 Well, hello everyone and welcome to the City of Burlington Board of Finance meeting. It's Tuesday, April 9th, 2024 at 5.33pm and we are going to begin first with, I'd like to call the Board of Finance meeting to order and we first start with our agenda and I'd like to accept a motion on the agenda item 1.1 to amend or adopt the agenda. Is there a motion? To adopt the agenda. So moved by Councillor Barlow. Is there a second? Just a point of information, believe it. Councillor Barlow, does that include the removal of consent agenda items 3.2, 3.3, 3.4? Do you have a consent agenda motion? Or do we have a reverse agenda? Okay, so let's redo the motion then. I will move to amend the agenda to remove item which items? 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and consent agenda. Move the amended agenda as amended. Councillor Barlow, is there a second? Second. Any discussion on this? Seeing none. All those in favour, say aye. All those opposed, say nay. The motion carries unanimously. Now we move on to public forum. So with public forum, are there any members of the public wishing to speak to the Board of Finance and we'll first look to focus in the room and then we'll go online. So if anyone would like to address the Board of Finance, please raise your hand in the room. Seeing anyone hiding back there, so we'll move to online or is there anyone online who would like to address us in public forum? Yes, we do have former Councillor Sharon Busher and I will enable her microphone. You should be all set, Sharon. Hi, good afternoon and for Councillor Barlow and for Catherine Shad, they're familiar with me making comments. For the rest of you, I do follow the Board of Finance because I think I want to know where my money goes. So that's just it. I just wanted to comment briefly on a couple of things on your agenda, although you've modified it. So forgive me if I am speaking to something that was removed. The first thing has to do with the budget neutral amendment and I just wanted to say that I understand that impacts this year's budget but it also sets the stage for FY 25 where there will be some savings realized and I'm pleased to see that. And I also am hoping that the events around the solar eclipse will really augment the rooms and meals and sales tax in a very pleasant way for us so that we will garner more revenue that way. So I'm looking forward to understanding that impact on us. The second thing I wanted to comment normally I don't comment on a number of things but this is important to me the Burlington Fire Department and their community response team. I know they hear a lot from elected officials but as someone who's just a citizen, I just want them to know how much I value them and how much I appreciate that this was a team initiative. And it was incredibly successful for the people in our community and I don't think that words really capture how thankful so many people are. I understand that tonight you're looking to continue the pilot until you can utilize the rest of the funding which brings you to June 16. I'm hoping that the Board of Finance and the mayor will consider at least bringing it to the end of the fiscal year. And if I believe it's valuable to continue in FY 25 but I will look to the fire department and the administration to set the stage for that conversation. So I just want to thank them all. The next thing is a request. And this might be something that's off the agenda, but it was the Colchester Riverside there at Mill Street intersection, and it's not the funding. So as everyone knows the Winooski Bridge and that intersection of are going to be upgraded and it's been a lengthy process. And that's really why I'm speaking to it. I was involved because I was on the council but it's gone through a number of different eyeballs and it's and I think it's a coordinated good plan. But when there are meetings for the this project that are held by regional planning. It's a large group of people with a lot of different agendas so I'm going to ask DPW to please when you come in with your finalized project plan which I hope is pretty much like what the reason is and saw initially that they could potentially come to the Ward 1 NPA to allow the residents that actually live right in that and that vicinity to see that final plan and ask some questions. It's almost impossible to really focus on on just this item when there that was large meeting so I'm making that request all of you. I think Ward 1 people would really appreciate it. The last thing is for your discussion. I did reach out to Director Pine to try to save you from hearing me hearing all my questions but I take it really seriously when we consider selling a property that we own that the city owns. We have sold properties. I mean we sold the property that City Market downtown. We have sold properties and I think sometimes I at least regret some of those sales. I'm hoping that you will look at that and look at if this still is in everyone's best interest to understand the repairs. They're always what gets us are one of the driving factors but I also understand written into the lease is that in the third term of the lease that BT can kind of nudge the city out of that space. I'm really worried about where HR and payroll will go and the cost of rental space downtown so I'm hoping that all of you look at that and look at all of the options available to you and not see this as a fixed proposal that can't be reconsidered if it's in the city's best interest and the taxpayers best interest. Thank you so much for hearing all my comments. Thank you former counselor. I'm sure we appreciate that. Are there any other folks online who would like to offer public comment? Or in the room to change your mind so I can speak. Okay, so seeing no one further wanting to address us public forum is now closed. Moving on to item three on the agenda, the consent agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions into view? I do see that. Oh, I'm sorry. Let's back up. Councillor Grant, would you like to offer public comment? Councillor Grant, we can't hear you if you are trying to speak. Can you hear me? You can hear you now. I am so sorry about that. I had a comment about the consent item 3.6. I guess just in terms of, I know this had been previously discussed I think in, I think it was even the last REIB committee meeting. But I guess I was surprised to see it put on the consent agenda after the last conversation. I guess if we're going to be using the grant monies, any grant monies for just future reference would like to see these discussed through the REIB committee meetings. I guess I kind of felt blindsided by seeing these items put on for approval. There was some discussion that yes definitely these are two great organizations. I do support them, but had a concern about making sure that we are teaching these organizations to fish, giving the fact that we have this deficit that we have to take care of. We want to know that that they're getting assistance with looking for grants to cover some of these expenses and not relying entirely on to the city. Just so that we can help them ensure their continuity in the community. And that was it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Grant. I appreciate it. Thanks for any comments for public comment. Anyone else for public comment. Going once. Going twice. I'm confidently leading us forward here now to item 3. I'm trying to get you all to smile over there a little bit too. Moving on now to item number three, the consent agenda. Okay, moved by Councillor Travers. Any second? Seconded by Councillor Carpenter. Any discussions on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favour say aye. All those in post say nay. Okay, the motion carries unanimously. Moving right along. All right, moving on now to our our deliberative agenda. Moving on to item 4.1 now. This is my new computer. So on item 4.1 we have, let's see, I think this is, see, oh yeah, right next to me, who is going to, right next to me to speak, to give us a brief summary on the issue before we have any discussion by the board. Um, thank you, Madam Mayor. This was an item that Sharon Busher mentioned, a budget neutral amendment that those of you who were on last year's council might recall. It's a follow up to the budget to actual reports that we have started producing. Um, and it is, um, in response to those reports, we have realized that there is, as you can see, $700,000 worth of revenue that we have determined is not achievable. Um, and it's important to note that these two items, the $500,000 of miscellaneous revenue and the $200,000 of purchasing savings has been in our general fund budget for many years. But these items look back even beginning in 2019. So for the past five years, these are not items that we have been able to realize. So if you look back at previous budgets, we have zero budgeted for purchasing savings and we've never gotten more than 20 or 30,000 for miscellaneous revenue. So I think at this point, after further discussion, both in the CET office as well as with our mayors, we've realized that those are things that should not be in the FY24 budget and we won't be budgeting in FY25 because they're not things we can count on. So we also need to commensurately reduce expenses. And so part of that budget to actuals report showed us where we could do that. And you can see that below and that involves some of our departments that have not staffed up as much as we thought, including City Attorney, Treasurer's Office and the REIB, all of whom have had less staffing than we would like. But that has resulted in having some extra money left over that will make up for that shortfall in revenue. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions from the court? Dr. Robert? Yes, thank you for this. I'm curious to know if this was contemplated in some of the earlier presentations that we had when we were investigating the $9 million shortfall. Is this already sort of netted out at all? I mean, this is it's neutral. So for the next year, for the fiscal 25 budget, this is already sort of contemplated as coming out of there and some earlier presentations to you. It is not included in that $9 million. Part of what makes up that $9 million was $4 million of one-time money. And that had more to do with ARPA and the assigned fund balance and less to do with revenues that we were not going to realize. So you are correctly identifying that this would increase that whole. That's important. Thank you. Any other questions? Is the CRT savings expenses anticipated as well in the 25 budget? Right now, the CRT is being paid for by opioid money. So that is totally a separate funding stream and that's how it is continuing. That's how we are forecasting FY25 at this time. Any other questions? I'll speed ahead here. Okay. How would the board like to proceed on this item? I'll make the motion as recommended. Absolutely. That's why I think that out for the sake of folks listening at home. We don't usually. Okay. I think it makes it more accessible meeting frankly as opposed to what we're doing. So I'm going to go ahead and read that up. That's okay. I'm actually going to read this version. All right. I'm not my master commissioner. Would you read it? I think that's a good way for us to make sure people know where we are in the meeting. Thank you. Okay. I move to approve and recommend that the city council approve and authorize the city's chief administrative officer for their designee to execute a budget amendment to reduce the CT budget by $700,000 and to reduce expenses by a total of $700,000 in the CT REIBCA and assessor super attached. Thank you council for that motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Chavuz and any further discussion on the side? Oh, we vote. See none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much, CAO. Appreciate that. And these memos have really improved over the years since I went on board of finance. So I appreciate the clarity and also just making sure folks at home and in the room know where we are on these items. All right. Moving right along to item 4.2 on the deliberative agenda, right up the chief. He's the president of the Berlin Department of Association. And we are here to request the extension of fund utilization for the community response team pilot. The