 This conference will now be recorded. Welcome to the April 3rd City Council meeting. This is our regular meeting and our valiant chair is out of town. And so she has passed the reins over to her vice chair. That's me, Maggie Henry. So I'll be acting as the chair tonight. And we always start with the Pledge of Allegiance. That's what we're all here for. So I will ask Jesse Baker to lead us. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Jesse. Is that the first time you've led us? No, there was one where Andrew and I were the only people in the room. And everyone else was virtually. Well, very good, very good. I just wanted to end to have Jesse provide instructions on exiting the building in case of an emergency. And she's also going to review technology options for those of you attending online. Thank you. So for those in the room, welcome. If there is an emergency during this meeting, go out either door to the left or right at the rear of the auditorium and then turn left or right to exit the building. For those participating remotely, thank you for joining us. If you are interested in speaking on any agenda item on tonight's agenda, turn your camera on and the chair will call on you. You can also indicate that you would like to speak in the chat to me and I would be happy to pass your name over to the chair. Other than that, we are not monitoring the chat for content. So the next item on the agenda is the agenda review and I'm going to ask my colleagues here if there are any additions, deletions, or changes of agenda items. I do have one, but I'll listen to you first. Apologies, I'm not sure if this is the, I'm still familiarizing myself with the rules and procedure, but I did receive, and I apologize again for the late notice, but I did receive a very, I've been trying hard to engage with a lot of the citizens next door who are affected by the construction and also just to better understand what the challenges are associated with that we discussed at the last city council meeting with children walking to the school. And in doing so, I've met several residents of the building who've brought a number of issues to my attention and I'd like to share them with the council to see if there's anything that we might be able to do to help them out, if this is the appropriate time. How about the end of the meeting? We could put it under other business and I did have an exchange with our city manager about having a future discussion about city center and there is going to be a preliminary discussion at our next regular meeting on April 17th. Great. So this could be a preview, but you could also bring it back to that April 17th meeting. Sounds great. All right, good. Any other additions or changes? Okay, I did hear from Jesse that Sarah Reeves, the executive director of the Chittenden Solid Waste District will be arriving a little bit later than foreseen and so we'd like to, she suggests that we switch numbers seven and eight and have our Vermont Air National Guard members who are in attendance tonight speak to us around the seven o'clock hour. Okay, okay, very good. So this is now time for members of the audience to come forward if they have comments and questions that will not be addressed tonight on our regular agenda. Are there any online or in the audience? I don't see any in the audience. Nothing online, Jesse. Okay, very good. Then we will then move ahead to item number five, which is councilor's announcements and reports on our committee assignments as well as our city manager's report. And I know that there's only three of us who might have those committee reports, but nevertheless, Andrew and Tyler, do you have things that you'd like to bring forward at this time? I know what we're gonna speak about. Not a committee report per se, but I guess just to maybe mention that I did have a conversation with Jesse and Paul about possibly having the city host a forum to better, to help installers and homeowners with issues they may be having around heat pumps. That there's certain things you need to do when you install a heat pump, there are things you need to do when you maintain it. And South Burrington is very fortunate to have a gentleman that actually does this for a living, consults with folks and advises on how to do that. And we're gonna try and arrange South Burrington host a forum for folks to learn from him and it'll probably be a conjunction with efficiency Vermont. Very good, that would be great. And I think that that's very timely too. Did you have anything else that you wanted to say, Tyler, for tonight? No, I think the letter speaks for itself and we can speak about it at the end. Okay, all right, very good. Helen, do you have anything that you'd like to bring forward tonight? I do not at this time, thank you. All right, and Tim, I know he just took a bite, sorry. Pardon me, not much to report except that I just went to the S100 feedback meeting upstairs. Yeah. So did you and Councilor Chownock and Councilor Barnes and City Manager. Yeah. Very interesting, thank you. Yeah, very good. Well, I just like to state, I did write a letter to the editor of the other paper about the report on the Council's response to the S100 bill. And the reporter wrote that I have the opinion that there should be dense housing in our downtown and single family housing elsewhere in the city. And I wrote a letter, but I wanna state publicly in this meeting as well that that is not all my opinion. And I've been a big proponent of our new land development regulations, which allow for not only single family housing, but multifamily housing, including duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes throughout the city. So I really want to make that clear, as well as inclusionary zoning, which is throughout the city. So that people of all income levels can live throughout the city. I just wanna make that very clear. And I will also be speaking through the paper, I hope on Thursday. As far as the committee assignments, I do not have anything. So I think it's now time to go on to city managers report. Great, thank you. So first and foremost, I wanna officially welcome Steve Locke here tonight as our new deputy city manager. Very, very exciting to have Steve in this role. He will of course continue to serve also as our fire chief. We have posted the position for a deputy fire chief as well to build the administrative capacity to support this new role and to support our team. And I'm just thrilled to have Steve leading the city with us next. I wanna share in a kind of the next step of our exciting TIF build out on our ability to meet our debt obligations through our TIF district that we have received our site plan application for lot A, which is the partnering development lot to lot B, which is this lot here on this side of Market Street between City Hall and the CHT building. Lot A is the lot between the Poon property or where Hawaiian Grill is and guarded street. So that is the next phase in UVM's investment downtown that will consist of 213 homes and 27,000 square feet of commercial space. So that's really realizing that commercial space aspect of downtown. I wanted to give you a quick update on your climate action plan implementation, the transportation implementation group continues to meet with VHB are working on building out that implementation plan and developing one pagers for each of the major actions of the climate action plan related to transportation. Just a reminder, green update is May 6th. You will hear more about details around that and activities that the rec department is planning but mark your calendars for now. And then on to leveraging outside funds to the city updates for you, you had previously approved us applying for two transportation alternative grants through VTrans. We were awarded both of those grants last week. That's $40,000 for scoping for the lower Allen Road shared use path that last connector and $300,000 to design and construct a replacement culvert on Bartlett Bay Road. Additionally, you had approved us applying for one of the community recovery and revitalization program grants through ACCD. The team that was a million dollars for a potential new water tank to serve our high service area in the city. And we received affirmative positive vote from VEPC which is the initial approver of that grant before it goes to the governor's office last week. Paul and Tom did a great job with the VEPC board. So pending the governor's signature that's a million dollars coming into that project. And you will hear a lot more about that project on the April 17th council meeting from Tom. And then Tim reminded me to share that the winter parking ban as it is April 1st is officially over for the season. Thank you very much. Just in time for the snow tomorrow. Just in time for the storm on Saturday. It won't stick, it won't stick. I just saw Sarah Reeves appear on the screen. Should we go back to the original order of agenda items? It's up to the council. Should we go back to the original order? Okay, we will do that. So we will keep the original order of the council items. All right, our first item of business is the consent agenda and there are six items. As always, we are going to be considering and potentially approving our disbursements paying the city bills. Looking at two sets of minutes to approve March 9th and March 20th, we will be also in public session appointing Lori Smith and Fran McDonald to the planning commission for terms ending June of 2024. And also publicly appointing John Moschatelli to the development review board for term ending June of 2025. There is also a request for an exemption to connect to public wastewater system for a proposed accessory dwelling unit at 1505 Dorset Street. And we also have an item to approve submission of a state of Vermont municipal highway class to paving grant. Yay, to fund paving a section of Spear Street and approve the certificate of compliance. So I will entertain a motion to approve. I move approval as presented. Very good. Are there any comments? All right, I'm waiting for a second. Second. Second, very good. I did have a comment. I did notice one error in the March 20th minutes and just went back to the recording to see on page 10, top of page 10, it was noted that counselor Barnes voted against the letter of support for an application to the US Department of Energy for funding for enforcing compliance with our residential energy codes. And in fact, he abstained. So I would like to suggest that we ask for that to be amended and have us approve with that single amendment if people are agreeable to that. I agree with that, but I have a different item like to discuss first. Okay, very good. So item E is the request for the exemption to connect to public wastewater system for proposed ADU. I just have a generic question that if S100 were to pass, would we be required to approve this or would we be required to force them to connect to the sewer system? It's just a rhetorical discussion about if S100 were passed because if S100 is going to pass, then we probably should not allow this exemption. We should probably force this house to connect that very long distance to the sewer system. So I'm just posing this rhetorically to city council because I'm not sure what the answer should be. I mean, I support the exemptions it is today, but I'm just curious. I would say that we act under existing rules. Oh, I agree. We can express our frustration. I share your frustration, but we grant this exemption. But I appreciate your rhetorical question because if they wish to sit here instead of us, I have other things I could be doing tonight as well. But on a more practical basis, I do think that it's incumbent on the council to look at this particular provision that is kind of giving rise to this request, for example, because I do think we should consider changing it. I agree. I agree. It is the proverbial can of worms that state legislation can open. And I certainly hope that they will not be taking our seats. I very much appreciate local control and I am very happy to be here today. Just one other question about item F. I'm sorry to postpone the vote, but could the city manager, do you have anybody that can tell you quickly when was the last time that section of road was ground down and repaved? And I think it was 2010. Does anybody have a recollection? That's between Swift and? Pinnacle. Right. I don't know. I was not here, but I'm happy to get that. Well, so my question is that whoever the contractor was that did that, I mean, are we looking at what we think is the normal wear and tear durability of that particular paving job that was done? Because usually it's just abraded and then repave it with a certain depth. And I'm just curious whether, I know there are some new materials being laid down for asphalt and are they going to be more durable and that is a highly traveled road and it gets its fair share of plowing too, but I'm distraught by the amount of delamination that's occurring on a lot of the roads in South Brooklyn that have been repaid within the last five to 10 years and should that be happening? And I fully acknowledge the fact that our weather patterns have changed a lot more. So we have a lot more freeze-thaw events where we have a lot of moisture that's wet that gets into the pavement and then we have freezing, whereas before we would just have a lot of snow, a lot of snow, a lot of snow, right? And snows, if it's freezing all the time, that's fine, but freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw really wreaks havoc. So I'm just curious if the paving contractors in conjunction with the asphalt providers have anything in their mixture which would prove to be more durable? That's all, just curious. And that's all I have, thank you. It's a wonderful question. I don't know the answer to it off the top of my head but Tom DePietro will be here for your next meeting presenting a traffic calming manual Public Works has been working on and I will have him prepare to answer that at your next meeting. Thank you. Can I follow on that? I think if there were a solution that perhaps was a little bit more expensive that we're not aware of, might be good to know about it. All right, very good. So we have a motion and a second on the table with amendments that has been approved to. All those in favor of the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I think that was all of us, very good. It was unanimous. So we are gonna move on to item number seven as originally planned, which is receive and approve the Chittenden Salad Waste District fiscal year 24 budget with Sarah Reeves and she is online. She is the executive director of the Chittenden Salad Waste District. Hi, Sarah. Good evening, how are you? Are you able to hear me? Yeah. Good, I've been having some technical difficulties. So thank you. Thank you for having me. I do have a PowerPoint if I could be allowed to share the screen otherwise. I can walk through. That's not possible. Oh, it is. You should have access now. Thank you, Kathy. Thank you. Again, I'm Sarah Reeves from CSWD and this is our fiscal 24 budget proposal that we hope you'll consider for approving. I do like to start off our presentation with reminding folks who we are and knowing that we've had a lot of new people move into Vermont and particularly into Chittenden County over the last couple of years may not be familiar. So CSWD is a municipality that was formed over 30 years ago by our members, our member cities and towns and they just happened to all be in Chittenden County for managing the waste this generator within the district. So we managed it based on your behalf. I also like to show the pie chart of where we generate our revenue and also to highlight where we do not generate our revenue. So we have three main buckets of revenue and one is user fees or TIP fees and those are the fees that are paid directly to us to handle the materials that are being generated. So like at our drop-off centers or at our materials recycling facility. The another bucket is the sale of products so sale of compost, sale of local color paint, sale of recycling that has been sorted at the MRF and then the solid waste management fee which is a fee charged to haulers when they get to the Coventry landfill with Chittenden County trash being disposed where we do not receive revenue is directly from our member towns in the form of income set, income tax, sales tax or property taxes nor do we assess any per capita fees to any of our member towns. I also like to let folks know how we're doing and in Chittenden County, it's probably not a surprise though, we do very well. We do a very good job at diverting material from landfill disposal. So just over 61% is diverted from the landfill what we generate here in Chittenden County. That does leave a good amount that is being landfill and of that 39% that is being sent to Coventry being very about half of that, a little more than half actually could be further diverted. So that's my plea to everyone out there is when you're looking at deciding whether to throw something in the trash or take another thought, say can this actually be recycled in my blue cart or a drop off? Can I recycle this through organic recycling composting again, drop off or in backyard? Is this a piece of scrap metal that can be recycled? Is this actually construction demolition degree that she managed differently? So just to take another extra minute or so to think about what was going in the trash bag to make sure that it really has no other place to go. And as you may recall, I do like to start with our bottom line. We are budgeting revenue in the amount of $50,400,000 over we're budgeting expenses at $14,400,000. So that's leaving a little under $900,000 of anticipated revenue in excess of expenses. So that remainder will then be flowed into our revenue reserve accounts, which we have any priority on a waterfall effect. So when one reserve it's designed maximum then the excess revenue will then waterfall or spill into the next reserve in priority order. And anything that once those reserves are maxed, any remainder does go into the capital reserve. And a quick highlight of this year to next year, our revenue is anticipating to be changed to be increased by about 10% our expenses about just under 9%. And I wanna say how excited I am actually about this administrative cost increase, which is odd to say that I'm happy about an increase, but I am because that is reflecting our move to our new office space with the South Barley-Tin Police Department. So we have moved to 19 Gregory Drive. We are in the process of building tables and chairs and setting those things up. We hope to be actually conducting our business there by the end of the week. We're just moving boxes in right now, but we are super excited to be in our new home in South Barley-Tin as of this week. This is a new slide that you may not have seen before on the council. And it is to kind of highlight where the funding goes to kind of what and what it pays for. So I like to highlight the operations program. And what we call operations, we're referring to our drop-off centers, the materials recycling facility, the environmental depot and the rover and the organic diversion facility. Those programs in particular are our charter are designed to be self-sufficient and raise enough money through user fees and sale of product or appropriate to cover their costs. And the reason I'm highlighting that will become apparent. And I mentioned the solid waste management fee. It is $27 per ton charged to haulers at the Coventry Land Pro. This fee has not changed in about 10 years. And I am asking my board to take a different look, perhaps at the philosophy of this fee. We do often get the question and kind of the misperception about the fee where folks think that it has a direct relationship to waste reduction. And it isn't exactly how that this fee works, but what this fee does do is it supports the management of the district. It supports the education and the outreach programs, the communication. So it is an important part of our revenue, but it's also the fee that we want to see get lower and lower and lower. We don't want to be generating a third of our revenue from this fee because that means that trash keeps going up. So we want it to go down. So we want to take another look at how we're managing this fee in particular. So right now, there's no need to tap reserves and no increase in the rate. Our materials recycling facility where the Blue Bay materials go to be sorted into commodities, we are going to have an increase in the tip fee there. We currently charge $80 per ton. We'll be increasing that to $85 per ton July 1st. And this is a direct result, probably a significant increase in the contract that we have with Casella who operates the Mer-For-Us on a daily basis. So we hire them to run the Mer-For-Us and that contract recently went up as of March 1st by 55%. So we had been paying them $45 per ton. We are now paying them $70 per ton. So we are covering that increase for this last quarter of the fiscal year so that the increase won't hit until July 1, but it was quite significant. We are budgeting the material sales. So the sales material is going out to market a very conservatively. We're essentially keeping that level for fiscal 23 into fiscal 24. The markets are stable but suppressed. So there's still nowhere near where they were two years ago, which was just gangbusters. You can see the line from the fiscal 22 at just under $4 million. That was a clear anomaly in the industry. It was good for us, good for everybody, but it is not the norm. So we have budgeted back down to what we expect to be the normal range and in about the $84 a ton, $85 a ton. The Organics Diversion Facility likewise is also seeing a small increase in their tick fee from $65 a ton to $70 a ton. This is, again, a direct result and a loss of inbound materials. So food scraps coming into our facility for composting. And that happened immediately after Casela opened their packaging facility in Williston where food that is in containers or in packages that cannot be sold for human consumption or for animal consumption or information the food has to be liberated from the package. We lost a lot of also sort of separated material to that facility. So we've grabbed some of that material back, but we're not anywhere near where we were in fiscal 22. You can see we nearly broke even and this year's budget and in next year's budget, we are anticipating a subsidy for that facility. Similarly, our drop-off centers are also requiring a subsidy. The fiscal 22 actual was just under $400,000 in the red. This year we're budgeting just over $400,000 in the red and without a bag increase, increased to bag prices, we would certainly need a subsidy of $421,000. So again, being in the red. So we are increasing bag prices at our drop-off centers as of July 1, $3 for a small bag, $8 for a medium bag, $11 for a large and that $3 bag is about 18 gallons. $8 is about up to 34 gallons, 35 gallons and the $11 bag is about 45, 46 gallons. And I added a line in there about pre-COVID pricing just kind of as a reminder before we start shifting our pricing during COVID, we were at $2.75 for the small bag. So compared to the three years ago, it's a small increase. It is a large increase compared to current. So we do understand that and understand that it is a hike. And yeah, without that increase, we would again be in the red on that facility. And the drop-off center does represent nearly 50% of our employees and quite a lot of our expenses. And everyone is experiencing increases in costs for cost of living adjustments for healthcare benefits. And we are also experiencing increases in costs for hauling that we pay to Cassellar, to Myers or to other haulers to move materials from our drop-off centers to disposal or to recycling. Fuel increases, insurance, everything is going up. We are looking though to make a change to our schedule that we hope will provide more service and more availability for everyone and shifting to a Tuesday to Saturday schedule for all of our drop-off centers, except for Heinzberg. So that will provide more availability for the folks in Milton and for folks in Burlington. Heinzberg, we have to just keep to one day a week. That's what our lease with the town says. But everyone else will be Tuesday to Saturday and that will help eliminate confusion with the public of having to either call or to go to our website and kind of take a look at the check word schedule and see when the heck we're open on which day and which location it will all be the same no matter which GSE except for Heinzberg. I mentioned, you know, staffing kind of challenges. The where in this budget includes a 7% cost of living adjustment and we do utilize the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI index that consumer price index calculator for the Northeast. And when we looked at it back in December is about 7.4% so we rounded back down to seven but we knew we had to make some adjustments as well. So what we did was to try to offset and mitigate those costs was moved our employees who opt into our healthcare plan to a higher deductible of health care plan. Their benefits are exactly the same but there's a higher deductible on that. And then increasing their employee contribution of premiums up to 3.5%. So we've moved them to the high deductible as of January and we'll be moving to 3.5% as of July. Our capital reserve is healthy and I just kind of wanted to point out that we are making some major investments proposing the next fiscal year to the Milton Dropoff Center and to the Burlington Dropoff Center. So we're hopeful that we'll be able to expand services there. And we have a healthy balance at the end of that year because the excess that we earned at the Murph Fiscal 2022 then flowed into that capital reserve. The one reserve that is not, I'm a little uncertain about is our landfill post closure reserve. We are responsible for managing the closure activities for the closed landfills in Williston. And we're at about year 