 So I will call our meeting to order at 6 31 p.m. And let's see, I've got so much in. In front of me, the first thing I do, I do, I think is we'll ask the members who are participating remotely to identify themselves. This is Carrie Brown district three. Thank you. So I'll follow district two. Great. Thank you. I'll review a little bit of meeting logistics. Anyone who is participating remotely remotely, please change your name display to indicate your first and last name on the screen. So we have a record of who's participating in the meeting. Anyone who wishes to address the council must be recognized. And we would ask you to start by stating your name and where you live. Keeping your comments to three minutes and counselor bait will assist us in keeping time. If you're speaking about a specific agenda item, please keep your comments, your main to the topic. And you can be reeled in if you do not. Keep to the topic. I would also ask all members of the public to. Adhere to the city council. Rules of conduct adopt at public meetings adopted May 11, 2022. Including the rules that require all members of the public in attendance to remain seated in one of the audience seats unless you're. Being unless you're addressing the council with that. Time to approve the agenda. Does anyone have any. Requested changes to the agenda. All right, we are ready to go. The next item on the agenda is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public. To address the council on any topic that is not on tonight's agenda. As with other items we. The time limit for general business and appearances is 2 minutes or 3 minutes per person. And I'll open the floor to people here in the room. Yes, sir. I'm Sidney Cushing. I'm actually your guys's water and sewer supervisor. And I came tonight just to kind of share a concern. That a lot of my crew members and a lot of the public works garage expresses. And it's more of a change in. Our parents and our staff and kind of what we've been doing. As you guys are aware, we've been operating short staff for a number of years now. And we always pull it together and kind of make the magic happen. But it comes at a huge cost to other divisions down there. For example, the water and sewer guys, it used to be more of a voluntary. Thing where we were relief support for winter operations. And now we're just part of winter operations. They're very dependent on us. And it's causing an increase in overtime and increase in our workload. It's leading to a lot of burnout and added stress. And it's nothing that our guys aren't willing to sacrifice for the city because we all just do what it takes to keep us going. And we're happy to do so. And we know you're aware of this. It's just a concern because we don't see a whole lot of sustainable plans for a change in the future. And it makes us nervous. Because eventually we are going to be old men and we don't want to fail and not let you guys down. We want to be successful. It's kind of stressing the importance of bringing the street staff to full capacity and replacing the missing members. It's a huge cost to all of us missing those people. And I'm not naive to budget problems and the gap that's already in existence and happening this year. I'm just hoping that moving forward with budget talks that there could be a focus on finding that sustainable approach to not just bringing us back but maybe even making us better. And that goes into like our equipment. We've had equipment purchases deferred for a number of years now and the effects are becoming apparent. When I first started Montpelier, it was a lot of pride in the fact that we had the best staff and the best equipment available. We're the capital. I was so I still am very proud to work for the capital. I don't want to see our current trend carry to the point where we're no longer a leader of Vermont. But we become a follower. I want to set a precedent. Other towns should be looking to us for how we achieved the goals and how we managed to get through all the tough times which we've gotten through them. So we've had we can pat ourselves on the back. We've pulled it together. And that again is coming at a cost to our equipment with the with COVID and the flood. Our equipment has gone has really taken on extra work and it's shown extra where when I first started Montpelier like nine years ago, we could have multiple snow events and our trucks did not break down. Now when we have a major snow event, there's three to five trucks in the garage broke down. And what that leads to is they're borrowing like water department trucks. We used to be able to make it through if there was a water leak in a major storm event at the same time. It wasn't a big deal. We had equipment enough. Now I'd be really nervous for a heavy snow event and a water leak simultaneously will make the magic happen and we'll get through. It's going to come. It's going to take longer and it's going to stress the men more. And it's really because the equipment isn't there when it it always was before. And I know you guys are not naive to this and I'm not trying to say you're not trying and you're not approaching. It's just having a sustainable plan for the future. How are we going to overcome what we've deferred? And I'm sure that questions may be asked, but I hope it's highlighted now the importance of asking that question. How are we going to catch up? Thank you. Your time is exciting. That's all I had to say and thank you for hearing me. We appreciate everything you do. Anybody else in the room? I have to stand to keep my back from dense enough. So I don't know if that exception was crafted into your carefully policy. I want to support. I mean, he said it a lot nicer than I've said it for a few years now. And he's doing it every day. So I want to really commend his succinct. We probably got a $200 million deficit of infrastructure repairs that we have down the road for too long. And I don't understand all the implications of how many trucks are down and how long, but this is the mismanagement that I've been crying out for a long time that we have just ignored or swept under the rug. And right now, all our sidewalks are covered with glare ice. The snow hasn't been removed. Puttles everywhere, people with wet feet, you know, damaging their cars in the potholes and you're just shifting costs by. Again, I'm going to say fully fund public works. I don't know how many people that is, but that's better than hypothetical. You know, replacing a fire chief when we don't need one right now, or not until, you know, we won't need one for a year. You know, we can get by without replacing the chief. You can put an interim chief to handle the legal obligation of health, etc. So same with the one police position, you know, to plan for contingencies are exceptional circumstances when we've got other backup and capital police state is, is unreasonable right now public works is where the I want to see them fully staffed so that we can measure them against the standard of what they're able to do and what they're not and if they can't do it then then we know we've got a different problem to address in the in the way of ownership structure compensation, whatever it is, but we're not going to know as long as we keep short changing public works, they're going to have an infinite reason legitimate reason for not keeping up, and that not keeping up is what people are crying out about, and people you know, I mentioned the oil leaking from behind Unitarian Church, you know into the river, and I've seen no action to address it no no booms to absorb it. It's been going for days, you know some something's leaking oil, you know, somewhere in that black pipe going up school street and the water leak over in front of MMR next to the capital. That's a forget who owns that building, the blue building two doors that water leak has got sheer ice across the sidewalk to three inches thick, you know out into the street and nobody's going to fix that. You know how many times do I have to call it to your attention. What are we paying how many $100,000 salaries for this kind of performance, you know. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the room who was looking to be recognized. And now I'll ask if there's anyone on on zoom who's looking to be recognized, not seeing any hands. Yes, sir, Eric Chase worked for DPW for a little over nine and a half years. I mean I want to obviously second what said said. The equipment is a huge part of what we do and and how we do that. We have gotten by for a number of years very well. We need to be mindful of, of where we're heading. You know, everybody here these guys here burn Alex and and everybody else at DPW put 110% into making the road save passable for the fire department, the police department. So we're working as a team. And we need to be mindful moving forward so those services obviously don't slip in this in in the city. I mean I grew up here. Graduated from Montpellier High School. We need to be looking forward to making those improvements. To continue our level of service where obviously the residents want us to be at. So if everybody can be mindful of that. I think that's where we're looking forward. Okay. Thanks. Anybody else. Okay. I am not seeing anybody else but hand raised. So. I'm going to move to the consent agenda. Very short consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda. Is there a second. I'll second it. Any discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed. Okay, we have adopted the consent agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. On the remote. Just the very top of your head shows. Oh, you could tilt your. Let me just like to see your face. Yeah, maybe, but. Let's just take a look. I want to see your face. There. That looks a little better. Okay. Thanks. Next up, we have. A charter change petition. So somebody here to talk about that. Yes. And as you step up here, I will open the public hearing on the. Petition for a charter change. While they're setting that up, I'll just note and maybe the city clerk can help me out here that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There are. Charters can be changed one. The city council initiates and places an article on the ballot and that has one set of. Public hearing requirements. And the second is a petition of charter change, which is what these folks have brought in. And a slightly different set of public hearing requirements. So they're having their first. This week in the second will be next Thursday, right before your board of abatement meeting. And that will satisfy those requirements. And then we'll have a meeting from a petition and not the city, then the petitioners will make the presentation as opposed to city officials. And this is on the agenda on the, on the ballot. It's just because requisite number of signatures have been provided. I want to make sure everyone can hear me. Does that sound good? I'm bringing a bit cold. Can you hear in the back? Great. We're all good. Well, good evening. Montpellier city council. Thank you so much for having me today. My, my name is Tom proctor. I am the housing justice organizer for rights and democracy. And I'll be talking today about the just cause vision charter change petition. I will warn you, I've got quite a lot written. I, I thought this was the, just the meeting to inform people about what is in the petition. It's pretty detailed. So if you want me to cut the chase a little bit, just let me know at any point. And I will, I'll move it along. We have a substantial agenda. So if we can be expeditious, that'd probably be appreciated. Okay. So just first off, I've been working at rights and democracy as the housing justice organizer for about three years now. This has put me very much in the front row of what is an escalating crisis in Vermont that's affecting a third of the month is about 50% of Montpellier residents. What are the big reasons we are finding ourselves in a housing crisis? And there is many different reasons here. One is housing supply. You'll see in the graphic behind you. Housing supply was, was pretty steady in the 1990s. It dropped in the 2000s and between 2010 and 2017 for rented properties. It dropped to just 0.3%. So only, you know, 0.3% of more houses came online in those seven years. We don't have the data right now for between 2017 and 2023. That should be coming out from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency at some point this year. They do these, these reports every five years. So the associate to the lack of availability has been compounded by the pandemic and climate migration in 2021 for the first time in decades. You saw a net increase in people moving to Vermont to live in Vermont. The socioeconomic makeup of those folks tended to be richer. It was post pandemic more people working on zoom rather than live in New York City rather than live in Boston. Let's go to an idyllic place like Montpellier for months. I can do my work anyway. And that, as a result, has risen the cost of housing in Vermont. It's, it's gone up an incredible amount. I believe 121% in the last couple of years in certain places around Vermont. Sorry, my statistics were wrong there. The price of a single family home rose more than 16% in 2021 to 382,000. So to get on the housing ladder is really difficult, especially if you are a renter. So in short, we do not have enough available houses. We're not creating enough new housing and demand is only getting higher. This put an enormous financial strain on renters were being priced out of a severely limited market and leading to massive evictions as landlords seek to find richer tenants. The 2020 Vermont housing needs assessment written before the pandemic had data showing that over half of renters in Vermont already had housing costs that consume more than 30% of their income. The standard for assessing affordability, half of those paying above affordability rates pay 50% or more of their income on housing each month. And obviously this puts enormous economic strain on the rest of the rest of our society, effectively the rest of our community. The current market conditions is incredibly hostile to renters, but it is a seller's market for landlords, which some have been quick to take advantage of with disastrous consequences for our tenants. With no risk of having the units filled due to outrageous demand, some landlords have been evicting their current tenants to take advantage of the richer market or movement to the Airbnb market. Some landlords have seen their properties skyrocket in value and sold to our real estate investors that have no knowledge or love for our communities and just wish to make a profit. And some landlords have seen an opportunity to rid themselves of quote unquote problematic tenants that have the audacity to complain about code violations or discrimination. The result of this has been an explosion in no course evictions, a legal recourse for a landlord to rid themselves of a tenant, even if that tenant has done nothing wrong, and an option for any landlord can take when filing an eviction notice in Vermont. The difference between a landlord filing for an eviction for non payment of the lease violation versus a no cause is that while a tenant can argue against or remedy in eviction for the former complaints, in a no cause case, there is no legal recourse for that tenant. In 2021 that Vermont no cause eviction in Vermont, no cause evictions made up 50% of all eviction cases being filed for being filed in the state. But the problem is far worse than that. As an eviction on your record often means not being able to rent again, as a tenant is required to provide that information when filing a new rental application. Most tenants vacate the property when asked without the issue ever going to court, meaning thousands of Vermonters are being evicted each year with no place to go and often for no reason. And I can tell you this much. I work with a lot of tenants. I have been a tenant and still am a tenant myself. This has happened to nearly every single tenant that I know. I myself got evicted because we complained that there was a hole in the roof of our kitchen and we had dust falling into our food. This has led to population centers like Montpelier being drained of lower income residents and explosion in our homeless population. According to December report of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, homelessness rates rose 218% between 2007 and 2023. The largest rise in the United States by some distance. This has created a generational strain on public housing and services and the gutting of historical communities across Vermont. This is an issue that is affecting all of Vermont, but particularly in areas of high percentage of renters like Montpelier. The question on this town meeting day ballot will ask Montpelier voters whether they wish to adopt regulatory policy for businesses that lease property to use as domiciles. This policy would ensure tenants are protected from arbitrary eviction and are free to lease property unless codifies violations occur. This policy is needed due to the current market conditions of the rental industry and the exacerbating crisis by exacerbating crisis created by its current trajectory. The proposed regulation will prevent widespread homelessness, worker shortages and foster community growth in Vermont's population centers. A just cause eviction policy that protects renters from arbitrary, so a just cause eviction policy is a policy that protects renters from arbitrary retaliatory and discriminatory evictions by establishing only certain reasons that a landlord can evict known as just causes. These causes include non-payment of rent, a tenant's failure to accept reasonable renewal terms, a violation of the terms of a lease and the violation of state statutes regulating tenant obligations. Just cause provides the right of first refusal for tenants to renew their leases once they expire and it has been successfully implemented in four states, California, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Oregon and in dozens of cities across the US. Under just cause lease agreements will still remain the lawful contract between a tenant and a landlord and will still have starts and end dates like any other standard lease. However, right of first refusal is granted to tenants to renew a lease after its expiration. Landlords will provide will profit regardless of whether a tenant decides to renew due to the market demand and would be able to benefit from a steady stream of income due to residents who continue to rent with the assurance of not being displaced unexpectedly. Under just cause regulation landlords also have the right to change at their least year on year. If there are actions a tenant consistently performs the landlord does not agree with they are well within their rights to ban those actions and future leases so long as the rules are non discriminatory. I want to get really into the charter language now, just because it is kind of complicated. So when you first reading this on the ballot, it might look a lot like gobbledygook, but I'm going to kind of break it down just for everyone so we're all very clear about what will be on the ballot. So it starts off with shall the Charter of the City of Montpelio Montpelio as amended be further amended to give the city council the power to provide by ordinance protections for residential tenants with fictions without just cause by adopting and adding a new section to read. This is effectively asking you the voter. If you agree or disagree that the city council should be given the authority to create a just cause eviction ordinance in Montpelio. So then it goes on says to provide by ordinance protections residential tenants as defined in chapter 137 title nine the Vermont statuettes annotated from eviction without just cause where just cause shall include but it's not limited to tenants material breach of written rental agreement attendance violation of state statuettes regulating tenant obligations and residential rental agreements, non payment of rent and a tenants failure to accept written reasonable good faith renewal terms. I'm going to take this one by one. So tenants material breach of written rental agreement. I if the lease said there was no smoking allowed on the property and the tenant ignored that rule that would be a violation of the written rental agreement and grounds for eviction. The landlord will get to decide what rules are in the lease at the beginning of each new lease cycle and it would be within their rights to change the rules if they saw fit at that time. Number two tenants violation of state statutes regulating tenant obligations. So the tenant was to violate a rule is defined in Vermont state statutes that regulate rental agreements such as being abusive to housemates or defacing the property. That would again be grounds for eviction non payment of rent. So if a