 heard there. But thank you all for coming. As people come in, we'll just keep promoting them. We're gonna start off by just saying hi to everyone and we can see you all on the screen. So feel free to turn your video on if you're comfortable. If not, that's okay. Just like every other meeting, you can raise your hand or unmute yourself to ask a question when it comes time. We're gonna start off with announcements. So Carol, I believe you wanted to make an announcement about the voting project that we're working on. So feel free to do that now. Sure. And I guess as sort of an elder, I also just want to say I'm so glad you're here. It's been a hell of a week. It's actually been a hell of four years, but I just really wanted to make note of today. Thank you all for all your part in what you do for our community. I think it's times like this that we need to really remember the energy and the commitment that each of us is giving in our own way and how much we value that from each of you. So thank you so much for all that each of you does. And I know that this time is probably wearing on you like it is on me. So hopefully we'll do okay and we'll be in a better place certainly in a week. So it's good to have you here. Thank you. So Anna is our representative to the All Wards group that is working on planning mayoral forum hopefully pretty soon. Hopefully the first or second week of February. It's going to be a zoom event again. What what Odin Haji, who is our school board commissioner and Ward 8, he and I with others, including Hannah, are working on providing again an avenue for non English speaking or folks who are more comfortable in their their native language that's not English. We're working on ways to publish and have them participate in that that forum so that they can ask questions and listen and be part of it live. So we're working on that. We have asked each of the NPAs if they would support us again as they did in October and our steering committee voted to do that. So our thanks to wards one and eight for your contribution to this project and keep keep up to date. It will let you know when the date is set so that you can be part of that when when that occurs. So thank you. Okay, now we're going to go into the speak out section. So if you have something you'd like to speak on just physically raise your hand or indicate it in the chat. Let's go David, then we'll do Cindy. I thank you for recognizing me. Actually, I have two announcements if I can do two and be better to do two at one time. The first one is that I'd like to let everybody know I've been the representative from the ward one NPA to the Colchester have transportation study that's been going on. And there was a public meeting that took place on Monday night this week. And so I just wanted to update everybody as to what took place at the meeting and where things are heading. The meeting was sponsored by the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission in conjunction with Burlington Department of Public Works. Now they have a project team that's been developing alternatives for the past year about the Colchester have corridor and how to develop, you know, sustainable and safe transportation. So it's really about building a vision for the future. The project team, as I said, has been building these alternatives and has done a lot of work. There's an advisory committee. They've been meeting with local businesses such as Campus Kitchen and other stakeholders such as the fire department. So it's in over the it's slowed down a little bit because of COVID. But over the past year, they've really come up with some pretty refined alternatives for the corridor. So just to be clear that the study doesn't mean that this project is going to be implemented immediately. It really is about offering a direction that the city would pursue. So this last Monday night, there was a meeting of 33 people from the public that participated and there were eight members of the project team that were there. As I mentioned, there are alternatives that we're looking at as to what is the best way to achieve safety and improve the corridor over time. These alternatives were compared on cost and criteria such as cost, impact, safety and other benefits. Now within this short time period here, I can't go into all the details about, you know, what these alternatives are. But one of the things that was kind of nice about this meeting is they gave the participants an opportunity to they pulled the participants on how they felt about about these alternatives. And I can say that there was a strong preference to create raised and separated bike lanes for the Colchester Ave corridor. And there was also a strong preference to preserve some on street parking in the section of Colchester Avenue between East Ave and Greenmount Cemetery. The other element and one of the major elements of the study is taking a look at the intersection of East Ave and Colchester Ave. And once again, there was a strong preference. That's a high crash site at that area. And one of the reasons the high crash site is because East Ave doesn't come in at a perpendicular angle to Colchester Ave. And so there was a high preference to be able to better align that intersection, certainly with signaling and other things that would make bicycling and pedestrian more safe. There's also a proposal to consider a roundabout for that location. So these are there was kind of preferences for both those things, the aligning, the intersection and or supporting a roundabout for them. So at this point, the study team is going to reconvene next month, the advisory committee will be coming back together to further review these options. And the ultimate aim is to get a preferred recommendation going to City Council. Now, so to this group, what I would recommend, this is actually kind of an important piece of an important time to have input. One of the things the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission has done is there all of these documents are on the website, but of particular importance, the presentation that was made on Monday night is there. And there's also a video. So if you don't want to download a presentation, you can actually watch a video of the presentation. So if you go to the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission website, look for the Colchester Ave, bikeways, parking and intersection safety. You can either download the presentation or view the video. And what's most important is, if you have opinions about what should be going on in the corridor, send an email into the project team, and all that information is on the site, because they're going to be collecting public comment till January 25. Also, I'm happy to talk with anybody, any of the neighbors about the project, if you'd like, my email is dqually at me.com. And I guess I'd encourage you to check it out. This study is really going to set the stage for Colchester Ave development for many years to come. And your opinion will make a difference. So it can help the neighborhood and help the plan. So that's the Colchester Ave safety study. The other announcement I wanted to make is that I'm also involved in working with the old East End. And we've we've come together as a neighborhood to start really offer some winter activities at Chimanska Park. The Burlington Parks and Recreation have completed their renovation of a barn there. So it's actually going to be available for public use. We're going to be able to open up the barn on some Saturdays, January 30, the 13th of February and the 27th of February. And we're helping to sponsor in a COVID safe fashion, outdoor activities. So there's going to be a story walk for kids. There'll be some sledding and cross country skiing and snow showing. We've created a walkway through the woods. There's going to be some nature trails and nature walks for people to go on. We'll have some music. So all of this will be socially distanced activity. And it's just actually we've got a grant that we've been working with from the AARP Vermont, as well as the UVM Office of Student and Community Relations. So we thank them. And we just hope it's, you know, this has been a tough year, as we said in the beginning, and maybe this is a chance to be able to kind of fight the winter blues, and come together in a COVID safe fashion as a community. So you'll see some postings on front porch forum. The events are listed there. We're also looking for some volunteers that can help with signage and preparing for the events and helping to staff the events. So any support that you're interested in providing would be great. And those are my two announcements. Thank you, David, so much for all your work. Yes, thank you. Now, Cindy, I think you were in speaking order for speak out next. You're muted. Yeah, thanks. I have like David, I have two very different things that I want to raise. One is about the speed levels on East Avenue. This is a chronic thing you've heard me raise this before, probably hear me raise it again. I would love to have DPW and the police department respond, hopefully at the next NPA meeting, about the concerns that a lot of my neighbors have asked me to raise regarding the really high speed levels on East Avenue. And we'd also like DPW to respond to the petition that we put in several years ago now to request that there be traffic calming on East Avenue. We don't know what's happened with that. We'd love to hear more about that. So that's the first thing. Second thing is much more positive. And that is that I just put in a little free pantry and library in front of my house, 166 East Avenue. It's doing wonderfully. It's lots of fun. Encourage you to check it out, make contributions, take stuff if you find stuff that you could use. And spread the word because it's I'm hoping that it'll be a way to get food to people who could use it and reuse things that would otherwise go in the landfill. Thank you so much. And that's really exciting. Thank you for putting that together. And Celine, I think you were up next. Great. