 Okay, we need to get started gang Yeah, he gets hungry in the middle of the meeting Okay, why don't we we have a quorum and Council counselor Barnes will be joining electronically later. So we might as well get started. So I would like to call the South Brompton City Council meeting of Monday 17 2020 to order and we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you for joining us in person. If there's an emergency, you can go out to the rear of the doors at the rear either side of the rear of the auditorium and to the left and right to exit for those participating online. Thank you for joining us. If you would like to speak on any agenda item, you can indicate that you would like to do so in the chat and I'll have the chair call on you or you can turn your camera on in the chair will call on you. We are not otherwise monitoring the chat for content. Hey, Travis, is it possible to turn the mics in the room down? No, I feel like I should be at Yankee Stadium or something. Thank you. Okay, that's you can still hear me. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so let's move on to the third agenda item, which is the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of what's posted? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any in the audience? No. Okay. I see Roseanne. Why don't you have the floor. Okay, good evening, Councillors. And I got the memo I have green on. Anyway, I want to talk to you about one of the most beautiful parts of South Burlington and that's the Hubbard Natural Area and Park, once called Underwood. I know some of you were a part of the big effort we had quite a few years ago to vision what the citizens wanted of that area then called Underwood. And as you recall, the vast majority of those that attended these these visioning sessions wanted it to be remain to remain in its pristine condition. A few weeks ago, I had was out walking and ran into some neighbors who told me that they had heard that the city had decided to pave over the middle part of it for a bike or walking path. And they were concerned about it as am I. I do not know if you've made that decision I haven't kept tabs on everything you're doing. But if you have I really urge you to rethink that in this time of climate change, we do not need to be adding more impervious surfaces, especially over meadows. There's an organic farm only a few feet of way away from where this concrete or asphalt or whatever you know the city or individuals have been thinking of putting down on this meadow. And there are wetlands air that's definitely a wildlife area. We really need to rethink, you know, doing damage to an area this magnificent and letting it be what it is. We have had this land now we purchase it with open space funds so I'm not really too sure spending money and I don't know how much money would go into paving this over but whether that would be appropriate considering this was purchased with the lands where the intent is to leave it undeveloped. Right now that land is is costing us absolutely nothing, but it's providing natural resources to us that will save that are saving us money. If you putting pervious surfaces down is going to cost. I don't know how much it costs I'm sure it's pretty darn expensive, but then you had an ongoing maintenance to it. Folks have been walking on that land now for 10 years doing just well. So, I really, really urge you to take a look at what the plans were for for Hubbard and if there's any idea about paving it over please do not do that. Thank you for listening and might I have another time to raise another issue unrelated to this. What can we do with our traffic lights. I have been raised this now since 2012. And every time I go into downtown Burlington and come back in the evening I'm reminded again of how inefficient our traffic lights in South Burlington are the major streets in Burlington go to flashing. It was at the emergency room at midnight last week for something everything is fine now, but coming out on on Pearl Street on Main Street, even on Main Street, the lights are flashing. We drive into South Burlington and the intersection of spear and swift, nothing's around, not even rabbits, and the light is red, and stays red for a long time. And that happens also on, you know, endorse it and swift and all across the city of Burlington. If the city of Burlington can go to flashing lights, which is far more energy efficient. Certainly we can do this in South Burlington and once again I've been saying this to 2012. Let's just put flashing lights after 8pm or something and save the gasoline the pollution the aggravation from people waiting at a red light when nothing's around so that's my second issue, and I'm going to keep raising it. Thank you for listening. Okay, thank you. We'll come back and present to the full council of future. Okay, where we are with Hubbard. All right. Is there anyone else at home or in the audience. Okay seeing none will move on to counselors announcement and reports on committee assignments and then followed by the city manager's report. Yes, Andrew. So, 10 to two really good meetings, one with the energy committee, and both committees are working on some really important stuff for Hubbard, a lot of energy. So the energy committee is talking about an energy fair where they would have vendors and they're also talking about some kids activities, probably some time in the fall. And the purpose of the fair would be to educate folks about, you know, what individuals can do to address climate change. Can you put that. Yeah, more about our climate action plan. Thank you. So that that's kind of exciting. We spent a lot of time also talking about a company that provides window inserts to improve the efficiency of windows to avoid leaks around the window and to have some more our value. This company actually it's it's the idea is to do it as a community service. You have volunteers that help to assemble the windows to install the windows and the company provides and pretty cheap. It's like 60 65 bucks an insert compared to several hundred or more if you got it commercially. They need volunteers to get this going but it sounds like it might happen. The committee spent a lot of time thinking about how to make that happen. So I guess more to come there on to the natural resources. Is that will that be are they working with like efficiency Vermont or no CBOEO. This is an independent right. So typically, when you have your home weatherized the weatherization contractor won't replace or address the windows. They focus on the attic. They focus on insulation and air sealing but not windows. So this is kind of filling that that hole. They don't even I thought when they had those blowers on they checked your windows as well and maybe they wouldn't. They do check your windows that we did. Leakage around the edges of the windows but they you know for if your windows aren't sealed well in the frame right but the windows themselves. I don't think they can do much about that. I'm sorry to interrupt. So this kind of plugs that hole. Okay, so the NRCC is working on the open space plan that pulling together the inventory and might be something we actually want to talk about. Maybe provide a more targeted guidance on what the council would like to see as a work product from that inventory. But they're doing a lot of a lot of good work there kind of inventory all the parcels in the city. They presented that the airport is looking at doing something with the strip of land to the south. That's no longer suitable for homes and the west. Okay, so yeah, yeah. That's no longer suitable for homes and the proposal still in an inter you know kind of a beginning phase but it's it sounds there's a nursery tree nursery that provides the street trees for the city. Apparently through COVID it it's not it it lost some of its momentum and where it has capacity for 200 trees only have 75 trees so that program needs some volunteers. Coupled with that there was an idea to expand the operations Dave Willow who's the liaison committee is putting in a grant to get some money for equipment to potentially even expand that operation beyond the 200 to also have trees that may be able to replant our parent areas of cottonwoods and things like that so street trees plus restoration trees and he's looking at a partner to help them do that. I'm actually working with him I reached out to common roots we're going to set up a meeting with some folks and so this momentum there we may hopefully get the tree nursery back to full operation and then possibly even expand it. So a lot of exciting stuff. Tim. Thank you. I attended the Economic Development Committee's meeting last week. They had a very interesting zoom call with some folks in Woodstock that did some research on how to assist childcare providers expand their capacity. And what they finally learned from this very long process was that for a childcare business to add more providers they had to bring them in and then train them for a while. And so the problem was that you have the same number of kids when you have more employees and therefore you're going to be running a deficit because you have a greater cost to your business. The money that they had available ended up acting like a bridge for that period of time when they bring a new employee on until they're able to then be able to take in more kids and increase their volume of their funds. Right. How much they can charge. So there was this bridge effect that was enabled. It's like a bridge loan right. And so then that also then rolled over into maybe there should be a revolving loan fund. So a lot of great ideas came out of that. A lot of good discussion and I think there will be more later on. I also attended the BC meeting where we had two folks come in and ask for abatements on their property taxes. And I attended the Leap Energy Fair in Waterbury as did Andrew on Saturday at Crossett Brook Middle School in Waterbury. My first time there it was great. They have some solar panels out in the field right next to the school. And they had a lot of vendors solar panels. They had a representative from the Washington Electric Co-op and I learned the new fact that Washington Electric Co-op gets most of their power from the methane generated from the Coventry landfill. I did not know that before. And then we had this very interesting discussion about well if you're getting it from the landfill now and you're going to get from the landfill in the future. Are we denying the landfill the components that you need to have organics to break down to create methane? And we couldn't take that conversation much further because there's plenty of garbage in the old one to satisfy that they're in their need right now. So yeah, so that was really interesting. And I also talked to a plumbing company who said that they had 10 plumbers who were coming into the journeyman part right out of high school because they had gone into the high school and recruited. And had them coming through and they were going to be joining their ranks soon. So it was a family business and they seemed really psyched up about how things were going because they had new blood coming in. They had a lot of business. This is locally? This was down in the Waterbury area. So that was really good. And that's I guess all I have to report. I also did take a drive down East Terrace because a constituent had asked me about some retaining walls that were degrading. And so I've had a discussion with all the public works about that. I'm not going to talk about it right now. Thank you. Thank you. Megan. Yeah, I attended a charter review committee meeting last Wednesday and they are ready to go. The outreach starts, I believe this week, April 18th and goes through mid May. They're also going to be going to the high school and speaking to three high school classes because of course we have voters who are in the high school and the classes topics are aligned to civics. And I believe that they'll be taking back the information that they receive in those outreach meetings as well as an online survey. I don't know when that goes live, but soon I'm assuming. And we'll analyze it and then come see us, I think by September, if I'm not wrong. And so yeah, they've done really excellent work. And I think it will be a lot of food for thought. Yeah. Good. Yeah, there's a lot on that plate. Okay, great. Well, I also went to the BCA meeting and the Board of Waitment. I had, excuse me, a Burlington Airport Commission meeting. And the update on the sound insulation info is that phase two will cover the next 53 homes and the application to fund that has been submitted. And it will add beyond the 53 and other 50. They're working on the actual map and selection now. It's ongoing right now. So that grant for the next 50 needs to be submitted by May 1st. So I can't tell you which ones have been selected, but they're working on that. How many homes have they worked on so far? There's 53. And they're working on them right now? I believe so. They have the money for that. And they're submitting this grant to identify the next 50. Okay. Have they completed any yet? I don't believe any are completed. When they sound proof, they also weather proof. Weatherize. Well, they're working. I think with the efficiency Vermont, I think we hook them up with in the Vermont gas systems to look at some of the. Some of the other ways to weatherize your home so that when the workers are in there, they excuse me, they can do the same thing. I mean, they can do their thing at the same time. But I don't know how much has been spent or identified on that. I can follow up with that. Do you know? I don't know how much has been spent, but Paul and I did meet with the airport director on this a couple of a week and a half ago. And if you go to BTV sound.com, you can see the map of the parcels that are in phase one group one and phase one group two. BTV dot com BTV sound dot com. Okay. And then, and as you read, where the name of the airport will change to the know what it is. It's not just Leahy, but maybe it's Patrick middle initial Leahy international airport, but the call number BTV will not change. That is very, very difficult and so as it is, it's going to be expensive to change all the signs and all the letterhead and all of that kind of stuff. Then I went to the planning commission meeting and they have been working on and we saw some of that other language that we'll be looking at today for potentially approval. Then they also are moving forward with discussions and really interesting and good discussions I think around the comp plan. While I was there they talked about the arts history in the cultural parts that included scenic views. We talked about extending the official branding for new signs around the city, what that could look like and that that might be important as part of the comp plan. And then they started on the natural resources and conservation sections with and looking at it in the rewrite or the reorganization I guess for the comp plan includes looking at the landscape value as well as the resource value. So it's sort of a different lens I guess to look at things and they were, well they didn't vote on anything they were just discussing but there seemed to be a certain number of members who were quite interested in making sure that the comp plan really dovetails with the energy or our climate plan. So there was, you know, strong voice to do that and not just keep that sort of that plan and we have this plan and never the two shall meet. What else did I do? I met with somebody else and now I can't remember. Anyway, so city manager report. I actually don't have much. I was going to talk about charter but thank you Councillor Emery for being excellent liaison on the outreach front. And I did want to share because we talked about it at the or I talked about my last city update and you're going to hear more about the water tower project later on tonight. At our last meeting I had shared that we had applied for a community recovery and revitalization program grant for a million dollars and that the VEPC board had approved that we were then notified a few days later by staff that staff is not recommending it move forward to the governor that they are deferring it to the next round of funding and they had some advice on how to make it more competitive for the next round of funding. They also recommended that we apply for a Northern border regional commission grant for as an additional funding source so that is on your consent agenda the approval of that tonight. And then just again reminder green update is May 6 the clerk's office has bad so you can come in at any point and collect those during business hours and the drop off will be May 6 between nine and one at 575 577 Dorset which is the school administration building. Okay thank you. Okay item six the consent agenda we have six items the disbursements approval of minutes the approve the settlement reached between the city and Paul Washburn and to authorize the city manager to execute all those documents approve an application for a northern borders regional commission that the city manager just mentioned approve an application for a teen lit mob grant to support programming at the library that's in conjunction with the high school. And then approve an application for Vermont Department of Libraries summer grant program to support the library. Yes, I'm moved to approve but I would like items see to be removed since I do intend to vote differently. Okay, you'd like us to vote on that separately. Please. Okay. And may I point out that in the agenda that was released on Friday item B does not agree with here that this is approved minutes and we don't have any minutes. That's okay. So we only have a right so we'll there's no B. Eliminate B so we'll be voting for the motion will be on a D E and F for approval. Is there a second on that second. Is there any further discussion. Okay, all in favor of agreeing to a D E and F signify by saying aye aye aye that passes then we will separately look at C which is approving the settlement between the city and Paul Washburn. And that Megan would like to to pull that out. Do you do want to make a comment or I will just say that I understand why this will be approved tonight. But I do wish to vote no simply because I do not believe that justice was served in all cases. And Okay, those are my sentiments. All right. Is there a motion to approve. So I'll move that we approve item C which is the settlement between the city and Paul Washburn. There second second. Okay, any further discussion. Tyler isn't with us yet. Okay, so we can still do just voice votes. So all in favor indicate by saying aye aye. So there's three eyes. Nay. Nay. Thank you. So it passes three one with one. Okay, thank you. We ahead of ourselves four minutes but we can. Oh, I didn't see Donna in the back. Hey there. Okay, so let's go on to the really important issue exciting for all of the dog and cat owners that take the time to register their pets. Donna's creation. Right. Yes. Newest city counselors have to bark and meow. We get to pray. No, this is just, you know, this is like the lottery. The name is in there and you get picked or you don't. So this is for the city's top dog and first feeling first feeling. Yes. So that time of the year again. Very exciting. My staff, before I left, you make sure you tell us who won, who won. I feel kind of sad about having to take down the pictures that we have there now. Zoe and Ella, great representation for, for last year. So just kind of get a little bit of business first registration just ended. I know this program is not the only reason it increased. Our staff works hard to make sure that when people come in to register the path that we can continue and complete the application and so kudos to them for, for going the extra step. But this program, this, this contest is a big reason why we succeed in times when other miss families are going down and drastically going down. We're continuing to go up and up every year in a registration. So at this point, we have 26 more dogs registered than we had last year. 35 more cats than we had at this time last year. So, you know, it's nice little, nice little increase. So is it a COVID bump? Actually COVID, I shot a little bit of a decline for a year, but then it perked right back up prior to pre COVID numbers. So, um, maybe it's related to the dog park. Well, I know it's a beautiful dog park. People have a lot of pride in that. So maybe they want to register their dogs to support it. I don't know. Yeah. Um, so just like, like I said, this wouldn't be a success without sponsors. I'm a big kudos out to pet food warehouse who gave us $250 gift cards, one to each dog and the cat. Um, guys farm and yard gave us two bags, probably 10 things of each, of things that each bag for a dog and a cat. And they have been there since day one for us. Um, so. Big gratitude to them. Um, some sponsors we've had over the year. Uh, Kim provost, one of our residents actually does beautiful paintings. And she'll actually paint it eight and a half by eight by 10 picture of the winners. She was gorgeous. Yeah. Um, and I think those things have like a couple hundred dollar value. Sure. Um, Brown's animal hospital gave us an assortment of prizes. Um, Hannah first gave us a gift card so I can go out and buy some of the things that were kind of missing in the package. Um, and we actually had two new things. Effectively cats, um, brought in a crawl tunnels and toys, obviously for cats. Um, and then doggy style salon out in cold chest or actually gave this a really big cow. Dog toy stuffy. I mean, it's. It's really cool. Um, so, so thank you to all those sponsors. Um, and, uh, I guess I'm ready. If you guys are ready. Okay. Actually, because we were so fortunate with people giving donations, I have a couple of runners up that we can do. I got a couple of, like an extra leash, beautiful dog leash and collar. Gorgeous. So we'll draw a second one to get those gone. Uh, let's start with the cats. So you seek to find somebody who wants to draw. I've been playing and they're in big bags. So there's lots of room to shake. Can I draw? Sure. You may. Someone with long arms can reach down there. But do you have to meow? Yeah. See here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See, he has no, he sounds like a cat. Yeah. You win a prize, Tim. Best. Best. Why are there no cat parks? That's one of them. Yeah. He's going to call all the. Tag 561. Keep it on. Pull another one for them. Run her up. Run her up. Tag's 561.1. A different meow. Two more. Three. I know. And then you're going to look them up and announce, right? 