tenant does not pay their rent within 14 days again that's grounds for eviction and attendance failure to accept written reasonable good faith renewal terms. So at the end of each lease cycle, if the current tenants have stuck to the rules, paid their rent on time and have been a good tenant, they will get the right of first refusal on a new lease. However, this lease does not have to be identical to the lease agreed on in the previous cycle. The landlord is free to change that lease as they see fit. If the tenant does not wish to sign this amended lease, they have forfeited this right of first refusal and the landlord is free to offer this lease to any other interested parties. In short, failure to accept a new lease would be grounds for eviction if the tenant refused to leave. Such ordinance shall exclude from just cause the expiration of rental agreement as sole grounds for termination of tenancy. In addition to exemptions in Chapter 137 and Title 9, the ordinance should exempt from this provision subject to mitigation provisions, sublets and in-year rentals as well as the following properties. So here it again says that the termination, the end of a tenancy does not grant grounds for eviction. And then it also goes on to say what sorts of properties would be exempt from just cause eviction laws. So those things are owner occupied duplexes and triplexes, those being withdrawn from the rental market, including properties be occupied by the owner's immediate family member as a primary residence, accessory dwelling units on the same property as a single family owner occupied home, and those in need of substantial renovations which preclude occupancy. To be clear here, these are a list of things that a tenant, even if they stick by the rules, do everything, pay the rent on time, look after the property, these are reasons why a tenant could still be evicted, but basically a no fault eviction. So the first one, owner occupied duplexes and triplexes, this says that the landlord was to remove a tenant without a cause, i.e. a family member needs to move in or there needs to be substantial renovations made, then the tenants should get, oh sorry, I'm reading the wrong part. Owner occupied duplexes and triplexes, so if you own a property and rent out a room or a duplex or triplex and you rent the other units, you would be exempt from just cause eviction ordinance. Landlords who live on the property they rent get a dispensation. This clause allows landlords to evict who they please whenever they wish and for whatever reason, if they live on the property, up to a triplex. Those being withdrawn from the rental market. So this clause allows landlords to remove the house from the property market whenever they wish to do so. If they no longer want to rent the property privately, they are under no obligation to do so and therefore can evict their tenants without cause if they take that action. Accessory dwelling units, so that works in the same way as owner occupied duplexes and triplexes, and those in need of substantial renovations which preclude occupancy. So for similar reasons to withdrawing a property from the rental market, if the home needs renovations and the renovations needed are extensive enough that it requires tenants to leave, landlords can evict those tenants without a cause. The next section. There's such an ordinance shall include provisions that mitigate potential negative impacts on tenants and property owners, including but not limited to requirements of adequate notice and reasonable relocation expenses to provide a reasonable probationary period after initial occupancy and limit unreasonable rent increases to prevent de facto evictions or non renewals, although they shall not be construed to limit rents beyond the purpose of preventing individual evictions. So the first part, this says that if the landlord were to remove a tenant without a cause, so a family member needs to move in, then the tenants should get adequate notice of that eviction and some moving expenses paid. How long this notice should be and how much the moving expenses would be would be up to you the city council to decide when writing the ordinance to provide a reasonable probationary period after initial occupancy. This clause allows the landlords to put a probationary period on any new tenant that occupies the house in which they would still be allowed to evict without cause. This is to allow the landlord some time to assess whether this tenant is likely going to be an issue, and if so can evict them without cause before that probationary period is over, after which just cause protections would kick in. How long this probationary period would be would be up to again the city council to decide. A limit on reasonable rent increases to prevent de facto evictions or non renewals. This rule would prevent landlords from raising the rent to a point where it would be effectively be in eviction. For example, if your rent is $1,000 a month and your landlord was to raise it 100% to $2,000 a month, that could be seen as an unreasonable rent increase designed to evict without going through the proper channels. It effectively close the eviction loophole, but by design it is not meant to stop landlords from raising the rent. What percent that is what is unreasonable again would be for the city council to decide. And then finally, this ordinance shall define what is reasonable and adequate notice in defining just cause and to require the landlords to provide notice of just cause and other legal requirements as part of the rental agreement. So this last section of the chart of the charter question outlines that terms such as reasonable and adequate notice shall be decided by you, the city council when writing the ordinance. It also states that this charter change were to pass and an ordinance was to be created, landlords would have to inform the tenants of their rights when they signed their lease agreement. To be clear, this charter change, if it passes is not a silver bullet to fix a housing crisis. To do that, we need to build more houses, dissuade second and third homeowners from leaving their properties empty, regulate the short term rental market like Airbnb's and create a statewide rental registry so we can understand the true extent of what's happening in Vermont. Grants for first time home buyers and rental assistance for those trying getting off the street are also important and much needed policies. What this will do, though, is protect good tenants from bad landlords, landlords who neglect their properties and punish tenants for making reasonable complaints, landlords who are competing against and undercutting good landlords that look after their homes and their tenants. Those good landlords spend money to make sure their homes are secure, safe, warm and dry. The band lad lords do not. Safe in the knowledge that if a tenant complains, they can be easily replaced. This policy will also protect good landlords from bad tenants, tenants that don't pay their rent, tenants that destroy property, tenants that threaten their neighbors and their community members. Those tenants will be no safer from eviction than they currently are. In fact, by removing no cause as an option for landlords looking to rid themselves of tenants, we will free up their housing courts, allowing for just and reasonable eviction cases to move quicker through the courts and allowing landlords to rid themselves of problematic tenants faster. We do need to create safe and secure housing for everyone in Vermont. And while this may not get us to our goal, it does take us a step closer. If you share this vision of a safety fair for a Montpelier, I do urge all of you in the city council and those listening today to vote yes on question for this town meeting date and become the fourth municipality in Vermont to be a just cause eviction town. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Members of the council have it. Sorry. Oh, I just mentioned this is for your information. The what's on the warning is the chart changes too long for the ballot. So it's going to be posted prominently at the polling place and including in every single voting booths to make sure everybody gets to see it but just the language that you'd be voting on. Rather than wordsmith it myself I just took the top of their signature sheet, but it can be wordsmith by you all if you find that as amended be further amended to be awkward or anything. But just seem to make sense to go with what people were signing. Thanks. Any members of the council have any questions. Carrie. Hi. Yes, thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Early on, you said something about an explosion in no cause evictions, and said that in, I believe this is right that in 2021 50% of all evictions in Vermont were no cause evictions. Looking for a little bit of clarification. A couple questions one is, does that mean that 50% of the of the fictions were because the lease ended, and the landlord opted not to renew it. Or some other reason and then also the, how does that rate of 50% compared to previous years in Vermont. Yeah, thank you so much for that question, Carrie. No, that would be evictions going through the courts. So that would that wouldn't be folks that were at least ended and the landlord says we're not going to renew your lease. This is people who were evicted during their lease agreement was was on so say your lease is between January and January. They were evicted in say August and the landlord use no cause as the reason for eviction. There is no numbers. You can't find numbers on those people whose lease have ended and they have moved on. It's not data that's gathered. So that was your first question. And, oh yeah, second question of how that was differs from previous years. Previously, pre COVID, it was about 10%. It rose to about 50%. And according to Vermont legal aid of the mayor, I believe is a employee of that has now gone down again. I think it's 20% but I'd have to get back to you. Thank you. Any other members of the council have any questions. Okay, I'd like to open it for open the floor to any. Oh, sorry. Sorry. You said this is this existed other communities and another states and other parts of the country and I'm wondering if you can tell us about what what are some of the impacts that have been seen as a result of this change. Yeah. I'm sorry for cutting you off that carrier was any more to that question. So many states have actually had it for a long time. New Hampshire has had it I believe since the 1970s. New Jersey have had it since the 1980s. California is a bit more of a recent one. To clarify in California, every town has the right to put in just cause of it and ordinances in their municipalities. It's not statewide and such it covers the entire state is just every municipality has the right to the authority to enact just cause of it and it's a great protection laws or good cause is this otherwise known as from what we can tell it's had no major effect on rental markets in terms of like major drop in landlords or a major drop in rental accommodation. I've been talking to other tenants in those states. What it's done is provide that greater protection for tenants there who kind of know what the rules are and know if they can stick to them they can stay in their house. In terms of like economic differences or the availability of houses that has not been any studies to show that it's dropped at all since those laws came into place. Okay, yeah. Sometime one time years ago when I was doing some lobbying in the state house for or on some eviction legislation that the question that was presented to me well the governor wants to know why it's so much faster we've picked someone in New Hampshire than it is in Vermont. The answer was well, it is faster, but only if you can do the eviction and because surprisingly New Hampshire doesn't have no cause of eviction. There are some landlord some evictions that just never happened because landlord doesn't have the ability to do that. And that's, that's what we're what this is getting at here. New Hampshire doesn't have no cause of eviction landlord has to assert a reason analogous to the reasons we that are illuminated in this in order to even bring an eviction. A couple process questions. So, if this passes by the voters it's authorizing us to, if we choose to develop an ordinance that then would go to the legislature for approval or is this If this passes then this charter change would go to the legislature and if they approve it and amend our charter that would give the case I'm that would give the council the authority to put in an ordinance this long as it was consistent with the terms of the this charter change and then the council could choose whether to do it and what like sounds like there's a few things that the council could decide so there's any change first goes to the voters and goes to the legislature and that Okay, I'm going to open the floor to other members of the public. Yes, since this is a public hearing if anyone else in the public wants to be heard and I why don't you come on up to microphone. Hello. My name is Joseph Moore. I live in Montpelier. I wanted you to hear from a Montpelier resident less do you thought that this was like an astroturfed campaign from metal some Brits. I can assure you it is not. Most of the people who have worked on collecting the signatures and who continue to work on this campaign are in fact residents of Montpelier. And so I just want to take a couple minutes to tell you why I support this policy. I only own our home on Derby Drive in Montpelier, but for most of my adult life up until a couple of years ago, I was a renter. During my 15 years or so as a tenant in multiple states. I've had some good landlords. I've had some not so good landlords and I've had some in between. I have experienced unreasonable rent hikes as high as 20% in one year. And plumbing issues that went unaddressed for too long. And in one particular case a brown recluse spider infestation where my landlord refused to hire a professional exterminator. And so, while I've never actually been evicted my experiences as a renter make me sensitive to the fact that the landlord tenant relationship is one of unequal power. Your landlord effectively has the legal authority to revoke your access to shelter. And this power differential is compounded by the fact that as Tom outlined, Vermont has among the lowest rental vacancy rates in the United States currently. So Vermonters who lose access to housing have very few alternatives. Just cause eviction attempts to address this power imbalance between landlords and tenants by protecting tenants from arbitrary. Retaliatory and discriminatory evictions rather than the existing status quo wherein landlords can evict tenants for no cause. Meaning they don't need to specify a reason as Tom explained. The proposed just cause charter language establishes explicit criteria for eviction and provides tenants with the right of first refusal to renew a lease when it expires. Just cause eviction protects as Tom said, good tenants from bad landlords and good landlords from bad tenants. The proposed language would allow a landlord to evict a tenant for non payment of rent breach of the terms of a lease agreement violation of state statues regulating tenant obligations. And further the proposed charter change would allow landlords to alter the terms of a lease agreement after expiration so long as those changes are not considered unreasonable. And I just want to emphasize that, you know, what what is deemed unreasonable is going to be left to city council should this charter change go through so it's going to be in your hands to decide. Housing discrimination on the basis of race, religion, disability, etc. is real. We know that. Right. None of us I think are naive enough to believe that it doesn't happen here in Montpelier. Federal and state laws exist to protect tenants from discrimination. However, no cause eviction makes enforcement of those anti discrimination laws difficult because it means that the burden is on the tenant to prove discrimination, rather than on the landlord to prove that an eviction was not discriminatory. Just cause eviction places that burden of proof on the landlord where I believe it belongs. It also protects tenants who report discrimination code violations or other abuses from retaliation. So in closing, I support the adoption of just cause eviction ordinance in Montpelier. Because I believe that no one should have the power to deny another human being access to shelter without justification. It's that simple. Just cause eviction takes an important step in correcting this imbalance. And I think as Tom did a good job explaining, it's not a panacea. We know it's not going to solve all our housing problems. It's part of a spectrum of policy initiatives that we need to get behind. So I'm glad that Montpelier residents will have the opportunity to vote on this question on March 5th. And I encourage my neighbors to vote. Yes. Thank you. Thanks. Anybody else in the room wants to be heard. Yes, come on in the back. Hello, I'm Mary Messier from Montpelier. I have never been evicted. But I would like to see this change take place. There was a lot of situation and Barry a number of years ago. It wasn't an eviction, but I just want to tell what the story is to illuminate some of the problems that people might face. And I have, you know, good credit. It was there weren't any problems at this place. I lived in a fairly nice place, but I decided I didn't want to stay in Barry. But one thing that was happening was several times the landlord. And there was only two apartments in this building and the front part was an elderly couple and I was in the back. And we had a very private backyard. I had a window that was a picture window like four by five feet looking out onto a really nice backyard. And several times I would come out of another room and see my landlord in front of this window, which for a woman living alone is very uncomfortable. But like one time he was fixing this air vent up top. And I know he kept his properties very good. And of course it's reasonable and we want the place to be good. But I've been looking around for an apartment for quite a while because I didn't really want to stay in Barry at that time at that place in that area. And then I decided if I'm going to, if I'm going to sign this lease, which he had already sent me signed to renew. I thought if I'm going to do this another year, I'm going to ask him if when he's working close to my building, could he let me know. You know, so he's got an option knock on the door. Call me email me text me. So I sent to know a nice email just saying by the way, I didn't find a place yet. I'm looking at one more place and if it doesn't go through then I'm going to stay another year. But by the way, could you let me know when you work around the building the next day. So they said we're not renewing the very next day. So with that in mind, and the thing that really triggered this was one day I came out of a room and I found them like the windows here, like six inches from the window. And they had their grandson with them and he looked in the window. And so this is all very uncomfortable because like decades ago I had a stalker, like 3040 years ago. So, next day, I faced that. And I decided just to leave because otherwise, if I fight this. It's called an eviction. And then what's my record look like. So I became homeless. It's necessary. We could have had a mediation, we could have talked. But instead of that, I lost my housing. And you can tell it still upsets me. Yeah, so I am for this change. We need to be fair to landlords and tenants. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Is there anyone else in the room would like to be heard. Yeah, hey, I'm Thomas Graham. I'm a Montpelier resident voter and I have been collecting signatures for this charter change and I want to encourage you all to support it. I've had my own terrible experiences with landlords, including when I was four years old. And, you know, we may not all in this room agree about the ethics of the housing market and the way things are running right now. But I think one thing we can agree on. I think everybody's on the same page about the right of queer and trans and gay people to have the same kind of housing access that anyone else does in Vermont. And the federal government has some laws that are supposed to take care of that, but they only really do so. And the only way we can make sure that those laws are enforced to de facto is with just cause eviction because we have evangelical dark money flowing into Vermont trying to flip it from a blue state because they know it's a small and vulnerable state. And I know a lot of other folks in the queer community, including and myself are afraid for our access to housing because our protections are just unenforceable until we have just cause. So please support this. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in the room who would like to be heard, Steve and while, while he's coming up, I'd ask anyone on zoom wants to be heard to activate your hands up feature and we'll get to you next. Steve Whitaker, I want to ask the voters to support the charter change because and make clear the point that that this is a multi step process. It's the rubber will meet the road. It's often when an ordinance gets approved by the voters and refined and all the detail gets put in. This is basically just creating an opportunity for the council to move forward towards renter protection. And it this is not at this stage it is not a threat to anybody, not even not even landlords that this is basically just laying a foundation that will give us more options for how we address the Airbnb crisis the homelessness crisis the we know we've got some let's say lax landlords in town and we need to develop strategies to remedy that I did a records request about part of a building falling into the river and potentially injuring people and the records request revealed that our building inspector wrote to the city manager says we can't enforce that because if we do will have to start enforcing it evenly on everybody. Yeah, you should. That's, we've got a real deficit in our building inspection and enforcement. And this is just one example of, I encourage you to help get the word out that this is not a binding thing that happens automatically this is going to be a multi probably a two year process. And that kind of protections is human rights issue. Thanks Steve. Carolyn read back. There we go you should be able to speak now. I'm going to come at this from a little different perspective, which is the same one that Mary messier pointed out is that we have a growing number of homeless people. And I think this is a step in the right direction of kind of stabilizing that so we don't have the rapid increase we've been seeing. So, I'm in favor of passing it. Thank you. Anybody else online who'd like to be heard. I'm not seeing any hands coming up. Anyone in the room who hasn't been recognized yet who'd like to be heard. Okay, then I will close our public hearing. Do we have any comments from members of the council. Donna. Mine come before at the end of the. Cause of the hearing, but I really appreciate all the work you've done and to get the signatures. And I appreciate what Steven put it in context. It is part of the process. And it will get a lot of discussion, which is really good. And I, and I like the idea that it gives the council the option should it pass. And then they can work on the details. And I do think the balance is important. So thank you. I just want to speak to that. I think when we were writing this, it was written quite a few years ago with the help of some, some fantastic experts on housing. The head of wonderful housing coalition was a big part of that Sarah carpenter who used to head up housing in Vermont was was part of the writing as well. And we realize that each municipality is going to be different. Each of them is going to have its own way of doing things when it comes to the rental market in town because, you know, every town in one is unique. And so these were baked in specifically to give city council members like yourself the leeway because you have the knowledge of your towns in order to make this ordinance as best as it possibly could be and be as balanced as it possibly could be for all your residents, not just tenants, not just landlords, but for everyone. Thanks, Tom. Any other council members have any comments, Lauren. Yeah, just also grateful to all the folks in the community who have been gathering signatures and working on this and for the comments this evening. I'm also interested in seeing this move forward giving us the opportunity to dig into it figure out the issues. I mean knowing we're not the first there's a lot of other experiences to learn from but you know everything we've been hearing from our city housing committee our homelessness task force. It's you know there's so many different approaches I think we need to be looking at so that we're not exacerbating homelessness that we're keeping people housed and so just, I think it's a good conversation to have so thanks to everyone working on it. Anybody else. Okay, we can move on. Thanks for coming in time. I'll mention to the members of the public that we will take this up again at our next meeting which is February 1 a week from tomorrow. Next up, the second public hearing on our budget. And I will open the public hearing. Thank you, Mr Mayor. So you get to watch my weekly struggle with screen sharing. Okay, since you made no changes last week it's the identical presentation is last week but I will still run it through here. Oh, I need to open it first right that's what I understand. Yes, there we go. You think I'm a slow learner. Summary is in my zooms not reopening. There we go. I'm not going to talk for an hour. Okay, here we go. I think we got it. All right, so this is a rerun from last week but for those that are tuning in for the first time or watching for the first time we'll do a summary of the city council's budget. This is our last our second and final public hearing the council does need to adopt a budget tonight and vote to put some of money on the ballot. Like any budget we start with basic goals and our goals are pretty constant, but the this year in particular was to implement our strategic plan policies and goals to continue our investment in infrastructure to deliver responsible expenses and to stay within the range of inflation rate which was 3.2% when we presented the budget it went up to 3.4% in December. So our key factors, and I think this is really important is that we had, as you've heard, some areas have been under budgeted in prior years as we attempt to balance a lot of things so we updated our budget amounts this year to make sure that we had accurate totals. We've seen increased costs and delays due to floods, COVID, all sorts of things. And we have a backlog of infrastructure projects we're trying to get to. In addition, we are in our current budget. We're struggling with a pretty significant loss of revenue and the council's adopted a one and a half million dollar rescission to our current budget. We're still working hard to manage that. I can talk a little bit about that more either during this process or under the manager's report later. And lastly, we had a reappraisal and that had two impacts on this budget. One is that it changed people's tax bills. Some people's went down, but I think a lot of residents in particular went up. In addition, the process that the council and the board of civil authority have just completed of reviewing tax appeals actually increased the 3.2% budget up to 3.93% just from granting reductions in tax appraisal. So we had a lot of factors working against us. The flood, of course, certainly creating a struggle in our current year. And I think some of that is residual for the future year. So I'm not going to read all of this, but you can see the main areas of our strategic plan are around infrastructure, housing, resilience. The economy and public health and safety. So those are the main topics and we tried to make sure we had some funding in for all of them, even under a difficult year. And here I point out that when we first got the budget and all the requests and looked at everything in order to do what we would do. Well, if we were able to do our fully approved budget this year, not the recented one, and then completed that next year as well with all of its increased costs and funded the request that we got. So it would have been up about a million and a half dollars beyond this budget. So we we had to reduce 1.4 million to get to the budget we presented to you. So in the bill to maintain infrastructure. We have $11 million on FEMA projects those are separate we have our own share of that although I do know the legislature is working on possibly funding. In the summer all of the municipal shares of FEMA projects we'll see where that goes. For the first time in a couple of years our capital plan is fully funded in at 2.4 million, although that number could be a lot higher and apropos to the comments that were made earlier accurate comments by our DPW staff. Our equipment plan is fully funded within that capital plan. So there's $593,000 actually exceeds our target of $515,000 includes 3 DPW trucks. So there is an attempt to start to catch up on some of those delayed investments includes $658,000 in paving our goal of course is to get to a million but it's an increase from 200 and something thousand last year. We have $2 million for water line improvement, which is working towards our plan to upgrade our water lines. And we have plans for several major projects in the works they're not all funded in this project. We did reduce as you heard one position in DPW we're hoping we can reposition one, but we'll see. And we are working with DPW now I'll save that for later, but we think we're we're trying to work on their shifts to save some money in this year and possibly for next year. And also provide them a lot of them are efficient. Great more housing we had 110,000 in the housing trust fund in this current budget it was slated to be for lectures and the prior years budget was used for country club road we had 110,000 in the present budget that was actually part of the budget rescission we've cut that to zero in our current fiscal year. We put 50,000 in from the housing trust fund we'd note that they actually started with a request for 250,000. The planning and development staff which is small anyway to handle all of our permits. They're handling all of the FEMA repairs and funding on all of that, as well as moving the country club road housing project forward it's the biggest chance I think we have to obtain housing. We have the lease revenue from that available I know there's some discussion about how that should be best used and I think that's a great conference conversation but some of it at least ought to be used to for some of the consulting costs for moving this project forward at your next meeting you'll start the first public hearing on zoning amendments. If we're not here to midnight on the budget you'll hear an update from Mike tonight getting you prep for that. And, however, there was 40,000 in direct funding for the country club road project which was eliminated. For a good practicing good environmental stewardship we maintain our sustainability and facilities coordinator. We reduced a request from a popular energy advisory committee from 12,000 to 2000. But we are still actively searching for the 10,000 which would be for some consulting help to look at the district heat heat process. We have a very substantial water resource recovery facility wastewater sewer plant however you want to call it project moving forward voters have approved $19 million on that. And that is moving forward steadily. We have CSR projects to prevent sewer outflows into the river. Those are all active. On the other side, we have we was cutting GMT my ride by 40,000 proposed cutting the conservation commission by 3500 tree board by 4000 and think the hardest cut from city staff perspective was the AmeriCorps program for the parks for 25,000 which represents 40,000 people for a year and the popular youth conservation core funding for 40,000 which is the group of young folks that work in the parks and certainly were instrumental in the floods this summer. For advancing the economy and dealing with economic issues. We reduced the homelessness Task Force funding from 45,000 to 17 five and the balance the difference in that fund funding the 27 five was used to fund the social embedded social worker within the police department. The community fund which goes to nonprofit agencies through a request process. We kept at 134 150 which is the amount they had in the last couple of years they had a requested 166 875 based on the activity they've seen my pillar alive of course a very important partner we kept them in at their full funding of 32 six they also get downtown improvement district funds. But we did cut $100,000 for economic development. 10,000 for arts and 10,000 for social equity and just some of those had also been cut in this current year as part of our budget rescission. Public health and safety we are maintaining the crisis intervention team training program to get both our police and firefighters that are able to respond to people in crisis. And mental health crisis situation. We've maintained or kept the social worker position. We are proceeding with shelter planning as well as the shelter temporary shelter at the Elks Club and planning for permanent future shelter. And we've kept the senior center which is important lifeline for elder people. We delayed the staff increase for the police we did not cut a position but they were due to be increased back up to 17 and we've delayed that we cut the canine program, which was $20,000. We've had a reduction in recreation staffing and funding one full time decision and operations cuts and the childcare program was eliminated. For responsible and engaged government again we initially proposed a 3.2% increase kept keeping it within inflation that moved to 3.93% after tax of peels and it's currently at 4.7%. The expenditures within the budget it's important to note are only up essentially 3.2%. So the city is not spending wildly we're spending within inflation. The communications coordinator is retained and the Zen City platform, which has been used for surveying and to provide really good information for people is out. We do have future admin staff reductions to be determined for 65,000 we've eliminated the bridge page for 14,000, although they've told us they could do it for 9500. The American National Citizen Survey which was done in 2022 would have been scheduled to have been done again in 24. That has been eliminated. We eliminated the committee stipends for 20,000 and outside lobbyists for 15,000. I didn't also put on that but just so people are aware the entire Department Head leadership team also volunteered not to take any cost of living adjustment for next year which saves another $50,000. So changes since the initial proposal there's really only been two changes one I already mentioned the grand list changes due to tax appeals increased the tax rate just that in itself. And then the council has voted to restore a firefighter position in the budget, which added $88,000 so increasing the tax rate increased from 3.93% to 4.7%. Those are the only changes since the initial proposal. So far, they have still have tonight. Taking a quick look graphically. This is where our money comes from. Again, about two thirds of it is from property tax. And then various other other it actually when you count 3% of ballot items as well on non city budget. It's really about 70%. This is divided by department. So you can see really, you know, police and dispatch at 21 fire at 15 public works at 18. Those are our big and then if you have the capital plan and other 11 those are the big services, big areas. And that makes sense. Those are our biggest services. If we take a look at general credit a little bit differently. You can see we're about 55% personnel. And that's one of the reasons that drives costs is pay changes and benefit cost change and those kind of things competing in a very difficult market. We've had we've had a lot of vacancies last couple years which we've been able to stop but some of that required pay adjustments. And then our other areas. Oops, that is not what I wanted to do. So just if you take a look at those employees and break them down by function, you can see there are people really working at discrete functions. They're not just all lumped together doing one or two things or people would get all these will be in the annual report if you wish to study them more in more detail. Taking a look at our debt and annual debt and equipment funding. You can see that the total, the fourth column over is the total. And this year we're at 2.4 million as you can see it has been since FY 21 that we were at that full amount. And dropped, you know, through COVID in the other areas the last couple of years. And then showing where that goes. It shows for 15 in equipment. There's an additional bunch of money in debt for equipment. So that together that brings it up to the 593 we combined so that debt total has equipment money in it. So that is the total fund. So it's up 11%, 246,000 and this chart that just shows us increasing at 4% a year, approximately 100,000. That's a policy conversation, of course, for next year. But we think that could probably be even greater. And it's also one of the reasons why we had stress on this year's budget. I think as a, not the council and the city staff said we need to get this at 2.4 million. So that added a 2.246,000 dollar increase in the budget that we considered untouchable. And so we had to cut everything else around that in order to meet this priority. This is just graphically looking at our debt scheduled debt payments and the annual project and equipment funding. You can just see how, if you have a total sum of money, if that's slowly growing and debts dropping off, then your annual money to do the things that you need to do can rise even greater than the 4%. So this brings us all to the tax rate calculation. And this is small, I get it. But basically it's showing the 4.7% tax increase for residents. Obviously you have got the city budget, the county tax and the ballot items make up all of this together. And an average home in Montpelier after the reappraisal is valued at $370,000. So that home for the municipal portion would see about $160 increase in property taxes for a local share. So taking a look at what you're paying for in that tax bill, this takes our various services, deducts revenues that are attributable to those services. So, you know, the building inspector, you can see is only $2.60 because they are almost completely funded by fees to fire is smaller than in the other graph because they have the ambulance fees. So we try to assign those directly and you can see kind of what the net cost is for each service that people are getting so for, you know, $700 you get your police and dispatch, for example, and $536 you get your public works department. Taking a look at our overall residential tax distribution bill. And we do have the city's the school's budget now that was approved last week. It's on the ballot for tonight. So this this is how the tax bill would work next year. This coming year, assuming someone does not have income sensitivity and was paying the full freight so 56% for the school 38% for the city, the sewer and CSO charges and then the county taxes, etc. The ballot items. So if you look at everything together, just need to move something on my screen so I can see better. You've got the city budget, the sewer and CSO benefit charges which have not changed from last year. The school is proposing a 19% tax increase. And the county taxes up just a wee bit actually it's not. $22 I don't think it's going to make that much difference. And then the ballot items are a little bit extra and then our water we have not set water and sewer or storm water rates yet the storm water is still a new potentially new project. The city council has set a policy of inflation plus 1% for both water and sewer with 1% going toward infrastructure investment. And that has been working pretty successfully so if they fall if we followed that policy this year this is based on what that would look like at 4.1%. The storm water fee is still under discussion that we may or may not have a storm water utility starting in July. It would have its own fee. One thing I neglected to mention last week is some of that fee is likely to be coming from the sewer and CSO benefit charges. So those numbers could drop probably not all of it, but there might be some double counting in here. But taking the worst case scenario this is an all in estimate if you are an average residential value and an average residential usage of water use. So, all in 12.5% it's not great. So, here's where we've been and where we're going we've the budget was presented in December we had a workshops in December and January and couple in January. The public hearing was held last week. The second public hearing is tonight now and the council will have to approve a budget and warning after this and then town meeting is on Tuesday, March 5. And early balloting will start at some point in February when the city clerk deems it so. And we have had some questions and again about the town meeting date some notice that the city of Barry moved its town meeting to May. Our charter section 501 of our charter states that our town meeting shall be on the first Tuesday in March and does not give the council the authority to change that date. So if we were wished to move our town meeting date it would require a charter change on this year's ballot of which we're already too late to do. And then the voters would have to approve it charter change would approve and then it would take effect the following year. So we do not have that same flexibility. So, I think I've talked long enough happy to answer any questions and happy to listen to any comments and I'm sure the council has its own conversation out. So that is the summary. Okay, thanks Bill since this is a public hearing. I will. Start by saying if we have. Any members of the public here in the room or on on zoom starting with people here in the room because it's easier for me to see those people who would like to be heard on this budget, Jake. And you're bringing Patrick up with you. Hey. You know, a lot of us recently. I'm Jake Brown. I'm chair of the cemetery commission, the Greenmount Cemetery Commission and Patrick Healy is director of the cemetery of the cemetery. We have asked for you to restore some money into our budget. And we've been here twice asking that. We had a long conversation about it at our commission meeting today and we developed a statement we'd like to enter into the record on this issue. And so we'll do that and then maybe we can get get John a copier. So this is a statement from the Greenmount Cemetery Commission to the multiplayer city council January 24, 2024. On behalf of the entire cemetery commission, we want to thank the council for the time patients and consideration that you put into what is perhaps one of the most difficult budget budget processes and recent memory. We recognize that no decision you were making is an easy one. We also think it's important that the city council understands that there's a long standing legal relationship between the city and the cemetery. And our participation in the budget process is part of that legal relationship. And from our perspective that process needs improvement. Therefore we'd like you the opportunity to educate and inform the council about the legal relationship between the city and the cemetery so that there will be a greater understanding between the two parties going forward. And we'd like to schedule a time to be on the city council agenda as soon as as is practical for that purpose. So that's the, that's the statement from the commission. And we would like to schedule some time to have some have a conversation about the relationship and budgeting. Sure, some time probably be probably be after town meeting day, but we'll see. Okay, so what is the process for getting on the agenda? Is that something that we ask you to do the request has been made. We will make it happen. Okay. Yeah, I think it would just make sense to do it after a lesson because then the group going forward. If there's any changes would understand that's only two or three minutes. Okay, thanks for the opportunity. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming in. Hi, Jim or thanks for the presentation and I appreciate the work that the staff and the council put into the budget. I know. Difficult decisions have been made one concern slash question that I have is around the DPW position that's being cut. You know, in light of what we heard from from the DPW staff earlier in the meeting, it sounds like those guys are stretch pretty thin at the moment and be curious to know about the rationale for that cut. You know, is this is this is this through attrition. Are we laying off city employees and what if any impacts we anticipate this would have on operations given given what we heard from from our city employees. So thanks. I could respond to that if you'd like. It would not be a layoff. We have actually currently to vacant positions. So this would actually be filling one of them so they would have more people than they currently have tonight out salting roads. We certainly take their concerns very seriously. We're looking at. I don't, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but there are some internal changes we can make that might allow in an existing position to be more useful on the road than words doing so that the response is, is the same. But it's fair and we are also working with them. It's going to announce later, but I've mentioned it a couple of times. So we are going to be implementing very quickly. An attempt to try different shifts. So we're going to have, and they've just agreed to it today, which is why it's sort of hot off the press. But in part because of the current financial circumstance this year, we're going to now start a shift that starts at 11pm, goes to 7.30am. So rather than calling people out for overtime for removal, we'll have a crew of like, I think it's six people, all of whom volunteered, none were made to do it. Who will already be on staff to do snow removal, snow, that kind of thing. And then another crew will come in at 7am. And so we're hoping that will relieve some of the burden that they talked about as well as hopefully working better. I think it should, we should have faster response at night when there's a storm because people don't have to be called in during the daytime when there's storms that will be less people plowing. So we might see it not going as fast during the daytime, but we will be able to do more snow removal, those kind of operations more cost effectively overnight. And I think perhaps the most important thing of all is by doing it this way and is we won't have people working 20, 24 hour shifts. The most anyone would work would be 16 hours and then go home. Because that is a fatigue factor as they mentioned and it's a safety factor. So we very much appreciate the support for DPW and we very much are sympathetic to their concerns and we're working really hard. And we will appreciate frankly the DPW staff's willingness to make a big change like this. They recognize the financial concerns. You know, police have also stepped up and really made some changes in their scheduling to reduce over time costs. So we really appreciate it. And most of the other departments are running short. So we've appreciated those departments that have really tried to make this work. Thanks, Bill. Is there anybody else in the room would like to be heard Steve Whitaker again. It seems kind of tone deaf that y'all take this budget from the management staff. And you tinker with it one item, two items, you know people are saying the tax burden is too high. And the staff is too high and y'all are afraid to deal with that. You know, you're adding 12% to people which is going to pass into the rents and pass into the price of coffee and everything else. So you really are going through the motions rather than the to call these public hearings is really venting sessions because you're not effectively going to change that this and voted out tonight. You know, and that's really an insult to the people's effort to come here and try to plead with you to have started earlier and to give us meaningful purchase on changing some of this. So, like I said that the facilities sustainability quarter was supposed to make the district heat system pay for itself. We still got a $200,000 debt deficit in district heat, as I understand it, and we're paying, you know him. What 20,000 more than he was making his building inspector, or more what's that position cost 120. Yeah, I mean this, this is not sustainable and it's an insult to the taxpayers and including the renters and the property owners. The suggestion that we're going to keep moving on the country called broad plan we don't have a plan. And as I pointed out last time, we don't even have due diligence on whether we can get traffic off a route to. So, and we've cut the funding that would have paid for that kind of engineering analysis. So, I'm concerned that the public works. We've we've put money in there for paving and public works and projects, but we don't have the staff to actually implement them. So it's kind of hollow. Pretends that getting things done. So I'm disappointed, disgusted with your ability to take some of the fat out of the administration. And, you know, we have, oh, we can't put bathrooms in or even a shower at the shelter but we can, we can pay for embedded social workers and street outreach. You know how many times the street outreach comes out and says I got nothing for you I got nothing for you. You know, that's going through the motions. You know, if you don't have something don't keep spending our money on it. You know, thank you. I'm going to look to the people on zoom to see if there's anyone who's looking to be heard. So please either raise your hand or activate your electronic hand. Are you looking to be heard. Come on up. Hi, Chris. I'm up here fire department. I spoke to you guys I think first hearing about how important adding this position back in was it was a due cut that was made in the budget. You know, I've heard it's about an addition but it's not it's just keeping us whole where we're at right now. I talked about call volumes and how important that would be and where that would affect us by taking that position out like last Tuesday. We ran calls all night through the winter storm at 2am I was headed to Burlington with a critical care patient in an ambulance with a nurse and respiratory therapist and all that. You take that person away and we don't do that call that was a person we did CPR on, got their pulse back and then they had to go to Burlington for further care. Without that spot we don't do that run. It has now that person has to wait for another ambulance and all that stuff and who knows what that outcome is. I don't want to run all that stuff. I don't want to keep pounding that on you guys. I know there's big decisions to be made. We talked about in 2020 when COVID started, there was furloughing people. And we deem that your fire and ambulance people were essential you needed us you you wanted us there to take the sick to the hospital and do all that stuff. We're still that essential like through the flood we were essential every guy in that fire department came in and worked through the floods to do whatever we need to do to help wherever we needed to help. My house took on some water, not a huge amount nowhere near like what you guys did, but I still came to work my spouse handled the flooding at our house we had other guys who were taken on water. They ran home to see what they could do they came right back like, and we weren't there was no questions as there was nobody hiding from that. Like, we're just asking to keep us whole so we can continue providing that service that you expect. And it goes to that survey that we talked about the three most important things that they said in that survey were your police your fire and your DPW so I'm just asking you to kind of acknowledge that survey and keep that survey to what your constituents your voters wanted you to have. Obviously, it's not every voter in my pillar but they took the time they filled that survey out they they're asking you to not touch those positions. And that's all I'm asking you guys to do. So, thank you. Thanks for coming out. Hello, can you hear me. Yes, loud and clear. Hi, thank you. Thank you for all your work that you've done on the budget and for that late nights you've spent on on this. I just wanted to vocalize just some concern over, you know, the increases and ask the council to think about how, like the compounding factors that are weighing on homeowners, you know, from what we're looking at for those increases in the school budget and along with just personal homeowners insurance increases, car insurance increases. And I guess I'm here just to ask the council just to critically look at those services, you know, to fund those services that are kind of critically essential to the most vulnerable in our community. And think about how we could kind of prioritize the priorities to help kind of work through the budget a bit more and find some extra areas where there could be some places where, you know, that could be cut and I recognize it's a hard process and and and that it's not easy to do but I just wanted to come out this evening and express my concerns and make that request of the council and also thank you for the work that you're doing. Thanks Claire. Is there anybody else out there in zoom land who is looking to be heard. And is there anyone else in person in the room who is looking to be heard. Okay, I am not seeing any one else who's got their hand raised. And I'm looking for help from the meeting hosts and I don't think they're seeing anyone either. So, at this point, I will close the public hearing and go to the council discussion. And counsel so where we are, we all know where we are from bills presentation. And we are budget is essential 88,000 has an $88,000 addition the only thing that we have changed from the administration's proposed budget. We've had. We've had votes previously. Nobody is is required to adhere to the budget. And I'm not going to pass it cast at the previous meeting, but I will open it up for discussion or proposals. Thank you, Mr Mayor, so I want to make a motion to use $50,000 from housing trust fund and 5000 from legal to $55,000 amount to offset the fire fighter position. Okay, so that's a proposal to do to cut that from the budget. Yeah, right. Okay, is there a second seconded by Tim. Thanks Sarah. Is there any discussion. And I'm looking at up Sal. You're about to be muted. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to amend that, if possible. Exactly how we go about that, but I'm going to make one last stab at helping with this offset was $33,000 left I'm suggesting we we reduce overtime across the board by about 10% to make up that difference. So, so your proposal is to amend the motion. Equal 88,000 to come from overhead over time over time. Sorry. Okay, and I mean, I mean no disrespect to the people who use the overtime I just. When I look at I see a trend in overtime that looks problematic to me and I'm surprised that others don't see it, but to see it going up so rapidly over the last couple of years. Obviously, there are pressures on the city, but it seems to me that something's not working and you know this is a budget for six months in the future we have time to work it out I like what I just heard from. Bill about changing scheduling I think there are solutions out there this is 10 a little bit more than 10% of the increase for this year which is 282,000 I'm talking about $33,000. Okay, thanks. Is there a second to sales motion to amend the pending motion. Yeah. I second. Okay, second, it's been moved and seconded to amend Pellens motion. So now the motion on the table is, shall we amend Pellens motion by adding an additional 33,000 to the city reduction. Is there any discussion carry. You should be able to go now. Thank you. So, I, I'm going to vote against this amendment, but I think the underlying question that of Pellens motion I think still needs further discussion. I also would like us to look at some other opportunities for some other things to cut so I guess I'm this process is a little clunky to me I think I would feel happier if we did things one at a time. So that's why I'm that's just me saying that's why I'm going to vote no one this one because I don't want to make that cut to overtime. Because I'm not sure how that would actually play out and I feel like we've been told from several people on the staff that they've done and reduce overtime and they need it as a tool for their the management of their staff time. I don't know exactly how that works, but I'm kind of believing them and I'm just nervous about just making a cut to it. I'm not sure what would happen. So that's why I would vote against that one, but I do want to continue to talk about ways that we can other reductions that we can find. Okay, thanks Kerry. So anyone else. Donna, I agree with Kerry. I mean, we put them the amount in there because that's what we've been having. And it actually is better than it had been but we've cut staff back. So when emergency happens or parades or whatever, somebody gets sick, we've had staff out on medical leave and you end up with overtime and I'd rather have it in the budget than have us go over. I wouldn't want to ask process. Is it possible to talk about some of these without making them individual motions or is the motions the only way to do it. I think it's fine to do that. We've got a motion before us now. I think it's fine to we're going to be disposed of this to talk about the range of options and then get to the point where someone could make a motion. I'd like to do that after these motions are done. Thank you. Just listening to, I guess, Donna, part of the frustration in the overtime budget for me is it's a really big increase, like 664,000 to roughly 950 range overall for the whole operation. And pretty much as we've gone through this process, the reason has been, well, it is what it is. And I'm not willing to accept that. I think we do need to take some action. It hasn't stayed the same. It's gone up a lot. And maybe it is being honest about what it is, but it does look like something that, you know, other kinds of operations that I'm familiar with managing differently, you could reduce it. We're not we're choosing not to that when I think that's a mistake if we won't even discuss it. And clearly we haven't. Can I ask Bill how this 3,000, sorry, 33,000 will affect the services? You know, we'd have to be allocated probably 10,000 or so to each department. It would have some effect. I mean, I think we'd have to look at it would, so there's, you know, they're sort of scheduled over time and then there's emergency response over time. And, you know, one of the things we're trying to do with the DPW move is to have, you know, more scheduled work time as opposed to response over time. You know, as I said, I think the one that's been the toughest to crack so far has been the fire department. They, you know, that hasn't, we're going to continue working on that, but it hasn't been as flexible with those employees as have been with other other employees willing to make some changes. So we've got to figure that out. The, you know, the police have adjusted their schedule. So I mean, if this is what you want, we'll have to make it work. I think I want to say again for those that are watching and just that the number in the budget has increased drastically. It isn't that drastic over what was actually used. And so part of it is putting in the number that was actually used. So yes, it's a big budget increase, but it's not a big spending increase and combination of increase in pay, which has, you know, made the overtime rates higher. And that was necessary to fill our positions. And, you know, like I said, right at the beginning, we were right sizing the budget and putting it trying to get the right numbers in. And so it's not like we're saying, oh, all of a sudden, sure, we're going to use a whole lot more over time. We're saying we're actually budgeting it more on the line. But, you know, I mean, we, everyone has to make decisions and you're here to make decisions and we will do what we have to do. So I know these are not easy decision. That's why I just want to vote something that will affect at least negatively are like city services. That's why I was asking if this toward the 3000 will affect really, really bad or we can do it without it. So because, you know, I, I explained this before I think when I look at the budget, most of things are like numbers for me, but city staff and city manager, you know, what's the impact. So it is important for me to hear from you what will be the impact is. Thank you. You know, just one more comment on that is, you know, part of this, you don't know, right? We don't know how many snowstorms we're going to have the rest of this winter or next winter. We don't know how many fires and ambulance calls we're going to have there up. We don't know how many police calls we don't know how many people are going to be injured. And so we have to backfill, you know, those kind of things. So, so it's always a crapshoot and one of the things we've done in the past, which got us into the situation. Well, say, all right, we've got to, we've got to balance this budget. Let's knock 30 or 50,000 off of overtime and hopefully it'll work. And, you know, we've tried different things, but other things happen that, that are, I think that said, you know, is this, I don't, I'm not sure that we wouldn't recommend this. It's less disruptive than, you know, cutting another position or something like that. I think, you know, it's in terms of maintaining our services. It's, it's, we can do more with the folks we have and use them, you know, smarter and hopefully get them engaged with doing things differently as well. Because, you know, it takes all of us to participate. Lauren. I just kind of in that vein, like I, I appreciate this