 I'll call to order this regular meeting of the Winooski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Thomas Renner. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Next, Elaine, we had a question about maybe moving item E, Local Resource Advisory Board, up to item B? Sure. Is it strategically placed at the end? It is not. I figured it would be easy and you had a lot to get through that was going to require your attention, but if you think it's easy, you might as well take care of it first. If that is the desire of council? Yes, I would agree. Okay, those in favor of adjusting the agenda to move item E up to position B, please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Hopefully I don't forget that. Next up is public comment. I don't believe we have any members of the public in the room. If there's anyone on Zoom that is here for public comment, if you could raise your hand or use the chat feature. Okay, seeing no comment, we'll move on to the consent agenda. We have our meeting minutes from January 8th, payroll warrant for December 24th to January 6th and accounts payable for January 10th. Any questions, concerns about consent agenda? Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. All right. Council reports. Thomas, do you want to start? I can be right quick. I do not have anything. Great. I was wrong in our meeting date for downtown Waltersky. It is this week, not last week. All right. I have three updates. You could have shared this. Thomas and I were able to join the culture and community class at the Winniesky High School this past week for some Q&A with students. They were largely focused on how we're working to improve housing affordability and accessibility. The planning commission continued review of zoning related to updating and alignment with Act 47, state legislation. And I was able to share the update from our last council meeting that we would like to see replacement and inclusionary zoning language of some fashion incorporated into that work. They will be meeting again Thursday, January 25th at 6.30 PM at City Hall and via Zoom. And this Friday, my monthly housing roundtable meeting will occur. We'll also share that update and check in with partners on updates related to 300 Main Street or any additional emerging issues. That's it for me. Brynn. I don't have any updates from last week. I believe we'll have a quorum for Thursday. So the Infrastructure Commission will be meeting up at the pool at a regular time and regular location. We'll be reviewing the updates to the LaFountain Dyan Street scoping. That's it. All right, in Aurora. Not a whole lot of updates here for me. I'm hoping to be at the Winooski Senior Center for Coffee tomorrow at 10 AM. Excellent. Thank you. Moving on to city updates, Elaine. Yeah. So I'm sure many people heard about the Fire and Main Street. Many thanks to the Winooski Fire Department, Winooski Police Department, and many neighboring first responders for their service in putting out fire at 246 Main and 8 Stephen Streets that occurred in the early hours of this morning. We did have some injuries, but mostly pretty much minor and related to icy conditions. An investigation on the cause is still underway in an instant report. Press release will go out later this week, I believe. And I'll turn it to John for some other words. You want to come up here? Yes. Good evening. Just again, echo what the manager said. Thanks to our partners, city staff. Two of our staff were injured this morning. Also a civilian injury just due to icy conditions. Same buildings that burnt a year ago. So state police are doing their investigation with Winooski PD. And again, just really can't drive home enough for our staff. And the mutual aid partners that came into the city this morning, which were about 10 other departments again. And our public works are PD, the manager. Getting up this morning and headed to the hospital to be with our staff. So just huge appreciation. Thank you. John, of course, was already up on the call. Fiscal year 2025 budget discussions tonight. They continue. Please stick around for the public works department presentation, which is different from the capital presentation, if you all have been following along. We'll be discussing tonight plowing, paving, sidewalks, water and sewer facilities owned by the municipality and other things public works. Also a general budget discussion that council will be having later on in the meeting. Please do ask questions and provide input on how you think your tax dollars should be spent. There's still time to provide input. The final budget vote and approval and public hearing is scheduled for Monday, January 22nd at 6 p.m. It might change, but we'll try to avoid that. And the annual city school budget community dinner, where you can hear more and ask questions directly, will be on Monday, February 19th. For the full schedule of budget meetings that have already occurred, please visit WinooskiVT.gov slash FY25 as in fiscal year. You can also send questions between meetings to budget at WinooskiVT.gov. By Vermont law, property owners must file a homestead declaration by April 15th, 2024. In this case, property owners are specifically Vermont residents who own and occupy homestead, meaning the house that you live in about half the year, as of April 1st, 2023. If you're 2024, if eligible, it's important that you file so that the homestead tax rate on your property is correctly assessed. For full details and instructions, please visit tax.vermont.gov and search for homestead declaration. Speaking of property, this is a different kind. Winooski residents might be eligible to make an unclaimed property claim on the Vermont Treasurer's website. Unclaimed property is any type of financial asset owed to an individual, business, agency, or nonprofit, for example. To see if you have unclaimed property, visit vermont.unclaimedproperty.com. There's no charge for this service. I think I found one time that I owed 25 cents from someone. You never know. It could be more than that. All right. Thank you. So we'll move into our regular items. And first up for discussion is Winooski Valley Park District Presentation. Ray, you want to introduce and we have some guests that Paul will move over via Zoom. So thanks for the patience on delaying this. I feel like between the two of us, it's been the walking wounded recently, but happy to be here tonight to hear from Nick and folks from the Winooski Valley Park District. So really, as I've mentioned before, in these presentations around budget time and otherwise on their strong partner bars, we've worked with them closely over the years for technical assistance and support, as well as some contractive services within our parks for some cleanup and trail sort of trail clearing projects. So again, really valuable partner. We are a psych to be a member community. I have been trying to get incrementally back up to full payment over the last about five years. We've been kind of making an incremental increase. And as you'll hear from Nick tonight, are proposing as a potential add this year, getting up to full payment as part of the funding formula that Park District bills their communities at. So I think without further ado, I'll let Nick take things from there, but I'll stay up here and be happy to answer questions from the staff side as well. Thank you. Yeah. Nick, welcome. Thank you. I was going to be there in person, but the black ice fall to me and reminded me that I had this option. So I appreciate that. There's already been some great back and forth the city council had some questions about the park district. Typically when I do these presentations, I do the whole song and dance routine, but I think launching, I'm going to give you like a three minutes quick overview of what we are. And then there are some additional questions that I believe the city council has that are very, that are great questions that would be great to answer in public session. So you have been a member of the park district since 1972. And the park district was originally created in response to the fears around rampant development back in the 1970s. We're on the same time that Act 250 and the planning districts were set up. And it's really evolved into an organization, especially in the last few years, is pretty focused on mitigation of ecological impacts and climate change and so forth. And that sounds lofty, but we manage a lot of wetlands, a lot of shoreline, a lot of floodplain, and we lean into that. That's what we're built for. For instance, during this past couple of flood events, we had nine parks that were completely inundated. And our total cost to cure everything was less than $30,000, which we're getting insurance monies for. It's just a way of showing that that's what we're built for. We also actively manage our assets. We have 18 parks and almost 1,800 acres of land. And then we are tightly controlled and governed by our towns. I've worked in municipal government basically my whole career. And this is one of the more fascinating models. We have monthly trustee meetings. Your trustee, Bridget, is very active and engaged and she's new and bringing new perspective. And there were some questions about, obviously, you're looking at funding issues. The way we set up our annual budget process is the staff prepares a couple of draft budgets and we'd spend two or three trustee meetings carefully finding ways that we can spend less to do more. And we're very cognizant of the number that we ask our member towns to pitch in. We try to keep that under 3% increase every year. There was with inflation and everything last fiscal year, we had a 5.1 increase, which is a big time anomaly for us. So there's a formula that we use that takes into account both population and equalized grand list. And it's our best attempt to be progressive so that you will see the city of Burlington obviously pays the most, Jericho pays the least, and Winooski somewhere in between. When I first started this job 10 years ago, Winooski was completely zeroed out in their contribution, but you were also going about to start your second renaissance or third renaissance. I've been around for a while, and we conferred with Deake and leadership and Ray was there too. And there was no money to be, Winooski was in a tough spot. And so we made a mutual agreement that as Winooski cured its development and began to rebuild its municipal budget that we would ease into higher payment rates. Now, to be clear, all the other towns do pay their full rate. And we have a new town, Essex Junction, basically took the town of Essex, cut it in half. And so Essex Junction is, they have part of Woodside in their municipality but not a new park and their enthusiastic new partners. Williston didn't have a park in their town and we've been working with them for the last three, four years and we're getting a lot closer to potentially adding a 29 acre parcel along the river in Williston. We grow incrementally. It's important that when we grow that the, grow in terms of our land portfolio, the lands that we take on are permanently protected. Every parcel that we have in our ownership has either a conservation easement and or deed restrictions that protect them in perpetuity. So that's part of our model. So that's a big decision for a community. So it's an iterative process. There were great questions about memorials, you know, change the zoning, who's going to manage it, et cetera, et cetera. Those, that's all part of the due diligence that we go through before the final decisions made on taking on a new property. And so we're, we're still in the beginnings of that. And, you know, Ray has done a great job at as has the leadership in Winooski working with us and trying to figure it out. But we think that memorial has the strong potential to be a really super park that fits our mission that we could manage effectively with having a whole lot of negative impact in our organization. And frankly, we'll give people in Colchester and Winooski a new, there's existing trails, but we would upgrade those trails and work on the Colchester side as well. There's a lot of work to do in a relatively small area to improve it. So I, I just want to put that out there. I did, there were some great questions that came my way from city counselors. And I would, I guess I would like to hear from you and what your concerns are about the park district. Thank you. One permanent protection is not a phrase I've heard before. And question for you and Ray, as it's been previously, I feel like we were discussing Winooski Valley Park District managing Memorial Park, whereas more recently, it sounded more like we are, we are discussing transferring ownership of the land to Winooski Valley Park District. Can either of you clarify? Yeah. And I think perhaps Ms. Nomer on my part, we, so Nick, and you can talk more about your, your sort of model for taking on property, but there's, Park District has been pretty clear with us. And if I've not conveyed that correctly, apologies, but we have had the conversation throughout that for them, managing parcels really is something that they want to have site control over. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Nick, but in the past, there have been some examples of Park District managing property where they did not have site control. And I think it did not go particularly well. And so that on the Park District side is a change in their business model in, I don't know, you can, you can say when that was, Nick, but it seems like that's the direction that things are going now. So I think any formal partnership around management of that parcel would involve sort of site control for that, that parcel. So does that mean parcel transfer? I'm going to, so Nick can speak better to what those different tools are. If it becomes, if it becomes the Park District property, the answer is yes. However, the way these things are structured is in all of our conservation easements which are held by third parties. You know, we would work with a land trust to formalize the easement. They provide language that the Park District for some reason went belly up or we were not doing the job we're supposed to do or some other extraordinary circumstance that the parcel would be transferred either back to the city or another entity that could manage it for conservation. So it's basically a reversionary clause that's built into all of these agreements. And I'd be more than happy to share some of those with you because if you haven't seen them before they're fascinating and they're pretty powerful legal documents in terms of the conservation business. For us, if we do not own the parcel and we make an investment into, because we actively manage our parcels and we make an investment into that parcel and then we lose site control at some point in the future that's not a great situation for us. But it's not... This is an iterative process. We work for you. So I don't want you to feel like we're coming in making demands of the city. It's just the opposite. It's been a really interesting and kind of joyful back and forth over the last few years. Like, how do we do this? What's the best property? What makes the most sense? What do we have to think through? And I do have concerns about memorial. I mean, there's security issues. There's parking issues. It's... There's a degrading shoreline. Every park has different aspects that we look at really carefully before we make a commitment to make sure that we can manage it. And to be clear, it has to be approved by you folks. So if we do go to the next level with this and at this point, I'm feeling strongly that that would be a good idea. We will come back to you with a very detailed plane of action and you get another two or three swipes at it before anything is made permanent. It's a process we just did with the city of Burlington over the last few years for the Derwe Kove property, which is our most recent significant add to the park system. So this is not... I don't make a presentation and go away and all kinds of things that happen. This is, in many ways, this is the beginning of the process whereby Ray and myself and Lane and others will be doing a lot of due diligence around the parcel, a lot of discovery around what parcel's potential is. And if it works out, that's great. If it doesn't, it doesn't. We still exist. We used to... What Ray was referring to is we used to lease Casabot. And when Winooski went into the redevelopment plans, there was a lot of question marks around the use of that property. And I wasn't around when this happened, but it just made more sense for us to back off from management and let the city figure out what they needed to do. If you look at Biofinder or any map of ecological values, Winooski has some of the most ecologically important lands in the entire Northwest region. It's astounding how important Casabont is and Catlin Island and that whole strip downstream along the shoreline, even though it's well-developed, is very, very important ecologically. So whatever you decide to do with us on this, you are managing some of the more important areas in the state in terms of ecological values. Also, please share what your vision is for Memorial Park. Were we to transfer management to you? Well, I can tell you what the issues are. The big question is, can we get boats in the water there safely? Because that's always a priority for us is how can we get boats in the water. That's still unclear. We want to work closely with the landowner in terms of the use of that building and parking and trail development. Also, the park exists in two different towns. You pretty quickly get into Colchester when you walk downstream. There is, we've already talked to the CHT that owns that series of properties up on Morehouse Drive, and they have a strong interest in dealing with the erosion and trailhead issues they have. We also would want to understand, I mean, there's already been some really good work done that the city has commissioned. There's a pretty significant invasive species problem down there, so we want to be aggressive with that and lead into that. And we do all these things with leverage resources. So we would not be, another good question was asked, it's like, are we going, is this a baseline? And we come back and ask for more. And then we ask you for one number each year. And then we use that for our operations. And then we leverage using grant funds, a lot of pro bono work from attorneys, dozens of volunteers that work with us on projects. And then we've got a three-person full-time staff and a three-person seasonal staff. So what you're doing is you're investing in something that leverages a lot more in terms of what we're able to do with it. I think too. And I don't want to speak for you, Nick, but I know Park District staff were really instrumental in the development of our Parks and Open Space plan. And so I think also we've talked about sort of honoring the vision of that plan as we look at the future of Memorial. So I think to be clear, I don't envision Park District coming in and taking a hard left or a hard right. I think that plan that our community set out for that parcel, they're just sprinkly better equipped and have more expertise in-house to deploy. And I can share also just, and I know you've got to wrap this up and move on to the next agenda item, but we made a commitment this year. I've been directed by my board to go out and find other sources of operating income. So we've already put out a grant for that and we are going to be at the state level also making a pitch. What we think is going to happen over the next five, 10 years is that the work we're doing is going to be seen in a much different light and that we're going to be asked to take on properties that we didn't even anticipate would be coming our way in terms of the need for flood resilience, wetlands protection, shoreline, etc. Those all fall under our management scheme. So we're looking ahead five, 10 years from now. We'd love to think that there will be regional or statewide support for our organization as we incrementally grow. And by the way, all of our warrants, I mean, we operate as a municipality, so every penny we spend, you can look at, all our, everything is open book in terms of our operations. Thank you for that. Just to, just to say in a public meeting, beyond the parks and open space plan, I don't feel that we've done much engagement with the community about transfer of the parcel. Yes, exactly. So that is one point of hesitation. Yep, I know. I think there's a lot we got to do with that. You know, so far it's been, it's been, is this feasible? Does it make sense? Is there some big wall that we're looking at? I don't think so. I mean, there's issues that we have to figure out the management standpoint, but we absolutely need to engage the community, do a series of hikes, write some articles, get some feedback. I mean, there's a lot of work to do before we want to go to the next level. Do other members of council have questions? I pose most of my questions beforehand. Are there members of the public with questions? Judy, do you want to come up to the microphone, please? Thank you. Sure. Sorry, I missed. Sorry, I missed the beginning of this. One thing is I was locked out of the building. I'm sorry about that. It's all right. Thank you. You got it. I think we need to stop talking about this as management and tell it like it is. We're talking about transferring some land to another entity. We need to be clear about that. So I'm glad that's coming to the forefront. And I certainly think it sounds like Muskie Valley Park District has the wherewithal, the knowledge, the experience, and whatever to manage this property very well. And as Mike, what's his name, Mike? Nick. Nick. Nick said Muskie has some very ecologically valuable land. And I would like to see it managed properly. However, the thought of giving up some land, more land in Muskie, I think we need to think about that long and hard. I remember several years ago there was consideration given about to giving the Gilbrook, say, Michael's College wanted to buy the Gilbrook property. I don't know if any of you were here. I was performing a time. And I think that went before the voters. It may have been just an advisory vote and people did not want to sell that land. So it never happened. And thank goodness it didn't. And then I also remember another situation where the, I don't know if this was the school district or the city, that parcel is part of the school district property that abuts Main Street where there's that big field that the kids always would play soccer and so forth. And I think it was a school district was giving consideration to selling that some developer wanted to buy. And it seems like it went before the voters. I don't remember for sure, but it was resounding null. And looking back, thank goodness we didn't do it. As far as I'm concerned. So I just think we need to take our time on this, on this. And I really think Lewski Valley Park District can be a valuable manager of that land. But I would like to see us be careful about that. Thank you, Judy. Thanks. Is there anyone online who wanted to make public comment? Oh, oh, we have another in the room, please. Hello. So I'm Brigitte O'Brien. I am the trustee for Lewski. For the Park District. And that's a reason development. I've only been with them for about five months or so. But in my short time, I can just speak to them being a lean organization run on a lean budget and well managed with Nick there. You know, those lands are very valuable in the flood. That is their flood plains. So come up that water in July. And they, the organization mobilized very quickly to apply for grants to get the damage and the trail damaged fixed as soon as they could. And I would just love to see Memorial Park managed a bit better in Lewski. I use that park pretty consistently. I'd love to have canoe access back in Lewski. Again, that's a big one. And I just think that area can be better maintained and utilized. Thank you. Thanks. Anyone else? Public comment? Question? I would like to thank Brigitte. I'd also like to thank Judy for her. I thought her comments were spot on that you really should be careful when you make these kinds of decisions. And maybe the biggest part of the decision is taking a piece of land and putting it under easement. The ownership is one thing, but the easement means that the use of that land would be dictated long-term. But I just, she was spot on. We think the same way from the other side. We don't want to take something on unless we're clear that it's a good idea. I do have one comment. I think right now there just isn't enough information to really make a decision on this. And it seems like question over zoning, question over access, potential easement with the industrial site ownership. I'm curious if Colchester is also being approached to offer or provide access or easement from their end. It sounds like it's privately owned on that side rather than town owned, city owned over there. But I just, I think based on this proposal, it's really difficult to make an informed decision. Yes, we agree. Yep, it's too early. We're not asking you for a decision. We're just informing you that the process is moving with the due diligence and understanding the site. And I appreciate the response to questions, given the short notice to get back to us. Any time, to send us any questions, any time or if you need us to reappear, we'll be here anytime you want. Thanks, Nick. Yep. Yeah, I just wanted to mention too that some of this was discussed with the safe, healthy, connected people commission. And they were definitely in favor of exploring how this partnership could look. Definitely also in favor though of really getting that community input before any decisions were made. Yes, yep. Any other questions, comments? All right, well, Christina, I have one. Yeah. Nick, I'm curious if you have any sense of how long that discovery would take? You know, we can, there's a little bit of give and take here. So we need an indication that the city is interested. And if once that happens, we've already done a soft pull of the title. We've already done some natural resource work. It's a long way of saying it won't take a whole lot of time. It's more that we're trying to move at a pace that's appropriate to the city's desire to do this. So now twice we've gotten sort of conditional, might be a good idea from two different committees. So I think we'll be pushing a little harder. It doesn't take a whole lot of time. It's just a couple of months to do this kind of thing. It's more we're trying to go appropriately with the pace of the city's acceptance and desire to do this. Does couple of months take into account a, let's say a standard public outreach timeline? That's more for the straight due diligence. I think the public outreach is a whole separate thing that needs to start and just be continuous. You know, it's not something we do within a specific period of time because part of the public outreach for us is recruiting people who will be friends of the park in the future. We have a great model where we have caretakers who live near parks to open close the gates and be our eyes and ears. So it's not just a, it's a recruitment campaign along with community process. Well, and we would need to do our side of that and bring this as a topic when we're doing engagements with community groups and members. Which is not something we have done explicitly as I showed earlier. I wasn't aware the nature