pilot was begun on the 16th of October 2023 on the 14th of April 2024. The six months is up and we still have some monies available from the opioid settlement fund that was identified for this use. And we are requesting permission to continue using those dollars past the 14th of April. I've looked at the finances. It looks like it should get us through to about the 16th of June. But as former counselor Sharon Buscher stated, I am looking to get to the end of the fiscal year, so we can come back and see you in June if we need to to extend that. But I also want to thank everybody here and everybody online for their support for the community response team. We at the fire department have felt nothing but support from this body and the community, and we really appreciate it. So I do have some data. I'd be happy to share. I know Milo likes my data. So if you'd like to see it, I'd be happy to show it. If you don't, then we can see it next week when I present this to the city council. Thank you so much, Chief. And thank you with kind of like for being here as well. Are there any questions from the board? Well, just curious, Chief is saying, you know, San Lomito June 16th. We still got two more weeks left in this fiscal year. I mean, would it not be prudent to amend this to fund them through June 30th? And then we'll duke out next fiscal year. Let me get to that. It just seems odd that I want to support this. And is there a way to add two more weeks to it? I effectively just want to ask Chief. It would be about about $10,000. It seems awkward to have to come back and then not plan for it being fully funded through June 30. And then obviously there's the context of the next fiscal year. I'll ask a question if you'd say a CAO if I can. I was learning a little bit more about the open settlement funds and how they come into the city and the timing of such and all the different sources. So I am curious what how we would go about I guess you're marking that additional $10,000 to make sure we're getting to the end of the fiscal year based on past city practices with other ways we've been using the open settlement money when it does arrive. I think part of the issue, Councillor Carpenter, was that we were trying to not have to ask for more money and just use up the time because we are in, I guess, what you could call kind of a cash flow situation now where we know we have all of this money coming and we have, you know, several different agreements, but we don't have all of that money. And so we gave this agreement, we gave an amount up to as much cash as we had, knowing that more money is coming in and, you know, this is pretty secure source, the money is coming in for many years, we could certainly make that motion. But I think we did not when we first agreed on an amount, we didn't want to get too far ahead of our skis and so to speak. And I can understand that I don't know what a problem is there a way to do it. Fund through June 30 contingent on getting more money and so we need to prove what's before us and then we prove two more weeks contingent on receiving the money. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Councillor Cain? So this is an estimate, right, the June 16th based on trends. I have altered all of the costs to the program broken down weekly. It's in front of me right now. I just did the averaging. It averages about $4,437.11 a week is what the average is. It doesn't make any kind of trend now. Well, I'm just doing the averaging. Last October we were a little higher because we were staffing up a little higher for a longer time because the days were longer. Over the winter when the days were really short, we staffed a little shorter so we wouldn't have to go out in the dark for four or five hours. Now that the days are getting longer, I am starting to see those 12-hour days again. So that's why I averaged off a little bit for that point of time. Is there data that you might show us to include trends with the response volume? Yes. Yeah, I would like to see that. Sure, that's all right. Is she where you connected to them? I am. I'm on and I'm ready to share access to do so. This is on disabled and screen sharing. I'm going to make you a call post. All right. Here it comes, Milo. Yay. All right. So let me just get to this. There we go. So the first slide is just total call volume. It's a little hard to see with that little thing there. That's okay. I'll be good for something. There. More than just a pretty face. Yeah. The first slide is just total call volume to the department so far this year. The orange line is just an average, but we are actually, this year overlapped, we're 11% up already, this year overlapped based on from January 1 to April 7. We do call volume does go up considerably in the summer months, so that's when you start seeing that call volume go up. So what we're, the meat and potatoes of the CRT that we've always looked at is overdose totals in the city. And overdose totals in the city, what we look at is we look at the blue line up on the upper left, which is total overdose numbers. The orange line is overdoses that we transport in the gray line is the overdoses that refuse transport folks that get taken and taken out of an overdose then have no interest seeking further medical care. That's one trend that we are concerned with. And that's why we are working to begin a buprenorphine industry program through the CRT. And we're going to we're working with the hospital right now to create state protocol for Burlington to allow for us to start people on buprenorphine after we reverse their overdose and which will allow them to feel less withdrawals and hopefully seek care at the hospital. And if not seek care then we can work with them with some of that partnering agencies like the training center. One of the average the average overdose numbers are down definitely this year, which I think is a very good trend. Again, this is since 2017. This is where it trends up. You can see in October of 2023 a pretty significant drop. The city has been working definitely putting its best foot forward with this opioid crisis and there's a lot of offerings to our folks and the CRT is one of them. And since us tracking we're seeing a pretty consistent drop and a pretty consistent staying dropped, which is which is encouraging. Can you go back to that? Sure. One thing to note and I think this comes into play with Councilor Carpenter's question about continuing this and ensuring that we don't fall that two week period. If you look and see where our high points really are, we're coming into that now where we're going to start hitting the June, July, the August. And so trying to ensure that there's consistency with this program I think is important. One of the things that I know the membership is hopeful for is seeing that program out on the street during the June, July and the August where we had that huge spike not to really wear the city sort of to put it only one crazy where we were having 130 calls in a 48 hour period, which is just not sustainable. So trying to ensure that this truck is out there during the peak months is where we can really get that data to determine its impact and the connections that it's making, the services it's delivering. So I think that was just an important note. Councilor Carpenter, since we're paying for this with opioid money for do we have a sense of how long that might be and where I'm going with my question to sort of respond to the last comment and maybe we can't do this tonight since it's not part of the general fund budget which we will look at and do need. Is there a way actually for us to approve it through the summer or something approve it now or maybe next meeting through September or something like that if we think we're getting that much opioid money potentially even when the cash flow problem do a contingency that we will commit to take this much of the opioid money through September? I think there's some more there's some deeper conversations to continuing it past July 1. This is a staff with overtime firefighters. We're staffing an average of 160 extra hours a week of this so if you ever see my fire commissioner reports I show you the overtime numbers and the commitment of the firefighters to this has been incredible and I'm concerned about with regular overtime expenditures in the summer in needs and then this 116 average hours on top of that what that's going to do with folks as far as burnout so I'd like to if we feel that this is a sustainable program and something that we want to look into I think it's just a deeper conversation to see how do we staff it and what is the true cost of that? Are you going to be asking that for the f-125 budget? I'm going to be having conversations with the new mayor about that absolutely and I figure I'll give her a couple of days before I end it. I'm just trying to sort of be helpful in the sense of because I really appreciate that you need some guarantee of consistency but whatever that may be. I don't have all the answers yet either and I'm sure President Blake and I will talk a lot about it and have meetings with the mayor the mayor's office about it and in the next in the next month I'd say the folks are going to be conversations to have. Really we're just looking to get a pool to spend the rest of the monies that were already allocated and I do appreciate the offering of the extra two weeks that would be handy to not just have to come back for that. If we can do that I don't know if we can and maybe Catherine and I could sit down and look at my budget and figure out if we can cover it within that somewhere you know. I really appreciate that and I also just want to name the fact that as we start looking towards f-125 and looking at all of our community safety piece I would like to look at this a little more comprehensively to make sure we're making it sustainable for existing staff being really smart about cross department ways to really tackle this in this year 25 with a clear intention that we need to make sure we're not pulling the rug out from folks both the city staff have been doing this critical critical and essential service but the community itself of course too we built up a lot of trust a lot of those relationships which are so vital in this work we're really going to be a partner and city with folks who are struggling with substance use disorder and then all of our community partners as well so yes I'm very supportive of this to leak extension and for the budget coming up I'm just hoping for a much more comprehensive understanding that we can work together my administration and the council to really make sure we have a fully comprehensive plan going forward as we look at also the btb care program coming online as well as other components as well thank you guys for are there any other questions or discussion on this before I look to see if we're ready for vote or anything else from the party well I just this is my favorite slide here your data sorry yeah no it's fine I skipped through some some other ones but this is the best one I think this shows overdose total overdose numbers in 2020 and 2023 left to right and you can then in the third column you see the fourth column you see percentage in red and percentage decreases in green and you can see that the months leading up to January through September there was pretty significant increases in overdoses from that month the year before we began the program in October and you were seeing consistent decreases since so from from the month here before so I find that to be a very interesting slide I do know that and I this is anecdotal for me because I I don't have any real data on this I do know there have been some some police action whether it's local or state or federal with some of the drug inflexes into the into the area I don't I've just heard that I haven't seen any data on it but I'm sure that that has something to do with it as well I can just speak to what we're doing and the data that we've collected since and then you can see the 25 weeks before and the 25 weeks after you can see the increase 23 to 23 to 22 23 on the left and then 25 weeks after the decrease from 23 to 23 24 so pretty interesting there and then on the bottom that that's how many folks we've seen I my EMS chief sends me a she goes through all of the reports every