 Good evening, everyone. Welcome to tonight's meeting of Montpellier City Council. So first item is to review and approve the agenda. And we have had a lot of comments on the sprinkler ordinance. That's our last substantive item tonight. We have a very long and full agenda. And I'm going to suggest that we put that off to our next meeting. There are some members of the Planning Commission who wanted to comment on it, who aren't going to be able to be here. And I think there's some question about when we're going to get to it. I would really ask that we not put it off. And the reason for that, we will have a second reading and we'll have ability for folks to talk about. But we're talking about things that are going to affect the building season this year. And we have folks currently who have requested variances that the variance committee is unable to give out under the current ordinance. And so it is urgent for people's projects this year. We can move up. But I think it is really important that we at least have the first reading tonight. Even if it means that we have a more substantial discussion at the next meeting. Okay. Other thoughts? I would agree with that. All right. So we will, we do have a whole host of budget things that we need to get through first. At least I would argue we need to do those first. We could, we have, let's see, three items, a farmer's market, dog ordinance and sprinkler ordinance. So we could just reverse those if folks want to do that and put the sprinkler ordinance as item number 14. Does that work? Okay. So that's what we'll do and we'll get to it when we get to it. I also just need to add onto the liquor license thing. We got a renewal from Belladonna across the street. Do you have any changes to the agenda? We're supposed to move up the. Thank you. There's an addendum. Thank you. And I don't have, let's see if I can call that out. We're going to pull it. Oh, I thought it was an add-on. Sorry, let's see. It came from Jamie today. Okay. So this is, this item has been proposed as the proclamation designated, designated February 11th, 2018 as Amanda Pelkey Day in Montpelier. Amanda is a local Montpelier hockey star. She's going to be competing in the Olympics and it's a resolution to honor her. So I'm not sure what was being suggested here. You were just saying, we added it to the agenda. No, I think we thought people would want to talk about it. Okay, great. And just to move it to the beginning so people can come up. Well, I can say I'm very proud of Amanda and it was her fourth grade, I think when she was four years old was her, was her little league coach. So I started then. So very exciting to see her success. Any other comments? And I think we're going to maybe do something else as I'm standing outside another event that involves more people in the community. Okay, so we'll add that proclamation as part of our consent agenda when we get to that. We need to approve the agenda though. With that change, without any objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. Next item is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for anyone to comment on anything that's not on our agenda. Okay, so if we get to the, yeah, Ben. I live in Eastwood. I live on 241 Main Street. So I'm concerned with the lack of transparency around the event at the high school the other day. As a parent of a student who was there at the high school, I first want to say a thank you to all the teachers and staff at the high school for doing an amazing job under horrifying circumstances. As a citizen, I'm concerned whenever there is a lack of transparency in an investigation. And I'm just curious as to what the mechanism for public oversight for the police department is. Because I looked on the website and unlike many communities, there is no public oversight board. There is no mechanism for the public to have an input into how our police department polices in our city. There is no public record of what the requirements for the use of deadly force are. So I just want to sort of, I know this is a tough, a very tough subject for a lot of us. You know, but I think that Mrs. Giffin deserves a full, transparent, honest accounting for what happened. And as a community, we deserve that as well. I just want to leave that there. I don't have a particular question. Thank you, Ben. Thank you for responding. Just briefly, Bannon, for anyone who's listening. The matter is under investigation by state police, not the city. And that's typical because, well, first of all, they were heavily involved in the incident. And second of all, when something does occur with one, you want a different agency looking at it. That's also reviewed by the elected attorney general and the elected state's attorney. The city council, through me, is the citizen oversight for the police department itself. I think any policies they have, whether it's about deadly force would be certainly our public record. We have to share those. In this case, any time we've received any information at all from the state police, we've immediately published it. I don't know anymore necessarily than you do, we expect. And are told we're going to have a full, complete accounting with video and other records of the account when it's ready. And hopefully soon, we all want the same thing. And I agree with you that the family and the community and the officers involved all deserve to have the full story out. And I'm not looking to armchair quarterback what happened there. But I'm also just concerned going forward as a community, you know, this brings up this issue that we don't really have a public mechanism to discuss or to really be aware of what the policies are that the police are operating under within our city. And that's the discussion that I would like to see started is to, you know, a lot of cities have a citizen review board that can oversee, that can suggest policies for the police, that can investigate if there's, you know, citizen complaints about alleged misconduct. And I think that the public is best served and more transparent. Our law enforcement is, you know, you'll say who watches the watchers. And it was this, and when this happened, you know, I found out via text from my son who was in lockdown. And I have to say it again, thank you to the school for their quick release of information. And to you or John, whoever updated the city webpage quickly, you know, in this modern day of immediate social media communication, you know, it is really good to, you know, every minute that I didn't have information from the school was an eternity. And I think a lot of parents felt the same way. Thank you. I had a child at that school too, so I know exactly how you feel. Thank you, Ben. Okay, any other comments? All right, next item is the consent agenda to motion to approve. So moved. Discussion? Just. I'd like to pull BNC, please. BNC? Okay. So we will come back to those. Any other discussion? None. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, so we move to item five, Green Mountain Transit Budget Proposal. Good evening. Good evening. Mayor and City Council members, thank you for having me here this evening. I know we tried one other night and it just went a little bit too long, so I appreciate you letting us get back in here and have a conversation. A couple of things. My name is Mark Souza. I'm the general manager of Green Mountain Transit. And have been for about a year, but have been with GMT for a little over three years. One of the couple of things I want to kind of mention before kind of get into some of maybe the recommendations and options that the city might want to think about. Currently we are in the process of doing a next gen comprehensive service analysis of our service. We've never done that in the years. We've always added service, but we've never quite been able to bring in a third party to kind of look at the five counties that we're in and kind of look at how they all work together. We're also doing a fair structure. All of that is on our webpage and what they're doing is they're doing root profiles. And I will say that this, this route has come up as a possibility of having some changes made anyway. So that was kind of in the works. So that is all on our webpage called Next Gen. And that will kind of give you kind of the recommendation that they'll come up with a final recommendation to our board. And then we'll have to make some decisions on what those look like. It's everything from even down here where we currently have deviated routes, which means we go off track to go pick up people to possibly having a complimentary paratransit service, which is three quarters of a mile from the fixed route, which would also help with what we're talking about this evening. So that's just another kind of another caveat that's kind of in this, in the works right now. So we came up with several options. The $40,000 that we're talking about here represents 20% of the $200,000 that this route currently costs. So we have a couple options that we could talk about. And I understand you have to make decisions tonight. So I was saying to Bill, I could put it in a memo, but it appears tonight. You have that decision. So I kind of go through them with you and then I can answer any questions you might have. So one of the options is if anybody knows how that circulator runs, it runs in two loops. And so one of the recommendations is another, let me step back just a little bit. The Capital Shuttle is now year-round thanks to BGS who has come in and wanted the Capital Shuttle to be year-round. So what happens with this circulator is it's doing some double service. And so we think, in our opinion, and I'll give you the option that we think you might want to consider, is that we would kind of work together with those two routes and kind of make it more efficient. But I'll give you some options. And please stop me, because unless you know how to read our PUSH map and guide, it can be very a little confusing with loop one and loop two on the circulator. So option one would keep the route and funding as is, which we know is a little bit of an... It has an average of about 71 people a day right now as is. And so our feeling is that with the next gen study coming in and with Capital Shuttle doing what it's doing every day, we could go in and probably make it more efficient and more time. So the option would be more frequency. So option two would be to eliminate loop two, which most of the route is served now by the Capital Shuttle. The problem with that is it's circuitous, long travel lines, loop one would remain and we would eliminate service to loop two, which is freedom drive. So we do have people that pick up on freedom drive. So that would be an option, but it also could affect some residents down there. Option three is the one that we kind of think would make a lot of sense. It would be basically eliminate loop two and streamline loop one so that it can run in a 30 minute to increase frequency and reduce travel times. The only con to this would be that we would eliminate some of the lower ridership and that's going to be a recommendation on our next gen anyways. It's some of the lower ridership that really doesn't make sense that we would probably have to... To do any of this we'd have to have public hearings, etc. But that would make a lot more sense because then we would kind of merge the Capital Shuttle and this option three, which would give you more service based on the circulator. So that would be our recommendation. What's your recommended option? The recommended option would be to keep the funding as is. We would basically run the service every 30 minutes instead of every 60. We'd give you more frequency and we would eliminate low ridership areas. But as I said earlier, the paratransit piece of what we're going to be recommending with the next gen could pick up some of those residents that would qualify for paratransit, which would be three-quarters of a mile from the fixed route. So you would change the routes? Correct. We would eliminate some of the lower ridership areas. We'd make it a quicker route, so it would be like a 30 minute. And basically it would be more frequency for the city and the residents. And all three of these options cost the same? Correct. I could give you one option and I know you're probably going to want to know and that's fine. It would be the option four, which would eliminate loop two, reduce loop one. The trips would only operate seven in the morning to nine in the morning and then three-thirty to five-thirty. So you would miss your midday. So basically doing five trips in the morning, five trips in the evening. That would reduce the $40,000 to approximately $20,000. But it would also eliminate your midday service. So that would be another option and that would be a reduction in what I think you were asking. Sure. So I'm wondering about, I know that that route is free. And I'm wondering if you've explored what the budget would look like if it wasn't free and if there was, I think for other routes there are income sensitivities. You can qualify for various benefits. You can qualify for reduced price or free passes. So the fares really don't impact too much because they're fairly minimal. They're a dollar a route if we did charge or 60 cents a half. So they really don't impact the budget too much because it's just not enough revenue because it costs $200,000 to run the route. But to answer your question, yes, we are looking at all of that. I wonder in your next gen exploration, if you're looking at barriers to ridership, why is the ridership, is the ridership plateaued? Or is it still increasing? Or decreasing? No, our ridership is pretty much has leveled but has decreased and I'm talking system wide. So it's been between 6% and 10% ridership has gone down throughout the system. And we feel that, and we've done our research on that and we have about 30 peer agencies that we work with throughout the country. And we basically did a survey from all of them. All of them, but two were down in ridership between that 6% and 10%. So this is nationwide. And the two that were up had just had a brand new transit center that had just come into play. And so the ridership went up because the amenities made sense. And the other one had to do with, I believe had to do with the way that they did their route changes, similar to what we're doing. So the two out of the 30 have had an increase. So are you thinking that when you suggest option three that the increasing the route time to 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes, do you see that as enhancing ridership? Is that one of the barriers? We believe so, yeah. These routes are very long. And there are sometimes when we've had people say, well, I can walk to there if I don't have to go all the way out and come back. So we've heard those comments. These routes have been in play for, I want to say eight years, maybe I think that my planning department said eight years. And so things have changed. So now it's really a good time to really take a look at it and try to build a frequency. In any transit agency, it's efficiency and it's on time. And that's a big thing and it's frequency. I just have one more question. I wonder if you have you any kind of mechanism to survey the general public folks who maybe aren't in your ridership and to ask why aren't you and so on. Yeah, so we've done. So during the next gen during this whole process, we've had nothing. We've had a number of public hearings surveys online. We've had people go on. We've had literally sit on the bus and then people that were at certain other meetings, we would go into those meetings and like chamber meetings and have conversations. And so we have done a lot of that legwork. So it's been in work for about a year. So we've been doing that. That's that. And right now we're in the last phase of outreach, which is municipal outreach. So we're going to meet with all the municipalities and talk to their staff and get some feedback from them as well. So that's where we are. So we have done a lot of outreach and surveys and conversations. Thank you. Thank you. One of the things for me the circulator wasn't made to be a fixed root stock. It wasn't made to have that density. It was made to get into neighborhoods that I get calls from, whether that's out on Elm Street, Heaton Woods, Freedom Drive, which is not in my district, but I hear from people. So if you are making these changes, just to get more ridership versus getting to people who are off the fixed root, but need it, what's the impact there? Well, that will be, I don't think we're trying to gain ridership. I think, you know, the frequency issue for us is a big deal. But I do think that some of the fallback could fall back on the paratransit piece that we're working on. Right now we do deviated fixed root, so we could do five stops outside the root and come back in. So those people who are on that bus have to wait for the five stops before they get to their destination. So what we're kind of focusing on is a true fixed root in this area and then a complimentary paratransit, which is mandated by the federal government. So some of the people that we don't serve or that we may end up coming out of those neighborhoods could be eligible for that service as well. So we have to kind of work on that, you know, it has to work together. Well, just one more. And like with your numbers, I know that the mayor made a comment that $10 a ride he wouldn't take his car out of his driveway. But the fact of it is, for this kind of demand response deviated root, I went on to the 2016 transit fax put out. And definitely $10 per ridership is average, is actually good. Some go as high as $15.22, especially when you get into smaller transit areas. So I think it's hard to take this route. If you're going to get out to the places where people need the ride, you don't have the density and compare it to a fixed route, like the one between Barry and Montelier. So I would just like people to be more open to working with you and using the data you have and making some changes, but not trying to side those changes tonight. But I still feel very committed to this $40,000 for transit and we can modify how to use it. But I feel we really need to keep that commitment. I don't really need, we'll work with this. I was just giving some options. And if we come back and kind of the $40,000 is still the same, then what we would do is work with staff here and our staff to kind of figure out what's the best option. We tried to combine the two capital shuttle and the circulator and the time points just wouldn't work. We probably worked on this hours just trying to figure out if we could just make them both kind of work together, but time points and they just don't work. So that's why we came up with these options. Likewise, I mean, we've had a request from the school to try, middle school to try to reach out to kids across the river. And I think that's another place that's not just numbers, but it's also serving the greater good of the needs. Others, I don't know who's next over here. Well, so I just have a question about the procedure from here because we're not, this is not something we're putting on the ballot. So we're potentially putting it in the budget. But if we don't put it in the budget, if we don't agree to that tonight, they'll have to go seek signatures. They don't have time. We could, the other option for them is put it on the ballot. All right, so I guess I would make a motion that we fund the GMTA through the city budget, the level that we did last year. Assuming that they pursue option three of limiting loop two and streamlining loop one. That's our second. I would, I have an amendment. First, let's see if we have a second. Okay. Emotionized for lack of a second. Do you have a motion? I would move that we provide the $40,000 in our city budget to fund the GMTA one. A second. So with that, I'm puzzled. So we give them money without any direction. Thank you. I think there are committees that do this. There are committees that work with GMTA. There are committees that work with the city who know this way better than I do. I'm not going to sit here and dictate what needs to happen for public transit. I think public transit needs to happen. But I'm not in a position to say what the best option is. I like your emotion. I'd like to thank you for the work that you're doing in public transit. I remember my family and I were head-on by another motorist several years ago and was taken to the hospital and fortunately everyone was okay, but had a couple cracked ribs. And to get to some of the medical appointments for follow-up after that, I used public transit as our car was totaled. And it really made a big impression on me how valuable this service is for people with limited mobility. I really couldn't drive at that point. I didn't have a car to drive. And it really made a big impression on me also for people coming to our new homeless shelter or coming to access our meal programs here in Montpelier. People coming and going from their jobs. People who have cars but may choose to utilize public transit. That's a goal of this council and it's a huge service. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. I have a couple of questions and just for additional clarity, the $40,000 that has been moved is or is not part of the... It's already part of the budget. It's already included in your 1.9 budget. Technically you don't have to move anything if you just passed the budget. It's already in there. Very helpful. Thank you. Wanted to follow up on a discussion from our last meeting. Are you or is GMTA anticipating and the state recently released a report on the future sort of autonomous vehicles? And I didn't know if, as you're planning many years out, if you're doing anything at this time to accommodate for that? So the industry, I don't think we would have thought it is where it is right now today, but I went to the national conference and there were just meetings on strictly autonomous vehicles. So they're already in play. They're already in some transit agencies that have, say, large campuses, like hospital campuses, they do shuttles. They basically get you to one location and that vehicle basically takes you all over and drops you off and then comes back. So it's already in play. So it's an interesting... We have started the discussions but they haven't gone that far and I think everybody's kind of still... I mean, I wrote in two of them while I was at the conference. It was pretty cool, actually. So I think that conversation is going to happen sooner than later, like the electric buses. We didn't think that was going to happen. If you'd asked me three years ago, I would have said there's no way this technology is going to be here and here we are going to order four in March. So, you know, I would say the technology is going to creep up on us and so that is going to be a focus. Certainly it seems as though some of the existing vehicles are important for people with disabilities but that there may be a role for a variety of different types of vehicles in the future. Totally agree. Also wanted to just get an update on when our bus station might be open so that we can start receiving buses as per our most recent timeline. Are we sort of all part of when we will start to see GMT buses in Taylor Street? We're still looking at construction beginning in May, excuse me, early June and so 12 months later. So a year from the spring. Sure. We've had great working relationships with the city on that. It's terrific to hear. I guess lastly I would just encourage you to explore the increased frequency in terms of when buses come. I think that for people to add on half an hour an hour to a 15 or 20 minute trip, it may discourage some people in terms of both ends on getting to and from places. Thank you. Okay, any further? I just wanted to really compliment you on the next gen process. I periodically ride the bus between Montpelier and Berry and I followed that process and I really appreciate the transparency of everything online, the thoroughness of the reports, how responsive your staff is being to people's individual comments. And I also really appreciate the addition of the Root Shout 2.0 app so that we can track when the buses are. And I've found that all those things have made riding much more pleasant. So I appreciate all that work. The next gen is kind of our, okay, we haven't done this in how many years. So now this is kind of the big deal. So we made sure that, you know, transparency is the biggest thing for us. Any questions? All right. The motion seconded. