 okay so it is 631 and I will call the meeting to order I'll mention a few meeting logistics we have if you're joining us remotely please place post your name on your screen with your first and last name so you know who's talking to us similarly if you address the council we would ask you to state your name and and where you live we ask everyone to keep their comments to two minutes and counselor date will be helping us with timekeeping if you're speaking about a specific agenda item please keep your comments pertinent to that item and anyone who desires to speak must be recognized by the chair first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda is there anything yes and since we have a member who's remote Jennifer would you indicate who you are yes Jennifer Morton district 3 via zoom thank you okay we have the agenda to approve are there any changes anyone needs to make to the agenda either in substance or in sequence okay our next item then is general business and appearances this is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is not on the agenda and we again ask you to keep your comments to two minutes in length I'll start with people who are who are remote at at this time because Steve sees I saw you had your hand up even before we got started so I think you're first and I'll call on you thanks mr. acting mayor is it Councillor McCullough how do we tell you council president very good I'm a little unclear on how to use these zooms I think that's why I had my hand what up so early I'm so good my name is Steve cease I live at 603 North Street and I'd like to talk to you tonight about North Street I've sent you all a letter about it I believe these comments are pertinent to the budget but also with regard to the city's paving policy and I'll take those two things in order I did send you all a letter within a with an excluded letter from Zach Blodgett deputy at the Department of Public Works my concern is the woeful state of North Street and I'm here to ask you tonight to direct that it be resurfaced hopefully this year as a temporary measure in advance of a much more elaborate project that is still somewhere in the planning process if you haven't driven up North Street I encourage you to do it and I warn you to drive slowly it's a bad street in my opinion it's the worst street in the city and Zach Blodgett the Department of Public Works says it's possibly one of the worst streets in the city he's hedging his bets but he does go on in his letter to me to say that he believes that at least a portion of North Street needs to be temporarily resurfaced before the the larger project is undertaken I am suggesting that it would be great to get the entire street temporarily resurfaced because the entire street is really bad when you turn on to North Street from Main Street you'll immediately encounter bumps and bangs and cracks and frost heaves things really get bad above mechanic toward Hillhead where the street is really almost indescribable it's the street is hazardous for bicyclists very hazardous for bicyclists if you're descending the street your forearms get tired because you're breaking so much in maneuvering it's difficult for pedestrians because of the cracks and potholes and it's it's actually I think hazardous for automobiles because you do have to do a fair amount of maneuvering to avoid the worst of the of the problems I believe it causes damage to cars my own car it's got some suspension noises that are pretty are pretty significant so if you do drive up be careful but I encourage you to do that I do think that North Street I don't know exactly when North Street was last we've paved bill was going to look into that my neighbor up the street thinks it was 15 or 20 years ago bill thinks it may be more recent than that bill did you ever come up with an answer on when the street was done I didn't I know it was during Mary Hooper's time as mayor but I don't know so somewhere in that eight-year period between both 4 and 12 I think she put it at the early end of her tenure she sent me a note which I don't have in front of me but it's been quite a while and in that time we residents have watched the street steadily deteriorate in fact portions of the street that were repaved were then dug up because of some other subterranean problems and left their own array of bumps and bangs so I think I do think that it's unfair to leave North Street hanging and this brings me to the subject of the city's paving policy which I described in my letter to you and this is the second point of my message to you the city has a you can tell but the two minutes sign is up so if you could move through the second point it is in writing the city has a policy of not paving the worst streets first this is an economic measure it depends largely on engineering criteria I'm asking you to review that policy because I believe it needs to be expanded to include other let's say more human impacts criteria and I described that in my letter to you things like how long has it been since the street has been paved how does it compare in worstness to other worst streets is there a list of the worst streets is there a list of streets to be paved can the process of deciding which streets are be paved we've made more transparent with public involvement and notice to residents I would love to be involved in that kind of a discussion so let me leave it there yeah I'm asking you to direct the city to repave North Street as a temporary measure and secondly at an appropriate time to visit the policy on paving streets with an eye toward examining its criteria and expanding its applicability so thanks sir thank you I'm done thank you Peter Kelman Peter Kelman Mountain View Street Montpelier I apologize in advance because I've been away for three weeks and then kind of out of email contact I mean a computer contact but I just have a question about the minutes that are going to be voted on the minutes for the 111 meeting stated that this meeting would be held on January 27th okay we can address that so we can take that we can cover that when we're taking up the minutes if I like all right public comment is allowed on the minutes we if you got an issue we can take it off the consent agenda okay then maybe take it off the consent agenda yeah thank you thanks anybody I don't see anyone else online who's asking to be recognized is there anyone in the room who would like to be heard Steve would you like to be heard okay as much as I liked and respect Steve Cease I'm glad he was out of reach of being arrested for your illegal policy I went through the packet this evening the new the new website organization made it difficult to find the agenda it's not a banner on the front page for tonight the next meeting so I did finally find it under a submenu you know for out I find I'm repulsed by the manner of doing business of packing the consent agenda with a lot of big policy issues like the non-discrimination policies that prohibit excessive force you know by the police and and you're adopting them in order to get another grant but it looks like it would have prohibited you from kicking Tom Mulholland off the Arts Council you know there's there's so much packed into there and you're adopting it just willy-nilly with no public discussion or scrutiny you know it's it's corrupt it's really corrupt there's reference to a meeting on page 128 there's reference to another meeting public hearing on the bond or something for tomorrow there's no meeting warrant for tomorrow in the city calendar you know it's it's just outrageous that you can you know move through this you know pack the consent agenda with policies and contracts for police and fire that end up we've paid a hundred thousand for Chad being to not work it you're really corrupt you you you most of you should resign and start to put this pat this sitting back on a healing path but it's not really worth the effort to try to address it because you everybody nods and listens patiently and never does another damn thing about it you don't mention it you don't put it on a discussion list you just like sweep it under the rug whether it's something from Mark Johnson's killing to just you know corrupt policies so the State House is learning more and more about how you run your our miss manager manages the lease for the transit center for public bathrooms so it's gonna take time but you will vacate and start to let the city heal thank you anybody else who's looking to be would like to address the council in a person or online okay we'll move on to the consent agenda taking out the minutes for the moment is there a motion let me just to we can take the liquor licenses off as well okay so that's that's just off completely okay thanks I moved the consent agenda excluding A and B second is there any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed okay consent agenda items C through H are adopted now is there a motion regarding the minutes it does look like the the date for the meeting let's have a motion so that we can discuss it okay I move we adopt the minutes from January is there a second second okay so discussion you could have moved the motion with an amendment is that what you well let's just talk about that's fine so John do you know what the answers to the question oh no I don't I am Sarah did those minutes and I didn't look at them for content I looked at them for because I very much she's pretty meticulous but I guess I should have looked more closely at them we just looked at it for things like typos and missed those I believe we moved our final hearing on the 27th Friday at noon that would allow any petitions to come in that's my understanding so I see it as correct it says we moved it from the 26th to the 27th and we moved the right so we actually I'm looking at this now the first motion actually was moving the regular meeting from tomorrow night to tonight and all agenda items currently scheduled and then we also you then made a separate motion to create a special meeting for the 27th at noon petitions coming to morning so I think it's this so you actually had two separate motions there were two meetings set so the reschedule the meeting where it says currently scheduled for 26 to noon 27 that is not good should have been till 6 30 p.m. tonight the 20 yeah well you just leave it and I'll go back and wind this and check with her yeah okay Peter I'm still confused why don't you just what did John just said why don't you just leave it and I'll check with her what what what are what were the two motions as as the manager stated the two motions were one to move the meeting that had been previously scheduled for January 26th to tonight January 25th and the reason for that was that the welcome legislators reception is happening tomorrow night and then the second is to schedule a meeting for Friday at noon if there are and we would just cancel it if there are any petitions that come in at the last minute thank you you're welcome are we any further discussion sorry John thank you I'll just withdraw my motion move the minute so just do it next week yeah we'll put it the next week we'll take them up next meeting okay yeah it's a pretty straightforward change I don't know why we want to put it off well what's the pleasure of the body I think it's clear enough that we're moving with the 26th plan regular council meeting to the 25th and then we had our final review of the ballot items on Friday the 27th at noon should be needed I would rather review the actual language of them of the motions and try to get the minutes to reflect that okay honestly be more comfortable with that but you know it's a quick fix I'll just have the next time I mean they're year-olds minutes so you can do what you want with them there are minutes oh that was a motion no no I was just trying to understand why we weren't making a motion and moving oh there was a motion and the maker of the motion wants to withdraw her motion technically we could make us all vote on whether to allow the motion to be withdrawn but I think I think we can just move it to next time that's okay okay next up we have a couple of the appointments we have an appointment to the public arts commission appointment to the Montpelier Energy Advisory Advisory Committee and to the Complete Streets Committee and are any of the people who are applying for those here either in person or by by video not seeing anybody in person and is there anyone raising their hand on video okay folks what's your pleasure we could proceed with the appointments an open session or we could accept a motion to go into executive session with whatever people want to do we can proceed because we're considering appointments of officials the law would allow us to go into executive session but it's not required but we can't do anything until someone makes a motion I move that we make the appointments to the Public Arts Commission the Energy Advisory Committee and the Complete Streets Committee that are listed on the agenda that work yes it does second it okay is there any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye and councilor and any opposed okay those appointments are done next up item 9 proposal from the for the community garden and is there someone here to talk about that okay nice come on up Michael go check live on Pearl Street I'm on the Conservation Commission DRB and the advisory fund and we're fully behind the projects it's pretty self-explanatory I can answer any questions when you explain it a little bit okay sure it's been a couple years we've been going back and forth with the community garden folks that about a 30-year quasi verbal agreement to have this operation going the landowner is a bit sick aging once his property handed off in good fashion the group doesn't have the funds essentially to get the land work done the legal work done required to then turn the two-acre parcel over to the town so gone through a bunch of meetings conservation commission like I said supports it the fund supports it allocate the town supports it if it's our mission conserving land open space public gardens it's a it's a good project for month failure and Bill can you explain what what that would involve for the city I don't really have much more information yeah it's essentially what what the group is trying to do is just just again it's been handshake agreements verbal agreements over the years I'm sure we all have aging family members who want to put land at ease I know I do and this is just trying to help out a group formalize legal requirements that's about five grand as a cost not to succeed the group thinks they can get some pro bono legal work and survey work we added a couple grand in there more because you know if they get it great right but we want this to go through and essentially the deed work will get done such that the town will then take ownership of the land with the intent of the donor in perpetuity saves conservation easement we've been down that road don't want to bore the group it's complicated a lot of money stewardship this is a simple solution and it's a good one okay anyone in the council Garrett yeah I mean I like this project a lot it sounds great um I just need a little clarity and maybe it's from Bill about how the funding works exactly so the conservation fund was this attached to the conservation commission