 would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, July 18th, 2022. And we will, the first order of business is to rise and pledge to the flag. It's over there. It's usually in that corner. Tim, would you like to lead us, please? 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. OK. Second item is instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency and review of technology options. Sure. So we have two exits at the left side of the auditorium. There are two exits in this auditorium. From this exit over here, you can also exit out the front entrance, which you came in. There's also a side door past the clerk's office in case of an emergency. For those online, we do not monitor the chat options for content. But if you would like to make a statement, please either turn on your camera and we will get to you and or put a comment in the chat that you would like to speak. Thank you. OK, thank you. Agenda review, are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of agenda items? Megan, do you have any agenda order? That's OK. All right, so moving on, comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Welcome, and please come up to the podium there. Make sure the green light is a bright green. OK, there we go. It's green, but people think, oh, yeah, it's green. They don't turn it on. So it has to be bright green. So please give us your name and tell us what you'd like us to hear. My name is Diane Boardman. I live at Granway Commons on Farrell Street. This conference will now be recorded. And we have a lot of through traffic coming on to Bacon Street from Shower Road, coming through our parking lot to go to Farrell Street because they don't want to go through the light. And they are always speeding through there. We've got elderly people. We've got kids. We've got animals. And if one of those kids or a dog gets loose or even a person can't get out of somebody's way, it's very dangerous. So I would like to see at least some kind of sign, put up residential area, you know, slow down something because it's really ridiculous. It goes on all day long, all day. Will you remind me exactly where Bacon Street is? It's right off Shower Road, just before. Oh, I agree. It's a Deamer Square, Deamer Tower. Yes, OK. I don't see where it is either. So if you came off of Home Ave towards the Walgreens and you turned left and you went past the Walgreens, there's a little tiny street that cuts up. And it's a cut through? Well, people are active. Do you say you live at Grandway? Yes. OK, so yeah. So Grandway is the building that has United Way up front. And then there's Eastwood Commons 1 and 2, right? And then Bacon Street Lofts is besides Walgreens, but it's like it fronts right on the Shower Road. So I think they're cutting behind the Grandway, getting onto Bacon, so they don't have to go to that light. They don't really get on the street. Isn't that like a parking lot? Yeah, it's a parking lot. Yeah. But you have our parking lot. I mean, Bacon Street is, I mean, it used to be a dead end. Our parking lot. Do you have any speed bumps in your parking lot? No. No. There's nothing there. OK. And it's just really sad. I mean, I don't want to see anybody get hurt or anything. Oh, right. Yeah. And I've done this, but they don't pay attention. Well, thank you very much for coming in and letting us know. We have another person in another, a different part of the city has identified her street as a cut through as well. Yeah. Ruth Street and whatever. And I understand everybody wants to get home, but come on. I understand that too. Yes, yeah. At least they could wait till they get to the old Kaggle station, right? Somewhere. Illegal thing to do, right? Right. All right, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Are there any other comments from the public who are just here to listen? OK. Any on mine? OK, so we'll move on to announcements in the city manager's report. So announcements. Tom? Nothing comes to mind. Well, you've been busy campaigning for something else. I'm doing things. Yeah, you're eating a lot of creamies, I noticed, which is why there's fruit tonight, huh? Okie doke. Megan? No, for the last week. No, it was a good retreat. So I'll just report that back. Yeah, we'll be eager to see the list of priorities. Yes. Got more feedback about those. Good. Yep, we've been recovering, yeah. It was a busy week. It was a four-week meeting, four-meeting week, right? So we had the policy priorities retreat, right? I also went to, well, I'm a liaison for the Economic Development Committee and the Energy Committee, so I went to both of those meetings and stayed at least halfway through the meetings. And then the BCA had a meeting on Thursday, a very quick one, so we could get out and go up to the Sobu nights, which I then did that afterwards. So yeah, so it was. Well, thank you. Yeah, well, it was, you know. I missed several of those. I should have been in attendance, but I was finalizing family vacations. Now they're all gone. They left today. I taunted my brother-in-law because he really likes lasagna and he hasn't had to have lasagna. He hasn't had it in like months and months and months. And so I took a picture of the last piece of lasagna in the Marcos' pan at our meeting and sent it to him and said, I can't get this for you, sorry. He said that was a mean thing to do. It was. And I, too, I think we all, with the exception of Matt, unfortunately, we were at the priorities retreat, and it was very good. And we did miss your comments, Matt, and I hope you will take it seriously to put your little dot so we have whatever reflections you might have. But that was really interesting. And again, I just, for the public, it was, it's always impressive to me how much work our staff and leadership do in preparation for some of our discussions and conversations about priorities. It's not just sort of shooting from the hip. This sounds like a good priority, but there's been, there was a lot of thought and energy and passion and discussion that went into those lists for us to comment upon and our thoughts. So I appreciate that. And I think the city is well-served with that process. The city manager's report. So I apologize. It's a deputy city manager report tonight. Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah. I'm filling in for Jesse. Jesse's taking a much-deserved vacation this week. Just because it was not a televised meeting at the last meeting, we sort of provided an update on our grand list and the council set the tax rate. Everyone should have received their tax bills. Those were mailed out last week with the usual installment dates, the first installation due August 15th. From a snapshot in time, as of April 1st, we saw 1.33% grand list growth. Last week, as you mentioned, we had the policy priorities and strategies retreat. The result of that work, Jesse's been compiling that. And the next council discussion will be on August 1st. The ARPA survey is now live. Thanks for those who've taken it. We've had over 220 responses thus far. Hope to see that number increase a little bit. We're going to be keeping it open until mid to late August. As you'll see in the consent item agenda, we have not quite closed out the fiscal year, but from a draft financial standpoint, we're in really, really good shape again this year with a little bit over. This is our second year in a row with a little over $1 million surplus. That's driven by a lot of staff vacancies that we've had over this past year with a lot of turnover, as well as increases in revenue from some of our building permitting, electrical permitting, as well as local options tax being much higher than projected back when we made those projections in pandemic times. Pardon our appearance here at City Hall. Sun Common is still repairing the solar panels. We're hoping that that'll be, project will be wrapped up the end of this week, not early next week, but our main entrances are still open. We're still seeing a lot of traffic here. You might have seen outside this hallway. I encourage you to take a look at our new art exhibit that's up. It was just finalized literally as you were walking in the door today. The new exhibit is called In the Garden. It's curated by Jessica Manley, and it has sort of a mixed medium approach, which is something a little bit different than we've seen. You may see a new friendly face in our city clerk's office. We welcomed Alyssa Colby's first day was today. She's originally from South Burlington and comes to us from Colchester's clerk's office with over 10 years of customer service experience. Our library is seeing a wave of short staffing right now, so please be patient as they bring their levels back up. This may impact programming, but with that said, there were over 600 participants in events in June, which set a new record for the library. And what is the, did someone leave? Was there a? Yeah, we've had a number of both part-time staff and full-time staff turn over. Oh, okay, turn over, all right. We have job offers out to new people, but we're taking a little bit of time to get back up. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so We Night Out has started, and it's been very successful. So successful, we're starting to have some parking issues, so we're gonna think of some creative out-of-the-box concepts to get people maybe a raffle prize incentives for bike racking, for those who take their bikes, overflow parking opportunities at adjacent sites, and especially for our fireworks display, maybe some busing from the high school. Okay, Tom. It's amazing what ice cream would do. I'd love to see a free creamy to anybody that bikes to Sobu Night Out. I mean, that's a heck of a motivator for a lot of kids and families to just do it. I know money doesn't grow on trees, but we get a creamy machine set up. I'll pour the ice cream. Yeah, great. That's a great idea. And I did have a lot on the question. As long as it's maple, right? Maple, it's gotta be maple. Yes. Going back to one of the first things you said, Andrew, and I'm sorry if you have more, we didn't mean to interrupt you, but I noticed the tax bill didn't have for the first time in about five years this insert that we were doing until, I know with Jesse and you coming on board, things got lost through the cracks, but it was going on for about five years where we'd promote Sobu Night Out. So when people got their tax bill, they'd also see other things. We did a C-click fix one year. It just was, I think, economical to insert that. So maybe for next year, just thinking about having an insert with the city services that we want to promote awareness of. I know I'm thinking about the city when I open my tax bill, so I think it's a good time for them to also be reminded of some of the good things that we have that don't always come to mind. That's a great idea. That's great. Thank you, Tom. A couple of last updates. Paving a Baycrest, Dean Street, Patterson Terrace, Barbara Terrace, and a piece of Mills Ave occurred last week. We're also opening bids on Wednesday for Dorset Street, section three of four. This is a section from Aspen Drive to Garden Street. I think we have been talking about the Wheeler Dog Park fencing. We ran into some delays, unfortunately, that's been rescheduled. Our vendor will come in to provide the fencing. We're hoping with a date of July 25th. Just two upcoming dates. The library is hosting a birthday party on Saturday, July 23rd from 10 to two. This is the one-year anniversary of them in this building and 50th year overall, so a big date. Nice. Alana also wanted me to mention I-89 Bike Ped Bridge. The next concept workshop is planned for Thursday, August 31st, and a final concept presentation to the public will occur on Thursday, October 13th. That's all I got? Thank you, Matt. Just a follow-up, was the fencing delay will impact the opening date of the Wheeler Dog Park? It may, yeah. Okay, well, that's too bad, but I guess delays happen. Item six is the consent agenda. We have four items. The disbursements, approving a lease renewal with the Poon Trust for the parking for City Hall employees, a preliminary June financial report, and a minor amendment to our utility rate resolution. I'll move to approve the consent agenda. Is there a second? Second. So it's been moved and seconded, is there any discussion? Okay, Matt, and then Tim, and then... It's 40, the right number. Andrew, for parking spaces, or is that, do we guesstimate correctly when we did the first initial year lease? Yeah, it's currently meeting our needs very well. Okay, so it's not more than we need, it's not less than we need, it's about correct. Yeah, we've seen, I mean, every once in a while we'll have some overflow, but there's so much street parking available at the moment as well as parking behind the building that we don't see any issue until potentially when there's a much higher build out of Market Street, in which case we will have the opportunity to renegotiate. And we don't have to police it in any way, it's largely being used by, so employees are not being used by the public? Oh, it's allowed to be used by the public as well. Yeah, so we're not policing it at all, and it's still being pretty well used, yeah. Good to hear. Okay, thank you. Tim. So the utilization rate on a daily basis is 50 to 75%, do you know what it might be? I mean, I would say if you pinpoint a time throughout the day, there's probably always a time when all 40 spaces are being used. Although we also just got rid of the trailer you may have noticed that was taking up two or three spaces, so that'll add some additional space there, but yeah, we're seeing, yeah. Great, thank you. High utilization. My other question was on the utility rate amendment, right? And it concerned the change from 100 cubic feet of water to per gallon of water, right? But that was the connection fee, the way it was worded. Can somebody help me understand, does that mean for brand new freshwater connections to the city system, that's what they would, I didn't understand. Yeah. Because there was a usage rate, which is what we're paying now is per 100 cubic feet. Then there was a connection rate, which is by gallon, which I didn't understand. Yeah. Yeah, I'd have to get back to you on that. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, this was, we ran this by our water department and they identified this issue and we made the change and, yeah. Do you wanna hold it till you get that answered? Well, it would affect anything if we did hold it. It wouldn't affect billing or anything like that, or I'm satisfied. I just, you know, was just curious. That's all I can send Tom a note later. Okay. I guess I just have a... Yeah, I think Tom had his hand raised. Go ahead. If it's on this, please, if it's on the same topic. No. The water rates, is your question a follow up to 10? Okay. Either way, I'm doubling back as well. So on the parking, the two questions I had, one of them was already asked, is I thought I recalled it being a dollar per day. I'm wondering if the rate went up to $3. And the other question is seven years. So does that really, do we wanna commit for an increase in the rate for seven full years, or do we want a little more flexibility in shorter term? Yeah, so we were hoping to lock in this $3 rate for the full seven year term, thinking that the market rate would go up over time. The $1 rate that you're referring to, there was an MOU a while ago that was renegotiated to a one year contract last year that you approved for $2 a parking space. So this is a $1 increase this year. But again, we were hoping to lock that in because we get a longer term rather than going year to year. Quick follow up. Yeah. So if you say we're using all 40 of these spots, then I'm gonna go on that. It just, it seems like we're paying a lot more and committing ourselves for seven years. So you're saying we need 40 spots for seven years and this is a good rate. Yeah. All right. Obviously, I hoped it was lower, would have hoped it was lower, but that's the bargain we were able to strike. Megan. Money again. The 1.2 million, the end of year surplus, was that expected? And so is it already called for? No. So the 1.2 million, we forecasted approximately that at the Q3, our third quarter projections. There are a number of items that we're tracking in FY23 to be overages where we'll be in the red. And so we'll be asking for a council commitment on those when we close out the fiscal year in August. You know, one of the things we've been running into is the projects that we were looking to do in FY23 are costing, you know, 30, 50, 75% more than we're projected at the time. So one of the things we'll be asking for is some additional funding just to make sure we can actually do those projects. From this surplus? From the surplus, yeah. Okay. And we'll see those numbers at the end of August is what you're saying. Okay. Is that it? That's it. Okay. So we have a motion that's been made and seconded. If you're ready for the vote, all in favor of agreeing to the consent agenda as presented, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. That's passing. Five, zero. Now we'll move on to item seven, opportunity for counselors in the public to share information and resources on climate change. I don't have an update on the committee because I was unable to go. Basically, I forgot about it until it was too late. I had some other family stuff going on. I could speak a couple of comments about the heat wave that's been affecting the US, right, in the South Central US and also the heat dome that's over Europe right now and the fact that there is severe drought on the Pogue River in Italy and that I think that there are at least five French nuclear reactors that are operating at reduced capacity because they don't have enough water to cool themselves or the water that they draw from is too warm to keep operating at the particular rate that they were operating at before. So it's a really interesting situation and also don't forget the fact that most electrical infrastructure operates less efficiently at very high temperatures, right, especially solar, right? So even my own solar panels in my house, we can have a very long day in June on the summer solstice but if it's 90 degrees, I will actually get less power than a day in let's say late April when it's really cool, right? So solar panels produce less power when it's really hot. Transmission lines induce more resistance and so there are situations where power is being rationed across parts of Europe and it's at a time when demand is at an all-time high, right, for air conditioning. So I just wanna point out that fact that the climate continues to heat up and in certain areas it gets really hot and then there are all these wildfires that are burning around Spain and Greece and even in the US. So just ringing the bell a little bit more that situations are not good in certain parts of the world right now and then conversely there are like monsoon seasons in Pakistan that have like flooded regions over and over and over again unexpectedly and have caused a loss of life. So we continue to see deviations from normal patterns that are alarming and worrisome, really worrisome. So yet here in Vermont, I think we're fairly lucky at this point we've been spared a severe heat wave and we have adequate water at this point. Except I think parts of Vermont are in a drought. Well, parts of New Hampshire are in drought. They've declared some. I think they said parts of Vermont as well. But I think we will continue to see climate refugees drive up housing and land prices here over the next years. So thank you. Thank you. Any other comments or thoughts? Okay, Roseanne Greco. Yes, hi. I'd like to make a comment about the Climate Action Task Force meeting I went to it last week. One thing that I know Helen wasn't there, but one thing that they talked about, they have lots of initiatives and they're gonna be presenting them to the city council next month. But there is a potential stumbling block that I saw being spoken about. And that is some of the actions that they're gonna be proposing have no enforcement. A lot of the things we do in our city have no enforcement. And Jesse was there in urging caution and that we ought not to enact more things that cannot be enforced. We don't have the personnel to enforce it. It would be a disaster if we would not take any actions when we had this climate emergency looming because we don't have the proper mechanisms in place to enforce it. This may come up next week, but I thought since you're talking about climate stuff, I really urge the council not to do business as usual and to be now for this issue be cautious about let's not enact anything if we can't properly regulate or enforce it. Most people obey the rules. So anyway, that was a comment about the climate action task force, but to what you're talking about now about heat waves and droughts and water shortages, et cetera, it's coming. And it is really frustrating to watch how much water we waste in Vermont by using tap water to water lawns and wash cars and do non-essential things when other people don't have enough clean drinking water. I don't know that the climate action task force is talking about this, but water is a very precious resource. And I think that ought to be something that should be on our list in the city of encouraging people to treat water as precious and not to flush it down the drain by making your glass or your grass greener, which is environmentally destructive anyway. So thank you for having climate conversations. That's where change starts and we change starts when we start talking about it. Thank you. Of course, that sort of links in with some topic that Barb service often raises about incentivizing reduced water use through the rates, which is might address some of what Roseanne is saying if it costs you that so much money to keep your grass emerald green through hot, hot dry weather then maybe you won't. Yes. Yeah, we all were sent an article by Karen Ryder this morning, which I thought it was interesting. And I guess my takeaway that I stayed with me is how the economists don't only look at GDP that they also look at cost. So the cost benefit analysis of growth. So I think that I definitely hear the same stories that Tim was referring to regarding nuclear power plants in France shutting down operation because they cannot cool their reactors given the temperatures. I didn't know about the solar panels. And so I can hear people saying, well, see, see let's just keep doing it as we do it. And so I guess what I would respond is, the cost that we have to underscore here is that once we, we're already 1.1 degrees Celsius, average temperature increase on the globe. And once we get past 1.5 and the 1.1 is here a lot quicker than they forecast, we're gonna get worse than what we are seeing right now. And I know that it's hard to think of the incentivizing because it involves changing lifestyles and it involves changing, I think, whole systems. And that was another argument that I found very compelling in that article, that Karen sent that we have to think about how we are organizing our budgets and organizing our programs and our infrastructure and our work schedules and when we do laundry. I mean, there are all kinds of changes that we're gonna have to think about how to integrate those things and do it in a way that feels good. We have to see this as a good. And so I think that getting past that 1.5 degrees Celsius, the news is not positive out of Washington. And so we might very well get over 1.5 degrees Celsius and then we shall see, but I think that the cost of not changing our behavior has to be balanced in any discussion. So I just wanted to, it's not happy. I go like this when I think about. Well, when I was a little girl. What we need to do. There was a, I don't, I can't remember whether it was the price of gasoline had gone way up or there was a shortage of something, but people, they really did change when they did laundry, when they ran their dishwashers, people put timers on so that they went on at night, as before any of you guys were born, in order to have enough power during the day for other, you know, business and lights and things and not run some of the appliances at the same time people needed their air conditioners or fans in the window. I don't think we had an air conditioner, but we had a bunch of fans in the windows that ran on electricity. So people can change because they did. But then it got cheap again and it was okay to go back to just doing the dishwasher, turning it on right after dinner. And I, yeah, and the story of that generation for, you know, First Depression and then the World War II effort, there were big changes that people embraced. And so, yes, we need to hear that hopeful, that hopeful language right now. That's for sure. Okay, Tim? Yeah, just, so as Justin Rabbit who has told us over the years that, you know, the used capacity at the wastewater treatment plants has kind of leveled off despite increased growth in the city because of increased efficiency use, right? With front-loading washers, you know, flow attenuators on your shower heads, things like that. I mean, our energy committee through that whole Georgetown prize, right? Distributed a lot of devices to help reduce water flow. New standards for flushing toilets, right? Some toilets come with either just a water flush or a solid flush, right? And one uses less. So, I mean, I think that in general, if you look at the city, you know, normalized, people are generally using less water than they used to. But just by virtue of upgrading, you know, their devices that consume water, right? The things that are extra are, you know, watering your lawn or washing your car. I know that in my neighborhood, I really don't see people watering their lawns anymore unless they've planted something new, you know, and some new seed or something like that. But it's really interesting. And I would like, it would be interesting to hear from the water department, whether, you know, they are, you know, usages up or down or if it's, you know, normalized, proportionally less, you know, per household, you know, over the last 10 years. Since the wastewater is leveled off, I would assume that, you know, the same thing is true for freshwater usage as well. Well, don't the energy codes for building require the... Yeah, exactly. So, new houses and also people upgrade their bathrooms. Yeah, then you get a new appliance or a new toilet. People have been redecorating and over the pandemic, they rip bathrooms out and replace them like crazies. So you get, you know, low-flow shower heads and low-flush toilets and things like that, which some people really hate, but, you know, they have a really good effect and they reduce your water usage. If I may. Yes. So not to go too long into this conversation as we have other things, but I just want to echo my support for what you spoke to Chair Realy and also what Tim just touched upon. Now that we have a new deputy manager and city manager, I just want to know that Barb service has been very eloquent over the years in advocating and I fully support us doing this. There was a long time of delay because they were putting in new software, but what Barb is asking for goes along with just incentivizing reduced water consumption. So what we currently, as I understand it, as I've dove into this, we give everybody 1,000 gallons for a base amount. And if we just adjust that, if we just play with that and say you get 500 for a base amount, a lower amount, then you charge a little bit more per usage. It incentivizes reduced usage of water. So this is where I think there is definitely worth us as a council now that they have new software, now that the pandemic is mostly in our rear view mirror pressing for this. I think it would do a lot of good and it just makes sense and Barb is here. So I'm just trying to get some points with Barb service. She's applauding you, so you've got some points. Cheers. Okay. All right, so if there are no other comments from the council or the public, we'll move on to item eight, which is a warned public hearing to adopt or hear about a correction to the LDR's amendment 22-02 land development regulation amendment. So I would entertain a motion to enter the public hearing. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. So we have entered a public hearing. Paul, do you want to go through it or do you, my understanding is- Well, I'm just going to very briefly go through it to say, so this is, there are two pages in the article 12, which is our new or relatively new and updated state amenity standards that were approved by the planning commission. They were included in your warning, but with all the various documents in the sheet we realized last month that we actually left these two pages out of the physical document that you all warned and approved. So the warning was there, but not the pages themselves. So this is an administrative actionally to clean that up and make sure that it has been officially adopted. What this contains is it shows where the, which open space types sort of designs as civic spaces can be applied where it really just expands it so that they, most of them can be used in most places and it creates two new ones that the planning commission had been very interested in. That's private decks, balconies, things like that and combination indoor outdoor spaces so that you can get some credit for doing something indoors as part of say your apartment or part of your apartment building or a non-commercial space. So that's what this is. We have received no additional public comment from what was received way back when the round took place and I don't believe there was any specifically to this table. Okay. And I just would note this is the first time I've seen your face in about two years. I've had it be this whole time. Yeah, well, it's new to me. Yeah. Okay. Are there any comments from the public or Matt? No, the public first, I'm sorry. Anybody from the public? Anyone? Okay, Matt? Hi, Paul. Is there any project that's been proposed that has been sort of in limbo because we haven't done this or is this just a, we caught it before it became an issue? So we had one project that made use of the site plan standards or was required to make use of the site plan standards. And we said for that project, since there was no specific type assigned to it, we said pick whichever one you'd like and it happened that they picked one of the ones that would have been what they, what was allowed to be taking place anyway, so we were able to address it. Nobody had yet proposed a balcony or an indoor outdoor space yet. So we caught it pretty quickly. Great. Okay, thank you. So if there's no other public comment, we could close the public hearing. So moved. All in favor? Aye. So the public hearing is closed. We can move on to item nine and adopt the amendment to article 11b, site amenities of the land development regulations as presented. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. So they have been approved. Thank you. Thank you for your time, everyone. Thank you, Paul. You are so welcome. Good night. Good night. Okay. Moving on to item 10. Welcome, John Moore. We're going to receive an update and a report from the Green Mountain Transit. John Moore is the general manager. And yeah, why don't you sit there? I think it would be easier. And do you need to be in charge of the- Trust the assistant for this? Yeah, just give me the nod. So good evening, everybody. My name is John Moore. Relatively brief PowerPoint presentation. I know a lot of you folks have a good understanding of Green Mountain Transit. Talk a little bit about our FY23 budgetary situation, which our fiscal year just started July one. And then start talking about our plans for our fiscal year 24 budget process, which we'll be starting soon. And we try to align it with the fiscal new process for that weekend. So we're going to cross this to the next slide. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. No, let's see if it... Apologizes. One second. One second. Let's try this again. Well, you could start telling us, or do you need it up there? I have a hard time being just- Oh, okay. Yeah, I have a hard time being just- Sir, this is a quick... Which was created back in 1973 as the person only transit authority within the state. The authority piece is important because we have assessment authority within Chittenden County for our eight-member municipalities, which South Burlington is one of those eight. In 2016, CCT at the time had a management agreement with the Green Mountain Transit Agency, one of the acronyms, which provided service in both the Washington County, Greater Montlear area, and also up in Franklin County in St. Albans. And in 2016, we merged. So that's when the Green Mountain Transit authority was created. So long story short, we provide service in six counties in Northwest Vermont. We're directed by a 13-member Board of Commissioners, which Councilor Kodak is the current South Burlington representative, and Councilor Barrett's actually still the alternate. Councilor Emory and Chittenden have both served on that committee for some length of time. So again, we thank all South Burlington City Council for their support of GMT. And we have about 180 full-time equivalent employees, 160 revenue vehicles, and almost 1,000 bus stops within our system. Is there a similar agency in Southern Vermont? So there are seven transit properties within the state of Vermont. We're by far the largest, but there's Southeast Vermont Transit. So they're Wyndham County and Bennington County. So the state has mostly split up into actually six different service providers. Oh, okay. Thank you. There's questions on the way. I'm happy either way. Okay, yes. So you mentioned eight member communities that are assessed when I was last there. The Colchester was on a track, on a contract to possibly be included. And is there any update or discussions of the served but non-member communities in being assessed or sent to bill, so to speak, to fairly collect from all of the communities within the six counties that GMT serves? So in Chittenden County, Colchester, we did structure a service agreement. So they're not a full-fledged member, but the service agreement is that they pay as if they were a full-fledged member. They just don't have representation on the board. We have similar agreements with, we started on route after Jeffersonville a few years ago. So some of those route communities have the same structure. So I'm over here at Full Mission, but I did highlight some of the key factors that we focus on. Number one, we use safety, any transportation industry's safety is critical. In terms of getting folks on the bus, which is our primary mission, we want to be as convenient as possible. We've made some service changes before the pandemic in the south room, specifically, I'll get into those changes, trying to make our services more accessible and convenient for folks. And then our goal is to reduce congestion and pollution. I just heard you folks talking about climate changes and mitigating strategies and transit. Certainly one of those mitigating strategies and more folks, we can get on the bus, the fewer single occupancy vehicles and tailpipe emissions. We are certainly interested in furthering transit-orientated development of this Market Street City Center area as a good example of that, or we call it TOD light, but compact mixed-use developments within easy access to transit is great. We both support that. And then really, we want to enhance quality of life for all, certainly our passengers, but even for non-passengers in terms of the other benefits that transit can provide because we are publicly funded and we need the support of everybody and not just our own passengers. So that's a key strategy for us is to make sure that we can get full public buy-in in the benefits that we create, even if you don't take the bus next time. So we do operate a whole slew of different types of services. The most visible is our fixed-route city bus, which we operate, some high-frequency service in South Perlington. We also operate multiple commuter services to outlying counties and areas. We do operate multiple demand response trips. So in Chittenden County, we contract with the Special Services Transportation Agency, SSTA, for the Americans with Disabilities Act service. And so what that means is anywhere that we run a scheduled bus route, there's a three-quarter of a mile zone around that. And for folks that are eligible and they cannot access the fixed-route service, SSTA will pick them up at their door and then bring them to their destination. We also contract with SSTA in Chittenden County and they provide the Elders of Disabled Program, very similar to the ADA program, but it doesn't need to be three-quarters of a mile away from a bus route. So in some parts of South Perlington where there is no bus service, in the Southeast Cup watchroom, for example, you may not be eligible for ADA because there's no city bus, but you could be eligible for the END program and still get to medical appointments and other services. And then we also operate the non-emergency Medicaid transportation in our rural service areas. Again, SSTA provides that in Chittenden County but for folks that are Medicaid eligible and they don't have any other transportation to medical appointments that are qualified in the program, they do have that as an option. We also operate in Chittenden County three weekly grocery shopping trips, including every Tuesday in South Perlington. So for folks that may need some extra time and assistance loading their groceries on the bus, it's a free service that, you know, mostly to senior living communities within South Perlington. So that's a great service that you folks actually help pay for. And I'll talk about some of those details. We also operate some seasonal tourism service in both Stowe and Sugarbush for the winter season. That's critical in those areas. And lastly, we've started a new service model or pilot project in my career called Microtransit, which is essentially a Uber-type service using public transit vehicles. And I'll talk a little bit more about the potential feasibility of that in some other areas. And feel free to stop me along the way and have the answer questions. This is a little difficult to read, but this is just a quick ridership snapshot. You can see the large dip in ridership. As you can guess, that's March 2020 or thereabouts when COVID hit. We are still struggling to get back to our pre-pandemic ridership. We're at about 70% of our pre-pandemic. Our local routes are closer to 85% to 90%. As you can imagine, teleworking has impacted our commuter routes. And we're on pace to do about 1.7 million boardings in FY22. We were up around 2.5 million in our high years before the pandemic. So to get into some of this out-growing in specific, we operate three pitch route services, the Williston route is our highest ridership route in the system. We're providing about 370,000 rides that's through May of this year, typically that's over 500,000. And that connects downtown Browinton, UDM, University Mall on Dorset Street and then out of the Caps corners. And that route, as you can imagine, does get our highest service quality. So we operate seven days a week. During weekdays, one of the service improvements that we've made is that that route operates every 20 minutes from 6 a.m. till 6 p.m. And then we do operate evening service Monday through Saturday until almost midnight. The airport number 11 route, this route was recently combined. We had two previous routes at South Road and Surge later which served the Kennedy Drive area in the airport and then the College Street Shuttle which served from the waterfront up to UDM Medical. Those have been combined, provides a one seat connection from the airport downtown, also serves Dorset Street, the city center area, and then Kennedy Drive. We do operate that seven days a week. The frequencies are a little bit less every 45 minutes but we do operate that evening service Monday through Saturday. And then the Shelburne Road route is our third highest route in the system and that connects downtown Browinton at the Shelburne on route seven. The busiest ridership stops on that route are the Ferrell Street Shaw's area. So that's a critical point. Would you operate that seven days a week, 20 minute service during rush hours Monday through Friday? And again, we're operating until about 1120 Monday through Saturday. Yeah, yes, Tom. The great presentation, John. I always love hearing from you. So one thing that I remember hearing for the last eight years while I'm on council is that there's no way to get from UV, sorry, the U Mall to Shelburne Road. So Wilson Road to Shelburne Road is out going downtown Browinton. I'm curious if there's any possible reconsiderations of the airport 11 route so that instead of going, they can somehow get to the U Mall airport, Kennedy Drive and then take 189 and just get it, get the down to the Shelburne Road area. Has that ever been considered to try to connect the two legs of South Browinton directly? How far south on Shelburne Road does number six go? Do you go down to the Teddy Bear factory or? Some trucks actually terminate at the Teddy Bear factory. Fall roads, yeah. So just south of New Zealand. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So this is just a quick snapshot of our revenue for FY23. It's a little skewed because of the COVID relief funds that we received and we tried to prioritize those for many reasons but to try to bank up as many non-federal funds as we can because the way that federal transit funding works is you need a 50% match on any federal funds. So we've been able to bank a lot of federal funds because the typical funds we get from the federal government we didn't spend and we spent the COVID relief funds instead but we can't use those unless we have enough with a non-federal match which we primarily get from multiple assessments in the state of Vermont. So we're strategically trying to position ourselves financially to minimize any future service reductions and the COVID relief funds have been great in that aspect but we will likely be looking at some level of service reductions as soon as FY24. I will mention that the purple slice which is about 1.7 million, those are operating revenues. That is what we were projecting for fair revenue thanks to some great support in both the House and Senate transportation committees. We did get about 1.5 million in state funding to the transportation bill that allowed us to continue zero fare for the entirety of fiscal year 23 which is great and also allowed us to take those state funds in a match and other federal funds to avoid some planned service reductions we had. So we were able to kill two birds and one stone which was really great and so we'll be knocking on some doors again and trying to find some additional money for FY24. So you're taking federal funds to match for federal funds? No. You can't do that. You're taking local funds. Okay. So we're taking the COVID relief as it's gonna say, wow. We're saving the federal funds we normally use to bring those. Well that's the really the pinch point is having the non-federal funds to match those. Got it. Good, thank you. So for our FY23 urban budget summary and you folks have already been assessed these amounts but just a quick highlight. On the urban side, we have about a $16 million budget when we're taking into consideration our rural side of the business, it's about $23 million. We did originally plan for about a 5% service reduction in Chittendon County. Our board voted to avoid 95% of those service reductions. We did have plans to reduce the Sheldon Road service from every 20 minutes during rush hour and every 30 but largely because we got the money from the T-Vill which allowed us to stay fair free. We could also use some of that to leverage some federal funds and we again, avoided majority of those planned service reductions. We do have cost pressures in FY23 which we anticipate we'll continue through to FY24. Number one is that ADA program. There are labor costs, there are fuel costs, inflation, it's sitting down like it's sitting us and I'm sure the city. So there's just a general higher cost of doing business right now. In addition to that, the population is aging. That program serves folks that are elderly and disabled. And so as the population ages there's gonna be more demand in that program and it's a very important program that we need to meet but it does increase the cost pressures. Our fuel is our biggest pressure right now in terms of our budgetary concerns. So when we did our FY23 budget last fall, we were projecting $2.75 a gallon. We were way off. We averaged 477 gallons in quarter four of FY22 and we're buying about 330,000 annual gallons of fuel. So well over a half a million dollars if fuel stays at the current prices. It has come down which I'm sure the city has experienced so we paid $4.20 a gallon today by speaking with our fuel vendor. We're getting very nervous at what's gonna happen once the heating season starts and what the price of diesel does. So we've worked with the state, the trans on leads identifying that pressure and we'll work through it the best we can. Ways and benefits as the city I'm sure can identify it's a very tight labor market right now and for CDL drivers and skilled mechanics especially it's ultra competitive and we have had to raise our wages and benefits. I think it's fair market but they have gone up. Fair revenue, we're not charging fair but even if we weren't we're still experiencing some of those ridership impacts. So we're still about 700,000 lower than what we were collecting in fair revenue pre-pandemic. If we don't get back to those pre-pandemic ridership levels in FY24 that will cause additional