 So, I've got 6, 6, 0, 1 Monday, March 15, hold on a quick sec. Yeah. So it is 6, 0, 1 PM Monday, March 15. I will call to order this meeting of the Windows key liquor control board. Could you please join me in the pledge of allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Colston. 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 for our on our city council agenda, we have Congressman Welch here as a guest to speak to us about rescue package updates. So I wonder if we could recess this liquor control meeting until 615 and move over to our council meeting now. If counselors are supportive of that, I would like a motion to recess this meeting to 615. So move. Okay. Motion by House second by Bryn all those in favor please say aye. Motion carries. And I will call to order our when you ski city council meeting. Once again, please join us in the pledge led by Deputy Mayor Hal Colston. I pledge allegiance to the flag of 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 again. You're welcome. Next item on this agenda is agenda review any concerns about the order of tonight's agenda. All right, we also then next have public comments. There are members of the public who wish to speak to anything not included on this evening's agenda now would be the time and you can indicate that with a raised hand or with the chat. Okay, so we will move on to our briefing from Congressman Welch welcome we're very happy to have you join us this evening. Well, thank you, Mayor. It's really wonderful to be with you. And thank you so much for accommodating me and this is really the wonder of zoom. You guys are working hard and I can participate. The reason I was very, very eager to talk to you is to just go through the impact of the American rescue plan and how that's going to provide funds to Windows key into the school district. And as you know, the president signed that in the law. And there's a number of things that are going to affect everybody in Vermont. We have held folks with the $1400 check. Obviously the most important thing is it's going to pay for vaccines. It is going to continue to provide support for small businesses and our performance basis in things that you have been reading about. Another aspect of it is absolutely essential for the well being of Windows key and where you will have the fundamental responsibility about the wise use of funds is the money that is going to go directly to Windows key. And of course there's money that is going to go directly to the school district. And the impact of COVID you know it at a local level and what a challenge it's been. But what I wanted to do is just go through what in the bill, as it was passed looks like would come to Windows key. Now, I'm going to have a caveat here because they have to write rules and regulations. These are the numbers that we're talking about right when this case city is estimated to receive $2.147 million. Now that would be allocated 50% in 90 days in the balance in a year. It has to be used for COVID related expenses. And that's broadly defined on Bernie Patrick and I were really strong advocates for flexibility at the local level, because our view is that the elected officials in our communities like when is the have the better judgment and knowledge to make wise use of those funds. But those funds can be used for such things as water sewer in broadband. You know this is a good news bad news situations good news that you're going to have some funds to help you with the challenges that you face. The bad news is you're going to have to make really tough decisions on the allocation of these funds with the obvious goal of helping Windows key for the future. The school district, you've got an amazing school district there and you've got an amazing school project underway there. And you know it's extraordinary number of languages in your school, and I really quite admire your folks there but that school district is going to get $7.9 million to assist them. So there's money in the relief package that goes directly to Windows key and directly to the Windows key school district. It has to be used for COVID related expenses but those are broadly defined. And as I mentioned it can, it can include water sewer in broadband and I know how broadband is just a huge issue for us all across the state. The state of Vermont is also going to get a billion, a billion three. And in Montpelier, I guess how close to this here he's going to be doing double duty, both in Windows key and on our behalf in Montpelier, the state is going to have a good deal of flexibility on the use of that money as well. Some of that money is dedicated to coronavirus capital projects. And some of it is located for allocation to local projects. And I say that to you because that'll be where, if you want to have access to any money to do projects that are important to the well being of Windows key. And that you're going to have to be advocating in the state because the state will have some flexibility about how best to utilize that money, and that that process will be administered by the state. So just to recap the decision of Congress, and by the way, a lot of you know this ended up being a partisan vote unfortunately but many, many, many of my Republican colleagues were very, very much in favor of state and local aid. And it was because we understand that you who have the responsibility at the local level, have to deal with the impacts of COVID and, and you're in a better position to make the decisions about how best to accomplish that than we are in Washington. So to recap here, when this is going to receive, as it's written now 2.147 million dollars, two tranches, about half, about half and 90 days in half in a year, and in the school district will be receiving 7.9 million dollars. So, the final thing I want to say is that, while this law has passed there's going to be bumps along the way there might be questions about, can you do this or can you do that. And our office is here to work with you in any way we can to cooperate to make certain that the things you're seeking to accomplish. If there's impediments in the way that we can help address, we want to do that. I'm really excited about the fact that local people, you and Winozki, are going to have this responsibility, and that you're going to have these funds to do things that your citizens really need done. So Mayor Lott, thank you so much for giving me this time to be with you this evening. Well, thank you Congressman Welch for coming and sharing that information that that's very exciting news. You know, we have definitely seen needs in our community that this will help us address and I want to appreciate I know that you have advocated throughout the pandemic for direct funding to local to municipalities and very excited to see this package coming out of Congress, you know, not just for that but there's a lot of other resources in there that are really going to help our community. I would open it up briefly for questions if anyone has questions for Congressman Welch. Thank you Mayor Congressman I just really want to appreciate all of your leadership and seeing this through. I know you have your your hands full down there at times but it's, it's just great to be on board with you. Thank you. Well, thank you how you're going to be, you're doing double duty. That's a good thing. It is a good thing. Thank you. We do have a few members joining us so I will open it up to public comment to see if anyone has any questions for our congressman here. If you can use the raise hand feature the cat, or if you're here by phone press star nine to indicate you wish to speak any topic if you want. Not just not just how you're going to spend the money. Brendan you have a question. Yeah, I am curious about the timeline for that's listed in the legislation about how long we have to spend it. If there's a designated timeline. The last the cares package there was a deadline that was 1231 last year, but we were able to get that extended. And you know my view is that the flexibility should apply to the time within which it's spent as well as the purposes for which it's spent, as long as it's broadly connected to coven. Because you know, if you have a particularly if you're going to have a capital project. There's a lot of variables that are beyond your control about when and how you're going to be able to get that done. So, I'll check in there, but I am with Bernie and Patrick a very strong proponent to give you the flexibility you need as long as you're saying within the guidelines. And it's coven. It's coven related. So we'll get back to you. Yeah. Rebecca I see your hand is raised. Basically, I'm just checking the statute and it says the funds must be spent by December 31 2024. So three and a half years to spend them. Yeah, so that is so that's my thanks. Thanks for back and that's so much better than the cares package where people were up against the wall and had to make a choice about on my spending, or losing the money and you know I'm glad we were able to change that. I think it's been a great spring for that. That's certainly a lot more flexibility. Thank you very much. The other questions for congressman. Again, I really thank you for being here, Representative Welch. And I believe you have another Council meeting to attend this evening, perhaps. Yeah, we want to get around. But I just want to end where we began. And that is to thank you. There's a lot of cynicism about government these days, and it's a real challenge to our democracy. And there's nothing more important than public service the local level to establish and reinforce confidence that our citizens need, that government works for them. And number two, you're doing this at a tough time. I mean, this is an incredible challenge to the state. And we all are excited because now versus a year ago, we have the vaccine. People are getting vaccinated. But it's been a long, hard struggle for folks, as you know, financially and emotionally. And we've all got to hang on until we do get vaccinations out so that we've got that herd immunity. So we can let up our guard. And we've got to continue wearing our mask and continue social distancing, as Governor Scott says. But get our shots. So thank you all very much for your service. And it's really going to be a pleasure for Rebecca and me in our office to be your partner and see this through. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, so I would like to propose that we recess this meeting now and return to our liquor control meeting. Would someone like to make a motion to recess our city council meeting until 625? All move. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. All right, so it is 615. And I will call us back to order for the Winooski Liquor Control Board. We are on our regular items, item A. So this is approval of outside consumption permit renewals. And there is a memo included in here about the history of outside consumption requests at the RVA, given emails that we received from residents in that neighborhood having concerns about this request. Is there anything that staff would add here? So I will also just add, I'm happy to walk through anything that's in the memo, but you have the authority under state statute and our charter and our municipal ordinances to approve or not approve outside consumption licenses. And there is no actual criteria that you have to follow. It is your prerogative. Thanks, Jesse. So I would suggest we should probably have a conversation about the RVA specifically. And depending how that goes, we could take our vote on the overall approvals of these requests. Could you have a clarifying question for staff? Reading through this memo with history at the RVA, it doesn't sound like they've had an outside consumption permit since 2012. Am I interpreting this correctly? Yes, that is correct. OK. I've got a question on that. Weren't they granted one for COVID-related for outdoor consumption back in March? It says no outside consumption requested, but weren't they granted one anyway? We were very flexible with businesses over the summer because of the COVID restrictions, but they didn't actually submit a request for one. We just did not enforce it. Did you know if you received complaints over the summer about noise, cursing, smoking, et cetera, from the neighborhood? We did from one property owner, yes. OK. Thank you. Is there I think what might be helpful for clarification is, I can see here that at some point permits were revoked. If we were to approve it at this time, it becomes a problem for residents. What would the process be for council to address that? That's a good question. You do always have the ability to revoke permits. So I think if it became a concern in the neighborhood, one or more of you could request to have a liquor control meeting for the purposes of revoking the permit and then have that discussion at that meeting. Thank you, Mayor. I guess the question I have is, how are we going to be assured that there's not going to be any issues going forward if a permit is allowed? Has there been any convincing interaction with the party? I'm not quite sure how to answer that. If there's been any convincing activity. We certainly the city is in regular contact with the RVA. And if if you choose to approve this tonight and you can you could direct us to have specific conversations with them, certainly I think that that would be appropriate given the the residents concerns. And we can make clear what the expectations are and what the condition what the parameters of the permit are and send that in a communication to them. I mean, that's in our in the regulations. So it should be available to all. It wouldn't necessarily be something special from them for them other than drawing their attention to it. OK. Thank you. I was also curious outside of revoking permits. Do we have the authority to issue fees or fines for permit violations? That is an excellent question. I don't believe we do issue fines. It would have to be a noise violation fine, which I guess we could issue. Typically with our business community, we we try and work with them out of, you know, the operations are confined enough within the ordinance that folks stay within that and then try and work with them to mitigate concerns. So I guess the one ticket we could issue is a noise violation ticket, but we would likely start with an education approach first. OK. Mike. I have is there stipulations that we can enforce for the RVA for them not to have the outside per consumption for the back side where most of the complaints come from, but maybe putting it, I think the city. If I if I remember the history right on this permit when they requested it last time, the city had stated to the manager, Mr. The Mew that they could have an outdoor consumption permit as long as they were in the green space on the side of Weaver Street, because I think they wanted to put an outdoor site on the rail to railroad lane. I think this is the street or is it rail lane rail road lane? You want to have a outdoor consumption site there with tables? Take some parking spots away. So it wasn't infecting Maple Street residents that are the subjects of the complaint. And if I remember, if from what Mr. The Mew told me, the city had adopted a plan for them to put their outside consumption in front of the RVA. And that brought some concerns up with Mr. The Mew because of the the living situation across the street from from the RVA. Is there any news to that, Jesse? I