and you can explain as well okay great thank you well I mean we have a set this is an annual appropriation with conservation but then there's also a fund set aside several years ago from conservation fund there's no time for community there the commission has a special committee that reviews those requests and makes appropriations from it's a mix of public and committee members it's been it's been tough right to get this up off the ground this is a project for us to showcase to people it's not that hard come to us we're here to serve so it's again it's a win-win shows it's easy process so really the request is to allow them to apply the money they already have yeah we don't control the fund yeah right so I move that we approve up to the five thousand dollars for this garden work and is there a second a second okay um now who would be responsible with that with managing this the property and the use of the property we're following the department set this group's working out with the city yeah it's a it's about a 15 acre parcel we're carving off the two acres for the community garden they're going to try to sort out a public access which is a little unclear at this point it'll be signed it'll be ordered off from the other 13 acres council would have to accept the name yeah once that's ready when we get to that point yeah we're we're not ready for that okay um is there anybody uh in the room who's physically president wants to have anything to say about this or anyone online who has any comments um I would okay great thank you yeah thank you uh michael verla college street mount pilier and I've been an active member of the gove community garden for the last two years um really appreciate comments of the other michael um and uh yeah the work of the conservation commission and and city council um as has been mentioned the gove community garden is on route 12 about two miles north of mount pilier um we've got about 30 garden plots maintained by about 20 gardeners um um as as was mentioned roughly two acres of land that's been under the you know this handshake agreement for for gardening since about the mid 1990s and um yeah just grateful for for this opportunity to take this parcel of land and conserve it for the explicit purpose of community gardening given the um you know given the um demand for garden space growing in mont pilier and elsewhere in the state the soil at the garden is considered prime agricultural lands and this project would also conserve a significant riparian buffer between the garden and the north branch of the wunewski river and has been mentioned from the parcel there are several paths that lead directly to the north branch um which could provide ideal river access for residents um and you know plots in the garden range and size the average is about 500 square feet um which is significant for a mont pilier resident to grow a portion of their own food during the growing season and we have a turnover rate of about 25 per year roughly um which would allow other mont pilier residents to also join uh in this effort so um I just wanted to provide that context and would be happy to answer any additional questions okay and just add I just was reminded by the planning director that it would still need to be subdivided go through the DRB sub-division process to do this part of the diligence I'm on the DRB so yeah okay I can't speak for the DRB right I have to recuse myself of course but yeah right no I mean basically this is just getting the ball rolling but for this money this this wouldn't happen so we wouldn't have to worry about DRB and the rest of it and that's the intent of this fund okay are we ready to vote if so all those in favor signify by saying aye aye and I saw councillor Morton even even muted and any opposed okay I'm sorry for uh another town I've sent a bunch of boards I've applauded you guys it's not easy taking a day in and day out so thanks thank you next up we have public hearing on charter changes yeah I just have a brief overview of the proposed charter change and submit oh I'm sorry here we have a brief overview of the proposed charter change and the process and information and then obviously I'm here from the public interestingly if this if this format of this power point looks somewhat dated compared to more modern power points is because it's from when I did 11 years ago on the same topic so updating the information so what is the local options taxes and basically those are taxes that local governments can adopt rather than by state so they are added on top of the state's additional state tax so for example we have a rooms meals and alcohol tax an additional 1% in addition to that which the state charges charges the uh these have to be adopted by charter amendment and there is a process charter amendment which is what you know last meeting voted to file the language tonight you'll decide whether or not to put this on the ballot and it would amend this section what current state sales tax rate is 6% this proposal would add 1% in my earlier to make it a total of 7% only applies to items are already subject to the state sales tax so it doesn't cover anything more or less than the state sales tax covers already 30% of the total goes into the state pilot fund 5% of that is kept by the state firm administration the remaining 25% is then redistributed out to communities around the state who have state buildings which would be about 11% of that comes back to my earlier one of the reasons why our pilot fund has grown from 125,000 to almost a million over the course of years is because of other communities adopting these local options taxes so that has the actual sales tax that didn't bother with rooms meals and alcohol but the following communities in Vermont have adopted the 1% local sales tax don't read them all the closest one to us of course is Berry City which just adopted it last year and several other communities Middlebury's that we are often compared to et cetera said all the city so that is who's out there that's doing this already how much we're going to raise the estimated net revenue is 493,000 that is a change from what I had originally told you and that was my error I looked in the wrong column so when we moved it we realized that we needed to look in the retail column not the gross sales column we haven't had subsequent conversations with the tax department and that our retail sales does not include online sales so actually that number would be higher but we could we didn't feel comfortable enough especially after getting it not right the first time so this is a conservative estimate but this is a reliable estimate so it'd be at least you know approximately 500,000 or more so that's about 3% of our total budget about 4% of the proposed property taxes about six cents on the tax rate if we're just to go to that additionally we could probably see more pilot revenue of about 24,000 dollars so whether the money begins for that's to be decided by the city council after you know we fill in the money I would suggest that we really all of it into infrastructure we already heard tonight about a street that someone had concerns about there are other streets we it's been a big need we talked about a water sewer and I do believe that to the extent that there is a perception that it would be this would create a disincentive or a problem for our downtown that we ought to invest some of that to help promote the downtown and create a link between sales that they have and how much goes into this fund that they could be helping themselves in that regard so this would be on top of the funding that we already provide them so why is this being considered and we'll talk about this more over the last several years we've seen a shift in property tax burden from commercial to residential from the most of the rural appraisal and we will likely know anyone who's seen home prices in the city we're very likely to see that again we have huge service demands from non-residents and as we know we have large infrastructure needs so this chart shows our change in tax base from 1985 to now so the blue is the residential portion of the of our tax base those years are all rural appraisal years with the exception of 2022 which is our most recent grand list and that is just what is that will change this year with the new appraisal we expect that to pop up even higher into the 70 percent so you can see over this time we've gone from about 53.6 percent residential up to 68.6 and going higher so obviously the people our residents are paying much higher tax burden over time pretty steadily and the commercial buildings are not and and you know non-residents of course not at all so this is it so this is the 15 percent shift 15 percent is about 1.663 million so that over 30 someone years has been shifted from non-residential on to residential properties and that's municipal only that's not counting the schools so whether our service demand indicators a big pandemic we had 15 to 20 thousand dollar daytime population we haven't done an estimate since then i'm guessing it is lower but we still definitely see a much larger daytime population than nighttime again we ran our stats just this year and recently at least half of our motor vehicle accidents involved non-residents that's just an indicator of the type of activity that goes on involving non-residents i'm going to go into a little bit more detail but almost a 20 population growth in our neighboring towns over a 40-year period while that same period we've had a 2 percent population decline in mob failure meaning non-residents are coming in and you know in our area and lastly we have the second highest ratio of jobs to residents of our mob we're one of only three communities above 5 000 population that have more jobs than we do residents so clearly ahead again that was that's as per the department of labor uh november 2022 projections that may change if they if they adjust for state jobs that are not here but that was the most current data that i could find so just taking a look at our regional growth uh just i again i'll read them off but you can just see how the towns in our area have all grown uh some substantially a lot player as a site you know we're two percent lost but really about the same very city about that we're working for them but they've seen you know clearly the move has been from cities into the neighboring towns which means those folks are coming into the cities waiting a service to you here's uh this is the jobs per ratio as you can see the highest in the state is williston we're right behind them uh then saint albin city and then you go right down the list and interestingly enough uh everybody the top people in the list accept us down the bellington all do have this sales tax the stowberry city as well uh to uh just note that uh but again we we have a lot more people working here than we're here at least excuse me kelly can you get rid of that upper bar uh if i can try yeah where it talks about caps yes there we go all right thank you back to this okay almost done so the policy question for young city council public is is the local option sales tax appropriate as a revenue source for my failure city government is what you're here to talk about reasons for saying yes are that non-residents are paying for local services used by non-residents in less reliance on the property tax reduced tax for non-residential properties and it has been successfully implemented in brahman communities reasons for saying no is that there's an unknown impact on local businesses um you know i can't speak for other communities but uh we don't you know i know there are concerns and we'll probably hear about them locally sales tax on our own our regressive taxes and of course local residents would pay them as well as non-residents so the next steps uh first of all just to say that the budget we're going to be talking about later tonight does not assume any revenues from these taxes so whatever you decide to do has no impact on the upcoming budget if the article if each is to be placed on the ballot the voters would then consider our march 7th if they pass that then the legislature will need to consider it yeah and then if it's approved it would likely start in the fall of 2023 uh that i based that on when we did the rooms meals and alcohol tax we passed it in March it was approved that uh during that legislative session and it took place October 1st which would mean that we would see six months of revenue in FY 24 that we have a budgeted for which we could make that decision about what to do with that money at that time but um that's putting the cart way before the horse that's what happens and that's the outline that's all i have questions of the council listen public comment thank you that was helpful thanks bill okay i'll open the public hearing and uh do any members of the council have questions at this point when we did the rooms and meals there was opposition to it and people were feeling that it might affect your businesses but after the fact we didn't really notice that did we get feedback after the fact from physicists or did just sort of integrate and and hardly i don't want to speak for businesses we have we in my office haven't heard anything but i don't know like you i don't know way to measure that other than impact verbally from people we'd have to ask them yeah thank you any other questions up here uh or jennifer one question i have bill is in the in the bar graph you showed with the disparate distribution of revenues um rental properties are included in the commercial bar is that right no i i put commercial apartments in with the residential okay inconsistent okay right on through okay okay um we'll start with people in the room this time let's just step up hi hi yeah okay you just need to be right on top of it but yeah all right uh i am katie trout the interim director at montpelier alive uh one of montpelier alive's goals is to help support the economic vitality of our wonderful downtown we do this in a number of ways but one is working closely with our business members to be a resource especially during times of need and provide opportunities for networking collaboration and learning we oversee the montpelier business association which acts as a support network and united voice for small downtown businesses i have been relaying information about the local option sales tax to the downtown business owners and providing space for discourse i'm here to share some of those perspectives and give voice to businesses who cannot be here tonight i'll first mention that in doing some research and evaluating the results of a recent survey i found that 32 percent of the downtown businesses are comfortable with the options tax going on the ballot and 68 percent are not 23 percent would vote yes and 77 percent would vote no when it came down to it businesses are concerned the implementation of the tax will contribute to the perception of montpelier being an unwelcoming town for visitors many feel that there's a large burden in setting up the tax in their systems and implementing it in their stores businesses are also concerned about how the tax will be used and find it difficult to see any positive side of the situation without knowing how the funds will be directed in a clear in a more clear way roads and