i don't i don't work on the day-to-day of the upcoming puds um but frank and his team worked very hard with us to understand what the upcoming pud standards are um things that are not changing um as far as we go at this point the rules pertaining to wetlands um we are going to see the mix of uses including the non-residential component um that is represented by this community space in the center of the green space um there's going to be a real emphasis on density compact development with buildings facing on the streets um and then having a central feature of the neighborhood it's looking like density will be sort of based on the form of buildings rather than units per acre so certain types of buildings will be allowed in certain areas um and the foreflexes that frank is proposing would be allowed in the r4 district um some things that are a little bit less certain are um street types um and then potentially a mix of buildings um but there's been no discussion or decision yet on what the threshold is for our mix of building types it's going to be sort of an acreage um and this project is on the acre side so we're not really sure where this is going to fall on that yet potentially um around 10 acres is where there would be a mix of buildings as required and I believe that there was also a question of when a parcel uh being considered for develop um would would be considered for one type of PUD versus another type of PUD was there any kind of discussion with regard to this specific parcel with regard to the different kinds of PUDs that's a this would be above the threshold for requiring it to be a PUD um I'm not totally familiar with what the different types are that you're referring to I think that's just a failure of me to be on the day-to-day at that um but I can follow up with that I think that would be good to know frank probably does know but Tom did you want to say anything no okay are there any other questions from the council all right so seeing no other questions let me go back to my cheats here we can close this if we want first I would recommend opening up to public comment um and then I'm sorry of whether to continue um to allow either the planning commission to look at it or to talk about it amongst yourselves and then come back with more questions for frank and his team or to close um if you do close you can't take any additional information before you have to write your decision that's true okay well I personally would like to get a little more information vis-a-vis um Megan's question from the planning commission or from Paul Connor but let's go to the public are there any comments from the public uh yes I because this is up on the screen I don't know that you can see me but uh this is Roseanne Greco yes I see your little green um so okay I put some things in chat just because of the the um the graphics are taking up the screen um please don't do what the city council did the last time and that is we did approve some projects during interim zoning only to find out after interim zoning work was completed that we approve projects that should not have been approved because they were on primary agricultural soils and more so I would caution the council to wait until the work is done find out what the PUDs are going to look like what article 12 is going to look like uh or anything else that the planning commission or city council then enacts before approving a project that's in the interim zoning area so that's okay comment thank you Roseanne are there any other comments from the public you set to turn on your moniker your um little thing that says you want to speak seeing none so what would the council like to do I would move to close this application now pardon me I would move to close this application now but it sounds like you don't want to well I think there's a little more information I would like I don't want to distract the planning commission from their work though if we could get information from from Paul Connor that would be helpful yes yeah I don't think that's reasonable that Paul can probably answer your question about um different types of PUDs Megan you're thinking that's a size threshold thing well I think it's also based on what is on the parcel and um um and we haven't yet seen the final language as Roseanne pointed out there's also article 12 so I I don't know how much he can tell us I don't know how okay for that language is really sure but I understand the whole question when I convey it to Paul I believe there are four different PUD types if I recall correctly right I think you're right okay that's starting to ring a bell okay Helen can I ask a question that I don't think has been mentioned before sure of course it just came to mind and and pardon me if I missed it but um what's your market for this development is it young families or senior citizens or people without killing what's what's the mark what's the target market primary target market for these 36 units and if you mentioned it I apologize and you're off to say it again I'll get it from somebody no that's okay can I answer that yes of course um it is a mix uh David um the you know the biggest closest we are to the uh to the major employment centers like the university and the hospital make it an obvious um focus for workforce housing so we would envision um uh small families um uh hopefully not too short term renters uh it's the focus is certainly not on students per se but we we would certainly expect to see grad students uh people to work at the hospital um as being obvious people who would be attracted to this um I would I would present it to you and to the public as being um market rate affordable we we aren't able to access any subsidies so it's not going to be a a deeply subsidized project like you like you might find through some of the non-profit developers but it'll be as close to that as we can make it um and still have it be a private uh a private project and it's 100 percent rental no sale correct okay thanks Tim I can't hear you are you speaking Tim I'm sorry I was on you I I moved that we close this application so I will second that because I'm comfortable with what's been presented and with the timeline and with the PODs that are going to come out I still have faith that it's going to conform in general from what I understand it so I have enough information to close this okay I I I'm more comfortable in putting this off for two weeks I would be willing to set another date um in two weeks so that I can hear from um Paul Conner and get a little more information about the impact of what they are considering in terms of the PODs on on this particular piece of property I would tell you while we were Helen I'm generally good to go with it but I wouldn't mind letting Paul weigh in with a little more information and if in two weeks any miscellaneous questions are answered I would agree with uh with Tim and Tom uh on this and and I think Frank that meets your that meets your expect your hopes as well and then some oh thanks that would be fine Helen we'd be we'd be happy to have Paul weigh in on anything that uh that the council would like to hear and we can provide some additional information that you might need in a couple weeks so two weeks would be great for us in that case my motion okay thank you thank you so I would entertain then a motion to continue the hearing um and I think I don't know what the um agenda will be in two weeks if we have a whole lot on the agenda but this shouldn't take a whole lot of time can that work Kevin yep you can do that Helen uh 7 30 on the I forgot what the date is November 2nd