 I'm going to call to order this regular meeting of the Winooski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Colston. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. The first item on the agenda here is the agenda review. Any questions or concerns about the order of the agenda? All right. Next up is public comment. I see there's a couple people in the attending via Zoom. This is a chance to speak to any topic not related to something already on the agenda. So if you're here for anything that's on the agenda, please hold for that item. Is there any public comment? And you can use the chat or the raise hand feature in Zoom. All right. So we'll move to our consent agenda. We have our council minutes from the November 15th meeting and accounts payable warrant of 12 to 2021, payroll warrant for periods 822 to 1113 and 1114 to 1127. Are there any questions or concerns on the consent agenda? Any questions from members of the public? All right. Can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Motion by Bryn, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. We are on to council reports. Bryn, any reports to share? Next meeting is full infrastructure committee meeting. We'll be next week. We have yet to develop the final agenda. So if anybody has topics they would like us to cover, please send them my way. Happy to address them in our next meeting. And attended the Shop Winooski this past Thursday. And it was an excellent event. It was great to see everyone out and run into some fellow counselors down there. So a great event and happy to see all the work that went into it and all the vendors and folks Winooski out there. Thank you. Jim. Thank you. So I have attended the housing commission meeting last month where we looked at the update that was by council just to have a debrief on that. We had some public discussion at council and again at the commission meeting around some housing quality issues. And also uses for our funding and housing if that's the direction that occurs. We looked at some of the ideas for using that funding in a street way. The commission was particularly interested in the housing while their housing movement along the lines of our housing movement loan fund as part of the housing trust funds. And there was a further discussion at future meetings as mentioned at the end of the review was a bit allowable to think about what are their priorities I think were decedently for. The accept becomes an option. And then finally we looked at the a building registry and housing standards ordinances in preparation for further discussions on the housing quality issues Winooski and how it has potentially been perceived by the public authorities of being wants to housing a length grapple or ahead on that topic. In addition I attended the airport commission meeting last month and was able to ask some questions around the voice monitoring system and some of the information coming out of that. Winooski for some guidance on how the systems can be used to look back at historical data and first follow up after the meeting with acting director along with Nick. So who provided information that Excel data or spreadsheet data for the voice monitoring stations will be being available weekly is a goal on the Berlin Timbs airport sound website. So that will be available the public weekly basis which provides the time the events the duration of the events and how long it was over the course of that event. So a lot of the members are really interested in going back and looking at different events in our area to be the raw data that they also provided in their review of the sound monitoring portal and how they can honestly that and look at this past events with their retail function. So that's not exciting to see that moving forward and I'm officially moving forward. Thank you. Hal. Thank you. Do you know what I have to report is some personal information. I'm planning to retire next year after the legislative session in May. So therefore it'll be my last session in the legislature and therefore this will be my last term on city council. I share this with the mayor and my colleagues in the council and I just want to make it down to the public that I will be moving on. I'm not getting any younger but 269 next April. So I just want to work on a the next chapter of my life and I'll be in Aruba as of October 1st next year. So it's been a great experience to represent our city locally and at the state level and I hope to keep in touch with all of you. Thanks Hal for all of your service. I'm glad we have a couple more months to keep working together. Well-deserved retirement plans that sound wonderful to me. I'm going to do that. Yeah. Mike, council updates. Good evening everybody. I have nothing to report today. Thank you. The only thing I will share is Jim and some and staff and I met with the Gov HR the the recruiter for the city manager role to finalize next steps in timeline. That is pretty much final. I'm going to be doing some recruitment from our previous search committee and I should be able to bring a formal update to our next meeting to share with you all where we're at there and when we'll kick that off and what you can expect for your time commitments for potential candidate interviews. With that I will turn it to Wendy for our city updates. Okay thank you mayor. I want to let potential candidates for the city council positions know that they can pick up petitions at the clerk's office or online. Now for that petition you need 30 signatures. It's best to get a few more in case that some are not valid and they're due to the clerk by Monday January 24th. Registration for winter recreation programs has started so now's the time to register and Heather informed me that the city has been awarded a municipal planning grant to develop a housing equity plan which is great news and that plan will build on the housing findings in the equity audit report which is scheduled to be complete in the next couple of months and just a reminder that the parking ban is in effect for all of downtown through March and for the remainder of the city bans are as needed and you can tell when one is active by the flashing lights at the entrances to town or to the city rather and you can also sign up for alerts on Nixle which helps and I understand from the folks who gave out the reminders that people are already complying and they complied earlier this year than they have in previous years which is great so thank you very much to the public that's all I have thank you so the next item on the agenda is a public hearing about the private street molly's way however it was warned for 615 so we can take it is 610 right now we can take a five minute break before we move on to that item we were a little faster with our first portion of the agenda than normal today okay I've got 615 so we can reconvene ourselves we are item number eight the public hearing for molly's way I want to open that public hearing and invite John Rauscher is going to share some information with us thanks yep so I just wanted to give you an overview of the public hearing so this is a public hearing for the naming of a private street that is that's been constructed as a part of a nine unit planned residential development at 64 la fountaine so it's the new construction kind of townhouse style construction that's that's on the sort of south side of la fountaine street so as part of our local ordinance in chapter 22 we are required to have a public hearing for any street naming whether it be public or private so we did review this with our city attorney and they recommended even for this kind of private street that we would not dedicate or make a city right away we should still hold the public hearing and go through the council process so that's sort of the background for this hearing and then there's there's two items there's a public hearing and then after this there's another agenda item for the official council thanks john are there any questions from council I have a quick question sure in the documents I didn't mention if there was you know any background or reasoning for the naming I was just curious it kind of just provides the what is proposed yeah I believe it's a granddaughter for the owner of the development one of his granddaughter students any other questions from council are there any questions from members of the public as a reminder you can use the chat or raise hand feature to let us know if you wish to speak all right hearing no questions from the public I will close this hearing at 6 17 p.m and hearing no concerns I wonder if someone on council would like to make a motion to approve the Molly's way naming so moved second motion by house second by Jim all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you so we are now in the regular items portion of the agenda first up we have the waking windows event permit on for approval good evening while Paul brings Ali Nagel over to speak a little bit or answer any questions I'll just go over this quickly staff has received the permit application for the annual waking windows event to be held May 13th 14th and 15th of 2022 generally the event is held on the first weekend of May so you'll know that this is a change in weekend it's the second weekend in May this is a three day arts and music festival that's been held annually with a slight disruption for COVID for the last 10 years and it brings thousands of people to our downtown to enjoy the event so it will feature act in downtown business venues as well as outdoor stages on when you ski falls way and in rotary park the event sponsor is requesting the closure of when you ski falls way for Friday through Sunday May 13th through 15th use of rotary park use of the property along when you ski falls way and possibly the use of terrace park in front of the sack as well as a couple of select on street parking closures two stalls of parking one in front of monkey house and one in front of misery loves company that was used in the past to do children's events I'm not sure if that's how they're being used again this year I do want to make one note that the map that was included in your packet shows an overlap of some of the activities with lot nine which is not owned by the city but that was discussed in the meeting with the event sponsor and we also discussed COVID and how that is being monitored through time and safety guidelines and so the event sponsor is aware that COVID conditions at the time may impact the event but staff recommends approval of the permit and I have Ali here Ali do you want to give us any news or big changes for this year? Hello everybody I don't think so you laid it out pretty great it'll probably be mostly the same as 2019 we are downsizing a bit as we may not be in every business but other than that we're trying to focus a lot on the outside stuff obviously due to COVID so it should be a great celebration year hopefully Thanks Al That's about it yeah unless anyone has any questions for me Council any questions? Brynn? Just quick clarification so it's just a portion of Winooski Falls way not the full length of the road Yeah Yeah No I mean I'm very excited to have the event back so thank you for all of the work that goes into it I know it's a really awesome opportunity for our city to bring music and arts into the area and bring out in folks that really might not otherwise come and see our awesome city so it's a great exposure for everyone Yeah hopefully things uh the plans don't change Are there I will say Yeah Are there any questions from members of the public? All right hearing no concerns would someone like to move to approve this event permit for Waking Windows? So I'll move Second Motion by Mike Second by Brynn All those in favor please say aye Aye Aye Aye Motion carries Thank you Thanks Ali Thanks everybody Bye So we are Oh Shucks We are on to Item B which is a presentation from town meeting TV however our guest Megan is not here yet I think she's not expected until 645 Can we y'all mind if we skip this for now and move on to Item C and we'll just come back to this as needed All right thank you So moving on to Item C this is on for discussion this is consideration of a local mask mandate the legislature did approve granted the ability to municipalities to create their own mask ordinance Wendy would you like to add any introduction? Sure and I just want to say it was intended to be discussion approval so you could take action on it Yeah and I believe it was corrected on the public agenda online Oh you're correct this is on for discussion approval not I printed this out days ago thank you so hopefully okay good right so the Vermont legislature met in special session to approve Act 1 which allows municipalities to impose a mask mandate it can be either with or without enforcement staff is recommending the non-enforcement option because the purpose as we see it is to ensure or to impact compliance and to also have some consistency within the city it would be especially helpful we believe and we've heard from restaurants and businesses to be able to have a sign on their door that says the city requires masks so that visitors from out of town will just wear a mask but again there's no enforcement so there's no penalties for not having masks we're just trying to encourage people to have them obviously COVID is increasing again and masking has been shown to be the most effective way to prevent it there we developed an outreach plan to make sure that folks who lack either the resources or the ability to get masks are able to get masks that's in draft because we wanted to get more information and suggestions from the council if you have them on how to reach out to communities the provision of masks as we have it scheduled now would cost the city $300 or less and we already have a lot of the materials a lot of the masks because they went down in price after the initial COVID so the rule does require that the council revisit it the first time for it's limited to a 45-day period and then at that meeting which would be in January the council would vote to either rescind it or extend it for an additional 30 days and because you meet twice a month you don't need to have any special meetings for the to comply with the 30-day requirement and the rule ends April 30th of 2022 hopefully COVID will end April 30th of 2022 thanks Wendy and I will add to that the language that is drafted here for this local rule is what was recommended by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns as Wendy said without an enforcement component the only change that we made to the stock language was to make exceptions for it had initially said children under two we changed that to five for easier compliance and I will add that you know myself and and some members of staff participate in a weekly meeting with folks from the Department of Health various community partner organizations to stay in touch on on COVID response and heard strongly from that group that they would like to see a local mask mandate as sort of a communications and education strategy so like you know right now kids are going to the school and being told they have to wear a mask all day but then if they go into a store with their parents afterwards they don't and that disconnect can be hard to you know the consistency would be a nice add so this is on for discussion or approval we can take it up or not and also provide feedback as Wendy said on the outreach plan are there questions or concerns from council I don't have questions or concerns I did look up what other municipalities are doing there are quite a few other municipalities that are taking up the question tonight or tomorrow night I think for those that have adopted it so far that I've that I've heard of include Brattleboro, Warren and Burlington and I believe the others that are taking up the question are tonight or Charlotte Essex Richmond and then tomorrow night is expected to be Shelburne and in Wilson and actually tonight also South Burlington so there are quite a few municipalities that are bringing the subject the question for on whether to adopt a mask mandate yeah and our neighbors in Burlington have already done so as well right I thought I mentioned that sorry you might have that was a long list yeah Mike yeah I got a question it's hard to put in words what's what's been going on since COVID hit and I'm just wondering why and maybe you guys can answer this as a group or the mayor can why do we feel that we need to have an elective body mandate and tell businesses and residents or visitors the mask up shouldn't we leave this up to the residents or the business owners because there I mean there's already businesses already doing this for example Walgreens and when you ski has a sign says mask required before entering and I'm just trying to figure out so the city city be giving guidance instead of mandating and telling business owners and people what to do yeah so what we have heard from a lot of business owners is that even while they're asking patrons to mask it's easier for them to have the weight of the city behind that ask and I mean frankly this this rule is like guidance in the fact that we're not going out to like ticket people for non-compliance right this is kind of more of a carrot methodology of just trying to encourage more people to wear masks is how you know I'm looking at things Hal I see your hand thank you mayor just to the point of the question of Councillor Meyer we know why we need to do this I think we need to do this because our governor doesn't want to do this and we have record number of cases of late off the charts and there are six states in the country that have mandated mask wearing and five of them have seen a decrease in cases so it works and yeah we can fully enforce it but I think giving it some weight that we know this is something we need to do I think can only have a positive outcome so I support this thanks Hal and I do just want to quickly clarify not every business owner has said they want this right but a lot of them have and it is something that I was hearing from hearing about back before the state enacted the the statewide mask mandate Jim thank you I don't have any concerns about taking this step I think it is the right thing to do for our community right now one in 20 of our community members are under five and cannot be vaccinated and every child under 12 is eligible between five and 12 is eligible but we have not had enough time for any of them to be fully vaccinated so I think this is what we need to do to bridge this time we're going into holiday seasons and gathering with family and there's going to be necessary risks with that and there's going to be risks that families are willing to take but we got to also look out for people gathering in our public spaces