 It is 6 p.m. on Monday, April 17th. I'm gonna call to order first the meeting of the Cannabis Control Commission. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Thomas Renner. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. So we have a Tier 2 manufacturing license on here is, oh, there's Eric. Yes, good evening, thank you very much. I'm here to meet with you as the Cannabis Control Commission to consider approval of a Tier 2 manufacturing license for a local business. This, as it was included with your agenda, I provided you with our procedure, our kind of process document that you all reviewed and approved back in October. So earlier this month, we received word from the Cannabis Control Board that a local business had applied for and was pending approval of a Tier 2 manufacturing license. This would be in conjunction with a home occupation, so there would be no outward vision representation of. There's limited information that we're actually able to provide given the fact that it's some of it is proprietary information. There's issues with security and statutory components with that, but the applicant was intending to be here tonight, although I'm not seeing them in the Zoom list, so unless they're in the room. Recording in progress. But I have had conversations with the applicant to make sure that they are meeting all of our existing land use regulations. They do have an open building permit right now just to finish up some of the work that they were doing in relation to the manufacturing, so in the memo I included with the agenda, the only item I noted was just closing out that permit for issuance of the license or for consideration of issuance of the license. All right, thank you, Mayor. Any other questions from Council? I was wondering, so they have the permits for the construction that they're doing. On those permits, Eric, do those indicate the type of business that they are creating? It does not, Nessa, it doesn't have to do that. No, it's just, it's basically just work associated with the business. Any other questions? Is this business gonna have public advertising in any way? There would not be, no, there's, because it's a home occupation, they could have once very small sign, but it would have to be, we have very specific regulations on signage for home occupation, so they wouldn't be allowed to have one employee potentially. They wouldn't have any outward advertising on the business itself other than, as I mentioned, one very small wall sign. I think it's like a 12 inch by 12 inch sign, that's about the size of it. They're not allowed to sell directly to the public at all either, so they would have to sell to somebody else that is engaged in cannabis sales. Is there any way that they would have a different LLC out of the same location to sell? Not to manufacture cannabis. So it's possible they could have a, well, I guess they could have a second business there, but they would still need to meet the home occupation standards that are outlined in our regulations. So I believe it's 30% of the square footage of the structure can be utilized for the home occupation. So as long as they didn't exceed that, presumably, I guess they could have an additional business in the establishment, but they're not allowed to see clients on site or limited, very limited interaction with the public on site. It's really intended to blend in with the neighborhood and not be a typical brick and mortar type business that you might see anywhere else. Is there any risk for offsite odors? I'm sorry? Is there any risk for offsite odors? Not that I'm aware of or not that I can think of offhand. Do our regulations are due to the parameters which these entities are related, regulated, have any authority over any offsite odors? Well, so we could still regulate that under our performance standards as we have with other businesses or any other use technically. So if there are odors that are becoming an issue, we would address it just like we would any other land use in the city. And we could take enforcement action in that direction. Okay, thank you. Any questions from members of the public on this item? Tier two manufacturing license. If you're on Zoom, you can use the raise hand feature. If you're in person, you can raise your hand. Okay. I'm not hearing any concerns. Would someone like to make a motion to approve this license? So moves. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Oh, sorry. Okay. Sorry about that. All right, thank you, Eric. That is the end of the cannabis control commission agenda to have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Motion by Bryn, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. It is six o' six p.m. I will call to order the liquor control board meeting. Oh, were you here for the Sedwin suites? If you want to come, like make an introduction or something, I would welcome that. We did just approve your license. Do we need to hear it or something? And we don't have to, but if you want to share anything, you can. We'll introduce ourselves. At least came out my smile. I'm Jordan Sedwin. This is my wife Esperanza Malvair. We're part owners together. Equal owners of the gummy company. That's it. I wasn't sure what kind of questions you were going to ask us. And I talked to Eric Warwald. I don't know if he's here or not, but I'll hear something. He let us know that it would be good to introduce ourselves and just kind of put a face to the name and all that. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you coming in to do that for us. We did just have a few questions. They were permanently regulatory, which Eric was able to answer. Oh, okay. But if you have any questions for us, we're here, we're happy to answer them. I have a question. Will you be producing concentrates to put in your gummies yourself? Or will you be producing concentrate and making gummies? Yeah, we'll be purchasing concentrate because of the nature of us doing outside of our home. We just don't really have the facilities for anything more than just the kitchen space. Sure. Also, I'm a big believer in the, keep it simple, stupid process. I don't want to overwhelm either of us with more things that we need to do. And given some of the practices that our distributors is gonna be using, it's really clean. They have a really good system for developing the rosin and the distillate. So I think it's better to leave it to the professionals who already know what they're doing rather than trying to overload ourselves with more. So we'll be purchasing it directly from a distributor. Northern Craft Cannabis is the one that we're working with mostly. And they produce it. They're gonna sell it to us wholesale. And then we're basically gonna create gummies and sell most of those right back to Northern Craft and then they're gonna distribute for us. Thank you. Well, thanks for sharing that detail and for coming in. Yeah, sure. Sorry, we were a little late. It happens, no worries. Thank you very much for the approval. You're welcome. Have a good evening. Yeah, you too. Have good luck with your business. Okay, Jenny. We have a number of licenses. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I've said that before that we have a new portal. We have a new, we have a couple new processes. So these are all, these are ones that I've reached out to because we haven't received the license. So that's why you have some pending. What do you mean by pending? Pending because they haven't satisfied all the requirements yet. Okay. Either their sidewalk wasn't approved. They're waiting an inspection. There's quite a few. Like all the second class need an inspection. A follow-up inspection. They've been inspected once by code enforcement, but they all need a follow-up inspection. Okay. Jenny may or can't get in there. If it's not, I'll be, we're asking for conditional approval. Yeah, okay. All of these I did not put in, but they're all, all the restaurants are approved as restaurant. They've all submitted payment and applications for restaurants. I'll bring another agenda with the other ones that do not sell liquor. So just asking for approval of these liquor licenses. The period ends, April 30th. That's why I just wanted to put them on the agenda for this evening so we can get the ball rolling. Also, just an update for the outside consumption. I just heard from Fusion and they don't, they're not gonna request a sidewalk permit. And that's not the last one on the back page. And just to bring this up, this could be conditional. I can bring it on May 2nd, but four quarters at their two locations at 70 Main Street and 150 West Canal have requested entertainment applications for both a year around. And that'll come at future meeting you just said. It will. Okay. We got it rather late. So if you have any concerns, it will be helpful. I know you're just hearing about it. But if you have some concerns, you could let us know about it now. Okay, so for any attending members of the public, these are liquor license renewals, tobacco endorsements, outside consumption, sidewalk use permits, including the last stop, the VFW, the archives, regular veterans association, four quarters, Mandarin, Fusion, Chicks Market, Walgreens, Sammy's Quick Stop, Fast Stop, the Champlain Farms, Simon's and Beverage Warehouse. I think that's everyone that's on this list. And Wesco. Questions or comments? Are there any of these that we should know anything more about before moving forward? They've all been, I run them by, through the Chief of Police, to make sure that everyone is okay. So they've all satisfied. They just, various reasons why they're not approved yet. Okay. And for Chicks Market, I know it's being sold. Is this for the current owner? And will that carry over if they continue doing the same business or would they have to reapply? Yes, they have to reapply as a new owner. She's still wanting to have this, but she's pending. Okay, thank you. Jenny, for the VFW, what sidewalk use, outside consumption are they asking for specifically? They're asking for they have a back deck. It's for the back deck, okay. From 12, from 12 until 9 p.m. Okay, so for Context, the back deck on the building is a space that they've been using before. When they came a year or two ago, they were trying to put new tables out front and that is what we had previously declined. Any other questions? Do we know if all of these are, if there are any outstanding fees or taxes that need to be? If the taxes are satisfied, fees, they're waiting on a couple fees. Okay. And those are part of the pending? They are. Everything that came in on the portal is what I've included here. So there's some establishments that I have left messages for that I haven't heard, so those are not included here. Okay. If there's any questions from members of the public, you can raise your hand. Use your hand patron, Zoom. I'm not hearing concerns. Could I take a motion for conditional approval on the first and third class liquor license renewals, second class liquor licenses, second class tobacco endorsements and outside consumption and sidewalk use permits? So moved. And I have a quick question before we. Sure. This is just a little different from what I'm used to seeing the packets with a little bit more detail. So as a follow-up question, for the outside consumption, when is the ending time? Are they all the same? They're not, but the ending time, according to our code, is two a.m. in the morning. Are there any that are requesting? They don't have to put the hours of operation now on the portal. So there is one, I believe Monkey was the one, but he can't say for sure, that establishment can't say for sure if they're gonna have staff to stay open until that late. Okay. Another follow-up question. Was that, I don't remember the change when that changed. Is that recent where they don't have to indicate? It's the new portal that just went into effect this year. So it's really very limited. They just have to say yes. So then I've had to reach out to most of them to get a sketch dimensions because that ties in with their sidewalk application. So it's very little information that is on the applications except violations. And is there, is it only local ordinance where we say, or is there a state law that has an end time in the morning for distribution, like for sale? I am not aware of the state time. This whole process is a little funky because the DLC changed and we are trying to adapt to it in real time. So it's not our portal, it's the state's portal. Okay. Jenny's been providing a lot of feedback. Okay. All right. Let me know if I can provide some more feedback. I think they're welcome. I have also heard displeasure from business owners about it. Yes. It's very difficult, it's not user friendly. I see, I attended a class. I can see where their endpoint is, but right now there's just been a lot of errors, technical glitches that we're working through and just not enough information. Okay. Thank you. So I had a motion by Thomas and a second by Aurora. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm serious. Are we all conditional or just all of it? No, just all of them. Conditional for pending, right? For pending. So I shouldn't have phrased it that way. No, no, the first and third class, those are all regular and everything else is pending. It feels clear to me. All right. Thank you. That's the end of the liquor control board meeting agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Motion by Bryn, second by Charlie. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Now it is 6.18 p.m. I will call to order the Winooski City Council meeting. First up is agenda review. And I am suggesting that we add an executive session that was intended to be on the agenda but was left off as an oversight to discuss a personnel matter. So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. So we'll add a new item nine for executive session. With no action. Thank you. So we are at public comment then. This is an opportunity to make a comment to an item not on tonight's agenda. So if you are here for something that's on the evening's agenda I would ask you to hold until we reach that point. If you are not, if you have something else to talk about please raise hand. Our consent agenda. We have our city council and liquor control board minutes from our last meeting, April 3rd. The payroll warrant from March 19th to April 1st and the accounts payable warrant from April 5th. Any questions, concerns? Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So we are on council reports. Charlie can I start with you? Yeah. The housing commission has its rescheduled meeting today or excuse me, this weekend on Thursday. That's it for me so far. Thank you. Thomas. Meredith will be here later to do a dive into downtown Winnowsky. So my update would kind of just be anything she's gonna say. So I'll just leave it to her. Excellent. I have a lengthy one, unfortunately. So. We skipped two. So. Two weeks ago I attended the airport commission meeting. Sorry my notes aren't as clear as I wish they were. Oh, the website btvsound.com where you can find all of the information coming from the airport and on noise mitigation. They've added a new map that is showing properties that are in the queue for noise mitigation in the next year or so. So it's not the full like five years out or long-term plan, but there is some information and they want to keep updating that. Their next grant application is due May 1st. And after that we should see an update on the next like 50 or so properties that will be included. So don't know yet what those actually are. They also made a change. So noise comment data is shared at every airport commission meeting. And they have now overlaid that with flight paths. Shocking, not shockingly. It's higher volume where we are closer to it. Those were the updates coming out of the airport commission meeting. For the public's knowledge, we hosted an annual convening of the chairs of our policy advisory commissions. This was to have a discussion about potential shared priorities that they might recommend to us as city council and staff leadership when we do our annual strategic prioritization session on Saturday, May 13th. That's a discussion where we set the, we align on the priorities that we're gonna work towards in the upcoming year. That is open to the public. More information will be shared. Our finance commission met. And in addition to having those priority discussions, they reviewed our economic development strategy, which is a document from 2017 or 2019, to check against progress and see how that would inform priorities. Some of those comments, I'm bringing back to the downtown Manuski discussion later because they're relevant. But otherwise, we actually had made quite a bit of progress on that document, which is good news since we haven't had someone in the field community economic development officer role monitoring for that. The planning commission met as well. And kicked off a discussion on creating a new design review district. So this would add another layer of review to the permitting process in a designated part of the city. They haven't discussed exactly what that looks like or even where they would want to suggest a district be. It's a strategy that they want to consider related to historic preservation. I'll bring back more information on that as well. And then a reminder that next Thursday, the 27th, they're having a public hearing on some proposed changes to our land use regulations, including creating incentives to retain historic building facades by exempting mixed use and non-residential projects in our business district from minimum parking requirements and in residential districts, allowing an increase in lot coverage of 10%. Updates to our minimum parking requirements, including new bicycle parking requirements and incentives for underground parking and electric vehicle charging stations and increased requirements for off street loading space and screening for trash receptacles. So public can come and learn more about those changes and also make comments for them to consider. Last week, I also attended a monthly meeting of the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance. So this is a large sort of coalition group, including housing providers and sort of social service areas, folks from across the county. Myself and the Wundewski School District Wellness Coordinator attended, as well as some folks from Burlington School District to discuss essentially that school staff are serving and becoming sort of front line of discovering housing instability issues with families who are in connection with the school. So there was discussion about how agencies that are actually resourced and able to support with housing could give, could resource the schools so that they're not trying to do that service on their own. An action planning process will come out of that in the future. And Elaine and I on Saturday were able to attend an event at the Wundewski School District to meet with parents in our multilingual communities. There were four different linguistic groups present who we were able to meet with. We shared some information on housing, voting, basically what the city does and then took their questions and answers. There were some other agencies there too. It is something that the school organized beyond just the School of City Services. We are hoping that that will become a permanent ongoing event. But we'll have more discussion there. And then finally, congratulations to the School District and the community on the official completion of the capital project, which culminated with a ribbon cutting ceremony two weeks ago. There's gonna be a public open house May 12. I don't know the times yet, but that will be forthcoming. So for community members who want to see the new building, you can actually get a tour and see inside. Okay, that's it for me. Bryn. That's a lot. It was busy. I want to start off, the Infrastructure Commission is not meeting this month. We don't have enough agenda items. So we are going to cancel this month's meeting. I imagine there will be lots to talk about after our retreat next month on May 13th. Green Up Day is May 6th. So just make sure you look for announcements and from Fort Forum and through the city channels to get updates on where to go and find your bags and get additional details for locations, good locations to collect. So look forward to seeing a lot of folks out on May 6th. It's one of my favorite days of the year. The Bike Pad Master Plan has an advisory group open house and that will be at the Bryn Community Center on April 26th from four to 7 p.m. So hopefully we do see a lot of members of the community come out to provide input feedback on that. And if you can't make it, you can always reach out to me or the manager or the other counselors with some comments ahead of time. I think that's what I have. Thank you. I don't have a whole lot. So say how we connect. Big people did not meet this month also due to not having enough on the agenda. We were supposed to have a meeting of inclusion belonging last week, but we didn't have a forum. So we are still working on rescheduling that as there are some items that we wanna make sure discuss there before coming to council. Excellent, thank you. Okay, Elaine, city updates. As a reminder, the city clerk's office is currently closed on Tuesday to 7 p.m. and open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Our summer team in team employment program is now effective applications. We have three seasonal part-time positions that directly support community engagement in the industry. All three positions run in May and June in the summer and pay $50 an hour. Youth ages 16 and up are encouraged to apply. The positions are counselor and training. This role supervises and supports the participants in our office rule camps and community services programs. A library assistant that supports various operations at the Linnusky Memorial Library, including circulation programs, customer service, and administrative tasks. And finally, in parks and trails, remember, this person will help maintain Linnusky's trails, parks, and open spaces with our recreation and arts team. Please learn more and apply at linnuskbt.gov. slash job. And just a little bit of additional detail to counselor Oakley's mention about the Jamaica County Regional Training Commission's open house and community workshop on the Linnusky's walk-by plan. There will be a project presentation and questions and answers. This project with support from the consultants, aims to create a comprehensive walk-by plan for Linnusky with a prioritized set of infrastructure recommendations and cost estimates for climate stability. To learn more about that or any of the other items, please visit the news update section of linnuskbt.gov or look for updates on our social media platform or a front porch forum channel. All right, thank you. So we are finally to our regular items. First up is on for discussion or approval, inclusion and belonging commission appointment for Ruth Steinmetz. Thank you. We counsel liaison Aurora and our chair, Parker Silver and myself met with Ruth Steinmetz last Monday. Just to, we had our application but just to discuss in a little bit further her perspective and what she could bring to the commission. We're really excited that she, that Ruth wants to become a member. And we do have that opening available until June 30th, 2024. And she did receive all commission chair approvals. I believe she is here this evening just to introduce herself. The Zoom. Yes. I don't see her in the list. Sorry, Ruth is not here with us this evening. She's not, okay. So we're just asking approval to have her be a member. She previously was last year, but due to scheduling conflicts, she could not make the commitment. But now she is excited and we are really excited about her. Great. She has some more availability and doing social justice work is something she's really interested in. And she, as Jenny said, has a really great perspective and thoughts on the work that we're doing. Awesome. Any questions from council? Just a curiosity really is, there are roots of business owner, is it a Winnowsky business? I think she said yes. Yeah. Double A plus then. Any questions from members of the public? Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the inclusion of belonging commission appointment? So moved. Was that a motion by Thomas and a second by Charlie? Sure. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The motion carries. Thank you. Okay, we are on to item B. This is just done for discussion, the Vermont Air National Guard 158th fighter wing, fire and emergency services. Chief Audie is gonna come do a little introduction and then we will meet our guests. Good evening. Thanks for a little bit of your time. Welcome Chief Soder and Mr. Kelly, environmental compliance with Air Guard. I'm just gonna open with a little bit of, our relationship as far as the Winnowsky Fire Department and the Air Guard and then let you folks let them explain a little bit more. We have a long standing relationship with the Air Guard, with the Fire Department. You know, they precede me as chief. Spend a place for many, many years. We continue to evolve that relationship. We've assigned them to first alarms here in the city, so if there's a credible report to our dispatchers of smoke in the building, the sprinkler alarm activation, the natural gas leak, those sorts of things, they're automatically dispatched with Winnowsky, St. Mike's, and St. Mike's rescue. So we rely on them a little bit, heavily. Those are fairly new changes with the first alarm. Again, as our relationships evolve as chiefs, you know, it's a relationship that proves very valuable for us. I'm getting four or five of their folks with an officer on their truck. You know, they're highly trained in both structural firefighting and technical rescue. So again, a very valuable asset to see come into the city. 22, over the calendar, they were in 12 times into the city. And again, the first alarm is fairly new for us. So since January 1st to current, they've been into the city 11 times. So we expect that number to continue to grow. And part of that growth is also, Winnowsky has been put on the phase five emergencies at the airport when there's a large event at the airport. We now respond to the airport. So we've since January 1st, we've been there twice. So it's a relationship that goes both ways. Obviously they come here more than we go there. But I guess I'll stop there. I don't know what questions or updates. Appreciate your time. I'm Brandon Soder. Thanks, Chief, for the kind words. I'll fill you in a little bit about myself. I've been in the military 22 years. I've been a full-time employee at the fire department for 20 years now. Been the full-time fire chief for two and a half years. I've been the military fire chief for four years. So as a fire chief, I'm relatively new to the game, but I'm not new to the area in building the relationships, the personal relationships that it takes to be successful as a team and inter-organizationally. We're here to look to build upon what we already have. So as Chief was getting at, we've made some modifications to our response standards. We only anticipate those numbers to grow. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you a story that's not true. We're getting busier. And it's good to have all the help and the friends that you can have in the event that you need them. And that's not lost on us. What we bring to the table, like Chief said, is training that the state not necessarily can't offer, but doesn't offer on a regular basis. So we have the accessibility to go nationwide with our schools, with our rescue training, with our hazmat training, with our aircraft rescue firefighting training, with our knowledge of how the rest of the US does firefighting. We send people everywhere to train with, excuse me, other Air Force bases, city fire departments, and we meet so many different people from so many different walks of life. Not only here in the Northeast, but as an example, I'm taking 15 of my people out to Alaska for two weeks this summer to see how they do things. So it sounds real tough, but we're gonna go observe how they do things up North. On top of all that, last year, out of 350, 51 emergency responses that we had, 244 of those are mutual aid. So we're going off the base and we're servicing the communities at no cost. I'm not asking for anything in return. Obviously if something gets damaged during a call, that's where insurance kicks in, so we don't hold the cities of the Fire Department's liable. It's the insurance companies. I guess to put that in perspective, we're in the top 20 as far as the DOD's concerned with emergency responses. We ran almost 1,000 calls last year and we're on track to meet that. So we're here, we wanna be utilized, we have the talent, we have the resources, we have the people, we're hungry, and we're just looking to kinda, here we are, this is what we do, who we are, and I'll turn it over to Mr. Kelly here to introduce himself and give his backstory. Yep, I'm Shannon Kelly. As Chief mentioned, I'm the environmental manager there with the Air National Guard. And so I work closely with the Fire Department as needed, dealing with the various foams that we've had over the years. And I'm there to support them and sometimes they support us in times of our need if it shows up. So I've been there about eight years and I've seen lots of good things. Working with the Fire Department there, here with the Air National Guard's been a great experience for me, so I really appreciate what Chief Soter brings to the table and it's been interesting getting to know each fire chief out in the community because I don't really interact or engage or interface with them. So thank you for allowing us to be here to share this story. Well, thank you guys for coming in. We haven't had this opportunity in the past. I know you've been a part of the mutual aid structure and so it's good to actually have a chance to like ask questions or get to know you better. Also want to just appreciate the increased service level that we're providing or you're providing here. You know, given the challenges with staffing for the Fire Department, it's really, it's great to be able to collaborate more like that. Are there any questions from Council? Yeah, first, I'd like to echo what the Mayor said. Thank you for everything that you do. For Winooski, I'm pretty sure I've seen your trucks at some of the bigger fires we've had recently. So much appreciated. I was wondering, I know that there's a, that you all at the Guard both sides are experiencing some staffing issues. Have you noticed that? Is that impacting your Fire Department staffing as well? Thankfully, no to the full-time force. I think just due to the region, the military is not as a high demand occupation as other regions of the US. So recruitment on the military side can be an issue. Thankfully, we've increased our efforts and we're good now. But we've fought really hard to get numbers up and staff the military side of things. But we're getting plenty of applications for full-time status. Awesome. I'd be remiss without asking a question that I've heard from constituents and circles around from Bridge Forum. I've recently received a briefing, so I kind of know what the answer is. But if you could maybe talk about the mechanisms that you have in place that you can discuss of if there were to be a fighter jet crash or something like that up at the base. Up at the base or anywhere in the area. So a little bit about us. We have a joint use agreement with the airport. We have the responsibility charged by the federal government as well as the city of Burlington to respond to a certain range that's 15 miles. Pick a point in the middle of the airfield, draw 15 miles, that's where we go automatically. I say 15 miles, that's not the limit, right? If something goes down in Platsburg or over the lake or southern Vermont, New Hampshire will provide our assistance as necessary, depending on how far away it depends on what resources we can send in an expedient fashion. I guess I would just, it's all case by case. In the immediate area, however, we would send a full response and as it's our duty to take care of the national security interest as well as the federal asset as well as the surrounding community. So I would show up, work hand in hand with Chief Roddy in a unified command and more than likely direct aircraft rescue firefighting operations and advise him in his capacity when he's thinking about the total picture. And we would work together to make the problem go away as quickly as possible. So as far as our capabilities go, I, again, the F-35 is a new platform. It's a hot word right now, I get it. I understand the 16s were when they were here. Everybody was nervous. I wasn't here for the transition for the 16s, but I heard all about it. What I would offer is other than the national security aspect, we treated no different than a commercial aircraft crash. It's another airplane. The materials involved, the chemicals involved, they're largely similar, just a smaller package. The only thing that differentiates it are it has things that go boom sometimes on it. So, and when I say that, that's no different than any other Air Force installation. Great, thank you so much. Follow up question on that thread. So you said like the materials are similar, but the concern I've heard from constituents is that the materials of the F-35 are specific, like the coating or something is specifically more flammable or more toxic than a regular aircraft, a commercial aircraft. So I can't speak to the chemical makeup. I'm not the expert on that, I just put the fire out, right? That's what we train our people to do. We are trained to keep vapor down, suppress vapor through water foam application, and make sure that the scene is safe. Everything, every bit of information that we've received says that if we're doing our jobs like there's a, I'm not gonna say at no risk, there's always risk, right? But it makes it reasonably safer around the surrounding area. It's just really boils down to how quick can we get there and how quick can we put water on fire. As far as the coating goes, again, I can't speak to it, but what it offers is the construction of the plan of carbon fiber composites. They're in every commercial aircraft that's been flying here since the 40s. It's no different. Thank you for that. Thanks, and thank you, it's really nice to meet you. I, we have heard the unfortunate train derailments happening elsewhere in the United States, and obviously we have an active railway here in Manuski. Is there, are there drills that your team runs through to respond to train derailments in the area? In my career, I've attended, I wanna say, two or three train incident classes, and they were offered down in the city of Romantac. I couldn't name dates because I have terrible memory, but I know I haven't been there. What I would offer is this. We were treated no different than a mass jet fuel fire, mass flammable woodwood fire. They call for large amount of agent, meaning water-foam mixture, to put them out. You can spray water on them all day long. It's just gonna spread the problem. So the biggest risk for us railroad-wise is the locomotive, it's wood chips that come through here. This is not an open hazmat line. I'm not saying it's not in the area, but when you see specific, the biggest risk for us is the locomotive and the fuel loads that are on that. So it'd be a combination of response to the Vermont hazmat team, if it was a fuel fire, we'd obviously be looking for folks off the air base to help us with the foam agents, with that larger petroleum, that sort of thing. So not only people think that there's 60 cars of chemicals rolling through, it's much different. The circumstances that happened, what you're specifically talking about is train traveling 45, 50 miles an hour from several cars of chemicals that derails and what you see here is wood chips going to the McNeil plant back and forth. Thank you. That's reassuring and very beneficial with clarification for our residents. As a follow-up to that, obviously another thing that is kind of a hot topic, environmentally speaking, is PFAS Pupola and its presence in foams of present. And can you go into any detail about how that's being addressed or mitigated with the new regulations that surround PFAS contaminants? Yeah, I mean I can answer to what I know and then I'll kick this one to Mr. Kelly here. So what I can tell you right now is we're on a C6 short chain foam and there are significantly less PFAS Pupola elements present and compare that to what the state has in stockpile which is the legacy old version, has the longer chain PFAS Pupola, more harmful to the environment. The state is put in place and please correct me if I'm wrong, an ordinance or a law regulation that they cannot disperse that foam. So it is my understanding that we are the only ones with the federal exemption to actually use the foam. And when I say use the foam, it's our foam, the shorter chain. I can say with pretty good confidence that in the next 18 months or so, we are slated to get a PFAS Pupola free solution to AEEE. So it is on its way. And again, being a DOD government agency, I'm pretty confident in saying we're probably one of the first agencies in the state to receive it. So there's hope on the horizon. This is a relatively new thing for us as well. We've been using the stuff for years and thought nothing of it. And then all of a sudden, 10, maybe 12 years ago, we started hearing rumblings and now here we are. That's great, great news. And then just curious, I'm a different front and related to the expanding relationship of partnership we have with you and with our city fire department. Do your teams tend to run joint incident command drills? I think that's a case by case. I think we're all wise up and not too proud to seed some ground when someone else has a little more knowledge in that arena. I'm not going to challenge the chief on his buildings or his city. He's just going to tell us where he wants us and what he wants us to do. I would say if it's the one-off, if it's a tech rescue call, aircraft call or whatever, we would consult each other heavily. Honestly, we run annually and every three years, we run drills annually that test that capability for us and every three years we run a mass cavity incident on the airport that truly tests how thick that fabric is before it starts unraveling. And we have eight, 12, 15 agencies responding and we have a representative from each talking to us while it's all going on. So it's never been an issue before. I would say Chittin County small enough to have that luxury of we're not too proud. And we all realize that we don't have enough resources to handle it as one department. We need to work together on it. Yeah, I want to expand a little bit. That was part of my desire to get on the phase responses. And that's a larger, by virtue of a phase five being declared, it's your practice in it, right? And you're being immersed into a larger, where they're bringing almost every department in Chittin County together they're filling the insect command roles. So it was important to be either from Nuski not to be sitting here, listening to it in the city, knowing that we could be impacted. We want to be there and be part of whatever's going because reality is that if something about the bit happens here in Nuski, all that is coming here. So we want it to be part of it coming here, not just all of a sudden have it come into the city. Secondly, I can relate to our fires recently at the end of the brief that was just done. And there's 15 fire departments that were in here on Main Street for the three structure fires. Chief Palmer was in charge of that call as the insect commander. And I stood with him, but there were several chiefs, Burlington chiefs, the Williston chiefs, the Colchester deputy chief, were all part of our insect command. So the fire service is very well rehearsed and how that functions. And you just don't know who's going to show up. And Chief Soldier could show up tonight in the city. And you learn as a chief, you absorb that into your system. Word I heard the other day was out of the chaos on Main Street, it was a choreographed dance of hundreds and hundreds of years of experience that everyone there, but specifically the option chiefs were able to pull together 100 firefighters on the ground and three different structures, one minor injury. That's a lot on what the systems are and integrity of them. Yeah, that's wonderful to hear. Obviously there's always a never-evolving workforce and having the strength of the partnerships and the expanding phases and drills and it just helps with response and coordination. So it was great to hear. Thanks. Any other questions from Council? I think any of the ones I have are answered. Okay, let's open it to members of the public then. Anyone in here? We don't have enough microphone space. Do you want me to stuff it up? Yeah, would you mind coming up to, just so we can get you on the microphone for the recording? Come here, Clark. I guess one of the questions I had, it wasn't answered, but it is, what is the amount of toxic chemicals, fibers and particulates after an F-35 crash and fuel fire regarding like military carbon composite by the coating of the F-35s? And that wasn't answered, but where would you find the answer to that? And is that, that would have to be available to the public? I don't think there's a definitive answer on that. I think every crash is different in its own right. It depends on the size of the crash, how far it's spread out, it is how far the contamination goes. And I can speak to this that if there's an incident, there's a reclamation effort and there's data that backs the effort. So if there's so much, and actually I can defer to Mr. Kelly here, but the chiefs I've talked to that have actually ran incident command on the F-35 crashes, the cleanup effort is more extensive than the response. It's far more extensive and I can't even imagine. So I am in communication with chiefs who have actually real time on these incidents. And I can defer to Mr. Kelly because he's been in charge of the environmental program and overseeing some of these efforts with other materials. Yeah, I think your answer is pretty well. I don't think there would be a defined amount, it would just be based on the plane break in half, two pieces, was it shattered into many pieces? I mean, really it would depend on what type of crash or what the extent of the crash site looks like. I mean, that would be really the best answer without providing a quantitative answer to your question. And if there was a crash, what area of the land would be evacuated in the event? And for how long would that remain evacuated in the event of an F-35 crash? Again, that all depends. It depends on a structure fire, it depends on a car accident, it depends on an aircraft crash. It depends on how large the incident actually is, it depends on what the federal agencies involved deemed a secure area. It would depend on how long the investigation took and it would depend on how long cleanup efforts took. But that would go with anything. If it was a suspicious fire, the area would be off limits for so long, nobody could go around to touch anything around it. If it was a massive car accident, interstates would be shut down indefinitely until it was cleaned up. So it's no different just on a either larger or smaller scale. It depends if it's a Cessna or a commercial airliner. And as far as the firefighting problem, is there like a list, a full list of the toxic chemicals in the concentration like available to the public? It has a safety data sheet that has come that accompanies that. It would be, yes, it would be publicly available, yep. Camille, are you close to done? Could I move to some other commenters or do you have anything left? Okay, thank you. There's several folks attending on Zoom, so. Oh, and we have some, we had the pre-science. Paul, please direct us. Thank you, mayor. We're gonna go in order of comments received. And so we have Marguerite Alderman under Bob Aquin's name. Marguerite, whenever you're ready. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, as the coordinator of the Vermont PFAS Military Poisons Coalition and the Winooski Residence, I am here to ask you to vote no on signing the whole harmless indemnity agreement between the Winooski Fire Department and the US government of V-10. Other cities and at least one state across the country have refused to sign this agreement and I urge Winooski to be one of those cities that says no to it. We must not give up our right to hold the US government and V-10 liable for using hazardous substances that result in exposure to pollution of or contamination to air, land, water, person or property that may result in response actions under CERCLA, which is Superfund, R-C-R-A or any other federal, state or local laws. Winooski is already an environmental justice zone according to the EPA's new analytical tools. And in reality, we are a sacrifice zone. We must protect our city and our residents from the harms of PFAS, firefighting foam and other hazardous substances. And many of us never thought that the F-35 should be stationed in such an urban, densely populated area. We fear a crash in our community. The smoke produced from a burning F-35 would contain microscopic fibers and plastics known by the Air Force to be carcinogenic, mutagenic and toxic. And such materials could inflict permanent lung and neural damage and even death if inhaled. Frankly, it doesn't matter if we sign this agreement or not. I bet you're asking why. Well, because the agreement states that even if we don't sign it, we can't hold the United States liable for any harm that it causes. However, we must not sign it for the following reasons. There are over 600 military sites that are superfund site, contaminated by hazardous materials. More are being identified every year. And here's the sad truth. Of 50 sites with the highest PFAS level contamination only nine have cleanup plans that are being developed under superfund law. Not a single cleanup plan has been finalized and little actual cleanup has begun anywhere. The DOD has been great at dragging it's feet. Because the DOD, Department of Defense has known about the toxic effects of PFAS pollution for decades. The timeline for what the DOD knew about PFAS starts in 1973 and it continues until 2000 when 3M, the primary maker of PFAS, was going to stop making it due to evidence of its hazardous health effects. But DOD waited another decade to issue a risk alert to its own service members and did not take steps to replace AFF until 2015. And what's more, the new PFAS replacement has been linked to many of the same health effects as those caused by the original firefighting foam. The DOD is supposed to also follow state laws around PFAS and hazardous substances but the Defense Department is going back on its word and is refusing to comply with state laws. So far at least four states have used state regulations to try and compel military bases to take clean up action on PFAS. And each state has been met with resistance or counter lawsuits by the DOD. The states are New York, Colorado, New Mexico, and Michigan. PFAS firefighting foam is still used broadly by a lot of firefighting units across the DOD. The Forest Service, Commercial Air Force, and many state fire departments also use the fire suppressing foam that contains PFAS. While the Pentagon has phased out the foam for training to reduce exposure, it's still present in airline hangar sprinklers and it still can be used in the case of aircraft fire or a plane crash. Please vote no on the whole harmless agreement even if the vote is largely symbolic. I can assure you that there is a cost to this agreement and we shouldn't allow a single department of the city of Winooski to approve it at our individual expense. We cannot let the DOD continue to be irresponsible in the use of PFAS firefighting foam, refuse to recognize or treat its own service members and take care of the residents of communities affected by PFAS and honor its EPA Superfund commitment to clean up the messes it creates in our community. Keeping us truly safe, which is what the military should do. Thank you. Thanks, Marguerite. So to be clear, we don't have an agreement to vote on this evening, but Elaine, could you add some context, please? Yeah, so this, for the full benefit, the section that Marguerite is speaking to is a request in the draft agreement that would require the city to hold retail and car lists for any issues found afterwards from the use of firefighting foam if it was a success. That's part of a larger agreement. It's an operational agreement, which is quite a concern of the Council, but really it's been a matter of public discourse over some time, so I appreciate you bringing up the topic. We had a quick chat before the meeting started and I asked Council to get some other context about what it would mean if you directly need not to sign or negotiate a different pathway to that, please. So the indemnity clause specifically lists in their foam that's a change in the last year and a half to two years, which is why we're pushing out the new mutual aid agreements. A triple F is, while I'm not going to dispute the fact that it does have forever chemicals in it, it is one of those things that is necessary in the job of class B firefighting. What I say when class B firefighting