infrastructure being a main focus they're also worried about increased credit credit card fees and they are largely not in favor of the tax and feel it would hurt the downtown economy more than help it i hope that by sharing the perspectives of our small beloved businesses the lifeblood of our town the council will be better informed in making their decisions in regards to the tax thank you thanks katie before you go away i one thing that i didn't i don't think i understood which was that they're the concern with new setup costs for the for the tax because it just seems like it would be as simple as we programming it to go from six percent to seven percent because then the state it all goes to the state and state the divides up the money so yeah do you have a way to explain that i don't i actually have people here who can probably explain that better than i but i think that it is it has been difficult to do in the past like when they were setting up taxes before in their systems that it's a labor for staff to have to do and then reporting might come up as well so i would ask that of the businesses who are planning on speaking here okay thanks anyone else have any questions for okay thank you anybody else in the room would like to be heard hi claire benedict i'm a montpellier resident and the owner co-owner of bear pond books here downtown um a couple of points the powerpoint presentation uh relies heavily in the argument for local options tax relies heavily on the idea that outsiders are using montpellier and we need to get some money out of them to uh balance out what their what resources they're using our i don't know our sidewalks our parking our streets and i i take issue with that very limited thinking because those outsiders are what are what is keeping downtown businesses afloat they are absolutely essential and they are bringing a lot of money into this town so i just want to reframe how we're talking about these outsiders they're not people we need to get more money out of and get to i don't know pay to the privilege to be here they're already paying without tourists without people who live outside of montpellier my store wouldn't exist i can't speak for others but it this would be a very different town so let's not make them the bad guys and montpellier homeowners of which i am one the the victims and to our budget problems um further i i also want to speak to the credit card situation that we pay a percentage on every sale so that will affect our our credit card fees it will also affect if we if we make purchases from other businesses so i as a business of buying my supplies at capital stationers that's going to my my costs are going to go up so it affects us in a lot of different ways um and i i don't think it's as simplistic as getting outsiders to pay and they're they're from out of state so we don't care what they think um they'll they'll shop here anyway tourists are very important to this to the economy of this town and one other exception i took to the powerpoint is that it looked like the burden is being there is a burden on the homeowners the taxes that homeowners pay but commercial properties go up pay more taxes too and um our our rents go up every month every year not every month but every year and so it's not just homeowners that are burying this burden i think that's everything i wanted to see thank you anybody else in the room would like to hear hi my name is lauren andrews um i live in berry but i have two businesses here in montpelier uh aromet essentials and uh capital cannabis company um i'm just here i wasn't planning on speaking but i feel compelled to uh let you know that this would be a horrible burden on small business owners who are still reeling from covet i don't know that all of us have fully recovered from covet and where many people became habituated to using amazon and buying things online that it it's not all completely come back to us since covet has somewhat resolved and i'm not sure if you're all aware of that that this is uh when covet hit i had three stores three aromets i have one now and i chose to keep my uh montpelier store up and running because i feel deeply committed to um this this community um and so i i think this would you know i paid my sales and use tax today um and i figured out what that one percent would be and it's multiple multiple hundreds of dollars and that's money that you know i pay bills with uh i pay my staff with you know uh money that would be set aside to help cover the lean months that are coming up because we have lean months in this town um and so i just come to you from to tap into your compassion and understand that uh while one percent doesn't sound like a lot it's a lot and it builds up and that's money that needs to be used elsewhere to keep our businesses up and running and keep people employed um so i i that's my two cents my other thing is too is i'm kind of a real estate person my husband married to a real estate appraiser for 30 years and his his perspective was interesting you know while we're doing all of this uh you know there are going to be businesses that will shutter likely and there are reasons why real estate is less expensive and buried than it is in montpelier and one of the reasons why we can maintain and have property values increase in this community is because we have a vital downtown but without that uh you could see real estate values go down plummet and that's not what people who in this community want so um that's could be an unintended consequence because nobody wants to move into a town with shuttered downtown businesses and while one percent doesn't seem like very much uh it could really be the final nail in in some businesses coffins so uh i ask you to be mindful of that as you move forward thank you thank you anybody else in the room looking to be recognized okay we'll go to uh people online and again we're starting with the steve sis thanks i've learned how to raise my hand on zoom i think this is a real uh progress uh thanks again i'm steve sis i live up on snowy and very bumpy north street and i cannot speak to the impact of the uh tax on businesses but from um my standpoint as a as a resident and a potential um uh while i won't say victim while i will say victim of this tax the only thing that would make it palatable to me is bill's um suggestion i think recommendation that the money be put into infrastructure we know the city's infrastructure is in rough shape and i'm sitting right next to one of the worst examples i think if um the only way i would find this um idea um acceptable setting aside all the concerns raised by the others tonight is if it does go exclusively into infrastructure thanks thank you anybody else uh online who would like to be heard before we close the public hearing oh i should say also as part of the public hearing can we add all the emails that we received from people into the record and post them on our webpage you can i don't i don't think i have them on okay i've only gotten a couple so okay you've received them uh send them along you can send them along to the park but i mean certainly they're public right yep by all means thanks uh linda berger hi thank you i have an off the wall question i've lost track of the um wastewater utility at one point that was going to be a charter change and i i just lost what happened to that if you could refresh my memory okay why don't we finish this uh item and then we'll okay we'll answer your question new peter uh did you call on me yes sorry peter kellman uh peter kellman um uh mountain view um i actually have mixed feelings about this but i i do object to the power point i'm in for a number of reasons and steve sees his comments actually underscores one of them unless the um the tax actually requires that it be used for a particular purpose money in our budgets are fungible they can be moved around so there isn't money that says unless unless that's part of the the change if you don't put into the charter change that it will be used for infrastructure then it can be used for anything that bill decides to use it for or the city council agrees to so that that that's really a kind of a phony argument um the other thing i think that is a little bit of a phony argument is the uh looking at i can't remember which graph it was showing you know the burden of uh uh money coming from the from property taxes versus business well let's look at what that really means what it means what it really means is that our properties have increased in value over those 37 years or whatever the like this whereas our businesses have not produced as much are you know it's been it's been rough just like the small business people have said we've seen businesses go in and out of how that graph does not show what bill interpreted as showing i don't remember which graph it is now so i'm i'm well i i understand some real good arguments on both sides i think that the presentation is a little heavy putting a thumb on the scale a little too strongly thank you thank you anybody else online who'd like to make a comment or raise a question about the about the proposed charter change and is there anybody in the room now claire you just spoke so if you have like one or two sentences i'll call on you okay i just i want to uh reiterate the previous speaker because that is really um one of my biggest concerns about this is that we don't know what this money is going to be used for and i've heard things floated already from city hall oh maybe it'll bring down property taxes and now it's uh it's going to go into infrastructure but we aren't having any promises about what exactly it's going to be and or maybe we'll give some to montpellier alive but there's no commitment and without that i agree with the previous speaker that this is who knows what's going to happen to this money okay thank you yeah because claire's right and um i've been asked several times what the money was going to be used for and the fact is only you all can decide that last meeting i asked you to think about that so all i've been able to tell them is it could be used for anything from tax reduction to spending money on other things so that's true there is has not been a clear answer so i've given you my recommendation and peter's right that you know it can either be added on top of or it can use as a revenue offset and you know if you chose to change the wording of the charter change so i don't have you know i just want to be clear no i haven't tried to misrepresent anything i can't speak for what city council chooses to do with the money and um the slide said has not been decided needs to be decided by the city council so point well taken it's it's in your part one other thing too i just like to respond because a couple people mentioned the slide about the residential growth i want to be clear the slide just shows the facts and i think and i believe i said when i showed it it showed the value of residential properties going up and that i'm not making a value judgment whether that's a good thing or a bad thing but what it does mean is that you know there was a time when residents paid about 58 percent of the property tax and now they're going to be up over 70 that's just a fact they can argue good bad or indifferent whether that's true it just is so i'm not trying to say anything other than that's one of the reasons put forward for doing this is plenty of reasons not to do it as well if you don't do it but um you know so bill to be clear if if we were to do this would this be the same as an ordinance where we first have to adopt the charter change and get it passed by the legislature and then we would have to adopt an ordinance to do the uh tax you could do that but well yes so so right so what happens is the the legislature will authorize the council to do it and the council passes a resolution to actually adopt the tax and that would be the resolution that you could put in what the uses were for but certainly you could make a commitment you know people want to vote if if you put it on ballot people want to know what they're voting on i understand and that's that's up to you okay thanks um i'm not seeing anyone else who's looking to be heard so with that i will close the public hearing and then peter is that a new really is you just didn't put your hand yeah yes it's new jack i'm sorry well just this to be very quick no i want to build to repeat what he just said in answer to your question i i'm not clear it will the um the voters be voting on something that specifies how this is to be used or is that something that you know we're we're just getting the legislature to say yeah you can do something and then there's a second stage where we where where you can put in how it's going to be used this is a slippery slope issue right let's be very clear about it bill could you say again more clearly the answer is that we if the council votes to adopt a charter change the charter change could if the council votes to do it include a specification for what the money is to be used for or it could not and we don't know what's going to happen because the council hasn't voted to do anything carry so my understanding is that the charter change allows us the possibility of having a sales tax but it does not impose a sales tax that that would be something that would come later wonderful point thing okay if that's the case which i i think that is that's what i thought then i have a real problem with this because this is what happened with the ordinance uh uh charter change ordinance uh for the set uh the home uh i can't remember what's called you know the odd one yeah and and what and what the let what the legislature permitted was open to the city to come up with a specific instantiation of it and the specific instantiation i don't i don't know how it's going i don't think very well and i think that's the problem when you say all right we're just gonna ask the legislature to give us a tell us we can do something but then the something that we do isn't really necessarily put back before the public in an understandable way okay thank you peter that's yeah so peter um i don't think you heard what jack said the city council has a range of options they could put as a vote of the they could put on the ballot a restriction and and word the charter change such that it designates where the funds go or not if they chose not to and the and the legislature gave permission then they could put such restriction on when they voted to adopt the the tax itself which is what we did for infrastructure actually with the rooms meals and alcohol tax um secondly you know i think this is my opinion this isn't speaking for the council comparing this to the home energy uh ordinance is really not on point this is a whether you like it or not this is a sales tax program that's been successfully implemented in several other communities it's uh people know how to do this and uh i don't know if our business communities reached out to business community you know business members in those communities how recording in progress i've talked to the managers and city officials and they have not reported big problems or businesses going out that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen here i'm not trying to project that but it's not you know the the home energy ordinance was kind of a new horizon