of like management and transfer of ownership. So yeah. One additional question. Ray mentioned that parks and open space plan. In it was mentioned how one of the questions was a desire for a pedestrian bridge. Yes. So is that something that Winooski Valley Parks District would take on? I mean, I think that that project is a is a big project. I think that's not any one entity, right? That's going to get that done. But there needs to be a lead. Yeah, I mean, I think Nick and I have had conversations over the years about more about bike path facility out towards the Colchester side of the Winooski River mouth. Truthfully, I think that the pedestrian bridge is in there because it is something that the community brought up. I think it's very much a long shot and it's not something we've done a lot of real work on in terms of moving towards realizing that because it's a it's a massive lift. I think we just haven't had the juice to really dig into that. With that said, I think if an opportunity or funding or you know, energy arose around that, I think it's something we could consider. I present the question one because I noticed it as an area of interest in the plan. And that could be if it was integrated as a part of the goals of the transfer of property, there might be more incentive. Yeah, and I know Nick, I would maybe push that question back to you. I'm not sure with engaging with communities around new parcels if kind of putting those long projects on the horizon is part of that negotiation or if that's something that would be... I think it's not it. It's an intriguing idea because that's how we force ourselves to do things. You know, if you don't put ideas out there, they don't happen. And that idea has been around. It's not very... There's a number of people who have had that idea over the last four or five years. When intrigues me more is the potential of the trail development on the Wynusky and Colchester side over the next few years. There's been a huge transfer of land. The Fitzgerald parcel and one of the Sennesag parcels in Colchester are now artificial wildlife. And so all of us... And then we've got our McCrae Park there and then it backs up to the WVMT property which goes up to Colchester High School. And the potential for trail development over the next 10, 20 years is just astonishing. So to me, that's what would drive something like a bridge because then it becomes more of an asset that would serve as a major trail network. And frankly, Memorial is just a little piece of that. And I don't know how we... There's private property owners, I can't speak for them, but most of the property, especially to get deeper in Colchester is now publicly owned. So there is some real potential here. And another potential is something which is a lot more expensive, which is that race boardwalk over Cassavon going into Essex. I mean, there's a lot of potential and what we tend to want to do is, as you mentioned, is like set the table. We should talk about it. I'd be very open to talking about the bridge because that's how you... That's something we can refer to later if we're going for a grant to figure out the feasibility of it. So it's not a bad idea. I'm a project manager, way back. I think that's actually a very intriguing idea. Any further questions? Who's name? Am I missing something? Oh, no, just kidding. Yes, yes, okay. Nick, so I'm going to pose a hypothetical since we have you here tonight. Yeah, of course. If Council were to decide that this timeline makes it hard for them to agree to the budget increase for FY25, but that they would be interested in continuing to explore, what would be your response to that? My opinion is that the fee is... I'm sad that it's totally coupled and dependent on the creation of a new park, but if that's the way the city perceives this situation, I get that. I think our value... If you had a park in place that we were managing, I think you would maybe clear the air to some understand that you're supporting a regional system that charges no one and that everyone has accents too. My hope is that those two concepts could be decoupled, but if they're connected, I understand that. I get that, but I was hopeful that over time, Winooski would see the wisdom of what is... It's easy for me to say, but I think it's a relatively small investment in an organization that has a lot of impact and leverages a lot of resources. That pitch aside, if there's a reluctance, I understand that and I will go to my board next week and we discuss it. Well, I will recognize... Tomating TV is another entity. We are not paying full assessment and we've been doing this $1,000 annual increase trying to catch up, which is the intent of the agreement with Winooski Valley Parks District, but the $1,000 a year is actually falling behind because your rate increases are higher. So I think even if we did not choose to go with full assessment this year, we could increase that annual step to actually start closing the gap with the intent of in a future date paying the full assessment eventually. I think that makes sense, it's what we've been doing. So my board will tell me, we'll go out there and find out why. That's just what they're supposed to do. But I've seen... We've had a lot of progress and just a great relationship with the folks in Winooski over the last few years. So I don't want to step on any of that. It's been a really good experience. We've got a lot done. We've done a lot of work with you guys and for you guys. Well, we do appreciate the work you do and just to reiterate, the intent is to eventually pay the full assessment that has been the intent. Regardless of the... I think the not having lands here is a point of discussion about what our residents receive versus other residents that probably informed us initially while we still have sort of hard decisions to make about what is affordable here. So ongoing discussion. This particular item is not on for a vote. Has been worn that way. Obviously we need more public engagement. But the assessment will be part of our final fiscal year or 25 budget later in this meeting. Any other comments, questions? I would only say that based on, Judy's comment and some of the history of the city, it may be worthwhile to explore some alternatives to the standard management site control model. And I think that's something we can certainly do and talk to Nick and see what other communities and other parts of the country are maybe doing other park districts. So certainly some good homework for us to work on. Well, thank you so much, Nick. And the other Winnieski Valley Parks District folks that I believe are in Zoom. Yes. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thanks Nick. Thank you. So we'll move on to, we actually moved E up. Eric, I don't know if you were in here, but we're going to do item E next, the local resources advisory board, and then we'll go back to the regular order. Great. Thank you very much. I'm here tonight requesting City Council approve a resolution to establish a local resources advisory board and appoint an interim board until a permanent board can be established. As you recall, the draft amendments to the unified land use and development regulations call for the establishment of a local resources advisory board to advise the zoning administrator or development review board on covered projects that are impacted by, sorry, that are included on the local register of historic cultural, architectural and archeological resources. The intent here, because this is a new board, any projects that are submitted between, sorry, once the, once the advertisement for the hearing scheduled for February 5th is in the paper, then any projects that are submitted that would be governed by those regulations would be reviewed under those, under that draft, those draft changes. So this would allow staff to begin advertising and trying to fill out a local resources advisory board and have an interim board to review any covered projects. Approval of this resolution does not, does not signal the intent that you would adopt the draft amendments as well. That if the amendments are not adopted, then there would be no reason to have the board and we would just not fill it. Additionally, any board members that are identified would need to be appointed by council as well. So you would still have control over who ultimately ends up on the advisory board. So this is really just kind of an interim step so that if any projects are submitted, we do have an entity to provide that review and guidance. Thank you. Any questions from council? And we make it more clear that this is an interim. I appreciate you going over why you're presenting it now because that was one of my biggest questions. We haven't had that public hearing, but I don't see on either the documents that were submitted either the cover sheet or the charter that it specifies interim. So in the cover sheet, the last paragraph of the background information speaks to the interim role and identifies a possible option as the planning commission. They, I think in my opinion, are the most logical choice for that as they have familiarity with the regulations but also would not be in a position to have a conflict. Whereas, for example, the Development Review Board is one of the entities that would be receiving the advisory opinion from the Local Resources Advisory Board. So I don't think it would be appropriate for them to also, for them to provide an advisory opinion to themselves. So, but it could be explicit that the interim board is only in place until a permit board is filled or until council takes formal action on the amendments so that that's clear. Yeah, I think that language sounds perfect. Any other questions from council? Any questions from members of the public? Okay. Do I have a motion to establish, to approve the charter for the Local Resources Advisory Board and establish the planning commission to serve as an interim body until formal action is taken by city council on the U.L.U.D.R. amendments related to local resource management? And the Assigning of Permanent Board. And Assignment of a Permanent Board. Yes. Thank you. So moved. Motion by Bryn Seig and by Thomas. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. I'll say either. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. So we are now on the original item B, fiscal year 2025, budget presentation for public works. Welcome, John. So Paul, I have my computer volume down. You should be able to share your screen. I'll mention that there were some water and sewer questions shared in advance by council to staff, and those were answered today. So you might not have seen them yet, but of course, feel free to ask them again here. Great. So thanks. This is round two for me. So first presentation was, as the city manager stated, capital budget. So that's our large multi-year typical expenses. This goes into more of the, at least on the general fund side, the operational annual expenses. But then we get into the full budgets with water and sewer funds and the capital parking. So this used to be one giant presentation. So thank you for breaking it up. Makes it a little easier. So as mentioned, this is kind of the agenda, just getting into the intro work for public works, current year, future year, and then covering the general fund operations budget, and then getting into the enterprise funds. So just some highlights from this current year. These are capital projects, but that's mostly where we're spending our time right now. So we've got, as you're aware, three major projects ongoing, the Main Street Project, the Burlington Bridge, and the last 70 development. So in all, you know it's about 66 million dollars in infrastructure investment. So pretty close to the downtown of the vitalization work that was done in the early 2000s. So pretty significant investment. And then we also do have some ongoing planning studies, the Lofau and Dine Street Scoping Study, some stormwater work, and not included as the Walkbike planning study that the Planning and Zoning Director is working on. For FY25, you know, we're going to be obviously continuing those big three projects. Main Street's going to be going into construction in the spring, Nuski River Bridge. We're going to be getting in some more of the concept design and some of the financing, potentially. And then lot 70, you're going to start seeing construction above ground, which in the spring, which will be exciting. And then the other items we've talked about previously in the capital plan, some of those like annual street resurfacing and some of the sidewalk and curbing work that we're proposing. And then just some of our usual work like, you know, additional line striping and some of our stormwater permitting requirements. So here's our crew. So you'll see behind me, Joe Schauer, Deputy Directors here tonight to answer any detail operational questions. So this is all fun. So this is our general fund maintenance staff and our water sewer staff as well. So getting into some of the public works operational scope, the budget actually includes three divisions within public work. So engineering, that's kind of where we do our project management and some of our public outreach, like the Main Street Project photo we're showing, permitting grants, all the sort of office work. Streets is, you know, what I think most people probably think of when they think of public work. So, you know, you hear the plow going out and salting roads right now. That's, you know, typically where that street budget is utilized. And then the grounds and facilities that covers, you know, the electricity in this building, even street lighting, mowing. So kind of a whole host of any of those grounds and facilities expenses. For FY 25, just some really high level