618. Thank you. What was that? You're going to announce who that is? Yes. We're here. We're pretty excited. Where's our drum roll? I said 561.1. Write these down. High numbers. Remember what? Hard dog. Okay. Drum roll. 561 is owned by Jillian Norando on Bayberry Lane. And it is a, oh, I missed it. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to cat. Something. A domestic short hair cat orange. So congratulations. Yay. One other time. That name sounds so familiar with the dog. Did she have a dog too? Oh, I don't care. I mean. No, I, I know you can win the lottery more than once. Yeah. No, I don't recall that name. Okay. Um, if you want to. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Um, if we want to do the. Oops. Computers. I hate when they think they're smarter than I am. Never. A caller winner. Oh, Sarah Dopp. Oh. For her. Yay. The last one for the caller is Greta Chapman. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Okay. So now we're on to the dogs. Okay, Andrew, why don't you pull those? I will, but I will not be making animal noises. Even though, even if you pull your own dog, it's, we'll still count it. He's going to howl if he pulls his own dog. Howl to the moon. 1055. I'm just going to get down to it. Yeah. The extra caller we have. 602. I think my number is lower. Okay. Let's see. Tag. 1055. Okay. Let's see. Tag. 1055 belongs to Robin Cooley on Black Lantern Lane. For Sunny. Who is a lab retriever. Chocolate. So congratulations. I'll get in touch with all of them. Oh, and we got one more dog. Yeah. Or a leash or something. Yeah. It goes to Kathy hatch on Farrell street. Chihuahua mix. That's going to be a little too big for a child. Wow. I have a lab in a Chihuahua. Right. The big and the small of it. Yeah. I hope it's a small leash. I know. I'm going to be giving the couch and put it around the middle. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for taking the time for this. Congratulations to the winners. Thank you. And thank everyone for. You know, registering their door, their dog. Because that means that the dog is also. Inoculated for rabies. And that's really important. I think that's a really important thing. For rabies. Right. Really important. I think we should probably have a sign to remind people at the dog park too. You know, Is your dog registered? Yeah. It might remind people or vaccinated or something, but I'm on the dog committee now. So I will raise it with the right committee. It's your dog rabbit. It's your dog rabbit. Yeah. Please don't enter. Okay. We will move on to. Number eight. Thank you, Donna. And this is, we're going to receive a presentation on neater, needed water storage capacity. So we have Tom Di Pietro and. The team. Who helped them. We need another chair up front. Tom, there's one over there. You can do that. You can pull the coffee chair over. Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry. So as Tom's pulling this up, this is a precursor to Tom meeting day. So very far in advance, but some work to do between now and then. So no action needed tonight, but we wanted you to know. The work that was ongoing in advance. All right. Good evening, everybody. Tom Di Pietro director of public works. Excited to be here to talk about water towers. And it's not as exciting as first dog and first cat, but we'll do our best to keep the excitement up tonight. Second water tower, right? This is second water tower. Yeah. So joining me this evening. Our two engineers from Aldrich and Elliott. Jeff Lewis and Jason Booth. They've worked on our water system for decades now. And they're very familiar with it. Also joining us is Jane Adow with our water department. And Joe Duncan with the Champlain water district who supplies our water. So we've got a great, great water team here to answer all your questions and kind of go over a few things this evening. So as Jesse said, our objectives are pretty simple this evening. We just wanted to update council on the project's history and its current status. Discuss kind of the current project actions and where we're at. Answer any questions that counselor, the public may have to help better understand the project and the need. And lay the framework for kind of the next steps in the project, including potentially a bond vote on town meeting day 2024. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jeff. He'll go through some of the specifics of the project and come back for questions at the end. Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for having us. As I said, I'm Jeff from Aldrich and Elliott. Basically just wanted to give you a basic overview and just kind of start with, with your water system. I think it seems like you guys have a pretty high knowledge already based on some of the discussion topics that have come up, but citizens of South Browlands can get their water from Lake Champlain, treated through CWD. It comes from the source goes into CWD for water treatment and is pumped by CWD into the distribution system. CWD, who is represented by Joe and Jay here tonight, provide the treatment and basically the city is responsible for the distribution. So water comes from them, goes into your own storage tanks and gets to all of your fine citizens. And that's the basic idea. What we're talking about tonight is not water treatment. It is the water storage that we're really focused on to get from the tank into your customers. So water tanks, why do we have them? What does a water tank do? This will be explained to me like I'm five. Why do we have a water tank? There are two main purposes for what we're looking for from a storage tank as part of the system. One is to provide storage so that you can meet your daily needs so that we're not having to constantly pump from the water treatment facility all the time. You guys have the storage to meet the needs that are currently there. That includes both your usual usages, like getting water for your day-to-day to usages and also emergent uses such as fire flow when you have a fire and you need to hit the hydrant hard. You want to make sure you don't run out of water for everybody else when that's going on. And that also extends to emergencies such as having enough for long power outages, what have you, storage. That's the number one and it's in the tank, in the name of the storage tank. Number two is not as well known. It's water pressure. And basically the way that that works is if you're holding a stack of books, the higher the stack of books is, the heavier that stack is going to get. So when you have a water system, the higher you put your water, the bigger you build that water column, the heavier that water column gets and the higher your system pressure is. So we have to meet both the storage need and the system's pressure needs by basically balancing those two needs out. I haven't lost anybody yet, so it's a good night. Project needs. So why are we before you tonight? You have in your system, you have basically two service areas. We're going to discuss one of them tonight and I'll get a little bit more into that. But the currently within that system, you have utilized about 98% of the storage capacity in that tank. Every day, the tank uses about 1.4 million gallons. The city has already given away or allocated 500,000 gallons or so, 499,000 gallons of water. There's an allocation that goes to the to Shelburne and then there's also the fire flow demand that's up there. So you have that tiny silver slivers basically all that's not currently allocated or being used by your system. The water supply rules in Vermont require that you plan for expanding your storage or treatment capacity once you reach 90% of your capacity. You guys are beyond that. And then they require that you basically kind of get going. So the concern here is that we don't want to over allocate the city and have to stop all the great development you guys have been working on. We hate to have water be the thing get in the way of all the great things that you guys are trying to try to do. As I mentioned, here's your here's a basic overview of the city of South Browinton, that big blue blob that's there. That's what's known as the high service area. And that's one pressure zone. And that's all that we're talking about tonight. There's a lot of development that's ongoing there, including the city center, you mall, the Wilson road corridor and a couple of other ongoing projects such as the O'Brien estates on logic, better things that you guys have been talking a bunch about. And then that little red area is another service area. And this kind of comes under that pressure need. Basically the big blue blob is at a higher elevation. So we need to keep that at a higher pressure to get all those people serviced. And the little red blob is at a lower pressure. That's serviced by two different tanks. So we're talking about that big tank that's kind of that's indicated by that small star. And that's the South Browinton East storage tank. This tank has an effect on all of the surrounding areas and is connected in certain ways. But the important thing to notice is that we're just talking about the blue section that is what we're talking about tonight. So just a little bit of background on how we got here in 1971. That's when the city first built the tank, the South Browinton East storage tank. That worked out pretty well for quite a while. Didn't really have to do much for it until 2001. A feasibility study was conducted by our firm. And we looked at the time that needing increased storage, the usage in the area had grown up. And you guys were having a similar problem. Evaluated a number of alternatives, including building another storage tank or expanding the existing tank, which is what we ended up actually doing. They raised the tank up, which was a great solution at the time, but that's kind of a one-time deal. We can't really raise it any higher. We'd make the pressure too high and it's just not really economically feasible to raise the tank a second time. It wouldn't really work. So we used that strategy last time. We also, in the interest of that, kind of solved that from that 2001-2004 period. A number of sites were identified as put up there. Throughout the years, the city has continued to look at these sites. In 2017, they updated your master plan. Again, some alternative sites were evaluated. The city continued to look at alternative sites for water storage. And we really kind of sat down again in 2019 and wrote another memo that looked at the feasibility of constructing a second site. At this time, there is no other real alternative site that is available to the city to develop. So you guys have your existing site to work with, which is great in some ways. You don't have to build a long water line to connect to the existing system. It's all right there. But that just kind of limits your options long-term. So with this project, we really want to think long-term, 2007-2070, really want to make sure that we have this handled for now and for the future. Just want to add one thing real quick. Jeff, so seven sites were evaluated. Excuse me. Do you mind standing over there and turning the... Make sure the light is bright green. Thank you. So seven sites were evaluated. And early on, all but the existing tank site in the Eclare site were ruled out, really had a lot to do with elevation. As Jeff mentioned earlier, the pressure issue. So adding an additional tank ruled out six of the alternative sites that were reviewed. And the Eclare site was the last remaining tank where there was some potential. However, given the... There's nothing there now. And the new property owners, I believe, were not on board with having a tank constructed there. So that was the last alternative. And back to Jeff's point, the existing site, you own it. There's a tank there already. And there's room to put a new tank. And it seemed with the infrastructure there to be the best available location. Thank you. And so we evaluated that. And I guess to complete the thought, we evaluated that with the preliminary engineer report that we finished at the beginning of this year. We finalized that and submitted that to the state. What's known as step one engineering, kind of finishing the planning, evaluating of alternatives. And now we're moving into... We're proposing that you guys move into step two and kind of get the ball rolling on moving this forward. So what we're talking about is what was evaluated in that preliminary engineer report. When we're talking about a storage tank of this size, what options exist, and when I say of this size, in order to meet the pressure requirements there, the tank needs to be approximately 130 feet tall on the existing site. So that's a pretty big tank, a pretty tall tank. There's not a ton of options as far as what would really fit that bill. The two main options are a standpipe tank, which is exactly what you guys have there now and that's displayed on the left-hand side there. And that stores water throughout the entire tank, with the top part being at the elevation that we need usable. And the second option is an elevated spheroid tank. And that's a big wide ball, basically, that has all the water up where it needs to be, but based on the configuration and geometry, would be much wider and would be equally tall, but would end up being a much wider tank than what we're proposing as far as this. We're recommending that you guys construct a standpipe tank just based on some other things that we're going to discuss as we go through. So one of the main questions that we looked at for this is what size tank should we construct? You guys have allocated about 98% of your current capacity. Should you just build a smaller tank and just try to basically meet your long-term and your short-term and your long-term needs with the smallest tank possible? Should you build a tank the exact same size and basically make sure that you never have this problem again or the two real questions that we had? So we evaluated building a 1 million gallon tank that would pretty much meet exactly your needs. If you look up there, it would account for about 93% of the anticipated storage by the year 2070 or build a tank that would be the same size as your current tank and give you about, it would have a total capacity that would be about 70% of your needs. So you guys would be well under that recommended allocated use of 90% action level. I guess the quick takeaway here is that the construction cost between the two would be, you'd have a million dollars of difference but on a per gallon per storage basis it would cost significantly less. There'd be two dollars about per gallon as opposed to three dollars and 34 cents per gallon to construct the larger tank. So given the long-term needs and given the available space and you guys not having any other spaces we're recommending that you construct with a full 2.1 million gallon capacity. That also has some advantages when it comes to water quality and having flow come out of the tanks at the same rate and just basically solving long-term needs will also kind of match what's needed in the short term. What was that? Redundancy. So by building a 2.1 million gallon tank you'll have two tanks of the same size so if you ever take one tank off of line you have 100% redundancy right there on site so that if long-term maintenance is ever required you're not going to have to worry about oh we only have the small tank we better do this quick. So here's the proposed site. As you can see it's a neat little site. One of the things to note is since we're showing a stand pipe tank it would fit right on the exact same... it would fit on the existing footprint there's not really anticipated any need to require any additional property. You might need to bump the easement out a little bit but we're not looking at a massive expansion of the current site. One thing to note is if we were to go with the elevated spheroid type tank it's about twice the width so it would really change the landscape it would really change the way that the site would be utilized which is another reason why we kind of pushed this project more towards considering a stand pipe. It'd be a new 53 foot diameter 127 foot tank with a 2.1 million gallon capacity and would increase the storage capacity for the high service area to 4.2 million gallons that's the proposed project. Doorset Street is going to be right over to the right that's basically an access drive there I think I have a better photo just to give you an idea I don't know if you can see my cursor this is the tank and Doorset Street basically runs up and down this way Could I just interrupt too? Of course. So are we going to have two tanks standing side by side? It'll look kind of like that. The one that we currently have is 2.1 million gallons The 2.1 million additional minimum is based on doubling in size population-wise? Right now you guys have and let me see if I put this under a slide Right now you guys have as far as your usages go you use approximately 1.4 million gallons per day We made an estimate given your current growth assuming that you have this allocated capacity I believe that your required usage goes up to a number that I don't have on a slide any longer The actual required is it's above 2 million I have to look at it I apologize if I don't have the exact number It's not a pure 1-to-1 growth Your actual demand total and this number is actually a little bit higher but we end to estimate that you're going to have a demand a required storage of about 2.88 million gallons So if you were to add 3, if you were to add a million gallons per set By 2070? By 2070, looking at it The anticipated demand So just shy of 3 million gallons let's say And so the name of the game is to make sure that you have sufficient capacity to not get close to any of those 90% trigger or any of those triggers that you have to consider adding additional storage on top of that The pressure of the taller tank too and matching it But it does seem to suggest that we're going to be doubling in size What am I not understanding So But more than that The allocated capacity Is that all the homes are in the pipeline? Those are everything that the city is currently allowed to build There's a water supply There's a water supply rule that does that So we have a lot of projects in the pipeline and we allocate out So as a project is proposed it gets its water allocation So that's everything we've approved so far to date to get into the specifics of which projects or not have approvals I'll kind of go back and look at a larger spreadsheet but I will note some things that the housing that's been approved is under construction right now next door So the top floors, the residential portions of those do have an allocation The bottom floor where the commercial space does not currently have its water allocation and they would come back for that when they have tenants So it's sort of a mishmash of which projects currently have their allocation It's slightly decoupled from a pure population extrapolation The population will increase The anticipated usage just based on your population is around where you're at now It's 2.25 or so MGD is what I estimated your average daily use On top of that you're going to continue to have a fire flow requirement that you're going to need to have That brings the number all the way up to approximately 2.7 billion gallons per day And then on top of that you have some additional allocations that we assume will remain such as agreement with Shelburne and there are other allocations that you could potentially have I guess at the end of the day in 2070 we estimate that right now given your current projected growth that you guys would have about a required storage capacity of just under 3 million gallons it would be like 2.8 or whatever I said If that makes any sense For the daily use of residents For the daily use and for needing all of that extra capacity that you need such as fire flow for all of your additional allocations that you guys currently have out of your tank It would be less than a third of a million gallons per day How would it be just under 3 million gallons per day So currently it's about it's going up I apologize for not having that number That'd be great So currently you guys this is your current usage right This big blue thing is 1.4 million gallons per day That's currently what's used About a half million gallons or 500,000 gallons is going to come into usage So that's right under 2 million gallons per day That number is not going to grow exponentially We anticipate that that number will land right at about 2.3 or 2.4 million gallons per day So that number continues to grow On top of that there's a fire flow demand This fire flow demand is underrepresented on this graph But that fire flow demand can be quite large So to plan for that 500,000 gallons Which is about what that needs to be That brings that number up to about 2.8 million gallons And then you have some some other random usage that are like some other allocations that are very small So calling it about 2.8 million gallons is about where we're at The actual number that we came up with for the 2070 number I think I put on that slide was 2.9 million gallons per day as the estimated required storage for all of those needs And our capacity with building a second tank would be 4 million? And that's why we're trying to figure out what size to make that second tank So we evaluated basically two main things One adding 1 million gallons of storage Which would put your total capacity at 3.2 million gallons And one adding a tank the same size which has some other benefits and having it be 4.2 million gallons So all of that said if you have a tank of the same size then you're going to have approximately 70% of your tank is going to be used or needed for your current storage Which is a good comfortable level