 And for some reason I did not see Councillor Pine. So thank you. Now I see you. And I think we can go ahead and get started. Is someone prepared to make a motion on the agenda? Move the agenda. I was like, am I on mute? Thank you, President Tracy. I'm ready to second the motion. Thank you, Councillor Pine. I'm just going to get up my agenda. I don't have the agenda yet. Sorry. No problem. Any discussion or amendments on the agenda? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. The motion carries. And I also don't have the agenda up, which is very awkward. But I am assuming that the next thing on the agenda is public forum. Thank you, Brian. President Tracy, do you happen to know if anyone is signed up to speak on public forum tonight for Board of Finance? So I'm not seeing anyone in the inbox. I do see one person, one individual who I'm seeing in the attendees, Lisa Bergstrom, who I guess it was two people signed up as ones. It says Lisa Bergstrom and Trevor Sullivan. I see Lisa is here. And so maybe we should check in with that person to just see what their intent was, because I don't have an indication as to whether they were interested in speaking to Board of Finance or the Folk Council. Lisa, if you are here and would like to speak at Board of Finance, now is your opportunity. You could just use the raise hand function and I can allow you to speak. Excellent. I am going to enable your microphone. You should be able to speak, Lisa. It looks like you are muted on your end, so you can unmute. Hello, hello. Hello, we can hear you. Great, hello. It's actually Lisa Bergstrom and Trevor Sullivan here. We are in the same room and very much in the same world most of the time. But yeah, we're actually here because we were told that there was going to be some deliberation in regards to the North Beach concessions contract. We submitted a proposal for the contract. We responded to the RFP and we were told that we were awarded the contract by Alec Keating, who is the manager, the park's manager, park campground manager. And then we were told that the person who had the contract the last three years was appealing it, the whole process. So long story short, we were told that March 8th was when there was going to be some discussion surrounding that and moving the whole contract forward. And we haven't really heard much. So that's why we're here today. And if it's not on the agenda, then that's fine. I guess we'll just still kind of wait to hear what the next step is through Alec. But if there's any discussion around that or if we needed to answer any questions, we're very happy to be present on that tonight, if need be. Thank you very much for that. I believe that the mayor has joined us and his chief of staff has indicated that she would like to speak on that. So I am going to turn things over to them. Hi, just generally the board of finance, sorry, the public forum isn't a back and forth, but since it's a small group, I thought I might be able to offer some clarification. I believe the folks at parks will be reaching out to you shortly and either Cindy or Alec and it is not on tonight's agenda. So sorry for the confusion there. And hopefully that's at least clarifying immediately that the contract approval is not on tonight's council or board of finance agenda. Good evening, everyone. Is there any further public forum comment? No, mayor. Okay. Then we will close the public forum and go to the consent agenda. I welcome motion on the consent agenda. Councillor Pine. I would move to approve the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Jang. Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously, approving those two minutes on the consent agenda. And now that brings us to 4.01. I've got myself organized properly here. The request for airport to accept two airport coronavirus response grant programs, grants totaling $4,430 and the approval of a $307,515 budget neutral amendment. Welcome, Marie, Nick, Jean. How would the board like to proceed on this? Councillor Pine. I would move approval. I've moved to approve and recommend the city council authorize the mayor to execute the airport coronavirus response grant program, primary airport grant with the federal aviation administration in an amount up to $3,857,199 subject to final review and approval of the city attorney's office. I also move an approval and recommendation that the city council authorize the mayor to execute the airport coronavirus response grant program concession relief grant with the federal aviation administration in an amount up to $147,231 subject to final review and approval of city attorney's office. And lastly, approve and recommend, move to approve and recommend the city council approve a budget neutral amendment in the amount of $307,515 to the fiscal year 2021 Burlington International Airport budget by increasing the accounts as set forth above. Great, thank you, Councillor Pine. We have a second from Councillor Paul. Is there any discussion of this end? Councillor Paul, go ahead. Thanks. I just think that for the benefit of the public that it would be important for people to understand how these grants come about and what role they will play in the recovery for some of the, particularly the concession relief grant, what that will do for some of our partners at the airport. So I was hoping either Jean or Nick, if you wanted to, if you could speak to that, that would be great. Go ahead, Nick. Go ahead, either one, go ahead, Nick. Okay, yeah, thank you very much. And as the letter outlines, we're looking at a couple of things here, very similar to the original CARES Act that we received last year, back in June, the $8.7 million, this is an additional funding source to help alleviate some of the losses of revenue by supporting the necessary expenditures that the airport, of course, has to move forward with. So essentially that first portion of the authorization is to accept these grant funds to continue operations. There is a little bit of a difference where it also allows us to support any effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 within our facilities including HVAC upgrades and things like that. So that's something that's different than the CARES Act, but essentially all being used to support our necessary expenditures. The second piece to that is for concession relief. So we're looking at a skinny pancake, Hudson News, the car rental companies. We have a small business that helps with our marketing and advertising. So that will help relieve some of their obligations to pay the airport by reducing their minimum guarantees to the airport in which we can then recover those revenues through this particular grant. The grant funding doesn't go to these concessionaires, but we as the airport can eliminate some of their obligations to us. And then the third item there is just a budget amendment to allow this to occur. Thank you. One more thing, I'll just say that with the new budget that's coming out that President Biden has been pushing, we should we anticipate potentially seeing another $4 million that would take us into first quarter of next year. So these are all good things, no guarantees, but we're optimistic with the refinancing that we've done and the work that we've done to cure our position that we're going to continue to be very healthy and do very well. So I just want to let you know, we have one more while we bring it back to you. Great, that's great news. Great. Okay, I believe we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Yes, Councillor Jang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And was just wondering if this is, there are any strings attached or this is just the federal government as a stimulus package to the airport? Do you need to do a reporting to the federal government around how it was used or this is just to have accepted and do this stuff? Everything that we, every grant we have, we have to follow the criteria of that grant. And so there's always strings attached, you know, Marie, Nick, Shelby, Larry will follow through and make sure that each penny we spend is 100% in the criteria of that grant. Each grant, as Nick said, is a little different, but we are very fluent, you know, in that grant, we read it down, we understand it, we talk about it as a group. So yes, there are strings attached and we will follow and make sure that they're here too. Thank you. And just to clarify, if I may, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead. This is a reimbursement grant. So this is actually going to be us spending or expending the funding and then reimbursing ourselves through this funding program. So that every single time we reimburse, we send in a reimbursement request, they're gonna be looking at and approving those funds coming to us. Thank you. Okay. I think we're ready for a vote on 4.101. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. That brings us to 4.02, authorization assigned, property lease with Passaro Associates at 1252 airport drives, suite 123. Are we ready for a motion on this item? Councillor Pine. Sorry about that. No worries. I jump around my screen to approve and recommend the leasing of certain identified space at the Burlington International Airport to Passaro Associates and to authorize the mayor to execute the lease subject to final review and approval by the city attorney's office. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Paul. Any discussion? Okay, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and that brings us to 4.03, request to authorize signing a five-year contract with KES Environmental Science and Engineering for Underground Injection Control, Permanent Management Compliance Assistance Services. Jean or Nick, you wanna just remind folks of the background here before we dive in? Nick, you want Larry to do that or do you wanna do it? Yeah, I think it makes sense if Larry can do that. Okay, this is the Underground Injection Control Permanent Compliance Management. As everybody knows, we have apron areas where aircraft are de-iced and that precipitation that falls and then flows into our collection system goes to these large tanks, then pump stations, then pump the independent underground injection control systems that are nothing more than big leach fields. From that, we have to monitor those in terms of how much goes out there. We have to collect samples, analyze, and then also do groundwater compliance management downgradient of these systems to ensure there's no groundwater quality impacts and surface water quality impacts. Any questions? Okay, seeing none, would someone like to make the motion? Councilor Powell. Thank you. Councilor Pine was on such a role that I didn't wanna get in the way. I would make a motion to simply take the recommended action as listed on Board Docks. Second, sorry, was that a second, Councilor Jang? Yes, seconded by Councilor Jang and any further discussion? All right, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 4.04, request to authorize signing a five-year contract for the stormwater permit management compliance and services with EIV technical services. Would you like to add anything about this Larry? Basically it's the same thing. We have hundreds of structures, stormwater structures on site along with multiple fields and discharges from the site. This is water quality analysis and sampling and reporting and all the required reporting. I would note that between this and the UIC through going through this process, we're saving about almost $100,000 per year and both these companies are locally women-owned businesses. Very good. I welcome motion for 4.04. Councilor Powell. Thanks. I would make a motion to take the recommended action listed on board docs. Grades there a second? Seconded by President Tracy. Discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and that brings us to 4.05. Request to authorize signing the stormwater system agreement and license agreement with the city of South Burlington enabling the construction and maintenance of a stormwater treatment system on a parcel owned by the airport. Would you like me to explain it? Yeah, why don't you just give the primer here? All right, I'll do it quick. Okay, as everybody knows, we have multiple stormwater permits and in conjunction with the county and the city of South Burlington, we're all required to take action to clean up stormwater. This facility will be fully funded by the city of South Burlington and put on a lot of our property, which will collect runoff from the airport drive, airport road area for stormwater treatment to in turn help clean up the Potash Brook, which ultimately ends up in Lake Champlain. So it's a long time ago, there was an agreement sign, multi municipal agreement sign with the airport that we would work with the surrounding communities to assist with this type of stuff. And our assistance here is a piece of property where they can put this 31 foot by 100 foot underground like leach field that will collect stormwater runoff from those areas. Any questions? Let's see, we'll open the discussion and we're ready for a motion. Councillor Pine. Sure, I'm gonna get verbose and read the whole thing. To approve and recommend the city council that the mayor be authorized to execute agreements of substantial conformance with the attached stormwater system agreement and license agreement with the city of South Burlington, enabling the construction and maintenance of a stormwater treatment system on a parcel owned by the airport subject to the final review and approval by the city attorney. Seconded by President Tracy. Discussion. We will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Be opposed. The motion carries unanimously, brings us to 4.06. Request to authorize the signing of a contract with the American Association of Airport Executives for the development, delivery and maintenance of a digital interactive employee training service package for five years in the amount of $113, $915. Jean, would you like to give a quick overview of this? We have a operations requirement for people who are bad at the airport. We've been doing it manually and probably doing a good job. This is a many steps up and it makes people much more, I think just does a much better job training both staff and our vendors at the airport and airlines to make sure it's a better, safer place to be. Nick has put a substantial amount of time into this, doing the research, doing RFP and this one won and we really believe it's the right thing long-term for the airport for the safety and soundness of everything that we do every day. Great. Floor is open. We welcome motion or discussion. Councilor Powell. I'll make a motion to, oh gosh, I don't know, Councillor Pine, you're putting me on the spot here. I'll make a motion to approve and recommend to the city council that the director of aviation be authorized to execute a contract with the American Association of Airport Executives for five years in the amount of $76,100 for the development and delivery of a digital interactive employee training service package plus a 15% contingency of $11,415 and $26,400 for ongoing maintenance costs for a total amount of $113,915 subject to the final review