overview items. So pretty much a level service budget with the exclusion of that 10K for traffic calming that's in the bullet below. It doesn't include any staffing increases for this coming year. In some later slides, I'll talk about, like, ideally what we'd like to be at at some point. And then we did revise one of our existing line items in the operations budget specifically to say that it's for contracts, street painting, just so it's more transparent for folks trying to figure out how much the city spends on line stripping. So crosswalks and, you know, any of the other road painting work that you see out there. John, to be clear, 10K for two traffic calming evaluations. Is this in the public works budget or the CIP? Operations budget. So the CIP did include some seed funding. So like, so if we get to a point where we want to actually construct something on the street, whether it be an interim piece, that's where that funding is. And this is just the analysis portion. Right, because the plan, the traffic calming plan has the requirement of the assessment first. Correct, yep. And I will say, so our goal is, once we get through some of these large projects, we will do those in-house. I mean, these are, it's not a huge lift, but to kick off, you know, a couple of traffic calming evaluations, we would hire a transportation consultant to do like two template ones, and then we would likely do those in-house once we had some capacity to do those. So do you think this 10K is for FY25 only and not ongoing? That's our goal. Yeah, we are not looking to, we're not looking to hire consultants to do these ongoing, and we may even lean on CCRPC to kind of help with that too. We've chatted with them about supporting this. And then do you have any thoughts on the cause of your consistent vacancies? I do. So I can get into it in some... If you want to wait for the future, so that's fine. Yeah, yeah, yep. So here is just the general plan maintenance side of staffing right now. So we have Joe, our WD director, who manages the crew, does an excellent job. Making sure that staff are doing the work out in the street that they need to and managing facilities and every other piece of thing that Joe does. We're very lucky to have them. So we've got seven Union field crew staff budgeted currently and that's what we're proposing for FY25. We also have a central garage mechanic that they maintain all our existing fleets and do minor repairs and manage it if it has to go to an outside vendor for a specialty fix. So right now, vacancy-wise, we do have technically four vacancies, but we do have a winter seasonal person that's filling in one of the EO2 positions right now. I will say, speaking to your question, so we have seen recently a pretty large uptick in the amount of resumes that we're receiving, which is a great sign. And they're pretty decent candidates as well with experience that fits the position. Unfortunately, some of those folks, we just can't, they're not responding to us for resumes, but within the last week, we do have two interviews this week for EO1 and EO2. So that is an optimistic sign. So fingers crossed. You're getting more resumes than before, but people are still not responding. Correct. When you reach out. Yeah. John, our communities around us are also experiencing similar vacancies, so you're all competing with the same people? Yes. Joe, I saw, did you want to come up and... Yeah, yeah, the microphone is so people can hear it. Last year and a half, we've set up interviews, interviewed a couple of people, but we've set up a lot of interviews. And for whatever reason, they don't show up. And I don't know if that's because I need to meet their quota for unemployment or things like that. This, this time around, we have some viable candidates. In fact, this week we had three interviews scheduled and more applicants came through this last couple of days, which looks promising to us. So we're open to fill these as soon as possible. One of the things I also wanted to mention that John had the list of the typical things that my staff does. What's not included on that list is like, we support the water and wastewater departments. So we're the ones who do all the excavating for sewer breaks and cleaning catch basins and lines like that. Steve, our mechanic, he's a full-time mechanic, but tonight he's going to be out plowing for us. So this staff is so small. I just wanted to point out that they're, they do everything and they support every department. We're in the pool every day. We maintain the pool. We take care of the chemicals. We've trained Ray's staff how to clean the pool. So we work in close partnership with Ray. I just want people to understand that it's just not the same things that are, just the things that are up on that list. Thank you. Thanks. Good day. So kind of just one more slide on staffing and just, really this is more to give you all an idea of where we would, public works would like to be at some point as a goal. Um, but obviously there are financial constraints to that. So what I'm showing here on this slide is sort of a, you know, a typical summer day, which may not be appropriate when it's snowing out, but on the left hand side is, you know, if we had a sort of quasi fully funded staff with assuming one vacancy, we've got one staff person out because illness, vacation, whatever, that's kind of what a day would potentially look like as an example. So you've got one large crew doing a street project, which can be, you know, replacing some sidewalk pieces or manhole covers. You've got one E02 that's dealing with the emergency of the day, you know, each VAC system catches on fire, which apparently happens now. And then, you know, we just have constant mowing throughout the summer. On the right hand side is, is what, you know, public works would like to see as a more, more filled out staffing. And this would address some of the, I think the comments that you get, the comments I get from the staff, from the community, you know, that assuming we have a 10 full-time budget field staff, one vacancy and just come back. And then potentially one person out sick. Now we can do the one, the large street project. We can put somebody in the street sweeper potentially, you know, we've got another crew that's doing some local street painting, mowing, and then some of that emergency work. So that's, you know, a rough, that would be our target for a staffing model. Given, I will say, I know we are talking about doing a staffing study this year. So it'd be interesting to see, you know, what recommendations come out of that as well. Again, I just want to point out a couple things that people aren't really aware of. Is like in the summertime, we have to pick up trash at 42 different barrels, trash and recycle. We have to do all the doggie pots, things like that. And that takes two people four hours. So there's 16 hours a week, band hours a week that we spend just doing that. So when we say we're talking grounds, we have 26 properties that we have to mow. That includes Landry Park, which takes two days alone, just to mow. So we're very understaffed, is the point I'm trying to make. And people don't see all the things outside of what's real obvious, like the paving and the structure adjustments and things like that. Just street sweeping. We'd love to be out there street sweeping every day in the spring and every day in the fall. But we don't have the staff to do that. So things build up. If the street sweep breaks down, we're not getting the job done. So I've been harping on John for a long time saying we need more staff. Obviously, we don't have the staff we need right now, but in the future, we need more staff. We've got the new parking garage being built. That's going to take some more manpower. So I don't mean to get on the soapbox, but I just wanted to share that. Sure, thank you. Thank you. And I will say one of the reasons, at the beginning of the budget season, I know one of the council priorities was municipal infrastructure. And in our minds, this would probably be the priority area for funding, but I didn't feel comfortable coming with a staffing request given that we are short staffed right now. So it wouldn't be, you know, if you said, all right, we'll give you an EO1 or an EO2. I'm not optimistic that we could put those dollars to work for FY25. So until we get a bit more staffed up with our current budget, it didn't seem reasonable at this point to come forward with a request. Well, I appreciate that. And the inclusion here, as we consider FY25 budgets, knowing what folks are thinking on the horizon in a few years out should be a part of that consideration. So. Right. Now on our line, what John said, that some of the complaints that you all get, that we all get is related to staffing. Like if we're trying to prioritize something, sometimes we can get to it, sometimes we can't, because there's an emergency or there's something that just has to get done. And it's not optional. So before I get into the actual numbers on the general fund, any other questions on the staffing highlights, that sort of thing? Great. So budget-wise, so for public works, we are proposing a $1.4 million budget for FY25. It's roughly about a 10% increase from FY24. We're about 13% of the overall budget. And as you can see, we're relatively consistent over the years. Most of those increases are due to sort of AFSCME salary increases and just material costs. AFSCME is the union that public works employees are in. Thank you. Before you move on from that slide. Sure, sure. Question probably not for you for Angela. Why is regional programs up over $200,000 from 24 to 25? That is where we are holding the transfer for community and economic development, which is $200,000. Okay. Thank you. Then sort of getting into different breakdowns of that $1.4 million budget. So pie chart on the left is the breakdown by those three categories. And then the pie chart on the right is just a breakdown by sort of the division of services or the categories that we provide. So kind of see here, you know, the majority of the budget is salaries and benefits, which is usual. And I also sort of highlighted on the left side what the major cost centers are, not including salaries and benefits, just so you can kind of get a sense of what are the major costs in each of those divisions. So for example, streets, roads, all that's one of our biggest costs that we pay annually. Grounds and facilities, utilities, typically. And we do have contract custodial services for the facilities. And just this is sort of more of a fun fact because I don't know if the community sometimes realizes street maintenance typically isn't one of the major, major cost centers for municipalities. It's a portion of, but in this case, the operation side, the street maintenance cost, which is on here 845,000, that's about 7.5% of the general fund overall budget. So cost of a Netflix subscription, say. But that does include some of the capital costs that also equate to street maintenance, that paving, rotary paving, large truck payments. If you add those in, that's about 12%. So just, I think more for perception so that folks know, it is a portion of the budget, but maybe not be as big of a portion as some folks think it is. John, where in here would line striping fall? So that's in the streets category, the 845? And is the, you mentioned that there's a line item for that this year? Correct, yeah. So we renamed one of the contract line items we no longer use. So it's listed in the budget as, I think it's called street painting budget for 20 grand. Okay, thank you. And then finally, this is just the overall sort of roll up that you all see in the budget workbook. So 1.4 million, you'll see the difference in the level service versus the city manager recommended. There's a $10,000 difference. That is the traffic calming. So any questions on the public works operation? And regarding traffic calming, we're including it as line item for consideration because we can't use any reserves available. You and Angela can help me out with this. So I believe you could. It just requires council authorization. So just wondering the conversation before where it's not a year over year, supposedly not intended to be a year over year item. It could be something that we consider as a reserve item. Angela, did you want to ask? If it is not an ongoing expense, it could be an eligible use for reserves that it falls within our policy. And I guess it just comes back to how likely is that to be the case of coming in-house? Yeah, I mean, basically what we're looking to do is have the consultant that actually prepared the traffic calming manual prepare a template for us go through the procedure of evaluating and basically we will copy that. I'm an engineer, Ryan's an engineer, so we're both more than capable of doing that in-house. The only question would be if CCRBC would let us use some of the equipment that we would need to do some of those like traffic counts and speed analysis, which in sort of casual discussion, they seem to okay with it. And of course, your capacity? Yeah, yeah. And I think once we get through some of the mainstream construction, if mainstream is a two-year construction season, then we will have some capacity once that drops off. So if you'll entertain this just a little bit further. So in theory, we could use $10,000 for from reserves hire contractor to do the same work with the same intent of creating a template for use moving forward. And in the meantime, could also formalize an agreement with CCRBC for use of some of their equipment. Correct, yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Great. Any other questions on general funds operations? Are you about to move into a water sewer? Yes. I'll just prompt for members of