week and she sends me a report on Monday morning and it tells me how many attendees which means how many folks we've touched wound care items we've handed out we do come for care supplies now like Kleenex and hand warmers Narcan leave behind hits that's what NLB stands for and then referrals to bridge services or other service providers how many requests we've received via the phone things like that so you can see the numbers there so that's that's kind of the true impact of the program is it's right there so that's my last slide I'm not trying to keep offlining it more but is any of that covered by Marquis? um it's it's if we transport if we get paid if we don't transport we don't so that's just the way EMS is built basically um if the if we go to those overdoses and we try and transport allows but we do build yeah but how but how I guess I could break that down to say this is for the CRT but it's just medical and it comes in as and medical and EMS is our most significant revenue for the general fund portion of our budget so that's the general fund like reduction of our budget comes off of EMS tranportment I'd like to learn more just because it might be a conversation for another day even state conversation about it's changing the building yes components for like lift assist non-transforce those there are there are and I'm I'm we are having conversations with our we're doing a study right now on revenue in the city I just met with it last week about that and we can we can get into that here if you want to but I'd be happy to talk about I'm just curious from my old service days and it seems like because the department is doing so much right it is a state issue it's not a right to issue I understand that I agree but I I do struggle with going to help somebody off the floor and then sending them $500 well except the state would pay half of it maybe that would be okay and that's something I don't know we're we're doing a whole revenue study right now and I'm that is certainly not often able to actually ask them to kind of look at that and speak with our billing agent called the company called ECP yeah to talk about that I have Gail at ECP look into non-transport what is that look that could be built for non-transports things like that so we are looking into it I'm just I'm also looking at it in kind of the human aspect of what it may be beyond what we're going to dismiss it but if we're looking for additional revenue sources and we are we are providing them and they might be Medicaid eligible in another setting you know that's money off of our table so that is 100% being looked at through this revenue study okay I also just add that the legislature is also wrapping up some increased reimbursements it's making its way through the very slow process and of course we have about six weeks left of that process so I would imagine that in May as we all roll our sleeves for fiscal year 25 we can start to really look at other additional ways we can look at revenue and I think we'll see what happens but I it's a conversation I hope it doesn't end because I think again a more aggressive I'm just going to call it build back to the stage of some variety because we've had so many services laid on us I hope continues into next year this and I see it not just with the overdose prevention but services called thousand longer conversation and we do have a if I can speak because we do have a bell h747 in the house right now um that we authored that's uh like Slater that uh is looking for some monies to the world's environment for the opioid crisis yeah um it has support but it doesn't have broad support I don't think out of chinning county so which which is whether it is but we we are as a department and as a city looking for ways of finding this outside of the general one sure thank you so we will have uh or you will have on your council agenda in about a week of legislative update and I do think this is worthy of a topic in a picture for finance as we really start to look at creatively where we can pull down funds from the state knowing that Burlington is holding a lot of the suffering frankly of the state and we should be smart around use of funds and partnering with the state and leveraging so that bills like that can actually get moved and uh and that would be great again partner more that is the work ahead so and I do feel like I mean however folks feel well we're going to leave my strong brotherhood to the state it is um so I agree yeah we are going to say that loud and clearly um as we go forward okay so for the sake of time is there any further discussion on this item in front of us before we see if there is a motion I think we're ready and council member I'm going to ask if you would be willing to make the motion perhaps with your perhaps a amendment that you had in mind yes so if you're willing and I would love to practice of reading the actual full version for the sake of clarity I would move to approve and recommend that the city council I might say the board of finance if you're reading on that question move and recommend that well that's a recommended action that we that we recommended the city council so I think yep the finance committee approving it right yes the board of finance approve and then recommend the city council it is a bit confusing but it's working we'll get better I would move that the board of finance approve and recommend to this recommend that the city council authorize chief administrative offer to make any and all necessary budget amendments allocate the use of the assigned opioid money fund to support offering costs of fire department in response team and where do I put this amendment is it best to do that at the end or do I want to put it in here the other funds are exhausted with the budget not to exceed original approval of 180 to 598 and in and to further authorize the extension through the end of the fiscal year 25 or available funding with the county if you can give me some words here with $10,000 expenditure contingent on receipt from you'll get something like that thank you councillor carpenter so the motion is as directed on our agenda and also on the memo just quick clarification because we are 24 years to 25 just by any error which is 24 and just to clarify at the end just make sure everyone knows the intent to extend the program to the end of the fiscal year with estimated $10,000 contingent on use of opioid settlement funds yes that's the motion councillor thank you very much for legislating on the fly is there a second to councillor carpenter's motion seconded by councillor kane any further discussion before we go see none all in favor say aye all opposed say nay well she carries unanimously thank you very much thank you for being here honestly councilor we're about to move on to the next item yes i just have something really quick because of the way the camera is situated it doesn't move so we can hear the mayor but those of us who are watching online cannot see the mayor so and also i don't even the the camera gets adjusted or everybody kind of slide down one c there i am hi thank you sorry for the interruption i was okay councillor i appreciate that and the spirit of making sure folks start because here okay i'm in the great queue to get our next one at the at the table great so moving um moving along here right moving on to item uh 4.3 uh the burlington electric department memo of understanding through the city place um public improvements with the department of public works okay so i am senior public works engineer laura wheelock and that's me and sit here so i keep public works engineer uh we are working on the city place project so this is an item that is in support of a tiff funding tax increment financing around the city place project so this is bd's contract with dpw so that they can install and purchase the new lighting that'll go around the project so with this being tiff funding it is fairly specific to this location it's part of the overall budget that was previously brought to the council it was followed last year it is a modest request um but i do want to bring up the fact we had a few questions about the bd lighting policy so bd's lighting policy for director pine was established about 25 years ago in the sense that bd brought forward to their public utility commission and the utility board a question about can they pay for the increased cost of the decorative lighting um and for conversation like directed pine the ultimate finding of the utility board was no bd could not incur and bring to their right pairs the increased cost of the capital from standard lighting to decorative lighting they can maintain it um they can help install it but they cannot incur that first initial cost so for the last 25 years this has been the practice as we've improved lighting around the city from north street to main street st paul street riverside ab and now bringing to charian bay streets improved decorative lighting so with a specific request truly is going to go through um how our math works sure so um we worked with bd um with them to give us their kind of standard estimate for standard lighting which is basically the fiberglass pole with the cobra head um flight style um which was about 109 thousand dollars um their estimate for the decorative street lighting which is kind of the black a little more like historic looking um light in a bit more evenly distributed light was around four hundred twenty thousand dollars so the difference between those two numbers is what the city is responsible for which is three hundred and eleven thousand and two hundred thirties uh that we're going to enter into an mo u with one of our fellow city departments but because they are controlled by the public utility board it is necessary for them to be very transparent about their transactions of city money going between different departments so this is why we do have an mo u with tiff also appreciates it jillian loret thank you for their questions from the board just one and not how of anybody's list but since they gave me an opinion 20 by years ago is it worth asking again and i would think a lot of small downtown some moved more in that way and we have things like downtown tax credits and so that's just a small ask on somebody's list to say um it can be i think on this exercise we've we've looked at that that could be something we ask of bd to bring back um as a double check in this case specifically it is tiff funding and it is really very specific to developing the public improvements so i don't know that it would change our direction or our request tonight as to how this gets funded um but it certainly if we were using more direct city funds to do something like this that is so worth it and i think there's issue more well all tasks do more renovations to their downtown any other questions discussion i moved to approve and recommend that the city council authorized the director of public works to execute a memorandum of understanding with rural and electric department and the amount of 311,237 dollars for construction of street lighting associated with the city place of the improvements project subject to review and approval of the city attorney's office thank you for the motion is there a second seconded by council carpenter any further discussion so trafas i guess my question maybe it's it's a dull question but just wondering you know can you speak a little bit more to why the city has made the decision to go in the direction of the more decorative lighting as opposed to the the standard lighting and i mean i think as we look towards um you know budget park wall in f y in 25 are there any discussions about whether or not in terms of decorative elements versus standard elements we're having to revisit that as well so the decorative lighting that's been selected for this project was vetted under the great streets process um it is an initial capital investment and then after that the repair and maintenance of everything related to the lights becomes part of the expenses which certainly carry back to the the repairs but it is not something that the city occurs on capital side the choice of the lighting is important to um the users on the street he actually apologize i am not a lighting engineer but i am speaking to what i have heard them to share the lighting on the street