and making it as safe as possible right now as we face this kind of uncertain time in the winter when we're getting towards a really important milestone with the vaccination campaign and we need to buy ourselves a little more time so I think this is a good idea thanks Jim are there questions or comments from members of the public again you can use the chat or raise hand feature I see Daisy Burbeco can you all hear me yes welcome Daisy thanks so much for taking comments and also thanks to those of you who are considering taking this up I think it's incredibly important as councillor Duncan noted there are a lot of members in our community who are unable to be vaccinated including children of mine so I appreciate you taking this seriously and Representative Colston I appreciate your understanding of this you know COVID is nothing to fool around with I am a long hauler myself and I wouldn't wish this on anyone else so thank you for helping our community stay healthy thank you Daisy are there any other members who wish to speak there are comments in the chat yeah okay so Ali Nagel is asking if we will forego Jim's bars and restaurants if they can prove vaccination status I think that's a good point because I know we have some businesses that are asking for proof of vaccination is that another exception that we would like to add to this list if we adopt the mandate mask everyone has to be masked anyway so vaccination status should be you're asking for someone's medical records now right so if you're going into a resolution where if you're vaccinated you don't have to wear a mask then I can see the language maybe going in there but I don't see I don't think it's right asking people's status of any medical history so to be clear it would be if the business decides on its own that it wants to do that with patrons then they could not ask those patrons to wear a mask I'm pretty sure that's how it was written now okay and yeah but not that we would be telling people to take that route okay and I think it's up to an individual business if they decide they want to do that because it gives that individual the right not to go to that business if they don't want to give that information out so I think that's a a good point and brand I see your hand yeah I certainly am not a health scientist I think that what we're hearing then in the news and from the experts so far is that there is waning ability for the for the vaccines to fight against Omicron so I know that there are many folks in the population that are approaching the time to get a booster if they have not done so already and I would worry about saying that it that there are exceptions when we when the initial leading science is that is that really that there are potentially more breakthrough cases with Omicron and that there it can break through the previous vaccines that may be reaching their six-month status so I think we're revisiting this we're required to revisit this every 30 days so I think initially I would I my favorite position would be to require it across the board thanks friend Jim or Hal you have thoughts on vaccination exception for businesses I'm inclined to agree with councillor Oakley I think it should be across the board and given 45 days and if we need to you know make any changes we certainly can I'm inclined to agree I think the exception for while eating and drinking pretty much eliminates mask wearing in a restaurant or bar already with the exceptions we are providing so I think if establishments want to add a vaccination requirement I think that's a smart move and this will require you to put on a mask when you go to the bathroom so I think that's the reasonable balance at this time okay I think that's also similar to what we experienced with the previous statewide mandate so might make it easier uptake there any other I want to see if there's any other public comment does anyone else have any questions or other thoughts to share okay so we could take this up tonight we could wait till our next meeting to get more input if somebody wants to make a motion to approve this now that is now would be the time sorry Mike I want to make sure what we're voting on are we voting on as it's stated yeah it's written right okay no thank you so moved wait someone has to actually so you Hal motion to approve yes yes okay and then second by Jim all those in favor please say aye all right all right motion passes we will have a local mask mandate and we will have to revisit it in the first or second meeting in January do we have our town meeting TV guests here yet we do not so let's move on to item D this is our FY23 budget presentation great thank you mayor and I am here with Angela Alderi the finance director so that she can answer all of the really tough questions okay so we'll start with the presentation so Paul if you can put the first slide up thank you so this is the title you all recognize that place so let's go to the next slide which shows you the schedule and we're here today December 6th is highlighted it's your first review of the overall budget and we're also going to go over the general government budget you see you have several other opportunities for review you have the community services budget next week and then you take two weeks off January 3rd you come back and look at public works and CIP and then public safety and then another overall discussion and January 24th is the date that we're targeting for final approval but if you're not ready to approve it at that point you can do so on January 30th you'd still meet the timing for the warning then we go to community presentations town meeting day and then town meeting day the election on on March 1st and I just want to give a shout out to the to the leadership team you'll see the first item is a budget congress and I had actually never heard that term before but that's a term used here when the leadership team the department heads of the staff get together and to cooperatively make reductions in each other's budgets they get to know about each other's budgets and then and it's also a collaborative process which I think is is really helpful and it helps them not only know what the other departments are doing but support each other in the implementation of this budget so kudos to Angela and the the gang and I just want to let you know one other thing at this point the finance commission had asked that we produce a summary version of the budget and so that was provided to council in the book and it's also on the website if you're interested it's on the same page as the regular budget book but then you can you can also see a summary version okay so so paul please go to the next slide okay and this is just a very high level summary of the challenges and constraints that we faced in developing this budget the council had a goal to minimize the tax increase to between 1.5 and 2.5 percent which is a very good goal but a lofty goal we combine that with the fact that the majority of our expenses personnel which you'll see later are impacted directly by the February consumer price index so we are trying to project what that's going to be which is particularly difficult this year and just generally I just want to point out that the way the schedule works is we're working seven months prior to when the budget goes into effect to to predict so it's very important that we be conservative on both sides on on revenue and expenditure because we we really need some margin of error and this year CPI and COVID are unusually large unknown okay we'll go to the next one so a couple of fun facts pages wanted to show you who the top 10 property tax payers are in the current fiscal year and there's different ways to to do this data but the way that it's done here is we did the aggregation of property so when there's one company or one firm that owns multiple properties we included all of those properties now there are some firms who have different LLCs for different properties so there are some names that you might expect to be on this list that are not because they have different investment groups and for different properties so just want to point out a couple of things the city of Burlington surprisingly because of the power generation facilities at the hydrodam our top property taxpayer HK Hawking is number four however there's an agreement that's expiring in 24 that limits the payment to number it varies but this year was 383,000 they would have been the top taxpayer and paid 682,000 so I'm sorry yeah when that expires do they go to back to paying regular rates yeah they go to market rate okay fiscal year 24 cool thank you right so that's important to note green mountain that difference currently comes from the TIF district the TIF is the one that makes that payment back to them and speaking of the TIF district there are asterisks is next to the properties that are in the TIF district and the city of Winooski has two properties which combined made it onto this list and those one of those is in the TIF district another takeaway from this is notice at the bottom the taxes paid by the top 10 are almost 50% of the total taxes paid which is interesting does anyone have questions on this do you should I pop the question yeah feel free to folks can jump in with questions as we go through I'll try to keep an eye on any raised hands okay so then the next slide please Paul is top five employers and you've probably seen this data before or you may have it's part of the economic development reports and I think just it's important for you to know this because those are who are providing jobs now these are not jobs of Winooski residents you could do another study that would show where Winooski residents work but it is interesting to note who are your your largest employers the school district is almost always on top five or top 10 list and medical facilities like often the hospital if you had a hospital here it would likely be on that list okay so go to the next one so this is just a very high level depiction of the pressures that would decrease taxes and the pressures that increase taxes so health insurance actually decrease is decreasing next year but it health insurance is on a calendar year we're on a fiscal year so there's some overlap so even though it's decreasing we're still budgeting for a 10% increase because we could have a huge increase in health insurance but the net is a reduction now the two arrows in the middle you'll notice that they're the same size so what that is intended to depict is that they're equal we get revenue from news sources that's the Esser the school ARPA revenue that is going to the recreation department for programs and then we also have the working communities challenge grant which is going to equity work and those are funding positions so the expense of the positions is covered by the revenue from those two sources but the total budget does go up so when you see our total budget numbers going up but property taxes not going up as much that's why now the big arrow on the right that's again the CPI it could be as high as 6% in February and that impacts as we said 62% of our operating budget which is is staff costs and the other challenge is that we won't know the CPI until after the budget has been adopted at town meeting because it we don't get it until March so that's something that town or the city could look at in the future is trying to get your agreements with employee for employee contracts get that tagged to a different month have it be October or earlier because it's really this year especially it's very challenging to to plan so can I ask I think I read you budgeted assuming a 3.4% CPI is that right correct so how did you land on that instead of being on that higher end Angela looks at sources of folks who are paid to predict that you want yeah sure so I go to a couple of different economic websites that do trend forecasting for consumer price index and I kind of average the two sites that we have found for predictions together to come up with what we're estimating the February to February CPI will be it has been pretty close the last few years within a half a percent this year the the range has wavered a little bit the October to October CPI came out much higher than they were anticipating at 6.2% but they are still predicting that the February will be in the mid three okay and go ahead I'm sorry we'll be checking this throughout the process but as I said it's it's still such a big unknown so if anything this budget is on the lower side I mean we we intentionally want to keep the tax rate low and there there are some funds that we could use if we do have a crisis and end up with a 6% yeah so that was the the the next piece is like voters approve a dollar amount right so if that goes up we still only get collect the same amount of money so it's not like we would then raise the rate do we have do we have some cushion or would we have to be thinking about potential cuts we have a plan there's a few potential options that we have we have a lot of vacant positions right now that are budgeted with family plans and we could have savings from people coming into those positions we have some cushions built in to the budgets for new positions we've built them anticipating the highest level person that could come in in addition we have pretty significant reserves available we do also have the flexibility to negotiate if CPI comes in extremely high we can potentially go to unions and request one-time alleviation from the contract specific language okay and then I see Bryn your hand is raised yeah I was going to ask clarification on the contracts so the contract language essentially requires the city to place cola to match CPI is that what I'm hearing that is correct both of the union contracts say that cola is equal to the February to February CPI which is issued in mid-March okay so when we get to renegotiating AFSCME maybe we can adjust that timeline should be on the list and both of those contracts are tiered contracts so whatever the CPI comes in at they are tiered so if it comes in below one and a half percent the unions get one and a half comes in between one and a half and two and a half they get two and a half yeah anything over three they get whatever CPI is okay and so even though I just want to add even though we do have contingency plans the city would have to dig itself out of a hole so you would have larger increases the following year so even though we have a plan not still not preferable okay I know the council recalls us we did run into a minor issue a couple of years ago where we had estimated cola to be 2.0 percent and it came in at 2.7 and we were able to cover that shortfall within existing budget so we have absorbed that kind of increase before not 3 percent but based on the projections I'm seeing from economists I don't expect it to be that much of a variation okay and brand I see your hand again um I so the follow-up question was whether or not we have it can pull from reserve so I think you were kind of hitting on that Angela but what would we can it is not necessarily sustainable and would simply kicked the can down the road to fiscal year 2024 but it is a potential source and gives us a year to potentially develop some other revenue sources that could offset that potential increase to taxes okay moving on okay next slide please so this is the budget this is the proposed budget you see foy 22 current year in the first column general fund budget is the top line so we're proposing to go from 8.2 million to 8.7 million so it's a 6 percent increase 6.1 percent increase now notice the tax impact is less than that and that's because of the other revenues so the tax property tax impact is three or this is all taxes so that amount is 3.75 percent non property tax revenues are increasing more in proportion the 12.81 percent so the tax rate would go from 1.1622 to 1.957 which is a 2.88 increase you can see the average tax bill this is based on a house valued at 225,000 the tax bill the difference from last year is 75 dollars and 38 cents a year which quarterly would be 18 dollars and 84 cents yeah and to be clear for listeners 225 being the assessed value that's on your tax bill which is probably not your you know your actual home value or what things are selling for right now but that's what it's based on so that is still across our assessments that is still like the average home value in Manuski right so I just um actually maybe I should wait it might be on a future slide are there any other questions and when we come back to this slide at the end okay a whole okay so next slide please so this shows you the immense reliance on property taxes which is that's what you have I mean it's a Dylan's rule state it's you don't have cities and towns don't have many options for revenue so being reliant on property taxes to this extent is not unusual yeah plus didn't we collect less like fees and permits and stuff during the pandemic I think something's got waived parking we collected less yeah this year actually there is a slight well there's a less there's a less reliance on property taxes this year was 79.7 percent last year so to 72 percent and this these budget numbers are different from the numbers you just saw because the budget is built with proposed revenues without an increase in the tax rates because we don't want to assume that the tax rate is going to be accepted it does include an assumption of an increase in value of 0.8 yeah 0.8 yeah and that is what we have been trending the last couple of years for growth in the state the actual growth for the current fiscal year was one percent the assessors and Eric Warwald the assessing planning zoning took a look at the permits that have been issued and did the analysis and we ended up coming out right at about 0.8 percent increase just based on new development and improvements to properties okay so let's go to the next slide so this is an overview of what is included in this budget so we have staffing levels or staffing for level services and it's just important to note that the 211,000 dollar cost of temporary expansion of recreation programs that's funded entirely through the ESSER contract and you'll hear more about that next week because Ray's already started thinking about how to transition that it includes continued equity and inclusion work through the working communities grant we're in year two of three it does maintain pay parity between non-union and union positions it continues a five percent year over year increase to the capital improvement plan from the general fund it includes continued staffing for the school resource officer which was the request of the school district it includes incremental increases to fund the valley parks district and channel 17 so this would be a good time if she shows up hopefully