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for your work. Okay. Next item, item six, Montpelier Community Fund Board Grant recommendations. Good evening. Good evening. All right. Welcome. Thank you. Recommendations for us. Yes. Actually, I think we've already received. So I did have a chance to look at those. So I did have a chance to look at those and I saw your note that you had allocated based on a budget of 115,500 rather than the 106,000 that we had initially indicated. I talked to Bill about what our options are here because I didn't feel like we were in a position to cut that, but I also didn't want to throw in an initial 9,500 kind of at the last minute without making a studied decision about that. And so it sounds like we actually have some time in the awarding of the grants and so we don't need to make a decision tonight on who to make the awards to. So I would be inclined to keep us at the 106,000 level and instruct the board to please come back to us with a recommendation in the very near future about who needs to be, which grants need to be cut to get to that level. That's the amount we've got to spend on this this year. And one option certainly is to cut all the grants by about 8%, but I don't know that that is the best or the fairest and you all have spent a lot of time evaluating all these. So I'd like to leave that decision up to you. You know, pass the budget tonight with 106,000 and not the increased amount. So I'd love to respond to that if I may. Thank you. So since the Montpelier Community Fund Board has been founded a number of years ago, the direction from the city council has always been to use our collective wisdom and guidance to review and respond to the applications as we received and, in fact, last year received specific direction to really ask for the funds that were deemed necessary to fund the applications that were really critical. So with that direction in mind, we went through our process this year. Last year, the request based on the total applications was $119,550 upon reviewing the 37 applications that we received this year. We found $115,000 worth of applications that we felt really merited support, which is $4,550 less, a 3.8% decrease from our request last year. So after we went through that process, reviewing the 37 applications, meeting as a board, we then had heard the $106,000 figure post-decision making. And so we are here tonight as we usually are at this time to make our recommendations to the board and wanted to share with you that we're making our recommendations based on the process that we've been instructed to use in years prior and with the guidance that we've had in years prior. I want to also understand that the $106,000 figure was developed based on some rationalization around the Just Basics grant. So we'd love to talk about that specifically if that would help bring some light to the situation as well. Sure. Before you do that, I do want to just comment on the state of Christine that this is the way that it's always, the fund has been directed. So that's not my understanding of what I think, my recollection of how we've proceeded with it since we created it. The council has always, in my experience, set a target, a number, a cap that the fund had available to allocate. I think there was some, so in the early years, there were several years where the recommendations came in under that cap and I think it was last year, maybe it was the year before, there were some members of the council who thought that that cap should actually be an amount that was fully allocated. So maybe the confusion arose around that direction, but I think there was never been any direction by the council to provide recommendations of any amount that exceeded the allocation that was given by the council or through the staff. So I just want to, this is unique, the first time in our five years, I think of this, that we've gotten recommendations that exceed the amount that's been budgeted. When, I just, I think that I know the answer, but I don't like to assume things. When, when did you make your decisions about what to recommend for the organization? And when did the council set the dollar amount? The hundred and six, or when did city staff set the hundred and six? It was after our meeting, as we heard about, I will know, we heard about a recommendation from the city. Just as we were about to meet. It was literally like the day of we heard a recommendation from city council. If you look at our, the meeting, the minutes of the meeting, item number three is that we received, and I'll just read it, the MCF board received a memo from Todd Provencher dated November 30th, 2017, that the city is taking over just basics feast, that quote, since the feast meals program has been absorbed by the senior senator, it was logical to move the funding source with the program costs, and therefore, the city manager is recommending in his budget presentation that the city council reduce the amount allocated to the Montpelier community fund board from 120 to 106. So we went into that meeting just having heard that we only had, we were only supposed to have 106,000. Going into what meeting? Into the meeting for the, uh, making the awards. To make the decisions. And when did the city know that, though? When did the city know that that money was going to be shifted? So we, right, uh, we notified them. I'm just trying to find actually the communications. The 30th was when I, When the committee got the note. I'm just wondering when the city staff. Right. So that would have been the week after Thanksgiving. So that's the week we have profanished the budget. And so as soon as we finished it and realized that this was a change, we notified them immediately. It just strikes me that that would be the kind of thing that, like that the city would have known about beforehand since, I mean, that just strikes me that notifying them on a day when everything has sort of been this thing. And then I understand why it happened. And I, I wanted you to read that piece into the meeting. Um, it just strikes me that that's something that the city should have been aware of before that and knowing that we were going into this process. I just don't understand why we're going to hold that against this committee who volunteers their time, reviews these applications. I mean, these applications are from community groups across the area that serve really at risk needy populations for these services. And I think we as a city have an obligation to be transparent in what we're doing with this fund and why this fund exists. And to say on the day of that all of a sudden we're, we're cutting the budget by $14,000 for groups that serve our most vulnerable populations just doesn't really pass the SNF test. I mean, honestly, Ashley, it's not cutting the funding. There was a chunk of money that was, had been funded by the fund that was going to be funded through the general fund. So the money that was available had not changed for the, assuming that the same applicants were received for the same scope of services, the same money was going to be available. So there's no funding reduction. And I, I did want to just add one other element that I think needs part of this discussion. And that are the petitions that we're going to be considering here tonight to add another $26,000 in additional spending for services that in the past have been funded through the Montpelier Community Fund. So if we add 115,000 that you're requesting and the 26,000 that will be, be going on the ballot, that's $141,000 for a scope of services that in the past we, when we first created the fund were funded at $100,000. So that's a 41% increase in this item of the budget that is dramatically higher than any, as far as I know, perhaps any, any other element of our budget and without any real decision. I mean, it just seems to me this, I mean, I think at one point we've made some decision to increase it by some amount, but it seems to me this fund has grown in a fairly dramatic manner without decision within the council as to whether we want to, you know, this is where we want to put scarce tax dollars. So I'm concerned about the growth of it both in terms of this off petition items, but also this confusion that seems to arose about how, whether there's a spending limit within the board and what that is. Justin and then Ian. So historically the council has always, I agree with the sentiment to not get involved in making any individual adjustments that we've always trusted that you're doing that. And thank you for making these recommendations. I think we should continue that process. It occurred to me that in previous years when this group has not allocated the full amount that was in the budget, there would have been left over money. And I'm curious sort of the, and I don't know if we have that number available tonight, but it was several thousand dollars in the beginning that were, wasn't, that had, the council had allocated as part of the budget process, but that wasn't spent. And so I'm just thinking perhaps that left over money from previous years would help bridge this gap that we find this year. I also think it's important to recognize that the work that you do potentially limits or helps avoid the ballot workaround that we are seeing in this year's ballot and so on, last year's ballot. And so it seems to me we should either fully fund and maintain this process. There was a lot of work put into and establishing or let people go in the ballot because at this point we're kind of, seems to be moving towards doing both, which of course is well within residents' rights to petition. But we have now two kind of processes by which they can access funds. There's so much important work being done by these nonprofits. I don't think anyone disagrees that the scope of what is being done in our community with this money is huge. For me to see the amount that we're giving the community fund going down at a time when city budgets continue to go up seems a little backwards to me. In the past I have advocated to increase funding to be distributed so that you can at least come closer to or meet need. I see. So if I may. Oh, I'm sorry. And I did. I'm sorry. So you can go ahead. That's all right, if you like. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So I just wanted to respond to a couple of the points that have been brought up to date. One is that clearly the Montpelier Community Fund Board doesn't have control over the nonprofits who are seeking to go on the ballot and ask for funds directly from the city voters. And in fact, we have seen a direct relationship between our efforts to create what we feel like is a greater degree of equity and parity in the grants made to nonprofits that we inherited, those grant amounts that we historically had inherited from the original ballot and our efforts to create some equity and parity among those items, which meant for some organizations trying to cut to some degree their grants in order to what we felt more fairly distribute grant funding among a wider variety of organizations. And so our effort to do that has most likely directly resulted in at least one organization pursuing the ballot option, which obviously is not within our control. We still think we made the right decision. The other piece that I would put out there is that the pool of applicants is different every year. So, you know, with every grant funding process, you know, this is an open process. We have a number of nonprofits who apply to us every year, usually between 35 and 45, and that pool shifts every year. And in fact, there's new nonprofits as new organizations find out about this process or new people come up with creative ideas to serve the city. There are new organizations coming to this process and looking for funding. And so, you know, we have a small amount of money that each year we're trying to stretch further and further and further. And so that is an inherent challenge again with this work. The last piece I would put out there is that perhaps there's been a misunderstanding. It sounds like there has been between the City Council and this body as far as a budget cap or a budget line item allocated to this process. But in my time on the community fund board, the process that I have experienced is that we come with recommendations. They've been approved to date. They can be approved or declined. And then our understanding is, is that that figure is then included in the city budget. And if there had in the past been a budget line item for the molecular community fund board, we have been operating unaware of that fact. So it's good to, if there is, if that is the process, then we would like to know that and be able to work with those bounds. But our understanding is that that budgeting was happening based on the recommendations that we were bringing forth each time. Well, I just don't think that, I mean, I guess Bill can talk about that more directly, but the process has always been that the board's recommendations have come within the proposed budget recommendation from the city manager. This is the first time that that number has exceeded that budget figure. And that the board has always coordinated its work with the recommended budget figure of the city manager. So I think everybody's right here. But there's some differences in timing. And actually texting back and forth here with the finance director and others. We previously, I think you started your processes earlier. And so the early in our budget process, usually around the time when we were preparing the city's budget, this group did come and say, we think we need 115, let's say. The council would say, yes, we're going to put that in the budget. So that would become an untouchable budget number for us on staff. And then you'd go through your process. This year, so then we do our budget that first week. This year there was that conversation that happened. Your applications weren't due until November 27th. And we do our budget, the 27th, 8th, or 28th, 9th, and 30th in staff right after Thanksgiving. We had a budget cap. So to respond to, we weren't trying to penalize the committee. We were trying to keep hold the amount of money that went to the same amount of programs as the mayor said. So without knowing what you had for applications, we said, all right, well, we spent this much last year and some of it was for this fees program. So if we're paying for fees, let's keep the rest of whole. And as soon as we completed on the 30th, if that's when we, you know, once our staff knew trying to meet the council's budget limit, we immediately said, all right. In fact, you were the only group that we released any budget information to because normally I don't tell anybody what's in the budget until I give it to the city council as a public document. But we wanted to make sure that you had the info as soon as we could get it to you saying, just so you know, it's 106, not 115. So I think we missed that earlier. So October, early November conversation that we've had in the past. So you're right, you brought the recommendations. Council said it, but it was never as late in the process. And I think that's what's happened and that's how we got here. But, you know, I know from our end, we wanted to make sure you knew that there was a number change as soon as we knew what we were going to recommend. And of course, it's up to the council to decide what the final number is. Yeah, so thank you all for your for your work on this. I just want to acknowledge that I think I've expressed this in past years that I trust this committee and whatever it is that you think is worth awarding. I trust that you all have done your due diligence and have wanted to know in past years if the amount needed to increase from the year prior. And this is in my mind within the range of what we've been allocating in the past and so it seems appropriate to me. It's not that unusual. When thinking about the grand scope of the, you know, the economics of it over over time, you know, we just came out of a conversation. Gosh, just a few weeks ago about the future of this fund and the inclination that other groups may have to not go through the community fund and to get on the ballot. And I think if we send them back to say, you know, cut 8% or find people who you don't actually think are worthy, then that will send the message to those groups that maybe they shouldn't go through this process and that they will sort of abandon it and go back to the generous voters of Montpelier. And so, you know, I guess if even if the goal is to keep cost down in the long run, even if I'm not, well, even if that were the goal, right, then then I think it's probably wisest for us to honor the request of 115. So I'm feeling really uncomfortable because I don't have a good sense of where we're at with the budget right now. We kind of set a cap and there's, you know, a range around there where I'm comfortable. And if we're still in that range, then fine. But I feel like we're creeping out of it. And so I don't know if Bill. We're at about 2.3% right now with it with all in with ballot items and including this full request or not. So this full request probably doesn't affect that. Okay. I don't know. I'd have to do a quick. Okay. That's a little better than I thought we were at. So that makes me feel a little bit more comfortable. We're going to go through it next time. What's that? We're going to go right through it next time. Okay. I mean, I guess my personal opinion is we did set a cap and I'm really cautious about budget creep. But if the rest of the council feels really strongly that they're okay with this, then I'm willing to go along with that. I think I'm just going to say, I think that this sets a really dangerous precedent. I mean, I'm not going to. This is the last I want to comment on it. But I think that with every other item in this budget, we've set, I mean, within the budget, we have set a cap and said this is what the Montpelier voters can afford. And I think what I'm hearing from other counselors is that this is an area where we should say this should be needs driven. And I think if that's going to be the case, you're going to see, I mean, you've already seen a lot more applicants. I suspect that's because it's a lot easier to apply for a grant from this organization than it is to go on the ballot. And as time goes on, it becomes more apparent. It's easier for people to understand. It becomes more widely known and your demand's going to grow. And so, and clearly there's greater demand in this community for services than $115,000. I mean, I think that's just likely going to be a number that people think that it's in the range. It becomes known that this isn't a cap. This is just a program that's driven by need. You're going to see dramatic increases. And I think that's just not an appropriate way to set a budget. We make all kinds of difficult decisions within the context of what we can afford, not what we think we should be spending. And I think this is setting a different standard for this program that I think is going to result in some real, significant challenges in the future if that's the policy that the council wants to take. Just to challenge a couple of assumptions there. I mean, there is an application process that applicants have to go through, which is not the same as getting or the requisite number of signatures, which, I mean, requires certainly shoe leather politics because you got to go door to door. But putting together an application, I mean, I've written grant applications that is not an easy process by any means. And I would frankly prefer people to go through this process because there are community members who are reviewing this, who are seeing what the services that are provided to Montpelier by this organization is the population served. I mean, I think that clearly, I think Bill articulated an issue that the city needs to address, which is when do we notify groups about what their limits are? And I think that warrants a bigger conversation about these committees that we're asking to do this work. But I think that this is the way to go. I mean, having a committee that reviews these applications rather than just going straight to the ballot, I mean, that way the city knows what it's spending its money on. When there's an application process, the city council gets a write up of what the organization does, what the history is with this board and this organization. And to me, I mean, it sort of highlights a communication breakdown, which was this memo went out the same day that their meeting was. The understanding was a little bit different because the timing had been different in the past. I think that the council or the city needs to set a clear deadline for when the city is going to get this information out and when the expectation that we receive information back is. Thank you for the comment. But I'd also like to point out that we had requests for $143,282. So it wasn't as if we were just going through, say, okay, not okay, okay, not okay. We had to make some decisions. We realized that there was a cap somewhere. And that we were not, you know, and that we were constrained to make decisions based on what we thought was a fair presentation with also accountability for what money had been allocated the previous years, reviewing that. And in a couple of cases, we reduced the, we gave less because we felt that we had not received information that showed how the money that had been given the previous years had been spent. So I think it's not as if we were simply giving a pass to everybody who walked in the door. And I think that that's important to recognize. Also, in one case, the issue of the feast money being suddenly moved from the community fund into the budget had two effects. I think one was to say, okay, we don't have that, we appear not to have that money, but it also, just basics, had put in an application for two new projects, which we thought were important. And so the question was, do we penalize one applicant because some of their money has already been moved somewhere else without, you know, out of our authority at this point? And so we say, well, they've got their money, we'll just dismiss the other projects that came. And we decided that that didn't seem to be a good idea either. And although then I'm a little reluctant to do this, but I will say it anyway, two applicants who had been receiving money steadily over the years missed the deadline and they happen to be on the ballot now. So there's a case where it was not, if we had had their applications in as we expected, we would have made some other decisions to try to accommodate what we saw as a need that's being met with a project. So I think the committee was put in a kind of difficult position by all of a sudden having this less money here with very little notice and with really some pretty bad options to pursue if, you know, given those circumstances. If I might just add one data point to Michael's point, I would just say that just basics proposal this year indicated a 66% increase in the number of people that they're serving now this year over the last. If you look at the list of these nonprofits on page seven of the agenda, these are groups that are helping people in our community. And I am strongly in favor of letting them do what they do best, which is to keep helping people and not have to tramps around collecting hundreds of signatures, which is really distracting them from their core function. I would move to accept and fund the Montpelier Community Fund as recommended for FY19. I would second that. All right. Further discussion? Dr. Juvenhill. No, that's what I was going to say. All right. All right. Hearing no discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? All right. Thank you all very much for