is lit to something called ies standards thank you julia um and really it's based on a pedestrian scale and so you put lights out on the streets to meet the amount of pedestrians that will encounter the traffic street so you can have highways that need no streets if there's no pedestrians but as soon as you add a pedestrian to the street you need lighting um or pedestrian accommodation so really this lighting is to take the existing street lights that are out there which are led they're down lit they mean a lot of our standards but they create what's called hot spots in their light pattern and so pedestrians have to enter in and out of these hot spots and it's not kind of an encompassing experience um so it feels different this lighting is lower and a little bit more frequent and a little less bright so that you can have a continuous lighting experience so as a picture makes sense um just another question sorry for you on spots i know you're not a lighting engineer but i expected that the cost of the lighting itself would be higher one of the things i was interested in is how much more labor goes into installing the decorative lights i mean there's hundreds more hours that b80s apparently have to spend on the decorative lighting including much more engineering and inspector work i mean the grand scope of things it's not a huge sum of money but just curious if you is it because there's more lights or do you have any ideas of why the 80s haven't spent so much more time installing decorative lighting as opposed to standard light um these decorative lights my understanding um are not all that much more complicated than the decorative lights that exist already in the downtown and i think that that's important to recognize is that decorative lighting already exists and therefore if they ever replace it they have to replace it with the same decorative fixture so decorative credit is a little bit misleading they do that because that's what their utility board has allowed them to do but if they were to take the existing decorative lights and have to disassemble and reassemble them their decorative costs and labor would be similar to what we're proposing to put on the street um the fixture types the arms the the poles and whatnot it's not all that different decorative to decorative is what they should other than there are a few extras because we are going to a lower lower scale lighting so there are typically five lights per block versus the four to three that there can be now any further discussions i'm sure they'll come speak to you know thank you for better or worse these are questions that we're kind of people aren't based acting on and i appreciate that point further discussions council kane thanks on a similar note i see in the spreadsheet here there's like contingency 15 percent and then there's like an added 12 percent for like general admin so um now it's about a quarter money project that isn't like specifically allocated to out of the 400,000 to i guess materials or labor um so that could be part of our discussion in terms of like how we uh allocate fund source projects or given the budget shortfall um not experienced with thinking about capital outlays and how contingency need to be allocated for um but maybe just given the budget situation we should you know talk at some point relatively soon about um yeah just uh making sure that capital outlay methodology is is as careful as it can be uh basically thank you council kane and i think that's another good pin if we can put in that and as we start building and working towards as a new board here uh and to plan for fiscal year 25 and that and we talked about before just themes that we need to pick up as we continue going forward i am mindful of time so i just want to see if there's any other i'm not seeing in here but this is a similar one so so question on the floor to um approve this uh board of finance item it's related to an mou between um dpd uh sorry public works and uh d ed and the question we has a first and a second are we ready to go okay all in favor indicate by saying aye all those opposed say nay okay karen unanimously thank you very much julia moron thank you moving right along item 4.4 the champlain parkway city of burlington is champlain water district moa the department of public works the environment uh normal city engineer also division director of technical services so what you have in front of you is a asking or requesting your support for authorization for the director to execute this moa i think it's an important element to this conversation is to understand that this moa is associated with the initial contract goes champlain parkway champlain parkway initial contract is most known is from olma outing north to uh keller street the final phase of construction is yet to be put out to bed and considered by the council so this is relevant to this first initial contract this is a a bike path segment that is in the south end near the seven 189 interchange they're just coincidentally and unfortunately we have two easements that exist in that same space we're referencing and that is the cwd easement and the city's easement cwd has a 24 inch transmission line water transmission line that is coincidental to our easement again that they have an easement that precedes our easement they have first priority as a result there's been a lot of ongoing discussion of cwd in terms of their comfort with our development of our share use path over their 24 inch transmission line which is which is critical to their system and abroad chitinik county community so they have been cooperative to within reason um their goal was to make sure that they few things one that we have an understanding in terms of how they are responsible or not responsible for maintaining the shared use path if their system needs repair or fix and they place that responsibility on us for reasons because of this priority they have um asked us to do some significant redesign related to how much cover would go over that water line because they don't want to have it too shallow too deep too deep means they have to have too shallow it means it could freeze and then cause problems so we've looked this out this moa is kind of extension of the understanding of these easements but i think it protects both their interests and ours and as a result we've come to the final conclusion where we think we can agree and as you see in the packet there was the moa has been executed by the general manager of cwd and now it's relying on our execution of that so this would hopefully if the quarter finance supports this and quarter finance would provide that support and then you put that through the council on the 15th you know if there's any other questions well let's see are there any questions for the board councillor borough yes um i'm just trying to understand i looked at the information in the packet it like so basically the bottom line is if they have to fix their water line we have to then come back and fix whatever disruption to the shared use path if there is yes so they would uh they would set finish grade back to where it was and uh we would have a shared use path that needed to have basically refinish grade and uh repaid the bike path itself and potentially replace any of our landscaping one of the things they asked for in our landscape is not to have deep deep rooted trees that would impact their facility as a result you'll see in the drawings there's flat locks and pushes and vegetation that is sheltering uh soft metal but is not in any way going to their facility so does this line and i couldn't tell this from the drawings does it run parallel to or does it intersect the path so it's quits it out for about uh 150 200 feet again and as you move further west it does cwd's water line breaks south so um unfortunately or fortunately i gave you a high level of detail that you would have to kind of go through the design and see where kind of water line as you go down the cross sections we're alone what one only is either directly underneath it or moving away from our shared use path okay yeah and and i don't think we have really i mean it seems like the way the um the easements chronologically happen it seems like this is our we don't have really a mission we don't so not familiar we want to have a shared use path this this is necessary this is what's necessary to satisfy cd and allow that yep so thank you so i don't know is is there any more discussion or questions any one question just i'm looking at the memo and notice that there's a a point that talks about subject to the attorney's review on approval yeah um but that's not the motion so i just didn't know if this is already this is the final or if we need to add that to the motion that subject to this this is the final and um in my memo the timing of this unfortunately there was back and forth with our private attorney eric our our attorney and cwd's attorney in the extent finalized the last minute before the packet was released with my memo so this is this is the final document that we're referencing thank you yep so clarifying that we need to change the motion language and we're doing now the stats are already been finalized yes great just making sure crossing our thing and dotting our eyes okay any further discussion or questions or not i will entertain a motion let's go and councilor corp do you mind reading sorry i'm going to think i'm going to ask this for just for a record keeping here item 4.4 just a comment but it's um the meat of the stop is in one side but the motions are on another side when we throw to the agenda hunts that part so i always follow like to follow where the memos are but that doesn't have the motion so that's just why we're not some templates make sure thing is seamless well it doesn't mean for me personally it would be easier to have the motion included when you when you go with that i know i find this is a 4.4 right yes i move to approve and recommend that the city council authorize the department of public works to execute a memorandum of understanding oops that's the wrong one to authorize the director of public works or his doesn't need to accelerate execute a memorandum of understanding of agreement with the shampoo and water district for the purposes of delineating the party's respective rights and obligations with respect to cwd's existing easement that was reported in city ronnie's land records march 19 1984 and the city's easement easement originally executed on november 7 1988 thank you councillor carpenter is there a second it's okay any further discussion on the motion saying none all in favor say aye all right i'll post a nay but she carries now great thank you all thank you norm you're in long end of 4.5 full chest or a bit reside there at mill intersection and finance and maintenance agreement acceptance early to estimate five thousand nine do you come down to you hello chapelle welcome hello great can you see everyone yes yes chapelle spencer director of public works i have with me senior public works engineer laura willard public works engineer metis lender so thank you for bearing with tdpw with these six uh deliberative items it's a sign of all the work we have underway this generational piece project here in front of you is connected to the next agenda item as well this is the colchester barrett riverside uh mill intersection finance and maintenance agreement and this along with the wanouski bridge finance and maintenance agreement really unlocks after decades of work on the city side to advance of overhaul comprehensive overall of this infrastructure this finance and maintenance agreement allows us to harness federal and state funding to accomplish a project that without that funding we would not have the capability to complete so i'm really excited to have staff here go through the details of this we can hear from former counselor busher tonight in public forum we would be happy to go to the word one npa and discuss this project as we have in the past with them as we move forward so with that i'll turn it over so to focus on the intersection um and this agreement that we're asking for you guys to consider so it's important to take one quick step back be trans brings municipalities under agreements in two different ways one is this finance and maintenance agreement and one is