that had not been tested in the state so there's a there is a substantial difference in terms of excuse me there was just a minute folks are you able to hear right now obviously do you know something's going on it's it's back it does that sound done raise your hand if you can hear me yeah no one else is raising their hand either right can we get this steve's trying to get in yeah the audio is off thank you can you hear me now yeah but the people it looks like people can't hear us the joys of the hybrid meeting yeah could could somebody could use some of this money to fix the hybrid could uh kelly could you enable the chat and put a note in there that we're trying to fix it recording in progress any sound now can can people hear yes yes we can okay is everyone able to hear now hey sorry about that the wonders of technology i don't know where we were but simply comparing saying that i think the issue of comparing the energy ordinance to a sales tax and again not arguing whether it's good or bad but that has been successfully implemented in many communities versus one of one of its kind ordinance in the state is probably not you know in terms of being difficult to understand how it's going to work i don't know whether our business has reached out to businesses in other communities have had this including you know our neighbors and barry i've certainly reached out to municipal officials and you know not heard any problems as well as from their businesses i know when we looked at it 10 years ago we visited several businesses in those communities and they all reported essentially that they had opposed it but that had made a big difference but i don't that's hearsay um so i'd rather you know i hope that you've reached out to your colleagues to see what their experience has been and certainly we take it very seriously if there's a concern for the downtown and again it's up to the council to do okay thank you for that clarification bill um at this point i'm not seeing any new uh hands raised or new requests to be heard i'll pause for just a moment if someone has who has not addressed the council would like to be heard on this please indicate okay at this point we will close the public hearing and go to council discussion um where are we with this folks i have a question i remember the meals and meals and rooms tax and we we did the ordinance the charter change different from deciding to dedicate it we made a different motion it wasn't written into the actual charter change is my memory i think that's right and i i think that's important as much as we can have the intention to do it for the infrastructure or we also at that point set aside some money on our vote for the development economic development and guess what the economic development council went away so if that had been in the charter change we've been stuck with it so i think you need some flexibility but i think it'd be good to have a vote if indeed we decide to go with the charter change and make the dedication as a separate motion and provide the voters with that information should we decide that but i think they should be separate okay thank you um cary um i'm still against a sales tax in in any form for any reason at all on philosophical principles so i appreciate the input that we've gotten tonight um i uh i can see some great value that the city could realize from it but i'm not going to be in favor of it because i'm not in favor of such a regressive tax that will mostly be um felt by people who live in mobiliar so i'm just gonna stick with that so you know okay uh yeah um there are good points from both sides of the argument i think um this decision is too early for our businesses because of the covid effects uh and i think we need to study more the positive effects because when we talk about development housing or other things which is great we bring experts right um but i don't know if you have talked any economists or any you know person who really can talk about what we will have if you say yes or no so i think yeah it is a little bit early to say something okay because of these reasons anybody else on on the council want to be heard or does anyone want to make a motion yes Jennifer hi thank you um you know i last meeting i was uh tentatively in support of this and now i don't i'm not so sure and it's really because of the pandemic and i know that local businesses have been suffering and i just i don't know i don't know if i feel good about adding another tax on the heels of trying to recover from the last couple years so that's my two cents thank you donna well i would like to have the possibility of having it which is what happens when we ask for a chart of change and the legislators give it to us then we can decide as a council not to implement it this year maybe next year uh and so i i would like the option to have it because it has been tested all over the state city after city town after town takes it on and so i feel we have a tested field and so that's what i would like to do is that a motion i don't mind the fails sure it's a motion okay there's a motion i did not catch what my motion is that we adopt putting the charter change on the ballot for the one percent local sales tax very clean yep is there a second motion fails for lack of a second thank you we can move to the next item on the agenda i'm sorry yeah i i like i share the same concerns that kary has raised i don't generally like sales taxes because of the recursive nature you know as i've said at previous meetings we do have very limited tools and a lot of needs i i could see exploring this in the future like i would want to look at are there some like programs that could address some of the regressivity programs like better understand what are real impacts for small businesses i love all the women business owners um coming out um and you know so i could see getting to a place where like with a little more work on how you're going to spend the revenue you could address the kind of fundamental structural challenges with the sales tax knowing we do have limited ways to raise money um as a local community so i'm still open to exploring that um but i think for now i'd like to do that work before putting it on the belt okay any last minute thoughts from any other member of the council we said okay thanks for the clarity you know we get asked a lot why don't you have it so great we brought it up so fair enough okay thank you um and thanks for coming out folks um linda berger you had a question that i just want to raise while uh we're moving to the next item on the agenda and your question had to do with whether we we had a previous conversation about doing a charter change for a stormwater utility yes and the answer is that yes we did discuss it and having done some research we determined that we have the authority to do that without going for a charter change and so in the in the coming months we will be taking it up but it won't have to be as it'll be just as an ordinance not as a charter change next up we have the second public hearing on on the budget and so i will open the public hearing back and okay thank you um once again i am bill phraser the city manager and this is the second public hearing for the budget and um the final but hearing before you have to make a decision about what to put on the ballot so i will try to run through this uh most of this you've seen before we have made a couple of we do have some updated information in here as well uh and given the relative lack of people in the room and that looks like a lot of the people on the screen the people that saw this before i will try to get through this quickly we uh we start with budget goals we try to go through those each budget item is to each section of our goals is attempted to be addressed in in budget so our goal for moving community prosperity includes putting a hundred thousand dollars for economic development on this case toward country club road continues funding for the homeless task force the community fund monthly or live and the arts fund under our goal of responsible and engaged government uh we have uh actually we should take this out of the slide it's uh we're going to we hope to do some infrastructure upgrade in here to improve some of the audio visual capacity we're doing transition plan pro americans with disabilities act transition plan projects specifically elevator improvement we have fully staffed departments we will be expanding our communications coordinator to a full-time position but maintaining the committee stipend program we're maintaining funding for social economic justice advisory committee and funding for legislative advocacy we are also earmarking 110 000 recommending earmarking 110 000 for the housing trust fund also to go to the country club road project it's probably a decision that the council should uh ratify at some point you know besides just putting the money in practicing good environmental stewardship we are looking at electric purchases equipment looking at the dpw complex doing a capital needs assessment of sustainability evaluation continuing funding of my ride and we'll be talking a little bit more about confluence park but and we'll be talking about the bond language with the next item on the agenda we've kept our capital plan at the same amount of funding as last year so that's good news the bad news is it's still about 250 000 below where we'd like it to be and given the the last conversation it will likely stay right where it is for this year we've uh we've used the 2.2 arpa funding um which you've already heard about we continue to look at the future planning at country club road for the rec center which we know will have a huge problem with major projects that were approved last year but will be done this year uh the east states who are started this year the east state street very main intersections and actually a lot of the street lights have already been done the public health and safety are continuing the body worn cameras we are continuing our investments in policy software we've got a grant supported canine unit fully deployed and we are implementing the crisis intervention team did not add add this from last time but we also added $20,000 back in for the social worker to take a look quickly and where our money as far as money comes from as you can see we're about two large property tax funded and the rest from various other sources i won't read that you're all capable of that similarly we spend our money this is um woken out into basic departments you can see obviously police fire public works for our big three uh take up uh really the bulk of our budget especially if you consider the capital plan also in there so those four really are our major operations and then we're we're just looking at our budget a little differently we are 55 people as you've heard me say in years past it's people that answer fire calls and ambulance calls and police calls and plow roads and we got water and sewer mains and answer your phone calls and pet meetings uh so we are people business we try to be as efficient as we can and as automated as we can the world we will always be a people oriented operation correct oops our capital improvement plan again just quickly you've seen this slide before it shows that we are at 2.149 million same as last year our goal is to be at 2.4 million and then up in the future and obviously when we start next year's budget that's where our 2.4 will be our starting point but that obviously affects our annual capital and so these are our proposals to projects this year within our annual capital and you can see the street paving is drastically reduced in order to complete the rest of the project so that is the direct impact there um and also we're in equipment uh again most of it is in TPW equipment and the police crew it was not a whole lot of else and after we've talked about this we had 2.2 million uh we've you can see what we've allocated and where we're we're looking at and some we've already spent we do have more work the good news we still have more infrastructure work to go and we're waiting for a recommendation on the the formable populations follow the questions etc from the homelessness task force good news i think ultimately has moved this year the good news is the city's tax rate is at 7.6 percent or the school is at 1.4 percent i guess so overall when we look at our overall tax rate for a monthly residence it's going to be about a 3.9 percent increase and time of high inflation that's actually really good and when you look at it the year before it actually dropped by about 0.6 percent so uh that's a change of 3.3 percent over two years or about 1.65 percent per year uh and so i think you know while we wish we would like to restrain our budget for you know we also would like to put a lot more in for caving etc um the taxpayer in Montclair will not see a giant hit and have not you know the last two years is really very reasonable considering the inflationary period that we've been in during that same time just so looking up the ballot uh this is how the average person's tax bill will be allocated get 54 percent from the school 41 from the city and then various other items okay another piece just also to note there is state assistance uh so 152 homesteads so those are home ownership not rental properties that's what 65 percent of the homesteads in Montclair receive some form of state education property credits uh for just under two million dollars comes from the help pay education taxes average above 1500 per homestead 307 and i assume some of them are the same folks receive also receive state municipal property tax credits the so-called surfer again another 368,000 comes into the city again average 1200 for those people and then there were 206 rental rebates issued for 157,000 uh and average of 766 this is all based on 2021 data it's obviously 22 which one was not yet completed but just a reminder that in addition this is out there for our community water rates and sewer rates as have been set even though you're mostly most of this budget presentation is focused on the general fund which is the tax portion so that's what the citizens actually vote on um just reminding people that the council policies inflation plus one percent with the extra one percent set aside for infrastructure of covid so we've talked a lot about so that's what these budgets are based on uh using the inflation rate because of november you know look at these budgets again and so we have a chance to adjust that uh later on this spring if things have changed so lastly the next steps are obviously we have public hearing questions and comments and happy to hear the of that tonight you will approve the public hearing the budget bond and the warning articles uh then we will hold the public upon hearing in february and then our meeting is on march 7th and that early balloting will start i don't know those three weeks before then quick yeah take a week of february uh and so people can vote on uh city positions square board positions and all the various budgets so that is the budget process that's the lightning round of budget i'm happy to go longer on anything uh that i i rushed through but i'm trying to be respectful of everyone's time that's already heard me blab this two or three times so thanks bill um bill one question