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say hi. I think I know actually almost everyone here. But I'm Selena Colburn and I'm the representative for Burlington Student in 64 District to Legislature along with Brian Cina and just wanted to give a really quick update and say the legislative session 2021 legislative session started last week's on a fairly dramatic day last Wednesday, actually was the first day of our session. And I just want to make myself available to the folks. And I'll try to come to these meetings when I can, but can always make it but want to make sure that people know that they can reach out to me that I'm happy to come for, you know, and be scheduled for more time. And I'm sure the same is true of my district mate, Brian Cina, if you'd like to hear more from us, and just give a quick update to say that, although it's actually not typical to have taken action right at the start of the legislative session, we did take a couple of actions in the last week. So we passed a resolution on the second day of our legislative session actually calling on the president to resign or be removed from office. And that actually had quite broad tripartisan support in the Vermont House and Senate. There were a handful of folks who voted against it. But we passed that kind of immediately after the attack on the Capitol. And then this week, we passed a bill to ensure that municipalities could have some flexibility about how to conduct their town meeting, day work and necessary votes and a little bit less important for Burlington, because we have, you know, we tend to we vote at the ballot box. But as you know, around the state, there's a longstanding tradition for many communities of meeting in person to do things like vote on town and school budgets and things like that in town meeting day. So we created some alternatives, as well as built some capacity, and there'll be some funding available from the Secretary of State's office to ensure that people can get ballots mailed to them. So we took some pretty swift action there. And yeah, just looking forward to see what the last rest of the session brings. And really happy to connect and work with all of you. Whenever there's interest at your end to do so. Great. Thank you. And does anyone else want to speak during speak out? Seeing no hands will go forward. Next is our council update. So whoever wants to go first, feel free to jump in. Yeah, thank you. I'm happy to go first. So I guess first thing, I don't know. I don't know how much conversation or dialogue there's been about this, but I guess I just want to make sure that we at least mention the King Street fire and the tragedy that happened there. And I think we're also waiting for the report from the fire department. But I feel like I feel a pit in my stomach just knowing that building that maybe it was also building related, which would be awful. But I think um, yeah, if I guess if folks want to talk about it, if you have ideas on how we can make Berlin 10 safer in that way, do feel free to reach out and I'll speak for Jack and Jane, to myself, Jack, Jane or any other counselors. Yeah. And then, of course, we'll share. I think that report will be public pretty quickly in terms of the investigation. The the what I'm going to talk about today is the is just cause eviction, which I think we already get an update on last meeting whenever that was I think those maybe two months ago. So I'll be brief on that and then I just want to give a quick update on policing and SROs. So the first one just cause eviction. I think folks know that that past the council tend to so it'll be on the ballot in March, which I'm really excited about the CDNR committee spent a lot of time working on this and did a lot of meetings. So it was good. In the end, I got to work a lot with Sarah Carpenter, who's a Democrat over in the New North and and I everybody got frustrated a lot at every point. But we came to something that I think was, you know, had large support and was bipartisan. And I think it's a really good ballot initiative and really hopeful and excited to see it pass in March and beyond so that we can be a just cause community. The and happy to I think I'll I'll send a front porch forum item about some of the details later but happy to answer any questions on that. The other two things is just I guess want to be transparent is I think folks may have heard about the policing numbers and a kind of what the summer reduction means for the force. So Max Tracy, the council president and I have been having kind of offline meetings with Meryl Weinberger and Kyle Dox and the director of police transformation to talk about that issue just so folks know where I stand on it. I'm not an advocate of raising the uniformed officers again. I think there's other workarounds we can do such as having more community service officers who are more engaged in non-conflict kind of activities and community service liaisons. So we're kind of working on a pilot type of activity which I'm not which for the next to kind of give some more capacity in terms of what folks want to see without necessarily having more armed officers in permitted in Burlington. And then the SROs. I'm not going to talk too much about it because I don't want to steal the SRO task force thunder but over the last I don't even know three months now we've been meeting weekly on Wednesdays so just before this meeting to talk about the school resource officers in the Burlington school district and it's been a interesting conversations the SROs are part of it myself as the city counselors and a few various community members including folks from the school and parents and students and I think what we've come to which is maybe not surprising to anyone who knows something about the Burlington school district is that the school kind of needs to look at reform beyond just this just the school resource officers the presence or not presence of school resource officers I think we're gonna the report will say isn't going to be the micro break on if we see restorative justice and bias in our schools and so I'm excited for that to come out although I'm not a hundred percent sure yet what all of the recommendations will be but yeah so those are my updates on some of the things that's happening more in the background as opposed to on the council floor yeah Tom yeah just a couple quick questions one is on the just cause eviction that the ballot item are there differences that have come up recently that were well are there items different on that ballot item than what you described to us I guess in November um yeah so I guess it was more that there was some compromises made around language so there's no like substantive substantive language so there are things for example it does refer to families um so the family exception but it specifically says that it's related to um if the you know if the unit is no longer available for rental so um that was important to me because it's easier to regulate somebody not renting a unit than it is to regulate if a family member is moving in or not so um yeah there were some concessions around that but generally it's the same the big principles are um the expiration of a lease will no longer be um cause for an eviction with the exception being for a few things such as owner occupied duplexes I mean sorry triplexes or smaller renovations and a few kind of more logical necessities does that answer your question yeah I have one other question you said that the uh with regard this is going to SROs you said that the reforms that are needed are going to be greater than SRO are you talking about just school security generally or school discipline or yeah so I am yeah I I don't want to get too far into the task force but um it's it's not just about I guess one of the things is just I guess one of the refrains that we've talked a lot a lot a lot about is how schools are involved in discipline and how that plays out and who's disciplining at schools um so there are some members of the task force who believe schools shouldn't really be in the business of disciplining at all um and then others you know just like looking at other models it's like why are principals who are often the least engaged with the student and know the students the least and have the least chance for intervening kind of the ones who hand out the harshest discipline um our suspension rates and how they tend to be focused on BIPOC and students with disabilities so it's really looking at much more of like the school has a restorative justice approach that they've been starting to implement over the past few years and then just how do we take some of what we've learned and really apply it to the school's policies um so that it's not just a restorative framework kind of in terms of some of the communication to the students and teachers but really in terms of how it works as a as a school. Okay do you see this being mostly a um a city council or a school board or a joint discussion? So this is a report that will go to the superintendent and the school board. I'm the only counselor that's kind of part of this process and then Aden who I'm not sure if he's on the call yet is on that task force as well. Okay thanks. Hi Jack or Jane can go now thank you. I can jump in Jane unless you want to. Go for it. So yeah there's I thought today would be tonight would be a good time to hit on the ballot measures that are coming before you all because usually the February NPA is is used per forum or debate and so this could be our last chance before you all vote to kind of talk about those. Zariah already talked about just cause eviction which is one of the ballot items. Another one of the ballot items that I've talked to you all about is rank choice voting for city council races. So switching to a system of rank choice voting or instant runoff voting where you can rank your candidates in order of preference and the the bottom candidate in the first round of voting if no candidate gets 50% then the bottom candidate is eliminated and anyone who put that candidate as their first choice would have their vote essentially redistributed to their second choice. It's only relevant in races that have more than two more than two candidates which city council races we do see you know three-way races pretty regularly so that's one of the charter change items and I've worked a lot on that and I'm happy to answer questions about that. I know there's going to be a public campaign, public education campaign launching around that I think like in the coming days and a few different groups are working on that VPIRG and rights and democracy and others. So that should be helpful and get a lot more information out to folks about what that system is all about. Another charter change proposal that I worked a lot on is around regulating thermal energy systems in buildings. So buildings are the second source, second leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in Burlington after transportation and the city at least the city council and the administration is really interested in playing in a much more active role in decarbonizing our buildings you know in order to really address the climate crisis and meet the goals that we we feel that we really need to meet in the science demands that we meet which is to really get off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible and we have the goal set of 2030 for that and so we feel that it's going to take a more active role from the city to get there so what this ballot language is is really authorizing language that gives the city the ability to regulate thermal energy systems in residential and commercial buildings including the ability to create alternative compliance payments or carbon assessment fees and if there were any sort of carbon fee that that were to be imposed that would have to go back to the voters again specific to that proposal before being implemented so even if we get this authorization we still couldn't go ahead and do any sort of carbon tax type of policy unless again it went back to the voters um so that's that's kind of just broad enabling or authorizing language and then policy development would come out of that if if voters approve and if the legislature approves that charter change there's an accompanying ballot measure to go with that because i think there was a lot of confusion and frankly really poor reporting from WCAX on that item that really made it out to seem like you know if you vote yes on this we're gonna just start taxing everyone and forcing everyone to to change their heating system you know tomorrow and just a lot of kind of fear mongering about what this this charter change is all about so I worked with with some various