have not seen such a plan since I've been here. I'm not saying that didn't hasn't happened before 2017. But I haven't seen a plan to be on Weaver Street. My interpretation of this request was that it was for that back space. Certainly, if they wanted to come forward with a different request, they could. But we have not reviewed it for that at this point. And they could do that. And we could go back to having a review at a later date, correct? Sure. Because I do know. Sorry. I'm sorry, Mayor. Continue, continue. I think all sides have to have some compromise in them. I mean, it's not a perfect world. There's going to be one side isn't going to be totally perfect or the other side. I think compromising and understanding the value of business and the understanding of the piece of a neighborhood needs to come to head on both sides. And I think the RVA has been compromising for the neighbors on Maple Street. They've been trying to do some noise reduction by adding a roof over the deck. They added a fence. They got a special zoning for it. They've been playing ball fairly, so to speak. So I think that should go into their favor. And I wish Mr. Lemieux was here tonight to explain some of that. They are a good partner for the city. They give back. They donate money to the city, to the Winnieski Police Department, for instance. So I just think there's some compromise that has to be held on both sides. And I think that we should keep that in mind. Thanks, Mike. Jim? Oh, Jim, you're on mute, still. Sorry. I have one question, and I'll share my thoughts, too. Can we limit time of day at which this permit can be effective after consumption be limited to, say, 3 to 4 in the afternoon and not allowed to go past dinner hours when kids are at home? That's an excellent question. I don't believe we have done that before, but we could. I think you can do that. And then it would become an enforcement, a new enforcement thing for us, but I believe you could do that. I would I would want to check that a little bit, though, if it were different for one business than other businesses. OK. And I'll just share, I mean, my recollection of these emails they're a month old at this point. But these are people who were here the last time there was an outdoor consumption permit are living with outdoor activity now without consumption that is still incompatible with kids being outside and back yards in the summer. And so we're not there's a question about what this will be like for residents who live there. They've already experienced it once and are advocating from a position of being informed about what the impacts are going to be from increasing outdoor presence to drinking establishment in a residential neighborhood. And I think we should have deference to that experience and the expression of impact that they've already had that this could have. I think there are plenty of reading to the list of outdoor consumption applications. It makes a lot of sense to see outdoor consumption at Mule Bar and at McKee's. And I think we should take very seriously that this has been attempted, it has not worked and there has been no real difference in this application versus previous applications to manage this impact. So I'd have a hard time saying that let's try it again and see if something different happens this time because I don't really see how anything has changed. Thanks, Jim. How? Thank you, Mayor. I agree with Jim and the way I see it they should earn back the trust and we ease back into it. I like the idea of restricting the outdoor consumption. So it hopefully wouldn't be a disruptive scene at 10 or 11 at night as it was before. Perhaps a path forward would be to let staff investigate what limitations could be imposed and then invite the business back to a future meeting, the business owner and then talk through, what might we do to make this experience different if we did move forward without outdoor consumption? Mike, I'm sorry, I see your hand raised when I started speaking. No, because you kind of said, I was gonna say, I think if maybe we come up with a different plan. I also wanna let the council know that RVA is not open past eight o'clock. Certain occasions they are when they have special functions there. But for the most part, they are usually doors are shut and most people are out of there by eight o'clock. They do do a lot of special fund raising functions there. Sometimes it does tend to go on the later side but their majority of their hours are way well before 10 o'clock just for some reference there. And I think maybe you're right, Mayor. I think we invite them back and maybe we can have, and I like the idea of earning the trust back, Hal. But maybe we should try it in a different area instead on the backside of the back porch where the voices carry. Maybe we should see if they wanna rearrange their plan a little bit to allow that. Maybe we allow it on the front side. There isn't many neighbors on the front side on Weaver Street. And then being that city hall and the police station right down the road, it might curve the loud voices or the profanity, knowing that the police department is right there. Thanks, Mike. I'll open up to public comment in case there is perhaps anyone here from that neighborhood or who wishes to speak on outdoor consumption permits. Were there questions or concerns about any other of these outdoor permits that are included in this list? Mike? There's not a concern, but I think if other people are watching what we're gonna do with the RVA because for example, there's other establishments near residential areas even in the downtown area. I just, I wanna be cautious of what we're gonna do because a lot of businesses are gonna rely on outdoor consumption this year. And if we don't find a compromising situation for all businesses, it might result into revolting some other businesses outdoor consumption because one person in a residential apartment complains that it's being too loud outside, knowing that they rented an apartment by a establishment or a restaurant that has outdoor seating. So I think we need to be cautious of that on this approach. President. Bryn? I was curious if these were the only complaints for the businesses that we're considering tonight? Yes. So this is a continuation of a conversation that was on a previously worn liquor control meeting. Sorry, Bryn, I didn't give you that background. So the reason that there is only a memo on the RVA was that there was previously concerns brought up about that property, but none of the other properties has, does the city have concerns with from a complaint perspective or from a violation perspective? Great, thanks. I didn't think so, but I wanted to confirm. Yeah, thanks. So, Jesse, correct me if this is the wrong way to go about it. Could I entertain a motion to approve the outside consumption permit renewals for all businesses except for the RVA? I move. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. So then I would take a second motion to table the RVA's permit request to a future meeting. We'll have staff look into it, connect with the business owner, then pull together another liquor control meeting. So moved. Second. Motion by Hal, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So item B here is the sidewalk usage permit renewals. Anything staff want to share on those? So Heather, do you want to jump in here? Yeah, I do want to explain why there was a cover sheet here when generally there isn't in these situations. So the sidewalk usage permits, the application itself is something that I would like to revisit in the future just because it doesn't require anyone to draw their site boundaries or the location on the application itself. And it allows people to submit applications defining their own beginning and end date. So for the purpose of clarity, I wanted to point out that the sidewalk permits are always contingent on city staff being able to ask people to move their site furniture, for example, upon the first snow. So even if someone has written that they would like to have it year round, we need to have access to city property in order to do snow clearing, maintenance of facilities, and when there are public safety events. So my memo is really just about reiterating the fact that in any of these permits and we do recommend approving all of them, it is always contingent on being willing to work with city staff if we need to adjust boundaries slightly or need to access those spaces for routine maintenance and operations. I approve, I suggest approval of all of these sidewalk permit applications. Any questions from council? Brynn. Is there an ordinance change needed to do the updates that Heather recommended? There's not, it's the same ordinance. It would just be a change to the application paperwork itself. And that paperwork has been in place for a very, very long time. And so it's something that I think probably could use a little look at. Okay. Any questions from the public? I have one other question. It's speaking to the dates that Heather was just referring to. I know that the Champlain Mill Restaurant, the waterworks space, their dates are listed from April 1st, 2021 through March 31st, 2020, 2022, I should say. That's precisely the situation. So for us, it always ends when we have to access the site for clearing snow. It's slightly different with waterworks because they're in a location where we don't have to clear in order for people to be able to get through the area. So, you know, they may get a little bit of an extension on that, but it really is we come in and let businesses know when it's time to clear away their site furniture. We try to extend that for as long as absolutely possible, considering how much need there is currently for outdoor cleaning space. Great, thank you. Mike? Yes, Heather, isn't the waterworks, isn't that part of their outdoor gazebo? Well, wouldn't that fall in that? And that might be why a date is so long so they can do the heating room and have outdoor consumption during. Yeah, it does fall under that. So it is slightly different in terms of the location as it is with every business, you know, you have access to different amounts of space and that's just a matter of where they happen to be located and what their frontage is on. But yes, that's correct, Mike. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the sidewalk usage permit renewals? So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Item C are our restaurant license renewals. Any comments from staff on this? All recommended. Any questions from council? Questions from members of the public? Would anyone like to make a motion to approve the restaurant license renewals? So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Item D, first class liquor license renewals. Any context from staff are all recommended? All recommended. Any questions from council? Questions from the public? Can I have a motion to approve the first class liquor license renewals? So moved. Second. Motion by Hal, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. And finally item E, sidewalk usage permit, new request. Anything staff wanna add to this one? Any questions from council? Questions from the public? All right, would someone like to make a motion to approve this sidewalk usage permit request? So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. That brings us to the end of the liquor control board agenda. Can I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So it is 637. I would like to reconvene our Winnieski City Council meeting. We are at the consent agenda. We have city council minutes from March 8th and we have warrant for March 11 and the periods February 7th to February 20th, February 21 to March 6th. Are there any questions or concerns about the consent agenda? Any questions from the public? All right. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Council reports. Can I start with Bryn? I do not have anything to report at this time. I'm still waiting on my committee assignments. Thank you. Jim. Only thing I have to share is I did attend the board meeting for the Hart of Winnieski Foundation. They're looking at setting up their mission and values statements. We'll continue doing some work on that in the next months and kicking off a fundraising target and campaign. But I noticed on-front porch forum today that one of our residents is challenging people to donate stimulus checks if they don't need them to the Hart of Winnieski Foundation or other useful causes. This is one that she identified as serving needs in our community from food security to infrastructure for long-term educational benefit for our students. So I thought I'd, since I'm on the board, I thought I'd amplify that message that she's sharing on-front porch forum. It's kind of a creative way to think about our stimulus payments. Thanks, Jim. Hal. Yes. Tomorrow I'm gonna be introducing and reporting H-227, which is our charter change bill in the House floor. Last week, we passed the Montpellier Charter Change, which included non-citizen voting. So there was some robust discussion. So I'm hoping that that's kind of set the path for this to move through and I expect it to be supported. That's it. Mike. Yes. The Municipal Infrastructure Commission met last week and, excuse me, we went over several topics, one being the sidewalks in the city when we see the, some residents from Mansu Street joined us to advocate for their street. They had, there's an open invitation for any city staffer or city official to go to Mansu Street at night. If you wanna meet up with Kate Coffey, she'd be more than happy to have a walk with you on her street during dusk, hours leading towards nighttime. The safety issue down there is a real concern for the residents due to all the new construction down in that street. Now the snow banks are receding. I think it's getting a little easier for them to navigate. They had also asked us to keep, to relay a message to the city manager on keeping the street closed until the construction is finalized. To sum this up, the sidewalks in Winooski, the Maple Street and Mansu Street, the residents had asked us, excuse me, to add those two streets for this year's prioritizing, or sorry, the make of a priority to get either installed or fixed. Now Mansu and Maple Street do not currently, in the sections that they're talking, do not have a sidewalk. And it's a real safety concern to the residents, especially with there's many families on the roads. So the MIC had recommended that we asked the city to put that on the list. And everyone listened to the residents and we have their, it's a real concern for them. And I think the city needs to look into this and get on board and hopefully we can add those and not just add them, but make it a priority to get at least Mansu Street done because the Maple Street incline, it's a real steep incline. So that's gonna take a little effort for a sidewalk to be installed. Secondly, the Hickok Street project, winter shutdown is ending. They're gonna resume in April or May, whether pending of course. And that street project is gonna add a sidewalk for the whole length of where there wasn't one currently. Lastly, there was Ray Coffey showed up with his commission and some of his staff members to talk about the tree canopy in Winozki. And one thing that stuck out to me and some of the other members of the commission was that Burroulton is, they have a huge development going on and they're trying to find homes for trees