 Okay, welcome everybody. Good to see such a such a good turnout I will call the meeting to order I'll just say a few words about meeting logistics anyone who's appearing remotely would ask you to set your name to to your actual name so we know who's who's participating to call on anyone who is addressing the council when you come to address the council please state your name and where you live. You'd ask everyone to keep your comments to under two minutes. Anyone was we should speak must be addressed called upon by the mayor. Once you be called up on you can again start your comments. Anyone who goes off track or exceeds the time and counselor date will be keeping track of the time will be gently reminded to get back on track. The first item is to approve the agenda. Are there any comments or proposed changes on the agenda. Oh yes, and counselor Brown being remote. Would you please introduce yourself. Yes, I carry Brown counselor from District three. Thank you. Had to do it and that's right. Yep. All right. Now. Anything we need to adjust about the agenda before we get going. Okay. 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 the agenda. Again, we ask you to limit your comments to two minutes. And I see we already have a speaker. Thank you. District three prospect street area. I just wanted to say tonight I want to welcome the new council members and welcome the mayor. And let everyone know we'll continue to work together on the issues. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you. Thank you for, for running. Good to see everybody. Really miss the room. Welcome to the new council members. I found it such a rewarding experience while serving for the five years here. And I hope you enjoy it as well. Just coming to comment on an item on the consent agenda. I asked the mayor to bring this to everybody's attention. It deals with the sale of 110 State Street, which is the state's attorney and sheriff's building at the moment. I serve on the on the institutions committee at the state house which deals with the capital construction bill, which also deals with selling state buildings. 110 State Street has been recommended by the governor to go up for sale. I think there's about 15 state employees working on it yet at the moment so it's a very underutilized building. I'm going to go over sale. What I did was I put language in there to give Montpelier the right of first refusal to buy this property. If it's of interest, and what I'm still a bit unclear on is how much parking comes with that. If you look, if you're standing on State Street, you know, you look at the M&T bank. And then right next to it is the state's attorney building. There's a wee strip of parking lot for the bank there. And then you have sort of a Taylor Street parking lot there. There's also a street from the transit center. So, you know, property in downtown Montpelier is pretty scarce, pretty precious. There would be no obligation for the city to purchase this but the way the language is currently written is you would have a year after the passage of the capital bill to decide which would be probably a year from like July. So, at that point, you could do whatever you want, you know, partner with Down Street, see if there are other uses that might be appropriate for the building, but always better of options than not of options. So, with this, the letter you'll be looking at is just coming from the entire council rather than just a mayor and city manager expressing interest in this. And I think it would be enough to get it over the finish line, at least on the house side. So, that's it for me. While you're here, does any council members have any questions on this item? Okay, great. All right, happy to come back in time folks. Yeah, good to see you. Okay, is it anybody else in the room would like to be recognized. Okay, I don't see anyone. If you're participating online please activate your hands up signal electronically or raise your hand and I'll will keep an eye out for you. Oh, again, not seeing anybody. So, we'll move to the next item on the agenda, which is the consent agenda. And I just really quickly apologize to everybody for adding some of the minutes that were already approved back on they were just an ugly mess, and then needed some work so. Okay, we I heard a suggestion that we, we take the meetings. We take the minutes from before March 8 off the consent agenda because we have members who are on the council who were not on the council at that time. So, without objection we will do that. Any other suggestions on the consent center gender are we ready for a motion. Okay, Carrie Brown I'll recognize you and then Peter I do see you have your hand up. So Carrie, are you are you muted. Sorry, I'm yes I was muted sorry. I had asked for some additional information about the Recreation Center feasibility study which which city staff provided which was very helpful to me but I still would like to request that it come off the consent agenda just so it has a chance to we don't necessarily need to have a big discussion about it but just so it has a chance to be heard on its own. And with that, is somebody ready to move the consent agenda with those changes. Yes, I'll Peter yes I will recognize you once we have a motion and a second. Okay. Okay, it's been moved in seconded Peter Kelvin you're recognized. I'm Peter Kelvin mountain view street in my failure. I just wanted to add one thing to what Kerry asked to do which I would have asked to do, which is if it could be discussed, either in conjunction with or after we hear the report from white and Burke because it's related. The rec center study. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. Okay. With. Okay, are you ready to vote. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Next we will. The chair would accept a motion to approve the January and February minutes. Any discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Can I just ask really quickly that folks who make motions and second really do so in the mic since I'm not there. I had to do a little. Think that sounded like. But it's probably a good idea to be clear. I'm writing them down for you to. Oh, thanks. Okay. Now. Recreation center study build you want to take kick better. I'll take a stab at this and Kelly maybe able to jump in as well. So, I certainly understand why it will seem connected to the. Recreation center project. So it's basically saying if we were to have a new rec facility, what are the desired. Elements, what are the things that should be there, regardless of where it is. So while it certainly could be relevant. At the end of the day to the sighting, because you say, Hey, we need one this big or this big or whatever that might inform a