your work. Thank you. Thank you. Smoother next year. Okay. Next item. Budget public hearing. Did you have another? Yeah. In fact, I have, I actually have my PowerPoint covers the budget, the bonds, the charter and the warning. I can split them up or we can just run through the whole thing and then you may make some changes. Are you setting up a PowerPoint? Can we take a break? Sure can. Oh, I, it's not me to tell you that. Hello, everybody. I've actually drafted outlines of the four issues that are up for public hearings and I also have this PowerPoint from the school superintendent, Brian Rick is here who wants to quickly go through the school budget as well. So what I'm completed, he'll do his thing, I think. So just with the caveat that all the budget numbers I'm going to give you are now $9,500 short. Having said that, so I'm going to walk through the proposed budget, the bond issues, the charter changes and the annual meeting warning. Obviously those can still be addressed individually, but just put them all together. So the budget is as was approved by the council on January 10 and it's subject to additional changes made tonight as we've seen. The council set the budgets based around council goal of affordability. This is a requires a 2.3% tax rate increase which approximates CPI that includes all the again prior to the 9,500 all of the ballot items and everything else that's in on the ballot. Personnel costs were up only 1.5% and we used our long term budget as a guide. I'm not going to read all of these, just hit some of the key highlights. One of our goals is good governance that could count the budget included many of the things that we had consisted in our goals. One of the things we hope to accomplish is a citizen survey which isn't included but we'll take a look at maybe other ways of funding that. Public safety is important and we've funded our public safety departments at sufficient levels. We weren't able to expand in some areas that we'd hoped and we and the council has chosen to put the CV PSA ballot item on as well. Economic development. We've kept the $100,000 in funding for the Montpelier Development Corporation. We've kept our planning staff to implement our new zoning and master plan and we are continuing to support a possible TIFF application. Housing we last year we increased the housing for the housing trust from $21,000 to $60,000 and we kept that funding at the same this year. It has funds for completing one Taylor Street. Quality of life. Many of the things that have been concluded before the downtown improvement district, Montpelier alive, community enhancements, downtown projects are all included. In our healthy and welcoming community we kept funding in the parking fund for alternative transportation. We kept funding for the bike path. Our community and arts fund that we just talked about and the feast program which was moved to the senior center. For infrastructure we've got CIP plan which was fully funded. We're proposing two bonds for infrastructure improvements. We've added an engineering position in DPW and continued other plans that we've had. For environment we continued funding for the energy advisory committee, stormwater projects and we just talked about the GMT circulator bus. So very quickly where does the money come from? As you can see our budget is funded about 65% for property taxes, other grants, revenues and fund transfers. So some of the transfers between the water fund, parking fund, sewer fund. Where do we spend it? You can see the bulk is in public safety and in infrastructure, community services and our general government services. Taking a look at cutting that slightly differently. And I know I'm going quickly because I know we have a lot to talk about tonight. There's a huge amount of detail on all of this if anybody's interested and happy to provide or answer any questions. Cutting this separately you can see that we are about 55%, 54% personnel. We've got our capital plan, valid items are about 3%, operating costs about 20%. So what does that mean? Our property tax rate would rise from 1.055 cents to 1.079 cents. It's 2.4 cents or 2.3%. Average tax bill about $55. Our other rates, water and sewer rates are planned to 2.5%. And other rates will have no increase in those sewer and CSO benefit rates. Just this is a quick chart. This will be in your annual report. Taking a look at each service we provide, breaking up our budget and then netting out any revenues that that department generates. So this is the net tax cost for our various services. And you can see how much the average tax bill pays for various services. Just under $500 for police and $350 for public works, $340 for fire, EMS, et cetera. So you can see kind of what your Alucard looks like. So that's the end of the budget. Again, happy to answer questions on all of this. We are proposing two bonds. One is a water and sewer bond for water lines on Main Street, Laguio Canal and Clarendon. $500,000 for sewer lines on Laguio Canal and Clarendon. So obviously some of that work is coordinated. The Main Street line is the line near the middle school that's given us failure problems. And so allowing doing that. General fund infrastructure bond is for $450,000 to complete the alternate transportation path. $360,000 for sidewalk improvements. And $490,000 for one Taylor project, the Taylor Street project, and other accelerated infrastructure if needed. So we don't have to float the whole bond, but we've talked about moving, trying to speed up some of our improvements. There's also a $4.9 million bond for school improvements, which I will leave to Superintendent Ricka to discuss. So those are the bonds that will be on the ballot. And the numbers inside 11, 12, and 13 are currently the ballot, the article numbers on the ballot in case you're wondering what those are. Charter change. The city is proposing four charter changes. Also required to have a public hearing tonight. The first one reflects the creation of the new Montpelier Roxbury School District. So it basically deletes a whole section of language about the Montpelier School Department and reflects this new independent district. The second is to amend election filing deadlines to coincide with the general state statute. Our current charter currently has its own filing deadline for candidacy, which doesn't match any other community and the general statute. So we're amending that. So we'll be in sync with neighboring communities and with other across the state. The third charter change amends the size of the DRB and sets specific terms for the DRB and Planning Commission members. We currently have five members on the DRB, but have functioned with seven for a long time. So this is amending the charter to actually make it seven and also setting specific beginning and end date for terms. Right now our members of these committees are all over the place. We want to have only one date. I think it's May for the Planning Commission and October for the DRB that will appoint all of the people for those set terms at those times. And finally, we're eliminating the collections of personal property tax for items valued under $10,000. So these can often be $2. If the value is 10, the bill is $1.56 or $3 or something like that. So $30. So we are eliminating the nuisance collection of those small personal property taxes. That's the charter changes. Oops, sorry. And then the warning is it's currently drafted and I know there will be considerations of adding other items or changing items, but the first three items are the election of city school and public safety authority officers. The next three items are city school and public safety authority budgets. The next three items are the compensation for elected officials, mayor, city council and school board members. The authorization for the school reserve fund, which is an annual appropriation. The 11 through 13 are the three city and school bonds. I just went over. 14 is the annual authorization for the downtown improvement district. 15 is the funding for the Kellogg Hubbard Library. 16 through 19 are the four charter changes I just outlined. 20 to 22 are the three agency petitions we've received, presuming they'll put on the ballot. And then there's 23. There's a non-financial petition regarding state renewable energy policies. So that is the draft budget as it sits right now. And again, we need to have a public hearing on all of that. So that's quickly running through the four items. Certainly can talk about any of these in any more detail. Oh, excuse me. So with regard to the warning, this is related to the whole overall budget. When you look at the tax distribution, this just shows with the city school and everybody else in there. You can see how your tax breaks out. And this is the overall picture to answer the question. So with all in including school, we're looking at about 2.4% increase with everybody included. So when you look at the warning as a whole, if everything passed, this is what it would have looked like coming into tonight. So tonight is the public hearing. The voting is on Tuesday, March 6, 7 to 7, with the early voting slated to start on February 9. I'm told. We're registering for requesting an early ballot that's already under way, but the ballots will be available. So that is the schedule. So any questions or comments? And obviously these are public hearings, so happy to take anyone's questions. That's it for our public hearings in one. Oh, excuse me. No, now we get to school. Almost got out. Can I make one comment on that? You sure make. So I just wanted to mention briefly the increase in compensation for the council and the mayor. I noticed that the reporter from the Times Argus wasn't there that night and so that did not get covered in any of the various local newspapers. And I didn't want anybody to think that we were slipping that in or anyone to compare what we had put in this year last year and think that that was trying to be done secretively. It's not mentioned in the warning that it's a change. So just throwing that out there that you can go back and watch our discussion on that. We had some discussion on that in our previous meeting. But I just wasn't intended to be hidden in there. You have a PowerPoint as well, or should we turn the lights up? Okay. And as the superintendent comes to this circle here, I just want to recognize that I'm an employee of the school district and so I'm going to be recusing myself for this portion of the conversation. Thank you and good evening. I will try to do as well as Bill did with my budget. I would like to summarize briefly and succinctly the work that we have done in the FY19 budget for, as Bill mentioned, the Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools. With the merger that was passed in June, we are planning for four schools next year, the three here in town and the Roxbury Village School. The budget that we are about to run through with you contains no reductions in force and is framed in the unified districts motto of personalization, community, and sustainability backed by our continuous improvement plan. On December 1st, Vermont Digger reported that per pupil spending is growing faster than the Vermont economy or Vermont wages and that the average tax rate is going up 9.4 cents or 7% on average. As of tonight, the Montpelier tax increase on the education side is less than half of what was predicted. Right now we're looking at 4.3 cents and that is an increase of 2.6%, not the seven that was predicted. What that looks like is $43 per 100,000 of assessed house value. According to the city manager, the average home in Montpelier is at $228,000, meaning an increase on the education side, no, you're fine, you're fine, you can go back, meaning an increase on the education side of $98 or a little less than $25 a quarter for education taxes. For the Roxbury community, their education taxes will decrease by 2.5 cents. Recently, Governor Scott has called for school districts that have rising enrollment, like Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools has and will continue to have, at least the next three fiscal years, to increase their equalized per pupil spending by no more than 2.5%. As Mayor Holler knows from his time on the school board, this is the most important figure to concern yourselves with when you think about education spending in the state of Vermont. Our current increase is more than a percentage point below what Governor Scott has called for. It is 1.3% on our education spending per pupil. If not for the capital plan, which is included in our operating budget and the bond, which is a separate issue, a separate article, we would be returning money to the Montpelier taxpayers for the second year in a row. The Agency of Education and the Agency of the Administration have suggested that there be at least a 5 to 1 adult to student ratio in pre-K12 delivery systems of education in the state of Vermont. Ours is predicted to be, or excuse me, ours is currently 5.3 to 1. Please understand that we did not build our budget to meet or exceed these goals. We built this budget to ensure a successful merger, one of our themes, to focus on equity and personalization, and to meet all of the needs in the schools, the four schools that serve three grade levels in two communities with one motto, personalization, community, and sustainability. Another goal from the school board this year was to stabilize our future year tax rates. As you may know, part of the incentives for a merger include a tax-cent reduction. This year we'll see an 8-cent tax reduction, a 6-cent next year, 4-cent the following year, 2-cents the following year, and so on until we're at a level fund with Roxbury. And so we've purposefully built in costs this year, one-time costs that will not be there for next year's operating budget to absorb the 2-cent reduction, which would, if you think about it, look like a 2-cent increase. Some of the challenges that we face, there's an estimated Education Fund shortfall of about $80 million statewide, and at the end of last year's legislative session, there was the healthcare compromise, which included a clawback of an additional $65,000 onto next year's budget. And we saw a 10.1% rate increase on our healthcare. And the challenges continued in terms of our tax rate. We saw a significant drop in the dollar yield, and an increase in the non-residential tax rate to backfill the Ed fund. The dollar yield is a number that is set by the legislature. We were expecting it to go up, perhaps a percentage point. It actually dropped 3.1%. And so that's been a big factor for us. Next page, please. Thank you. So here is our residential tax rate calculation. I will try to do this without boring you too much. Our operating budget is here. The combined, you'll see, I'll start over here. This was our operating budget last year as Montpelier. This was Roxbury's operating budget. So only for this year will you see this combined, or else I wouldn't be able to give you any comparisons in terms of what the two districts did. Our operating budget this year that we're proposing is $23,084,695. Our grant funds are in this number here. We're proposing a capital plan, which is in the operating budget already, and the proposed bond that we have that I'll go through briefly in a few slides will include a first-year interest-only payment of $118,000. So moving down further, our total general fund budget is the $23,452,706. From that, you subtract the non-tax revenues of almost $4 million. This right here is our education spending number of $19.5 million. From the blue box here, this is a 6.5% increase. Without our capital plan and the bond, it would only be 4.5%. So 2% of this is being driven by much-needed attention to our buildings. Our Equalized Pupils, and this is the really good news, folks. In Montpelier alone, we had Equalized Pupils, which is not a headcount. It's a weighted two-year calculation of the number of students that we have. I won't bore you with the calculation, but suffice it to know it's not an actual headcount. Plus, our Roxbury cohort added in at 86. Again, that's not a headcount. It's a weighted two-year average. So we were looking at about $11.65 or so. Our calculation came in over $1,200, and this is the first time this number has been over $1,200 in the seven years that I've served in Montpelier, but it directly drives down the local tax rate. So as we gain more students, the tax rate in town decreases. And so with the education spending here of $19.5 million divided by the Equalized Pupils, this is our education, this is our spending for pupil, the number that is most important in terms of how taxes are calculated. And as I said, this is an increase of only 1.3%. Had we not included the capital plan in the bond, this would actually be a reduction in the education spending in town. There's no excess spending penalty. As you see, Roxbury had one last year. There's no excess spending penalty here. And our adjusted ed spending for pupil is $15,923.77, the same number. This number that's highlighted in yellow is the property dollar yield. It was delivered as by statute on December 1st by the tax commissioner, but it has to be set by the legislature before it adjourns in May. And there's no telling what will happen between now and then, so we're basing this on the tax commissioner's letter. So when you take the ed spending for pupil divided by the property yield, you get an Equalized Residential Tax Rate of 161.8. You see here, for Montpelier, there's the 8 cent tax reduction that is our merger incentive. And then, as I've said, I think consistently for the past six years that I've done this, the backhanded compliment is that the CLA went down again in town. Our estimate here is that that impacted our tax rate by about 3.3%. What that means, it's a calculation that's used to ensure that people are paying the same level regardless of the town that they live in, and the fact that the Montpelier CLA is going down means there continues to be a lot of competition for housing in Montpelier, and so people are paying more than the assessed value for the house. So with all of that said, here is the tax rate for Montpelier that I shared with Bill, $1.66 and a little higher. The Roxbury one is over here. Their CLA also went down, and they're paying $1.69. Okay, residential tax rate impacts, as I shared, about $43 per 100,000. It works out to be a little bit less than $100 on the education side for the average home in Montpelier. As you can see, the Roxbury folks are, they have decreased. Please note, though, and this is apparently going to be a topic for conversation in the legislature, households with income under $90,000, which is about 60% statewide, have income sensitivity, so it may not be paying the entire amount that you see here. This is a big topic of conversation. Our 706 committee, the merger study of which the new board chair, Jim Murphy, who's here with me, did a tremendous amount of work in order to try to predict how much we were going to spend. The Ed spending was predicted to be about $18.9 million in the merger study committee, and we came in closer to $19.5. But as you see here, it did not include the capital plan, interest for the first year of a bond, and this is the number that I was telling you about. We've put almost $200,000 in one-time expenses into this operating budget that will not be there next year in order to absorb not only the two cents less of a merger incentive, but also in the second year of a bond, you pay interest and principal, and so that will be a substantial uptick. But part of the method to the madness was to put in as much as we thought we could do reasonably in terms of one-time facilities funds, or facilities projects that won't be there next year, and that's separate from the capital plan and that's separate from the bond. So we were taking a real hard look at improving the quality of our buildings. We've had special education costs that we can never always budget appropriately for, but please note that there is state reimbursement for all of those, and the Roxbury deficit that they came to the table with is being covered by our overall fund balance. Again, the committee estimated about a 1.48 residential tax rate. We came in at 1.54, and here are the big cost drivers to that. Last year, the merger study committee anticipated a little bit more for the dollar yield. It came in at 98.42. That difference right there is 7.4 cents. If that's even level funded from last year, we're right at the number that they recommended. And that doesn't even include the capital plan bond. The higher one-time projects was about 5 cents, and in that study, they estimated equalized pupils at 11.80, which was a modest increase, and we came in a bit higher. This is the list of bond projects that the board asked us during the January 10th meeting to come in under $5 million. We were slightly over. All of these projects are in a state of, if not critical, approaching critical. UES has work that needs to be done on the electrical power distribution, fire alarm and PA, as well as elevator replacement, a renovation of the playground that we are trying desperately to get off the ground if we can ever get the soils to where they need to be. And we're calling this new improved area of MHS our wellness and arts wing. It includes auditory and renovations, wellness center and training room, locker rooms, offices and a family restroom, as well as classroom improvement to the restrooms and the lobby, roof replacements and an upgrade of heating and ventilation, most of which have not had a lot of attention in the past easily 20 to 25 years. Notably, Main Street Middle School is not there, but I want to point out that in the past year and a half we've spent over $400,000 using not only facilities fees, but reserve funds to make adjustments to the work at Main Street Middle School. And as you'll see on the next slide, the bathroom renovations are the second item in FY20 and based on the timing of the bond, if it passes and the construction cycle, including mostly summer work, it's probable that the MS-MS bathrooms are going to be replaced about the same time that the work begins in earnest on some of the big projects last year, this year. And this was another desire of the board to see a capital plan. This year, this capital plan is built right into the operating budget, so we do have $250,000 set aside for roof replacement at the high school. Next year, we anticipate this being a capital fund, which would be a separate valid item, but because the board was contemplating a bond we wanted to go ahead and put the money in for this year and show not only the board but the public how serious we are about caring for our buildings going forward. You can see we're ranging in costs from about $250,000 to $280,000. These first two years are pretty much set and are hard numbers. We know these projects we're going to do as we get further out. These are softer numbers but we also want to give everybody not only on the board but in the community a sense of the care that we're trying to take from all of our buildings. As we look forward, the Dow yield should not decrease as drastically. We're hoping it doesn't ever drop another 3% and have to backfill the ed fund as much. Our equalized pupil account shouldn't increase as drastically. At the same time it is projected to increase at least over the next three years and that's only good news for folks in town. As I mentioned a number of times the tax incentive decreases two cents per year but we have planned for what that's going to be. The board was very clear that they want to make sure that the tax rate is somewhere remotely close to stabilization among the factors that we can control. Enrollment and staffing, we're both likely to see increases through FY22 and that impact should be minimal as our pupil growth grows. Our spending per pupil should be about the same. We're going to see some expenditures decreasing as part of the merger. There was grand parenting instead of grandfathering students in Roxbury who already had school choice so we will tuition the students who are in 9th through 12th grade and then the following year it will only be 10th