that they're uprooting. And Councillor Duncan can chime in if you have any information or if I misspeak on this because I know you're in contact or you've been in conversations with this project. There are 70 large trees that need to find a new home and Winozki wants to adopt them. We are currently trying to figure out the logistics of this to either where we can store them or where we can find homes for these trees so they're not just chopped up and mulched up. And I think that was it. I have some notes that I'll be making a report on and I'll email each of you and I'll be posting it soon. Thanks, Mike. We won't talk more about sidewalks later in this agenda. I attended finance commission meeting. They're continuing to review financial policies for the time being reviewed our budget management and employee financial responsibility policies. Angela has set that commission on a course to review our financial policies over the next several months at which time a group will be brought to council for review and planning commission continued with their zoning review, looking at changes for our downtown core zoning instead of hearing for one of their April meetings. I forget which, but it will be publicly noticed as usual. And finally, I continued to work with our manager Phoebe over the past week on city manager hiring, which we will also get into later in this agenda. I will pass it to Jesse for our city updates. Thank you. Just a few updates from our team tonight. So just as always our COVID update, we had 14 new cases in Winooski last week, which makes another month of us in the teens. It also pushed us over an unfortunate milestone, which is we have had over 500 COVID cases now in Winooski over the life of the pandemic. So just remind folks to wear a mask, socially distance, wash their hands a lot. Luckily, I think as we are seeing our vaccine numbers tick up, I think we will be seeing data coming out of VDH showing that hospitalizations and really serious cases of COVID are going down even while the positivity numbers are staying up. Just a reminder that we do have daily testing at the OCC, please do. If you have any question about exposure or just general wellbeing, please do go and get tested. Again, that's at the OCC from two to eight on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and then nine to three all other days including Saturdays and Sundays. You can walk up and there are interpretation services available at that site. Additionally, just reminder that vaccines are now available for those 65 and older school and childcare staff and anyone who is 16 and older with a high risk health condition. You can register for those through the state's vaccine website which is healthvermont.gov backslash my vaccine or call 855-722-7878. We continue to partner with VDH on our limited English proficiency clinics here in Winooski. We also believe and hopefully we'll have more public notice on this coming out this week that starting this Saturday, March 20th, there will be a specific BIPOC focused clinic in Burlington that we will be partnering on. And for those clinics, just a reminder that as long as one household member qualifies to be vaccinated, the whole household can be vaccinated. So that's the end of my COVID update. This week a year ago is when we officially shut down City Hall and went all remote. So it's a big week for us as well as the rest of the world. Three other quick updates. I believe the school trustees are having a special meeting on March 24th at 6.30, again, March 24th at 6.30 to talk about a future safety policy and perhaps make a decision about our school resource officer. I requested to have city professionals present at that meeting and that was not met with a lot of encouragement. So I don't believe that will be happening. As you may remember, we extended the City School MOU through February in order for these conversations to take place. I am unclear at this point whether we will have that City School MOU draft for you to consider on April 5th. We're still, Sean and I are still very much trying to work in partnership to move that forward but lots of conversations are still being had and we wanna leave time and room for those conversations. Just a reminder on behalf of the mayor that March 25th, you're invited to a structural competency and culturally humility to address disparities and inequities training with Dr. Mercedes Zavila who has been instrumental to our COVID response. That invitation is extended to counselors, school trustees, the Planning Commission and the Housing Commission. So please register for that training via the mayor's email. And then this is a way advanced looking thing but on March 31st, so before our next meeting the mayor and I will be attending a Chinning County meeting of managers and chief elected officials to discuss future opportunities to share services and regionalize efforts in a vision of serving our communities better. That's a very initial conversation and we will happily report back on what we hear and learn. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jesse. Moving into our regular items, our first item is appointment of deputy mayor. So every year we have to appoint a deputy mayor per our charter. Hal Colson has been serving us in that role for the past two years as a senior member of this council and is willing to continue forward. I would recommend reappointing him but open to discussion if anyone else is interested in this role or has any questions. Go ahead, Al. It's a pretty quiet role but it's an important one. So thank you. So we put this on here for discussion tonight but depending on how the discussion goes could we would approve it our next meeting potentially in our consent agenda. Brin, go ahead. Is this a role that Hal is interested in continuing in? Sure, absolutely. Are there any questions for members of the public about this item? All right. Hearing no concerns, I would like to just include this in our consent agenda next week and approve Hal continuing on in this role. All right. Item B, this is our Mayor and City Council Procedures policy. Jesse, you wanna give us a little synopsis? Sure. So this is the, just as a reminder, this council policy is adopted from the model policy from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. It's been in place probably for three years with the council. I do wanna call out just a few places where I have made changes this year specifically as you may remember in past policies, virtual meetings could be held but one person had to be in the physical location. Obviously that was waived with the governor's state of emergency. So this policy in several places is updated to say that where state statue allows it, all virtual meetings can continue. So that's giving you, if the state allows it, the ability to continue to have virtual meetings if you so choose, you can always have in-person meetings as well. And then there are a few other related changes that are included. For example, that if meetings are held virtually that login information must be included in the agenda that I've updated in article 5D. Again, I've updated that language about requiring somebody to be there in person if it's a solely virtual meeting. And then I have also added, and this is what we have been doing, but I just wanna draw your attention to it in article 6H5, sorry about that, 6H5. It does allow us to, if a meeting is only virtual, we may remove a participant from the meeting if the behavior is disrespectful or unruly. We have been doing that since the pandemic. We've only, I believe done it two or three times but it is different than our past policy enabled. So I just wanted to call that out. Other than that, it's exactly the same as your previous policy. Any questions about the policy or the updates? Bryn? I'm wondering in article 4B, if it makes sense to call out posting the agenda and agendas to Front Porch Forum or to our social media. I know that's a practice that we're doing already and that members of the public have expressed interest that we continue. I was wondering if it makes sense to formalize that given that it may not be written anywhere else and we are going to have a change of city manager. Sure, yes, we can add that. Luckily you will not be having a change of communications coordinator and he really is the rock star who does all of this, not me, but yes, I think codifying that so both Front Porch Forum and social media would be a good idea. Great, thank you. I appreciate the kind of words, Jesse. I just also want to note really quickly that all of those places that we do more in our public meetings, all of those are listed in writing in our communications procedure. So those do exist. Gotcha, thank you. Any other questions on the procedures and policy? I'm wondering if we'll point, if that's the case then perhaps it makes more sense to refer in article 4B to the communications procedure. So there's more flexibility there. I don't know if it makes a difference. So I would recommend that, so the communications procedure is really an internal staff procedure. So it's our rules for how we implement the policy set by the council. So if the council is interested in ensuring something always happens that you put it in your own policy as well. Gotcha, okay. Then I would like to see that included here then. Any other questions? Any questions from the public? All right, would someone like to move to approve the mayor and council, mayor and city council procedures policy with the addition of noting social media in item 4B? Is that moved? Second. Motion by Jim, second by Brynn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. Item C, conflict of interest policy. So again, this is a policy that's built off of the model policy from the Vermont League of Seas and Towns. It is a requirement of your charter that or our charter that we have such a policy. This is the exact same policy as you have adopted for the last three years with no edits other than the date edit. And we recommend that you do approve this annually just for the vote of the council is aware of this policy. Thanks, Jesse. Any questions from council? Jim. Just a point of clarification on process for this and the prior and following items. These are on just for discussion. Can we approve them? Oh, shoot, you're right. Thanks. Okay. These are for discussion, but hearing no complaints, I'm gonna have them in the consent agenda next time. Thank you, Jim. All right. So then the final one is the council schedule. Item D. So this is, you know, it's charter states you may at least once a month. This schedule is the schedule staff is put together as a proposal for you. There are two questions we wanted to call out. One is in the last number of years you have met one meeting in July and one meeting in August. So want to know if you have a preference about an August 2nd or 17th meeting, 17th would be a Tuesday since Monday is Bennington battle day. And then the second question is historically you have not had two meeting to regular meetings in November because the budget process is so heavy in December and January. And often that third week falls in the Thanksgiving week. So folks are traveling. Having said that in the last couple of years we haven't had special meetings in November. So want to give you that option if you wanted to do that. We can always call a special meeting if it's needed as well. Thanks, Jesse. Do folks have a preference on which week in August to meet? Jim. Go on the preference for the second. I see Mike is into that too. I have no feelings about it. Looks like we want to choose the second. Am I hearing any desire to schedule a second meeting in November or would we prefer to do that on an as needed basis? And Jim, I see your hand is raised. I do think it's worth keeping the meeting on the schedule. I would rather we could always cancel it and remove it from our schedules. We get closer, but we will be with the new city manager and still exiting the pandemic, making big budget decisions ahead of a potentially different budget year than we just came out of. To me it seems reasonable to have that meeting available so that we haven't scheduled anything else and then pull it or have a very light meeting if that's needed during that time. Let's think about that. I'm comfortable with it. Works for me. And that's great. Any other questions or comments on this schedule? Just one quick comment. So as in past years, when we do have long periods of time without a meeting, for example, from August 2nd to September 7th, we will need an interim warrant. So that will mean that we will ask you to come in and sign that in advance and ratify it at a future meeting. So just heads up that that will be coming your way, at least once, if not more during the year. Bryn? Since this is, I'm just curious what's been practiced during the pandemic. Are electronic signatures permitted? Jim? I said a question on the prioritization setting and as there was no date called out for that is there a certain time frame in which we were envisioning that would happen for the strategy prioritization retreat? That has not been firmed up yet. Spring is still the intent. There's a lot at play. Like Jesse and I are working to identify how staff will help support that in absence of an actual city manager being present at the time or a permanent one rather. So still targeting spring. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, so it sounds like we are good for August 2nd and including November 15th and we will vote officially on this at the next meeting as well. Thank you. So this, so speaking of city manager, item E is an update on our city manager search hiring process along with a fund balance request. So at our last meeting, we discussed a process for how we're going to recruit and select our next city manager. I've updated the memo to reflect some of the important parts of that conversation, including, I'm just putting more emphasis on how our HR manager and myself as well in staffing this committee are going to support like an equity focus in the discussions. Our HR manager will provide some training for committee members. I'm just to make sure that we have a focus on that. Also clarified the public engagement process. So the intent is to run this like similar to a commission where we warn these meetings, we share the materials in advance and the public is able to engage throughout the process. Although certain, you know, interviewing initial candidates or debate that will happen in an executive session. And then Phoebe has put together a cost estimate for us as well for anticipated expenses to support the committee on the process. We also included some detail here on our options for an interim manager, which I would like us to make a decision on that approach in our next meeting, but wanted to preview that information to you here, what it looks like to either move forward internally or with an external hire. So I think two, sort of two points of discussion here. One, does this memo, does this process work for you? Have we addressed, you know, the things that we raised at the last meeting? And two, do you have any questions about the fund request? Mike. I do. I see $500 for community dinner. Are we, we can't do a community dinner right now, can we? We can not. So Phoebe and I had discussed that by the time that we get to the final round interviews and bring on the new hire, maybe that will be possible. Maybe it still won't, but we could do something else. Like we just want to be prepared to have some way to do a community engagement process near the end of this with our potential new hire. And then I, the other thing I'm looking at is the four community members getting paid $100 to sit on a committee for this. I mean, we, in the past, we haven't paid any commission members. It's all been on a volunteer basis. Are we kind of? So the thought here is we're not, it's not exactly that we're paying members. We're offering a stipend that is optional to take if you need it. If you, okay. Because this isn't, it's not exactly like when we have volunteers serve on our commissions, like we're gonna be asking specific people potentially to engage in this for us. Like it's more of a, it's less of a volunteer thing and more of a you're being asked to do something. So that was the thinking there. Okay. Well, it's sort of like the commission. It's similar, but not quite the same. Okay. Other questions? Bryn. So again, for just procedure clarification, it looks like this is for approval. Yes. So this is on for approval for the process and the fund balance request. And then next meeting, we would actually approve how we're gonna go with the interim hiring. Oh, I see. All right. I probably could have separated those out. Jim. So I do think this addresses a lot of the comments we had last time. Thank you to you and Phoebe for doing this work to put this together on such a short turnaround and thinking of short turnarounds and populating a search committee between now and April, sorry, April 5th. Is that seem feasible? And in terms of making sure that we've explained the roles and responsibilities that search committee will have and identifying good candidates, is there anything that we need to plan for or do in the next three weeks to make that possible if we approve this tonight? It's a good question, Jim. So Phoebe and I talked a little bit about this and so she will be helping solicit the staff roles. I have intended to reach out to, you know, we have this like monthly leadership meeting with various partner organization leaders in Manuski. I'd intended to reach out to that group. I think it would be helpful for if there is anyone that you all would want to recommend to let me know and I can do some outreach there. Also, if we have any other questions also, if this is, so there is a role here for one member of council in addition to myself. And so if you're interested in doing that, letting me know outside of this meeting. We have, you know, we have the information about sort of the timeline and the time commitment and what the expectation is. And I think my plan had been to do direct outreach and formally invite people one-on-one. And I think I have the information to do that, but if there's anything that you would suggest and again, any names that you wanna throw out there, please share them privately via email outside of this meeting. Thank you. I think also like if there's someone on the commission that you liaise to that you think would be a good candidate think about that as well to recommend. Mike. Yeah, I know that we're gonna have a downtown business owner on this. Are we gonna look for a Winooski business owner or being that's a city of Winooski? I mean, we're gonna keep it to Winooski residents and try to keep it or we're gonna have kind of an outsider chime in. So this will be our decision. I asked, I previewed this ask to Meredith, our downtown Winooski organization director for her to recommend some folks. And we will be bringing recommendations to, the goals to bring recommendations to the April 5th meeting. And that would be our purview as the council to decide who we want to appoint for those roles. Thank you. Any other questions about the process, the updates, the funding? Any question for members of the public? Do folks have any questions about the two different approaches to interim here and how that's been outlined whether we do an internal or so we could pull from our internal staff here at the city or solicit an external person. All right. If we are good to start moving forward here, I will need two votes. So first I would seek a motion to approve the city manager hiring process as proposed. So moved. Second. Motion by Hal, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Second, I would seek a motion to approve the fund balance request. So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Phoebe and I will be meeting first thing tomorrow morning to start moving this forward. And yes, please contact me outside of this meeting about potential committee members. Moving to item F, this is on for approval. This is Champlain Housing Trust Loan Discharge and Renewal, which Heather will introduce for us. Yeah. So most of you, I believe we're here back in a couple of years ago when we did an extension of the same loan. Bryn, I apologize. I did not give enough details for someone who is entirely new to this, as it is a very complex relationship here. But the Champlain Housing Trust is an actually, Paul, could you bring over Amy Demetrowitz? So that she can represent CHT here. The Champlain Housing Trust is requesting that the city of Winnowski authorize the discharge and renewal of an existing Vermont Community Development Program grant funded loan, which is for the properties at 53 through 67 East Spring Street. They are currently owned by a partnership, 1306 Spring Street Limited Partnership. Those properties need to be rehabilitated, renovated and as part of keeping them affordable, discharging and renewing this loan will effectively extend the loan term for an additional 30 years. This, which will allow them to keep it affordable. Champlain Housing Trust is the administrator and the custodian of the fund. So we are not carrying this on Winnowski books. It's actually on CHT's books. But since we were part of, I believe, acquiring the BCDP grant in the first place, we serve as a partner and we have taken action on it before. So they're requesting our permission to go forward and to discharge and then renew the loan at the same terms. So I'm going to turn that over to Amy to explain it a little bit further and to take your questions on it because this far predates my time here and I have just given you my best understanding of what has happened, but Amy has a much more complete understanding of that. So if you want to add anything, Amy. Heather, I think you did a great job. It is very complicated. I apologize, but affordable housing funding is very complicated. Mostly because we take advantage of what's called the low income housing tax credit. And it kind of ends up requiring a very complicated structure. So for example, currently the buildings are owned by a partnership. We're the managing general partner. So we're the front facing entity. We manage the property, find the tenants. And we have to, in order to make use of the tax credits, we have to sell it to a different partnership of which we will again be the managing general partner. So there won't be any change really to the tenants. Extending this loan for discharging it and rewriting it for another 30 years will allow us to maintain the affordability. We're also going to be doing a significant amount of renovations on the property. They're in good condition, but you know, things like roofs, we've got site plan and drainage issues that we're taking care of. There's some work on the porches that needs to be done. There's some work on heating systems, which are now, you know, over 20 years old and weatherization work that we want to do on these buildings. And so this, this extension will allow us to go into a new partnership, access additional funding and make those improvements to the property. Thank you, Amy and Heather. It is nice. Nice to see improvements happening on these properties. And it sounds like this is. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of labor work. That has no financial impact on the city of Winnieski. Are there any questions from council. Jim. Thank you for. Navigating all the complexities of housing finance to make this work. The only question I had is just, um, I understand it maintains affordability, but does it still result in a rent increase? I mean, we do, um, annual, you know, minor, you know, 3% rent increases generally, but there won't be any significant rent increase. There's no overage on top of that to adjust the new financing. Okay. Correct. Thank you. Any other questions? Any public comments on this topic? All right. Hearing no further comment. I would entertain a motion to approve the Champlain housing trust loan discharge and renewal. Okay. Motion by Jim second by how all those in favor, please say aye. Hi. Hi. Motion carries. Thank you again for coming, Amy. Thank you very much. We will move on to item G. This is request for use of the city parking space, which Heather will introduce. Yeah. So this is kind of a follow up to the liquor control board meeting where we did, um, the sidewalk usage fees. Um, and we also have the city parking space. Um, we also have the city parking space to have 300 square feet of sidewalk use, uh, which is not available directly in front of their business. So again, talking about that variability between businesses and where they're located and how much space they can access. Um, so last year we had. Given our house one parking space as the result of a. Um, rumor goes that the land owner Meredith from the downtown organization and I hosted, I think. Seven different meetings with the downtown businesses along that row discussing possibilities for creating outdoor dining opportunities and space. And it was far and away. The preference of most of those businesses not to create outdoor dining space within those parking spaces, but there were some winners and some losers in that. more on par with the space that other businesses along those rows had. In addition to that, we also, if you'll recall, created the to-go parking spaces and decided to forgo parking fees on those spaces in order to help to boost, take out and delivery for our business, our restaurant businesses. So those continue this year through June 31st. This would be a continuation of what we had approved last year for our house and what we would potentially forgo for this one parking space would be up to $2,520 if it went through the end of October. And if, in fact, we were to have someone park there every hour that we could possibly charge. So this is really just to allow all businesses an opportunity to succeed during COVID. Thanks, Heather. And I appreciate the time that you and Meredith have spent with business owners hashing out something that works for everyone. And also that that has been, that late work has occurred before coming here so that we have a recommendation to move forward with. Are there questions or concerns from members of council about this proposed use? Mike. Yeah, was this a place last year? I can't remember. Yeah, we did it last year after having all of those conversations and I have to say that it wasn't just the meetings with businesses we had. I personally had dozens of emails and phone calls. There have been some pretty elaborate conversations about this, trying to make sure we accommodate everyone. And was there any issues with the adjacent parking spot with people parking their car there and then having any disruption on their vehicle? Not to my knowledge. No, I had not heard anything about that. I think they divided it pretty well and the Department of Public Works comes in and puts a jersey barrier at the back of that parking space for safety purposes. So while I gave you images of what it looked like last year, you would see the pretty inside of that. There's a jersey barrier on the outside of that, just so it's safe there. I was trying to look at that and I was thinking of the side where the car would pull in and open the door and I was just wondering if there's any instances that people, it just didn't work, but okay. Not to my knowledge, no. I am curious about just kind of the undesignated timeline of through the fall of 2021. I think that there are a lot of changes and a lot of improvements that we're seeing with vaccinations. I'd feel more comfortable having a more defined timeline or a point which we could review and see whether or not it was still necessary. You know, maybe by the end of the fiscal year or something along those lines, just to give us a chance to see how things are going with the state safety recommendations. And I recommend that we align it to the to-go parking spaces in that case. They are approved through June 30th, 2021. So I think those two would go hand in hand, both being responses to COVID. Yeah, I think that makes sense to me. Any other concerns? Any public comments on this item? I see a hand raised. I live on George Street. My comment would be, this is the first meeting I've been so thank you all for letting me speak. My comment would be that it's nice to have these communities even outside of COVID. So to the extent possible, if there's room to use public spaces, especially downtown and give over some parking for businesses to really bring the streets to life, that would be nice to continue whatever improvements we see on the COVID front. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. Appreciate the comment. This is like a more successful version of the Parklet, I think. Any other questions or comment? All right, would someone like to move to approve the request for the use of city parking space? Almost. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. We are moving on to item H. This is on for discussion, our transportation impact fee with commission feedback on exempt uses that John will introduce and maybe we'll give some, if you leave anything out, I'll try to give any extra background for Bryn here. Sounds good, yeah. Yeah, this one's been going on for a little while. So this is a follow up for discussion. If you remember, we reviewed the sort of the draft final report from RSG and some of the ordinance language. And as discussed with RSG with this impact fee, there's exemptions that you can place on different types of developments, residential and commercial. And there's a lot of flexibility in the types of exemptions you can place on those developments. So the mayor put out a memo, I think it was back in December to the applicable commissions for some feedback, asking which uses they recommended for exemptions that aligned with master plan goals. So the housing commission and the safe, healthy connected people commission were requested to provide some feedback. So getting a little out of my realm here as a public works guy, but let me go through this. So in the housing commission, three recommendations were made. So all three were related to affordable and low income households. So one was, and these are ranked by priority, family rental units, three bedroom and more. Two was house of home ownership opportunities with three or more bedrooms that are affordable for low income households and three rentals affordable to low income households. So chatting with Heather of the, I think 173 units that are currently being permitted or plan for construction that, and including that butternut station development that you all saw a week ago, that's about 25% of the current projects, just for reference. So those are the three housing commission requests and those three are pretty easy to accommodate within the impact structure ordinance. So that's where all these exemptions live is right in the ordinance. I guess any questions on those before I go to the safe, healthy connected that hopefully Heather can answer. Well, I will just to refresh fellow counselors memory. We discussed wanting some exemptions because this impact fee will increase the cost of development. So exemptions are a way to sort of steer development towards things that are priorities. We asked commissions for to weigh in on what those priorities might be, not that. So I don't want us to feel like we need to include all three of the, like all six of these things. This is just something to give us to work from. I did have a question that maybe Heather can answer or Jim, I was surprised to see all of the housing commission recommendations targeting low income when previous discussions have also included middle income. So like up to the 120% threshold. So I'd be curious to hear more about that. I believe the second one was intended to be low to moderate income and it was moderate up to 100% area median income. So not the full range of moderate up to 120 but up to 100%. Thanks, Heather. I think the one reason that that did not go up to the 120% level is because the area median income is the entire Chittenden, or the South Brownington, Burlington MSA. So a house affordable at 120% of area median income is a quite expensive house for Winooski. So as far as a home ownership opportunity, that was I think the reason for it limiting at 100% rather than using that middle income definition. Thanks for that. Did other folks have questions about the housing recommendations? Bryn. I'm curious, does this mean that this would apply to plan unit developments? I think so, right? Yes, it would apply to anything that met the financial criteria. So the form of those developments would not matter. Okay, Jim. So I was just curious to hear what other counselors think about number three in particular. I mean, here we have current code and zoning is providing affordable housing units. Around 17% of development is affordable based on that definition of, and we know that mostly smaller units. There's going to be increased costs, which might make it harder to balance the books on maintaining that percentage of affordability. So I think there's some benefit here, but I'm curious on the relative merits of that, if we already have some, if these are already being provided, do we need to continue to incentivize them or what's the right level to incentivize them? So partly this is a question for staff. Can we, can the impact fee waiver be graded in that like a level, the third option could receive a lower reduction impact fee, like we have a portion of the impact fee. And then I guess the council is this, I think it's something to think about is this number three priority? Something we want to use this tool for, are we going to, do we want our existing zoning form-based codes to continue to try and work to meet the goals in number three? Well, I appreciate that question, Jim, because when I read through these recommendations, my instinct was to exclude number three because we are finding those needs met as it is. And the other two items seem more urgent because this is something that is updated through ordinance. I think we can change it with, I shouldn't say easily, but we can make changes to it should our priorities change in the future or should we find that suddenly we are no longer meeting that need with current development? That's my personal feelings there. You can also do different levels of exemption or waiver based on those criteria. So in answer to that question, you could potentially do 25% is exempted if it's that third criteria, whereas it's 100% if it's the first. So that you have that ability. That's good, thank you. I think that would be an interesting approach to consider and especially, I know ultimately the amount of waiver determines the impact fee leveraged on every other use. And so it could be interesting to try and figure out where the sweet spot is, is it 15%, 30% granted it's hand waving and guesswork but with educated sidebars? So I think that would be worth exploring rather than striking it entirely because I do worry that the net effect of this would be to reduce the overall 80% or below rental income or 80% or below rental affordability units. If nothing else is done, like the cost of it construction will go up. So the rate of affordable unit construction could go down. Although you'll have other funds coming in that potentially support that from other directions, but that's just something to consider. I would hate to see that de knock on effect of this impact fee exemption. Other counselors have questions or comments on the housing recommendations? We can go ahead, Brynne. I agree. I feel like I don't have enough information to make a decision based off- We are not approving tonight. Yeah, no, I know. And I'm also articulating that that's good because I don't feel like I have enough information to really evaluate these and to determine what the impact would be and as well as the unintended consequences. So, yeah. So the idea was to have this on for discussion to start engaging in what do we think about these priorities? There is also some work happening at the housing commission to look at other incentives. This is really like a huge can of worms. We have incentives in our form-based code area to encourage affordable middle income housing that haven't worked. So this is potentially an alternative to that. I think there's some other policy discussions happening as well. I will say at some point we need to make a decision and we're not going to know all of the unintended consequences. But I think we could leave tonight would be good to get a sense of which priorities sound right to potentially move forward and then ask staff to come back with some more information about what if we proceed here? What would that look like? Mike? Wasn't one of the goals to have more affordable housing for families and that's why we're doing the three plus bedrooms. So I'm kind of agreeing with you about the regardless of bedroom count. So I think it's important. I think the biggest complaint we have is there's not enough affordable rentals or housing for families. Yeah, and we hear from developers that they're not going to build three bedrooms because it's not financially viable. So that is one of the policy discussions is how can we help? Like what can we do to bridge that gap? Mm-hmm. If it's helpful for this conversation when we had the discussion and what we were asked to do is bring back three priorities for consideration of city council. The first two were very quick and easy and most of the discussion was about the first two. And then the third was the catch all also all affordable housing is good. So I don't know if that helps inform your conversation but that's the conversation that we had at the housing commission. Thanks, Heather. I think a possible thing to look at for the future is let's say that we are likely to move forward with the top two priorities. What is the downstream impact on the rest? Like what do we, I mean, we kind of know what the impact will be because we're saying we're charging this much money per unit but how does that maybe play out on like actual rent for the, in the end when the unit is out there? So that could be a piece of information for our next discussion on this. Mike. Right. As of right now, do we know the housing stock of how, do we have three plus bedroom units that are affordable or low income adjacent or next to say not affordable? And how does this work? We do have some neighborhoods that are more integrated economically than other neighborhoods. In the city of Winooski, we have a much lower percentage of rentals that are three bedrooms plus and that is shifting more and more in the direction of micro units and one bedroom units. So we started at a deficit in comparison with Chittenden County and the surrounding communities, a big deficit in comparison. And that's just for rentals. So I think, you know, this is a real need, but again, like Christine was saying, what we're hearing from developers and I've spoken with a bunch of different developers about this is it's just not financially feasible to build three bedrooms because they don't pencil out. Does that answer your question, Mike? A little bit, because part of my concern was if, if the building came online that was built for this purpose but it didn't work and then the whole complex became low income, I mean, it's the plan when it worked, right? And so how do we move forward with a development or a building like this if it, especially if it's a four story building? So I don't know that we were specifying that it had to be buildings that were mixed income buildings. So whether it was a bunch of all affordable housing for low income people or whether it was a combination of market rate and affordable family housing isn't something that we're specifying through the housing commission. It's not something we haven't looked at inclusionary zoning that would require those to be in one building. In a lot of cases, developers look to use low income housing tax credits and those, but again, not necessarily for three bedroom plus because it's much more financially effective to do the micro units right now. Because just for an example, the building that's on East street by the beverage warehouse, that started out as townhouses that were being sold and turned into rentals. And I think it wasn't working and that's why I'm just being cautious on how the plan is gonna be put forth and how we work it. Brynn? Yeah, so just piggybacking on Mike's comment is the predictability so that we have a good sense. Of course, we're not gonna be able to know and forecast everything, but just with a good amount of confidence would be nice to gauge like, what does the money look like? How would this pan out? And what would be the remainder that we would need to make up from the tax base? And then I'm also not familiar with how this is regulated and how we ensure that units stay affordable. So that's maybe a conversation for another time, but that also pertains to my thinking on how do we even know whether or not units are staying affordable? So before that point to your first, the first part of your statement, we don't collect these fees right now. And so the goal of the fees is to put more burden on the infrastructure that we need to build to support development on those developments and less of it on existing taxpayers. So in my opinion, in stating these fees does not have an impact on our current tax base, like it's not increasing the taxes that they will pay. It will increase the cost of the new developments and have some impact on the cost of affordability there. And so that's why we want some waiver in there so that we can protect affordability for some units. On top of that, how do I say this? Well, to your second point, there is, I think it was in this memo or perhaps the last one about the mechanism for monitoring affordability. Oh, that's right. That's what I was trying to get at before, Bryn, is that? I think your statement made me think that there's concern that this will increase affordable housing, low-income affordable housing development and that that will have some impact on the tax revenue that we collect locally and that is not true. Okay, I misinterpreted what you were saying. Sorry, John, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, yeah, that is something we've been talking to RSG about is what's the mechanism to make sure that if development comes online and they're saying they're affordable, how do they maintain that affordability? Do we have them sign some sort of covenant that says, you must show proof that your development is maintaining affordability and it's set for at least a five-year timeframe or something, it's gonna need some attorney review to kind of suss that out to understand how we can actually track it. The other point I just wanna make too is, I don't necessarily think that these impact fees are gonna significantly drive a development type. I think it's more of a, or I guess a perk, I would say, like yes, you are complying with our master plan or you're me or master plan goals. Here's a reward for that. I think a developer is coming in and they're saying, we're gonna build the type of housing we want, it works with our performer. I don't think this is gonna be a big enough sweetener for them to change. It may change a couple of units. I think that would happen, but I don't think it's gonna wholesale change the development type. So just wanted to point that out because these fees are being charged by, for example, they have an Act 146 fee that they charge for all of their large capital projects that developers pay here in Manuski. So just wanna make that point. Maybe, we don't go too far into Manusia trying to suss these out when really it may not make a huge difference on what development we see. Quite well taken, John. Mike. Yes. I don't know the fact on this, maybe someone can enlighten me. When a developer comes into the city, builds a building, they have some incentive of making, I think, is it 10% or 15% affordable housing? Is that correct? I don't believe they have any. If they're on the gateways, those are neighborhood development area. And so at the state level, they can get a priority housing project determination. And so what that means is an expedited Act 250. So it does have some perks for developers to do that in the neighborhood development areas. Yes, at a state level. Now, is there a way to piggyback on that? To make it another incentive for impact fees? It would be piggybacking on that. And I think there are some things that would all work in conjunction to make it more likely that affordable housing would be built. Yes. Thank you. Do you wanna move to discussing the Safe Healthy Connected People recommendations? John, are you looking at me? Oh, no, I'll go for it. No, thank you. This is a really good discussion. Much appreciated. So Safe Healthy Connected People Commission, I was lucky to sit in with Ray on that one, but their recommendations for the three priorities are childcare, daycare facilities, healthcare, which centered around the master plan, which also centers around sort of improved the local provider healthcare access and the mental health and substance abuse support. And then the third one was food resources, which I think that also centered around sort of affordable grocery stores options. Similar to the last discussion, I think the first one, childcare daycare facilities was like, yes, that was a priority. And then the healthcare food resources were more of like, we could do this, but there was a lot of discussion on how to define it. And to try to put values into an actual thing, you're gonna administer difficult sometimes. So in the memo, I threw out a couple of options for how do you define it if a permit application is coming to us so that healthcare is not sort of vague that somebody can manipulate it. So an example would be calling it out as professional substance abuse and mental health care provider. And then grocery store, say under 10,000 square feet, which we could give an error and figure out what that actually, what's an appropriate square footage threshold. So just a couple of options, but that's a great fill in anything I missed. No, I think you got it. I think the one big piece that the commission got kind of stuck on was like the affordability piece around food resources and