stakeholders on another ballot item to really make explicit that any policy coming out of this would really prioritize um low and moderate income burlingtonians and and bIPOC burlingtonians and it's really about supporting the transition off of fossil fuels and helping people get there not about really just not it's not about punishing working people um so yeah those are those are three of the ballot items there's there's two on that thermal energy and then there's one on ranked choice voting and I think we lost your audio jack just at the end or for a lot of it oh no just at the end you're okay no i was just saying maybe if jane wants to speak to some of the other ballot items if or i can hit on a few more jane if you want me to um yes i'm gonna just go with my flow and then i'll try and fill in whatever you missed um well first and foremost i i i just want to recognize and take this moment while we're all together to like really mention that this is a really traumatic time that we're living through and we're all here right now functioning and communicating but it's it hasn't been easy for anyone and i just want to thank you all for sharing this space tonight and um yeah there's a lot going on we've had our record high um highest recorded danger days in terms of the pandemic already in this year so the five highest days ever have occurred the most recently which is not you know comfortable that's not nice knowledge to know and but it's very real and these are our neighbors and our community members burlington and afar and it's it's it's a lot it's heavy and people are losing i personally my mom my mom lost a coworker very close to her this past week it's just everyone kind of is starting to know someone and it's a lot so i want to recognize that and you know last week was horrific and i just i want everyone to know that you know regardless if you agree or disagree with my politics or whatnot you know i'm a human being and i want you to reach out to me if you ever need to vent or discuss these things because it's real and it's heavy and it's entirely valid to want to discuss this um so one thing i do want to update because i guess we we haven't had a meeting for two months now or we skipped the december one so i don't think i was talking about divestment or the outcome of that um in our last meeting so the i introduced a divestment resolution we had unanimous support we had support from the administration um and that was something that everyone voted for i worked very closely and collaborated in a very amazing way with uh councillor caron paul who represents folks in the south end and um that was a really great experience and she has a ton of experience in in accounting and finance and really offered so much to that so i i thank her again for all of her work on that too um and so yeah that resolution just for folks um it's the the burlington uh employees retirement systems that's the burrs board they're required to report to the council us no later than um april of 2021 so in just a few months with an updated summary of the city's investments in fossil fuel companies and also report on a plan to actually divest those assets and just for like if you're a numbers person the board currently holds a little about three million dollars or less than two percent of of its total equities in in fossil fuel assets so that's what we're trying to divest and shift that into a green new deal investment fund where we reinvest in local sustainable initiatives we invest in local entities like burlington electric department and projects that are going to really fulfill our goals here um as as a species on this planet and um so that was that was a lot of work but it really did pay off because it there's a really strong plan within that resolution and that also helps reinvest in uh bipop communities and lower income and and uh folks that identify as such so it was a lot there um and i'm so happy to delve into that um deeper if anyone's truly interested in in going over what this really means but um it is overall an ongoing project but it's an official commitment from the city um and i'll keep everyone updated as we move along through that um another let's see oh so another actually really ward eight centric um so we um as a council authorized um and I believe it was an unanimous CEDO to apply um to the state of remonts downtown program um for the reallocation of sales tax receipts for the um materials that are going to like the building materials that will be um using a project that was proposed by redstone um and this project is I believe it's in south when you ski the corner of yule south when you ski I might be mixing up my streets there's not that many so I'm so sorry um but I think it's right like it's very close to everyone in ward eight basically and it's a five-story building um it'll be 69 units I grilled the person who my contact at redstone about affordability and some things that were are still they just can't answer them because it's really soon or early on in the project um but it's going to be mostly um single units studio apartments and that kind of thing so it's a you know it's a pretty substantial project five unit five I'm sorry not five units five stories is pretty big for for a town our size especially in this like kind of close-knit area so um thought that would be definitely mention worthy um and I think yeah I don't I'm not really sure I feel like you guys hit on all the ballot items but correct me if I'm wrong um can we ask a question go for it Tom yeah um just a couple I didn't I didn't understand one is the divestment piece is that a ballot item or is that just city council action that's a council action and that's an ongoing thing they'll be hearing just through the transportation energy and utilities committee and um yeah that's that's something that um is not going to be on the ballot I just wanted to update you as to where where we are and what that vote was all right not clarify I didn't understand what you said about CEDAO the sales tax is going to go to something and then you started talking about this new development itself yeah so um we just we authorized the um for CEDAO to apply to a program um to it's for the reallocation of like sales tax receipts for the building materials that are going to be used in in the housing project itself so we're not we weren't like pulling the trigger on necessarily like the whole project or anything like that because we still are learning so much about it but we just we just basically voted to say hey you're allowed to apply to this program um oh okay yeah yeah yeah all right does that answer everything on that or yeah but i've got a question for jack too go for it i'll be quick i'm uh no i'm god i'm glad you're asking questions time yeah that i'm trying to just be concise uh and with regard to thermal energy uh what's your thoughts on i mean we in burlington a large percentage of the people live in rental units so they don't own the units that they live in is there do you have a some thoughts on how uh landlords will be encouraged to uh go away from fossil fuels yeah i mean that well first of all on thanks thanks tom for asking these questions i i think it's great um to have a little dialogue because often people don't ask and and i wonder what folks are thinking or wondering um so the first question just going back to what you asked jane about this development project yeah it's basically a state program to encourage development in downtown's and so they give a tax incentive and the city's jointly applying with the developer for that um it's a really interesting project i hope i mean i'm sure we'll hear more about it at future npa's and talk more about it so but anyways so in terms of rental units and um heating systems so it really this policy really couples with another policy that many of us have been working on to require landlords to meet certain energy efficiency thresholds in rental units a lot of these rental units are super leaky um and inefficient in terms of thermal and so that policy is actually moving forward it's been a slow slow grind but tomorrow night we have a draft ordinance before us in the ordinance committee that we're looking at so it's actually that policy is really moving along and i think the two go hand in hand because if you're gonna you know for electric heat pumps for example which is one of the main technologies that people switch over to if they get rid of gas heating um for electric heat pumps you need a good building envelope you need a tight building envelope and so if we can get these rental units better weatherized it positions us for more of those units to be able to switch off of fossil fuels um but yeah this this policy authorization that we're voting on this chart of change authorization would give the city the ability to regulate all residential and commercial buildings and so we we could regulate both rentals and owned or occupied um and 60 percent of housing is rental so we certainly that would certainly be a big part of it i think we need to get this authorization before we really dive deep into into um the the policy development because if we don't get the approval from voters we and from the legislature we can't do it at all time so i don't have a detailed proposal for you about how we would move rentals off of fossil fuels but that would definitely be a huge part of the intention if we get this authorization okay can i i ask just one other really quick question i yeah okay this is talking about the divestment and jane do you know what the current situation with the brolington pension fund is at my understanding is that even as of a couple years ago it was grossly underfunded is it is that the still the status or no yeah so to my knowledge and i uh worked with the chair of that um board and um bob hooper and um just about everyone who like has any involvement with that board and any experience with prior attempts to divest this is actually probably technically maybe earlier last year would have been better but this is the the best time to actually divest because of how the standing of the portfolio currently so that's not underfunded um in in the i'm trying to think of specifically because i did have this conversation and i apologize was back in september um but i don't that i don't i didn't get that inclination from anyone i talked to or you know we went over like like serious numbers for a long time on making this work so um i i don't think that's currently true still okay it was two years ago was that like 77 percent yeah i i don't yeah that's not no i yeah i don't think it is underfunded i'm sorry i wish i could be more specific and i can look more into that and answer your question more thoroughly all right well thanks yeah of course too many questions no never too long thanks um and then salina had their hand up um to ask jane a question and then we'll go to carol and then i think jack had some final thoughts on ballot questions as well yeah thanks so much um thanks so much for your work on the divestment issue jane as someone who also worked on that issue it's been just amazing to see um the shift that's happened uh with your leadership so i really really thank you and i'm just curious um uh you talked about the pension fund board and i'm just wondering but because my understanding is ultimately there really the stewards of the board and would make any final decisions