 We'll call to order this meeting of the Wendyski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Costa. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, agenda review. Any questions or concerns about the order of tonight's agenda? All right, hearing none, we will move to public comment. So this is time for any member of the public who wants to speak to a topic that is not planned for tonight's agenda. If you're here for anything that's on the agenda for this evening, please wait for that time. If anyone is here for to make comment about anything not on the agenda, please use the raise hand feature or you can chat the host and let us know. Seeing no public comment, we will move to the consent agenda. We have our council minutes from December 13th and the accounts payable warrant from December 29th and payroll warrants from November 28th to December 11th and December 12th to 25th. Are there any questions or concerns about the consent agenda items? All right, would someone like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda? Don't move. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So we are on to council reports. Hal, can I start with you? Sure. I attended the December 14th meeting for the State Healthy Connected People Commission and provided my city council update. We heard from fire chief Audi. He reported that they internally promoted a part-time lieutenant to a full-time fire marshal position, chief Palmer. He talked about the COVID-19. There's enough tick and mental health challenges as a result of the pandemic and specifically seen in housing issues. Ray Coffee talked about the mask mandate that was being put in place masking up in indoor public spaces and this topic will be revisited in 45 days to review. He also presented the budget that's going to be presented to city council and got some input from the commission and he certainly encouraged others to review it on the website. He also talked about the ARPA planning process. The city will be initiating an ARPA planning process so we can best sort out how to spend these anticipated funding. Each member of the commission was asked to prioritize the top five goals of the municipal plan and that was forwarded and submitted so there could be a sense of consensus of what are the priorities for the commission going forward and that was pretty much it. Thank you Hal. Sure. Mike, can I have your update next? Sure. Good evening everybody. I have no up in the report. Thank you. Thank you. Brynn, any council report? Sure. The municipal infrastructure committee met on December 15th. I also presented city council updates to the group. We heard that we will be losing two of our commissioners so there's been a posting from Paul to our newsletter and social media to recruit some additional members to the infrastructure committee. If there's anybody that has interests or questions, please certainly direct them to me or to John. I'm not sure to follow up on what to expect and what the schedule is like for that. We are looking to return to a regular schedule for Thursday, the third Thursday of the month I believe. It got off schedule because of the pandemic and was more of an ad hoc committee but we're hoping for consistency and to help with recruitment to have more of a regular schedule and to keep that on the books to allow for greater ease of scheduling rather than doing doodle polls every month, every six weeks or so. The committee discussed updates to Main Street revitalization project, progress on easements and permits bidding. John certainly will probably touch on that later on during the council meeting tonight. That seems like that is progressing well. There's some discussion about the Federal Infrastructure Jobs Act, presentation from VLCT, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns earlier in December that staff attended, that the funding will likely go through existing programs, grants and loans programs, rather than creating new programs. That should help alleviate some of the questions around structure and process and procedure for accessing some of those funds as well. A bulk of the time was spent discussing the energy goals and differentiating what the commission sees as most immediate needs for next steps. John has gathered some baseline data from Green Mountain Power and will be requesting baseline data from Vermont Gas for the municipal facilities at least as a starting point just to see where we are with our cities usage and projects that have been employed and implemented to date. But there's much more conversation there to be had so we're really just kind of getting the ball rolling in that realm. And I'll have an update, a more thorough written update for the city newsletter and front porch forum in the coming week. But that's coming for updates. Thank you. And Jim. Thank you. I attended the Housing Commission meeting on December 27th. We were joined by G-Body and Fire Marshal Campbell to talk about code inspections for housing quality, kind of continuing a conversation we started two meetings ago. We had some community members as well so we had a good discussion on some of the challenges around running a full inspection program in the city. And we talked about the enforcement mechanisms that are available and also the shared staff that make it hard to or make it that the staff has to run on a lean capacity and can't and it's difficult to take on additional work. And meanwhile we have this continued growth in the number of units that are coming online in the city which adds to the inspection burden and just a lot of work being done by code in a lot of different ways. So it was a good discussion on where those challenges are. And we also heard about the need to access resources through partner organizations and the city sometimes filling those gaps in accessing resources. The city has options for code enforcement around housing and quality issues such as ticket writing or withholding certificates but these can have consequences on the people in those units and potentially negative consequences so being careful on how those are used is discussed during that meeting. Finally we heard from a little bit more about what support residents need and getting problems fixed in their homes and the need of a range of options and ways to seek help from the city. All of this is informing the commission and getting them set up to be able to advise intelligently and effectively when the time comes to view a public building ordinance update. So this is really a kind of getting up to speed and really digging into some of the details of these issues so that when the time comes and ordinance changes are being considered the housing commission weigh-in on this as well. Let's just continue this dialogue around housing quality in the city that we know is really important. So it was a good commission meeting. We normally meet the fourth Monday of every month but because of scheduling changes the next meeting is going to be happening in January 20th which is a Thursday at 6 p.m. So a little bit of a change in schedule this month but we'll go back to before Monday's starting in February. Thank you Jim. I have one update to share from the Burlington Airport Commission. At their meeting in December they shared that the noise data from the noise monitors so we have one located at City Hall. There's also one in South Burlington and one in Williston. The raw data so there's the the portal that's available you can find it at btvsound.com that lets you view the data with a 10 minute delay. There's a question mark help button in the lower left corner of the the screen that you can look at instructions for how to use it. It's not super intuitive when you first get there but additionally they are going to monthly upload all of the raw noise data in a spreadsheet file to the btvsound.com website so that's something we heard that residents wanted access to was the raw data and that should be available going forward. They also provided an update on the noise mitigation the insulation program. The 10 home pilot is moving forward and they are currently determining which homes will be included for next year 50 homes that will get designed this year and insulation next year. The airport is kind of figuring that out with the FAA on their own based on distance from the the airport within the noise contour map but also where Winooski makes up about 50 percent of the homes each year which is what we have discussed with them through the noise compatibility work. There was some conversation about what this looks like going forward into the future like how residents can know when they might be what's the word i want when they're like up to be included in the future years and so there was talk about creating some sort of kind of a map that like tiers neighborhoods and areas so you could go to their website and see you know i might be in the next two or three years or my house is actually not going to get taken care of for five or ten so that's something that they are open to doing and as they go through this pilot year we'll be designing that process whatever that's going to look like and we can continue to share feedback with what we hear from residents. They also have hired a consultant to be a point of contact for folks who are getting insulation or folks who have questions about it and they're working on getting a dedicated local office space where people could actually stop in. So i know there's been a lot of questions about how can i learn more how can i get in the program this pilot year is where they're going to kind of figure that out and so later this year we should have answers to those questions and we'll keep sharing those out. That's my only update i will turn it to wendy for our city updates. Okay thank you mayor we have a few things first happy new year to everyone unfortunately covid is still with us and with us even more now just some recent information for the week of 1229 mnuski and burlington both saw a 62 percent increase in positive covid cases over the previous two-week reporting period. Case rates in chinden county are up sharply most other communities as well but burlington mnuski have seen the highest recent increases. For the week from 1219 to 1225 the cdc estimated and this is in our six state region that 44 percent of the positive cases were omicron so that's worthy of note hospitalizations remain high but steady which is probably also because of it being omicron which is more contagious but less severe as we know so this is a good time to remind folks that the mask mandate is is still in effect for all indoor spaces please keep yourself in your community safe by masking up whenever you're indoors the council will consider the mask mandate again on at the meeting next week on january 10th which is what's required under the way that the statute allowed cities to restrict activities regarding city staff we are developing a policy to comply with the federal OSHA regulations and we'll advise the board about that also on the 10th and the person who's working on that policy it's i am sad to let you know that phoebe towns and the hr director will be leaving us in the middle of the month we wish her luck and she is working very hard on a transition on handing off her responsibilities to different staff members and the city has been without an hr person before so we'll get through this but we very much appreciate phoebe's service throughout this time one of the items that she's been working on is the search for the city manager and that advertisement is active now so i just want to put that word out and the applications are due February 4th so please feel free to share that it's so the next thing just night flights to alert folks the air national guard the vermont air national guard will be conducting night flying from Tuesday the fourth which is tomorrow through Saturday the 8th and the takeoffs are scheduled for between 4 and 6 p.m landing scheduled between 6 p.m and 8 p.m so just be alert for that and the city did enter into a settlement with the vermont cbd labs they were operating the hemp drying operation on elm street and under the settlement the action will be suspended as long as they stop all operations which they've done and not recommence operations and they expect to be out of the property by the end of this month which should be good news and that is all i have thank you indy so we will move to our regular items first up item a this is on for approval these are memorial library committee