decision. But it is not designed to say we want this facility at this location. So this will make that distinction. The council can wait for the presentation. It really doesn't matter as we make sure people understand that this study is not about a rec center in one specific location. It's about rec center needs and community wants and those kind of things anything I'm missing. Okay. So what's your pleasure. I would like us to study as the intention was. So I'd make the motion to approve moving forward with the study. Is there a second. I'll second it for conversation. Okay. Okay. With that I read it. I guess I'm not used to having as many consultant studies coming at me in a week as I see in the last week or so. It's okay. I'm just not sure another $15,000 is worthwhile. Are we really going to learn anymore from this consultant than what we have here and what we already know about Montpelier. I mean, my first reaction was. Okay, but not another increment of it. And I supported as we've heard that people feel things are out of date and they feel like the world is different after the pandemic. Yeah, I don't think that's necessarily true. About what we want for the rec department, but it was part of our goal was to make sure we had current information. And this was done in 2018 ended in 2019. Carrie. Yeah, so part of my concern about it was the, the description of the scope of services, which is kind of a list of bullet points. And I wasn't around for the beginning of this, you know, back in 2018 2019 whenever it was so it didn't really make a lot of sense to me so I'm not, I'm not opposed to this I don't think but I would love some more clarity about what they're actually going to do so that we do learn something beyond what the surveys already told us. So I don't know if that's something that we can get, or if we can, we can just say we would. We're, we're okay with going ahead with this but we'd like a follow up with some actual, you know, narrative description of what they're going to do and a list of deliverables would be great. So that's a proposal that they're, we're putting forward for the 14,500. What that would be doing is giving us a pro forma study and analysis of costs and revenues for programmatic items so it would be looking at the current site, looking at demographics, looking at what's what's needed within the community and then you know some cost estimates and modeling. This has been done in other communities, such as South Burlington and the city of Claremont. So if you have some case studies it would provide us with additional detail in terms of being able to get the modeling for a community center should be moved forwards that will know what revenue would be generated. Right now we might not have access to that kind of information without doing this study. I will also say that this would be sort of the next step in the process that was initiated in 2018 19 the total that contract was 39500 I believe, and we spent about $20,000 there so doing this now would add on additional about, you know, $3,500 of the total contract cost to do this additional work. And so, I do think we would get additional information out of it in order to help inform the process. I think it also would come from, you know, a subject matter consultant in the area that would help us really kind of gauge where we're at and where we're going. So you'd have those details to make some decisions. With this include an analysis of revenue and expense for something like an indoor pool. So, the initial planning did include or would include that and in this particular instance I don't know that we would be including that something we could. I don't know why but what we're about to see on the white and Burke presentation it, if, if it doesn't include that I would suggest that we, we ask that it, that it could be if within the, within the contract terms. Yeah, they will be looking at current recreation facilities and then evaluating, you know need so. I think the revenue information might be enlightening. There are ways to generate revenue with with an expensive thing like an indoor pool. So, sure. Thank you. Thanks yeah, I, I think this makes sense to do, especially with just remembering the analysis that was done a few years ago it was so predicated on the constraints that each of those sites had so now having this whole new site it kind of makes. An analysis is still useful but a little obsolete in terms of like what our options are, and I did get a lot of feedback from constituents who participated in the process that we'll hear about later around the country club site who were really like wanting this bigger picture of their options at all the different sites. So, I think, I think it'll be helpful to get this more updated picture not just the analysis, but like just knowing that that analysis from before, really just focused on the kind of like narrow opportunities we had in our current rep building and the pool site so I think it's, it's worthwhile. Thanks. No carry. Yeah, so I have two questions. One is. If you were able to, or bill, able to just kind of sum up like in a sentence what the, what the question is that this is all this whole process is trying to answer because really specifically. And then my second question is about why are we not. Why would we not be talking about an indoor pool, because that was one of the primary things that people said they wanted in the survey and it was a point of so much focus then I'm wondering what has changed. Sure. So I think in a sentence you know this study would do two things it would really evaluate current recreation facilities against future needs and assessments as well as looking at programs within that facility and determining sort of that need. And then lastly would be looking at those programs within that facility to determine what we could anticipate in the form of revenue generation. And also they would provide us with cost estimates for doing this capital investment so there's a couple of different things there's the, you know, evaluation of the current site. So there's the programmatic evaluation and then there's the cost modeling. So there's kind of the three pronged deliverable here, I think with the study. And that's not a short sentence I'm sorry. And the pool. Oh, yes, of course. And so, you know, certainly we could include the pool and the evaluation I think we didn't necessarily put it sort of front and center just based on, you know, past feedback that we have received from the process but this is also part of the reason why we're doing this because you know this is, this is new. Yeah, Carrie one of the things about the last time we did this study was that the, the idea of doing an indoor pool was a very popular idea. And then