is flammable liquids. So if you have fuel, if you have oil, if you have anything that burns that's liquid, A triple F is going to put it out much, much, much more expediently than any other media that we have available to us. Now, what does this all mean for you and the city? There's a couple of different scenarios here. One, you sign the indemnity clause and we can operate just like we've been operating for, well, since I've been there long before, or you don't sign the indemnity clause and we take it out of the agreement and we don't offer those services to the city when something happens. And when I say that, it's not a threat. It's definitely not a threat, but it's just an advisory to if you have a gasoline tanker that flips on the interstate and catches a neighborhood on fire and it spreads, it will spread 10,000 gallons, will make its way across neighborhoods. If you have a truck delivering fuel at a gas station here in the city and it starts leaking and catches on fire, that will spread right downhill, all the way downhill. I'm not here to scare you, I'm just here to tell you the facts, I've seen a lot of fuel fires in my career and I've seen what they do, I've seen them expand and the only thing that I've seen that works is A triple F. I'm not gonna dispute any facts about the chemicals that are used in the makeup of it. That's not what I'm here for, someone I'm here to speak to. I'm just here to advise and offer a service. If you don't want it, we can move forward peacefully and we can sign the agreement without that clause, not that clause, but that specific verbiage of the clause in there. There has to be some sort of indemnity to us as Winnowski comes on and they operate with, you know, to hold harmless and stuff like that. It's what happens in our world. It doesn't rule out negligence. So I will say that, I'm not gonna get it into too much attorney's speak here because I'm not one, but what I will say is every department operates with some sort of indemnity. We show up to make things better, not worse and that's the intent. So I will say that given that my intention would be to sign it within the agreement because we can't, the cost benefit there to not having that coverage option probably takes me to not work it. Thank you. So I think we should continue public comment but just for you all to consider if you, if we wanted to provide different guidance to Elaine then we would want to give that direction now and have this on the next agenda. I do have one more note to add. We are the only agency in the state that can do mass application of this and I believe the only agency in the state that actually can apply it. Vermont Hazmat has their hands tied. So chief mentioned we'll call Hazmat. I'm not sure what good they're gonna do. I've been talking to the Hazmat chief and he's been instructed not to utilize his stores. So I don't know what else to tell you. I'm just here to offer you a resource. We're happy to help and we're happy to help even if it means no, that doesn't stop the relationship. It just means it's a little different at the moment. And we hope to revisit it. If that is in fact where we go with this when we get the better stuff. And it is reassuring to hear that we're expecting to keep past three products pretty soon. Perhaps in the time to work the next round. Thank you. Paul, can we go back to the public comment? I know there are more signups. Next up we have Jennifer Decker. Jennifer, whenever you're ready. Hi, I live in Hinesburg and I just want to say thank you to the council for hearing my comments. I support the comments of Marguerite Edelman that were made earlier. I too would like to ask the council to decline to participate in a memorandum of understanding that doesn't prevent harm to the community of Winooski. Whenever you have the opportunity. I do believe there has already been negligence. I wanted to correct the comment that was made about short chain and long chain PFOS. Short chain PFOS have come about because the harm of the longer chain PFOS has been known for longer and manufacturers have made 14,000 different PFOS chemicals only very few of which have actually been studied. So having a short chain PFOS in the firefighting phone is not an improvement. I sent articles to the council on 10 F-35 crashes around the world. I'm glad to hear people asking questions about the plan in an event of an F-35 crash and at the same time it's ample evidence that we don't need the basin here in this community and I think when we take a stand at any level it helps to work on appropriate and healthy boundaries between military operations and residential communities. Right now the public is unaware of the need that might occur as far as evacuation. There's no emergency plans and drills in place yet because people aren't talking about these issues enough. The fallout from the Fort Worth crash which happened at the end of December is that deliveries of F-35s and F-35 parts are on hold currently. My questions regarding V-10 is what are you already doing to clean up the PFOS that you've already dealt in the Winooski River and Lake Champlain? It concerned me when I saw this agreement because I feel like instead of cleaning it up they're trying to wash their hands of the problem at the expense of community health and that makes me really sad. Some of the illnesses that are caused by PFOS are reproductive including high blood pressure and pregnancy, developmental and cognitive delays and impacts on embryos, infants and children. Over time that also has affected the school budget. This is not something in the future but something that's already happening. In addition, kidney testicular and other cancers and degenerative illnesses are caused by PFOS. It reduces the ability of the immune system to fight illness and it impacts vaccine effectiveness. It interferes with hormones including thyroid. It increases cholesterol levels and it causes liver damage. I wonder how many kids you know who've died young or suffered seizures or other neurological conditions. I know a lot because I worked in public schools with special education and I know a lot because of the impact on my own family. I'm urging the city of Winooski to do everything it can to reduce harm to residents perpetuated by V-Tang. Guard is supposed to stand for protecting the people and so I ask those who are here on behalf of the guard and the fire department also to please protect us. Please use your voice to stand up for us and to share the truth that we are sharing. The students I worked with may sign up for the guard and I can't imagine anyone here or anyone who chooses the role knowing that they would be signing up to partaken activities that cause us harm. I'd like to offer to those in the fire service that there's a movie called Burned which is about the impact of PFAS on fire departments and people working in the fighting fires. You are very noble and you're very important to our society but PFAS are hurting you too. In addition I just wanted to mention the fact that F-35s are nuclear capable. So our community is a target in the event of a nuclear war which is becoming more and more possible because of the conflict in Ukraine. So I wonder do we also have fallout shelters? I have had tonight since the F-35s arrived in Vermont. I usually bring my headphones when I come into town and I had to move out to Hinesburg to get away because of the stress and trauma that it caused me but even here in Hinesburg my house shakes when the F-35s go over. So I would like to request some silence for us to consider the harm that's already been done to the most diverse town in the state and other surrounding communities. This is an environmental justice issue and I would really like to ask the council no matter what to make sure that there's an education campaign to alert residents to the seriousness of the dangers posed by the National Guard base at the airport. So if I could just request a minute or 30 seconds of silence after my comment and just think about it, think about the kids, think about the parents who've lost children, think about the families involved in special education, think about the one day I was in the new ski and I saw the F-35s go over and I was lucky enough to be in my car with the windows closed but I saw somebody walking by and that person just literally screamed up at the sky after the planes went over. This is not good for our health. So please take a moment and just take this all in and I'd really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. I want to lift up, she did ask a question in there about any efforts the V-Tang has taken to clean up existing PFAS. Yeah, so about six years ago in 2017, we installed a what's known as a granular activated carbon filtration system and that's located in what was formerly known as our fire training area. That's where the firefighters used to practice putting out fires within a contained area. So that's been an operation for about six years. Right now we're waiting on the next phase which is the remedial investigation within the circle process. I think somebody used that term, that's the federal term. Some call it super fun but within military circles essentially it falls under a different category but essentially it's under the federal cleanup process. So we're in line behind other international guard and active duty military installations. Those who have public drinking water impacts are well ahead of us for obvious reasons. We're somewhere in the chute for the next phase of that but right now we have one bit of remediation going on on the installation and that's been going on for about six years and that's just partial remediation of what exists as our investigations have expanded across the base and off the base there will be more remediation down the road in the years to come. Thank you. Paul next, next up. Next up we have Kara Montague. Kara whenever you're ready. Yeah, I would just support everything that Marguerite and Jennifer had to say. I find it shocking that the military is asking us to help them harmless for the harm they've done. My understanding the military bases rank as some of the most polluted places on the planet which also goes for all the way down right here into Vermont that V-Tank base has so many toxic chemicals leaching off but into the Winooski River which then flows into our drinking water which comes out of Lake Champaign. So it's unclear to me how that could be considered not affecting our drinking water. It's, I don't think it's okay to hold them harmless for the toxic nuclear planes and the toxic foam that they use to put out those fires. And that's all. I really hope that the city council and the city manager can hear these concerns and take a stand against this pollution. Thank you. Thanks Kara. I don't think John Rouscher is on. I believe he shared before though our drinking water is tested for these and it comes up negative. Although I do believe that the river water has tested positive near here. Right, so the Champaign Water District supplies the city's water and they checked their report last year and it's undetectable. And you've probably heard that it was that the detection level or actual, the detection ability is not quite, it doesn't mean it's not there but it's so low as to our current technology cannot detect it in undetected water. Okay, thank you. Could we have our next public comment please? So we also have a request from Bob Ackland. I know that Bob and Marguerite were sharing an account. Let me just see if Bob is with us. Marguerite, do you have Mr. Ackland with you? Hi, I'm here. I presented a really brief written comment. I just basically am interested in acknowledging that the Guard is established to help people. And I appreciate the fact that they've helped fight fires. There have to be ways to speed up the delivery of a triple F foam, firefighting foam that doesn't have PFAS in it. It does exist in some countries in Europe. And I'm frankly just amazed that the spokesperson for the Guard couldn't give us more of an idea of what kind of evacuation would have to happen if there happened to be a crash within Winooski's boundaries of an F-35 that has, to my understanding, it's coated with chemicals to cut down on radar detection. And we're a very small community and we need to be aware of this danger. So thank you for having allowed me to say this. Thank you, Bob. Can I comment on that? Yeah. Forgive me, I don't remember your name. I would like to answer your concern. The problem with giving you a specified evacuation area is no incident is a cookie cutter. I can't tell you how it's going to land, how it's going to crash. I can't tell you where the debris field's going to be. I can't tell you the wind direction for that day. I can't tell you the humidity for that day. I can't tell you the precipitation levels for that day. And I can't tell you how much support we're gonna get from the outside communities immediately as well as what the traffic conditions are like, what our response times are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I would love to be able to give you an answer. There are very few certainties in our career field. And when we show up, what we see is what we get. So we have checklists that are developed over years and years of training to set us up for the best success possible for the responders and the general public. That all can change as soon as we arrive on scene and it's not what we were led to believe. So I would just like to put that expectation of realism in there. And again, the same holds true for any aircraft that flies in and out of here. It could be a helicopter. It could be an experimental aircraft from beta. It could be a commercial aircraft liner. It could be a large-frame aircraft that have frequented here that we have to plus up our staffing for. So we are prepared, as prepared as we can be as emergency responders. And I think the Chief can agree with me on this Chief body. We do the best we can to prepare. And then when we show up, it all goes out the window and we have to figure out based on training what to do next. Thank you. Can we have our next speaker, Paul? Next up we have James Lease. James, whenever you're ready. Thank you for allowing me to speak. The military has regulations related to protecting civilians. And they're very strict regulations in five different ways. The military is supposed to conduct its operations in a way that avoids harming civilians. And one of those regulations is called distinction. That requires the military to keep its operations separate and apart from populated areas. Now this regulation, this area of military discipline is being violated every day that the Bermont Air National Guard conducts training in a densely populated city and low over other cities like Kronewski. So it is certainly within the right area and correct procedure for Kronewski to demand that the military conform to its own regulations and find ways to itself enforce those regulations. The best way to protect Kronewski from the toxic chemicals emitted by a possible rash of an F-35 and from the toxic chemicals of the firefighting phone that would be used or could be used in response to such an accident is for the request by the citizens of Kronewski in the town meeting vote in 2021 which was to request that the state hold the F-35 training in a densely populated city such as Kronewski. That's the best way to protect not just against the noise, against the crash, against the targeting by US enemies of F-35, it's against every possible harm that this is producing is to remove the, is to do what the military's own regulations require, maintain a separation from populated areas. There are plenty of places where the F-35 training could be conducted so that it doesn't hurt civilians or imperil the lives of civilians, particularly armed our children. This is like so outrageous that the children of the city and of multiple cities should be in danger by conducting training operations in a city where we now have to face PFOS chemicals and oxidative emissions when the carbon composite body of the F-35 and it's still coating burn. The combustion products are not just water vapor and carbon dioxide like they are for fuel. The carbon composites that are, these military carbon composites don't burn completely. All kinds of chemicals are released, including the ones that caused a tremendous loss of life in Bhopal. I mean, there's just a mixture of chemicals and these chemicals interact with each other in the human body. And then there's the fibers and particulates that are very fine and get into the alveoli of the lungs and cause lung problems. This is not something that should be experimenting with in a city. It should be far away from populated areas. So I really support what others from the community have been saying and I urge the city council to take appropriate action to protect the people of Williams. Thank you. Thank you, James. I just want to point one thing out. You mentioned carbon monoxide or dioxide. All the toxic chemicals that you were listing off minus would forgive me, I'm not a technical expert on the coating on the aircraft reside in your homes. So as materials burn in your homes that we enter, that we fight fires on, they have all the very same signatures, the PFOS, PFOA elements in their makeup, whether you buy furniture, whether you buy refrigerators with refrigerant in it. The list goes on and on and on. I'm not here to tell you that firefighting isn't dangerous because it is. I'm not here to tell you that the world is free of hazards because it isn't. But I would just temper expectations when we even respond to a structure fire because there are toxic fumes far beyond carbon monoxide and dioxide. Thank you. Paul, do we have anyone else? A follow-up comment from Jennifer Decker. Jennifer, whenever you're ready. Thank you. Yeah, one thing I wanted to say about the evacuation, that I've come up with is just, I just want to mention this to everyone in the space, is check the wind direction and drive in the opposite direction, especially with your children. The other thing I wanted to say is in regard to the drinking water discussion because there are many locations around the state of Vermont where the level of toxins has not been detectable and that does not mean that it's not in the water and it is still a major concern because these chemicals bio-accumulate, not just in our human bodies, everyone who's listening to me already has a lot of PFAS in their bodies. But also in plants and animals, the fish that people are fishing for on the Winooski River and when children go swimming in the Winooski River, I feel like it might be better if the city also puts up hazardous warning signs to prevent people from fishing or swimming in the Winooski River until such a time as we all realize the importance of thoroughly cleaning up the impact that the VTANG base has had. In addition, if one of our houses was to burn, sure it would release some toxic chemicals from our carpets and our refrigerator and fabrics and things like that, but it wouldn't be at the scale or the scope of an F-35 crash. So it's not a realistic comparison. So once again, I just really wanna ask those who work for the Guard and work for fire departments to please, please, please protect us by using your voice to take a stand against those things that we're raising today as a community. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. Is that the end of the signup, Paul? That is the end of the list. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Two more redirects and I'm sorry. I do wanna mention someone that made the comment. Forgive me, there's been a lot of people talking tonight that the DOD is not taking care of us people. Again, we were made aware of this situation maybe 10 to 12 years ago. I've made efforts to swap out the triple F. It is mandatory that all DOD firefighters at this point in time be offered PFOS, PFOA, blood testing to get a feel for what it's done to us over our careers. Again, I'm lumped in with that crowd, not going into my personal feelings on the matter. However, they are doing their best to figure out if there is an issue and how big that issue may be. So they're doing the rest to take care of us. The other important note is we, someone had mentioned, I wanna thank them for having an accurate fact on this, is we do not train with our phone and we do not do open testing. So what does that mean? We have a cart and forgive me the name escapes when we have so many things. We hook up two hose lines and it internally cycles the phone to make sure that it is the correct viscosity and chemical makeup and at no point is any foam dropped on the ground and made into the system. And I also wanna point out that it is federal regulation not only on the DOD fireside but also the environmental side that if any drop of that hits the ground is instantly reportable. So there is that reassurance and all of my employees have that directive to date I don't think we've had to really file any reports, which is awesome. So we're very careful about what we do that we understand that it is a sensitive topic and that also us working around it, take it seriously. Thank you. Any additional questions or comments from Council? I have one. The foam in question, the short chain foam, is that used at every response where there's a fire, specifically in the case of like liquid condemnant and stuff like that? Or an aircraft which may spill fuel? Famous answer, it's complicated. If it is a class B type fire, liquid flammable liquid fire and it was requested through a town that had a valid mutual aid agreement, we absolutely would acquiesce and follow the incident commander's instructions and say, hey, put foam on that. On the airport, we're given the green light due to the Ajua, that's kind of our safety zone. And then right now, as it stands, if you don't sign that indemnity clause, we cannot use that foam on a commercial aircraft crash outside defense. So right now it is on military assets only. It's where federal jurisdiction kicks in. Again, I'm not an attorney, I can't speak to the ins and outs of it, but that's my directive and that's what I'm operating on. Thank you. So as you've heard me say locally, air guards are a huge resource for us and part of that is the class B capabilities, right? I mean, super complicated game day decision, as Chief said, you know, God forbid if something happens here in Manuski, but to take that completely off the table for us, that's huge. Our decision making really changes, right? Our ability to quickly put that fire out potentially mitigated immediate life safety hazard, knowing that there's an environmental piece to that that needs to get dealt with. To take that off the front side is huge. We would have zero capabilities other than regular water, which is going to help in those situations. I'm probably worse than... Understood, thank you. And if I could, I'd just like to clarify a point because I think it's really quite important in this conversation. So if I understand you correctly, you know, God forbid say a commercial airliner crashed in the middle of the city, I would imagine that would create a huge fire if we did not sign the agreement as it currently is, you would not be able to respond with the phone that would put it out. I will 100% clarify that, but that is my understanding of what I've been told. Thank you. But I will get you an answer very, very soon. I have a clarifying question. There was a commentator earlier and I didn't quite catch it. You mentioned you're the only entity in the state that is using the phone right now, is that correct? And to my knowledge, we're the only agency permitted to utilize it, that is correct. Due to a state, I don't know if it's a law or a... So the state has a cash of triple A phone that it can't use, meaning on the state side, not on the military side. Right. So, and I just wanted to make sure I understood that, because I think you mentioned the state's hazmat team is not legislatively, or by regulation, authorized to use their cash, is that accurate? That's my understanding, yes. So when I say I'm gonna use the hazmat team, right, there's lots of reasons to use the hazmat team, and if nothing else, they're gonna be part of our strategy to mitigate and get to the point where, for lack of better words, I'm gonna be trying to dirty someone else's hands as quickly as I can to limit the exposure to the city of Lewinowski, to all of you, to all of us, to all of me, to understand the decisions that we're making and what those impacts are. The state has a whole different level of ability to make those types of discussion and decisions. Financially, liability, they can help us more than they'll hurt us in that decision-making. So when I say the hazmat team, that's really what, they're