and approval by the office of the city attorney. Great. Do we have a second to you, Councillor Powell's motion? Second by Councillor Pine. Discussion. We will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Post. Great. The motion carries unanimously. Thank you to the airport team. You guys have been busy since our last meeting. Thanks for all of that. Next up, we have the central services reorganization. This is a joint item of significant collaboration and who would like to kick us off here? Chapin or Cindy? Go ahead and get it started. So we're excited to be here tonight. It's a big re-org for the central services for the city. Right now, central facilities has kind of diffused among the different departments and we haven't really had a set leadership as far as from the maintenance end, looking at preventative maintenance and overseeing a lot of the projects that are in the city. There hasn't, it's kind of been sifted out over time into different departments, people taking projects up, but not real set leadership. So we're excited to be working together the clerks treasurer's office with DBW, Parks and Rec, Waterfront, all of us putting our heads together with the support from HR to figure this out. And I give Chapin a lot of kudos with, you know, some of the things that we've been doing with kudos with, you know, some insight at the end there that really helped us kind of trip over to what we think is a really good solution for the city. And that is moving chemically over from DPW, who's a capital manager and coordinator. And she's shown the leadership needed and she's doing a lot of the work that we need for central facilities. So she'll be coming onto the parks side. Parks 4 is now finally taking on the official leadership as far as the maintenance of our central facilities where that's kind of just sort of happened over time. We're now officially making it part of what we do is central facilities. So Kim, who's really done a fantastic job right now, she's been managing the city hall project and she will be coming over and providing that key leadership for central facilities. But again, under this, you know, the direction of Derek Roche, who's our park superintendent, who, you know, has valiantly been doing a lot of that good work from his side with his facilities team. He'll provide that strong leadership with the central facilities, as he does with conservation, trees, parks facilities, grounds operation in our cemetery. Thank you, Cindy, for that overview. I'd like to appreciate questions. President Tracy. Two questions about sort of how this position is going to interface. So I know that it says that this is really focusing on oversight and accounting issues, but wanting to understand more about how, given the role in capital, how this reorganization will support the movement towards our net zero goals as a city. So how they're going to integrate some of those, that environmental thinking, in terms of how we make buildings more energy efficient and sustainable. And then also how this position, you know, given that you're saying that it's more oversight and accounting, what role this reorganization will play towards what I've sort of heard is being contemplated, like, you know, we're at the end of the first kind of chunk of the capital plan. So wanting to think about like, how does this set us up for that next kind of forward-looking element of the capital plan as we head into the next couple of years here? I'll just start on that, then I'll hand it over to the folks from DPW. But I think again with that leadership piece, you've been very reactive to a lot of the different issues in the city as far as maintenance end and having that leadership on there will help us be able to look forward to many of it. And Martha Keenan with the DPWS who's got to probably got the best answer for this one. I mean, she's already been doing a lot of that work, looking ahead to how do we tackle the energy? So I don't know if, Martha, if you wanna kick off to that or Jake then. Yeah, you know, Kim and I both have a very green background and she worked for all her three new ovals before this and so she loves green and those projects are every project that is done for facilities we'll be looking at how we can go towards net zero. And this group, it's a great step forward because now there will be someone who is keying solely on what do the facilities in the buildings need and building that plan with the capital and asset manager to make sure that as we go forward and as we look at if we go for another five year bond or if we go for new funding that we're getting the right projects done there and tying to the net zero goals. Councilor Pines. Yeah, this looks like a process that took some time. This looks like a real involved process to figure out how to do this and I really wanna commend everybody who was involved in that. And just to ask if, you know, sometimes when you look at a cost benefit in this instance the benefits are kind of described in a narrative way they're not really, and yet the cost is put out as a dollar amount. So on a quarterly, the first, I guess the first quarter of it's a cost if you will but there's some savings I think we have to acknowledge as the policy makers for the city is it looks like it's all cost but there's benefit there too. And I just think it's important for us to say that because I think, you know, to the average taxpayer it may look like we're just adding cost. So Brian, I would completely agree with that and that's a preventative maintenance end. You know, if we're on top of, you know all the preventative maintenance that needs to be done in the city with our buildings you save so much money with, you know doing that fix before things break. And I remember Martha had an example at one point of I think it was something at the library without having that diligent focus on our facilities that, you know, something got missed and this will help us enable that. So again, that preventative maintenance goes a long way for saving a lot of money for the city. My only request is that somebody take a stab sometime at figuring out the avoided costs that were the things we're avoiding in costs rather than just the financial outlay which again on the balance sheet looks like we're only spending more, we're not saving anything. So. As we move into asset management and our analysis we will be doing KPIs that will show you what we're saving. So we will be excited when we start doing those analyses to be able to come back and show you how this move is going to save the city money capital-wise and operating once we get it up and running. Great and thanks. My question is we're not meant to suggest I think this is great is a great move really appreciate your work. When we've looked at this analytically, Councillor Pine there's definitely opportunity on the table there in terms of the percentage of our efforts that go into preventative work versus repair work. We've been shifting in this direction on all of our assets but there's still a ways to go to get where we need to be and this is definitely a significant step in that direction. So I agree with your observation that it's important that we quantify that going forward and we'll work to do that. Councillor Jenning. Thank you, Semeo. This is more for Marcia. And I think in the memo here it states we have the city has 40 plus. On top of your head, how many is it? 45, 49? Buildings. Yes. It would be close to 45 and that doesn't include all of your little park pavilions, et cetera. So there are more than that when you take into account every park's little building. Yeah. And also the other question maybe for each one of you. When we talk about maintenance, I mean I think it would be important maybe next time to clarify what type of maintenance we're talking about. Is it ground maintenance or building maintenance or, you know, and in maintenance also we talk about cleaning, you know. And I was just wondering, are we talking about both? Maintaining the parks? Are we talking about all of this? Good. So this one here would be maintenance of our buildings. So pretty much the inside of the buildings, I mean with some exception are custodians that would fall under central facilities. They do some shoveling of the walkways outside of the building, but we're talking about the building structures or the grounds would still stay under the, you know, that's still a division or it's going to be a program within grounds. And I just want to give one kudos to one of the employees on this list that is looking, we looked at the job description, updated the job description. And that's Senge who oversees the custodians. He's the lynchpin. I mean, talk about somebody who has been just done a phenomenal job for this city during the pandemic with our custodians who kept us all safe that have had to come into the buildings. And Senge has coordinated his crews when, you know, something happens and, you know, some folks are out because of, you know, needing to quarantine. He, you know, figures out who to put where and how he can get a little bit there. So it's really exciting to be able to see Senge become working to a working form and position as compared to the facility for the interposition that he was in. So hats off to him. And then also to Chris Baudry, who's our, until you make the motion, he is our, he is our facilities manager. He'll become the parks facilities manager. Chris has really done the dance with central facilities and, and parks facilities trying to kind of manage the two of them. So he really, again, is another amazing city employee who somewhat recently became our facilities manager from their working form and position himself. So it's just great to see people in the city, the city employees who are able to work up through. And there's very valuable employees for the city. Yeah. Thank you. And for doing that plug also for Senge. Great guy. And lastly, I think it is more reading this to me. It's more like you're looking into making sure that the city departments are working more efficiently. This is more of an efficient than cost saving from, from that I read it. But, and at the same time, I see also there are, you know, some of these positions are union exempt and others are not. And just was wondering if you encountered any issues or there is no issue at all. It's just you want to be more efficient and anyone involved in this is, is ready and want to move forward. Yeah, we've had, you know, unanimous support from everybody involved in the process. People believe in what we're doing and are behind it. So thank you for checking on that. Okay. Are we, are we ready for a motion? Motion. Make the motion. Hold on. Yep. So I think this is a long motion. If you allow me to, I want to make the motion to approve and recommend that. Does the city council. As stated on board of what doc. Very good seconded by councilor pine. Discussion any further discussion. Seeing none, we will go to vote. All those in favor of the motion. Yeah. All right. Any opposed. The motion carries unanimously. Excellent. Thank you to the team, big team that worked on this as you pointed out, councilor pine for considerable time. And really over years in some sense, studying this and bringing this forward. So. With that, we will go to 4.08 creation of the accounting committee. And then we will move on to the next slide. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Assistant. Regular part-time position. And. Council. Council Paul. Sorry. Sorry about that. Just wanted to, I'm not really sure exactly. Do you as the host Catherine need to enable gallery view? I can check. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if people that are watching can see us. Councilor. Paul and for those in the attendees, you can, you can toggle between different views by going in the upper right hand corner of the screen, the view button. You should be able to change the view that way. All right. I just wanted to make sure that there isn't something that makes it so that that can't happen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We are on item 4. Oh, eight Catherine or Tony. Do you want to say anything about this to kick us off here? I can just say quickly that. This is a position that I did not realize. Kind of already existed in CT. In the past three years, we have been working on this for temporary labor. And that has been filled by a few different people. Over these past three years. But when we really looked at that history, we consistently realized that we needed someone 30 hours a week. For the next three years. We had to hire a three to an employee for, and since we were already paying it, obviously that makes it more attractive for a potential candidate. And we can offer them that stability. So we're keeping it at a 30 hour a week position, but we would like to transfer that to. A regular position instead of always relying on temps. I want to make the motion to approve and recommend to the city council approve the creation of an accounting assistant regular part-time, not exempt, AFSCME grade 12 position in the clerk pressure's office. Thank you. Is there a second? Seconded by President Tracy. Discussion? Councillor Pion? I just have one request, and that is as somebody who spent some time working in a position that was not temporary, but it was limited service, that we do get really sharpen our pencil and look at all the positions that are out there temporary and limited service and evaluate whether we can move people, because when you move people over, it truly is a career move for them, really. I mean, as Councillor Paul has said many times, keeping people as limited service is something we should really limit the service, but also, we should be looking at temporary, so a career ladder is what we should be creating, and I think this is a great example, and I hope we'll do that, and I'm glad we found this one, and I hope maybe there will be some others there as well. Thanks. I appreciate you bringing that up, Councillor Pion. And with Councillor Paul's help, I think we have a very good handle on limited service, and the limited service positions, we have all make sense, or we have a plan for transitioning if they don't, but for the most part, it's very few, it's about 12 or 14, and I think you're right, the next level, so to speak, is finding those temporary positions, and also the HR team and I are working on that, so we appreciate your support when we find these positions to take the next step of what makes sense here, so we will continue to look for those and bring them to you as appropriate so we can do the right thing for our employees. Thanks. Okay. I think we're still, I don't believe we have a motion yet on the side. We do. Councillor Jang moved. Okay, sorry, you're right. It was seconded by President Tracy. Okay. Are we ready for a vote now? Go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And the motion carries unanimously, and that brings us to our final item of the night, acceptance and approval of the FY 2020 audited comprehensive annual financial reports. Would you like to, and we've talked about this a few times, Catherine, would you like to add anything? I don't think