the next question was taking for taking this as the price tag of an indoor pool. Now, do you want to do an indoor pool, and the support went way down. So, I don't know what the, what the voters about failure would ultimately are ultimately going to decide to do, but that's that it was a very strong indication that the, the price was discouraging people from, from wanting to go forward with that. So were people clear that they were happy to pay some, some additional amount of money for something else, in particular, not a cool. I'm not sure what people are going to be willing to pay for, but the price that seems like part of what this study could be doing is is figuring out well how much would it actually cost to have a pool, and what would the impact of that be financially as well as on the quality of the city. Oh, I agree. And I think that's something that we could, that could easily be incorporated into this because it's already in the, in the baseline of what, what they've looked at before. Tender you have your hand up. Okay, anyone else on the council have any further comments to make I see at least one hand from the public. Okay, we'll go to the public. Peter Kelman. I don't mean to be argumentative, but this is why I thought these two things should be discussed together. Kelly immediately talked about the present facility and everybody else has been bringing up things that are related to the country club road. I think these need to be planned together. It would be a waste of money to tell this consultant to go off and not be talking to white and Burke, as they are doing their study of the country club road. There's no siloing that goes on with consultants. I've seen this in other cases as well so I would strongly urge that the RFP or whatever it is with this group be direct them to be in communication with white and Burke, so that these two things are done in parallel and maybe even time it so that they're done more in parallel. That's why I had asked that these be these conversations be combined. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. May I. Yeah. Peter, thanks for your comments. You know, I think, you know, our intention here is to make sure that this item does help inform the process. I think that this item also needs to happen regardless of what happens at country club road because we currently don't have this information. And so this will help inform sort of, you know, future state for a community service center. And so I do think that, sure, there is definitely a correlation with the country club road property in that site. And I think that this will be very helpful with that project but I also think that, you know, if it works to stand alone it also is something that we need to do to kind of start to move the needle on the community services building. Thank you, Charlie. Councilor you're ready for the vote. The motion is to approve the recreation center study all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. All right, we'll do a roll call. They. Brown. I. I'm sorry. Any cone. Hurl. And we've adopted the motion. Thank you. I just reminder again, if you could please speak into the microphone because I didn't catch that. So I'm hoping bill you did. Thanks. All eyes, but he. Okay. Thanks. Moving on to the next item country club. Just for those watching and for our new council members. We try to educate as we go along when somebody participates remotely, just one person, if there's a split vote, the law requires we do a roll call vote. So, if it's unanimous, that's fine, but no, even if it's obvious who did it or not, but that's the reason they're called for that there. Thanks for reminding. Okay. I do think we should take John's comment about not hearing if he can't hear that means other people can hear. So he really, these mics are hard, you got to put them in your, in your face. Okay, next up country club road report. Okay. I don't know how to test if everyone can hear me remotely too but just want to make sure to following counselor Bates comment to make sure my mic is nice and close. Hopefully folks can see this. I'm going to try to. Make it a little bit bigger. Hello, counselors and everyone out on zoom and in the room. I am Stephanie Clark with Whitenberg. I am the lead on the consultant team hired to help with the country club road site master planning process. I'm the consultant team by the HB and Black River design. We do have one member of that team like BD here as well. And Josh Jerome from planning is here as well as Evelyn Prim and Kelly Murphy and Mike Miller who are all on the planning team within the city. Tonight's purpose of our meeting is to update you and offer a bit of a reminder of where we are in the process, and especially for the new counselors, although we were able to do some education and I know folks have been very clued in and staying on top of this which is great. We are also going to share the results from our winter stage of the process here the public component. And we're going to really focus what I'd like to focus on and get opinions on is the direction for the spring stage, and this final surge of the phase one process to get feedback today. So let me see if I can just advance these slides easily. Okay. So, again, this is the process we've been on this timeline since the fall when our team was engaged. The property was bought in the spring of last year and there was community input at that time. And then our team was brought on in early September and we initiated a fall community input process where we had several multiple public meetings as well as some stakeholder meetings and at the same time did due diligence on the site and analysis. In the last stage of this that many of you attended and were engaged with we did an opportunities and constraints process of looking at the test testing the limits of the site and exploring what the underlying conditions could accommodate as well as prioritizing the different uses that are that were voiced from the community in the fall. So we have data on that now, and we are heading into the last stage which is the concept planning stage, and the ultimate goal here is to bring back a concept one concept plan, the phase one will culminate when one concept plan, and an actionable master plan document that will entail all the findings we've had, it will encompass recommendations for next steps, and it will start to put some real parameters on what what the what the site will look like. And between now and then we are planning to do another round of public feedback, and that will look like it did in the winter so several public meetings, lots of marketing we have a. Thank goodness for Evelyn as communications coordinator for the city, who is spearheading this marketing