that just occurred to me immediately uh when you you mentioned the uh intersection of barry street in main street and i think last time you said that the scheduling of that project depends on the railroad do we have any more information on when that might be uh i don't think since two weeks ago we do um and that's a good correction you're right that may not happen this year i do instead of stopping this year it was approved it's in the works but right it has to be done in conjunction with the road do we know anything new um one thing we wanted to do before we are you coming up this answer that question the public works um so the schedule i believe is it's next year next summer would be the rail construction we'll try to time the intersection work at the same time great thanks so one thing we wanted to do before you opened up but there were two pending questions from the last public hearing we just want to make sure we address those since we told people we'd get them answers so i think kelly has one and i think her had one so there's a point of order i understand you've already done the charter change amendment i just went to the official place of posting at the library you still worn that meeting for tomorrow night okay thank you so the vote may be illegal or invalid there's no charter change going on the agenda you're on the ballot kelly go over here why not okay this microphone um kelly murphy assistant city manager one of the items that was brought up last time um was our stipend program folks were wondering how it's been being utilized and so um i just wanted to give you a few details on that um and so it was a twenty thousand dollar appropriation in 23 um so far we've got nine um people signed up for the program um and 50 percent of the way through the year we spend about 2100 dollars so far um so full year about five thousand dollars i'd say is what we'll end up with but you know more people could sign on so we'll see thanks thanks uh so the other question was in regard to the costs of water main repairs over the last three years um so we track uh the cost staff cost equipment costs and materials through a work order system um called manager plus and it's a pretty old system so um i have all the work orders output but uh each individual a day has to be added up you know per person so i haven't gotten through all of it i got through 2022 and that came out to 85 thousand dollars of in-house repair costs um that's during fiscal year 2022 or calendar year okay yeah so i'll continue um the next uh the previous two years and get that um okay before the next council meeting thanks all right i i don't see anyone in the room who's not a city employee so i will see if there's anyone on on zoom who would like to be here uh emis avis i see you've got your hand up hi there good evening um my name is emis avis um i'm here tonight as one of four members of the Montpelier housing committee who have been digging into our responsibilities related to the housing trust fund um first i wanted to say that we are supportive of the recommendation to fund the housing trust fund at 110 thousand dollars for fiscal year 24 um for a little background the Montpelier housing committee was convened in july 2022 it's our understanding that one of the items we were tasked with by the city council is to monitor the operation and activity of the city's housing trust fund um so to that end we see our due diligence as understanding how the trust fund has worked to date assessing its effectiveness um in terms of past investments and approach and establishing a consistent application process and parameters for allocating funds in the future um we understand that the city staff has recommended that all of the new housing trust fund money for FY 24 be put towards the country club road project um and while we are very excited about the prospect of affordable housing at the site our understanding is that it's only one possible outcome and a final decision has not yet been made um so if the city council moves forward with the city staff's recommendation to earmark all new funding for the trust fund to the country club road project we ask that you also condition that this money ultimately go towards the development of affordable housing on the site or be reimbursed to the fund um i think we all agree that there is a housing crisis in Montpelier and preserving the use of the trust fund for this purpose is important to addressing that crisis if the city ultimately decides a different use for this the country club road site is more appropriate and valuable than affordable housing we feel strongly that the other use should be tapped to pay for the associated costs for the site and the housing trust funds should be reallocated to their intended purpose which is supporting affordable housing thank you for the opportunity to comment we look forward to playing an active role the trust fund in the future thanks Emma and if i may to that point that's a great point and i think we could certainly condition it that way and um sort of conversely i'd point out that the part you know the property was purchased with a million dollars from the recreation reserve fund so when and if the decision is made to not have recreation on that site then i think we'd be looking at a similar situation of uh reaping just reminding that as we use these different funds that are earmarked for certain purposes then it creates expectations of their future use uh peter kehlman uh thank you peter kehlman um mountain dew street um this is the second year i'm going to make this comment i think bill's presentation of the budget um uh is very informative but um and i know that we've had two hearings and i missed the first one because i was away but um racing through it in order to save time does not do it's not real transparency um yes it's meant some people have studied this but not everyone and you need to take the time to go through it in a way that people can follow it i could not follow what you were doing your cursor all over the place and you were racing so i really care that that there's a recorded version of that a video of me doing it as well as every department had doing their their budget i understand that but okay it's also very difficult to find first of all what your presentation you just showed is not in the budget is not in the agenda packet what's in the agenda packet is what you created on december 15th i tried to i went i was reading it so that i'd be prepared for this meeting and then i realized i was reading something that was more than a month old your presentation that you just gave should have been in the agenda packet so peter similarly the budget itself the full budget book is not the current budget is not the budget you guys are going to be voting on today peter i'd like to jump in for a minute because i want to make sure any questions you have about the budget that's been proposed are answered so do you have some questions that you'd like more detail or clarification on a couple of my questions that i had based on reading what was in the agenda packet were answered uh one is was not i think i read in the executive overview there was a there in the previous one there was a page on what was not included and including that that that that page seemed to have gone away is that right bill we didn't put it in the presentation it's still in the the budget book what is not so the only change peter that has occurred since the initial uh conversation is an additional 20 000 for the social worker uh there was also 15 000 that we were able to absorb without adding to the budget 5000 for the parks and 10 000 for 13 sorry 8 000 for the rights field dm based on their presentation and 5000 for the park so those are the only changes uh nothing else has changed in the budget since it was initially proposed the only different information in tonight's presentation was the ultimate other than a couple charts was the information from the schools uh and and the total tax rate and we only got that last night so we could really didn't you know we just got it last night and i was presenting it today for the first time i but bill you just said the money for the social worker but in fact that wasn't in your overall presentation right well i we should have i should have added it to my power point but i did say that that was added yes right okay so i understand a number of the questions that i had were answered but there were other questions i might have had i couldn't follow what you were what you were doing so jack the answer is my questions have been answered yes okay thank you and uh and the power plan is going to go up on the city's web page correct okay and we'll even adjust a couple things that we left out okay thanks okay steve cease steve you're muted uh we yeah steve uh steve you're muted right now i think i'm sorry about that i don't know as much about them as i thought i did can you hear me yeah this could be one of those old dog duke tricks situations but well if you're calling me an old dog i say woof woof so all right um a question um a partial question partial comment i wanted to ask bill what is the amount uh you're marked or or sort of lined up for the confluence park thank you actually i meant to touch base on that so there's no money currently lined up in last year's uh in action we're going to talk about this more in the next agenda item but in last year's bond we bonded for six hundred thousand dollars for that um we're proposing that the bond be reworded to give us more flexibility to of how that money is spent and then we will be receiving a presentation with a design and a budget at some future point to decide whether we're going to continue with that project and by we i mean the city council okay i think that uh your idea of um uh providing more flexibility for that money may be good i do not um support what i've read about the potential cost of the confluence park i will tell you i'm a fairly dedicated canoeur and kayaker i've gone into the river many times down by the interstate bridge i think the confluence park site if you're considering it as a boat launch is dreadful um i think yo that's that's the next agenda item oh it is oh thanks yeah gosh um okay let me get back to my second topic then can you guess what it's going to be that would be north street might have to do with paving i think we've fully heard what you have to say about paving well i have a comment i did not see in bill's um presentation about the the areas to be done anything about a worst street or worst streets being done and i think that gets partly to my questions about the policy itself i would like to know our worst streets being addressed and um if so what are they and if you have the ability to move money around in the budget as i believe you do let's go back and repay more street that's that's it on that one thank you steve um and we're we're well aware of your concerns about north street from your emails in your lengthy presentation tonight okay i'll try not to come back to it again tonight thank you um anybody else i don't see anyone else's hand raised online i want to give people just a moment to consider and we will close the second public hearing and now we are with the council do we have any thoughts about adopting the budget and i would uh be prepared to entertain a motion on adopting the budget donna make a motion that we adopt the budget as presented this evening second any discussion and jennifer i just want to make sure i don't see you right now your hands not not up either is it okay you're ready for a vote um if i may complicate things a little right that's right we got to do that yeah okay breaking we're breaking out we want me to break out the clerk's budget so councilor brown can recuse yourself from that portion of the budget so my motion will include taking the city clerk's budget portion of the budget so the motion is to adopt the budget as presented with the exception of the uh expansion for expenses for the city clerk's i'm really sorry i forget that i see you as two separate people i pay for half the groceries okay um are you ready for that vote all in favor signify by saying aye aye proposed aye okay we have adopted that the first motion donna and i make another motion to accept the city clerk's finances as proposed within the budget any any discussion of that and councilor brown you've recused yourself not discussion i am recusing myself from the discussion and from the vote okay all those in favor signify by saying aye anyone opposed okay with that we have adopted the city budget that's what's going to be going on the ballot um next we're up to item 12 public hearing on the bond bill see you again i think i don't have a i don't have a a a dog and pony show this time i may need some help from kelly uh to just walk us through this so we are proposing to do we uh look at actually two of the bonds from last year and adding putting some amending uh wording for them one is the bond the 1.8 million 1.815 million dollar bond for various public works projects which included uh the confluence park also included specifying a pellet boiler at the public works garage so this would allow more flexibility amongst those projects and if the council so chose the second one actually is a portion of the east state street project which was approved last year the recent rural development funding that we received which was good news is a 30 year loan not a 20 year loan bond was actually voted as a 20 year bond so we're proposing to amend that to a 30 year term as well and then we will so we will need a motion affirming that the city council wants to add this amendment to the warning is there anything else i missed this could be one of your last finance director uh okay so i will i will open the um public hearing on this bond proposal is there uh anyone online who'd like to be heard uh steve c so i think you just forgot to take your hand down linda burger your hand is newly out okay thank you i'm sorry i did forget to take my hand down i think i the remarks i made earlier although in the wrong place just carry them forward to thanks thank you linda thanks um confluence park project is not shovel ready why not decrease the bond by the amount allocated for this project to reduce the property tax burden um well that of course would be up to the council the fact is that we could do that and um you know it doesn't go on to the property taxes until it's actually issued so even if it's authorized for 1.8 million if they chose not to issue it only only issued 1.2 million um but it also could be you know we know we have future projects uh so if it could be something that's going to be coming you know if it's already approved and in our budgeting so i think that's going to be a future discussion is what is whether we can do some of the other projects run out list would be more expensive than what was anticipated so we do it within this funding and not have to come back for more bonding in the future so i think that's what the council will be deciding thanks bill so again the council is comfortable with the property tax burden is is basically what you're saying i'll let them answer that the way i would answer that is that uh as the manager said that 600 000 none of the money that's in that bond goes on to anyone's property taxes until we vote