regarding um you know divest divestment or divestiture strategies and so what is the sounds like the two committee is looking at it some but what is the kind of role between the council and the pension board and yeah that's such a good question and i'm sorry if i didn't clearly lay that out or go into detail um so so what's happening with um the the board just kind of for everyone's for transparency sake they're having leadership shift so while they have a new person come in um they asked for more time to be able to do this thorough analysis of where things currently stand and where they see themselves going and what that timeline is going to be so originally it was going to be you know earlier on like february march what have you and we agreed on april for this person to really settle in and be able to be acclimated to the position and also i'm just understanding the pension fund and all of the different moving parts within the the retirement system and um everything everything in terms of money and burlington so um so what so what's going to happen is in april they're going to report back um with with this analysis and this timeline and then that's something that you know we're going to take as a council and also as the tuc committee and the ceo of the city ceo shad and the administration is also going to be kind of in on these hearings regarding this and um you know there's there's going to be we don't really know what to expect it's just going to be a thorough analysis of where things are being invested currently and um what can be taken out of that um but it it overall i mean it's supposed to be a hundred percent divestment so it's just a commitment to we commit to a hundred percent divestment we don't know how long it's going to take obviously it's going to be a reasonable amount of time i mean we all have our personal goals i wish this could happen tomorrow um but you know it could be five years or ten years but it's not going to you know there's going to be some type of reasonable um shift i guess in terms of timeline on that front so that's where we we are at so it's going to be something that kind of needs to be like in a very healthy way kind of babysat in terms of the committee and the hearings and and whatnot and there's going to be different things coming to council through this but hopefully things happen soon and and quickly and and that's a shared goal amongst myself counselors on the other side of the aisle um the board um and you know i we even had a lot of statewide support in terms of folks being interested in this happening sooner rather than later because it's just better for our entire economy so and for people who are going to be really dependent on these pensions once that time comes for them so we want that we want that healthy portfolio we want that i want people to have a healthy retirement amount coming in that's that's a fair thing to want so um that's kind of where we're at with this it's kind of a very fluid thing but there's that commitment great thank you so much and thanks for your work it's really great absolutely thank you carol i think you had your hand raised yeah just very quickly um the redstone development proposal um we actually were scheduled to have um Tucker Helmets make that presentation tonight and they informed us last week that they weren't quite ready so it is on our docket um and hearing your questions and concerns um just flags for for the steering committee that that we will continue to to pursue having them come hopefully soon to give their presentation great um now jack if you have any final comments on the ballot questions feel free to go thanks hannah yeah i had forgotten until you mentioned that um um yeah i think the only one that we didn't get to or didn't mention that's going to be on the ballot for you to decide is around the airport commission and giving Winooski a seat on the airport commission um i think the f-35s makes it hopefully obvious why they would want and in my in my opinion deserve a seat on that board they are very much affected by airport operation so i'm hoping that one will pass pretty easily um and then yeah carol i second what what you said and that's great that they're going to be coming on that project soon okay great thank you all for those updates now we're going to go into the school commission um presentation and updates so adan and i don't know if Kathy's on but feel free to jump in all right great thank you hannah um Kathy's actually not here today she's in another meeting but i um i have a quick presentation that the superintendent gave to us about budget development so i'm just going to be sharing my screen can folks see that okay great um and if there are any questions i'll do my best to answer them and if i can't then i'll provide my email so folks can reach out to me and then i can direct you to um folks in the district so as folks know we started talking about um the budget and right now um we are doing like the purpose and next steps for budget development this is the presentation the superintendent gave and um so the overview is that um we're going to review cabinet ideas for possible reductions discuss surplus and how to use it and update on tax estimates and also provide direction for um the following next steps for budget votes all right so in terms of um the budget benchmarks these are the members that nathan library the finance director provided to us and i'm still um digesting some of this information myself but um in terms of budget uh very much benchmark amounts this is what um was presented to us yesterday so the most important one is the 6.23 percent and um again i uh i'm still kind of new with these um terms and these numbers but i just wanted to give folks the opportunity to look at what was provided to us on uh at the school board and so um the next slide budgetary assumptions baseline growth and pcb relocations is going to equal 5.2 million dollar increase and um so again with the bhs being in macy's uh that's going to cost us 2.4 million dollars which includes rent and related cost plus repayment of fed up costs and also we touched on the btc relocations which is four hundred sixty thousand dollars and um the estimate based on the current locations and a large part of the conversation was looking for savings and some of the things that came up was line item budget reviews so the actual spending spending trends and assumptions and projections and also they requested reduction ideas from principals and directors the next couple of slides discuss those reduction ideas and um the first one is the operating reductions so this is what um the finance director nathan library suggested for the meeting so a total savings one million dollars and um i'm really excited about this next part for the budget additions which is for the increased communication and support for multilingual families they allocated 120 000 dollars for the ELL program which i think is a really huge need in terms of making sure we continue to expand the services for our multilingual students and families and then another hundred thousand for the strategic plan implementation and again if folks have any questions i'll do my best to answer but i'll also provide my email so we can contact respective representatives in the district and the principals and administration the cabinet overall had these ideas for reductions so the three ideas that was presented was to eliminate vacant para positions as well as some central office and department budgets and reduce elementary lunch and supervision budget so these were the three ideas that came up from a meeting that the superintendent had with the with the cabins so altogether they come up to three hundred sixty thousand dollars in total reductions and here's the updated expenditure budget for the physical year estimate and this is the most important slide from the presentation we also talked a bit about the surplus from the 2020 physical year and it amounted to six million dollars in surplus and those were the two points that came out of the the surplus for the for the six million and then here's some information about tax rates and i'm still like digesting some of this information myself but these are the terms that came up from the presentation and this presentation is available on board talks so if folks have questions or further or they need further explanation about anything in the presentation i i can definitely reach out to the superintendent and make sure that those questions are answered so and these are tax variable estimates and we also had a chance to look at tax scenarios um for the current one the current estimate we're looking at seven point one five percent and homestead tax increase and then for education spending growth eight hundred fifty seven thousand so these are some important summary takeaways real effort to control spending and impact on taxpayers as well as although budget increases three point five percent surplus funds have reduced the need for an increase from the taxpayer supported education fund to less than one percent however factors of bsd control result in tax rate increase of six point seventy five percent and so um these were some of the discussions that they have at the finance committee meeting that's going to happen tomorrow if folks are available they can come to ask more questions and this is our budget development timeline thank you i'm i'm more than happy to answer any questions again this presentation is available on board talks and if i if i have any trouble answering any questions i'll be more than happy to provide my email so we can get those questions answered i'll stop sharing my screen all right thank you does anyone have any immediate questions we'll also make sure we get that presentation up in the minutes so you can be directed towards there as well but i'm not seeing any hands so thank you adin for going through that that was really it was really helpful um yeah i i got a text from um from i believe amanda hanaford um who's watching on youtube and what was hoping to ask about the just about the the plan to um you know use the old macy's building and any updates you could provide on that in terms of i didn't i didn't get the exact i'm waiting on her to send me the exact question she had but but yeah um in terms of the uh the macy's building i mean to my to my knowledge we don't really have much updates i can definitely look into that and if there's a email i can forward that to her the information okay all right yeah that sounds good the two of you can maybe connect offline and follow up yeah thanks adin great thank you now let's move on to the uvm presentation so wendy i heard you're going to kick us off on that so thank you for being here tonight yes thanks so much for having us um i'm gonna walk you through a little bit of our spring restart plan for uh testing and quarantine and isolation and things like that and then i'm going to turn it over to gail shampnoy to talk about some of the work that her uh office has been doing with off-campus students so um our spring restart plan is largely going to mirror what we did for fall a large proponent of our success for the fall semester was with a robust testing plan and we're going to have a testing plan that's very very similar to what we did last fall all students will be required to do a pretest um they they uh notify us that they're ready for it and