the public if there are any questions around the general fund street's public works side. Okay. Good. Okay, water sewer funds. So this does include operations plus capital improvements. I will say just as a sort of an overview, it is a pretty light year for water and sewer funds projects, mainly because we're going to be pretty tied up with Main Street. So we're not going to put too much more on the plate. Um, so starting off, we are proposing rate increases for both. It just ended up they're both, they both end up about 5% this year. As we go through what the expenses are, what revenue we actually need to fund those. What that actually equates to for the typical, I'll say the average three bedroom household user is about 14 bucks per quarter, which I think is around $56 annually cost increase. So that's for both water and sewer combined. And I will say, you'll see this in one of the other water slides, the CWD rates increase, which is a rate is increasing 5% as well. And that is a major cost center for the water fund. CWD being Champlain Water District. Yes, thank you. This is roughly our water and sewer fund maintenance staff. It is so our water staff does support sewer. So it's not totally just, you know, those, those EO twos on the left hand side, they also do some of the distribution work on the sewer side as well. But just to, just for clarity and kind of get a sense. Our utility manager manages both groups. Maintenance wise on the sewer fund side, we have two treatment plan operators. They do do some distribution work in the field. But primarily they're, they're working at the plants. And I also do want to give a shout out to the treatment plant crew, because this year they rewarded the Green Mountain Water Environmental Association Facility of Excellence award for the treatment plant. So that is a statewide group that pretty much all of these Pellies and a lot of the consulting firms that primarily do this, that's the sort of trade organization. So really recognizes, you know, the work those folks are doing down the plan. Water fund, just some real high level, you know, it's level service budget wise. As mentioned, seed of Champlain Water District is about 51% of the overall budget. We do not have a treatment plant. We, we are only maintaining distribution lines throughout the city. So I know last year I kind of highlighted that a lot of our lines are 100 years old plus and we are working to sort of figure out how to finance replacements, you know, associated with needed street reconstruction projects. Not harping on that this year, but just highlighting that that is still one of our primary goals is to, you know, continue on that path. Main Street is one of those projects that does that. So we are making some headway there. The budget for water funds, 1.14 million. You know, as shown, most of that is the Champlain Water bulk purchase that is increasing by about 5% this year, rate-wise. And then salary benefits for our distribution crew. My salary is part of that. Our city engineer salary is part of that. So it's not just our maintenance folks. And then this is the roll-up of those accounts you can kind of see. Good news is, you know, in the past you've seen this budget where, you know, we were pulling from capital reserves to make this operational budget work and we don't have any money going to capital. This budget, we're finally pushing some way to capital. We've got 20 grand in there to do, to replace some meter-eating equipment that's outdated. And then, of course, we have some existing debt service for capital projects that we're paying off. I guess I should go back. Any questions on the water fund? Sort of brief one this year. No, I presented my questions earlier. Okay, sewer fund, same operation in capital. This one is a little larger budget because we do operate a wastewater treatment plant facility and we have distribution piping. Sewer fund includes sanitary sewer and the stormwater system as well. So there's some permitting costs associated with this fund. I will say the picture on the bottom there, that is the first flowing event from this summer. So our crew did a great job maintaining the plants. We are currently pursuing some grants to help with some flood mitigation. So hopefully you'll get some news on that. But we are, that's one of the tasks we're looking at this year as well as we didn't have any damages, but we had to really, I mean, the crew is literally using tarps and sand and dirt to protect some of the equipment. So we're looking to do something a little bit more permanent and easier to install when we do have these events. Because this happened twice this season, which is pretty unreal. So we're going to have to make some improvements down there. We expect there's grant money that's going to cover that. This is the overall on the sewer fund side, so 1.4 million roughly. Majority of the cost here is on the salary side. Second major cost item is biosolids, which is basically the leftovers from the treatment plant. After we treat it, there's some solids that we have to truck out, send to Burlington and then landfill, so that is a pretty large cost center. For FI-25, the only capital expense we're proposing is a truck replacement. And I do want to highlight here is similar to water funds. This is probably the first year we've been able to push funding to the capital reserve, which is sort of a relief that this is another fund where we were stealing from the reserve fund just to balance the budget and now we're actually able to put some money aside for future replacement work. Kind of see here, this is a roll-up, it's a little hard to read, but I do want to call out that we are kind of seeing the capital line expenses. So it's going from 280 to 176, so that is helping. So there's some debt from the street sweeper that's dropping off. It's like, I believe it's like 56, 57,000. So that is another thing that's helping this fund. How old is that street sweeper? 2019. So it's got some useful life left. There are usually about 10 years we usually keep them for. Is there warranty maintenance on that? Yes. I will say street sweepers in general are very fussy pieces of equipment. This isn't the first municipality I've worked in and I've purchased a couple street sweepers and they're all problematic. I think it's just the life they lead. So some components are still under warranty, but unfortunately some are just wear and tear. We were able to have the previous street sweeper for about 15 years before replacing it and that one had caught on fire at least twice before we had to replace it. All right. Any questions on sewer fund before I go to the last few slides? I have some overarching questions that I can wait for. So this one's pretty quick. I believe we touched on parking. Operational, it was in some of the first presentations you saw. This is just the capital improvement plan for parking fund, which for the coming FY 25 is pretty minimal at this point. So no on-street. So right now it's kind of there's a few divisions. So there's on-street parking. We're not proposing any capital for on-street parking this year. That typically means new meters, that sort of thing. The Cascade Garage or existing garage, we have an annual preventive maintenance program that we do. That's about 130,000. So we've scoped that work out already and then we push that forward to FY 25. That's been very successful. The Cascade Garage is in very good condition based on our feedback from other consultants. And then the Abinaki Garage, no capital, because it's in construction currently. So that as mentioned earlier, that project you should start seeing start seeing it coming out of the ground later this winter, early spring with steel steel erection. I believe that is it. If you have any questions? You all start right. Sure. On the parking side of things, I think I still don't know that, and I'm sure I'm not remembering this accurately, related to parking enforcement and or potentially parking permits and lack of enforcement or some choice. Maybe you're talking about the residential parking permits that we were exploring as part of revenue last year? Yes. Yeah, that we looked at it and came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it. Yeah, I actually don't remember the decision. It was very little revenue projected. That is certainly Yeah, $475. As we look at the parking assessment and plans moving forward, construction work anticipated in the city in the imminent future. Is there thoughts about revisiting parking permits? I don't know that we've talked about that as a parking team. We have been talking about on street parking fees. And I'm also wondering if it's not time to talk about fines again, too. So that would probably be more of where the bank for the buck would be. But we could throw that in the mix, too. Okay. Moving on from that, I don't notice anything in here that relates to the municipal energy resilience program the state has been offering. I think there was some conversation this past spring or summer that it looked like we were going to have some funding for an audit. Just wondering the status of that. If we have results yet, this is the move forward. And if the city should be allocating a line item in the DPW water sewer budget to account for energy investments and energy efficiency investments based on the feedback that we get from the audit. Did you have to let something more recent from that? I don't. That was the last correspondence. It was more competitive than we were allowed to believe initially. So there's not a guarantee that we'll get it, especially since we're in Chinne County. Even though we're at Winooski? Yeah, that would be our argument always, every time. Yeah, RPC is advocating pretty strongly on our behalf because they're targeting more rural communities. And so we are advocating that, given our community makeup, we should also have a prioritization in that program. I think that's the challenge that I think I heard. So it sounds like the awards haven't been announced yet. Is that what you're saying? We haven't heard of they have been. I think we would have heard if they were, but we haven't. So regardless of the MRP funding, I guess I still have that same question. Should we be allocating some type of year over year line item for energy investments? Yeah, I think so. So for example would be CCRPC again. We've been working this week, actually, we're trying to set up a meeting with a partner of theirs to look at, I think, more of like a geothermal type system down at our treatment plant. So there's an opportunity to capture, you know, some of that heat transfer that comes through. I've also, that same consultant, we're engaging with our lots of development. So the hotel proposal, even though it's not, we are not an owner, we will own the land underneath. They're going to be proposing geothermal for that hotel use and it may, it'll be on city property. So we've started to engage them. They're starting to do some well testing. I think we could take credit for that because it's on city property, potentially. So the tricky part is I don't have a rough sort of budgetary cost yet. So that, you know, for FY 25, I don't know if I will have anything, but I may have a fund balance request potentially if, you know, if it seems like it makes sense. All right, thank you. Any questions from Council? Any questions from members of the public? Come on out. And I'm sorry, I should have asked this sooner. I catch bits and pieces of the street striping conversation, but I don't, I feel like I missed the whole conversation. So I was hoping you could help me understand how that fits in. I guess I'd heard we'd had problems before because there was like one contractor in the state and we could never get them. But now this, that $10,000 that you're proposing there, it seemed like we were hoping that Winooski staff were going to be able to do that or is that still contracting or still going to be in the same situation where we're not going to be able to get them on the books? So we still have a contract with the vendor that's basically, they're covering the citywide painting on our main corridors. So they did about 20% of it, you know, since we've had a contract a year ago. They still owe us 75% of that work. Elaine and I are actually going to be meeting with them to advocate that they need to prioritize us and finish that work. So we do have budgeted, we have $20,000 budgeted for contract work. The goal would be to maintain that annually so that instead of doing like this catch-up work basically, where we're proactively like, okay, we're doing this corridor, we're doing East Allen Street, that will be the next one, okay? We're doing Main Street this year. We're doing Mounts Bay Avenue this year. Internally, our staff is still going to be doing some of the local streets. So the crosswalks that are on some of those local streets, not high traffic areas, they don't need necessarily the most durable paint because they're not getting that traffic load. Our staff will be doing that work. So that's, that's kind of where we're at at this point. Bridget, I think you conflated the $10,000 is for two consultant, two traffic calming studies done by consultants. So separate issue related to our traffic calming policy. Okay, so they're welcome. Like the dial on it. Traffic calming would include like feed-hombs or bump-outs or? We have, actually, so we have a manual online on our website. It's under current initiatives, parking, and there is a whole host of traffic calming elements that we've included in there. So it's sort of all a car depending on the situation. Yeah, I just like to put my two cents into, yeah, bolster that, that striping those crosswalks in the bike lanes. It's not from no walker bike out there without this. Thank