push to get the message out to do the outreach, and we've solicited opinions and help from lots of different pockets of the city to help us optimize that plan. And we know we've learned lessons in the winter that are going to inform our actions in the spring. So that we can amplify the word get people engaged get people educated on this, we're going to do another survey and get the data in through multiple various means, and bring that back to city council. So the next time we see you will be in May to give you the feedback from the community, and then it's ultimately this city council's decision on what plan to advance. And then we'll get into a little bit of what that's going to look like in a little bit. So to high to recap the winter stage. Sorry, I got a little ahead of myself. We had three meetings, variety of methods of, you know, in person hybrid and online 145 people attended and engaged in that process which was wonderful. So it was a high school student survey that a high school student led, giving us some great data as well to work with, and the community wide survey which many of you took yourselves, and that was reached a lot of folks will get into that in a moment, but it yielded 12,000 data points so it gave us a lot of information to work with and a lot of direction which is exactly what we were hoping for qualitatively. I can highlight some of the ways that some of the things we heard, which was over over reaching consensus was to have both housing and recreation on this site, a balance of both. What a balance looks like is the question. I'm not going to read every single one of these points but you know in general, very, very strong belief in mixing price points and product available for folks to buy rent, live together. The importance of the integration of the site together with not just different price points of housing but also the recreation pieces to get all of that integrated not bubbled and isolated. There was a big response to make sure this is a connected site with the rest of the city, transportation being a big key piece of that transit public transit being a key piece of that. And to be thinking of this holistically within the context of the surrounding areas as well. We also heard a mixed reaction about and this actually speaks to counselor Hurl's actual point just a moment ago about the, the response from folks about where the community center or recreation center should be located. So there was not clear consensus across the board on every single part of this site shocking and continues to be why I'm involved. But, you know, it really does emphasize that there are pieces that are very clear and there are pieces that are not so clear. We, we also heard I just have to mention that commercial. That was a pretty universally responded to not a big interest in having big sale commercial out here small scale if any out here. We have consolidated this feedback you in your council packets and on the website have a document that that summarizes this qualitative data. But we also then had the survey which is what we're going to go through now a little bit some of those responses. And that those results are going to be on the website tomorrow we have now finally been able to export all of the data from the poll co survey. We also have and there are some hard copies here in the audience and the room today for the audience and there's also the high school survey responses as well that we have on that we'll go on the website tomorrow on this country country club road site webpage so folks can see the raw data for themselves. If they're at all interested. We are. But I will go through now a little bit about the, the findings of the survey. Just a reminder, this was the site test sketch called test test C, which was a balanced approach between mix of housing and recreation. So I just do this as a refresher this is not the concept plans we're going forward with but this was the one that got much more favorable response from the, from the community. So our survey reached a good number of folks. You can see the percentages that are listed here and I'm going to scroll up because I know it's not it's cutting off truncating my, my screen a little bit. So the results we got and in green those highlighted bars are what are represent the majority of per the census of the majority residents of Montpelier. So consistent with that, you know we got 38 response 38% response from this income level and that is actually the majority of Montpelier residents according to the survey data. So that's what this slide represents. What I want to point out here is that we did receive an overwhelming response from folks who own their own home. But that is not representative of the split, according to the census it's more like almost 5050. So it really says to us that we didn't do a good enough job and outreach to renters, we did a last surge and kept it open for an additional couple of weeks when we found a couple new resources and avenues to pursue. But we will do a better job with the spring phase. And so we admit that that's a shortcoming but we're hopeful we can reach more with the next left the next survey and we'll provide that data in the next round. So here's just some of the quick findings. As you know you can you have seen in your packets and people might have seen at home. When we asked the question about which uses. They support the overwhelming response was for outdoor rec and housing, but childcare and indoor rec were not far behind. Then similarly, asking the question, how would you lay out the site you can see it's a pretty strong preference for a balanced approach between both. But again, nothing that was so clear that we would have produced one of the test sketches to bring back to you and say done. So, here we go where we continue on this gets into some of what we were just talking about what the council was talking about moment moments ago. Maybe I can do a little bit better on my scaling here since I'm new to this a little bit but So the uses for a rec center the question was what features are your household most interested in and the top features that came back where childcare and indoor pool and gymnasium space. And so I know that that somewhat dovetails with what Kelly was just talking about. What's interesting to us too is that when we surveyed the high school students there was a similar response. So, similarly prioritizing a pool and outdoor rec bike trails dog park, but also gymnasium things that would require gymnasium space. It was a similar question wasn't exact asked in the exact same way. But similar results. The high school survey also yielded some interesting findings around conservation, some strong feelings around conserving some of the