pressure. And so all said and done we are anticipating about a $750,000 local match deficit in FY24. We have plenty of federal funds but if we don't have those local dollars to draw that down we will be looking at some service reductions. So remind me you have 160 buses is that right? Yes just a mile. And so when do you anticipate that they all can be electric so you can eliminate this gasoline cost? Well it's a great question. We're moving in that direction. Yes I understand that. We have two buses currently in service. We have a grant application into the Federal Transit Administration for seven more electric buses. The price per bus is about double and we've had some operational issues with the two that we have so we don't want to dive into the deep end before we know that they're gonna meet our service obligations. But our board is interested in moving in that direction. It won't happen overnight and we want to phase it in. There's mileage considerations and other operational considerations but that is something that's part of our strategic thinking. So the electric buses you use on the most active routes? We are still experimenting. Oh you're just experimenting. You can't depend on them enough. That's the distance you can travel probably, right? It's a limited distance you can travel before you have to recharge. In service there were most of the buses. Our current vendor is new to the market. They've never built a bus before in the electric bus. There's other vendors who've been building buses for a hundred years and they're exchanging out the propulsion system. So the grant application we have for the seven new buses is partnering with an existing vendor who the doors and other systems of the buses are trying to improve. So we're hoping to have a higher reliability with those buses and they've been tested in many markets. Okay, good. Yes, Matt. John, relate to this slide there. The 750K anticipate local match deficit. Your sources of funding for that just to reiterate are your assessments on the cities and towns and ridership fees, which we're not charging. And state funding. And state funding, right. And state funding did go up, correct? Well, so our normal state funding was cut in half. Oh, but they substituted the federal document. We added back that 1.4, thanks to the legislative action, we got back to roughly the pre-pandemic amounts. So that's still a challenge, yeah. So some more stuff going in specific information. So there's three primary programs that you folks fund. Number one is that picture-out assessment. We had a 4% increase in FY23. So that brought your assessment to 331,000. I'll get into the FY24 assessments because we're looking at some changes to how we do that based on so national service delivery data. For the ADA assessment, you folks actually saw a decrease in your ADA assessment, which can be said by all communities. A lot of our member municipalities saw double-digit increases. And the way that's calculated is basically based on actual ridership usage. So the ridership didn't decrease, but the proportional amount in self-growth and actually went down to FY23. That's why there was a decrease. And then lastly, it's relatively small contribution, but a very important one for that weekly shopping special that I mentioned, about $2,200 a year. That matches the E&D funding, which is 80% federal share. And that allowed us to provide that shopping special every Tuesday. We average 16 passengers in the free mean stops or both very manner of the times in the country part. So as we get into our FY24 budget development, again, we are anticipating some local funding shortfalls. And some of the things that we're looking at, we're descending this week at 23, so we'll be looking at some trend data to help inform our FY24 budget. Number one, we expect some continued cost growth in the ADA program. When we met with SSTA about six months ago, we thought their rate would be coming more in line with pre-pandemic levels and then fuel prices exploded. So that's certainly gonna be a consideration. We are looking at ways to minimize the volatility of the ADA assessments. So right now, as I just mentioned, the ADA program is based on ridership, actual ridership data, only based on the origin of the ride. So if you live in South Burlington, that ride's completely built to South Burlington. One of our, and what that does is you have a relatively small number of individuals who may move into South Burlington and to go to dialysis three or four times a week. That could change your assessment by 10 or 20%. And so one way we are looking with our board to minimize that volatility is that there would be a mixed assessment where it's not only based on the origin of the ride, but also the destination of the ride. Oftentimes, for the ADA program, it's not just medical trips, it could be building grocery shopping. So, you know, there's a South Burlington resident going to the place Walmart. You're paying for the full ride with Wilson's getting the tax revenue. So we're trying to balance that out a little bit. And more importantly, we're trying to penalize communities who are building senior housing that are getting a massive increase in the ADA assessment. We can see it as more of a regional program and it should be funded regionally. We're also looking at fixed route assessments. We've made those service improvements before COVID. We've made a whole slew of other service changes during COVID, most of which we've put back in place. A small amount we haven't yet and we're trying to figure out if we can afford to put that back in place or not. So we're looking at trying to match the assessment amounts better with the actual service that we're providing in each community. And so we're looking at a few different ways and highlighted and underlined and if I could have a sharpie, I would do that too. These are just projected numbers but for South Burlington, at the current service levels with the new methodology, it's about 4% increase which is an historical amount. If we were to go back to our pre-COVID service levels it's about 11% increase for South Burlington. Mostly because we're still running so we use headways on the airport route every 45 minutes. If we went back to pre-COVID, it'd be over 30 and that's where most of the cost increase would be for the city of South Burlington. Again, I just want to highlight that we do need more non-federal funding to maintain our current service levels. It gives me a good opportunity to plug a CCRPC transit financing study that was drafted last fall and that looks at a statewide revenue source to pay for transit. So that would remove the reliance on the property tax which would be great for everybody. It would also create a more sustainable funding mechanism for all transit in Vermont and probably most importantly, allow transit to maximize those federal funds that are available and that have increased recently at the federal level. So GMT will be spending a lot of the next legislative session with the CCRPC and probably the Vermont Public Transit Association really pushing that study. It's not only GMT that's experiencing these local match challenges. It's really a statewide issue. And if we can find a statewide revenue source, that would certainly help the sustainability of the system in Vermont. What does the study recommend as a statewide funding source? Well, it doesn't recommend anything. It identifies eight options. Increase the property, excuse me, sales tax, to wage taxes to a small monthly utility fee of $3 per residential house in the state of Vermont. So I think the CCRPC and GMT agree that we wanna lay out some options and enjoy our legislative decision, what the best option if any would be. And so just some future initiatives. The electrification is folk about a little bit. We have two buses in service now. We're gonna be trans on a six-month, excuse me, that transit finance and study, again, looking at ways to reduce the reliance of the property taxes. And I just quickly point out, we're not looking to generate more money or a lot more money. There would be about five million additional generated. But we wanna replace the reliance of the property tax with a new statewide. So it's not generating 21 million new taxes. It's replacing about 16 million and then generating five million new funding. Again, that would allow everyone, all the transit properties in Vermont to maximize the increase in federal funds, which is actually in the state law to do that. And then to create a more sustainable revenue service to maintain existing service levels and hopefully allow us to expand service statewide in the future. I did mention quickly micro transit. That's that on-demand transit using app-based technology. So we have a pilot project in my pillar. So right now, if the bus was running, it's actually past our service time. But you go on your app, you can say you wanna get picked up at South road and city hall. And if there's capacity available, the app will say the bus will be there in 30 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever the availability is. So there's some funds. We're working out with that project. There is a call center option. So for folks that don't have a smartphone, they can call a phone number and book a ride. We've actually, in my pillar about half the trips are booked through our call center, half the trips are booked through the app. We're hoping to see more of the app usage by working on strategies there. I think there's other applications, first mile, last mile, in low density settings, until we drive from Zilindra, for example. Go ahead. Regarding the funding, could you tell us the reasons why you would change from the starting point to the destination point and what was the thinking behind that? For the ADA program. So, primarily. So we had some of our communities experiencing increases of 30 to 40% in the ADA assessment. I see. And then the next year it could go down 30 to 40%. And then it's that yo-yo effect. And then the municipalities, the feedback we got was just very challenging from a budgetary perspective. So we wanted to smooth out that volatility. And then we also wanted to, again, not penalize communities that are building senior houses in their cities or towns, with the underlying kind of philosophy that it's a regional program and it should be funded regionally not at a municipal level, or completely at a municipal level anyways. Mm-hmm. Is there a way perhaps you've discussed to kind of spread it so that there is kind of a smooth, because the increases we were seeing potentially on our end, you said 4% would be historic and then up to 11%, but that's also a bump for us too. So. So that's on the fixed route side. Yes. That's more based on actual service delivery. Mm-hmm. And so that usually stays relatively consistent because we try not to make too many service adjustments. On the ADA side, because it's all based on actual ridership, I think, city of South Rowans and did 10,000 rides in FY22 a year today. If you had again a small number of people moving to town that were taking that ADA service two, three times a day, that could go up 10% just because of one individual user. So that's where that volatility comes in in the ADA program. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. I was just wondering if there was a way to smooth it, even across the fixed and the ADA. So that would be born perhaps by a broader area, but we're all really living in the same area. I don't know. It's just tension. The best way to do that is to train the money instead of work. So it's a state-fund-based program. Yeah. GMT sees our service area as a regional service area, but it's funded at a local level. So there's a mixed match of how we do our service plan, how we operate our services. Right. If there was a statewide funding source, not only for our service, but for all trade the properties in the mod, it would be a much more logical funding that would make it a statewide service. Right. Our highway system. And that way, we can plan, do our service plan, and operate more logically and holistically and not have these artificial funding and service boundaries that we're dealing with now. Would that idea have any legs in Montpelier? We just introduced it last session. I think it's going to be an uphill climb. I think we'll be knocking on the city's door and get as much local support as we can. City owners and the public. So I think it's not full-flying, but one that I think would be of less interest of the public. Thank you. Tom? Couple things just to follow up on that first thread. I really like how you're looking at possibly splitting it based on destination origin, because you made a great point in your presentation that if a South Burlington resident goes out to Williston to buy a meal and or buy products and goods, those local options taxes are staying in Williston, and South Burlington is bearing the full cost of both to and from or that trip. So I think that makes sense to look at it. The other thing I want to say is, yeah, I would love to look at and pursue the car registration, a variable car registration assessment, to support public transportation. I think that was in the study. But if we have 200,000 vehicles that get registered every year, add $10 to what we pay for that year. That's $2 million, add $20. And I also think it's a rational assessment because that would collect an additional fee from those choosing to have a single occupancy vehicle to then subsidize public transportation. So I think it's a great financing study, and I'm glad to see it go forward. I don't know if this is the end of your presentation, but the one pressing question I had that I hope that you can answer if you have other slides that will get to it. What can South Burlington do to get people to take the bus more? And I'm going to just lead that question by saying, I hope GMT is at the table with the new U-Mall owners because I see that as they look to that property to use it 24 hours a day. I really hope there's a strong public transportation hub or presence so that it really is right off the interstate of the busiest intersection in the entire state that I want buses to be able to get in and out of there and just to be really foster public transportation in this whole region. Yeah, so this is the frequency or two critical things to get folks in the bus. Funding is key to that. If we have to reduce services, that's never a good thing in terms of trying to build a ridership obviously. We are fare-free, so we're hopeful that at least that will get more people on the bus and try it out and as fuel prices hit or have hit record highs that free ride on public transit, that could create some behavior change. But I think the biggest thing in the short term, from our perspective, is trying to avoid any service reductions because that's certainly counterproductive. Once you start cutting service, people can't rely on you and likely you will not continue to be using the other option. Yes, Tim, sorry. So thanks a lot for the presentation. Does the transit app still show the location of the buses as they're moving around your system? Yes. It does, okay. And I made this comment before, but it doesn't really concern GMT, but so if you have the smartphone, right, and you're on a bus, if you don't have a data