to be at. There's other things that we evaluated such as tank turnover You want your tank to turn over no more than approximately over 3 days So we don't want to make it too big where it's not turning over And you also don't want it to be too small It's not ideal to have your tank being used every single day Providing you with the storage that you guys need if anything were to happen to the great folks at CWD What do you mean by that? I'm sorry Joe can probably speak more about that You pumped that tank that existed a several times a day You filled it several times Let's hear the story of the tank So Joe's the expert on that They're pumping almost constantly I'll just say to follow up on the question Will you just tell the audience Joe Duncan with the Champion Water District General Manager To answer the question In 2070 you'll need about 3 million gallons a day up from the 1.4 that you're at today The proposal is to put 4.2 million gallons of storage there basically doubling the storage you have now from going from 2.1 to 4.2 by putting a twin 2.1 in there And the reason is tying in the original piece that you're out of tank sites If you're going to build a small tank now there's a good chance you'll be kicking yourself in the future at $2 a gallon to have built a 1 million gallon tank now to get you where you need to be when you can build a 2.1 twin There's a lot of hydraulic benefits there from an operation standpoint as well as That's from a CWD perspective selfishly which you don't need to It's great to work with you on and saying If I was the city, I would not want to be out in 2070 wishing I had built 2.1 when I only built a 1 million gallon tank That's basically what's being presented here My question is If the tank is emptying you pump and you fill it So argue with me why you need a second tank If your tank is emptying, just fill it again What does the supply rule say that What happens if the line 2 from CWD is down What happens if power is down What happens if there is no source pumping There is no water coming from the source from the treatment plant into South Burlington So every community one of the things that to keep things simple didn't get into is the water supply rules require you to have 24 hours of storage available to you in the event that your source is not available to fill that tank So that makes sense 24 hours because you would drain the tank 24 hours We wouldn't drain this tank in 24 hours today Currently you would drain it very quickly You would drain it in about a day and a half day and a half So you have that 24 hours Do you get added benefit with two tanks in case one needs maintenance Correct, it's a very old struggle right now to rely solely on the transmission system when that tank is offline and it happens every 5 to 10 years So in 2017 you emptied the tank and cleaned it out and painted it, right? And it was down for a couple weeks About two and a half months That long? So in the interim you guys were entirely reliant on CWD's pumps the entire time So if they ever had a problem which they have great redundancy it's not likely but it's something we have to plan for It's not ideal for the city to have to rely on that forever Interestingly as a frame of reference the main service that serves basically Shelburne Road at a lower elevation that has actually two tanks So with your very small service area actually has the redundancy that you currently need your large area does not and that's been kind of a focus over time of some of the studies if you look back at some of the plans that have been done Well aesthetically I like the two towers But the red service area how much does how much do those tanks hold? Now you're testing me I think each of those is a 500,000 gallon tank but that's a report that I've looked at in a little bit two 500,000 gallon tanks And then have you worked with Shelburne? Are they satisfied with moving forward at 81,000 gallons I mean they're a growing community as well certainly not as fast as ours but we did reach out at this time they said they're all set with their current allocation they're using not all of it but most of it around 70,000 J is that right? That's right But perhaps in the future they may need more and they could call us at that point That might be different, yes So you guys would have good long term flexibility as well part of giving you some extra storage is giving you guys the ability to have unknowns occur and not be needing to look for another tank to be to need to be constructed And since the water district is full of Chittenden County isn't it or almost every community is there with this kind of redundancy or as well as the excess capacity does that allow us to support another community you know something happens to one of their water towers or I don't know It does provide some flexibility within the area because there are without getting too much detail there's a pressure zone that pretty much goes from south Burlington through Williston Essex up to through Colchester to a portion of Milton that is all on the same gradient So this tank definitely does set the bar for the gradient throughout the county so you could certainly have some advantage in having some extra storage in that tank when needing to move water around one is say Williston industrial lab has a break and they need there's no other way to get water over there and our pumping system was out Yeah so besides Shelburne have we ever had an agreement with another community to provide them some water? No there is a relationship with Burlington on an emergency basis with providing some water back and forth mostly at the at the Jug handle Thank you Are there other questions? We have a couple more slides to get through I think You guys hit on the hottest question which is what size to make this tank which is one that we struggled with a lot but I feel like that's a fair point to be asking about Just how did you get to that number I still don't know Maybe we'll just move on to the cost Why do you estimate the fire capacity like going up 10 falls So this is a good question So basically in order to look at fire flow capacity there's a couple different sources out there the short answer is there's a requirement that you guys provide that the city provides 3,500 gallons per minute for 3 hour duration which I think comes out to it's over 600,000 it's 630,000 gallons that's the full storage requirement most cities and towns they would have to provide all of that themselves that's what they would be required to carry as mentioned you guys have the benefit of being directly attached to CWD's massive pumps so the state has allowed you to count that as a fire flow credit which takes the burden off of the storage tank the amount of the burden that is taken off of the storage tank is slightly debatable and has changed in recent years and may decrease more in the future the reason why I threw 500,000 is just to say if you guys had to in the future carry all of it even without that with your current allotted fire flow capacity that you have to carry that's where the estimate is around 3,000,000 gallons that's what I'm currently assuming talking about not planning for future who knows what's going to happen there is an additional fire flow capacity that may need to be required by the city some point in the future that would be really handy to have this available that we're not currently that we're not currently leaning on but to answer your question I guess currently there's based on their fire flow credit and the fire flow requirement it's about 135,000 gallons of storage that needs to go towards fire flow currently does Shilbert pay us for the allocated capacity do we lease that and if we have excess capacity so we'll have a lot of excess capacity if we build this extra tank yes they paid us for the construction value at the time and if they were ever interested and we had the capacity we could entertain doing that again I'd be happy to share that agreement with council just take a look at it if you'd like so will they be part of the second tank they will not we asked them if they'd like to participate if they wanted more storage and they said they were good for now okay and I think you had indicated that you still don't understand the water quality difference no no no I don't understand the assumptions that go into us needing to double I'd be happy to provide the report that walks through all of what we're talking about I guess the last point that's kind of there if you were to have a small tank next to a big tank the draw off from those two tanks will be different so even if they're mixed perfectly which isn't usually achievable you'd have very different water ages in the two different tanks and there's ways they can try to avoid that where we have two different tanks with two different ages that are going to have a water quality issue of really old water entering your system and having other problems so that's I guess the last little piece I'd like to kind of end there for that otherwise you'd just fill both the same amount they will always be at the same level so if one was shorter that's the problem the shorter tank it would just be a dead space it would just kind of sit so you have to build them at the same height so that they actually both get used so that wouldn't add to our capacity it would just fill both of them half way I mean one full, the short one it wouldn't add dead capacity we're not yeah you wouldn't add any usable capacity there because once it drops where the system was using it then it would never get used and that's part of why you need one of these two types of tanks hell that's an important point though they're different sizes into the project cost and how much this would cost we estimate currently that the construction of the tank will be $4.3 million given how everything has been these last few years I don't know if the construction industry has been increasing very rapidly we've also included a 15% construction contingency for $648,000 we've already completed the preliminary engineering study we've listed there at $23,000 there's proposed engineering services for final design and permitting the city is currently putting out a request for qualifications for an engineer to do that final design and then based on the state revolving fund curve there's a maximum amount that could be applied for there at about $260,000 required engineering for construction phase services at about $450,000 other cost which is administration, Tom's time the permitting all that kind of stuff is estimated at about $24,000 for a total project cost that we're recommending of $5.75 million impact on the rates how would this impact your users currently we're assuming that the city is not going to qualify for any grant or subsidy funding as noted earlier in this meeting you have applied for some grants including the northern borders that you guys just applied for which will hopefully help we anticipate that this project will go through the drinking water SRF program that program would provide a 2% loan over a 30-year term and we estimate that the annual repayment would be approximately $257,000 $257,000 $720 per year for your average user looking only at the usage fee our firm is currently doing a usage and rate analysis for the city which could also play how this works under those assumptions of just looking at the current fees we anticipate that the current user would see an increase of about $19.38 per year for this project for 30 years yes other things go up in cost too and accept that this does not include any future growth so it's assuming stagnant growth it assumes your current user base covering everything and just through their user fee as well which is not necessarily how you would have to build this project whoever is doing your final somebody could help you look and see how you want to do that project timeline we finished the PR in January currently the city is selecting a step to engineer the most aggressive timeline has you guys starting a final design in May finishing final design in about December getting through the permitting process optimistically looking to start construction in April you would need to conduct a bond vote for a project of this size that would involve more public outreach, more questions, and more making sure that everybody is on the same page and looking at getting going in May and finishing construction in December of 2024 with a one-year warranty in December of 2025 um yes any additional questions or anything else that we can help clarify I know that I've taken up a lot of your time already but we best a lot of questions we can continue to discuss anything that's unclear would it be possible to have the excess capacity serve the main service area and not utilize those two small tanks and would that save money and is that feasible what is your question not we have these two small tanks in this other area the city oh in the red area so we can have all this capacity now at a very high elevation could you just now just have one site of the pressure you have excess pressure is kind of the problem there so there is theoretically a way to do that would be too much pressure is that the point it'd be too much pressure your stack of books is too high for that area just crush that area um so Jason can talk on that fire hose coming out of your sink is the mic on I'm sorry those two service areas are disconnected at this point there's pressure reducing zones between those two so interconnecting them might be a little bit more challenging hydraulically and that is a lower service area um so the pressure would be excessive for what's in that area and then you still have those two tanks which are on a different hydraulic gradient at this point so I think they'd be a little bit challenging interconnecting those Joe Jay any good question you have one million gallons of storage in the low you'd be adding an additional one million gallons of excess capacity in the high you're kind of you'd be handcuffing yourself in the main service ultimately long term the other pieces I think that you're going to wind up you can't they're currently not interconnected so any money you're going to spend to try and save on putting in a smaller tank or eliminating those tanks you're going to spend in putting in infrastructure that anybody who knows water systems and runs PRVs you're going to hate having to operate those PRVs over pressure reducing valves yeah oh sorry pressure reducing valves my bad yeah too much uh too much lingo the uh those pressure using valves would not be reliable and not a really a good long term solution when you have the two tanks it wouldn't be recommended in the end although a very good idea in consideration but uh it certainly is not something we would recommend okay are there other questions is this a candidate for an impact fee so um the way we would fund the project going forward from our user fee standpoint too is we sell those allocations that we spoke of earlier so we would set those allocations uh such that we could pay back the loan with them if development goes as planned um so there's not that is sort of the impact fee it's when you build your new development you pay for that allocation which you're basically paying for that capacity we should have done that 10 years ago and then we would have had all the money right i mean if we had had an impact fee with the understanding that in 2024 we need to double our um capacity we could have been collecting that all along that's sort of what the allocation fee is that's the impact fee i'm sorry if i wasn't clear but it's kind of there already um i will note that our rates are really low currently and we're looking at that in the rate study you keep hearing me talk about when i come here um we're working on that uh hopefully talk to you about it soon but yeah Tommy when you say um pay for it with the allocation you mean um because the anticipated growth of the city will bring everyone's rates back down to where they are is that is that what you mean when you say it's paid for ready through the allocation can you describe the allocation yeah what that is what that means yeah sure so um let's say you're building um a new home or a new building you have to have so much water capacity per day i mean that's calculated through the state rules there's ways you calculate that so you pay the city a rate the allocation fee rate for those gallons per day and that's how meet me like we all pay is that so that's the user fee so then there's the typical user fee where if you use x gallons of water per day you pay for every thousand gallons you pay a certain rate so two separate fees we have permit fee so well so the it's already like an impact fee yeah oh there's already a permit fee on new construction for this for now yes it's an allocation fee it's not an impact not an impact but it's a like an impact is that right allocation impact okay so it's a one time fee that you pay when you're initially connecting to the system there's an allocation fee that you pay to that makes sense okay and it's anticipated that the sum of those through the which in the pipeline which will be enough to pay this bond is that we'll pay back yeah bond payments yep and then everybody still pays the user fees that all the ongoing maintenance and we purchase water from CWD it pays for that so the twenty dollars that I showed that goes up for everybody's fee a year assumes that it all goes on to the usage fee so that's up to you guys to decide how you would like to actually implement that or I guess Tom or whoever's doing that see those numbers with this allocation fee folded in so what's like the real cost but currently we're just assuming it goes on to the user fee so the city has a number of ways that they can reduce that burden on the user we are trying to show the most it's automatic that there is an allocation fee I mean it's not like we we choose to impose right it exists already exists already and we're going to talk about that when we come back with a rate study okay counselor tell me you'll get a good opportunity to dive into those numbers like soon are there other questions by counselors last comment can we paint the second tank a different color than the other tank can my wife get up there on a scaffolding and paint the rest of the tank and we do what they did in Boston at the natural gas or down at what's the car place dealer dot com yeah we could at counsel's direction we could propose certain things but this goes through the act 250 process and there are aesthetic considerations as part of that I'll bet there are okay we have one person in the audience and then Roseanne Greco on line would like to comment do you want to come up and make your comment or question I just want to note to the council that Tyler is here as well apologies for the delay I'll give you a chance Tyler after we hear from the public Lisa yank house here live in Queen City Park over a million gallons is a hell of a lot of water what's that going to do to the lake and does any of this construction involve your main site in the pump house area because that could impact my neighborhood in a very big way so I'll take that one that's the Champlain Water District pump area and nothing's proposed this project's not going to impact that at all because in the past we've only done something else okay thank you Roseanne Greco yes counselors this is the cost of development obviously I hope you got that but I think this would be a great opportunity to talk about water and the natural resource that water is which is finite I know you're only talking about storage tank and you're not talking about the availability of water like Champlain or the quality of that water but imagine what it would be if we talked about reducing our use of water very very wasteful in how we use water and other parts of the world are suffering from droughts and their projection is with climate change we may be in the future too so I really hope you could use this opportunity to take a real broader environmental climate crisis focused look on water and whether or not we need we don't need but evaluate what our water uses is the more you have the more we're going to use and I think past time we talk about this and not just can we afford it economically build it and we'll use more so I urge you to take this issue as an opportunity to weigh it against the climate crisis and what does this mean for it and what does natural resource of water mean to us and how do we use it thank you Tyler were you here for the presentation or did you just join I want to give you the opportunity to ask questions I appreciate I appreciate the consideration I was not here for the presentation so I'm not prepared to well this isn't the final decision this was just informational understood any other questions so if we have to build a second tank what does the Champlain water district have to do by 2070 to increase their ability to process water from the lake and pump it can you just build a new storage tank like four years ago right good question so Champlain water district draws water out of Shelburne Bay 33 billion gallons of water in Shelburne Bay we are rated to treat 20 million gallons a day we currently have about 9.5 million gallons out of our facility the way storage works in our systems is because Shelburne County and the rest of Vermont loves local control we own the storage tanks we own the shelves of the storage tanks we do own the four tanks that are in the three tanks that are in not south brunken we would require the city south brunken this tank to our stand in order for it to be turned over to us the way it works is the volume in those tanks is yours probably sounds a little strange but the volume is in there is in the south brunken because communities like their own local control would be able to say I have this water that is mine that I can decide where I want to put the water in my community we have a plant that is rated for 20 million gallons a day currently only doing 9.5 million gallons a day so the growth that we foresee around the county we don't anticipate being anywhere near the limit of our plant within the 7th and 10th I would note I don't know how many years ago it was but didn't you receive a national award for the