 Welcome to In the World of Winooski. I'm your host, Mayor Christine Lott. And joining me today is city manager, Jessie Baker. Was been no stranger to this show over the past four years that she served in her role, leading our city staff and operations here in Winooski. Jessie is moving on to the next step in her career, taking on the role of city manager in South Burlington. And her last day with Winooski will be tomorrow. So we wanted to take some time to celebrate, look back on the past four years and all that we've achieved in our community in that time. So welcome, Jessie. Thank you. Thank you for having me today. Of course. Before we dive into what we've been achieving over the last few years, I would love to hear about your experience when you first came to this role in Winooski. You know, any interesting things you learned or special memories or stories to share? Great, thanks. That's a great question. So I joined the team in March of 2017 and actually put in my application for the position in November of 2016. So when I think back on my interest in this position, it goes back well before my start date. As folks probably know, I'm Vermont kid. I was the assistant city manager in Montpelier before joining the Winooski team. And I'd always had my eyes on Winooski. You know, I spent some time living in New York City and right outside Boston in Somerville, Massachusetts and really loved densely populated urban communities with lots of diversity and hearing different languages on the street and having access to different restaurants and businesses and things like that. So Winooski was always really appealing to me as the place I might find that in Vermont. When I started, I went through a really wonderful slash intense interview process with the community. We had a great steering committee at that point, much like you do now, that assisted the council in my hiring process. So I got to meet about eight different community leaders as part of my interview process and just the joy they articulated about being Winooski leaders and Winooski residents was just palpable. And I knew I was joining a team in a really special place in a place that folks knew each other, folks really cared about the future of the community, folks were ready to welcome new people and grow and try new things and be innovative. And that was just so intriguing to me. On my, I guess the last phase of my interview process and slash Mayor Leonard at the time probably viewed it as part of my orientation process. I spent a day with him going around and meeting all of the different departments, staff and all the different departments in the city. And that was just so fun and interesting and seeing his connection to the staff, the councils which you have carried on in your role Mayor Lott, the council's connection to the staff team and the orientation between the staff and the council really being on the same team. I think sometimes in communities you see elected officials and staff feeling almost at odds with one another. And that really is not the case here and Winooski it really is the elected officials and professional officials of the community working together to implement a vision of the community is a really special thing. And I saw that from my interview process forward and really appreciate your leadership to keep that connection going as well. You know, that's a great point you make Jesse. I think maybe not everybody knows exactly what this role is and how the leadership functions locally. So we have our city council of elected officials who are here to set the kind of policy vision for Winooski and then the city manager role operationalizes that and helps staff carry out that vision. So we're lucky here in Winooski to have a pretty comprehensive master plan. Perhaps some folks participated in this process others not but through a series of public meetings and outreach we have developed this master plan to guide us for the next seven, eight years on what we should be prioritizing working towards what the vision is for Winooski. And that, when did we approve that maybe two years ago? That is one of the great things I think that we have achieved over the last few years is really getting that in place along with other like subsidiary strategic plans. You know, having these guiding documents really helps leadership in staff in the elected officials stay on the same page and also have a vision we can articulate to residents. So they understand, you know what it is we're working towards. A couple of big thing pieces of that come to mind over the time that I've been serving in this role alongside you. You know, we obviously we have reconstructed the pool something less visible. We have a capital improvement plan that we can work through. There's been quite a few of these like big projects that we've worked on. And I wonder if there's, you know one that is your favorite maybe that you worked on or had the most interesting experience with or that you think is gonna be really important to us in the future. So I'd love to hear your experience on some of these like big projects we move forward. Sure, I'd love to talk about that. Can I talk about master planning for just a minute? Yeah, by all means. So I think that this, I love how you introduced that because it's, I think it also tells a story of how a community changes and adapts and leaders come in and out within a community vision. So when I started, the prior to me starting under prior council and Dick DeCaro and Mayor Leonard they had established the strategic vision for the