plan, you can't get that information unless, do all the buses have Wi-Fi on them? So, right now they do. We have... Yeah, T-Mobile. Yeah. And so they actually provided some free service. That's coming to an end this fall with a big graph, we can afford to keep that. Again, getting back to Councillor Kinnan's question, how do you get people on the bus keeping there? And then he's like, Wi-Fi certainly helps. Right, so my comment is that a fair portion of the population that uses GMT is probably cost-challenged on smartphone data plan use, right? And one thing that really bugs me is the fact that cell providers should allow usage of any tower to any government website that is a state website or a federal website. Because if you have any cell phone at all that can turn on, you can get to 911. Now the question is, can they get to 988? I don't know, right? And then the second question is, why don't all cell providers provide free internet access, right? Data plan access to any government website that is, you know, that's in the U.S., you know? Because if you wanna use the Transit app, you have to be able to get the data. If you don't have a data plan, or if you're Wi-Fi only and you're standing at the bus stop, you won't be able to see where the bus is, right? I'm just, you know, and that would include, I mean, I'm sure the Transit app probably calls back to its own servers. It's not actually a government website, but GMT has services or information on its own website. So I'm just making that site. I think that's an interesting idea. Comment, I mean. Matt, did, oh, I'm sorry, are you finished, Tim? That's it, and thanks very much for your presentation. Matt? It is an interesting comment. I don't think John can solve our cell phone tarishes, but one of the things that you did bring up, which I'd like to reiterate, which we talked about the difficulties with bringing fares back because the boxes haven't been used for a while and you've got a maintenance issue, which I understand with. And the idea of when fares do come back, if they do come back, so I'm suggesting they do, what's the plan of making it easier for both your drivers to collect fares in for passengers to use them? Obviously there's lots of new technology that would allow that. Well, so yeah, there's some options that we'll need to look at, you know, this fiscal year, we prepare for a fair resumption, which absent replacement revenue is going to have to happen. Just before the pandemic, we did implement a mobile ticketing app. And so we are hoping to push as many people to that as possible because we don't need that hardware to rely on. So we will push that. There's other off-board and on-board fare collection systems. There's a lot to it in terms of equity. We could build cashless on board, but everyone has a credit card or a smartphone with Apple Pay. So it'll be a lot of considerations, but yeah, most of our fare boxes are 20 to 25 years old. We haven't been operating in three years and they're on the bus in 90 degree heat or minus 90 degree winter weather. So there will be a lot of maintenance needs. We are short staff in our maintenance department. That's one of the threats to the organization right now. But we will start developing those plans soon because it's going to be a long-term process to get a fare collection back online. Has there been discussion with some of the major employers about having a, I don't know, some kind of deal with transit so that their employees can potentially in the future ride for free or have a discounted rate or the teddy bear company makes a contribution to support the whole enterprise? That's an area of the problem. Do you have an employer transit pass program where employers pay on a per-swipe basis with multiple companies and businesses in the area that do pay for that? Just today, we did sign an agreement with CAPMA, which is the Chin-Nin Area Transportation Management Association. Typically when we're charging a fare every time a student or a faculty swipe their card in the fare box, we pay per swipe or we bill them per swipe, they're going to pay us a per student fee which, even though we're fare-free, they've been a great partner of ours and that will help us generate non-federal math so we can unify their service production. So that's going to be about $105,000 or $10,000. So it was a great partnership with them and we're very thankful. We are looking at expanding that partnership with other private businesses because that is one area that we need to generate these non-federal funds if people are sort of trying. Yeah. Maybe our Economic Development Committee could think about how to go about that in South Burlington. I will say that it's someone of a top sell and we've said the business's names but we approach other large businesses and they say, well, we pay property taxes and that funds GMT and so they... Right. Sometimes they feel like they're already doing their part but anything you can do to get creative we would like to have conversations. Okay. An impact fee, no, I don't know. Well, I mean, they complain that people can't live close enough to where they want to build their business so they have to drive from a far away and that so they can't bring as many people to the state to work for them. I mean, it's all intertwined. So I mean, I get it. You can't always push everything off to the business community and tell them to pay for it but it is in their interest to support collaboratively a system that allows their workers to get to work and not have to spend five bucks a gallon on gas. And going back to the World War II effort that you referred to before, we all need to be in this together. So, I mean, there is just part of being a member of the community. Okay, any other questions, Tom? So I'm gonna get myself in trouble but I'm gonna say on that note, I would say one thing that UVM does do which I think is something that more employers could is they charge us for parking. So we have to pay and that's an economic incentive that when I pay that amount out of my paycheck which is also progressively assessed, it is a pause for me to think, ah, maybe I should tax parking lots or parking spots but there is some economic incentives that I hope more organizations could be motivated to look at in order to incent people to want to take public transit. I know 40 spots that are charging $3 a day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If when you do come up with a payment method that's like uses a phone or something, please do it in conjunction with the waste districts so that you can use it at either spot. The what district? With the waste district, yeah, with the CSWD. There really should be like a municipal district payment system, right? That you can pay the bus, you can pay CSWD. Wherever you live in the state, you can buy this like, you can put $20 on a card or on an app, right? Wherever you go, you have to pay for something and just use your phone or use a card or something like that. A gift card for municipal services? Exactly, I'm telling you because every time Sarah, what's her last name, Weber, or that comes up from the CSWD, I'm like I'm sick of paying cash when I go to Patch and Road, right? I'd rather just buy a $50 gift card and just come out and swipe it every time I go through because they have to make change. That's true, that's a good idea. But if you lose your card, though. They've got other priorities like trucking stuff up to Coventry, right? And making sure the compost is cooked correctly and things like that, so anyway. Well, I want to thank you very much. This was a wonderful presentation and you got us all thinking creatively, I think. Thanks, John. We need a few more hours to solve the problems though, but yeah, thank you for your service. We wish you well, too. Are you taking the bus home tonight? You drove the bus. You drove the bus. Thank you. Thank you very much. Congratulations on a beautiful building. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Have a good night, thank you. Thank you. All right, moving on to item 11. Consider sending a letter of concern regarding the temporary basing of F-35s from Florida's Eglin Air Force Base. And we have a letter that is just a draft for our consideration. We don't necessarily need to vote on it tonight, but if there's conversation or thoughts about the letter, I'd like to hear them and what the council would like to do. If I could just start and add that based on some feedback that Roseanne Greco gave to me and to Helen, I forward that on to the whole council. I did just add a line at, I think that we might consider it. So in that big paragraph where we say the third one we are disappointed not to have directly received warning of this assignment at the time of the press release. As in so many cases concerning V-Tang, the local government of its host municipality is the last to receive notification of decisions that have a significant impact on our residents. I have a new sentence to add in the information that Roseanne sent, which is, it is particularly disappointing to see Air Force training flights occurring at an operational base. And then I go on for much of the civilian population living adjacent to our air base or our base and under the flight path, et cetera. Comments, thoughts? I'm not interested in signing this letter. Okay, for what reason? I think it sends a wrong message. What's the message? That we don't want our troops here, that we don't want the Air Force here. We don't want the air guard here, that we don't want training here. That's not my feeling. We have 35 is one aspect. It doesn't mean the base, it doesn't mean the training. And I think that when our constituents raise this with us, I think it's important for us to respond from the point of view of our residents who aren't asking the base to go away either. But simply questioning why our Eglin Air Force pilots training here when we have a three month respite. I think that's what they're asking us to ask. And I think it's a valid question. Okay, I disagree. Okay, but it has nothing to do with the base going away. I want to make that clear. Or with the training of our own pilots. Other thoughts? I'm not one to question the Air Forces and the Air National Guard's strategy for implementing training among all the different F-35 bases around the country. That I don't know what their training plans are. I don't think that we have any hint of an ability to interfere with them or make a comment about them whatsoever. I mean, they invested over $120 million in our airport to facilitate the introduction of that plane. And the plane is here. And we have a number of them that have left to go to Europe and where there is this war going on between Russia and Ukraine. And I think that these planes are involved in that strategy that the US is in right now and that there is no activity because it's been very quiet here. And so for whatever reason the Air Force is moving planes here to do some training. Because as we've been told, this air guard base is the number one air guard base in the country. And so that's probably why they're here is to get extra training. So I don't think I have the right to introduce my opinion into what the Air Force wants to do with these F-35s. And even though it will disrupt some of the quiet that's been around here, if our F-35s weren't overseas, they'd be here and they'd be doing the same thing anyway. So I can't support the letter and I apologize, but there is a major war going on in Europe right now. And the air guard is supporting the US's position in that. And if there is training, it has to happen here because of that, because some of the planes are gone and so be it. I mean, who am I to question that? Okay, you're the civilian. They respond to civilians. The secretary of the Air Force is a civilian. And it's our civilian president of the United States. That is the commander in chief. And when we as civilian leaders give up our authority because we believe that the military has shown answer to us, I feel that we are abdicating the government that should oversee our military. That is how our government was founded in this country and our Republic was founded on that principle that the military responds to civilian leaders. And so that is our role and our responsibility to question. And it's particularly when constituents are asking us to question, I see no impediment if they need to say, we need this for United States national defense. Okay, tell us. And that's really what the part of the letter is asking is, tell us, we were not notified. And that trumps all. I mean, in any court of law that would trump all and the commander in chief would say, okay, but we deserve to hear that answer. And therefore we deserve to ask the question. And I truly feel very strongly that if we abdicate our responsibility as civilian representatives, let's just become a military led government. I mean, and that's not at all what our founders wanted. And they put very clear guardrails in place for that. Not to happen. Tom. So I couldn't have said it better than Councillor Barrett, I'm of the same mind. I don't want to, I don't support this letter as it's currently written. And I just want to state that these jets can land in any airport whenever, wherever they want in the U.S. And it's their legal right to do so and part of the responsibility to protect the nation. So I'm not on board for this letter. You don't know that either. I mean, I think you're stating things that you don't have the knowledge to say either, Mr. Chitnan. Well, it doesn't sound like we have a majority. So, yep. I felt it was important to have the discussion because a number of people in the public raise the issue. And I think that's part of our role is to respond whether you support or not. We don't have any ability. We don't have currently any, what's the word I want? So we don't have any interaction with the guard about their daily flight schedules today. They don't notify us when they're getting ready to fly. You said they used to call, I think they used to warn Chamberlain School, but I don't know if they do that anymore because now that it has new HVAC new windows. But the point is that we have no say in what their flight schedule is whatsoever. And to imply that we have some sort of decision, co-decision making process with them about what F-35s they might bring here for extra training or not. I mean, it seems, it almost seems naive to me, right? From a national defense point of view, we can't inject ourselves into that conversation. We've already tried to inject ourselves in the conversation about bringing the plane here in the first place, right? Don't forget that we joined the Amicus Cury in the suit against the Air Force, which was basically dismissed. There have been multiple attempts to try and modify what happens at the air guard as far as their mission. And nothing has worked and the plane is here. So I thought this was settled business. I mean, but the fact that we have planes that have left and we have other planes coming from Florida to co-train with the current guard here, I can't see how we would have any, we can comment on it and say that we're, the noise is back, but I can't see how that we feel like we have any, how would have any effect on anybody to send this letter to the Air Force. Okay. I think we'll