appointments and ray i think you have some folks to introduce perhaps so nate is going to do that in corrections here t was in part of running the uh screen process so i'm gonna let him step in excellent thanks right um we are excited to welcome hopefully nicky kajakalai colleen more and existing member jess wignall who's up for a reappointment to the term um i'm not sure i see jess oh and colleen here um the new members bring great experience to the library um colleen is a long time winnowski resident she has kids in the school system and will bring a really nice perspective about children services to the library and nicky is a recent winnowski arrival who will bring a ton of experience around communications and systems in a really nice perspective um to the committee jess has done great work with us um for a number of years and we're really happy to extend her appointment to the committee so i see colleen um if folks have questions feel free to ask otherwise we'd love to let our new committee members um say a few words if they'd like to sure yeah um welcome nicky would you like to introduce yourself yourself sure uh happy new year um thank you for this opportunity to be um you know selected as a possible member of the committee um i look forward to working and serving with nate and the other members of the committee to further the goals of the library so i'm really excited thank you i your application showed a lot of enthusiasm so welcome yeah and colleen would you like to introduce yourself hi i'm colleen more um i've been living in winnowski um since 2016 um although my dad and um multiple relatives grew up in winnowski over on pine street um so i have long ties to winnowski i'm really excited to be part of the library committee or the opportunity to be part of the library committee i actually have one of the little free libraries located on the point street um so i feel very passionate about reading and bringing reading to the community and i'm very excited about the the chance to serve thank you as well uh do counselors have any questions for our new potential appointees i don't but i want to thank you for your enthusiasm and it's always great to draw in new members to the committee to the committees and commissions so it's um great to see your applications and thank you just for continuing to serve and for members of the public who aren't aware we have a library committee of engaged residents that helps steer the direction of our library um with that do i have a motion to approve these appointments almost second motion by mike second by jim all those in favor please say i hi hi brinn was that an i yes okay motion carries thank you very much and welcome to our new library committee members and thank you nate yes thank you thank you all all right so we'll move on to item b this is on for approval it is a bank signatory update with uh angela yeah thank you so much uh so in uh sadness carol has officially retired her last day was last week carol has acted as the second signature on our bank accounts during her entire term as assistant treasurer um this is a title that comes with the title of city clerk and so we would like to add jenny willingham as our second signatory in addition to alex anastasi hill um at all of our banks uh which are td bank people's united bank and opportunities credit union thank you angela any questions from council any questions from members of the public as a reminder you can use the raise hand feature or chat the host all right hearing no questions or concerns do i have a motion to approve the bank signatory updates it's all about second motion by mike second by brinn all those in favor please say i hi hi motion carries thank you uh next up is item c this is a sidewalk plow municipal police angela will you be introducing again yes um so the um public works department had included in the capital plan this year replacement of a 2012 sidewalk plow they have bid out the equipment um and the low bidder was a hundred seventy thousand hundred and sixty four dollars the plan to purchase this equipment was to do a lease over a five year period we solicited quotes from multiple leasing agents and the lowest rate that we were able to obtain was three point two five percent from fnb bank this is a company that we do lease equipment from currently so it is an existing partnership that we have and they just require council authorization for us to move forward with the purchase thank you any questions from council sorry did you just for clarification did you say this was a purchase or a lease so it's a capital lease so we will own the equipment at the end of the five year period okay all right thank you any other questions any questions from members of the public all right do i have a motion to approve the sidewalk plow municipal lease as presented motion by mike second by how all those in favor please say i hi hi motion carries thank you thank you this brings us to item d this is on for discussion uh the f y 23 department of public works and capital improvements budget presentation and john i see you now yep i'm here trying to share my screen can folks see that yes great um happy new year everyone um thanks for joining um to review the public works and capital plan budget for f by 23 a little delay um so tonight we're going to be talking about the general funds public works operation budget um the entire general fund capital plan budget so that's that includes all departments the water and sewer budgets um along with their corresponding capital plans and the parking funds uh capital plan budgets um so in total that's about 4.9 million worth of expenses for this year for the upcoming f y 23 budget um as we get in this feel free to stop me asking questions i will stop at the end of each sort of category funds um and just pause for any questions but jump in if you have anything so looking back briefly for this past season um just to highlight a couple things that were accomplished you know the mainstream project we've been progressing on that as brim mentioned um we're well into sort of getting to construction document phase and and trying to get to that next bid document phase working through the getting easements for right away so that's been a main focus for us this past this past season you know mire's pool with ray's team uh that was a big lift for our team to get the facilities and equipment and all that operating for this this last swim season and um let's see we're pretty successful with with the help of ray and his staff um we also completed the hiccock street reconstruction project so that was a three million dollar full street reconstruction um brand new water main rehab sanitary and storm lines and then on the the surface piece we put in your roadways new curbing new sidewalk um so that project came in under budget um took a little longer than we expected unfortunately due to covid but um we were able to get there and get that project delivered even with uh extended schedule and then sort of other things that are underway that we've been working on um the traffic calming manual that's been on our to-do list and in our transportation master plan for a while so we started working on that um thanks to a grant that we received this past summer so what that's going to do is allow us to look at uh citywide what streets do you need to focus on uh slowing down vehicle traffic to you know make our streets more livable when safer for pedestrians so that's underway and we're hoping to wrap that up the next month or two and start bringing that out to council and public other things v-trans there's a lot of coordination going on in the backgrounds with the projects that they're trying to deliver next season and start getting going so you've probably heard of the exit 16 project the double diamond interchange they're still proposing to start that work next this coming year with some utility underground work so we're trying to coordinate with them with making sure we're you know meshing with the main street project what they're doing um the other thing is they're going to be doing a lot of resurfacing work next season as well on uh route 15 east alan um uh the the asphalt section of the circulator and across the bridge so um you know there's going to be a lot of disruption next year so right now we're you know we're coordinating the design phase this past season but we'll be getting into public outreach as we get into FY 23 to get that news out to the public and then finally some of the uh you know private development work so we continue to work with these developers on the gateway projects and making sure that their facilities um interface with our existing utility infrastructure and then of course the the lot 7d development um that we've continued working on with our development partners to deliver a parking garage and then the two uses on either end hotel housing potentially um for that project so that's been some of our you know initiatives beyond just you know normal operations for public works moving into next season FY 23 and what we're going to be talking about um with the budget so main street's going to be again the the major focus and trying to get that project into construction this spring um so again we're we're in good shape on the sort of the design side we're just working through right away at permits right now so we're still targeting you know later this winter trying to get that project out to bid and bringing it to you all to to review and then as mentioned the v-trans projects you know those are going to be getting into construction working on public outreach um and then now we're getting into some of the stuff we'll be reviewing with the budget so I'll touch on La Fountain Street the scoping study and the fight headmaster plan a little bit um in more detail when we get to budget um the ADA transition plan is another uh item that we've been talking about and it's part of our work plan um so we're we're going to be starting on that in the next couple months with the regional planning commission folks to help us with that initiative um and basically what that is is we're going to be looking at all our city infrastructure um for example like curb cuts making sure that they are ADA compliant and if they're not what do we have to do to get them up to spec um and then the man's luxury sidewalk will again we'll be talking about that during the sort of budget presentation we also do have a lot of um treatment plant work um more on the planning side this should this for FY 23 and that's really driven by some of the regulatory requirements under our um our new permit with the the states for discharging into Muskie River so um not construction related but you know just you know more planning uh review type work um and then of course lot 70 trying to progress that into construction so now we'll kind of get into the budget side of the public works operation so our org chart um for FY 23 we're not proposing or requesting any changes um for staffing um you know we have a total of approximately 12 field crew two managers for each division and then a city engineer that so you know pretty small team but these guys do a ton of work day in and day out so you know I can't say enough good things about them like I'm in the office all day these guys are the ones out there plowing the roads and taking care of the infrastructure and um you know they're they're out there every day I think the biggest challenge with us right now is that you know and it and this is across the state um you know we are we are down on the street crew side as kind of mentioned there in red we're currently down two staff um one of them's a vacancy that we've been trying to fill a CDL vacancy for you know since last year there's just a lot of a lot of draw for the CDL drivers um so and that's every public works department right now in the state we're all fighting for the same staff so that's kind of our biggest challenge is just getting staffed up on the street crew side um and making sure we have enough folks that can plow roads and do what we need to get done on a daily basis so getting into the numbers for FY 23 so public works operations um general fun side uh this includes all those divisions are sort of bullet pointed so it's not only just streets it's our facilities are grounds engineering um a brine community center the pool facilities uh it's you know it's approximately 1.57 million dollar operation um proposed for FY 23 um that is a little lower than what was budget for FY 22 but the the