November 2nd okay oh god we'll be no it isn't is it November 2nd yeah I guess it is it should be a busy news night it's November 1st it's not November 2nd November oh no that's Sunday excuse me I got my calendar wrong okay so Megan so moved to have the hearing continued to Monday November 2nd at 7 30 I can second that okay are you ready for that vote okay all in favor thumbs up I see five thumbs so thank you very much and it's a it is a really interesting um project Frank I like the net zero portion of it and how you comprise it so thank you very much thank you thanks Frank thank you okay so we will move on I'm sorry we're running a little bit late so we go back to the council discussion regarding publication of a bi-weekly municipal government e newsletter called the South Burlington Times and we put this on the agenda in part because Tom asked for a fuller conversation um I will report that I heard from um Jesse Ford foreman is that how you're trying um that she is reinstituting the councilor corner um and I have noticed that the other paper has included some sports so I think they have listened to the public to a certain extent on what kind of news is important to our community um and ought to be added back to the um the other paper I also suggested to Jesse that you get in touch with the school board to see if they would like to re-institute their um bi-monthly I guess it is for monthly um column so that people hear from them um in the newspaper but I um Tom do you want to you had some real concerns so so thank you for putting this on the agenda Helen I really do appreciate it and I just want to acknowledge that this is an honorable intention all around I think it was it's worthwhile pursuing an e newsletter to communicate city business and I want to say Colchester's previous chair said the manager would issue a weekly manager's report and at the Green Mountain Transit Board we had a monthly publication from the manager the general manager going back over three different managers and that would be an update of everything that's going on at GMT so I fully support the notion of this and we do this with other aspects of the of the enterprise I just think we can all acknowledge based on the news coverage and some of the I'm guessing the contacts you've had from different people that we could have ruled this out in a different way and so I think it's just really helpful for us to uh pause a little bit here and just consider and articulate what this is and what it isn't how it fits with our whole communication efforts so how it fits in with what we do with front porch forum how it does it fits with what we do with the rec department and also um with the concern that I heard in the opening comment about how people get on this email list I just think we need to articulate the scope and intention of this I fully support an E letter to communicate about city business I just want to do it right and address the concern the valid concerns that have been raised about how we've rolled this out so I would encourage us to just pause a little bit and have this be a policy discussion about what this is and what it isn't okay are there comments am I correct I'm sorry Dave can go first I'm happy third we no longer have a reporter in our council meetings is that correct I don't see Maddie I haven't seen her for the last month or two is that is that right she isn't here tonight so I don't see her scooter mcmillan madam chair scooter mcmillan is listed there from the other okay so scooter works for the other paper or the larger corporation he's the assistant editor all right so we do have them listening is that that I regret that that the other paper felt that it was competition I saw it more as information that had disappeared from the other paper and I value the other paper more for the local news than for anything else and then I think what barb appropriately brought up was that it had tilted to a lot of other things and less local news and and so there there does have to be a way to plug that gap because the citizens of South Burlington the residents of South Burlington need to know what's going on locally so I think a discussion should transpire between the other paper and somebody to to come to an understanding as to what they are going to cover on a regular basis and then what gaps we might fill in and then that newsletter becomes appropriate for a very valid reason Megan no I agree with both Tom and David with everything that they've said I would I would add that local government is the closest that any of us get to democracy really right the state reps are amazing here in Vermont unlike any other state that I've lived in as you know we know we we see them at the polls and that is that is a tribute to to Vermont's democracy but I would argue that local democracy is is the closest the municipal government is the closest that people get to the actual workings of democracy people coming together and having conversations and coming up with policy and our local paper has as long as I've been here 18 years has reported on I would say those workings and and that seems to have gone away and I have to be quite honest I read the other paper much less than I used to as well because of the changes and at the same time I'm not sure that a newsletter can replace what the other paper used to do for the people who are really really interested in the conversations that go on in these meetings you know as we all read in an email I don't know if we all read it we all received it but an email was forwarded to me from the editor of Shelburne News stating that you know their job is not to to produce the minutes and it maybe was even in the other paper and I understand that and I'm not sure it's the minutes that that people were expecting but more a synopsis of major decisions that that people are following and and wanting to kind of keep their finger on and I do fear that that will be lost regardless you know of the newsletter or not and and that is regrettable not everybody has the time or the patience to sit through a lengthy city council meeting every two weeks and I give credit to those people who do show up faithfully every two weeks and one of them has your camera on Barb and it's it is a loss and I and as much as I regret too just like David pointed out that this turned into kind of a spat which I didn't see coming at all it was it was a surprise to me you know I think that it might therefore communicate kind of the the feeling of loss that residents as well as city staff and and some of the counselors here feel and and perhaps you know like Tom said the way this was rolled out was received very poorly so I think that this is good I'm glad that Tom asked for this to to be discussed in public and I think that you know as Helen said that there's been already some changes and and maybe this full airing is a good thing and we can move closer to to a happy for everybody just a quick follow-up I'd love to communicate to the public the changes that we've made I know Kevin and I have had an exchange but I'd love to to know how we're going to craft and articulate the mission of what this is and what it isn't and especially with regards to libel insurance if we're any approaching any topic of newspaper or allowing opinion pieces what that translates to additional financial exposure and I and also just in the broader topic I just want to acknowledge the freedom of the press that I I'm not entirely comfortable with the municipal entity exerting influence or direct pressure on a free paper I'd completely support of the barb service and me myself