28 of our 30 year federal requirement. And because there are some unknowns that specifically regarding the forever chemicals, so PFOS, PFOA and how that is going to be required to be managed in the leachate, we don't know what the requirements to treat that are going to be. So we don't know if we're going to have enough money in that reserve to manage both what needs to be done for the next couple of years and then to be treating that leachate. So we'll need to have some conversations at the board level about how we will augment that reserve. Normally the post closure reserve is funded through TIPPs at that landfill and that landfill's been closed for 28 years. So this is generating no revenue. So that's the one reserve that I'm a little bit of concern about if we're gonna work on that this year. And I also like to remind my cities and towns that we do per our charter require that you, there are budget for adoption. And I will and ask any questions you may have. Yeah, so I just, Sarah also want to acknowledge that Paul is with us on virtually and Allison is here in the room as well who are our South Burlington reps to CSWD. Paul, very nice to see you there. I just, I'm very sorry I couldn't be there. I think I've been exposed to COVID. I didn't want to expose anyone else. But I just want to take a moment to thank Sarah and her staff for the great work they're doing. Very excited about our future. The new MRF is gonna be really important to the operations of the district and our finances. And I'm grateful of course for the voters for approving that. I also want to thank Jessie and her staff for working with us to find the new home for our offices. It's just, it's great. It's been long overdue. So just really, really appreciate that. And I'm excited about it being there. So I'm looking forward to my, our first board meeting. So there and there. So that'll be great. So Sarah did a great job. I don't need to say anything else, but thank you. And it's a pleasure to have you guys at 19 Gregory Drive just for the new counselors. This was a vacant space, office space that during COVID a private company had leased and left and had no intention of coming back. So we were able to work out a relatively long-term deal with our government partners at CSWD. So thrilled to have you and 19 Gregory. As of today, I think you officially start moving in. Yeah, start moving in. Very good. All right. Now we're opening up. Oh yes, Allison, I'm sorry. Please come up and turn on. Either one. Yeah. The microphone by pushing on the button. They tend to be off. So as long as the light green. Yes. I see green. So I'm Allison Lazarus. I am the alternate for South Burlington for the CSWD board of directors. And I just wanted to say that I've been working with Sarah and Paul since late last year. So not a huge amount of time, but just in those few months, I've been able to observe how thorough they are and how much they care about just not only the county, but waste in general. And so I just wanted to state publicly that I think they've done a very thorough job with this budget and I hope to approve it. Thank you. Thank you, Allison. Are there questions from the council? Oh yeah, I got a ton. Okay, go for it, Tim. The first question is, in your new offices in South Burlington, do you take your trash home with you at night? No, it is part of our lease. We do have trash recycling services and we actually also ask for composting services to be included in our lease. The other question is, how do you measure your could have been recovered percentages? Yes, so we measure those basically through the state. Does a, what we do is a waste composition study and the state does a waste composition study. So when the state does their study, it's how frequently it is. They produce a huge list of what is going into landfill. So we're able to take a look at that list and see exactly what should have been diverted. And then we can use the population in Chinden County to basically do the percentages and say, okay, if we know that Chinden County residents, businesses are generating X amount of pounds of waste per year and then X amount is going into the landfill. We can say of this, of the total in the state that is in the landfill that should be diverted to other places, our population is this amount and that's how we're doing our main assumptions. And then we verify that with our own waste characterization that we do periodically. We haven't done one in a while, but Tuesday. So being a more than glass half full person, I acknowledge the fact that the glass is 76% full for recovery and proper disposal as opposed to, unfortunately we're sending 24% to Coventry when we don't have to. I've said that before every year, I'm sorry. So, but 76 is a good number if we could just get more compliance across the county to be able to remove out some of those recyclables and especially compost. The next question is there were some proposals to extend the bottle bill to more containers. If that were to happen, how would that affect your ability to sell certain types of recyclables to your purchasers? That's a great question. So we have also done some studies on that as well and what goes through the materials recycling facility about 75% of it is paper and cardboard. So the vast majority of what we're managing have nothing to do with containers. And then a good portion is glass and we would still see some of that glass. The expanded bottle bill legislation eases wine bottles into the expansion. That is the majority of the glass that we process at the MRF. So we would love to see wine bottles in right away. And then of the remainder containers, we're still going to get quite a lot of containers that are not in the bottle bill. So if you think of cans of tomatoes, for example, if you have canned tomatoes, those are not going to be part of the bottle bill. They will continue to be recycled. So we will see a decrease in things like water bottles if they are 100% redeemed. We might manage redeemables now for the MRF. So there's a wide variety of reasons why people choose to not redeem their containers that are in the law right now and instead choose to put them in the blue bin. So we will continue to receive those materials. And the new materials recycling facility will have the technology to make sure that whatever people are putting in, we are grabbing every single unit that is coming through. So we will see some reduction overall and expansion of the bottle bill will increase the cost of recycling in the state because it is a dual system. Cassella has said much the same, but because the vast majority of all we manage is paper and cardboard, the effects will be limited. And the final question is, when will you start accepting credit cards at the drop-off centers? Please, someday. I promise you this. We do accept them in Heinsberg. And what we are now trying to do is get a better deal, frankly, on the fees that are being charged because they are exorbitant. However, I have asked my finance team and my drop-off center team, they're ready to go and have my finance team promise me that we'll be able to take credit cards everywhere this summer. So if you definitely want to use one, you can go to Heinsberg, I know it's out of the way, but that's been our sticking point, has been just those high fees. So we do have it in our budget to, as part of our expenses, an increase in those costs. So we are anticipating that that will be fully rolled out this summer. Thank you. Yeah, Sandra. Yeah, just a follow-up. I also wanted to ask about the Bottle Bill. Sarah, thank you for that very thorough presentation. So just to, did I hear correctly that you think if the Bottle Bill passed, it would have only kind of a limited impact on the financials that you presented, but that you, but that, you know, yourself, your facility itself might segregate the items that could be redeemed and presumably that could be in a different additional revenue stream. Thank you for allowing me to clarify. The equipment will be able to do a better job at making sure that for the materials that come through the system, that they're actually being sorted into exactly the properly correct bail. Right now, because we're hand sorting everything, sometimes a aluminum can will go into the water bottle bail or water bottle will go into the aluminum can bail. And that results in fewer of those particular commodities going out to the market. The technology will take care of that and create just better quality and more of the right things. So, so no, so no, to your question, would we be segregating Bottle Bill to your renewables and then redeeming them? No, we would not be doing that. That's not what the Murph is designed to do. So to follow up one more time, if we got rid of the Bottle Bill and the new Murph was in place, you could handle the load, right? Oh yes, oh yes. Here we go. Thank you. And I share Tim's comment. It's, I guess I was a little surprised at the presentation that almost half of the organic material doesn't go to the right place, which is not only impacting the landfills adversely, but really missing a huge opportunity, right? To compost and use that material as it should be used. So that's really interesting to me. I'd love any thoughts and we should all think about what we can do about that. You can brow beat restaurants that you go to that don't compost. That's one thing, because there are several that I know of that don't. I mean, we don't have enforcement mechanisms for that. We're happy to talk with you about options. What are the options, Sarah? So you did mention enforcement, but there's also, I think even being stronger in communications and maybe it's even working with us at a more local level, kind of maybe it's focusing in on, this is important to the city of South Burlington. We want to be number one in food scrap recovery from everywhere. How can we do that? Making it more of a community pride thing or something. We can talk with you about ways to kind of get more education out, more information, talk with you about how can we facilitate the recovery of those food scraps? What are the barriers that are understanding? Are there things going on in some of the restaurants or the institutions in the city that may be causing folks to not have that be seen as a possibility? It's also additional education as far as what is the requirement and who should be diverting and spoiler alert, but it's everybody. So there's I think more that we can do and if the city wanted to be even stronger partner, we would love to look at some pilot programs if they're not, I mean, there's more we can do. We would love your input. I actually thought it was required to separate, isn't it state law? I guess there's no enforcement. So people throw it away and. It is state law and we have a great team we have really one and a half people dedicated to, two people are dedicated to the education for businesses and around this and for enforcement. So and in Chinook County, we have the largest number per county per capita of businesses and restaurants in the state. So it's a good job. So we would love again any assistance and ideas you may have that may be kind of unique to the city that we could target focus. But yes, it is, it is everyone's responsibility to keep food scraps out of the landfill. It doesn't mean you have to compost them, but you have to somehow keep them out of the landfill. And I think that's where people get confused. So perhaps we could put a short article in the weekly South Burlington newsletter that I get via email. It's a wonderful newsletter and that might be good to put a little reminder in there. I wonder if someplace that common roots would want to do larger scale composting. So the public has a place to, I mean, my husband and I do our own composting and we have a big garden, so we use it. But not everyone wants a composter in their backyard, I guess. Right, and it's just not, for some folks it's not feasible. There's a host of reasons why that wouldn't work. And hauling costs are expensive if you want to pay a hauler for that. And you have to, we take it at tough growth and then you have to bring it to us. So it's also probably not going to make a difference. There's a lot of different factors. But we would also love to be able to kind of work with you and maybe even highlight where some of the success stories are in the city to show, here's a like a restaurant or industry or business that is doing it and making it work. We're happy to provide those examples as well, success stories. Sarah, do you have a sense of where the waste is kind of concentrated? Is it commercial, is it restaurants or is it just dispersed across homeowners? Do you have any sense of that? I know that when the final part of the law kicked in July 1, 2020, we knew everybody has to divert. We saw a dramatic increase in the amount of food scraps being collected at the residential level. So we know that homeowners, residents, even you know, multi-family and some of the commercial apartment apartments, they increased the amount that they were doing. So we know that that was happening. And the workshops we were asked to provide through the roof. So I do think that the opportunity lies in the commercial sector. Because that should be easier to tackle through enforcement. That's right. I would think so. Well, or rather than stick, Karit, I mean, I'm just saying, if we were to do something along the lines of calling out good actors and giving them kudos and credits, I think you'd be surprised at what that might do. Free marketing goes a long way to business owners that are pinched for tight margins right now. Is there something that CSWD could do to incentivize that good behavior? So I know we've talked in the past about having kind of like a green-sealed approval type of a program where you could use that in your marketing, you could use that on your website and you'll kind of feel good about being that good actor. So we've talked about that in the past. It's been a while since we've talked about it, COVID through a monkey wrench and a ton of things. But that's something that has some appeal for some people. Not everyone responds to kind of that green-sealed approval type of a program, but that could be something that could go along. The Chamber of Commerce, there's a bunch of different approaches and we'd love to chat. Yeah, because there must be an association, a restaurant association that you could tap into that I think, I mean, your residential handouts, things that come in the mail that say you can throw this out, you can recycle this, you know, where to put it. I think they're very well done. And so since you have that kind of public outreach already capability, and that's up to you to say whether you have that capacity or not. But, you know, I would encourage you to directly reach out to the associations that have, you know, their members just within a reach. Yeah, and we've since kind of we've become out of COVID, we have ramped that activity up quite a bit in the past just even six months. You know, because we know everyone just needed a breather and people were still doing quite a bit. And now we're coming back out a little bit stronger and saying, okay, let's make sure you know what you need to do, you have the tools, if you don't have the tools or if you're confused, we are here to help. Megan, one more. Yes, Andrew, one more. So I'm aware that some recycling, you know, facilities will just reject, you know, waste that has too much non-recyclable. If you know, if you didn't sort correctly, we just won't take it or charge more, right? Because now there's, right? So is that an option if a restaurant is dumping off waste that's, you know, chronically illegal? Is it an option to reject it or to charge more? Yes, so what we have done in the past and it has been a capacity issue. So thank you for mentioning that. Is we will, you know, as part of our enforcement and compliance team, we'll do spot checks at the transfer station, for example. And so if we, you know, see loads that are coming in that have too many recyclables in them or they clearly are loads and loads of food scraps, we can then speak with the hauler, try to find out, you know, where did this generally come from? And then work with the, we can get down to the business or owner level, work with them to help them to understand what their responsibilities are. So we don't have someone stationed at the transfer station, that's not really our job. And the transfer station does do a good job too, at making note of some of those heavier loads than they have the contaminants in them. But there is a lot more of that could be done. And we really prefer to lead with education and outreach. But there is a role for enforcement, absolutely. Yeah, because I can just say for the South Burlington Food Shelf, there's a newsletter put out every week. No, I'm not suggesting that that'd be your, you know, a weekly communication, but they highlight the generosity of the grocery stores as well as the church communities that give and how many tons that they give. And just that kind of, you know, positive publicity, I think is really, I think doing those businesses as well as I would say those communities, you know, some kind of, you know, service. And so I just thought I'd, you know, and coming from CSWD, you know, putting it out there in your annual brochure that goes to, you know, every resident saying here are, you know, heroes, you know, with regard to the amount of food scraps that they deliver, it gives them, you know, publicity, which could be quite, quite positive for them. So I don't know, it could be a virtuous cycle there. Agreed. Can I, I don't want to, I just have two very quick questions. The first one, I just to clarify, you said you've accounted for Sarah, the transition to credit cards in the current budget proposal? Yes. Okay. All right, thank you. And our three questions, sorry, the schedule change that you referenced, that is consistent across all locations. Is that correct? Except for Heinsberg. So that's the only one, or at least with the town of Heinsberg, says that we can only be open one day. So we choose Saturday because that tends to be the busiest day. Got it, but, but moving forward with all the rest of the locations that's consistent across the board. Correct. And Burlington will take a little bit to get there. We want to wait until we can expand at Burlington, but we are in discussions with the city right now for, for that. So we are hopeful that by the end of the second quarter, into the third quarter of the year, that Burlington will then also be expanded so that they'll not only be able to take more materials, but also be open the five days a week. Got it. Last question. The reserve for the Williston Post-closure. What's the, do you have any sense of the order of magnitude that we're talking about here? Is this hundreds of thousands of dollars? Is this millions of dollars? Where? Oh, good question. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify. So certainly not millions. We are, we have enough in the reserve to make it through our planned 30 years. It's that unknown that will be needed either for again, the treatment of landfill juice, the leachate for PFAS and Pifala, or if there are any more extensive repairs or updates that we need to make to the landfill before we apply to the state for that ongoing lower level monitoring care, that custodial care. So it probably is in the hundreds of thousands, certainly not in the millions. And depending on what the federal government says, and then what the state of Vermont says about the extent that we need, we all need to treat for these chemicals. That's, that's- We don't know. No visibility. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I have a quick question of remind me, and I can't remember how long will we be able to use the landfill and Coventry? Is it closing in two years? Oh no. And then what are we, oh, no. Thank you. Those are great questions. So the landfills that we manage are the ones that are in Williston. There are three in Williston that have been closed for 28 years. Those are our responsibility. The Coventry landfill is owned by Casella and they have about 20 years left on their current open areas called the cell. That's on that current cell. The concern is that they, it's not a given that they will be approved for another cell. So, you know, there's talk, the state is doing a, sometimes with conversations, I did a very brief internal survey about the well, if another landfill were to be built, where likely in Vermont might that be? How many would we need? What size? So they're starting to look at that. Our landfills take an awfully long time, this site to permit to build, they're very expensive. So we really do need to be having the conversations now. Well, I can't imagine there's all that many communities who are saying, we would like to be considered as soon as you need one. Exactly. And, you know, one of the wonderful things about Vermont is how much land we have protected. So there's not a lot of available land. Certainly not for the size if the state were to say, yes, we need another one very large landfill, whereas the hundreds of acres that you would need to site another central landfill. And so the conversations are beginning at the state level at the agency of natural resources, and we are encouraging those conversations because we know how long these can stay. Thank you. It needs to be held at the federal level with industry in my point of view, but because we're at the receiving end and we need to look at the source. But any other questions? All right, thank you. So we're looking for approval. I didn't hear any questions. I move to approve the budget as presented. Second. Very good. All those in favor? All right. All right. And that was unanimous. Thank you very much, Sarah, for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Paul and Allison, for coming as well and for the service that you provide our city. Thank you. Thank you. It's an honor. Well, it's mutual. It's mutual that you serve everyone so willingly and for so long. So I am going to move on to item number eight. Thank you very much to those in the audience from our Vermont Air National Guard. Our fire chief from the Vermont National Guard is gonna be here to talk to us about community engagement and mutual aid. And that's fire chief, Brandon Soder, along with Mr. Shannon Kelly, who's their environmental program manager. Good evening, thanks for having us. Yes, thank you. So if you can just make sure that, yeah, there you go. Should be a bright green light. There we go. So I'm Brandon Soder. I'm Shannon Kelly. Thank you, welcome. Just wanted to come and have a chat about the services we provide the city of South Burlington. Kind of offer a little bit of insight to who we are, what we do. Some background on me. I'm the new fire chief. I've been in the position just over two years. So I just wanted to put some faces with the names. We've been doing a lot of community engagement through the base. Been in the military 22 years. Love the Guard. Love everything that's done for me, for my family, for the country. I've deployed many times through the Guard. Now working in the position of fire chief, I have to think about things at a little different level strategically. And what does that mean for the community and the outlook? We're looking to build upon our already robust relationship with the city of South Burlington. So in step with Chief Locke here, been having a lot of really good conversations prior to this meeting. And some of the things that we've sent over in the fact sheet, just highlight a few of the brief things that we do. But we've forged a cohesive and cooperative relationship with the fire department and the community and it become a common fixture within the construct. It becomes, it comes as no surprise that we're only getting busier. And I think Chief Locke would agree with that. And we provide a cost-free resource for the city of South Burlington. So I think that's the big ticket here as well as very optimistic about our future together. So as time moves on, we're fulfilling more and more of the city's needs. And a fun fact is 86% of our mutual aid calls are for South Burlington. So that is the majority of our call volume. And I anticipate that to being more and more in the future. I'm going to kind of coin Chief Locke a little bit here so he can vouch for those statements. I'm not just pulling him out of thin air. I did run some reports before I came here tonight. But I think the fact sheet kind of speaks for itself. I'm here for any questions that you may have, but I would also like to invite Chief Locke to kind of vouch for us so to speak in our involvement with the community. Thank you, Chief. You know, when I came over to South Burlington, I didn't really understand the relationship, how close the relationship was between the Air Guard Fire Department and your city fire department. And what I've come to realize is that we are almost one fire department. And so the, our responders every day rely on the Air Guard to provide us additional resource. Just before I came over here, we went to Smell Smoke in the hotel right over here and they were the second unit in. And so what we're really forging a relationship now, automatically, I know I need 15 firefighters. That's a national standard for, on a deployment to a structure fire. And I can't do that without their help. And so now on dispatch, they're automatically responding to, and all in an effort to cut down on response times and deploy the right number of people. So I think the number of calls they, and they handle medical calls for us on that end of the community without a South Burlington suppression piece, so just with a South Burlington ambulance. And we're going to be looking at GIS data and not too distant future about saying, are there areas of the community in that area of the neighborhoods that they could even be at quicker than us if they are to use them? We're really trying to morph them into one fire