numbers that are in here don't include um the seasonal staff that Ray mentioned during his Myers pool update so between FY 22 and FY 23 numbers are actually pretty pretty close um so we are projecting this 1.57 million um and then oops sorry as you can see most of that in the pie chart which kind of highlights you know where those funds are spent 50 percent of that is salaries and benefits um that's where the majority of these operation costs come the next big chunk is in materials um for example road salt that's probably the biggest chunk that's in that materials category that's um you know roughly 65,000 a year that we spend for road salt for so nice control so um nothing um nothing out of the ordinary or nothing new that we're asking for this year um one thing that I will say that we are including this year that we were able to kind of squeeze in the budget and allocate cut out some money for is 12,000 in roadway paint um contract work so that's something we've been struggling with for a while um on our gateway district roads such as East Downland or Melts Bay uh Main Street in the downtown and you've heard this at meetings is trying to maintain those strippings really quickly and so you kind of you see in this picture here and you know um roadway arrows and crossings that we internally don't have the capacity to do so we were able to um cut out that whole grant and we're going to try to incorporate this annually so we're hitting different corridors um because unfortunately the the plows take care of those that road paint every winter and by the spring there's there's not much left so we're we have to do better about making sure we paint those um the other thing just to highlight um this budget currently doesn't conclude a uh grant matches for um grants that we will be proposing to uh apply for so that you know we're usually successful in finding some savings within our budget to accommodate those funds but it may uh it may trigger us coming to you for a you know potentially fund balance ask if we do find a grant like um you know bike pad master plan grant that we're that we might be pursuing so just a heads up on that so um I'm just going to pause there quick and see if you all have any questions on sort of the general funds public works operation budgets before I dive into capital I'm not seeing any hands raised no see Jim um John it's just on the uh the grant program match is that I'm sorry I can't recall if I'm ahead is that something that you have included with previous budgets a certain amount for uh matching grants or is that something for my recollections we do get regular fund balance requests for grant match is this something different you're doing this here or you just find it out just calling it out right yeah we we typically don't just because it's an unknown if we're going to get the grant or not but just calling it out now okay thank you and Brent staying on the funding question for a minute more um I think I heard recently uh maybe some vlct notes um that the federal infrastructure funds are not cannot be used for matching is is that something familiar John yeah correct any time so typically if there's a lot of our grants that we received have some kind of federal backing typically so the the sort of rule of thumb is you can't match federal funds with other federal funds so yeah I I've heard that too through some of the preliminary um information that we've gotten on the federal monies as far as um you know infrastructure planning capital project planning I mean how I guess how does that play into opportunities just you know I I don't I'm not really familiar with the federal funding process and uh whether or not that might lock us into something without without intention yeah you know they're I'm thinking of a specific example so you know they're the details right now in the federal funding are sort of scant like they expect to have the agencies that are going to be um funneling this money through like an R DOT and those um they aren't able to share a lot of information yet um so you know we have projects for example like the Winooski bridge that that comes to my mind if there's a lot of federal money that might be floating around that we would you know we would partner Burlington you partner with RPC to you know try to go after any sort of federal funding which you know I think it would be outside of an FY 23 budget unless there was some kind of match requirement and then we would come have to come back to you all and say hey there's a 10% match or 5% match on something um so I think with these federal funds potentially floating around there could be an adjustment that we would have to come back to you on you know in FY 23 if there's some opportunities that come up and if that request is made how will that impact available funds or reserves or will that essentially you know again thinking about locking us in will that essentially mean the city is is looking at a higher tax increase for FY 24 no I see Angela probably wanting to answer this question too do you want to chime in Angela generally the grants that we're seeking for the public works department are for larger one-time projects that wouldn't result in a need to increase taxes to maintain the same level of services in the subsequent year so I'm thinking along the lines of planning grants that we've gotten in the past for the wayfinding signage the there's a small match that has to come from another source other than federal and we have in the past also used private partnerships grants to make up match money as well or local money and we have done it within our existing line items as well so for the wayfinding grant we used existing money that we had for signage in the parking fund okay thank you John just one more question I'm pivoting to the roadway painting striping so what would what would be the estimate of how much striping we would get out of $12,000 so 12 grand would get us all of Mallets Bay basically in the city limits and I I expect we can get some of the downtown refreshed to downtown being like sort of the east or sorry the west side of the circulator around that area do we so obviously there are areas that are more high traffic and that for safety reasons we might want to ensure that we prioritize annually versus some other arteries that are maybe a little bit more secondary that may not have as much traffic for you know safe safe transportation pedestrian cycling used to the school for example or or in the downtown core so I'm just curious if we if we need to commit to having some annual funds to restripe those high traffic areas what would be left over for some of the other secondary arteries yeah so in my mind we would the contract work would only be for the gateways so we would be doing Mallets Bay for example this season we may go back to East Allen the following season and then you know if Main Street was you know theoretically if Main Street was complete we do Main Street and then sort of start all over again our crew could do the sort of secondary streets internally we do have the equipment for that it's just the the long corridor high traffic areas those are the streets we don't have the equipment to do thank you okay I will jump into the fun stuff on the capital plan so capital plan is the our five-year plan that covers kind of our our big ticket items and it has to meet this these criteria so it has a useful like three years or more and then it has these these asset value thresholds there and these bullet points based on the category so here is sort of the the numbers of the five-year plan so you'll see for FY 23 we have one million twenty seven thousand five hundred in proposed revenue for the capital plan however you know 632,692 is already allocated to existing debt so you know what's left from that the 395,000 is what we have to review for FY 23 so this is sort of the five-year look ahead and then in this table what you'll see is there's sort of this anomaly in FY 25 where it jumps up to 1.5 million that is that is from this tip set aside that we've been modeling for Main Street you know since since we've been since the bond vote so for the Main Street project we have said that you know we are looking to allocate up to potentially 50 percent of the the tip funds are flowing back into the general fund for the Main Street project so and this would cover the entire general fund debt you know minus all the grants and stuff that we have right now so that would that's the intent basically is no property tax rate increases for the Main Street project we did that in FY 19 and you know with the local option tax you know and the intent would be that this would cover all of that debt so in these are this is sort of the overview of the numbers for the capital plan and then just to highlight again for FY 23 1,027,500 and then this is sort of the breakdown of where those revenues are coming from so the 498 and the 70,000 that's what you know that was our old capital plan so you really used to have you know a little over 500,000 for capital and then in FY 19 that's when it was decided to you know bring that local option tax on board and designate those funds for the Main Street and the Myers-Pool project so that's where that bump to one million dollars plus happened so FY 23 what are we looking to do so as mentioned on on the the finance debt side we have 632,695 dollars already spoken for so about 61% of the capital fund budget is already allocated and some of those are highlighted in those bullet points so Myers-Pool 245k annually that ensures in 2040 some street reconstruction projects fleet replacements and the design the Main Street project those are annual costs and if you go in the budget book all those are all detailed out what the annual payments are when they mature and all that I didn't want to clog it up in a slide show so for FY 23 proposed what we're looking at is fleet replacements this year so the added proposed debt would be 44,100 and that would be for a replacement in kind's plow truck it's a federal plow truck we're looking replace one of our three and a command car command car for the fire department so that would be a five-year lease sort of like the sidewalk cloud that we were talking about earlier so that's the sort of total proposed annual debt but I will say one caveat on the command car talking with the fire chief this morning it sounds like you know we we put a 10 year ish replacement on it on that vehicle but it's going through some electrical issues right now so depending on how you know if they can't figure out what those electrical issues are in that vehicle and they're trying to start it every day jumpstart every day and it's it's going to be you know prohibitively expensive to fix it we may come to you ahead of time and say can we use fund balance and I don't know Angel we'll have to we'll have to work it out do we pay back the capital fund or something so just wanted to throw that in learn that this morning so we're still figuring out John when this says additional debt this means like new debt service or are these replacing previous vehicle debt that's rolling off the books there yeah good question there is I don't have in front of me there is some there's some debt coming off the books I don't know if it's the 44 100 though once I get off screen I can I'll um I'll follow up outside of this meeting but I think something that could be interesting to see would I know a lot of the fleet happens on like these five year cycles is what it is that we're replacing over time and then where we're adding in you know like the street sweeper things like that that don't actually fit into that cycle yeah yeah and we true I mean the the intent is to try to you know try to balance like so there's not peaks and and valleys and the debt and just try to try to flatten that out a little bit and you know hopefully get to the point where we're we're setting enough money aside for the future that you know a command car like a passenger car we're just buying out we're not we're not leasing that or doing anything that I think you know we'll always have to buy plow trucks and you know those big ticket 100 000 plus items but we want to get to the point where we're just buying those passenger vehicles outright great so on to the next sort of portion of the capital costs are these nine non-finance costs so that's what I'm talking about when say just just buying something outright we're not financing it and having the deal of interest charges so after that proposed debt um and the