cleanest water or the best tasting water or something so we want to keep up that quality yeah okay thank you we'll probably see you again sometime okay so Tom don't go too far oh no it's Erica excuse me are you going to sit with Erica our next item is the traffic request evaluation guidance so while they're setting up for this I do want to do a little bit of table setting as this is kind of a we don't usually bring you presentations like this but because what Erica and Tom are going to present to you has such a nexus to constituent requests that you all get and to the budget that you will consider in the future we want to make sure you are aware of it and we're brought in and that you had the opportunity to provide input before we implemented this modernization okay great thank you for that thank you for that Jesse I'm Erica Quallen deputy director of capital projects at TPW so oh I guess so tonight like Jesse said we're going to be presenting to you the process we've been going through to update the way we handle and process traffic requests that come in this is not related to any specific project it's just based on historically how TPW has processed these requests it's time for a bit of an upgrade and I forgot to mention I'm not sure if he's here but Israel Maynard from STANTEC he's here he is joining us virtually for any questions to jump in he has been on the consultant team in developing this process with us so a little bit of background on how this came to be public works we get a lot of requests from the public on all sorts of things related to traffic in terms of speed on any street pedestrian and bicycle safety folks maybe getting more cut through traffic in their neighborhood than it was designed for and so we wanted to look at how we can address these in a very objective way rather than the one that seems to maybe fit in with a project that's already going it might be a quick hitting item to say what are the priorities based on a lot of the factors that will be running through and so the overarching goal of this like I said is to provide an objective, a transparent and equitable process for how we identify projects, evaluate, prioritize and eventually implement different strategies based on public requests and I'll just note that these aren't the requests that might come out of an engineering study that we're already doing that says we recommend X in this location this is from public requests that are currently emailing or calling or whatever way they are currently issuing their request so I'm going to be running through kind of the eight primary steps that this guidance document takes you through I know it was in your packet but it's not a necessarily a small document so I'll be giving you the highlights for each step and kind of what that means for us for the public and how these requests work so the first step of course is you have to make the request so this will be an application kind of a standard form we have a current standard form online but it doesn't ask for a lot of the things that we need for this so we're updating a very easy to use kind of portal click through answer some questions check some boxes submit and it will come into our dpw email address you can also print it out fill in a pdf and email it to us anyway to get it to us so I already kind of mentioned why folks might be submitting this but it is important to note that this isn't to request say this intersection I think should be a four-way stop can you please put a stop signs there or their operational issues with this traffic signal and this is going to be more for a generalized concern of I'm seeing vehicles travel really fast on my neighborhood or it's really hard to cross the street in this 500 foot stretch so then we're going to go through a lot of kind of initial screening there are going to be a lot of numbers on here but they are actually quite simple and I've already made a test spreadsheet to see how they play out just to see is it straightforward for us to be able to handle also this first step there's going to be three phases of scoring this first one is our initial screening that takes into account really two primary metrics the traffic conditions or the number of vehicles on the road and then a few safety concerns so these numbers up here are based on reviews of kind of what's going on already for traffic and what other similar manuals and other municipalities are kind of using and these are all being done on a per vehicle or per mile basis here to really normalize the playing field so that if someone is requesting something over a 500 foot stretch that only sees one crash versus someone who's submitting a request about a mile stretch that has 30 crashes that the straight number doesn't really convey the different types of safety issues and so throughout all of this each request is going to be accumulating kind of points throughout this and that's just based on all of these criteria we're going through so if you are a local street but experiencing a pretty high volume you could equate to more points because maybe that street wasn't designed for it that might be a sign that you have a lot of cut through traffic safety pretty self-explanatory and then on these there are a few different areas where request would get a higher prioritization score based on very key characteristics like even if there might be one crash per point two miles if it involved a bicycle or a pedestrian that immediately gets additional prioritization here because that indicates a higher concern in looking out for those vulnerable users so on here there are maximum possible scores at all of these steps and we've set thresholds of moving on to kind of the next phase so in this case the maximum possible score is 44 and the threshold to move to preliminary scoring is 30 so you really need to kind of check one of the boxes and you'll be able to get pretty close to that 30 if you're a local street with a lot of vehicles that might indicate a problem or even if it's not very high volume but there are a lot of crashes again it would signify a problem but you fill out the numbers it's not the person they just identify the street area and the issues and then you go through that yeah that's a great point so there's definitely some additional staff work on the back of this that comes with implementing this process but the metrics have been chosen that they're fairly easy to collect data at the beginning a lot of this is publicly available data VTRANS and the regional planning commission do yearly counts very frequently and we get to submit what streets we'd like during the summer from the regional planning commission and any crash that gets a police report goes to the state and they maintain a database that we can search that's all publicly available public doesn't need to go to all these different databases that is correct they do not have to do that it has taken me a number of years to navigate these they're now very simple for me but I won't be asking everyone to go through that that's why we have professional experts on staff that are good to have the public understand as they look at this so the next step the last one all of those criteria were related to transportation specifically since this is a really transportation driven effort but the next one the next step going into preliminary scoring takes into account a bit more of the environment that it is in so looking at bicycle and pedestrian facilities what type of facility is available actually having a fully separated shared use path provides a much safer environment inherently for bicyclists and pedestrians rather than not having a sidewalk at all or having kind of intermittent pieces so the request would become a higher priority if it doesn't have facilities and we're forcing all the users to share and again this is another place for prioritization if there's a mid block crossing so crossing is not signalized or at a stop intersection that again increases the presence of those vulnerable users and increases therefore increases the risk and then the next community criteria are what's what are called people generators so places where more people are likely to be around so things like a lot of retail facilities maybe being near all or being near a library high density areas a large employer or schools and if one of those people generators is a school that is another place for additional prioritization because again more vulnerable users you're going to be seeing more kiddos so adding the transportation scoring that we saw in the previous slide to this community area gives us the preliminary score and the max score here of that transportation plus community is 72 and the threshold to move to community outreach the next step is 45 so you have to score at least 15 points in this to then continue through this and if a request didn't meet either of those thresholds either step two or step three there is a chance to be re-evaluated in three years to give it some time for maybe conditions to change so that the numbers would come out differently but still have an opportunity to be looked at again so that next step for any request that are continuing through the process is an initial community outreach point so these requests we would have it would be as an agenda item on an existing bike committee meeting I have talked to them about this and they are okay with that this wouldn't be kind of a large scale traditional public meeting but it would be born as an agenda item on there and it would be a shorter discussion really for the folks who put forth the request to come and elaborate on it and the bike pad committee to kind of say like yeah we do think that is an important area to consider or maybe some folks agree with it might come and express that so we can just get a clearer picture and I am already at all of those meetings as the staff liaison so this is one place where there wouldn't be a big additional staff effort so if it is gleaned that generally supportive from the neighbors and or the committee then the next phase would happen and this is where the staff effort starts to kind of increase so the committee stop it and its tracks I wouldn't say that if they said oh we don't really think this is a good idea that it would definitely stop if the especially if maybe it was really highly scored and we see that safety is a really huge concern based on the crash data and the neighbors okay yeah so they they can't say shut it down kind of deal but it's kind of just a touch point for them to say maybe this is the area we want to focus on based on this so the next step after that community outreach is the technical evaluation so we start to get a bit more in the weeds this is where we would have to go out and collect speed data a lot of times where we get the count data sometimes if they did the road tubes those also collect speed data so sometimes it already exists in the past few years or we might have to go out and get it and so an example of what we'd look at I have just kind of a sample of what speed data looks like over here and based on what is counted from that data collection effort you'd look at the 85th percentile speed which is something I know we've brought up here but that is the speed at which 85% of traffic is traveling at or below and so that will be a big data point in that final scoring and based on that community outreach and looking at the area in a bit more detail we'll start to pull together some initial design recommendations which might be as simple as totally ruling out a few that just don't make sense for the area or some we think might be worth exploring more and what happens with the speed data 85% are really traveling significantly higher than the posted traffic speed limit that is a great question so we use exactly that data if we find on a 25 mile an hour road that folks the 85th percentile speed is actually 36 and they're traveling 11 miles per hour over they that would then go into here and so that 11 miles per hour over the speed limit each mile per hour is two points up to 28 points so up to 14 miles per hour over they will be counted and then once you're over that 14 you get the full amount good so this is kind of the way that all three of those scoring processes add up the initial was 44 just the transportation then we added the community with a maximum of 28 and then another maximum of 28 based on speed for a maximum total score of 100 so if a request has made it this far it's probably worth talking about so we're going to go back to the bike pad committee and this is going to be a bit more where we talk about the specifics I might be there to present some of the ideas that we're starting to think about that maybe this is a good area to improve sight lines maybe this is a good area to neck down an intersection all sorts of things and so that would be kind of the focus of discussion again it wouldn't be the whole bike pad committee but it would be an agenda item so based on that conversation we move into the final step which is design and implementation which is like kind of two steps but 8a and b here so it has to kind of break out into two options here if it is a lower cost solution something that staff can handle in house something that we have staff in budget capacity for that falls within an existing budget line item we can add it to our list of ongoing projects internally to do when it becomes a project that is out of current staff and budget scope then that would have to come before you as a capital improvement project and talk through where the funding source for that would be is it from the general fund is it a bike pad improvement from penny for pass is it coming from somewhere it is the case that we would usually have to bring in a consultant and go through a more traditional design and construction process for so that is kind of the whole process to just wrap this up before opening it up for any of your questions in the appendix of the document that you all have is a lot of different sample design treatments it is not a fully exhaustive list but it is pretty close obviously new things come out all the time but I want to just throw some examples up here to kind of give you an idea of the scale of projects that would come out of this so that it is not going to be something where you look at the entirety of a road and assess it from A to Z this is going to be a bit more targeted approach something like a block of road that a speed hump would really help through here necking down an intersection adding some pavement markings to make bicyclists more visible things like that the median island one spear and pheasant that is pheasant way entering onto spear street if you want to guess where the speed humps are I would be impressed it is coming out of pheasant onto spear you are driving on spear so it does not look like that the pavement markings are not local I was out on a not great day but the speed humps if you could guess that straight I would be very impressed is that proctor? it is on curie curie lane I spent a day driving around in there there were some good examples last time I driven on curie so some next steps of what does this actually mean how does this go into effect we have obviously been receiving requests for a long while now and those that have not been addressed and their entirety will go through this actual scoring and prioritization process and the ones that meet the priority thresholds we are going to jump into that community outreach like I said when I met with the bike ped committee last week they were on board for this because that is really at the heart of their goals is to keep folks safe on the streets and so many of these are neighborhood streets and pedestrians they were very on board for this and I also want to mention that these requests it is not going to be like we fill in the spreadsheet as soon as one comes in our plan is to kind of batch them quarterly let the requests come in so that we are not necessarily overburdened with data collection or every month that a bike ped committee is set aside for something like this so batching them quarterly makes sense also for data collection efforts we can kind of do a round of data collection over the course of a couple months go to a lot of streets rather than just all these one-offs and then the projects that are going through the request process or through the requests that are going through the prioritization process excuse me we will be back in October and October through January to talk about those projects that seem to rise to the top to move forward as future capital projects and so I will at the state roads this can apply to them correct correct so that's seven and one sixteen and two correct but this would be our ranking prioritization so they still would still reach out and work with them for any implementation we'd like to do right they could still go through this process but we wouldn't be able to immediately even if it was one in stock capacity we couldn't immediately do it great any questions Tyler do you have any I can't see you so if you I do thank you and Eric thank you for all your hard work this is a remarkably comprehensive document I guess a question for Eric and also for the balance of the councils in this in this order am I correct in that to pass phase one the only way that it can pass phase one would be to meet this criteria the initial screening right so we're looking at I guess what said differently did you discuss was it ever discussed the quantitative data is important but I guess my not concern but my question lies around this is seems to be somewhat reactive rather than proactive right so we're waiting for an accident perhaps to occur or for a multitude of crashes to occur as opposed to and it wouldn't be able to proceed past this until something like that happened did you explore any measures that would allow for us to move to pass phase past step two there were more holistic in nature or qualitative in nature maybe by collecting X number of signatures or if there were maybe it wouldn't even need to be qualitative maybe it could still be quantitative and if there were X number of school children who happened to live next to the area I just I'd like I'd love the council's thoughts on whether or not I don't have a whole lot of experience in this but it just seems to me to be almost a little and I don't mean this in a critical way so please forgive me I just the words skate me but just like I'm wondering if there might be a possible possible way to make it more proactive as opposed to reactive and I'd love people's thoughts yeah I really appreciate that question when you brought up signatures we did actually discuss that during the community outreach or in the submission of these things but what I'm hearing correct me if I'm wrong here is instead of kind of breaking out this initial scoring and preliminary scoring to kind of look at them at once to take into account some of that land use consideration like you're saying if there are school children nearby there are that is taken into account and being able to look at that from transportation and land use kind of jointly am I rephrasing that correctly yeah I'll allow you to be more prescriptive with it but yes I think in essence we're saying the same thing is I just I would hate to see us I would hate to see a proposed project not make it past step two because we haven't had an accident yet and then we do have an accident and that's the catalyst that puts it over a threshold does that make sense I don't know from a prescriptive standpoint I'm I'm not the person to say what how we could account for that earlier in the process if it would be taking some of these elements out of step three and putting there that might seem to be a great solution for it but I just you understand where I'm coming from and then I would hate to see some concern a group of concerned citizens get together bring something forward and that's not being able to do anything because it hasn't happened yet under there does that make sense yeah absolutely I very much hear that and another way that we have tried to take that into account this hasn't been officially published and started use so that is why we're here to hear your feedback on this for exactly things like that this is another reason why we wanted to make sure that things could go through the process again so that not necessarily to wait for that crash or something like that but in the way of a new building pops up so now there are more people there so you want to make sure that gets taken into account but I very much hear you in terms of looking at the kind of environmental factors not just the traffic numbers initially other questions from the council none okay John did you want to comment have a question you're muted for us I can see you're not moving but thank you no I'm listening but I'm here for later on in the agenda thank you for asking alright well if there's no other comments I would just say that you probably get a lot of feedback from the public about traffic issues on streets and stuff and you have to pour it into some sort of a sieve right to figure out which ones you're going to react to and this gives you a structured way to do that that seems pretty fair to try and evaluate the issues that are more important than others and then take it to the public a couple of times and then prioritize what your work plan is going to be and whether it needs to go to current budget or to the CIP so if somebody calls and they go well we have a way to evaluate this and everybody goes through this process so if you'll be patient and go through this process with us we'll find out just how important it really is relative to other things because we have priorities in the city so I understand that but to Tyler's point without a crash you don't pass that 30 point threshold in that first category so and I can see how the school in addition to the number of cars going on that street could somehow get you past the threshold I know that we're already doing that so it's kind of a hypothetical now that we're already doing that yeah I do absolutely hear that and we can definitely explore some more here Israel and his team did a lot of doing of existing manuals and guidance documents that other municipalities are using