after this one and then just an FYI a penny raises 50,689 dollars in revenue and not included we just found out today that green mountain transit has advised us that their preliminary numbers show a 16.4 percent increase which is 18,000 dollars or 18,141 dollars more than was included so we had anticipated an increase for GMT but we anticipated an increase of seven and a half percent not 16.4 so the differential of that is 18,141 dollars so that's not included in the budget we are working to identify other offsets to absorb that 18,000 without changing the total budget so any questions okay let's go to the next slide please okay so this shows general fund expense by operation so this you get to see exactly what the funds are spent on so you can see police is the largest single component then general administration public works this is up 6.1 percent from FYI 22 you can see the figures below it's pretty straightforward okay go to the next slide please so this shows you the expenses by type so this is where we get the salaries and benefits number because we are a people organization we don't make appliances or materials what we do is things that need to be done with people I mean our services are people related and people furnished so that is why so much of our our budget is salaries and benefits now we have made some conversion to professional services contracts which can be convenient it's not necessarily less expensive but it can be helpful okay next slide please okay so this is the utility funds the water fund and the wastewater fund this is very similar to last year we're recommending a 4.5% rate increase and that's to implement a program that you set up in previous years especially for the water system it needs the appropriate reserves and you want to avoid rate spikes because there will be I mean you have 100 year old pipes so they're going to need to be replaced and it's better to replace them before they break the impact on a customer typical customer use is 2200 cubic feet per quarter so the per quarter increase is $16.67 or $66.68 per year and then the wastewater and storm water fund it's we're recommending the same 4.5% rate increase and the impact on a customer using 2200 cubic feet per quarter because it's measured by the water that comes into the home or location the increase is $21.73 per quarter or $86.92 per year and now this fund does cover operating expenses with operating revenue which is a really good and it's really important to keep it there and not reduce that relationship the rate increase is necessary to generate an additional 23,000 in revenue to allocate for future capital projects especially with storm water the regulations are increasing so you're going to you're you will have increased storm water expenses in the future so it protects the river at this point wastewater is covering its operations but it only has $23,000 to spend on capital costs over and above debt service and wastewater projects are significant cost the Hickok Street project by itself for wastewater is estimated to be over $800,000 so 23,000 for capital is a drop in the bucket you are likely to see continued requests to increase the rate so that we can build a more reasonable amount of capital budget into that plan yeah and historically it was a couple years ago I think we had looked at a five year to what you have up here about 2024 for water five years of slightly larger increases to get these funds on track and then we could move to doing a more modest one to keep up yeah and hopefully as we pay off the debt service that will shift the money from being tied up on paying projects that we've already completed to be available to fund future projects so we'll make that transition hopefully in the next several years we have some stuff that we're already performing and paying off now brand I see your hand thanks yeah I'm curious about the timeline for the wastewater stormwater improvement capital improvement projects and if we're seeing any preliminary information what match what the matching requirements are for build back better funds we want to hold until we do the meeting where we look at public works and I think John's definitely going to have a lot more information and I believe VLCT is holding their first informational meeting on the infrastructure funds this week write that down and email it to John your question Bryn right it's a good question and you're also the better in shape financially your fund is the better you qualify for low rates because there's a lot of funding out there for stormwater and water and wastewater well just for clarification when you say low rates do you mean low bonding or low financing from the there's two funds the clean water water and drinking water yeah the state revolving projects we're currently utilizing those for Tickock Street and Main Street we will likely be converting the Main Street projects for water and wastewater to USDA funding but we have been making use of the state revolving loans zero percent interest or very low interest funds for a lot of our larger projects at this point right and they work well with USDA actually they they work well together and they look at your structure because they prefer to fund things that are sustainable right thanks oh i'm sorry no you can move forward okay okay next slide please so this is a an updated organizational chart we made some chain not just relatively minor changes moved the communications manager was in the community community and economic development office there are new staff in this chart in community services but i'll let ray speak to that i'll talk a little bit about their funding later do you have any questions on this okay let's keep going please all right so this is meant to show you what the administration department does so it consists of the city manager new manager will is scheduled to be on board spring or late spring of 2022 city clerk we have a new clerk who will start this week tomorrow as a matter of fact she will overlap with carol which will be very helpful and the big thing on their agenda for the upcoming years to implement all resident voting for the march town and school elections then the equity director is a member of that department and will be receiving the equity audit in january february so she'll be working on the implementation of those recommendations and also an access equity and inclusion access plan development and implementation those will be heard big projects for next year finance director manages all budgets payments receipts payroll and financial planning and when angela counted up the number of funds it's 17 funds so we didn't list them all here just general fund tip fund parking fund just just the big ones human resources director phoebe is on the call i believe big things coming up are the asmy contract that expires in 2022 she works to implement and document internal equity of hiring and the experience of employees and just as a note from 2019 to 2021 which is just two years the percentage of city employees who are people of color went from 8 percent to 12 percent so you should be proud of yourselves for that that's significant and the communications manager hi paul he's helping us now he's working on the centennial celebration in march and the legacy campaign which are related and just as a note when the way that the word municipal infrastructure is used you typically use it to refer to hard infrastructure but i just i suggest that in the future you also include things like structures personnel policies that are also infrastructure because there are things that need to be updated there are things that allow us to do our work so i just suggest that you expand the use of the word infrastructure and i did take the liberty of using it that way in the summary of the of the budget okay so let's go to the next slide which is the community development fund and in that fund are two individuals the community and economic development officer and the planning and zoning manager and the things they are working on and will be working on housing trust fund rollout you've seen a lot of work from Heather on that the real estate negotiations are ongoing that's that's real estate negotiations for town owned property and housing equity plan is upcoming and supporting the businesses in COVID particularly she does a lot of business support in non-COVID also and then Eric the planning and zoning manager he's working on updating the land use regulations which again you've seen because those come to you focusing on parking requirements and standards incentives for community priorities historic resource protection and updates to align with department standards so that'll be things like public work standards that would be included in the updates and then just generally updating the codes and he's going to work with the clerks he already is working with the clerks to improve records management because we have several storage and access challenges and then you can see the ending fund balance is highlighted in yellow that's what is proposed that would be the fund balance at the end of fiscal year 23 so that's a year and a half away but we're proposing a positive fund balance did you want to add something on this we have potentially earmark uses for the reserve balance in the community development fund associated with lot 70 to offset city investment for a new parking garage so did want to make that clear that if that does come forward to council that would be an ask to do that transfer okay so next slide which is this is a pretty fun slide Angela got this together this shows you the transfers of funding between the TIF the parking fund the community development fund and the general fund so you can see the TIF sends or transfers funds to the general general fund 205,000 and this is upcoming yes this is the proposed FY 23 transfers so TIF pays the general fund for things that we would not have had we not developed the TIF which include extra capacity on the fire department extra investment made by the public works department a second detective that was hired as a result of the TIF district those types of things the TIF fund is also proposing a payment of $150,000 this year for the interest payment on the WCDP note this is a decrease compared to the current fiscal year where we are paying $200,000 and that is to maintain the one-to-one debt ratio in the TIF and make sure that we can continue to do that through the end of the debt service community development pays the general fund for like overhead costs like their share of human resources and finance the parking fund this year pays that overhead as well to the general fund and the tune of $110,000 that also pays for portions of the code enforcement officers who manage the on-street meter enforcement and this year which is a new thing for the coming fiscal year is we are anticipating having the parking garage pay to the TIF district $203,000 currently the parking garage has debt service pledges against it for our debt covenants it was constructed using TIF dollars so any net operating funds are required to go to the TIF district we have not been sending those in recent years due to COVID but the parking garage has more than sufficient reserves it has over $600,000 in reserves so this fiscal year we are proposing to spend their capital funds out of those reserves and instead of putting capital money aside transfer that into the TIF to be able to make that service payments that's kind of the the way the money just flows around between those funds right which is really important to understand so thank you any questions on this one and when the TIF expires you'll have a different arrangement but we can talk about that another time okay so let's go to the next slide please so this is actually the TIF fund and again there's a positive fund balance at the end of the year do you want to add anything on this other questions I mean what we care is that we're on track with that one to one ratio so one more year I think we can make it we're getting close 1.07 is like the closest we've been I think we'll definitely have a lot more discussion about this in the future oh no I do see Jim Jim just popped his hand up okay thank you I just wanted to come back to this transfer from the parking garage reserve fund to the TIF so I see that in the revenue line are is this required in order to make the debt service ratio this year far closer to one to one if you were to deduct 203,000 from that ending fund balance we would be at $20,000 worth of fund balance in the TIF and that was too skin of the teeth for my comfort in terms of making sure that we stay exactly on target of expenses since we only budget for about $40,000 worth of legal costs in the TIF so you know just just to make sure that we've got that capacity to meet that one to one ratio okay thanks and the parking is it the parking garage is in good shape the parking garage is absolutely in good shape we've made very careful use of the capital funding that we've had to date and have been maintaining the debts we've gotten a lot of compliments about the maintenance in our garage compared to other garages that it's very well kept and I think that we can continue to do that out of the reserves we have over $180,000 in structural repairs plus funding that is set aside for a lot of the other things that could come up so we we are in a good position that even if some emergency happens capitalized in the garage we can cover it Bryn, I see your hand I as we hopefully start to return more office employees back to work on a regular basis and with significant state investment in electric vehicles is do we anticipate the EV charger in that garage the repairs on that or replacement of that to be part of what's covered under this budget or would that be a separate allocation I'm hoping that John's on the call but I believe that we have some budget for the electric charging station already John, do you recall? Yeah, last year we actually budgeted for two new charging stations you placed that large Mitsubishi one so I'm in the process cleaning together a bed so our goal is to have that replaced this winter early spring that's great news so we won't see it in the FY23 then that's the current year we'll get it before we even get there perfect and there may be other I mean hopefully you'll get other charging stations too not just that one and there is some grant funding for that okay shall we go to the next slide this is where we do have a negative fund balance because you suspended parking fines and fees which was the appropriate thing to do during COVID happy to answer questions you know some of this is as a result of being far under our revenue projections but we were conservative for a lot of our operations costs we are paying for some of the development costs from lot 70 out of these dollars in addition some of that loss is due to disposal of assets yeah so do we just work to refill this in the following years yeah we're we're getting closely we ended last fiscal year negative 40 000 and we're projecting that by the end of FY23 we'll be at negative 15 and if we're conservative with how we spend in these funds we can probably get there sooner than that and completely negate that okay all right next slide please so then this is the garage this is the cascade's garage so you'll see that there's no budgeting capital expenses any capital work that we do will come from the reserve so we'll result in a net loss so that we spend out of the reserve balance but pretty much operations as usual and that's a very healthy fund balance okay next slide please we'll go to the reserve funds this is just information that we provide to the council every year on what you have in available unassigned reserves after our 30 days cash on hand policy and the assigned funds are taken out of consideration we contributed $611,000 to the reserve fund in the general fund in FY21 we have unassigned balances of $1,116,000 of which council has already allocated out about $147,000 to regional dispatch conversions the centennial celebration and the city manager's search one thing that hasn't necessarily been highlighted is that we are proposing in the fiscal year 23 budget the use of some of these reserves to net the O'Brien community center to a neutral position with no impact on the taxes in light of the fact that we are not leasing out the space that would make that a performing entity so we are proposing the use of some reserves in the FY23 budget and even after all of those things are taken into consideration we still have unassigned balances of over $880,000 Mike I see your hand yeah I get a question about the regional dispatch yeah isn't that that project has been put on hold hasn't it I would say it's moving very slowly we had a meeting with South Burlington folks last week on it so are we going to keep budgeting money for this project that keeps rolling at a snail's pace or is this something we want to keep thinking about or yeah spent yet right we're just holding the money we're holding the money right now some of this would be physical upgrades that are required to the police department here in order to go to regional dispatch so those things we may not necessarily wait on because they would be good improvements for the building anyway but you know those are just assigned funds council can reassign funds in the future it's not 100% dedicated until we spend it and this is a good thing to talk about in the public safety budget conversation yeah thank you you're welcome okay so should we go to the next slide please so these this is a slide just to give you a heads up of things that are coming after next year's budget so you don't need to make any decisions on these now but it's just important that you you know that it's coming as we're discussing the TIFF will expire in 2024 400,000 in general revenue should be available that's the amount remaining after the amount planned for main street debt current CDC costs legal fees and maintaining the existing general fund transfer that's what Angela talked about a little bit before so that's 1.087 million the existing general fund transfer that includes those existing staff roles is that accurate no so the 205,000 the only staff that are included in that piece are the one detective so the other staff is the CDC that's not covered by the general fund transfer that's covered by our payment of interest on the WCDT note okay thank you okay and then something that is coming up that we're well aware of is ARPA there's a grant of 2.192 million needs to be allocated by the end of 2024 that's calendar 2024 and spent by the end of 2026 and so the finance commission is we'll discuss ARPA allocation at their meeting in January and public outreach is scheduled to begin soon we've talked about that and then funding