just register an objection. It doesn't say we're taking over the decision. I don't think anything in the letter suggests that we are sending them away. We are simply registering an objection. And I think that that is, again, our role as the locally elected body in response to constituents' concerns. And asking also for notification, I find that to be perfectly within the realm of possibility and not naive at all. In fact, I consider it to, if they can prepare a press release and put it in the press, why can't they prepare that just paste it into a letter to our city management so that we have some heads up? They prepare press releases all the time when they're gonna have night training. When they have different changes to their training schedule, we get those and the public sees that. And this is another example of that. We can't control whether the F-35s come from another base and they come here and train or not. It's being notified. And we can still say we're not happy about it, but that's not control. They did notify, right? They did have a press release saying that they were coming. So I just don't understand the basis for the letter. Are we can get a no? I mean, there's, Tom? If I might suggest something else that we could do, and I fully support this, and we've done this before, and I think I've mentioned this before, but I would love to invite the Vermont National Guard to come in and talk to us so that we can, you know. They would like to come. I would be, I think, very healthy and they're members of this community. And I'd love for them to hear that there are concerns with the noise and we can keep those conversations open. So I'd love to see. They haven't been here for several, because the pandemic for several years, yeah. For several years, so it probably would make sense to include them in a future council meeting. And this issue can be asked. Yeah, but I'd rather ask the civilian secretary of United States Air Force as opposed to the military. I'd rather speak civilian to civilian. Okay. Rosanne Greco would like to make a comment. Thank you, counselors, for discussing this. Well, I mean, it's no news to y'all that I think having the F-35 here is a grave social injustice. I also believe it is our patriotic duty to question. Yeah. Our government, our military, we are in a democracy we're not a military junta. We are, as far as we're gonna know right now, a democracy. And democracy thrives when we don't unquestionably roll over and agree or keep our mouth shut when things do not appear to be right. That is a patriotic duty. Yeah. And just because you were unsuccessful in the past to right a wrong in this F-35 and the harm it is bringing is a social injustice. Does not mean that you stop talking or questioning or asking or commenting to roll over and play dead and say, we have no power, will mean nothing will ever get done. I mean, not just in this issue, but in so many other issues. I am not certain of this, but you can ask the guard if they come and talk to you. But I'm pretty certain the press release didn't happen here. There was a press release in Florida that a friend of mine in Florida said to me, saying, I'm so sorry for you, we're gonna have some peace and quiet, you will not. I send that to the local media and then there was a press release here. So maybe I missed that, but it was in Florida, the press release before it was here. But that's sort of a tangential issue. The fact that there's a war going on does not justify that we accept everything the military wants to do. Just look at history. What happens when we don't question? Think of the Vietnam war. Those of you who are old enough to remember that or other conflicts we have gotten ourselves into or other military issues that have happened because people just said whatever they want, whatever the military wants, I'm sure there's a good reason. How dare we question? How dare we seem like we're disloyal? Just the opposite. We are patriots for doing this. And so I thank you. Whoever brought this up, whoever wrote it. And I encourage you to keep questioning, keep asking because rights can only be wrong when we question what's happening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rosanne. Any other comments? Okay. Well, we will invite them and we can have that discussion. It's interesting to note that it was the press release in Florida, perhaps, and maybe in the future, the press release can also be shared with a community that is impacted. That doesn't seem unpatriotic to ask that and question why that wasn't part of the process. Item 12, receive a presentation on a possible Chinon County Communications Union District, better known as a CUD, to improve broadband access. So Andrew's gonna, and Regina Mahoney, is she, she's online, right? Yeah, Regina Mahoney is here as well as Bob Fish is also joining us. Okay. So I outlined this sort of kind of a rapid discussion for a November ballot item. This arose from a recent conversation that we had about some of the changes in state and federal funding and opportunities for the community of South Burlington and other regional partners to be able to use that funding to sort of close some of the gaps in our broadband coverage here in South Burlington. Initially, these CUDs were created to close sort of the underserved populations throughout our state. South Burlington and other Chinon County communities are in the unique position that we have very, very few residential or commercial units that are underserved, underserved meetings sort of below cable. Outline it in the memo, it's sort of four, four one speeds. That would be properties like those on Autumn Hill Road or other sort of... Or Hinesburg Road. Or Hinesburg Road. Right, Ed. There are a couple of these pockets and I think I identified in the memo only about six of these pockets in the region. So at first blush, it would be why would we entertain this? This is very, not a lot of bang for the buck. But in the latest legislative session, we came to understand that monies are only available for fiber access. So we have a very robust cable network which is 25.3 access throughout the city of South Burlington but we're actually a little bit behind when it comes to fiber access. That's only being done right now through the, except for Market Street, only being done through the private sector. And so there's an opportunity here. We recognize that in closing some of these gaps, for example, bringing a line to Hinesburg Road from Market Street or to the end of Dorset Street would actually provide potentially fiber cable access for a huge number of citizens. And we also know that CUDs are the only entity that are eligible for these funds at the moment as well as private entities have become accustomed to dealing with these regional partners and contracting with them. So the recommendation has come down from the CCRPC and Vermont Communication Broadband Board to for Chittenden County to now partner and potentially have this item on the ballot in November. The reason why it's such an aggressive timeline is in part because this is ARPA dollars that we're talking about. And as you know, we have a limited window to spend those by the end of 2024 allocated and spent by 2026. So that's the kind of brief quick overview. I don't know if I'm missing anything but feel free to fill in the gaps Regina or Bob. Okay. So thank you for having us. Virginia Mahoney Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission for those of you who don't know me. I just am gonna give a little bit of background on what we have been thinking about over at least the last year and a half that we've been thinking about these issues. And then we'll hand it over to Rob who can give much more detail on what a CUD actually is. But essentially we have been thinking about trying to find a better way to expand Fiber Network in Chittenden County without a communications union district because it is an additional municipal district. It is gonna require some effort. All municipalities that are a part of it will have to have a representative going forward. And so it's another thing. It's another thing like GMT and the wastewater district and the water district. But ultimately it really feels like it's a thing that really makes the most sense to move forward. There are some municipalities in Chittenden County that have been able to figure out an alternative approach. I'll start with Bolton. So Bolton is in Weitzfield Champlain Telecom's service territory and a number of our towns in the southern part of the county are in Weitzfield Champlain Telecom. The smaller service providers which Weitzfield Champlain Telecom meets that definition of statute. They can apply for these funds directly. And so they are doing that in some of their municipalities. So Bolton is well-covered and the Vermont Community's Broadband Board has approved their grant and they're gonna move forward and get coverage. Our other towns that are a little bit more in the northern half don't necessarily have a provider that's been coming to the table so far and willing to do that. Another example is Milton has decided to join the CUD in the northwest part of the state. And so they're already covered but again still sort of following the same kind of model. And then also Burlington of course is completely covered by Burlington Telecom. So we don't need necessarily to set this up for every municipality but for folks who don't have one of those smaller service providers coming to the table right now, willing to do this. This really makes the most sense to be able to get the state and federal dollars into the hands of providers who are willing to come to the table. And really kind of a key benefit of this is that because we have so much cable access already in the county, it is possible that the providers will just come in over billed with fiber over time completely on their own even if we don't do anything. But there isn't gonna be any public oversight to make sure that those unserved and underserved residents get connected. So we might still, all of us who have cable might have fiber 10 years from now and still the folks that don't have anything still won't have anything. And so really this is an opportunity to provide oversight so that those other folks get served. I think that's it from my end. And it's good to be the sandwich, the middle part of the sandwich. So Rob can sweep and make sure we got everything covered. Regina, I think Chancellor Emery has a question for you. Could you say again, what weights field service provider, what category they are in that they can receive these funds directly? Yeah, it's, Rob will know the exact term better than me, but essentially what the state decided to do is the small service provider. And that's basically defined as providers who serve five counties or less in the state of Vermont. They are eligible to access the state funds directly. And so they don't need to go through a communications union district to get that money. An alternative example is somebody like consolidated communications. They are not eligible to get that funding directly unless it flows through a communications union district. Is weights field a private service provider or is it a municipal service provider? They're private. I believe they are private. They're private, okay. Thank you. Just happens to have weights field in the name. Yeah. Thank you. Rob? Hi, thank you everybody. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to tell you a little bit about communication union districts. And Regina covered almost everything. I'm gonna go into a lot more detail, probably more detail than you need. Interrupt me at any point with questions. And do I have permission to share my screen? I have a brief presentation that'll walk you through the history and why things were done the way they are. So do I have? Just made you a presenter, Rob. Wonderful. Well, now hopefully you will be, I'm not as familiar with the go-to meeting. So hopefully you're seeing the correct screen right now and not my email. Looks great. So wonderful. You're ordering that? So for the record, my name is Rob Fish. I'm the deputy director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board. Before that I was with the public service department and was the key person building these communication union districts around the state. So the little background on the communication union districts, they're organized under Title 30. They're very similar to solid waste districts, sewer districts, anything that's an opportunity for communities to work together. But there's a few key differences of really why these were created. So they're a legal entity for municipalities to start telecom planning, but they're also a way to insulate member towns from financial risks. Yes, Burlington Telecom is doing wonderful things right now, but I don't think anyone's gonna deny that there was a few big bumps in the road in terms of how that worked out for the city and different actions that were taken. So with these communication union districts, you're creating a new municipality. This municipality has no taxing power. It can't do anything with general funds, can't do general obligation bonds. It can only accept grants, gifts and loans and stuff that are backed by the revenue generated by the network. These districts to start, they must be approved by voters in two towns, either at town meeting or a November vote. After that, select boards can vote to join. We encourage more than two to start just because the critical mass that's necessary and the idea that the entire region is working on this. So why do this? I mentioned the risk mitigation part, but there's other reasons. It's aggregating demand. In the case of more rural communities where there's hundreds of underserved addresses, that's not enough to attract a provider. It's not enough to have the negotiating power. On the flip side of it with communities such as those in Chittenden County where there's only a few addresses, you need to raise the flag to say that we wanna upgrade from cable. You need to say that there was a business case for cable. So it's speeds that are usually 100 down and 20 up for the case of using Zoom or go-to meeting or remote learning or telehealth, you need that upload speed that that's the 20. That's the one thing that Fiber can provide that nothing else can provide at this point. The speeds are unlimited. Like you could be potentially getting gigabit by gigabit speed. That makes a lot of things possible and it's expandable to the point of where we're saying that it's future proof. It's gonna solve the need for the next 30 years as opposed to something that's gonna be an interim solution right now. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for such a good investment. That's why the legislature really just came around to the idea of if we're gonna do this, we wanna do it once, we wanna do it right. Funders are also very familiar with municipal districts in terms of going to the bond market. If that's necessary, there's efficiency in network design, construction and operation. This is once again a reason why you could be attracting a provider to get involved and do an entire build out of your community. Town boundaries are irrelevant. It really, it's where the lines go. It's where the wire centers are. There's also additional funding opportunities for municipal district, whether it's the federal, the ARPA funds, the BEAD funds from the infrastructure bill or USDA or EDA funding. The other big reason is public accountability. The broadband marketplace was deregulated in 1996, which means the federal government and the states really can't tell providers what to do when it comes to providing service and who to provide service to. The, these communication union districts are all committed to the idea of universal service that we're not gonna pick the areas that have the highest density and leave everybody else behind, which in many cases is what it's, it makes market sense. It's what the cable companies did. You have a road that has 15, 20 houses or 50 houses per mile. Yeah, they're gonna have access to cable. But if it's an area with just three farms, yeah, good luck. So it's trying to create a system of public accountability so no one's left behind. And there's a way for the community to have some recourse, some say and some oversight as these grant funding, these, this grant funding flows. So there's several different models that the CUDs are taking. I'm just gonna give you just overview of both. One, we'll talk about what would probably work better for this area. Many of the CUDs are doing a, several of them are doing a public-private partnership in the case of Southern Vermont. So this is Bennington County. They're working with Consolidated, now marketed as Phidium Fiber Internet, go figure, to build out the entire, every single address, unserved or other side in the entire county, they're saying by the end of 2023. I'll give them to the beginning of 2024, you know how these things go. But they're working with Consolidated and the reason that they can do that is because it's a public-private partnership. There is the oversight built in by the Communication Union District. The funding flows through the Communication Union District as opposed to an out-of-state provider that's a large out-of-state provider that has, how to put this? Let's say there wasn't as much of an incentive as there is now to, to keep, to convert fiber, convert copper infrastructure to fiber. Because they were the incumbent, there wasn't competition. So this is a way to put the community in between. In the case of this model, the CUDS serves as the negotiator, provides the oversight. We provide, as the Vermont Community Broadband Board provides some funding for the research and the studies to make sure that the community is getting a good deal. And Phidium or Consolidated is currently investing a heck of a lot of money around the state and around the region to convert most of the cabled areas to fiber over time. So the funding ends up supplementing that bill to get to all the underserved areas and ensuring the accountability. In terms of the timeframe, well, that's an open question. As I said, they're building out, they're building out in the South right now. It's gonna take a while. So eventually I would expect that most areas in South Burlington are gonna get fiber. I would not expect that areas that are at the very ends of roads right now that don't have access, will get it without some kind of intervention by the part of the town working in conjunction of other towns. So if the grant. I just have a question in terms of an intervention. What would the, is that what this CUD would help provide? I mean, I have- Oh, God. Infinity, or not infinity. I have fidgy, fidium, I guess, consolidated. And I've, you know, we can't have two devices going on at the same time in my house. You've got consolidated. You just have twisted hair, copper, telephone wires, what you have. So it's just, and, but, but Xfinity goes right by, but they won't hook up to me unless I pay them, I don't know, $1,700 bucks. But they're right there. So is your encouragement or leverage to say to them in this situation, you need to provide that to this home? Frankly, the grant funding is both a carrot and a stick. If they want access to any grant funding, they need to serve everybody. All right. And when it comes to, when it comes to Fidium with the cable companies, the legislature made a decision that we are focusing on service that can provide 100 up and 100 down. Cable cannot reach that right now. In May and the future, for years they've been talking about new technology that's gonna match those speeds. I'd be very pleased and very excited if it happens. And then you have competition, which is better, drives down the rates for everybody. But right now the only access is fiber and from what I know, the only provider that's providing some fiber in South Burlington right now is Burlington Telecom. Fidium might have or consolidated might have some business fiber options or first light, but in terms of residential service. Okay. And Xfinity doesn't, huh? I thought they had fiber, no? No, it's just cable. They may have. They may have. Okay. So this would enhance everyone. That is the goal because in order to actually build out a fiber network, you're gonna have to over build many of these areas. We can only provide the funding for the incidental over build, but there's an incentive for the private market since they know there's a market to cover that part of it in order to get the funding to reach to the ones where there's not as much of a market case. That's what's happening down in Bennington right now. Okay. I think I understand it. Matt and then Megan. Thank you. Just a real basic question. So the idea is where there is no copper to get fiber, not to move copper there. And then where there is copper replaced with fiber, is it replaced or is it additive? And we're not actually pulling copper, we're adding fiber. For the case of, for the case of it's the cable company of its Xfinity, they would actually, they are actually likely adding fiber within their network, but it's a hybrid network. It's a combination of fiber and the coaxial cable. In the case of Phidium, it would likely be over lashing all the existing copper and switching everybody to fiber. So it's moving, it's moving towards the new technology, but it's not reducing the number of options. Okay, Megan and then Tom. What role does the public body, our council have in this process to oversee it and to review what the options are and determine whether or not it's working for the benefit of our residents. What role do we play? So with the communication union district, each town appoints two delegates, delegate and an alternate. There's a board of directors or a governing board that meets some of, some CUDs have an executive committee that takes care of most of the decision making and the governing board just meets quarterly. And all decisions like whether it's applying for grant, whether it's entering in a partnership, any kind of policies or any kind of restrictions you wanna put in in the negotiations, like that is the body that makes that decision and that we answer to when we are, when, if we're gonna be giving a grant, like we're gonna be, sure if, for example, if it is Phidium, yeah, Phidium will be there talking to us too, but you have the communication union district as the public advocate in this case, which is a lot more power than has existed in the past because of deregulation. Tom? So it's... Are you done? Did that answer your question? Tom? Great question, counselor. I mean, I was gonna build on that. So yeah, I support this for just that reason, that answer, that this puts the public interest at the heart of the decision and the prioritization of building out, upgraded broadband infrastructure, I think just makes a lot of sense. You did state that this entity, this communications unified district would have no taxing authority on members. So that too is why I'm supportive of it, but I'm curious, I'm just, and I love that word, future proof. I'm just thinking about five, 10 years from now. Can, what would it look like if that wanted to change? I would just hope that there are in the Articles of Incorporation that a community like South Burlington that joins with clear designation that there does not have taxing authority, that we would have the right to withdraw should that change in the future because we are the second largest city in the state. And if we're outvoted on this board to then tax all of our members, that would cause me concern. So if you could speak a little bit to what future councils options would be, should that taxing authority want to be changed? I would put my mind at ease. It would take a change in legislation to be able to change that rule in the first place, but a community can always withdraw from a communication union district. And you can withdraw by the same way that you came in, whether you come in via vote in November or whether you come in via select board votes. Any infrastructure that's built in the community at that point is still the CUD, the communication union district still has ownership over that infrastructure. But there's no penalty for leaving other than you're losing your voice when it comes to decision-making and oversight. Yeah. So a quick followup is if we join and so do a lot of other neighboring communities, can you put my mind at ease that we wouldn't be out, that proportionally, that there'll be some consideration in the governance related to populations of the community districts that are appointing being South Burlington's 20,000 and you know, St. George is a very small community. How is that factored into the formation of these things and considered in future member joining? So there's existing bylaws that can serve as a model, but there's no reason that a communication union district couldn't do something that takes into account, population for instance, or number of underserved addresses. Most districts at this point do operate on a one member, one vote, or two members, well you know, of how it works in terms of making decisions for the district. That's not to say that there's not other models out there. Okay. Other, Tim? Sure, so yeah, I support this because I think it'll help generate better penetration of services to people that didn't have it before, enhanced speeds for people that had slow speeds. I mean, you don't have very good speeds where you are. I mean, they're slow. And when I moved from middle road to the cider mill, I maintained with consolidated and I had a 2.9 megabits per second download and 670 kilobytes per second kilobits upload. So, and that was fine until the pandemic hit and my kids came home and they were zooming and doing schoolwork from home and at the same time. So these speeds, the key here is how many people are trying to use that bandwidth all the same time in the home. And so I support this for getting higher speeds for everybody, I also support it if it fosters communication since it is a deregulated industry and this is the next best choice that we can make in order to facilitate build out of different choices, right? Because choices are what generates competition which I would hope would generate lower access prices to higher speed internet, right? And hopefully it would give better equity, right? For people and their access. My only question is these are, we're talking about twisted pair and cable and fiber but is anybody doing private 5G networks anywhere in the state? With anything when it comes to wireless in the state, it's a, our typography let's say is a wee bit challenging but when it comes to wireless signals, that's not to say that there's not areas especially in densely packed areas where there will be 5G level service but we're not talking about mobile wireless, we're talking about, we're talking about landline, we're talking about that the speed is gonna be consistent regardless of how many people that are on that network and it's not gonna be impacted by the fact that you could see the North sky for Starlink or that you don't have any trees that surround your house or the weather conditions. So that's why I think there's been a consensus at least in the legislature on that fiber is the way to go and I wanna touch a little bit on what you said about equity and that's one of the things that got me into this issue. It's like we saw it during the pandemic but going forward it's gonna be more and more important. I saw earlier on your agenda, you had stuff in terms of energy efficiency and climate change. To be able to access a lot of those services whether it's renewable programs or efficiency programs, there needs to be grid management. The only way to have grid management is if everybody has the same access to the same speeds. So it's Mayway's broadband and especially fiber, the 100 by 100 to infinity service could be a great equalizer in terms of opportunities across distance learning, telehealth or energy equity. Like there's some visions out there that show that with this symmetrical service at this speed, you could turn almost any single household into a hospital room. Think about for aging at home. The possibilities are endless and that's why we're going for the gold tier. That's what it comes down to. I do wanna talk about one of the other models that's being pursued around the state because there is a situation where that could also work here in Chittenden County. And that model is public ownership where the public or the communication union district owns the network and selects providers to be on that network, either one or several networks. Our grant funding is certainly not gonna fund that in its entirety, but there's private funding that is interested in competition in areas with increased density, like there is here. And the model for that in the communication union districts is that we're doing our best to provide about 60% in grant funding and the rest would be through the revenue bond market or other grants outside of ARPA on the infrastructure bill to build out the district. This is what's happening up in Northwest and Lamoille. So you got Franklin, Grand Oil and Lamoille County where they formed a communication union districts. They said they wanted open access. They had this number of addresses and raised the flag, said we want this and they're in negotiations right now with Google Fiverr to bring gigabits, gigabit symmetrical speed to 43,000 residents. So there are other companies that are also interested in open access networks but they don't wanna talk to individual towns one by one. If you could get 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 you're gonna go talk to that entity as opposed to talking to a single town. Like it's a South Burlington's probably on the edge of being able to engage, but it's a, but either way, working together and making that statement has had a tremendous impact around the state and that you'll hear more about that. I'm fairly confident and go into that more but briefly just some of the challenges facing the areas that are heavily built out. It's said you have a lot of infrastructure already. There's not many underserved or if there are underserved, they're scattered which makes it expensive to get to it. So that's why the public-private model is likely to be the way going forward. And one thing I should mention with the public-private model, we've been mentioning consolidated infidium it could end up being Waitesfield. It could end up being a company you've never even heard about. It could end up