as a citizen or even an individual counselor speaking up on this but I don't want to use the machinery of the city to at all force or try to influence or persuade directly the the freedom of the local press outlet so I still have concerns and I'd love if Kevin wanted to articulate more about what this thing is and what it's not going to be to the to the public I'd certainly welcome his thoughts so before Kevin comments I would just like to comment I looked very carefully at the last edition and I did not see that as journalism and pushing a particular position in any way it was largely this is what we're doing and identified in a very short synopsis um the kinds of you know activities and successes and challenges and information that the city goes through on a you know constant um a process and so Kevin said he was going to make so exactly what you just said I'm I'm personally very comfortable with how the e-newsletter has rolled out in its development and I would be supportive of that I'm also very supportive of the other paper taking to heart some of the public feedback and to the extent in a pandemic and this kind of economic environment will add some of the information that I think people looked forward to I mean I have to say I was shocked when I got the email that said we're no longer going to have the counselor's corner because I didn't see that as any kind of effort on their part we're told exactly how many words they know exactly how many columns they didn't have they don't edit it they they just print it so that was kind of shocking to me so I'm glad that that's going to come back and I hope that they continue to get more local news I mean they have with the sports and I think that's very good so Tom you have your hand raised and then I'll ask Kevin last part and I know we have lots to cover so I just want to say exactly what you just said in the exchange we had with Kevin he adjusted the scope and purpose of the second edition so I'm supportive of that where he stripped out to have just news no commentary no comments from members of the public no and that's the no managers message we can certainly follow up on that we do need to hear from our manager he's the closest thing to the mayor that we have so I just want the public to know that we are calibrating what this vehicle is and what it isn't to address some of the valid concerns that were raised okay Kevin do you want to make a comment and we can take public comment as well uh sure Helen um let me turn my camera on here if I can um Tom asked what it is and what it is not you saw the last edition that's what it is fundamentally it's we take content that would have otherwise put up on our website and instead of having that be a passive thing where people had to come and find it we're pushing it out to the public there's a multitude of things that we put in there that would not have been covered by the other paper under any circumstance current past or anything and I think you heard tonight from a member a perfect example tonight when we're looking at the energy report from from Lou member of the public spoke up and said gee it would be great to have that pushed out to the public so the public's aware of all the things that the city's doing to bend the energy curve costs the taxpayer and so on and so forth there's no guarantee that that presentation would have been in the other paper or even will be in the other paper regardless the power poem won't be in because the technology's not there so we're going to put that up and report to the public by posting that power point so that they can look at it but we're not going to say uh I'm not going to write a lead to it and say oh my god look at how great the city is and and we should all be lauded for doing what we're doing we're going to just simply put the information out to the public and let them draw their own conclusions that's what this is about it's we're not going to have a sports section we're not going to have an update on on different clubs in town we're not going to have news from other communities we're not going to have letters to the editor we're not going to have things that a traditional newspaper including the other paper might have this is strictly going to be activities in the city for which the city is a driving force there was a little blurb last week about the intersection at community drive and um Kimball avid I've been asked half a dozen times what's going on at Kennedy drive and Kimball avid this answers so that's the purpose nothing more nothing less it's an effort to get information out to the public for their consumption if they want it or not just like any other publication or newsletter or uh uh it's up to the public if they want it if they don't want it they can click out of it but it is fundamentally a a website content that we're pushing out rather than asking the public to have to come and find it and that's that's what we're going to continue to do other other comments from the other counselors or the public bar service yeah you know uh my mother used to say no good deed goes unpunished um and I think that may apply in this situation um I think that Jennifer and I have been a bit maligned but I am delighted that whatever that um a bit of angst um existed that in fact we are getting some return to the other paper of the things that that we're missing and I am looking forward to the fact that I will start to I will return to really reading the other paper which is a benefit for the community for the paper etc um and I think it's been hard on all of you as well um but that I hope that now that you've had this conversation with the editor that hopefully we can continue that my hope is that they will also bring back the pieces from our legislators as well as from the city council and I also I we need a place where we can write letters to the editor and where citizens can disagree with each other and discuss and carry on and um it doesn't come from the city and so my intent was pure it wasn't to you know create all this consternation on the other hand if it's generated dialogue then I am delighted and if we get better news reporting in the other paper the things that are more relevant the analysis the discussion all of that then um it was it was certainly certainly worth it um and I am glad to hear the term e newsletter used more and more there's no reference to it being a newspaper no reference to it being competition um it is a place where hopefully uh we will see objective reports um no analysis but simply the information then that we can read and at the same time it's a place where the other paper can find that information and they can then generate dialogue among the citizens about those pieces of information so I am hopeful that we will come to peaceful resolution that we will find a way for um you know I mean I'm biased the other paper that I miss um parts of it to be back I don't need all of it just some pieces of it um to come back um and that we will continue to have those dialogues and I apologize that um I have to go I'm already 10 minutes late for another meeting but I at least wanted to say I think the discussion that the city council is having is productive I am delighted you are talking with the other paper um that's even better news and I am I am hopeful that uh the product of all of this is going to be something that that meets everybody's needs so thanks thank you um Tim and then um Mike Donahue just just real quickly you know the pandemic has had a lot of effects on a lot of businesses and the other paper has been severely affected with staff cuts and um