property, and it kind of spanned about how much should be conserved some said half some said more than half said exactly half. So, that tracks also with what we found in the, the community wide survey and had and heard in the meetings. Sorry, let me just comment that in a high school survey as well. We heard that transportation was a key concern for high school students and we know the four main ways they, they said they mostly commute is vehicular walking biking and public transit. So that says to us, those have to be well accommodated at this site that just has to be an important piece of what we consider. Unsurprisingly, but just an important data point is that half responded to the survey saying about half say that they would not stay in Vermont, but they don't plan to stay in Vermont. And this tracks with the statewide average that we are familiar with and I think that most people know, but it really underscores the need for quality of life investments and projects like this one which have been consistently ranked as an important part of wanting to stay in Vermont and wanting to stay local, and the amenities both recreationally and professionally that something of this scale could provide another survey response was around building height. We heard mostly all the majority were for three stories or higher building height. And what we take from that and I add here a note about kind of my, our professional opinion my professional opinion here is that. The efficient, it will matter very much how that is done, and how the three stories to five stories or beyond is shown. And because we're planning that this would not be developed, the housing would not be developed by the city. This would be done by a private developer. That's something that we want to emphasize in the RFP process. And one of the things that was so important to the community was sustainability sustainable design energy efficiency, and sometimes those are accomplished with going vertically. Another important priority of the community was open space. So that also complements going higher or not wider. So we want to make that strike that balance in RFP when you go out to a developer to allow flexibility to be able to accommodate all the goals we're trying to do here. Yeah. You're back to the non high school survey right. Correct. Thank you. Yes. Thanks, Mayor. That was a that was a overall community wide survey finding and community meeting survey take away. Back to the main the the community wide survey and the meeting data. This buildable area this is just a refresher of the buildable areas that were shown during that winter phase stage and that we're shown as the for the test sketches. And that's relevant because this chart here shows us a lot. And I'm sorry it's a little hard to read if you're reading it for the first time but essentially what's bolded in the green cells. And with the red highlights are the dominant most most majority most popular within each category. So across the columns go by buildable area a b a through f, and the natural areas east and west, and then down the rows are the different uses. And the way this this is a limited as all survey data has to be taken into consideration and the questions we asked had to have to have some context. This has some limitations because the question we asked was what use would you most want to see on each of these buildable areas. So, the top line takeaway is that there was a strong desire for multifamily and outdoor rec in many of the different zones areas trails on multiple of the areas. So that's why we're looking at east, west, very clearly conserve land and trails, but some of the other uses. We just have to note method all the methodology of this, which is that maybe they were ranked lower, but that may be because they did not want to have an entire buildable area to a community garden, for example, that's a lot of space for a community garden. So we don't want to discount something that says 0% as not as off the table. It would be maybe in conjunction with these other uses as you put that together with dedicated Abnecki space or conserve land or multifamily in a combination. So that's just an important data point, and also solar arrays. We made a mistake a little bit in our terminology sometimes people hear solar array and think it's a rooftop solar array. Others think dedicated solar field. We were intending it to be solar field here as if it was going to take up an entire buildable area, but some folks probably were very, you know, intent and we heard it qualitatively over and over in the survey comment section as well as in the energy efficiency and sustainable design was of a top priority so we just take that into you have to take all of that into account when you look at data like this. And a lot of that will be taken into account by the developers themselves and by the city developing any kind of recreational building that will be on us. So, what did we take away from this and what is known. What we know that can be put into a concept plan for this phase one is that it needs to encompass housing and recreation that there needs to be both on the site. That there need to be a mixed a mix of housing product whether that's different styles and different layouts, as well as putting different, depending on where it is on the site and not just siloing it. The two natural areas on the east and west are more than likely going to be trails and conserved land and that trails in open space need to be incorporated throughout the entire design. And the general road location is also pretty well known. That came out less from the community process but more from the consultant team and the design team looking at the natural resources, looking at the topography and the characteristics of the site itself. Some things that we know now are also things that we know will not be incorporated at this site in phase one, in particular. For example, we know that there are specific developer decisions that won't be made in phase one. So things that were suggested that are really creative and innovative that we will capture in our findings. The geothermal technologies, the co housing model for housing, those are all great ideas and we want to make sure those are surfaced and and put out maybe in the RFP process as ideas that are important to the community or were of interest to the community, but aren't going to be things we're going to be proposing to be codified in that phase one concept plan. There are also ideas that were thrown out that we did some due diligence on that we know won't be accommodated at this site. For example, some, there was a few people talking about schools, locating here. And when speaking with the school district, it was not of interest