how that would be defined. And doing a little digging around, there's not great kind of industry standards there to lean on necessarily. So I think, again, that's philosophically one we wanted to have included in the memo, but I think we're struggling to kind of put a fine point on how those terms would be defined to that administer the impact fee. So. So I just wanna add in here, former counselor Amy Lafayette had sent me a recap after this meeting, including that the group could not reach a consensus in terms of how to define food resources at all. If I was continuing on council, I probably would suggest leaving that off entirely. She also noted that the group did not include, this is her statement, the group did not include mental health or substance use abuse help under healthcare facilities. They felt the Howard Center in Burlington and the outreach team has this covered and didn't need their own exemption. So I don't know. It's a little bit in conflict with the memo here, her takeaway there. I don't know if there's anything you would add to that. No, that's interesting. I mean, I think her point about the food piece is well taken. And again, I think John and I kind of dancing around that are probably indication of that, but I think we didn't wanna highlight it here as just reference to their conversation, but the healthcare piece, that's interesting. I don't remember that specific detail to be quite honest, but I don't doubt it. I think, I mean, personally, I would agree on the food resources. That's, there's no way to define that right now. That's really kind of tricky to get into. And that we, it is not surprising to me that childcare came up as number one pretty rapidly and it's something that we have been talking about ways to support as a city. There are other questions, thoughts about these recommendations, Brynn? I don't recall clearly from the Wunewski partnership for prevention presentation in January, December. If there were recommendations about any healthcare services, substance prevention services that were related to retail cannabis ordinances or approval, any recommendations that were related to ensuring that adequate services were also provided in partnership with those ordinances moving through? I don't recall any specific recommendations at this time. Jesse? So I don't think they made specific recommendations about that as part of that conversation, Brynn. I guess we've inappropriately put my thumb on the scale here about Amy's comment about the Howard Center. I think that there is a different, the Howard Center is not providing ongoing treatment to our residents regularly. They are connecting folks up with treatment. And often that connection is to a provider out of city if we don't have that service provision in city. So if that was something you wanted to incentivize or give a bump to, I think that defining it as specifically as direct service provision for mental health and substance abuse, pending our ability to evaluate that and track that, that is a different thing from what the community outreach team is doing. Does that make sense? Yeah, good point. Jim? So I generally support all three of these and I would still be interested in food resources even from a small form grocery store perspective since that is a business that people feel is lacking. So we were talking to our housing authority senior residents that being able to walk to a grocery store that they wanted to go to is hard. I recognize that's not a great way to fill that need through this impact fee waiver. One thing I'm wondering is how, so the affordable housing one makes sense because you can understand the economics of it without having to actually have anybody in the unit yet. Whereas these all require basically a commitment of a tenant, a certain type of tenant. And you have to fit up the space for a particular type of tenant but what is gonna be the limitation in requiring a development to have a tenant already committed to coming in to provide this service? Or are we just saying that if you build a space that could be used by such a tenant, that's a waiver. So that would be, I guess it seems like a slightly different challenge to certify this type of use. Is there other mechanisms already in place with other impact fees that can do that? I don't have a great answer for that. Yeah, I don't know, Heather, do you have anything for that one? Yeah, I think that's a really good question and I don't have an answer for that. I think it is much more difficult. It's a much easier proposition to do this with housing to a certain target income level. I have an answer or a potential answer for that, if I may. So from a land use perspective anyway, we have specific categories of land use for daycare facility and for healthcare facilities. So as a use, we would be able to track what they are before a tenant is identified and make sure that the use itself is permitted where it's being proposed. So we could at least capture it from that perspective. That doesn't necessarily, if you all choose to drill down further and further define what specific healthcare uses you want to exempt or daycare uses you want to exempt, that would be a different level of analysis, but from the broader perspective, as a land use itself, we have specific categories. So we'd be able to determine where the use is going before a tenant is identified. So when someone does an application, they would be, or when they're filling out their materials to go for development, they'll declare their intended uses and we would know if they have declared intended use like healthcare or childcare. That's correct, yes. And then so there could be some mechanism similar to housing where there's a certification process or a covenant that if you don't actually fill the unit with a provider that meets certain specifications, you don't get the impact fee. Like that seems like a way to do that. If we can do it with housing, it seems like we could do it with other tenants, but I'll leave that to you all. I just in general would say that these are likely to be less utilized. We're not gonna have six daycares try to open all at once all of a sudden. So I see less downside to including more potential exemptions along this dimension and making more of like a wider pool of potential ways for people to hit the target. And if we get any one of those, we would be in better spot. Whereas with the housing discussion, I think there is a available supply and which use sucks up the supply first. So I think in this case for food resources, for childcare and for mental health and substance abuse in particular, I think these might be worth all having in as options. So if we get any one of them, we'll be better off. Other questions, comments about these priorities? Mike. Yeah, I do know once a building, once, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong to John or Eric, once you permit for a certain use of a building in order to get the, to see all, it has to fulfill that obligation and the permitting process. If they don't, then there has to be an amendment on which we could follow through with this. If it doesn't work out, if they say they're going to put a grocery store in and then they build the grocery store and they don't use it for the grocery store, then there has to be some check and balances for that. If they're going to use it for housing, for example, or whatever, whatever specific use they're developing it for they have to fulfill that. And if it doesn't, then you go back to the permitting process or to the amendment. Is that correct? Yeah, that's generally correct. If they're not occupying the structure with the use that they proposed, we would not issue a CO and then they would not be able to occupy and they would have to then go through a change of use process to get the new use that they're proposing. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time a development did that. I mean, it happens. I mean, we've seen it downtown in the by with the efficiency of Vermont, you know, it's just something like that happens. I mean, that's an example that's not in the process yet, but that does happen. Any public comment so far on this topic? Before digging into the piece from the Municipal Infrastructure Commission, I wanna make sure that we have some clear next steps here. And, you know, what I've heard so far is interest in a little more detail on what impact waived uses will have on other. So like, if we're waiving these types of affordable housing, what is the increased cost on other types that are built? Particularly around if we do or do not include housing priority number three with the low income rentals of any size. And then maybe in the next update, like a clear statement of here is how we would track affordability, here is how we might track these uses. So we can think about that. Is there anything else staff that you have heard or questions at this stage for the next step of this process? Jessie. Maybe this is where John was going. To me, the next step of this process is really to start bringing you a draft ordinance to look at and consider, you know, right now we're talking about this very hypothetically. So I think one of the goals we were looking for tonight is, is there enough interest in doing any of this that you wanna start seeing draft ordinances? We can always then, you know, add an exemption or change an exemption or put in a different percentage or whatnot. But are you ready for us to spend some staff time and legal money to do that ordinance drafting? I didn't hear that we are. I hear a lot of questions and no consensus yet on what priorities could be included. But am I wrong, counselors? Do you feel like we could move forward towards draft ordinance? Jim. I guess I haven't heard anything that says we don't wanna do impact fees at all. And I guess the question is if you need to know exactly what the list of exemptions are, then I agree with the mayor that we're not there. But if we can shuffle the, or if we can add or remove exemptions after seeing some additional information and you can do the ordinance language at the same time, I'm all for making this change sooner rather than later so that we can capture as much from development as possible or spread this across as much development as possible. So I don't, I guess I feel like we're in consent. I haven't heard anything that says we're not gonna do impact fees at all. It's just a question of how to jigger the exemptions. And so if we can do that, it's part of your staff process. Great. If not, and you need us to do that work first, we can do that. Mike. I agree. And I think we should talk to some of the developers that have been building it when it's trying to get their take on what we're trying to accomplish here too. They may have some input that we're not seeing it. They might see it from a different angle, you know? I would like to invite them to this discussion. I think there's been some preliminary conversation, but so let's talk about the Municipal Infrastructure Commission recommendations. So as part of this process, you know, as we have seen in previous updates, we have to have our projects identified in advance of what these fees will fund. And so I think this update maybe has implications for those projects, identified projects. John, do you want to summarize for us? Sure. So now we're kind of talking about the impact fee study. So the impact fee study lists the capital projects. The revenue from those fees would be designated to. So those projects that add some form of transportation capacity, meaning wire sidewalks, bike lanes. Usually we're not talking about adding roadways and when you ski. So it's usually multimodal sidewalks and bike lanes. So currently the impact fee has, um, say three categories of projects. So two specific ones. Main street for the sidewalk widening bike lane, East Allen for the, um, some sidewalk widening and shared use path. And then the third category is, we've identified two projects that come from the transportation master plan. Um, one is East spring street. The other is North street. So those two are identified in the transportation master plan because they currently do not have sidewalks. Um, for at least a portion of the street. Um, East Allen for East East spring street. So we met with the infrastructure commission. Based on some of the resident feedback that we've received, um, requesting sidewalks on maple and Manso street. And the infrastructure commission agreed to add, uh, those two streets to the. Prioritization list in the transportation master plan, which in turn, um, also makes it eligible for this, uh, impact fee study. Revenue. Um, so what we're proposing to do is add those two sidewalks. Um, to this impact fee list basically so that any. If, if this does go through and the impact fee is. Um, Is authorized and that revenue could help fund. Those projects. Um, One question I have now is if we do say, you know, if, if this goes through, it gets approved at some point. We construct a sidewalk without having those fees in yet from a developer. Can we kind of back pay ourselves? So if we wanted to fast track a sidewalk construction, um, thinking Manso street, for example. Um, Can we actually use those fees to pay back? Um, Can we actually use those fees to pay back that work? So that's, that's a question I have for the RSG folks. Um, I don't know council decision at this point, but it's just, we can, you know, those are now additional sidewalks that we can put into the mix with this, um, Impact fee. So John, I feel like the study previously specifically included the cost of North street sidewalk. Are you saying that we could collect from any impact fee we collect in the future? We could apply it to any of those sidewalks. Like. Kind of willy-nilly, whichever we wanted to. Yeah. I mean, there is, there's kind of a natural prioritization because, you know, East spring street, we wouldn't do that sidewalk until we actually reconstructed the road because it needs curve. So, you know, um, North street could be a standalone, but it's it's low priority on the transportation master plan list. Mansa street, I would say is higher priority and it's standalone. So that's a better candidate to do right away. Um, because it's, and I say it's higher priority because it's, it's a cut through street between a gateway corridor and a collector street where North street. You know, it doesn't see the traffic volume that same Mansa street has. Um, same with Maple street. Like that's, that's a more challenging one because it's, you know, it's a cut through. It becomes high priority, but we wouldn't do it because we just repaid that street and it needs new curving. So, um, yeah, not necessarily sort of, you know, willy-nilly, but it'd have to align with, you know, road resurfacing type projects to make it work. Well, I guess my question is if we collect these fees and don't do mainstream revitalization, we have to refund them. How specific do we have to be with the sidewalks? Like, can you plug it into any of the priority sidewalks? It's my question. Yes. You can plug it. Yep. Sorry. Too long to answer on the first one, but yes, we can plug it into him. Thank you. Jim. But having as part of that impact fee, we have to do it. Eventually. That's my understanding of the impact fees. We have to accomplish all the projects on the list. It's, um, Yes. Yes. So you do, it's, it's like dollars and dollars out though. So if, you know, you could have it on the list, but you