you know some of the real estate isn't being used like it used to and so you know that forces changes in journalism the number of sheets in the paper has been reduced and you know that's a change that we could not have predicted a year ago hopefully that will go away as businesses return and start advertising again and we get staff you know staffed up again but um I can see that the that the south brunner response from the city you know in this spat was to well we'll go create our own newsletter if you're not going to publish what you're going to publish and I just want to make sure as Thomas said that the line is drawn very firmly in the sand about what the city is doing is not journalism it's just pushing raw information about project the city's has that it's it's undertaken to let the public know about things that are going on and that's the only responsibility they have if you don't want to go to the website to get it then have an e-newsletter pushed to you that's fine you know somebody can do that through front porch form and say here's the link to this newsletter from the city you know whatever it is just make sure that the line is very firmly defined in the sand because the last thing we want to do is is step on toes of journalists who are supposed to be objective about what goes on in government and allows the public to comment through let it as the editors so that's all I wanted to say thank you okay thank you Mike down here thank you madam chair uh just a couple of things one wearing my hat is executive director of the vermont press association I would tell you that the discontinuance of legislative columns during a political season is typical at just about every newspaper in vermont that's true you you and it's it's much like uh it's an issue of equal time and there's as many of you know curt right decided not to run for the city council in brolandon because he didn't want to give up his daytime job on the radio so the problem is most newspapers cut off legislators during the campaign and they restore and that's my understanding that it was never going to be a complete cut uh it's just standard uh in just about every newspaper number two there's always been a love hate relationship with every newspaper in america you know people love it people hate it um truth be told ruth boger tried to sell it to me in 1987 i think it was but i was in the process of getting married and i got a better deal like getting a wife the newspaper but uh but you know i know that several years ago five years ago i think it was there was a group that was looking to buy the paper because they were unhappy with i mean they were just not happy with it at all they approached me to see if i would become the editor and i was looking toward retirement so there have been ups and downs with the other paper through the years when people didn't like what they were doing so uh this is not the first time people were unhappy with it and the third point i'd make in whether you call it a newsletter or whatever there are legal issues that you face liability whether it's it's not just liable it's invasion of privacy the four kinds of invasion of privacy that you could get yourself and jammed up over is copyright is trademarks infringement uh there's you're not going to have advertising but there's a lot and i was surprised when i checked with the city and i because i asked about the increase in liability insurance that that was not even on their radar that i was told that my public records request got them running around trying to figure out whether the city had any additional exposure by having what was initially a newspaper or any newspaper and now they've realized that it really didn't even meet the threshold of being a newspaper that it was more a mouthpiece or a newsletter so thank you okay thank you other comments from the public so are we um oh rosanne yeah um i i echo just about everything everybody has said and particularly what megan said about this is the the form of government that the people have the most say in um i too used to come to all meetings more than uh more often in the past years than i am doing right now and i relied on the other paper um to get a synopsis of what happened at the meetings that i wasn't able to attend and i i really did miss that but i also recognized that the covet um you know covet 19 impacted the financial um stance of the other paper and people were let go and i assumed that that is why some of the things were dropped but i um but i really did miss them and i hope they come back and i bring out its own newspaper the name itself says that that really bothered me i i can't believe the city is not expending funds on that unless you have a volunteer that's compiling all that on their own time and not not being paid for it it's going to be it's coming out of our our tax dollars not that it's not important to get information out to the residents about what the city is doing i think that's really important and i think having some sort of a newsletter is a good idea i do not think though when you're reporting on stuff that you do people are going to be unbiased how often do you write articles about how horribly you are doing things and how things aren't working out so there's an implicit bias when you're writing about your own organization um and so that's why we need the press to give that unbiased um view of it and i um if the city continues to send out updates on what's going on then name it something else don't call the self throwing in times because that that's a newspaper so um anyway thank you tom also for getting this on the agenda because i think clearing the air and um developing a better partnership between the other paper and the city and the residents um is terrific so thank you i i agree with you um i think we can entertain a name change and i appreciate your comments rosanne sandi duly there i just wanted to read what i put in the chat um the difference between newsletter and newspapers the role of journalism i do not believe that people see a newsletter as journalism this is what we have lost vis-a-vis how the other paper has changed their journalists coverage of city council development review board and planning commission meetings was a major contribution to the life of the community their journalists captured and communicated the issues that were raised and the decisions made very well as the burlington free process covered less and less prior to recent changes of the other paper it was providing important information that improved our quality of life i hope the other paper decides to reinstate more of what has been discontinued thank you yeah i i'm with you on that yep so council are we in agreement that we should continue with an e newsletter that is not journalistic in um its um positions but really pushing out information and um i i hope that slowly as the economy gets better the other paper will return to a more active reporting of our um current issues i mean i think this is it was a good conversation uh and needed and obviously they responded to a certain extent i mean i totally understand my don't agree that you don't have the um legislators have their column during um election period and that was true for the counselors whoever was running for election couldn't write the counselor corner for january february in march um so i i understand that and and we abided by that and we'll continue to um so what is your pleasure did you want to say something else my no i i just thank you for acknowledging that uh i and i did want to say you did talk about covid too i gotta tell you and it's