or they not interested in engaging on that conversation at this time for this site so we're not going to be taking that forward and advancing that if that conversation had gone differently. We'll be coming back here tonight asking what council wants to do. And then other ideas for phase two, there's other ideas that were really better suited for a phase two exploration and that's back to this idea that was kind of just highlighted earlier, and that we'll get into next about specific programming elements like a swimming pool versus a tennis court. That's going to happen in phase two so wouldn't be expected on this concept plan. So, what do we not know, and what we might not know until future phases, and what might be might come out as part of this phase one, the next spring stage, the recreational programming is the biggest is one of the biggest pieces and as well as the housing product. So again, just not to hammer this home but again the, this is going to go out to an RFP a developer is going to need to bring forward what exact kind of housing product makes sense because this could be three years off, or four years off, and that may change. So we're not going to predict that what we are going to do is show illustrative intentionality of what the city would like to see in the buildable areas for some of the housing product, and that will serve as a, as a guide, especially in building the RFP, and talking about specifically what we are looking for, but the alt that will not ultimately be what's likely designed the layout, the exact cost of those individual units we will not have that information I just want to be clear we're not going to be able to set the housing prices in the spring of 2023. And we're not going to know exactly what city infrastructure is needed for every part of the site but we are going to get to a little in order of magnitude that I'll get to in a moment. So we're not going to know exactly what indoor space and what outdoor fields are needed. There is it is an iterative process and the city is working our team is working and the city is working with the wreck department and working on more data. So this study is going to provide some additional helpful data, and there needs to be a more, there needs to be more public process around that. The concept phase one concept plan will not be showing things for people. We will be making recommendations, likely for a focus group, a working group and a process for answering those questions as we go forward in phase two. That zone of indoor wreck and fields will be located is part of this phase. So where that we're calling it the recreation and community zone which you'll see shortly where that's located as part of this phase, and how that will be determined will come out as this in this spring stage. The other pieces we don't know, like I said before we don't know how necessarily each kind of innovation could be incorporated or all the different creative financing mechanisms, and we need to be explicit that we don't know exactly how childcare will be accommodated here but we can talk about that within the community and the recreation zone. So, within the concept plan, and within the concept alternatives that you that we're going to show to the public and engage with the public on and come back to you with over the next few months is they're going to incorporate it's going to a recreation and community zone. It's going to incorporate housing options outdoor wreck, including a connection to the bike path. Show some options for how to accommodate dedicated Abnecki space, community gardens and additional trails, conserved area open space and also the you 32 trail, as was this has come evolved in the last few months. So, to kind of get to that more specifically. See, I want to make sure this is going to get as big as it can for the purposes of our font is very hard, much harder to read on here than it was it is on my computer that is challenging. So, I will read it to you don't worry. So, here's what we plan proposed to get to an actionable master plan. We're going to be bringing back different concept plans, three concept plans to the community. And we know things that we know are. I'm going to use my mouse because I think I can. These natural areas east and west, the green boxes right here say trails and conserved land. Sorry, it's too hard to read on this screen. We will also be showing the you 32 trail as I just said it's not shown on this graphic but we will be showing that on the concept plan and a possible bike path connection, also showing possible vehicular connections to a budding properties. Very similar to how you saw the concept, the test sketches with all those elements that will be shown in this next stage as well. But you'll also be seeing a combination of different elements in all of the buildable areas. And so let me walk you through what each of these says. Number one, this is the recreation and community zone. Number two over here says multifamily housing or recreation fields. Three and four have the same two sets of options multifamily housing, or a combination of outdoor rec trails, dedicated amnaki space and community garden and buildable area five has three options, single family housing slash tiny homes, or multifamily or that combination we spoke about outdoor rec trails, abnaki space and community gardens. So what we show here and I have some questions this is where we're going to get to the questions for council. The recreation and community zone. The central concept is not going to show any programming buildable buildings and fields in that session section yet, because that needs to go through a separate process. But what we are showing is the area and we've shown this ranges, and you'll see because I've got two different orientations of this it ranges from about 12 to 15 acres. It's been right sized to preserve flexibility based on input from the recreation department based on the designers on the consultant team, knowing what how much acreage it takes to accommodate that kind of facility those kinds of facilities. But it also reflects what was shown on test sketch see what was the balanced approach so it doesn't show the max max rec. We're oriented differently. And we I will show you that in two slides because I want to get council's opinion on if you want to show it in two different orientations or if you feel strongly about one orientation the design team felt pretty comfortable with this orientation that rec would be the first thing you get to when you drive into the site. In part because if you had housing down here for example, you're sending a lot of cars by a bunch of housing in order to get to the recreation when they're that's going to be a major driver and vehicular