through 12th grade, 11th through 12th grade and finally only 12th graders. This year's 7th graders at Roxbury Village School, sorry. This year's 6th grade. No, wait a minute. If there's someone who's in 7th grade this year's 7th graders will come to Montpelier Public Schools next year as 8th graders. So starting from 7th grade down all students in Roxbury Village School will come to Montpelier Public Schools for grades 5 through 12, Main Street Middle School and Montpelier High School. We're going to see a decrease as we go forward in the one-time facilities projects. We're hoping to see transportation aid increase but we won't see that for two years until FY21. We're going to be adding buses and that's part of what's built into our overall budget. We need to not only have buses to continue to bring students in Roxbury to the Roxbury Village School, they already have a contract that we'll be working with to change but we need to have a bus to bring not only students from Roxbury to Montpelier but also the board is committing to having a late bus or a late van to ensure the Roxbury Village students can participate in co-curriculars and after-school activities. And in terms of bond expenditures the existing bond payments are going to be fairly level. The facilities bonds are going to decrease but our Vermont municipal employees retirement system bond is going to increase but we've known that. And as I mentioned earlier the new bond that hopefully will be passed that we're taking on is going to see a large increase in FY20 but will decrease each year afterwards. Bottom line it's a 1.3% increase in per pupil spending and that is excellent news and a credit to the board and the leadership team for ensuring that the work that we are doing is at a manageable spending amount and I will continue to remind folks it would be a return on education taxes if we did not include the capital plan on bond which we need. The overall residential tax rate increase is 2.6% and it's a 1.5% decrease for Roxbury. And I'd be happy to take questions if people have. I just need to ask do the council need to vote on this? Okay I need to recuse myself as well I did not realize that because of my position with the agency of education. Okay, thank you Brian any questions for Jim? It's largely a formality we don't have the control of the budget but we appreciate all of your work. I would just comment briefly that in talking to people from U32 surrounding towns too they're constantly curious about how things are going here in Montpilier and I'm proud to say I told them we've got some great schools here thank you both for making that happen. CLA is also numeric evidence to some degree of the interest in living in Montpilier thank you. We have a motion to approve that part or do we do should open the public hearing too? Budget, bonds, charter. Do we have a separate vote on this? No. Item? When you set the warning you put on the house. Okay great. Okay so this is for a budget or any other items discussed? Any of it have any comments? Okay so next I guess yeah public hearing would be on any of these items so the budget, the charter and the bonds that you've heard about not hearing any comments on those so then we have the petitions to consider. Turn that over to the city clerk. Well you've heard Bill's description of the charter items and the same ones that you all approved before so you're probably familiar with them. They are going to, well you've also seen the warning so you'll see how they will appear on there which does make it incumbent on us to make the actual text as available as widely as possible including printing it out and putting it every time. But I don't know if you all have any questions about any of them? Pretty straightforward I think. Covered them all, thank you. And then there was a request to add an item to the the center Vermont internet. Right so we do have somebody here, Jeremy's here I think to make that presentation. Did you, Donna this was your request to put this on the agenda, did you have anything you wanted to comment about? No that I hope that we support putting it on the ballot and that voters will support it. It's an opportunity for us to create community-wide and fiber. We're confused. Could we separate out these items just because I would prefer to not vote on the school portion of it? You don't actually have to vote on a school portion, all you do is vote to approve the warning when we put those school items on so when we vote for the warning you could just put the two school articles on. Just note for the record I don't think it's a real, we can't change. There's nothing we can do. I'm really excited to Did you turn the projector off? I did but I can undo that. Don't worry. He does have this as an attachment to our agenda as well as what he's presenting. Those are your mics, pull them. Thanks for having me tonight. I'm Jeremy Hansen. I'm a professor at Norwich University. I teach computer security, programming, networking, all this stuff. I'm also on the select board in Berlin for a bit. Before I came to Vermont, I spent about 10 years in information, technology and security working for all sorts of different sized organizations doing all sorts of different things. What I'm proposing is actually something that's not terribly different from something that Montpelier is already involved in. So there's a group called EC Fiber which operates primarily to the south of us down from, about Brookfield all the way down to West Windsor. But it's this thing called the Communications Union District, which is something like a water district or a school district, but it's an internet district. Arguably EC Fiber will at some point be building out Montpelier with high speed fiber to the home. But we're essentially looking to clone what they're doing to the south of us here in central Vermont, and I'll show you the list of towns that have this on the ballot already in just a bit. But just to make sure you have the whole picture for people who aren't familiar with this, we're looking at creating this municipal entity. And this is a municipal entity that's separate from Montpelier. It doesn't have the same budget. It can't take tax money from any of the towns and Montpelier would be insulated from liability on any of the building, any of the construction that would happen. So it turns out that the Vermont telecommunications plan says that by the end of 2020 that half of addresses in Vermont, more than half of addresses in Vermont should have 100 megabits per second symmetric, which means the stuff that you download from the internet you should get 100 megabits per second stuff that you send to the internet should that should happen 100 megs per second. According to the statistics that I have from the state, there are zero addresses in Montpelier that have this. Of all of the towns that I've talked to in Central Vermont, there are zero that meet this requirement. And then it says by 2024 every address should meet this. And we're not really on track to hit this. I think we have something like 13% it's in the teens percent of addresses in Vermont that actually hit this. And the reason that we're at that number is because of Burlington and a couple other towns, mostly E.C. fiber towns to the south. So I'm looking at building this municipality with Montpelier's help in all the other communities that I'm working with to essentially build fiber to the home, connecting homes with up to gigabit fiber connections. So this is a picture of Montpelier and you see, so all the green dots, which kind of get mashed together downtown, all the green dots are addresses, E.911 addresses. All of the red lines are roads that have at least cable infrastructure coverage. Montpelier has cable basically everywhere. So almost every address in Montpelier you can have a choice between cable or DSL. The surrounding communities, including Berlin where my house is and I don't live very far away from here, I'm just off the map near Berlin Pond. I have DSL at best. So I could go to wireless broadband or go to satellite, but those aren't really options if I want to do real work from home. So what I'm asking of Montpelier is for Montpelier to help us create this district. This district doesn't exist. There's no board, there's no entity right now. So I'm asking you to add the language to your ballot that says shall the city of Montpelier enter into this communications union district to be known essential for my internet under the provisions of 30VSA Chapter 82 in a similar way as you did when you joined with EC Fiber. So again, member towns are insulated from the financial activities of the district. You can't use tax money. There's a hook in there that says the statute requires that each member shall make available for release to the district one or more sites for a communications plant or components thereof within such a member municipality. I think EC Fiber only does this with three or four other towns, and this is basically where they need to create sort of satellite locations and that would not be more than for those of you tech geeks in the crowd 2U of Rackspace or something roughly the size of your average desktop computer. Should this pass at city meeting and we have at least two towns that vote affirmatively on this the municipalities involved would appoint a CVI board member much like you appoint an EC Fiber board member and an alternate, and that's it. Nobody votes on bonds. The bonding that happens with these districts is different. You've probably not noticed EC Fiber going out to the bond market and bringing the votes in front of Montpellier residents because it's separate. It's different. So why would we do this? A lot of the existing ICPs don't really have the motivation to provide this really, truly high speed internet. If they did, we would have seen more construction. We would have seen evidence that this is actually happening. We also get local governance. There's somebody from Montpellier who's going to be responsible for the decisions that this district makes. You get local control, local accountability and in a lot of cases, important to some people, local tech support. There'll be somebody in central Vermont answering the phone to fix problems when it comes up. I had the opportunity to go visit EC Fiber's office, their location and get a sense of what's going on with them. They've been extremely helpful and very willing to help us help CVI get off the ground and make this happen. It's a pretty lean but really effective operation that they have going on down there. So because there's no profit motive and because this district can tap into the municipal bond market, we can offer cheaper rates than we might see than if I was coming to you and saying I'm starting my own for-profit fiber optic internet service provider. We're also, I'm hoping if I have any say about it, we will have net neutrality written into statement of principles from the get-go. There's not going to be any negotiating or arguing or worrying what the federal government does or whether the state can say anything about that. We start square one, no filtering based on content, no throttling. That CC is also making made moves recently to give ISPs the ability to track and resell subscriber network activity, which to me as a privacy advocate is really gross. I won't bother pitching to you why this is important for economic development, but it could also have the side effect of also indirectly driving prices of the other offerings down and speeds up. All right, so I'm talking to you tonight, you're up at the top there. I'm talking to Berry City, whom I've already I talked to, I pitched this to them already back in November-ish. But already on the town meeting ballot, Berry Town, Berlin, Callis, Eastmont-Pillier, Marshfield, Middlesex, Norfield, Plainfield, Rocksbury, Williamstown and Worcester. So I want to point out something that didn't occur to me until recently, Rocksbury. If you have students going to from Rocksbury going to Montpellier High School and they have homework assignments that require use of the internet, Rocksbury is at 0% coverage with cable modems. They will have DSL at best, which means maybe one megabit connections. If they're in better places, closer to one of the state highways, they might get 8, they might get 10 megabits per second. So some of the criticisms that we see is I don't want my taxes to go up or something I don't want. This is like the sewer. If you're not on the sewer line, you don't pay for the sewer. This is the same thing. Taxes in statute, it says you can't use tax money, tax capacity to pay for this district. I don't want to be in the same position as Burlington Telecom. Burlington Telecom is a weird and unfortunate situation and this is a different structure that insulates Montpellier from having late night meetings to midnight over and over and over again. I mean, I've been to my share of long select board meetings and I am not interested in inflicting that on anyone. Having a bunch of these providers failed, sure. Just like any other business, any other effort could fail. That's absolutely true. It has happened and could happen and I'm it's possible that this won't work. I'm going to be completely straight. But if EC Fiber is any indication after three years of operation as a communications union district, they're cash flow positive after three years and they're still building out more towns. They're building out all of Brookfield. Brookfield is not very dense. They're building out all of Brookfield with gigabit speed Fiber to every house. If there's truly the demand, wouldn't the market correct to provide the supply? Maybe, but again, we're not seeing that. There hasn't been new construction in much new construction in Berlin or Northfield. Those are the communities that I'm most familiar with working in Northfield. Are the towns covered by satellite and wireless broadband already? Sure, but those are and I'm happy to go into the reasons why that's not a legitimate criticism of... It's essentially because the way people use the internet when it requires a lot of bandwidth, it's these solutions are not going to be satisfactory essentially. There's no guarantee that you'll actually provide cheaper service or faster speeds. I can guarantee that there's going to be faster speeds. I mean, this is fiber optic to your house. We're talking about 700 megabits per second. EC Fiber charges $150 a month before. Will it actually be cheaper? We haven't written the business plan or gone to the bond market yet. Do you know if EC Fiber prices? $66 a month is what they charge for 17 megabits per second up and down. It's actually the next bit in your packet right below this presentation. My agenda was to finish up getting the language on the town meeting ballot in more than 10 towns and then go to public outreach and awareness building, so getting people to know what's all this kind of legalese stuff that's on the ballot that's talking about this communications unit district. Talk to more people to put this out there. Hopefully win approval of town meeting, appointing representatives to the board, and then kind of as we go looking for organizations and people who are interested in providing free money or otherwise being anchor institutions. First time in a meeting in May, possibly add other municipal members, and then we start talking about feasibility studies, looking for where we're going to start, draft a business plan, a budget, initial coverage, and because this question keeps coming coming up over and over, you know, I'm knocking on doors in Northfield and they're saying, so when am I actually going to have possibilities of fast internet? I was like, if, if here, I couldn't imagine the first construction happening before 2020, just in terms of getting the organizational structure complete, getting the money and actually permitting and construction and all that stuff. So, there's that language for the ballot again, and there's me. And I'll shut up. Thank you, Jeremy. Any questions for Jeremy? No questions necessarily, but just a comment that if the municipality is responsible for paving roads in our city, basically what we're talking about here is our effectively analogous, it is the roads of sort of modern culture. So, and while this isn't strictly a utility, it's participating as a member of sort of a joint utility, and I think you know, the risks are minimal to the city and I'm really excited to move forward with this. Any questions? I really appreciated your having the EC fiber rights here just below the presentation and I'd notice that well, it may be more bandwidth. The prices were quite a bit higher than what I'm paying from Fairpoint right now, our consolidated communications. Would joining this collective in any way restrict for-profit companies from offering their products a month later? Just another option. I realize this entity doesn't exist yet since we're waiting for town meeting day, but I would encourage you to explore what a potential co-op might look like going forward if this entity is approved, sort of seeing what that might look like as we move forward depending on how many towns or where those towns are that agree to it. I think it makes sense, I moved up here from Boston and the internet speeds are it's like unacceptable. So I applaud your work on this. I'd make a motion that we put this item on the ballot. Would you like me to read it word for word, John Odom? I would rather you sent it to me. It's right here on the agenda format. Then I can go and copy it from there. City of Montpellier, Inter into Communication. You just emailed to John Odom. District to be known as Central Vermont Internet under the provision of 30 VSA Chapter 82. Is there a second? Second. Is there a discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you, Jeremy. Thanks, everybody. Oh, you can just leave it. I'm not going to be using it again, so thanks. Thank you. Okay, so next item is item 12, warning the public hearing. It's the warning public hearing. The warning public hearing. So I already went through the ballot items that didn't include this item you've just added, so that would be a new item and the number that on your draft warning for the budget, the city budget would go up by $9,500. So those are two changes you'd make before you approve the final warning. So we need to have a public hearing on the warning. Okay, so do we have any comments on the warning? If not, we will then go to item 13. Questions to approve the warning. Do we have a motion? So moved. Two changes. Two changes being adding the CV. Yes. And the $9,500 in the budget. Seconds, any discussion? Just as a note, I am to the result from just the school portion. Likewise. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? So we have completed our work on the budget and we did make an earlier adjustment to the agenda to move up the discussion about the sprinkler ordinance, so we'll take that up now. This will turn over to the sprinkler committee to explain this. Since I didn't have a version of this with the additional ready for you all to sign, I'm going to run and make one. Just a process question to, in terms of the ballot that we just approved, since I had pulled the bond decision from the consent agenda and it does appear on the ballot, assuming that it is approved by the council, are we not going to have that discussion? No, we are going to have that discussion. I just hadn't thought about that in the context of the budget. So we should probably go ahead and do that. We do need to approve necessity resolutions before we vote on this. I just wanted to get clarity as to how best to proceed here. Well, are those part of the budget, the necessity resolutions? They're on the consent agenda. They're not part of the budget. They're just approved. Well, they're related to the bond votes. The bond votes are on the ballot that you just approved. So we should. I guess it's up to you. If these don't pass, we can go ahead with the bonds. That's up to you. We have two amendments for the $9500 in EC fiber since this item hadn't been discussed. Should we have that discussion before we approve the ballot because it's on there? Which one? The necessity. The two bonds that are being proposed to put before voters. Okay, so why don't we take this up right now? Do you want to relay your concerns about that? You know, we spent quite a bit of time about less than $10,000 to the community fund earlier tonight, and it did come to my attention that there were two fairly large bonds that are being put before voters together totaling about $2.6 million, which is only about $325 per person divided by $8,000. So it's not a huge amount of money. Part of the reason I pulled it from the consent agenda is we have recently been informed of a number of different changes in pricing on projects starting with Northfield Street construction project where we bonded over a million dollars specific to road work there. A $400,000 increase to our bike paths. Recently, we got some new information about our wastewater recovery plant that was several million dollars off from initial estimates and some of that has to do with the scope of the work and when we're doing it, including methane digestion, it was significantly different. Many magnitudes of previous information that had been discussed in the capital improvements projects and also included in the water and sewer plan that we approved in the summer of 2016. So my reason in raising this is we have an established process, a plan to bond and I wanted to get some more information from the city manager because in looking at I certainly could be an oversight on my part but in the documentation that I have coming out of the CIP committee or on that water sewer plant, bonding is identified on there and perhaps it's a different kind of bonding but I just wanted to be sure that if it is for the sorts of things that we propose bonding within these committees that it's we're acknowledging that we're making significant multi-million dollar departures from the plan that we have been talking about quite recently. Looking for a little more information is if these bonds are separate from the ones that would be within the scope and are identified within the CIP and the water sewer rates process. So I thought I'd explain all that when we presented the budget. This isn't new, these aren't new presentations. The water and sewer bonds are specifically the bonds that are called for in the master plan. It calls for bond work for replacing these are specifically for upgrading water and sewer lines. There's so much set aside per year but we agree we would be funding them in increments with bonding so this is exactly what was planned on and the general fund bond as you recall in the budget presentation we record. So some of that was to accelerate specifically in the CIP committee about accelerating sidewalk work and other work to try to get ahead of the curve and then we built in the bike path funding and it came with the recommendation that next year we'd add another $50,000 to the capital plan above where we'd been to accommodate that and recognizing that was going to require an additional I guess I'm a little confused then because in reviewing at least the documents that I have from the water and sewer master plan it appeared as though there was bonding scheduled in 2018 and then not again until about 2023 for $450,000 and so we are talking about FY19 now aren't we? This is 2018 we didn't break them. I don't know if Tom's here we we talked about it's specifically to fund the water and sewer infrastructure that we had planned to fund this is. But we bonded that last year as well right? It's part of the Northfield project that's correct and this was to basically take the annual funding that we were going to put in and pay for it now so we can get the streets done before the next year. Also in the CIP plan that I was looking at recently even over the last six months I remember asking repeatedly do we need to readjust our bonding plan based on adding this additional revenue or based on need of our infrastructure and understand you're talking to a guy who loves to spend money on infrastructure here what I'm concerned about is the process that we