to uh expend the money and the draw down the bond have a second question if that's all right i didn't understand the um 30-20 year discussion about the bond could you just clarify that i'm sorry i didn't understand it fair enough um so most bonds that are issued through the municipal bond bank in vermont municipal bonds are 20-year bonds that's kind of the standard and so when we put the three ballot item last year for east state street on the ballot our anticipation was that everything was going to go through the municipal bond bank instead at least for a portion of it a large portion of it we receive rural development funding in very favorable interest rates but that's a 30-year term not a 20-year term so we need to have the voters reauthorized to the 30-year term so that we can execute those notes thank you thanks uh bill uh peter kellman peter kellman mountain g-street uh jack or bill could you please just clarify what are the voters going to be asked to approve with respect to the 1.85 million that may or may not be used for the purposes that were originally listed are they what are what what's going to be the word in okay i'm looking for it right now um so the wording is going to say shall the voters amend the authorization provided to the city council on march 1 2022 to borrow some of money not to exceed 1.815 million for highway recreation park and building infrastructure improvements proceeds from bond funding may be used to finance the following amended improvements of various city infrastructure renewable heating system and energy improvement projects at the public works garage street light traffic light and intersection improvements a retaining wall on marvin street confluence river park and other highway infrastructure projects the estimated cost of the improvements is 1.815 million and so a voter reading that would and not at this discussion tonight might go away with the impression that they are voting for or against confluence park monies can't this be worded in a way that makes clear to people what they are really approving i don't think it does no i mean we can try to amend the wording this was wording provided to us by our legal bond council well i appreciate that but but but but you know peter hold on peter um most of our articles have informational paragraphs attached to them uh on the review of the ballot before it goes to voters or when they're at they come into the voting place there's usually a place they can go and read a little bit more about that specific article perhaps there we could do a more clear definition of what's going on here that might help voters and meet peter's concern that seems like a good idea to me and karey you had your hand up to i think okay so the actual question that people are voting on is you know we're not to exceed for highway recreation park and building infrastructure improvements um and then it says it may be used to finance the following amended improvements i think the prior version and i don't have it in front of me said something like it will be used for the thing so the difference is that it's it's providing more flexible language the fact of the matter is the city council has made no decision on confluence river park and um so if they chose to go forward with it and took it out uh then they would they would be negating that authority um and also if this language is turned down last year's bond authority remains so doesn't this isn't approving this is only changing lines right now here your point um and we could probably you know we could kind of decide to me loren i mean just on this confluence park question i mean we did hear from city staff i mean there's some money that's been invested some grants like if we didn't move forward with anything we would actually owe money back we'd have to return grant i and at this point don't feel ready to say we definitely don't want to do anything on confluence park i i can say speaking for myself i don't think we'll move ahead with the two million or three million dollar project i think we'll probably look for a scaled down um more affordable version of confluence park or a stepped phased process or something but i you know having the ability to continue working on that project that we've invested so much time and effort as a community i still think we should be pursuing it so i think this language of flexibility keeping it on the table you know and acknowledging that you know this wouldn't even be enough to cover just the confluence park budget that we've seen so we certainly will not be committing to that yeah as if i as i recall the bond we adopted last year it had the mandatory language it had the shallow language so i think part of it was it has to be the 600 has to be spent for confluence park i think part of it also made required us to do the pellet boiler and now we're looking at different options to make a more more efficient and carbon neutral heating plant and the only way we get to do that is by changing the language to have it be may instead of shall okay is there any other member of the public who would like to be recognized uh steve cease thanks again steve cease on north street as i've listened to this conversation frankly i got more confused i don't have the potential language in front of me but is it possible that someone would read the language saying may be used dot dot dot for confluence park to infer that the entire amount of money might get blown on confluence park i i think you really need to take some time to to wordsmith this so that following peter's concerns there's there's clarity on what is going to happen to this money and how it might be moved around between those various potential projects thank you i'm i'm telling you i am confused i'm out here in zoomland with nothing to read so um i i just leave that in your your hands okay thank you if i'm not seeing any other member of the public who is seeking to be recognized peter very briefly you've already spoken twice on this no no jack i asked the question billy answered the question and now i'd like to follow up with what i am concerned about i just asked the question first i am concerned about communication i mean concerned about communication with the public so that the public has an understanding and a trust in government these bond these bond uh and issues and similarly my my concern about about ordinance changes and so forth they've got to be put in a way that people can understand it now donna's got a good idea about having an explanation but that explanation can't just be one that's sitting in city hall that's because people are going to be voting um remotely i believe so we've got to figure out a better way to communicate that's what i'm trying to say and i think that the city website is a moley has it is just unbelievably difficult to find anything and so posting it there is also not sufficient you guys need to figure out a way to state things in plain clear english and maybe other languages thank you point taken i agree that this is something that needs to be made clear to the voters so they know what they're voting on um at this point i will close the public hearing and come to council for discussion what's your pleasure we can offer a suggestion um and i know we talked and if this got shot down by our attorney that's fine uh when we passed the bond way back when in 2002 uh for the transit center which included the initial funding for first time confluence park was ever mentioned it listed a bunch of things that that money could be used for but it said like a transit center and or parking garage and or recreation path and or apart those kinds of things listed a lot of things but it was very clear that you might not do all of them so maybe we could say not to exceed for for highway and or recreation in your park and or building infrastructure improvements and then proceeds from bond funding may be used to finance some or all of the following amendments sounds good and i think you're right we could do some follow-up clarity but at least no maybe you could come up to the microphone either either microphone okay um yeah so we did um provide on council with that example um and so they didn't really necessarily give guidance either way um on that but they didn't say no they didn't say no so i'm you know i would guess that it's an open item although it was a suggestion that we did make and crafting this when we were reviewed it with them so i just do that as well so can we put the clear language on the ballot and the legal one behind it or what it's so i as far as i understand we have to use some specific language because of the rules rights laws so people can vote uh the statement that they can understand but also we can put the legal one there so they will be together instead of using the legal one that nobody or some people wouldn't understand you know just changing this um spaces lauren um thanks i think the concerns i'm hearing about that it could be used for for example only confluence park like i don't actually think that tweak addresses it and i'd be more comfortable just using like i think it still could be someone could read it if they wanted to that the and or the or is just confluence park um so i'd rather just use the language that's been approved by the bond lawyer and i you know i'm hearing everybody and i agree that the um communication and maybe working with evelyn of how are we finding multiple ways to communicate to people about exactly what this means and what they're voting on um might be the better route rather than trying to tweak this on the fly and maybe make some um something that will make life difficult later carry your yeah i'm sorry i meant donna but you can go first kary okay fight it out you too you not want to speak i'm referring to you i do think that people understand the verb that it may be used or it should be used or shall be used and i think the verb is what carries it the most and everything else is an example of the things that could be useful okay and now kary you have something to say after that um yeah i'm finding myself sort of agreeing with everybody um but but i think that the uh what the fact that this was approved by an attorney and um that you did discuss other options and ran all those through and came out with this makes me feel more confident about leaving this i think it it is um not easy language to understand but it is actually accurate and um and uh and what we want to say so i think i'd be in favor of just leaving it right now or you said palin i love good questions so um kary you are trying to say we will just use this text that's all okay we don't need anything else right okay thank you okay does someone want to make a motion but you got the text right here loren loren's well let's talk about go ahead i'm just gonna say i'm will we adopt the bond language as proposed for both article 14 and 16 for article 14 15 and 16 for articles 14 15 and 16 is there a second second by brown no i'm not second thing oh sorry i'll second then she can come okay no i've lost track a little bit of of where we are are we on um i thought we were we were talking about um article for public hearing bond or are we talking about the warning no so so there are there are actually three articles that refer to bonds that we're amending so we're not actually talking about the warning but we're we're approving the warrant actually we're just holding the public hearing but we just closed the public area close the public hearing so actually debating the debating the so really i think councilmember brown is correct that we would you've closed the public hearing of the bond we've explained what we're trying to do then when you go to the actual warning then you would approve the so i don't think you need to make emotional bonds until you actually get to the warning is that nope oh no that's why we have her trying to speak in that way yes um so this one is particularly tricky just because there's not a lot of guidance and statue about amending you know a particular item and so that's why we've been really careful with this one because we want to make sure that you know in doing this vote we don't end up inadvertently you know then getting sort of all of them voted down so long story short we don't need an additional necessity resolution which would be typical but we do need emotion sort of affirming the items that we're taking up and so well it's not the warning per se it's the language therein um so we just need kind of emotion stating that you're authorizing that want to do this this will be playing which we put on the warning and then you take up the warning next and the language is the language that the manager read to us from article 13 of the proposed warning yes it's 14 actually and and but also i think the reminders that there's also 15 and 16 that go to changing the 20 to 30 years right for so that's less controversial and more straightforward okay carry i'm looking at the the draft warning that came with this packet and it's not lining up with the what so i'm sorry it so i'm going off to a newer version like the newest version because we did have and bill has that and i will make copies if we can take a break um during this next one we um did adjust some of the numbering on the warning because there were additional items that came in sort of in the final hour as we were discussing um cvpsa and whether where to put those items um and so the thing the article numbers that you see online are not the most current version and typically we have this sort of back and forth as we're doing the warning to get it finalized for tonight or the final hearing um so apologies for that i should have sent it earlier so you have those in front of you um but i will print copies after this so that everybody has it like you review it is it possible to get it online tonight so that the public can see it as well um so we can certainly try to do that um yeah i'd like to see that again Lauren just bill can you clarify because you said there's three like in our packet i'm just seeing two amendments the 20 to 30 years plus the language around the 1.8 million dollar bond so maybe we should get photocopies for everybody let's do that now right and we have a great it's just so at least the count we all have the same paper copy and then we can let's do that well okay folks 10 minute break starting now i will call our meeting back to order in the interim the outgoing finance director has presented the council with a copy of the new version of the city meeting warning so maybe from there we can discuss exactly what we're talking about so we're still on the bond public hearing right now yes so articles 14 15 and 16 the second page of the three that are the amendments to bonds so article 14 is one we just talked about with the you know the authorization for the money to be more flexible and articles 15 and 16 have to do with the wastewater plant the water resource recovery plant and east state street just there are two separate items but it's really to reflect the the rural development funding to go for the 30 years instead of the 20 years so it's this refers to the same items but splits them up because we got funding for both projects was all together we but we voted them separate separate bonds so that's it um and i think what kelly told us was that we we should have a motion