city. And those principles, you know being focused on housing, economic vitality, municipal infrastructure and safe, healthy connected people were really the have become even though you and I did not create those those came out of, you know hundreds and hundreds of hours of community participation through the development of the form-based code and the early conversations around the master plan those have been our core now as a community for about seven or eight years. And you and I have taken those and with staff and with the planning commission and with our commission structures and really built out that master plan and those associated documents. And now we have annual work plans together where we articulate for each other and for the community what we're doing to accomplish those goals. We've had three in my experience here we've had three mayors and 11 city counselors who have influenced that process. We will have had three or four city managers who have influenced that process. And I think that's really a testament to the vision of this community and that that vision can carry through beyond leaders. It's the residents who are articulating what they want and we just have the privilege of being able to move those forward. So I think that foundation is really strong. I think it's something that's really special about Winnieski. In terms of favorite projects, you know I'm sure if I don't say the pool people will be surprised. We've done a lot of really interesting projects we've done the pool, we've done a lot of repaving we've put in new sidewalks we're currently finishing up our Hickok Street project. We're in final plans for our Main Street Ritualization project. We've done a lot of things. I actually want to talk about the Headworks project which is probably not the one that most people think of but from a kind of core municipal services is an incredibly critical critical part of what we do. Our wastewater treatment plan is arguably our most expensive asset as a government on par with the school building. You know, obviously it is where all of our sewer system and stormwater system ends up and being able to appropriately handle that treat that in a very small city and dispose of the waste and put the effluent back into the Winnieski River is really critical to not only our public safety but our natural resources safety as well. So forgive me for a minute while I talk about this really wonky municipal thing the Headworks project. It was a project we completed last year had a bond vote for in 2007-18 cost about one and a half million dollars and basically the wastewater all the wastewater ends up at the treatment plant and before we did the Headworks project our staff was taking out all of the non non biodegradable things that came through the wastewater stream which is quite a bit. So daily they were shoveling things out of that stream. It was a really arcane system created some public health challenges for our staff and the Headworks project really modernized that and automated that process. So our staff no longer has to do that by hand. There is a system in place to do it. It can track more effectively the flow and what's coming in and out and really let's make sure that our water and wastewater infrastructure is well maintained. So while it is certainly not a visible project to most it is actually an incredibly critical modernization that we did in the last four years that I think is really important and will set up the community well for the future. I'm kind of glad you mentioned that one. I think there's a lot of work that happens that is not visible to residents. And so I think it's hard to envision like how much happens in our city like how much stuff staff are doing. The pool Main Street, these are things that people have heard about. They're very visible but like the Headworks project I'm not gonna use the right terminology but I know that staff have done some like patch basins and various other sort of stormwater treatment, things that are really important to keeping our environment safe that aren't very visible. And a lot of that happens also in when a street is redone, a project like Main Street like there's a lot of components that aren't just about resurfacing and parking but actually like treating our environmental sustainability as a city. And those are sort of things that I think don't often get highlighted. They're not as exciting but they're really important. I think similarly we, I believe so I've been serving in this role for a couple of years but you've been city manager longer than when I came onto council. But I believe in that time we have passed every city budget with pretty strong voter support. And I think that's also something that is not on the surface remarkable but I know historically hasn't always been the case. So I feel like the master plan public outreach working together in these leadership roles has put us in a position to be able to present something that voters can support that's in line with what residents want. I think another maybe less obvious financial piece is our downtown tax increment financing the TIP district and you and staff have really done a good job of keeping that financially on track. I wonder if you could speak a little bit to what that has looked like, how you guys have thought about making sure that those finances stay in line. Sure. So one of the things I think you are right going back to the budget approval, each budget that you and I have worked on and Mayor Lara, Mary Ace and I worked on together all passed with over, I think the lowest