existing debt we have approximately $217 000 to to utilize typically the bulk of those funds yearly are for repaving roads and fleet replacements passenger fleet replacements um so that's kind of what you're seeing here for FY23 and I've got more detailed information the next couple slides on the transportation projects and that parks project but you know for FY23 we're proposing annual street replacement a new sidewalk installation a scoping study that would lead to a capital project which I'll go through in more detail and fleet replacement so pick up truck 2009 in-kind truck replacement for DPW PD has an annual you know cruiser replacement those cars get you know as you can imagine pretty pretty beat they get a lot of miles 24 hours a day so we've got those vehicles on an annual rotation and then community service van replacement so that's that's one that and they've done a good job they've been talking money away to for that replacement so um we're able to put you know almost you know 23 000 23 400 000 again 23 400 in reserves towards that purchase um so that's and that's where we want to be in the future it's just you know trying to build up those reserves and then the park side is another similar to that La Fountain Street it's a scoping study that would lead to a capital project potentially so I'll get in a detail on those so paving um this is probably the one you all get or at least I get the most comments on and what are the condition what's the condition of my street once again so this map shows um the condition rating for each street based on um 20 last year's condition index so we do them every two years we go out we'll do these index payment index updates green is good red is not good so red is in really poor condition and then the the sort of hashed green is what we've done the last four years so for 2022 next season we're targeting um we're targeting this area just kind of east of id nine so that's Florida have Bernard Gale Street and Reginald Street um those are all due for paving based on based on their pavement condition index they're all in a pretty close proximity to which is nice for for paving just to keep costs down try not to move the pavement around but we've also kind of outlined over the next five years where we want to be um with paving too so kind of see on the map these are these are our targets for the next five years of where we're going to be doing some resurfacing work however i will say it's it's our target we still have to do a lot of underground utility inspections to make sure we're not paving over you know collapse sewer line or something like that so you know we are we've already started doing some work on the 2023 candidates um which are Hall Street Shepherd Audet and we know we've got some storm water work to do so we're trying to do you know any rehab work we can do you know the season before and then pave the following season so you know worst case scenario what we never want to be doing is paving your road and then next year open it up because there's you know water mean break or utility issue um so you know our just kind of giving an overview our goal is to get our entire street network up to pavement condition index of 72 which is basically means the street is in fair condition it falls in that kind of fair category um we are currently at a 67 but we're making progress i mean we we're just trying to chug along and every year make sure we have a pretty robust paving yeah i am curious about um some of the others fair condition streets you know in particular east spring street um i consider that kind of a high traffic um artery and there are certainly sections of that especially between far low and east allen that um are showing some um degradation uh well i i don't see it included in your pool your four to five year plan here yeah so east spring this section in particular is in really poor shape um we are and they should include on this we are chasing a v-trans they call it a class two grant because east and west spring are conserved class two street so we can receive some there's a competitive grant and we can um go after some funding to to resurface that street and we've tried we tried once two years ago and we're going to be trying again this year for that funding so that is on our to-do list you know it definitely will happen next um within the next five years we're just trying to do it with subsidy from the state we're also trying to actually add a sidewalk on this section of east spring which makes it even a little trickier because you know we want to pave it and we want to you know smooth out the top surface but we don't want to we want to make sure the sidewalks constructed as well so that would be part of that grant application is the sidewalk and in the infrastructure committee we had discussed some funding opportunities from third parties so not just aot but you know third party funders and local insurance companies the hospital potentially I don't know if there's a way to access some of that funds and speed up the speed up the sidewalk development efforts there but yeah I was also going to mention east allen and is that what is east allen part of what what section is aot taking care of is that just near the bridge yeah so all of east allen will be repaved next year so okay you know for clarity I should and and you know I can include mainstream on this as well so we're we're going to see a lot of resurfacing in the next you know two three years but yeah v-trans will be taking care of that yeah I just wasn't clear on which if it was only a portion of east allen or like closer to the closer to the highway or if it was the full segment so thanks for clarifying yeah they're they're going to be repaving all of east allen and actually this side of the circulator and then down across the bridge as well so that'll all get resurfaced okay all right thank you yeah yeah and just to to kind of finish up the paving side you know just for reference you know if you know if a 1.72 million dollar grant fell in her lap that would get us to you know that goal of having a PCI 72 so you know pretty significant amount of money is required to to get that level but you know I think our program that we've been we've been increasing our funding for paving you know we'll get there in the next few years especially with some of this other support with like v-trans projects I mean Hickok Street helped a lot last year kind of bump up our PCI but that's always our goal is try to get into that fair condition category John what would that be like what would an ideal annual funding amount be yeah ideally um you know we've we've penned it out um previously and it was around 220,000 somewhere in that range um but it's it's tricky too because not all streets are the same you know resurfacing we're just hitting the top inch and a half some of the streets that we want to do you know it's it's it's more of an intensive project but ballpark it's in that 225 range annually to keep it you know in that 72 PCI range thanks and Mike yes hi John um I'm glad you just said that more intensive is is that why the lower part of Bellevue Dion Street are slated for 2024 um I don't know if any of you folks have been up or down those roads but they if I was a taxpayer living on that road I'd be calling you guys every single day yeah absolutely there is some stormwater issues on there we're trying to address so before we put in the program we're trying to figure out um you know what's the best approach there but yeah now I hear you um I mean I went down Dion Street the other day and I couldn't believe the I don't know if they're frost hues or if it's just the whipy dudes that have just naturally formed but I'm surprised there hasn't been any serious issues on those roads um I was in fact talking to a taxpayer that lives on lower Bellevue and he says once in a while he'll see a car go by and he actually see sparks coming from the car's rims because that road is in such dis disarray that it's just a matter of time before someone is going to be calling you for some new tires yeah we looked at it with a paving contractor this summer and um I think we have an approach for for that particular section because it is probably one of the worst sections of street right now in the city unfortunately so yeah that's the issue it's like it would be nice if we could just say you know what we're gonna mill and fill it an inch and a half and it's done but that's why we're trying to catch some of these streets before they get too bad and then we've got you know a bunch of these streets that are in that that red quarter section that we have to deal with it it's not just a mill and fill it's it's like reconstruction candidates feel whole rehab correct yeah yeah thank you john yep onto sidewalks um so sidewalks map is very similar green is is good condition red is poor condition however we'll say this map needs some updating it's been a while since we've inventoried sidewalk conditions so the bike headmaster plan that we were talking about earlier Eric Warwald and I I think potentially it's part of the bike headmaster plan we may try to include an inventory update of sidewalk conditions but this is the best info we have on the current sidewalk conditions and also missing locations so for FY 23 what we're proposing is to target uh manso street this missing section of sidewalk here the new development on 12 manso street they actually they ran some sidewalk around the corner so our intention is sort of just tie in and run sidewalk all the way from Lafowling to East Allen so these yellow sort of dash locations those are the priority sidewalks that we've identified as part of the transportation master plan um the other one that was included with manso recently was this this section here on on maple too so that's the one we're we're targeting for this year it's and mainly because it's you know if our survey information comes out and we have the space to put a sidewalk in there without you know asking for permanent easements it should be a relatively easy installation um but along with that too we're also targeting in-house to replace uh some of this sidewalk section up here pending staff we tried to do it last year and unfortunately with COVID and staffing shortages we we just could not get to doing any sidewalk work up there but um that's sort of our plan for this coming year um contract out the manso street work since it's it's brand new installation and then replacing kind up in this area Florida Gale Reginald where it's just you know our our crew could do that work potentially Mike Mike your hand is up yeah I wasn't sure if I could just go or not um I I'm glad to see this on on the slate and it was disappointing that that happened last year John I understand the shortage um but this is one of the main things that our residents are really loud about um some of the sidewalks some of the people are having a really hard time navigating um some of the streets because of agent population or handicap accessibility and I think this is a must do for next year um we we have to find a way to get our sidewalks walkable now is it just the sidewalks or is it curb placement too does that go with the sidewalks or does that go with the road roadway resurfacing yeah it depends on the street so you know you may see some sidewalks or integrals of the curb where they're put it up um connected to it and then there are some that have sort of like green belt spacing so um for example up by four to have and Reginald and Bernard I'm last I looked those were separated but I do remember seeing some curve that some sections of curve that needed to be replaced Manso Street that would be um you know that's a relatively resurfaced road so so we wouldn't be touching the curve there yeah I was talking about the aging either the the curb sides that are either busted up or they're just a hazard for people to be navigating or the lack of um like and I can't remember I remember Roger Street they used to have those little the little curbs and I don't know I can't remember if they still have those little curbs or not um from sixty seven years ago whatever how old they were but this is one of the main things I keep hearing about one is the roadways and second is sidewalks our residents are really they're they're starting to get a little loud about it and they're at the point where they want to see it done and I'm sure you're doing your best that you can with the crew that you have but in my opinion this is a must-do for next year yeah and