conversation and like looking for creative ways to, to reduce that. And we're not increasing staffing in any of these departments. And, you know, so it's not like we're structurally changing things in a way that gives me comfort. It's going to happen. So my concern with it is we're putting this on paper, but then we're actually going to spend it. So we're really just doing a cut somewhere else down the line. Like we're going to have to make some other discussion because like, unless you see like, no, we're, yeah, yeah, sure. There's some great things that we can try. And so I guess I don't feel comforted by what I'm hearing that we're like, that we definitely can find this money to cut in overtime. It might just end up being that we cut something else later. So we're kind of postponing a hard discussion, essentially by doing this, which might look good on paper and seem easier to do politically. But it's just kicking the can down the road. One of the disadvantages, I guess, of being on the council for terms is that when I first got on, we did an in-depth thing on overtime. I think at that point it might have been much higher. And we actually looked at the sizing and that's why the 17 everywhere in the police and the FAR got established and reaffirmed that again, that seemed to work. And I think as long as we're going to be responding to the needs within the FAR department and the EMS and the police, not only with their regular service to the community, but we also have regional things that happen that we're mutual aid. And we have the state house and protests and marches. So if we're going to stay a lively capital city, we're going to have these expenses. And I would rather budget it and not spend it than once more cut it so that looks good on paper, but ultimately we end up spending it. So that's where I'm at on the cut on overtime. Do you want to mention your conversation with Janet? Do you want to mention your conversation with Janet? Okay. Tim, were you about to say something? It seems like most of the overtime is emergency related from what we've heard, but not all. All the overtime is not emergency related. I mean, like water plant water. There are certain facilities that you're running and just part of your operating right. So, so what, yes, you're right. And, and that is again, it's keeping an essential 24 hour, you know, daily. I mean, what provision of safe water is probably the most important thing that we do. So we do have people that need to come in on weekends to do certain water safety testing and those kind of things. But, you know, that is also very predictable. That hasn't changed a lot over the years. I mean, we know what those folks are. They do get call outs as well on emergency, something that there's automated alarms in that building. So they could get, they get an alarm. They can check online and look in in their computer to see whether there's something they can fix remotely or whether they need to come in. And obviously, if there's something going off with the water system, then we want them in doing that. But in terms of the schedule, there's, you know, every everyone, it happens every weekend. And same thing, I think at the wastewater plant, there's testing. But those are part of our base budget. Those are, and those are in the water and sewer rates not even be part of this anyway. But yes. So there is some scheduled overtime that is not emergency response. But, but that's also true with police and fire. When somebody's out and they replace that's not necessarily an emergency response is preparing for a potential emergency is having the staffing to respond to what might come up. It's not having an inadequate number of people to, to make a response. So, you know, they're like I said, there's sort of what happens when there's a call and people come out. What happens when it's snowing and people come out or versus. You know, like Ken mentioned, you know, you got so many people on duty, someone's on vacation, someone else comes in to fill that shift so they can make those calls and that's that's a different kind of emergency. But the bulk of it is in our emergency services and in DPW and water is DPW as well. So we have very little overtime in other departments. I mean, maybe the occasional somebody's over an extra hour, but even then we usually have them flex it or comp it, not take it as overtime. Bill, the change you just announced of scheduling in DPW, are we figuring that that will reduce overtime? Yes. Yes, definitely, because there will be six people on duty from 11 to seven. So if there's anything, any water breaks overnight, any, so you know, any issues that we now call DPW out for, they'll already be here and be able to respond. But the amount of savings is it's difficult. Like it depends how many storms we have and how many water breaks are right. So if we get lucky and there's no other weather event between now and April and there's no other water break, then we've just got a bunch of folks working overnight that didn't save any overtime because we wouldn't have called. There was no one to call out. I wouldn't bet on that here in Vermont in January. So yes, we will save overtime on those calls. We'll save overtime right now. Snow removal, particularly in downtown is a full overtime operation costs three or $4,000 to do. This should be able to be done by this crew. But you don't want to. And so I think in terms of efficiency, that's great. And I, but I do want to mention and in, you know, to the point of the DPW guys over there and the police folks, you know, we are trying to make this more efficient and the, to the extent that people are willing to work this out with us and understand, you know, that's money that they make. So they're, they're taking, you know, less in their pocket. Now I think some extent they're trading their trading, maybe convenience or fatigue or whatever. And again, fortunately, it was voluntary in DPW, but and it's been voluntary and police. But so people, staff is making sacrifices to when we heard that the folks from DPW and the folks from, you know, these, these people care and all of our staff does. And so nobody's trying to milk the system. It's just, it's how it's built. We couldn't, we couldn't, if we put enough people in so that we didn't have overtime budget, you know, nobody would like that budget and the number of employees we had, you know, we were looking particularly like a fire. You know, some of the places that have less overtime, you know, Williston, South Burlington, they staff six or seven at a time on shift. Burlington has 10 or 12 on at a time. You know, we're running three or four. Same with Barry. And so our overtime they're higher because we have to call the people in. So, you know, we're, we're making it up on one end and paying it at the other end. You know, Barry police department is 21 or two people. We have 16. So we're, we're managing things differently. So if we add five more police officers, it's going to be a heck of a lot more than the overtime total. So, you know, I mean, that's Not saying we can't do this. I'm just saying overtime over. I'm not trying to say we shouldn't be talking about it. I'm trying to say that To deliver the services that we deliver over time is a necessary part of the function. It is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. It's can we be better at it? Can we schedule smarter? Sure. And we're constantly trying to do that. But we can't. And it certainly jumps out in this budget because we right sized the number in the budget this year. And so it popped out and it's really as a, you know, we were substantially over budget last year. And a large part of it was overtime that was under budgeted and overspent. So yes, so there's a combination of getting the right number in the budget and doing the right job of managing it. And that is art, not science. So I just want to be sure, like Lauren said, after I heard from you, it is not a good idea to cut that. I know that you cannot say like strictly black or white, right? You cannot say yes or no. What is the general idea to vote on this? Should I understand that this is not a good move in the long run, right? Because you said we overspent last year from overtime, which might happen this year too. So we should be careful taking this money out, right? Correct. We've also substantially changed the overall total. I mean, as Sal mentioned, it was up $282,000. So this would be, it would still be up $250,000. So I want to say this. I can't tell you whether this is a good move or a bad move. I can tell you it's going to have an impact on our services to some extent. We don't know. So I think knowing that it's going to have an impact on our service, you all need to make the decision about how much, you know, what the tax rate is you're willing to support. This is one of those decisions that is a value proposition. You know, is it more important to have some extra in here? Or is it more important to try to keep the tax rate back at the 3.93? And that's, you know, we'll make it work however you decide it. And you will have done this with a full conversation that either you chose to have the tax rate be what it was, or you chose to skim back on this a little. And at some point when something isn't, you know, done, this is a conversation that we had. And, you know, we were always trying to work to have the best outcomes. You heard, you heard the DPW guys will make it work. Well, you know, but it's, it will be harder. So. Listening to this discussion. It just seems to me that the, the example that, and I don't have all the details obviously just heard about it tonight, but the, the example of what was just described to us in DPW was done. Because it, a need was felt. Something had had to change. And this was a solution that the DPW came up with, in conjunction with the administration, partly to save wear and tear on people, partly to make the operation more efficient, but it was done basically because a need was perceived. I'm simply suggesting that this $33,000 of proposed cut in fiscal year 25 creates a need, a similar need to manage in across the board in a creative way as it's being done in DPW. And we have, we have time between now and then to see how well this works. I think if you don't perceive the need. You don't make the change. Yes. So, and just to respond to that, I want to be clear that we are trying this in DPW we're going to reevaluate in the spring and see if it was a success or a failure in. So, but it's, you know, it's definitely driven by the. Actually, by the financial situation we're in in this current fiscal year was, you know, we are really pulling out what we can do. So if it works, hopefully, and people are happy with it, hopefully we can continue to continue it into the future. Lauren. Well, I hope, regardless of whether this motion passes or fails, I think the message has been clearly delivered. If there are places to cut, there's so many other things that we're also cutting in this budget that we would much rather be spending money on than over time. If there's ways to avoid over time while delivering high quality critical services to the community. I guess I like are there in your mind other. Not that that was necessarily low hanging fruit but like the water plan or other kind of obvious next scheduling adjustments like that's what it doesn't seem to me like with police and fire that's harder to do maybe the water plant. So I would feel better supporting this if it was like well yeah we can also try this next at the water plant and you know there's there's some clear opportunities if it's just a numbers game where we're doing it to cut the budget and then we'll probably spend it that's what I just want to avoid doing. Do you have an answer. We can we can look at it anywhere just be clear that the water plant is not this. This is also not fun so. But, but we, you know, we can look at that I mean again I think it's one of those things you have someone come in on a Saturday. For an hour, when the rest of the time when you have the full crew there they can actually get work done, you know do you have them spend a whole Saturday by themselves for what is essentially an hour is worth of work. It's actually probably more efficient to just pay them to do that hours worth of work and be done with it. Anyone else that anything to say are we ready to vote on sales motion. All right, let's, let's vote on. We're voting on what are we voting on Pellans amended motion we're voting on the motion is to amend Pellans motion to cut $33,000 out of. Okay, over time. Yeah, definitely bait. No. Brown. We're waiting for you to be. And once you're unmuted if you can keep yourself unmuted that'd be great. Okay. No. Yes. He. Yes. Cone. Yes. Yes. And the mayor votes yes. So we've amended the motion to add a $33,000 cut. Now we're back to the main motion as amended. And it's now $88,000. It's exactly the same. Okay. $50,000 from the housing trust trust fund $5,000 from legal and $33,000 from over time. To offset the fire department position. Is there further discussion we'd like to have on that. Lauren. You've been Mr. Mayor, our liaison on the housing trust fund for a long time. Can you just describe like what we would be for going if we cut that $50,000? I know we just recently, for example, approve 9,000 for being able to do housing for a refugee family in town. Like what are the kinds of projects we're not going to be able to do if we cut this. Well, over the years, what we've done with the housing trust fund is we've used it for essentially two things. The first thing that we've done is we've used it for a long time. And the second thing that has been to. Provide work on projects or programs like the. First time home buyer program that's been able to. Provide some down payment assistance for people. For buying homes in the city. The other thing, and I don't. I'm not sure if we're doing that. But the other thing that we've done is use that money in the trust fund to build up a. A fund that we could then use to be match to. To be a contribution to. Development programs or projects like some of the funding for. To analyze country club road or. Some of the money that went into the French block. Some of the money that went into. 58 Barry street, is it the. And, and some of the went into the Taylor street. Project. Yeah. And it's all been, I think it's all been to down street, but it's been very useful because. What I'm told that I'm not an expert in affordable housing. I'm not an expert in development and financing, but what I'm told by people who are is that. When all these funders, you know, these. Developing these projects is very complicated and there's. A dozen or more. Funding sources to that. That all come into these projects and. You know, including community development money from the state and. To the city. The city has the money. A lot of people have the tax credit money and a bunch of other stuff. And they consistently say that having. Some city money. In the, in the project. Is a plus factor and it enables the. It helps the. To bring all the other funding sources together. And so it's very important to have that. Money there to do that. we have in the trust fund is a couple of hundred thousand dollars I think okay 200,000 exactly or yeah Sarah's going to get us a real number so yeah and there's not a project that is like in the wings waiting to go on stage and happen so even though I've been someone who's been really housing, housing, housing all the way if we if we took this 50,000 Sarah okay $76,000 for those that didn't so if we put $50,000 into it this year that wouldn't in my judgment it wouldn't significantly reduce our ability to put money into future projects Donna we don't know what projects are going to come up right and I feel that housing is our priority we should keep building that the same way we constantly have the steady state for our infrastructure so I oppose taking it out of housing I oppose taking it out of overtime hence I won't vote for this motion okay and and then the other thing about it is that I forgot what I was going to say but Carrie you've got your hand up yeah thanks so I'm I'm pretty uncomfortable with this as well because housing is one of our priorities and because I'm not sure well because you know we're not funding it at what the they've asked us for however knowing how much is in there at this point and knowing the kinds of things that we've spent money on in the past in the several recent years if something like the French block came along or Taylor Street or something like that that required a significant investment of you know 100,000 or 125,000 we would be able to do it right now and so while I'm not happy about it I I'm okay with this as as a measure to reduce this year Helen so I'm also not happy like proposing this but at the same time we need to offset this firefighter position and it is important to you know at this position without creating more burden on taxpayers because we heard I think it was Carol if I'm wrong please you know understand me she mentioned that like this tax increase affects vulnerable people so and we want to have this firefighter like I think three years ago or four years ago I had a very very bad asthma attack and I went to my doctor's office and because it was the beginning of COVID and I was coughing couldn't breathe and they said okay we cannot do anything for you because it might be COVID so just put your mask that and please drive to the hospital and I said I cannot drive because I cannot breathe like what what if something happens to me and they said okay we will call um ambulance and I was waiting there and ambulance was there like in two or three minutes but for me that three minutes was 300 years because I couldn't breathe like I was just like my husband was not here in another city my kids are at school and I was all alone didn't know but the ambulance came they took me they was very they were very nice and I felt safe so that's why this is like very important for us to have enough number of firefighters because most of the time they mentioned they go and do like ambulance and like they deal with patients but at the same time we don't want to create more tax increase yes there is already tax increase and people were waiting for this right because even survey results showed us that yeah we shouldn't have cuts in this three core departments but at the same time we are okay with manageable tax increase so that's why yeah if it's a normal time normal conditions I wouldn't offer let's take this 50 thousand from housing trans fund but this year budget I think we have to make this difficult decision thank you thanks Bellarmine one of the questions that occurs to me is that you know I was the chair of the housing task force for years and and we had years where we had to we were coming into the council and fighting back against cuts to the housing trust fund and and I think we had some discussion about well is it would be better to even cut it to a dollar than to cut it to zero because that way we retain that line in the budget and I don't really know the answer to that maybe Sarah or Bill knows the answer to that I think we're at a different place in the public discussion of of our housing needs in Montpelier and I think that there's it's it's not as it's it's the value is is shared more broadly across the council than it than it has been in previous years but Sarah do you you yeah I don't think you lose it if it comes out of the budget entirely this year I think it is a priority to you all and if that remains a priority it would be something that would be put back it wouldn't be lost sight of just because it comes out of the 25 budget okay thanks Kerry yeah I was just gonna say that this was that my understanding is this came to be because of a city meeting vote in 2005 and so it's more it's more built in more securely I think than just the people on who happened to be on the council at any given time so so I don't feel as worried about it disappearing I feel like we can make a cut for this year but it still can remain a priority for us in the future anyone Lauren yeah I appreciate and the context is really helpful I mean I think this very well might pass and I feel better about it than I would have I do remain concerned just you know bill has made the point that it's not like the FY26 budget is going to be a better roses and we're cutting over and over and over all these priorities of ours being like well it's okay for this year and I don't know how we're going to like claw back to being able to do things and you know if even something like housing which we've all identified every single one of us as a core priority and something we need to be investing in like you know assuming this moves forward just underscoring like this and many other things that we're cutting are really important so like how are we going to figure out how to build a budget next year but because