all over the country but one thing to know not to say that we're absolutely tied to this order a lot of these things are really interconnected where if you have one of those people generators nearby that will inherently increase your number of vehicles in that area and then when you have more vehicles the risk goes up just by the nature of the math there but I do absolutely hear you in that it could end up being reactive in ways so yeah we're very much appreciate that feedback thank you criteria can be fluid if they find out through experience that nothing is rising to the level where it gets any attention we may have to recalibrate your first comment was absolutely right and also that we can adjust this as we move forward but right now I feel a strong need to have a way to those calls I get where people are speeding in my neighborhood I want speed bumps figure out a way to weigh those against each other because right now my response is okay thank you for calling me to put you on the list as funding becomes available but I'd like to have a more transparent way to do that and as Erica alluded to I'd like to have a way to come to council to say I have this backlog of projects that we could do for traffic safety pedestrian bike safety whatever it may be and we could talk about that during budget season as we move forward I think that is very thoughtful and makes sense and I realize it's not perfect but once it's implemented just like the LDR she can make changes to ratify some some unintended consequence can I make some wrap up comments certainly may sorry Tyler no I agree it's an incredible first step and I apologize if I came across as overly critical that was my only feedback but otherwise it's a very go from not having a policy or a procedure to this is very impressive great work so just one last point on the crash data I think it's important to note that I think when we all hear crash data we think of big fiery crashes and the reality is most crashes are bumper to bumper fender benders not that those are insignificant at all and we want to encourage them but I think that we will see some of these requests from the community having those that kind of crash data that we may not think exist out there right now whenever there is a crash that whenever there is a significant crash in the city the police and the state police reconstruction unit do do a evaluation of was there causality with the infrastructure we have in place and that is treated very differently than this resident process so I just want to be clear that we are very attentive to health and safety on our streets in the event of an accident and then finally just to wrap up if I may Madam Chair I want to embarrass Tom for a minute and Erica and Israel have done an enormous amount of work on this Tom I think as a lot of you know has had most of his career in our public works department in my experience when you have a leader like that who comes up within a department and then takes on a leadership role it is sometimes hard for them to see the improvements that need to be made and see how we could do things better I have never seen a professional like Tom who can hit the ground running and really identify where those areas of modernization and process improvement are needed and I give him a ton of credit for getting us to where we are now and leading Erica and the team through this effort so I just want to acknowledge that this is a huge improvement this is completely arbitrary right now how we are handling these requests and not transparent to our community so to put in a system that is equitable and transparent is a massive improvement for our 20,000 residents so thank you Tom thank you thank you okay let's move on then if there's no other comments or questions to item 10 which is receiving an update on the city center development the tax increment financing district and the form base we call that at least the other things that we have covered we have struggled to get as much people content as we would I wanna Blanchard the community development director and Paul Connor are planning and zoning director are going to give this to us thank you hey folks so welcome I don't see either of you thanks so just a table set while Alana comes on appreciate that the community thinks we are going in the right direction. We then have, you all had some conversations about what's going on in the TIF district and clarity about what's coming next. So we wanted to provide kind of a universal update, comprehensive update on where we stand, not only with the TIF district but city center globally and the form-based code district to be responsive to those conversations happening out in the community. It's going. It's still going. It's still going. $80,000 later. We think we are scheduling our EXA interview with them in May, which is kind of the final final step, which is a great sign. Will these TVs be changed at all? Can they be tipped up? Is it pretty easy? Yeah, go tip it. See what happens. Don't make it fall. So, you can start. Crushes this TV. Right. And no points for a crush. So, thank you for having us tonight. You know, I think we're at a really, really exciting point in the city center TIF district. We're sort of teenagers at the moment. And as you can see from the picture in front of you, there's a lot happening. The city is definitely growing and we're a bit awkward right now, but there's a lot of change happening and a lot of change planned. So we wanted to share some of that with you today and just give a general overview of what has happened until now in terms of what's been developed, what's been approved, what the city's working on or has approved and what the private sector has. So Paul and I are going to jointly do this, which also may be somewhat like a teenager, a little awkward because we're like, oh, we both have things to say on that side. So, here we go. If the slide will advance. Let's see. Do you have a glare coming up? No, I don't have a glare. I'm sure. So we wanted to start with the geography of the TIF district. The city center is often thought of as just Market Street and it's really much wider and more has a much more exciting geography than that. It's both developed areas and undeveloped areas and the TIF district itself extends all the way down San Remo and all the way to Hinesburg Road and all the way to Williston Road and many of the projects are actually outside of the TIF district because they serve the TIF district meeting the state standard. But overall, city center is much larger and the TIF district makes up about a third of the area. There we go. So the form-based code encompasses the area that we think of as city center and I think Paul would like to speak. Yeah, so just to, you know, this was the purple area is the area that was adopted in 2016 as your form-based code and that was really the areas that one would generally consider to be the commercial mixed-use part of city, of the city. So its boundaries are the residential neighborhoods and obviously this EVM and city of Burlington and really, you know, what's fascinating and what we're seeing starting to happen is a combination of redevelopment of existing areas and also new development along Market Street and it's really the combination of those that we're going to see in a few slides as to how this is coming together and then some steps of the future about where this is going to go. So in addition to the residential development that has already occurred and that is occurring and the commercial development that occurs and is occurring, there are also several significant natural areas and existing green spaces that the city uses today as well as city center park which the city's developed and right now city center park includes both the 7.65 acres that was built as city center park and has opened to the public and the stormwater pond which is right off of Market Street and serves Market Street but also is a recreational area. It has public guard and grassy areas, walking trails and extensive gardens and that park area will connect to city center park and also to Garden Street and so together combined with the recreational path it becomes really accessible to the development that's immediately happening in city center TIF district so but it also helps to sort of serve the folks but there are many other parcels within this area so there's parcels that are owned by the school district. There is a piece, a very large forest that's owned by UVM that has walking trails in it and then there are several other pieces that are preserved surrounding wetlands that the city controls. So and I want to pause here and give apologize to talk about what might happen in the future based on our existing land development regulations. Sure so you're going to see in there that there are five or six sort of green circles in there and they're described as when redeveloped so one of the pieces that exists in the form-based code is a civic amenity site amenity component so when there's a major redevelopment of a property there's a certain portion of it that needs to become an amenity for that site. I think you know as Alana and I were putting this together we see that those circles are both an opportunity, that they're both a requirement to a certain extent from the private sector development but they're also opportunities as we think about in the future public-private partnerships of the possibility of value add and you know let's say in a few years time there's major work at the Blue Mall or the U-Mall site or the Staples Plaza there are strategic opportunities for the city to consider being an investment partner in a place like that to add more localized park space if we wanted to make that public and private for example and then just the other to underscore something that Alana had been describing connectivity amongst all of this is a really key element in city center. I had a resident come in just last week who moved two years ago from the Midwest to the Pines. She sold her car and she said that she's really excited that she lives here because her five-year-old granddaughter whenever she comes to stay with her they go for a walk and she had come in specifically curious about is the stormwater pond that has the gooses in it going to be connecting to the city center park. The five-year-old granddaughter calls it the tiny forest is her name for city center park and was so excited to know that these two things were being connected about this is exactly what she wanted to be where she wanted to be living in her retirement to be able to walk around with her granddaughter and then we were talking about the blue ones at the bottom and I was telling her about the other opportunities that exist to walk over there and she said oh I didn't even know about these yet so connections and then the messaging of how much is there and how much was coming in the future is a really neat opportunity. Paul can I ask you, you used the term and now I can't remember exactly the words as a investment partner the city in these little circles would the investment dollars come from like the open space fund because we're talking more about public... I think that's a future discussion to be had from the council it is an eligible use of the open space fund it can be used to acquire natural areas and recreational land so it is absolutely an eligible use of the funds because many of these are outside the TIF so and we've already did our final bonding for the TIF right so that... it could also be in an update to the city's impact fees they could be impact fee eligible type projects there's a number of possibilities that could be in there it may be even something where it's not an acquisition but it's a management and who maintains something over time there's a lot of opportunities we're ongoing in discussions with folks about it so that was a great lead-in into transportation so there's several new streets that have been built over the years by the private sector such as in Corrie Hill and Garden Street which is under construction currently and then many years ago the city made a big investment in Dorset Street and made it into the street that it is today gave it the recreation pass as well as trees and nicer lighting and undergrounded utilities was a major investment and then currently with the TIF district we're connecting Dorset and Wilson Road with Garden Street and Market Street which already happened but also designing those streets so that they're very accessible so that you can use them with the wheelchair or strollers and that they're bikeable and then thinking about recreation pass that give people ways through the park to these streets so a big investment and in order to support the development that has been happening but that we see coming in the future and all I'll say about this one is that this sort of connects from the larger scale and proactive side essentially right back to the last conversation that you had with Erika and Tom about investing in our infrastructure to support people on foot, on bicycle in wheelchairs, in transit and which aligns directly to the objective in the climate action plan of reducing vehicle miles traveling in our community so it's all directly linked together the colors on that map is the green and the red and the... which of the bike... I just can't tell from the colors what's like bike path and what's road and what's... the fluorescent green is bicycle is bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure the slightly darker green is bicycle and pedestrian adjacent to roads right so like on Corey Hill Road like a sidewalk all of these have bicycle and pedestrian facilities whether it's on a shared use path or a shared use... the green, the dark green and the red is all bike path facilities that's highlighted allows both pedestrians and bicycles some of the streets like Garden Street it's a sidewalk next to a cycle track but generally... but these all are infrastructure that support bicycles and pedestrians okay thanks just the skinny green lines are just like ped access through the parks or the bridge so this is you know all of this transportation the natural infrastructure it supports people coming to live and shopping and owning businesses so this shows all the buildings that were built under the form-based code and we thought it was important to really highlight that tool which was developed as the TIFT district was getting approved and really helped to galvanize development yeah so we're going to go through the next couple slides of both buildings under the form-based code and before the big picture message here is there's a lot happening in the core of city center so what you see on this map is 19 new buildings that have been built under our form-based code or currently under construction or I think actually 19 built or under construction and other three that are approved to be built a big chunk of them of course are right on Market Street as anybody who's been going up and down can see but they're not all there there's two that have been constructed on Corey Hill Road under the form-based code just south of the U Mall two previously sort of built as single family homes but operating as dermatologists buildings were rebuilt into six apartments and a new dermatology building Habitat for Humanity on Hinesburg Road took a single family home and made it into four new homes and then as you can see anytime you get to the top of Dorset Street there's a massive large reconstruction there going to take in place of a mixed use building that is one of two buildings new buildings approved on the site the other one has not yet started construction it's the street. Can you go to the next slide here? So the next slide if we add in buildings constructed or substantially rebuilt in the eight years before that we also get Trader Joe's what is now EMS the building that has Chipotle in that the hotel that replaced the University and the CBS that replaced the old friendlies healthy living which had been for anybody who's been around for a long time an old Lake Buick dealership and they brought the building all the way up to the street which was really the first massive investment in city center so there's been a lot happening in this area So the vision that was established by the community really focused on supporting this development but really supporting in downtown and so all of the city's investments today have really emphasized orientation, place making and creating a place for community to come together and create stronger connections and so generally all of these projects do double or triple duty and we're starting to see how that works as they're getting built one by one and that will continue happening over the next few years and move on we spend a lot of time talking about our TIF projects but there are lots of other projects that are underway that are supporting these investments in city center there's the Dorset Street signals which are addressing creating additional capacity along Dorset Street but especially at the Dorset-Williston Road intersection this summer the signals are being installed the software that will actually make them smart is coming at a later date but we've been talking about this for a long time so it's great to see it moving forward one of the first projects that occurred to support city center was the Potash Brook watershed pond in Box Culvert which is that little bridge that you see on Market Street right by the stormwater pond and it goes about 20 feet down and most of it is underground but it supports the aquatic natural life between upstream and downstream and the pond addresses stormwater across Mayfair Park so really big investments Allard Square we have another slide here Allard Square Housing and Garden Street I was thinking we somehow ended up on the next slide but the city affordable housing trust fund invested in both of those projects and then the city has been supporting bike share in our last iteration and I believe in our future iteration and then most recently Illuminate Vermont and currently the traffic study that is about to be undertaken by CCRPC that will look at city center and help develop trigger points for when investments need to be made and to understand how to fund those using a variety of tools that support transportation planning So just some summary numbers through right now what's been approved we have about 200 homes and outside the TIF district over 200 homes 150 affordable homes within that and the piece we're really excited about is now the construction has begun on the first floor commercial component of it We knew from the beginning of this work that we had somewhat of a unique circumstance with especially around Market Street housing in single family homes and small multiplexes outside of city center we knew that in the core of city center that it was almost entirely commercial with almost no housing and so when city center and the form based code all the investments in Market Street started coming around we were not surprised to see that a big chunk of the initial investment was going to be in the housing side the form based code laid out where it's optional to have housing versus commercial and where it is required to have first story commercial and we've seen for the most part but not entirely in the areas that it's optional to have mostly residential though I will say that under construction now 112 Garden Street right behind Healthy Living is going to have a cafe and also a day care unit a residential component and I think as we see more on Williston Road we're going to see much more of a mix like the hotel that is approved to be under construction and the first floor of the one that is under construction now we're entering the next phase this big site immediately next to us is the first major block that's in the T5 district and that requires first story commercial so that's 23,000 29,000 is first story commercial on the two buildings facing directly on Market Street with housing above it and can you just jump to the next slide so the next slide is what we've seen so far this year so in the last month we've received application for the other side of the street so the south side of Market Street for that block that is essentially the staging area right now is proposed to include 213 additional homes and 27,000 square feet of first story commercial again sort of mirroring the other side those numbers of 23,000 27,000 square feet of commercial they're also significant in that they're not single large foot plates the form-based code was very intentional setting up the ability for much smaller spaces to exist which is something that frankly outside of the Blue Mall and a couple of small buildings doesn't really exist in South Burlington the ability to have smaller more downtown feeling commercials so this is those are very large numbers for that size of retail and commercial and small office space and we're really excited for this next stage so they don't have the alleyways or that's the wrong term right is that what you're saying they're separate no it's more that the doorway standards for in the form-based code require there be a door every no more than every 35 feet and so what that does is it creates the ability for different tenants to have different needs over time so really we're thinking about buildings to be used for the next century so you know there may be a user that wants to be a restaurant today that will take up 10,000 of that but then maybe 20 years from now it'll be five small retailers and the the building has been designed or are being designed to be able to accommodate both of those circumstances that's what I mean by smaller scale you just understand the numbers so how does that relate to the 29 on the slide sure so go back one slide so the 29 represents everything that has already been approved so the 29 is the 23 and the 29 is the 29 is the 29 is the 29 is the 29 is the 23 plus the daycare plus the coffee shop and then the 58 that is the larger one also includes the first story of the excuse me includes the hotel that's been approved includes the dermatologist that's been built but doesn't include the new 27 that you're correct this is that's why we put the word approved in here the the next slide is really just