not just the economic impact i mean there are just a lot of events that are not happening in communities and i i'm on two different halls of fame committee the the state and the romant principles association and we've had to keep postponing our induction dinners and there's just a lot of the events that would normally be covered that just aren't being aren't happening and therefore not getting in the paper and now that sports have resumed in the high school level you know and again i'm not authorized to speak for the other paper i'm talking newspapers in general across um vermont but that that has been an issue of so many events have been cancelled postponed yep that there aren't as many things to cover so thank you you're welcome okay so what is the council what direction do you want to give kevin change the name and keep up tim yeah so go ahead i like to change the name uh it doesn't have to be biweekly it can be whenever there's enough information to push out to you know all the recipients and and i hope that we don't have a an fte dedicated to this work i i hope it's not a whole person it's just a part of a person you know i don't i don't want to make a new position in the city and pay for that position to produce this newsletter so it better be wrapped into somebody else's or a couple of people's very part timish type thing because there are a lot of other things that the city has to do well i think it's clear that all the links when i read it the last time it was two or three sentences and then the link to whatever the topic was on our website we certainly have a person who works on our website corally and that's her role so i'm assuming that she has pulled some of this together and that if you've already written the article um for the website that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort i mean i probably couldn't be able to do it but um other people can you know line up the the different um website sites and put it in an e newsletter for the public without spending a whole lot of time but you know i also think it's an important piece in everyone's job who works in the city to make sure that the public i mean they report to kevin they do write little reports that are under their um job title i mean they're they're not all free agents out there so you know is there a cost to this well it's probably part of their job description and what we expect from a team working together um as the you know administration of our city tom so i love what you just said and that's actually how the general managers monthly update would be broken out there would be a piece from the operators from maintenance and from administration and so the general manager as much as it was the general manager's update it wasn't him uh right or her we had a karen as well uh composing the note and putting all the time but instead rolling up the reports from the different units and then communicating that out to anybody that wanted to receive that email all right so are we all together on this now i think so yes okay yes so kevin is that clear megan i just want to make it clear that i i i completely echo what sandi had to say and i i hope to have said it in my initial comments that journalism i see as critical and any loss to our local journalism journalism is a loss to local democracy so i in no way saw this as a replacement and and i just i want us to do what we can to support local journalism just a last piece just to address that concern about how you get this so it would be great to understand how people are going to receive this how they sign up for it how we get their emails and so on well we all got our tax bills our new tax bills and it said if you want the e-news letter or e-news um this is how you sign up so there's that and and we had suggested actually at least i had to kevin to utilize the existing um emails that the city uses for various things if people are concerned about that i guess we can wait until people sign up so i i know we need to move on we don't want to keep meeting this dead horse but i think the concern raised by mike donahue at the opening was that we were using emails from that were collected by voters and also from the cats and dogs registration i'm okay with that as long as we're telling people when they're giving us that email that the city will use this for communications we're just clarity so putting that in policy so they know going forward when they give the city an email that we will include it in our communications it's useful to have these discussions i think okay so going forward we can do that that doesn't sound like that would be too hard is that acceptable kevin does that sound like it's workable all the emails that come in are of course owned by the taxpayers so um they're all aggregated um for the purpose of this newsletter um uh we may be able to come up with some kind of disclosure form about that but yeah i think um i think you understand what we're trying to do this council in particular has been very outspoken about transparency about trying to find innovative ways to get news out to the public and to the taxpayers through various means and you utilize them through front porch forum and other means so this is not anything more than trying to augment that and we're going to continue to do it it makes good sense every member of my leadership team has an obligation to report on what he or she are doing and i think as a as your city manager i have an obligation to tell the public what we're doing um i uh i hope that the other paper will continue to be a vital part of the community but i can't depend on that i've got to make sure that the public is aware of the things that we're doing and that's what this is all about so thank you for the um discussion thank you for the endorsement we're gonna we're gonna do our best to to get the information out to the public so thank you okay Kevin thanks thank you okay so we're gonna move on number nine the review and discussion regarding the burlington international airport noise capability program implementation plan is paul gonna go through this no i heard it or are you Kevin paul's on vacation this week um but um this was really the first um meeting that the airport has had now that the ncp has been approved to talk now about how to implement and as you'll note from paul's memo to you and uh gleaning through the report that i put uh in your packet um the intention is to to move forward with the noise insulation or the home insulation program uh the the shocking i guess to me part of it was that you're looking at um approximately five million dollars federal funding a year which is approximately 50 homes uh and the the other component of this uh and the next real step in this process is to assess how many homes might be eligible for this while there are actually i'm now forgetting the number 2,300 or 2,600 homes in the area where they would be eligible for these improvements um some of those homes may not qualify because they're already um and i'm talking primarily about new homes uh they already uh have done everything they can do to soundproof them so the real number of what might be eligible is likely less than the total number but the airport and uh and certainly uh um city south burlington and city wanouski are going to be working together till we find that number so while this was on the agenda tonight is really to have you take a look at the um the plan to offer any kind of comments on additions or changes that you'd like to see in it uh they are like i said emphasizing the insulation program as opposed to the other programs but