you. And then we have a question online from Terry. Hi, I'm sorry. I also, can you all hear me? Yeah, yeah, we can. So I missed the opportunity also as fumbling to figure out how to raise my hand earlier. I also wanted to ask a question about the line striping contract. So I think I heard you say, John, that we've had the contract with them for two years. Is that right or just one? It will be two years, yeah, next this coming season. So that was the first that we had it that they didn't weren't able to deliver. Correct, yes. And so I'm assuming that whatever they were supposed to get done last year, they're going to get done this year and they're going to do, and there's another $20,000 for more striping. Is that right or? Correct, yeah. So they they haven't completed their current contract work. So we, we have a contract with them for, I believe it was somewhere around like $56,000, $58,000 somewhere around there to basically do all of the main corridors. And you've seen it around town. They've only gotten, you know, a very small portion of that done. Right. Okay. So that was the first question. So we're anticipating this year that there's going to be quite, quite a bit more done. Could I, William? Yeah, Ellie. So I have to say, John, if you want to scrape corners, which we might be at that point given the bigger budget context that you all have as of last week, John had originally envisioned not increasing it because he didn't, he was not sure that they were going to get done what they, like they're just going to get done what they currently owe us. That's his projection. We are trying to have this meeting, not just to say, you really should prioritize us, but also what is it that we need to do so that you get here? If you tell us early enough, maybe we can do that. Like, is there something that can bump us up the party? So we're not sure if they will do more. So if you wanted to scrape a corner, that might be just don't do an increase. It didn't sound like it was going to be alignment with what all the complaints that you get in your priorities. And so that's why we went ahead and include it in my proposed budget. But we are not sure that they're going to get to more work. Thank you. Yeah. And I will say too, FY 25. So FY 25, it's not just, we're thinking also it's not just this coming summer, but it's sort of the beginning of the year after the season too. So for example, if we notice, hey, we want to do some painting next June, not this coming June, but the June after, at least we have some budget that we could do that, whether it be walk bike recommendations or La Fountain Street scoping studies or, you know, some of the painting work that's out there is not holding up as we expected because of high traffic volumes are turning. So it does give us like a little bit of buffer for like that like following season. So another option there. Terry, you had more and then I had I had another question just I think most everyone in the meeting this evening is aware of the incident that occurred in the Rotary last Wednesday, I believe, and then again, another accident in the Rotary sometime over the weekend. And so I'm wondering if there's any way to set aside some funding to address the immediate safety risks at the Rotary crosswalks. John, you had some something with VTrans about that. Yeah, in the background for reference, I wasn't aware of the second incident in the the Rotary, so I'll chat with PD about that. But we have reached out to VTrans bike ped staff. So VTrans was the, you know, they constructed the circulator originally and installed the RFB unit on the southwest corner. But you know, as you're aware, there's not one of those units on the northwest corner for whatever reason, and the other intersections for that matter. So I've reached out to them and shared the incident that happened recently. And we're trying I'm asking them to look at options that we could sort of add another layer of traffic calming for those those crosswalk intersections, whether it be an RFB or raised crosswalk or something like that is sort of a first go, given that they constructed it originally. And then they also have a mechanism they have a bike ped grant that they they have annually that we've been successful with. So that might be another option. If if we work with them and determine there's there's another layer of traffic calming we can implement there potentially another funding source. So that is that is one thing so we didn't propose we've given council some options. But I think what we're trying to do is get some clarification from VTrans first to see what they'd be willing to pay for before asking council for some funding, which we really couldn't do anything until you know spring at this point construction wise. Anyways, and our news is rapid flashing beacon. Yes, yep. Rectangular rapid flash began the pedestrian push button notification with the lights. And what one of those costs was they are roughly about I think 30 to 40,000 all in like with foundations and buying units and and signage. So it's a trunk for us. Yeah. So even if there isn't there isn't money in the budget, then I think if I'm understanding correctly, there's there's not a way to put to ask for additional money for that in the budget. But we're hoping that VTrans is going to provide that. Is that did I understand that right? Yeah, that's currently what we're pursuing. Yes. Okay. And then also wondering, I know that there was some money for for scoping that you mentioned earlier, I think there was that traffic calming, but wondering if there's any way to to to put aside some funding for a local match for a circulator scoping study just based on what's happening there. And also, you know, bridge is going to get reconstructed. So is there any way to put some money aside for that for a scoping study for the circulator? It's yes, that is an option. I provided some potential match estimates for what that would look like. The one of the issues is the applications due this Friday. So sort of have to make a decision tonight if that was an option that the council want to pursue. The other issue is just staffing wise. You know, I think, unfortunately, public works is a little tapped out with the three big projects. So we would have to identify sort of who would be the lead from the city on that effort. I mean, as you've seen there, it's a big public outreach effort. It's usually your long process managing meetings, you know, addressing any comments, things like that. So I think we would just have to determine who's going to be handling that. It would make us stop doing something else. Correct. Yes. In addition, with the proposed changes to the bridge, the state may not consider it a high priority because there could be changes to the way that the circulator is used with changes to the bridge. All right. I appreciate the explanation. And I think I understand what everyone is saying. And I guess I'm just a little a lot actually concerned about like safety at the circulator. So I don't want to take any more time from this meeting, but I just want to, you know, put it out there that it's this week alone. I mean, we're only 15 days, 16, whatever, 16 days into the month. And there's already been two accidents there. And one, one of them, you know, someone got sent to the emergency room because they were struck by a vehicle. So I hope that the council and whoever else will consider additional just looking at that more closely and figuring out what we can do in the short term to make it a little safer for people to cross, especially if we want to be the walkable city that we talk about being. So that's all I have. And I thank you all for your time. And I appreciate all the thorough explanations. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Can we do item C quickly before our break? Okay. So strategic vision goal area update. So, yeah, I won't go into too much on this because I think it probably covers just about all of it during the budget presentation. But in your packet, the latest sort of updates on the municipal infrastructure priorities policies for this current year is in there. Do you all have any questions on those? Curious about the contaminated soils down on Nabanaki. I'm curious. So that is treatment or is that removal? That is removal. So they are mainly urban petroleum contaminated soils are not high hazardous. So a lot of them a lot of that soil is is being reused on site. And we're some of that brownfields grant money is is you'll see the sheet piling walls going in. A lot of that brownfields grant is supporting that work because it's allowing us to maintain some of that on site and then we're capping it for our our DEC approved plan that allows us to put sort of a impervious cap on the site vis-a-vis asphalt concrete pavement. So given your earlier comment about exploring geothermal, I am concerned about vapor intrusion. Yeah, we will. I will get you an answer on that because I definitely am not the expert on geothermal. I know we are going with those type of wells. They are extremely deep. I think they're I don't know 300 feet deep, but that will question. Yeah. It used to be an underground storage tank inspector. So one of the things that we would get from properties that had contamination is complaints about vapor intrusion into buildings even though the previous property had been decommissioned in the past. And those vapors traveling along the conduits into buildings. So I would want to make sure that if geothermal is explored that it is taken into account with the contaminated soils that are being addressed. Great. Yeah, sounds good. And we do the city is we are the contract or we have an environmental consultant on board, Wes and Samson, that they perform the environmental investigation and they prepared the cap so we can ask that question of them. Great. Just want to make sure like eyes and tees are dotted and crossed on that. Anyone else have questions on the update? Okay. Thank you, John. Let's have a five minute break before we get to item D. I've got 741 so 746 we will reconvene. So I will reconvene the meeting. We are on item D, the fiscal year 2025 budget discussion. So our goal tonight is to provide direction to staff on what budget we want to present to voters. The questions to answer are what number increase can when you ski afford on the municipal tax rate, what do we want prioritized within that number from all of the items that have been raised up to us from staff. Staff will come back to us with a budget at our next meeting, January 22nd, ideally for our final vote and warning for what will go on the ballot. At the outset of this process, we asked for a modest increase with catch up any municipal infrastructure. Staff have presented a more significant increase with catch up across departments. We've seen detailed presentations, asked a boatload of questions and heard from quite a few residents. One thing we haven't considered fully is the impact of the citywide reappraisal, hence the memo I included in tonight's packet. We know on the city side that the assessed value changes are not going to change how much tax dollars we collect. So your assessed value goes up. In theory, if we did nothing, we kept the tax rate exactly as it is, we added nothing. Your municipal bill would increase or decrease only related to the average in when you ski. I think it's safe to assume that the majority of properties are going to go up in value and you could see an up or down based on where you fit in the spectrum of what is the average increase value in when you ski. The reappraisal impact is much less clear to me on the school side. Last week, I watched the school budget presentation in their meeting and I included projected numbers from that meeting in this memo. So what you see in this chart is that if the assessed value of a home increases roughly up to 50%, the education side of the tax bill will be relatively flat. We don't know what the average increase is going to be. I included in here a link to an article where Burlington and their assessment two years ago saw a 56% increase on average in assessed values. There's another chart in this memo that the school presented where folks who are lower income and receive like the income sensitivity subsidy would see roughly a dollar a month increase, which is great. But we also know that some folks who would theoretically qualify for that are renting and their landlord is likely going to pay based on assessed value. I think that we need to give real consideration to this as we decide what budget this community can afford. I am really troubled that we can't make an educated decision about what is happening on both sides of this tax bill. It is hard for me to put to voters, please give us a significant increase because we think that you're not going to see one on the education side, but we know that you don't know how you're going to be impacted by this reappraisal. There's a lot of uncertainty here. I'm concerned about assessed values increasing at a rate higher than 50%. And so the context that we have been assuming where we don't think there's going to be much of a change on the education side, I am not confident that that's true anymore. I think that if that is not the case and we are seeing higher on both sides of the bill, like we could be talking about a lot of money here, we're talking about a couple hundred dollars on our side. If that happens on the other side of the bill too, we have folks, a lot of folks in this community who can't afford that. We have been hearing repeatedly from renters whose rent is going up at ridiculous numbers. And I believe that significant increases here will get passed along there too. And we really need to think about how the decisions were making impact affordability. So I just want to