used to do that and also to make sure that it's consistent with some of the work that is being done in committee not that we shouldn't spend this money this year I guess I'm making this point so that council is fully aware that we seem to be building a fairly consistent track record of adding additional bonding as far as I can tell maybe to sit down and look more at some of the documents that are coming out of these groups to meet need but my concern is that one of three things appears to be happening here I'm going to say this quite plainly either we need to improve the way that we're anticipating need if we thought 3 million would be enough to fix the wastewater plant and it turns out it's nine we need to sharpen our pencils and take a little closer look at that or prices for this sort of work are increasing dramatically much much faster than inflation they're going up by this much or we are aware of the risk but we're not fully communicating that back out I just want to raise those three things because if we continue to bond bonding is borrowing it's running up like at home if you use your credit card there is a credit limit that this council or previous councils have established in terms of our bonding ceiling if we approve these bonds for the ballot and if voters approve this money that will then constrain future council's ability to bond within that established policy so for things like the methane digester there will be 2 million dollars less before you hit that ceiling and you'll either have to raise it and create a new policy or stay within our established policy that's really my intent in raising this to acknowledge that well I'd just say first of all we did talk about all of these in the capital improvements process and these were laid on the table in December we've had several meetings in public hearings to discuss this this is the first time this question has been raised so it's a little bit that seems a lot to me we and I think the the three versions that you've said are pretty simplistic nuance of being the wastewater plant there's a whole lot more that goes to that we have anticipated these needs we've laid out the streets these are clearly streets that need it they're intended to match with one of the main concerns with the CIP plan was to make sure we were combining water and sewer work with paving work so that we weren't digging up so that is exactly how this is laid out to accommodate that we have certainly looked at our bonding limits comfortable recommending these and as I said I believe we'd explained all this when we laid it out so I don't know what else I can add that will help you feel any better thank you okay do we have a motion to approve these two items from our consent agenda unless there are no there's no further comment I'll make a motion we'll include these two bondings yes so do we clear what you're approving here is necessity resolutions which I mean essentially they're financial documents they're not actually committing you to do the money it just means basically we're saying it's a resolution that we don't have the money on hand to pay that we need to finance this it doesn't commit you to actually doing it but these have to be done so that we can go to the bond market so the motion should say that approve the two resolutions correct items B and C on our consent agenda yes second further discussion I would just add that I would be happy to put these before voters ultimately they will have the decision as to whether they want to borrow this money if they appeared on the most recent versions of the documents that lay out the plan for this sort of spending further discussion I nay okay so we will go to item 16 the spring court ordinance discussion alright so the spring court ordinance committee was appointed by this council and has met five times since October was made up of myself counselor Watson and counselor Olson and we spent some time learning about what the state law requirements are for sprinklers what the current city ordinance does and then we spent some time examining the various variances that had been granted by the so called sprinkler variance committee it's technically the board of building code appeals or something like that in the ordinance but we call it the variance committee so we spent some time looking at I think at least 13 variances that had been granted since 2013 to see what was happening there we considered some options and I laid all of those out for you in a memo and I detailed our proposal and our rationale behind that I will say that I believe that the current ordinance is deeply flawed and we've presented one option that I think improves it if this council decides not to go with that option then I think that we would be best served by repealing the current ordinance rather than leaving the current ordinance in place I think that the option that we have presented is more nuanced it's balanced provides that essential public protection along with giving folks some more freedom and giving people a clear path to request a variance and giving the variance committee clear abilities and authority to grant that variance so I am happy with the proposal after the deliberation and the thought that we put into it but this is an area where reasonable people can disagree and it is really a public policy decision of how far we want our local government to go in prescribing what goes into folks homes and I understand there's some particular public strong public feeling that has been expressed to us and some written comments and I assume will be expressed tonight regarding where folks feel that should fall and that is absolutely welcome and I want us to have an open discussion about that I do want to address one thing it's generally the practice of this council to not acknowledge or address personal attacks that are made on us however I feel in this instance that I would like to call this out and acknowledge this there's been by one member of the public an implication made that Ann and I are somehow naive young women who were bullied into our decision by the fire chief and that we were somehow tricked by the fire chief because we are not smart enough to understand or know what's going on here and I want to call that out as absolutely absurd we are both intelligent members of this community who have been elected to give our best judgment here so I absolutely want to have a discussion about the merits of this public policy but I want to I think that sort of insidious thinking and gossiping and sending out that sort of thinking is really poisonous and I think the only way to address it is to call it out so that's what I'm doing and then I would invite us to have a real conversation about what we want our public policy on this issue to be thank you Rosie okay so I guess I just want to ask maybe chief gallons I know we're going to hear a lot of comment I think a lot of this is going to be focused on the inclusion of single and two unit homes and I understand we are the only in the state that has that requirement so I think at least from my view it would be helpful to hear from you what the rationale is for having that obligation on these single and two family homes in light of the fact that nobody else in Vermont does that alright and it was established in 2003 there was a committee made up appointed by the council a lot of effort and work went into that I was not on that committee and the decision was made after looking at issues and homes single family and two family homes that have sprinkler systems there's an 80% reduction in fire deaths in homes that have sprinklers there's a 65% reduction in firefighter injuries in homes that have sprinkler systems there's a 70% reduction in damage to the home so there's a lot of thought and effort went into putting this ordinance in place based on a lot of those issues there was a discussion on if the city were to continue to grow the city could grow without the fire department growing the fire department could stay at the size of an equipment level AR without so the city could continue to grow without growth in the fire department I don't I wasn't involved in that I was probably more involved than Bob was at the time Chief Lewis was here the city council unanimously approved it at the end of the process there had been a residential fire death in the late 90's and then there was the downtown fire shortly after the early 2000's and I think that really felt prompted a need that something needed to be done the city looked at this and looked at safety factors and looked at I think there was a real concern with apartments because of a person could be taking using risky behavior in one part of the unit and the other people are vulnerable without knowing what's going on whereas if you're building a new addition you can protect that and I think that was also the reason why the tax credit was created it recognized that there was a lesson burden on the fire department for those people that had those that they could receive a tax a capped tax credit in fact the city also got very actively involved for time there were grants for these sorts of things there aren't anymore in helping some of the downtown commercial buildings to obtain sprinkler systems to prevent a catastrophic loss in the downtown but also loss of life I think a compelling factor was and even since this ordinance has been another one was that the only fatalities in fire fatalities in the last 40 years had been in single family residential homes or one or two families residential not in commercials not in apartment buildings I guess my question about that though is this ordinance wouldn't affect that the existing ones no that's right not existing but ordinance wouldn't have any impact on these and aren't newer units are they for example are required to have wired in building wired in smoke detectors it just seems to me new units the only units there's an anomaly in this it seems to me that you've got older units that are going to be less safe and unaffected by the ordinance and new units that are going to be more safely built that have for example wired in smoke detectors that would be affected so not necessarily because newer construction is of a lightweight construction it burns quicker it burns quicker I got all that information out to the council from the NFBA in addition to that it's more the furnishings furnishings of a home are made of a lot of polycarbonates things burn more rapidly flash overs happen more quickly temperatures rise quicker in homes now than they did 20 years ago because of what furnishings are made of yeah I think and at the time the ordinance was put in council started recognizing that the cost and the effort involved in retrofitting every home in Montpelier was not at all feasible or anything you could even consider but that if going forward we could protect the community and people that was the intended desire we did take a look at the time and again at the outset I'd say if we're going to seriously consider re-looking at this I would ask that we had a committee look at it and reach a conclusion that we spend some time because a lot of work was done by the council getting a lot of information we looked at videos of fires with sprinklers and without them and even in smoke alarms you still have to be able to get out I mean you're still if you're upstairs and there's the gases and those kind of things just because you know the alarms going on that you're going to escape successfully so you know yes it's better than having no smoke alarm but it's not as safe as a sprinkler and so I think you know I just urge that my suggestion you had a committee that put a lot of work in it gave you a recommendation that our chief and I will fully support I appreciate all the work because I've heard that smoke alarms are better the NFPA's reports will tell you that smoke alarms in a single family or multi-family home will reduce fire deaths by 50% where sprinkler systems will reduce deaths by 80% I wasn't suggesting they're better and I I understand all the work that's going into it and I'm not saying we're going to make a dramatic decision here but I'm just going to look at this and say we are the only city if we were facing this dire public health threat we would not be the only of this ordinance and that's kind of the full lens that I see is better and so a couple of things I read Barbara's response as well and I'd actually kind of be interested in having her come up as well since she sort of advocated for a different position than the committee did and I would like to hear that perspective because I have heard from a number of folks who are architects and who are contractors who are involved in potential new projects and I think that's a really important perspective to hear and understand how much work the city has put into this but I think it's important that we have a robust discussion given what's at stake here so I would like to invite Barbara so we have a number of members of the public I know the Planning Commission the Planning Commission considered this and so I know there are a lot of people here from the public including Barbara and Kirby so however you guys want to proceed but interested in hearing from anybody who's here wants to comment on this issue Kirby Keaton I'm the Vice-Chair of the Planning Commission so Barb has a lot to say as Commissioner Hill or Councillor Hill pointed out but first I thought we just kind of set the stage with where I could catch you up on the motion that was passed by the Planning Commission so that the Planning Commission's official response to the committee's work and I should start off by saying that it seems like it was a lot of great work Rosie's memo was wonderful and really well thought out and put together but officially the Planning Commission responded to this with just a motion to suggest that you repeal the ordinance instead of trying to amend it and for one simple reason and that being that the Planning Commission has tried to put forward one set of rules whenever possible that's kind of what the Planning Commission's been trying to do in its recent work with the zoning and other things we've looked at and currently there's a state building code and the state building code was passed by the legislature where it was decided that single family and these duplexes were going to be left out and so we'd like for that one set of rules to apply to Montpelier and as the mayor pointed out that's what every other town has decided to do so that was kind of the limits of what the Planning Commission vote was about was just about having one set of rules and then I also have a personal statement about things but at this point I could probably hand it off to Barb now that and then I can Whichever. For efficiency's sake I'll just say that and I could so what I have to say I could say any week I think, any given week at these meetings something comes up that is an obstacle to housing in Montpelier and we have a real problem with a shortage of housing in Montpelier and I think that every week it seems like something comes up that could be an obstacle to doing something about that problem and the market shows us that there's an incredible demand for housing in Montpelier and there's almost no supply and economics tells us that doesn't happen unless we put up some really serious barriers to having the market respond and since the market's not responding I think we see that we have that we've it's been the city has done something there and I think there's dozens of roadblocks and that this ordinance is one of those things that gets in the way of housing I don't need to tell you all of the things we're missing out on because we have this housing problem if we saw the housing problem we would have fewer reliance on automobiles less forest fragmentation elsewhere in the region our property taxes would be lower the economic advantages I think you all know all about all those things so to me it's not just housing it's not just a one issue thing it's a holistic big issue thing and one thing I'd like to get across and hopefully I won't be coming back and doing a speech like this again so hopefully it's just a one type thing for many many different things sprinklers and many things and it's that we have to say no these barriers to housing much more often than we say yes if we're actually going to be serious and do something about the housing problem and that's my own personal statement the planning commission did not have anything to do with that well said thank you Kirby Barbara thank you I have copies of what I sent to the council if you don't hear the microphone I realize it was late in the afternoon here today I got it oh actually this I'll take your copy sure thank you Chief Gowens this is kind of the modification of what we've talked about in the past first of all I really want to commend the committee I attended as many of the meetings as I could and there was a lot of work and a lot of good thought that went into that whole thing and all but particularly commending emergency services I mean the fact that we have so few fires and Montpelier is really direct result of our excellent services here so I don't want this to be reflective of that at all I do want to address a few of the issues that were raised in Councilor Krueger's memo that well some of them surprised me a bit she mentioned that three different options were considered one to repeal the ordinance completely the second was to create a fire protection district in the downturn core and that has been discussed in the past and it wasn't clear to me why that was not pursued because if our concern is really about fire protection for the downtown district that would create the opportunity to in some cases perhaps put some additional requirements in for commercial buildings in the downtown and then the third option was to keep the ordinance but exempt one and two family homes the discussion about foam furnishings is certainly an issue but I think that that would as Mayor Haller pointed out that happens in existing homes too so I don't think that by adding sprinklers to new construction which admittedly is going to be a very small percentage of the homes that are occupied in Montpelier are going to be new construction but I just wonder we're asking the right questions are we looking at the right threats and dangers to the city I was sort of disappointed to see in the budget that there was a line item for rental inspections but that it wasn't funded because I can certainly see that if we had the opportunity to have existing rental units inspected to my mind that's where a lot of the fire potential fire problems occur I also think as we went through this I had some different interpretation about the codes regarding change of use but I won't get into that right now it's something more that should maybe be discussed with building code officials to see where's the clarity here certainly some of the requirements I applaud for exempting duplexes or accessory units very clear for us to be able to implement the zoning attempt to create more housing by allowing people in large houses to duplex that's definitely a benefit but the other thing that became clear to me as I attended the committee meetings and also in looking at this later was that if we modify state codes without a clear knowledge of what we're doing we potentially get the city into a very serious situation in the current current ordinance is fairly narrowly written so perhaps it hasn't created any consequences yet but I think that the possibility of creating unintended consequences when we take a national code and that the state has adopted a number of national codes that the state has adopted and tweak them without necessarily knowing how that impacts other aspects of the code I think can be a problem for example one of the things I was kind of horrified to discover in one of the national codes is that if we sprinkler one and two family homes then we are not required to put any egress windows in bedrooms any longer I think that's a little bit confusing because Montpelier has adopted the 2003 IRC and so we have a building code that requires that and it doesn't it wouldn't allow for there to be that exemption if it's sprinklered no it's in one of the other codes it's in NFPA 101 in the section of NFPA one that addresses one and two family homes when it says if it's sprinklered then that's not required we also have IRC the 2003 IRC and so that there's another piece of city ordinance that is requiring Chris Lumber, our building inspector when he reviews those he looks at all of the and I think that's addressed early on it can create a lot of unintended consequences when we sort of pick and choose what we if we wanted to do this if we wanted what my recommendation was actually was to the city council was to suspend the current sprinkler ordinance and to sit down with code officials people from the state and if necessary federal people who are involved in writing the codes and so that we know exactly what the ramifications are of any of these actions that we take and we may still decide to take them I would hope not in terms of one and two family homes but at least in terms of your other concerns about change of use those are happening in our city and maybe we need to be able to clarify that to just do that without looking at it more comprehensively is disturbing to me I just want to make one clarification there we are not changing the state code we are applying additional requirements on top of the state code so we're not going in and editing the state code this is in addition to what's in the state code but you're modifying the state code as it's been adopted by by the state we're being more restrictive yes but that is modifying it because you're adding requirements to it that on statewide are not there but aren't that true in the zoning ordinance too aren't there occasions when we were stricter say on we were talking about the vernal pools in other areas that exceeded state law that were unique to Montpelier and not consistent actually I think that was are you still yeah I think that was what Kirby was addressing is that we pulled back from adding any additional requirements that were Montpelier only there's nothing in the new zoning that's different from state that exceeds the state requirements I think I think your point is correct there are things in the zoning that that's unique to Montpelier but we're trying to in places where there's already a code on a subject trying to keep it so that there's one set of rules to make it simpler I'm not trying to catch anybody I seem to recall there were places where the state set a limit and we adopted stricter standards Kirby's point is there's a building code can I just make a point on that the state is very supportive of our ordinance we have a contract with the state the state has signed a contract with the city of Montpelier to do inspections and they're very supportive of our ordinance okay thank you do you want to hear about Ben did you have a comment Ben Eastwood Main Street I just want to say as a citizen here in town I'm appalled to hear people putting more development or cheaper development ahead of safety of firefighters and of people the numbers are clear I'm a former EMT I used to run with Brandon Vermont I've responded as an EMT to fire calls and I've seen what happens and I've treated firefighters who were injured on a scene and the fact that we're putting easy development ahead of public safety and ahead of firefighter safety is appalling to me I think that we need to set a strong safety standard for our city and furthermore you know Mr. Mayor you seem opposed to this idea in your speaking but are you not a lobbyist for the insurance agency industry and for the real estate valuation and you know aren't real estate developers financially impacted by this potential is there a conflict of interest in your lobbying work with your ability to participate in this conversation Ben I can't think of any client that could care I mean has no interest at all in this real estate valuation association doesn't care about I don't represent them Ben you're referring to the secretary of states on the website you do the website so the secretary