of temporary staff recreation staff funded via the school district by ESSER I'm going to show you more on that later and the equity director funded through working communities challenge grant I just want to keep bringing that up so that you remember and the staff will bring this up next year and it's just important to be thinking of that okay go to the next slide please and so this is showing you the folks the positions in orange are the ESSER positions and then the positions in yellow are partially funded by grant funds not by tax revenue so those will be discussed in future years just giving you a heads up and let's go to the next slide do you think yeah we're getting to the end so this shows you this is the same schedule that you saw previously just highlighting the January 24 goal of having the budget complete does anyone have any questions on this before move on okay so then yeah the last slide is the same the summary of proposal and impact just because that I think is the best summary of what we're proposing so I just wanted to call out two things here one is this increase on the tax bill for the average house plus the water and sewer rate increases is a total of about $114 for the average household in Winooski for increases what we're asking for here keep in mind this is just the municipal side of your tax bill not the education side and then this percent change of 2.88 so we had asked staff to reach like up to 2.5 after they were already budgeting we said that we would redirect 5% of the local options tax to downtown Winooski and so you know in essence that's a pass through we collect that revenue not from taxes and so essentially we keep 95% of it that's not exactly accurate but sending 5% back to downtown Winooski but because the staff had already worked on the budget that bumped this up from 2.5 to 2.88 because instead of us keeping it what is it $22,000 roughly that is being sent along to downtown Winooski so what we're looking at here is a little higher than what we had set as a goal if we are concerned about that then we need to tell staff that we want a reduction in where that's obviously not something we should dig into right now but I just wanted to frame that up as we're looking at the future department budgets I do also want to provide a little bit of perspective so the total tax rate increase that we are asking for in dollars quantity is about $170,000 just under that the total increase to just existing staff wages and benefits was $227,000 so we were able to do an ask from the taxpayers that more was underneath the amount of the cost of living and benefits increases that we're projecting thanks to non-tax revenue that y'all have worked hard to bring into this budget and I do really appreciate that and this is something that will also will always go into my budget presentations is we have this many staff this is what it costs to deliver these services in Winooski just like everyone else we want to keep up with cost of living and provide good wages to staff and retain them and actual growth in grand list revenue is is not even close to sufficient to keep up with that so you increase taxes you find new revenue which were pretty constrained on by the state or you cut services those are like the three ways to to address things so I do appreciate that I think every year I've been sitting here you all have been able to bring forward an increase that is lower than the actual cost of retaining everyone so thanks for adding those details are there overarching questions from council at this point in the presentation Jim um I apologize that I don't recall this off the top of my head but where do we stand with a citywide reassessment in our threshold there it's supposed to start next spring so it's it's going to start with the new fiscal year the contract is already signed for the reappraisal but it won't be finalized until the year that the TIF expires okay so we'll be getting a new revised grand list just in time for fiscal year 2025 and just for our viewers reference while a reappraisal will probably increase the assessment of your home it's going to increase everybody's assessments it doesn't change the amount of money that the city collects so it doesn't necessarily mean your taxes go up brand I see your hand curious to what extent staff pursue costs and operational efficiencies to help reduce expenses you know in previous presentations there's been a leveraged funds report that shows all the not so the leveraged funds report is included in your packet that you received it should be in the appendices and that is really the outside funding sources that we seek to offset some of the tax dollars most of it is around low major capital projects but the last page of that leveraged funds report is called other projects and it details the grants and donations that we received to fund different initiatives in the city it details the prior fiscal year because that's information that we actually have and in fiscal year 2021 the city was able to get three hundred and seventeen thousand dollars to go towards operational projects that we were completing including a lot of the equity work and some police safety equipment election support and a lot of COVID relief thank you for adding that detail I'm also curious in terms of not just additional funding sources but our own operational efficiencies to cut expenses I mean we've been working on trying to do some of those types of things one of the reasons that we went to a pooled office supply budget was to have purchases go through a single person and have a pool of off supplies that people can come and take from so that not everybody had a hoard of paper and pens and things in their own office that it's one pool that people can come to you know operationally there's people are flexible we're doing lots of different jobs I don't know what other well always fresh eyes help just good planning too and capital planning and equipment replacement matters because sometimes the temptation is to keep trucks for as long as they'll drive and that's really not the efficient way to go it's it's it's better to to have a plan where you trade things in when they're at a higher value before they begin to cost too much some this building has challenges efficiency wise so we are looking at long-term solutions to that electric cars you're using electric vehicles more which is good you could do more of that and actually getting a good solid capital plan where you start putting money away and earning interest instead of paying interest in borrowing can can really make a difference in the long term so I I think you're doing a lot of a lot of things right and you have been I mean you were one of the first tips which is impressive does that help answer the question and we can get more information from you the departments will have more yeah I think a lot of the departments are going to have their own operational efficiencies we're still working on creating some depth um we we have uh lacked the backup so if somebody's sick a lot of cases in the city there's only one person who can do something and we're trying to make some some depth of service so that if one person's out it doesn't cause a bottleneck so that's something that we are working towards we have more than one person who can cut checks and issue payments we have more than one person who can process payrolls and so we've been working towards those things as well which is very important given the size of our staff awesome yeah I I've done a bunch of work and continuous improvement with working for the agency of natural resources and in my current role my day job so it's always looking at opportunities to low and no cost opportunities to um improve improve operations while cutting expenses so not and it's not a focus on cutting staff at all but just um reducing reducing overproduction and reducing waste things along both lines right and just doing what makes sense too and and you have to continuously look at what you're doing you can't just assume that you're that what you did before is going to work in the future hey I need to correct a statement I made the total for tax water and sewer is 228 I had used the quarterly total for water and sewer not the total total so this is what we're projecting would be a total $228 increase on the municipal side of the tax bill for the year for FY 23 for the average home are there any questions from the public again you can use the raise hand feature to let us know if you'd like to speak at our next meeting on the 13th we're going to be looking at digging deeper into the community services budget and then in our each Monday in January digging in deeper to each of these sections of the budget so there'll be a chance to look more in depth than and learn more about what's being included there Mike yeah so that'll be the time to bring up the waterfront and sewer fund then right I mean do we have to increase that four and a half percent it just seems awful high I think we can look at in that meeting see the actual projected out like the full fund projections and then talk about for that I can't note that the water fund if we do not do a four and a half percent increase is already not going to be able to cover its operations costs with the increase that we are proposing so we would need to eat into the reserves that it has available more it just seems like married that your total having a 200 200 plus dollar tax increase I mean it doesn't seem like a whole lot of money to some people but it is a whole lot of money to some people and on a city that's already taxed very high and we hear it all the time from our from our residents and I know we have to keep things moving forward but I mean to be interested to know it and no one's asking any questions from from the public today but I'd be interested to know what how they feel about it yeah um it's like 20 bucks a month right and if you're on a fixed income that matters and we know that a lot of our residents pay 40 50 maybe more of their percent of their income just to make their rent I think that is something that we always need to keep in mind um and that property taxes paid by landlords are passed on to renters in the rent we have historically since FY 16 we've been averaging about a 2.23 percent increase each year which is probably like in line with cola or lower I don't know I haven't checked that off hand but that does add up over time and again this is just one side of the the taxes that we pay there's also the state education funding that we all have to think about as well oh there was just a question in the chat about funding for the equity director that is currently grant funded and conversations about long-term sustainability for that role so next year after town meeting day or like right now we're like focused on all resident voting as sort of the big thing that we need to work on with community outreach starting at town meeting day we want to shift to ARPA and the TIF expiration because both of those come in 2024 there's going to be a lot of money that we need to decide what to do with so the goal is to spend next year doing a lot of community outreach to get actual input from residents on this long-term sustainability and priorities and then so next budget season we could start having a real conversation about how those funds are allocated in the upcoming budget and then the following year so that's something that you know in this budget we're saying level services for the upcoming year so that we can then spend time thinking more strategically about the long-term funding closer to when we get that money Mike I saw your hand first Yeah and I'd just like to repeat a statement that when the TIF was enacted 20 years ago or so that the people that are living on the fixed incomes now in this city are looking for the so-called payoff so I want the council future staffers or future council members to remember this the people that voted for the TIF that are still here most of them are on a fixed income Yeah it was that sort of investment was communicated as a way to mitigate increasing costs right so when we start getting those funds in how do we think about that as a way to sustain the services this community needs and using that new income to to resource that without like continual tax raises Jim I saw your hand as well Thank you I just wanted to I think it can be misleading to look at the dollar amounts right now I think we have to consider this and how we're doing in comparison to COLA and inflation the the value of 280 and $28 this year is not the same as it was last year when we made decisions to raise the tax rate that doesn't mean much to those on folks on fixed income and we have to consider that but we also have to decide whether we're going to respond to inflation going on right now with pets to services to keep the dollar amounts the same or if we're going to try and maintain services while still going under COLA which is for the inflation CIP our CPI I think that's just something to consider that we talked about $18 quarterly impact this year compared to a $9 quarterly impact last year but we're doing the same things this year as we were last year we're maintaining level services we're utilizing significant external funding last year if you recall we added sidewalk improvements to our capital plan so we were doing more and I think we just got to keep that in mind that the dollar difference the dollars don't match up year to year right now because of inflation so we really have to think about this in terms of what it's going to cost to be a city what it costs to business and what we need to pay to do that and that's the unfortunate effect of inflation but that's not something that we need to control can control we can respond with either continuing to have our services or not and I think this you know I look forward to the next several weeks of discussing this in more detail for each fund but I want to keep that in mind thanks Jim hey Paul could you please drop a link to the budget page in the chat there's a question about like what's included in community service and yeah I think you could find that there also next Monday we'll be digging into that part of the budget that you covered there yep and if anybody listening just another plug for that is when you ski vt.gov slash fy 23 so we have the full budget there you can see each department on piece by piece as well as a full executive summary that you're welcome to not to download and look over before any of the meetings and then the bottom of the page we have all of the upcoming meeting information so in the presentations for each one of those meetings will be included as well thanks Paul and for counselors and community members like when you're if you are reviewing this stuff offline like please for counsel please submit any questions you can in advance to to Wendy to work with staff so that when these presentations happen staff are prepared to have those answers and then community members as well can email myself staff counselors whoever you want we have a dedicated budget oh great budget at when you ski vt.gov and that comes to the city manager myself the finance director and I believe it also goes to the mayor and we'd really like some people to write very much encouraged and we'll be pushing that out on our various communications channels for the next two months straight there any other questions or comments on the this general summary as our kickoff to budgeting I just want to say I do appreciate having this packet to reference and help with um facilitate the discussion so thank you for putting it together thanks to staff okay we are moving on we need to return to item b now that our guests are here but I it's 7 45 p.m. I want to call a five minute recess and reconvene us at 7 50 p.m. please thank you we are going back to item b which we had to skip for a minute while we waited for our guests who arrived um so we have with us Megan O'Rourke from town meeting tv and Kevin Lumpkin who is our I don't know what your official title is but our representative to town meeting tv trustee like representative but fancy thank you um to give us a little presentation on town meeting tv services who is how folks are watching this right now to begin with welcome Megan thank you all so much for having me and Kevin here thank you Kevin for joining us as well a trustee trustee Lumpkin I should say um I trust that you've all received the memo detailing our FY 21 what we did in FY 21 um our planned FY 22 budget and our request from your FY 23 budget for municipal contribution yeah it's in our um agenda packet so if there's just any like key info you wanted to highlight or yeah let's just do a quick highlight you know FY 21 um obviously was a transition year um I would say from COVID um from I would say from one phase of COVID to the next phase of COVID and we have been working out um the hybrid meetings I think that's probably the biggest highlight is this move from remote meetings to supporting um high quality audio and video um in this zoomo sphere and I hope that's been working out for you we have a pretty talented um amazing staff that we rely on I think Kate is there with you tonight and she's new to the town meeting tv team and is pretty awesome and um fantastic troubleshooter has picked up um a lot of the technology really quickly um it's it's mentioned a lot you know technology is changing people's uh demands people's requests for what they want um these systems to do and as I said to you when I presented it um the uh when I presented the request to support the hybrid meetings that this is a three-year fund um in terms of the technology so it's a three-year investment and we are through year one of that investment and um are keeping our eyes on how it's going to grow and change I did sit through most of your presentation and my ears perked up that Councillor Oakley's um term of uh now I can't remember it and I should should remember it but that you know constant improvement and that's what we are in um so the biggest request here on page two um is for the municipal funding request we came to you in f y 19 knowing that cable funding is in uh is in a decline um we are like many um folks looking for ways to uh re um vet how we fund the services that we provide at the same time the services that we provide cost more because you know cost of living increases hr increases fill up and people demand more for those services so if you look at you know the City of Winooski we recorded 41 of the 36 programs that you're allotted out of the trustee's contract we can't not record some meetings um and and I think the City of Winooski actually does a really good job and I think you pay for additional coverage above those 36 meetings um on occasion and then on occasion we make the decision to