um you know it could i think the estimate was it could take us 26 years to get through all these homes um so uh since we're going to need to give feedback uh to be part of this process paul and i really wanted to have feedback from the council and you don't need to give it tonight but if you want to if you want to send a note in over the next couple weeks about areas where you'd like us to concentrate that's fine too well i just had one concern and i don't know how to solve it but when they were talking about how they would you know fairly select the homes for the program and they had you know percentages of how many houses were in each community and um and they and i i just was kind of well one of the things that really hit me is i think that the large portion of homes i could be wrong in burlington are the very new homes that stew ireland's whole development and they're the most five years old and we have known about this we've been talking about this for 25 years and so i'm just i i guess i i really don't think i mean it gives burlington a whole lot of units that need to be addressed but i i think that the houses that ought to be addressed first are i mean maybe these won't even qualify but at least in percentage the houses that have been there forever that are old that have borne the brunt of this for a longer time i don't know i mean i i know you want to get stuff going in every single community so they all buy in and no one feels like they're the um the last people to be cared for or attended to but i just was a little uncomfortable with the percentages and how they they parse that out and it's just it just struck me as yeah right last to the table and first to get help and and i also think my god if you're building houses that you know are on the flight path why don't why didn't you build them like curvy cottages so i i i don't think we should be paying for new windows or insulation and that you know new development that didn't um wasn't required or didn't um you know have that standard built into the new build but helen isn't isn't doesn't there have to be a test done on each house first to see if it qualifies so obviously yes newer constructions is it's going to pass it's not going to qualify i would assume because it it's just going to be tighter but maybe maybe not i don't know how the quality of that new construction was frankly well i mean i mean new codes new newer codes right and all right but but extending that construction possibility or extending the testing to new construction seems kind of silly when you should be extending it to the older homes first yes that and i don't know how you say that but maybe that's what you say is that we're going to plug in the older homes and first and then you know come up with some kind of fair distribution among i mean the really big communities of burlington south burlington and winewski and that that's just something that just kind of cut my crawl a little bit i mean the city through its solution is but the tax rolls tell when these homes were built right kevin yes yeah so we we can instantly sort all the of the 810 homes right within each dnl we can instantly sort them and tell them which ones are oldest right and yeah i think a lot of work needs to go into that issue too to really determine eligibility and priority frankly i think helens talking about as much as anything priority uh and and i think that that needs to come out in this document yeah i didn't see that and so i think that's a recommendation okay are there any other comments besides my number two are you trying to get into say something if not can you turn your phone off we're on mute i think we can sort of hear you hello are we able to call can somebody mute call a row too kevin you should be able to mute we're really calling on your i should be able to regrow a pair to tim but i'm not sure that that over them and click the little throw the white circle with the three dots breaking corner and got it uh helen i just wanted to make one more comment okay um as we all know having gone through this for the last three four five years the lingering question out here has been the the so-called local match i think that i think a local match has been lined up um and my sense of just looking at the five million dollar number is that the five million dollar number is probably driven by how much of that yet to be identified local match is going to be available and so i think you know would the number otherwise be bigger if there were an additional local match i think it would be but um i don't have confirmation of what's a local match the source of the local match but i think we all know who it is and um and i think that might be driving uh the limitation of roughly five million dollars a year invested in this and of course then the many many years it'll take to get to resolving issues for many of our homeowners so i know anyway we'll we'll have a new sound map by then with new lines please please as you read through this uh send me your comments uh so paul and i can represent them at the at these meetings okay let's send them separately right no reply all right okay okay moving on to the next item it's the budget schedule is that right i just got rid of my look at my thing again we can take them in either order palin we got you're going to do the unaudited financial yes let's do item item 10 and then we'll also look at the budget schedule okay okay so we're not too running too late are we okay go for it tom switch it up a little bit thanks ellen uh so i sent you off the uh reports in my memo last friday i believe that's also been added to your box today just so that everything for you is in one place but i'd like to take uh just a few minutes go through a list of some of the bullet points that affected the budget over the past year and again preface my remarks to say although we don't have a lot to put back on the balance sheet i am grateful that we have something to put back on the balance sheet um as you may recall the last report i gave you with some very preliminary numbers had us finishing up about 14 000 to the good and now that we've closed out our unaudited figures we're about well we're actually at 33 784 um that would allow us to make the transfer to the energy fund of the monies that were indicated earlier that 80 that'd be about eight thousand dollars but it still leave us on the balance sheet 25 993 so that's kind of where we're at again these are unaudited financials uh we're working through that process with our auditor as we speak and they'll be here the whole last week of october finishing up their data so just a few things on the positive side talk a little bit about the local options taxes back in march we were actually about three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to the good in terms of how we would we're going to finish up um the fiscal year as we all know that the pandemic hit in the fourth quarter and fortunately i'll say fortunately we were able to actually finish the year with our local options taxes with a 39 000 dollar uh mark beyond what we projected as our income for this year so that was that was great news for us to have if you know the numbers that we had that came in between mid may and mid august word were definitely lower we're anxious to get our next report in mid november to see kind of where we're at with that our property taxes came in at 99.42 percent which is excellent excellent the city clerk recording fees vital records fees produced an additional 150 000 dollars above what was stated by don in terms of what she was going to bring in this