know, those dollars coming in, if you spend them on those other, you know, projects, then, you know, there's not necessarily a refund to developers. So a product, a sidewalk can stand the list for. A pretty long time because we don't have to prioritize the sidewalks on the impact fee list. So as long as it goes to one of those, those listed projects, then. Then that's fine. Christine, can I jump in for a minute? Yeah. So. Um, John, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think these impact fees are ever going to fully pay for any of these projects. They are going to be a funding source on a project. So it's not that we have to get through all of these projects to. We have to get through all of these projects to. Buy a date certain in the future. It's that we can't use the impact fees for anything, but these projects. So assuming we are doing a set of projects. And we are raising money for those projects. We can pull those dollars in as a revenue stream, but they're never going to fully pay for all of the sidewalk projects in the city. So that. Yep. Exactly. Yep. That's a very good point. So I'm just going to go back to the bottom. So I'm going to go back to the bottom corner. So I think on, as you stated before, on this piece. There's no action needed. This part wasn't more of an update about. Sidewalk prioritization. Jim. I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm. Feeling. I really had it in my head that we had. We, when some ways were committing to these projects. And doing this and doing the impact fee if you include, the distribution of costs of new development onto existing infrastructure and what's new infrastructure, that total pool of money relies on how much you're planning to build. And when, so when our overall planned build go up, like we would, if we're adding to new sidewalks, we have to include costs for those sidewalks and distribute those as part of the impact fee or as total construction pool of money staying the same where it's adding to new streets to the list of what that money will go towards. I guess I'm confused about what part of the study stops. I really thought we would have to build those things as part of, if as soon as we start charging impact fees like we allowed to charge that amount of impact fee because we plan to build this amount of stuff and as soon as we don't build that amount of stuff and our underlying calculation was wrong. Isn't that how it works. I think what I'm talking about specifically is the sidewalks piece. So you're right in and if we don't do Main Street or East Allen, then that that becomes an issue because, you know, 5.3 million of the impact fee or so is, you know, based on Main Street, or at least of course some of this and same with New Allen sidewalks. It's kind of subset like these are the sidewalks. We just list sidewalks, new sidewalks. So, you know, we're calling them out but, you know, if, you know, if we swap out, or if we add sidewalks, we're not going to have to pay a refund. If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I mean it all points back to our capital plan or, you know, our transportation master plan. So specifically for sidewalks. But again, like, yeah, if we're at Main Street or East Allen falls off the wayside for some reason then that does create an issue on the impact fee refund. Or if we decide to stop doing sidewalks all together, if we are to do no sidewalks then that would create a problem as well. But as, but as long as we are using the dollars for the intended infrastructure, we're okay. Thanks. Other questions. Anything else staff that would be useful to your next steps. No, I, but I just so I make sure I heard what everyone's saying then. So it sounds like if we came back to you with draft ordinance and the further sort of review of the exemptions that's acceptable. Because I think those two can happen at the same time. Yeah. And then if you could find time to meet with Bryn to give her the full study context. Yeah, absolutely. And because this is maybe the third time we've seen it, maybe fourth, still very complex. All right, so we had this on for discussion. Before we move on to the next item, I would like to call a five minute recess. So we will reconvene at 813, please. Thank you. All right. Are we all back here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great. So 813 I will reconvene our meeting. Thank you for the short recess. We are on item I Main Street revitalization quarterly updates. Welcome back, John. Thanks. So this is our quarterly update from December. He put this together and basically downloaded, you know, everything that's been going on and even some of the historic data. With the current election trend, you get, you know, new counselors up to speed on sort of what's going on. But just want to throw out that Bryn, whenever you want, can definitely go through the project with you and answering any questions. So I will not go through this huge memo, but I'll just hit some of the highlights. On the project estimates schedule and sort of design. All minutes. So with a project estimate financing, we, we provided a more sort of detailed overview. So you can, you may have seen this before, but just a refresher from where the funding sources are coming from and what grant funding we have currently and how that breaks down a slight increase in the cost estimate, just based on some recent data from, from December meeting. So total project cost estimate right now is around 21.8 million. The actual cost to the city. We're looking at 17.1 million. That, that includes that's taken away all the grants and. Other cost share items that we have. And then one thing that we've been kind of working on since December is having further discussion with USDA about funding the project on the general fund side. So we're, you know, we're definitely funding it, funding the water resources through their web program, but we also have been. Or I should say during that process, we've also approved to fund the general fund portion through their community facilities financing. You know, after kind of further discussion with them, their, their interest rates seem to be, you know, looking pretty good for the next couple of months. I think they're right now, they're like 2.125%. So kind of beating bond bank right now. And that's the one benefit of the USDA funding that they have to double check is that they would be able to fund the. Private utility undergrounding work, which potentially we would not own any of that infrastructure, even the bank's and that becomes an issue with bond bank because they can only fund up to 10% of. You know, non municipal owned infrastructure. So that would be a big benefit because those commercial loans are shorter time period and a higher interest rate. And then we, the other thing just to note too, we're looking at in the memo is in order to utilize that USDA web funding to its full extent, meaning that we have to actually get to the, the sort of finance threshold before we get to the grant piece. We kind of use it or lose it in order to get to the grants. We're looking at potentially adding some side streets, water and sewer work. So that would be on West spring street and Norman street potentially. So that's an option we're looking at right now. That's really the only that's the major estimating finance pieces and then schedule wise, we're basically holding to what we updated back in December. So in October, 2021 bid January, 2022 award and next year spring groundbreaking in May. And that's really going to depend on how the rest of the right away process goes. So that'll be a kind of a big update in June when we, when we chat again on the project. So kind of where we're at with the right away piece. We've also included an updated Gantt chart in the back. So you can kind of see the different elements and where rat with the schedule. And then finally kind of design pieces. We're, we're wrapping up the 90% documents. The focus continues to be on the utility undergrounding those private utility providers and just getting that final piece coordinated. We're in pretty good shape with all the city owned underground infrastructure. It's just getting all the telecoms and GMP coordinated. And the other sort of piece that we've been working on is finalizing the stormwater design. So you'll see that next round. So we're looking to do pervious pavers and the amenity belt, the tree belt, and then some, what they call gravel wetlands. So it's sort of like a bio retention type basin. But we're also looking to include some rain gardens further south down the corridor for some, you know, water quality benefits. And then the last sort of design pieces. We're probably going to be getting some streetlight examples. And then we're going to be looking at some, what actual like 14 foot streetlights coming to Winooski. So you can kind of touch and feel and see what they would look like to, to review. So I don't know where they're going to land, but there should be coming next couple of weeks and we'll, we'll send an email out so you can get a look at them and see what you all think. So that's kind of the highlights of, of what we've been up to, but there's a lot more in the memo. So that's just, you know, the background that we've talked about, but just kind of all included in one document now. Thank you, John. So again, for council, no decision making tonight, but time to ask questions. I am just going to say I have a number of questions, but I will save it to when I have a chance to check in on the overall project and get up to speed. So save the bolt for that. Yeah, this is huge. Thank you. Thank you. Definitely well worth a dedicated meeting for two other counselors have questions about this update. I have one. John, do we see an uptick on costs? Because of, you know, things are costing more now than they did two years ago. No, not yet. We'll see when the 90% estimate comes if, if they've, um, you know, if like, you know, you know, if there's like a electrical wiring, things like that, which you probably see too, Mike, there's, there's some costs increases there. Um, so well, I'm sure well, if there are those, it, those items, we'll see that in the 90% estimate. Um, but I, you know, I will say like, You know, until we get to 100% estimate, it's going to fluctuate quite a bit. And frankly, until we get to bid, um, you know, within that comfortable range of, uh, you know, well below the bid threshold, um, which we're currently holding, then I think that's all we can ask for. Jim. Um, thanks for dumping all of this into a larger update, though it is a lot. It was nice to be able to read through it kind of in totality. Um, and I was trying to make a little bit of sense of what we might be thinking in terms of scheduling with all the other projects that they all seem to be moving forward and backward in time. Um, which is not to be, not a surprise given everything that's going on, but I'm curious what your kind of sweet spot for timing looks like right now. Um, I mean, you have our next or update our 90% target, but, uh, with this school coming on earlier and the DDI potentially moving later and the V trans work shifting and how much this going to be done. What's kind of your vision for like an ideal season or a future plan? And what are the other policies that this will happen over? Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's actually working out to, to our benefit at this point, because I think the one piece that we are concerned about is trying to restart this, you know, originally when we were thinking construction this season. Um, you know, we didn't want to be impacting businesses with just coming back from COVID. So that was a concern. Um, I think the main street corridor, a breather from the COVID impact, um, and hopefully they're starting to get back on their feet this summer. Um, I think is, is working out with the schedule with the other projects. Um, V trans is going to be tearing out the, the concrete section above the, the, the circulator, which that's actually working in our favor right now. Um, you know, assuming we're starting next summer about the same time, there's some benefits there with, uh, traffic rerouting that we can take advantage of. And sort of similar with exit 16. Um, I mean, frankly, the traffic piece is going to be pretty ugly no matter what. And it's going to take us and V trans. Um, and even to even the school, you know, I think it's going to be a really good plan. But right now the way it's, it's kind of coming together next summer is, I think more of a benefit. And frankly it helps with the tiff sort of funding too. If, you know, if that's the way we're leaning with, with the financing. Um, delaying it to get closer to the tiff. Doesn't hurt. So. Um, Yeah, right now it seems to be working out. Thanks. Um, yeah, I was curious about scheduling. Was there. Has there been consideration about doing any project work, um, outside of high traffic hours? Yeah, we haven't gotten to that point yet. I think once we get through 90%, then we're going to have to start. Working with VHB and reaching out to some. Um, potential contractors to start putting our heads around. Um, work hours. Cause. I think there will be some night work for, you know, some utility. Um, Cross, or cross utility work, cross utility work that we'll have to do, but, um, we'll have to take a close look at where that is. And in regards to like residential apartment buildings and things. Other questions. Okay. All right. Thank you again for this thorough update. Um, thank you to you and Ryan. Um, we will move on to item K. I'm sorry, J. The resolution for fee and lieu of payments for street amenities with Eric. Yes. Thank you very much. I am here tonight to speak with you about a resolution regarding the use of land use. Um, the use of land use. Um, the use of land use. Our land use regulations require that with new developments. Uh, there are, um, in, in several instances, street lights and street trees that are included as part of that development. So over the past several years, as we've been seeing more developments come online, especially in our gateways and having the discussions with developers. Um, we've talked about how to coordinate those, uh, the use of land use. Um, the use of land use. Uh, is currently in progress like the main street revitalization. So in an effort to help coordinate that and to minimize. The duplicative nature of some of those amenities whereby a developer puts the amenities in and then we tear them out later because of a some sort of revitalization project. We've established a fee and lieu option. Uh, which is included in our regulations as well. Our land use regulations do identify the potential for a fee and lieu option. Uh, in June of last year, when you updated the fee ordinance chapter 28 of the municipal municipal code, we included a line item for, uh, establishing a fee and lieu for these, these street space amenities. However, uh, no fees were actually established. And we, we identified that they, those fees would be established by resolution of council similar to the way we establish thrive rates and other, uh, other fees in the city. And so the issue of, uh, what we're going to discuss with your agenda tonight is, uh, is a draft resolution. Uh, that would outline those fees specifically for street trees, street lights. Uh, and then sidewalks and, and the paver or amenity belt as, as necessary. These fees we discussed with public works on, on