in the record that we affirm this language amending me putting these in addition to voting the language for the warning when we get to that but specifically that the council approves this amending language to be placed for each one of these three proposals yes and we where we stand right now is that we're debating uh councillor brown's motion i think to adopt the first one of those what was it lauren it's lauren okay yeah i seconded and she had the question okay and you have a question now okay okay donna i mean i was waiting i just have a question okay and maybe this is for kelly as much as bill could the could the could we make a motion adopting that indeed the council approves the need to change the language and hence approves the need for article 14 15 and 16 or do they each have to be done individually i think you can do it in a single motion we just need the affirmation um okay thank you're doing it i make the motion to affirm that the council wants to amend them we've got a motion pending so do you want to move to amend the motion to include them the water resource recovery facility and the east state street bond language yes i was referring to article 14 15 and 16 but i don't know if the numbers are going to stay the same right those should they should okay yes okay is there a second to your motion to amend second second by uh cone is there any further discussion so now is there any discussion on donna's motion to amend hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed okay next up it's priority there because it seemed like maybe there was some duplication what was the the motion specifically the wording the council approved approves the need to change the language on the items in article 14 15 and 16 or adopts the adopt the new language the new language it's that we approve the need that we agree with it that i understand is the issue i thought kelly said that we don't have to make a new finding of need but we do have to approve the language yes there is there's a affirmation of the language in a motion to put this language on the warning um so then you're just okay you're saying that you're authorizing that and we just need that and the records that then should we need it for the future we so we're we're approving the language yes i'll take away the word need i'm sorry okay for articles thank you because the underlying motion really already said that the motion was adopted the bond 14 15 16 yeah there you go it was all there okay okay because i only i seconded only 14 that's all i heard so bad about our motion so that's been amended we're clear on what we're doing the now the question before the council now is shall we adopt lauren's motion to put these items on the agenda any further discussion or question before we lauren's motion was not to put anything on it it was just adopt bond language so okay i just want to be clear yeah right now it's been amended to a sort of another version right so are you ready for that vote if so all those signified by saying hi hi any opposed it's adopted in unanimously and i think we have now finished um item number 12 we're up to item number 13 which is a second public hearing on the warning and uh and to adopt the warning and i will open the public hearing so um typically so the warning has changed slightly from that which is on the ballot which is you know online so i don't know i can go through quickly and just read a summary of what each article is for yes please so article one is to elect the mayor article two is to elect the council members uh article three is to elect the school district moderator clerk and treasurer article four is to elect school directors or school board members article five is to uh shell the city withdraw from the central republic safety authority article six is shall the voters approve the cvpsa board of directors dissolution plan article seven is the city's budget um article eight is the school district budget article nine is the capital reserve fund for the school district article 10 is compensation for the mayor and council member for the mayor excuse me article 11 is compensation for the council members article 12 is compensation for the school directors article 13 is uh allowing the school directors to hold unaudited for uh fund balance in a discretion i think this is a legal requirement they have to do each year article 14 is the now amend is the amended language for the bond article 15 is the bond language article 16 is the bond language there will be no article 17 that have been held for the potential charter change so article 18 would move to article 17 which is the downtown and the designated downtown tax article 19 would move to article 18 and be the kelloch harvard library amount and article 20 would move to article 19 and become the central vermont home health and hospice amount so that is the revised warning or the morning uh i would recommend um is you do this for article five about central vermont public safety authority that we add the parenthetical uh requested by the city council just so it's clear that it's the council that's asking for that and probably for article six we would put a parenthetical requested by the central vermont public safety authority okay good thank you okay is there any uh member of the public who wishes to be heard on on this item peter kelman uh peter kelman uh mountain view street uh i i i i'm sure this will sound like a mistuck record but this is very poor public communication um the we didn't get to see what you just went over bill we saw something that was very different the city council didn't see this until the break this is really discouraging to watch um i do have some additional one additional comment but not sure that it's germane but the um the uh the the item for city council elections i think that should be read aloud because i've had this conversation before how do we we don't really know who the candidates are going to be we don't know if there are going to be candidates we're we're about four days away from uh the closing date and jack just got listed as mayor which just opened up the possibility the need to elect somebody in his place that that kind of of constricted choice i mean people who are district two could end up without you know a replacement for jack and then you guys would appoint somebody i guess or hold a special election unlikely there's something off about the way this whole candidate thing has been handled and uh handled and i brought this up initially for the appointment which i to replace uh connor which again it it it's just creating distrust in city government thank you so the actual ballot that people vote on will have the candidate's names um the article is simply to say this is who we're voting for that this is the the warning this is how town meetings work in every town and city in the state peter um you can like it or not and you can hold your head this is how it works there are actually candidates running for jack seat that have file paperwork so some people figured it out um but it's you know it is uh um how it goes you know i'm not here to defend who jack announced a long time ago that he was running for mayor clearly vacating his seat i don't see how that's an issue and with regard to the appointment i can't remember if i forwarded to you the league of city sin towns thing i think i did but it was pretty clear that's what was mandated by ars charter uh there wasn't really an option i know you didn't like it sorry i'm talking about communication i'm not talking about what i like or don't like this is about the vote i looked this afternoon there was nobody running for jack seat on the city on the city on on the um city um clerks john ever well i think one of the points in and our city clerk uh john odom can clarify this but the candidate due date is different than the city council's ballot and items very separate they come in later we can't control that and maybe john could clarify but i believe the petitions aren't due till like january 29 no 20 tomorrow 27 27th and that's why we've got a noontime meeting potentially scheduled for that okay great filing deadline per candidates is the end of the day monday actually five o'clock uh palin has filed to run as it says in the um the voter guide or it should for what would be jack's seat which is expiring and what still remains open is uh someone to run for uh the remaining one year of um uh conners carry i think you had your hand up no palin do you want to have something you want to say and uh i believe there is a board of civil authority meeting scheduled for the evening of the 30th to draw names to place for the position on the ballot for all the candidates yeah so also to be clear the council right this is the deadline to adopt the budget and to adopt the warning um which is actually 40 days in advance of the town meeting um and that's why tomorrow is the date for petitions um for non-candidates and so like money art so we have a special meeting scheduled for friday if we should receive any of those petitions to consider those and add those to this ballot and then finalize the ballot that is separate from the candidate elections that is vermont law of how these things run it's not the cities and i believe the city clerk hosts the candidates when they file i don't know do you i yeah that's the things come in i'm putting them we have a we have a little website voter guide that i set up which i don't think anybody else has and it's what i refer to and city staff stays 100 clear elections for council the mayor seats thanks bill uh linda berger yes um i so the the the warning has to be approved tonight is that correct and it's are the requirements that the public gets to see the warning just throw in just to inform just the discussion um it doesn't have to be approved tonight um it could be as proved as approved as late theoretically as the fifth however um if it's approved any time after monday then it cuts into the printing time and losing one day doesn't necessarily equal to putting us one day behind because we could fall farther in the queue um behind some other folks so i would say for purposes of running a smooth election the drop dead deadline would be monday but i do think and you all are going to think i'm being a total weenie for this but i think the final approval should wait until uh friday because of the first day thanks so that was my first question my second question is i had a question about the original article 15 which i don't even know if you know what the original article 15 was anymore it was about a levy of assess the special assessment and my question was what's the anticipated revenue from this special assessment and what was um mobiliar alive's position on this is special assessment so this has been in play this is basically called the downtown improvement district tax okay proposed by mobiliar alive several years ago okay is about 65 thousand dollars every year and it's only on pro commercial properties in the designated downtown district it helps fund their activities so i guess given that the local options tax is off the table and probably there wouldn't be a change in their position it would be safe to assume yeah no and they've been like i said they this initially came from them maybe 10 years ago or more and it's been on the ballot every year it's just because it's a special tax it requires an annual approval um so yeah they're they're in favor of increasing the property taxes on the commercial buildings but not the sales things okay is there any other member of the public who wants to raise questions or uh comments before we close the public hearing on the warning the public uh hearing is closed lauren i think is a question for john there's been this whole like frenetic activity that you can't do zoom municipal meetings anymore and there's a bill sitting on the governor's desk can we do our Friday meeting by zoom if that's the route we're going or do we have to figure out how to get here um he signed it he signed it um but that really would only apply for zoom only meetings and we usually you know warrant a location that people may not be sure we would have it still physically here and our staff would be here and as long as someone is present then you all can okay i just don't think i could have gotten here yeah thank you for clarifying well we have these public hearings and we start out with a core document and every public hearing there's some changes usually and so i see the changes that we've made tonight not that different than other hearings and i i would like us to go ahead and approve the the ballot warning this evening you know how everybody else feels so that's your motion yes and is there a second the motion is to approve the uh warning now is there a second for that motion as amended yes yeah and the crossing out number 17 nobody wants to second that okay because of all the information we just received so because john said we could do later what is the advantage of doing are we waiting anything are we waiting some feedback from public that's why we should do it later or if we are not waiting anything then we should approve tonight so that's i need some clarification on that thank you question i have john because for i've been to coming to city council meetings for 20 years or something like that and and the council every year has done it this way of having uh approving the budget usually on the thursday this year on wednesday so that we can have it approved and um i don't recall there ever being a problem so why are you saying this year that well he's funny i was looking for that language about why we did that and the language in the in the um i mean on the elections calendar that the 26th is the first day to post-warning but then the last day to post-warning is the fifth so theoretically it could be approved in that zone and we've always done the first day having said that i have to look back and check i think our charter before it was amended a few years ago was very strict about but right now the charter says to follow the general rules of the state and so that's the general rules of the state i think i just brought that up before because i couldn't tell if you all were thinking about you know enough things coming up maybe shifting maybe getting another copy out to people that was more about making sure you wouldn't bump it to beyond monday because that would that would start causing problems for us but and and our deadline in the past was always driven by trying to do it as soon as possible for the printing deadline yeah reporting even charlain was very important um and i you know i would say just as a point of clarification that um the reason that the article the articles were different is we hadn't received the cbp itself until yesterday so just today got today so we just got them and changed them was that we had them and weren't sharing i mean we had our own but we didn't have the one from cbp and we only got the school budget information if we yeah which is another story always happens yeah and i'm fine not waiting well i'm gonna second donna's motion and just recommend that we just walk through the change because i don't think that's actually substantive new different things that is hasn't been provided to the public in various formats i agree i think it'll be helpful to just walk through