fiscal year planning and zoning fees were also above projections our health insurance was underspent partially due to the employee contributions that came in for the first full year this past year uh we continue to save on medical supplies through the group purchase program the uvm medical center uh and our ambulance purchasing the police department computer expenses were down as we consolidated some of their services dpw maintenance was down 43 000 dollars below what we anticipated some of that as a result of some of the stewardship efforts uh that we put into place that are paying off our h back in electricity costs have been up and a lot of that has been attributed to the the covid response we we've increased the airflow and as much as we can in all of our buildings which has increased the electricity in all the buildings as well but we're trying to provide as much uh as much airflow as we can throughout the buildings and do the things that we can do uh with the filters and all to provide the best environment that we can for our workers highway state aid for roads also came in with some additional grant money which allowed us to do some of the extra paving that we had last fiscal year some of the challenges with the budget will first and foremost it's the pandemic right and we put a budget freeze into effect back in mid-march uh we also as you know furlough as many as 44 city employees it's probably the two most significant things that we did to make sure that our balance uh that we balanced out our revenues with our expenditures this past year uh we had a tough winter storm as you might remember with a lot of old and with salt and salt and more salt that we needed on our roads we had some uh unexpected medical equipment replaces and our ambulance our fire inspection fees were down the district courts were closed um so there wasn't much income coming in uh through the police department in terms of that several vehicle repair replacements were were necessary fire department salaries overtime holiday pay pd overtime continue to be problematic for us we we need to continue to look at ways uh that we can mitigate some of those expenses and we had uh some additional public safety training programs and we're going to have even more through the police department that will be mandated that are also causing some uh uh unanticipated additional expenditures FY 21 uh now that the FY 20s closed out we'll be able to catch up more quickly with the monthly financials out to you uh you just received july there's not a lot to reveal in july at this point maybe share with you uh just a couple of reminders with some of the things that we have in place uh first and foremost we're going to continue to be cautious and prudent there's a lot of unknowns as we progress through this next fiscal year our budget freeze remains in effect other than what the council's already approved capital expenditures have been put on hold we do hope to reevaluate those come spring early spring once we have a better feel of when of how we might finish up the fiscal year and if we can allow some of those expenditures to be made as planned we we hope to do that uh we have a number of position vacancies that remain unfilled i think we have 10 at this point and the couple of positions that were improved as part of the FY 21 budget have also been put on hold uh we'll receive the first quarter the first full quarter of local options in mid november we have projected just over four million dollars of revenue through our local options tax this year that will largely i think determine for us what we're going to be able to do and what we're not going to be able to do this fiscal year and the second installment of the property tax is due in mid december the first installment in september was right on track according to martha glions and again we're hopeful that that will continue so we'll continue to monitor these finances closely month to month certainly any surge in the pandemic particularly in our region would obviously impact the budget in a number of ways um and i believe the steps we've taken the steps we continue to take with more time in this fiscal year to really adjust to them than we had last year we'll safeguard the budget and leave us in a position where we can adequately adequately balance out our expenses with our revenues so in general that's that's the overview of of how we finished up and kind of how we're progressing through this fiscal year and happy to respond to any specific questions or general comments that that you have so i think the headline is things didn't work out nearly as worse as we were participating things are relatively looking great and thanks for all your stewardship my question has to do with fire and police overtime well how much of a function of the pandemic would you credit that to versus being short staffed yeah so we we would have been over with most of those things anyway tom the holiday pay in particular that needs to be looked at again in terms of how we handle that but um i would i would say that a significant chunk of the fire department overtime probably in the range of two hundred thousand dollars is related directly to the pandemic we've applied through fema to hopefully get a good portion if not all of that money back so that still remains to be seen but the good news is regardless we were able to make it through the last fiscal year with some of the other precautions that we took not knowing what we might be able to get refunded for so we remain optimistic about that but to your point there is a good portion of the overtime we would have been over anyway but a good amount of it was attributed to the pandemic for sure okay any other comments or questions no excellent as as always tom much appreciated wish you weren't going anywhere but at least it's not until july 1st okay so the next item is to look at the f y 22 budget schedule hey helen helen can i ask a quick question of the council sure uh this is an employee excuse me this is an f y 21 issue tom noted the the freeze on capital spending and and the other freezes also the freezes on hiring we have one account that only the council can direct us what you want to do with that and that is the transfer to the affordable housing trust fund normally each year you have a $50,000 transfer let's call it to the trust fund and those funds in years past have been used to support allard square and the garden apartments we have not made that transfer the money's available we've not made that transfer but there is a request that has not yet been heard by the affordable housing commit or a trust fund committee before hearing that i wanted to find out from the council whether or not that should also be subject to the freeze it's $50,000 this is going to be a harder budget year f y 21 is going to be harder for us than f y 20 was and my recommendation right now notwithstanding the fact that there's interest expressed by the developers and city center for support for an additional project in city center that the council consider adding that to the list of things to put a hold on for now but that's yours that's totally your decisions so comments megan i always have to look for my cursor i just wanted to say that there are more grant funds potentially available for the city clerk's office for the elections i was just looking at the city clerk numbers on expenditures and i i believe that facebook in addition to congress i think they're doubling what congress is is providing to a local government for for the elections in the tune of 400 is it million dollars um and so i was just