there's anything to add other than this is the last step, and we are all extremely happy to be here. If there are any further questions, I'm happy to answer that. Councillor Paul. Thank you, Mayor. I would make a motion to recommend that the city council approve the attached resolution. Great. Seconded by Councillor Perron. Any discussion? All right. Let me just say thank you to Catherine, Rich, everyone involved in the hard work over a lot of months to bring this important piece of work to a conclusion. And with that, we will go about all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And that completes the deliberative agenda. And if there is no objection, we will adjourn as a Board of Finance at 6.14 p.m. And hand it over to you to President Tracy. Yep. Thank you so much, Mayor. We'll be getting started with the regular council meeting right around seven. We have a pretty light agenda this evening, but if you are interested in speaking for public forum, you may do so by going to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. So that's burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. That'll take you to a forum that you can use to sign up. And then we'll call on you closer at 7.30. Don't have too many folks signed up now. So if you are interested in speaking, you can go ahead and do that at this point. We will likely try to get to, we'll probably get to a number of deliberative or non-deliberative items prior to 7.30. So committee reports, Mayor, if it's okay with you, your report, those kinds of things will have to go beforehand. So just be aware that we're going to get to some things in maybe a different order than maybe indicated on Board Ducks just to make sure that we have enough time. We'll try to get as much done before we get into that without making any decisions or taking any votes before the public forum. So we'll, if folks want to turn off their cameras, feel free, we'll get back, we'll reconvene it closer to 7. And then if I could also just be, I don't know if I've been made host yet, but if I could be just shifted over to host just so that I can have perfect thank you so that I can enable folks when the time comes for public forum. Wonderful. We need a bit, folks. Meeting of the City Council at 7.02. First things first is the pledge. So let's go ahead and do that before getting into the agenda. Brings us to the first item on the agenda, which is in fact our agenda. Meg, please go to Councillor Stromberg for a motion on our agenda for this evening. And move to amend, adopt the agenda as follows. Presentation slides for agenda item 5.01, ordinance BCO, housing change regarding energy efficiency and weatherization in rental housing, chapter 18, ordinance committee, Department of Permitting and Inspections per Assistant City Attorney Devlin. Great. We have a motion on the agenda, seconded by Councillor Paul. Any discussion of the agenda? Okay. Seeing none. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Hearing none, that carries unanimously and we have our agenda. We do have quite a light agenda this evening, folks. And so with public forum not being time-certain until 7.30, we won't go to that quite yet. I'm going to go to non-deliberative items. We won't take any votes as that is our practice and in fact the open meeting law, we have to offer an opportunity for public comment prior to deliberative action. So we'll go to non-deliberative items and we'll certainly not take any votes prior to the public forum itself. So I'm going to jump past the public forum. Like I said, if you are interested in signing up for that public forum, you may do so by going to Burlington VT.gov slash city council slash public forum and that will get you signed up for that forum. Before we go to that, go into the public forum, though, I'm going to go to several of our reports. I'll skip past that to item number three, which are the climate emergency reports. Does anybody have a climate emergency report that they would like to offer? Councillor Pine, go ahead. Thank you. I think we all, well, the community decided last week that we need to move forward on climate, our climate crisis and our climate emergency and take action and take that action in a way that really advances our values as a community. And I just want to mention that something that I have been familiar with, a concept that I'm going to just keep, keep putting out there and finding some support for is the idea of inclusive financing as a way to ensure that property owners can use some creative financing to bring about the transformation that we need as a community to take, we need to transform the way we heat and cool our buildings and one of the most effective ways to do that is to provide really attractive financing. And so I just want to put it out there that we will be discussing in the future, in the near future, something regarding a concept which is, you can look it up, it's called tariffed on bill financing and it's a concept which has gained momentum elsewhere, kind of started here for some reason in Vermont, but it never really took off, but it's been adopted elsewhere and it's a talk about a, it's a game changer. It will really be significant if we can make it happen and I'm hopeful that we can. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Pine, did any other councillors have climate emergency reports to offer this evening? Who wants? Twice. Okay. We'll go ahead and close down that item and move past our consent agenda. Again, we will go back to that and take any votes on that or deliberative items. So we'll also skip through item number five or deliberative agenda to come back to that later on. I will now move into item number six, which are committee reports. Did any committee chair have a report to offer this evening? Councillor Paul, go ahead. Thanks. The, the long and tortured pack meeting that was originally scheduled for January and twice in February that had to be canceled due to the special meeting for the City Council and a couple of other reasons is now rescheduled for March 10th, which is the meeting of the City Council. And we will be doing what we were going to be doing back in January, which is an overview of the library, parks and rec and BCA in terms of spring and summer planning. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Any other committee chairs have a report to offer? Go ahead. Councillor Pine. Yeah. The community development and neighborhood revitalization committee has been focusing on this question of. What we as a community should be considering as, as ways to provide more support for our older members of our community. And we have a meeting on March 31st. It will be devoted to that topic. We have a, luckily we have some great partners in the community who provide services to seniors and they have agreed to come forward with a proposal. So we'll have something as a committee to discuss by the end of the month. At that meeting we'll also be getting an update on progress with the early learning initiatives from staff. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Any Councillor Mason, go ahead. Thank you, President Tracy. The joint planning commission and City Council ordinance committee. We'll be meeting tomorrow at six 30 on zoom. To continue its discussion. Of the short-term rental. Policy debate. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Any other chairs like to report? Go ahead. Council. Yes. The joint committee of the public safety committee and the police commission has our next meeting. Next Monday at March 15th. On that meeting, we will hear back from Tolita consultants on how the process went with NGOs and understanding gaps in public safety and how to fill them. Just as importantly, this week will be our first meeting with an NPA. So at the ward one and eight NPA meeting, Tolita will have a conversation along those lines as well. And then we've got one other one scheduled for four and seven. I don't remember the date or whatever that. The NPA meeting for that is, and we're hoping to schedule. The other two NPA meetings. Shortly after that. So look forward to having conversations on public safety. Through your NPAs over the next month, hopefully. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. Councillor Hanson. Thanks. The license and local control subcommittee is going to be meeting next Wednesday at 17. At five PM. Via via zoom. As always. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. The racial equity inclusion and belonging committee is meeting every second Tuesday of every month. So for this month's, it will be on the 16. Five 30 via zoom. And we will be receiving some updates in specific to the racial equity inclusion and belonging. Strategic planning. As well as. The reparation task force a little bit. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Chang. Any other committee chairs? Great. Thanks for all those reports, folks. We'll move on to the next item, which are general city affairs. Did anyone have a general city affairs? Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, President Tracy. You all might remember that back in January, 2020. The council passed a resolution regarding the per pupil waiting study. Asking our legislators. Both to respond to this study, which demonstrated that Burlington is at a rather severe challenge. In how we're being funded. Based on this new study. And so I just wanted to reiterate. That the resolve clauses that we agreed upon back in January, 2020, which said now therefore be it resolved that the Burlington city council hereby respectfully. And firmly request that the Vermont house and Vermont city council hereby respectfully and firmly request that the Vermont house and Vermont Senate review the study. And take immediate action based on study findings to revise funding formulas in this legislative session, which would have been last year. Assuring that all Vermont students have equal opportunity in education. That got put on the back burner, of course, because of COVID, but the resolution that we agreed upon. And so I just wanted to reiterate that the resolution that we agreed upon, that the resolution that we agreed upon, that we would allow into this session. The second resolve clause was be a further resolved that the Burlington city council respectfully and firmly requests that the resolution shall be sent to every Burlington representative and all Chittenden County senators with a request for a response, so that we can ensure fairness and equity for all Vermont students. There's a very important vote taking place on this. March 22nd, which is prior to our next meeting. And we've been asked to join a coalition of school boards and city councils that are working to move this forward. And President Tracy, I was hoping that. Based on the resolution previously passed. be willing to contact all of our legislators, along with the mayor's office, if possible, to remind them of this resolution. We have at least one Chittenden County Senator who noted that making these revisions would not benefit the South Burlington School District. However, he represents Chittenden County, not the South Burlington School District. And more importantly, the current waiting system is not only unfair, it's illegal. We need to have fairness in order to be legal. Our students are at a severe disadvantage and we really need our legislators to address this legislatively. And hopefully this doesn't have to go to the courts to be resolved. So I know we don't have a back and forth President Tracey, but this was, of course, unanimous. There isn't anybody in Burlington who would not be supportive of this effort. And I just request that you do whatever you can to get the attention of our legislators, let them know we are watching, and ask them to report back to us at our March 24th meeting as we had requested in this resolution dated January 2020. Thank you for that, Councillor Shanann. I'm happy to reach out to them and can see if they're available to come to our next meeting, which is actually on the 22nd. So it will be the day of the vote. So that could actually be helpful for us in terms of just getting information. So I appreciate you bringing this up and I can reach out to our delegation and see what their availability might look like. Thank you. Did others have additional general city affairs commentary? Councillor Hanson, go ahead. Well, first of all, I agree with Councillor Shanann. I think that's really critical and appreciate you for doing that, President Tracey. But the other thing I just wanted to mention is just thanking all the workers, both in terms of our city team, our city elections team in the Clerk Treasurer's Office, as well as all the volunteer poll workers for pulling off a unique COVID town meeting day and just doing an incredible job, ensuring that our local democracy functions and that everyone who wants to vote is able to and can be sure that their vote counts. So I think it was pretty remarkable feat that was pulled off. Once again, this team has done a few elections during COVID now, but yeah, just thank you so much to Amy Bovee and Lori Olberg, the whole city team and all the volunteers across the city for their work. Absolutely, very much appreciate that. Yeah, let's give them a round of applause for all their hard work. That was absolutely incredible. Really appreciate all of our wonderful clerks and elections workers and that's great. Thanks for bringing that up, Councillor Hanson. I had Councillor Jang next in the queue. Thank you. And I think, you know, but Jack, well, Councillor Hanson just talked about is beautiful. Nice. And to the second point is what Councillor Shannon also talked about. I think yes, President Tracy and also the administration can maybe send a joint letter, but at the same time as also individually, especially with the state representatives, we can also reach out to them that this is dearly to us. Thank you, Councillor Shannon, for that reminder and also for our sheet in the county senators, right? Yeah. And lastly, I think there is an issue here in this community that even the seven days picked up, gravity is on the rise in the city. It's a big issue. And I think it is starting now to bring some concerns of federal employees who are seeing federal properties being vandalized. And to tell you the truth, some of these gravities, gravities are beautiful. They are extremely some piece of arts. But now how do we harness the beauty in this city? And also what are the specific city departments that need to work alongside maybe the police department and to just harness this new energy that is being here on the rise. And was just wondering also if the administration can send a communication to the community because many people feel that the city is not doing nothing about it. I mean, and I think I'm sure action steps are already taken, but for us also to not come from a punishment angle, but at the same time, how do we harness this? And maybe at our next meeting at PAC, maybe we can start to balance some ideas. Just wanted to put that out there. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Are there others wishing to speak to general city affairs? Okay, seeing, oh, Councillor Appall, go ahead. Thanks. So yes, second and third, what Councillor Hanson said we're very, very lucky to have a wonderful group of people doing overseeing our elections and I'm sure that we all think that the elections volunteers that we have in our board are the best in the city. I personally think that the election volunteers in board six are the best in the city, but I will understand if there aren't a lot of people who agree with me. In any event, it was a well-run election. Just wanted to mention that the next the food distribution for the month of March that takes place at the Champlain Elementary parking lot is going to be on March 27th. Anyone in need is welcome to and encouraged to come and just want to express appreciation to the number of city councilors who have come, have put these events on front porch forum and have encouraged others to come. It's been a wonderful effort and I'm grateful for all of your support as is every person that comes to these events and is most appreciative of the work that's being done. So thanks very much. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Any additional comments on general city affairs from councillors? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to the next item which is city council president update. I don't have any updates with regards to our functioning though I did want to let the council and the public know that I will be seeking another term as council president for the upcoming council. We have one more meeting as this council on the 22nd as I said before, after which point we will have our organization day in early April where we'll hear the state of the city and also have the swearing in of new councillors as well as the mayor. So I will be seeking out another term. I feel that I'd like to continue on as city council president given that we've had very tumultuous and challenging year. I'd like to continue on in order to see us through this recovery and coming out of the pandemic hopefully back into con toys and like to actually get a chance to run a meeting in con toys and the new and improved con toys if members of the public don't know there's significant work happening at city hall including a new sound system and some insulation. So I'd like to run a meeting in there at some point. So that's just something that I wanted to put out there I'll certainly be seeking out feedback and additional comments from councillors in that process of it but I just wanted to give folks that heads up that I will be seeking another year as council president. With that, I will turn it over to Mayor Weinberger for your update mayor. Go ahead. Thank you President Tracy. It is quite something to think you've gone through a whole term without having had the chance to oversee, to lead a meeting in con toys that does line up with the fact we were about to hit the one year anniversary of the first COVID cases here in documented COVID cases here in Vermont and the declaration of a state and city emergency it's been quite a year. There was just as the meeting was getting started tonight so further news on the COVID front in that the State Department of Health confirmed what the Burlington wastewater testing expected suspected a month ago, which is that there is a confirmed case now of the UK variant here in Burlington, which is in Chittany County, which is not necessarily a cause for alarm, but it is a reminder that as we hear all this positive news that gets better every week with respect to the vaccines, we are still in a period where there is a danger, there is a threat. Somehow just in the last couple of weeks, I've become aware of some deaths quite close to the city team. It just underscores that until we can get everyone vaccinated, which we are now projecting by administration says there should be vaccine for all American adults by May. So we're getting towards the end of this, but the threats remain, we need to remain vigilant and the confirmation of the new strain is a reminder of that tonight. Two more uplifting notes. One, I too wanted to thank the city, the Clerk Treasurer's team for another successful election. I think it's worth pointing out this is the third election that the city clerk's team and all the volunteers have had to conduct during this pandemic and all three of them have required extra steps, new ways of doing things, innovation, lots of additional work and all three of them now have been successfully completed elections and I offer my thanks as well. Another milestone last week for the community, downtown BHS opened, congratulations again to the Burlington School District and Superintendent Flanagan and everyone involved in the quick decision making and an enormous amount of action that needed to happen since the end of August to make that possible. Sorry, it had an impact on our household and hundreds of other households here in Burlington and we wish the district continued success with downtown BHS and the city's gonna continue to do everything we can to welcome students to our downtown and offer experiential education opportunities and support in the downtown to make this a special part of the high school experience, not although an unexpected one. And that is all I had today, President Tracy, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. We've got about five minutes until we get into the public forum. We did have a couple of folks signed up so I don't wanna go into any presentations right now before that forum. So I'm gonna go to some of our speakers and we can just wait until 7.30, it'll be a minute or so and then we'll see if anybody signs up at that point. So our first speaker of the evening is Sharon Busher and I believe former Councillor Busher is on the line on a phone call, on a phone. So Councillor Busher, I'm gonna go and enable your phone. Hi, good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, one moment, Councillor. I believe we're waiting to just, I think we need to get the timer up one moment. Oh, okay. Can I get the abilities to share the screen, please? Yes, I will shift one second, one moment, yep. Okay, now you should be able to do so now. Okay, fantastic. We have the timer up now. Sharon, so if you'd like to go ahead, you can begin. Okay, thank you. Good evening. I just wanted to dovetail on what the mayor talked about with Burlington High School being there in downtown Burlington. I watched it on TV and it's just so important for people to get back into the classroom. And the space looks pretty good from my living room and on the TV. So anyways, I'm excited for them and it's so good for their mental health. But I'm calling this evening because I wanted to speak to your item, the ordinance on change regarding energy efficiency and weatherization and rental housing chapter 18. And I've been following this through the ordinance committee and I certainly support all the additional language, the new definitions and the new minimum energy standards. What I'm concerned about is that this originally was the time of sale ordinance. And as you look at what you have before you, that has been completely deleted. Beth Fax and Blair Hamilton spent months and months working on this and the intent for time of sale was not to just stop with what we had on paper, it was supposed to be the beginning. And it was, as you all know, a political compromise. The intent was to have it applied to all time of sale properties. But when all was said and done, they had only applied to rental properties. I feel that with your proposed new ordinance, which eliminates time of sale, you have taken maybe a half step forward and a side step, but you haven't really fully realized what energy efficiency we could attain. If indeed we coupled time of sale with properties being sold and having them come into compliance for energy efficiency with also the new language. I feel that- Erin, if you could just pop up. Certainly. I just hope that during these two meetings, you will look at that part of the ordinance before you delete it and perhaps reconsider. Thank you. Thank you. Right. I am able to locate our other speaker who has signed up, Dale Tillotson. Dale, I've located your phone number and will enable your microphone. Again, if folks are interested in speaking at the public forum, you may sign up by going to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. There's a sign up sheet there. So Dale, I've enabled your microphone. Looks like you're muted on your end. Dale, I've enabled you. You just need you to be unmuted on your end. Good evening. Great. Glad we were able to get you on, Dale. Go ahead when you're ready. Yes, thank you, Mr. President, for taking my call. Through the last year, especially, I've been watching city council and following city council proceedings very closely. Very disappointed in the movements that you've made concerning Burlington Police Department, as well as many other issues, including the airport. Back a few years ago, I fully supported giving city council members a $3,000 raise, up to $6,000 per year. With the actions of this present city council, I think it is now time to downgrade those raises. With COVID in effect, we no longer can afford radical ideas like reducing the police department by 30% putting the public in safety. Putting the public in a safety position where they're not safe. Putting the public in a position where they have to carry mace to protect themselves because we do not have enough officers on the streets. As far as the airport is concerned, some of the counselors seem to want to eliminate the airport. I expect some of these same city counselors probably get deliveries through FedEx and UPS where the hell do you think those are coming from? They're coming through the airport. So eliminate the airport because, well you just don't think it's necessary anymore. That's very poor. That's very poor. I think it's now time that we eliminate some of the payments for the city council because they're not acting in a professional manner and they're putting our safety in jeopardy. Thank you. Thank you, Dale. All right, I don't have any other folks signed up for our forum this evening. Let me just refresh and just make sure. I'm not seeing anyone in the inbox either. Okay, in this case, I will go ahead and close the public forum seeing as we have gotten through everyone this evening. And we will move now having already completed item number three, which is the climate emergency reports. We'll move right to our consent agenda. Councillor Stromberg, may I please have a motion on the consent agenda? I move to approve, sorry, I'm gonna pull it up. Yes, I move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Thank you, Councillor Stromberg. Is there a second to that? Seconded by Councillor Pine. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none. Let's go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that carries unanimously. Brings us now into our deliberative agenda. However, we'll be, we do have another meeting structure that we need to get into. And I just wanna address that prior to getting into our deliberative agenda, that being our Board of Civil Authority, which is the mayor's meeting to run. So I will go ahead and recess this meeting briefly so that we can address those items prior to getting back into our deliberative agenda. I'll recess us at 733 and bring it over to Mayor Weinberger so that we may go through the agenda having to do with the Board of Civil Authority. Thank you, President Tracey. I'll call the Board of Civil Authority to order at 733 p.m. And I would walk on motion from my Councillor on the agenda and let's see if I, go ahead, Councillor Paul. Thanks, I'll make a motion to adopt the agenda. Thank you. Seconded by Councillor Pine. Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the consent agenda. I'd walk on motion, Councillor Paul. Thanks, I'll make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Excellent, is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Pine. Discussion of the consent agenda. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and without objection, we are adjourned as a Board of Civil Authority at 7.35 p.m. And I hand it back to you, President Tracy. Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate you running that meeting and getting through that business. And we will now reconvene the regular City Council meeting at 7.35 and just pick up where we left off on our deliberative agenda, which is item 5.01 and ordinance regarding energy efficiency and weatherization and rental housing. We have a presentation, but prior to getting to that presentation explaining this item, I'm gonna go to Councillor Hansen for a motion on this. Councillor Hansen. Thanks, I'll move that we waive the first reading and set for second reading and adoption on March 22nd. And I would ask for the floor back up to a second. Sure, seconded by Councillor Mason, go ahead, Councillor Hansen. My screen is frozen. I can't mute or unmute. I may have to log out and log back in. Director Ward, I'm hearing you just fine. Okay, I apologize. I seem to have lost my ability to change the settings on my screen. Okay, all right. Well, I'll let, I'm gonna go to Councillor Hansen now and just have him do his introduction to the resolution and then we'll come to you. So if there's other issues, we can hopefully sort those out when we get to that one moment. Councillor Hansen, you have the floor. Okay, did we get a second there? Sorry. Yep, Councillor Mason seconded. Okay, great, great. Well, thanks. And yeah, I know we have a presentation coming up. So I'll just try to give a little bit of a high level overview on this before we jump into that. So I'm really excited to be get coming back to the full council with this, this long overdue ordinance change regarding mandatory rental weatherization. In Vermont, we've really, for a long time now, we've believed in the importance of energy efficiency as a way to reduce negative environmental impacts and address the climate crisis to improve health and quality of life, to save Vermonter's money and to build our local economy. Weatherization is one of the most important examples of energy efficiency that we have. And it's really about reducing the amount of air leakage in a building by sealing up cracks and improving insulation and creating a building envelope that holds in as much heat as possible. For owner occupied housing, there's a pretty straightforward economic incentive for weatherization, which is just the savings are, the savings annually on heating bills are greater than what you would spend on the improvements, especially when, as Councillor Pine referenced, when the financing is favorable and you can spread it out over time, and especially with the incentives that we have available in Vermont. But for rental units, it's a lot less straightforward because the property owner is the one paying for those improvements. But it's the tenant, usually, who's paying the utility bills and it would be the tenant receiving those savings. So that's a problem that we've recognized as a city for at least 25 years. And as Councillor Buscher referenced, we tried to start addressing that issue with this time of sale ordinance because we