an expertise that I would be drawing in to try to limit the liability and exposures to the city. Gotcha, are there, is there any reassurances you can give to our community about using it as a last choice? Look, Klasti, it could be the gasoline tanker that's fully loaded, that's delivering to Chukta Mobile, to the Shell stations, come down Main Street in a residential area. It could be an event at our sewer plant that we want to mitigate quickly, protect critical infrastructure. There's a whole host of reasons why I would get to the decision point to use it. Not my first choice, but one that would be made fairly quickly, given that's pre-planning, event pre-planning, building pre-planning, the community risk reduction efforts that we do, that's why it's so important, right? I mean, an airplane crashes and when you ski, it's a big deal, it's gonna impact our complete one square mile one way or another. It's gonna be very, very impactful. A small, elected beta plane that drops here, I forbid it, is gonna be very, very impactful. And you escalate it from there. Electric vehicle fire in our parking garage, and the run-offs, and, you know, picked arms for two days, which is happening. It's not just an aircraft, you know, there's several different situations that could be very, very impactful in the new ski, and we need the ability to have all the tools that we can in a toolbox to mitigate those, as quickly as we can to lessen that impact, knowing that we need to be very mindful about the environment, obviously, and the future impacts that those decisions are gonna make. And a follow-up question to that. While the agreement has a cause for indemnification, is there any, I haven't seen the agreement, so I apologize if this question's obvious. Is there anything in the agreement that captures any support that's given or financially or, you know, directly for cleanup that's needed or warranted afterwards? So again, that's why, you know, I used the word hazmatine, the state. That's where the city of Winooski would get its biggest resource initially in any sort of environmental cleanup or impact, you know, if again the state has much more financial resources or ability and sometimes authority to order such cleanup or mitigate short-term while we figure out who's responsible for such mitigation. Winooski doesn't have the resources to do that. We are going to be reaching outside of Winooski and I am going to start with the state for emergency management, hazmat, whatever resource is the state and they will, they are a valued partner and they will be a very, very important one. Okay, thank you. Can I ask for some additional clarification on that? So if the phone was used in Winooski, it's, I'm going to reach out to the state but it's our problem to fix. There wouldn't be additional support from the folks of military. I may be speaking out of turn and please correct me if I'm wrong. If it is a federal asset that we are protecting, we would be responsible. Correct. Correct. It's my interpretation. I'm not speaking to what the government will or won't do. That is correct. Yeah. But if it's a FedEx plane. Yeah, you call FedEx. We have a shipper, right? It's no different than a tractor trailer that tips over on the interstate. We're looking at the shipper. We're looking for the responsibility. Again, the state will put us in that effort for making those, so they'll help us legally figure out those steps. Right. It's all good, Chief. And I think one important thing worth noting is VT has very important to me, so subject matter expert on the matter. I would expect Chief or myself if something happened on the airfield to have them consult absolutely. But I think it's important to set expectations. They're not an immediate response agency. It takes some time to mobilize and get resources to the incident. So I think that's the other key factor that needs to come into mind. You're lucky if you have one five minutes from me but more often than not, they take two hours to mobilize and get to you. So two hours into an incident, we're already done making decisions. If we're doing our job right, hopefully the fire's out and we're trying to figure out cleanup at that point. Again, I'm not speaking ill of Vermont-Hasmat, but it's a program that's designed to cover the entire state. It's not like a fully staffed team. I mean, Chief Palmer happens to be part of the Asmat team. So at any given time, his phone could go off and he could be going around the world. I will connect a couple of dots for you. J&B Fire, you really know the trucking company over by Costco a few years ago. I happened to be the first one on scene there and happened there was eight tractor trailers on fire and approximately 90, I'm gonna say 80 to 90 truck tires, a paint booth. There's a lot of nasty there. You know, the Hasmat team was called within the first few minutes of that, knowing that we were gonna have firefighters that need to be decontaminated. There needed to be some mitigation on site to run off. But they were an integral part of what that cleanup was. Not only to get us out of there safely, you know, there's thousands and thousands of dollars worth of gear that was trashed. It was put in trash bags and people picked it up and never do it again, it's been destroyed, hoes. You know, they made those decisions of no, you should not take that back to your own rescue firehouse and try to clean it and just stay here. And they, they're the experts. They have, they brought a lot of that expertise and resources to the table that we just can't man or have the expertise to do it. Does that make sense? Yep, I think for me it's just ensuring that it's not, film isn't necessarily the first choice or the first go-to but used when necessary with professional expertise factoring into that. And then ensuring that when it is used that there are mechanisms for Winooski to mitigate our financial impact from that decision. And again, for what it's, how far it goes, I mean, it starts with the relationship that we have. And by virtue of maybe in an arm of you and the constituents, the residents here in Winooski, those decisions, any decisions like that and on emergency scene aren't made easily in some cases. They're made with a lot of different, walks of life, if you will, different levels of expertise that come to the table. Again, it cleaned fire departments on Main Street, several chief officers, hundreds of years of experience there in a melting pot, trying to mitigate that situation. It's not going to be any different if it's a plane crash or an oil truck, again, pop a bit. But, so it's super important in these relationships. That's where it really starts. And then I just want to clarify, when I say financial impact, I mean, that goes from exposure to cleanup, it's kind of all occlusive, so I just wanted to add clarity there. Any more questions or comments from council? I have one last one. And it's just, so the foam is used only on class B fires. That was correct. Thank you, that was it. So we have a class A foam, which is structural fire fighting, it's a whole different, a whole different form. Okay. I do have a good example. I really do. This is very pertinent to the situation. General aviation, so a private airplane caught fire, had three generations of family in it. He went out in the news probably a couple of years ago. I ran incident command on the airfield. We were able to put the fire out without using foam, while using water. I was the incident commander, I said don't use foam, get it out with water. I think we can tackle this. Years of experience in training, got it out, three generations, grandfather, father, son, made it out completely safe. So instance where it wasn't our first tool in the toolbox, however, it was in our back pocket if we weren't making progress on the aircraft fire. So good example, very, very upfront, fire was out in less than 30 seconds, it was great. Thank you. Okay. Well thank you for responding to all these questions coming here and sharing more information about what you do and addressing community concerns. We appreciate the time. Thanks very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. I am going to call a five minute recess. So it looks like 7.45 by the sea hall clock. We will recommit at 7.50. Sorry for another five minute delay. We are on item C, downtown Monizki mid-year update and executive director introduction. Elaine, do you need to do any stage setting or? I'll just do a quick one. You can come on up. Yes. Yes. All down. Meredith Melissa, why don't you both join us up here. Who's business is out in the sea? Despite the name. We do have a memorandum of understanding or MOU with downtown Monizki that lays out the shared expectations of how we partner, including activities they will do with us planning to meet financially and how we connect. And they are here today for another video report in the future you can expect it earlier in the calendar. So this year both the memorandum and this report were related to the staff. Awesome. I just wanted to say one thing on the cover sheet. I don't know if it's on. Also I made a mistake. Meredith was in here for four years. Yes, that was, it was four years. Yeah. It's like, I know it seems like three years cause the pandemic like deleted stuff, but it was four. I'm just actually two weeks shy of four. So really I should be honest with that. So we just also give some history of the memorandum of understanding. The downtown Monizki organization has existed for a very long time. In fact, in its inception, it was part of the city because there was no one to do this work. They had to have this downtown designation. It was part of the city. And then they quickly realized that having a little bit of separation between the downtown work and the city, the municipality would be beneficial. Of the 23 downtowns in Vermont, only one is housed within a municipality. So that's pretty standard. I would say across the country, it varies a lot more. But in Vermont, it's pretty standard to have some separation between the municipality and the downtown work. That being said, it does change depending on where you are. So in 2018, the organization was at a crossroads and essentially said, we can't continue the way that we have been. We are fully volunteer run and our funding is not sustainable. And we are either going to shut down and have some sort of changes where the municipality takes on this work or we need to figure out something else. So thankfully with city staff and council and a lot of other people coming together, this memorandum of understanding, the first one was created. And through that, we've tweaked it every year. Since then, it's been renewed every year with slight changes, usually to just better reflect what we're doing, better reflect what kind of metrics we wanna see, better reflect how this can work. We are an independent organization. We're not overseen by the city, but we are allies and we wanna work together. So if there are changes that need to happen, we can make that happen. So as we continue to work with different staff and different city managers and different councils, we will make tweaks as needed. So one of the tweaks that we made this year was to actually report on the MOU, which makes total sense in hindsight, to not just meet yearly to talk about what the MOU should be, but to talk about what we're working on. And so I did, there is a document that you should have at some point and you can look at it later. I'm not gonna go through it all because I would be very dry. But essentially what I wanted to highlight is that the city of Winooski and downtown Winooski have an incredibly positive relationship, which we're really grateful for. Downtown Winooski in particular, especially when I joined in 2019, we worked really closely with city staff on making sure that we were aligned with the economic vitality portion of the master plan. And that is actually pretty rare for a downtown org. I'm surprised to see how many downtown orgs in Vermont and across the country are not necessarily super aligned. And I think that that is a mistake. And so I'm really grateful for the leadership that I had on my side when I first joined to make sure that we had that alignment because it makes sense for us to all be going in the same direction. We don't need to be pushing and pulling. Certainly we'd like to push and pull where is needed, but not at the get-go, not about basic things. So we're really grateful for that positive relationship. And also this MOU and this report that I'm talking about does not cover 100% of our programming, our projects, our work. This is simply what's in the MOU. If anyone has any questions about anything else, we're happy to provide more detail. I love providing more detail. I could always say more words and you've been warned. So essentially the downtown program is in existence because the city of Winooski is a designated downtown. So we need to have an organization or an entity in place in order to have that designation. And so we are that piece. We could do the bare minimum, but we want to serve our community. We have passion for not only the economic vitality, but the vibrancy of our community overall. We're one square mile, 1.2 square miles, maybe 1.5 I've heard. So some amount of square miles that are very small. And so we do serve the entire community, not just the downtown, but that is where this started. Our designated downtown does have lines, but our organization doesn't, if that helps. I did want to give a little bit of news. They, in 2022, actually that's wrong. The 2021, the 23 designated downtowns in Vermont formed a coalition. We worked together to receive some funding from the preservation trust of Vermont. And we were able to secure three years of funding for help to discuss our needs with the legislature and also have a few of the people who are already working with downtowns either in an executive director to capacity or on a board to be paid to do this additional work to make sure that our network is really strong and to make sure that the state saw the need for capacity building and operations funding. For 25 years, the downtown organizations have been required to exist and have had no state funding, not a single cent, which is really shocking. And so it looks like there is funding in the governor's budget currently and crossing our fingers and toes that it goes through, but the budget for next year looks like it does include a little bit of capacity funding for every downtown in Vermont, which is amazing. And it happened very quickly. We were expecting it to happen over three years and it happened the first year. So we're really grateful to the downtown coalition and to be a part of that. And looking forward to kind of an increased capacity building overall, we are especially, downtown Manuski and all of the downtown orgs are incredibly small. And so sustainability is a huge part of what we're looking for. If we can't have sustainability, then we can't continue our work. And with the municipality in particular, with Manuski, there is an acido in place in the city staff right now, and we don't claim to take over that role because that's not at all what the situation is, but it just makes sense to have that piece continue, like keep those threads together. And so we're really, again, grateful for that positive relationship we have with the municipality. And again, I'm not gonna say name names or throw anyone else under the bus, but it is shocking sometimes to hear the push pull that happens on basic items with other municipalities and other downtown orgs when everyone's on the same team. Certainly certain details everyone can disagree on, but we're just really grateful that Manuski has in general recognized from the start from 2005 and its inception and certainly in recent years as we've tried to ramp up and professionalize the organization that we've seen just tremendous support and tremendous collaboration. And I don't wanna speak for city staff or city council, but we have answered the call whenever we've been asked to be on a committee or asked to review something or asked to take on something with capacity when capacity wasn't there and we're really happy to be there and to be that kind of net or to be that group because Manuski's a small community and the truth is we're the only ones that are doing this work and we're really grateful for that opportunity. We're really passionate about it and we wanna continue that. So the report that I submitted that you guys can review in your own time is essentially goes through every program, talks about what it is, talks about what we're looking ahead to the next year and talks about some metrics. So we have everything from the farmers market to Manuski Wednesdays to the very first Manuski pride which we're really so thrilled about to talking about business support, attraction, retention, talking about placemaking and that kind of thing. So we have a lot of different areas that we're working on in conjunction with the city and also working on our own but making sure that we're aligning with the city. And so all of those details are in the report. I'm not going to go into that. Like I said, I think that if any other details are needed I'm happy to provide them and certainly if this is the first time we've done a report. So if there's other information that's needed I'm not the only person that can answer the next executive director is not the only person who can answer. We do have to talk to the board of directors but any information or any tweaks that need to be made we can certainly bring that to the board and see what they want to do. Anything anyone wants to say or questions before I make our next exciting announcement and drum roll? I mean I don't know if it makes sense to wait so either way I can follow up to what you're asking now if that's made what you just shared if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, why don't you talk about the, yeah. Well congratulations on the funding, the state funding. It's not congratulations yet, but sure. Okay, knock on one. Yeah, knock on one. There's a potential, yes. It's looking positive. Yes. And then is that separate from the preservation trust? So the preservation trust was specifically for the, to organize a downtown coalition. It gave us money to create a website that was called the Vermont Downtown Coalition. It essentially gave us a lobbying body to be able to then hire someone to go and talk to legislature to figure out how to get that on the agenda. And yeah, like I said, it was for three years of funding because I thought it might take three years and I think I wasn't there in the room but I would only imagine that they were like, oops, it's been 25 years and we've never done this. Nevermind, we need to add that right now. So I again was not in the room but I would imagine that that's why it happened so quickly and that it's on the government's, the governor's budget, excuse me, for this year. And are all 23 designated downtowns participating in the coalition? Yes, that's 100% participation. And we actually had some, we have someone who's not, that wasn't actually a designated downtown at the time of its inception but they knew that they were going down that path. Actually with the help of previous staff member here, Heather Carrington, the city of Hartford is actually joining the designated downtown. So they actually joined the coalition knowing that they were coming into the pipeline as a downtown when they were, or I think a village center at that point. So yeah, we're all together on it. Nice, awesome. Yep. And then this might be more of a follow up but I noticed that Juneteenth isn't on here. Oh, well that would have been a mistake and it's definitely happening. We are looking at a much smaller event this year since we don't have any city or other funding via city staff. We had funding for the last two years because of the equity director and this year we don't have that. So I did not mean to not include that. It could be like hidden on the document. I know I wrote the report on it but I will get that to you for sure. We will have information about Juneteenth on there. Sorry, I've left that. No worries, thank you. Human error. I just didn't put it on the post. Yeah, we canceled it. No, we're not doing that. I want to let you know that our last finance commission meeting we were reviewing the economic development plan and there were a number of questions raised there about downtown Manuski activities, mostly around like attraction and retention so I won't dig into that now. When I get a chance to look through the report we'll follow up and they were interested in inviting your successor to a future meeting. Fabulous, yeah. We were very lucky to have sort of the heads up from the previous Community Economic Development Officer to talk about like here's how I did it and I'm like, oh, here's how I do it because we actually were already doing some of that work, attraction, attention, sharing resources, holding people's hands through things, receiving, being the first point of contact if someone's looking to move into Manuski, those kinds of things. We were already sort of sharing that work so then we were able to work together before she left to kind of talk about the strategy there so we actually do have quite a good answer on that. Awesome. And then the second thing I wanted to float for council is I know I didn't get to look at the stuff yet today and we I think only have one more meeting before we would have to give 30 days notice of changes so I'm interested in having the MOU on the next meeting in case we learn something out of the reporting if we want to make any adjustments. Great. Do you need a vote on that, Elaine? Well, I was going to say you could do that or you could just directly delay signing if wanted. Of course the more doubtful this will happen for you too but you could just continue with your understanding until you're ready, but if you wanted to go then kind of. And there's precedent for that. We delayed the signing of one one year. I can't remember for what reason. We might not have a city manager. That would have been a good reason. I forgot that that was a thing that happened. Yeah, there was a delay at one point and I think it was for about six months or so and it was basically we're going to operate under this other MOU until it's signed. Let's try to get it on the next meeting. And avoid delay. Just as the liaison to downtown Manuski, I just want to highlight the board's continuous desire and almost a need, I feel at this point, to plan events that are community-focused as well as business-focused. I think that the board could be extraordinarily narrow-minded in creating events that benefit the businesses and leave it at that. And I think that's close to what some other downtown groups do and your board and you as executive director have always wanted to have that good relationship with community, city, government and the downtowns. And when I'm unfortunately not in Manuski, the thing that I hear from folks all the time is the amazing things that our businesses and the downtown is putting on especially during the summer. So I think I've said that to you privately but I wanted to say it in council as well. Appreciate that. We have to be focused because of capacity. We can't do everything to everyone. We can be focused about maintaining our mission while also being integrated into the community and not operating as a silo. Just a follow-up question. Is there, notice we have two farmers markets that occasionally happen on Sundays? There's no overlap. So there the- That was essentially what I was getting at. Yeah, so the four, I assume you were talking about the four quarters? Yes. The four quarters was working with one of the Manuski farmers market vendors who lives in Manuski and just said, hey, can we operate? And they were like, yeah, come on in. And then it's just grown over the years. We didn't have capacity to run or location to run a winter market. We were looking into it before the pandemic hit. We were looking into a couple of different community partners to make that happen. And they kind of were like, we're gonna fill this gap right now. And they are agile and they were able to do it. So there is no overlap. They know they're ending theirs a few weeks before ours starts. And it's actually like a really great cohesive relationship. And we have a lot of, we've shared a lot. We've paid for some of their music. We've shared our vendor information and that kind of thing. It's kind of an interesting group. They can't operate the same way a farmer's market does. They can't operate with NOFA support, operating crop cash and things like that. I mean, maybe they will in the future. I don't know. But at this point, it's more of a marketplace within a business as