department. So I appreciate the chief being here tonight and everything that they do, we would not be able to deliver the services as well as we do without their support and their really willingness to always jump right in. So thank you. May I ask a follow up question, chief? The number of firefighters that came out on this call from the South Burlington, the number of firefighters that came out from the base. Sure. So our ambulance was on another call. So there were six of our people on duty because we have eight on duty, two were on a medical call. So we had six of our firefighters and three or four from the air guard. They're typically deployed minimum of three and sometimes four. So we didn't have 15 with the two? Right. And so what we're comfortable or I think we're moving towards in just a few more months, we'll have that additional two bodies per shift was authorized by the voters that between that and then the look at maybe having to have at a Burlington engine on to reported structure fires. Please go on. So those are just a few of the things that we do. The services that we provide again, they're on the fact sheet, but aircraft rescue firefighting with a primary response at the airport. And the only ones in the state certified through the FAA to my knowledge, we provide structure firefighting at a high level emergency medical services at the A level. So it's not at the medic level like South Burlington, but we provide advanced life support rope rescue. So technical rescue, confined space rescue, hazmat response, motor vehicle electrification. We do our own dispatching so that comes at no cost. We don't necessarily rely on the adjoining communities, dispatch agencies to get us out the door. In public outreach and education. So at any point we invite Boy Scout troops, schools, classes, Girl Scout troops. I mean, you name it, we host tours, we educate people about who we are, what we do and the services we provide. We are also hosting skills USA, which is a technical skills building program through the state. We proctor all of their examinations annually. So we're very involved in the community. And in my experience in talking to the chiefs around the nation, the international guard chiefs, DOD chiefs, we have some of the most comprehensive agreements and best working relationships that I've heard of. So I hear nightmares and horror stories about the surrounding communities and some of which the other fire chiefs serve. This has by far been a dream to walk into and it's only gotten better in my 22 years of being here. So the relationships that we forge, the people that we put out into the community, over 50% of our members volunteer within their own communities which they reside in. So it brings that information, that training back, that the Air Force offers and not necessarily the state can't offer, but it has a hard time doing so due to constraints. So we're bringing a high level back to the community. We're paying for it. Thank you. Yes. We have an environmental officer here too. And chief, I didn't mean to cut you off, but did you want to say more before? I'm open to questions after you're done with Shannon. All right, very good. Did you want to say something or are you prepared to say something? I'm here in support or to respond to any questions, anybody. Okay. Well, we have heard of course of PFAS and need for mitigation at the base and around the base. And as well as some litigation related to that. And we see the foam and the chemicals that are listed there. Could you inform us more about the status of that cleanup as well as what kind of chemical makeup is in the foam and the other firefighting agents that the firefighters use? Yeah, so right now the type of foam, a triple F foam that's used, it's called referred to as C6, a triple F, which is just a short carbon chain. And so that was approved by the EPA several years ago. And so that's what we're currently using. Now in January, they just approved they being the department of the Navy had lead on trying to secure a fluorine free foam. So that's what the Department of Defense and the FAA have approved going forward. And so that will be replaced similar to some of our old, what we call our old legacy foams, which are longer chain foams that were more harmful to the environment. So those will be replaced. The Air Force estimates on a national contract just in terms of DOD, they estimate October of 2024 for replacement across the nation. And that will include us at the Air National Guard as well as other Air National Guard bases. So we anticipate in the next 18 months. As far as cleanup, drinking water impacts across the nation had been the priority. So we are not yet in that prioritization list in terms of having what's known as a remedial investigation, in other words, the next phase from where we've been or from where we were a few years ago. But that is a few years in the making. So drinking water is the number one priority across the nation for the Department of Defense. And that's currently where we set. Given that priority, is there a reason for the 18 month delay? It just takes a long time to change out A-Triple-F at literally hundreds of bases across the nation. So we're, they're Air National Guard bases that I think they're roughly 169 give or take Air National Guard bases and also active duty bases as well where we're talking about an effort across DOD. So not just the Air Force, it's the Navy Marine Corps Army. So that's a pretty significant lift. Are some receiving it earlier than others? They'll, I don't know what the prioritization scheme is, but yes, yeah, in effect. I mean, some will receive or replace sooner than others, but I don't know what the prioritization scheme is as of yet. So there's no requirement to use up your current supply before you get this new version? No, no. We only use the current version in an emergent scenario and thus far we haven't had to use it on any fuel-based fire. The disbursement of foam is prohibited unless it's for an actual emergency, excuse me, we cannot train with it and how we test it's on a closed loop system. So no disbursement whatsoever. And the status of the cleanup with Winooski River being involved in that, could you provide some? Yeah, yeah, we're years away from being in the prioritization. Yeah, they're focusing on, they being DOD is focusing on drink and water impacts right now. I see, I see, yep. Other questions? It's two quick questions. Thank you, Chief. Thank you for coming to present for your services. So how does Chief Locke and the city services coordinate in terms of like rooting and dispatch when an emergency call comes in? Who gets it and how do we figure out who services that call? So we have pre-designated automatic aid areas. We train our members to know them very well. We also monitor radio frequencies, so South Burlington's frequency we monitor 24-7 as well as being on South Burlington's run cards. So as Chief mentioned, if it's a confirmed start, go ahead, Chief. But there is no automation. I mean, if they didn't have someone listening in the radio room 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they wouldn't know. So yes, there are pre-designated areas that they know. They hear the street address. They go, that's our, we're gonna take that call. But in today's world, that should be automated at the dispatch center that we could dispatch. Basically, we should be able to trip their house bells or send out a call. I mean, in today's world, really, it's one person in the radio room going, huh, that's our district. We gotta take that. So like a phone call made. That person took a bathroom break, something might fall through the cracks or- I'm sure that they- At no time, at no time are we unmonitored. So I can assure you, if that's the case, we're gonna have another conversation. It is amazing how quick they are on runs and yet it is completely manually done. Interesting, thank you. And then I asked Chief Locke this question about, I'll ask you two last week. Just, I had a number of constituents voice concerns about the hazard of a potential F-35 crash and that I guess F-35s are made with materials that are more difficult to handle emergency, they're more toxic, they're more flammable. I'm just wondering about your perspective on that and the ability of the base to handle a potential F-35 crash. As far as my scope, we're equipped, we're ready, we're trained. I'm not concerned about the emerging aspect of it. As far as the hazards associated with such, an incident, I would argue that it's no different than a commercial aircraft going down. There are the same materials used in commercial aircraft for the past 60 years, i.e. there's new technology in F-35 that makes it a little different, but it's not entirely different. It just has more of those materials and we're trained to, trained and equipped to handle all of that. Thank you. I have a question. Yeah, please, Tim. So by my poor math, you had 107 calls that were not in the community, so they were at the airport itself last year. I'm sorry? So you had about 107 calls that you answered, responded to at the airport last year. So what kinds of calls do you respond to with the airport? I mean, I haven't heard of too many airplane crashes. They had one that was, you had emergency recently, but there was no fire. So what do you respond to at the airport? What goes on at the airport? Everything and anything, suspicious packages, excuse me, medical calls, fire alarms, medicals and airplanes coming in those qualify as IFEs, so in-flight emergencies. If there's indicator lights on the aircraft, we monitor and watch them land safely. Luckily, that's what happens most of the time. In the two years that I've been the chief, we've had four crashes and we've had one, I know of aircraft fire that I ran. So, and I think that got some press. It was three generations of people in the plane and got them out in under 90 seconds. So it was a good day. And some lithium. I am battery fires. Beta's been a good customer. I'm not gonna lie. It's been a good customer of ours. Thank goodness for shipping containers, right? Thank goodness, yes. No, honestly, the numbers don't tell the true story. When we do calls for service, so you see our numbers are 906. What we classify as an actual emergency may differ from a call for service. So if it's just a good intent call someone wants us to come and check something out for them, we'll put it down as a standby or a good intent call. And that won't always classify as an emergency. And the only reason we do that is because we know what the call is going to be so we can classify it as that ahead of time. As far as the actual emergencies go, it kind of blew me away because I hadn't really run the numbers like that, but 86% of calls into the community is up and it's pretty large for us. In the 29 full-time state in Vermont, how is that allocated Vermont employees versus guard members? So think of it as two separate departments but work in the same building and our state employees are the full-time 24-7 presence. They are the what? The full-time 24-7 presence. Oh, okay. Well, they are the firefighters. Oh, okay. They are the firefighters. Okay. They're working under a federal contract as 100% reimbursed by the DOD. Oh, I see. Yep. The only time the state's on the hook form is when it comes time for retirement. And then the guard members are doing what? The guard members are doing the same thing, just getting ready to do it in another location, not near here. So we train to deploy and do the same job overseas. Oh, I see. Got it. Thank you. Councilor Burns. Yes, just a couple of questions. I think the first one is probably directed more to Chief Locke. Chief, what would be the ramifications if this relationship were to end? And what would be the ramifications on our city and our ability to cover these calls? You would need another fire station, period. Okay. And I guess that goes to, thank you, both of you. Thank you. We appreciate the business. It's what we do. Well, we do too. We appreciate your support. So then my question is sustainability. I for one, I'm incredibly grateful, and I think I speak on behalf of the council. We're incredibly grateful for the support and for the fact that we have this great relationship. Given the importance to the community, how do we improve it? How do we make it better? And how do we make sure that it continues into the future? What can we do? I think we, I mean, I think we're, I see this as a very opportune and fortunate time. We have two leaders who are committed to this and want to see this relationship grow. And I'm inclined to say, how can we, to be quite honest, how can I get more bang out of that free dollar and use them in a greater capacity as long as they're willing to and they cover their mission, right? So they have to make sure that they can protect the airfield, you know, with 24 seven on a short amount, a very short amount of time. As long as the chief can continue to deliver that mission, he's comfortable providing a service to the community. And I think that, you know, we want to try to figure out how we can maximize that because it's, it really is, it's a state, it's state tax dollars or federal dollars reimbursing that, that is a huge benefit to this city and the city of Burlington. Because ultimately without, without that fire protection there, that would fall to the local communities to cover. And I think that's, that's not my concern, but I just, I want to make sure that it's sustainable. And I want to, I want to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to ensure that it's sustainable and that the mission can continue for both parties. Yeah, I think what I've seen in my 30 years is the air guards fire department has continued to grow. And where, you know, when I first started this business, they almost never left the base, maybe for auto extrication. And now it really has grown into, they are on everybody in the county's mutual aid response. They're often first into Winooski or second into Winooski. It's a, you know, it is seen now not as the air guard fire department, but it just as any other municipal fire department that you just, you call them and they show up. They're well trained people and tech, and they actually have a skill set with technical rescue, probably more than most. All right. Well, please, if there are things we can do, please let us know. We're grateful and we want to see it continue. Yes, Andrew. Yes, sir, a follow up. And I completely agree with everything Tyler said. It's wonderful for our community that you willing to provide this service. But I guess I'm just going to sustainability point. Curious why? Is it the case, for instance, that you have the capacity you have because in the event of an emergency, that's what the guard thinks it needs to have on base. But at times when there are no emergencies, it's excess capacity. Is that why we're kind of able to have this kind of mutually beneficial relationship? Or is it that the state just decided that, you know what, the Vermont Guard should provide this service to communities. Like I'm just, just in terms of sustainability and understanding how this developed. I think Chief Locke touched on an important topic is the ability to perform our primary mission, which is the F-35 and airport. So I'm not going to miss my words. That is why we're here. That's why the Air Force is paying for us to be here. That's why we have so many people. If it was up to the FAA, we'd have 2.5 people on duty. So I don't know how you get a 0.5, but you can see where I'm going with this. Now we have nine on duty every shift. We're covering 24 seven, and we're able to send three to four people off base in under 60 seconds. You know, you call upon a local volunteer department, no disrespect to them, but it's, it was from five to 10 minutes before you feel the truck on the road. So you can also see where I'm going with that. Response times mean everything in today's day and age. What I would like to say to sustainability is that even if we go off base with three to four people, we have our in-house matrix and cross-staffing of vehicles to affect either F-35 suppression and recovery aircraft, commercial aircraft suppression and recovery. In lieu of the event, our engine is off base with three to four people. We never drop that mission, even at night when there's no flying. So we always have to have the one-offs. We have divergence all the time. People don't hear these things as you're usually sleeping, but we have aircraft from other airports that divert military aircraft from other bases that divert. And we're known because we have an arm station that's very good at what they do. Helen, do you have questions? No, I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming. I think this is really helpful to have you remind us what you do. And also it's reassuring to hear you mutually have great collaboration and a working relationship with our fire department. So thank you. Yeah, I did have a question for Chief Locke. Yes, with regard to the foam that you use and the chemical components of it, could you tell us more about the PFAS? Sure, so we all use the same foam. I mean, the reality, and we carry, with the exception of we have a Class A foam, which has no PFAS in it, more for structural firefighting. But the reality is we rely on the air guard. And part of our mutual aid agreement says that we will, we rely on them for, so if we have a tanker crash out here on the interstate carrying gasoline and there's a fire, we don't have the capacity to put it out. We're calling the air guard. But your Class A foam could put it out if you had enough fire fighters? Our Class A is for structural. So it's Class A fire, so it's wood and where flammable liquids fire would be a Class B fire. And for that, we have small amounts of foam, but we would rely on the air guard for that responsibility. When I was in Burlington, we, Burlington stores a lot of Class B foam, a AAA foam, same foam that is used, but it's a state cash. So basically if there was a significant event somewhere, the state hazmat team would stop there and pick it up. So that's, but so to you, to back to the original question, are AAA foam is the same foam that they use? For certain kinds of fires. For certain types of fires. So that will never necessarily go away. It's just the structural fires, you will have a new kind of foam to add. Can I expand a little bit on that? So the foam that the hazmat team has, and Chief, I'm not, I hope I'm not overstepping, is the legacy foam. So the more dangerous the environment foam, we're the only unit in the state to my knowledge that switched over to the short chain, the less hazardous foam, and the only unit that are on track within that 18 month timeframe to have a flooring free foam. So we will have a non-hazardous Class B alternative. And we are the only entity in the state that can handle a large Class B fire. I've been in talks with global founders and the hazmat chief and they just don't have the capacity to deliver product on fire. So it's really risk first reward here. You'll never have Class A foam because of the types of fires that you're equipped to fight. So our engine has Class A foam on it. That's all it has on it. So our crash trucks have Class B for the POL, so the jet fuel, the hydraulic fluid, all the nasty stuff we don't want to talk about, right? Our engine, structural firefighting truck has Class A foam on it. So it adheres to wood surfaces, it sticks, it suppresses the vapor, all that good stuff. They operate differently. That's why there's classes of fire and that's why there's specific media to combat all of them. We just happen to be the only entity in the state, maybe other than Rutland Airport, that has the ability, I know we have more ability to put large amounts of suppression on large fire. So this is helpful. So in the 18 months, the switchover will be for the gasoline fire, the fuel fires that will be PFAS-free. Yes. I see. So then you'll be 100%. Anticipated, anticipated. Okay, okay. And how about this floor? Because it's military, they're always gonna get the, I mean, to be quite honest, they're gonna, they had thermal imagers before anybody else had thermal imagers. So because it's a military, they will be the first ones to have the capacity and capability. You know, I'm not hearing when it is on the commercial market. I see. All right. So we'll still have that small cash for a fuel fire. And the other part of that too, is I think Vermont State has been bound by state law. I don't believe they're allowed to even utilize the A-triple-F that are in stores. So it's just sitting there. So there's no one, no one other than us that has the federal exemption to apply that phone. In my, to my knowledge, and I could be speaking at a turn here, but. Okay. So that was something that, that when Chief Locke and I were going back and forth about our mutual aid agreement, we had several discussions on it. And I said, listen chief, this is, this is the agreement. I can either say we won't use foam outside of our fence, or we will use foam. And it's kind of a take it or leave it situation. But the truth of the matter is if a railroad, you know, unfortunately, if a railroad derails and catches fire, if gas tanker flips, going through the clover leaf in South Burlington, you name it, we're going to be there in a short amount of time with very big trucks putting that fire out. Okay. Well, that was very helpful. Thank you very much for that clarification. And thank you for coming. I think that we have all asked our questions. And again, thank you very much for everything you do. Thank you, 24 seven. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So we are moving on to item number nine, which is consider assigning onto settlement agreements with Teva, Allergan, CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens that would enable the state to maximize the return to Vermonters and Jill Abrams ish. Yeah. The director of the consumer protection and antitrust unit of the office of the Vermont attorney general. Is she here? Right there. There we go. This is the second time we've had a pitch like this before, right? Yes, I believe so. Well, thank you very much for coming, Ms Abrams. My pleasure. Thank you for working with our city attorney. All ears. We already have a motion ready to be made, but we will first listen to what you've come to tell us. So I think what I'll do is start pretty high level. I'm not really sure how much each or all of you know about the settlements and about the process. So I'm going to just sort of give you some big picture and then if I haven't hit the things that you want me to talk about, I'm happy to talk about them. Make sure the button, I think so, to make it a bright green. No one ever says I can't hear makes sense. There's always a first time. Yeah. So I think some of you were probably here, maybe all of you, when the first opioids settlement happened in 2021, there were settlements with three distributors and the manufacturer Janssen. And this is structured the same way. So number one, the goal of these settlements is to abate the opioid crisis and to try and get as much money into our communities as we can. Recognizing that no matter almost how much we have, it's not going to be enough. And so across the country, there are agreements between and among in each state, the state and the municipalities about how the money will be divided. And in Vermont, we use what's commonly referred to as the default mechanism, which means 15% of every dollar, 15% of that money goes to our municipalities, 15% of it goes to the state, to the general fund, and 70% of it goes to what's called the opioid abatement fund. And that fund is overseen by a statutorily appointed council, there are 12 members, they change membership every three to four years. It's overseen by the Department of Health. And there are people there from small and large municipalities, people with lived experience, doctors, people who are pretty experienced in addressing the opioid crisis on the ground. And so each time a settlement is reached, it requires certain kinds of sign-on. And so that's really what we're here to talk about. And for each state, the defendants who are the other party to the settlements have different requirements about how the settlement is structured. For Vermont, what it translates into is in order for us to get the maximum amount of money, and by that I mean the following, the defendants would really like not to have to pay all the money that they have to pay. That would be their preference. And so what they've done is they've structured the settlement so that there's what's called a base amount, an amount they absolutely have to pay no matter what happens, and then incentive payments. And the incentives mean that in every state, there are certain municipalities, subdivisions who must sign on in order for us to get the maximum amount of money. So in Vermont, it's the eight municipalities with populations of 10,000 folks or more. 12 of our 14 counties, I guess the two they think are not large enough, and then four towns who actually sued some of the opioid distributors and a few of the manufacturers. So if all of those entities sign on, then the state gets the maximum amount of money, and the money is divided 15, 15, 70 whether everybody signs on or no one, but the state signs on, there's always that division. But in order to maximize the recovery for everyone, the eight municipalities, South Burlington being one must sign on. And what does sign on mean? It means that you agree that when you receive the money you'll use it for the purposes of abating the opioid crisis. And that could mean pretty much anything that touches the opioid crisis. So it could mean going and educating kids in schools, supplying doses of naloxone to emergency services and kind of everything in between. So that's the reason for signing on. And just a little bit of history, I did a quick look at some of the data that I was able to access. And it looks like, for example, in the distributor settlement