of states website that's not current that's just what it says on our website I understand it's not current and you know represent insurance industry at all I do represent insurance companies in any position one way or another on this it seems like those things would call it play and you know you also represent Fairpoint which would be a potential opponent or competitor to the internet discussion earlier and I was happy to see that you didn't take any position on that but you know I just think that public safety and firefighter safety is something that we can't nickline this is something that has been discussed through the city council as Bill has said here Unionism supported this idea of improving public safety and to see people putting further development ahead of firefighters is just appalling to me Just briefly like to respond to Mr. Eastwood's comments about safety I don't speak for the whole council but I don't think that we're anyone's debating that having sprinklers and buildings makes them more safe I think we all agree on that and if you look at other more stringent code for example in high-rise apartment buildings open flames are prohibited so people in cities can't have gas stoves in buildings over a certain height there is increasing level of strictness around building code to keep people safe we're in favor of that what we're trying to do here tonight is to I think is to find a balance and I respect the chief's position on this immensely his position should always be in favor of greater public safety and we're not going to I'm sorry we're not going to have a public debate if you want to if you want to come back up and make a comment you can but just we're not going to have you're going to get called on like anybody else so wait until Mr. Turcott finishes and then if you'd like to make a comment but we're going to do it in order so I hope that tonight we're really thinking as Mr. Keaton was saying more holistically about how this particular ordinance may be affecting from my perspective specifically the development environment here in the city of Montpelier we know that for a long time even before this ordinance the population here in Montpelier has been quite stable we also know that there is much more demand for housing right now than there is supply I see the changes in this revised ordinance as a step in the right direction I also see our new zoning that we recently adopted as a big step in the right direction in terms of addressing city council goal of providing a variety of housing you know applying this to single and two family homes is really kind of targeting the middle class here subsidized housing is going to do the development and install sprinklers with taxpayer money regardless people who have the money don't really care 10 or 20 or 30,000 however much more they're going to spend on a sprinkler system in the maintenance and testing there's also nothing stopping any resident from independently installing a sprinkler system in any new construction that they built I guess I'm a little concerned about the mandate to do that and how that may be affecting the palatability of the development environment here in Montpelier and in speaking to developers currently is one of a variety of issues that are part of the reason that we are not seeing as much new construction as this council would like to see on the flip side of this I could acknowledge that for any existing homeowner or property owner in Montpelier having more restrictive building code will help to maintain and increase the value because we know we have demand here and that will also help roughly 50% of residents who need to turn over their house in the next 15 years as they are changing their lifestyle as they age to get a fair market value for that house so that will help to keep up property prices here in Montpelier because it's an additional cost you can add that right under the sale price of your home if it's a requirement of new building because you can't go and buy that house without it those are my thoughts on this matter okay do you have another comment I just want to again say 80% and the fact is that the reduction in potential for death and serious injury the reduction of property damage will actually have another consequence of reducing insurance costs this is something this is not necessarily something that is going to be an enormous burden it's going to effect new housing to bring new housing up into the 21st century I can't understand why we're so afraid to take the lead in this town why do we have to wait for everybody else to do it before we finally take a proactive approach to something as important as safety the safety of our firefighters, the safety of our kids and families in this town and you know I'm just I'm afraid to have a call Good evening Jim Libby I live on Liberty Street and the first thing I want to say is I'm the person that had the conversation with Councillor Krueger that she characterized pretty well I've had to do this a couple of times in my professional career and it's not pleasant and I've already apologized to Councillor Watson although the entity in her house that had to deal with my I told her I was using my outside voice but answering machine so that wasn't as difficult or disrespectful I think to the conversation that Rosie and I had so all that I can say is I apologize to the council for that I got on this very inappropriate line of argument what Rosie said is an accurate interpretation of what I said and what I realized after I had those conversations was that it was inappropriate it was inaccurate I had no reason there was no basis in fact for me to think what Rosie heard from me and I said it I'm not denying that and what I was and so what happened between yesterday and Constable Hill may have seen an earlier draft of my comments and so my comments between yesterday and today sort of went around 180 degrees because once I got off that sort of disrespectful conspiratorial I don't know attach any name that fits it wasn't appropriate I quickly realized this morning and then had some feedback from Jack McCullough and Pauli Nickel who I rely on a lot and I should have listened to them before I had the conversation with Rosie but so you know Constable Corgan I will have to figure out how we repair whatever game has been done I hope that I can help do that so let me just say three things so I'm pretty happy with the comments that I submitted today and there was a lot of input from Jack McCullough and Pauli although the housing task force didn't have an opportunity to talk about it so those are really my those are my comments what I was trying to say about the process was it is that it looked to me as if neither the council nor the committee had a real opportunity to step back and ask the big question you know should we have this ordinance and I thought that was I suspected that that might have been lacking in the committee process because it's appropriately dominated by the fire safety conversations that the chief and the building inspector brought to it and I really appreciated the memo that Rosie put together it contained a lot of good information and good thought you know generally I think that the best way to do this and I think other states have done it this way I can't tell you how many is that the state one way or another passes a law that expressly enables municipalities or counties to do this I suspect that it's it may be accompanied by general fund revenue or bonds or however things are funded in other states because you know this is one of those unfunded mandates that all of us once in a while have had a problem with and I think that's that's not a you know that's a problem and I think it's a problem particularly in the housing area particularly because we want to the city I think can and should be more welcoming to to builders and the city can be very proud of the track record that we've done over the last 20 years supporting all these very important projects you know I think we have you know the great track record with the housing trust fund I think it's important to from time to time and now is a good time assess the effectiveness of how trust fund monies have been used and I think the housing task forces you know intend to do that let me see if there's you know I pretty much covered the bases in my in my written comments see if there's anything I'd like to add the final point is I think you know I sense and this is appropriate I sense two things one the council is usually quite differential to its professionals including its fire prevention professionals and I have no comment on our fire prevention professionals and I actually have no comment on the effectiveness of this ordinance or mended or is on improving fire protection it will you know whatever you do it's going to get better if only in one or two or three houses so I was encouraging well I didn't do this well yesterday maybe I did a little better today encouraging you all to have that conversation you know which is stepping back the other thing that I sense is that it's local officials and I know you guys better than anybody else I don't know you personally but I know your predecessors and those around forever too so he's a familiar face but there is a reluctance to repeal things you know it's as if there has to be you know some huge cataclysmic event instead of what you might consider is to say this wasn't a good idea if it was a good idea it isn't working out real well and you know I had mixed feelings I was really appreciative of Rosie describing the variance process that's not something to be proud of you know in some places people would be fired for that disregard of the law I don't think people are harmed that's the good thing and so in addition to the other issues that have been mentioned I think there's a time we just say we tried this you know when it was Mary Hooper and the former fire chief I wasn't directly involved those people are very committed to fire safety Mary was the former commissioner of the department of labor and industry and I think she was instrumental in getting the state code to cover multifamily buildings I'm not sure of that I don't know that but I know she was very committed to it and she would have been very committed to this ordinance she was and the council adopted it I just think it didn't work out as planned and it's unfair it does provide additional fire safety in the small number of units that are newly constructed but I'm not sure that's the right place to have mandates but the only other point I would make is that and compare it to how the state and the municipalities have handled affordable housing you know in the 80s there was a tremendous leap forward on affordable housing it's been a huge problem with the one part of it was the creation of the housing and conservation board at the same time the legislature created a dedicated fund in the second year of its existence appropriated an additional 20 million in addition to the dedicated fund and has since 1988 appropriated between 10 and 20 million annually and then last year there was a $35 million state housing bond so that's a situation where the legislature said we want affordable housing we want it delivered by a non-profit delivery system and here's how we're going to help you and you see the accomplishments and that's not a feature of this ordinance and I think it's maybe it's time to start over it isn't a stellar track record and that is no reflection on our fire protection professionals I don't know why the varying stuff was so screwed up I don't know whether it was like jury nullification John probably knows what that is kind of a jury really wants to reach a right result and they don't care what the law is and they just vote to the right result and the lawyers and the judges are scratching their heads I don't think there was any conscious effort but it kind of feels like that ordinance isn't working out real well if there was that much activity around variances so I apologize again I made some significant errors yesterday and I'll live with that and hope we can move on thank you for your comments Jim appreciate it one minor factual matter Chuck Capers was the mayor of the three when it was passed oh he was it's not a story yes Hi, Gene Troyer I'm not a Montpelier resident but am a Montpelier taxpayer and have been for 35 years I have probably caused more of these sprinkler systems to be installed in single family houses than anyone else in town I'm a local building contractor have been for 35 years and I almost don't know where to start I think that the idea that houses constructed since 1982 are somehow more fire burn faster than houses built in 1850 is misguided there are some issues with houses that have been built with plate trusses which can in a fire come off and cause collapse and I understand the fire department's reticence in the integrity of those buildings in a fire but to have a ordinance that requires a sprinkler in a single family house I think is ridiculous I have put 15,000 gallon underground storage tanks to support sprinkler systems I have put 1500 in house storage tanks to support sprinkler systems in single family residences the cost is not you guys just you don't understand the cost involved that you're putting on middle class residents that you want to draw into town if you want single family house development I live in East Montpelier I'm on the select board in East Montpelier I've been involved in town government for 30 plus years I can build a house on County Road in Montpelier I can go on the other side of the road in East Montpelier and build the same house for almost $30,000 less if you're going to go and amend the ordinance and exempt 1200 square foot houses, small houses if you're going to exempt manufactured homes what are you doing you're making social choices through building ordinances and I don't think that's quite right I question as the ordinance stands what happens with manufactured homes in town now I mean I'm proud of what I've done in Montpelier and I've built a significant number of the single family houses that have happened in this town since 1982 that I know about this meeting on two and a half hours I noticed from a friend of mine that I didn't know at all about the committee and had the chance to talk to the committee I think is a miscommunication on the part of the government of the town and how people are notified of the way this happens I think it's ridiculous that I can own a single family house and I own a couple of them in town that have sprinkler systems in them and I can own a multi-family house built in 1843 or 7 or whatever it is and not have a sprinkler system in it I mean you're putting the public safety issue best afterwards that I can go into a restaurant on Main Street and be in a building without a sprinkler system but I have to have one in a single family house you're putting the cart before the horse and that's just the way I feel I'm proud I'm going to ask you to wrap up if you could we've got a number of other people we need to hear from appreciate your comments I don't want to feel free to finish up I just ask you to wrap up your comments if you could I understand you don't want to hear about the people that actually build houses in your town no I do want to hear from you and we have and I appreciate that it's almost 9 o'clock and we have a lot to go through and more people we need to hear from so just don't have an unlimited amount of time that's my only point my point is if you're about public safety look at public buildings you're looking at single family houses which is a small part of the equation if you're looking at promoting development in town drawing middle class people to town look at what you're doing in cost to building single family houses thanks for your comments Mr. Mayor I just have a quick follow up question for this gentleman as a veteran right here as a veteran builder and contractor curious for your professional opinion does having a sprinkler ordinance for single and two family homes in Montpelier in any way change your interest or willingness to develop here in the city of Montpelier my interest in developing in the city of Montpelier is it so hard to do your property values are like gold it's like having a house in St. Petersburg or Providence Provincetown I mean it's a niche market the values are really high and they will stay that way as long as you discourage development so if I'm hearing you correctly this sort of restrictive ordinance actually helps to increase our property values absolutely from your perspective from my perspective if it costs $20,000 more to build the house in Montpelier than it does in East Montpelier or Berlin it increases your property values that's just my perspective thank you okay I look out I just do a little cursory research it doesn't appear like Burlington and I know that we're not Burlington not saying that we are Burlington but Burlington has been tackling the affordable housing issue for as long as we have but I think they've been somewhat more successful I also just took a glance to see it looks like the Massachusetts legislature enacted a lot I want to say in the 90s and the mass supreme court took up an issue about it looks like the mass law targeted plus unit buildings so I think that I've heard a lot about single family and duplex and I'm not sure what the answer is whether it's repealing in its entirety which I hear some compelling arguments for or whether it's to create a solution to these particularly articulated scenarios where a building is designated as commercial retail and then transitions to a dining establishment or something along those lines but other places don't have ordinances like this and seem to address public safety they also seem to affordable housing seems to also dovetail into all of this in a way that does not cost an extra 20,000 plus dollars on a single family or a two-unit building and I agree that that does price out a lot of folks and I've heard from folks who have maybe rehabbed places or who have built new construction where that was a huge expense and that really kind of determined how many units they would build or what they would or wouldn't do and I think as a council it's incumbent upon us to get this right Just a quick follow-up on that I'm pretty sure that most affordable housing that's built in would already be sprinkled because of the number of units and so it's going to trigger the state ordinance anyway so that's one thing just one thing I want to make sure that people understand is that the way that this is written under the variance section there is a provision that things that will be considered in granting variances includes cost burden so if that is if it's going to cost something like $10,000 or more I'm not sure that we can say for sure that that will be granted but it'll be granted a waiver but that is certainly one of the things that the variance committee can weigh so as you know as people are worried about construction I mean this is a very different thing than what we're dealing with now so just want to make sure that everyone is aware of that I would like to respond to that it costs more than $10,000 to sprinkle a single family house so I have multiple friends who have done this it's cost them about $10,000 they've gotten bids for more and that's fine but that's what we're saying is that if that the cost is a factor and that that's built into this ordinance why don't you just make it for multifamily properties and exempt single family houses that have more than a specific setback from their neighbor so the setbacks are part of this as well if you're six feet away I can understand the fire hazard but if you're on a .4 acre lot with a 20 foot setback why does this become an issue when we all know it costs more than $10,000 to sprinkle a single family house so I would encourage you to okay so I'm going to jump in here so we're going to end the argument we can, you made your presentation we appreciate that but this isn't a form for having an argument back and forth okay Tim thank you I'm Tim Heaney I live on Main Street and I work on Main Street I've brought up some thoughts and tried to get my mind around this today too and share Gene's frustration over the years of trying to work with this ordinance and create housing so I'm not going to read all this to you but forgive me if I read a bit and I'm going to try to do bullets just to give you my thoughts I think Rosie's remarks were really good and thank you it helped me get an understanding of what the committee's been doing I'm just concerned that the recommendations don't improve the functionality of the ordinance that we have today and they do not strategically encourage housing growth but we've recently adopted zoning and master plan the ordinance we have has proven to be ineffective its focus is on requiring fire suppression sprinkler systems for new structures including single family homes and as it's been said tonight I think single family homes are probably a very small part of our housing stock and probably the safest group of homes within the housing stock we have with hard wired smoke and carbon oxide systems new wiring, new heating systems new building code most of the homes we have in Montpelier there was no building code when they were built so I think it really is the wrong focus if you've heard over and over tonight I think probably the focus really needs to be if you want to create a safer living environment for people in Montpelier and you want to improve our older housing stock you've got to create a way to have this sprinkler ordinance focus on existing multifamily housing fire within the last two weeks on the street with an 8-unit house I think that property could have benefited if there had been a sprinkler system there Bob Cowins I'm sure can tell me more if that would have kicked in or not there I would love a sprinkler system in every building there has to be you have to draw the line somewhere and I agree I'd like to see the line focus more on the older multifamilies and trying to find a way to create a code that's not punitive it's the old care and stick thing like the code we have the incentive to find a way to help people install these systems and all these wonderful old buildings that we have there are a lot of neat ways we can do it you could even be as simple as helping to offset some of the hook up fees with city water lines anyway I think the committee's recommendation is flawed in essence because it's just trying to modify a flawed basic policy I'd love to see the council take up the planning commission's recommendation and repeal the ordinance and have the committee take a fresh look at what can we do to make housing safer and more clear hopefully that recommendation will include ways to create incentives to put sprinkler systems in our multifamily houses thank you Tim Gene if we're ready I would like to make a motion let me just first see if there is anybody else who would like to make a comment before we do if you don't mind Gene good evening I'm Phil Dodd I primarily got interested in this from the point of view of a downsizing group I've been involved with some of you may be aware of that we're looking for opportunities for people to move out of their larger homes as they get older and move into smaller ones so this will impact that desire when I first learned about this I was surprised to learn we're the only city in Vermont that has a sprinkler ordinance applying to single family homes most of us live in town without sprinklers you know there is a balance here and I you guys have to figure out where that is but one thing I think thought about was we could make cars a lot safer we could require $10,000 more in safety equipment or heavier cars probably had a bigger impact on cutting down deaths but as a society we decided not to do that and we live with the situation we have so there's that cost and benefit you really have to weigh here the thing I went to the last sprinkler ordinance meeting and I had heard that the earlier draft before the one you ended up with excluded it was an exemption for all single-story single-family homes which was appealing to me because that's what a lot of downsizers would like