I do think some of the um you know the ADA transition plan that we'll be working on so one of that one of the tasks that's going to come out of that is looking at all the curb cuts so those those curb cuts with the detectable warning and we have to go through the city and identify if those curb cuts are ADA compliant or not so that means the slope is correct that means the geometries are correct that means they all have some sort of detectable warning so and then we have to say okay well these ones aren't up to 80 standards and here is the schedule when we're going to be replacing them so that's going to drive oh I think a lot of improvements for accessibility and just you know better navigation um for folks to get around the city and correct me if I'm wrong we do have a piece of equipment that will assist our guys on fixing these sidewalks correct we have a piece of equipment that will lift those slabs to yeah I mean are we we it's not that we have I mean we have jackhammers and all you know all that yellow equipment you know the guys yeah use but we do have some pretty talented folks that that can do concrete work that's the big thing is um we've got some skill on staff that that um you know they can finish the concrete and it looks like a professional job you can tell if there's a contractor you know someone else perfect thank you john yep john so you were just talking about the ad-aid transition plan is the it says proposed bikeped master plan is that something separate yeah two things right so the ad-aid transition plan does you know it's an inventory of and they look specifically at you know what's ad-aid compliant what's not the bikeped master plan would be we're proposing to submit that for a UPWP grant and basically that would be sort of a public process to say all right community where where should we potentially add more bike lanes where should we have better wider sidewalks you know and that will um I think that'll feed into our transportation plan and help drive some capital planning as well I I don't it's not clear to me how that's different like our transportation master plan already tells us that from what I can see it it has some general um outlines of like you know hey look maybe you should put some bike lanes in what I think we're looking for more a more detailed analysis to say yeah okay we can put a bike lane here but should be protected should it be a Cheryl only should it be a five foot with a buffer um so we will use that as part of the bike master plan but the the bike master plan is really meant to be like almost a um a more detailed like this is what kind of facility you should put here on this street versus you know the concept of like hey this would be a good place for you know more uh a better bike route so I'm sure we'll get more information about this later would you get closer to it but like I don't know it has me thinking about the the draft parking study that we've seen that doesn't exactly come to like this thing needs to be able to tell not just ask residents what they want to see but also provide guidelines of what is actually feasible and viable to build and viable within the resources that the city has um I I think that's something that's been missing from some of previous planning work that we've done in community outreach of sort of saying what do you want to see without giving folks guardrails of what's actually possible yeah yeah no I hear you I I totally agree I mean we we sort of went through that on the east island scoping study where we push the the consultant be like hey look there's no way we're going to be putting you know 20 million dollars into this this corridor in the next you know five ten years what are the the short term low cost things that we can do immediately um and improve it it may not be the final result you know it's going to happen in 20 years but you know what what's the what's the best approach that we can do with the budget we have and and that was I think really successful because we pushed that to be trans and said do this when you do the resurfacing project and they're like great this is what exactly we wanted we want that same thing for a bike pedplan you like hey look this is our crew size you know we're not going to you know contract out someone to do um a green bike lane on La Fountain street for five grand every year like what are some reasonable like what what are the reasonable facilities that we can install with with the crew we have and not have a budget impact I think that in my mind that's that's what we're really looking for but yeah no I I completely hear you that's helpful context thanks on so this is um this is the scoping study I was uh where I was talking about earlier so La Fountain and Dionne streets so what's really triggering this is La Fountain street has a water main that's on our priority list for replacement um it's undersized it's 100 plus years old and we know within the next I don't know 10 years we're going to have to replace that and hopefully it's with a lot of federal dollars that come our way so prior to doing that work we would like to um perform sort of a public outreach to say okay if you know we're digging up we're uh you know water main that's six seven foot deep we're going to be probably reconstructing the street at that point um when we put the street back together public community what do you want it to look like do you want on street parking do you want bike lanes do you want wider sidewalks you know do you want tree belts so really this is um this is just setting us up so that if there is funding that comes our way to do a water main project and then you know hopefully the corresponding transportation piece of that we have the the public feedback to know what the corridor is going to look like in the future um this actually came up with Hickok Street because we we pushed that project pretty quickly because we had a a critical water main issue there we're having multiple breaks every year and it was it was really becoming an issue and unfortunately we didn't have time to do the public outreach to say hey do you want to eliminate um public park you want to eliminate on-street parking and create a wider tree belts or you know um wider sidewalks so for any street that we we know we're going to have to do some reconstruction on in the next 10 years or so we we'd like to do that for the outreach now so that's the intent of this and it's the scoping study would be um a grant um new pwp project so our cost would be the you know 20% so in that time to probably 10 to 15 thousand dollar range to do this work um i i have similar reactions to this as i i do this bike ped grant application like our transportation master plan already solicited input from the community they already told us that they want some biking infrastructure there i don't i don't know i don't 100% get behind doing all this outreach to see what kind of changes people want when we can just replace what's there we can use the information we already have and we're like setting ourselves up to be doing excessive work on certain streets when other streets aren't even up to par yet um to potentially be doing moving curb lines and things that are really financially and environmentally impactful when again we're not meeting the needs of every street like i feel like the folks i have talked to on hickok street are very pleased with the results of that having their street and their sidewalks redone is sufficient for them um i i just feel like it's sort of unnecessary extra that we're doing for not the most return on our investment brand i see your hand i i mean i think i have some correlated concerns about like the parking study and you know asking and and with changes with the housing ordinance changing with ordinances as it relates to increasing housing by reducing parking on-site parking it's going to put potential more pressure to on-street parking and so i i just want to make sure all the studies align and are paying basically are coordinated with what they're directing the city to do and as the best path forward um i worry about having disjointed studies that that don't really talk to one another um so i and then and as a result um some important priorities getting ignored or neglected entirely because of uh just the loud the squeaky squeaky wheel or the loudest voice basically getting priority rather than having um integration between the studies to say what what actually the needs are as it relates to our master plan so it's i have similar some similar um concerns as the mayor yeah and brin i think that's a really good point because the street does not belong to the residents that live on it it's a facility that's for the use of everyone in winewski and so i i i know there are people that would have all parking removed from their street or all private parking or you know have requested dead ends even because they don't want to deal with traffic but if we are to your point if we're you know making changes to parking and then we're letting folks on one street say we don't want to abide by that we're looking for something else that is problematic yeah i mean i would just say so when you know this came up with municipal infrastructure because they were the ones that sort of gave me a plaque about street i said you know what well you know similar to esauan you know we should look at doing sort of public outreach for any potential street reconstruction we could do that internally and say like i have an idea of what should happen on the found street i think all on street parking should be removed from the ket um street east because it's it's not used except for maybe one vehicle um but then the question is you widen the sidewalks you add a street wider tree belt do you add a bike lane and internally we can make those decisions because the on street parking isn't utilized and there's eight foot of pavement that we're paying for to resurface every year that really should be reduced to what's needed or this the intent is this to do is some kind of public outreach but i you know we we would be happy to do that internally and you know i think we are gonna prep for any future water main funding that comes down the line because this is um next on our sort of priority list for water main work but um i mean that that's sort of the rationale for why we were we were looking at that i think any outreach like additional community outreach about what you want to see needs to already have the parameters of here's what's already in our master transportation plan here's what's already but you know supposedly we're going to have some parking best practices in the coming months like that stuff needs to already be considered before we start giving folks options true unfortunately that's that's kind of it nothing speaks to that right now in any of our plans i think that's that's the issue i have is like our parking our parking study will say you know this first these first two blocks you should keep on street park which makes sense but then for these collector streets that don't have they don't utilize on street parking how do you reshape the road and our transportation master plan is detailed enough to say like four collector streets they should all look like this so that that's sort of what we were looking at here but again we can we can do this internally without spending spending match money that that's totally possible well and then if i think it sounds to me like that would be the outcome of the bike ped grant potentially to kind of direct where bike and pedestrian infrastructure how that should look am i missing yeah that that's true that's true we could ask them to say like hey look at this corridor in more detail i mean they're not gonna you know they're not going to look at trees and they're not going to look at you know should we bump in turbines but i think they could get us to say they could get us a point where to say you need this kind of protected bike facility and that may drive what the corridor looks like too so yeah i think you're right maybe between the bike pad plan um we could we could get to what the corridor should look like i i think there's something there to take a more like holistic approach instead of street by street is my concern and sounds like it's concern as well jim i think my one concern with that is that as i understand the bike pad plan and most of these other plans are saying you know with the street configuration as it is what are you going to do right and most of the time those faster plans