we can't keep doing this year after year and so it's just you know zeroing out all these priorities and expect progress on critical issues for the community so just just another quandary we're in with this really difficult budget yeah be my my presumption you know assuming I'm here uh is that we would start by putting all those numbers back in that we cut you know at least as for our starting point and see what that looks like and share that with you just like we did and say here's the struggle we're up against and get some guidance and work it from there I don't think we would just zero them up because they were zeroed out this year and the other possibility and I you know is you know we also cut it in this present year because that's part of our budget rescission and you know depending if we got state state money you know maybe we could put 50 000 of that into the fund as a one-time expense to at least if that was it depending on where else we put it you know what else we need we have a lot of needs but I'm just saying that that right what but I mean it could be it could be on your maybe not yours but I mean it could be as we talk about where those funds could or could not be used I mean obviously we would probably put it into capital and equipment and deficit reduction and all these other things but yeah but anyway okay um let's let's vote on this I think I think we all know where we are so I'm just going to do a roll call again uh bait uh brown I alfano I any yes cone yes pearl no motion carries uh six to two nine four to two sorry thank you um whoa and we have a request at this point we can we'll take a 10 minute break thanks bill and we are continuing our deliberation of the fiscal 2025 budget uh carry yeah so I was going back through um looking at any little things I could find and and one of the things that I keep coming kind of coming back to is the city council budget which is gone up almost 11 percent and it seems like the the increase is coming from a line item of um advertising so I wanted to know more about what that is and wonder if that might be it's three thousand dollars was added and wonder if we might consider taking that three thousand dollars back out again depending on what it's for thanks carry that's being looked into checking now we do have some advertisements you know all the legal ads and things that we have to do uh posting public hearings and those kind of things that come out of that but I don't know Sarah's on it now yeah but this was bumped up because the actual in fiscal year 23 was about 3500 so that's why that line item was bumped up so it's just bumped up to match the actual and was it uh unusually high because we had an unusual number of public hearings or something like it something else that had to be more more warnings than usual maybe because the country club wrote I don't know some under council cost the advertisement part I mean the plan posted the planning stuff comes out of the planning budget I believe uh Mike's yeah but but also the like we put an ad in with the agendas and all that kind of stuff I want ads ads yeah so some of them are in the managers budget some are in council budget so council meeting here warnings so clarification it was a thousand dollars in years past but we overspent by three and a half times that's what we're checking yeah and and it was solely on warnings that's what we're just looking right now oh Sarah's digging furiously in her computer burrowing into the hole all of the expenses are for the Times Argus um by I can't tell exactly what without drilling into each one but there several expenses to the Times Argus result as a paper Times Argus for advertisement so we'll have to we'd have to dig further to see where those exactly where we can see the invoices but we can't see what they're for okay so one of the if I could continue um one of the that has come up a lot in the discussions that I've heard in the public about the bridge expenses is that people have been saying that the city is paying for something similar in the Times Argus for a lot less money and I don't know exactly what that is and I and I don't know how much money that is and I wonder if you could tell us more about that bill I can and Evelyn can help too so it's three thousand dollars it's a monthly page and we've used it differently than the article it's been more of a you know kind of more graphics and more you know up announcements about things going on and those kind of things and part of our thought was if we discontinued the bridge we might put more narrative into it like we used to with the bridge I agree it's not as good as the bridge in terms of reaching people but um the at the again the information we had at the time was it was fourteen thousand for the bridge versus three thousand and we have Evelyn to do her magic so and Carrie it sounds like you have a number of things to go over and you should just consider that you have the floor and keep okay no that I mean that was really the big one um I think that I I know that three thousand dollars doesn't make a tremendous difference to the bottom line but just in the interest of looking for ways that we can cut a little bit of expenses here and there without cutting essential services um I said like to move that we discontinue that three thousand dollars in times our guess advertising um so that's the uh the public notices that we were just been talking about no the the the column the the column okay that's informational that's you know just a communication strategy and that we instead try to make better use of our website and from porch forum and other things like that that aren't going to uh incur that particular expense I know it well I know impacts the communications functions I know it's it's not without impact but I think maybe this is a way we can absorb it okay is there a second so since we are talking about like communication with public um I think we should find a way to keep a month failure bridge page um I don't want to make um like more difficult decisions but if you can find some way to keep it next year not including it on the budget will be great because so many people are benefiting from their um services for free like I remember their presentation and everything so it is important uh for our community to be informed so I don't know if there's any plan or if we can make it happen is there any like a tiny little because now we will talking about cutting uh time argus then suddenly we are not um giving that much information to uh papers so I just want to learn if there's any chance for the uh bridge thank you well I'd say if we cut 3 000 from the times argus and the bridges drop their price to 9500 you would have to add 6500 to the budget somewhere or then cut somewhere else if that's the net of what's left no there's not a second there's not a second yet is there a second on Kerry's proposal uh I'll second okay thanks um yeah that that's definitely a way to do and there's an argument well six thousand dollars is better than the three thousand for the times argus because it reaches everybody in the city and nobody has to pay to get it um Donna by the same token the information can be read on the website we could post articles in the library the library does get the times argus I believe it also gets the bridge so the public does have access to those papers right now I'd rather cut both of them than either one okay any other comments on uh Kerry's motion before we vote on it okay the motion is to cut out the uh three thousand dollar uh monthly page to the uh Montpelier bridge we'll start on this end uh I'm sorry sorry thank you for that correction uh hurl phone yes any yes alfano yes brown yes big yes motion carries that three thousand dollars is out any other discussions or ideas that anyone has I know that Kerry a little while ago you said well can't we just throw out a whole bunch of ideas and talk about them so Tim maybe that that's what you're planning a totally divergent ideas you'll probably follow a few chairs but one might be an increase um the pros so but the one thing that's occurred to me is thinking through this budget process this weekend is we haven't talked about resiliency at all post flood is there any funding within this budget to support the resiliency commission or for flood resiliency there isn't I mean Kevin asked either but um but there isn't there's none specifically no right yeah no which is embarrassing yeah Lauren do you have anything to add to that being a member of the commission I mean it's a great question I think both the commission is hoping to put forward a number of ideas over the course of the year would hope that the city would be kind of partnering on things and looking for opportunities some of which might cost some money I think there's also a recognition of what a challenging budget year and there's some really good fundraisers on that commission for example so I think the ability to try to see if there's other ways to raise funds or get projects started and then look at the next year's budget or something so I think we might miss opportunities or something but yeah there's there's nothing like tangible right now that will definitely require a city expenditure that we know about at the moment that's like a clear missed opportunity but it was more like there's a whole bunch of ideas kind of in development that will come before us and we'll just have to see if there's anything we could do at that point and yeah Tim when it was established we were partners at the table and agreed to support it and I don't like to go against what I feel I thought we agreed to and even if it's administrative support or something we may need to find some way to assist this because I think it's really critical work that we need to be doing and they are doing just just on that I mean I know we're going to get to and like we have many many many competing needs but like with some of the state money that's coming in because of the flood if the state for example you know is putting some money into impacted residents and stuff we've we've got the FEMA money like I think there's a few pots of money we could potentially look at as setting aside some chunk and I think I would wholeheartedly support that if there's some opportunity are these are the applications for executive directors still open they are anyone interested in applying please check it out Montpelierstrong.org you can learn more thanks Tim I think your honor you had other things this thing I've brought up before is I still have a struggling with the country club and and I know you think I'm short-sighted with it Jack but I think it's I'm looking at this thing going we're having trouble funding basics we haven't funded any thing to help us move ahead with that project in this budget there's no money for the engineering or the basic work we really need to be doing if we're going to move ahead with this so we've got a $3 million investment that we've paid money to carry we're paying about 160 something thousand a year in bond payments to fund that at the moment 160 167 we're paying the utilities for the taxes and the heat we're paying for insurance and the net result in the rents we're collecting is bug dust you know it's not a couple thousand a year or whatever in that budget it's it's going to cost us continuously in this range because every year there's a surprise this year we had the environmental work up there there was 40 something thousand and in a property that big that's not uncommon to experience that I just like it we're going to be down to a couple hundred thousand a year or more every year carrying this till we get to a place where we can really do something with it I'm struggling with that seeing when we're talking about not funding resiliency commissions and and the the you know the all the folks that help us in so many other ways that we want to fund it it's it just doesn't I think we're on the wrong track with it and I don't see it coming up you know it's not even zoned for the use we want to use it for we're having to change our zoning so if anyone else bought this and wanted to build housing there right now they couldn't do what's proposed for that project we can't do it we you know we're changing our own zoning we're changing our own rules to be able to do it which is really hypocritical I do favor changing the zoning and making it so that it will accommodate housing but I really don't think we should be doing it and I think we should move forward and I make a motion that we propose taking steps to prepare to sell it and part of those steps will be getting the zoning change in place because I don't think it's going to have great value to a potential developer if it's not zoned to allow the housing we want to help so you've made a motion I'm trying to think how does this fit within the budget if we're talking about the budget what is the motion to have to amend the budget it's not going to add an immediate add back into the budget it's depends on how long it takes to sell it right I don't know is an immediate impact it'll have a long-term impact on our finances but this year's general fund budget I'm not sure you don't want but next meeting we're doing the outline of where we're at so we're actually going to have on the agenda this topic now the budget's over to try to talk about some those issues so if we'll be asking for your guidance on whether we can move forward or sell or what we do so not trying to tell you can't make a motion now that's up to the mayor and everybody else but it that is it's our next meeting's agenda once we get past this so that is true and I mean I'll say this again when we presented the budget prepared the budget at that point we were we had at least for $1.1 million of which we needed about 800 thousand for a water line and so our plan was that the excess would fund the type of work that was going to be done so we felt we did have a funding source that would address those things about having to add the tax rate to do it we since got $513,000 and my suggestion was let's use it for the property and we didn't make a decision on that and that we had a lot of good arguments but you know we could even if we chose to use some of that for flood resiliency we could also you know we could allocate half of that to this problem and half of the flood resiliency and I think both projects would be better off you know I mean so so there is that $500,000 but um waiting to be allocated so I mean from from my perspective and our team's perspective that was the funding where we were going to get the funding and I realize 1.1 turned into half of that and then we heard about other needs we also know I mean I think the budget adjustment act has a fair amount of money in it for individuals um so hopefully the city won't be in a position to be asked for that I mean isn't really our role but so I mean there there are potential funding sources without raising taxes for them is all I'm saying it's up to you guys to do it but it's we didn't completely ignore that we we were in you know I think yeah if you go back to my presentation under the housing it said lease revenue available for but anyway that was our plan right from the get go um it was how we were going to fund that so so we've got a motion is a little vague exactly what the motion is but the question is is there a second okay okay I'm not seeing a second let's keep moving on does anyone else have any other proposals for additions or subtractions from um uh the budget as it's before us now and we're a little bit lower than where we were at the end of last week so 3.91 yeah just kind of process confusion for me and I'm sorry but this is my first time through this drill but so I'm still not sure because this this isn't the whole budget in the sense that we're not talking about capital fund you know and I know it's been brought up that we need the new ladder truck we lost a fire truck in a fire recently and we've heard nothing about that um and you know we have responsibilities to buy the equipment for the basic pieces it hasn't been part of this process so I'm a little confused and disillusion so um so the capital fund is part of this budget and it's the 2.4 million that's part of this budget that's approved and we we've met that um we are planning for these so the the ladder truck would be a bond and we will be planning that in the future years when that comes and we've been I think that's been delayed basically tune there's a grant a potential grant available it pays about half of that so you have but you have to be to 25 or 30 years old 30 you have to be thoroughly eligible so we've been trying to get it to that because these are one and a half million dollar pieces of equipment so if we get 750 000 to pay for it it's it's worth it with regard to the fire truck we've been waiting for insurance settlement which we've just sort of got and we're now you know seeing what we can do but if you want to sure yep so for insurance money for the fire truck we received about 316 000 we haven't actually received it but I expect to next week there is some debt associated with that truck that will need to be paid back so I think we will probably net 200 000 towards a new truck and in the capital funding we did plug a 50 000 spot for additional funding to go towards a new truck or a used truck or whatever we deem would be appropriate to replace that truck and the contents on the truck we will receive full funding for replacement of through insurance so now we're sort of shopping for used trucks so we'll come back to you and once we have something to propose but it hasn't been forgotten sorry if we haven't kept you we just got the insurance number last couple days so same thing I mean yeah we've got it it's it's in the plan and as I recall from a couple of months ago there were a couple of fire departments around Vermont who were potentially interested in selling us used trucks I'm not sure where things stand on that I think we'd probably look wider than just Vermont and you know that's not a lot of money for fire trucks so we gotta figure this one out and we'll come back to you with a plan when we have one are we ready to vote on the entire budget at this level I'm not hearing any carry I'll just just a reminder that I'd like to request that we split the budget into two portions so that the city clerk budget is separate from the rest of the budget so I can recuse myself from that because I'm married to the city clerk and I have a financial interest in that budget I can hold that says carry pull out clerk's budget I've got that all right yeah so how do you make a motion does the motion have to have the amount in it to exclude the clerks from the amount that I'm looking at on the screen just I would say just move the budget as adjusted today minus the clerk's portion yeah that should cover it yeah and then there'd be a separate motion to fund the clerk at the recommended level I'll make the motion that will fund the budget as presented and amended and amended separate from the clerks city clerk's office portion is there a second all second all right is there any more discussion or are we ready to vote okay I'm gonna try it this way all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed no okay hurl tone yes any no alfano yes brown yes and bait okay the motion carries now do you want to make the second path of that motion I'll make the motion that we pass the city clerk's portion of the budget okay all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed any abstentions am I an abstention I'm recusing myself completely so I guess that counts as an abstention yeah I wonder if this counts as a split vote where we need a roll call okay okay good okay so there we have it we have a budget and that is the amount going to the voters on March 5th thank you so when we get to the warning item we'll just have to I think we'll get the new number here before spreadsheet yeah let's just know where we are I just have to thank staff you've all been immensely helpful yeah thank you for this work this is this has been great and having this uh spreadsheet that enables us to do all this stuff and have people see it is really uh tremendously beneficial so great work everybody all right next up we have the annual warning and we have the second public hearing so I will open the public hearing we all have copies of the warning in front of you and again article four we'll have to change slightly and we'll have that number for you shortly and the school did approve their budget last week so that is the amount that they've asked to have put on the other question I had actually as I was looking at it tonight and some I just don't know the answer to this so I'm hoping did CVHHH petition or did we say as long as they kept the same amount they'd go on the city council and both of our understandings were that it was the standing will of the council that they would both be put on at the same level