realized that the incentives alone aren't enough and that we actually do need to compel landlords to do this work. So we passed this time of sale ordinance, which would require that anytime a rental property changes ownership, energy efficiency upgrades would need to be made at the time of that sale. And then two years ago in 2019, we asked for a report back on the impact of the time of sale ordinance and the state of energy efficiency in rental housing in Burlington. And that report really showed that because there's such low turnover of ownership of rental units and because of the lack of a strong enforcement mechanism, relatively few rental units had actually been compelled to weatherize through this ordinance. And so many of us have been working hard these last few years to try to universalize that program and add teeth to it, which as Councillor Buscher referenced, there's always been a desire to expand from time of sale. And so when I say long overdue, it's been over two decades and now we're finally creating that expansion if this passes. This would require almost all rental units that are not already efficient or that have not recently had weatherization work done to do so in the coming years. This is also really important because it'll help prepare us for the transition away from fossil fuel. Heating sources because having a tight building envelope makes a lot of the newer technologies like cold climate heat pumps function a lot better and make them more feasible. People will often ask about the economics of this. How are you gonna pay for it? Is this gonna drive up housing costs? I think it's first important to remind everyone that the savings, again, are typically greater than the costs. That's with no incentives at all. But right now we have from Vermont Gas and Burlington Electric Department 75% incentive covering three quarters of the costs of this work. And the savings on the tenant side are gonna kick in immediately and they're pretty substantial in terms of monthly heating costs in the winter. So I think the real question is how can we not afford to do this and how can we keep asking tenants to pay hundreds of dollars a month in heating bills and how can our climate afford to continue to waste all of this natural gas in Burlington? So this is a policy that I've talked to hundreds of constituents about and even outside of my district over the last couple of years. It's incredibly popular. I think it would have a huge impact on the lives of so many people in Burlington and I'm really excited that we're finally bringing it back to the full council. And I hope that we can unanimously approve this and really shift into the implementation and getting this work done. Thanks. Thank you for that introduction, Councillor Hanson. At this point, I think it'd be good time to turn it over to the presentation before we get into comments and questions from councillors. So Director Ward, are you able to share your screen or are we gonna be, someone else gonna be doing that this evening? Bill, Jen Green here. I'm happy to share if that's convenient for you. I'm not hearing from Bill. I know that Bill was, that Director Ward was having some technical issues with their machine. So why don't we go ahead and have you share, Jen and then don't know if Director Ward, if you're able to unmute yourself. Okay, so I'm not having any success. President Tracy. Yep, Councillor Macy, go ahead. I know Chris Burns was also one. So I don't know whether Chris, this is a pretty short PowerPoint. Maybe Mr. Burns might be able to step in and pick it up while Bill. Sure. Chris, do you feel like you're able to fill in and just take us through this presentation? There we go. Chris isn't available. I can do it as well. Okay. Chris, you're muted at this point right now. I don't know if you heard that, but I was just asking if you might be able to, given the technical issues that Bill is experiencing, if you might be able to just walk us through the presentation and get Bill on. With Jen's help. Sorry about that. It looks like both Bill and I are having computer trouble. Yeah, no problem. All right. Well, why don't you kick us off and hopefully we can get Bill on and then we can go through the rest of the presentation. So go ahead. Certainly. Councillor Hanson did a wonderful job explaining the history and the context. And we just have a few slides to just tell you where we're at presently and some of the additional work we have to do. So Jen, if you wouldn't mind going to the next slide. Sorry folks. So we just wanted to remind everyone that this conversation started with the Mayor's Housing Summit and it was one of the pillars of the Mayor's effort. And the discussion was, as Councillor Hanson alluded to, time of sale churned through these buildings and these apartments rather slowly, because it was just simply based on if someone was going to sell the property or not. So the idea was, all right, we have a very robust minimum rental housing standard to begin with. What about embedding energy efficiency into that? And that would accelerate the number of buildings that need weatherization treatment greatly. And between BED and DPI, we have been working on how would we do that. And next slide, Jen, if you would. So without getting into the weeds, the number there deals with space heating loads of buildings because we 95 plus percent of our buildings use natural gas which is metered gas. It's very easy to separate the space heating load which is typically the largest load energy use in buildings from everything else. So whether it's the stove, the dryer, the hot water, we can look at what is it that is causing the heating bill, what's driving the heating bill. The assessor site gives us great insights into the finished square footage of the building, meaning what is the conditioned space that you're trying to heat. And we have tested this number quite a bit and that buildings that use more than that for space heating purposes tend to have opportunity for cost effective weatherization improvements to give you an idea. We are seeing buildings over 100,000 BTUs. These are buildings that typically have very little insulation are extremely leaky and then we see buildings that are at 20,000 BTUs. These are buildings that are either brand new construction or someone has done a wonderful job doing a deep energy retrofit, but it's kind of like miles per gallon in a car. If you want a really efficient car, well, there's a sticker that tells you what you get. So with buildings, we can do essentially the same thing. Takes a little bit more effort, but we feel pretty good that we can get to a good number. So, what are we talking about? We're talking about what the building presents and gives us. So if the exterior walls are empty, fill them, open attics, ceilings, roofs, slants, slopes, the things that are in our, many of our beautiful buildings in Burlington when they were built at the turn of the century, insulation just wasn't something we were thinking about. Anything that conveys the heat or cooling through the pipes of the ductwork, rattly windows and doors that could be weather stripped and door swept. And one of the biggest ways you can change a building is you can go find the pesky air leaks that are usually somewhere in the basement and somewhere between the house and the attic. And you can have a big impact on the performance of the building. So we're not talking about thickening buildings. We're not talking about adding insulation to the exterior or raising roofs. We're talking about traditional weatherization, which is what happens every day through Vermont Gases Program through the low-income weatherization program. Some very good stuff can happen to these buildings. Next slide, Jen, if you would. And again, it would apply to high-use buildings and buildings that have not recently and successfully participated in a weatherization program through BED, Vermont Gases, or the Champlain Valley Weatherization Service. The reason we talk about this is not all buildings will get under 50,000 BTUs. Every building has, you know, you can do just so much using traditional weatherization techniques and you may take a building that's at 100 and you may get it to 55. But you have done pretty much everything that that building has given you. It may be the fact that the reason the building is over 50 is that it has a 15-year-old heating plant in it. And when that plant needs to be replaced in five years, because of federal energy standards, you're gonna get a heating system that's 10 to 15% more efficient. So you're gonna get the opportunity to get under the 50 during the natural replacement of the heating equipment. So between doing the shell and doing high-efficiency appliances, some really good stuff can happen to the buildings. And we did borrow from the existing time-of-sale mechanism. There was a cap. It was originally passed without any kind of rate of inflation escalator. We've looked at through help from Vermont Gas and some other partners, what are actual costs of weatherizing these buildings today? What are the contractors charging to go in and do the exact work we're asking them to do? And we set the per unit cap at $2,500 a unit and then apply an annual consumer price index adjustment so that we keep up with inflation. So the way we have crafted this or suggested that it work is the first time through when you have to comply, you're gonna do everything up to that cap. We believe that a vast majority of buildings will get everything done in that first phase, especially if there is very aggressive and generous incentives available. If it so happens that they're not the next time they come around, which is within a three-year window, there is no cap in place and you must finish the work. So we feel that that's a reasonable way to help people phase in the work, especially if there's any concerns with how to capitalize these. And the next steps, the two staffs are now trying to really unpack how to take it from time of sale scheduling and put it into some kind of minimum housing code scheduling. This is weatherization by its nature is very different than minimum housing code inspections. We're still trying to figure out what's the most logical way to do it within the bandwidth of staff, within the bandwidth of available weatherization contractors which there's not a lot and there's a lot of competition for their services and then working out the enforcement process and then the collaboration, the data collaboration between the two teams. And I think that is it and happy to take any questions. Wonderful, thank you for that. And I think we have Director Ward back on. So do you have anything to add, Bill? No, but I think Chris just showed you what good collaboration is all about. So thank you, Chris, for pitching in at the last minute, but I'm happy to answer other questions that folks may have. Okay, wonderful. All right, so the floor is now open, Councillors. If you have comments or questions either for our presenters or if you'd like to speak to the motion, please by all means, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. I wanna sort of start by acknowledging and thanking all the staff that have put so much time into this, you know, Director Ward, Patty Wayman, Chris Burns, and Jen Green from BED, and then Kim Sturdivant and Tim from the City Attorney's Office. Collectively, just for the rest of the council, you know, there has been a very deep dive into the work that's before you and it's short, but I appreciate the thought that has gone in to sort of balancing the competing needs here, you know, to get the work done, to ensure, you know, tenant fairness and we hit our climate change goals, but also trying to come up with a system that doesn't, you know, basically impose inordinate costs on landlords that would then be pushed down to the tenant, which sort of defeated the whole purpose of this at the outset. And I know, you know, Chris has spoken at length with Vermont Gas. I also wanna be at a little bit of caution to I think the enthusiasm behind this while I am optimistic, there has been much attention before our committee brought to the fact that there are many shortages of contractors, you know, out there. And I'm looking forward to this sort of the implementation schedule that's gonna have to address the fact that at least now there are shortages and hopefully, you know, that will build up as we move forward. But for now, I wanna temper expectations in terms of how quickly this will be implemented. Certainly the schedule that we're expecting to get will go after sort of, I'll say the worst offenders first. You know, we did as a committee talk about whether it should be on a ward basis or south and north end and where we ended up and expect would be, you know, let's go after or assist, I should say, the worst offenders first out of the gate. I also wanted to address just briefly, former councilor Busher brought up a request to sort of consider modifying this to not remove the time of sale applicability. And that was something that we did discuss as a committee and it came down ultimately to an allocation of resources. What we heard was there was not an ability to go after those worst offenders and still continue to maintain the time of sale program as currently constructed. And it made sense to the committee to go after the worst offenders and move away from the time of sale. If we decide resources are available that we can reimplement that, that's certainly something this council could look at. But for now, I just wanted to bring to this, we did discuss the time of sale issue and it did also come down to a question of allocation of resources. So again, I appreciate all the work that's gone into this. I am fully supportive and look forward to, not tonight's vote, oh, not just tonight's vote but also our next meeting vote. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Mason. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Councilor Pine to be followed by councilor Freeman. Thank you. I would ask for, I would ask either councilor Hansen or Chris or Jen, somebody to clarify the CAP discussion was woven in here but I don't think there's a CAP, as I understand it in the proposed ordinance, is that correct that there's no CAP? Seeing. I'm happy to take that. Yeah, there should be language in there speaking to the 2,500 a unit and the CPI index applied annually. So, okay, my concern is that that number is, is seems rather arbitrary from my work in this field that you, I can understand why you wanna limit potential impact, because therefore it could affect rents and all those other issues, but I'm just worried that there's gonna be a lot of saving sort of left on the cutting room floor. And I'm just concerned that we're gonna, you have this opportunity and you're sort of giving up some of the potential benefit while they're in the building, doing the work, doing the assessment, they're deploying the crew and you're gonna do some of the air sealing, but you're gonna get to a point, I just, I'm just worried about that. Yeah, it's something that we really looked at and we were fortunate to get a really robust data set from Vermont Gas that showed for, it gave us 10 years, it gave us over 200 Burlington multi-family rental buildings. I'm not gonna get the math right, but over 600 apartments, average building had about three and a half apartments in it when you did the math. So the 2,500 is predicated on real weatherization contractor costs before incentive. So we felt very comfortable that and Vermont Gas's requirements for program participation are much higher than the ordinance. So we feel like we're gonna get a lot of work done, if not all the work done in the first phase of the buildings. Just welcome for Councillor Payne. Okay, thanks. Let me just first, I wanna just say that over two years ago, I met with Jack Hansen before he was Councillor Hansen and he came to meet me at VEC and we talked about this idea and Jack said this is gonna be his key issue, one of his key issues. And didn't just run on it, but when he got elected, he actually held lots of discussions, he facilitated lots of activists engaging in this and even came to a meeting at VEC as a counselor to talk about this with a group of others. So I wanna just give Jack some of the credit here because I think it's important for us to remember when we propose things on the campaign trail, we don't often, we don't always see them turn into something. And I just wanted to say that Jack was persistent and that tenacity is part of the reason why I believe this has advanced to where it is. I wanna just point out that the whole idea that President Biden has been embracing really is something that Senator Sanders and Van Jones and others in this movement have been calling green collar jobs for over a decade and that we have to view this as ultimately an economic development strategy in addition to transitioning away from our fossil fuel addiction that's causing so much harm to our planet. So I want us to really embrace the idea that workforce development actually shouldn't just be like an ancillary benefit, but it actually should be the core, should be a core of what we're trying to accomplish. And one example was there was actually a photo of a building that over 30 years ago, I was part of a deep energy retrofit with youth employment, learning how to do the work on a building on Front Street that was in the slides that Chris Burns showed earlier. So that's just an example of how connecting it to youth build, connecting it to the Burlington Tech Center we have a building trades program at our Tech Center. We need to really ramp this up so that young people can see this as part of their career ladder is to develop the skills and to understand that the economy is what is going to be able to offer them both the climate impacts and the economic impacts are real, are really significant here. And I hope we won't site of that. And I'm hoping that the $2,500 a unit cap becomes irrelevant because we offer such attractive incentives that owners will go further and do more while they've got the crew there and they've got BED pushing for people to do fuel switching if possible and Vermont gas right in there with them, I hope. So I really hope we can take it to another level. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Pine. I have Councillor Freeman and to be followed by Mayor Weinberger. Got you, Councillor Hightower after that. Go ahead, Councillor Freeman. Thank you, President Tracy. I don't have too much more to add just that I thought the presentation was really helpful. This discussion has been really helpful. It was also good to hear more of the context around the time of sale. I was guessing that having sort of both components would be a capacity issue. So I was glad to hear some more information about that. I also, I really just want to say thank you to the ordinance committee, you know, Councillors Mason, Hanson, Hightower for all your work on this as well as numerous city staff, city employees. I'm really, really excited about this. And I just feel really grateful for all the work that's gone into it. It's clear, you know, Councillor Mason, you mentioned like you all went on, did a really deep dive into the details and it's really clear. And I just really appreciate the work and I'm really excited to support this. So thank you. Thank you, Councillor Freeman. I have Mayor Weinberger to be followed by Councillor Hightower. Thank you, President Tracy. Couple of just detailed points and then I just want to address sort of a couple of big picture things as well. The detail points just being this, I mean, first of all, I want to speak to the cost cap issue and the time of sale issue since there's been discussion on both. I think it's important to point out the cost cap only applies to the first time in which the property falls under this regulation. If in that case, that work is done the first time as I understand it and the unit is still or the building is still consuming more than 50,000 BTUs per unit, essentially that unit will be issued an extension to come into compliance with that 50,000 BTU limit and at the end of that extension, the cost cap no longer applies. So there's a significant additional incentive to Councillor Pine's point that you'd want, if there is a real efficiency we gain by doing it all at once, that's the fact that there will be no cost cap that second time around, I think is a significant push in that direction. Secondly, with, I don't see the removal of the point of sale regulation as a capacity issue. I see it as a redundancy issue. If this applies, basically a major policy decision was made in the development of this to move away from this model of only regulating these buildings when they come up for sale. And this just says every property, every rental property is now captured by this. And you really wouldn't, within a relatively short period of time, there's no longer, you know, really a point of the point of sale from my perspective existing anymore once you've gone through a full cycle of this, which takes me to the kind of big picture point I wanna make, which is at the time at least that this was being drafted during the course of the two mayor summits in 2019, there were very few other communities. This may, I expect this may have changed in the, you know, year and a half since then, but very few communities that had actually taken this step and made this a hard requirement of all, of all rental properties. I think this is a bold policy step forward that I'm really excited, is one that I think we are doing with quite a bit of consensus amongst the elected leaders. You know, we've spent a lot of time in these meetings over the last year on issues where there's disagreement here. I sense there's a lot of consensus. You see, I think that there is consensus in the community in the ballot question number three that passed by a large majority last week. I hope this is the first of a number of important new regulations that we'll put in place to move our buildings in this direction. And I do just want to further complement part of the consensus with the builders as well. There was quite a bit of work that went on reaching out to stakeholders, reaching out to the people who will actually be responsible for these properties. And in some cases doing the work and where there was questions and concerns at first, this process has been a good and thorough one. And it's encouraging that at least tonight, I know there's still time, but at least tonight we don't hear major voices of concern for something that really is a very bold and significant step forward. So I'm excited this is getting to this point tonight. Looking forward to it coming back on the 22nd for our final passage. Thank you, Mayor. I have Councillor Hightower to be followed by Councillor Chang. Yeah, I'm going to do be quick because a lot of it is just echoing what other folks have said. Yeah, a huge thank you to Councillor Hansen for taking this off a year ago. And then the city staff, I was just, we definitely had our discussions about things like point of sale and the cost cap, but the fact that it was so solid when it made it to ordinance made our job really easy in terms of, we moved up the cost cap from 2000 to 2500 based on some data that Burlington Electric Department found. So I think that's a good kind of database number that I at least feel confident about having it first been more on Councillor Hansen's side that there shouldn't be a cost cap. So I feel really same thing with point of sale. I do think it's a bit of a capacity issue. I guess I want to call out, this isn't a change that's going to happen in a year. We don't know how quickly all of these buildings are going to be hit but prioritizing buildings by BT per square foot makes much more sense than by who's currently being sold. So very, very, very pleased with how this was brought to the commission and what little tweaks we had to made and glad to be voting, I guess, for it today. Thank you, Councillor. Hi, Tower, I have Councillor Chang. Thank you, President Tracy. So I think as a board member at CBOU that does have a great, wonderful program around reservation, I know that is a big capacity issue in Shijindan County or even more. But I think it is would be also important to not maybe tie this policy with what the voters have voted on and to tell you the truth, many have voted on things that they have no idea what it is in favor or not in favor. But I also wanted to definitely speak to what many people talked about, both the mayor and also Jack Hansen for taking active and leadership roles around this. I think those are very important. But in terms of next step, I want to come back to the capacity issue here of professionals who can actually do the work. What is being contemplated from the city's perspective? This is a question for maybe the committee around next steps and how can we expedite or who can we collaborate with to see that through, see more capacity in the city to get this great and needed policy forward? To whom are you addressing your question, Councillor Ching? Committee members or also Mr. Bill Ward and team. Jack Ward. Okay, Jack Ward, are you able to offer some insights on that? Sure. Well, I would say on the capacity side of things, some of this is not within our direct control. So the folks that do this weatherization work are not our staff. So I know from Chris and Jennifer's assistance from the Burlington Electric Department, we have to respect the fact that there is that limited capacity with the group of folks that do that work. So part of putting together the schedule, outlining which properties would go into compliance first. And of course we've talked about those being furthest away from the 5,000 BTU mark. But that's part of the development of that schedule to understand both what the capacity is and then what's the right number for us to put forward as the first group that needs to come into compliance. That's gonna be the difference in the schedule that we would put forward that would tell you whether it's gonna be at like say 90,000 BTUs or 80,000 BTUs. It's going to depend on the number of properties that fall within that range and within that capacity. Clearly as the capacity for the weatherization work increases, we can adjust that schedule. And what we had proposed in the ordinance committee had discussed on multiple occasions is where this should go next from an oversight capacity. And that would be the expectation was that as the director, I am responsible for producing that schedule and keeping things moving that there would be an update to the two committee within 60 days after the time that this goes into final passage. So I'm not sure if that answers both what we are thinking but also how we're going to address it to make sure that council is kept up to speed. And we will definitely work with the administration to make sure that everyone is kept informed about what the next steps are. Thank you for that councilor Jenkins. You have the floor. Yeah, thank you. I think the answer is somewhat what I was looking for but I think, yeah, thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Councilor Hanson, go ahead. Yeah, I think councilor Jang raises a really good point and we've been talking about this throughout is that this is creating and this is a good problem to have is that we're creating additional demand for this work. So in theory, we are creating jobs and we're building the workforce but the city really should, from my perspective and this is going to be part of this ongoing oversight and implementation with the Duke and working with city staff is the city should play an active role in this broader effort in this broader discussion around the state of developing and growing the weatherization workforce in terms of training folks in this work. And I see Jen Green wants to speak on that too but I do think that we have to keep that front and center and the city should be active on that effort. Yeah, absolutely. Jen, did you want to add something? I did just quickly for the record. I wanted folks to know that we've been working closely with resource in conjunction with VGF to support a weatherization 101 program. So although it's not a quick fix, we're very much aware of the lack of power that we have in terms of boosting the market, boosting the degree of contractors but to the extent that we can help, we are. So it's been a nice collaboration again with VGS and CEDAW as well, working in conjunction with resource to train new and aspiring weatherization specialists. So more on that. Wonderful, well thanks for that additional information. Any further comments? I don't have anyone else in the queue. Ready to go to a vote everyone? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. Follow those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that carries unanimously. Brings us to, we'll hear that one again at our next meeting because that was an emotion. So we'll see the second reading on March 22nd. So we'll have that at our next meeting. Brings us down to item 5.02, which is an update regarding the citywide reappraisal project before I go over to city assessor Vickery for the presentation and explanation on this update. I'm just going to go to Councilor Freeman just for the motion, which is just to accept the communication. We're not making any decisions on this. This is just to accept the communication. So Councilor Freeman. I'll move to waive the reading, accept the communication and to place it on file. Okay, we have a motion to accept the communication. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Carpenter. Thank you for that. I will, Councilor Freeman, you didn't want the floor back, right? No, I figured that you would send it back over to city assessor John Vickery. Okay, wonderful. All right, city assessor Vickery, I will turn it over to you so that we can hear about what's going on with reappraisal. Thank you, thank you for your time. We are very busy at this moment. We are getting close to publishing the values to all the property owners in Burlington that would be exempt as well as taxable folks. The Tyler Technology Company is setting up informal hearing process, which will, I'm sorry, the formal hearing process for the Board of Assessors, which will begin in April. Probably run the entire month of April. So that's one of the reasons why I want to put out a communication so that all the Councilors know that this is coming to a head. We're about to put values out as of April 1st. And the market has been increasing with single family homes, duplexes and condos. And so the new values will reflect that. We also wanted to make a statement about the tax rate that it will lower when values are increased as a result of this reappraisal. We wanted to also provide links. Our website has a lot of information on it. It's being updated on a regular basis. And when the new values are mailed out to everyone, we will have the online database of property values updated with new valuations and the property information that we have on folks' records. Is there any questions? Yeah, quick one. I'll open it up. I saw Councilor Jain to be followed by Councilor Pine. Thank you, President Tracy. And thank you, Mr. John, for being here. So this question is about, because I've been in meetings and some people stated they already received their appraisal and all the saying they have not received anything. And it seems that I'm hearing here that all of them will receive it at the same time starting April 1st. Did I get it right? Yes, everyone will receive it at the same time right around April, hopefully before that. We wanna make sure that we do a thorough review before we send these things out. So as soon as the review is over, which our goal is to have the new valuations out by April 1st, hopefully a little bit sooner than that. And they will be mailed by the Tyler Technology Reappraisal Company. We have not sent out any new valuations for anyone yet. And their tax bills currently will remain the same until June 30th when the new tax bills come out. So people it's not gonna be an immediate change of taxes. Okay, yeah. And thinking of updating those people. Now, what is currently on the website, the series website, your website, right? Is it does not reflect the new appraisal. That's an old one. That's the current, which is the old, yes. Okay. Current and old, yeah, you're right. Okay, thank you. No further questions. Okay, I have Councillor Pine to be followed by Councillor Mason. All right, so having served on the council at the last major reappraisal, I know we did it in 0405, but that was really, that didn't generate a whole lot of citizen reaction, shall we say. It was a extremely difficult moment when it was done in 1992, extremely challenging. It had been a long time since we'd done reappraisal, a lot of voters thought that it was an attempt to try and get more money out of them because we were raising all these taxes and we were driving up the cost of running the city when in fact, and this is important I think for people to tell their constituents early and often, it's a revenue neutral to the city. The city does not see an increase in revenue. As hard as it is for people to believe it, this is not a way to make money for the city. And so I think it's important for us to let our constituents know that they're gonna see their values are going up rapidly. And something in relation to sales during COVID, the prices I'm noticing are just mind-boggling in neighborhoods that you would not expect to see these types of prices on single-family homes for sure. So I guess what I'm wondering, Mr. Vickery, if the board of, is it board of tax appeals? Is that what the board is technically called? It's the board of assessors will be hearing, we'll have hearings in April. April, I would suggest you might wanna think about not making plans in May or June perhaps because my experience suggests that you're gonna, even though the tax rate gets adjusted and so people shouldn't see a huge hit, values in some neighborhoods have gone up dramatically over where they are. So when we're at 70, something percent common level of appraisal, that doesn't mean that most properties are there, that's just where we're landing. So some are way undervalued according to market. So we're gonna see some, there's gonna be some sticker shock. I just want us to be ready for that, we prepare people for that. It's gonna be challenging. It's gonna be very challenging for the taxpayers to grow into when they see I think the new values. I really, I just want us to be upfront. Maybe you disagree with that. I'd like to hear you say I'm wrong. I would love for you to prove me wrong. No, I love what you're saying because it's the truth. There's gonna be some changes. People are gonna have sticker shock. We wanna make sure that our website is updated. It's a resource for people to get information to look at their property value in and of itself. Do we have the correct information on their particular property? I think some people will look beyond that and say, well, how does this compare with other properties in my neighborhood? And that's the second step that folks take. We have those, that information on our website so people can do the research and then everything is automated. We automated the systems a couple of years ago where people can file their appeal online and the hearing officers are trained. They're all appraisers and they will ask the right questions and hopefully walk people through this process. And if there's a change to be made, they will absolutely make it. That's their job to be fair and do things right. And then lastly, I would just say that the assessor and to some extent, maybe a lesser extent the mayor and the council will get essentially blamed if you will for this when in fact we have this taxation system that's based on property value, not the ability to pay. So all of our constituents who actually have their incomes level because there's no COLA in Social Security or one or one and a half percent. So their incomes stay flat, but all of a sudden their taxes are gonna be increasing. So it's critical for us, of course, to find ways to find alternatives to the property tax for us to recommit and redouble our efforts to that and to make sure that people aren't forced to sell their homes because they've lived here for 50 years and they just can't pay their taxes. And that's just, that's tragic. That's just a tragedy for us to face as a community for our older residents, but mostly hit, I think, the hardest, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Pine. I have Councillor Mason to be followed by Councillors Shannon and Carpenter. Thank you, President Tracy. Just to sort of follow up, I think with some general comments on Councillor Pine and I have a different recollection of the last reappraisal having joined the board right around the time that the reappraisal happened. It was, it seemed like a lot at the time. So I wasn't around in 92, but I can tell you 04 was not that much fun on the other side. One other thing for all of us to keep in mind, not only, this is required by state law. So when our constituents come to us complaining, they need to understand, to Councillor Pine's comment, we're not just doing this to raise in revenue or because we want to, this is required by state law. So a specific question for John, I'm not entirely sure. John, I know back in 04, the first sort of set of reviews was back with the agency that did, in essence, the reappraisal work. Is that what you're envisioning? And then from that, if a disgruntled homeowner still wants to appeal, then next is back before the Board of Tax Appeals or what is the process that you're envisioning? Right, there's a process. People have a right to have their property reviewed and also to contest test their property. The first step was with the Board of Assessors, which they will be, they can schedule through an automation process and have a hearing with a Tyler technology appraiser, which our staff will be in attendance with as well, sort of as a backup. Those values get settled. And then likely in the beginning of the next fiscal year, July, August, September, October, November, the Board of Tax Appeals will be holding hearings for those folks that wanna move forward. We're hoping that we've done such a good job that the load is a lot easier this time. And we are gonna keep our fingers crossed and we've run a lot of tests, a lot of statistical analysis. Everything is compliant. It's getting really solid. And we've run tests that the state tax department does in ahead of their testing. And we know that this reappraisal will pass. And so I'm pretty confident about that part of it as well. My last question, how current are your sales data? I mean, I agree with Councillor Pine, we're seeing numbers that shock my conscious. I'm wondering, are you, when did you stop? In essence, what was the cutoff for purposes of coming up with comparable sales and doing the reappraisal? Well, we continue to monitor sales currently. And that actually acts as a test to the preliminary values that we have now. They're not public right now, but we're getting there. We use sales from 2017 to the end of 2020. And then what we did was we time adjusted the earlier sales so that our sales set is more current with 2020, late 2020 market. And that way you have more sales to build valuation tables with that set all of the valuations of the Huntsville properties, which is everybody else. Thank you. I asked my last question, which I just thought of. I know in the last 10 years there have been certain segments that have been reappraised. Is this citywide, regardless of whether within the, I mean, I know Lakefront property was reassessed at one point and then there were some other pockets that you had gone in and done select. Were those included? So this literally is a citywide or are those out of this mix? No, all properties are being reappraised and they're all putting them at the same market level, current market levels. Okay. So I guess in my last question, we should look to your, because I have no doubt, I agree with Councilor Pine that we are all gonna get hundreds of emails asking about the process. We should be looking right now to your website for an explanation of the process as well as people are gonna want a better understanding of what fair market value is and what your office is. That's all available on your website. So we can either direct them there or pull that information from your website. You can direct them to the website. That's why I put out the communication with the links. So if you send someone to certain pages on the website, they will have, we have information on individual properties, a page on the reappraisal itself, the appeal process. It's, there's a lot of information. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Mason. I have Councilor Shannon to be followed by Councilors Carpenter and Jang. Go ahead, Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracy. Director Vickery, could you kind of explain my understanding is that the reassessment is not completely revenue neutral. The bulk of it is revenue neutral but there are also several taxes that are not revenue neutral. And so for a house that, and this may be too specific an example for you, but what I'm thinking is if you have a house that is, you know, meets the CLA perfectly, that house would still be experienced a tax increase after the reassessment, correct? Can you just clarify? If it's possible for you to let us know how that house that is increased in value only exactly as much as the average house in Burlington, how much their taxes might go off or in some other terms just explaining which taxes are not revenue neutral and what people can expect to see there. Good question. So by and large, the tax rates, the municipal and education are revenue neutral. So most rates will go down. There's a few provisions in the tax in the municipal tax rate where say penny for parks remains a penny for parks. That's a good example. It doesn't adjust downward. It remains one cent on the tax rate. So that in a sense would not be revenue neutral. And there's a few other provisions that are specifically stated out like that. In other words, there will be a little more revenue for certain parts of the tax rate. But that's the smaller part of the tax rate. So everyone should see revenue neutral adjustments. There will be obviously some shifting of the tax burden as parts of Burlington have appreciated at a faster rate than other areas of Burlington as well as certain types of property have appreciated probably better than other types of property. So it's not entirely means that no one will see a change in their tax bill. Some may actually benefit. Others may not. And then most people should be about neutral. Also, can you tell us kind of how you segmented that for instance, is there a shift from commercial to residential in the property tax burden? And have you looked at it by segment of the CIST city, either by neighborhood or by South End versus New North End where are you seeing the greatest disparities now and understanding that those are the areas that are going to see the biggest tax increases? So the South End has performed appreciated more than say the New North End. New North End by and large should probably will likely benefit from this reappraisal. And the South End properties will be taking on a greater burden. We've also seen that duplexes have performed very well as well. COVID has had an effect on certain commercial types of properties. So before COVID, the equity was pretty good. Now we are gonna be increasing certain properties, some not all commercial properties but some commercial properties will have a smaller increase than had been anticipated before COVID, which means that the tax burden will be shifted towards other types of property. Okay, thank you. And when we go to the links, will people, actually you wouldn't have this information up yet, but when you do have the official reappraisal information will people be able to see specific comps that you used to evaluate their house? Or is that not the process that you use? We've used a market adjusted cost approach for residential single family homes and condos. The tables are based on the market. And so it's not a sales comparable approach, even though the software allows us to do that and we will do that as a backup or support of the cost valuation that is applied or as a check. And but no, they won't, but the sole properties are available through a search. And I've had discussions with staff about putting a list of the sole properties on the website so that folks can access the properties that actually help us develop the values. And so when a citizen comes to you, they think that their valuation is unfair. Typically what they would do is they would bring forward sales that demonstrate that their value is something different. If that's not how you're doing it, is that still a reasonable way for residents to argue there? Okay, thank you. Yes, your answer is correct. Have them bring forth sold properties. That's more that we prefer that over just bringing over neighborhood properties that have not sold. Because it's a mark on the, on what the current value is and running comparisons on that. So if a person submits that information, that will be compiled and the reviewer will look at those type, those sole properties for their review. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you, Councilor Shannon. I have Councilor Carpenter to be followed by Councillors Jeng and Pine. Councillor Carpenter. Thanks. I had mentioned to assessor Vickery that the city has a nice little page where you can plug in your value and calculate your taxes. And my concern is people are gonna get new values and calculate it against an old tax rate. So John said they're gonna update that page, but I just wanna say that loud because I think it's really critical. And part of the problem is we won't have a final tax rate, April one, but we're gonna have a final value. So somehow we've gotta get the proxy information out there so the people in their heads. If my house goes up 25%, my taxes are not gonna go up 25%. So we've gotta get them a hands-on way to figure that out. Plus I think the city page should really link to the state page where you can compute how much you might get back in the rebate. And so there's a quarterly page on the state side. A lot of people don't even seem to know about where you can show them how much they're actually and I get their own tax rate reduced. So I'm just tossing those out. And then I guess the last thing I'd like to ask, and this is probably not John's area of expertise, but I would ask somebody in the city, maybe the mayor's office can pitch in. We need consistent PR information that we as counselors can get out there. And we haven't had an appraisal in the era of Facebook or Twitter. And so I would ask that somebody prepare us consistent Facebook, Twitter worthy tweets about this. Cause I agree with all the councils, we're just gonna get a ton of people talking to us. And I think it's incumbent on all of us to say the same thing and have some well-prepared PR that we can quickly get out to folks. CEO Shad, go ahead. Thank you so much for that point, counselor Carpenter. I know that our communications director, Olivia is not here tonight, but she and I and John have been discussing exactly that. We were kind of waiting to get through the election and get a little closer to that April timeframe, but we are working with her. And if any of you have concrete ideas, Sarah, it's great to hear from you that you want Twitter, if you have those sorts of things, please send them to the three of us and we'll take that under advisement. And I hear your larger point as well. And I agree with that. All set, counselor Carpenter? Okay, I have counselor Chang to be followed by counselor Pine. Yeah, thank you, President Tracy. And thank you John again for the clarity of all of the answers you've been providing here tonight. I think a couple of things. And I think one of them is specific to the communication. And I'm talking the specific communication that I was going to craft in order for my constitution to understand that this is coming, right? And to that it would be important also to bring a little bit of history. How much did it cost to do the full assessment citywide and also where those funds came from? And if I remember correctly, it was through the state of the month and it was around one million dollars. If I remember, one something million, right? I think I will need that in what I'm going to do in terms, and this meeting is recording, I always can come back to it and get the answers. That's one. And I think two, it will be also very important to counselor Carpenter's point for you maybe to consider doing a demo where you are recorded and just explain what it is and also all those links where people can find them. And I think it will be very easy in terms of equity that some easily can read and understand and some will need some visual and also where to go on the city website and to make it just easier. And I think the rest we can channel all communication coming from you in terms of clarity because this, the way that I'm feeling it already to counselor Shannon's question, south end versus new north end, right? And I see that there will be more burden in the south end resident in terms of taxes but at the same time, in terms of the values as well will the home values will go are greater there. And I would wanna also understand the dynamic as to why is it new development? Is it Pine Street is booming now? What contribute to all of that? And I'm sorry, I brought maybe three different points in what I just said. Whatever you can capture and can answer that be good. Sorry. So you're able to touch on counselor, counselor, Jane's questions. I, Jane, you made some really nice points. I appreciate that. The reappraisal cost about 1.1 million in total. A lot of that money is appropriated to Burlington about a little over a hundred thousand a year. So that's why we were able to pay this, I think without borrowing. I like your idea of putting out some sort of communication with a demonstration of sorts. I am gonna be, I have requested and speaking with most all the NPAs, I think all of them, but maybe one that I'd still need to schedule with. So I'm doing that. I will do anything that will help with the communication because I think what that does is that helps alleviate the work later on when people see that effort that the city has made and that they know that we've worked hard to be fair and to do the best job that we can. And they understand why they have a new valuation and just some details around that, that all plays better down the road. And I think that's very important. The other point, I think it's how do we also understand, people understand that, yes, if property values go up in the South and it's more likely they get more burden. I don't know if it was clear. Well, I could make a point about that. It just over the past 15 years, there are certain areas of the city that have slowly appreciated at a faster rate for whatever reason. It could be the fact that Pine Street has more vibrancy now. It could be the city market in the South that I don't know what the real reason is, but the stats are the stats that folks are willing to pay more to be here over time. If folks are receiving a state adjustment on their tax bill, then there'll be some sort of leveling off of the increase if they're income eligible. And a lot of people are. I think that the state sends us around $6 or $7 million a year in adjustments to people's tax bills. So a lot of people are willing to pay more so a lot of people are eligible for that. So if there is a larger change, they will receive a larger state payment. I can't totally explain the math right now, but that's how the system works, that there's an adjustment that the state gives if you're income eligible. Thank you again, sir. Thank you. Do you have any other counselors on first round before I circle back to Councillor Pine? Okay, seeing none, Councillor Pine, go ahead. Yeah, I'm gonna just touch on that last point, Assessor Vickrey, if you could. Last I remember about 68% of homeowners are income sensitized. So that means for their education portion only, not the municipal, just the education portion, it's based on income actually, it's based on ability to pay. Imagine that, a progressive property tax. And for renters, I think it's like 55 or 58% of renters get what we still call the renters rebate that might not be the right term, but it basically attempts to give back renters some portion of the property tax to kind of level them out a little bit. So they're not paying such a high percentage of their income. What I don't know is, do you think we've reached full enrollment in these programs as far as who's eligible? Do you have any way of knowing if the state tax department says you still have a few thousand people that could qualify, they're just not filing. Do they know that? No, I think they keep income information to themselves. They don't share that. So what we do, we receive calls every year and we encourage people when they ask about their tax bill, we tell them about the law and where to go. I've been on the phone where I've helped people maneuver through the website to get to the state tax department's page so that they can file their HS-122 and the income form just to get them there because it saves some people a lot of money and a lot of taxes. So we do the best job we can because I think that's part of the service that we provide. I would imagine the tax department could tell us because they have this data every household they know. And if they looked at it and said, based on our data, you've got another 10%, I don't know what it is, but it'd just be interesting to know if there are households that aren't aware and aren't enrolling and don't have somebody helping them with their taxes and they just don't know. And that would be a shame because they're entitled to this but I also want to just ask, was there a number of years that shouldn't pass before you do a reappraisal? It does seem like 0405 is too long ago. It feels like we kind of waited too long and that's really what is causing such incredible change. This appreciation happened, but if we'd done it more gradually, is that something you can speak to? Yeah, if I had my choice, we'd be doing a reappraisal every five or six years. We'd be doing it on a regular basis, keeping everything as equitable as possible. But that would take a fair amount of change and it would cost some money upfront. That said, the state has changed some of the rules. So the next one will probably be sooner, but it's still based on statistics. And we did the last reappraisal in an upmarket in 2006, effective 2006, and then the market crashed or leveled off in 2008. And it stayed pretty stable for multiple years and then it started to increase again. So it was a period of four years where it didn't move a whole lot and then it started to change slowly and then that's become more rapid more recently. Well, then what if 2020 is an outlier? What if 2020 is just this real spike that is truly an outlier? And we look forward and that spike not just flattens off, but actually starts to go down. Are we setting values at a really unusual time that's a real anomaly? And is that gonna hurt? Is that gonna hit people? I'm wondering, can you just speculate on that a little bit? Yeah, there's one of the changes that the state of Vermont made tax department was to, if there's a down market and the level of appraisal is above 100%, 115%, the state will mandate a readjustment, a revaluation to bring those values down. And I agree with that. I thought it should have been tighter. I think that, if we're at 110% of market, there should be adjustments. We can't do that as a municipality if that happens. We have to- I'm the type of person that, if I'm given the resources, I wouldn't be doing that. Yes. Okay, that's our choice, got it, okay. And then last thing is a little bit along the lines of Councillor Jang, I think we have to be much more proactive about reaching people for whom English is not their first language. I think the language access is critical with this information. I can just tell you that Burlington had a very small population of refugees the time in the 90s, but it was largely, it was Vietnamese homeowners who really struggled because they were new homeowners, but they also got this new tax bill and they struggled mightily to get through so much so that we had advocates organized to meet with them ahead of time to help them prepare to meet with your predecessor to go through this process to get their tax, to see if they could get their assessment adjusted. I think that's a great point. I, we've had in the past where someone that doesn't speak very good English and maybe new to this country, if not new to the state and they don't understand the Vermont laws around the income adjustment, then they don't end up taking advantage of that and that opportunity that's given by the state. And so those are areas that I've been concerned with. Yeah. Thank you. I'm glad you're thinking about that. Thanks. Did I take so long that Councilor Tracy thought I was just gonna keep going? Nobody has any questions. It looks like he's not on. I guess John's gonna run the meeting from here on out. He's back. Back to you, Max. Back to you. Hi, Max. My Zoom just concocted that second. Thank you. Are there any further, did any other counselors wanna ask any questions? Sarah? This is just a comment. It's so important for folks to file the, whatever it is, the H-122. And now is exactly where they're supposed to be doing it for next year. So I just wanna encourage in our communications, whatever you prepare for us. That's a word we really need to get out there. And I think in particular to what Councilor Pryne was talking about, getting that to the community that may not be in the speaking now because you file that with last year's taxes. So we just need to make sure they know it. Excellent. Thank you. Were there any other counselors? Sorry, I'm seeing folks are a little bit frozen on my end. I guess hearing none, let's go to a vote on this. It's just to accept the communication. We're not voting on a matter of policy this evening. We're just saying that we've received this communication and placing it on file. All those in favor of taking that action, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none that carries unanimously brings us to our final item of the evening, which is the accepted approval of the FY audited comprehensive annual financial report. Councilor Paul may please come to you for a motion. Sure, I make a motion to move the resolution, waive the reading, and just in terms of summarizing the resolution would ask for the floor back briefly after a second. Thank you, Councilor Paul. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Chen, go ahead, Councilor Paul. Thanks, President Tracy. It's a very short resolution. We've talked about the audit a lot in the past year, something that when I was first elected was not done. We have been very vigilant in overseeing the audit in all phases of its progress. And basically what we're doing here is we're just approving, accepting and approving the FY20 audited comprehensive annual financial report, which is commonly referred to as the CAFR. It was done a little bit later because the school, we have to wait for the schools. They have a separate auditor and theirs was a little bit delayed. And so even though ours has been out, the city's has been out and completed quite some time ago and has been out in the public and available for the public since early February, now we have both of them. So this is just to, as I said, approve and accept it. And I know that the CAO is here and has done an amazing job on putting this together along with the staff in the clerk treasurer's office. And if there were any questions, would encourage them to be directed to the CAO. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Any further discussion of this item? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. That completes our agenda for this evening. So a motion to adjourn is in order. May it please have such a motion? Moved by Councillor Pine. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Any discussion? Hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of adjournment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. And we are adjourned at 1856. I will see you all on the 22nd. Bye.