where the first payments went out last year, South Burlington got two payments of $15,000 each. And I think with the Janssen settlement, something shy of $60,000. So it's not millions of dollars, but it's certainly a substantial amount of money for the community. What can I tell you? I'm not really sure what you'd like to know. Could it be used for our community outreach program? I don't know if you know about, but it's to, I mean, our emergency services do encounter people who are either inebriated or high or committing suicide or various situations where they sometimes have some access to counseling. Clearly not when the actual crisis is occurring, but as a buildup to the crisis. Is that something that it could be used? I think the answer is probably, and the reason that I'm just a little cautious about it is because the money is really earmarked to address the opioid crisis. So if you had someone who had several kinds of substance abuse and one of them was an opioid abuse problem, then the answer would be absolutely. Could you direct it to the fund without any guardrails at all? I think the answer would be no. No, right, yeah, right. So if we had some data that would show that it could at least cover $60,000 worth in a year. Yes. Thank you. Yes, Jesse. So thank you, Jill. I think that's absolutely right. I do think this is a conversation that council should have at some point. We did not have it as part of the FY24 budget process. So we do have these funds in a fund in the city waiting to be allocated. I think we've talked on the community outreach team's side of things, exactly to that suggestion. Could we work with Howard to put into place enough data collection that we would know that? I know council really was also interested in exploring other partners that are specifically providing treatment services like Turning Point or something like that for our neighbors. So I think that it is a deliverable. We owe the council to bring some recommendations about how to allocate those funds. School board. Talk to the school board too, right? And you can also, you don't have to spend it the year that you get it. So if you've got a five-year plan, you could just hold on to the money until you're ready to spend it. Are there questions? Yes, Andrew. Thank you. The Chittenden Clinic on Dorset Street, the last I heard did not have a waiting period. They were able to take everybody, and I don't know if that's still the case. I don't know if you know, and I'm wondering whether the payments that have been received so far by the state have helped that clinic achieve zero waiting time for a new patient site. That's just a question, or if you can tell me two or three things that the state has done with the funds that have made a difference. Yeah, I don't know because the state is doing the same thing, is assessing how the money's going to be spent. So I don't know if any dollars have gone out of the Batement Fund or not. I think the answer may be no. I think it may be a second part of the year expenditure. Thanks. I will tell you the first half of your question. The last I heard there was no waiting list, which is great. It is also among the, I think what I've heard is that it's the largest service provider of its kind in Vermont, and very successful at what it does and serves a lot of our residents, which is phenomenal. And if it's helpful to you in terms of how to spend the money, there is an exhibit to one of the settlement agreements that I can, maybe I can forward it to you, Colin. It's like 15 pages long and it gives tons of examples of ways to spend the money. It's not exclusive, but I think it's, sometimes it's helpful to people just to see all the different ways that you might want to spend it in case there are things that just haven't thought of before. Can I ask? Can you remind, you may have already said this and I may have missed it. Is there a timeframe when we need to spend the settlement by which we need to spend the settlement money? No, there isn't. Thank you. Can I ask what other communities have signed on? Where are you at in the process? I've been in touch with every community directly with the exception of the two Essexes. I haven't connected with them. So they may have already signed on. I was hoping I would know before I came here today, but all of the other communities have indicated that's where they're going. And in the last settlement, everyone signed on. So I fully expect that's what's going to happen. And if they don't, I don't want to say because I don't want to speak for them. And if they don't, if I understand, I just want to make sure I understand you correctly. If they don't, that won't change the outcome of the settlement. It will just change the amount of, it'll change the disbursement. That is allocated to the state of Vermont based on the settlement still stands. Is that correct? Or do we have to go back to the drawing board? No, the settlement will stand. It's just going to depend on how much we get. So we might only get the base and not get any of the incentives. I understand. Thank you. Andrew. So this is my first time hearing this and maybe I'm misunderstanding, but just to clarify. So Sage South Burlington does not sign on. What reduction in dollar amount would there be in the incentive? Do you have a sense of that? I don't, you know, we don't know exactly because it's a combination of everyone. So it's not like self-religion. Or like order of magnitude if the base is 39.5, is it like, is it? Let me ask my second question first. So if we don't sign on, do we still get a share that we can spend however we want or we get nothing? Nothing. Okay, then I'm done with my questions. All right. Helen, did you ask all the questions that you wish to ask? No, I just have one more. I mean, just, it's not a question. It's a statement. There's no downside for South Burlington to sign on. And I, I mean, it's sort of a new question in my mind. Of course we need to sign on because these monies are really important. I can't think of a reason why we wouldn't. And just one clarification. I think just to state the obvious is that this, this settlement money that we signed to this settlement and this would be in addition to the money that we received previously under the settlement with the disbursements for the distributors. Yes. And I think the total amount is what, 39 and a half million? Yeah, the total amount to the state is 39 and a half million, yep. And as a component of signing on to the settlement, we would be in effect releasing the, these entities from any liability for this. And we wouldn't have an opportunity, not that we pursued it in the first place, the state did, but we wouldn't have an opportunity to pursue any claims together. Yes, that's what you're giving up for, absolutely. Thank you. Have a quick comment to me. Yes, please, Tim. So I just want to say that I can't stress the importance of this settlement to extract every possible scent out of these companies for the damage that they have done in such a far-reaching manner across the whole country. Every corner of this country has been touched by the opioid crisis, even here in South Burlington, with a couple of high-profile cases that have been just absolutely tragic and there are countless others as well. So I don't have any problems voting yes on this. I just want to make the point that these companies have damaged and killed many, many people across the United States. So it's time to get something back so that we can educate and take care of people who are still under the influence. Thank you. I do have a question with regard to the 70% to the statewide abatement fund. How would that be divvied up or is it already allocated to? No, it's not. So there are, by statute, I think required to be at least six meetings a year of this council. And our council, the statewide abatement council. So the statute sets up two things. It sets up, it establishes the funds so that when the money comes in, we have a place to put it, the 70%. And then it sets up a structure for how the money is going to be spent. So it directs that the money be spent consistent with that 14-page document that I mentioned before. And it describes how the committee, the council members will be selected and then the criteria that they'll use to make the decisions about how the money will be spent. And the goal is that the opioid abatement council will be making decisions that will impact the entire state as opposed to maybe South Burlington gets X dollars and would like to spend it in a different way locally. This is intended to benefit the entire state. Are there treatment centers in the state currently in-house? Yeah, in-house, you mean run by the state? I don't know. Or with some kind of funding provided by the state. So I'm not an expert on that. So I sort of hesitate to say that. I know that we certainly, we've got folks who have the benefit of Medicaid. So there are certainly currently funds being spent in that way. There are a bunch of state and federal programs. I don't, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about the treatment part to say to you, I know that X dollars goes to any particular, any particular treatment program. I could probably find that information if you like and I'm happy to send it, but. I think it's useful for us to know what, some people need to get into a supportive environment for a length of time. Is that something that even exists in the state? I would be curious to know. Yes, and there is, there's a unit of the Department of Health called ADAP, is the acronym. And that's probably where the states, experts in this field reside. They're pretty impressive group of people. So I can get you a contact person if you want. I can work with Colin and maybe pull together some information for you. Okay, all right. Yeah, it's more just to kind of understand as someone who is receiving these funds to know, as we're trying to decide what to do locally, what are the larger frameworks that exist in the state as we consider how our small contribution fits into that whole picture? Sure. And I would hope that there would be some kind of website or like 2-1-1 has a listing of help centers, or some kind of information that we could access even as local officials where we don't have to have an interview with somebody on the phone, but rather just to have an understanding of kind of the apparatus that's already in place in the network that we're trying to play our small role. I'll send a link, because I think the Department of Health does that pretty well, yep. Thank you. Sure, yes. So also the opioid settlement committee, advisory committee that's putting together the set of recommendations, the VLCT has representatives on that committee and Chief Burke is one of the municipal representatives on that committee. So as we go forward with this conversation, I think it would be worth bringing him in to have him share from the advice he's providing from the local level up to that statewide location decision. Yeah, because we, I think, I mean, I don't know, but I just walking my dog, I can sense when neighbors are in crisis. You smell things in the air, you see garbage that hasn't been emptied for weeks and weeks and weeks. I mean, there are just signs that people are in crisis and I'm not gonna go up to the door and knock and inquire, certainly not my business unless I can somehow approach this in a knowledgeable way and be compelled to respond in some way. But I just think it would be helpful for, because it does affect us in our very neighborhoods. Okay, well, I think we need a motion. The man in the yellow coat was ready to jump all over it. I will move that South Burlington sign on to the settlement agreement with Tiva, Allergan, CVS Wal-Mart and Walgreens. So I would enable the Senate to maximize returns to Vermonters. Is there a second? I'll second that. Very good, thank you, Helen. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I need to abstain. All right, and one abstention. And is there a reason? Just curious for that as well. I can't possibly be objective about this. I lost family members to opioid overdose and I know this is a good deal for the state, but $39.5 million doesn't seem to, I can't be objective. So I'm respectfully going to abstain. Thank you, thank you for that explanation. So that is four who voted yay and one abstention, Sue. And I am going to ask that we all take a two minute break and we will reconvene in two minutes. Helen, we're getting a lot of background noise from your mic. Oh, okay, I'll turn it over to you, sorry. Well, thank you for letting us take that two minute break. We'll probably extend it a little bit. I would like to have us come back to order. We have as the next item on the agenda, our city clerk's retirement. And we will discuss how the process for filling her position until town meeting day of 2024 will be done. Daisy Brayton is here from Human Resources in our city. She's our director. I can make it bright green. Thank you so much. I'm Daisy Brayton and I am the Human Resources director for the city of South Burlington. Very nice to meet you all. Yes, as you all are probably very well-familiar, Donna Kinville has announced that she is going to be retiring in August. Our beloved city clerk has decided that she's going to leave prior to her term being over, which means the city council, you have the entire responsibility to appoint an interim city clerk to fulfill those duties until the election in March of 2024. So Helen and I and Donna met earlier in March to take a look at the job description of the city clerk. We took the opportunity to review that and before you is the revised document, which we agreed upon that hopefully reflects everything that Donna is currently doing and where we want the position to go, but certainly wanted to get city councils input on if there are other things questions on or wanted to make sure was included in that job description. In addition to that, we put together a strategy and some plans on our potential timeline. That in front of you is indicating that in April, we wanted to finalize the job description, get advertisements out as you are all very much aware that this individual must be a city of South Burlington resident. So we will be advertising just locally to recruit individuals to apply for the position. The process would be that we would get it advertised and the human resources department will be happy to accept those applications and compile them and then get them to the city council so that we can make a determination on who to interview, who to bring forward, who you want to appoint. That would happen, our timeline again, looking in early May that we would get interviews and potentially identify a candidate, have an offer made to that individual and hopefully then in June and through August have some overlap to work with Donna to learn the position and to appreciate all of the knowledge and that's gonna be walking out the door. So, and then in August as I mentioned earlier, when Donna anticipates to be retiring. So yes, wanted to bring all of this information in front of you and to talk through if we had any questions, any recommendations on timeline job description, anything that I'm happy to help answer questions. That's a mighty list of duties. And... 40 pounds? You gotta be able to lift 40 pounds. There you go, because then climb that ladder that goes into that vault. Let's see the guns. Yep. I think a good humor person is a must. Someone who whistles while they works. Absolutely. And pivot very quickly when the, what was your last crisis in when equipment wasn't working properly and batteries were dying and as I understand Donna remained very cool and collected and handled the crisis very well. So... So if I can just add just a couple more senses about table setting, we will have lots of opportunities to celebrate Donna in the months to come, but really because this is an interim appointment, it is the council's appointment. We are happy to support you in whatever administrative way we can, but ultimately it will be the council's decision. So we just wanted to make sure we're going down the right path here that you all will feel comfortable with getting to a final candidate that you'll be able to make the appointment of. So interviews would, so I guess our outstanding questions for you are the job description look good, the timeline look good, and are you comfortable or is your intent that the full council will interview candidates in executive session and then make an appointment in public session. And if yes, then I think the request would be that Donna, Daisy and myself would all like to somehow be involved in that process. Of course. So you say interim. So we... I'm sorry. Yes. I'd just like to add that in the job description, I think it's important to note that we included that the city clerk is part of the leadership team. And so while the person we're on a point is an elected, ultimately it's an elected role, but and they are independent from the city manager, but they work closely together and going forward as it is now, we wanted to make sure that the next city clerk is understands that she's part of the leadership team, which kind of pulls it together in a very nice way. You guys could sit at the table if you would prefer. Hi. In that meeting that we had, oh, sorry, Daisy, in the meeting that we had, we had kind of come up with the possibly, hopefully a June 1st start date for the clerk. I have a relatively, I will say green team, but there is not a lot of experience in the clerk's office. So this person who comes in is going to be needing a lot of training in the fact to the point they get comfortable in what they're doing. So if there's any way we could try and get close to somewhere around the June 1st start date for them, that would be appreciated. Yes. Okay. And then the person would be up for election potentially in March at the next town meeting day is the goal. Right. Statute says that after they would be elected at the first meeting of the town, would you be March next year? Okay. Very good. What's the duration of the position in terms of how often you have to run for election? This is a three year term. Three year term, okay. In 2024 would have been the time I would have rerun. Well, okay. So currently we are holding time on your council agenda on May 1st for interviews. So we can post the job tomorrow, this week, collect resumes until we post, send them to you for your consideration for your April 1st meeting. Which would be make that deadline. Which be held in the interview process would be held publicly like for our committees. This is the first time I've ever, or is this an executive session or I don't know. So I think that's up to you. What I and Daisy please feel free to jump in here. What in my mind, this is similar to you all appointing a city manager. So you did that and you interviewed me in executive session and then you made my appointment in public session. You could decide especially as this will be in an elected official position. So you are kind of holding the decision for the voters for the time being but the voters will need to know this person in the future. You could decide to hold it in open session or to do a part of it in executive session and then bring a finalist to an open session presentation. Those are some of your options Daisy. Yeah, definitely options that you have in completely your decision. Yeah, so when you say you're holding time at our May 1st meeting, do you foresee that we could potentially hold executive session prior to May 1st and then potentially bring the finalist to that May 1st meeting? I think that might be pushing it just a little bit only because we have, yeah, April, we're already in April. So I would anticipate probably more along the lines that we will have all of the candidates that are applying to you in that May 1st. And although we are looking to do the interviews there. So we could then look at the second meeting in May after an executive session between that first meeting in May and the second meeting in May where we'd have the finalist. I'm just trying to think, right? Because June is then, June 1st is the date that. So Howard currently tracking this on your calendar is interviews on May 1st to hopefully get to a decision among you all of who your top candidate is at the end of that evening. And then we would negotiate or we would make an offer to a candidate that then would be approved by you in the open session on the 15th, but with knowledge that this person was going to be starting in a couple of weeks. So it'd be during our regular meeting time that we could potentially be interviewing people in executive session? Or you could set up a separate meeting. I think there might be, depending on how many applicants there are, we might want to consider a smaller group to go through the initial number of applicants and kind of like we did the city council, I mean, not city council. City manager. City manager. And we now the, you know, this person I've been with in South Burlington or they don't have the minimum set of requirements or something. So that the whole council isn't looking at, you know, 10 resumes and having a conversation about so which are the final three or something. That's just a suggestion. If the council wants to go through all of them, you know, we certainly can. That makes sense to me to have some filter, presumably our HR director would participate in that and fill out the most qualified candidates. And then it sounds like the timeline is pretty abbreviated because ideally they'd be some overlap. So Donna could pass on her skills for some short period of time to the person selected. So you'd kind of want that person in the position, say by mid-May, which really makes this timeline very compressed. Well, no, Donna serves through August through, I'm sorry. I am here August sometime. Oh, okay. So they'll be date, date yet until it's July for transition. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And also keeping in mind an individual that we bring on board is more than likely going to have to give notice to their current, to their current employer and trying to build that in. So we did build that into the timeline of overlapping with a June start date and having June, July and part of August to... Well, speaking personally, I find city council meetings to be pretty heavy duty. I mean, unless we have a super light evening that it would be hard for me to just, you know, kind of change gears into kind of that interview where you want to strike a tone. You certainly, it's a very different, you know, duty that we'd be performing then. I would prefer that that executive session, we could do it on a Tuesday, May 2nd, or, you know, just to keep the timing. But I would be much more relaxed if we didn't, you know, have our usual agenda that goes to late at night. It would just be more relaxed. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Make it more comfortable for the candidates. Any other questions or concerns for me? Can I repeat, sorry. No, go ahead. Can I repeat back what I think we're agreeing to? Mm-hmm. So we're going to post the job description, as is, with a comment about the leadership team immediately. Collect resumes. We'll have a spet, well, Daisy will work with you all to coordinate a special city council meeting sometime right around May 1st to do solely interviews and then aim to make an appointment no later than the May 15th meeting for somebody to start as soon as possible in June. And that, so I think I'm good with all of that. And then do you want to appoint two of you to work with Daisy on screening of candidates to get to who to bring forward to the council to interview? Sure. Yeah. So I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to help. Unless somebody else wants to help more than me, or I mean doesn't. I could help too. Thank you very much. If it's three of you, we're gonna, we have to warn it. Oh, yeah. If it's two of you, we can. I mean, if you want to do it, thanks. I've got a coin here. No, no, no, no, please. It's, would you like it? Okay, I'll help. All right, so Tim and I, thank you. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. I'll definitely be keeping you abreast of as things are happening. It's kind of an unusual employment world at the moment. Recruitment can be a challenge for darn sure. So we'll keep on top of it and then I'll be in communication with how things are going. All right, very good. Thanks, Daisy. Thank you. At the party, can we have pizza and calzone? Or just, just eat. Gluten free though. Thank you guys. Well, thank you both. We'll look forward to seeing those applications. We're moving on to item number 11, which is regulating rental properties. We are going to be receiving an update from our staff, including our deputy city manager, Stephen Luck, as well as our city attorney, Colin McNeill. And we also have a draft here to consider, at least as a starting point, right? Exactly, as a starting point. So good evening. And this really was a cross departmental effort to get to a place, at least something for your consideration. So back in early January, the then council presented the concept of creating or at least some sort of regulation for short-term rentals. And so the committee got to the group of us got together to look at what that should look like, including the potential for a rental registry. So what we thought perhaps the best way to do that was to present to you a draft ordinance that would get perhaps all those components and then you let you give us some guidance on if you like the direction we're going and if that is true, then we'll continue or now would be the time to make some changes if we've overshot or gone too far. So really the highlights of this, it does two things including, so it does look at starting to do some regulation of short-term rentals, but it also creates a rental registry of all our rental properties. So that we're, so just so you're aware, our prevention department within the fire department does not inspect, well, we have the ability to by law or by ordinance to inspect rental housing, but we really only do that on a complaint base, which we just don't have the staffing. So this would create a situation where we would have the increased capacity to be able to inspect all rental housing. And so the draft ordinance for you, one for you to consider as drafted, it proposes that a short-term rental could only be used if it was owner occupied. So is that something you desire? That would be a data point we would need to know. Are we on target or would you like to have it done some different way? It also, if you rent your house out for less than 15 days a year, you would not be considered a short-term rental and you could still do that. So if you rented your house out for the two weeks a year that you were gone away on vacation, you could still do that and would not be considered a rental need to apply for the rental registry. You would be required to have a property manager with Inchiton County. And so this ultimately is often for us, for the fire department when you respond, so if we have a building contact and someone that can show up quickly, if there's a problem. We are proposing in the ordinance $100 per unit fee, which is similar to, is the Burlington numbers that? Anyway, we are proposing a hundred, we looked at several other ordinances, but we are proposing $100 per unit fee. Given that many of our units, certainly just in looking right around the buildings around us, our new units, we are certainly proposing that the first three, if on a new building or a building that's relatively new, that fee would be waived for the first three years. And some part of that is those buildings just paid a pretty good fee to have been constructed in all the inspections that occur during construction. And so that was the logic there. And we're also, as part of that would say a large unit, large multifamily unit with more than 40 units owned by the same building owner would have a reduced fee. And again, that's part of, when we do that inspection, you would coordinate that and probably do all those units at one time, which makes it much simpler than making 80 different or 40 different phone calls to set up the inspections. And then the final thing I'll bring to your attention is the inspection cycle is really set similar to how Burlington reconfigured theirs, where if you have no violations on your inspection, you don't see us for five years, unless there's a complaint. But if you have several violations, then the more violations you have, the quicker we come back. And this is a good way to reward those property owners and managers that take good care of their property. So at a high level, this went from both short-term to also long-term, our all rental housing. And between Colin, Paul, and Eddie, and I think Terry may be online. We hope we can answer any questions that you may have. I miss him. Just one other clarification is that short-term rentals would also be allowed if you are, if you're a tenant, you can rent out, you could rent out as an owner occupied with permission from the owner. And the way this is set up currently is you could also rent out an accessory dwelling unit. So looking for your direction on those concepts as well. Can I ask you a question about that ladder point? Why, can you help me understand the rationale between allowing tenants to sublet but not allowing owners? What's the differentiation? Is that because you just don't want to see the housing stock? It just- Owner occupied versus tenants, that's your question. Yeah. I think it was let's look at what other communities are doing, and a lot of communities had done a similar thing where you were allowed to, if you were an owner, you were allowed to rent out your building as long as it was owner occupied, but also treats a tenant occupied in the same way as an owner occupied. So for instance, if you are a tenant, a long-term tenant of a single family residence, and you go away for a month, you'd be allowed to short-term rent at your place. It kind of puts a homeowner and a tenant on equal footing is what I understand. That makes sense. Thank you. Can you clarify for me how does a home that somebody owns and only really owns it just to have it as a verbal rental or an Airbnb? An Airbnb. Did I misunderstand that this doesn't affect that as only owner occupied rentals? It would not be allowed. So under the ordinance, you could not buy a home and just Airbnb it. And, okay. So this is the most- Stand up ahead, point of it. Okay. Yeah, this is the most restrictive. Okay. So how do you transition that home that somebody owns from the use that they intended it when they bought it to something different? Does it force them to sell it or do they just are able to rent it long-term? You can only do a year-long rental or something? That's a conversation we're definitely going to have to have. I think that, yes, it would be under the current draft of the ordinance that would be prohibited. I know that for instance, a lot of municipalities when they adopt similar short-term rental ordinances, there's a grace period where you can accept rent. You can continue to rent for those rentals that have already signed up. There's a period of time for that that's explained in the passage of the ordinance. But once that period of time has expired, those residences would only be available for a long-term rental and you could no longer short-term rental them under the current draft of the ordinance. Okay. And hence then they'll be presumably more affordable house, maybe affordable, maybe not on the housing stock. Okay. And I think Paul has the number of at least what we, what was best we can capture for the number of short-term rentals out there now. Yeah, we're currently averaging about 73 active rentals in the city of which 80% of them are some form of a whole home rental and about 20% are a room within somebody's house or apartment and then it sort of breaks down from there as to whether they're single-family homes or within an apartment. The majority are whole homes, meaning the entire single-family home and that's been the area of growth in the last few years. A little more than doubled the number to about 40-ish from where we were. Now the data doesn't say whether that's happening three days a year for that whole home or the entire year. We have to sort of interpret. So I'd say some portion of them are full-time rentals but not all of them, for full-time short-term rentals but not all of them. And are you looking at listings for that? We are using something called AirDNA which is a service that is provided that pulls data from VRBO and Airbnb. It doesn't capture the other services but those two have about 90-something percent of the total market share so that's pretty close. That's a snapshot from last month with data from the past year and showing sort of trends in the last five-ish years. And those were short-term rentals? Yes, the AirDNA data is only about short-term rentals. We have about 40% of our total housing stock rental is in long-term rentals so of our nearly 10,000 homes we're almost, we're nearing 4,000 rentals. 10,000 units? Yes, okay, yep. So did you have questions? I just wanted to make sure I understand the rules being proposed. So if you have one of these 70 in order to Airbnb it, you can only Airbnb a piece because the owner has to be on site, is that? That's the disposal? Well, go ahead. I mean, I think. Can I answer this question, I think? Yes, go ahead, Paul. Not necessarily, it has to be your primary residence. But you don't have to be there. You don't necessarily have to be there and as long as it's your primary residence for tax purposes, for homestead purposes, however you can establish that as the place that you live. For instance, some people go away for less than six months a year. That would still be their primary residence that could be rented out on Airbnb for that duration of that time when they're not there. And also it could be rented out when you are living there if you rent out a portion of it. I see, okay. And I believe the third. In terms of a tenant then, if a tenant, is that the same rule? If it's a tenant's primary residence, they don't necessarily need to be there. I mean, that's the same rule. That's how we would, yeah. That was confused by the words. So there's no individual registered or short term rental unless it's own occupied and it says tenant occupied without permission of the owner. I think that without, I picked up on that earlier, that should have been with. Okay, yes. So this, as Chief Locke pointed out, this is the big policy discussion for you. There's a whole gamut of what different communities have done to meet the needs of their community. This draft is at the most, at one end of that spectrum that prioritizes housing to be long-term housing first and foremost. Communities can go all sorts of different models to the other end of that spectrum depending on the needs of that community. But that's what this one is. We sense that's where you were. And so if you're not there, a lot of snow and we can go a different direction. I have a question in terms of that. That is where I am, but I was just curious that I'm thinking that this is a true statement that we have very little, if any, kind of summer rentals along the lake. I mean, if you look at Colchester, let's say, they have neighborhoods of just summer rentals. So if you said it had to be a primary residence, then this would really impact that. But this doesn't, does it or does it not impact homes in South Burlington? I'm not, if the question is about whether we have sort of summer camps that are only part-year homes. Yeah, do we have any? I'm not, if we have any, there probably could be counted on one hand. I can't think of any. Yeah, I don't want to say absolutely, but I can't think of any homes that those neighborhoods along the waterfront have long been desirable neighborhoods and have converted over the last few decades to year-round homes. Okay, but we may want to have some kind of option if that is the case, if we find one that isn't. Helen, can I ask for your rationale behind that? I mean, I think if the house is meant to be a summer home, it's never meant, it isn't even maybe weatherized. If the owner owns it as, we don't have hunting camps in South Burlington, but if it's a summer camp, a seasonal camp, it's never going to be full-time housing for someone. I guess, I guess, so here's where I struggle with that is we start to get into the idea of intent, right? In the sense that my parents, my parents until very recently maintained a residence in South Burlington, and they had to sell it, and had they not decided to sell it, they would, the only way that they would have been able to retain it, their snowbirds, would have been to do some sort of short-term rental. Now they could have done an intermediate-term rental that would have kind of skirted any regulation by offering it for six months or two, what have you, but in essence, that would have been the only means that they could have kept their home here. Sure, but my understanding is for the snowbirds, if there's still Vermont residents, your parents, for example, if they only are down South for four and a half months a year and their primary residence is their home in South Burlington, they could rent it for four months or however many months when they're not... But there's the practical realities of trying to find a four to six-month tenant versus just turning it over to Airbnb, right? It's a lot easier to flip over the switch. So why would you turn it over to Airbnb for four months? But yeah, so you could, again, as the chair said, as long as they were, that was our primary resident, they could Airbnb at the time they're not there. Right, but if it's not their primary residence, then they have no ability. As we proposed, you would not be allowed. And I guess when the, I understand the idea about lakefront housing or, you know, or non-year-round housing and offering an exemption there, but it just, it seems a little, it doesn't, part of me struggles with that because it doesn't seem equitable. If we're allowing, if we wouldn't allow a senior who spends six months in one day in Florida to do it, and that's the only way that they could keep their home in South Burlington, but we would allow it for someone who has the ability to own a lakefront cottage I struggle with that. It doesn't, it just doesn't seem equitable. And that's where it's, it would, it would seem to me, I don't know what the solution is, but I struggle with that. What I could add is the people who have been most vehemently writing to me about this do have lakefront property and they want short-term rentals to go away that they want their neighborhood back. And so I'll just put that out there. Helen, that these were owner-occupied homes that have been flipping more and more. So I don't think we have cottages out there. I think we have neighborhoods that are flipping. Just the two weeks that you mentioned at the beginning, Chief, now you- Sorry, you can tell me either. Yeah. Steve or Chief is fine. Is, was that just an example? So for families that go away for two weeks, that they could Airbnb it for two weeks, it could be up to six minus one day, six months minus one day. A couple of questions there, I think, but the 14 days you were talking about, so we had said that it's not a short-term rental and you don't have to register if you're, if you're renting for 14 days in an annual, in a year, that's from state law. So the definition of short-term rental and state law exempts those rentals that are under 14 days. Thank you. So we just, we had took that from the state, the statute itself. Sorry. I just have a couple of questions. Sorry, can I pause you for a minute? Helen, can you hear us now? Helen has less sound. Uh-oh. Can somebody else on online let us know if you can hear us? Like Chris, can you hear us? Yes. Yes, I can. Okay, thank you. I can hear you. Thank you, Sue. Okay, let me, you can keep going. I'll just message Helen. Okay. Do they have to show and provide liability insurance of $1 million for guests? That was something that I found as a provision. That's, let me just look at the number. But yes, they are required to provide liability insurance or if their platform provides insurance for them, say for instance, if Airbnb provides insurance that has the same limits as what the ordinance requires, then they would be allowed to not acquire insurance independently, but they'd be able to rely on the provider's insurance. Yes, that is in there. It also requires a... Was it a million dollars? I can't remember. I'm sorry. It is. Read this on Saturday. It is. Yes. Okay, thank you. Short term D. I'll get there. Since we're not going to pass it tonight, I trust Chief Locke's memory. Eddie just... He's looking at it right back there. Yeah, okay, very good. I even trust the eyes there. But it also requires either signing up for an account to pay rooms and meals taxes or same thing, have your host or the mechanism by which you are renting have that ability to pay those taxes for you. The other concern had to do with special events. So parties, weddings and noise. That would not be respectful of... There's provision in there that the owner had to notify or provide guidance on what the noise ordinance is. And I think that was the limit. It is addressed in there, but it is basically the owner would have to, as part of the informational sheet to the tenant provide listings on what the noise ordinance is. We don't have any numbers in our newest since ordinance. Burlington does. Hopefully someday we will. So that's a concern. I would have some communities prohibit parties and weddings and major events. And since we don't have decibel numbers in our ordinance, I would advance that as something we should consider. And I was also looking at the number of offenses, the number that the fines would be for offenses. And it does seem to perhaps not be stiff enough to encourage people to abide by our regulations. So that was another concern I had. We can look into both of those. And we did try to incorporate most of what was in the letter that you put together in the draft ordinance. Thank you. I do appreciate that. And we can look into both of those aspects. I mean, I clearly have much stiffer things in the letter I provided here. I mean, we're getting to the thousands of dollars on the second offense. So that might be too stiff. But I think when we get to four, 700 just seems like if they're willing to go up to four, we're not necessarily dissuading them. We're just looking for statutorily what we can actually find. And usually it's limited to $800 per day under the statute for violations of ordinances. But we can look into that a little bit more to see what avenues we'd have to have a stiffer penalty there. Okay. Can you state the per day thing again, though? That's really where the quantity comes. It's $800 per day. Per day. Yeah, maybe this wasn't per day. Yeah, maybe it does. Okay. Thank you. And I think with parties there are some ordinances that we looked at that do that. But it obviously with that would ramp up the need for enforcement capabilities as well. And add to our hands-on enforcement of the ordinance itself. Can I change the conversation back to the... You have to ask me. I'm the acting chair, Tyler. Just not you to know that. No, no, no. I'm just saying, I'm not asking to change the conversation. We've been talking about short-term rentals, but longer-term rentals. I'm concerned that one of the unintended consequences might be that it could further increase rental rates. Can you give a sense, chief, for existing property owners and property managers with the move to compliance for inspections and for having to join the rental registry outside of the $100 fee? What are some of the biggest pain points in your experience that some of these renters, that some of these building owners might encounter? Could we be looking at something that might potentially... I'm just going to let our assistant fire marshal, he's here in the room, just take the podium for a second to tell you probably the most common violations that are found, which would be the pressure points, I think, where a rent or a property manager would have to fix. I will say this, though. Some of our occupancies, people should not be living in, and which will probably surprise you, they did one today, and Eddie should be the photos later this afternoon, and it really was uninhabitable. And so those types of occupancies, we need to be in, but those people aren't calling us to complain. So they could. They could, but they typically don't. So we experienced less than 55 violations over the last two... 55 complaints over the last two years. So most people aren't calling in to complain about their housing situation. Because they're worried about losing it. Yeah. Good evening, Ed Spooner. I believe that you're probably going to see the electrical aspect would be the most expensive avenue for some of these older homes, if they were to rent them out, to bring it up to the current code, to go to what we have in the ordinance with all hardwired interconnected smoke detectors, and then looking at egress windows, escape windows, that nature changes those out to the proper size. So there definitely could be some money incorporated into that. So that's what I think you pretty much are looking at. And is that... I know this is an impossible question, but is that typical of homes that were built before 1985? Is there any sort of general and broad brush that we could say? I'm just trying to get a sense like how much of our housing stock might this affect if we have exposure to all of a sudden... So if it's an existing rental, like a rental apartment, probably it's pretty well in compliance. Because most of our housing, our units are newer. Where we will have those type of window problems and smoke detector problems being hardwired would be in conversions. If I wanted to rent my 1968 house out now as an Airbnb, then I think those are the houses that we would catch during those inspections to say, in order to let someone sleep here, you've got to change the windows out. Or you can't have extension cords. You're going to have to put some outlets in. Because now we charge our phones next to our beds and all those other things that perhaps we wouldn't have and we wouldn't allow an extension cord. So again, from our normal apartment buildings things are going to have way less concern with ensuring compliance. It's going to be the conversions. Can I say that? And I really want to stress that one of the goals I've heard this Council share is to really incentivize home ownership. And I think that discouraging homes from becoming Airbnb's is something that if that is a consequence, it's not unintended. And I still think that it is good for everybody to be complying with our fire and our electrical regulations for their own safety. And we can certainly talk about affordable housing at another time, but I am also a proponent of having big A affordable throughout the city that S100 does not allow for. And I see that there... Can I add one comment? So I think, I think I just want to call attention. I think maybe this is where Councillor Barnes was trying to go. The short-term component of this and the long-term component of this. To be clear, yes. I'm talking about the long-term rental component of this, not the short-term rental, sorry. So to your point, I think that what we have heard from the current Council is this interest in securing our home ownership stock and making sure that we're not losing that the stock we currently have on the books. And the mirror goal of this as currently drafted is to ensure the health and safety and well-being of our rental stock outside of short-term, long-term. So we have, as we tip into 50%, short-term rental properties in the city period, that's half of our population that we want to make sure have access to quality housing, affordable or not, quite frankly. And this allows us to build a system that we can document. Right now we have no way of knowing if our rental housing stock is of quality. So this ordinance would get us to not only a system that would enable us to prove that to our residents and make sure we're protecting the health and well-being of our residents, but also collect the data and understand what that stock is. And in my experience in Winooski, where we had a rental registry, pushed information out to those landlords as well. You know, right now, if we want to send a notice to every rental property owner in the city about a forum with efficiency in Vermont, we have no way to do that. With a rental registry, we would have a way to do that. So it's the two things. It's both incentivizing the home ownership stock and it's ensuring the health and safety of our rental stock. You said it much more clearly than I did. My last sentence did not do justice to that. Yes, we have a couple of... Yeah, as the council... I just have a... Okay, so just a couple of questions. When a single-family home is sold and changes hands in South Burlington, what do the codes dictate in terms of hard-wired interconnected smoke detectors today? If it's like old, you know, older home, 60s, 50s. Prior to and after. Thanks for coming back. Just stay close, Eddie. It goes to a year and that's in the city ordinance. Anything built prior to 94, you have some different varieties that you can do for detection. And then anything after that is all hard-wired interconnected. It has to be hard-wired. So if it was built after 94... But anything built after 94 isn't necessarily at construction had hard-wired interconnected, right? Not until probably... We're still finding some that are built after that that are not. Most of the newer stuff is, but I can't say for sure because we're not inspected them. Right, so this is a great reason why. We're trying to do this. The only time we see those is on time of sale. So if you sell your home, you're supposed to... Not a single family. Not a single family, you're right. Not a single family owner occupied home. So this just points out that the first... My opinion is that we need to get our arms around all the rentals because in my mind, ethically, morally, if you accept money from people to live in your unit, right, wherever it is your personal unit or it's another unit that you own, you owe it to yourself and the purchasers of that agreement to provide them with up-to-date code for fire and electrical safety and lead abatement, right? Let's not forget that all homes built prior to 1978 used lead paint, right? So, and I know that there's a lot of people in the Old North Inn in Burlington who have had to go through the whole, you know, abatement process on lead. And I'm sure that there are homes in South Burlington as well, especially if they're going to be rented to people with kids, right? So that's another dimension that I don't think you mentioned that in your... Okay, go ahead. Yes, please. That's a great segue. So I just wanted to add that the project team that Steve led for us sort of took a two-part discussion. One was what are the core issues that the Council is looking to address in the short term, and that we identified as being the rental registry in the short term? And then we also sort of did a bubble diagram, essentially, of what are the orbital issues that relate to this? So that could be building codes for single-family homes that are ownership. It could be energy codes. It could be certificates of compliance and certificates of occupancy from the zoning side. There's a whole number of related subjects that a structure that if the Council decides to move forward here can be added to in a thoughtful way over time if you choose to also move in that direction. So we have been putting thought to that, but the team wanted to focus on the core issues in the shorter term to make sure that we don't sort of have it sink under the weight of its own thinking. So that's where we're at. Thank you. I just want to be sure that all Councillors... Okay, Andrew? So the