opposed to a traditional farmer's market like we run. But yeah, we're very in close contact. And so we, I think, support each other. Great, that's awesome. Yep. I learned so much more about the relationship as well as the operation. So that was great. Yep. Thanks. You have another announcement? I do, guys. I have another announcement. So I am so pleased to say that I am just so thrilled with the next person that's coming in as our executive director. I'm not going to embarrass her. But I am gonna say that we are incredibly impressed with her experience. And I knew it was gonna happen. Oh, I'm gonna embarrass her a little bit. That in the first week of working together, she's already just brought so many things to the table, had so many amazing ideas, has done some incredible work already, made inroads with some grants and made inroads with some other items that have been kind of on the list and in our minds for a long time. So we're very, very grateful. So I'd love to invite Melissa Corbin up to sit with me and she can introduce herself. Thanks for embarrassing me. Yeah. My cheeks are red. Yeah. So Melissa Corbin comes to us from the Vermont Brewers Association. She was their executive director for eight years. And before that, she was in Winooski. And so she has direct ties to Winooski. She's worked with a lot of different groups here. And we're just so grateful to have her. So if you wanna do a little introduction, I think that would be awesome. Thanks. Thanks for having me. And I'm really excited to delve into this opportunity. I've only been here for a week. So I'm doing my best to absorb everything that's coming out of her brain. There's been a lot of downloading and the amount of knowledge and programming that's been happening is really exciting. And I'm really thrilled to be a part of it. So thank you for having me. And I look forward to getting to know all of you and working with you to advance the organization built on the platform that Meredith and the predecessors have built before me. So yeah, I'd worked in beer for the last eight years. But more specifically, I spent five years in Winooski working for Vermont Works for Women and building their social enterprise division. And so I am proud to say that I was able to be part of training 72 women in this community in construction and food service. And so I know a little bit about this community having, I lived here for a few years and worked here for five. I have a pretty tight relationship with Ray. We built quite a lot of wonderful programming together over those years. And so although I've been away for eight years, I do, I feel like I understand the heart of this community. And it's a big reason why I wanted to apply for this job and come back and see what I can do to build on what I was able to do in the past. So thank you for having me. We will have an official press release that goes out so you can learn more about her background and all the nice things we're going to say about her. But we're super excited to get started. So I am stepping down. I'm officially stepped down, but I am not leaving in the lurch. We're going to be doing a lot of collaboration, a lot of support moving forward. And I'm excited to kind of help in any way that I can as a volunteer. And I'm excited to attend maybe before my family leaves the state, attend some events as an attendee, which is going to be- I'm sure that's going to be great for you. It's going to be very, very, very, very, very good. I probably won't care or something. I won't be able to help myself with popping tense up. But yeah, so I'm so thrilled. It's bittersweet, but I'm excited for this new transition. And like I said, I'm already just very impressed and very excited. We haven't been having fun for the last week. We have, yeah. We've been exhausting ourselves. We've been having fun. Anything else? Is there any public comments? Oh, right. I want to say welcome. Thank you. Very excited to have you. Excited to hear about your new ideas and really cool to hear about your history and connections to Anouski. So that's fabulous. Yeah, thank you. I lived here in the year 2000 for three years. So I got to see the massive transition from what the downtown was then to what it is now. So I'm really psyched to be part of the community again. Awesome. Welcome back in that regard. And sad to lose you. You're definitely, you've done so much in the last four years. And this community is tight and feels like a town. So many people say that it doesn't feel like a city. And I think that is in large part too, all the work that you've done. So thank you so much for all of that. And we will miss you. Appreciate it. Thank you. I did want to embarrass you before we let you go. Just try. I'll see you. I mean, we all want to recognize your accomplishments in this role. You created what the executive director for downtown Anouski has been as the first person. You've set a precedent for community engagement and care that Melissa's going to have some shoes to fill there. You created new connections in our community, strengthened existing ones, certainly expanded the scope and how many businesses are engaged. You've been instrumental to growing community events from expanding Anouski Wednesdays, the Juneteenth celebration, your role supporting our once in a lifetime centennial celebration. You bring new faces to the events and have benefited new community groups and businesses, as was discussed earlier, like it's more than just a business focus. So you've set a really strong foundation for the new executive director for Melissa to build on and expand on your success. We're just really thankful for all your work. We're gonna miss your unique energy and everything that you brought to this role and really wish you all the best in your next chapter outside of our borders. Yeah, I know. I'll be back, don't worry. You'll be able to hear me coming. And Melissa, very excited to see what you transform this role into and what it looks like to carry forward from certainly something more of like a startup effort to a really established organization now. Yeah, that's ultimately what it is. We wanted someone that wasn't married of 2.0, we wanted something completely different. We have discussed though that we're both women with M names, so there is gonna be some confusion and people will be like, wait, are you still married it? But we hope that people will, I think people will very quickly pick up on the sort of new direction and the new energy, so we're really excited. Well, thank you both for taking the time to come in. Thank you for having us. We'll see you again soon, Melissa, and we'll see you around there. Yeah, I'll be around. Thank you, thanks. Thank you. Okay, let's move on to item D, personnel policy update. I will attempt to make this as brief as I can. Thank you. Very simple, any policy change you can go to council for. So we are seeking to update our current policy outline in the manual regarding our health and wellness benefit. During the pandemic, there was a request to broaden our interpretation of health and whole body wellness as many of the gyms and health clubs have closed down. So the precedent for this has been set by the FOP contract which was approved by council in June of 2021. The current policy as it reads is that employees holding regular full-time positions such as health orders to be reimbursed for 80% of a health club membership subsidy not to exceed $600 for an individual or family member. The city shall provide an able-bodied option for membership dues less than subsidy, and this benefit shall occur when I roll in gear from the date the employee rolls. What we want to move it to is the employees with the same numbers, same eligibility, employees holding regular full-time positions, 80% not to exceed $600 of cost related to health and wellness incurred by the employee including but not limited to gym memberships, stress management and sleep applications and fitness equipment. The subsidy will be at the discretion of the city manager and the resources director and the city again shall provide payroll deduction for requests paid by the city less than subsidy. This benefit shall occur on a rolling year from the date the employee rolls, and as for our finance director Angela, the likely impact will be negligible financially given that the payment amount doesn't change just our ability to open up the broadband. Also has the attention for lowering our HRA payments in the future as more staff members are getting out again in the south state of the matter. Just to put clarification, HRA is called the investment oriented which is how we supplement employees with health related expenses and FOPs in return or please purchase our HRA payment card. Thank you, sounds like a modern pivot. Mm-hmm. Are there any questions or concerns from council? I have a question. In the but not limited to, would that possibly cover like subscription fees, say like you have wanted to like subscribe to the Peloton app or something like that? Would you consider that, again it's at the discretion of the city manager and increases director we're trying to open up for things like that. Looking at like your stress management apps, your health apps, they are pretty price friendly monthly, but they make you pay for the year and that could be cost-effective for some people. So we want to open that up to them so they can still access the benefits. Perfect. So the short answer that question would be yes. Okay, great. Yeah, I just want to make sure those would be thought about and included because some people have like a spin bike at home but they don't have the app to use. Yeah, we've talked about putting on a snack list so that people understand what they could ask for because some people might not even get it. I don't know if I've heard of it in the past. Yeah, awesome. Thank you. Does that include a reimbursement or subsidy to the pool? I just don't know if you can say that. Yeah. We couldn't see that, so. Okay, wonderful. It's really great. Any questions from the public? Okay, would anyone like to make a motion to approve the personnel policy update on health membership? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Brynn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Onto item E, our operational overviews. Are you starting first, Lieutenant? Thank you, everyone. See you manager, mayor, council members. My name's James Shrek House. I'm a Lieutenant with the Manuski Police Department and hopefully it won't be too long. You know, it's been a long day for everyone. So we can go over a brief overview of our operational, what we do, operationally speaking. Actually, Paul, you can probably go to the next slide. It's a little bigger. It'll show our staff and how we lay it out. Thank you. So we have 15 full-time police officers. We have four full-time dispatchers. As you can see, we have a chief, two lieutenants. We have three sergeants. Currently, we have one open sergeant position. However, we're in the works of starting a sergeant process. So hopefully in the next few months, we have a full first line supervisory staff as far as the sergeants go. We have one in-house detective. And the one thing that I do wanna point out on this slide is that I'd be remiss if we didn't include the SRO. We still have an SRO at the school. And he's just a phenomenal work. And we have a couple of part-time dispatchers, but really it's the three dispatchers and the supervisor that holds down the four for us. Next slide, please. What? Sorry, SRO stands for School Resource Officer, and I'll go into that more later. So what we do, we are 24-hour day, seven day a week, 365-day-a-year operation. We offer a plethora of services. We operate with two officer minimums. So at all times in the city, you have at least two officers. That's how we staff ourselves. We work three shifts a day. So we have a day shift, which is seven until five p.m. We have a three p.m. till one in the morning, and then we have a nine p.m. to zero seven. So seven o'clock in the morning. And we do typically four 10-hour shifts a week. And the chief and with the 21st century policing model we really wanted to focus on officer wellness and having that third day off does pay dividends in the long run. So you lose a little coverage, but we think it benefits what we do as far as a long-term and retention to have that extra day off. It does make a big difference, especially when you're working in midnight shift and your first day off, you're leaving at seven o'clock in the morning. It doesn't really feel like a day off. So having that third day at least gives people like a solid two days, especially when they're working over nights to feel more restful and provide their service. In addition to what I think our traditional police services, we are kind of like a frontline liaison. We connect residents to social supports. That could be anything from our community outreach team. After hours, we connect people with the ability to get protection orders or stalking orders. So we connect them with the online court system. We are mandate reporters, so we're constantly working with Department of Children and Families, DCF, and Adult Protective Services. So we're always kind of at the frontline as far as phone calls that come in. It might not fall under our specific umbrella of what we do as a PD, but we are, like I said, 24-hour agency, so we are constantly fielding calls that maybe aren't necessarily police related, but at least we can start that process to get them the services they need. And then the next bullet point here is staffing has become an issue with nationwide and locally, and it's really important that, even though we're in Chattanooga County, and it feels like we have probably more officers than most of the state, we still really need to build our partnerships with the Mutual Aid. It doesn't take long for us with two officers running in the city to get overwhelmed. So if we're at an overdose and it's requiring two officers and the phone rings and it's a domestic disturbance, we really value our partners, such as Cold Chester Commons, so they can deal with that incident in real time and provide residents the services that they need and require and what they pay for. And that works both ways. We're constantly helping out Cold Chester when they're tied up on a major incident, Burlington UVM police services. So it's a good partnership and it's necessary. The next bullet point is when I talk about pre-pandemic, this was a big focus for our agency. Obviously with COVID it slowed down, but the 21st Century Policing Model really emphasizes the community outreach and the community policing. And Chief Hebert implemented many programs that we're starting to pick up again, kind of starting this summer. So you'll start seeing us with the coffee, with the cop. We'll have the block parties, which we did a couple over the summer. We do the operation firecups during the holidays. We have partnerships with the Special Olympics when we do the torch run. And trying to think, oh yeah, and we also have a public safety camp at the SRO, the school resource officer runs every summer and that'll be, I think, in June, which has a lot of the students being able to kind of see what we do and it gives them a little hands-on feel of what it's like to be a first responder, not just in police but with fire and rescue as well. So hopefully you'll see more of that as we continue on with the year. And in this last little statement, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but really it's kind of just says what we do. I've kind of mentioned the 21st Century Policing Model. I brought up during our budget presentation in January, but just to give a little background, in 2015, former President Obama put together a task force and it came up with six pillars, like building trust and legitimacy relationships, a lot of community policing and de-escalation tactics, guardian mindset, not the warrior. And so that statement up there just kind of falls in line with that 21st Century Policing Model. The next little part, I just can go through kind of just some numbers of what we do yearly. We traditionally hover around 8,000 calls for service. It was a little slower with the pandemic, but I think this year will probably be closer to 9,000. So we are a busy agency. Community outreach, which I'll talk about more as in the coming up slides, but they had 220 contacts and they're a busy and very important part of what we do. Next slide, please, Paul. All right, so again, in addition to the hundreds of criminal charges that we file a year, a large part of what we do is community-based policing. And as you can see, our public assists are, you know, over 900 complaints or what we do incidents, 328 welfare checks, the mental health issues. I can't stress enough how, I don't know if we're more in tune to our document better or if it's just, there's just more of it, but I feel in my 17 years in Winooski, it's daily. And as you can see, four in seven, mental health-related incidents that we actually track, so that's more than one a day that we are responding to. It's a pretty heavy lift on everyone. And then the drug issue, you know, 30 overdoses, mental health stuff again, and you know, property crimes, which is probably in line with some of the drug issues, which we're trying to address daily. Next slide, please. So just kind of giving you like updates since the budget presentation of what we've kind of focused on and what we're gonna continue to focus on for the fiscal year 23. I don't get too much into the first bullet point. That's a very much influx, I think, discussion that is above my pay grade for sure. Just realized that I think it's still being discussed. There's been nothing concrete as far as where that's gonna land. I would like to tell you that we have an exceptional team downstairs, and it's very professional, and the service is A-plus, so everyone in the city is in good hands with who we have downstairs currently. A big thing going forward is gonna be retention for us. And like I said, it's not just a Winooski problem, it's a national and statewide problem. And just wanna make sure that we have, you know, we're building the tools. We've increased our training budget. We wanna make sure that who we have downstairs is happy and continues to function at a high level. And so we've increased the training budget. We've doubled it, I believe it's up to 15,000 now. And just wanna make sure that we are keeping who we have and keeping a high level of service for the city of Winooski. Because like I said, with, it seems like we have, obviously the chief is probably gonna retire this year. That's gonna have another opening, and then you have just life in general that happens where people move, and people decide to leave for whatever reason to have so. Retention is very paramount for us going forward. So next bullet is the school resource officer. Couple years ago, there was a big kind of push slash discussion, some community forums to say, is this a program that we wanna continue to have? As far as fiscal year 23 and into going into fiscal 24, the school resource officer as far as his, or their assignment is gonna be unchanged. Officer Zyder does a phenomenal job up at the school. He is continually, does programs. He does dare, he's a dare instructor. He is actually coaching baseball, I think for the middle school, which is amazing. And so he's fostered a lot of relationships as a representative of the PD, but also just to have staff and students feel comfortable coming to the police for whatever issue it may be. But anyway, so he's, or officers, they're still gonna be up at the school as far as this year in fiscal year 24, but there'll be more conversations going forward. This next bullet, diversifying our workforce. Proud to say that that was a huge focus for Chief Heber and as an agency, and I'm proud to say that of the 15 full-time personnel we have, we have over a quarter now, or people of color. So I think that's a better reflection of the community to serve and that was a huge success for us as far as being able to diversify in a state that technically doesn't have maybe a lot of diversity, but I'm so proud and happy that Winnieski was able to do that. Next bullet point is, again, just really trying to emphasize growth with planned retirements and future promotions. Chief Heber was able to double the training budget so we've been able to send new supervisors to LIDA, which is through the FBI, it's like a first line and executive and then it's a trilogy, it's three major trainings, it's nationally accredited. We've sent people to Roger Williams, which again is a very well-respected training for first line supervisors in particular and then we've also had the opportunity now to hopefully in the future, we've been in the queue, but COVID kind of slow things down and life happens, but to send some wonders or multiple people to the National Academy, which is the FBI National Academy, which is in Virginia, it's a 10 week I believe in residence. It's basically the apex of training for supervisors going forward. So hopefully we can maybe send someone to that soon. The community outreach team, this is what I'm gonna kind of explain a little bit more what they do. Like I said, mental health is a huge lift for us. It was a need that was immediately recognized from everyone in the county and so this team is embedded with all of the municipalities in Chittin County, except for Burlington, they have their stand alone, so they do have access to a team as well, but they have allowed us as police officers to focus more on criminal complaints and also offer a higher levels of mental health services because they're professionals and deal with that all the time. And they work money through Friday, it's 8.30 to 8 p.m., so almost 12 hours of mental health coverage and I believe the cost is only about $16,000 a year, so to essentially have one to one and a half full-time social workers out in the field for only $16,000 a year is a huge savings and just a great partnership to have. So I can't say enough about them either. Yes, they are through the Howard Center. This year, we are able, and I believe this is probably like seven, eight months ago that we unveiled the strategic plan, which again, Chief Hebert put the original strategic plan together, I believe about four to five years ago and the point was that after we've kind of identified what we feel are good goals for us as an agency to follow through the 21st century policing model that we revisit that every three years. We're at the three-year point, so we redid it, we said, okay, what worked? COVID obviously slowed some things down, what needed to be changed, we made those changes and then kind of just looking forward to stuff that, okay, we still need to implement, but haven't accomplished yet. So there's like three tiers to it, but that was something that myself, Lieutenant Heisenga, other community members, Ray Coffin was part of that project, tried to get as many stakeholders involved as possible, not just us, so we had multiple sets of eyes looking at it to say, hey, is this like the best way to police and interface with the community going forward? So that was a nice thing to kind of accomplish this year as well. And then this last part actually kind of what it probably should have mentioned during the staffing. For those who haven't been here that long, we used to have it in-house, I feel like I said it every time I come here, but we used to have it in-house, CJC, which is a community justice center or a rep board. So just because it's not seen here every day, it is still being utilized. So if anyone who is getting charged with a small crime that the court system feels, this person doesn't maybe need like a permanent record of this crime, those individuals in Winooski are still able to access a rep board or a community justice center, just through Burlington and Essex. So we're still utilizing that, that's still a big part of the judicial system, getting those individuals who are identified as good candidates to the alternative justice measures. Next slide please. So goals going forward for 2024. Again, I can go into the too much of the dispatch, really invest in our employees. Like I said, it's a struggle because we always need to have two people at the PD at all times as far as an officer. Actually three with dispatch. So we always need three people there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So we really have to make sure that we are doing everything we can to keep employees engaged, feel valued, and make sure that that is then translated into the service that we're providing them on the streets. So, certainly getting the training budget up is a big help and we've talked about other ways to engage the officers we have through special teams, tacticals kind of stuff to keep patrol very much in place, but still have opportunities to do a little extra on the side that would still benefit the PD and the residents. We do have a person who is part-time working for HSI, which provides professional growth and allows us to access the federal system for utilize them for either tools that they have that we can't afford or to even use their judicial system which sometimes is more appropriate for more significant crimes. So it's been a good partnership. Again, I've talked about the community outreach team, continue that. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I kind of was going to go toward it at the end, but just to kind of talk about the shortages and just how important it is to, I'll skip forward. So when, and then Jess, Jess, you can kind of attest to this. It's really important to keep who we have the continuity because it takes so long to obtain or identify a viable candidate. So it's really important to make sure that we keep the core together. And because it takes about, I'm guessing about one year to probably have a person who you can go through the application process to a background, to a polygraph, to then hopefully pass a PT test to then get into the academy. And there's only two academies run a year. So if you miss that date to start them, you're waiting an extra four or five months on top of that. The academy itself is 16 weeks plus probably two and a half weeks of post basics. So you're looking at close to five months and then assuming that individual gets through all that, we have a 10 week FTO process. So it's a field training. So you got 10 more weeks, they pass field training. That's at that point, that is a serviceable officer. Where, and I mean my serviceable means that that individual can be in a car by themselves, picking up shifts, helping alleviate the overtime and things of that nature. Is that what you're getting at? Or am I? I didn't mean to hurt you. Yeah, yeah. I'm lost. Yes. Absolutely. Yep. I mean, it's, I think what drew everyone that does apply here is the diversity. It's, and some of the challenges that come with that, I think we all take a lot of pride in having a community that is, at times can be a challenge, but that brings a lot of rewards to what we do. And it is important to have a solid team who understands those needs and understands what is expected of a police department. And because it is very different, I mean drive 20 miles and it's a very different look. So it is a challenge, but a rewarding opportunity. And we've, like Elaine said, it's important to keep that continuity and understanding of the challenges to be successful. Seeing those same faces as we're focusing on so much on community policing and being approachable. And seeing the same faces at the sense of comfort that they revolve more. So I just want to quickly hit on the fiscal year 25, the school resource officer. So like I said, based on those community forums and continuing discussions, fiscal year 25 is, there's a potential that the school resource officer will not be embedded at the school, that they might be more of a liaison responding from the police department. So those are going to be discussions that are had this coming fiscal year. And then managing the staffing shortages which we kind of already highlighted. I feel that this is probably the most important thing to focus on going forward is how can we identify viable candidates? Because it seems like we can't keep up with the exodus that's approaching us through retirements. I think right now we have one or two openings. Jesse and I, it feels like weekly we have two or three applicants and we haven't yet two today, two no shows. And we've been doing this for probably about five, six months now regularly. And we haven't had anyone even get to the point of testing. So I feel strongly, yeah, so I feel strongly this is where we need to really focus going forward. And I'm actually in a project management class through UVM right now. And I chose to do it on police recruitment. I just think we have to hit different platforms, be more creative. I know that there have been discussions, I'm not trying to speak out of place, but of maybe offering bonuses that seems to be a common place now, especially if you're a preser which means that someone who wouldn't have to go to the academy who could just come in, do a few weeks of FTO and a bridge and then automatically be a serviceable officer. But this is something that going forward. And again, this is not just a Winooski problem. This is a Vermont slash national issue, but we do have to connect with people who are going to be viable candidates and be the right fit. And it's a little discouraging right now, I guess. This is being polite about it. So that's really all I have for the quick overview is anyone have any questions? Sure. First, I think you sold yourself a little short when you said you have to drive 20 miles away. I think you can be a lot closer and you guys are outperforming those police forces. Your adoption of the 21st century policing model is not something that was adopted nationwide or even Vermont wide. So the fact that this department has gone so wholeheartedly into that is commendable. I have a question about the mental health and the suicide number. The suicide number seemed really high and I didn't know if that was in addition to that mental health number or a part of that mental health number and you just wanted to highlight that for us. Yeah, so it's probably a little bit of both. So when we go into Valkyrie, which is our database for, it's might say suicide attempt, but we might also check that mental health box. So maybe it's duplicating its efforts as far as that, but yes, it is high and it, it is why it's so important for us to identify people in crisis and to get those services to them as quickly as possible. I am hopeful that we have been doing more to address those issues. And like I said, those are suicide attempts. Those aren't successful, but it does show that there is a huge need for these full-time mental health clinicians that we need to partner with. We just can't do it alone. Another question, the SRO officer, and I may be remembering this incorrectly. I thought during, I think maybe the budget presentation we had been told that the SRO officer was gonna wear it similar to what you were wearing at the school. I recently heard from a group of students up there that he has frequently been in full police uniform. So I don't know if you could address that. He, or SRO to my knowledge, is supposed to be in a softer uniform, which means no external carrier. Yeah. And when I, I believe that is the uniform that that individual is in most of the time. I can only say or speculate that this individual, if they are going up in what we wear in patrol, which is an exterior carrier, a more tactical look, is maybe because that individual is covering shifts as well, kind of working a dual purpose. There are times when we might have like more in two hours where if I have to run out to do something, can SRO just kind of supplement and work the road? Maybe at that point they would put on more appropriate tire for patrol purposes. That's good to know. I didn't hear anything else. And then just an update if possible on the police dog. So at this point, we're still trying to work through that the individual who has interest. We're just trying to make sure that it's gonna be the right fit for everyone. Life happens. We've had changes in making sure it's gonna be a stable. That is a huge commitment. It's not just like a one or two year commitment. That's like a seven, eight year commitment and you're locked into that. So as far as the canine goes, kind of just on pause right now. Again, I don't wanna overstep my boundaries, but on pause and then we're still looking at the therapy dog as well. And the chief has put out some, some policies to work through that as well. So there is movement on those just at this point. Like I said, it's just kind of on hold the canine until we just make sure that everything is in order. That's a big commitment. Not only with training and equipment, but just the person in their second or third year in their career to say, hey, in the next 10 years, you're gonna be with this dog and that's gonna maybe hamper other things. And just wanna make sure that everyone's on the same page before we fully commit. So. Yeah. That's all I have. Okay. Is there any questions from members of the public? You can use the raise hand feature. I actually remember something as well. Go for it. I don't see a hand. Since our police department has done so many great things with 21st century policing and I know that your hands are definitely full with recruitment, retention, then some. I think as the strategic plan kind of comes to its next evolution, I'd be curious to see if there's opportunities to work with the state's Office of Racial Equity and other opportunities there to just learn and grow and see how we can improve the structures we have in place and community support systems. And it certainly is a longer, larger conversation but it's just something I was thinking about. Yeah, absolutely. And I do hope, I'm hopeful that we get to a point where we are staffed more comfortably to be able to actually think bigger picture. It is about being proactive and staying ahead. And I feel like sometimes we get, unfortunately we have to be more reactive just because of the limitations of staffing. But yes, absolutely. I think these are all dreams we have of moving forward. How many of our officers on Winooski PD live in Winooski? One, to my knowledge. Thank you. Yep. Excuse me too. We have a dispatcher too that lives in Winooski. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Well welcome the chief back up. You're just gonna stay here for a while now. I think someone said this was my meeting, right? Yeah. Yeah. So good evening. Not sure if everyone knows Bruce. Bruce Palmer is Fire Marshal. Obviously want to start to expose him to you folks to these processes, what the future holds. And share the wealth, if we will. Thanks for being here. Yeah, I would just start with this first slide of reminding everyone that our department, unlike the traditional fire departments or emergency services where it's fire EMS based, we are community risk reduction fire based. It's very different, very unique. Remind folks of the five E's, the enforcement, engineering, education, emergency response and economic incentives through the community risk reduction efforts that you all in this community benefits greatly from. And that's our public billing registry. And just, you know, here we say a lot of getting ahead of the call. And we'd much rather do that. Next slide, Paul. Obviously picking up on the same org chart. We're in the firing code. You can go to the next slide, Paul. So I chose to kind of line this up a little differently for you folks as far as what we do day to day and place the positions for you. And there is some overlap. As fire chief, director of code, I am the city health officer. I could give that up, but that means the mayors, the city health officer. So the 11 o'clock animal bike calls, I think I'll continue to take those. Emergency management coordinator. The city manager is the director and coordinator. We're gonna touch on that on another item here. By default, the E-91 coordinator, every town, every city has to have an E-91 coordinator. Again, if we're not doing it as staff, council would need to do that. And I certainly need to recognize staff for pulling most of that load. Pretty important here in Wynuski with a new development, that sort of thing. It comes a big deal of power numbering or addressing properties. Administrative functions, there's too many to list. We do monthly officers meetings. There's weekly department drills, which admittedly I don't make all of those. They are the second, third, and fourth Wednesday. And there's just not enough time to go around. City council meetings, which are super important I feel for department heads to attend. Again, I think the commitment there serves a lot of value for you folks during your meetings and for us to be here for the public. Self-health and connected people, obviously, and then the housing commission. Emergency response, the chief is part of the emergency response here during the day. But more so, call back. So we do get called back. If there's a first alarm, as I spoke about earlier, or greater, or we're committed in another community, one of the chiefs respond back into the city. We're supporting those under us. There's usually decision points that need to be made that require a chief. I am part of the Monday through Friday emergency response, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. coverage. I don't mind it, but it would be an issue moving forward. In the future, I'm not sure every chief is gonna be in the city by 6 a.m. So I was in the city at 5.30 this morning. It's now 5 a.m. So not complaining to saying moving forward is something that we need to realize the workload. There is some weekend holiday coverage. We're three people trying to cover five days a week, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Bruce is on vacation, much deserved vacation coming up for a week and a half. We will be short coverage. This Friday, I'm the only scheduled person to be in the city, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Unless there's someone else available. And then we're relying on our partners around us. So we are thin, for sure. And then the chief on call Sunday through Friday, again, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. The dispatchers need someone to call. We don't drive that to our part-time folks. One of the chiefs take it on a rotation basis. So there's three of us that take that. It's just not a count of time. It's not a big lift. But again, it is something that we wanna put on the radar. So what's that mean for this position? March 22 to 23, I've averaged 96 hours for every pay period. Is it sustainable for somebody else or for this community? Is this something we need to put on the radar? You just don't know that that means a lot of times you've worked more than that. Yeah, I mean, I don't record all the time. What I would say is there's a lot of models to follow. The model works, how sustainable it is moving forward. The national trends, you heard it on the PD side, recruitment retention is huge. There's not a lot of folks trying to do this type of work certainly on a part-time basis. A part-time firefighter that comes on with no experience, we're paying 13, 11 minimum wage. And I heard we're paying a parks person 15 bucks an hour. I only say that because some of the applicants have told us there's a discrepancy. You pay a dispatcher $20 an hour on a part-time basis and somebody's getting paid 13, 11 an hour to ride a fire truck and go into burning buildings. There's an incentivized pay plan that if they go get certifications we'll pay them more an hour. But we are not even in a position where we're paying them to go get all those certifications. We have come a long ways. I'm not saying we haven't. We have come a long, long ways. But there's a long ways to go. And that's part of our recruitment and retention problem. So again, I put it out there. I refer to a model, the red ribbon report. The international fire chiefs puts it out. There's a lot of indicators in there across all these functions that you're gonna see. You know, am I thinking strategically for the city of Onitski? No, today I didn't touch anything strategically. Worked on the training plan for the fire department so that we could keep our 11, 12 people trained. So there's a creep factor, right? I mean, it's that constant piece of, again, not unlike the police department. The police chief's out doing patrol. Is he doing strategic planning or thinking big picture? No. If I'm on the fire truck, am I thinking big picture? No. And this community's grown enough and will continue to grow where that's huge. And yes, we can rely on our valued partners, but there will be nothing like the value of having someone within your organization making decisions on behalf of Onitski. And I think some of that reflected tonight in our discussion with Vitaing. And it doesn't matter whether it's St. Mike's or Vitaing or Purlington, we intimately know Onitski. I know your strategic vision priorities. So there's that decision making, that representation that's super important. I know it's getting late, so that's Paul, let's go to the next one. So the fire chief's exempt. Again, we're going to the fire marshal's position. This is Bruce for tonight. Again, another exempt position. He is the deputy health officer, one of two, serves on the battalion chief level. So this is the command level. His main focus is community risk reduction. That's the administrative functions of the public building registry or property complaints or commercial inspections. All that boots on the ground kind of really leading those efforts. Again, subject to the monthly officers meetings or sorts of things. He is part of the emergency response. 6 a.m. to 6 p. I covered that, the chief on duty. I'm going to call out the March 22 to 23. Bruce's job description says first alarm or greater respond back into the city. Bruce responded back into the city over 80 times over this period of time. He lives fairly close. But very few of those were first alarms. Probably, I'm going to say less than 20 of those were first alarm or greater. So the creek factor, we didn't have resources during the hours of 6 p. to 6 a. To adequately respond to a call and he took it upon himself to come in and help cover those calls. I haven't heard him complain. I'm just calling it out again as workload and the reality of what's here in Manuski. And he has averaged 90 hours for pay period. On the assistant fire marshals, the third full-time position serves as deputy health officer, serves as rank of captain. Again, the community risk reduction, first alarm or greater back into the city. I know that numbers 12 to 20. You know, always comes back when we have those and more. And currently works a schedule of Sunday to Wednesday. So does the eight hour on Sunday, 10, 10, 12. Ends 12 on Wednesday so they can be here for the training on Wednesday night with our part-time staff. So again, we have a very unique model. Thursday, Friday, it goes to just Bruce and I here unless we have per diem or some other coverage. Next slide, Paul. Our part-time battalion chief has a full-time job elsewhere. Again, as our main response, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and weekends as available. This is not scheduled. I don't know that he's available all these times. Covers a ton of those calls but there's certainly times that we don't have access to that. Same with the part-time officers, which is a captain and two lieutenants. Again, the main hours are 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. We rely on these part-time folks. They lead a company of four or five part-time firefighters. Everyone's broken the companies just so we can manage them. That's our professional development for these captains and lieutenants. All folks are required to do 72 hours of training. That's our Wednesday nights. What's unique about the part-time officers and the part-time firefighters is duty weekends, which is they do a weekend, full weekend, Saturday and a Sunday, which is 36 hours of coverage. For the officer, they get $120 plus their call. So they have to be available. They're not at the firehouse, but they have to be available. So if you do that math, that's about $3.30 an hour. I will, again, we've come a long ways. It used to be $20 for that same period of time. So you all have supported us and we've come a long ways. The duty weekend split goes for the Saturday, it's 24 hours. And just, again, we've been unable to cover the fourth weekend of the month. We used to have four companies. We got down to like two people. So we've had to go into three companies and then do a split. So they do a full duty weekend of Saturday, Sunday, and then they have to do a Saturday or Sunday additionally. The last part of that bullet is the duty weekend Saturday hours. We heard from a lot of our part-time staff. They wanted to be more engaged, which was very encouraging. They want more. They want to represent Winooski more. They want to be here. So we're doing, we just started this three to four hours each Saturday. So they get their duty weekend, but then they have to be at the firehouse, say eight to 11 on Saturday morning as a company. So they do a truck check. There'll be some public engagement. You'll see them at some of the events. It's a great opportunity for them to get out and be instead of just responding to calls that can be out in the community. We just started it, right? We're three Saturdays in and I shared with Jesse, who I believe is left in maybe a lane, but firetruck's going through one of our neighborhoods. Mom's out in the yard with a little three-year-old and the kid just absolutely rejoices in seeing the firetruck and she had it on video. So I shared it with staff and Jesse. So again, I hope those are the things that they experience, meaning our staff and our residents get to experience. Our part-time firefighters, we're down to eight. Again, we're covering the six P to six A. They're assigned to a company, the same type of thing. They are paid less, if you will, than the officers, less responsibility type. That's why it's structured that way. Next slide, Paul. Our code enforcement officer is mainly parking enforcement, limited municipal code enforcement. Takes care of the general maintenance of the parking equipment. So the kiosks are pieces of equipment. They don't go forever. They're very reliable. And we do the winter maintenance on the kiosks. I mentioned that, again, no one's complaining, right? Our current officer works Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then the next week works Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So it's supposed to be two officers. So they're supposed to not the same person the same day of the week. But through the winter, obviously, if they weren't here one of those three days, I actually traveled in to shovel the kiosks. We don't want some in the fall, that sort of thing. So again, we're sharing, there's a lot of creek factor. Our public safety admin, who holds us all together, does a ton of different things, touches many, many different things a day. The public building registry, all the notices, scheduling, billing, data entry, the parking, the appeals, parking permits, contracts, again, data entry, building permits, and the intake of data entry issuance, public works permits, and supports zoning permits. So again, staff do a lot. That's part of the excitement of being here. Next slide. Just kind of a comparison of what's happening. So I'll start with building permits. Last year was 131. Currently, we're at 154 in the right-hand column. Inspections, you can see we're gonna exceed our inspections on all fronts, except construction. This is a reporting issue with our software that I need to track down. There will be a significant difference between the 251 and eight, because we were at the school two or three times a week for that whole year, and we're no longer there. Time of sale inspections is down. We would expect to see that with the interest rates, that sort of thing. That is a pretty good reflection of, we feel the impacts of what goes on around us. Property complaints are down a little bit. I suspect we will catch up. Usually spring is a big one of the community. Absolutely amazing, brought those in. Chief, can I ask the inspections violations are up like 60%? Do you have any understanding of what's underneath that? It may be the district that we're in, meaning this year we're inspecting a part of the city. Does it switch its quadrants? It does change from quadrant to quadrant. Remember we have the city broken into four quadrants. We travel around the city. So it may be a reflection of that. Bruce, we have a new person doing inspections. So when you go from someone that's been here 20 years doing the same inspections and you introduce new people, you will see a different view on things, which isn't a bad thing. And remember, we're just coming off COVID. So you had two years of pretty much not a lot getting done. Whether people didn't have the resources or their contractors weren't available, we are still feeling those impacts. On the emergency response side, we're gonna exceed last year's numbers. I won't go word for word through those. In the bottom part, I just want to, again, our daytime staff is covering about 194 of those calls. That's three people across five days, 12 hours a day, trying to keep a