hoping that we could maybe look for a way to find grant funds for $50,000 at least that would make the affordable housing fund remain whole i don't know if that would cover it but i just wanted to put that out there well i certainly would be willing to freeze it if there wasn't a project that was sort of getting ready to apply for it i mean if nothing was on the horizon i would have been okay freezing it but i'm a little uncomfortable freezing it as well tom that was going to be my similar point and i wondered do we have to decide that tonight or can we almost hear about the project and then decide on this point at that time would that be inappropriate um if well let me let him let me let the rest of council speak could we could we do a proportional amount instead of the full amount that we think we can afford with the hope and expectation that we could um you know make it the full amount before the end of the year what's what's your what's your pleasure i mean are you thinking like $25,000 sure whatever i kind of like megan's idea too of seeing if there's some other funds that would um you know free up or allow us to support that i agree with that too well what do you want to look for the funds and see if we can do the full 50 or i'd love to do the full 50 because i want to i want to fill that bucket up because we're going to probably have a project in the future and i want to be able to you know pay that out and help out the organization whoever it is well it's it would be uh it would be snider braverman um they are they don't have other non-profit partners they're structuring the financing a little bit different than you typically would see but from uh the typical affordable housing program but what i can do is hearing that the council appears to be um continuing to be supportive at some level of an investment here we can at least take it to the affordable housing trust fund committee for their review i didn't want to do that if the council said now everything is frozen that's not what i'm hearing from you tonight so why don't be if the council's okay why don't we go ahead and take it through the process and have the affordable housing trust fund committee report to you okay that sounds good to me that sounds okay with you megan yeah and tim um okay okay thank you okay okay all righty so let's move on then if that if we're okay with the budget schedule so i have a draft of a schedule that was included in the packet um it's it's pretty standard you know um based on on past years it allows for three separate budget meetings if the council felt they were needed beginning uh january fourth uh subsequently on the eleventh and the final date that we could have a meeting to have a budget approved this town meeting comes really early this year in march um our pre-town meeting night is literally on march first uh so the 14th would be the final date that the council could have could have to approve the budget so my intent would be to give you an overview prior to the holidays with the full budget for you to to look through and to come back after the holidays and begin having the meetings to to finalize that okay kevin we have a potential steering committee meeting set for the 20th which i think is just about the last date that we could do it again to meet the charter requirements well i'm just wondering about you know communication with the school board and getting some sense from them i mean i don't know everything it's always always so they don't know the number i mean it's not their fault but you know the state doesn't know the number and they don't know the number and they never can really like say it looks like it's going to be i don't know you know a three percent increase but but those are always important conversations to have with them and i just don't know there's nothing on this schedule for us to have the conversation but we do have another kevin when do we set up the next um steering steering committee meeting next next Wednesday Helen oh that's a little soon to be talking about what a budget number might look like isn't it well i mean this schedule looks fine to me the only missing piece is to have some kind of conversation with david young and the school board about you know sort of balancing it to help get an idea about um where they might be what time is the steering committee i don't have that on my calendar um is it this one through the next Wednesday at seven at 28 yeah it's at seven in the is it in the library or are we posting it i can't remember we'll get a note out but what's is this schedule okay with everyone and we'll figure out a way to have that conversation sometime with the school board i mean i think it makes sense but i i don't know if we'll get us anywhere so yep okay okay i'm okay well thank you john we'll post this to our website we will send a copy over to um the superintendent's office and the business office just so they have a sense of what our schedule looks like and um they typically request that from us every year so okay it's good to have that set thank you all righty thanks um moving on to item 12 reports from counselors on committee assignments did anyone go to any meetings it's so weird you have so few like oh okay um is there any other business oh tim just two quick things that i told kevin an email earlier uh the first is that it appears that pj's auto village mazda and saab um has disappeared and because they were purchased by capital mazda in montpelier so that business has been cleared out all the cars are gone the other one is that karen's east end audio which is that last auto body used car shop that's on wilson road before you hit the muddy brook bridge turns into wilson uh is discontinuing its business and is going to be taken over by the burlington tech center i believe so yeah that's new news to me because i went there to get an estimate and they wouldn't give it to me because they're they're you know getting rid of the business and they're going to be renting the building out to the tech center so i wanted kevin to know that because i don't know if that's a change in use that planning it's only needs to know about too so but anyway it's too bad that pj's is certainly a change in tax revenue yeah yeah okay thank you okay so if there's no other business we can move on to um item 14 and so the next this agenda item is a possible executive session for the purpose of having a hearing of hearing a grievance filed in accordance with a collective bargaining agreement between the city of south burlington and the city of south burlington city hall and public works employees so i would entertain a motion that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the grievance hearing and the information presented therein would clearly place the city and the grievance at a substantial disadvantage okay i got a motion and a second any discussion okay all in favor you know thumbs up i see five thumbs and then the second motion is moved that having so found i now move that the council enter into executive session for the purpose of hearing of grievance inviting in colin mcneill andrew balduke kevin doran david van dozen joanna grossman and todd Gregory so moved second second okay it's been moved and seconded vote with a thumbs up there's five of us david yep okay so we are now in executive session we will not have likely a this conference is no longer being recorded we need to remove some people we do need to remove some people and i need to just quickly take a very short break okay so makin you can take over if i guess colin kevin are you controlling who's getting kicked out