short-term rental piece of this I fully support. In terms of the long-term, I don't know what the state is working on. And unlike S-100, there may well be a kind of scale or efficiencies to have a statewide, long-term rental registry, statewide inspection mechanism. I would want to understand that a little bit. Did it fail last year? Did it fail the year before? I believe it passed last year in the Governor vetoed it. It doesn't have legs and... No. Well, it has interest. Yeah. I mean, I guess I would just personally like to understand what that looks like a little bit before we... Well, and I would just say that because we have an agreement with the state to do our inspections of all of our public buildings, there would be an expectation from the state that we would handle our own rental registry in the inspection and those occupancies. So that office is going to have to ramp up to do that work if it does pass through. Similar to the same way we would have to ramp up, but I think they would... They'd rely on us and... I think they would concede that it is, given the number of units we have, very similar to all the large communities, it's much better to be handled locally. So then the second point is, I know, Jesse, you pointed this out in your memo. I'd like to understand a little bit about... And I know you said we need this information. The fees that we could expect to receive and would that kind of fund the costs that we'd expect to have to administer this because otherwise the rest of the taxpayers are kind of paying for this system that's really only benefiting the landlords. So I would just kind of want to understand that a little bit. And I think that's what we're looking for your guidance and the next step is to do some cost projections. I mean, back in the napkin math says it's going to pay for itself, but I don't have those numbers. I mean, we know we have about 3,000 units, Paul. Almost four. Yeah, and so in knowing, we're going to need two to three inspectors, some administrative support, you know, if you... So, but again, our ask is if we're heading the right direction, then we'll go back and do some financial projections. We'll see you balance out. It's probably going to pay for itself, but you should see that up. We want to spend some time on that. Okay. Andrew, I would just correct one of your statements and you said this would largely just benefit the owners, the renters, not the renters, but the rental owners. And I see this as benefiting our residents to make the rental properties in South Burlington safer. Right. So I don't see it as a benefit necessarily to the owner of the rental building. One last, one last. I just can't emphasize this enough. I'm really interested in the short-term rental issue, but I'm more interested in getting a handle on every single rental and whether or not the buildings meet code today. Because I have seen a unit in South Burlington, somebody in my family rented one who was going to UVM a few years ago and I referenced it in my other paper article, right? And it had at least three or four violations. If there were an inspection, that property owner who was taking in $4,000 a month would have to rectify them in a certain amount of time. And I think that's why, you know, we brought you in order to say includes both of those. We could have just focused on the short-term and, you know, for certainly for myself and those in the fire department who see these every day, if we're going to do this, we would prefer, much prefer you bite off the whole apple and take on all rental housing. Good. I think we're in agreement. All right. We do have one person online. I saw one person here in the audience. Are there other people who'd like to make a comment? Okay. If you'd like to come up to the podium and I'm sure that you'll have to probably push the button to make sure it's a bright green light to speak and then just identify yourself. Oh, there it goes. My name's Nora Sonicle. I've met you all before. So I have a couple of perspectives on the short-term rental housing and some concerns about the long-term housing. I know when I saw that we were going to be looking into this as a city, you know, I did the math and just to say out loud is that these Airbnbs, they really only comprise 1% of our housing stock. So just to have a proportion of a problem, you know, when you do the math, these Airbnbs sprinkled around the city, they only comprise 1% of the housing stock. So I don't think we're going to gain a lot by shutting down maybe somebody who has a house and then owns the house next door and shutting down that person's next door house that maybe they generate income off of. But they could, I think, convert to long-term rental. So I'm just sort of noting that, that's all. But the question, so I have a number of questions. I guess one of the concerns I have, so just full disclosure, I own a house. Actually, when I first moved to Vermont, we bought my husband at the time and I bought a house in Shelburne with an apartment under half of it and we rented it out and then we sold that house. And then back in 2009, I started renting a room in my own house and I paid taxes on it. It's nice. It's good with the insurance company. You know, for the most part, it's good. And it's not a short-term rental. People stay with me for a year or six months. But that's the only way I've been able to afford that home as a single parent. And I guess I want to offer another perspective that if we come at this problem with a very, I don't want to use the word punitive, but a very regulatory approach or maybe over-regulatory, are we going to squeeze out people who don't have the time to figure this out? I mean, I did some, I had some experience. You know, I was willing to make things as legal, obviously, as possible. And because I have a license, a professional license, I'm not going to screw things up. So, but I'm just wondering if there are other people like me who are trying to hang onto a property by renting some part out for whatever reason or, you know, a lot of the people I would have, and to just also emphasize, there's a need for short-term housing. I'm not talking about the 30-day housing. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who are going to be here for six months, three months. There is a great need for short-term housing in this community. I'm approached by various forms of healthcare professionals. Hey, are you renting a room still? Do you have space? I'm approached by students. I'm approached by other professionals who are maybe here for half a year, for whatever reason. I'm approached by lots of people. Do you have space? What's your situation? Couples, lots of people are dogs. So there's just a lot, a lot of need. So what my concern is, if we become over-regulatory, we're going to squeeze out the people who are trying to hang onto their homes, and then we're going to deplete inadvertently some housing. Now, I don't want people living in unsafe housing. I know what that looks like, and I think that's wrong. But I think we have to strike a tone that wants to conserve what's out there and obviously get rid of what's dangerous, for sure. But I just, I'm not, I just really want to offer another perspective. I can think of some Airbnb hosts who maybe have lost their job. That's why they're renting out their home or their artists. It's not people trying to get one over on the community. They're contributing to the community. So I just want to offer a different perspective on that. Thank you, Nora. Thank you. Nora, can I ask you a follow-up? So are you concerned about the provision which requires it to be the primary home of the prospective landlord or the $100 fee? Or the inspections, which part is concerning you? I would say probably, you know, I've read it a number of times. I don't think the primary owner is a hard one. I'm not as concerned about that because if you're the primary owner that sort of puts into some of the scenarios I'm aware of, I would say it's definitely going to be a big push to get everything what you've named to code for some people. I think that's going to be really difficult if you even just hiring some basics in your home, you're going to be coughing up, you know, 1,500, 2,000, maybe more, even more so. So maybe that might not be very available to kind of throw at their property. So I'm not saying that we shouldn't have that as an aspiration. I just think that you're going to, people are going to go underground, you know what I mean? Like you could have the, you know, I think there's already a little underground, but if you want to invite people out of the shadows and make their housing legit and safe, there's got to be some carrot approach to it, right? But someone has to pay for that inspection order. And somebody has to pay for that. Wait, no, I mean, it's true. I'm not saying they shouldn't pay for it, but I'm just saying that my concern is people losing housing and concerned of just, I just want to offer a different perspective that it's not all these bad land over. And I also want to make, ask you to make the regulations more clear, like does this include people with roommates? Does it include, you know, are you going to have the long-term housing regulations mirror exactly the short-term ones? Because again, I think some clarity needs to happen around that. That would be a request. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. So we have Chris Trombly online. Hi, thank you. Nora actually overlapped a little bit, but I was hoping just for some clarification of their, the 30-day cutoff, a lot of longer-term rentals have moved away from annual contracts in the now month-to-month. Would I understand the interpretations that it is a month-to-month contract that we would still classify that as long-term? I think that's a great question that we haven't really thought through yet, but it sounds like if it's over a 30-day lease, then yes, it would be considered long-term. It's these month-to-month that they're kind of the short-term rentals that Nora is touching on a little bit. We're like, I'm not really going to be here for a while. It's going to be, I'm here for some workforce issues or I need some temporary place to be because I was displaced or whenever there's this kind of a more of a niche group that I just, I wouldn't want to see any harm to that group, especially since it helps subsidize folks who kind of rely on an income to cover the bills. But if it is a long-term, if it's month-to-month, if it's long-term, that's not so, it's positive. Thank you. And Sandy, Julie. First, I wanted to thank the staff team that worked on this. It's been a, on a work plan of the affordable housing committee in particular about preserving wanting to reserve long-term housing opportunities, whether it results in more opportunities for home ownership or long-term rentals. I do, I wanted to say that I would respectfully disagree with the point that we shouldn't think about regulating short-term rentals because they're not a large percentage of our housing stock because it's, in my view, it's better to, if we think that the growth in this phenomenon is not in the best interest of the city, then it's better to start regulating it when it's small rather than when it's really gotten to be a bigger phenomenon or practice than it is now. I also, I think people seem to be agreement that you shouldn't make an exception for a lakefront cottage. I don't think there are any lakefront homes that aren't year-round. I am aware of a lakefront home that is used for short-term rentals and it's not owner-occupied and I do think, I don't see any reason for there being an exception to that. But mostly I want to applaud you because I think from the conversations, the health and safety issue of making, doing our best to make sure that when people rent, they have a habitable place to live as well as trying to promote the long-term housing stock that we have, preserve it. There are many different positive outcomes, I think, of this regulation. So I would encourage you to move forward on it and thank you for the time you're giving to it tonight. I want to echo that. I want to thank you for bringing it forward. It's actually earlier than I had thought when we were kind of prioritizing things. So you put on your superhero cape and you came through. I would really like to know the timeline for when you'll come back to us. Do you need some direction from us before you go and work? I know you were talking about also a hire and needed hire. I think we can come back to you probably in 30 to 45 days with cost projections and what that's going to look like. And then that would lead to your next steps on public hearing and it's all deferred to Jesse on when she thinks that would be on the schedule. But we should be back to you. No, Colin has vacation. I knew that there was something I was told that was going to lay this out. That's right. We lose Colin for a little while on vacation. And on a trial for it. So Colin will be on a trial for a week and then on vacation for the last weeks in April. I think we can move in parallel with the staff planning the finances of it. And Colin will pick back up fine tuning the ordinance in May and then come back to either second meeting in May or early June. All right. Yeah, I knew it. We're always open to guidance whether we're on the right track. What we essentially tried to do was incorporate in ordinance what you had suggested us to do. And so if we're on the wrong track or you think we can hit on some things that we've missed or do it better, please, like we're all open to try to address what you want us to do. Did you get a sense of the direction here that we're providing? Well, I'll just say, I think the one thing, do you as a council want us to put noise or really the prohibition of gatherings? Yeah. I heard that loud and clear from the vice chair. I just was, is that the consensus? Because I think that that's where we're headed with language that would prohibit that. So I think that's the other everything else we can, everything else I think was very clear. You wanted us to go in and the prohibition on gatherings. We take it. I think I guess that's the one thing I'm not sure where we have consensus on. Well, I would support that. Yeah, that's fine. We have guidance. I'm happy with this progress because this is the, we're making headway. Yes. Right. Like, we're going to go there. We've been talking about this for years. Right. We have. Warned the public meeting. We listen sometimes to. No, no, no. I'm just saying, I'm really impressed that you've generated this much information and, you know, a path for projects. So thank you. Yep. Yep. Thank you very much. See you on Friday, Colin. It's not vacation time yet. I'm afraid. All right. We're going to move on to number 12, receive and accept amendments to the land development regulations. Number LDR dash 22 dash 0909 and possibly set a public hearing for May 1st at 730. And we're going to hear from Paul Conner again, our director of planning and zoning. Hey, folks, Paul Conner, Jessica Luisos chair of the planning commission is also online. So thank you, Jessica for participating. So this is the follow up to your last meeting. So it's your last meeting held a public hearing on a series of amendments minor and. Well, not entirely minor, but updates to the environmental protection standards. At that meeting, you received some feedback and from the public and you asked us to work on a some additional language. So that language is presented to you tonight as a modification. If you choose to pick up that modification, then you would warn an additional hearing based on that language. If you choose not to advance that, then you have the opportunity. If you want to take action, well, I don't think it was worn for action tonight. Was it for adoption? Okay. So you could provide us with the guidance that you don't want to include that. Thank you. All right. I'll just get started since I'm probably going to be the fly in the ointment. I don't know if there'll be other flies with me or we'll actually be the ointment. I don't know, but the modification that you brought forward and the discussion we had at our March 20th meeting really opened my eyes to the risks of reverting to a 50 foot buffer for homes that were built prior to what was it, November 1st, 2020 something. And I am very concerned that we are opening up situations where there will need to either be repairs because they're building on land that shouldn't be built. And I'm also concerned that there are no limitations on what could be within that, you know, outside of that 50 foot buffer. So they, except for the percentage of impervious surface on the parcel. And I think, you know, when we think about existing properties, when we introduce a new ordinance or a new building code, it's primarily for aesthetics. It's primarily for character. In this case, we're talking about nature, who are talking about the immovable force. It's not simply, you know, a matter of taste. And we had reasons, which I thought were pretty structurally sound reasons for changing that 50 foot buffer to 100 foot buffer. I mean, I'm hesitant even to say that, you know, the people on the lakefront property that probably would not be allowed under our current regulations can replace, you know, a sinking deck or patio because of the land shifting underneath. And, but I've been swayed having had conversations, you know, with colleagues here, that when that is truly existing, that we could, you know, allow that repair to occur. But I certainly don't want to create new situations in that situation where, you know, we see not only damage that could be done to that infrastructure of the house, but also damage that could be done to an ecosystem. And, you know, it was raised to me that, you know, it might not be fair to these homeowners who bought their homes believing that they could add a deck, they could add a sunroom, they could add whatever they wish to add. I'm not so concerned about a small shed, but regarding, you know, an impervious patio or sunroom, I am concerned. And it is, to my mind, kind of part of buying property. You know, I have no assurance that the property behind my house will not change and none whatsoever. So the benefits of not having, you know, perhaps an apartment building behind me, you know, I can't count on that. And that's just part of being a property owner. And when situations change, you can stay and adapt or you can sell and move on. And I really feel that this is not a negotiable item. I mean, I think about all of the houses that are now, you know, on stilts on the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina, and now they're having to move these homes back. And should we say simply because they bought their home there that they should be allowed to, you know, develop this ocean from property? No, we know that this is not tenable. And I believe that with the rainstorms and increased flooding that we are expecting here in Vermont, that is our Atlantic Ocean, you know, situation. And so I'm willing to accept the modification, but the modification is causing strong reservations on my part with regard to the amendment, which is let me get there. I have no trouble with the retaining wall or the steep slope. And let me just find it. Yeah, so it's November 10th, 2021. So it is page 142 in our packets. It's article 12, 12.06, Wetland Protection Standards, number two, class two wetlands and related buffers. C, for last lesson half an acre existing as of November 10th, 2021, approved for or containing a single family or two family dwelling. The class two wetlands buffer is measured 50 feet in horizontal distance from the boundary of the class two wetland as opposed to 100 feet, which are the new regulations. So I, there we are. So I just thought the fly should come out in the open. And there I am. So I'm not positive what you're saying. You're, you're, you would approve the variance or whatever we call it for the couple to fix their retaining wall, but you don't want the language change so that could happen again. Right. I'm sorry. I'm just confused by that. So if there were a similar situation that was happening with another homeowner and they, they had a portion of their home that was sinking or that was, that was causing damage to their home or to their property. Oh, we should allow them. Right. That's where the modification is there to repair. Now I'm going back to that modification. Which is in yellow. Just a minute. I should probably go on down. Okay. Redevelopment of preexisting gardenings, landscaped areas, lawns, public infrastructure, structures and impervious surfaces. So, so what, what the specific language that you object to is. Allowing a new structure to be built. That might then have to be redeveloped in the future because of that damage that occurs when you build on a wetland. Well, this, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Just, I'm sorry. Can we just go back. So just in terms of the couple that was talking about their sinking patio, it's the new language is on page two. That's the language that was intended to address that. That's the language that was intended to address that patio issue. And that, that would satisfy that that what they want to do is either we'll have a positive effect or the wetland expanded and that this, this kind of works for that couple. Is that what we're saying? It's staffs feeling that that can address the, the couple's concerns. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a simple process. So this process requires first, we're going to go to the DRB. So in order to go to the DRB, there needs to be a wetland delineation. After the wetland delineation, then the person will have to propose and have a wetland scientist demonstrate what they're doing to, to improve the overall condition. So in their case, it might be that they can put in their retaining feature, but may need to take another part of their property where, you know, they've been using the 50 foot wetland buffer and properly leaving that to grow into a natural condition, but they have some additional lawn. They may need to take some of that lawn and convert it to wetland. This is not what they offered. This is kind of like, no, they, they, right, they propose something that was a little bit more of a, that's fine. If there are tough circumstances, what to do with it? We took a slightly different approach that was narrow. I just wanted to make sure I didn't say that. So now I think what Megan, what you're saying is that you don't think that we should change the 100 foot buffer rule. The 50 foot buffer rule to 50 feet for the set of properties identified, the half acre properties that were built before a certain date. Correct. You don't want those properties built before that are, that were in the previous 50 foot to add any structure to those houses to penetrate further into what is now 100 foot buffer. Right. This, this doesn't address structures. It just says gardens, landscape, very lawns, public infrastructure structures. Well, so these are two different subsections of the rules. So the one that counselor everybody's referring to is a broad return for parcels of less than half an acre in size to having a 50 foot buffer period. If they preexisting sites. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. We would need to add that we need both of these. We don't need both of these. Then why are we looking at the second one with wetland? They're both regard to wetlands, but one is for an existing structure and the other is allowing new structures. Can I share maybe, can I share Tyler? I was on the planning commission. Yeah. Let me just give the history, at least from my perspective and the evolution just so right poll approach to planning commission, maybe six months ago, articulating that there were a number of homeowners that had come before the DRB to say, we want it, we want to add a shed or we want to extend our deck. But doing that would encroach on the new hundred foot buffer and there were, I guess a number of these folks and so they couldn't do it. And the question that came up was, well, did we really mean to do that? Did it really mean to prevent folks who live on these fairly small lots who built their homes in accordance with the regulations that were in effect at the time to stop them now from putting a shed or extending a deck. And we had this conversation over, you know, a number of sessions at the planning commission. I have to say my initial inclination was similar to Megan's that look, I didn't think we should, you know, part-blanche eliminate the hundred foot buffer, but perhaps define a limited set of things that they could do. Yeah, if you want to build a small shed or you want to, you know, extend an above ground deck and no new impervious surface, that would be okay. But I was persuaded that because of our lot coverage ratios, which already kind of limit how much impervious surface that could be on these small lots that, you know, in unbalance that that lot coverage ratio would probably do what we need to do for these small lots and that kind of these homeowners relied on the regs at the time and it would just felt to me personally. And I was persuaded it would just be the owner's nature of it would be out of balance with what we were trying to accomplish from a natural resource perspective. And I think Jessica put it well, you know, we need to maintain the community's goodwill in all the natural resource protection that we want to do and imposing this fairly owner's requirement on these small lots. I guess I was persuaded that was maybe a bridge too far. And so, and so the planning mission unanimously approved sending this council to revert back to the 50 foot buffer for these select properties, small properties. My concern is that, you know, what's to prevent other people from coming forward and saying, I too have an issue with this 100 foot buffer. Well, that's where that's where I have to say why are we allowing some people to build new structures and not other people to build new structures. If it's an existing structure, that's a clear distinction in my mind, but the new structure, where do we say no? I mean, there's always going to be a very sympathetic argument. There's all, yeah, but the lot coverage has to include the road has to include what else is around that area, not just a half acre lot, which right should be, what is it, 40% impervious maximum. If I remember correctly. So, you know, if you put that spot where we already have roads and other homes and there's a lot of potentially impervious surface around that area. And when we're trying to prevent floods, we're trying to protect homeowners. In addition to protecting ecosystems, I cannot look at an isolated property on its whole. A wetland is a whole system. And so we'd have to look at the whole system in order to determine, you know, what this would mean for individual homeowners and for that, that ecosystem. And I just, where do we, where do we say no? I mean, that's where, Megan, there was just one other fact. I guess there were a handful of lots that were, that are undeveloped, but that were defined, delineated under the old 50 foot buffer that I gather would become undevelopable with the 100 foot buffer. And that also was a bit of the thinking that, and you can have a separate rule for a completely undeveloped lots or develop lots, but to say to someone that, you know, delineated a lot under the old rules and compliance with our rules. We changed the rules. And now you can't do anything. It also, it just felt a bit harsh for a small lot. So I guess, you know, and I had conversations over the weekend because I was struggling with this, I would like to hear that conversation that you all had in order to be convinced. Well, maybe Jessica could provide some. Yeah, but to actually see the situation through, you know, a little bit of a map or whatever. Jessica, please. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think Andrew just did a really great job of giving the summary and overview of kind of that, that last conversation of how we kind of came together as a group. And, you know, I think there were a few other pieces of it also. One is going way back to when we were actually considering going from the 50 foot to the 100 foot buffer in the first place. And there was a lot of discussion at that time. And part of it was that well, in these existing neighborhoods, you're not getting anything else anyway. So I think there was already like a kind of acknowledgement that in these developed areas, typically that extra one extra 50 feet was already lawns. It was already mowed. It already had various structures in it. So, you know, I think when we were doing the adopting, there was a general acknowledgement that we weren't necessarily getting, getting more in these, these, you know, neighborhoods with the small lots. So that's a little bit of back history. And then also, you know, Andrew was talking about the impervious cover percentage. That was part of our conversation. And then also that buildings have additional setbacks from your lot lines. And, you know, typically what was happening with the layout of these neighborhoods was that the, the entire lot was outside of the 50 foot buffer. So you have your wetland. You have the 50 foot buffer from that time. And then you have somewhere beyond that the lot line. And then you have an additional setback from that lot line for something like a home or kind of bigger structures. You know, which is kind of further keeping, you know, a lot of the structures you're talking about either even further from the wetland. And then, you know, we also had a conversation about how, like what is the impact to the wetland. Or the wetland buffer from some of these structures, like a patio or like a small shed. And, you know, from a stormwater perspective, yes, they are impervious surfaces, but they're typically the types of impervious surfaces that are relatively small. And the stormwater kind of sheet flows off of them and into the lawn and other vegetated areas around them. So kind of in the, in the like world of impervious surfaces, they're not as critical as like a parking lot or, you know, very large structures where, you know, a lot of stormwater winds up concentrated and carrying a lot of pollutants. You know, it's, it's typically relatively cleans, clean water, you know, that's hitting the surface and running off into vegetated areas. So, you know, when we were really thinking about like, what is the actual impact? It just, it felt like it, it didn't, it didn't match up with what we were hearing from, from staff and from landowners that the, the burden was on them to be able to say, okay, you, you're not allowed to have a shed even though half your neighborhood already has sheds, you know, it just felt, I don't know, like I'd rather have those landowners on, on board and, you know, pleased with the great environmental work that we're doing and voting for our, you know, pennies for parks and, you know, taking care of our natural areas instead of, you know, just feeling like we're out to get them over kind of a, a relatively small thing in their, in most cases, it's an existing mode backyard, you know, we're not in cases, you know, talking about going into like a naturally vegetated wetland buffer in these, in these cases where, you know, you have these neighborhoods laid out the way they are. So, you know, I think that's a little bit more of the conversation in addition to what Andrea was pointing out. Thank you, Jessica. And what I would just respond to that is that's looking at the situation today. So if we're looking at the situation of 50, 60 years, right, where we are having those storms, we are having the flooding, and perhaps there will be a city council here that will say no more lawn mowing, no more pesticides, no more, you know, you know, so that's where I'm looking at. And I'm also looking at, you know, the situation where all of the arguments you just gave for why you agreed to reducing that 100 foot buffer to the 50 foot buffer of these specific homeowners, I do not see what would stop of 0.6 or 0.7 or 0.8 or 0.9 or 0.1. Anybody challenging our 100 foot buffer? I just, I don't, I don't, there's, what's to stop them from saying why are you stopping at a half an acre? Because that's, that's actually big size. I live on a, on a fifth of an acre, you know, and that's actually a pretty big size half an acre to me. So, you know, I just, I, you know, I don't have so much the issue with the shed, but if, you know, a deck can be turned into a four season porch and we just keep going on, you know, that our rules have no more meaning anymore and I'm concerned about that. So, the small shed, okay, if they want to put their, you know, their lawn mower in a small shed, I have no issue, but with regard to a structure that could turn into a habitable space and that truly we are, we're going against the spirit and actual, you know, word of our new regulations that I think we truly believed in. I know I did. And I know that some people wanted to go to 200 feet because that's what some states are doing because of the amount of water that they're going to be seeing in 50 years. I have real, real concerns. Yeah. My suggestion, please. So Paul outlined earlier today to you and me, Megan, three different options of how, what action the council could take tonight. And I'm wondering if we want him to go, given what you shared and given the full interest of the council, if one of those options allows what the council's pleasure is for what to do next. Please. Can you walk through those, Paul? Yeah. Sure. So options are, so you have the full set of amendments as presented by the planning commission. You also have the modification that is in tonight's packet that you asked for. If you would like, I guess the first decision point for you is what do you want to do with the modification? You could choose to reject it. You could choose to include it tonight and warn a public hearing and, or you could say, planning commission, we'd like your thoughts on it before we take action, so you could table it. And then basically the same applies to anything from the whole rest of the rules as proposed by the planning commission. You could choose to modify them further, or you could choose to proceed with either the other two courses, warning a public hearing with the additional modification or any other changes or just straight with the modification. I'll just put it out there that I would like to accept the modification, meaning that I would like the commission to reflect on not saying that that's what's going to happen. So I'm not going to say that's going to happen. I'm not saying that's going to happen. It's just one Councillor here. But to consider the modification, that amendment with regard to wetlands. Can we ask the chair what she thinks? Yeah. Please. We can't hear you. Unmute. I was going to support including the language that was presented I'm not sure what you saw. I'm in agreement that I think Paul responded to the directions we gave him. And I appreciate your concerns, Megan, but I think I would. It appears to me that from Andrew, who was on the committee and Jessica, the chair of the planning commission, that this language is in keeping with. Their conversations and conclusions. Okay, but I, but this is the statement you just made. I wasn't sure you want to send it back to the commission. To have them do what? Well, I, I, I happen to know the chair of the natural resources and conservation committee quite well. And speaking, speaking with this about him with him, he's very concerned now with the amendment. So I think the NRCC might wish to have some kind of input, which is why I suggested that this could be something that could be discussed further. I mean, as I said, I might just be the fly in the ointment, but I just want to put that out there that there, there might be interest in having the NRCC weigh in on this amendment. I, I, I understand and I appreciate your perspective. And I applaud your passion. These poor people have been trying to do the right thing for a very long time. And they've been going through all the hoops. And I, I just would have done it and been done with it. And, and I just, when you have people that come and ask for help and are trying, they're darned us to do the right thing and to go through the proper channels. I think that should be applauded. And I think we have support the modification. I think we have, I think we have a risk. But on both sides, you also have the folks that Councillor Schumann mentioned, I think we have a responsibility to be timely. And to be responsive. And so I would support. Passing language as it stands right now. We have to set in a public hearing. I said, said the public hearing. Yes, but going as planned. So Tim, that was my thought. If you want a motion, I can make that. Or if you want to. If you want to, if you want to make that motion, you can share what you're thinking and then we can go from there. It's fine. You know, having heard Andrew's explanation and Jessica's explanation as well, I'm comfortable with it because the people that. That were there when the 50 foot buffer. Distance was in place, right? I don't think this is going to have a very large impact at all. I think that it's, it's fine, especially hearing that they had a lot of discussion about it. I'm okay with it. Great. Okay. Go ahead. Well, I will make a motion then to. Warn a public hearing. Just a minute. We do have somebody who would like to say something. Sorry. And please just introduce yourself to make sure the button. The bright light screen. I'm Kathy Easton. I was here recently speaking with you about our very complicated property and our slumping embankment. And Paul Connor has been in touch with me. He's been very helpful, but I have to say. In coming to the city council, I so respect all the time that you give and all your thoughtful energy that you apply. But when I come here, I feel on the one hand, sort of like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, that 1939 movie where a person is fighting against what they perceive to be injustice or an illogical situation. But I also feel like the protagonist in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 where I think it's Yosarian, is that that person's name is placed in a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. So on the one hand, you know, we fit so well within the guidelines for the slopes. Everything that it says is exactly what we want to do. We want to repair a small area that's probably about as big as that stage area in front of your dais. But we also fall under the wetlands. And so even though what we want to do is appropriate for the slumping ground, it may not be appropriate for the wetlands. And I actually took the time. I read through all 31 pages or so of section 12, which I don't know if you've done, but I have. And every time I go through that, it almost seems like the language started off in one direction and then it started to get massaged. And when you're looking from one to another, when I compare them to the state regulations with which I think we're in accord, that doesn't quite match up. So in the case of this recent change, I appreciate it, but now this means that for this area, we're going to have to hire the services of a wetland specialist. Now back in 2009, I think they built out at $95 an hour. So for the sake of this, we'll have someone come in. They'll study the ground. They'll write a report. But even in a criminal trial, when you're accused of a crime, it isn't your obligation to prove that you're innocent. It is rather the obligation of the prosecution to prove that you're doing something wrong. So now we're going to have to approve that this modification that's returning the soil to what it was, we're not doing a bad thing. And I think when Nora made her comments about the housing, I could identify with that because you and I both know people that when they get pushed too hard by regulations, their answer is, well, I'm just going to do, as Tyler said, I'm going to do what I want. And we haven't done that. We keep coming back to try to find redress within your regulations. And I know you have a tough job. And you're trying to balance all the environmental issues that I think are very important. But for so many of these people on these little lots that you're talking about, their home is the biggest investment they will ever have in their life. And for them to say, I want to have a little bit bigger deck, I know you may be thinking 50 years down the road, but they're thinking today and tomorrow and the enjoyment of their family. So whatever you do with these regulations, there has got to be a way to have a balance that doesn't reflect a heartlessness, a perceived heartlessness when people listen to what you say. And I'm not lecturing you. And I think we can find a way to fix the slumping ground and to fix our sitting wall, which is not a retaining wall, but it is at Mont Saint-Michel, even though we have water. And the stream doesn't meander only at the very, like, 10 feet where it goes into the lake. But I hope that you all working with Paul and your committees can come up with regulations that people in their hearts accept and people know in their minds that make good sense and that we'll be able to go forward and fix our slumping soil. So thank you for hearing me out. And I do appreciate all that you do. I'm sorry if I sound frustrated, but I am. So thank you very much. Well, all I can say is that there are neighborhoods where, you know, the frontage changed and things changed. And I think that fighting against a wetland is a losing battle. I do hope that you enjoy your home. Okay. So can I move that? Are you done? No, I was done. I don't have to make the motion. Someone else can go ahead. But I will move. I will move that we set, accept this new language and set a hearing for what is the date that we have on the sheet? May 1st at 730. May 1st at 730. Second. All right. All those in any more discussion? Can we discuss? Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, this is the first time that I'm seeing the, the modification, right? That was proposed to address the, the situation that was presented to us. And I, I'm just, I'm wondering whether or not we could adjust it in a way which meets the community needs and doesn't impact the natural areas that we want to protect. And this is the first time I'm seeing it, I can imagine it could say something like, if the applicant has proposed, you know, an alteration and there's no reasonably feasible alternative, you know, to accomplish a repair, then as long as that repair doesn't have a negative effect. I mean, I could see writing this in a way which protects what we're trying to protect, but also provides a little more flexibility. I guess this is the first time I'm looking at it. But, um... I wanted the commission to look at that, but I was... Yeah, so I'm just... I'm nowhere to hear. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm sensitive to, to what we heard and I, I could under, this is not really addressing the case we heard, which we're trying to fix something. We've tried a lot of ways. We haven't found a reasonably feasible alternative and we're trying to do it in a way which doesn't have a negative effect. And if that, you know, if we crafted a rule which addressed that circumstance, I'd personally be comfortable with a rule like that. I don't know if that would address your concern. And so, again, just seeing this, the rest of this, I'm fine with, right? I mean, I was on the Planning Commission when we went through it, but this particular rule, I'm wondering whether it could be tweaked still a little bit to address the concern we heard. It's not meeting her needs. I just want to make that clear. She's saying it's not meeting her needs. Well, I think what she's saying is that she, I think she feels like, why does she have to hire the wetland, the wetland scientist to evaluate this little tidy piece of slumping ground, which by the way really is next to the outflow from a brook, right? That's mostly dry all the time. It's not like it's, you know, if you're thinking about South Village, right? We have those homes backed up too and it's all marshy and it's usually next to the Great Swamp. This is not like that at all. It's like, the land goes down and then there's this like dry bed creek. You've seen it? Yeah, because as part of the DRB, I was there for a related thing, which I don't know what that application was or what we were doing, but I was like, wow, look at this channel. It just cuts right down between these trees and it goes right into Shelburne Bay. So it's kind of a unique situation, which I mean, I guess it qualifies as a class to wetland, but it's only wet when there's a lot of water coming down that brook, you know. So anyway, I don't know how to make that. Well, I may have misunderstood your comments, Andrew, because I thought that you were so eloquently describing the conversations. Oh, no, no, let me just be clear. So this language was the language that you supported. Oh, no, I'm sorry, Helen. I was surprised to hear that this didn't resolve the issue. No, no, no. So the Planning Commission didn't look at this very latest language that's yellow highlighted on page two. The Planning Commission looked at all the other changes. And so I was addressing all the other changes, but yes, I fully support this. This is I think the first time anyone has seen this language, this modification. Right. And so I don't think anyone's actually had an opportunity to think about this and what it does. And so that's the only piece that I'm expressing a little bit of concern about, this very latest new language. I understand. So just a procedural note. If you would like to review other options, as Councillor Chaunek is referring to, I would suggest for efficiency of the whole thing, decide that now rather than warning a public hearing and then making a change, because if you warn a public hearing and then you decide that you want to do as Councillor Chaunek is suggesting, then you have to warn another public hearing for June for that. So I would suggest that, you know, become comfortable. Can we separate these things? Any time. Not really. Once you take action to adopt, then it's done and it's back at the beginning for any other changes. So you're now, it is in your hands. You can work on it as long as you want, but I would suggest working to something that you feel comfortable with as a whole and then warning a public hearing on it then. Well, I can withdraw my motion and go along with asking the planning commission, I guess, to review this language and come back with something that is more specific. That's what I would recommend. Going back to the point about having a heart, these folks have been waiting a long time. This isn't satisfying them, Tyler. It's not, but I don't want to speak for anybody else, but I think it's that it's a step in the right direction. But at the same time, they're still going to have to pay ungodly sums of money to have an environmental engineer come out and take a look at it. I mean, it's. So this doesn't resolve the issue for her. Can I ask the applicant, would this, would further, would waiting longer be more satisfactory or less satisfactory? If the rule could be altered. Well, we're talking about Paul in two weeks. You can, let's see, when does the planning commission meet again next Tuesday? Right. Yeah. So we could come back to the council in two weeks if that was your wish. And if you'd like the council, the commission to look at it in that time, we would continue to press them to make sure they're focused on the comprehensive plan, but I'm sure we could find a little bit of time on the agenda to address this. If that's council's pleasure. I don't want you to think that we are ungrateful for Paul's efforts, nor that this solution that he's come up with is doesn't, doesn't have merit. It does. But our problem will still be there. But you need, I think, to take the time to get whatever it is you want to do in the best form that you can. I would not want you to rush a wording or a decision to our situation if, if it needs some discussion. And just to make sure, for some reason, you are thinking that the slumping land is near the stream. It is not. I should come visit. It is not. It is. If, if you took this room, this wall has some slumping land. And about two thirds of the way over, there's part of a stormwater management system and a swell. And then further out beyond that wall is a stream that has varied water depending on the time of the year. But the slumping land is not near the stream. It's, and this, this should be a relatively reasonable thing to be able to fix. So, so I appreciate your, your efforts and your work on this. And I'm, we're only one, one job among many that you all do. And, and we appreciate that. We appreciate Paul. Thank you for coming out tonight. Okay. Thank you. What we've got, we have a motion and a second. Did Helen, did you withdraw your motion? I'll withdraw my motion and change it to ask the. Planner commission. Sorry, Jessica, to take this up. At their next meeting and work with Paul and come back with. Hopefully potentially anyway. Language that addresses this in a more narrow way. For our, whatever date it is the. Seven. Team. Yes. Right for April 17. Can you do that? So that's my motion. I'll second that. It's complex. All right. Any other discussion? All right. All those in favor. I was unanimous. Thank you. Thank you for your time, everyone. All right. So now we are up to item number 13, which has approved the use of up to $30,000. $30,925 in the general fund balance to support one crossing guard at the Rick mark at central, central school for the remainder of the 2022 2023 school year and purchase a speed radar sign at the Gertrude Chamberlain school. Yes. Can I do a little table setting? And we have lots of our friends from the school district here with us tonight as well. So a couple of updates I want to provide since our last, since your last conversation about this, I think we have a lot of time to get to the topic and talk about it immediately. After the last Monday night council meeting, public works and principal McDonald's who I think is also on the phone. And a number of other team members spend a lot of time looking at the city center. Traffic patterns made some pretty significant operational improvements today. I spent an hour with the superintendent talking through that. And I think that's the end of today is that I think we've made a lot of progress, but that hasn't been well communicated. So we are going to jointly work on a communication to the community about where we have been as a city and making improvements to safety for our children and families where we currently are and where we're going into the future. And send that out hopefully by the end of the week in her report and in our city news. So what's really before you tonight is the things that we're going to be working on. We're going to be working on some of the things that we're going to be working on. We're going to be working on our council action that are specifically policy related. For your consideration. Additionally, at next week at the 17th meeting, you'll be receiving a traffic planning manual that public works citywide traffic planning manual that city works has been or public works has been working on for many months and be able to comment on that. So what we're going to be working on is the allocation of funding from the general fund fund balance for FY23 to pay for a crossing guard here at Rick Markot as well as fast tracking the funding for the speed signage to Chamberlain for a total of allocating as as Councilor Emery said $30,925 from existing fund balance to pay for those things this fiscal year. That brings us down our fund balance down to 9.09 percent of our operating budget. Just as a reminder, council per council policy, you can't go below 8.33 percent. I do want to foreshadow for you that I anticipate that the school board will continue a request for $43,184 to fund that crossing guard through FY24. I would recommend that we consider that as we consider the FY23 fund balance or the FY23 surplus and how we're going to treat those funds moving forward. But that would be another ask for later in the spring, well in advance of next fall's school calendar standing up. So that's the summary. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jesse. Does anyone from the school district wish to say anything? Alex. Sure. I'll say anything if you can hear me. Yes, we can hear. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you everybody for your attention to this matter. It's been heavy on my heart since last year when a student was struck near the South Burlington high school campus and very badly injured. And I think a lot of us within the school district are very, very nervous about when the next tragedy is going to happen. And we're trying to head it off as quickly as possible. And we are so, so please thank you for your patience in, in with our sense of urgency towards this. And we do a very much appreciate your consideration. In particular, we'd also like to ask for better communication between the construction site that's occurring at market street, along with the elementary school and the school district in general, because it is helpful to know if there are going to be dump trucks and so on going through and along market street. And if it coincides with the morning pickup or the early, or the afternoon dismissal that is an especially dangerous situation. And I'm going to leave it at that. If Lisa wants to say anything great, but anyhow, I just want to say that everybody in the school district is thankful for the city council considering this. Thank you. Principal McDonald. Good evening, everybody. Thanks for having me again. And thanks for your comments, Alex. I just wanted to say that we have had really great communication with the developer. We had one, one day where we got some news that was unexpected, but since then we've really had excellent communication. And I just want to tell everybody that I appreciate you considering supporting us by helping us with a crossing guard. I know Sue Conley has been on tonight. She and I have been managing the crossing at out on market street. And we've had some training from officer three, Williamson at the South Wellington police department. We appreciate everybody's support. And the more we're out there, the more that we, we notice the urgency that we really have to be thinking about because our young people are pedestrians on those busy streets. And they, they need everybody's support. So if you approve this tonight, thank you in advance for that. And I look forward to continuing to work with you as your neighbor. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. So I do have a couple of questions, but let others ask questions too. Okay. I'll make a motion. Oh, I just had a couple of questions if that's all right. Yeah. Have you thought as a school board or as a school district or as a school principal McDonald about future years of the crossing guard, even post post construction? I'm thinking about through 2024 when that development is completed. And I also know that Tom talked to us about the traffic study. That might result in some traffic lights or some help. And so no, to answer your question directly, I haven't thought beyond 2024 because I'm still waiting to see the results of the traffic study to see if that helps us with electronic pedestrian support. If we don't have that, then yes, that would be a priority. Okay. So that is just for the council's information, that comprehensive traffic study of city center that we started a couple of months ago. We should have findings of that by October, which would allow us to build costs into the FY 25 budget for either crossing guard needs on either side of the traffic city or school fund or infrastructure for signage and lights and other things. And is that just for central school? Is that for all of the other schools? So that's specifically a traffic study for city center and therefore Mark Hott. But the other school zone studies, CCRPC is helping us with that are on different timelines, but we think quicker or similar annual timelines, but maybe quicker month timelines. This will all be in our communication this week. Okay. Very good. I just wanted to make sure because I received an e-mail from Kate Bailey. Helen did too. I forwarded on to the council. I said Helen, sorry. Until I had finished my e-mail. But the reason why Chamberlain school received the study last spring and is having these modifications on now is because the principle of Chamberlain school is that it's not the same. But the principle of Chamberlain school is that it's not the same. I mean, I think that the reason why the study was in the last spring and is having these modifications on now is because the principle of Chamberlain school contacted the director of public works back in, I don't know, fall of 2021, asking for modifications on White street because of safety concerns. So I just wanted us all to be thinking ahead to, you know, also thinking across the school district since those were concerns that Kate Bailey raised with me and wondering why one school was put ahead of the others. So I just wanted to make, put that out there since I communicated in an e-mail with a school board member. All right. You have a motion. So I move that the council approve the use of up to $30,925 in general fund balance to support one crossing guard at Rick Marcotte Central School for the remainder of the 22-23 school year and purchase a speed radar sign at the Gertrude Chamberlain school zone. Second. Second. Okay. Discussion? Sure. Question for Jesse and for Principal McDonald. Are there any, were there any, was there anything else that was discussed that would, that we could do right now that would have an impact? Just in the future, I prefer that question to be before the motion in the second because the reason why there was discussion before the vote last time was because I think all of a sudden Andrew said, oh wait, I hadn't really looked at this language and processed it. Testimony on it. Right. Right. Okay. I apologize. No, no, no, no, I just, it's just for information. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. So is there anything else that's been discussed that we could do right now that would further improve the process? Yeah. Okay. So is there anything else that we could do to this? Or these felt to be the most? No, no, no. Was this, was this felt to be the best solution time? So I'll start, but principal McDonald, please jump in. So what's before you is the things that require council action, IE allocating the resources. There have been a lot of other things that the principal and public works have done in partnership that don't need to be, so we've, and listen, this is where you know in the details better than I, we've eliminated two parking spots out behind the building that we're creating a visual hazard. Public works has purchased some traffic. Like pedestrian little dollars that you put in the middle of crosswalks for more signage that I believe are now in place. The developer installed the path behind the construction site. So the kids who live at garden street can walk with no crossing of market street. What else am I missing? The fencing, we took down the screening at the corner of the fencing. So we've done a lot of operational changes that don't require council action. So what's before you is really the immediate need for money now so we can hire, so the school can hire their crossing guard and so we can get going on the. So is there anything else that could require council action that we could take action on tonight? We've already got a motion and a second on a table. So we can't add any more action items right now. This was just a clarification question. Yeah. So before the motion, you could have asked that question. Okay. Tim, would you like, I would like an answer to that because I think we have responsibility. Can we call the vote? Yeah. Madam vice chair, do you want to respond to the motion here presented by the city manager about what's needed today and what the school board has asked for? And that's what we're looking at right now because they need this approved now. So I understand nothing. They've taken other actions on their own. I'm sorry. Madam vice chair, did you want to respond to? I would just say that we have specifically warned items that we are agreeing to tonight. So if there are additional, you know, Tyler, I think that there is a lot of communication going on with the school board and the superintendent and Jesse about the very long list of requests that the school board made. And I think the city manager tried to make it clear to us and it may not be responsive enough for you or many of the parents in the school, but there's timelines and information that were required to get through studies in order to have a plan in place to make some of the changes that the school board requested. I don't think there's anyone who is thinking those are outlandish requests. I think a lot of it is the process to get to the point where we can have potentially an action item before the city council to make it happen, but to just add some stuff tonight, I think would be irresponsible because we don't have any information and we couldn't put it in place for quite a while. I understand. And thank you. I just, this is something that is, it's a very important issue. And if there's any, I just wanted to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to preserve or to protect these kids. And if there were other things that were asked for and it's a question of budget, I just wanted to make sure that we were prioritizing accordingly. So that's, and if there were other things that were asked for, I just wanted to get clarification on that. So we've all seen the memo from the superintendent and she prioritized the top three and I believe that we are responding as quickly as possible to those top three. There are two remaining items including speed bumps and lighting, I think, lighting that will be dealt with when that time allows. Fair enough. But, but yeah. Okay. I think I'm ready to call the vote. Okay. All those in favor of the motion, which is to use up to $30,925 in our general fund fund balance to support one crossing guard at the Rick market central, central school and to purchase a speed radar sign at the Gertrude Chamberlain school zone. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. which is to discuss and approve the 2023 to 2024 council liaisons to committee assignments. Jesse would you like to discuss that? Sure. So last year you adopted a policy about establishing council liaisons to committees. Thank you very much for doing that. I think it's been really helpful for the staff liaisons and the committees to to have those have you all as partners in that work. So with specifically with Matt and Tom stepping off the council there are some appointments that need to be either reassigned or shifted around. I've outlined for you in the memo who the current liaisons are when meeting groups meet and it's for your discussion how you would like to move forward. The specific ones if you're just focusing on the ones that we no longer have a liaison for. We're talking about bike ped common area for dogs public art recreation and parks and then green mountain transit as well. Councilor Chalnick suggested that he might like to be on the liaison for the energy committee and I graciously would let you take that position if you would like. Well then I'm gonna take it back then. So well I would be happy to let him take over the natural resources and conservation. Well that's very those are dream assignments that's very gracious. Except that doesn't solve any of our problems. Because I am sure that Helen and Tim are then gonna say what they're willing to take on. Because I already I already have an inkling. I would like to remain on economic development if possible. Okay. And but I need to take I need to move to another place right. All right so the other places that we have open I am very happy with my assignments as well. I know that for the Charter Review Committee that that is we're in an ongoing process here. So I would really like to see that through. I was invited to be the liaison for the affordable housing committee. I have not been asked to step away from that invitation. And I've been enjoying that work. And I enjoy that it really dovetails nicely with the Housing Trust Fund. So I would really like to hang on to my three. Feeling that the Charter Review Committee in particular I've been so close to their work that I believe I should stay on. So that leaves recreation and parks, public art, natural resource and no no sorry. Common area for dogs, bike and pet. Yeah. I'd be happy to take bike and pet and rec some parking parks and rec. All right. Is that acceptable to people bike and pet? That's a nice combination. That's a nice combination. Okay. I would like to stay on planning and you have to I'm planning. I have to stay on planning. I will stay on planning. It's like my second job. And then I'm you know I'm willing to do the dogs and you know the common area for dogs that occurs right before planning. So make it like one night and that'd be good. And then I'm happy to stay on the airport I could take public art. All right. I know somebody that's very interested in that. And you're gonna stay on pension right? And what? Yeah. Well that was done earlier. Yeah. We'd have to. Oh that's right. Yeah. That was an organizational thing. So it's set in stone. So we need the Green Mountain Transit. Is that something that Tyler you would do? You would be interested in? I would be interested. I just want to be careful not to over commit. Tell me about it. So I can I can it's I'm just being totally transparent. Two is gonna be a stretch as it is to do three. I'm just concerned. So I'm happy to take up the mantle with that understanding but I have if I'm being honest I have concerns. How often is the GMT? Once a month it's on a Tuesday morning. It's 7 a.m. Yeah. I'd be willing to do it. I mean you've got to be having probably more time. I'll tell you when they put both of our names now. Yeah. And we can back each other up. Awesome. You know what if we can rotate? We could rotate. That'd be awesome. But as a price for the energy committee you know I'm gonna miss the energy committee because I really like those people and I like what they talk about. Okay well that sounds good. Is that everything? No there's also Channel 17 town meeting TV. Channel 17. I just I can't do that. Yeah. It's just too much time. Right at the moment. Yeah. Helen I'm sorry I didn't look this up earlier. Is that a requirement that that's a counselor? Is that something that we can advertise for? No. It can be someone from the public. Yes. Absolutely. Would you like me to explore advertising for it? That would be good. That would be great. Yeah. Just for council's awareness I'm gonna do that in conjunction with advertising for the communications union district appointment which also can be anybody in the community. And I think there are some individuals who have more skills to do that than. Oh super. Yeah. That sounds good. Okay. Thank you. I think we have agreement. Very good. Well thank you everybody. That was very very. That was easy. Yeah. Smooth. Well I appreciate you Helen and Tim because you get connected to committees. It's true. We appreciate you too. We appreciate Tyler and Andrew and Jesse and Helen. That's right. And nobody else. Steve. Can you take a quick vote just accepting as discussed? Of course. I guess somebody would like to make a motion that we accept the council liaisons as expressed. So moved. Second. All those in favor. Aye. Thank you. Aye. That was unanimous and I want to thank all now that we have approved the full slate. And I move that we go into liquor control commission. Please do. Is that a motion? I needed a second. Do we get a second? I second it. Very good. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. So now we are in liquor control and we have a whole slew of enterprises. I'll move that we approve all of these first, third and second class liquor license renewals. Except for one business. Let's pick one. For some reason. That's just a joke. I'm just kidding. It's already 1045. Is there a second? Second. Second. All right. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. It's only 1041. And I'll now move that we come out of being the South British Liquor Control Commission. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. All right. Now we have other business and Tyler you had a letter to share with us. Yeah I was I was I made it started out almost inadvertently but I went last weekend to or two weekends ago to go investigate the path that had been created out in front of Central School and when I was down there I had the opportunity to speak with a bunch of residents in that building and they started or several of them voiced their concerns about safety within that building and along that road which is that the garden street apartment building you talk about? Yes. Let's see it would be the one that's set back. Well let me think if you if you walk it's the one that's immediately adjacent to the path that's been constructed so it's behind that's behind yeah that's the path that's behind the new construction. Yeah. Is that garden street apartment or a different property? No it's a different one. A different property. Okay. And what struck me is how passionately these residents spoke about the safety issues in the building and around the building number one and number two how they felt as though they had no choice but to try they all of them were trying there were six in total and they were all trying to actively move out and they felt as though they were being forced out and they had nowhere else to go in South Burlington. They don't feel safe. One woman is a two two of the individuals are senior citizens they have grandchildren they are not comfortable having their grandchildren come into the building or be around the building because of residents and they don't they don't feel it's safe and they have asked you know what what measures they've taken and they said well you're the first person we taught you but candidly we're a little scared they only wanted to speak with me on the condition of anonymity and they didn't want me to share their names for fear of any sort of retribution in in the apartment complex. They haven't spoken to management. They've spoken to management several times but they felt as though things that their concerns have fallen on deaf ears and so I I felt as though I'd be they took the time to write a joint letter I felt as though I'd be remiss if I didn't at least bring it to the council's attention I don't know what action we can take other than to but it it's concerning to me it's it's concerning to me for several reasons I don't want to the biggest one being that that if that is how we're directing kids to go to school on a day-in-day out basis that makes me really nervous that these residents have these concerns and I also think it it perhaps some of their concerns much lesser than and much less urgent but some of their concerns revolve around and I think it something that we may want to consider as we start as we start developing our comprehensive plan several other concern particularly from the senior citizens were around this not being a suitable arrangement for families with small children they're they complained about kids running up and down the hall being disrespectful it's just not a they've one woman her she characterized as feeling terrorized by the behavior and the actions of these kids and she was careful not to try and blame the children she just felt as though they had nowhere to go they can't play after school at at central because of schools out they have no other access they have no other avenues and they were asking for help I don't have any solutions I don't know what recourse we have but as a counselor I felt compelled to share it and to to share their concerns with the council so I'm I'm bringing it up I'm happy to go to read the letter if it's helpful I've summarized it as best I can but my most urgent concerns are one their safety to the safety of kids that are walking by there on a day-and-day basis and and I guess that I'm asking the question of the council what what can what actions can we take if any and and what can we do to help these folks I for one think it's a business a building management first step is contacting the summit and and sharing you know that counselors have been approached by residents and that there is a concern of feeling insecure and we certainly you know want all of our residents to feel to feel secure I mean I think that's the the first step I don't know I'm looking to someone who has more knowledge about the children that have been kind of running around and being disruptive are they school age or I think they're elementary school age I don't know it also may be a conversation with the school aren't there after school programs or why isn't there something to occupy these these kids there are wait lists there's not capacity in our after-school programs I'm assuming I don't know that's maybe the core issue then okay but but I mean so I think yeah I'm happy to have an anonymous I don't know who these folks are conversation with the property owners I am curious what which build if it's both buildings because some of the concerns that you're articulating we've also heard about the cht building so I it could be it's happening in both buildings so I'm happy to have a conversation with both property owners because we've heard the concerns I also I'm wondering what the options are for better engaging our community outreach team with the property managers because it sounds to me like there's some unmet service needs and that's what that team is for to try and connect folks up yes there are waiting lists but there may be other you know there may other service things that we could help and provide so that's something I would immediately offer and then also you know encourage I don't know whether it's through signage or community development within building or something for folks to I'm thinking out loud here kind of go through some restorative process internally or create their own neighborhood in the building or are there ways that we can support support the communities in having their neighbors within building kind of positively identify each other so that's where I would start and I'm happy to do that if if you all would like I think those are great suggestions and I I I wholeheartedly support everything you said Jesse and I'm grateful to you for reaching out and I I do think that there's a lot of work to be done uh in inside of these buildings and the owner I think would be the the good person to speak to but I I do think that the building manager needs some more support and perhaps in both yeah is that a good next step I think that sounds great I think that sounds reasonable if I mean put that on your long list of things you do but that's you know I have a deputy that's great that's what we need to do but it's it's you know goes on and on and on doesn't it what I'd like to add to to that conversation if I could because in the affordable housing community conversation for the city plan the residents of cht the the garden street apartment building that we're attending that meeting one of the issues in addition to kids running through the hallways and and somewhat creating a feeling of of unease is that the garden plots were being dug up by kids because they have nothing in other to do than than to and so my husband suggested an idea which is simply to defense that off and actually provide keys there there are plots I think they're like four by six feet box box plantings and if you put a fence around there and with the the owners of those plots or I don't know if they're owners or or or or what but they would have a key to be able to get in and to and to do the gardening that might deter some of that vandalism that you know might be completely innocent for lack I also took a walk back there and I saw the swing that was covered in snow we heard at that affordable housing community conversation that the the cht garden street apartments manager had threatened to remove that swing so I would follow up and ask about that um there certainly is not a lot of a playground here for if that was intended for to be a playground for for the kids it's really not much of one um so maybe some just communication you know that there could not in a you know not only be supports uh with regard to social services but you know what could be done with the the areas I mean the woods are beautiful if the if the cleanup could occur um what a great place to explore for a kid um I don't know I'm just no no just if you go down that wood chip path you know you're you're there are woods that some belong to the school some belong to the city and and some will unfortunately become a road road yeah become a road extension but you know now that we know that there aren't encampments there you know once I don't know I haven't been back there again since last week but if it's all cleaned out it's a really nice wood I mean I don't know is there anything that recreation and parks could do that you know let's go explore let's have you know scavenger hunt let's these are little kids yes I agree I agree on it it's a very tough conversation all right anything else I think Tim's ready to go home I think we're already go home thank you Helen for tuning in from Florida welcome take my way home so okay at least uh President Trump's coming and going won't affect my flight oh right right closed airspace but anyway and take good care Helen all right bye bye motion to adjourn we're adjourned we don't need a motion for that in my book okay um so but while the four of you are here um