been submitted so it's not yet approved our deck is a little different we did update that to include that additional that's not in there and I would point out that the 58,000 square feet that's outside of the tip district that's net of the area that was demolished to make way for the new mixed use housing commercial that's going next to the where the holiday in was but I mean it's interesting so we anticipate six roughly 60,000 commercial space in city center tips and that's a to be approved by you know and under construction this year 60 outside but I mean within like the proper city center 60,000 square feet of commercial spaces that's really exciting I think that's a great question I think that's a great question Paul can I ask a quick question about that housing do you have an idea of the total by 2026 we're looking at this slide of this 855 homes do you what percentage of those are going to allow for ownership or those all are those all commercially run or that's a great question the habitat for humanity ones which is four of them are those are ownership units there's there's a relationship of how those get turned over that there's a shared equity associated with it most of the rest of the multifamily have been designed currently and that is really reflective of the market broadly has multifamily over the last decade is in South Burlington and beyond has been almost entirely rental prior to that it was almost entirely the other way we're starting to see that turn a little bit of including not necessarily in city center but a few inquiries that we've been getting of folks who are interested in turning over current buildings that are currently rental to becoming ownership so it's really that it's it's the market corner sort of shifts those things back and forth a little bit but right now the overwhelming majority of it almost all of it is designed as rental understood and Mr. you said four units or four projects for the Habitat for Humanity project which is one project for units is rental I believe ownership I believe all the rest of it is rental at the moment okay thank you yeah anything else you guys want to share so we're at the end of our presentation so happy to answer questions okay are there any more questions Andrew yes so I guess when we asked for this one of the things I was interested in was talking about the initial proposal which contemplated like a central kind of lawn space a central green space and you know I see on the slide the you know opportunities in the future for where there could be green space with the it's kind of not a central like it's not like you know you see it's not what I had in mind I guess and I guess if I can wave a magic wand right I know that this is all really difficult but if I can wave a magic wand would it be terrific to say the parking lot that's in front of city hall across from city hall convert that to green space and then put like a deck behind city hall for more parking with covered solar canopy you know like really have a vision for the city which reduces the impervious surface creates this central lawn area that's kind of right in the middle of all the action and so I'd love to talk about that I don't know if other people other counselors think that vision is something that we should talk about but to me that's like a very appealing vision if we could achieve that yeah I I support that I think the challenge and our staff can clarify was actually having that parcel become available to us to purchase so if we do with the right incentive it can become available we could maybe offer to have the parking that's there you know they could access a deck that we build right so they still have parking yeah parking deck yeah to kind of you know instead of having just one layer impervious surface with cars like to utilize the existing lots better and convert impervious surface to non impervious surface the magic wand I think is appropriate because I think Alana wish she could have had a magic wand for a lot of things and yeah but if that opportunity becomes available yes I would support but does it make sense to at least approach the folks that own the lot and I think they've been approached but we can certainly approach again million dollars if I remember correctly right the one we're sitting in yeah yeah or was it eight hundred thousand I thought it was a half million but I remember what this was it eight hundred I think it was much closer to your yes so it was we I think we had it we paid less than other people might have paid for it but it and so we were charged one point one per acre yeah a crazy amount of money for that kind of amenity which would really I think transform the city center I mean I would imagine honestly spending a fair bit more than that well it certainly was part of the conversation as we were envisioning this that first flyover had a a park but you know it also had a like a hockey arena or something too there was a whole lot of if wishes were horses and beggars were riding you know but it doesn't mean that it's out of the possibility I think if that's how we wanted to commit open space funds I think the other reality is we need to make sure that we can generate the property taxes to support paying off the tiff bonds yeah but if you kind of improve the area and the quality of life and the you make that area more attractive you'll get higher quality you know tenants that will what are the public lands adjacent to central school the blue area is that city owned land or school owned land I'm sorry which one the one near central school that's that's price trapper no that's that's those are the playing fields in the woods is so that belong to the school so um oh so it's the it's the it's the green area associated with a school that's not parking lot or so yeah okay yeah and then just north of there is JC Park is JC Park is there no way intended to dissuade the prior part of the conversation but in addition to whatever new facilities the city is thinking about you know medium term to longer term there's opportunities to work collaboratively with the school district to think about how does that space get optimal use in support of downtown on the weekends when it's not being used by the schools so there's opportunities to think creatively for bringing that component into city center as well and you know have it reflect the intent and use of the school district as well as you know the needs of the of the community around it so I think there's also opportunities to talk with the owners of the U mall about their vision for the redevelopment of that site and the green kind of potential green belt that's the development that they could be proposing and Dorset Street I guess can I interject on sure I'm just going so certainly this the council's prerogative to redirect our priorities and if you all want to take a vote to do that we can I would I would just say that right now we are a little frantically trying to get the four TIF bond votes done or the four TIF projects in the bond vote done and you know while I agree it's not a huge amount of money for land acquisition I think if we were going to go through a real visioning process for you know a great lawn on the poon lot and property acquisition and a parking deck that would I think need to be in partnership with the school I don't think we have enough property behind this building to build a parking deck we are now starting to talk about a geo bond of a pretty significant amount which again is council's priority to redirect us but I guess I would be looking for some direction of do you want us to do this after we get through these four do you want us to stop doing one of these four to focus on this what's the geo bond I'm sorry sorry a general obligation bond which is not a TIF bond it's just a you're the second person to use that acronym a general obligation it just means that a bond that's paid for by the property tax which technically all our bonds are you know I think Burlington's you know one of the was it Howard Dean who set aside the city park there the waterfront park you know Chicago has grant park central park in New York City there are a lot of examples that show how prime real estate is actually a huge enhancement one left as green space so I yeah direct us what you'd like to do okay other comments I just my own personal bias is that in terms of city center and the wish for more open space in the center of it I think that ship has sailed that's my bias right now and I think we should put our interest in the four projects that are in front of planning zoning first and we have a little part we have the land that's next to the school although that's occupied often and there's other redevelopments are going to happen especially you mall and the blue mall we just have to make sure that when those happen there are requirements on them that they allocate some percentage of it to be returned back to some kind of a green space sorry to disagree but I think that we should have made that allocation ten years ago I agree with you those spaces are not a central green space I think Megan's right there's so many benefits that are hard to so many tangibles having that central green space yeah yeah yeah I've heard I've heard that that request to from people I've heard concerns to that you know I'm glad to have the commercial that we're not getting you know those that first floor commercial that a lot of people were hoping for or said that they were they were told to expect and I think too that there's I brought up just some residents concerns about how there's not a lot of variety in the building and the architecture and as Helen said well beauty is in the eye of the beholder as you know so I'm not here to dictate what beautiful is but I think variety is something that was recommended in the rules and I don't know how strong that recommendation is and what impetus is behind any kind of levers that people hold to recommend a little bit more variety in the architectural styles well I don't know you do look at the three pictures that are up or the four there is some variety I think it's always challenging when it's four or five stories to look at the architecture as really different I mean you know you look at housing developments and they're all the same too you know you get tan gray or white siding you don't have to but some of this is privately developed so it's and I agree with you I think the vision originally was to maybe if you look at the one on the left they are pretty similar except for the color it's a little bit more exciting you know versus making it different looking I know we were just in Florida and a lot of the development there is only two stories and they make it look very different sort of I think it's harder when it's four or five stories you know I mean wouldn't it have a Chrysler building and all these different interesting I think it's also building materials there's no balconies there's no balconies I think it's building materials more than and I know that we don't really say what materials to use we say what materials not to use in our regulations but a variety is there as a recommendation so I just don't know what what that how can we pull that lever isn't it true that the form based code sort of got rid of review any kind of aesthetic review by the DRB it replaced a very detailed DRB review with certain standards in terms of amount and spacing of amount of windows the setback of windows that there have to be variety three breaks in the building every 80 feet either vertically or horizontally or by material and you know some of the challenge is that architecture I'm not an architect but architecture tends to go through eras and we're seeing a lot of city center built in a single era so you know when we look back in history you can say oh that's a Victorian building because Victorian buildings have a style to them and there's a you know post-war building we're in an era where materials like hardy plank and brick are two pretty calm materials they're very sturdy and they need energy codes and you know there's sort of there's some design elements to it that that's one element and then I think the second one is that while the point of being four story buildings there are a reasonably high number of boxes that sort of constrain a project in terms of it has to meet all the fire safety codes it has to meet ADA it has to meet the energy code and the stretch energy code and then we say a minimum amount of windows and things like that and it the things that create variety on top of that are things that are you know creating a larger vertical element and those are interesting but also really expensive because you have to have the elevator go up to a top story we're seeing some people starting to experiment with it though the thing that's not really shown in that picture on the left is that in the most recent phase of that the developer has made a small rooftop thing that you can see from from Williston Road where residents can go and get views of the Green Mountains and that was the way that they decided to create their open space was wow we've got these spectacular views let's create a little rooftop area which doesn't really necessarily show up here but it is beginning to create variety for residents where is that I'm sorry it's on top of the building on the left or maybe it's the second building the one that's not it's immediately next to it oh this is what it's going to look like sorry the left is Quarry Hill Road okay that is Quarry Hill Road so what can we see from Williston Road you can see if you are on Williston Road you can see that one of the two buildings that's been built on Quarry Hill Road has a top story small projection on top of it and that's for residents to enjoy an open space looking out at the Green Mountains building as opposed to on the ground floor do they let the neighbors behind them go up to see whose view they wrecked well the Olympiad building has a common room that's on the fifth floor that overlooks towards the west as does Larkin Terrace over on Shelburne Road has one I mean I think we really do need to think about I mean I agree with you I think the vision that a lot of people had was that we would sort of recreate the you know the Vermont small town center with a green and the buildings would all be kind of different but all of those towns that are like that the buildings were built as Paul suggests at different periods of time so they do look really different I mean you go down Church Street and yeah the buildings are all about most of them until recently I don't think they could even have housing on the second and third floor because they had to build an elevator because of ADA compliance so they were empty for a very very long time Well Winooski was fairly recent and people brought Winooski up as an example of how different things are of how it could look but the same thing in Winooski looks just like this I would agree I think they have the same stuff in Winooski in their downtown not the new brick buildings and the cascades and no no no no they're thinking about I mean you see this along Route 15 so if you walk down Winooski Falls way you have cascade which is a brick building and then the two redstone buildings are very much like Corey Hill and then you have the affordable housing that's behind us behind if you're walking down Winooski Falls way on the left again it's the same kind of siding as that rainbow building and then you have CCV which is a brick building but is publicly funded and then city lights which is the corner across from CCV which is I think very close to what the garden what's the garden street on the across from CHD Union Place I find it to be very different personally well I look at these pictures and I think they're they're different I just think we're stuck with building or creating a downtown from scratch when you know the requirements or the affordable I guess sightings and elements are you know somewhat limited we don't have the chance to have you know city hall like south like Burlington that was built how long ago and then all the different other buildings church at the end we have a different kind of downtown not that I would love to have a green but I also think there's and it could be a possibility but I you know I don't think this looks like our downtown looks like Williston's housing arrangement so you know but that's just my feeling you know we go through periods of architecture which not everyone likes I mean I'm certainly not here to dictate anybody's taste I'm just here to relay people's disappointment and they they've invested a lot I'm not saying that I have any kind of notion of how wide this opinion is but I also want to ask if you know the broad sentiment on the council is not to pursue a green at this time are we precluding future exploration of that I have heard just concern that that's really going to be feeling closed into and I think to have people live downtown in our city center that you know yes we have the goose this yes we have city center park but there there's a there's a real benefit that comes with that open space I just wonder if you know that door is truly shut you know one more point on the green I guess like a lot of people I spoke to didn't realize that it wasn't part of the plan I guess there's a decision made in a couple of years ago during COVID which I think took people by surprise honestly that the green wasn't any longer part of the plan well yeah we had to make decisions and that by the way side when we say we decide tonight just deciding mean if we say we're going ahead as planned there's no green I mean is that what you're saying no no not at all I did I didn't mean to suggest that this was a decision making night you all always have the prerogative to put your hands up and redirect us on any given night what I was suggesting more is if we are going to truly reprioritize stop working on one project to work on another project to personally I think that should be part of a you know policies and strategies process you know is this something we really want to you know swap out one project for another so I would say if you if you want to consider that I think we're ready to do this let's put it on the FY24 policies and strategies list or you can all vote tonight to totally redirect us that's your problem I don't think we're ready to do that Tyler you wanted to say something no I agree with Jesse's sentiment that this is a much larger conversation and I would personally feel a lot more comfortable if this were part of a comprehensive strategic overview I just I saw that there's some members of the audience I think it was Mr. Mittag who is trying to raise his hand I just want to make sure he was heard right I have a list of people I like to have the council speak first understood so so Roseanne has been on the list for a while thanks councillors for taking this up because I raised this a while back because I too heard people lamenting the fact that there wasn't much green in city center and as Helen said without a doubt this was not the vision that the vast majority of people who participated years ago in the visioning for city center said they wanted and we were warned by the consultant that we hired when we did this not to do a little patch of green and it turns out that's exactly what happened there's a little patch of green and I also missed the decision that was made to reduce it these buildings for large part they have no character no charm but I really support what Andrew and what Megan is saying about you know re-greening some of the area it will you know you remember when you dedicated city center it was so unbearably hot there and you have created a heat island that whole area all the concrete all the metal steel that you put in there is going to make that area incredibly hot adding some more greenery even if you have to re-green is going to certainly help that that's going to be a real problem in the future and the more green we have the better we're going to be able to survive so I really urge you to think think about a new way of doing things not just build more and that was the plan and that's what you thought about in the past you know times are changing and we are you know you all know about what we're dealing here so I really think you know you can re-green other places have done it and the more greenery you can add to that place the more you will cool it off and be more way more inviting I won't go to I mean what's to go what's to do and I mean if you live there I guess you'll be in that area but there's nothing to attract people to that area but it's too hot anyway so anyway that's my views I hope you take a different approach to this I hope you continue the discussion and do some innovative things to make it look more I do not think it's beautiful it's my own personal opinion if you had some trees it might be more attractive thank you I think we had what's his name Colackey John Colackey did you want to speak on this I don't know if he had to sign off his camera is he still there he is there but his camera's off okay well then we'll go to Michael Mittag yes thank you Rosanna said quite a lot of what I was going to say but just to make sure we don't lose sight of the actual history of the visioning sessions very intensely worked on by a lot of people in South Burlington and the central the most important element of city centre was the so-called village green which was seen as the place that would draw the city centre together would be the real centre of activity places where people could go from a coffee shop and sit out on a bench under a tree and have a conversation with members of the community so we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that many many people are terribly disappointed that it never happened I know being on that form based code committee we have to explain to folks that if they want to do what they want they have to buy the land that you can't expect a developer to do what maybe the city can do that as Andrew has suggested and then on the architectural style of the buildings that are there yes they are a bit boring they are boxes they don't have to be boxes or rectangles or squares you can have curves in a building you can have different window sizes which lend