something called a cooperative agreement in case you hear other ones brought forward to you in your time here the finance and maintenance agreement is actually be trans asserting itself that they're going to be the leaders on the this project that they are asking for our permission to be able to have the authority to do work within the pulpit right away um other than that really is a standard document at the end of our cooperative agreements we actually do use a science and maintenance agreements which is our agreement about how we will maintain the federalized improvement and those dollars put in our right away these agreements still allow us to incur costs and build them back to the grant um as well as for any consultants that we need as city supporting staff to be able to move these projects forward what this agreement does not do is lock us into an exact concept um the city council did support the concept of a four-way signalized intersection which is part of the 2019 scoping study as well as another affirmation um the two can council last may so the concept alternative has been selected through that process this essentially allows us to continue to refine the details within it how is lightning going to be situated how is stormwater going to be situated how will the city's utilities water sewer storm and electric will be accommodated because those are all eligible for federal funding so improvements to those assets um are part of this project as well as the components of the roadway roadway improvement and the new bike head facilities that come under this project um so that is the the shortest that I can get about the intersection so I'll take questions shoot any questions for you really okay I was gonna I was gonna move I love that go for it okay it's a two-part motion uh first do I move to approve and recommend that the city council authorize the director of public works to execute the m 0477 um standard finance and maintenance agreement for federal aid projects for linkedin stp 5000 parenthetically from the vermont agency of transportation for designing construction for designing construction colchester riverside rail intersection for the bt train b trans commitment to cover 100 percent of eligible project costs and to to approve and recommend that the city council authorize that the chief administrative officer their designee to affect all necessary budget amendments and transfers of funds from the above reference funding sources as needed to pay the above reference project expenses in f y 24th and overall project budgets as further defined in investment too thank you very much councilor are there a second to the motion second by councillor cain any further discussion um just first of all I think we're about to turn to the bridge as well chair correct i think i'd reach out to see if this could be on the deliberative agenda for our next council meeting and i think it would probably make sense just to confirm that both these items be on deliberative together that makes sense uh from your oldest perspective and um i do think it's because as as you all know it's a significant public feedback on this project in particular walk and bike infrastructure and whereas you know my understanding is that we're not necessarily with this actually locking ourselves into uh a particular design um i do think that they will be important for the public to understand that fact as we read right here but b i think for the new council it will be an important opportunity to learn about this generational project so i don't i don't have many questions right now other than to say that that i anticipate there will be more questions one day we are prepared okay thanks thank you councillor chair councillor grant i quick question so um when the at a previous council meeting the design was reviewed and there was a lot of feedback from the public and um a few of the councillors with regards to the bridge design um is this design it was kind of like it was brought to the public after the design was finalized but there was some question about that is this design finalized and is there no consideration about the the walk bike ability on and adjusting the number of lanes so the bridges are next item but i'm happy to answer now or but let's later i'm just going to make that that point so councillor grant i think we're going to hold that question into long that agenda item please okay i'm sorry that's okay that's an issue councillor carpenter and i believe you said it can be clarified um i'm wrong i am reading these actions or at least this current action and actually i'm reading the second action to authorize expenditure of money no matter what the design is i mean is that so he's uh whether it's six lanes or one lane we still have to have these maintenance agreements am i correct that yes or no matter what the intersection looks like we still have to have the maintenance agreement because we are basically asking the state and the fence to pay for it effectively no matter what we design which is we'll come at a later point correct city council still needs to authorize the final concept so when we bring to these we're only agreeing to letting the state that's paid for it and to continue the design process that will give you all the additional answers that you seek okay and so uh this is not binding us into a particular design and will enable us to have that conversation more fully at the council on monday and stepping back a minute we since whatever 2019 we have committed to fixing that intersection and that bridge and and we're meeting with it so this is just part of saying we we agree to fix the intersection and we agree to fix the bridge or participate in having it fixed though within the general terms line in the finance maintenance agreement and uh we fully understand that we've had very productive conversations with our state uh and other uh partners uh city winewski and the bike ped advocates as well and you know we aren't done yet but we have cooperative discussions and progress and i am very confidence going to land us in a better place than we showed you originally just it's a long time but it's what looks like i mean the same discussions i mean it's sort of a parallel process so they are approving winewski is not a partner on the intersection which is the one of ours yet uh uh in front of us but they are bringing forward to their city council i believe next monday as well their finance maintenance agreement bridge good okay so back to that and with the intersections i know we're coming with them so let's uh i believe i've already lost track we had a motion on the intersection uh so on that question is there any further discussion or questions on the intersection i see none uh all in favor in favor by saying aye all right all those name hey motion carries unanimously now moving on to the bridge item 4.6 is the burlington winewski bridge finance and maintenance agreement acceptance not to read the rest of that we're on to the bridge anything further from our presenters on the bridge reason yes um this one is a little bit different so the city's uh both burlington winewski state of vermont um and with help with the ccrpc the chitin county regional planning commission applied for a race grant in april of 2002 race grant uh i don't remember the acronym for that i'm sorry 2022 okay i know these things they might um we applied for a race grant heading which is a replacement of various different federal programs but it's for larger scale projects five million to twenty five million dollar projects um so we applied jointly we were successful with our lord and the um agency of transportation graciously agreed to continue that funding so the total cost of the bridge is somewhere between 60 and 73 million dollars under its current estimate for replacement um the race grant secured about 25 million of that with our local match race grant is an 80 20 so 80 federal 20 percent of other funded to be able to make the local match that portion is made up of e-trans saying that they will agree to participate in this cost using state money state tax money to be able to put in 10 percent and then asking that the remaining 10 percent to be split between the two communities because we own this bridge 50 50 with the city of winewski um so burlington's share of the race grants and all of the funding for the project is five percent so v-trans having access to other structures which is bridges replacement funding said that they will cover that gap between the 25 to the 60 or 73 million dollars with state bridge replacement money um keeping the same splits that our race grant had so that is very advantageous to the city of burlington and city of winewski who own this at 50 percent if they chose to not participate um we could be on the hook for a lot more than just five percent of the total cost but that is the difference of this agreement versus the one you just heard about this one the city is on um is being asked for five percent of participating costs in addition to whatever non-participating costs that we have non-participating costs are specific just to the city of burlington we do not bring that into the split so when you ski we'll pay for their non-participating costs just contaminated soils is usually what we're finding burlington will pay for our contaminated soil costs for whatever's not on our side to speak to where we are in our public process because i do think it's important and it has been asked so since we were at the council in january of this year we've had probably a half a dozen meetings with bike walk orientated groups within the city of Burlington as well as the city of winewski our last meeting that we had in march we proposed an alternative configuration to the bridge cross section widening the downstream side which is the western side from 12 feet to 15 feet to allow for dedicated bidirectional bike facilities and a six foot pedestrian space five foot pedestrian space so five five and five this was a fairly well received compromise with the advocacy groups which included local motion members of our bike council members from winewski's thank you maddie pedestrian advocacy they call uh i can't remember their where acronym um so like but that's it was an interesting one that i can't remember uh as well as a hierarchy i'll never all at this last meeting in march where we did come to conclusion at the end of the meeting with the agreements upon uh pursuing that cross section that comes with a caveat that was a cross section that was not checked during the scoping study it does widen the bridge by at least a foot and so we're not quite ready to bring that forward publicly until some more due diligence is done to ensure that that can still be accommodated in the very limited space there's a direction that v-trans the city of winewski and the city of Burlington all agreed to pursue as the final concept assuming it can fit so that's where we are with our compromises on our improvements the bike head allocation the vehicle lanes of the bridge still stay the same it's still the same allocation of four lanes the width of those lanes is not able to be determined until about two years from now when we get our proposals from our contractors being a design-built project but that does still require city council authorization so the decision will not be made without city council thank you Laura any questions or discussion from the board anyone ready to make a motion i know these are long motions but i do appreciate it so and we'll come with printed copies for everyone so that you can read easily next time these are the one we want to make sure it gets right councillor was that a hand councillor all right go for it please i will move to approve recommend that the city council authorized the director of public works to execute the m0449 standard finance and maintenance agreement federal aid projects Burlington winewski bf raise two from the mont agency of transportation for design and contraction of the winewski bridge and the funding split of this project being 80 federal 10 state 5 percent Burlington and 5 winewski and i also will approve and recommend that the city council authorized the chief administrative officer or their designee all necessary budget amendments to transfer some funds to them from the above reference funding sources