draw. But that being said, there's a lot to be said for doing a more horizontal type orientation that could accommodate fields on this flatter space and have more multi family housing as a as a entrance to the site. So I'm going to circle back to that question for you in a moment but I want to go to my other two questions to so that we can. So the three questions I have for you tonight that are going to guide how we put the concepts together for the next stage with the public. So the first question is around this location and size of recreation and community zone. There is around a commitment to doing abnaki recognition on the site, there was community support it came out in multiple meetings and multiple ways to have this much acreage at the city's control to be able to honor the history here. What's important is that this is the capital of the state and actually represents based on our meetings that we had with some members of the abnaki community. Montpelier represents more than just another town because it also represents a history of diplomacy and also a history a complicated history with the indigenous people of Vermont. So, this does provide an opportunity here to do some with abnaki recognition whether that's a trail, whether that's a specific space that's dedicated and devoted to the community to use the abnaki community to use for anything that they want to do for programming. It could be space within the community center. So there's lots of different ways it could go we've met now with them. One time, this will be a much bigger process, it needs to follow a bigger process where council and maybe a working group can get together with representatives and members of the community from different areas because there's no one spokesperson for this. To be able to do that, that may start in the next few months, but would absolutely be one of our recommendations if it's the city council's commitment to want to do something on this site. That would be one of our recommendations for phase two is to engage with the community and stakeholders to be able to find the best way that's going to benefit everybody. The last question I have for you is if there were any uses that I just rattled off, since you can't read them on that screen. Sorry. If there were any that you opposed that you would not like to be presented to the community as options because this is a city council decision. For example, you thought, I never want to see single family housing on this property ever. And that was the consensus of the city council we wouldn't show it to the public for the next three months. It's just not a good idea. So that's, those are some of the questions to you. I'm going to start with the recreation and community zone question. I think I went too fast. Here we go. So you saw that first orientation where recreation and community zone spanned this area, but you could also do it more centered here in the middle and do either multifamily housing, or other type of fields here at the entrance. So, the question being, does the city council feel strongly about showing two different alternatives? Or do you have a preference for one or the other. And the last thing I'll say before I actually ask for input is that the concept plans are going to end up becoming, they're going to be a little bit of cobbling together because we have multiple choices for multiple zones. So it's kind of like a build your own adventure, choose your own adventure buffet and how exactly we're going to get the input from the public is still something we're working on. One idea was to just show one big plan and have each buildable area with a couple different concepts on one plan. And the idea of how big that graphic would be. And if I'm having this many issues with this graphic here, I don't actually think that's a good idea. So I think it'll end up being three concepts, but for each buildable area there may be multiple combinations that could be done. And so ultimately I don't think you're going to get the public coming back to you saying, I vote one, I vote two, I vote three. It's probably going to be a way of building this more iteratively, I guess. So one versus to the two different orientations kind of vertical or horizontal for the recreation community zone could be shown on a couple of different concepts, or it could just all three concepts show one orientation. And that's my question, and then those other two questions so I don't know how, Mayor you want to open that up to the council's discussion but that was the best I could do. Great. Thank you, Stephanie. This is. This is a lot. Good. Great information I think this is very helpful. And so, council members I see, Carrie you already have your hand up so just talking about that first question. Carrie go. Okay, thank you. So, I'm, I'm sorry but I need to back up a little bit and get some clarity on what, as we're talking about, you know how to arrange things and what it might end up looking like what what is the authority that the city has to be able to make those determinations is it through zoning is it through are we going to, are we intending that we'll come up with a clear plan that says only this kind of housing and only this kind of recreation will happen in these certain places. Do we have the power to do that. I guess I just want to know a little bit about the mechanics of what would happen next as we're talking with developers and as we're trying to make something actually happen on that site given that we're not likely to be the ones as the city to build all the housing and everything here. Yeah, that's what I'm. That is a very good question especially if you have that question. I'm sure the new counselors definitely have that question. I think, and I'll speak to this from my where I'm coming from in terms of my assumptions on how we're going to build the actual master plan, and then Josh or Mike could jump in on planning zoning. Typically, the, this is concept planning master planning at its highest level, really. So what this will do is set out the goal, and part of phase two recommendations are going to include things like what kind of zoning would need to be changed and what kind of designations you might need, or changes to the master plan are going to be needed to meet these goals. So for example to have housing out in buildable areas 345. And you'll have to change for that and we know that already. So this is the master planning that needs to occur before you do any kind of zoning changes because what if the consensus was 345 should all be recreation, in which case, the zoning would look very different. So, again, this is the precursor to that step. And then in turn, you ask the question around the developer part of it. So there is a point at