they're mailed a pretest um they take that before they come to campus uvm and the vermont department of health receive those results as do the students and anyone who has a positive test will be required to stay at home um for the recommended quarantine time for from cdc or and until they have a check from their doctor releasing them to come back to campus so the pretest um was really pivotal in helping us make sure that we were not bringing students who were asymptomatic with virus back onto campus um so we're going to be doing that again we will test students once they arrive at day zero test them again at day seven and then all students will be required to do weekly testing for the rest of the semester moving forward um so it's it's very similar um I think we uh learned some good lessons when we put our javis testing center up in the fall we know that we for example have many students who like to test on mondays that's a heavy day so we have um the appropriate amount of staff um for those times and have sort of gotten the testing piece down to a sign so we're feeling very comfortable and and happy with that um in terms of quarantine and isolation students who need to quarantine on campus will be able to come we will have um a dorm space set up for an on-campus quarantine um in the governor's guidance for higher education he stated that students may not return to vermont before january 15th the first uvm students who will be coming back to do their on-campus quarantine will be starting to come back on the 18th of january that'll be a small number of um student leaders etc um and then the following week we'll have more students coming back for their on-campus quarantine um once again we'll have space that's allocated um for quarantine and isolation should students become ill when they're on campus um and we can ramp up our capacity on that is needed so we're feeling confident about that also students will again be required to sign a green and gold promise which as all of you know requires them to adhere to city state and uvm regulations about um their behavior regarding COVID-19 um it's slightly modified this time to reflect some changes that the governor's office made in their um return to campus guidelines um and students will have to go through the process of of signing that again it's not it's not relayed from one semester to the next they need to go through the process of signing it again um we're going to have the same kind of disciplinary procedures which are very strict um if you have a missed test or you have broken a COVID violation um you are subject to dismissal I think everybody probably read in the paper that we had a number of students that were dismissed last semester for not following the green and gold promise in the COVID rule so we're going to stick to that again um we are also going to be practicing a de-densification of our campus we're really um pleased that students can come back and be on campus with us but in order to accomplish that and keep the appropriate amount of distance um and cleaning for students in classrooms part of their coursework will once again be online and part will be in person um we've had some questions from folks in the community about some tents that we're constructing on campus um those are permitted by the city we had them last semester we took them down while students were away and are putting them back up they serve as auxiliary space for students for study I think everybody knows that also that the libraries and other buildings on campus have been de-densified so we have a very small number of students who can be in a library at one time and we need some additional space for students to study and so we've erected some of these tents which are what we call winter weight um they have some airflow in them but they also do have some heat they are monitored and required to have students be distanced while they're in there using them for study space um I want to really thank the city for their partnership with with the university we have been meeting with city um employees and folks from the Vermont Department of Health and Champlain College on a weekly basis throughout first semester we took a little hiatus during December when students were home but those meetings have started up again they've been really useful for us to be able to keep each other informed bounce ideas off one another um and and I want to thank um folks from the city and from the Vermont Department of Health for uh participating with us in that and lastly um before I turn it over to Gail I'd really like to give a shout out and a thank you um to our students because the university has done tremendous amount of planning um for fall semester and for spring semester but without the cooperation and commitment by our students we would not have been able to be successful and I'm really proud of how they've been able to overcome the really difficult challenges that COVID has put in front of them and been successful at learning and uh maintaining safety on campus and in our community so thanks very much to the students um and I'll turn it over to Gail. Thanks very much Wendy and I really appreciate it Carol how you opened the meeting and you were talking about the trauma that we've been going through as a country and I want to let you know that students feel that too and uh we um just our thoughts are out with them and also for the King Street Fire we did have some students who fortunately were home with their families but they were impacted by the fire and we're providing them with resources and support. We did an off-campus survey in November of this year and 1,231 students took that survey and 75% of them said that they would be living in their rental after Thanksgiving recess and before classes start up on February 1st so I do believe we had a good number of students who have been in our community during break. We had 65% of them live in Burlington and we also checked in on financial issues for them so for food insecurity we had 30% of students feeling that 27% for rent and 23% for utilities. That's a little down from our April March survey numbers which are in the 40s but it's still uh it's about um 10% higher than it was pre-covid so we have a lot of students struggling as a lot of other people are as well with financial issues and we do provide them with a lot of support and resources and the Burlington Resource and Recovery site has been a real asset and it's been kept up to date so we make sure that we send that out on a regular basis. Also a lot of mental health issues so when we asked um if COVID-19 has negatively impacted your mental health yes we're 58% and sometimes was 32% and the top three reasons why were stress or anxiety was number one then loneliness or isolation was number two and disappointment or sadness was number three. Most of them as as Wendy alluded to have been paying attention to all the COVID regulations and one example is 99% wear their masks in public so we wanted to check in on them about that. We also wanted to check in about roommates and guests and a high percentage of them do have roommates and guests who had been following all the regulations right now um it's been changed back to you can have guests as it can only be your own household so we're getting that information out as well because of the current spike but we'll keep on top of all the new government from both the state and the city regulations around that and we want to meet the express needs that we found out in the survey so in addition to our our website has say also a list of resources we've been doing door-to-door food drop-offs we did one in Thanksgiving and we now we're doing one with the graduate students make sure that students who sign up get a bag of food that could carry them through at least two weeks and then we have been doing um our off-campus life newsletters been going out if you used to go out once a month it's been going out weekly and again providing resource support students being able to tell their stories to other students about how they got through quarantine or how they're making it their way through uh this this very very difficult time and then we also um are very um concentrating on community connection because of the isolation pieces and so we do give out neighborhood grants and uh as Dave Cawley mentioned earlier we're very happy to support the winter loot events and it's incredible what that group is doing and they have three dates and the amount of work that's gone in and the amount of community that came together to support it so kudos to the old east end neighborhood coalition for all it's doing to develop community and connection in that area of the city and then we're having a snow person contest and that'll take place on isham loomis and hitcock street we did a pumpkin contest and it was such a delight to go on the street and see pumpkins up and down that have been decorated and we gave out prizes and again it's for people to see that uh we're not alone we can be connected we can have some joy during this difficult time and we hope the same seeing all the snow people up and down the streets decorated uh we'll have an uplifting feel to it and then also we're doing a snow shovel pop-up event in on hitcock street we did it two years ago on isham it was very popular we delivered free snow shovels and then hot chocolate and hand warmers and someone who lived on the street when there was a big storm came out and made it more festive so it'll be more festive but covid style of course and for other things that we've been paying attention to when there have been issues in neighborhoods we're finding it successful if we go door to door and leave a little notice of it so when we had open pits fires in the summer people we we don't assume the worst of people we assume maybe they didn't know but the neighborhood asked for our help so we went door to door and after that there were no more open pit fires we had to do the same when people were putting compost in their recycling bins and we went to the neighborhood said that we were asked by the city to help with and after that i checked in with the city and they said they hadn't had that problem after that so we are finding different ways to reach out and connect that have had some good results and we'll continue to do that so if you do have issues specific to a neighborhood just ask us for our help we're happy to get out there and and pass out information and then for incidents and city violations we did in august had instituted an incident report form on our website and there were 110 incidents reported and responded to from our office and those are letters that go that at detail what we learned also reminding people that no one wants to be responsible for causing the death of someone else by not following covid regulations we're really open transparent and honest with our students that we there we are all need to take care of one another and we got really good results we got apology letters we got students who asked us for help managing their household because it was a roommate or a guest they had issues with so i feel pretty good about the response from that and not all of them were students in the summertime we don't have student addresses like we do now and so i always i wrote all the letters to current residents and they came in the mail and one thing i didn't notice too is people are