minimum of two people here. We're not hitting that, meaning there's periods of time, like I'm here by myself in the morning till Bruce gets in, we leave, and the third person's here by themselves for a couple hours in the afternoon or evening, however it works. I really want to point out our paid-on call folks who aren't scheduled, we'd rely on them when they're available. They're covering a huge percent of the calls still here in Wienewski, which is good, kudos to them. And our duty weekend coverage, although they're not at the station, that is scheduled time. I know people are available during that said weekend duty time, because they're signed up and they're on the schedule. I know that. They're covering 88 of those calls. And then we always want to watch the drop calls. And there's five. Am I gonna say that's bad or good? That should be zero. We really shouldn't be dropping calls, so we want to watch those. Next slide, please. So a little bit of the updates. Transition to a two-truck, that's complete. If folks have questions on that. The feasibility to accommodate 24-hour staffing. It's a future piece that Wienewski's got to deal with. It's recruitment, retention. Our ability to cover shifts here is limited. Can't have people sleep in the firehouse. So we're really looking for people that are within, not even a distance, within a timeframe getting to the firehouse, right? If we say five miles, that puts us over on the showroom road. So you can imagine during, if you have an emergency, if I say within a five-mile radius, you probably don't want to wait for people to come off the showroom road at 4.30 or 5 o'clock at night to get to the firehouse. So it's not feasible, right? So all things lead to us having a larger discussion about what we can do at the firehouse. So those discussions have begun. The discussion to expand our MOU to do plans review is ongoing. We have had a meeting with the director of fire safety. It was a positive meeting. Obviously they're concerned about losing $75 to $80,000 a year in fees. So I suspect in the next week or so, we will know a little bit more on kind of what stance they're gonna take. Clarification here, 75 to 80,000 a year. That's the average, okay. Yep, sorry, actually quite annually. So those are fees. If someone's gonna build a project, they go to the state and that's what the state is collecting for fees to review those plans. And we are trying to bring that local because that is a huge disconnect for us. In the budget, it was noted at 40,000 for revenue. Because there's gonna be some adjustment in the building permits. Are we still gonna charge people a building permit and the plans review? I see. It's gonna get lumped together. And I believe we were very conservative at the $40,000 number. Okay, thank you. That's over a five, that's a five-year average, that's 75 to 80. There was a huge spike with the school, with that project. We won't see $54 million projects. Very often. Next slide, please. Just tracking the replacement they approved in the truck that's ordered. There's some financing timelines to happen with the tracking, the delivery, as far as the supply chains are finally getting caught up and matching that up with the bond bank, that sort of thing. The site visits of the school is complete. Into housing, currently working with the Housing Commission. We've had several meetings. The building chapter's been done. The public building registry chapters is drafted. We didn't have a quorum, so that meeting is rescheduled. And I believe one or two more meetings with the Housing Commission, then I will start to come to council for its review. The public building registry is a little bigger lift than the building, just because we reformatted things and really tried to make as much as we can, make an ordinance more user-friendly, understand the information that's in there, that sort of thing. You know, we're continuing to work with Hawkeen on their sprinkler systems. They've done an excellent job. They're about 75% done. This is installing all new sprinklers in their four buildings. This was due to their sprinkler breaks. Again, kudos to them. This is something that Hawkeen took on themselves. This is not an insurance claim. Insurance said, well, we'll wait for the next break. Hawkeen was not interested in dealing with the first one, 60, almost 70 units displaced for seven months. And the second one being 40 units displaced for six months. I think they're doing the right thing. Housing Association, we continue to watch with some structural issues. I suspect that we'll be hearing a little bit more about that coming up in spring and contractors are available. Three under main, we continue to monitor and try to encourage the owner to do the right things. Like now that the snow's gone, get there and clean your property. And I'm just trying to stay ahead of it a little bit. So it's on the radar. Next slide, please. Save, healthy connective people, regional dispatch. Again, you heard it with PD. I would tell you, this is a dispatch as a whole for fire and EMS or another pinch point for Manuski. Meaning fire and ambulance don't operate on the same channel. We don't have the capacity to. So St. Mike's dispatches themselves. A lot of times the students dispatching the ambulance into the city 1400 times. But more so if I'm at a car accident, I have no idea what's coming for analysis. We're not on the same channel. We don't have that capacity. Operationally, it's an issue that again needs to be a broader conversation for Manuski. It's not an easy fix. It's not like we can just say to PD downstairs, you need to start doing this. They're staffing implications to doing that. But that's why regional dispatch to fire and EMS has been such an important issue. All hazards mitigation plan is complete. That's available. That's on the CCRPC site. Supplemental coverage for St. Mike's College. You know, in our operating budget coming up, there's some concessions made to support them, support that effort through purchase of diesel fuel, allowing them access to diesel fuel. They have a long-standing contractual obligation with the town of Colchester. And it's very difficult. There's a lot of just fingers to it as far as how that all works. St. Mike's is a battalion of Colchester. The town of Colchester funds a lot of their operations. So obviously Colchester is the best in interest in what they're doing. And sometimes that doesn't align with what we want them or need them to do here in Winooski. So we continue to try to have those conversations and assure that that's a resource to the residents here. Recruitment and retention. You heard it from PD. You know, we're just critically low on people. We are onboarding the first part-time on-call firefighter. It's been eight months since we've interviewed anybody. And this is by chance the St. Mike's student that's gonna stay in the area. So it's an ongoing, you know, Jesse can attest that there's just not a lot going on there as far as people's availability or want to do this work. And it's not just a Winooski problem. We are participating. I'm sure you have a big of a problem it is. It's a grant funded effort statewide. It's called Operation Mayday. Hopefully you've seen it on WCAX. So this is across the state. And we are gonna be one of that. I know of 50 plus fire departments that would be hosting an open house on May 13th from nine to one. And we'll be working with Paul to start pushing that stuff locally. But channel three will run this, they've already started, but they will continue to run this effort. Again, that's a grant funded effort. Whether you're a volunteer, a combination or a professional. Next slide. Then lastly, what are we gonna do? This didn't change from our piece. Obviously, if we're able to do the MOU, which I'm confident we will get there. There may be some other pains in getting there. But how do we implement that? The fee structure, we've already started to have that conversation. The renovation of the current station for 24-hour staffing. We've already started that conversation. That will need to continue. The replacement of the truck. Again, we've talked about the financing. On the housing side, implement the changes and updates to public billing registry. Get it through council, the public hearings, that sort of thing. Do the education, which will just be the start of the education for both tenants and property owners of said updates. It isn't about sneaking up on people with the updates. Continue to support the new development and renovation projects. Renovations here in Manuski are super important to our grand list. As is new development, we play a big role in those projects up front. Again, take delivery February, March of the new truck. I list that again because that could move. But it also has huge impacts on the firehouse as far as training people on a new piece of equipment. Safe, healthy, connected people. Transition, firing, EMS dispatching in a unified entity. Finalize the MOU for supplemental coverage, which would be super important. That means with St. Mike's or others to help make sure that we have people available when calls come in. Would love to get their strategic vision planning for firing EMS delivery. I say EMS delivery because Manuski continues to grow. But we haven't gone to St. Mike's and say, hey, are you able to grow with us as our EMS provider? And their enrollment numbers continue to decline as a school, which means their fire and rescue units continuously less kids. We anticipate this summer that their fire unit will be unrolling blackouts again because there's no one staying for the summer. So we rely on them, but I'll not only be dealing with our part-time folks that aren't available, I'm now gonna be dealing with an entity that we rely on a lot in trying to manage when they're available, when they're not matching up our coverage. Yes, we always have B-Tang. Yes, we always have Burlington. But it's just a constant, that strategic, that big picture thinking that we need to make sure we continue to keep our finger on. Possibly getting licensed as a first response, not starting an ambulance, I wanna be very, very clear. This came up with the opiate settlement money. You saw the numbers on the police side, the opiates, the overdoses, suicide attempts. It's weekly now that there's where two, three, four ambulances deep in the city simultaneously. So this effort would be if we're in the firehouse, we can render aid when our primary ambulance is not available, meaning St. Mike's or UBM's not available and South Burlington's coming in or Burlington's coming in, we should be with them. We can probably get there faster, especially when staff is here. The city of Burlington will have staff in the firehouse. They send an ambulance, they send a fire truck into the city of Winooski. That's like, that's craziness. We're taking a resource, an extra resource from another community when we have staff in the firehouse. This is not a big lift as far as training level. This is a very basic first responder level that we can provide access. We can be there with the automatic defibrillator and cardiac arrest, that sort of thing. So at a very basic level, Winooski's grown enough to be thinking this. Recruitment and retention, can't say not. I don't know what the answer is. No one around us knows what the answer is. Next slide, I think it should be questions. Yes, thank you for the opportunity to do the update, for sure. Thank you. I already asked mine, any other questions? I maybe have a simple question. Have we ever done a touch a truck event? So we historically have done a public safety day, which is down Winooski Falls Way. That was pre-COVID. So it's usually done in conjunction with police, fire, that sort of thing. And any, I think there was maybe some of the last budget rounds, there was talks about bringing back like copy of the cop. And I wasn't sure if there are any events planned for this next fiscal year. So they were, I say they, staff was at the school today. The first time we were there at 10 o'clock this morning, we had about 14 students. And then at two o'clock this afternoon, we had another 10 students go through the fire trucks, the police cars, and then we went into the classrooms. So we are trying, and we'd like to get back into the industrial park. We put 350 people through fire extinguishers and that sort of thing the first year we did it. I'm hopeful that Saturday hours, our staff that want to be more engaged can go out and start to do some of this engagement. We've certainly participated in the senior center events. We're going to be there for a few hours and sit with folks. But again, I got to tell you there's not a lot of bandwidth to do it, right? I mean, it's super important stuff, but we only can ask to do so much. It's super important stuff, but what do we prioritize? Sure. And that was just a tag on, given the previous slide talking about doing additional engagement on the weekends. So I wasn't sure if that was something that you'd like. That's the intent of those Saturdays for sure. And I probably have asked this in the past, and I forget if I have asked. So bear with me. When I lived in Washington state, I actually took community emergency response team training. Is there any, does anybody in Vermont do anything like that that you know of? So there isn't a lot of that in Vermont. Yeah. Yeah, I'll leave it at that. There's no real organized effort to do that. Just no effort, no interest, no awareness, all the above. I think all the above. Okay. Any other questions? No, in response to Brenda, I think that there may be some value in exploring some certain type of stuff or like police explorers or like you know, trying to use the human resources that we have in community to figure out like pipeline towards filling some of those gaps for you guys. So that's just where my mind has been at. Yes, so I would welcome that for sure. Any questions from the members of the public? Okay. Thank you all for the presentations. No, thanks guys. So onto item F, our annual approval of the local emergency management plan. That's good. So hopefully- We don't need that much detail. So hopefully you all get to read it. This is an annual thing. I think it ties into some of the discussion earlier with VTANG and what happens in the incident. We exercise this by default almost every day by virtue of the emergency levels we operate at. We do need to do some training with council with even our leadership team as far as how this happens if you know, if there's a larger event and how we can draw in a certain team to operate within you know, a local emergency management plan that sort of thing. So there's always room to do more. You know, hopefully when we decide to do more we use the word sustainability. What's sustainable within a plan. Yeah, and I'll stop there. Someone said the word start with C or C or start with something. Team, sir. Assuming the red text is updates, look like no substantial changes? Yes. Sorry, I'm not sure why that came through the red text on this. It's like references to EOC. Yeah. I think Paul was trying to- Yeah. Yeah. So Paul reformatted this some, but yes. It's mostly, we've had quite a change in leadership. So updating information as council changes, updating that, making some references to the all hazard mitigation plan. One thing that I just jumps out at me, there's no page numbers. So it's small, but it's one of those things that when I look at a lot of government documents, it's like, well, what page is it on? I think you can get it all up. Yeah, we can get it all up. I'm surprised FEMA didn't pick that up. Hmm. Paul, did you hear that? Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions from counseling? I'm very brief one. I noticed that along with Councilor Oakley, Ben, Councilor Judge that all of our members have blacked out, is that purposeful or is that a needed thing that you don't have? So we had asked Councilor, whether, because for different public information, these are their social solvers because the city does not pay for solvers for solvers. So we had asked if you wanted to step redacted and I defaulted, in case you missed the message but why did I redacted the default of action? Because this has helped on the public website. The city staff have access to all the solvers. Okay, that was my thought. I think they're listed on the website. Or they were in the past, but maybe not. Usually with onboarding, that's one of the questions. Yeah. We just tried to be mindful. No, I appreciate it. I just wanted to see like, so it's on the staff side, has it? Yes. They're not on the, the phone number, they're not on the, okay. Any other questions? Any questions from members of the public? Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the local emergency management plan? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Item G, request for use of reserves for emergency lockbox program. Yeah, so hopefully some clarifying info. I got it late for some clarification. When we're talking lockboxes, we're talking any public building has a mechanical lockbox on the outside. They are privately owned. We do not provide them for the buildings. What happens is we provide them with the means of getting said lockboxes, but it is a responsibility of them to get and is a requirement of the ordinance for them to provide such. The importance of, so I brought these just to show you, this is our own parking garage, which we don't have a lockbox for. So that's one building. And if you think about 70 to 90 of those, trying to carry those on the fire truck or on animals and manage those keys. Why so many keys? You need a set of keys for every floor. So if we go to Halkine, there's six floors and I'm sending firefighters to those floors. Each team gets a key, set of keys. So we require the building owners to have a master and then the apartments, a lot of times we're getting door codes. So for 30 years, and we're not alone, for 30 years we've used Supra. This is a name brand box who's been bought by Kitty. They've kind of dropped off. We don't, we can't get parks, we can't, people can't order boxes. So time has come to kind of, what do we do next? Knoxbox is an entity. They've been around a long, long time. We know they have availability. Other communities, Burlington, South Burlington, Williston are using such. And our current box is a manual key. So there's several of those keys out. So, I carry one, Bruce carries one, the ambulance is carry one, the fire truck's carry one. So the risk of losing those keys, and I will go no further than the risk of losing those keys is a reality. And the only mechanism when a key is lost is either the hope no one knows what that keys goes to or you rekey all those boxes. So we are clearly trying to leverage technology with the E-keys. Is it more expensive to go this route? Yes, but they come with an apparatus that goes in the fire truck. You need a pin to get it out. So I know which firefighter took it out. Super important when we're allowing St. Mike's to have the keys, you know, it's college kids is a constant change, whether it's fire or rescue. It's a constant change in our building. So it brings a level of accountability to us. And if a key is lost, it dies in a certain amount of time or I can wipe it off and that key's no good. Yes, we have to replace it, but I don't have to go rekey 100 boxes. So that's why we're trying to leverage that new technology. It will mean what's in here is us doing the seven facilities, city facilities and buying the E-keys and the mounts for our apparatus and St. Mike's fire apparatus because rescue builds for their services. I feel they should buy their own, if you will, apparatuses to put in their ambulances. Again, it gives us, it's a web based every time John only pulls that key off. I'm gonna know what time he took it. It just really gives a level of accountability to the property owners. It is giving us access. This is not law enforcement access. There's a lot of reasons you can't do a search warrant and go open that box and gain access. That's not what this is for. This is exclusively for fire and EMS emergency access. That's what these are intended for. They're not law enforcement type access. We are asked by property owners, what's the security of the keys that we have now? There is no security on it. It's hanging on my jacket. It's hanging on the key ring. It's sitting up in the fire house for anybody to grab. So when you lose a key, it's a huge problem or could be a huge problem for the property owners. And their access, keeping in mind St. Mike's is in the city 1400 times. We're out the door, it's been 500 times. So their access is a lot. So that's what we're trying to do. The quote, I need to own it. Thank you, Brynne, for bringing up the we are tax exempt. So that should come off. And that will come off. I just have to fill out a form or Angela has to fill out a form. And we have all that because I hadn't gotten there. Why is the quote 21, I asked for 25 not to exceed 25 is I don't anticipate there being an issue us mounting this in our apparatus. But I wanted to make sure I'm covered if, I can mount the box, but if there's a wiring that needs to happen, I want to make sure that I'm covered. There's nothing more other than that. Just trying to make sure I'm covered of getting this rolled out and putting their apparatus. What's the ongoing operation cost? So there's annually, there's a fee for the software. And that's a thousand dollars a year. Yeah, that's okay. So currently, again, we've identified this as a problem, right, as far as this accountability of these keys. So all a one new ski fire trucks have them. I care personally, Bruce carries it personally. St. Mike's fire trucks have it. St. Mike's ambulance has it and UVM ambulance has it. When I became chief, I was like, ooh, that's the liability I don't want. So we bought master lock boxes, household lock boxes. And that's how we've been trying to manage those keys. But you put that in a residential box, the box gets jammed, so now they're out of call. They can't get in anyway. It just, it didn't rise to the level. There's a level of accountability, but it's, I have to like, if I want to download, how many times St. Mike's opened the box, I have to go drive and sit in their parking lot for a set amount of time until it downloads on my, I just don't have time to do that. I don't, and I can't do that for UVM. So we tried, but. The, this just kind of played out in one of the commercial buildings in the city where the super box didn't open. The keys are in the box, but the box physically didn't open. And we had to damage the property door to get in, just to get in. And when, after we made entry into it, the individual was complaining of no injury. So we just damaged a thousand dollar door for somebody not to be injured. So the person that called 911, we couldn't get in the box. So everyone's thinking there's an emergency because we had no contact. They forced the door, it's about a thousand bucks. And, hi guys. It just puts us in a tough spot. Any other questions? I have follow up questions. I was just curious, like what if a land border HOA refuses to get the upgraded box due to the cost? Would that then, it sounds like, it could be an ordinance violation? So they have to provide it by ordinance, but we are proposing to roll this out over four years. So each core quadrant we're in inspecting, we're gonna be telling them they need to upgrade their boxes. So those that don't, I feel like it gives whoever's in my seat, four years cycle to kind of convince people, hey, these are going away. It's in the ordinance, let's deal with this. I would hate to think that I'm gonna be ticketing people because they're not upgrading the boxes. It's really a face-to-face conversation of, I'm able to account for the keys better. There's a level of accountability and access. Let's get another 30 years out of what we're trying to do. Because we've done a pretty good 30 year run with a box. Makes sense. That was one of my other questions, was how is it gonna be communicated? This final follow-up is, or is that safe? Should we push for a quicker implementation? You know, I think out of fairness to them, you know, it is a financial impact. You know, I think we've talked about it. We can, what happens is we will now take that manual key and attach it to that electric key. So at least it's connected in our box. So there's that level of accountability. We'll no longer carry keys. They will be in that apparatus. I need to enter my pin to get those keys off it. It's locked on that piece of apparatus. Okay. And we'll have the keys fused together. It's not like, it's just a title. It's not gonna be a key ring. It's gonna snap off. It'll be some sort of mechanical fast now that it can't be. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. So it sounds like you've got a transition plan. Yes. So while you have some in place and others aren't, it's not gonna. No, it's a four year cycle. I'm confident that we'll get through that. And we can, I think it's the right thing to do. And through our mutual aid partners, it's not gonna be. Nope. Nope, because our mutual aid partners will have those keys. And you know, St. Mike's will have those keys. We are not anticipating providing UVM this unless they wanna put it in their amulets. Amulets us. And then thanks for just covering some of the questions I shared earlier. One thing I'm not, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding clearly. Should council anticipate you coming back for another request? No. Okay. Because the seven boxes that the city needs, I've included in this ask. Yep. Because I think the city should take the first step in this and say, hey, we did it. Right? This is not putting, the city has no obligation to put, provide lock boxes on private property. We give them this account. They go on, create an account and order that box. It comes. They can't lock the box. They can't unlock it. They mount it. And then we go and physically put the cover on the box with their keys. Okay. Yeah. When I was reviewing the memo, it appeared as though this was phase one or stage one of potentially future asks. So that's helpful. Thank you. Is there any discount available if we buy more than one year of the software at a time? I don't believe so. We can ask. Okay. We certainly can check. Any questions from members of the public? Reminder, you can use the raise hand or chat feature. Hearing no concerns. Does someone want to make a motion to approve this request for use of reserves? So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. I appreciate your patience. Thanks for all the information. You're not gonna stick around? I'm done. I'm done because you're seeking goal update. How about as a point, was that in the... Nope. No, because it's weird. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Gene. Welcome Ray for the strategic vision area goal update, item H. Yeah, so per usual, I think fairly straightforward, but have it entertain any questions and we'll do my best to cover for Chief Hebert and John still not here, John as well. Will you walk us through it? I'm just kidding. Well played. Well played. Any questions? I mean, it definitely is intriguing to get an update that there's a pause on the canine. Yeah, and as James said, I think really that has more to do with the individual staff member that had been initially interested having some changes in his circumstances. And so that... No, of course, of course, but that would require a pause. Right, right. Is given that there was such a big push from the Chief for the option, are alternatives being explored, alternative officers? I think that's seen that the staffing challenges downstairs are severe, so until that we get more towards our actual staffing levels, it might be a challenging conversation, but I think even from the old time that it's still of interest. I think it was a big boom that there wasn't an individual that was interested in that, it's a commitment that's really up a lot, so it's just a lot of interest in narrowing costs. Yeah. Continuing in that same vein, is there less of a barrier to, and less feelings of the overwhelming responsibility that goes with it potentially? It's late, I don't necessarily know what goes into all of the training, but it sounds extensive for the intended, initial intended purpose. My question is, is it less of a hurdle to pursue a comfort canine, something similar to what Williston has? I believe so, and I think that's still on the table at this point, as something that they want to move forward with downstairs. And we're probably getting into a lot as we build up the moral of the table. Right, right. Okay, I mean, I'm excited. Yeah. And then, I guess with that, I was gonna say like, if that wasn't happening, I was, I know that there's some budget, restricted budget available that this canine, funding for this canine was going to be used for, knowing that there are additional budget requests for facility updates downstairs, is any of that restricted budget available for those facility updates? Actually, the thing to update on this, we're expecting to not need to make any requests for the updates we're planning out. Okay. Re-ranging current amount of funding. Okay, all right. I have one more question over here. Those are my questions. This might be something to take offline, but I definitely have some questions around regional dispatch, especially the way that it sounds like, the conversations remain on hold, they're possible appropriations from the state level. And just what I have in mind is we made some big sacrifices during our budget process to ensure there were funds for that. So if those funds are not going to be needed or at this point are paused, are there potential to, and this would be a bigger conversation I know, reallocate those funds. There, yes, that is technically possible. I'll just say that that is not a decision I would make quickly and readily. Because you heard from the fire chief, why even put those funds aside? But right, if that initiative has absolutely been in the water, which is not the case just yet, then of course there's a conversation. Do you want to spend some time on that? Okay. We also just heard the big needs, especially on the side of the fire, where if we have an error, definitely other needs as well. With the K-9 funding that was set aside, since the rub that I'm hearing is that the officer that was interested in engaging with the K-9 partner couldn't for whatever reason, that's the case, Brynn, is like you have to be willing to sign on to a K-9, like for the K-9's career, which can be eight to 10 years. Could the money that we set aside for that be applied to recruitment of a person that would want that partnership? I'm recalling correctly, we didn't actually need to spend a ton of money on that, because it was coming from like K-9 grants. So, it wouldn't be as before reality. I mean, it's not currently available to us. It's available because through if we had a K-9. Gotcha. There was no change to our budget to add the K-9 unit. Thanks, I didn't have any context around that. You are here. Appreciate it. Thanks for clarifying, guys. No other questions? Good. Any questions from members of the public? Okay. Thank you. No problem. Thank you, Ray. Item I, items for city council strategies and priorities are treated. So, just as we are moving towards that retreat, May 13th, I put together this memo to lift up some new ideas that have been floated over the past year by counselors or residents to us. If there is interest in considering any of these items, wanted to be able to have a discussion now so that staff have advanced time to consider impacts, you know, financially or operationally to advise us during the prioritization session. So, the goal today is to see if there's anything from this list that we are interested in further consideration. We are not committing to saying any of these things is a priority at this discussion. Please sit out to me, especially after our meeting with the chairs and just how for that ended up just being like discussing the issue of housing. So, I noticed like this final bullet point, direct staff to work to investigate one or more housing policies or ordinances. And I don't even know if we wanna get more specific like what came to mind for me, especially after our conversation was kind of that way to better manage or limit short-term rentals such as Burlington and South Burlington I'm doing. I shouldn't have put this bullet on here. Honestly, I was gonna take it off and forgot because our housing initiative director is going to right away start researching policies and then working with the housing commission to figure out what the highlight, whatever. High reward items would be. Good city, go for it, Kim. One item that I have a couple different ideas. I actually don't wanna do that first. I would prefer if we just discuss the ones here and then let's talk about new additional items. Are we eliminating from the list or just talking about what we would like to talk about? If there's something that you wanna move forward. You know what, and I will start and tell you that I actually don't want to add any of these to the prioritization session, but I wanted to transparently have this discussion with you all. If there is something you want to move forward, I think that's the focus we should have first. I agree with you. Okay. Seeing as housing is not supposed to be on here. Yeah, yeah, excluding that bullet. That was like directly from my own person, I know it's really nice to hear. Charlie, do you wanna go next? I don't really know how to contribute at the moment. I think that based on tonight's public comment being that it was the most exciting public comment so far that the addressing chemicals seems pretty important to our constituents by the last bullet not belonging there. Does that just mean that this isn't a place to discuss housing goals or that that's already? It's already gonna be on the private side. That's what I thought. I read that and I was like, that feels kind of dismissive, but then my immediate response to my own thought was it's gotta be somewhere else. Yeah, it's already gonna be there. Because we've talked about it so extensively, there's no way that it was like one thing. So maybe one thing. I may have more reflections on this particular list so far, but given the status of the city and what our departments and council is already focused on, I think that our ducks are pretty well in a row. But I do think if there's a simple solution to PFAS and PFOAs, then maybe looking at that, just because it's been stated via email and public comment that that's really on people's minds, bearing in mind that they're in our homes and everywhere around us, so. Elaine, do you wanna make comments on that? Sure, so one of the people who commented today reached out to me pretty early on and asked the city to consider banning the use of it, of PFAS and PFOAs. And my concern is that it's pretty much in everything. So I absolutely understand the concern, I do. But the challenge is, is there an alternative product that's gonna perform the way we need it to? And doing the research on that, that takes staff time. So there's a couple of areas, the pull-up work material, let's say the types that we use or the assholes that we buy or anything we use in public works, that's a big concern. I mean, we need those things to perform. Then there's office supplies, cleaning supplies. So in general, the cleaning supplies stuff, that is, it's a relatively straightforward task, but it could take some time. Again, if there's this, is there a better alternative? We just don't have a lot of excellent staff that have to do that research. I had intended to have a quick stop to do that, I mean, that was sort of blind up to go and then we lost the staff first and then we're down another staff first and then we're branding for it. So I wanted to have people in that office there really is nobody to do that research. So in terms of a simple answer, if there is not one, because of the, what's the equal one? Banning in a leavey, finding their place in a leavey. Sure, thank you. I'm gonna speak to items four and five on the list list. Having worked in the state's agency of natural resources, Soloway's program and serving on the Chinden Soloway's district, there are a lot of benefits to what's called franchising or basically a municipality contracts with the hauler for services, for collection. There, Chinden Soloway's has also done some studies and some community feedback before the pandemic hit four or five years ago, maybe a little bit longer. So I'm happy to share the information on that. I would say that there are benefits, but it is a very large conversation and I think just by seeing the feedback that Chinden Soloway's got that would inform how council might want to move forward. So I'm not stating a position on it. I'm merely saying that there's information that I'm happy to share with you and whoever else from the community has interest in learning more about it. So there are benefits and it is, it can be a lift to get in place. So just saying that, wanna speak to that since I have some background and experience in that. And obviously I'm gonna be in favor of item five because I recommended it, but for context, so there are some phrases, some sayings that go, the least cost energy is the energy you don't use and that the best efficiency is focus around time of use. So basically reducing the amount of energy during energy peaks. So peaks happen on a monthly basis and then they also happen throughout the year. So you'll often hear it more commonly in the summer, but they happen in the winter as well when there's the highest demand. Everyone's home, everyone has their heat on. Everyone's home, everyone has their AC on. So a time of use management and strategy can save a significant amount of energy. It can also save a significant amount of cost and it can also mitigate a good degree of avoidable pollution by calling on other power plants, dirty or power plants to fulfill that demand during those peaks. So they're the utility providers, Green Mountain Power, Vermont Gas, they have many rate structures that are regulated by the public service department and within those rate structures, there are advantages to basically reducing demand during those peaks so that they can one level out their how much energy needs to be generated during the demand, but also having predictable declines from some of their highest users so that there's more flexibility during those peaks. So this recommendation purely is to honestly, financially, foremost for the city, to look at what rate structures may be more advantageous for our taxpayers and then on a grander scheme, but less motivational, protect the environment, reduce climate change, those things that impact everyone but are less motivators in some ways. So that's my two cents on that. So I think we all, I think we all have been updated on that, we did finally meet with GMP about recent renewing our energy use and the least part of our plan seems like more viable. Possibly, so there, in that plan for that, you can get more details from John Lee because I'm the co-author of this week. And we also have been following the, there's a program that I would use for service soon and there, we definitely want to get audits done on our remaining buildings because for example, we're seeing like no drop off in energy use in the building over the course of the 24 hours which makes no sense and we cannot figure out why. So having an audit, free audit would be great. Yeah, so it's something we're pursuing, frankly, if you want it, I see it as kind of operational but if you wanted it out on the time, we want to do it so that, you know, it wouldn't just change. It wouldn't be added to something but it's the point that it should be added. So we can get more information on that. Great, thank you. New ideas. I'll start with the one that I think is probably the newest. Some of the others I feel like are highlighting stuff that might already be on there but I would like to propose that, you know, using resources from the LCT, maybe ideal as well as exit interview from Yasmin and other feedback to look into doing a rewrite of the equity director position that is more sustainable. So thinking of that position as very much paused are there things that we can do to prepare for that to be uncaused? I think like a very brief suggestion that comes to mind, it would be doing something similar to what we've done with housing and make it an equity initiatives director and have that much more focused internal look at policy and kind of how we can do things in the city instead of having three positions in one which sounds like one of the biggest issues with the position previously. So I think that would be really valuable as well as show commitment to the residents that we are taking this as a pause and we do want to do, and for the reason stated that there needs to be some work done for that position to be sustainable and fair to whoever occupies it. I would be interested in something a step back from that and like a gap analysis of what is the need that we're trying to fill with this role that I think would better inform a future rewrite. Any questions for Aurora? I could list all the goals from the end that I think this would touch on but it very much falls under all. So I also made a commitment that I perceived it to be a pause. So I support an effort to explore what a restructuring of the position would look like so that it's sustainable, has a manageable workload and furthers our commitment to returning that role to the city. That's three. We'll add this to get a little more staff input on. You have more? And this might be, one of the things that I have on here as a thought is something that has come up a lot which is like running civic classes or similar events especially like potentially partnering with school or other partners. But then I was thinking in your update today if there is going to be kind of more things similar like what happened on the weekend is that a way to start doing that? So does this feel like it's already working and done? I think partially and the Secretary of State's office is working on civics curriculum at a state level. So I would decline adding that. This I think is definitely on here but I guess raking the awareness of thinking about the kind of talked around it like the hiring process and then onboarding of a new police chief. I think that's out of scope. Like hiring, we hire Elaine. Elaine hires police chief. I think it would be beneficial though if you could share with us at some point like what does the leadership level hiring process look like as an FYI. So I think having civic classes per se I personally believe there's all kinds of ways to do that and I had no idea he was doing anything like that. It could have came off this term like yeah I wish I could work on that, right? But I will say like we're nibbling at other like if that's one means to the end there's other ways that we're trying to make progress for the same day. So for example all the engagement that the department is trying to do the engagement police strike department is trying to do. We have been talking with HR director about getting it even at the elementary school level with the principal like what does that look like? It's that exposure but more or more we're invited to receive students whether it's with the college or with our school or with the parents. Like yes, they're organizing that as well as with the principal. So we're trying to know what we had that with the current resources. I mean I partially feel like I pursued a career in policy because of some civics classes in high school. So it makes a difference. Yeah I mean I didn't even know I was going to move my dog. Like it for us. Did you have more of her? The one other I have on here is just the highlighting thinking about like the language access report followed by a plan. So maybe the specific language of that looks like a report to get anything similar to what you bring up with the equity director where are gaps and then follow up make a plan to bridge those gaps. This is already included right? I mean it's similar to my comments like I would be shocked, I mean I don't even know how to say it. It's like go ahead and add it because we shouldn't be doing that so yeah. It's fine with me if you want to ask me to. I support that as well. The only other thing I would want to add which I think is already happening so maybe not an ad per se but continuing to look at the fee, ordinance, and I don't know with some of the budget decisions we made in January that were approved. My impression was that budget for FY24 would continue some free services and zero cost services for programming and that during that timeframe there would be some exploration of what some type of fee structure might be for those programs and maybe not entirely self-sustaining but so that there's at least not 100% subsidy again just aligned with all of our other needs and considerations. Right, that's correct and so the way you know our capacity to continue at some time would be dependent on scholarship and the level of coverage for the college. Okay. To fill that. Okay. But that's back to what you were talking about. The issue with the fee structure, I just lost access to our sure drive so I can't tell you but it's on the Angela Crystal Larry 17 agenda. Okay, I saw it coming up but I just. Yeah, we were targeting the introduction at the May 1st agenda so you can have everything adopted for the new fiscal year with the buffer time for policy going into place. Thank you. I think and I had a preliminary discussion with Elaine about this but there is some sort of like financial outlook component of the prioritization discussion which is where like that sort of conversation can fit in. Okay, great. I'm pretty sure of the things I would like to talk about are already something that we are on there but infrastructure both below the ground and sidewalks. I don't know if those are specifically called out but I know that it's been a community concern recently so if we could have that as a conversation I would. Okay. Sorry about that. I'm not concerned. Yeah, I mean it's been an ongoing concern but just recently very much raised because the sidewalks are raised. I think actually moving forward. So as opposed to like not that you're leaning around but you know you see the budget okay well there's not that. Like having, I think something like that. I don't know what, I mean you could just be like saying that right. You need to be prioritizing. Prioritizing, yeah. To go off on that budget because that might be. Right. And that may be. It's not going to be doing any more than it is. Right, like I know there's a plan, I know there's but just maybe as a body for us to discuss it and prioritize it I think would be noted something that we should do. And then the second thing is just thinking ahead of the budget discussions that we will have later in many, many months. Possibly paying our fire department more. Again, it's a budget discussion but if we can put that up as a prior prioritization that would make me very happy. Thank you. Under safe public connected retention. Yeah, yeah and again like I said both of those items that I want to talk about I know we're going to talk about but I'd like to call them out if possible. And then I agree with everything you mentioned earlier as well Aurora and Bren after rereading the energy savings I didn't mean to veto that so quickly. It's okay context is open. Charlie you may not have anything but maybe you do. I do not. I do wanna I think that across the city there's not a lot of money, right? For all the stuff not for the stuff that we need let alone the stuff that we want. I think that to Brent's comment like if we can find ways to like the best money the best money that you could spend is money saved so to speak like on the terms of energy, right? If we could figure out how to bring our costs down in any reasonable and sustainable way. I think that's a really good idea. That's the first thing we say to poor folks, right? It's budget better so we already have a budget. I think that finding ways outside of our budget to make a bigger budget might be advantageous to all of us. I think that it's just gonna get more and more expensive to run Winooski as Winooski gets more and more residents. And yeah this particular reading has been really eye opening for me. So yeah. All right so it sounds like we're adding the utility savings for further consideration, this equity director restructure consideration. And then I feel like all the other pieces fit into like a thing that's, it's not like a new thing we're asking them to look for. Okay, anything else? We slightly improve the process every year. Okay, that was the end of the regular agenda. We added an executive session pursuant to one VSA section 3133, the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee provided that the public body shall make a final decision to hire or appoint a public officer or employee in an open meeting and shall explain the reasons for its final decision during the open meeting. We have a personnel matter to discuss. So I am looking for a motion to find that we should have this discussion in executive session under the statute that I just read. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas. Second by Charlie. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. I'm looking for a motion to enter into executive session, inviting city manager, Elaine Wong.