being Burlington Telecom. You don't know, but this is a way to put it out there that you're interested and want to talk and they know who to talk to. So what else do we got here? Here. Can we interrupt you with one more question? Yeah, let me ask one more question. So our land development regulations, they, so for developments, new developments that are going in, for example, Cider Mill 2 or Spear Meadows or the rest of O'Brien Hillside Farm, what underground conduit infrastructure is required, if any, other than water sewer power? Do we require coaxial cable and fiber and twisted pair? Do we know? So here is another, I kind of skipped over the, in the existing infrastructure thing, but this is another challenge in areas like South Burlington and Williston where a lot of some of the utilities have been put underground, especially new developments. Oftentimes there's exclusivity agreements between the developer and often the cable company that, oh, well, we'll include your, you'll pay us, we'll include the conduit for your fiber now and no one else can use it or no one else can market to people within your housing development. This is especially true in a lot of multi-dwelling unit buildings and a place where a town can take local action to ensure that as these developments go in, as utilities go underground, that if they're putting in one thing of conduit, well, they have to put in a spare too, that it's there. It's a lot easier to build, to dig once than to dig again after it's already in place. This is really important for competition in the future for all future development in South Burlington for communications. This is a really important thing right now that we have to think about and Planning Commission has to look at this. Andrew, an answer to your question. No, and I think Rob stated exactly what the circumstance here is here in South Burlington is we do require it for conduit to be placed in but we have no way of, we're not regulating it outside of that. So we are seeing that, you know, Consolidate will come in and they will be the one that's the exclusive owner of that and charging. I think relatively high fees for any other user. Which is something that we, oh, sorry. I was just saying, like not having those regulations has been a challenge around the country and it's also limited the expansion of smaller telecom providers that, oh, there's this big development of several hundred households but we can't get into it. Okay, Megan, did you have a question also? I did. I understood that Charlotte did it on their own without a CUD, how did that work? So Charlotte is almost entirely served by Watesfield. So they're working with Watesfield to build out all of the addresses via public-private partnership. So similar to Bolton? Similar to Bolton, it's exactly the same as Bolton. Okay, good to know. Thank you. So it's the towns that where the wire centers aren't shared or there's only a few addresses that's feasible for. I think I believe in and Charlotte that Watesfield is actually gonna over build one, it might be like a dozen households that are served by Consolidated in order to achieve universal service because of the way the legislation is written an individual town can't do that with Consolidated or any company that operates in more than five counties in Vermont. So. Yeah, and I also understood that they don't jump over communities to get their fiber carried on. It's just expensive to jump. So I'm not sure Watesfield is truly gonna be a service provider here anytime soon in any case, but who would be competing for our market here? Can we answer that question currently? There's a lot of unknowns. Like there, Consolidated is likely at some point to build out all the cabled areas with fiber. Burlington Telecom, I know is serving some areas. I don't know what their expansion plans are and I don't know what their capital is in terms of being able to do a full scale universal service build out. But there's other companies that are interested. I know if there was a communication union district and we could figure out the model that even Google fiber would be interested in the Chittenden County towns. That's a challenge because of how the grant funding is distributed, but they would certainly be interested. There's other companies that want to build wholesale brand new networks and sell access to multiple providers. I guess there's a lot of possibilities, but coming together informing the communication union district and having that single point of contact is really the first step to open up those conversations in a serious way and to unlock some of the pre-construction money to be able to do some of the studies that are necessary so you know you're making good decisions and the construction money that will help supplement private investment to make sure that all the addresses are served. And would the board, the council or select board be able to vote on whatever the CUD was gonna be determining or was that truly delegated when we put together a CUD? It's delegated to the communication union districts but you can always withdraw. You also do have influence over who you pick. Some towns have, that have given it to a select board member or planning commission member for instance, or require a lot of feedback on how decisions are going and it's the communication union district, it's a municipal entity. So the meetings are open to the public, the minutes are open to the public, the recordings are open to the public. So there's quite a bit of transparency, transparency that happens. And it would last over just a limited amount of time is my understanding until the public infrastructure and the service providers could take over. What we're seeing in a lot of communication union districts is they're gonna be a lot more active as everything is being constructed, as everything is being negotiated. Once everything is constructed, they'll probably move more into an oversight. So not meeting monthly, maybe they're gonna meet quarterly, maybe they're just gonna have an annual meeting with the provider. Maybe in the agreement after 10 years, there's a review of who's the provider if the public owns the infrastructure against it. But the model varies a lot, but I wouldn't expect to, once everybody's connected, I don't think you're gonna be having monthly meetings that someone has to go to. Thank you. Tom? So in the packet it says, the action is to just let management know what additional information will be helpful and further considering this proposal at your next regular meeting. I just say I would love our lawyers to just make clear that we feel comfortable that they will not be able to start taxing South Burlington without us having enough notice and possibly the ability to withdraw without fear assessment. But the question I do have to you Robert, I'm wondering in your travels, I love how this follows the transportation routes as well as the patterns of human behavior to oversee communications. I'm intrigued in getting our roads to be more intelligent to keep up with our increasingly smart cars. Do you see communications unified districts as being easier paths to have safety measures monitoring the road conditions in real time as well as I don't wanna get into the big brother privacy concerns, but having street lights be more in tune and connected so that we can better manage traffic congestion as well as self-driving vehicles in the future. Any topic areas about how transportation intersects with CUDs on the horizon would be very helpful for me to hear. Okay, it's certainly potential. If the CUD is owning the infrastructure, you have other fiber that you can lease to other entities, whether it's public safety, whether it's utilities, whether it's the school districts and the libraries or the healthcare. Fiber can make this all possible including the intelligent transportation systems. It's gonna be key for agriculture going forward in terms of the monitoring potential of doing irrigation. It really opens up a new world of possibilities and I would expect the CUDs to be involved in figuring out what those possibilities are both in terms of equity and economic development and frankly, what's next? There's also the digital equity side of things of making sure once the lines are built and the service is available, making sure people can use them, can access the information, can afford it and can evaluate the information that's provided. Okay. Yes, Andrew. A couple of questions, Rob. Thanks so much for coming tonight. First question is something that you talked about earlier around governance and bylaws. When you've seen these CUDs formed before, when does that process occur? Is that prior to a public vote or does that occur after it's been formed? That normally occurs after it's been formed since it's gonna be the delegates that are appointed that determine the bylaws and the operating procedures and the conflict of interest policy and all those fun things that thankfully for you all which would be the 10th CUD have been done before and written before and can just be adjusted to the situation on the ground. So by statutory default, you're saying that it would be two members per municipality? That would be a part of the original governing body. Correct. And I'm curious either from you or from Regina, is there sort of what's the temperature of other neighboring municipalities at this point? I know, Williston, it sounded like they were looking to get this on the ballot and I haven't heard from others. Yep, Essex, they met last week as well and they are seemingly pretty positive. They asked for the potential ballot language for their August 1st meeting. We all be talking to Jericho at the end of this week and Rob, you were at Shelburne last week. Shelburne was very interested as well. We also know that Westford has expressed interest. So there is, we're getting to a critical mass of towns that would be interested. I believe Colchester is taking a wait and see approach but that's just Colchester. It is. All right, thank you. I'll leave it at that. So is it, what is a critical mass for this to actually happen? Is it just two, but you said that's really not a critical mass earlier? It's officially two, but from a political perspective and I keep saying raise the flag or just like putting, shining the light out there, putting the bat signal out that your community, that your district is interested, we encourage getting to more than just two communities. So I think if we ended up having, with between the November votes and if there's a select board vote after there, if we ended up at five or six, it's gonna be fine. Frankly, even with two, you're gonna get a little bit of attention because of the size of the towns. Okay. Any other, do you have any other information you wanted to share with us? We kept interrupting you. No worries. I was just gonna show you what's happening up to the north of you with Google Fiber, down in Southern Vermont I mentioned. And then I also just wanted to show a map of just how you are pretty well served in South Burlington. But I want you to focus not just on those without cable, but those without access to fiber. So that's really it. Okay. I'll stop sharing my screen if I could figure out how. You may need to do that for me. There we go. So I guess we, the council needs to relate to management. Is there any other information that we want them to find out? Cause that, I mean, it's, from the questions that people ask, it seems as if the council is rather interested in this. So I guess one thing we would want is the language for the ballot. But there was also, Tom wanted the legal opinion on the tax issue. Are there other things that you would like Andrew to do in a spare time to get it ready for August 1st, right? That's our next meeting. Yeah. Yeah, we could have another, technically we could have another discussion on the 15th, August 15th, in order to get this on the general election ballot, meaning there'd be no additional cost to us, we need to give the state sort of the soft, all right, we're ready to go shortly before that meeting, but they don't need to actually have the final language until after that meeting. So after the August 15th meeting. So if we plan on making a decision on the 1st, that would be a good timing. Okay. Well, then let's focus on, ask you to do that. Okay. Okay. All right, great. Great, thank you very much. Thank you both. I'm excited, before I'm dead, I might be able to really have some good stuff going on. You all are very welcome. And don't hesitate to Andrew, others don't hesitate to reach out or if you'd like to speak to our general counsel, whatever you need, we've heard the questions before, I assure you. Great, thank you very much. Have a good evening. Thank you too. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Bye bye. Item 13 review and possibly approve the declaration of inclusion. View a call several weeks ago, we talked about this or months ago. Yeah, so this is the, I think the third time coming before you with this topic, I apologize, I was unable to attend the last meeting. We took sort of the forum declaration of inclusion document that Bob Harnish and Al Wakefield, who kind of have this Vermont statewide declaration project. And we brought it to a staff equity committee that Jesse and I formed in the last few months. They had some thoughts, recommendations to provide to counsel about what that language looks like, recognizing full well that this is your document. So that's been in front of you again tonight. Happy to, you know, provide for you to move forward, I guess, in any direction that you so choose. I'll move right away to approve this. Second, second. Okay, so we have a motion to approve in a second. Discussion, I have a question, is what you sent us includes the recommendations by the equity counsel, is that what you called it? Yeah, yeah, a staff equity group. Yeah, so this is largely the same format that was brought before you at the prior council meeting when you addressed this. You did have a one edit from the second paragraph to the third paragraph, continuing the similar, not just talking about racism, but also sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, religious intolerance, homophobia and implicit bias. So that was sort of mirrored the second paragraph. So that was added. Okay, so we have a motion on the table. So further discussion. Okay, all in favor of, I guess, adopting this, correct? We're approving this declaration of inclusion for the city of South Burlington, signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye. So pass this five, zero, great. Well, thank you. Thank you for that work. I appreciate it. Reports from counselors on committee assignments. Were there any? Are there any? We meet tomorrow with the B-Mount Chance Authority. Yes, and airport meets Wednesday. Okay. All right, then is there any other business? When is Dorset Street gonna be paved? Bids go out. Yeah, so we're opening bids this Wednesday for that section from Garden Street down to Aspen Drive. Oh, it hasn't been bid out. I didn't know that. Yeah, so yeah, won't have a project date for a little bit. All right, well, if there's no other business then the motion to adjourn, moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. And we need to sign this document of inclusion, so.