variety to the look of a building obviously you can change the type of cladding from one section of a building to another but I really find I'm biased I'm the son of an architect so I know what can be done and I don't see it being done these designs are not imaginative at all they're just boxes plunked onto the countryside onto the side of the street really disappointing for me since I spent two years on that committee now I have to live with it okay thank you John Kalaki no okay this isn't your topic alrighty any comments from the people sitting in this room oh Lisa why don't you come up to the mic please I actually have a nephew who is an engineer and he works on some of the structural part of a lot of buildings and I had mentioned to him how a lot of the buildings being built lately all pretty much look the same they're styled and a lot of it has to do with I think saving money on the parts of the developers because they get this nice plan they know what to order for materials they know what to expect and that's part of it I think that downtown Winooski they have a curve they have a little bit more variety and that was my question what does variety mean that question hasn't yet I haven't gotten an answer to that is there no answer to it so how well we will have a retreat where we work on that and that would be a great time to do the visioning and discussion I mean that's the best place I think to add to or really think about balancing our priorities and what those are great and I'm not an architect but these buildings would be a lot nicer if they had balconies I think okay well thank you very much for the update thank you we're going to take a five minute break you already took one I know well some people can't have a can only break it once again the South Burlington City Council on April 17th 2023 and we are now on item 11 another easy discussion and it's so clear to all of us I'm sure and that is discussing the remaining $2 million in American Rescue Plan funding and a process for making those final decisions so Jesse you want to sure I do want to not to shoot my team I do want to say though you have quite a hefty number of agenda items ahead of you still this one is not time sensitive so if you wanted to have a very quick conversation about this tonight you could and come back to it at a future meeting but at high level what we as you may remember back in January the current council decided to hold off until the new council was seated to make further decisions about the remaining $2 million of available ARPA funding the community did a survey last summer and you have those results in your packet and then asked all the committees to provide recommendations you have those in your packets as well for staff the key questions for tonight is what are the projects you identify as most transformational what additional information do you need from us to help you make decisions are you interested in making decisions now or would you like to wait for future budget cycles future opportunities and having said that there are no decisions to make tonight there is one one of the things you asked us to look at at your November 30th meeting was how to best leverage funds and the recommendation we got we asked all the committees to think about that was an opportunity to use some $320,000 of ARPA money to match a potential trans bike grant for the expansion of the shared use path along Heinsberg Road which does have more time sensitivity because of the grant deadline so is that something we need to decide tonight so that that is due June 9th or June yes June 9th so we have some time to think about that but it is also a grant application we do need to get to work on so if it was a hard no we would try and come up with some other options but if it's a maybe then we'll bring that back to you in a future meeting well why don't we have that conversation and perhaps we can delay the agony around the ARPA funding to an evening when we don't have quite so many pressing things on the list because especially for the new members that was a lot of stuff to read and sort of put in context I think but why don't we talk about the $320,000 for the matching for a grant that may or may not receive but the grant needs to say it will be matched so what is your pleasure committee that that's the Heinsberg Road sidewalk which is a paved I was mistaken when I last spoke about that thinking that it was a concrete but it's some kind of a pavement it's not in great shape and it's not it could be wider if it was a true recreational pathway so I think that's a good investment along that busy road do you need some more information about the project would you turn over we have a master plan that prioritizes where we have the greatest need for shared use paths of the greatest need to revitalize and if so is that has that risen to the top of the list is that why we're talking about so there's a yes and the first answer is there have been a history of studies this one came out of a two phase feasibility study in 2015 ish and 2020 that looked at a number of priority areas city wide and this was one area which is why I'd be able to go straight to design and construction it is not a scope but out of the climate action plan and the bike head committee requests for a while we should be we haven't heard back officially from the CCRPC but our plan is to start a city wide walk bike master plan that does that in much more detail over FY24 so I guess in the absence of a master plan is your perspective though that this particular path is the highest priority or is that kind of the best use of funds right now from a bike and pet perspective I will just speak from the bike head committee here that this is one that's been on their docket for a while and has kind of moved around in the CIP and this is considered renovation or repair it's not considered to be a new piece of infrastructure because there's an existing again it's a yes and it is replacing an existing facility but it's replacing it with an upgraded and expanded facility it would be taking out the five foot sidewalk which kind of varies between concrete and asphalt and creating a ten foot asphalt path from Williston to Kennedy this is my question it is eligible for pennies for paths as well so why would we be using our ARPA funds instead of the penny for paths this was just the project that the committee wanted to present and now that the grant opportunity has opened but the funding the match potentially could be pennies from four paths or ARPA or a mixture yes yep the amount shown to you would be the full 20% of the full project so just like applying for a grant it's will take any amount and this is the most we would need so what we're responding to here is your November 30th question about how do we make these dollars go fast or go farther how do we stretch these dollars how do we maximize the investment and so I think how the big pet came to this particular project was with $320,000 for ARPA here we can buy $1.3 million worth of the project and save our pennies for paths for other projects that we may want to do but it is the if pennies path were to fund the 300 you'd also be able to go forward the grant proposal it's not dependent upon using the ARPA funds is the is are there other FY24 allocations of those pennies already so this would this would be bumping up the timeline of this project because a lot of CIP projects had kind of already been filling in and using a lot of penny for path money this was put forth as an ARPA recommendation because it was a few years out on the CIP but the bike pad committee has really wanted to prioritize it as a lot of nearby projects move through designing construction will they be angry with us if we use pennies for paths what will we have to will we have to walk back a committed FY24 project to use pennies in FY24 for this I haven't run the full numbers I won't I can't give a guarantee yes or no we do have a fund balance and penny for paths well why don't we get that information before we make this decision and then we would be able to feel more comfortable with both I guess bike and pad saying yeah that's fine or maybe just use half of its pennies for path and the other half ARPA and together we'll draw down 1.3 million it's not an absolute given that we'll get the grant we've been successful with this grant program in the past it's the same grant program that is currently funding I believe the path on Spear Street it's either Spear Street or Dorset Street it's funding one of those Spear Street yes we have been successful with this grant program in the past but it's never a guarantee well is that amenable to everyone and then to not have the ARPA conversation tonight but to think some more about that okay thank you I will get that information okay we're almost back thank you penny and John may want to talk about this oh John did you want to say something about this thank you and I am eager to have a community conversation about the ARPA dollars because my understanding from when I was in the legislature it is time dependent on when the money can be expended so that we've now been postponing this and so I think there is a time issue well it's transformational and not one's plugging a budget gap is also key and also you know I know we have a wonderful climate action plan but I'm not sure that's to staff that is a use for ARPA funding because it's going to be an ongoing commitment so I think there's a lot of questions about the ARPA that the city council needs to understand to really discuss fully and not make it piecemeal decisions on this so I'm glad we put it off about this one pathway because I'm thinking that as compared to what you know so it's I am concerned that we keep delaying the budget so I think it's going to be a given in this $2 million that I just want to make sure the city lawyers are actually making sure that it's an appropriate use of ARPA dollars so I'm eager to have the larger conversation in the community as well so maybe we could you know consider it might be an hour long conversation with city council but if we look at these projects carefully you know the committees did spend time working on them and gave their best shot so you know it may be a lot of information for the new councillors but it was on the agenda tonight so I'm sure they read it you know so we're not giving the due diligence that we need on this okay thank you Penny I well I also attended because I knew this was on the agenda and it's in I am for the newer city councillors I'm the chair of the public art committee on which John also serves and we like the other committees put in a small request and I agree that we you know we should have a proper conversation and also we shouldn't just keep I mean I gathered there's a lot more urgent things but we can't keep kicking it down the road because in for example on our committee we've put goals in our FY24 plan and our request is a small one but it is for us it would be a transformational thing for the city to get support from outside to do a whole cultural plan for Wellington so you know we have a need and we need city council to weigh in on these needs of the various committees and what has been requested to use the ARPA funds for so I don't mind that it kicks down the road if it's a if it's so we can have a more proper conversation and while I have the floor I will also just input to that last conversation and you feel like it but those buildings they could do better they really could do better on those buildings on Market Street they just do not they make not not yeah anyway but thank you for the opportunity to speak you're welcome thank you just to clarify my understanding is the ARPA money needs to be spent by the end of 2026 so we do have some time to hopefully consider that and I would agree with both of you that this is a very important conversation and we have some new counselors and we should have that conversation and I would also agree John to if we were to make it as sort of a really important item with a considerable amount of time not at the end of our council meetings but you know maybe in the middle or the beginning then we could receive some public comments and have I think a needed an important conversation amongst the council tonight's probably not that night so we good to go on that okay so now we'll move on to item 12 discussing s 100 that will be Paul Connor from planning and zoning this is the I guess almost infamous housing omnibus housing building so welcome again on this topic thank you my pleasure to be here so I don't have too too much of an update from my and tonight this is really for any further council discussion but I am scheduled to testify to the house committee on natural resources and energy on Thursday morning using your the council's guidance as my guidelines for that testimony and I will be talking with them likely with some more specific ideas and language to sort of further narrow the subject area from our broad initial very broad concerns to more specific topics to more specific language if the committee is so interested so that's what I've got as my main update okay I'll be also testifying and I think we'll do a similar kind of one to punch as we did in this in the senate my remarks will be not as extensive about what South Burlington has done but rather kind of representing the conversations really that the council has had and then Paul hopefully will have a specific language that they can use to address our needs so we'll see but we're first presenting together yes okay yeah what date on Thursday starting I think we're at nine that's I just re-reviewed and said Thursday morning session so I don't have a I don't have a specific time on that yet well Andrew let me yeah the schedule that ledge council puts out and it says we're at nine okay well it hasn't been sent to me yet but I'm available well they haven't sent it to me either but it's not broadcast live oh yeah it is on YouTube yeah so you can it's a live stream so if there's any thoughts that the council wants to share right now to help advise this conversation you know we've got the list of stuff we're concerned with Paul you're able to draft some language I know that I have been working on some language that I'm in discussions with some various partners who we have been working on throughout this process with to sort of refine and you know bring put our best foot forward to the committee is the plan to have that done before Thursday morning then yes will you distribute that before then sure I'd be happy to share it with you just as I share it with the committee absolutely yeah I don't want council to be not getting into things at the exact same time what is the sentiment at this point taking the temperature of the house for the for the different segments of this bill do we have a sense yet well Michael Mittag and Andrew and I had a very candid and good discussion with the natural resources council and yes and Katie Gallagher Gallagher and they were both very supportive of what we had to say what our concerns were and why and they said that we should both or at least Paul should go before the committee no actually I said just Paul and they said no you should go to Helen so the two of us are going and they mentioned that to the Amy Sheldon and the chair so we got on the agenda you know it's all it's many of the people who testified in the Senate I was reading personally I was reading some stuff this week and I was like oh my god that some of the articles and digger and stuff were like oh this thing is just gonna shoot through I feel differently now from just the number of people that are going to be testifying and who they represent to the committee on is it natural resources and energy is that their name in the house so I'm more optimistic and I think it really shot through the Senate to get to crossover and I'm hopeful that the house has slowed it down a little bit and will consider you know some of our concerns it seemed like it didn't fall on deaf ears so we'll see what's the governor's opinion of this bill at this point do you know does anybody know he didn't like the changes to act 250 so I don't know as he will even I don't know if he'll sign it housing is such a huge issue right if everyone wants to do as much as they can if you were to veto it is there enough sentiment in the legislature to overwrite that's the other question I have you know I don't know John Kalaki have you talked to any of your little friends over there got any feedback yes I think coming in on Thursday with really specific language if Paul mentioned is going to be key and really it's now an energy and environment is the name of the committee and so they are very concerned about the impact on the environment much more so than the Senate was or the House committee that I sat on and because what they did is only in the House committee they looked at the housing aspect and moved all the other concerns to Amy's committee so but this will be the chance to get any iterations out of this committee because then it goes to the money committee after that so I think you know Paul you're right that go in there with really specific so that someone on that committee or the chair or you know it's going to be an amendment that will be accepted in that committee is going to be a key and if it's too broad it's too late for I just re-read the memo and the memo was great when it was to the Senate but now it's it's gone too far along it has to really focus on the environmental issues to have any impact and the energy and the energy and the building code and the environment committee it's called now okay so that's that's the designating the water and sewer districts and right giving municipalities the ability to to enact energy codes right and undermine whatever plan you have in place to both build housing and deal with the environment yeah yeah I'll just then I'll be quiet about this but the distinction is South Burlington is quite different than most so most of our locales are not dealing with this issue in an equitable way and so it's it's very difficult to give every locality what we're asking for and have it be equitable across the state which you all know you I think you know the dilemma we're ahead of most of our communities so that exclusion that won't be given back again to local control from the I don't think anyway you're not asking my opinion about that anyway thanks I just want to note that John I love that you have the resolution up behind you that's the final yes nice and a lot different one up behind him depending on the audience right still not okay and Michael did you want to make a comment yeah I think the energy codes issue that as it stands now has been kicked down the road we're going to right what they originally planned they're going to establish a committee to study the issue so we're not at risk yet I didn't see that that's 100 I saw both I'm not sure Michael I just I don't understand why the state would stand in the way of of policy that is following best practices for architecture and engineering I just I don't understand and the most critically important thing yeah yeah for stormwater and for and for heating and cooling I just when we have national associations making policy statements you know and advocating for these things I just I don't understand why Montpelier you know is not allowing that policy to be adopted well state policy is often very blunt and this is some blunt language yes I guess if the state were taking action it would also be different but the state has been you know basically paralyzed on climate action right actions been at the municipal level right and to thwart the ability of municipalities to take action is just indefensible it is yeah since they started it they came up with the state plan and told us to come up with ours aligned with that so we did yeah it is it is frustrating and the other thing I guess that I would stress is in addition to the environment is you know since equity is a big part of this bill I really think that our rules which aren't perfect but what I do really appreciate about them is that you cannot distinguish affordable from market rate housing in these multiplex developments and I don't know that the state rules would at all support that that doesn't come through and I think you were expressing some concern Paul about just having the extra floor added and I still don't know how this will work with our you know statute supported rules on using transfer development rights and there's just so much that you know be up in the air and all of this is based in state statute what we have done so some kind of clause you know where it just does not supersede you know state statute you know things I mean yes it is it boggles my mind it does well we'll try our best okay well thank you well I mean it's a little direction I mean we've we've been headed in the same direction for a couple months now so I guess you're affirming that you want us to keep going along those lines and we'll try our best yeah okay moving on to item 13 which is updates to the amendments to the land development regulations and possibly set a public hearing for May 15th 2023 yes Paul Connor director of planning and zoning Jessica Luizos chair of the planning commission Michael also on the planning commission are here as well so what your last meeting requested that the city council I'm sorry backwards the city council that your last meeting asked that the planning commission take a look at some language both what you had looked at a couple of weeks ago that would sort of put a few more parameters on redevelopment of existing impacted areas in wetlands and also a simplified process solely for the purpose of maintaining existing conditions where there might be erosion or something like that taking place so the planning commission did review some language prepared by staff they made a couple of tweaks to it to tighten the box on the redevelopment to make sure that it is very clear that in the circumstance of any redevelopment that the amount of impervious services not increased in your cover memo I said it the opposite way that is not the way I meant to but the language itself says that there cannot be an increase in impervious surface just to be very clear in any