has needed to pay the above reference project expenses and f1.4 and overall project budgets as further detailed in attachment to as the motion is there a second second by councillor parker any further discussion that's okay maybe just explain so five feet five feet for the two bike lanes and then five feet for pedestrians and this is that separated space between investments in the cyclists and between each each side of the biking as well or like in terms of it would be um it's still a flat cross section it would be 15 feet allocated with striping and designation that it is not protected by space and protected pedestrian space separate from each other has that been considered right it has very much been considered um and reviewed with these different advocates to go through several different meetings and ultimately they they did conclude and agree with the shared space but designated with arguments to start is the vehicular space separate yes keep your other comments before we move on to the question try and provide language over there sorry can't have another thought uh maybe yeah so it's it's been considered just like making that the pentagon part a little bit higher um I mean I imagine I wouldn't add that much in trucking costs just that like separated created to help people I mean uh Americans don't you know Americans do a terrible job of like staying in pedestrian versus bike lanes and like just making it safe for both groups would be I think important what you just do do not do all staying in their lane however we did have some national experts come in and they studied bridges from a lot of different communities in these pedestrian spaces and it's almost the fact that we don't have enough people using these spaces to want to encourage people to stay in their lane um we did heard I think that last meeting so that bit that comes from that um consultant we can make available I think it's it's really enlightening information it's information being a aid of a minor I didn't have um but really they were they were finding that uh if there is the volumes there people will stay in their lanes if there's not the volumes there then have made this flexible space is really helpful raising it up is it's challenging um that it creates an edge that's going to have people drop off it's incredibly hard to maintain and ultimately for our sidewalk tractors that fall off these curves because it is a narrow space we risk overturning the sidewalk tractors which has one other question is the pedestrian pedestrian space going to be on the river side because I guess that would be important because you don't want the pedestrians looking over the edge in the bike lane yeah that is how we had sketched it um I do think that's how we'll find that we want to convict them yeah these design ideas are all tentative at this point and part of the challenge is working with we need to understand their future build out of their network is their network is not as developed as ours at this point so we have a motion on the floor and also to remind you that council will have more discussion um not only soon but also later uh as we continue to do this um build design that's not the right term but build design process going forward so more time to dive into the details so I appreciate this all right so the question on the floor is uh to accept the Berlin Community Bridge Finance and Maintenance Agreement uh I have a follow-up question all in favor indicate by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you very much Maddie Mora and Jacob do you think this is gonna stay in the seat all right item 4.7 is our next item it's the authorization to exit a contract with Halem thank you I see ads for supervisory control and data acquisition scotta system upgrade at the water plant dpw and water resources thank you JV for the introduction folks who are at the table great I'm division director Megan Moyer and I also have our risk and resiliency engineer uh Steve Wright with us and they're gonna take it off just gonna say a couple things so Steve's been with us for I don't know for how many years now uh in water resources forever and one of the really important things that the council supported was two years ago when we knew that Steve was going to be approaching retirement was to create a succession position for him and put him in an effective closet and have him focus all of his efforts and energies on building resiliency at our only water plant um and really excited to be recording in progress for his time to replace it so we we've done a number of upgrades over the years and uh one of the last things that we're trying to do here we did a full upgrade in 2010 just 14 years ago and before that hardware and software starts to fail figured it's time to migrate to a new new system in 2020 probably none of you but some previous counselors have approved the start of an upgrade to the two plc of the brains of the of the control system that we use and what we're trying to do now is move on to and complete the rest of the pieces of the puzzle and uh so what you have in front of you we did a little history to give you a background of of the the whole plc in this case system we knew given the dollar figure and we wanted to ensure to you and to the public that that we had the best possible company or companies to do this work for us we put out a request for qualifications it was publicly advertised on the city website they got two proposals back one from Halom ICS which is a local company in south berlington they've been doing work for us for 24 or 25 years and we also got a proposal from another company out of Mesa in Arizona and we reviewed the proposals we had a scoring system and Halom ICS they scored very well um and uh it went far better than the company out of Arizona which really doesn't know nor our start equipment nor our hardware or software sort of stuff we worked with Halom to uh get two phases like phase a and phase b uh put together for a final replacement of our hardware and software and uh what we're proposing to do it's to just to move ahead that we we've got the total dollar figure right for both the phases and we want to do phase a in this fiscal year we have the funds for it and then uh do the rest of it fiscal year as as funds allow them they can talk about that and all of our contracts do have not appropriation clauses so for some reason if we were to have funds approved for app y25 it would be allowed to pause on that push in the contract but for efficiency we are asking you to approve the full contract um thank you are there any questions from the board motion oh motion i i love that all right motion um that's all right yeah uh to prove and recommend that the city council authorize the director the department of public works to award a contract to Halom ICS for up to a hundred ten thousand dollars complete the scout upgrade scope at the water plant subject to the final review and approval of the city's attorney's office councilor canis there's second so that my councilor borough getting for their discussion see none i'll call the question all in favor say aye and you opposed nay she carries the animals like you thank you moving right along so the next item seems often been working on i forget what we're calling the list the uh all the different ways that things could go wrong which is a very scary list that we review and uh one of the things that came up uh is going to be addressed um by the next item um which hopefully we get points for having pictures in this memo my word vintage vintage oh that's it that's it oh that's vintage probably not so uh one you know one of one of the jobs that one of the the uh directives of my new position here is to uh identify and try to eliminate single points earlier and uh as Megan said earlier we've only got one water treatment plant we have a number of finished pumps that pump the water out in 210 miles of distribution pipes so that you all have clean safe drinking water at all your homes but there is a situation where all the pumps are in one particular building and so if there was a problem fire or something like that right then we wouldn't have any we wouldn't be able to pump when you weren't having water uh and so we have some older pumps that were put in in the mid 80s uh in the treatment plant itself not in the pump building next door they haven't been used since the early 90s because we didn't need them and now we're like we think we want that we want to reuse them so we pulled one of them out we evaluated it it's worth rebuilding as opposed to replacing it with a brand new pump it's a fraction of the cost of the new pump and water and uh what we're trying to do here is we went out uh we had one of them evaluated by local company said yeah it's worth rehabbing it we agreed with that um given the dollar figure we couldn't just give that give the job to the company this local company so we went out to vid and uh we received three quotes uh the low bidder ended up being responsive bidder ended up being a company called corrosion products and equipment out of massachusetts on springfield by night blue yeah they they we checked them out when they had client references they've done pumps these are big pumps 350 horsepower 41 60 it's a very exciting day with cranes yeah the picture yeah two of these pictures are from megan's office window actually you thank you for funding but uh this company has got a lot of experience doing pumps of this size so we have complete faith in that and we're certainly asking you to uh agree to help uh don't for us to go ahead and rebuild them uh there's three of them and again because of the time besides the project we're proposing to do one of them now it's fiscal year and then the other two next fiscal year as funds and that's funds for me thank you Steve any questions from the board because of our little thank you um i yeah i had a question about are f5 to 7 are they the same as f1 to 4 they're just no they're all different we have different size pumps depending on the demand so so uh f1 and f2 and f3 f1 and f3 are 500 horsepower at two is 400 and four is three 50 and then these three pumps are all the same size but we try to we try to change we we over the time we put in different size pumps so you run you know in the winter time the demand is down you use the smaller pump and you also put in uh variable frequency drives provides speed control and save energy so my question i guess was that's as helpful but my question is why have these pumps not been run since uh what was it 1993 or something and why wouldn't we just as part of a regular rotation very good question yeah so excellent question so many years ago uh we the EPA required um did all the treatment plans have enough what's called disinfection contact time in order to have your your disinfectant in our case chlorine enough time for it to inactivate not only the bacturated viruses that may have made it might have made it through the plan but also the protozoans like giardine and cryptopspirinine and so one of the things that we did is the clear well that these pumps are in we connected it to a different clear well and baffle them all and we are contact time so that kind of precluded needing these these are not going to probably be used day in and day out it's good because because of the whole contact time but uh we plant they're they're going to be used in times when we need to take a clear well down in order to inspect it clean it do any other repairs to it so you do anticipate using them though we will be exercising yes yeah we will be exercising you don't you don't sit and wait to sit in for years and hopefully you push the button then it's gotta go because right and we've been doing more of that under Steve's guidance with all of the equipment and making sure that we're exercising things right early and you know capturing is something wrong with the pump before we actually need it um lots of months of work it's being put into making this place better and making sure we're using all of our parts and pieces that's what you want to add something I think it's important to know the quick conversation about the clear well there are parts of the plant that this these pumps will benefit our ability to continue cleaning and improving parts of the plant that are in the essential train now the