make sure that as we discuss tonight what we want to put forward to voters, we understand that they are not able to make a vote knowing how they're going to be impacted individually. My personal recommendation is that a double digit tax rate increase is not acceptable right now. Knowing that level service is already at 5.44%. I don't think we have room to add everything that we have seen throughout this process and that we should really be focused on only what is absolutely critical right now and some of these other ads should be discussed delayed until next fiscal year, maybe discussed during strategic prioritization rather than included in this year. With that I want to pause. If anyone is unclear about what I am sharing here about reappraisal, we have time for those questions and then move into discussion about the actual budget we are considering. I'm curious procedurally if there's ever a pathway or an option for like an interim budget approval. Could you explain what you are? So the voters approve in March a preliminary budget and then after the assessments go out there could be a special election to have a follow-up vote. I'm not aware of that happening in the past. I also think that would be too late potentially for staff. It would also require a lot of work. I think we had an entertaining and analogous question to this earlier. If basically what you are saying is that if the taxpayers approve the budget we would still have to approve it again. Which means that we would probably be issuing tax bills based on the first budget and then we should get that revised mid-year. Remember homestead rates are set by the state so those have to be reissued and we have to reissue corrections on those. I don't know what that would do. I did see that very city actually delayed their vote but by a couple months so that's another way to go about it but we still have some more expenses. Also they are delaying it because they were waiting to see what funding they are getting from the state on flood recovery and that wouldn't necessarily be the situation we are in because I still don't know that taxpayers would know what the impact was in time for May because they don't really come out until June so it wouldn't help that. You don't want to wait too long because we are actually in a new fiscal year. Plus it could still go down in which case you have to vote again on a revised budget. Again just asking procedurally what our options are. Not necessarily proposing that we go a particular route but knowing what our options are delaying being an option. It sounds like to some extent while there are other parameters that may make it unfeasible so just trying to before we get into the this or that conversation of the like procedurally what are we what's within our toolbox to explore. Yeah I do have an outstanding question too which feels like a Hail Mary so I'm not even going to repeat it in public until I get an answer about that but yeah to your point what do you have options to deal with that uncertainty. Or I see your hands raised. Yeah I think kind of my question is around some understanding that I don't think would necessarily make things more clear but might make things less I don't know scary or as as much would like there could be a total like an increase to the total grand list which would overall kind of help balance some of that cost going up. Am I correct in understanding that. I don't believe so. The grand list isn't going to change how much we collect right we're voting on a total amount of money and what the school side is projecting the grand list is like when the reappraisal completes our grand list will have increased but as you can see from these numbers that's also increasing the amount of taxes paid potentially right because the school sides increase is dependent on what's happening in the state it's relative to the state which is not true for the municipal side. Yeah yeah I understand that and we did build into the proposed budget a 0.5 percent increase related to growth in the grand list that is from people adding bedrooms increasing their property outside the scope of changing the fair market value appraisal so we have incorporated some of that in there should the amount increase by more than that half a percent we could see some mitigation but it would be very very small we actually revised this down after a review of the outstanding zoning and building permits because there was not significant development work occurring. Okay thank you that's helpful. Is it correct that with some of the properties that have come off the grand list because of structure fires and other reasons this past year that that will need to be made up by the remaining tax base essentially those are they already those already were um out of the grand list in the current year okay the values were as of April 1st all of the fires occurred before okay thank you. Any other questions on just related to this reappraisal this new piece of consideration? No I was also at that meeting that the mayor attended and even the school board was having a lot of debate back and forth due to the uncertainty of how much this was going to impact folks so I just think that's worth noting that it's a concern all around. It seems noteworthy that even without well even if the CLA does change to 101 that's just unestimated right now are projected that there still would be on the school side of things a couple hundred dollar increase based on their proposed budget. Likely you know they never can provide really concrete numbers because of the state process but based on this that is what I see. So at 60 CLA it would be exponential and at 101 CLA it still could be in some instances depending on the property at a couple hundred dollars. And I think it is important though when we're thinking about this that there like that this there's so many complicated things on the state side but we're talking about some folks is based on income so there is that like there is that income a little bit of income sensitivity it's probably not as much as we would like in some of our residents need but that is there. So it's not like every single person is going to see that a hundred increase there is as the mayor said there might only be like a one dollar increase across some of the folks that is based on income. That is true as an individual if you receive income sensitivity but if I am a renter and my landlord doesn't receive that and they get a couple hundred dollar increase on their bill I think that's showing up in my rent. I think we should cap rents but that's a different conversation entirely because they have already exponentially increased that far above and beyond where they should for years and years and years. So I appreciate that argument and I'm definitely considering it but I think that might be a larger issue. Certainly. Christine could I make a call? So I appreciate Deputy Mayor's mentioning that the school board is also considering because I have to take this opportunity to say that as you've heard us say and certainly me this budget season the folks at your table not necessarily you individually but the folks at your table have for too long looked at what the school district was doing and then had us down size accordingly and now you've you've heard through the last couple months what that's done to staffing levels and our ability to deliver basic services. I also get this is a huge increase and I'm very concerned about the information that was shared to the school board last week as well but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't mention that here and that is why I went over and beyond the council's direction when I thought it was more an opportunity and now I'm not seeing it either. So I do want to ask was there any indication they might actually reduce accordingly? They voted on the budget already so this is what's moving forward on their side. So they did not actually reduce anything? They took out $250,000 but their budget is significantly larger than ours so from what I heard that didn't make us much of a dent in what these numbers show and that's a point well taken Elaine. I also think that this is somewhat tangential but when we think about strategic prioritization this year it's not going to be a conversation as years past of like what are the new things we want to do that we should maybe take a step back on all the things that we are currently doing and all the things we've seen that our future needs. We have a lot of staff asked that makes sense. We saw preview some more tonight. The CIP outlook that we saw at our first presentation meeting was pretty staggering and we have transportation master plan, bike walk plan, parks and open space plan, several scoping studies in progress. We're talking multi-millions of dollars of potential projects and improvements and we don't even have enough staff and we're not even funding our streets and sidewalks maintenance. So I feel very uncomfortable with the significant increase this year when the outlook is there's going to be more of this and last year we made a significant increase as well and specifically because we cannot tell voters here is what you vote for this here's how it's likely to impact you. Normally we could say this is an 11% increase the average home will see this much but people are not going to be able to get that information this year and I'm very uncomfortable with asking them to make that decision. Yeah I mean I think I'm assuming that there's a possibility that when we do present here we present levels of what it currently looks like and what the extreme could look like and leave that to folks to determine when they get to the vote. Even I don't think we could do that because you don't know how your individual house is going up or down relative to the average. True. So I think my house is pretty low quality. I assume it's average to low average. What if I'm wrong about that and for some reason it turns out we're well above and now I supported what I think is a three hundred dollar increase but it's actually nine and I don't have the budget for that. Yeah I mean I think that's why we would present the highest possible I mean I guess not possible but we will have to put this in. Right I mean like see everybody thinks their fans is differently but I think the suggestion would be look at it as the top look at it as the nine hundred instead of the three hundred. Can you can you support the nine hundred. I mean I mean we that's like a wild thing to say but it's we're dealing with something that we don't fully understand what's going to actually play out so I think people need the over information. We still need to present something that with the hopes that it will pass correct. Yeah ideally and and let's be honest not everybody knows this is even happening or we'll watch any of the information right. That's great. Yeah to be clear I personally don't support just level service like I think there is a critical need to address issues in fire and emergency response and this is the debate we can have now is what is there but I feel strongly that if it's not a critical need immediately it can wait until the dust settles on reappraisal and people understand what the outlook is. I think it's worth noting that this year over what I mean at least last year that I did it but I believe from what conversation we've had we've heard from more residents about the concern of their tax bill and I think this year is likely just with everything that we're hearing nationally in terms of how people are feeling economically that people are really worried about taxes going up at our level the school level the state level federal level. I've heard from more people about how they don't want their taxes to go up then I've heard last budget season or period ever ever yeah the things that people talked to us about which is why we had directed what we wanted was infrastructure safety I hear about those things from folks year long so I also do not support a level budget that's not what we asked for there are investments that we need to make but I think we really need to now debate and look at what they are because we've all been told many many times that the city manager proposed budget is too high of a percentage. There are some things on the budget workbook I guess there are some things that I would expect on the budget workbook that aren't there such as the replacement fleet replacement so it seems like there's no existing policy and the unwritten policy is that it's an annual replacement and I would kind of expect something without a policy to kind of be on here with it. The fleet replacement that's proposed there's only one that's coming out of the tax rate and that is the police cruiser we have in the past cut that from the capital budget and we found in that year that the operating cost associated with repairs in that department doubled so the investment in a new cruiser every year is then found to be beneficial to the operating costs. One thing I think some of us have mentioned last budget and this budget is you know for the proposed positions that have come to us that are increasing to you know whatever level it is can we look at the idea of increasing those positions but not by as much as has been suggested so you know I know I mentioned this to the chief but the 16th police officer instead of full time being half now part time the circulation assistant you know adding maybe five extra hours to what they do as opposed to the full ass things like that because I do recognize the need and all obviously stuff is asking there's a need but I don't think we can support those needs of the full amount that has been asked. So we can look at scaling what we're I can make the case for you for every single one right here today but that's not