redevelopment scenario and then recommended that the that the council proceed with those amendments we did we ran it through legal counsel and they had some minor tweaks to make sure that the language is parallel in other language in our regulations so it doesn't read exactly the way that the planning commission had reviewed it but they included in their motion that a legal review and tweaks would be appropriate so that's what I've got um any questions or thoughts this is kind of what we talked about and I think it responds to those some concerns as fully as we can Jessica do you want to yeah I guess um you know one of the things that come up at the council meeting um at your last meeting when you discussed this was um you know um a particular situation on a property owner who had spoken to you and I think that um one of the things that we were looking at was to try to address that type of you know in the case of a stabilization like an existing feature that needed a stabilization that's part of the new language and then in the the case of the other area that's in the yellow um you know I think we'd also heard from um from you a concern about um situations where there might be an increase in impervious surface within a wetland buffer so we did add that additional um I guess more strong language and I believe the planning commission was unanimous of the members at least the people who were there wasn't was almost everyone there I guess yeah yeah okay okay just quickly so I vote for this language but I to wordsmiths just for a moment in the new section five stabilization I think it it could be improved a tad if it said the applicant has to demonstrate that the encroachment is necessary and represents the least possible impact like it doesn't say anything about needing to do it if I had my druthers I think I would add the words that the encroachment is necessary but if it's too hard to those words I will vote for this um yeah yeah so it's stabilization of pre-existing conditions encroachment into these various different resources for the sole purpose of stabilizing a previously approved pre-existing structure da da da da da the applicant shall demonstrate that the encroachment represents the least possible impact to the specific resource and you're suggesting that it's necessary encroachment is necessary and represents I if I had my druthers but I will vote for this as it stands as well I don't have any problem adding that the that specific sentence comes from a little bit later a page down under restricted infrastructure encroachment restricted infrastructure encroachments so it talks about where there might be driveway impacts and it parallels that language exactly the necessary in that case is met by four other clauses that have to be met so if you wanted to add the word necessary here I don't think it it doesn't harm anything and I think the least possible impact would be no impact but I don't have a problem with a clarifying of adding that word if that's what the council chooses to do and I guess I would say if you're going to do it do it now rather than after your public hearing because after the public hearing if you add the word you have to hold another public hearing so that would be my only piece of advice. What is your pleasure does Colin do you have any thoughts on that does that turn the tables okay how about you just okay on the word necessary I don't I'm not a lawyer but to me it doesn't seem like it makes a significant difference in the language because it already has the least possible impact so I don't see that as a big change from our end I'd rather leave it the way it is because because it's already been written and the planning commission passed it out so I don't want to wordsmith the planning commission's words that's not our job unless there's something really that's that's you know stands out that is a problem other thoughts is that okay alright did you want to speak to I mean my feeling is you have to do so much to get here that you wouldn't do it if it wasn't necessary pardon the big folder yeah just we went to the sorry we went to the planning commission meeting on the 11th and language was presented at that time and it was presented and voted four or five to zero with a caveat that it would have to be run by the attorneys and so when I looked at the new language the first four lines are virtually identical the next seven lines are different not being an attorney myself I can't tell you exactly what impact that has it looks like it would work our sole goal for ourselves and other property owners was to have language and regulations that would allow people to maintain and stabilize their properties I share Mr. Barrett's concern about inserting other words at this point such as necessary I'm not certain what adding the word necessary would help and I wonder whether it would open a door to someone saying to you well you don't really need that it may become that kind of an issue so at some point we have to trust our city staffers to come up with language that works and we've only had this afternoon to really look at this so I can't say but it appears as though it would do what you all have worked so hard to do so far so I we appreciate that okay thank you any other comments so it sounds like we'll go with this and then I need a motion to set a public hearing I guess I can make it so I move that the city council set a public hearing for May 15th 2023 at 7 30 p.m. to on the on the amendments to the land development regulations second second is that yep and let me just add the number LDR 2209 okay for the minutes including the modification from this evening okay yep so we've motion in a second are you ready for the vote I'm going to turn it on so we can hear your vote okay all in favor signify by saying aye aye okay it's unanimous thank you thank you felt like we just had a baby huh um the 14 item 14 discuss the process to make the FY 24 appointments to policy and regulatory committees so I know this is a little messy so we have a lot of appointments to make we have heavy agendas already as we are witnessing tonight so after talking with a few folks I tried to think through some options for you all to consider I'm sorry there are so many of them I didn't feel like I had a strongly held opinion about what to recommend so I call on and I put a ball in there so the just to give you the highlights you know 37 openings that's you know 50 or 60 potential applicants that's 13 to 15 hours of your time we do recommend that you keep as a full body the planning commission and the DRB because of their statutory roles so what we're really so the options are really speaking to the policy committees that you establish so I can walk you through them I will also say there are several other changes other than just the options we also are recommending that whoever choose whoever interviews folks we use an interview script with a matrix that we will give to you as a tool we also want to call your attention to a note on the planning commission we've gotten off kilter with the staggered terms and we do have an opportunity to fix that this go around so we'd have three positions revolving each year now we're on a two and four schedule so that's outlined in your memo you can read it so so what do you like me to walk through options or are people pretty clear with the council like that sorry one other table setting point the intention is what option you select the full council will see every applicant that applies for a position you'll see their application if you choose for the full council not to interview everybody the full council will still receive all the applications and the full council will ultimately vote on all of the appointments you're not delegating that decision out you're just delegating the interview process and the recommendation process so is you have several different ideas service is one idea to have at least two counselors for each committee that's not the every not many commission to do evaluations on their on at a different time than the city council meeting and I would like there to be a majority of the council actually on these committees well that's option two have two members options well three members would be oh that's right I'm sorry we would recommend if you do two well Colin can weigh in on this but we went back and forth about this if you do three you certainly have to warn a meeting you could do three as a full council with only a quorum present or you could create a subcommittee of three and warn it as a subcommittee you could also create a subcommittee of two counselors and warn it as a subcommittee meeting or you could just ask two counselors who are going to do some work in coming back which I think you probably don't want to do but then I further complicate it no no so it sounds like Tim you're thinking that option four is what you like we already have you know Megan yeah one counselor per committee right yeah so I'm just throwing this out there if you had another you want at least two sets of eyes to do the interviews and then report back because we're going to have one meeting where we're going to have to go through all this matrix to figure out who to put on the committees but Megan you're thinking you want three yeah I think it's important for the majority of the council to be there so that it's not a minority opinion recommending before council will still get to vote yeah yeah without the benefit of three person committee would come back with this okay we looked at these if we have two of them we looked at these six committees and you know for affordable housing we're recommending X and Y and then we would all discuss that and that subcommittee who interviewed them would be they'd have a matrix and then defend their decision which the full council could say no I read through all the that one happened Helen come on every time someone makes the recommendation I mean it's usually option one I mean you know we've got liaisons we've got a chair I think it's okay to delegate the kind of filtering as long as the slate comes back to the full council so like the affordable housing committee like minded people choosing like minded people I yeah I really think a majority brings in much more diversity to really not just create a club I really am concerned about that kind of thinking with Megan I'm partial to option four or five for those reasons where I like to be Tyler just so you know I just I well if I'm understanding option four correctly though multiple committees of two councillors at least that way there's it's achieving somewhat of the same aims is that correct and that the again you have groups of two that are going that are going about this and it's dividing conquering versus where they're still somewhat of a balance of power and that there's multiple you'll make the decision yeah I get it but I'm leaning towards three I know it's a good option but the other half of the story is the structure of the interview process itself in here right which is a time limit right a complete the same set of questions for every person right and not to let somebody who's being interviewed go on for ten minutes right you know and but you know we're friendly we like to talk to people hear what they have to say and then and then sometimes the conversations goes off course and and that's okay but you know when you've got twelve or sixteen people you have to interview in one night that's when it takes an hour and a half so but sometimes an answer does lead to another question it does it does and in order to really understand sometimes the follow question right is required I mean being held and you know straight check and I'm not only allowed to ask these no no no but I mean the structure of this starts the conversations list of questions that starts the conversation right yeah so that at least everybody gets the same question and then the conversation goes from there but it just shouldn't be fifteen minutes for an individual and you know I mean some people don't talk very much right and so another one or not yes and that's probably my fault for not no Helen you've done I think you've cut off the conversation no but I think you've ensured that similar questions be asked of the candidates but not as quite as prescribed and I like the three came up with these were injuries or injuries this is what you asked when we were interviewing the candidates for planning commission you said I'm going to ask three questions of everybody and they were great questions I was like writing those down oh good okay so he'll support it let's see alright so so we will have that format and so that'll help and this would be sort of a meeting that you hold some other evening is that right is that we're thinking yes so you know some some day in June or whenever or May three of us will sit down with the other people did that include other people from the committees so I wouldn't I would say that the relevant staff liaisons and committee chairs would be invited to attend all of the relevant ones which we pretty much do anyway for uh-huh council meetings and that we would also I've been talking about this solicit from the committee chairs any feedback they have on what the committee needs in terms of makeup as well as attendance challenges okay well for maybe the attendance of a returning you know a returning who is some yeah alright does that satisfy everyone committee has more slots more slots open and applicants or you know an equal number of applicants and slots so you pretty much know what you're going to be selecting wondering whether we can streamline that process a little bit and leave it to the interesting question let's say that there is an applicant that the council does not believe should be that committee but there's the same number of candidates as there are spots are we obligated out of courtesy I don't think we're obligated I think we're looking for the best group of candidates but do you need three well it might go really fast then you know so so that will not happen with all of the committees it happens quite a bit I also think you might face depending on how you do the three the council has before for committees that have lots of applicants with fewer seats redistributed folks so we may just need to pay attention to that in the committees a bit well that could be one of the questions that's at the end that we ask you know add that if another committee if you're not selected for this committee yeah are there other committees you'd like to serve on we've been doing that for years it's great and we can recommend some and interview them on the spot for that well you probably can if it's one of your committees that okay option three timeless script attendance and needs four questions Colin do you want to make the point about the the legal point about the three committees as a subcommittee versus three committee three members as the council sure so what we were talking about is similar to the if you created a two person subcommittee you'd have the option of creating a three person subcommittee or you can actually just have a council meeting and have only three people show up so those are really the two options that are talked about in option three is if you create a three person subcommittee that is the committee and so a quorum of that subcommittee is two out of the three or with a council meeting if three show up three is your quorum and you're having a council meeting so if you create a three person subcommittee then you're fine assuming you're okay with a two person quorum if you're not okay with a two person quorum and one as a council meeting you have to be very careful that you're only talking about committee interviews right thank you Jesse that was that was a very important point I think you have to be very careful that that is exclusively what you're talking about you can't in your conversations like oh we should talk about this at our next council it would be good to talk about this at our next council meeting you shouldn't have those conversations because those aren't warned for that meeting the whole purpose of the meeting is just interviews I think I like the three person committee so the vote could be two to one and then you'll get it done I mean unanimity doesn't always rain right what do you mean two to one well if it's a subcommittee right of the three members as I understand it then you just need to majority rules if it's if it's a regular if we we're not making it a subcommittee if we just say the council is going to have a special meeting on you know Tuesday some Tuesday only three of us will show up and then you have to have all three right right so you're just saying that two is a quorum on the committee that's okay yeah I agree with that yeah I thought you were saying vote two to one and like no no no we're not voting at that point there's a whole council's voting on the well we will be voting to who the subcommittee is recommending oh oh as a recommendation yeah I mean I hope there's a recommendation rather than we interviewed everyone and man I don't know what each person said yeah exactly I've lived here for 24 years and right so are we okay with three then three person subcommittee so I think you should take I think Colin that they should take a vote to create two three people subcommittees for the purposes of interviewing candidates to serve on policy committees so when are we planning these interviews through yeah I ideally I think you do them sometime between the middle of May and the middle of June so you can approve the candidates Slates June 19th what I will need from you is this is going to be it would be ideal for me if there are two threes and we just assigned committees to the two groups so are you okay with me just trying to do that magic as much as possible to get liaisons lined up appropriately okay thank you and just for the warning again I think I made the warning for when you meet as a full council if you're meeting as the committee of three and there's three of you present that is a quorum of the council so make sure you're only operating within the charge of the committee which is to do the interviewing and not talk about council business at the same time right thank you okay is everyone okay with that do we need a motion so I would recommend you make a motion to establish two subcommittees of the council made up of three councillors for the sole purpose of interviewing candidates for your appointed policy committees I'll make that motion we don't have to designate who do we designate who so I need to go through and figure out which three of you best overlap so who wants to be on I guess I do need to know who wants to go on both right one person has to be on one who's going to be on the one committee because I want to be on that committee you know probably the chair should be on both right I would say the chairs if well I would think the chair should be on both yeah excellent I will do that hoping everything works out in terms of my yeah so we have a motion yeah yeah do we have a second second okay all in favor aye back to us with the grid and now for questions yep and the I will send out some scheduling emails about one to actually schedule those subcommittees okay what combination of you will be on the two committees okay so can I suggest that when you do make some of those committee assignments you know like which committees each group is going to what if you'll think about someone who might apply for one committee and we have too many people what's another complimentary committee yeah I mean then we could since we're interviewing both sides we could would have the knowledge that you know we still have an opening on parts and wreck so I'd like to consider that absolutely happy if you if you the five of you want to do that now kind of batch the committees or Helen you and I could work on it together and make those decisions I'm fine with helping you people can always email me and with their ideas but we can do that that wouldn't be hard and are you comfortable with us working towards the planning commission smooth out yes I think that makes sense okay and then I reckon then I also think at some point when these two subcommittees are working at one of the council meetings we need to do planning commission and the DRB so there will be a full council hearing those applicants right in the same time frame on June 5th at the regular council meeting right that's what I would recommend just did this a year's gone by come on when you have this much fun the time flies thank you very much I know that was a lot all right now I would entertain a motion to convene as the south Burlington liquor control commission so moved second all in favor aye and we have before us one two you want a motion yep that we approve the various liquor licenses for Charlie's chicken Charlie's Dave's cosmic subs and all the rest of the businesses listed in item 15 of our agenda tonight what do they give you money to say their names I'll second okay so any discussion I do want to just point out there's one that you are approving tonight Parkway diner that has not yet paid their fee have just noted in your resolution that approval for that one is contingent upon receipt of payment okay yes that's amenable all right did we go yet no all in favor aye is there any new business or other business we have to come out of liquor commission second all in favor aye one last other item very quickly counselor corner Megan is going to do April but we need may we can do you know for more may June July and August what was that counselor corner all right right yes so who would like to do the thing in May I just did one okay I'm sorry July I'd be happy to do it in June or July okay so Tyler why don't you do June got it okay do you want to do May okay Andrew will do May July Tim will do July and I'll do August okay dope is it the first weekend day or what is it usually anytime but it usually goes out you know they're very anytime he used to be and now it's like whenever you send it in but they like it once a month Monday is really the deadline I think pretty much I drafted something for the planning commission okay okay so adjourn yes adjourn all right tonight we are adjourned thank you thank you thanks Tyler your car is at somebody else's