cover things um above the contract because um we can't not um the public wants it public demands it and we need to do that um so you'll see that your request I think this year is 9000 when we met with Winooski we decided to phase your contribution in over time um recognizing that you are a smaller city um cable um I'll pause there it's pretty complicated pretty quickly um and I can answer questions about that um I think another thing that you should know this year is that we work really hard with the legislature and our other van access um friends around the state there are 25 access centers around the state that do this kind of municipal coverage community access coverage um and we are um approaching the legislature for close to a million dollar um allocation we don't know if that is um something that we're gonna get but we have a lot of friends there and we realize the importance of the work that we do van and the work of community access centers was declared an essential service during COVID and I think um um you know municipalities the state level funding and various other ways are the uh future so I'm gonna pause there before I get myself tongue tied at this time and see if you have questions thanks Megan I did want to ask how discussions are going about shifting from cable subscriber fees to like streaming fees or something else to replace that revenue you're losing yeah so um the it is a it's a that's a big long conversation so um then when it gets into FCC regulations it gets into um public right-of-way gets into full attachments gets into the new rewrite of the telecommunications um telecommunications laws that we have in Vermont and um I think it's going to be um it's going to be a conversation that we're going to keep having and that is specifically on the legislative front that that that allocation to recognize the services that are provided and paid for mainly out of cable subscriber funds and the need to change that is something that we're going to see if the legislature moves on that I think it's going to be a big um I think that'll be a big uh what's the word hat tip um towards uh the importance of the service um in the meantime we're also doing fee for service as you know we do um so CCTV is the mothership and and runs town meeting tv and when you when you purchase service CCTV does fee for services today as well for a lot of the um the kinds of community coverage that we do so it's some of the things that we do in the community media internships for example working with students or youth or college students um that work um is paid for by fee for service work that we do in the community we do fundraising you know direct asks of folks so that's a I'm sort of skirting your question because I'm not prepared to go into that um but but I'm also trying yeah the answer is no substantial movement yet lots of long-term work well the the answer is like really good purchase and really good friendships and really good connections made of the legislature as well yeah so um I think that's that work that's been the groundwork that's been laid this week thank you and I um councillor Oakley has her hand raised yeah thanks um I do have questions you're getting into it a little bit um is there I can't I don't know off the top of my head if there's um advertising or underwriting um similar to way vpr has opportunities for businesses to do advertising yeah we do underwriting we have I don't have the numbers in front of me right now but I think this year we did around 30 000 in underwriting um and maybe we you know we do grant chasing we do um uh foundation work so we've gotten some foundation um support again some of that's for the media internship work less for the direct reporting of municipal media but you know folks will come in and support the archive for example we're in the middle of um undergoing a national endowment for humanities grant work to become a trusted repository so you know one of the services that we provide you is the archiving of all the content all the municipal content meeting content but also you know other interesting content city market just came to us and said hey we want a footage of you know anything you've ever shot around city market in the last 20 years and that's kind of stuff we pull out of the archives and that funding um that national endowment for the humanities grant is going to set us on a three-year course of becoming a digital trusted repository so you know especially in the age when people are like let me put it on youtube and it will be there forever we're saying actually no you know you actually need to control this content you need to hold on to the content you need to find ways of backing it up from multiple services so yes we do underwriting it's not the biggest thing and we have a history of um you know being supported by cable company and doing everything for free that we're trying to like shift this is the model we're trying to shift this is not um not um just a free service anymore megan do you mind if i add a little bit to that yeah so thinking of the relationship between town meeting tv and cctv is helpful here because this discussion is really the town meeting tv side of things town meeting tv megan correct me if i'm wrong really only has two revenue sources direct money from municipalities and money from the cable companies and the cable company revenue is only going down and it has been going down and so town meeting tv it continues to kind of lose money over time and that needs to be made up somewhere the municipal contributions have stayed relatively flat year over year in the grand scheme of the budget and that's actually where cctv is starting to essentially contribute to town meeting tv and make up uh make up for that slack on its own through underwriting through fundraising the fundraising operation has i think skyrocketed in the last year or two um so it's a long term problem and ultimately the legislature is going to need to solve that problem one way or another but in the interim there has been a a big development in terms of fundraising grant writing underwriting and things like um you know getting fee for service work from organizations that can pay for it thanks Kevin i can let other folks ask questions but i do have a couple more i don't see any other hands raised if you want to go ahead Bryn sure um i'm looking on your i guess page six and you have to direct me if there's other numbers that i'm missing in your packet so i apologize um in terms of viewership do you have more demographic data available or like year over year subscribers viewership i'm just thinking about what our needs in when you see are and and um as we move into all resident voting um you know just how we're going to need more translation services um uh as we increase access especially with um collections and voting so is that do you have any information on on that side of things as far as what supports you have in place or a plan yeah so um thank you Kevin for getting me back on the thinking track of town meeting tv and cctv for someone who's like i can i confuse them i can play them and i live under them so um and i might do it again here for a minute so the town meeting tv started as cable delivery only period and if you were running a channel out on on contest um and we can get cable subscriber numbers meaning like these are all the people that have that channel when they turn on we can't know who actually watches it whether they collect that data through their digital set top box or not which i'm sure they do they do not share that viewership data with us um and in winooski that would only be contest um we have a town meeting tv youtube channel that we can use to extrapolate some ideas of data i can tell you um that that varies widely you know i looked at the last winooski meeting and there were 60 views i recorded an interview here in the studio between two folks um from sudan and it has 2800 views that was in a week so we could make some assumptions about who's watching and who has access and the numbers um and they would be that assumptions um and some you know some more or less educated assumptions i'm going to switch from the town meeting tv and back to the cctv hat so as kevin says cctv is the umbrella organization town meeting tv is a project cctv has just taken under its wing the vermont language justice project which your ray copy and maybe others on this will know more familiarly as the multilingual task force so that's the group that has been producing um you know um videos in various languages about so cctv has brought vermont language justice project because we said yes please come this project is amazing and because it fits with the mission of town meeting tv opening the doors to local government because exactly what you're talking about figuring out ways to reach more audiences in various languages um and making local government more accessible is a hundred percent part of the mission and um and having other projects under cctv's umbrella that connect with that mission are incredibly important so i know that doesn't directly answer but hopefully gives you a little bit of a story and thank you go ahead kevin i was just going to say historically mayor lot has uh taken advantage of the opportunity to come into the studio and discuss things um directly in that setting my supposition is that it will be easier to provide language translation services in that setting because it's a little bit more of like a produced show rather than this you know live stream anything can happen kind of forum um so that's an opportunity perhaps to explore as as you do move forward with all resident voting and that sort of thing and it really um just goes off of what is already happening in terms of mayor lot coming in and having those direct studio produced conversations that make sense yeah and i think there's a lot more that we can do exploring translation functions in zoom so i think there are a lot more opportunities to explore and that's one of the things that we hope that we have the opportunity to do is a little bit of technology exploration and innovation and we're you know communicating with other access centers around the state um about these options and hope to bring those and share are there other questions i mean i guess i'm now i'm i'll i'll ask um just directly if there's any public comment if any members of the public have questions or comments not seeing any and just to clarify the so what megan shared the one thousand dollar increase that we are putting in here that's already been incorporated into the budget and it's like a step that we like started doing a couple years ago is there anything else you wanted to highlight megan i think that you know the bullet points list a lot of the projects that i'm meeting tv is working on in relationship to cct i think that's a you know some municipal i guess i'll say i will say that some municipalities are opting to put in the budget the option to record other meetings on a case-by-case basis or in some cases on you know a set number we're going to have 10 extra meetings um in this year that we want to have reported archive that's something for you to think about going forward um i'm sensitive to the conversation that i just heard about you know being about not adding things to the budget so i you know i want to be i want to be sensitive to that it's hard for me to know you know six hundred and sixty five dollars per meeting it's about the cost we think it takes to to produce from soup to nuts an entire meeting um and it's hard for me to know i mean that it stands up against i do know that it stands up in terms of what the market will bear but um you know again it becomes it becomes a question of what's important for you to cover what's important for you to make sure is it's part of the community record and archive and then how you share that out yeah and so for the public's information we typically record our two council meetings a month and then a third meeting which is usually if there's a development review board hearing but sometimes could be something else and then we haven't had one in like three months yeah well i also was doing a monthly world of in the world of winewski show in the studio what kevin was mentioning earlier which is meant to focus more on not on like specific council work but other things in the community i must admit after not doing that for a while during covid i have not gotten quite back in the habit yet so and i will that's not yeah that's not included in those three meetings yeah that's an additional thing yeah are there any more questions for town meeting tv and i will say i municipal members are the the best at um catching on to the new new name on meeting tv so i just want to thank you all for for that channel 17 it's channel 1000 and something 1087 so i just i it may seem like a small thing but it's not a small to be called by the right name it's really so fantastic i really get rid of that 17 sign behind you i know i know it's hard to get rid of i'm aware it's there it's a heart it just looks weird might you guys see your hand yes you know i i think you guys for your service because i i know firsthand that our aging population that pre-covid that couldn't make the meetings the city count city hall they do watch your program they watch our meetings to stay up to date so i think it is a vital tool to get the word out of what what we're doing and get information out so i want to thank you guys you're welcome help thank you mayor i'll chime in as well megan and i had some conversations about this and i strongly feel that you know town meeting tv is the is is is the blood of local democracy so we we have got to figure this out in the legislative level of our state to find a way to make this sustainable so i'll do my best and we'll see where it comes thank you thanks i was going to offer some legislative support from wanouski so you got it well we appreciate yeah we appreciate that representative falston rely on you all right this is so this is just on for a discussion like that increase built into our budget approvals process but thank you again for coming in and for providing all of that information on on the services that we get from you that are critical thanks so much and you know i'm here if any you know if you have any other thoughts or questions that come up feel free my name is my name and email is on the memo so anytime and kevin thanks for your role in trustee you're volunteering thanks kevin take care all right so we are back to item e the wanouski small business loan committee appointment which heather will introduce yes thank you um tonight we're bringing forward a potential appointee for the wanouski small business loan committee several staff members interviewed forest wallace a couple of weeks ago forest was with us but had to jump off at eight o'clock so unfortunately we'll be able to answer questions tonight but i did include in your packet his application for the position and this would be filling one of the regular resident seats on the committee so as you'll recall there are a series of staff members who hold ex officio seats on this committee so we can continue to make small business loans even in the face of no one from the community being particularly interested in this committee at certain times so uh we recommend that forest wallace is appointed to a resident seat of the committee for a term to expire on 6 30 23 thanks heather and i actually got to interview forest for another commission role and i remember him he had some he was able to make some good connections between like housing development economic um vitality um and i know he also spoke about like he seemed pretty aware of his own perspective versus understanding that when they're how to look for when there are other perspectives missing so i remember thinking he was a good candidate for other things so i'm on board to to move this forward but are there any questions from council about this appointment any questions from members of the public all right with someone like to remove the appointment of forest wallace to the wanouski small business loan committee so so move second motion by mike second by brinn all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries thank you thank you okay so moving on to item f this is just on for discussion um at our last meeting we saw an update from staff on our progress towards goals in the housing section of our our strategy forget what it's called strategic vision and our master plan priorities and what you have in the packet here is a memo that i worked on with councillor duncan um with some input in review with the chair of the housing commission and with heather um to add a little more to that picture of what we're looking at of what's happening on a broader scale with housing in our area so there's some information in here about the state-driven initiative the building new homes campaign um which has not resulted in the amount of increased affordable housing that it was intended to we are still seeing a less than two percent vacancy rate in this area which is super unhealthy and doesn't make for competitive rents um the discussion amongst our housing commission has talked about a lack of affordability in the 80 to 100 percent area median income area um there's some information in here from the chitinon county regional planning commission about what's driving higher costs so there's higher costs for both building new and rehabilitating existing housing and then also um an interesting data point in here about racial disparities in housing with a nearly 50 difference in home ownership rate between black and white families in this area and so what this memo oh also there's a letter in addition to this memo we have a letter here from the executive director of our housing authority about the challenges they're having getting um subsidized vouchers out into the market um presumably rents continue to increase here right and they're too high for people to even access that subsidized affordable housing so the goal here was to add some more details about the housing challenges that we're seeing in our community we heard from residents at our last meeting and then have a conversation our we asked our planning commission two years ago um to look into updating the incentive that's in our form-based code so our gateway development areas that could try to steer the development market in Winooski to meet more of our priorities so i i want to get to that as the the outcome conversation here but i think first would start with if there's any discussion about the information here shared here or questions you have and i want to pause and see if jim there's anything you want to highlight uh no i think that you laid it out well i think there's questions at the end of the memo