opening their mail so that's another technique that we know that that we can continue to use and the incident report will stay on our site so and i can share that incident reporting form with everyone as well we have a mapping group process where we take a look at all of the incidents in the city that for calls for services and for violations and we work in partnership with code enforcement and with the berlington police department and with several uvm offices to take a look and that comes every week and since from june 1st of 2020 to january 1st of 2021 there were only six noise violation tickets given to uvm students in that period of time we also had three or more calls for services there were 18 properties and i have been addressing calls for services again with letters and contacting landlords and i have to say landlords have been enormously responsive during this time when i've contacted them they said well we'll talk to the tenants we'll put some have laminated the covid regulations and put them up in their apartment houses and we sent them the posters to do that i just feel i've been really really good partners and and it's a desire for the city to be safe and to care for one another and i really feel that in my conversations that i've had with them we also started uvm student ambassadors program and we have 14 students and we have the student government association president and vice president who also joined that group and they helped us distribute over 600 welcome bags in the community to new student residents and it had our off-campus guide so that they were understood landlord-tenant law and they understand city regulations and we also had covid flyers in there as well with those regulations and i just wanted to welcome them and also follow up if they knew who to follow up with if they had any issues off campus and then we are continuing with our ambassadors to do neighborhood community building events so hopefully dave we can get you lots of volunteers for the winter loot events and and also for them to carry out the events that we'll be doing in the community and i will continue to go through our survey off-campus survey results and if we notice problems in particular areas of the city again try to do concentrated outreach and also hope to continue some conversations with the community and economic development office because a lot of our neighborhoods are in transition right now and some have called our office asking for help and wondering what we did to build community in different neighborhoods and i feel like the infrastructure for that let's keep working on that i do feel from a lot of people that some great things are happening with the little libraries and the food pantries developing in all these neighborhoods and so positive and other ways in which we can be there for one another especially with the overwhelmingness of what we're faced with so again happy to answer any questions great thank you so much gail and one day for all of your work does anyone have any questions yeah okay hi gail this is tom hey i think you're doing a great job um my wife and i were somewhat concerned um about what was going to happen last fall and you really just hit a home run as far as i'm concerned um the the student mask they really they've they've they've shamed me into wearing a mask where i i i don't think i really had to when i'm walking alone on a sidewalk but um but now i do thank you tom so and just a comment um from like the student side of it i think that uvm did a really great job at putting out material that was constructive and positive and wanted us to participate in your programs and wearing a mask rather than like shaming um which i think hasn't always been done well in the past so that's a big thank you and good job gail and wendy for that because i know i i would say at least all of my friends have really committed themselves to following covid protocol from uvm and take it really seriously because of that and they don't want to disappoint the uvm or berlington communities right thank you that's great feedback thanks okay thank you both i think we'll move on to tom i think you wanted to report out on something and then we'll move on to the water department presentation yeah let me uh figure out how i can share something here is that visible okay um i just really i'm going to go very quickly i've only got a few minutes i wanted to talk a little bit about green mountain transit that's the bus company that operates out of berlington and actually threw out a fairly substantial piece of the state and just to give people a flavor for what it is what we do and and answer questions if there are any so who we are uh the ccta is a predecessor of green mountain transit it was formed in 73 and then the green mountain transit authority and ccta were merged in 2016 and you can see it the service is uh much greater than than chitlin county including washington frankly granite alamone lamoille and orange counties um we have we do have a board of commissioners and there's a a fair amount of uh buses out there so we have 115 revenue vehicles not all are big buses but that includes micro buses and some other vehicles um you can see we have 180 employees i think out of that um 100 and i think 130 are drivers and maintenance people and uh 950 bus stops you can see it our business is sort of broken down into um urban and rural and here you can see the urban and it's the profiles a little bit different for rural but you can see that this is a service that's financed strongly by the federal government and state with local operating revenues making up the difference you can see here the the total operating expenses for the year that i think ended in 2020 was about 21 million dollars um the types of service provided i mean most people they see the buses driving around the city so those are uh fixed routes there's also commuter links from a number of cities into burlington and and also to montpelier and that's not the whole list but uh those are probably the ones that i'm almost familiar with we also service uh some ADA clients and um there's a contract actually with i believe medicaid to provide a pickup and delivery to doctors appointments and you can see here also some other things weekly grocery shopping trips there's seasonal mountain surface to service to ski areas i think that's mostly stow and sugar bush and then there's myco transit that just started that's a service in Montpelier that goes to the hospital uh in berlin and um GMT actually provides a lot of passenger rides so you can see this is a little bit old the current numbers started to give you a perspective in in the calendar year 2020 um the numbers are way off because of covid so this gives you an idea of what we were doing before covid and where we expect to be um once this ends which i think covid is expected to impact our uh the budget year that starts in july of 2021 um but i'm expecting that the second half of that which would be the first six months of 2022 will be back to something close to normal so you can see here there's there's a 2.86 million passenger rides you can see the breakdown um so it's it's fairly there's a fair amount going on um and i'm not going to go through all this except for i just want to bring something up um and jack you probably would really like this this is the fleet electrification we do as you probably already know we have two electric buses um i think we're pretty new in requesting electric buses and we're they're really in a sort of a shakeout mode there's there's some there have been some uh issues with them but working with the manufacturer to to get through them um the plan i believe is to replace uh fossil fuel buses with electric buses as we can afford it um and also the last bullet here is important and that right now we're in a uh a zero fare uh service mode so for people who are trying to catch a ride from place to place there's limited seating on the buses uh but there are no uh there's no fares at this point and last but not least uh if you do have questions um or if you have ideas about gmt i would appreciate if you can call if you would contact me but you can also contact john more he's the general manager you can see his name and number or his name number and email here um and we're very open to uh ideas and that's really all i wanted to say any questions anyone have any carol yes um and i know it's just i think um jack you've mentioned this sometimes too but um what would and maybe this is opening a huge discussion but what would it take you guys to have um a no fare bus system in as a as a routine i mean is that a goal worth looking at is that even possible how would that yeah it's it's it's a worthwhile goal but at this point uh when we look at our budget moving forward it's we can't balance our books without having fares um but if uh there there maybe it is something that we'd like to do uh but right now about uh 10 of our operating budget is is through fares only 10 yeah wow jack right and carol your reaction is i think exactly sort of the opportunity that we have um the fact that it is such a small slice um i'm involved i'm actually getting on a call tomorrow with um rob kid from the sierra club and there is a push right now at the state level for the for the state to provide um the funding for transit agencies to be you know in order to replace that fare revenue and enable the transit agencies to go fare free and there's actually a lot of movement already um with v with v trans the agency of transportation for the state on you know on doing that for the next the coming fiscal year which would kind of help normalize it post covid so i i think there's actually a lot of hope carol that in vermont that we're moving towards that statewide fare free system i think the hardest is the urban in the gmt um because it's the most expensive but um i do think there's movement and let me know if you're interested in getting involved with kind of advocating for that at the state level yeah i'm i'm very interested uh and yeah i maybe we should have a discussion offline yeah let's do it tom i would love to i would love to okay uh carol that's all i got is there just one more question i'm sorry i don't know that's all i've got i just have a quick question tom um yeah so i know there was some reorganization of routes probably with the idea of trying to increase ridership um and then we had covid like shoved in the middle of all of that yeah um is ridership improved because of the routing or what are we doing to try to increase people riding the bus i think uh well ridership is way down um for because of covid so i don't think that the uh route changes uh i think it's it's really hard to sugar out how those changes are motivating people to ride yeah so um there's there is some that there was a concern and this is it's going to sound somewhat trivial but it i think it it actually is important and that's somehow the the way that the uh bus routes were described when they went from numbers to to color codes was a little bit different and there was some confusion about where buses were going and um i believe that that if it hasn't already been it's going to be resolved by putting out a different route descriptions and um but to be just a backup just a bit yeah the the ridership is way off and um in fact for the commuter buses i mean sometimes there's only a handful of people