that's I just couldn't remember what we had decided so with that so that is correct that's I'm not gonna swear to you petition because no we they did not and Sarah and I just had this conversation like today that's all I think that's right but I just wanted to be sure it's really I wanted to make sure it's in petition yeah so it's not going to say by right got it okay beautiful all right any uh comments from members of the public of the uh city warning as drafted and the only just for the public's benefit the only items that are not I guess I'd say business as usual and even these are is the petitioned article for the calicover library the article for the Vermont health and hospice and then the petition charter changed for uh just cause evictions that we heard about earlier tonight everything else are the standard articles which are on each year seeing none I am going to close the public hearing is there a motion to approve the uh hold on oh we need to amend article four so article four the um taxes to be raised should be 11,860,353 dollars this is a 91,000 dollar reduction from the amount previously on the warning yep uh 11,860,353 dollars all right is there a motion to approve the warning uh as amended the amendment was changing the number for the amendment does that need to have a motion I think it's just go ahead we accept the city warning for March 5th 2024 with the additional amount of the 11,860,353 dollars on article four is there a second any discussion uh Kerry are you abstaining or recusing yourself from this too I don't think I need to because I don't think there's any financial connection here so okay unless unless someone disagrees I'm I don't disagree all those in favor signify by saying aye aye okay motion carries next up proposed unified development regulations Mike you stuck it out and you you get to come up and tell us about it and I think that's great preview coming attract it's just a prep for next week's public hearing quick heads up on the zoning changes you're going to be talking about next week good evening I am Mike Miller I'm the planning director for the city and give me one moment yeah I was just waiting in the back there in case they change their minds everybody wants to be here to watch the zoning it's done it's not subject to a revolt yeah thanks for coming I mean you're welcome to stay don't get me wrong that's a box here if they try to change the fire budgets thanks all right so I'm just going to go through this relatively quickly this is an introduction to the amendments for the zoning and river hazard regulations so I'm going to really quickly go through some process where you all can find the proposals online or anyone in the public really briefly just describe what the changes are so you know kind of what to look for in the unified development regulations which is more commonly known as the zoning bylaws and river hazard amendments then we'll have some next steps and I'll take whatever questions you have so what we will be having are two hearings over two nights although we're going to combine the two hearings into one each to amend the unified development regulations requires a hearing and to do the river hazard requires its own public hearing so we usually put those two together into a single hearing but just to be technical and legal and official they are warned separately but we'll probably talk about them at the same time and the two hearings that we have warned in the papers for our for February 14th which is the next meeting the next regular council meeting and February 28th and you are always welcome to have additional hearings if you guys want to there's just a requirement under state law to have two hearings so these are the two hearings that we have scheduled yep so you're going into zoning changes but we haven't updated our master plan at all right correct there's no requirement to have all things change the master plan uh the city plan well it's currently called the master plan so we'll use master plan it has an eight-year expiration so it's still good through the end of 2025 so the zoning bylaws must be in conformance with the master plan and that's kind of a general legal term and we can go into more detail with that if people want to but we regularly make amendments to our zoning within this seven year in fact we've probably amended it five times now since 2018 and this will be one more set that we'll go through so where to find the proposals if you go to the front front page main page of our city website you will you can scroll down and you'll see popular links on the right hand side at the top you'll see zoning and floodplain regulations if you were to click on that box it would take you to this page which has draft zoning regulations these are red line strikeout versions draft river hazard regulations which i believe just have it highlighted because there are only like four changes so we've highlighted where those changes are there's a draft zoning map which isn't redlined i'll have to point out where the zoning where the map changes are but there aren't a lot and then the list of zoning changes is actually an excel table it has some things that um the planning commission voted to change some things they voted not to change so it does have a mix of everything but it has a one column which describes what was proposed and why it was changed and then what was done and some most of them on the right hand side you'll see done which means they were voted on so the map changes there are really four map changes that are going to be in the zoning map really quick there's a map change for 155 northfield street the red circle there that was a piece of property that used to be owned by national life it was sold for a daycare so if you're familiar with going up northfield street there's a daycare that operates out of there they now own that property so we are rezoning it to match northfield street as opposed to being part of western gateway it actually makes the the property easier for them to continue to get permits and make amendments the second set which i'll show you really quickly after this slide uh country club road we've got a proposal to accommodate the redevelopment in the approved plan again we'll be talking about this in two twice really next meeting on the 14th because we'll talk about country club road work plan as well as the zoning that would be needed to accommodate it there's a really small change on 29 sibling i just pointed out because it is a zoning change for a property on 29 sibling where somebody bought a part of another parcel and then did a boundary line adjustment and then finally there's a home act changes to residential 24 000 district so the home act passed last year in the legislature most of our bylaws already conformed to the home act actually most of the home act was actually written modeled after the zoning changes that we had made in 2018 so we were pretty much in conformance with the exception of one zoning district and i will go into that so here we've got again really a little bit difficult to find yourself with these because it's just a zone a clip of the zoning map that number two is over the roundabout on route two and 302 so this is the country club property the proposal is to make the lower part this is the area where the country club building is and all those lower fields to rezone that urban center one and we'll go into it more detail later the reason generally is just that we own the property and we're going to be negotiating it so we will go through and and be able to put in the most flexible zoning so that was why we looked at that yes urban center one's downtown zoning it is the downtown zoning so the the master plan that was the the actionable master plan talked about five-story buildings we have one zoning district that allows five-story buildings we'll get into this a little bit more when we talk about the country club road project what the plan is going forward but the the 22nd version is the planned outline is to go through and do an rfi and find a developer to develop the lower part we would then negotiate a development agreement with them they would then have the flexibility to design a project that fits the actionable master plan and what the city council wants to see down there by rezoning it because we own it we can rezone it very flexibly to give ourselves a lot of opportunities we don't box ourselves in like you have somebody else I get it if we were going to sell it if the proposal was to sell it I would not be recommending we put it in this urban center one just because we're kind of really putting it out there without any restrictions so the reason this proposal is what it is is because we're following under the assumption until such time changes that we are working in a development agreement we're going to find a developer and we're going to do a development agreement so we've made very flexible zoning that we will then work with a developer on and then adjust at some point in the future when it becomes when it becomes when it gets to be sold we will adjust the zoning probably to create its own zoning district but it was really hard for me to create a new brand new zoning district for a development project that I don't know what the developer is going to want to propose and what city council is going to want to support so by making urban center one we're pretty much giving the city council a blank slate to kind of go and work with the developers with to come up with the best proposal for this site the nine dash nine that's above it and again these are all proposals they can change these are what planning commission staff has recommended planning commission is voted to support and you will have rights to change them later the upper area that's nine nine dash nine is basically rezoning the upper portion to be residential three thousand we don't have any proposals to develop that yet but we are in here and so we know that the master plan does describe that actionable master plan does describe that as uh lower density housing so three residential three thousand would be the appropriate district um in the right hand picture is really just a zoom in this is this is a piece of property near savings pasture this gray line here is savings is sibley that sabon street so at the intersection there was a parcel somebody bought a little piece of this parcel and merged it with their own parcel so rather than have half of the half of his really tiny lot be in riverfront and half of it to be in red six thousand we put them all in red six thousand so that's just two one of the other changes the final map changes um are the home act changes and under the home act there's a requirement that says if you've got sewer and water you have to allow five units per acre this area has sewer and water and it is zoned at one-third acre zoning so it would have to be rezoned to residential nine thousand in order to comply so that's the proposal here is to make it to conform the other text changes and i'll just roll through these real quick these are also to address the home act which is what we just talked about eliminating residential 24 000 move them to res nine and technically res nine will become one unit per 8 712 which is five units per acre um the planning commission routinely has brought up a number of housing and density recommendations to try to go and make uh more opportunity for housing to happen so the changes that they have put in for this one one set is to go change the use table to add in divide multifamily into two so that way instead of having just five or more as multifamily there'd be two and the smaller multifamilies would be a little bit easier to permit um we created a few more congregate housing types because they're just one and we wanted to try to allow for more opportunities in congregate housing on the right hand side uh if you're familiar with the zoning you know that we have a rule that says if you've got a conforming lot you can have a duplex regardless of the density the planning commission has recommended that we bump that up to four units so if i have a conform of conforming lot you can have four units you still have to meet the other requirements so you still have to have parking but as far as density goes we're not going to go and um uh look at density for anything as four units or less and then finally uh there's a recommendation this has come up a number of times we we're looking at removing density requirements we already don't have density in urban center one urban center two urban center three and we had a review from um congress for new urbanism and AARP and they recommended that you know if we have good design review rules we can remove density so they are recommending that anything within the design review overlay district not have a maximum residential density like if i'm not mistaken that's one of the proposals that came to us a year or two ago that uh there was a split on the planning commission and we decided that that wasn't quite ready for prime time is that right they chose different ones last time they did riverfront which had some of it in design review and some of it not in design review so they've decided to kind of focus on if the design review rules are good and um then we really don't need to be looking at much strictly on for residential density because we are going to be looking at the overall appearance of the building its size and massing are still regulated so it is a slightly different recommendation than last time the other changes if you're looking through there's major changes to the demolition provisions based on a court case the city had to go to court on an appeal we're back we asked before to remove the solar access and shading requirements that did not make it through planning commission has put it back on for reconsideration um we can talk about that more on the 14th um we're adjusting boundary line adjustments taking it out of subdivision putting it into three one two five that'll make the process administrative we get a lot of these there's no reason to have a public hearing make them administrative um we'll make the interim emergency housing provisions that you passed will make those permanent um we go through there's a lot of typos technical revisions that you can see in the strikeout as you go through um and then there are three changes which were not in the planning commission version that have come up since the planning commission hearing has ended uh they are also on that table and I can add them once we have a meeting you guys can tell me to put them in or not one is there's just flat out a mistake one of the recommended changes is actually wrong it talks about um the former ccv in this district in the in the neighborhood that is um on upper elm street and it's not the former ccv so I don't know why that was put in there but it is still ccv so we have to strike that but I can't do that without letting you know uh there was a mistake and we have to fix it it was it probably said originally the former woodbury college woodbury college that was my thought and I'm like I don't know why but we will get that fixed um a concerned citizen definitely was very very concerned that something had happened to ccv and I was like no no no nothing's happened um there's a technical fix to 3002 that was pointed out um that is the one we had just talked about of if you're in the design reviewed district you'd be exempt from density requirements capital complex is not in the design review district so if we went forward with that proposal we should add capital complex in as well um and that was a good catch by my zoning administrator on that and we also have a proposal which we'll have to talk a little bit more which is about delayed projects and this is um came in because of the flood and because of covid we had a number of permits that have been issued and there's a requirement in zoning that you have to complete development within two years so one proposal we have is first of all we're going we want to say you have two years to commence development and then you have some time to complete it um because a lot of times you might get your permit and you need to go through act 250 you might need financing and oh by the way we just had covid and we just had flood so we want to adjust the language of that to open the door to say if you've got permits that were issued since um I think I think it says January 2020 that those permits will remain valid for another period of time just because we've had some developers come in and say my permits are expiring I can't get another extension because I already got an extension can I get an additional extension and so because we're here talking about the zoning I'm going to talk about that a little bit more um but I wanted to put that on your on to let you know it never was discussed at the planning commission level so you will have to add that so river hazard really quick there's really the major change is just adding additional requirements for critical facilities so one of the one of the recommendations and it's a strong recommendation that they have is that we hold critical facilities to a higher standard and they usually say you want them elevated above the 500 year floodplain instead of the 100 year floodplain because your critical facilities your police stations your fire stations not that we're building any right now but if it comes up and we have a hospital or some other critical facility that comes in it should be two feet above the 500 year floodplain as opposed to two feet above the 100 year floodplain and that just makes it more consistent with what you'd see in federal regulations and recommendations so that's what you see here we don't have any other recommendations that have come out of any resiliency discussions these are just some the ones that have come through so most important what are the next steps how we review this is is up to you guys I have gone through sometimes and we've gone through a red line version from beginning to end sometimes we've just started with a summary like this and take questions sometimes we just focus on key policy questions how we do this hearing and conversation is really up to you and I now format my conversations however you like the entire zoning and river hazard this the other piece I want to make sure you guys know is open for change so the this is open for amendment to you it's not just the pieces here if you're familiar with zoning and you're like I've always wondered about this can we make an adjustment to that technically yes any substantial change to the zoning has to go back to the planning commission for them to provide you comments they don't get the vote yes or no but they get to provide you comments and say we think that's a good idea we think that's a bad idea so just so everybody is aware of the process and the big picture because you have zoning in front of you really anything is on the table for conversations and if you have questions mmiller at montpelier-vt.org I've already been getting a couple of questions from the public so if anyone on the council or anyone on the public has questions for me I can certainly go through them and that's it thanks Mike um I think this is uh all good to know um I'm interested in hearing what other members of the council have to say my thinking is that from being on the council I see zoning changes tend to generate a fair amount of interest from the public you know because people you know it affects people's homes and it affects what people might plan to do with their their land so I think that you know my instinctive reaction is to say going through the whole red line thing maybe too much detail but somewhere between what you did tonight and going through uh the whole red line version might be the way to go I don't know what other people what other people think and you you use this stuff that are probably more than some of us I guess I'm still philosophically stuck on we really didn't update the master plan five years ago it was an administrative review it wasn't like what we went through five years before that no it wasn't like we went through five years before that it really hasn't been communities input and feedback in it it was just kind of put through to keep it alive because you're going to do it every five years is that in the past it was every five years they changed it to every eight years so it it was last approved in December of 17 yeah it just seems like we're changing zoning on significant properties and actually spot zoning for the country club road property and we really should be looking at that section of town um not really tied to ownership but more toward coming up with the right plan and for the way our community wants to see this area grow and develop it just feels like skipping the master plan step is wrong do you know what the timeline is for the master plan I know the commission has been working on it for years yeah our