that um really get the questions we can address here as council in terms of policy and i think it does set the bigger picture for us yeah so i would just ask first before we talk about those policy questions at the end part of the memo um if anyone on council has questions about the information shared here or questions for um deek on what she has shared about her experience with the housing authority brinn i i'd love to hear a quick summary from deek um just to review the letter and and provide some more context to that yeah deek you want to give us a high summary of what you have shared as your challenges sure thank you very much um appreciate your time you know as as the mayor says that with vacancy rates so low one of the things we're really struggling with or we're watching people struggle with is when we issue a voucher for somebody to find um an apartment that's like the gold standard for finding an apartment um this year we're at 36 success rate on that um we're usually over 90 most most people when they get a voucher end up not being able to use it at this point and that's what we what we're trying to get our hands around and one of the ways we understand is we're going to have to build out of that um we're building a lot of single and efficiency apartments um aimed at um either an aging population or single folks moving through or young couples um in a rental market what we're not seeing is a big investment in rental housing for families um and there's a lot of reasons why people end up renting that those family properties so when we were looking at building one of the things we discovered was the zoning will require no more than duplexes at elm street which was our logical place to try to add housing we could probably add six or seven units there but if we can only build duplexes we could only add four it's just not a terribly efficient way to build on top of that there's like three properties adjacent to that that wouldn't meet code so what's happening is you've got a zoning code that's actually more restrictive than what's actually present and so you know what what we're hoping is we can really look at the densities allowed in that zoning and how that's all structured so that we can add more affordable family just to put a little context on it um three four five bedroom homes more expensive to build you can't you can't charge rent in proportion to how much more expensive it is a lot of the time and the operating costs on a family home when you got kids in it is just higher um kids do things they write on the walls they they just are kids um i'm i'm guessing kids are the same as i was when i was a kid um kids are hard on on on operating costs so um you know anyway we can bring down the the price of investing there um would really add to the um the the inventory of family housing so i'm not saying there isn't a lack of single family or aging but but this family rental market is is taking a hit and it's something i think we ought to keep our eye on um and it's certainly something that we'd like to help build out of does that help yeah thanks deke um and i think i skipped that point here in the memo too is that that is another thing that we're hearing is a lack of um family housing and we saw that in the data that heather shared last meeting um new development is like replacing what exists for larger housing but it's not adding any new so you know over time if we keep on this trajectory we'll continue to see less and less of our share of housing be of that family unit size deke yeah and what is replacing it is a lot of home ownership options which is great i'm not saying that's not a great opportunity but we have but the it's the rental housing particularly the rental housing for sub 80 percent of area median income that is taking the hit um that's not a bad hit because what's being torn down often is not anything we'd want to keep i would defer to chief adi on that but um but we really do need to reinvest in that um that portion especially if we want to continue our efforts on refugee resettlement and um just workforce housing yeah we've heard from our um partner entities also that they have trouble finding housing for families they're placing and we have also heard from developers including the vermont housing finance agency who builds most of the affordable housing in the state that you just cannot build family size rental housing without subsidy um so the the market is not likely to just provide that on their own mike i see your hand yeah i mean that's the goal of the question right how how do we this has been a question that's been going on for a long time now how do we get to that even with a subsidy now the new buildings going up in wintersky are replacing two or three houses that could have been revamped that have two three bedrooms but even when you revamp revamp them if you're going to do if you're going to have them the rental registry they're still going to be non affordable because they're they're going to get five eight hundred dollars per bedroom correct yeah we're here we what the data is showing to is that rehab is actually more expensive than new build so the new builds are all coming up as you say the studio or the efficiency apartments they're adding more apartments with less family options and that's been the golden question for a very very long time and i don't know if we're any closer and i'm hoping that there is a solution to this but even like you said with the subsidies it's still not affordable yeah so the i think the the first thing the thing that we have been talking about for a couple years is there is this incentive in the zoning regulations for development in our gateways that provides a bonus story to housing that meets green energy standards or targets 80 to 100 percent of area median income and so i think there's a question here for us if those are still the things we are trying to prioritize or if we should be changing that affordability target or if we should be adding a unit size target and then we can talk about the mechanism behind it but i think that question of what is our priority is is maybe the first thing to tackle here might go ahead yeah and that but that bonus story that that's just a bonus story for more single bedroom or efficiency apartment as well so that that's another tweak as you will maybe we should put in if that bonus story gets built maybe that's where the the two three bedroom um options are it's just a thought um so there's a question in the chat about if the incentives have worked in terms of increasing the number of affordable units we so much and any member of staff correct me if i'm wrong my understanding is that new development is generally meeting the green energy standards because most new develop this the state standards are just as strict or stricter anyway and then the affordability we are seeing a lot of affordable units built but not necessarily because of the incentive um so i think the incentive itself is not working right like it's not driving people to make different decisions and so we need to also talk about what that incentive is deak i see your hand if i remember right that story that you get on main street so it gets you from wood construction to steel construction so that was always the problem was that it to get it the construction costs just went up astronomically because of the need to to go to steel i may be wrong but that the when i was looking at that last that was the huge challenge um with that extra story i may add there's actually two challenges one of them is the parking requirements because we have such small parcel sizes that when you end up doing that bonus story there's additional parking that's required and because of the small parcel sizes that's primarily made up of structured parking which can cost in the range of 40 000 to 45 000 per parking space so it increases the cost as well so it's both and and i would just add that we have met the affordability goals for the for the city but not through the incentives so it's not that we aren't getting affordable units is that we aren't getting any so i think the question in the chat haven't sent us work in terms of increasing the number of affordable units no we are still generating affordable units but we aren't increasing that however if i can add one more thing i think actually the form-based code itself is what's helping us to generate the affordable housing so having that predictable administrative process that gets people through a permit quickly without additional soft costs based on having to redesign multiple times i think is really what's making the affordability happen which we have heard from developing development partners in the city brinn and then for what we're seeing now doesn't also the um prioritization of projects affordable housing projects for streamlining through active 50 help with that too yeah actually that's council or if i was just going to mention that that the uh because our gateways where we're seeing the majority of the development where the form-based code is is currently located the gateway zoning district those are all coincident with the neighborhood development areas which allow for what the state considers a priority housing projects and so with the priority housing project in exchange for affordable housing being built it eliminates some of the or i guess yeah it eliminates the need to go through parts of active 50 so it makes that the state review process easier as well so it's not necessarily the bonus story that we're offering is providing that incentive it's there's there's better incentives i think that the developers are taking advantage of and because they're using those incentives it also gives them the the ability to add an extra story through the city zoning regulations so i want to take us back to um do we feel like we need to change the priority from the green building standards and or 80 to 100 percent 120 percent AMI do we want to retain those do we want to lower that threshold of the AMI affordability do we want to replace or add in larger than two bedroom units to our priority list brin it kind of feels like we need to add in the number of units we want to see so i it seems like we're not seeing the three bedrooms and those that's what the demand is for that's what we're we're seeing the greatest need for so i don't know how we would go about necessarily making that a requirement but to me that feels like that's a great a good way to go about it i i guess i would need to learn more um about what the impact would be from reducing from the range of 80 to 120 down to 80 to 100 um i don't feel like i know enough about that to make a decision on that yeah jim or heather do you have anything to share from the previous housing discussions um i do want to share on the requiring unit bedroom is that that's not that's illegal so we can't require that um yeah incentive we can incentivize that but we can't require um in terms of you know the biggest gap that we saw in um looking at numbers which was several years ago was in um 80 to 120 percent area median income you know what is sometimes called workforce housing um but i do think there's a possibility that we could bump that down so it doesn't go to the 120 point and instead is 80 to 100 percent area median income so then people who are over the median are not you know being incentivized housing for people who are over the median income are not being incentivized although i do think we want to be looking at the full spectrum of affordability in winuski um and that does continue to be a gap so far as i am aware i would add that the uh i'm sorry go ahead no jim please do please um and recently the housing commission has shifted some of its interest down to that it's 100 percent on some of the discussions uh and thinking about when we talked about the um uh impact de waivers the uh commission explicitly set 80 to 100 percent for that requirement rather than including the 100 to 120 and i think this is something that we also need to keep in mind is that that number includes shellburn it includes um williston it includes a much larger range of communities in winuski when we talk about median income so when you look at like you put the numbers in the memo to make that clear that winuski's median income for an average household is 51 000 and that is well below 100 percent area median income so i think what we might need to disentangle those two terms we need to think about what winuski residents make and what um that means when we benchmark that against the whole chitney county or at least the south berlington berlington area are there others who would see value in adding the three bedroom or larger units to our list of priority products for incentive jim yeah mic i see i need to do it but is it is it um is it practical is it going to be something that can be accomplished though i mean just just because of the the cost yeah so let's talk about mechanism here i've posed a couple of questions in this memo um we heard in the update at our last meeting and through the research of the housing commission that parking is probably the key factor that can move the needle on a project with costs so i threw out a couple of thoughts in here one is that we had previously considered a parking waiver to reduce requirements um when a developer could demonstrate their project didn't require as much as our minimums do um that waiver did not stick so it was like across the board we could ask i so i i don't know the exactly the mechanism here but i think we could reconsider ask the planning commission to reconsider a parking waiver that is tied to projects that meet our priorities um something we haven't explored in the past but i've heard of in other communities is like a payment in lieu of parking so it's kind of like the waiver um you would pay less than the cost to actually build the parking and maybe that could go into the housing trust fund again not something we've looked at and i don't know the technical details around and then we also have previously talked about a potential impact fee to fund transportation uh capacity projects if we had a fee like that we could waive it for priority projects that doesn't reduce the cost right now right because we would actually be adding an impact fee like adding to the cost of any project in the city but it could be a bit of a carrot in the future jim is there anything you want to add or heather about the the so i i believe the what y'all looked at at the housing commission involved parking reduction and the bonus story potentially being the most effective thing in combination so what we were proposing was taking care of the parking issue to see if that in itself allowed more people to take advantage of the bonus story and then kind of working those two angles together the other piece that i just wanted to add is i believe that the housing commission did suggest a payment in lieu of parking option as one of the different alternatives for the planning commission to take a look at okay yep and the commission in the modeling the financial modeling we've looked at the um waiving the impact fees it's like an order of magnitude smaller than what you get out of the density bonus or the parking waivers so while it is it is a difference in cost it was seen by developers it's more like it's a nice little or by the amount of finance agency it's more of like it's a nice additional but it's not going to make a difference in building the three bedroom versus the one bedroom okay and anecdotally what we've heard is that in brilliant and when parking minimums were removed three bedroom houses or three bedroom units were added by the developer without any additional attention might they see your hand raised yeah um these we're speaking mainly in the gateway districts correct in this so yeah wasn't the vision of the gateway district were to try to increase the housing build the buildings to protect the neighborhoods that that was one of the visions of the gateway district correct so the language about like densifying in our gateway districts while protecting the character of the neighborhood but that's a really troubling piece of language that doesn't really say what it means right well i think we're seeing it though because if you do away with the park and you let the contractors or developers build these buildings and they don't provide enough parking for the building then the people that have the cars start invading the public streets and the neighborhoods and we've seen this on mansu street now if you go down mansu street any given time of the day usually it is full of cars all the way down with that was never the case before but i don't know what the residents feelings are on that because it's got us slow traffic down which is a plus but when you're trying to protect the neighborhoods and you have parking all the way down the street and you have people come visit your own home and they don't have anywhere to park you're not really protecting the neighborhoods anymore you're allowing the developers to build these buildings not provide enough parking so the parking is a key component to these structures in my opinion we've we've seen the arguments from the residents before and i think the parking has to stay a key part of this yeah well so i'm not certain that any project has not developed enough parking i don't think we've seen data that says that whether or not people choose to street park versus in a lot is another story i think we can give guidance here if we want to see the planning commission explore one of these parking solutions but we're not going to say like reduce it this much i think we would leave it to them to to sort out based on the data coming out of the parking study that's being worked on right now so i do want to keep that in our thoughts in this conversation that we're not saying we're not here to say like reduce this requirement specific make this specific reduction but like are we open to a reduction that would help these priority projects and i think some of these developers too a lot that you're seeing they're they rent a unit to a person but then they charge them parking to park so people will opt out to have the free parking and then deal with it in the winter time like we're seeing on east allen street so you rent a place for x amount of dollars then you have to pay another rental for a parking spot and that's you know that that's why you're having people not parking the parking lots that they're that they're providing because you have to pay additional fee for it yeah that could be a factor for sure deak i saw your hand not not about not about parking but about the consideration of moving and looking at zoning across the city and not just the gateway districts as a solution to family housing you know multifamily