boat with these pumps give us more flexibility so this plant hasn't received capital upgrade in 40 years that is beyond its normal reinvestment time so really this work is to get additional time out of it so that we have enough time to plan for the generational upgrade that will be coming and we did represent in the we tried to kind of foreshadow done done in the memo that we're going to be putting out an RFQ to hire a water treatment plant engineer who'd be coming in and helping us sort of do a modernization study for what what does need to happen looking at all the potential flow changes potential water quality threats you know the world that we live in now is not the world the last time they rebuilt the plant in the 1980s you know interestingly this winter we've been seeing higher turbidity levels because of the flooding so climate change may play a role and so we might need to speak the technologies that we're using or at least have a plan for if x y and z happens how are we going to do it because we don't have a lot of space at the waterfront unfortunately so we're going to have to be creative. Counselor Tane? Thanks and would we need all three to back up like temporarily replace the three Germans? They're only one or two you know to like I think you said two two for sure and then one as a backup case one of them ends up being down for a few years again we're going to need you know building two to meet typical low yes I forget how much one you said one produce like three one do four four million gallons per day our average annual flow is just uttered four million gallons today one will do four but then depending on time of year you need a second one to run in parallel um yeah unless we do some sort of conservation notice if we're in a real of a situation so then third but not going to be a backup yeah but they would all be exercised right so that any one time we're not going to let them let what happened to them before we're sitting there and seizing up happen again. I just want to add as we think about how the city will change the next 40 years um we have a lot of other things happening to our city that will maybe change the demands on our water system and what we not only find it but people and um densifying what else might be happening in the future so the board of finance 40 years from now hopefully will be set up for success. Any further questions or discussion from the board? I'm sorry Travis. I know it's in the memo but just in terms of your expectations that this reveal will fit with any generational modernization to come. You speak a little bit more as to what those expectations are based on. How are we how are we sure that this work will not be called or not we're having to do that more generational projects. Obviously uh you know like the the future we can't really say right now the future is going to hold you know whether or not we're going to keep the the plant that we have right now parts of it originate from 1908 original water treatment plant and it's been upgraded over the years. I can't say right now what the future holds is whether or not we're going to continue to work within our existing footprint or if we have to move elsewhere but as long as the treatment plant is where it's at we now we in order to take down a 1908 clear well we need to have this capability. I guess um perhaps what you're talking about the main thing that would affect the main future thing that would affect these pumps would be flows and even with running two if they both do four that's eight mgd that's very much are further out into the future. The the chances that Burlington would get to that level of flow we've been starting to do some calculations. Steve's been looking at our remaining capacity and then looking at the projects that we know are coming and even sites that don't yet have a project but we suspect will become a housing project and making sure that we're not going to be in some sort of major crunch situation really quickly but I think with these three pumps being backup pumps ready being able to run two you'd be able to get up to eight and yeah so we don't have any concerns about this being a misstep for where we may be going today to your question. It does. Thank you. You wrote something about it in there but then water will always be pumped uphill. Yes. Any further yes. I will move to approve and recommend that the city council authorized the director of the department of public works award a contract with corrosion products and for up to $182,500 complete the rebuilding of the water plants three vertical turbine finish pumps subject to final review and approval of the city's return. Thank you council borrower. Is there a second? Councilor Carpenter. Any further discussion? Seeing none I'll call the vote all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. This is six items and apologies to our CEDO friends as the director of the department of public works award. You're the one that tried to smoke it in the middle of that. I know I know because it's happened in board of finance meetings where someone started smoking. I know I was like I'm smoking. I know this is my first time but really it's always been. I have this personal right. It's not always cigarettes. And I know how to buy actually cigarettes. All right moving on to our last item on the agenda. Brian can you win the prize for patients today? Thank you very much. We're on item 5.1 the sale of 200 tertiary and our CEDO director Brian is here to kick off this item. Thank you very much for the records Brian find record community and economic development office. It's really a discussion of a piece of city business that isn't really in our wheelhouse per state CEDO but we took it on a way because the prior mayor saw a real need for the city to grapple with this piece of real estate that has been a piece of city property since 2005. City acquired it as part of its efforts to stand and human resources moved into offices and the city decided it was important to retain this property when the Burlington telecom workout restructure because of the city bank lawsuit for returning 33 million that was owed to city bank. One of the outcomes was essentially brought to telecom was sold to a holding company called Bluewater Holdings and part of that deal was that the real estate assets could be held outside of that transaction the city could retain it so that was a bit of a victory for the city. The goal was to keep the city departments that were operating out of that building in place and not cause disruption. So that was 2014 however the as I identified in the memo the asset purchase agreement the BT eventually execute the city in 2017 made it clear that Burlington telecom is a part of a company that has a business model that requires them to own their properties if you will their real estate they don't they don't lease their properties as a matter of course they operate their network operation centers out of those properties as a result they need to have control of the property they really aren't interested in a lease arrangement and it made sense for them because they don't even we already invested significant resources into creating that network operation center that that continued to be the home of Burlington telecom as a service provider so they put it in the agreement that in 2029 they have really what is kind of referred to alternatively as a right of first refusal it's really more of an option and the difference is a right of first refusal means if if I own a piece of property and Councillor Travers has a right of first refusal if I decide to sell he gets to make the first offer it has to be reasonable has to be market driven but if you have an option he actually gets to exercise that right without whether I put it on the market or not it's essentially with the differences here they have really more of an option and they've indicated they fully intend in 2029 and I think the mayor might be locked down this meeting I figured that out so fast forward to 2029 that would be their their plan would be at that time to acquire the property however today we face at least a million dollars in capital upgrades for the property one is very urgent and it's at least a million and make it slightly more to replace the HVAC system before the cooling season begins in the coming months in addition there's a roof that is at the end of its life I think it's probably sweep through a couple more seasons but not a couple more years and that roof replacement is estimated at between 125 and 190 thousand dollars so it's really close to another 200 thousand dollars of capital improvements and I'll just follow up and say this is where it's a little bit well I'm going to admit it for the city that we don't really do a great job of setting up reserve accounts for buildings that we own we operate them and we take any revenue so if you think of Letty Arena generates revenue from skating and all the other activities it doesn't necessarily go to a reserve account to improve and upgrade Letty same with 200 Church so revenue has come in it has gone to the general fund it hasn't been set aside to maintain the capital assets so this means that the capital means he's been paying the city we've been operating as a piece of commercial real estate essentially for that entire time they pay about I think it's about 10,000 a month to the city to lease that property because they lease the whole ground floor which is really the basement of the property that's where all their equipment is the other ground floor because it's the church street you know this goes way down into the ravines this is an unusual property the church street side is the Community Justice Center payroll and HR and then upstairs is all of BT's back you know office staff so we have this situation we're facing with the need to upgrade the building also fast forward to 2025 at the end if all goes as planned CJC moves out and moves into a brand new building more appropriate more suitable office space at the former BFW which is a Champlain Housing Trust redevelopment it's really exciting it includes space for the veterans and a community kitchen the CJC and then for four or five stories of housing for a lot that's about to I think it's probably gonna break ground pretty soon so that's coming right up as you all know we have very constrained bond capacity we have a high school bond we also have the exploration of the sustainable infrastructure bond so our sort of normal capital allocations are about two and a half million for streets and sidewalks from the streets and sidewalks tax and an amount which varies year to year for other city properties parks projects city facilities fleet all the rest is very constrained and that's limited by our ability to issue annually the borrowing the city does outside of doing a big sort of footer approved bonding so that's that's the reality that we're facing and that's what's driving all the work we've done to get to where we're at now which is concept or the you know we've laid out for you the memo was essentially a negotiated agreement and we wanted to get it on the table and start getting a sense of whether the board of finance and the mayor and council supports this direction Brian are there questions or discussion from the board that's the governor so BT or whatever the fire is committed to keeping that equipment in that building absolutely yeah they just relocated everything out of hopes we should maybe if we want to talk I know there's not many people listening publicly but we should take that discussion into an executive session as Scott Barker has asked us okay and actually I have a couple other questions about the due diligence of the city that they might have done for other real estate possible so let's see if there's any questions to stay able to stay in public session before going into something that is regarding real estate transactions and negotiations that would um disadvantage the city are there any questions questions from you councillor Parker or others that are more on the public scope of things around the building are things that um Brian has spoken to already now we can entertain that in a moment do you have anything more in a public realm also just confirming that the transaction with the ckc is final and they have confirmed and will pay the