approval rate was 64% and topped out at about 73% approval rate. So that's really significant and shows that the strong majority of our residents think we're going in the right direction. I think that is in part, I think that's a result of a lot of trust that the council and the staff have built with the community. I also think it's a result of council asking really hard questions and demonstrating to the community that they are holding the staff team accountable. These are dollars that we are taking from our neighbors to provide services and we really wanna make sure we're doing that as effectively and efficiently as possible. And I think the council being very engaged in that process has demonstrated to the community that these are budgets that can be supported because they've been really examined by the elected officials and the elected officials know what's going on. So again, thank you for that partnership. The tax increment financing district was one of the things that really appealed to me coming to this position. I think it's a really innovative financing tool for municipal governments to redevelop significant areas of the town that are not just solely on the backs of the current taxpayers but really invest in infrastructure to see that future growth. So just for people who may be watching short one minute on TIF. So basically our downtown we established it in around 2000. The property values were frozen at that period of time. Those dollars continue to come back to the general fund. And as it's redeveloped and the assessed value of the properties has increased, that difference between what they were assessed at the time and the increase, that increment, that difference is going to pay off the debt that we took on to build the new street structure to underground utilities, to build the parking garage, to build the rotary and the river walk. So that is on track to be fully paid off in 2024. So just a few years from now. And really, I'm standing on the shoulders of Deake and the past city managers who put that work together. Like O'Brien, George Cross, Jerry Myers, a lot of others who did an enormous, Clem Bissnet who did an enormous amount of work both in Winooski and at the state level to make that happen. So what we've really focused on in the last four years is modeling and ensuring that we have an incredibly tight handle on the revenues that are coming in and the expenses that are going out annually. So that we are very confident that in fiscal year 24, we will be able to fully retire that debt. And then that increment will come back into both the city coffers and the state education fund. Because right now we are one of the few TIF districts in the state that gets to retain 98% of the education increment as well. So we are on track to do that. We are currently working on our lot 70 project. That's the final significant parcel that the city owns and controls as part of the TIF district that we are looking to redevelop. As the community probably knows, we have identified Netty Real Estate as our development partner and are working on bringing likely a hotel and housing to that site with some public parking. A benefit of that project already is that when the proposal for that project first came in VEIC Vermont Energy Efficiency Corporation, many of whose employees live here in Winooski was slated to go into that location as their headquarters. And we were really excited about that, a great new employer in Winooski, lots of good paying jobs and a really vibrant partner in some of our energy priorities of the city. So while they are no longer committed to going into the 7D project, they actually just signed a long-term lease to locate their headquarters in the Champlain Mill. So when already of 7D is that VEIC's headquarters will now be in Winooski for the foreseeable future. Another big TIF related business change that happened relatively recently that's maybe been a little quiet because of COVID is Vermont Public Television located their headquarters to our TIF district as well. That's in addition to VSAC and CCV, Marathon Health and PCC and the Mill. We have a lot of great kind of anchor employer tenants downtown that provide those jobs, provide vibrancy to the downtown business community, the restaurants and the bars. And I think really will solidify the future of our downtown and make sure our TIF district retires successfully in 2024. It is really exciting to be at this end of the TIF district. We're working towards that benefit that voters supported that big investment for at the beginning. And I'm pleased that you'll still be around to see that as you continue to reside in Winooski. Yes, absolutely. One more thing that I wanted to call out specifically about that I've seen in your time in this position is I think you've done a really great job of building more relationships and partnerships, between the school, neighboring communities working on regional issues, service providers right here in Winooski, like USCRI and the Association of Africans of Lima. I think that ability to build those relationships and then leverage each other's resources instead of trying to recreate work or work in silos is really important to successful service to our community. And I'd love to hear about your focus on that and how you feel about some of that relationship that we've done. Yeah, thank you. For any leader, those relationships are just key. And I think especially in Vermont and in this part of Chinden County, our residents are the same. It's not, we have 72 to 7,500 residents. We'll see what