on them yeah yeah now this just one last comment is that we are doing okay for the fiscal year that ends in June mostly because we got a fair amount of covid money to sustain us through this period and it's not clear but i've got a finance meeting tomorrow where it may come out exactly what uh monies we're going to get out of the second round of covid money so we'll see what that's going to do when we're going to get the money and how that works forward great thank you tom yep thank you for that now for our final presentation of the night it is going to be from the water department so feel free to jump in whoever's presenting on that hi can you guys see the presentation yeah great um so thanks for having us tonight i know that you guys have had pretty jam packed agenda so we do appreciate you making the time um my name is Jenna Olson i've presented to your award a few times in the past on the water policy and programs manager for burlington dpw's water resources division i'm joined tonight by jessica lavalette jess can wave she's the one in the the very bright blue dress uh jessica is our customer care and finance manager um so the purpose of tonight's presentation is just to go back over and give you guys a refresher about where we're at with our rate and affordability project um we did present to the npa's back in the fall of 2019 and as the steering committee may recall we actually had um planned to do another round of presentations in the spring of 2020 actually in march um right when everything kind of fell apart with covet so you know in light of all of the the covet stuff and just you know the financial impact and the um the general upheaval of life related to the pandemic we did put the project on hold for the remainder of 2020 um but we're we're back in action now so we're relaunching outreach efforts this month um we've rebooted the project we presented to board of finance uh the first week of january and are now coming to all of the npa's between this month and next um and i'll go over the the rest of the outreach schedule as we move forward but this is just sort of a general update um i guess just backing up and reminding everyone the purpose of this project it all started in april of 2019 when the city council directed the water resources division to evaluate affordability programs alternate rate structures and alternate revenue sources for our water resources rates now the reason for all of this is that you know that the tension or the reason why we need to even consider financing and sustainability of rates is that you know the tension between our core values is a constant balancing act we need sustainable funding to maintain the infrastructure that is necessary both to provide clean safe drinking water to everyone and to treat and manage the wastewater and storm water before it drains to the lake where our drinking water ultimately comes from but if the cost of service isn't affordable then our rate payers may not have equal access to the amount of water that they need so we have to really make sure that we're striking that balance now the first thing that we really asked ourselves when we launched this project was um you know how much does it actually cost to provide water water service in burlington and you know who's using that water and are they paying a proportional amount of the costs based on the demand that they're putting on our system now our distribution system has to be sized appropriately to provide adequate flow to all of our customers but each customer class is different and they don't all place the same demand on our water system now the infrastructure that provides that base level of demand that's our smallest circle here in this graphic that's just for normal residential and commercial water usage our pipes would be a certain size and the fixed costs for you know the chemicals that we use to treat the electricity the pumps all of those things necessary to provide that clean safe drinking water would be finite but what happens when we add things like watering our lawns and gardens or peak demand when we're all using water at the same time like when we're all doing dishes after dinner everyone's giving their kid a bath at that point we get to that second circle and that's when we see our distribution system has to be that little bit larger in order to provide water for both that base level demand and those extra capacity flows now this final circle the biggest one that represents fire protection and that's how large the system needs to be in order to provide flow for all of the private fire services in the city if necessary now every building has a domestic water service line but almost all commercial buildings institutions and large multi-unit residential buildings who have any sort of fire protection system also require a separate larger service pipe to provide that fire protection now as we mentioned before as the size of the pipes increase so do those fixed costs that are needed to treat and deliver the water so let's go back to the original question which is are all customers actually paying the proportional amount of the cost to provide their property with water the answer right now is no because everyone in Burlington pays the same amount the same rate even though certain customer classes require our distribution network to be inherently larger and they're the ones who benefit from it so I'm going to hand it over to Jess and she's just going to go over the proposed rate and policy changes that we've made and give some general information on you know what what sort of customer impacts can be expected here thank you Jenna my name is Jessica LaVallette and I am the customer care and finance manager for Burlington Water Resources I'm here to discuss our proposed rate and policy changes the changes along with some estimated customer impacts and what opportunities exist for our residents to further reduce their bills it's a fair bit of information and we don't expect you to remember everything tonight so we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have at the end and there'll also be a slide with our project web page contact information and key dates about the upcoming outreach we have six proposed rate and policy changes that are all considered standard best practice within the water utility industry and additionally these changes support our goals of ensuring the affordability of water while improving the financial health sustainability and revenue stability of the funds these changes are also meant to help ensure our customer classes are paying for services in a manner equitable to the burden they place on the system the items in green that you see are adjustments or additions to our proposals made since last march in an effort to mitigate the impact on commercial customers while still maintaining affordability benefits for our residential customers these changes are in direct response to the economic hardship caused by the pandemic so the first one you see here is fixed charges by meter size we are proposing a fixed fee for both water and wastewater that escalates based on meter size beginning with five eighths inch meters up to our larger largest size of six inch this is important because our current rate structure is entirely volumetric which means our expected revenue is based on how much water we think residents in burlington will use in a given year and unfortunately a cold rainy summer or global pandemic can't be predicted in the budget process so incorporating a fixed charge for all meter sizes will ensure a negative revenue for us to count on to provide stability for the funds this type of rate structure is also viewed favorably when we need to borrow money and allows us to qualify for lower interest rates in some cases one of the modifications in green here that you see is the reduction in the amount of the fixed fee charge we were able to achieve a lower charge by modifying the calculation basis along with the target percentage of our cost recovery we move to the next one so lifeline rates here so here we have we currently have a uniform rate structure as jenna may have mentioned where everyone is charged the same amount per hundred cubic foot which is equivalent to 748 gallons the introduction of a lifeline rate allows us to define the water needed for essential life activities as 400 cubic feet and charge less for usage under that threshold which we are calling tier one essential water usage is comprised of activities like drinking cooking bathing we chose a threshold of 400 cubic feet because it's the median usage in burlington and any water consumed above that tier one threshold will be charged at a higher tier two rate now if we go to class space rates here the stream each customer class places on our water system infrastructure is inherently different as we learned so we are proposing different rates based on customer type there are two reasons why it doesn't make sense to continue charging all customers the same rate one as previously mentioned the cost of providing service is not the same for everyone and two most multifamily properties would automatically fall into that tier two rate which unfairly penalizes them by charging more we also see a modification here from the original proposal whereby commercial properties will now be charged the same rate as multifamily properties in an effort to recognize the negative impact the pandemic has likely had on their businesses the irrigation rate we are proposing a higher rate for water use solely for irrigation or cooling towers but have allowed an exemption for community-based gardening initiatives like bcg or the intervail private fire protection charges this change introduces a monthly fee for customers with a private fire service or hydrant which is standard across the country this fee will escalate according to the diameter of the fire service pipe and conceptually goes back to our cost of service analysis where we are paying more to have a water system capable of serving should those properties need to use it one of the changes here is that we have decided to face the fee in over five years which is a change from the original proposal where we had assessed the full fee in year one and the water resources assistance program so this is the change i'm personally most excited about and believe has the potential to make a real difference in the lives of our customers and we're proposing to waive the fixed meter charge for residents of single-family properties who can demonstrate that they are at or below 185 percent of the federal property level there is a whole slide later on dedicated to the details but i wanted to mention it here also that we modified the proposal to now include any senior citizens living in single-family homes along with nonprofit housing developments providing affordable or senior living units which is awesome okay next slide please so what do these proposed rate and policy changes actually look like in practice we can see here now that the fixed charges are assessed on all meter sizes we have always assessed a fixed charge on meter sizes one inch or larger but this will be the first time since 1996 that the five eighths inch and the three-quarter inch meters will receive one so you can see that right now five eighths is zero and it's proposed to move to three dollars and 34 cents a month and on the wastewater side it looks like four