homes on a postage stamp lot with no place to play is not always the best solution to family housing either so i and i do believe that if you look at what currently exists there is some potential to to develop some areas just not within the the zoning which from my point of view and i'll defer to eric but i i saw a study you know back in 2010 or 11 maybe even before that that most most of the areas that we have in the city outside of the gateway district you could not build now under zoning zoning is far more restrictive than what is actually there now and i'm wondering if that is wise or we ought to be looking at at that so i i know the gateway district well and i know parking enough to make me itch when we talk about it because i've spent a lot of time managing it but you know i think there's just opportunities outside of the gateway district that it will invite everybody to think about as well yeah i in your your letter made some good points there about so your example down at elm street that's already not in line with zoning down there neither is the big condo development that's nearby right and so this is another question that i have for council is if we would like to ask the planning commission to look at beyond the form base code at making some updates jim your i saw your hand yeah and i was kind of building that too in my head i'm right around the corner from me on north street if this or if that block were torn down and rebuilt today would look drastically different and i think that if we think about preserving the neighborhoods we're living in today i would like that that zoning matches so that we could and there's a lot of families that live in dense units and i think that it's serving a need right now in our community and we've lost that if someone decided to redevelop those properties so i think that's certainly something that we need to look at now so that new development outside the gateways can meet these goals too yeah and i personally see value in that because i i don't think we want all new rental family housing to be just in the gateways like having opportunities throughout our neighborhoods is important mic yeah we know the other thing there is limited parcels left in when the ski to the to build on to so we have to think about that as well there there really isn't much real estate left that i know we got to work with what we have dike um while i i agree there isn't much there is some coming online and there is some potential um you know for for lots to be redeveloped from their current um area um and it doesn't make sense to build family housing on any of those lots um given the current zoning um so um i'm just throwing that out that that there is and and spaces may come available for a whole variety of reasons um so it's not just what's there now but what could be there and and how that could be developed and getting ahead of that curve while the money is sitting around you know with a hundred and fifty million dollars looking for a place to spend um you know the faster we move the more likely we are to be able to capture some of that so one thing i don't see on the memo is impact with timing of any of these decisions sounds like some of them would have to go to the planning commission you know what what is like the short term versus longer term and longer term could be like 12 months um uh or it could be longer term like two to three years so just curious in terms of what's presented what what would have what would be a shorter something in the near future i guess i think we can ask um this parking study data is ready soon February the the public comment period ends December 10th for that and then the final draft that we put together after that so okay so this in the if we want to provide guidance to planning commission around parking and the incentive informed base code i think that is short term that is something that we could ask them to focus on in the beginning of the new year and potentially bring forward changes you know they would have a series of meetings there's a public hearing process um it takes a few months but it is something that we could try to change in the upcoming year um looking at beyond the gateways to like residential zoning i think would take a little longer um it's something that because we already have our planning commission already has a work plan and has been focused on form base code you know that's what they're doing now this would be an ask if we wanted to for them to focus on this as the next thing which could i don't know could maybe start later next year um and again would take a few months because they have to spend time with it they're the if changes are made there's public hearings etc also the um the equity audit is maybe for February ish two which will have housing a big housing component so i think that can inform this discussion i will say personally i've brought this to this meeting because i would like to see action next year um the incentive is something that's been under discussion as long as i've been mayor and to my knowledge even before so how quickly would the incentivizing um three bedroom or more units be able to be implemented i don't know is like six months of fair estimate eric if action started after the study results well i guess it's a good question uh i think it depends on how you're looking at incorporating it if it's if if it's tied to a bonus story for example or if it's just a standalone incentive in some other context i think it that's going to really dictate some of how it gets incorporated into the regulations and where specifically it gets incorporated to that point the planning commission this thursday will be having a public hearing on a suite of amendments to the form base code which does include the language on the bonus story so there are some amendments that are being proposed with that or that may not be the right place for the incentive for multi bedroom units because then you're looking at you still need to have the parking to accompany it um there may be costs associated with it that that are greater than some of the other incentives for the bonus story that are currently outlined there that we that we currently have outlined in the in the draft so while we may be able to include an incentive for multi bedroom that may be cost prohibitive compared to some of the other incentives that we've already included or are already including and they they're not going to take advantage of that anyway so i think there are some things to consider as far as is how we how we include that type of an incentive into the regulations and i'm not into the weeds in this the way that um you and the mayor jim and heather are um so i mean i'm in i'm in favor of uh tying it leaking an incentive to three bedrooms and and using parking reduction uh associated with three bedrooms as one of the mechanisms that we have available to us yeah and i think to your point about timeline that timeline is impacted on on what we say like if we're saying this is a priority we want to see something i think that helps speed things along so how does what i say influence the timing i guess i can't make it longer because i don't want to do that i i think if if the council is in favor of providing some guidance to say we want to add this priority to the list you know we're still looking at 80 to 120 percent am i um green energy standards and now we're saying three bedroom plus units as well could be um a project that meets any of those could access this incentive and if we also want to provide direction that we would like to couple some mechanism for parking reduction with the bonus to make it more doable um i think we could give that direction and then when parking data is available that is some direction for planning commission to then review that data and what does the regulatory change look like dig just asking is there a reason you're starting at 80 and not considering um up to 100 percent um because that that leaves a fair amount of folks out and and i'm not sure that that's intentional or or or what but just curious as to why you're starting at 80 i think the housing commission has been focused on 80 to 120 and 80 to 100 but is there any more context there i can help a little bit um i i think deep what was written into the original form base code was 80 to 120 so that was a pre-existing set of goals um i think what the housing commission has looked at in terms of and i think prior to you joining the housing commission um was where there are gaps in our existing housing and because we have a great deal of affordable housing that is under 80 percent and and some of it under 60 some of it very low there was a gap for people who are just over a poverty level over a low income level and so it was um keeping people from having places to move if they moved out of affordable housing so kind of creating a ladder i think is really what we were looking at with that because there's a significantly smaller portion of the overall housing stock that fits in that category for us are there any questions from the public comments beyond what we've seen in the chat again you can use the raise hand feature if you wish to speak um am i hearing general agreement from council i did not put this on for an approval item but that we would like to add three bedroom plus housing to our in our priorities for incentive okay um would we like to see some parking reduction coupled with the bonus story in the incentive i'm okay with that i would say yes if that's what takes to make it work i think having another incentive that doesn't function is not helpful so i would say if that's what it's going to take to make that that production happen that's what we should do i think it's a reasonable course for the parking study and with the work already done by the housing commission on the topic i just want to have a have a clarifying question around that so i mean is there is it an assumption that parking reduction with the bonus story will equate to three bedroom units because it's not like that's not something that we have the ability to dictate or if you okay if you are building a project that includes three bedroom plus units or meets this affordability goal or meets these energy standards you could access that incentive so it will not necessarily equate to three bedroom units but it maybe opens the door deak another tool we have available at the housing authority is a place-based vouchers which will pretty much guarantee revenue for the apartments that they go with so what that is is a voucher that goes with the apartment not with the person but a person who lives in a in one of those apartments is eligible for their housing choice voucher after a year so they can move on so it creates some guaranteed revenue um and we get to decide the terms of that at the housing authority and just for those of you who don't know we are actually an arm of the city the mayor appoints our board so our strategy needs to align with your strategy which is one of the reasons that that i'm very interested in this conversation it does us no good to have a strategy that's not in alignment with where you're going and so that's what we're trying to do and that's what we bring to the table so not only do you have the parking but if you get some place-based vouchers that helps a lot because um then you you know you've got a guaranteed revenue stream thanks Steve Jim thank you i wanted to i guess i this may just be my own personal preference but i i want i guess i would like to see this incentive around three bedroom unit construction i think needs to be fairly targeted if we're going to see it happen because there's already other structures that subsidize across the affordable unit construction in general um that if we want to get affordable free bedroom that's going to have to be fairly targeted so when you're presenting it may or says clean under standard or free bedroom or affordable i almost think that we might want to have one set of incentives that targets green and green and green building standard and affordable green building standard or affordable and a separate package that incentivizes three bedrooms that make that work i guess i would worry about offering the same thing across the board because the same thing may not be needed for each of those three um so i if i think about direction the planning commission on this i think i would say we want to see something that will functionally increase free bedroom unit production in the city and that may look different than it would look for a green building standard yes i think there's a question there of if the coupling of parking reductions and bonus story is for just that priority or if it's for all three kind of sounds like the other two aren't really being utilized is that right so then maybe we should just associate with three plus bedrooms if the other two aren't being utilized my sense is the bonus story alone does not incentivize anything eric yeah thank you um just if i may offer um i think what would be helpful for me as staff to the planning commission is really identifying what it is that you all want to prioritize whether that be three bedroom units whether that be affordable units whether that be something else and then i can work with the planning commission to figure out how to incorporate that into the regulations because right now we're talking a lot about the bonus story but it's possible that the incentives may be in another area of the code that are not included in the gateway so i think in order to hopefully to help with some of the discussion here it's as far as figuring out how to make this work and where to make it work do you just tell me what it is that you want to work and i'll figure out how to get it there as best i can any commission it's a great can do attitude mic i think it's a need for our city but is it an affordable need of our city can can these units be affordable for people to rent is that the question that we have any data on or is this something we're just going to start the process and see if it works because you have three four bedroom rental apartments they're going to be expensive to rent no i mean no matter how much help the state gives or incentives that they get it's still it's going to cost a lot of money they can be subsidized through like deak was talking about place-based vouchers if we have ways to reduce the cost for projects that create those units that can also be taken advantage of by an entity like the vermont housing finance agency to build more affordable housing so that is what we're talking about here is the goal is to create units that are affordable and correct and i think i think you're on i think this is we're on a wavelength here that is a need and i'm just being pessimistic where if a four bedroom unit goes for $2,400 that's $600 a bedroom and they get half the help they still have to come up with $1,200 in a low-income family that's going to be most of their income that they bring in so that's i'm just trying to think this out before we try to start implementing this three four bedroom and do all this work we i think we have to be practical maybe even get a consultant or ask the developer how this is going to work because i'm i just know what rents go for i've rented before and i know and i know what people pay in burlington you know look at the college kids that rent these four or five bedroom houses you know what those places go for i mean it's crazy that in the the rental incomes these days it's just it's it's almost out of control dick did you want to add something yeah just that um owing to a limit to how much you can charge in in rent with the place-based voucher those cover those assure that the renter pays only 30 of their income so so there is that that protection i think the other thing is people like me are sitting on equity in in properties we'd love to reinvest but we i i'm looking for a way to do that efficiently um you know so if i can bring a million maybe more to the table um that's just plain old get a leg up um that's great um but i want to get as many units as i possibly can out of a strategy like that and that's part of what i'm here for is get you know potentially out of the gateway where we own land already or the land isn't you know people want to develop in their backyard or whatever there's just some opportunity to do this in ways that aren't your traditional multi-unit multi-story unit um but i think we need to to look at that um residential zoning to get there thanks jim i think it might be worth aligning this recommendation to the housing commission recommendation which explicitly addressed that mike um we when the housing commission talked about it they explicitly recommended a parking considering a parking reduction for three bedroom units that were affordable to 100 percent am i um so i think the housing commission and the planning commission have discussed that already as well that this uh this multi bedroom unit have some affordability constraints yeah so to that point and what eric shared um that we can make that recommendation uh just to be clear just in alignment with that that we want to see an incentive that supports those priorities and then i think to deke's point do we want to also say please look outside of the gateways at other ways to incentivize the creation of this kind of housing and from the sound of it that would be kind of around two for zoning updates that the planning commission looks at next fall i mean maybe maybe not like eric was saying there might be something outside of form-based code heather i just want to remind everyone that um we do have an application in for a bylaw modernization grant um we'll be finding out about that in the next uh month or so and that was to look at um city-wide zoning for ways to support our housing goals so that would be to hire a consultant specifically to walk through this with the planning commission and also that the housing commission has a memo prepared that is going to planning commission i believe this week um which also has recommendations about using the zoning for great neighborhoods guide from the state on how to make our um zoning across the city more amenable to creating affordable housing and i think those i mean those two i think there's resources lining up to support that i think it would be helpful um i i certainly think it's helpful for councils to be giving direction on this right now given all these pieces you and eric have been lining up so i think this is a good timing to have this discussion and decide if this is a priority council jim can you restate please you said that the housing recommendation is the housing recommendation last made was for free bedroom housing for free bedroom units affordable to 100 percent am i you consider for parking reduction how do i