happens as the census numbers come out. And folks don't always think about are they, if they're coming to meal bar for a drink or they're going up to Landry to play softball, are you in New Scare, are you in Cold Chester, are you in Burlington, are you in South Burlington? I think people know that, but they don't necessarily think about the governance differences in those communities. And so I think the more we can partner with our surrounding municipalities as well as those service organizations and efficiently provide services to our residents, the better, because again, the residents aren't necessarily thinking about those organizational lines. And residents are involved in with lots of organizations beyond just municipal government. Folks send their kids to school and get services from the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants and ALV and the Howard Center and Spectrum and Center Point. The more we as organizations can minimize the bureaucratic barriers between our organizations, our residents will be better served and will be better served as efficiently as possible. I think COVID, you and I have worked so closely with so many of those partners through COVID and we've really seen the success of those close partnerships, that constant communication with our partners to make sure that we all are, have the same information. We know who needs help and when we know what kind of help they need and we're able to provide that really quickly. And we couldn't do, as a small municipality, we cannot do that alone. We need our service providers to partner with us in that work. So I think those relationships are at the core of creating that safe, healthy and connected community that we aim to provide. Plus, they're just amazing individuals running those organizations and the privilege of being able to learn from Emila and learn from Jacob and Thoto at ALV and learn from DGETWHA and learn from Sean at the school district. They're just wonderful humans who are so committed to our neighbors and it's really been a privilege to get to know them and I'm sure those connections are not just with me. You have those connections and our leadership team here in Winooski has those connections. The new city manager will build those connections as well. That is not a new specific thing. That is the culture we have in Winooski to kind of wrap support around all of our neighbors. Yeah, I think it's, I always hear from folks like, I love it here because it feels big and small at the same time. Like I know my neighbors, I can't feel connected to the community and I think it is that we wanna get to know each other. We wanna work together. And you mentioned during COVID, like those relationships have been absolutely critical to the way we've been able to respond and support the community. And we'll obviously be fostering those to continue when we hire our next city manager. I also, I think the regional work is important on another level as well, when we think about like finding efficiencies and providing the best services we can. You know, voters supported a couple town meeting days ago moving into this regional dispatch scenario where we would combine across Chittenden County instead of providing our own dispatch services, trying to regionalize that. That's something you've been working on for a while. Hasn't, we're not quite at the launch point yet, but I think that is really important, you know, the collaboration with Burlington and South Burlington on addressing airport noise issues. There's a lot that we have across the community that we can work on together. And I'm grateful that I'll actually continue to get to work with you in your next role as we continue exploring these other partnerships. So two funny operational points on the importance of that regionalization, you know, moving towards Chittenden County Public Safety Authority's regionalization of dispatch is absolutely essential. One of the things that keeps me up at night, and I think residents may not know this is our dispatch center here at the police department. We run that dispatch center with one staff person on 24 seven, which means that one staff person, if there's a big crash on the interstate or there are multiple fire calls going on at once, is really busy and really a lot of pressure on them all at the same time with often a life or death situation. So thinking about how regionally we could provide better service and back up calls more effectively, I think is really important for those, quite frankly, those worst moments of our neighbor's lives when they need police or fire EMS to respond really quickly. A funny story on that regionalization, and I'm not gonna get the names correctly, but probably about two years ago there was, folks may remember, there was a fire up at UVM in one of the buildings that was kind of in the middle of campus. And it was big enough fire that it was multiple alarm fire, meaning that fire departments from a number of different communities were called in to respond to the fire. Mutual aid, we do it all the time. So the big Burlington trucks arrived and the Big South Burlington trucks arrived and Winooski arrived and we have a much smaller truck. And the truck needed to set up to effectively reach the fire, the big trucks couldn't get there, but our little Winooski truck could get right in there and help put out the fire. And I think that, thinking about that network of assets that we have as a community, everyone may not need the same size ladder truck if we have one in Burlington, South Burlington, how do