are not going to say you should rip up the street and rebuild it this way but when we have water main replacements we do look up the street and rebuild it and i think that's is a different scope of what you can do and relative costs right we don't we're not going to put up a protected you know parking bike like put the bike inside the parking with dividers on the street because they're involved in significant rebuild but if we're going to rebuild the street then we might do that and i guess i'm worried that something like a bike pad master plan can't include the is it sensitive to when you're actually going to be rebuilding the street as opposed to just modifying in place what you already have and then that's why that's my sense of why this scoping study would make sense is that we actually are going to get down to dirt and rebuild an entire section all the months and the bike pad master plan would be looking at streets more to say like what can you add on top of what's there what is the change you have to do that doesn't involve rebuilding the whole thing right like we aren't going to take that approach for every street so if the bike pad master plan can be done well i'll stand like this is a street that will eventually be rebuilt and maybe you know this john like this is going to be these are the streets that are going to be rebuilt in the next 15 years so we can take a more creative license on what happens in these streets and we're not going to do any striking on these streets because we know we're going to rebuild them entirely and add defective lanes in the next 10 years like if we can get to that level with the bike pad master plan and yes this seems like it'll be redundant if we can't then this seems like if we're spending 10 20 local match that's the one else really do the work for us on the engagement piece and get us something that's very dialed in or we spend that 20 match on internal staff time taking a good stab at that and potentially being right potentially being wrong or potentially missing an opportunity that we then find out through our bike pad master plan we have to do differently like that's that's my concern with like saying that these detailed streets specific studies aren't worth it um i guess i so i guess the question i'm getting around to is john does the bike pad master planning process that you envision can it go to that level of detail to say like these are the quarters we're going to be rebuilding and so let's take a more creative license on these or is it is that good is that level of detail possible in the planning process you envision yeah i think so i mean we know which streets are going to need reconstruction the next say 20 years because it's going to be driven by the water main replacements so and we know we know which water means are sort of priorities so we could tell a consultant that's looking at this say hey look like this is going to be sort of a blank slate ish in the next 10 20 years so you know if if if we're proposing to reconstruct that what's what is the best facility they're assuming it's going to get reconstructed so i think that's feasible um i just also to be clear like i am specifically saying we don't need to do the level of what we have done for main street and east allen street on every road that we're going to rebuild in when you ski and and there there's got to be some lower threshold there and that's yeah and we would never yeah we would never propose that either so the streets that we would only consider for this level or review would be collector streets and gateway streets so collectors would be lefoundry spring north streets um and just that section of dion and weaver those are those are kind of our main collection streets that that we would be looking at any local streets we would never go to the extent of looking at you know scoping study level hey how should we reconfigure a street because it they ultimately don't have a connection tie into other streets that's why you know lefoundry spring they they tie into our main arteries so that's why they're so important to look at you know what kind of you know how should we break out these modes but yeah please don't get the impression we'd want to look at this for like every local street in the city thank you so and finally for uh capital planning um west allen park improvements so chatting with ray and his team this is the this is showing the concepts from the 2020 parks and open space master plan so the idea here is to use some parks planning dedicated reserve funds to develop these concept plans into actual sort of construction level documents to you know get ready for any potential funding opportunities that come up whether it be federal funding or you know this type of work would be arpa eligible if it was selected so that's the the project here so i'm going to raise a concern about this one as well um looking at the parks and open space plan there's like four items called for right one is to repave and light the basketball court and add another court that's like the biggest thing installing a pavilion structure with lights and tables at the rear of the osis at the o'brien community center expand the community gardens at the o'brien community center and then define the park's entry with a formal threshold or threshold signage gardens games and amenities two of those items are actually at the o'brien community center which i don't it doesn't seem to me like it's a good time to be designing for changes there would we're still working out what partners are going to be using that facility and there's construction taking place and the other two items like this outreach that we recently did this plan is already saying add another basketball court and fix the court that's there so if we're going to spend $25,000 why don't we just implement that why is there more design and and public outreach to like advance the design when we've already heard from the public what they want to see there rave can you answer that i was fine in the button there um yeah so i think to be clear christine i think the pieces at the osc obviously in light of you know some of the authority there would likely not be included in any sort of progression of document or planning document to construction level um i think the other pieces you know i would certainly look at and and his professional expertise because i am not an engineer but i think that some of these pieces are going to require a little bit more engineering work beyond the conceptual drugs that we've got just to make sure that we've got you know drainage figured out and design elements figured out for construction so again i think there's even if we just keep a pretty simple approach here i think there is still some construction level planning that needs to happen um you know the $25,000 number play is a bit of a bug figure i mean it could come in below that um and and obviously if it would that'd be great um but i think we wanted to be doing ourselves a flexibility there through the existing park reserve to say let's get the design dialed and make sure that we've got a good plan before we start digging in the ground and and um so i think that was the thinking here and you know again with with west allen being a pretty high priority park in the plan we wanted to focus on on that kind of on the front end i it makes sense to me that there's additional like design and engineering but this this feels like we're adding another layer of outreach and design to expand on what's already been recommended um you know we when we have already asked folks what they want to see there i don't i don't why do we go and ask again like let's just do what we were told we should do and i guess you know again looking at john a little bit but i think again getting from concept to construction there may be some adjustments that need to be made to the plan and nuance to that that where we would want to seek some um input from the community you know again i'm making this up but maybe there's an issue with green in the spot where the playground was supposed to be located and we would want to work at different options for playground i don't think we're talking you know on the same scope and scale of engagement that we were the first time around i think we're talking about much more specific you know do you want this playground structure or this playground structure or you know this type of feature or this type of feature i think it's less it's less of that big broad conceptual and more of like here's some discrete choices we want we want to make sure that what we're doing here is meeting the communities and needs an interest so i think when we're talking about community engagement and i think in my mind at least that's kind of what we're talking about is that much more discrete kind of final detail piece and wanting to make sure we're getting input there i like i don't see playground equipment even listed in the priorities for that park when i'm looking at the open space plan um brand i see your hand is raised um i i'm curious was that was that same level of detailed minutiae of input requested for the Myers pool like do you want a slide or not yep yeah not yeah so we had a pretty big event i think we had mike help me remember about 300 plus people come out and we did sort of a dot affinity process where we had you know again very much more discrete options of it's been a while but you know do you want a slide do you want a competition pool do you want a water basketball court do you want a water rock climbing wall so we did kind of go through that more detailed process with the community and that feedback certainly helped inform the the construction level documents and plan for the pool and how much of that work is is uh planet like the the logistics to pull that um event and feedback together how much of that is completed by our staff versus uh contracted out yeah it was so when we did it for the pool it was certainly a mix you know they came in with the pre-printed board and kind of again helped us to figure out like what was feasible in terms of the face and the location and the budget um you know obviously there are some things that were kind of way beyond the scope of what we were going to do at that pool that we wouldn't have included as feed crop but i think some of the like winnowing down to the options was definitely work that the engineering group helped us do and then in terms of running the actual event um it was definitely a team effort in in terms of our effort to get people there get the word out um be on site to answer questions but then the engineers were also there to kind of help with any of the more technical construction type questions that came up um it was definitely a team effort uh wasn't but not i mean it's not you know it wasn't a huge heavy lift for that portion of it but i think it was really helpful and informative to get um the good product at the end it definitely was it was helpful to see what direction the residents wanted the pool committee to formulate a plan for west west and samson and um at that event when we had examples of what we got feedback from the community through a survey i believe right and then we had examples so when people came to the event they saw pictures of what they had envisioned and each person had a sticker of what they wanted to see and then we counted up the the easels the plans and whatever had the most stickers on them is what we brought to west and samson and keep in mind when you when you throw a barbecue when you have food involved you you end up it's true though you have you end up having a lot more people show up for an event um when something like that happens and if you want to get public input on a system for a park and you want that kind of range again that's what it works it's and that's what the facility happened from the Myers pool i so you know getting a feel for that is just helps informs like what kind of um phases to the project timelines for the project um would be needed to before we finally see the project completed essentially like are we looking at 24 are we looking at 25 like how far out are we are we estimating project completion to be so it it it just helps with um getting a sense for you know we have these concepts and ideas and and tons of plans but how how far out are we to realizing them those plans are are they within the next three to five years are they further further out yeah it's a great question and and you know kind of jump in if i'm off track here but you know