to have and I think it makes some sense because you can get out the window you can get out the door if you require enough doors and windows but then it got pulled back to only houses less than 1200 square feet the exemption does not apply if there's an attached garage or it doesn't apply if there's a basement so it's really become a very limited exemption and I think potentially I'd like to see at least to go back to the single-story exemption and maybe require a certain number of doors one door for every 600 square feet something like that but these costs are real and it's already building costs are already very high so this is a real factor for people to consider I'm sorry I got here a little late I guess you may have already heard from the Planning Commission about what they were saying I do think their views should be given some weight I happen to have read the statute powers and duties of the Planning Commission any Planning Commission created under this chapter this is from Vermont Statutes may prepare and present to the legislative body recommended building plumbing fire electrical housing and related codes so they do have a role to play here and so they're here and getting a chance to say something someone told me some figures recently that I can't verify but they said in the last 20 years 1200 single-family homes have been built in the U30 towns surrounding us and 100 in Montpelier I'm actually surprised it's that many as 100 single-family homes but there is an issue here and I think if we want to have more single-family homes in Montpelier there should be some further loosening of this restriction we made a lot of changes in the zoning recently with the idea that this would increase housing in Montpelier as I look this I really think this sprinkler ordinance is a bigger barrier to single-family homes being built in Montpelier than the zoning ever was so it's an important issue and I'm sure you'll give it a serious consideration thank you Jesse my name is Jesse Remick I'm a District 2 resident here in Montpelier since 2004 I agree with a lot of what I've heard tonight safety being an important factor as well I work at an architecture firm so I have the pleasure of dealing with codes quite a bit and I do not pretend to know any and all of them but I do spend a fair amount of time in them I'm just getting caught up on this issue and I feel it's a very important one but in looking at one of the items that the committee was considering the three options one of them keeping the ordinance but exempt one in two family homes one of the main reasons it seemed that that was not taken was perhaps a statement which I would like to have the answer to is the savings that the fire department is seeing by the sprinkler ordinance and I think it really needs to be singled out whether that includes only the single family ordinance or the entire ordinance together as a city because I'm not sure that by sprinkling single family homes we'd see that savings and I feel that that is a compelling argument to not consider that I'm not sure that that's the right argument and regarding the IRC without having it with me because I never say I know anything about codes without going back and checking I'm not sure that the IRC does require a sprinkler system not the 2003 version but they do require other provisions to be made for safety yes you have interconnected smoke detectors and egress means of egress be it a door or a large enough sized window so we're saying we need to have a sprinkler system and we need to do these other factors as well so it feels like it's a belt and suspenders type system that we're requiring of single family homes and I'm just not sure that it's the right approach but I respect everyone's opinion thank you Jesse any other comments? yeah briefly I've been very rather than a belt and suspenders I think of it as a seat belt I just said one quick response to Mr. and it's coming about the future buildings this won't be long the theory didn't discriminate between which type of building whether it was residential or commercial it was the theory at the time was if the city continues to develop we won't have to expand the size of the fire department because any new building will be sprinkled so if for example we were successful beyond our wildest dreams with housing 1000 new units if they were all not sprinkled realistically some of them would be but if in theory they weren't we would probably have to add firefighters to cover those new that new supply so that was the theory that it didn't single out one type of building for another Barbara yet there's no one else I just to address a couple of things that were said Ashley mentioned affordable housing and I started to think about Habitat for Humanity houses which are single family houses and anything that was built under that would require sprinklers and the other thing too is just to direct the council to the research that I attached to my comments when I started looking at this two years ago and I went online this is what popped up and this was some extensive research done by several groups regarding the relative safety of smoke detectors and sprinklers and what they said pretty consistently was that in many cases fires that could still be deadly were too small or too to activate the sprinklers so the first line of defense has to be the detectors and the alarms and so people get out of the building now I understand that the sprinklers are much better for saving the property and certainly better for protecting the firefighters and I do appreciate that factor that you're going to go into a building you'd much rather have a building that's more structurally sound but in terms of protecting the occupants it seems like it's not always the case and I guess yeah I think I guess I would just leave it at that I think that again I would urge us to not write code language on our own and that we need to be using the experts that know how to write code language if we choose to rewrite this with this. Thank you Barbara. Can I respond to some of the comments? Sure. First to Barbara's I said it earlier sprinklers reduce deaths in single family homes by 80% smoke alarms and CO alarms reduce deaths in single family homes by 50% that's the statistics you can review it through the NFPA sprinklers reduce deaths by 80% on housing barriers myself Mike Miller, Chris Lumber we're meeting all the time with builders people coming to us talking to us about projects we're not hearing that the reason I'm not building in Montpelier is because of sprinkle systems we're not hearing that probably six months ago we met with a builder who's considering a fairly substantial project in Montpelier and we talked to him about sprinklers and he said I'm not worried about sprinklers I'm worried about the neighbors this is a gentleman who's interested in doing a very substantial project in Montpelier so we're not hearing that we're not hearing people aren't coming to us and saying people are coming to us and saying I can't find a place to build in Montpelier I have ideas there was a project presented on Sibley Avenue that was prevented that wasn't prevented by sprinkler systems we all know what prevented that so we're not hearing that so we're not hearing that that it's being prevented public billings was brought up we should be paying attention to public billings we are paying attention to public billings we are paying attention to our restaurants it's on our radar it's one of the things that the changers want to address is those areas so we are looking at that and then I just want to quickly there's been a couple comments about the variance committee and council member Cercotte was a member of the variance committee the variance committee worked really hard and they tried to do the right thing it was sometimes outside of the ordinance but it was a group of people volunteers who were trying really hard to do the right thing and I don't think we should be criticizing the efforts of the variance committee any other comments yes or no I agree with that sentiment perfectly about the variance committee I think with keeping the requirement for single family homes and thus increasing the avenues to go through and provide a variance is really putting the variance board in a tough spot because it's a gray area and it's because I feel the requirement isn't necessarily the best one and so we're constantly providing ways to help improve the requirement that isn't maybe right okay jean did you have a motion you wanted to make yes given all the questions and concerns from the folks here and from the council and even granted that the committee did so much work I moved to repeal the current city sprinkler ordinance and replace it with the state fire code until further review is there a second second is there a discussion ma'am still have lots of things to say so I just want people to know that I checked in with a couple of friends of mine who are intending to build some infill in Montpelier and ran this by them to see if they thought it would work for them and they thought it would so that was encouraging I am also really glad that cost provision is a part of the considerations for variances that is built into this there was a question that was brought up like is this actually better than the current ordinance and I would say it is definitively better because it is much clearer as to how one is going to how one could go about getting a variance and it's clear that one could get a variance which was not clear from the current wording also you know as we sort of ran through the kinds of buildings that this would affect one of the things that came up was a potential for cottage clusters and that's the kind of single family home that would potentially that would be in balance here are we going to require that they be sprinkled or not and under this iteration of the proposed amendment they would be and if we just repeal it they would not be and frankly I have come to a place where if someone is going to be planning a whole set of units for development that's something that I would want to have sprinkled and so you know just trying to think if there is any other iterations but that was certainly one of them Barbara you brought up whether or not we should be writing this language in the first place and I would argue that the same logic also applies to the zoning should we be coming up with language if nobody else does it and we've actually had this reviewed by a lawyer not necessarily in depth but briefly and he was comfortable with it and that is comfort enough for me in terms of the legal standing of this can I address that sure well I sorry your first point being that this this may have been reviewed by a lawyer but a lawyer is not a building professional and building professionals that I have spoken with and also other people that have to administer have serious questions about whether or not it could be administered easily and our, I'm sorry from that standpoint and I'm sorry what was your first point I had many points yeah many points all right but I think oh the cottage cluster but recognize that cottage clusters could be individual homeowners so that individual homeowner with a small cottage of 1400 square feet which they're allowed in cottage cluster then adding in the additional cost of the sprinkler even when they're not then when they're far enough away from their neighbor that probably just isn't necessary to me that seems burdensome so just okay so I would open this up but that's not if you need to make another comment but then let's move on I guess I would just also raise that you brought you also brought up the the rental inspections and that I would just say as an advocate for rental inspections that is something that we have put on the back burner and that's a conversation that we've had with the housing task force and it's a totally totally separate thing Ashley. So I'm just curious the proposal from the committee would send a large number of things to the variance committee I mean this could potentially be a huge number of things I mean city staff that committee we participated in it. Yes so that's going to cost that's going to take city resources I mean if we're talking and again I'm not showing my hand one way or the other on this but I'm asking from a practical perspective I mean what sort of resources is that going to require the city to put forward to address the number of variances that are going to come in if there is again it's assuming inundation of applications but depending on the size of a potential project that could happen and so I suppose that's one that's one question and I guess my other question is I forgot it so I'll stop talking I just wanted to say one thing on that I think that the variance committee is already receiving a lot of variance requests they're just outside of what's allowed in the ordinance and that makes me extremely uncomfortable and is one of the reasons that I raised this you know originally so I don't dispute that there would be an increase but I think there is already you know there have been quite a number since 2013 at least could you re-read the motion interested in the word gene used a word and it wasn't suspend and one of the comments that other people have made is suspend and then work on she said repeal to repeal the current city's brink of ordinance and replace it with the state fire code until further review and I just I don't think we need to replace it with the state fire code because that would already exist so I might if you were willing to amend that that would be more proper I just need to repeal the current city's brink of ordinance until further review does that state your intent that is the intent as long as the state fire code okay so with that objective I just say if we're good now obviously we still have to have a second reading but if you think about repeal just make sure that we're talking about everything whether it's one or two sections of the ordinance the single and one and two family pieces if that's what you're really interested in then we got to talk about that obviously it's your policy decision the ordinance also talks about commercial buildings, restaurants so if you throw the whole thing out make sure that's a thoughtful decision secondly I would urge the council this was an act with a lot of input from professionals fire professionals, fire safety professionals you've heard opinions from a lot of people I know the planning commission offered their opinion I'm not aware that they did full testimony with people at different points of view so you know I think I'd urge us to be deliberate and thoughtful about making and make sure you've had an opportunity here from a lot of different points of view with more facts before you make a rash decision this is a question for John Odom what is the procedure by which one could move to table something given that there's a motion on the floor once there's a motion on the floor it takes precedence we'll have a vote that's the way to deal with the resolution there can be a motion to amend the motion and the motion can be withdrawn but the motion takes prime let me just ask a question for Bob because I think this is a discussion how does the state fire code deal with family buildings and downtown over three units three units or more would be required to be strengthened except that buildings under no buildings with a direct protected access I think dedicate access to each unit our example so if you have kind of a lower single or a lower multi-family building and every unit has a door to the outside or a protected hallway to the outside then you're not required commercial buildings as far as required to be sprinkled under the state building code the state controls commercial buildings no my question is what is the new have to be sprinkled but the change of use it also includes a change of use provision where the state would not a perfect example would be because I talk about it all the time the Bohemian Bakery under the state that they would not have required that can I just say one more thing yes sir I would encourage people but between now and the next time you get together to please take a look at the federal tax reform because in the federal tax reform the division of fire safety Mike Narosha assured me he would get something out within the next week there was heavy lobbying done before that from the international association of fire chiefs international association of firefighters the NFPA and in the federal tax reform there is provision for sprinklers in single family homes 100% right off of those until the year 2022 and then at year 2023 80% and then incrementally comes down so if you want I think I sent it to some folks I can send it to the entire council and Mike Narosha from the division of fire safety assured me today that the state would speak to that within the next week because that is in the federal tax reform can I just make a correction to I actually was mistaken you can move to postpone a motion within the discussion of the motion that's typically done either to another date certain or if someone wants to table something they can motion to postpone indefinitely so that's my mistake I would move then I'm sorry to interrupt but I would move then that we table this until our next meeting I did not read this as we are going to vote definitively one way or the other tonight I had thought that this would be an opportunity for council to discuss, hear from people and then sort of make a decision and I have heard a lot of feedback about this but I would like an opportunity to do some research of my own and that's not to undercut anything that anyone has shared with us I think at this point it makes sense to table it and take it up at our next meeting I just want to say that this is the first reading of the ordinance we don't have to do anything tonight other than conclude the first reading if we want to conclude the first reading and then we need to have a second reading which was on the agenda for the next time I do think that there is we need to act with some deliberate speed here simply because this does really impact how folks are going to conduct their building projects this summer and whether or not they need to get permits whether they need to design a system etc so I'm happy to not vote or decide anything tonight but I would like to conclude the first reading so that when folks go back and think about what they want to do we can have more discussion next time and then come to a conclusion one way or the other I want to make it really clear for folks who are building this summer what we want them to do at the next meeting it seems to me that these are not mutually exclusive things I mean if we vote in favor of postponing this particular motion that could be taken up later and we could finish first reading tonight so any motions to the secretary is there any further discussion on favor please say aye aye okay so this matter will be postponed so you're concluding someone wants to move to conclude first reading then does that require a vote on the first reading it might be just procedurally where the pending on a table motion you might want to just for the record be clear that you're closing first reading or you could declare it I'm not sure that is I guess the question is what the council adjusted I just wanted to get clarity on the date specific I know you said next meeting so I just wanted to have a date associated with that February 14th okay so our plan is to take it up at our next meeting on the fourth second reading second reading is there any objection to that plan I don't think we need to I would move that we conclude the first reading second all in favor please say aye okay so we will move on thanks everybody for your input on this next slide I think it's going to be very quick is the farmers market it's a request for the farmers market to go to the to move to the high street oh you guys are here sorry you had to sit through just the nature of the beast and I do hope I'm right that this will be quick I don't think we're going to have a lot of controversy over this one we have to sprinkle all the booze no we exempted tents you heard should we change that I just have still I just have still just one okay welcome introduce yourselves absolutely so my name is Karen Wiseman I'm the president of the board of the capital city farmers market and I've got here with me Ashton Ashton Carol manager of the farmers market and one of our long time I'm the vice president and a 42 year veteran of farmers markets we're happy to have you here we appreciate your time and we really will be quick I'm speaking tonight on behalf of our 68 member vendors that our our business is voted at our annual meeting to make this proposal to the city our proposal tonight is to move the capital city farmers market onto state street between Elm and main streets for the entirety of our 2018 outdoor season which is made October 26 weekends as we've even heard tonight there's a lot of upcoming construction all over our city and we're pretty sure that we'll likely be adversely impacted in some way having a lot of construction all around us secondly we've always been on the lookout for a new permanent home that can reflect city and the community and the farmers market and so we're hoping that this will be the next step in that evolution of finding that right home for us our proposal right now is based on a set of successful trial markets that we did in September and October of 2017 we teamed up with Malkil you're alive the sustainable malkil you're coalition and the city and we really think it was a great success it had the look in the field and it just it looked great right in downtown we have metrics associated with the look in the field though we did a set of customer feedback surveys we typically get over an average of about 2000 customers every Saturday at the market and during the first market we were able to survey 335 customers interestingly 60% of those customers were from Montpelier 20% were from surrounding towns and 20% were visiting our city when we asked them if they thought that the location and look in the field was better 70% that back yes absolutely 15% were neutral and 15% said no they didn't really like the change sales for us we had the highest grossing market that 5 years of the market additionally we saw 20 to 30% increase in gross sales as compared to our whole average of 2017 markets as well as a history of the last 4 years of our market so really financially it made a big impact we have support from the Montpelier downtown business association Montpelier alive and the sustainable Montpelier coalition as we all can imagine there's not 100% support there's not 100% support from the downtown businesses our own members or our customers but what we've done is we've tried to take everybody's feedback and incorporated into the details of our proposal what we're actually proposing is a one year trial so that this gives us clarity for the year we're in one place but it gives all parties involved an opportunity to reassass and make sure it still really is the right kind of fit we will be obviously making adjustments as we go along to adjust any issues that come up we're asking the city to provide a port-a-potty for us during the duration of the markets that was one clear feedback that we got from our customers that there really were no facilities other than having to walk all the way to city hall and or unfortunately we tended to overwhelm the downtown businesses facilities which we heard from as well one idea that we have to put on the table is to work with Montpelier alive and create like a quintessential Vermont outhouse experience and put the port-a-potty inside attached to the info booth that Montpelier alive has and we could lock that and leave it during the week because it is it is a financial investment to have to move those things in and out every week we propose to maintain the lease that we currently have with this facility for the lot that we have it's adjacent and it just keeps our contractual relationship there we are requesting that no non-farmers market members be allowed to have done during the market hours our members pay a fee for Ashton's