we use that network of assets that are over 1.5 million dollars to buy a new fire truck? How do we best leverage those assets as a region I think is a really interesting conversation. And we had that, we had, proved positive of why that is important a couple of years ago at that Winooski, at that UVM fire. That's such a, it's like a little engine that could. Yeah, exactly. I love that story. Jesse, do you want to share, you know, like what you're most proud of during your time serving in this role? Oh, what I'm most proud of. You know, I think we talked earlier about the master plan and the alignment of the commissions to that structure and our shared work plan between staff and council. You know, I know it's really wonky and dorky, but those structures, those structures that we built together between staff and the council, I'm really proud of that. And I think it let us leverage a very small team to do a lot of really important things in the community's vision. I'm also incredibly proud of some of the hires we have made in the last couple of years. Again, that's not necessarily always publicly seen, but during my tenure here, I've brought on five new department heads or promoted them to their current positions. And they're really just an exceptional group of experts in their field of professionals of folks who care about Winooski and care about the residents. And they're the ones who, you know, are dealing with the water breaks in the middle of the night or responding to the fire calls or dealing with employees' benefits and pay and making sure that their families are taken care of so they can take care of the community. You know, the professionals that we have on the leadership team are just exceptional and are so well poised to not only carry through this interim phase, but also carry the city through the next five or 10 years. I know the new city manager will come on and add to that value and make it even stronger. But I think this team is what I'm most proud of, this staff team. I can say as an elected official, this is not my professional career, right? A lot of folks, residents, you come into this, into these service positions without necessarily having a municipal background or a government background. And those structures that we have, the staff that we have, so much great support to help somebody come into one of these roles and just take off and help move things forward. Looking out into the future, what are you looking forward to seeing us achieve in the coming years? Well, I think, so two things, I'm really excited about watching in the upcoming years. One obviously is the completion of the TIF district and what that means for our community and what new resources that bring to enable us to do the work of the community. And those community conversations about our values, how we wanna spend those funds, what we wanna do with those funds, how we invest in ourselves or invest back in our taxpayers. Those are gonna be really rich community conversations and I'm excited to see how those go. The other thing I'm really excited about that we haven't talked about much yet today is right through this wall right now is our fabulous new equity director, Yasmine Gordon. She's amazing and comes to us fully grant funded through a grant with a Boston Fed. She'll, that position is funded for the next three years and we have a sustainability plan of how to fund it beyond that. But thinking about undoing the structural racism that does exist in our community and in our systems and bringing more voices to the table and ensuring that policy decisions in when you see are really made with all voices taken into consideration that our leadership team looks like our community that our council and our commissions look like our community. I think that's going to be really exciting work. We've had a lot of wins in that already. I think back to the equity summit we held in 2019 and those 60 people in that room for that day which now seem so foreign and I hope we get back to a place where we can do that. But listening to the students and the wisdom they brought to the table. I think that we've done a lot of work and we're ahead of the game and a lot of things trying to keep up with the school district of course who's really ahead of the game but really making sure that our organization is seen as open and welcoming and accessible to all. I think we'll be just so exciting to watch. We'll see that increase probably, hopefully momentarily when the legislature finally passes our charter change allowing all residents to vote in Winooski. I think we see things opening up to be a more equitable community and I think that that work will continue and really thrive in the next three to five years under Yasmin's leadership and your leadership and the staff team. That is a really great place to end Jesse looking towards the future and efforts that you have been integral to supporting. So thank you for taking the time to share with us on your way out. Really, it's just been a pleasure to work with you and I'm grateful for the time and dedication you've given to our city and that we'll still have you around as a resource as a resident. So just wanna thank you for your time in the world of Winooski. Well, thank you and I hope folks understand how much time you give to this position and the leadership and the guidance you show to staff, to me and to staff as a whole. You have just been an outstanding mayor and I know you'll do great things for the future of Winooski. So thank you as well and thank you for your time today. Thank you.