have that right from our housing commission memo that was the previous memo um and and then we have the memo that is just going to planning commission now which is about using the zoning for great neighborhoods guide and the specific areas to look at in city-wide zoning okay so can we can we provide this guidance to say that we support that recommendation we support a focus to incentivize three bedroom housing um housing up to 100 percent am i and would support looking beyond the gateways to create that housing i don't know who went first i think jim's hand yes jim did yeah all right i never lowered it okay mic so i'm not a housing expert or a zoning expert so if we're gonna go outside the gateway with the zoning are we talking about building are we looking to build same kind of structures to protect the neighborhood integrity or you talking about putting three-story buildings in a neighborhood or are we talking about putting six plex or four plex in a residential neighborhood outside the gateway is this the kind of thing that we're discussing here or are we gonna try to find a way to add the duplexes that have the three four bedrooms that incorporate into a neighborhood it's the latter mic so like what deke was sharing earlier we have these areas that are zoned for like single family but already existing there are duplexes triplexes larger um and zoning for great neighborhoods gets to that as well of like creating these more efficient multi-unit buildings that still fit within that kind of neighborhood because it's already um was the deep the phrase deke is the zoning is more restrictive than the existing character of the neighborhood anyway so like looking for opportunities to realign it to what it actually looks like on the ground heather i just want to say if it helps mic i did a little analysis of the rc zoning and there are blocks within rc zoning where you aren't allowed to have more than i believe a triplex or maybe it's a duplex um where 40 yeah it's a duplex i'm sorry um where 42 percent of the properties within that block don't meet that zoning so i think you know just updating the zoning so it reflects what's actually on the ground is what we're talking about deke yeah and and i had to look at use if you look at um lot coverage and fars and stuff um it's it's even more than 42 percent or just not couldn't be built today um i wish i could find that map that i had because it was really striking how you know it was well over 60 percent of the buildings that we have don't meet the current zoning just because they were built before zoning existed um and then the restrictive zoning you know creates a barrier to to actually develop or even redevelop so i i wouldn't see mic that we're talking about you know building four stories you know on um pick pick a street belview um franklin um but you know are there ways to do within the character and the frame of the building three units at rather than two or at elm street and westwood there's there's land there could we build six townhouses next to each other that look exactly like everything else around it um and would that would that make sense because we can't do that now and building duplexes is just just adds to the expense so that's that's kind of what i'm proposing is just looking at that that model not not four stories form-based code yeah to be clear we are certainly not saying we want neighborhoods to have giant buildings like we have in our gateway areas brinn um so we're in some cases we're saying we're pretty restricted with form-based code because of the current zoning standards but doesn't plan unit developments allow an opportunity to provide the type of development at elm street that you're looking for deak uh puds are listed puds are limited to duplexes in the rc district right now so no i couldn't i couldn't actually build another set of what's there under current zoning unless eric corrects me i believe that that i'm i've got that correct yeah no that's correct the the the plan unit development still needs to follow the underlying zoning as far as what the the type of uses that are permitted and in the residential c zoning district we we don't allow anything more than a two unit building we allow up to three total units but it can only be configured as a duplex and then a standalone unit either as a detached cottage or as an accessory dwelling of some kind so we don't allow for three units to be connected to one another there any other questions comments this has been a good conversation about this though i appreciate all of it yeah and we'll see um the specific recommendations coming from housing to planning will be posted or they already are i'm uncertain this week um so appreciate all of the input thus far it is a really complex topic there's a lot here and i think it makes sense that we're getting a little in the weeds but you know the goal here is just to share what our priorities are to eric's point we want to see more three-bedroom units we want more affordability to 100 percent area median income and are kind of leaving it to our commissions to figure out how to do that hearing no more comment i will move us to item g so this is on for discussion approval it's a letter about the people waiting study task force and my apologies this wasn't added to the online agenda until today there's been some fast-moving pieces here um so essentially in vermont our education funding is based on the number of students in a school and students with higher needs like poverty limited English proficiency um are counted at a rate higher than one to provide adequate resources for those kids so like these higher counts are called weights the legislature had a uvm do a study a couple of years ago to evaluate whether our waiting formula was actually equitable and um it's called the people waiting factors report of 2019 uh found that they were not that the weights are really outdated and need to be updated that we've essentially been underfunding the these kids with higher higher needs or who need more resources um they charged a task force with figuring out how to implement those recommendations that task force has been working for the last several months and is not on a path to actually create a plan for implementation but is going down a path of actually looking at other changes to the funding structure most recently the most recent recommendation i've seen they would be accepting all of the reports recommended weights except for funding for english language learners which they want to treat separately using a different funding mechanism that continues to underfund those students um our school district staff and board are really concerned about this trend we think it's going to result in further reducing resources to when you ski students and so what i have here in the agenda is a draft letter that we could sign on to alongside burlington so we've been um burlington is also really impacted here in concerned and so i want to ask the council if you would like to put all of our names on this to say that we we want to tell the legislature that they need to implement the updated weights that were recommended in the original study and not consider these other pathways that are going to reduce supports to our kids um given how late this was added to the agenda i i will pause and give you a moment to take a look a mic yeah i got a question you said other sources of income what do you know what they were talking about oh other funding mechanisms okay so instead of what the report says is to update the weights in the formula that already exists and so they've been looking at like changing the formula altogether um so pulling the the weight for english language learning pupils out completely and then providing um essentially like a block grant that would be significantly insufficient so the weights the recommended weights would provide 25 around 25 000 per english language learner and what the task force is currently proposing would be five thousand dollars per english language learner so it's a really significant reduction and what they shared is that this was based on prior funding but like the funding has already been inadequate like that's what the report is telling us so to base those dollars on that is pretty egregious meanwhile they would be updating all of the other weights so um kids in rural communities kids who are uh in in poverty which certainly applies to us too right but to update the weights for all of the other students in that formula and then say for english language learners you're not going to get increased funding is not a good track to be going down um not for educational outcomes for kids who are english language learners and not for the school budget of wunewski um if we based on modeling if they go down that path if the this recommendation was accepted by the legislature we would be talking about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding in wunewski and that means either cutting services in the school or raising the tax rate which we know already is not something that we want to keep doing um and it would be a significant impact we do have um the finance director here from wunewski schools district and nicole i don't know if you want to add anything we'll bring you over just in case brin um can you just remind me who drafted the letter so i worked on this along with um a member of the burlington city council and then the nicole correct me if i'm wrong i think it's the vermont education equity coalition for student equity i'm sorry can you repeat that the vermont coalition for student equities thank you thank you and are you anticipating that this coming up with i think they're burlington next meet next council meeting is next week is that right yeah so they would be considering it for next week okay but we have we do have i am hosting an event with mary weinberger with um chinden county senators and our representatives this is a topic we plan to speak about later this week to share information with them and so having i think the full council behind it and not just myself adds weight to to this advocacy are we anticipating this school board signing on are we just kind of keeping it at the council level for burlington and wunewski at this point i mean we we could do both so like our school staff and school board members have been advocating and participating in this process for a while and i want to to we want to add the municipal voice as well to say that we also are concerned here um i for my two cents i would say i'm 100 behind us and if anything we can make it more aggressive um and and stronger um i think that we we need to be fierce advocates for our students and for our residents um it will severely impact the quality of education and that we we need to hit that home pretty hard thanks mike yeah i i'm kind of confused of why they would take the english learning language out of this since this is a priority of education um is it because there's only real two communities in the state that have the majority of the english learning language and are they are they feel that the state's going to the other counties or cities or towns are going to be out of disadvantage by paying into something that they're not getting out of like it's just coming all from the educational fund right yeah so the other issue here the proposal gives you like a flat fee of um i don't know twenty thousand dollars if you have one english language learner and then five grand per kid after so it actually their proposal would benefit smaller schools more than us that actually have more kids who need those services um it also proposes to use something called categorical aid and my understanding is that the waiting formula the funding formula that's what's coming out of our the education fund um that the categorical aid approach would actually require them to raise additional revenue i don't know where that comes from but presumably some other tax or fee in vermont right so it i i i think is going to cost us more either way while simultaneously reducing funds to our school i don't really understand the rationale behind it um the folks on the task force have said that we would make out better with their model than by implementing the weights but they haven't actually shown us any numbers to to say that and the analysis that the school has done shows quite the opposite is is going to be true okay so how come the task force hat isn't up the par on this then i i'm kind of confused why they're trying to implement something and then not give an answer to it because i don't want to jump the gun either if there's laps if they're if they do find a better solution and then we get on board on this and ends up costing the residents of onuski more money and i'm behind the students i i i agree with this strong school system but i'm just trying to be double's advocate here and say how can we can't put pressure on that task force to give us their their model to show us the difference that is one of the goals of sharing this letter is to push them to show us their models they are not going to find another solution i believe they wrapped up their work this week they're supposed to be providing a recommendation to the or providing a report or whatever to the legislature on the 15th so what they have is what they have and we don't believe that it is going to be we believe it's going to be very detrimental to us um here in onuski now how they arrived at that solution i don't want to speculate on motivations um but for some reason they feel like english language learning students should be treated completely different than all other students which is troubling it is troubling because i've been asking those questions for years now on how our population of english learning students seem to be there's got to be more help be whether it's state level or federal level or that school system to provide the best possible education for all its students yeah that's it jim go ahead and i i would say i think that the school is doing a great job and the prospect of cutting hundreds of thousands of dollars in the budget because i think in reality we can't i mean up to the school board to decide what budget to propose but i think the ability for new ski to maintain those services in the face of this significant funding cut is pretty unlikely and i think this is going to be it's just not i think what you see in our community in that school has invested so much in its students and i think it's paying off in the shows and i think that we need to continue that and strengthen it and not take this step backward so i think given that we know with some certainty and i i guess i'll defer it in a call if um you feel it's not so certain in your modeling but i think you understand pretty well what this is going to mean for new ski students and um if this is even if you're even half right this is extremely troubling and we need to take some action and i just clarify the the figures that um may or lot cited actually come from the task force's own analysis it's not my analysis so um thanks so that they know what what they're doing they have they have done the modeling they have shared the modeling and um that difference $25,000 versus $5,000 is uh on their website yep so i think that's that's immense i mean that's not i don't think we can stand by and accept that that's that there's some that way this imagine would be better for students any more questions comments here brinn sorry quick process question so it sounds like their report is do the 15th that's standing yeah right um and then it's a what like what committee does that go to the the you know both houses the education committees um um in the legislature what's the what's the next step of the process for review and consideration after the reports complete i do not know which committee it goes to but it that report is delivered to the house and senate um my assumption is that it runs through the the education uh committee but eventually it would go to the entire legislature right how do you have insight to share yeah i i think you're right mayor i think it goes to the education committees um and um i i i just think the more pressure we can put on this process the better um and it just so happens this impacts the two most diverse schools in our state districts in our state so um i i really support joining burlington to to let them know this is unacceptable do i have a uh do i have a motion to approve i'm gonna so move second motion by house second by gym all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries thank you for your support on this we'll keep you informed i think this is one of the the most critical issues that is coming up in the next legislative session so we will be following and thank thank you nicole for staying late with us you're welcome um this brings us to the end of our regular items we have worn an executive session pursuant to um one vsa section 3131 f confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the council regarding champlain housing trust and 32 mallet spate avenue i am looking for a motion to find that per vsa 313 we should move into executive session to have this discussion motion by brin second by jim all those in favor please say aye hi hi motion carries so i need a motion for us to move into executive session inviting along wendy harrison heather kerrington john rousher angela aldeary and michael monti from champlain housing trust so moved second motion by brin second by mike all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries you should have the zoom link in your inbox uh we're going to move to a different zoom line for this discussion we will only discuss this topic we'll return to this um main meeting after afterwards we went to one vsa 3132 the negotiation of real looking for a motion to find that we should move into executive session as discussed discussing these negotiations in public would put the city at a disadvantage motion by jim second by brin all those in favor please say aye motion carries so i'm looking for another motion to enter into executive session inviting heather kerrington john rousher wendy harrison bob depolma bill necate doug netty and jeremy farkas i should be in angela aldeary so moved motion by mike second by jim all those in favor please say aye hi motion carries we're going to move out to another zoom line for the executive session we will return to this zoom line only to adjourn the meeting uh we won't talk about anything besides the executive session a lot seven d i'll move motion by mike second motion carries as the end of tonight's agenda i am looking for a motion to adjourn don't move second motion by mike second by jim all those in favor please say aye hi all right motion carries the meeting is adjourned good night everyone good night everybody