i think the hope is that with the federal funding that's out there right now and and available that the shorter time frame is is certainly the hope and i think that's why we wanted to get a planning process prioritized to be ready to then pivot to implementation you know as those federal funds continue to be available but i think that's going to be a finite window of time as well so and do you think that's that's the hope is that we can move you know move this up the list in terms of being ready to then implement construction with federal dollars that right there and the construction document plans would give us an idea of cost for the overall construction of a project which we could then look at including in a future capital plan if we don't have alternative funding sources or there's match requirements for those grants so if this is going to be a larger scope project that's going to need to have a lot of drainage work and cost much more money than we're anticipating it might be something that ends up a little further out than something that just needs installation of a basketball court on the surface okay thanks i i guess i'm hearing all this and what i hear is we've got a picture and we don't have something that's shovel ready that we can put out to bed and so we can't go after funds and if we were to try and go after funds the first thing we'd have to do is get design documents or construction level design documents and so this is taking that step committing us to taking that step so we can then go after funds to me that makes sense i like that there's public outreach included in this my sense is that it's not the bulk of your expenditure that you're planning like is it 10 percent yeah i mean do you have like a sense of like how much time and effort you be devoting public engagement versus developing those construction documents i don't have that answer off the top of my head truthfully i mean i think obviously with the pool the engagement part of that budget was was a pretty small percentage um relative to the the construction kind of design engineering but that you know a basketball court and a pool facility are very different beasts so i do think that it's not going to be the lion share of the contract or the budget but um you know i i think the actual construction documents will probably be a lot less complex than the pool effort to put together so as a percentage it may be higher but it's not going to be a huge amount of money yeah and i think i mean looking at the features that you want to include and the level of detail that's available in the master plan i mean there is going to need to be some discussion about what is the whole side slide mean um and so i think there's i think it is worth to me this makes sense in terms of getting us ready to capture funds that are going to be available um so i i think that it's okay to have public engagement if the feeling is that we we know what the picture should look like and we just need to pick the materials to match the picture i think it's worth checking that with people who live in this community and live and live in the park and we'll be using it most but um i agree it doesn't need to be a full another pool uh design necessarily i think it could be something lighter touch but it's important i think to call that out as part of the way that we're spending taxpayer money is also checking in that we're going to build what they want and we might have a good bit we have a good broad picture of that but once you get the construction level documents it's going to things are going to change and we want to be able to check back in Mike yeah i mean you know a suggestion could be you get the m ic committee involved and i mean back when we did the pool the pool committee did a lot of a lot of heavy lifting by getting the volunteering and the people out the surveying so our committee did a bunch of work to get some of the planning for rey and for his team to give to weston weston and samson so my i would make a suggestion to get the i don't know if the municipal infrastructure committee is if that's their preview or not but i would get another volunteered board to help assist on perhaps doing the same kind of outreach for that community and see what those the people that live in that area would like to see what their park will look like and give them some examples to vote on and then go with that vision and make your plan i i think that you know if you you have to get to the people that would want to see this every single day and it would be the residents that live around that surrounding area that are going to use that park jim so but haven't we already done that i mean that's what the parks open space master plan was my mind was like a iterative visioning of what this park could be and what the priorities that we had for it if you look through the community feedback we've already got documented on this property i think i i guess i feel like we're talking about something a little bit more specific here like talking about what color things might be and what material it's made up and and and then the underlying like actual site constraints that you know make it not as simple as you thought it would be but i mean i guess i don't know that we need to go into a whole another i feel like we already kind of up to to the mayor's point you've already did the kind of big picture what should this look like and now we need to get to you know what do we did put out to bed there still could be public need public input points along that way just mean out the still level of what's already been done like we've kind of already done the big picture now we just need to do the menu chef right the it's we it's not recreating a pool committee it's moving towards actual engineering and construction documents design maybe i've misread this in the first place but i i don't know brand i see your hand yeah i was just going to say they at this point we're down to committee members and we haven't been meeting regularly so i i would hesitate to bring um a significant uh community survey community outreach component to that commission at this time um i i think what they've traditionally been to um utilized for is responding to plans and providing input on plans um it doesn't mean that they can't be utilized for some of the outreach efforts uh i just say at this point in time i i think it would be um too much to commit to commit that group to it at this time um but yeah an agreement with uh with the mayor on um having having some engagement on the details but nothing um that will be as robust as the pool um i think the ongoing needs and and um operational expenses for the park will be hopefully much lower than the pool so i think the degree of engagement we certainly wanted to be utilized and to meet the community needs but in terms of gaining enough revenue to pay for itself like that's not going to be at play with a park more questions about this one staff did we just confuse you or do you i'm confused i'm totally totally misunderstood what we're just talking about it it's out of this whole conversation you just said you wanted to get some detailed on what they want and then you said they already had the detail they've already had the detail then we put it out i mean right i think what we have uh come to agreement understanding on is that this there's a potential need for reaction to design in the design process but this isn't a whole new scoping like what do you want to see here situation all right yeah yeah i mean and that's pretty typical with even like main street for example right so we're still going we're getting into the final design phases but we still check in with the infrastructure commission on some elements of the design so hey do you guys like this paver feel like this light pole you know we're not asked we're not looking to reopen the whole design it's just those specific elements that we need feedback on or some alternatives so i think this is a good concept picture that's in the open space master plan but until we have some some actual design documents and a cost estimate it's hard to do anything with that you know once we have some like design documents and a cost estimate we can start chasing grants and we do that with stormwater work all the time like you know we'll we'll get a you know proposed attention pond that we have to design we have to get engineering details and a cost estimate and then when grants pop up we start chasing so until you have sort of those basic design documents and cost estimates it's hard to go after money or chase things the concept plan is nice but it's this is for the public this is what you use for the public to get them interested it doesn't it doesn't help us get grants also with that this is sort of the end of the capital plan stuff so there's any other questions on general fund capital before i go to water sewer funds not seeing any hands i should have mentioned this earlier though that members of the public can you could chat or raise your hand at any point if you have a question and interrupt us just like as counselors do all right still no hands john okay all right i will move over to water resources so water funds so just some general highlights level funded services no capital costs for FY 23 proposed and we are looking to continue continue that stepped rate increase which i'll i'll go through a couple slides to talk about that so for FY 23 we're proposing a four and a half percent rate increase from last year this would put us at a estimated sell revenue sell revenue of 962 962 thousand approximately um we are getting close to a balanced budget on this water fund so the the issue that we've had with both water and sewer fund actually is the water and sewer fund have both been pulling from the reserve fund to balance the budget so you know since FY 19 FY 20 that's what we've incrementally been increasing the rates to get these budgets to to balance out so water funds getting close with the four and a half percent rate increase we're still going to have to likely pull 700 7700 dollars from from our water reserve fund to balance the budget good news is on the waterfront side where our reserve funds in in pretty good shape so we have you can see at the bottom a total reserve of 6706 thousand and of that the unrestricted reserve that that's funds that we can do whatever we want with water fund wise wise so if we have a water main break or and you and you blow our operational budget we can pull from that to do stuff with it so our unrestricted reserve balances around 600 thousand dollars so if we continue this same sort of rate increase the four and a half percent next year will be balanced and then we can start pushing money into the capital plan start saving for some of these water main replacement projects that that needs to occur so what does a four and a half percent rate increase mean to a typical family household it's about 16 17 bucks a year for the year that's the the additional cost so and that's based on you know a 2.4 person home based on shending county yeah Mike quick question john this rate increase is this comparable to surrounding communities the I don't know what other community rate increases are but our actual rate is comparable to other communities that purchased water from Champlain water district so Champlain water district or supplier they post what other communities rates are and we're right around the middle of the pack for other communities thank you brinn so you say that typical family household based on shending county but what is what would that be for Winooski demographics I mean what are we actually seeing the average household in Winooski at 2.4 for home it is incredibly hard to average what the average uses for a home Angel and I've looked at that a few times and you know it's you know I know my household uses you know cubic foot annually but that could be totally different from another household's use so it's it's really hard to say but you know going by typical engineering practices and what for uses and what Champlain water district sees this is the same metric they use for an average household the 8800 cubic feet annually that's what they use so I mean I would say for me it's in my family it's that's roughly about what we use the census data from 2015 to 2019 shows Winooski's average household size at 2.2 okay obviously we have variation there but that is our average and then um is this rate increased to cover operational costs solely I'm just curious like what if