what would be a good rate for these. So we, we landed on a per linear foot of frontage. Um, and those, those numbers are included in, in, those numbers. Um, I think the reason for this is in some instances, for example, we just reviewed a project today with our project review committee, uh, on East spring street that. Doesn't really have an amenity belt or a green belt to accommodate any type of trees. So it didn't make sense to require them to, uh, to provide those in that, that wouldn't likely survive anyway. So this provides the developers another opportunity where they can pay the fee and lieu, uh, to utilize those fees to, to install the amenities later on, or to maintain existing amenities that we have. So, um, I'll pause that there with, uh, and answer any questions. Thanks Eric. Questions from council. Jim. The street trees, you know, I'd have to ask something. So, um, I'm curious about, uh, how we, where these fees go, right? So the idea in theory in a perfect world, you park them and then put them in one that makes sense for the rest of your infrastructure development. Like that's one theory of how these work, right? Like it makes sense to do this in five years, not when the developers closing out their project. And so you put it in a fund and drawn that fund later to install the trees at the right time. Yeah, that's, that's the idea. Yes. We would have a separate fund set up where the, that would be a separate fund. Um, I don't know if any fees in lieu would be funneled to, and then as necessary, we, we draw down from that, that fund. As part use. So like, if it was, uh, um, amenity belt or pavers that would be. Separate funds. That's a really good question. Um, I don't know if we would need to, I would look to Angela for that since she's here, but I don't know if we need to, uh, to. Uh, I don't know if it could just all be in one fund for the amenity realm, but I'm not the accountant or have any, any knowledge of it. So. And, and, um, I guess, yeah, my concern is that one of the benefits of the four of the code requirements is a maintenance of urban canopy. If, if not an improvement or increase in that, and this could essentially result in conversion of our urban canopy into pavement. Um, that could be an outcome when you, if you're using the feed and lose to fund amenities that are not for street trees, um, how, and we're basically losing a street tree development or more than one street tree development, depending on where it's happening. And it doesn't get replaced. How do we ensure that that loss, we have the tree ordinance, which it should at least deal with loss, but, um, this would not, it wouldn't solve the increased side of the equation of actually trying to have more urban trees on the landscape. So, um, I don't know if there's some way we can, uh, ensure that this also lines up with increasing or at least maintaining urban canopy in the city. When we're allowing development to not replace or add trees that we otherwise would get. Yeah. Thanks. Um, so I think the point of this resolution as we've drafted it is, it is for street amenities. So it is for, again, that, um, kind of comprehensive look as well. So, um, I think it's going to be, um, approve, you know, the mainstream designs and you say, this is what you want mainstream to look like all along the way. This is a revenue stream we can pull from to do. Broadly speaking, those three amenities. I don't think it's that this project is going to pay for that tree in front of that building as much as we are going to implement the community vision. And this will be a revenue stream into that community vision. So, um, I think it's going to be a revenue stream that is tracked and insured, not through a fee resolution. So if, if a tree is being taken down, we are tracking it separately to, um, It's, you know, plant a new tree somewhere else. Um, I think if the council is interested in. How these fees are used over time. I mean, I think in the last year we've had maybe. Two or three projects that would have contributed these fees. So, um, Exponential tracking here, we could track for a period of time, what feet, what dollars are coming in. And then what we, how we are pulling that revenue stream into something, but it's not, it's not going to be its own fund, like its own enterprise fund as much as its own Excel tracking sheet fund. Of what the dollars in dollars out are going to be. Um, so it's fun. So hope that helps. Jim. Where'd you. No, that was a mistake. Okay. I'm curious about the fee, um, amounts. And given the update we just had about the main street. Um, and the costs associated with the ideal trees that would go in main street, it seems like this in Luffy is significantly. Well, compared to, uh, The amount that I, I, I do see it's linear, linear feet, but I'm not sure about how that would convert to like the true cost of, um, actual replacement. So yeah, I mean, the fees are definitely low compared to what, what the actual cost would be. So as an example, um, on a hundred linear feet. Of, of frontage based on this for a street tree, the cost, the fee in lieu would be $2,500 where, um, they may be required to put in one, one, maybe two trees in that same span. And, um, what we're estimating the cost to be with the tree and all the structural elements would be approximately $7,000. So it is definitely a significant amount less. But part of the reason why we, we, um, we landed on that was one, we wanted there to be an actual incentive for the developer to go this route. So we would be getting something and, and not have to remove the infrastructure that the developers were putting in that they could somehow do it cheaper or less expensive. They would put in the amenities and that, which may not be appropriate for the location. And then we would eventually have to pay for it anyway. So this would at least give us some, some ability to, um, to offset those costs. And I guess I should also point out that this is an optional element. There's not a requirement that they pay the fee in lieu. It's if, if the developer does want to go that route and, uh, install the amenities themselves, we would obviously give them the, the specifications that they would need to follow via public works. And they, they have every right to do that on their own. Are there questions on this, Jim? Um, so you said you've had two or three projects that have taken advantage of fee and lieu already. Um, or I guess what's the, what's the total volume of anticipated projects. If you're to look at the main street build out or even the main street development to the next five years as, uh, the infrastructure infrastructure gets upgraded. How many projects do you anticipate might use something like this? So we don't have this in place now. So nobody's paid this out yet. Um, I was estimating that I think we've in the last year have had three projects that had this been in place. It would have been an option. Um, and I think Eric remind me, John remind me, Yeah. You know, you know, I just think that our modeling issue was for mainstream. It was based on 30% of the, of the properties redeveloping. So if there is that your question, Jim, how many of those properties along mainstream would actually potentially pay this. So the percent of the ones that are there is what we're currently modeling, but it's really up to the. Landowners. of this becomes less of an issue once the streetscape is reconstructed because the underlying infrastructure is there so they'll just be matching what is already in place. Right. Yeah, exactly. So once Main Street is constructed, they're matching in kind. So the PNLU kind, it goes away for Main Street once, you know, once it's constructed. And then it's more of an issue on East Allen-Meltz Bay Avenue. Right. And so any potential adverse impacts of this are going to come along those corridors rather than Main Street. Like long-term potential putting off of this. And if the community doesn't decide to reinvest in infrastructure development along Meltz Bay at some point, there'll just be fewer street trees. Right. People redevelop but don't and pay to not put in the infrastructure because we're going to do it at a future date, but we don't ever rebuild the infrastructure to do it there. Because there isn't good planting space along Meltz Bay right now. That's not being a concern is that we're basically waiting for it to be in the future that may never come in some of these areas. And the development along Main Street totally makes sense. Development along East Allen and Meltz Bay is more concerning, especially because there's not a lot of current urban canopy. So the tree ordinance isn't going to govern there. It's mostly going to be continued lack of urban canopy along Meltz Bay. I think that is a potential, however, at the same time, the collecting the fee in lieu would allow us to maintain the existing urban canopy and enhance it where it's appropriate and where it makes sense. So we could potentially use the fee in lieu that's being collected on a Meltz Bay Avenue to include additional plantings in another location in the city or replace the existing canopy in those locations that can support that growth in a more sustainable manner. And I think one of the reasons we're looking to implement this as well is a lot of these sites that we've seen where it doesn't make sense, you have like a two foot tree belt potentially. So we would be asking the developer to plant a tree and like a two foot tree belt because we can't bump out the curb just for that development. So we're saying, you know what, at least we can recoup some money like Eric said and use it someplace else because it doesn't really make sense to have a tree in that location, for example. Are there questions or concerns about this, Brynn? I'm trying to find it here, but is my understanding that this is an annual review? So the way the fee ordinance is set up is that this would be something that would be established annually by council so that if the fees change or if we need to add new fees, we can address that on an annual basis. Yes. Okay, thanks. Any other comments? Are folks feeling good about this ordinance? Does somebody want to motion? What if it's a discussion item? Oh, shucks, you're right. Too many items on today's agenda for me. Is there any more feedback that would be useful for staff? All right, so let's move on to Kay. This is an age well grant to support the senior center with which way we'll introduce. Yeah, and preemptively, if my internet gets funky, somebody give me the sign because Jesse can attest I was cutting in and out earlier. So but yeah, so we were approached back around the beginning of the calendar year by age well, who had received funding from the CARES Act and who we work very closely with at the senior center, they were really impressed with the work Barb and her team have been doing through the pandemic and came to us with this unsolicited offer of funds through their CARES Act allocation. And we're really excited to be here seeking permission to accept it. But given the size of the grant amount, we do need to get council permission to accept the funds. And the plan is working through these funds to continue our Meals on Wheels work, the grab and go meals, which we have been doing every week, which are actually up to about 100 seniors every week that we're serving on Wednesdays. And then also to begin to implement and design some new programming for seniors that sort of responds to the need for remote programming and COVID related programming. Very exciting. And that the good work that your staff have been doing is sort of being recognized with this offer here. Yeah, it was great. No match involved either. So no. Any questions from council? Mike? Can I make a suggestion on some programming? We have a pool opening up and as long as they social distance, I'd like to see some of the seniors, some of the elderly population start realizing that we had developed that zero entry pool for their use so they can be involved in that pool as well. And maybe we can put some of those funds towards that kind of programming for them. Yeah, I will say we are planning right now on having some dedicated senior hours in the pool schedule during the week. But it's a good suggestion. I'll definitely talk to Barbara about that and Jenny. You know, water aerobics is great for the muscles and joints. Any other questions or comments? All right. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the age well grant? So I'll move. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Brynn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Moving on to items. Oh, this is another grant on for approval, the Women's Community Fund, which Heather will introduce. Yeah. So actually, all credit to the mayor who had a conversation with the executive director of the Mott Women's Fund, who was actively seeking to support the city of Winooski and some of the work that we're doing here. So again, recognition of some of the good things happening in our community. I am seeking approval. I had written in your packet that I was seeking approval to apply for a Vermont Women's Fund grant in the amount of $10,000. But since then, I've gone on their website and found that you can apply for multiple years. And since what we are applying to do is use funds from the Vermont Women's Fund in support of what we're doing with our working working communities, challenge implementation grant and our equity work, specifically targeting systemic barriers to economic well being for women and girls. I think that I would like to apply for up to $20,000 if I'm able to do that, to do multiple years because we do have the working communities challenge going on for multiple years. And what I would be proposing to do is really fill some of the gaps that we had in what we had proposed to do with the working communities challenge funds and what we were able to actually fund through that. So we had proposed a bigger initiative than really could be covered entirely by those funds. So seeking your approval to apply for that, no match on this one either. So I think this one's a pretty easy one. So there are questions from Council. Would someone like to move to approve the Women's Community Fund grant with the increased dollar amount of $20,000? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Hal. All those in favor, please. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. So this brings us to the end of our regular agenda. We do have an executive session. I will need two motions here. So the first is that the discussion and negotiation of real estate in public would put us at a disadvantage. And so I need someone to move that we should have this conversation in the executive session. So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. And motion number two would be the executive session inviting city manager Jesse Baker. And Bob McCommer, city attorney. Oh, is he here? He's going to join us over there. Okay. And our city attorney, DePalma. Can I have a motion for that? So moved. Second. Motion by Hal, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Bryn, I didn't hear you. I don't also know if I have the link, so. It should be in your inbox. Okay. I'll look for it. Okay. So yes. So we are going to move into executive session on a different zoom line. We will return to this line only to close out this meeting and we won't be discussing any other topics in the executive session. So I will see you all over there.