dollars and sixty eight cents if we move down to the volumetric rates we can see that the single-family residential volumetric rate was previously charged uniform rate of four dollars and 44 cents per hundred cubic foot but now we have the proposed two-tier structure so tier one or the lifeline rate is for usage under 400 cubic feet and will be two dollars and 49 cents per hundred and then tier two rate will apply on consumption over 400 cubic feet and will be six dollars and 23 cents per hundred the threshold of 400 was chosen because the median usage in burlington and we prefer to use the median instead of average because the median is unaffected by outlier data points and calendar year 2019 54 percent of burlington customer spell into this usage category of 400 cubic feet or less um this rate would also apply to separately meter duplexes and triplexes so if a duplex has a water meter for each unit then that property would qualify for the tiered system but only if it only had one meter for both units that would fall under the multi-unit residential rate which is a midway point between those two tiered rates so to recap all single family usage between zero and 400 cubic feet would fall into tier one and any usage above 400 cubic feet would then be subject to that tier two rate the rate for as we go down the rate for multifamily mixed use and commercial is currently four dollars and 44 cents and we are proposing that it remain the same for all but at a slightly lower rate of four dollars and 36 cents per hundred this does provide some relief because they are typically larger consumers and would actually pay more if eligible for those lifeline rate tiers our previous recommendation did have mixed use and commercial classes at a higher volumetric rate to reflect the cost of providing service but we've decided to for the upcoming fiscal year to leave them at that lower rate to mitigate the presumed negative effects the pandemic was having on those customers the irrigation rate is currently a bit higher than the uniform rate but it will be increasing substantially to seven dollars and 48 cents per hundred this does reflect the cost of providing service and sends a pricing signal signal to conserve water when it uses not for basic needs the wastewater volumetric rate is currently 620 and will be moving to 608 for everyone there is not a cost of service rationale to charge race water rates based on class if we move to the far right column we see that the private fire protection charges are proposed for the first time and do escalate based on the diameter of the pipe these rates reflect 20 percent of the attended full charge as they are being phased in over five years the combined water resources bill also contains two other charges not included on this table storm water has been charged since 2009 and is assessed based on property type with single family duplex and triplex homes being charged a flat fee and all other properties are charged directly based on their actual and pervious measured at the property the storm water rates are proposed to increase by five percent across the board next fiscal year and our water bill also contains a franchise fee charge that we are required to pay to the general fund according to city charter and that is currently three and a half percent of our sales next slide please okay sorry as part of the rate study we did create a model that utilized consumption data from calendar year 2019 to calculate the estimated financial impacts for each account as noted actual bills will vary based on water consumption meter size availability of private fire protection and whether the customer is eligible for rap our typical customer and is indicated by the median volume row there and will they will see virtually no change in their water bill this is because they are now able to take advantage of that tier one lifeline rate and those savings offset the new fixed meter charge if that same customer were eligible for our customer assistance program then their estimated bill now drops to about 15 and 15.7 percent a year our low volume customers at top row there will see an increase due to the fixed meter charge being assessed for the first time although being eligible for rap here also significantly reduces their estimated bill and as we go down the list we see varying impacts on our other customer classes with most increases being related to private fire protection and the storm water rate increase it's important to note that a large increase doesn't always correlate to significant monetary increase as we see in that first example a 15 percent increase is actually only $52 a year just over $4 a month I also want to stress how the pandemic and related stay-at-home emergency order significantly altered consumption trends this calendar year we have seen an average increase in residential consumption of about 10 percent and a decrease in commercial usage of about 30 percent when compared to the previous year so we have developed a customer account impact summary request for folks to fill out if they are interested in receiving a projection of how they will be impacted by the proposed rate changes this will include data from our model along with information about their post-covid consumption trends next slide please we've discussed how the impacts of our proposed changes will vary by customer class and habits but overall we expect bills to be higher for those customers who have vacant homes or unused irrigation meters this is because of the fixed fee and is certainly an opportunity for them to consider removing the meter permanently properties with protective fire infrastructure should also expect to see an increase and this would be a chance to validate you know their internal records against ours to ensure there are no sizing discrepancies we do expect bills to be lower for those customers with that typical usage of 400 cubic feet or those who qualify for a wrap and this is because of the lifeline rate and the fee waiver and of course any efforts to reduce usage above that tier two threshold would further shrink overall bills next slide please wrap the water resource resource assistance program so this will be the very first rate payer assistance initiative for water resources the goal here for us is to limit the administrative burden and cost associated with developing an income verification program so we intend to leverage existing state and federal benefit programs as our qualifying qualifying criteria so this means customers who already participate in programs like lifeline or three squares crisis fuel rental assistance due section eight can apply and simply use their proof of enrollment to be qualified for wrap for one year or in the case of senior citizens providing proof of their age will meet that eligibility threshold we are also open to we are open to adding qualifying programs to the rate assistance list and would encourage feedback about what other initiatives exist that we should consider and looking towards the future we have also begun developing some additional assistance programs that address infrastructure and conservation so these proposals include offering grant funding for condition assessments of sewer laterals efficiency rebates for installing appliances that conserve water real-time water data monitoring and free tools to implement stormwater management practices like rain barrels these are definitely not going to be ready to roll out in july but we are actively working towards them and I'm sorry I talked so fast and now back to Jen Ellison yes um so I realized we only have a few minutes left um like I said earlier you know our outreach steps are really happening between now and March we'll be attending the npa's you know doing target targeted notification to those customers that are in the classes that will be most impacted we also maintain a robust online presence where customers where anyone can review all the presentations we've done to date you can provide feedback on that page and also make that request to get the estimated account impact summary that Jess mentioned the website is at the top of the page and I will make sure that the steering committee has that link in case anybody wants it continuous improvement will be happening you know march through july that's where we'll be incorporating all the feedback from the outreach process reviewing and responding to all of the impact summary requests doing our ongoing qaqc with the data and making all the required updates that we have to do to our billing system and then drafting that water resources affordability program policy and making all necessary adjustments to the city ordinance which is chapter 31 is is what governs us our approvals will be happening between April and June so city council we'll be seeking city council approval of the rate and fee structure changes including that water resources affordability program and then shortly thereafter we'll then be requesting city council and mayoral approval of our fiscal year 22 budget and our rates for fiscal year 22 implementation is planned to roll out effective starting July 1 that's the beginning of the city's fiscal year and that would be then reflected in the bills that people would see in August so at this point again we're welcome we're more than happy to take a couple of questions if we have a few minutes otherwise you can direct questions to Jess right now or you can submit those impacts on your requests on the website or provide any other feedback there does anyone have any questions okay i'm not seeing any hands so yeah the same presentation will get and put into the minutes just like all the others so you'll be able to access it there and then they put their contact information so for anyone watching you can reach out there but thank you so much yeah thank you of course so the final part of the npa is we just wanted to give another shout out asking for suggestions of what presentations you'd like to see at the meeting going forward you can speak now and tell us or feel free to reach out over email all of our emails are listed on the agendas so you can find that there but please want to make sure we're we're forming the npa around what you're interested in so if anyone has any suggestions now you can share them yes Steve i just wanted to let you know that i mean we've talked a little bit about the old east end and you know there's been an organization that's come together and we've been working on some community activities um and as part of it you know one one of the things we've been doing is researching the history um because there it's surprisingly you know uh this ward one has really got a lot of history to it and it may be history that not a lot of people know about so the reason i'm bringing this up is that at some point in the future it doesn't be there's no rush or anything but if the npa would be interested in hearing about some of the the background behind how did this you know ward get developed uh who are some of the key players what did it mean we'd be happy to to provide something like that great thank you yes thank you um we'll definitely reach out to get you all on an agenda soon um okay i think that's the end of the meeting so thank you all so much for coming and for those who presented thank you for sharing information with us but um yeah bye everyone thank you for coming tonight thank you all so much