households start putting in low flow faucets or you know toilets or whatever how how might that impact the rate coming the rate increase and coming off the reserves yeah I'll go next slide so on the bright side so 50 percent of our cost is buying water from CWD so that's where the bulk that's where the bulk of our our budget is so we spend for her 84,000 on just buying treated water so if there's low flow fixtures coming in it's just it's less water we have to buy from CWD so it can be read balances out but yeah that sorry I'm just gonna say historically a couple of years ago on council we decided to step up these rates for like five years to meet um they hadn't been raised in seven years and the reserves were depleted so the idea was to do some increases for a couple of years and then get to a steady state where we have enough for operating and reserves and are we is 2024 when we're expecting to hit that state john yeah so next year we would be balanced based on this if we go into a four and a half percent rate increase next year as well and actually we would be pushing a little bit of some funds to the capital reserve for the for that additional increase yeah and and kind of going off with the mayor said yeah yeah so this is why we're sort of catching up so we had a um you know a term between 2012 2018 where there was no rate increase you know although expenses obviously do increase and you know most of our water means in the city are 100 plus year old water means so the majority except for the ones that we've replaced in the last few years or so so our goal has been to one get get the water fund budget balanced um which you know could happen next year with another rate increase and then start trying to um you know start putting away some funds for capital and future water mean replacements so yeah and you can even see like we did have some missing data from like 2009-ish but you know that 2008 to 2018 like pretty flat rates and they were pulling from reserve funds to to balance the budget in some cases so not a good way to budget um and actually it becomes a real issue when we're going to our finance partners and we're showing that we're pulling from reserves to balance our budget um you know they've called that out for example on the Hickok Street project the bond bank called that out is sort of flagging that to say guys you need to start increasing your rates to to match your operational capital costs so going there so on the capital side um as mentioned no new fy-23 capital expenses um existing we have six hundred sixty seven thousand hundred sixteen dollars in capital uh debt uh this year for fy-23 and that's listed uh in those bullets there water tower west canal reconstruction and the Hickok Street reconstruction yes mayor i just want to make sure um there isn't an expectation that once we get to level funding that then rates would not increase so i just want to make sure john that wasn't what you meant right well wouldn't they potentially increase by like inflation but at a much smaller rate than what we've been doing that's possible but you have a lot of catch up to do and um as you saw most of our most of our expenses other than buying water are from personnel then you need to realize that the folks that were buying the water from most of their expenses our personnel and those costs are likely going to increase i mean there will be technologies that that uh could lower you know would have an offsetting influence on the prices but there will likely never be a steady state of no increase right right but and it would be good to to project what the level of increases would be in the long term um there'd be a lot of uncertainty in that projection but it would it would be good to do thank you yep and then you can also see we did we are showing the proposed capital debt that's um you know with if Main Street project moves forward um that would occur probably around fy 25 and that's in about a 53,000 54,000 a year cost for debt for Main Street based on the USDA loan um financing and all the grants that they put into it so just showing that and in the budget book does show like you know all of the similar general fund all the maturity periods and a detailed breakdown of each of those debt service costs so that's the end of the water funds please anyone have any questions that's saying any okay so on to sewer fund um similar uh similar to water funds so you know level funded services no use services added um sewer fund does include our wastewater treatment plant which is shown here in the aerial our sanitary sewer and storm sewer distribution network um fy 23 we're actually so we're we we passed that threshold and we're starting to put money into the capital reserve so we've balanced the budget finally in fy 23 um book as um same manager mentioned you know there could go likely be stepped increases and i mean ultimately the goal is to get to that just sort of inflation rate adjustment at some point you know get to that two percent where you know we we have everything covered we have a helping capital plan yet we can do what we need to um so similar rate increase four and a half percent um that gets us a proposed revenue of uh 1.2 million um and we are starting to put uh some funds into the capital um so around 23 000 revenue and expenses in capital costs so the the difference with the sewer fund and water fund though is um the main difference is the reserve fund so we do have a lot of restrictions on our capital reserve fund here so even though we have a you know 576 thousand dollar reserve fund we can only touch about 34 000 of that if um you know something catastrophic so that's really low and we're trying to get that up that restricted reserve fund is only can only be used for expansion aid projects so things that increase the the capacity to the treatment plant or our distribution network and similar to the water fund so the four and a half percent increase on the sewer side that would be that would equate to about a 22 dollar a year increase for a typical family so um total about 38 dollars annual um with the water fund and sort of similar overview on the sewer fund side um the main cost generator here is salary and benefits we have folks offering treatment plan folks running the uh maintaining distribution lines for FY 23 there's there's a couple operational um contract items that we're we have to do this year um we have to do a 20-year treatment plan evaluation that's including FY 23 budget um that is a regulatory requirement due to our new treatment plant discharge permit so that is included this year um you can kind of see the breakdown of what our treatment plant sanitary sewer cost is versus storm water it's about a 70-30 split which it makes sense treatment plant is obviously a much more costly intensive system versus our storm water system capital side um we've got 194,000 of existing debt that we're paying for in FY 23 um those projects and assets are below for closed capital we don't have anything um anything new we we're showing a cured in place lining or slip lining of sewer lines but we use that expansion and aid um money that we get from development any new development that comes to town that's adding bedrooms they have to pay a fee so we basically use those funds to slip line sewers um and that gets us more capacity and more useful life in those pipes so um until we build up the the capital fund a little more it's um you know it's a little difficult to to do much and we've we have done a lot of work in the treatment plant last couple years so overall the treatment plants in in relatively good shape and there's no big capital projects on the horizon for that facility um I will pause here if there's any sewer flooding questions. Mike. Johnny your estimate when are we going to have to expand that treatment plant due to new new building and all the proposed buildings that are going up now? Yeah we we've done some projections on the new buildings um we don't see any any horizon where we're going to have to expand the plant we're running like 40 capacity right now so we've got a lot of room at the plant the only thing that could trigger something but we have some bumpers for that is if you know if it's like a brewery or some industrial user but I think in even in that case we would make them pretreat so bring it down bring that that waste down to domestic strength their plant could hold but I don't even with the gateways built out we don't see any any future need to expand the plant right now. Thank you John. Yeah is there any consideration about um intensity of rain events? Yeah luckily we are in a much better position than some of the municipalities around us we have separate sewers so we don't have overflow issues or anything like that you may hear of in other municipalities um so on the sanitary side the the slip lining the Jordan Place Lying really helps with any infiltration into our sanitary pipe network um on the separate stormwater system um we have been um and you can kind of see in the picture here we've been pursuing grants for some of these BMPs as funding as funding comes up so this is one up at Pine Grove Terrace that that helps with those intense rainfall events so yeah as you know as grants come up we will keep installing these BMPs and trying to attenuate any you know high rainfall events and we're also you know working with all the gateway developments to implement stormwater best management practices okay we are you're coming to the end folks um parking funds is pretty short and sweet this year so parking fund includes on streets and Cascade garage funds um due to COVID we are really there's no capital expenses that are going to be coming on the on street funds um that as you know that budget was below projections and it's um so we we don't have the capital doing there Cascade garage um we are the only project we're pursuing for that is our annual structural preventive maintenance so it's around 130 grand we are going to be looking to use our existing dedicated reserves um for that work versus um any new FY 23 money so not much in the parking fund capital this year and then just sort of wrap things up um emerging issues I've chatted about most of these already but you know just making sure we have a robust street crew to get the things done we need to um filling some of those vacancies working with v-trans next year to communicate the projects that they have moving forward um making sure that folks know where detours are when they'll be impacted uh mainstream projects as mentioned even though it's moving along pretty well there's some outside courses that you know may impact that project with inflation and contractor availability so we're tracking that pretty closely and then on the positive side the um infrastructure investment jobs act you know what uh funding opportunities may come from that so we're we're going to be keeping eye on that pretty closely too so that's it for um my presentation but thank you all for um you know thoughtful questions Angela for letting me talk to her all the time and meeting on her and then you know to our DPW team for for everything that they do thank you for this detailed presentation I know we've already run through a number of questions but are there any final questions council has are there any questions for members of the public well we can move on from item D uh this brings us to the end of our regular items on tonight's agenda we have one executive session warrant uh pursuant to Vermont state statute section 3131e pending or probable civil litigation or prosecution to which the public body is or maybe a party um I am looking for a motion to find that we should have this discussion in executive session per state statute almost second motion by Mike second by Jim all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries can I have a motion to move into executive session inviting interim manager Wendy Harrison um HR director Phoebe Townsend and public works director John Rousher so I'll move second motion by Mike second by Hal all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries so we're going to move to another zoom line to have this discussion we won't discuss anything except for the topic that was warned we'll come back to this line solely to adjourn at the end of the meeting thank you Wendy this is the end of tonight's agenda I'm seeking a motion to adjourn so moved second motion by Hal second by Jim all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi motion carries good night everyone