operating rent for that program out of their own operation that's sort of all a great question um nothing coming to you soon uh as a uh we have a letter of intent that we've signed between the city and um shelter housing trust the details of um the lease are being worked out right now um we have created uh revenue sources not city revenue to fund the fit up of the space which is about four thousand square feet and um there's the fit up and then there's the ongoing rent that we do and um because of the investment fit up it will hopefully buy us a lower rent to the cjc right now the cjc gets it's a great arrangement the city basically says to cjc uh here's your space and 200 church it's 21 500 a year but we're going to give it to you as part of our match it's needed to match the state rents the cjc gets and so that's part of what is in the mix right now um there their increase in rent though will go from that number up to about 60 to 68 thousand dollars annually roughly so it's a significant increase in the way that cjc budget is structured it will require essentially building it into the cost of offering that service and getting that funding from the three main sources to fund the cjc which are all state sources department of corrections kind of general's office department for children families but we're still in the detailed negotiations around how to get that number down from the annual rent but that's they're committed and they've designed a space for cjc to be there and it's really an obligation that you know the current spaces people are sharing offices they shouldn't be there crammed in and they have a lot of confidential discussions going on in spaces that don't have sound attenuation it's a really unworkable space that they're in. Any other questions for the public realm councillor carver different friends? I don't mind I'm already into PT and okay we'll come back to that. I see your hand councillor Cain okay councillor Cain thinking on the public realm and I do see your hand councillor Grant hold on one moment. So thanks the air conditioning replacement is cited as a reason to do this now. I am wondering like how big of a deal it really would be if building didn't have air conditioning monitoring you know how that relates to you know the possibilities of hybrid work for folks that cjc and hr and nbt like the indoor temperature or to go above a certain threshold I I don't see that in like Burlington Vermont as being like catastrophic like the windstone and air conditioning that we're I think there's no AC in probably most most buildings in this city. It's actually not true for office spaces it's fairly standard to have air conditioning here but it's also HVAC which is heating ventilation and air conditioning so it's really not it's about indoor air quality it's about moving the air and now the building adequately it's about ventilation moisture preventing mold so there's a whole bunch in the HVAC that's not just what was that number 1.1 1.2 million effectively replace the HVAC or yes it's at the end of life it'll it won't make it through this this season so it's got to be this and even pretending we could go without air conditioning we certainly can't go without heat in Vermont and this is at end of life like we've said they can't go into the summer and I think even if we were willing to say okay hr you still have to come in cjc like these are not great unfortunately the departments that are there are not great for hybrid they're all people that we really needed the office but come work without ac by the time we get to october we have to have heat we also couldn't do either because bt leases from us and part of the lease deal is they get and building with hvac so he can't take that away from them and expect them to stay in the property and for the equipment that's there air conditioning is absolutely critical so uh counselor grand thank you i just want to make sure i'm understanding um what i'm reading in the documents that were required so according to the deal that was made with regards to the stale between the city and bluewater holdings we'd have to sell them the building anyway in a few years is that correct is that what we did yeah and it's actually i think it's a three-way agreement with burlington telecom or shores the company the parent company uh blue water in the city but that is correct but in in the beginning of the third five-year lease period which is 2029 they would be their option would be effective then so they'd be we'd be obligated to sell to them what are we making up on the current lease or are we right right we're not a year yes um the current lease their payment as ceo shat just confirmed is 120 000 a year is what they pay what's do you know what market rate is um you know i mean that's after we start to get into some details that we'll share with you in you know the appraisal process they look at these issues of market rents and comparable properties it's it's pretty close to right around there it's on the low end of market because it's you know our office space is classified as class a and class b and because of this space it's called class b okay thank you thank you councillor gran are there any other public facing questions before councillor trappers i just wanted to briefly direct your clients i think that's in the public basic level indicates that if the board of finance is supportive of this that um it could the purchase agreement could be come before the full council that aren't meeting on six yeah does that yeah timelines don't work for the expected very much so we can work in with the um city attorney's office on a specific agreement in case this looks forward we're ready to go part of what was driving it is the you're going to go out to bid i mean if if this were to happen bt before they own the property would go to bid and pay for the improvements so the city would not be paying for the improvements with the expectation that the closing because we have a signed agreement would happen if the city decided to not basically to back out of that uh we would owe them the cost of the improvements that they paid for so that's okay with that board of finance are we uh do we have questions where should we think we should be headed into executive section for bian it's time for me to how to pose this question but i'm not immediately concerned about the operations bt i'm curious around the discussion of that whole block and what has what's thinking has happened around it you can advise me whether you think that's effective level or not i think that's okay and when you say that do you mean uh essentially the parking is around this building yeah i mean it seems like an underdeveloped site and so um whether we're part of it or not part of it um i don't know if that matters it just seems like a pretty undeveloped site and i'm more curious has this is a more generic question has this explored other options um that means we can restart two hours i wonder if we're at two hours or maybe i can ask you this all i am just are we on the other hand and we don't know the parking lot i get that but sort of big picture sure what is selling this or not selling it how does that relate to what's happening around it yeah sure 20 plus years ago our office and planning zoning at the time pursued what was called a residential high density zoning or related district to allow for several properties and that was one of them to go considerably up over what was allowed before and that took a long time to get through kind of two years to get through the process and it was not just for the plan but it was that was a mill processing facility as you know facing windows the avenue and then behind it was all trucks were coming and going constantly um and so that whole starts with land that goes from the bt 200 church and all the way down to the building at the corner of maple is owned by a partnership of local people who actually one of them lives in the plan because they renovated and added on to that building i think with the movement of the ravine sewer that was the biggest barrier to development they're going to probably come forward with something coming years don't have any specifics but um i saw her not that long ago the owner what the owner isn't she said that definitely it's the plan at some point so that would be a private transaction with a private developer and that they would you know look to do what's market it's feasible the marketplace yes i mean yeah that's a future development opportunity for sure further questions of public facing i want to remind the board that we have to be very diligent to get the bar to go into executive session that it has to be very defined to our real estate related question that would disadvantage and if we fear out of that i'm going to have to take us out of executive session so this is really last call for public and i'm done after one year i was in the second leg um tonight uh i think councillors asked about whether this would be ready to come to council the idea would be to bring to council for it's the 29th year regular meeting is it the 29th is fortified with the finance only okay um so 15 i think they'd like to break the that's um that would be where we entertain an executive thought we thought it would make sense to do an executive session because it's a full council council right well 15 is the next one next is the following i mean yes so next one later we have a draft agreement because we've engaged with eric attorney's office and it's i think it's pretty close if it's not final but it's ready he's he all of his changes that he wanted have been incorporated we can be ready to bring this at the council meeting on the 15th or following at the meeting on may 6th that's the problem um i would i would just add just another conversation and since we there's probably other councillors who aren't here tonight and want to weigh in on this then we had one executive session where everybody could i would tend to agree i think that's would be advantageous for just frowning off the conversation and making sure that we are uh looking under under rock i don't know what we're talking about rocks anyway i think that would be a more productive use of our time at this conference i appreciate that that's great i agree that would work for us to be ready for that if it's the 15th we're ready if you can't do it the 15th because they look at if you have space on an agenda i mean we were planning on looking you know so we can it make it work i think as you perverse of our colleagues the council to the extent it's possible and confidence to share a copy of any you don't see it in the meeting absolutely yes so i'm anticipating you'll get feedback from some folks wishing that they had seen a copy that's in advance such that they had an opportunity to bring comments to executive session and given the tight timeline here and the fact that they likely wanted that same opportunity but it's an all possible to share i mean i'm okay sharing it if it turns off the sales that's okay for a month i just you know we've heard of this feedback from other colleagues about these events and i anticipate we'll hear that same feedback uh on my back so is it customary to ask the other party if they're okay with us sharing it as long as it stays a confidential document yes right that's customer okay yeah i guess just just a suggestion nothing no reason not to get it in the hands of those of you who have to deliberate on that so yeah yeah and and facing portion of this presentation for the meeting on the 15th i think that that would be helpful as well and to have it not just embedded in an executive session motion um it could be a brief presentation but i think we're very helpful for the public here through the special circumstances that are leading you to the recommendation that we should spell assassin and that's typically how we would do it is a quick couple of slides and some talking about the highlights and then go into a quick discussion okay so great okay with that is there any other further discussions before this item yes we have no motion we have no action needed on this item so we at this point thank you brian very much we have a prize for sitting through the board of finance to get there and with no further business the board of finance is adjourned at 736 yeah thank you very much