what's different from the posted warning that we're changing one more time because obviously people are confused just because you have it i don't have it in front of us okay so for all you folks participating at home what kelly is going to be doing is uh reviewing the uh the draft warning as uh included in tonight's packet which is online and and pointing out the changes from that to the motion that is now before the council right can do um so just uh a little bit of direction do you want me to just read the warning can you hear me now oh that's much better sorry um would you like me to read the full warning or just the adjustments i'll just walk through it i can totally do that okay yeah but you don't have to read every single word okay just let me if i can do that perfect even better um so the first article is to elect the mayor the second article specifically for a term of one year to complete the uh unexpired term of mayor once yes correct um and then the second article is to elect one council member from each of the districts one two and three for two year terms as well as one council member for district one or for district two excuse me for a one-year term to complete a term of two years one commissioner for the green mount cemetery for a term of five years and one parks commissioner for a term of five years let's be clear on those article three is to elect the school district moderator and some of their officers article four is to elect um the Montpelier school of directors article five is to withdraw from the essential remont public safety authority and this is the item that was requested by council just for clarification the second the next article article six is the article that was um provided by the central remont public safety authority um so let me this is this is a change this is one of the changes right from what you were supposed to do yes yep so yes yep that's correct thank you john um so then article six was inserted so then what article six was on the previous warning was um is now article seven and that's the amount to be raised by taxes um and then um a seven became eight which is the school's budget then article eight became article nine um which is the school district's um appropriation for 270 000 to supplement the capital reserve fund article um um and then article 10 was nine and so that's for um the amount to be appropriated for the mayor then article 11 which was 10 um is the compensation for council members article 12 uh which was 11 is the um amount for the school board members article 13 which was 12 is the uh authorization for school board directors to fold any audited fund balance as of June 30 2023 in a reserve article 14 which was 13 um is the item associated with the bond language um that we amended earlier to include in this ballot and that um is just adjusting language for clarity providing a little more flexibility and use article 15 um which was 14 um is the um item that is the first of two for the term moving from 20 to 30 years so article 16 um was 15 and that is also um an item just adjusting the term yes clarity the one that's online 14 was the placeholder for the local options tax wasn't on there at all yes no thank you i took that i took that out and the when we were talking about the local options tax thank you for that clarity i appreciate that um so then article 14 i don't have them side by side so i apologize for that so that's really helpful thank you um so then article 14 was taken out um which was the local options which then shifted those articles accordingly um i just want to make sure so now we're up to 17 which is the specialist downtown yes correct um followed by article 18 which is the kelly cupboard library and followed by article 19 which is the central vermont home health and hospice so thank you kelly yeah you're welcome the only difference between the and the placeholder that was only just in different cases and substantive so caring i think you had your hand up um yeah i mean i unless i'm really missing something there are a couple of articles on here that were not aside from the cvps a one or not on the one that are online so article so on the the latest version um article 15 to borrow some not to exceed 15.4 million for various sewer treatment systems that is nowhere on yes and that's that's correct so this is a whole new one and then article on the most recent one article 16 to borrow some not to exceed 7.2 million for the reconstruction of east state street and this is the one that's just changing the term right yeah both of those yes so that's not on there either that's correct because we did that was a final minute ad that we decided that we did in fact we got guidance that we did in fact need to come forward for the term no that's fine i'm not questioning the oh no no no please don't take it that way i'm glad that you caught it for clarity i was just more like yes sorry i totally um in terms of i probably should have pulled this up from crosswalk them but that's yes that's right okay thank you thank you for doing that yeah thanks for going to those details to me the the biggest issue is that none of the changes increase any money there are no money changes this is wording of flexibility to use bonds and circumstances that have changed so i feel really comfortable with that being introduced tonight it doesn't change the money loren and the items being added are both to allow us to take advantage of big grants so that's a great thing yeah i make a little suggestion this is i'm way out of my lane here but um since it's already on the calendar for folks to um i mean if if i ran the zoo i think i'd stick with the the friday meeting to approve it just and then i you know i would be happy to put something out on my front porch farm with this up there somewhere saying here is the final version if you have any questions because just just to avoid you know appearances i don't know just trying to be helpful here but i could put it on the clerk website i think public i think public might need more time to read this so if it doesn't create any problem with the timeline i think we should just announce it first then uh approve terry yeah i would like to wait until friday as well just on principle it i feel really odd uncomfortable about approving a warning that might have to that we know might have to change because there's a deadline still hanging out there so regardless of the the differences that are between what's posted online and what we're hearing tonight um i would still want to wait until friday i'm sorry what what do you feel is pending that will change this i didn't think anything's pending to change this you mean the petitions yes okay i would just say whatever you guys want to do is fine we do have the meeting set for friday so and it really doesn't make that much difference i'll just add that um the reality is you could change any of these articles on friday okay so i mean it's so it's never a there's never a final version until the council votes a final version it's all just simply but if you know it's fine we can get this up for all to see and do it friday at noon and it'll be done and it won't make any difference and that seems like people will be happier with that so why not i can try to eat sounds better and jennifer i just want to check in with you to see if you have anything say sincerely only what else is online okay thank you um so we've got a couple of choices one we have a motion and a second and we could just proceed to a vote or somebody could move to lay it on the table and we could take it up on friday or we could just move to the next item on the agenda without acting on this and take it up on friday what's your pleasure carry i move that we table this until the friday meeting is there a second hi second i don't remember off the top of my head if this is debatable but i'm just gonna say let's uh let's have a vote all those in favor of the motion to lay it on the table signify by saying aye aye all those opposed nay i'm sorry jennifer i didn't see if you voted on that one i'm ambivalent really it doesn't matter to me okay well we'll do we will do a roll call because we want to because one of our members is online and it's uh it's not unanimous so first we'll call her all councillor bae okay councillor pram aye councillor cohn aye councillor hurl councillor morten you couldn't hear you could you i i i i don't really care yeah sure it doesn't seem to really matter either way so i mean i don't know motion carries please but you voted aye so the motion carries motion carries okay so we will take this up again on uh friday at noon um we're now up to item 14 other business we have any other business that anyone's aware of i'm not okay yeah it would be really great if our i know we're doing a lot on the website like if we could be posting these things because like this confusion like if we could be posting updated documents in some easier form like if we could just have posted what we got a copy up here so people could just see it like all this confusion would have been alleviated so because i do think there was nothing substantively different that we did tonight so yeah just that would just be really nice and it comes up a lot that like we're looking at something that people can't see it at home um unless you're here so right i couldn't see anything tonight so that was kind of a bummer for me that's the nature of the process of course that anything that's on the agenda can be voted on and changed at a meeting but i understand what you're saying so so knowledge is very easy to post things so i don't understand well what should be on the uh what should be posted is the motion that's before the council and that right now which is the language that we're looking at at adopting on friday um city council reports we'll go with donna sure i just want to encourage people to go to the country club road property visitation and gathering is happening this saturday i believe it starts at 10 and if people need a ride they should call me 802 229 11 11 oh cool number so i received some emails and people were asking to me how um city decides to repair which road right the um priority and i think i wrote the shape this that um bill so i just want to ask again what is the rule or proof the procedure to decide uh to do this um road um so there's a we probably should get an update at some point from public works to really go through it and maybe one after the the new election in march we can update the whole new council with that uh so the dpw goes through a pretty extensive uh evaluation of each road and steve cease was right that sometimes we don't always do worst first because that's not the most bang for the buck sometimes you can fix roads that you can catch them preventively for a lot less money and they last for a lot longer there's also an evaluation done of whether there's uh subsurface work so for example east eight street is really one of the worst streets in the city but it was post postponed until we were able to do all the water sewer storm lines underneath uh because we would want to rebuild the road or pave it then have to dig it all up to do these things so it's a pretty significant and um process that they go through and obviously ultimately depends on the amount of funding that's in the budget for road work so last couple years we've had fair amount of money with the ARPA money this next year we won't have as much money um because of the budget decisions we've made and um but i think dpw can really outline they do keep track they do and this is every three years we do what's called the pavement uh management index or something like a pavement something quality index quality yeah something like pavement condition index that's it yes it's it's pc i and cpi and cip that's right so and so they evaluate all the roads in the city and by condition and then they make a priority then they evaluate those against uh what subsurface work needs to be done and then what treatments can be done and how much money and they lay out a plan and that changes a lot depending on funding so uh it's it's a kind of an ever-moving target i know some people just think of my road's bad it should be next in line but that isn't always the case thank you yeah and we we can get a full presentation zack zack does a really great job with that presentation lauren um yeah i just wanted to um announce that i'm planning to run for reelection um to district one city council um it's really been an honor to serve for the last four years and i think there's a lot of really important and exciting um projects underway that i would really love to continue working on for the community um you know things with housing and the country club road project i think you know working on our on-house population our net zero commitment and on and on so would just be um would love people's support to have two more years to continue the work and um i will would love to talk to anyone who wants to know more thanks jennifer i don't have anything tonight thank you okay and i also do not having anything tonight the colonel yeah oh i'll mention the filing deadlines uh tomorrow at five for petitions to get questions on the ballot monday at five for candidates reminder of a couple other things that we do have this online voter guide which i'm always trying to get people to go look at and i about given up on it a few years ago and then somebody asked where it was so i guess people are looking at it now but you can go you can either find it on the clerks page or just put in montpeliervoterguide.org and it'll take you right to it uh reminder that this election people are not automatically being sent ballots that's just a i know that's that's confusing to people i've already gotten a few calls about that but that is not happening so if you want an early ballot you have to request it and the time frame is tight because the ballots won't be available until somewhere in the second week of february or so so then we'll mail them out and it's not a lot of turnaround um it's the way the way the town meeting calendar works um yeah it's all i got although although kelly if you wanted to email me right now the ballot thing i'll have it up before the meeting zone and sent to both first floor by god city manager i will pass to you other than say thank you all for uh for those of you that are running um that's great i appreciate it and uh the folks out there that are running i appreciate the work from the staff on the budget and uh certainly appreciate the concerns raised by residents and it's interesting that this was our final hearing on the budget and all of these issues and there are two members of the public maybe three uh none in the room and a couple on online so it's just interesting when we talk about outreach um even with this way people either aren't interested or they're feel like they've got information or i don't know but it's it's it's um these are important decisions and i just hope people are clued in peter do you have something in one sentence or last that you can say i do i think bill you've hit the nail on the head there are very few people here because people are confused and discouraged i think we've got to do a much better job of communicating clearly on all kinds of matters okay thank you um bearing no objection we are adjourned at 9 23 p.m