wonderful management services and advertising and things like that and secondly that we do feel with the proposed layout that it could affect customer flow affect our layouts and things like that and we are already squeezed pretty tight in this layout for some clarification so when you ask for folks not to be able to then do you mean for example restaurants along the street having a director of seating or are you talking about folks particularly having a food cart or something yeah it would be not the downtown business but we would definitely look at this as an opportunity for them to participate and just create a much bigger destination and so it would be specifically there are certain vendors apparently to get a permit to then on state street yeah the street vendors to set up the temporary stands on the weekend or during the week and the food carts do we have a sense of how many folks would be affected by that there were two or three depending on the weekend setting up during our trial run I don't know who has permits currently for them on the street and are you talking could those vendors still outside the boundaries of the farmers market say on main street yeah I think we think that's fair it's just kind of right not in your market but that's how we work right now they're kind of adjacent to the market but we did find that it made working with their space it sort of interfered with our layouts so you have an exclusivity just within those boundaries from state to now that's correct main down so we're asking also for some help in finding a spot that we can put picnic tables and have a place where people can sit and be a little bit leisurely and a place to store our trailer and picnic tables with the construction that's going to happen we think that there's going to be an issue that we currently keep our stuff we have ideas potentially the courthouse and things like that that might want some city council help to forge those potentials we're proposing a different layout that we use we're proposing a circular layout so that the center of the road is going to be open and free we think that's a better access for emergency vehicles it's better access for our vendors and we think it's going to provide better flow for customers as well there's a view of that layout on the back of the handout there's way more detail on the handout but this is the important part and we're going to be assigning spaces to ensure that we don't put like for like businesses together so that we can be respectful of the downtown businesses as well the duration we're asking for is 6 a.m. to 2 30 p.m. for the street to be shut down and looking forward past this year we hope that we can continue to get some help in trying to find a good suitable permanent or maybe even down the road a little bit between Taylor and in front of the state house but let's work on this first step see how it goes and we'll go for that so that is our proposal we really appreciate your time there Rosie normally when we have a street closure we do the street closure permit application and we hear from various affected city departments do we have some opinions from them on this I think I believe they've all met but I I mean if they've already signed off on it then that's I think so we did pull our department heads to find out if anybody had any objections to this and generally across the board there was broad support for this Tom the department of public works has some concern as they always do when we close state street they're not crazy about closing a through way that was the one objection we got the police were fine, the fire department is fine and they're here too if you want to hear from them Sue do you know why Tom objects at closing the thoroughfare specifically well he's always worried because we do get state funds and federal funds for for our big roads it's more of a roads for roads yeah okay Donna and then very minor just a logistical question though but in terms of the barricades and the cone packages just want to clear what is the expectation of public works Montpelier PD staff how is that one detail going to work that's a good question I know during the trial we were under the impression that we really weren't allowed to analyze stuff I was saying because it's just going to be a challenge since we're institutionalizing something every weekend I can't always guarantee especially if there's two officers on that's going to happen so I just want to have that part I'm not saying that's a deal breaker I just want to make sure that we're clear eye to some of those elements that the city do close the city has supported that function both public works and the police department usually the police department we don't call them public works generally on a one-time deal unless it's a big event or something so I want to put that out there as we did with the pilot project this past year the farmers market has agreed to sit down with all the department heads that want to be there at the city and we bring out a big map to detail and go over it and work out the details until everybody's comfortable and we're going to do that again great well I guess I just want to make sure that we know that that's happened I mean I assume it it sounds like it'll be fine but I'm not clear what we're approving tonight if that hasn't happened well we can make it conditional upon that happening their approval conditioning conditional upon that happening so if it doesn't then I thought you said they've seen this no I'm sorry they haven't seen this they haven't seen the details but we bounce the idea off of them and the reason that they're here before you tonight and not waiting a little bit is that they also have to start their planning and they have some board meetings coming up and they didn't want to go through a lot of hoops if in fact the council was disenglined to allow them to do this so I have a question about whether you've considered using the Hinewatt and State Street seems like there's enough demand to support both spaces that's a good question we try to stay in the smallest area possible if we move to State Street then we take up the parking that's on State Street and so to have adjacent parking is definitely one of the important things that we've heard as feedback from our customers as well as the downtown businesses if we take the State Street parking then it can and the Haney parking then there's really not a lot of parking for the direct downtown businesses I honestly though never had trouble finding parking I mean people might have to walk you know a hundred yards anyway I just ask you to think about it I think there's demand and I think it would make even a more vibrant atmosphere downtown I think people would really like it and I just question with I mean I think parking is a strong feedback from businesses they lose it in the parking lot now but they have the on streets it's important to the businesses I hear in my district for sure overall I would just like to express strong support for getting more people out in the streets downtown you've got some data to back up the sales figures and the results on that I also would encourage merchants to keep an open mind that this is a win-win not a competitive situation that the more customers we can get in the streets likely they're also going to see those sales figures reflected in their gross sales as well I do have a couple of points just to go through don't need to respond to them just thoughts wanted to put out as your kind of sounds like on the path to developing a solution that's going to work for everybody making sure that you're planning to work with merchants and it sounds like you are with rest rooms and not competing putting a competing product I think would go a long way I did get some feedback during the trial run from some elderly folks in town about accessibility for disabilities so while it is active in public streets escape any reasonable accommodation that can be made to make those stands as accessible as they were previously I'm sure would be greatly appreciated clarified the vendors on State Street do you have a sense of how many parking spaces would be given over to vending between 6 and 2 I don't have a direct number available but there is a net gain with the parking that we would gain in the Haney lot the current market lot just because of the way the parking is oriented sure part of the concern is probably going to be proximity to the businesses that are right there on State Street so as you're managing that parking asset may be some dedicated parking for those businesses or encouraging your vendors not to consume the stuff that's closer to those businesses or a variety of ways that you might really make accommodation for those businesses so they don't feel sore about losing those spaces directly in front of their businesses we can't allow cars in there at all there can't be dedicated parking when the streets close in the Haney lot the Haney lot is going to be just open they're not going to control the Haney lot during that time at least it's going to be transferred to State Street I would just ask you to think it's a longer term consideration but not to let parking drive all this discussion this sort of reminds me of a yogi bear comment about the popular restaurant people don't go there anymore because it's too crowded and I think that's a situation we'd face if you expand to the farmers market I mean I think you can think of I know a couple of cities that close their entire Dantan I think Des Moines, Iowa closes an enormous successful farmers market and there's not any parking in Dantan but it's packed with people thousands and thousands of people every weekend that's the whole idea of it so I think the notion that people aren't going to come because there's not going to be parking I think the result would be just the opposite I think we'd have more people in Dantan because there would be more going on I agree that there will be more people there trying to make the point that there may be some merchants who have concerns about that shift in parking usage and so the more you can be proactive and accommodate those concerns it probably would help in the relationships and the ongoing support from downtown merchants but lastly I did have one logistical point and I don't know if obviously it was around the traffic signal at state and main and if there is some limited capacity for police support I'm sure DPW will be looking at whatever signage or traffic control things we can do to help keep people from backing up and trying to turn and now the police have to get involved so just that we're thinking proactively about what we can do there Dantan I appreciate your thinking about the parking because I did hear about it from merchants and likewise I heard they really don't like this format they like the one that you used in your trial which is the vendors, the farm remarker vendors being inside so that the back of your farm market isn't in front of the store because this way people were circulating between the stores the sidewalks and then they had a walk space and then your vendors and it was like a pod in the middle is there a reason you went and put yourself back against the sidewalks there were probably there are a couple different reasons that we were looking at that one was just better emergency vehicle access having a wider lane down the center which also meant for a quicker setup and breakdown because we could have two vehicles go down the center and have vendors set up on either side instead of having only a single lane of traffic which was an issue and then one of the major complaints that we got from customers was access for people with disabilities I think that trying to have the vendors in the center and have people kind of walk between the curb and the remaining area of the street next to the vendor was an issue for a lot of customers I think you'll find a different response from the merchants downtown we did bring this layout to the merchants association this past meeting because we didn't want them to not realize that we were changing I know how many don't go there thank you Peter it's a fair point Bob did you want to come over there to discuss this setup with the straight emergency vehicle down the first week and I think it was the second week there was a couple of jobs because of the build outs and the sidewalk so emergency vehicles would have to come down and make a couple of sharp turns and it would have been very difficult this is what we would encourage and would ask for is this setup thank you Bob so I so I so I got an email from Cindra who was coping with pet and she is not able to be here so she wanted me to read a statement from her so she says first I want to apologize for not delivering this short message in person recently been under the weather the downtown merchant who owns the town's pet shop on states my shop stands 100% behind the farmers market sharing our street with us on Saturdays this coming summer and beyond the other downtown business owners I know strongly support the move as well I'm speaking on their behalf the proposed move brings the market far greater visibility which should translate into far greater vitality on Saturdays in Montpelier the downtown's most important commerce day more people downtown is a good is good for the farmers market good for those of us with businesses on Maine as well as state and good for those of us living in Montpelier as my three dogs, my husband and I do I'm sorry I can't be there as planned to present alongside the farmers market people who will soon be my new neighbors as well as friends along with meeting with the city and other departments I've been going to the downtown business association meetings to discuss some of the potential issues that businesses do have excuse me, not every business goes to those I'm going to be meeting with Sarah the head of the downtown business association next week ahead of our selection process for the upcoming year just so I can talk some specifics with her and find out if there are any specific businesses that want to meet in person and just talk about any issues from the trial run and what we're looking at doing for this year okay, thank you can I have a motion? what's the wording here the motion approving the move of the farmers market to state street for the 2018 season contingent upon condition it on the meeting with the contingent upon a meeting with all of the heads of departments affected heads of departments is there a second? second I guess that does that I mean I think I know the answer but this means that we are granting the permits to close down state street for every Saturday just to make sure that that gets on the record that's what is happening that's what that's authorized any further discussion? all in favor please see aye thank you all very much look forward to another great season of the farmers market okay our last sub sub item tonight is the dog ordinance someone needs to be last right? I'm waiting for your patience I'm waiting like a dog alright so I don't know who's presenting this is from the who's been kind of shepherding this and Sue could you I'm the chair of the committee so Dennis before we take well I don't know who's presenting this proposal I wanted to make a request first I'm very pleased to have this document but it's like a totally new ordinance if not just amendments and it changed everything and there are a lot of people I only got this on Sunday so there are a lot of people who have talked to me about it and said they'd like a chance to participate in this because it all is so new and there wasn't the ability to see what you know what from the previous thing although it was the previous amendments the first reading September 27 they couldn't see what was out of it was deleted and this is really completely new so I would like to propose that we make this we make this like a first reading tonight of this new ordinance and have a second reading or have a third reading I was hoping you were going to ask to delay the whole thing 10 to 10 delay the whole thing I suggest that well I certainly not going to get any argue from me I guess I actually am actually going to agree with that I know there are a lot of people in our community who care a lot about this and you know they're dog owners they're non dog owners and it's late which I'm fine going but I also want this to be a super inclusive process because I know there's been a lot of work that has been done and I don't want to exclude anyone from participating in this so I'm wondering if we made a commitment to put this as our first substantive agenda item at our next meeting that's good I think those should be one and two and I'm going to ask selfishly that they be one and two because I'm having major surgery earlier in that week so I'm hoping to make it but I probably won't be able to stay for the entire meeting but I think that these are two issues that our community is clearly invested in and I would really like to okay well if you are you all okay with that you've sat through this whole meeting but if you're okay with it I'd certainly support that yeah okay okay is there any objection on the council to putting this off for the next meeting okay well thank you Dennis thank you all for your patience and we'll make an effort to look forward to full discussion and I just want to make clear that the commitment is to put those two agenda items as the first substantive sure but this is entirely different from the first document whatever I'll think it matters so will it be a first reading 30 that's a big tag that we've done that I mean I'm certainly we'll have at this assurance that we give this all you know plenty of opportunity for you to if you don't feel like you've had the opportunity to discuss it or to consider it well you can continue that that would be great I'm hoping that you can continue that I might suggest you could plan on second reading with a plan to continue second reading if necessary we could do continuation of the second reading alright thank you all okay so I believe that concludes our regular business tonight next item would be council reports Donna I wanted to go back to an email I sent out and I think I sent it to the whole council short-term bicycle parking policy it's about bike racks that the Montpellier Transportation Infrastructure Committee has on their budget that you've approved we have money for bike racks and sometimes we will have private owners reach out to us and we may work with them to get a bike rack sometimes we have a place that people ask for us to put it on city property we did this or this policy if we didn't we've been doing it but we didn't have it written down so we wrote down the policy we made the application and who made an application already has us doing some modifications so that make sure it can be a person can ask for it doesn't have to be just a business so if you have any feedback for this or if you feel when we get it finally draft that you have to approve it we'd like to know now otherwise we're going to do some editing use it and keep modifying it until it works right so what's your pleasure so this is city funds this is the the bicycle rack that we have money in the m-tech I don't think it would be a bad idea for the city to approve it I really appreciate you've done it and I think that's great and I didn't have any problem with it I emailed Corey and told him I'm fine with it yeah thank you are you all set? do you already want us back? do you all want to see it? okay, Jean? you can just email it to me I emailed it to you a couple weeks ago I did, I thought you were saying and I looked at it, I thought you were saying you'd make more changes we'd make changes as we get feedback and use it no I did look at it and I thought it was great okay thank you I want to acknowledge the police department in light of incredibly complicated and difficult situation everything that they've done this week and also the city manager for a really relevant, timely and thoughtful social media posts that he made in regards to this incident I also want to acknowledge there have been some refreshments made to our city web page and greatly appreciated it looks like some new photos and hopefully we're using whatever analytics we're getting back in order to continue to refine and develop that important tool so echoing Justin regarding the incident this week and I especially wanted to encourage all city staff to take advantage of the EAP the employee assistance program even if you weren't directly involved, if you were sitting in your office if you were driving a truck and not there, it doesn't mean that you weren't impacted and I speak from personal experience that these things can hit you emotionally in weird ways if you don't deal with them and so I just really want to say there's no shame, you don't need to feel like you had to be directly involved in order to take advantage of that service that's a benefit for you like your health insurance, like your sick leave your vacation days and we expect you to use it when you need it so please take advantage of that likewise I just want to thank the police department for their response to the incident last week and just all the support from the community I know that all the teachers at the high school are very grateful and the students as well so yeah, thank you and on a slightly lighter note I mean I know I sort of recused myself from the portion of the discussion about the school bond but I just want to express that I'm very excited about the infrastructure bond for the school because it involves fixing the roof which is currently not functioning in my classroom and it has been leaking for the last week, it's very exciting I have lots of pictures I would just like to thank everyone who came out tonight to talk about pretty important issues that our city is dealing with it's really renewed my faith in our community and I'm really I feel really grateful to serve with folks who are so thoughtful and mindful and to be part of a community who's really invested in everything that the city council is taking up Ashley it does feel like our community has gone through a lot recently in particular of course the incident at the high school was traumatic but it also brought out I think a lot of positives in our community not the support for the police officers support for the high school and the students but also the family and even the young man who was involved in his family so I think it really spoke well of our community in rallying behind everybody it's affected in understanding just what a tragedy it was so I appreciate and echo what other people have said about the police department and also of course just the heart goes out to the family and of course a lot of us knew them and I think it's a great opportunity for our community for decades I just need to note that starting tomorrow I can be accepting candidate petitions in the office the deadline to get those in is the end of the day February 4th February 4th is a Sunday I don't feel like I have authority under charter to do what we do with state deadlines and make it for the next Monday so I encourage folks to get that in the box if it comes in over the weekend and I will check that also just make a note to folks in general and any candidates that I am doing the online voter guide again it's at Montpeliervoterguide.org where you can navigate to it through the city website and it just is going to create a forum to discuss any of the ballot articles on there and for candidates on the ballot to give a little introduction to themselves I don't have a lot of support to the police and the EMTs have to respond and to the school they're a great ally and the community too, people with very supportive comments on a less exciting note just remind you all that you should have been emailed a document written to my multirator assessment so I hope you all fill it out it doesn't take very long to do it and get that in that will be helpful and in theory we're discussing our own review of that I'm going to not right now but this was me doing that on the 14th too so to get those forms out it's all right alright I think that's it that objection at 10 o'clock we'll be adjourned