plan is to have the public hearing process not the public well the public input process with the planning commission is going to be starting it was supposed to start this winter we're looking at later this winter I'm hoping in the March April that we can start I've got to see what the time the timeline is for my consultants on getting going we did get another grant approved in the fall so we have to sign a contract with them get that moving so but it is meant to have a significant amount of time dedicated to public input this year in theory that should proceed a big zoning change like this shouldn't it we had a very big process on this to develop the the actionable master plan so there has been considerable amount of conversation it's it isn't just being plucked out of thin air that this is what we wanted to see happen it had a significant amount of public input um that we would build into the zoning and build into the new master plan and that process to me emphasized why we needed to do a master plan because it felt like it was like you know plugging the hole in the dyke because we hadn't done the master plan so you'd have community members showing up saying let's put a school here let's you know good master planning conversations uh but because we hadn't checked the chicken and it's a chicken and egg um it could be argued the other way that you know it's like well how can how can we do the big big picture without looking at the details um I think we could it could go either way an actual master plan just to say it again because it is you're running with it like that's the approved plan but I do remember the conversation with Stephanie Clark was this is kind of an advisory concept plan just and that's why we changed the name so it's not a master plan for the country club road property I think it needs to be reviewed and certainly I don't think it needs should be built the way it's drawn and when we went through the process we were told they wouldn't that that's not a master plan that's set in concrete yeah but if you're proceeding that way I'm troubled it we're going through right now the I'm following the process as it's as it is still the official process which is that we're moving forward with that type of process and as I said when if and when it changes then that's how we would adjust so when do we get a chance to discuss and change it then is that going to come up the so I mean the country club road project that piece of it um you know the work plan for that we've we've wanted to be able to get that in front of you guys the budget's been a big process so we put that off till February so we are going to meet and talk about the the plan to talk about really how this process works to develop the country club road site now that we know what the public in general wants um those big picture questions have been answered it's not all single-family homes or it's not you know there have been a lot of big questions that have been answered as to what we would expect to see at the site including you know a lot of development up to 200 250 housing units in the lower area buildings up to five stories we don't know what they're going to look like we don't know how they're going to be laid out that's correct but we have a general idea and we can start then going to um what we'll talk about the next meeting really is having in what's called an RFI request for interest and we would start to pull together so we might need to spend some money which we'll talk about from the fund to have Whitenberg be able to help us put together an RFI because they're the ones who are familiar with how we write these things to get developer interest developers we would then bring the RFI to you you would approve the RFI we would then go through and put that out and see what the developer interest is and then they would just come in with with ideas of where they're going and you would eventually pick a developer who's going to be our partner the developer would then start to take those next steps of this is how we would envision developing this and we would eventually work towards having a development agreement that would go through and say yeah if you're going to build that we can get enough increment using TIF and on a separate path we need our zoning change we can't do a growth center designation until we change the zoning so we have to change the zoning in order to allow us to a growth center application which would then enable us to use TIF and TIF is how we would build all the infrastructure for this project it will cost no tax dollars because and it has to go through a lot of reviews to go through that process so that's how we would build the infrastructure is using TIF funds but we need a development agreement and the developer would agree to build certain things in certain ways they're going to then handle the costs of all the engineering because it's their buildings it's not our buildings it's their buildings so they'll do the engineering they they take over those costs there what they get out of it is all the new infrastructure is all being built by the city at our cost because we're bonding for that infrastructure they get the land presumably for a dollar because we're working as a partnership on that and so you end up building a relationship of what this is what this would look like they're doing all the work they're putting in the capital on their end but we need a development agreement and Stephanie and um and we and the planning department can go through and explain a lot more of the details when we start getting through that to so many assumptions here we haven't talked about that's next week's agenda that is exactly what next yeah that is exactly what it is it's actually you know it's just you talk about it like an experienced developer but you're not i've all right just just for putting it on the table yeah i work for the i work for the city of berry i know and in the city of berry we had um issues that were going on on main street during the big dig and one point we wanted to try to do was to clean up some of north main street in berry and so the city um we proposed out of the planning office that we should work to purchase what was the old wail and shrug building it was burned down and an apartment in back we would buy them we would tear them down we would prep the site and we got grants to do that we then put out to bid the redevelopment of the site the city negotiated to have the state take two floors we received three bids we took dw and dw built an 80 000 square foot building um it required a tiff because we had to go through and provide all the parking and all the infrastructure and the brownfield work and we did all that city assumed all those costs and the developer did all the development and that's how it worked out um so yes i have done these before i'm not a developer i'm a city planner but i've worked with developers and this is the process that we use if we want to do it i can help the city go through this process here if the city chooses not to that's not my not my choice if if the decision is the board would rather sell the property or move on or do something different or keep it as a big park that's that's not my decision to make but i do have experience on these types of projects and i do know how to move them along i was i was in berry for five years we did that project that whole project in three these projects can be done efficiently they can be done effectively but they have to be set up and organized and run in that way and and during that time was you know the great recession we had a flood in 2011 so we certainly had our handful of of distractions and other things so um i do want to make sure that you are aware this this isn't just me running ideas and just hoping and guessing it works it i have done these before and they have worked whether it's that one whether it's enterprise alley or other projects that we've had so but the zoning right that is the that is the exact agenda item for next week is to lay this out and make sure have the council ask questions and approve what you want to approve and not approve what you don't want to is exactly we're getting ahead of ourselves other than part of one of the things we have to do is change the zoning which is related to that which again this is a preview of what's coming for those only public hearing next week to kind of make sure you have an advanced notice of what's what's coming so that it's not out of the blue and when you say when you say next next meeting i'm sorry it's actually couple weeks no no like yeah that's i'm just saying it's February 14th actually so yeah i'm a support it's the 14th i'm not coming back next week well Valentine's Day Valentine's Day right what could be better and so yeah i'm interested in the kind of process thing that we're talking about yeah so less process but just like going into the February 14th meeting like so i know that there's a lot of conversations happening right now in the legislature about like river corridor regulations and you know like a home act too and stuff and maybe it's just we have to wait and see what they do and then but i guess like are you following those does it seem like there's any potential conflicts with anything that we're doing with what the legislatures work on obviously we don't know what they're going to pass at this point but i think some of it we have a decent idea probably of at least like the direction they're headed and just just making sure that that's all like being monitored so that we're not going to have to come back and undo things in a few months and just trying to be efficient yeah we we do i i do try to keep track of them i haven't been keeping track of these current ones the only one i've been working on is with bill for the um for the residents um for their their funding to help elevate houses so i really haven't been paying attention to home act too these change so much i usually wait till after town meeting day to really start digging in because they're going to change a bunch before no sense reading a hundred page per proposal that's going to change in two weeks so anybody else okay we get to spend more plenty more time talking to you about this might get it i appreciate this yes see you in valentine's day yes and i think we are ready to move on i don't think we have anything under other business so we can move to city council reports let's start at your end lauren there are just a couple quick things um one it's come up a little bit tonight but just am appreciative of the progress at the state house on some potential funding for impacted communities like montpelier and and just including residents so i'm glad to see that and grateful that we've got the capacity to be tracking and i know our mayor and city manager and other staff have been spending a lot of time up there so just thanks to everyone on the team for the effort going into that obviously really important stuff and our um house and senate delegation have been doing a lot of leadership um representing us in the state house too so thank them uh wanted to mention um one more time the commission on recovery and resilience is doing a public forum february 15th 6 30 to 8 30 at the montpelier high school so it'll be a great chance to hear what that group's been working on and weigh in on the priorities that have started gelling make sure that that commission seems to be on the right track and looking at some good projects so hope people can make that and as it came up earlier that commission is hiring an executive director so please check out montpelierstrong.org if you are interested in moving forward some great resilience projects and consider applying thanks thanks Helen um i just want to thank all those city staff for their hard work during the budget process and i don't have anything else to report thank you yeah thanks i guess just whenever it comes up i guess it's left do we do have recap in the budget process or look at the process for the future as soon as we can i don't know about the rest of you but i didn't think it was that's not an easy thing to work through and it feels like maybe we can improve um how we approach this you're certainly right that it was not an easy thing to work through there are some years where there's a lot of agreement and the budget the challenges are not as bad and it goes more easily you know when that happens but but yeah i think i'd be fine to uh i'd like some sometime after a down meeting to look into that uh uh sal yeah i i um i greatly appreciate all the work that the staff did uh to help us get through this it was certainly a learning experience to do the budget for the first time um it was tough and i i think the next couple of years are going to be tough as well so a good practice um i like what i hear about some of the some of the things we're implementing to to try and mitigate some of the issues we've come up with um i i just think it's going to be a couple of tough years and i'm hoping that maybe things on the revenue side help a little bit as the city starts to recover from getting whacked a couple of couple of times in the last 12 months so that's it thanks carry yeah i'll just echo other folks and say thank you so much to the staff um we asked an awful lot of you throughout this process and you came through and i really appreciate it um this is this has been really tough and i am i i'm eager to talk about ways to improve this process in the future for next time we do it yeah and that's all thank you dana uh yes again thank the staff and thank the council members for digging in and maybe one of the problems with to me we've been talking numbers since march because we had so many new council members and they would ask questions about budgetary stuff or the money behind things so i feel like we really talked about our budget but perhaps we have to set ourselves a council a better deadline so we become more assertive sooner and then we have longer time to consider some of the different ideas so i think it's good to look at that process and start analyzing it better thank you thanks dana a couple of things one as everyone else says thank you to the staff you know one of the things that makes our city uh as great a place to live as it is is that we have such a professional and dedicated competent staff and every department every uh every aspect of city government and so we have the capacity to deal with the complicated kind of things that we're doing today uh same thing with city council um nobody was slacking off everybody was really doing the work to get to understand all the issues of the budget which is not easy especially the first time through it so i appreciate all the work that everybody's done um on the uh on the monetary side i uh can let you know that uh yesterday i got a email from uh senator comings talking about some of the flood relief stuff and she told me that the she was anticipating the tax abatement bill to pass out of the senate today which i wasn't there this afternoon to know what happened but it was uh to you know soften the blow of uh on towns for uh tax abatement issues and there's also money in the budget adjustment act for flood relief our delegation is going to continue working to find more money uh for us and other city of cities affected in in the budget and so it's encouraging news to get uh to get this kind of thing uh moving this early in the session is is really uh really going to help us a lot and that's it for me city clerks report just pass and say see you all tomorrow night yes uh board board of allotment members uh tomorrow night at uh senior center thanks sir and city managers report thank you i i do have a couple of things i'll try not to keep you too long uh acceptable i've mentioned but um we are following the legislator we'll try to get a write-up in the report but there was 15 million dollars 10 from the general fund of five from arpa uh improved in the budget adjustment act for eight municipalities uh that included both loss revenue and some eight individuals um the ed tax abatement did move through the senate and has passed out of house ways and means uh the governor has proposed uh let the state cover the themes the local share a FEMA contribution so that's like 800s a month thousand dollars for us in the future uh you also put in a fair amount of money for resiliency and buyouts it's 39 million dollars or something like that so there may be funds available for those kind of things um so we're trying to we're tracking all of that so far it's all been good um we don't know you know how much we will get and when we will get it but it seems like there will be something substantial you know substantive i should say coming to the city uh for flood revenue relief that will certainly make a big difference in this current budget but we don't know so until i know um you know we sent you out a memo just letting you know we're continuing to track uh current situations in the budget and good and bad um best and worst situations i think we are going to come forward at some point future about um possibly setting aside putting in reserve funds to pay off the national life so that we have it we've reserved it it's there instead of it being a sort of hanging over our heads um we're continuing holding our vacancy strategically not so it's not 100 but as we see vacancies we're continuing to try to keep them open and it does have impact but this is we're also in a tough year uh we already talked about the DPW overnight shift that's that's an experiment we'll see how that works police have on their own been voluntarily adjusting shifts their extended time that they'll have one dispatcher on duty so that's good it saves us money but it's really not great for emergency response to only have one dispatcher if something really bad goes on uh and they have been making other changes to their own shifts the officer shifts like uh instead of just following their normal schedule if they know their schedule for court they've been trading with people so they can come in to their shift to their court not at overtime so they are they're making great strides um so like i said we're following the state progress because that has a big difference said well the recommendation and we're really trying to see where we are as of March 1 um because if we have to make more drastic decisions you know we'll have till June 30 to capture so every the longer the more the less time we have to squeeze in more money if you know what i mean so um we're we're watching it really carefully um so that's where that is um a reminder that the next week and thereafter we will have a much smaller room in here or next week i keep saying next week our next meeting in three weeks um those will be closed so it'll only be this half of the room cjc will be taking up the other space in there so if we think we're gonna have a really large crowd we might want to think about if there's an issue or if we have one one week like say we get a big turn after the zoning the second meeting i might want to consider relocating somewhere just mention that um so we have at the next meeting i'll try not to say next week we have the country club world discussion and the zoning public hearings um my review we had tentatively penciled in the discussion on the short term rentals for after budget but i don't think we've made a commitment so that's really up to you do you want to push that till after a town meeting um um then yeah i think it's a little more bearable yeah okay that's what i thought but i didn't want to even without it there's plenty to talk about i get that but that's just one more thing that's you know i do right i think i think the country club road and zoning and manager's review are three pretty substantive topics so and with that um the mayor and mary have sent out their reviews of their things so please get them in and let me have it and i just want to echo um first of all i appreciate your comments about the staff and our staff really did great and they continually are doing great to try to make this work i also want to commend you all you did do some hard work and um you know it's kind of i uh was talking to him but you know we've i've worked with divided councils so i mean divided on votes but um you all continue to be cordial to each other you continue you know i mean you're doing it in the spirit of the way it's supposed to be done so you don't agree you don't agree at all then you just move forward onto the next item and so you know we can all live with seeing how it comes but uh you know it's it's uh you're doing government right by deliberating and voting and not having group think you're you're kicking things around so it's hard and i appreciate the the approach that you've all taken with one another it's it makes it easy to work for you and with you so thanks for that now i'm done thanks bill and with that and without objection we are adjourned at 10 4 p.m. thanks everybody