where you are so what I I want to hear all these comments and concerns and things that you really want us to explore but what I'm looking for is a rough number so that we can try and get there in the configuration that we can best support. We did do a leadership team exercise last week and we're not thrilled with results but we do have fallback positions that you know given this new contest in particular we would propose but I want to know what our target is first before I comment on anything individual. Well actually I also I think I heard Aurora yeah your hand is raised please. Yeah I think what is a little challenging for me I think going back to what's not on the workbook is that regional dispatch amount for the positions and for what we put forward. That is now in the workbook. Okay wonderful. Well and I also think what we need to tell staff now is I'm comfortable with x percent increase. I want one two three things from this list make it work or bring us the best you can right. I have thoughts about a number but I don't want to leave since I already led the discussion. Make space for anyone else. I don't have a specific number I think that we had I think a big thing that we're hearing from folks and something that I've had conversations with fellow counselors about is that a double digit increase is not ideal so may that be 9.9 or 9 or 7.5 I am not there yet but I think 10 percent or more is really rough to take to the voters. I'm under eight. I think that's too high frankly but I think that there are some things we have to do and so I'm willing to go a little higher. I'm more in the seven range. That is what I first thought. I'm getting ready to clarify it with sevens because under eight is in the seven. Well we're both of you I guess. In looking at what's available in the budget workbook kind of being confined to that tool and the wealth of information that we've been presented by staff and all the considerations and all the hours spent responding to all of my questions. I even with wanting to see something closer to seven I still with the tool have a hard time getting under eight. Okay. That's awful. Thank you. Charlie we're going to share. Yeah I find myself landing right around eight mostly because there's so many staffing needs that need to be filled and I think what we're seeing is that by leaving them vacant we're incurring more costs. Having Ray behind the circulation desk is not financially like logical. Right. And I think there's by supporting staff in the way that they're asking they'll be able to do their jobs better and the community will see the results that they're looking for. At least that's logically where I'm leaning. I think really figuring out who we can who we can hire or hiring the most people possible for the most reasonable amount of money is mostly where I'm focused at the moment. Charlie what was the number? Right around eight. I think like like Thomas said double digits is just frankly sticker shock I think for people whether it would wash out in having the cleanest safest healthiest community. I think that's still a really jagged pill to swallow for folks right now given the economy the way that it is you know just because the market is up does not mean that people's paychecks are. So yeah I really really hesitate to full tilt into city management suggestion just because it is so high and the state's doing what the state is doing on their end too. It's just a lot to ask of the average Joe like especially as the person that lives in a rental property rent in Winooski is ridiculous. I go Aurora on that and it's only getting worse. People are being priced out of our community and I think that if that's happening right now we should really focus on empowering the people that can address the issues that create the environment that allows for landlords to get away with shady practices and you know etc. Um I would put my pin in at about nine percent. I have a really hard time getting there with the items that I would think are priority but I am also in agreement that I don't think I can support a double digit increase. What was the number over nine percent. I think a lot for me on the difficulty of pinning an exact number is depending on what's included in that number I think I would be more favorable so if we're really hitting a lot of our streets and sidewalks but that's putting us towards nine percent I would favor that more you know then if we're ignoring all of those things to stay at seven percent but I just you know I really want to again you know those are the things that I'm hearing about from people. I go to the senior center when we go to the school even like those things are really crucial and the balancing is difficult you know the same thing at the senior center when I visited a couple weeks ago you know a senior told me if their bill goes up by thirty dollars they're not going to be able to eat. Obviously everybody's individual situation is different but those are things that we have to think about when we're talking about raising taxes so if we're going to do that and we're going to put that person in a difficult situation I want to make sure that we're providing the best services for everybody in our community not just focusing on some groups. I want to propose that we cap it at eight as a sort of average across the five of us. Can we live with that? I'm willing to go slightly above eight so I would do like again just because of wanting to acknowledge the preventative services from our fire department raising the part-time fire department wages to me those those are some essential needs. I feel like holding on the 16th police officer while we fill the vacancies and wait for the chief to be selected makes sense to me to hold on that and alternate like as far as the other priorities I I mean the rest of it pretty much goes to infrastructure I think we heard that from the finance commission we heard that from the infrastructure commission and asking about the during that joint committee I don't read the joint committee in November I feel like we did ask about the equity components of putting more funds towards infrastructure and the participants in the group acknowledge that infrastructure is equity in many cases. When we've heard in this room how somebody couldn't walk on the sidewalk to get here because the sidewalk was so broken up and like you know we've seen kids in the streets instead of the sidewalks because the sidewalks are dangerous so 100% equity and a safety issue. Sorry Brynne could you before you said fire department wages what was before that um the fire captain yeah it was it was along with the fire captain um I proposed in a previous question a model that might give an option for on-call that may not be feasible but again just trying to look creatively at trying to fill the need while maybe not being able to meet the full ask at this point in time so how you know again just trying to think outside of the box of trying to attend to some critical needs some really some additional items again thinking creatively of starting a position later on like for half of the fiscal year rather than the full fiscal year so again just not trying to say no but trying to meet at the middle so um so that's why for me I'm like I there are some things that I would struggle with letting go at being eight percent which is the only reason why I would suggest slightly above but I could I could I could be happy with eight because I want seven in the long run but my ideal would be seven I'm willing to go up to eight I I think similar to you again I don't think we should be advancing anything that is not absolutely critical this year I think most of these positions can wait a year um I do think that fire is critical from what we've been hearing about the ability to respond to emergencies a core service that we should be able to provide as a community um and I think some amount of infrastructure improvements is the thing that is another core service that we should be able to deliver in that we are not delivering to residents and they continue to ask why um but within what has been presented I think we can delay some of these like scoping studies I think we can pull that ten thousand dollars for the evaluations out of reserve and anything that's a one time funding we can look at that way um I would like to see a number that is under eight that includes fire and some municipal infrastructure but not all we do 8.25 to get closer to Aurora's nine what have you said eight ish and let us get eight ish and then you could figure it out from there I'm happy with eight ish well Britt and I are the two that would push back the hardest and we both are holding our jaws so um I think there were so your second question was part of yours I think I heard from the three of you I think we're in Charlie yeah so I would I would happily meet uh an eight ish budget in good faith for review same are there areas that you'd want us to definitely try to squash in there very unpopular opinion um I don't think we need to hold that funding for a 16 police officer I don't think that there's any data that proves that police and more police presence prevents crime um and if I can if that is contrary to the truth please present me with that information um but in all of my research I haven't seen that yet um yeah I think that increasing third spaces for people um inherently adds value to our community the erosion of third spaces being not work not home libraries parks community centers cafes recreational clubs all that stuff that is what prevents crime and that's what builds community and uh slows down transiency of uh residents so yeah I think that maybe next year but I think holding that that amount of funding um just I don't think it's necessary just based on what I know about what that person's role might offer given the status of the community right now my priorities would definitely I think fall similarly I do want to see some of that infrastructure that we've talked about but I find fire a huge priority I think the library position is a huge priority and I think when we look at that that's a bargain and I would elevate that library position over those potential equity funds because I think that does so much equity work for our city so having unassigned equity funds would love to see it but I think the library position is more important um I would also as like a deep priority would be the 16th officer it sounds like there might be some other funding sources for traffic calming which I do think is important but if there are other ways of funding it um I would be in favor of that I there are also things too like the riverwalk capital needs study is that so important are there grants with the flood money that we could tap into for that um yeah I hope that's helpful I would hope not to see any unassigned money in the next budget or anything that is not very explicit what it's for I think I think we're hearing an eight-ish with fire and infrastructure being top priorities and library being just behind that can I let's see of course the unfilled public works positions with that additional those additional labor hours could those that additional work lead to some infrastructure improvements without a lot of of other expenses besides the labor like you know maybe some sidewalk we're yeah so what we were initially discussing the money for those three positions is in the budget as it is right yeah okay so that wouldn't have anything any influence on an increase so for those on zoom Judy was asking if we fill the three vacancies in public works if that will fill some of the gap in infrastructure work what we are talking about infrastructure funding was for street repair sidewalk maintenance accessible curbs um these staff would support that work but there's still cost in there's still added cost in time in materials but john if you want to if you have can you come to the microphone please yes so the the three the three vacancies currently so that is what you're seeing is a snapshot right now so we just recently had two one retirement um ended this summer and then one relocation so just a few months ago we did have the two staff um and really I think the current as as we showed on the one slide of like the typical crew day uh our current staff is able to do sort of base base maintenance operations what we want to get to is the the staffing that allows us to do you know the sidewalk replacement work like we could have a crew doing partial sidewalk replacements and a crew doing street sweeping so adding the the vacancies to fill doesn't really boost the you know the maintenance asks that you all are hearing about if that if that makes sense no yeah sorry that's how long we've seen no sorry Judy I do want to invite public comment or questions Eileen I'd like to ask the leadership team if there's any clarification questions do you want to ask of council right now or um we should do that during the week if you don't need a time to think about it our check-in is after the leadership team meeting so okay all right thank you so we need a vote to provide this direction to staff so I'm looking for a motion to bring well this is on for discussion but we'll take a vote anyway uh for the manager to bring us back uh FY 25 budget that is around 8% at the highest um that prioritizes first fire and infrastructure in second library are you looking for a motion yeah it's a moot second motion by charlie second by brinn all those in favor please say aye hi hi motion carries thank you thank you it's not an easy year never seems to be it's grown progressively more challenging unfortunately uh that brings us to the end of this evening's agenda do I have a motion to adjourn second motion by Thomas second by brinn all those in favor please say aye thank you all thank you