which the city stops having control, and that is where I was making the point you can't design the pods of housing or we can't do that ourselves. But what we can do is show a vision and show illustrative vision for what we want here and a list to go with it of the types of things that are important to us, and then see what comes back. At that time, there's going to be a whole nother process in place to have the council and the community deliberate about which kind of proposal comes in, and what makes most sense at the time. Respond to that, because I think Stephanie got the bulk of it right on I think just stepping back even further you know I mean the ultimate authority is we are the property owner. So we can sort of decide this is where and how we want to use the property as it lays out and we have the ability to change the zoning. And, you know, we won't be able to 100% control the housing but we can ask for what we want. And we can figure out we can see what proposals we get and the proposals that are most close to the desired outcomes are the ones we have the control over who we select. So there is, you know, some control or reject if they, you know, so they come back and it's not at all what we want then you know we're back to the drawing board so so we have those kind of controls we can't you know like you said we're not going to build the housing ourselves but we can guide it that's for sure we can figure out what kind of investments we want to make, whether it's in the infrastructure or other things that will help maybe make the project more affordable for the end purchasers. The policy decisions the city can have as it goes forward. It is very visual. So great for me. I just want to check maybe we don't know the answer yet. Will there be any expense difference. If you choose the like first plan or this one because as far as I understood we cannot do anything about the housing as a city, but we will build recreation right right so which one is. I would say less expensive right cost more short so it had this micro decision to make if I should continue with the presentation and then take questions and get input and there's one more slide that I think is important so I'm going to do my last slide. Before we continue because I think it addresses your, your point. What we'll be doing out of this is to create these concept alternatives but one of the pieces will also be the order of magnitude cost estimates, and not just cost estimates pure numbers, but also the implications there's permit implications there's other implications that can basically be translated into a person's mind to a different cost. So we have kind of an idea of a matrix that we'll put together that will show, you know, green, red for certain types of things, certain types of implications per design alternative. And so I think at that in this spring stage that will absolutely need to be part of it and you had made the point before that was really astute that if you have. You really had to make and it kind of ties into something that counselor bait said earlier it's like you'd be willing to pay up to a certain amount for something, but may not be willing to pay for it. If it's, you know, for running infrastructure out really really far that's going to cost more doing roads and doing water and sewer out to the fifth billable area, it may cost more. But it may cost less than doing the max, you know, possible recreation you might do because you're also putting money back on the tax rule by putting making that property privately owned. So there are some different trade off so yes as part of this next stage we will associate costs with the choices so that people can make those with some context. So I just wanted to make sure that was clear as part of the next steps. Yeah, thank you. But I think you ask us to choose one of the plans so it will go to public. That's why I was asking how we decide not which yeah recreation center here or like the others how we can this or I see I can tell my for myself how I can decide the cost difference between these two two orientations. Yeah, yeah, no there won't be. I don't think there's a sizable. I don't think there's going to be a sizable difference between the two of those in terms of cost difference there. We're talking about the same land area. Maybe there's a topographic difference that could cause some additional infrastructure costs but you're going to be running infrastructure up through these. So I don't think it's a sizable enough difference to have effect a council decision at this point, what goes in those sections absolutely will have enough of a sizable difference so you need to know that for the next phase. Next stage. Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie. So it sounded like you. When you present whatever your whatever we decide or suggest that you present to the public. There will be some costs attached in in their decision making. So if we if we come up with a notion of two options to show the public for input. They'll have they'll have costs attached to right. Yeah, we are going to we're going to present three different concept plans. And that's a that's a given. The different combinations that are in that is a little bit to be determined by the design team but the decision tonight is whether or not all three incorporate. One of these orientations or if they if, if we should diversify between the three, a different, you know, offering two different orientations of that community zone. And for those we don't have a cost differential right now but when you when we show the costs I expect we're not going to have a concept one costs. Option two costs 200 or 300. It's going to be by buildable area. Most likely because we're going to be showing different uses within each buildable area. So we'll break it out a little bit more rather than try to give one because people will probably end up doing wanting to cobble it together differently. In addition to that kind of information. I assuming there'll be other kind of annotations pros and cons. Exactly the implications. Yeah. What you mentioned about traffic passing back. Some people might think that when they're looking at a plan and some people might not think exactly and permitting feasibility. Different types of impact that could happen. That's the kind of implications we want to show that won't be quantitative. But we'll be flagging pros cons or, you know, one is stronger or not as strong in some of these. There's also struck by one of the earlier charts very early on where people wanted to do everything everywhere, all at the same time. And I wonder if. Yeah, it wasn't wasn't that moving. I wonder if, if people are, and maybe you can incorporate this into the phase to input phase but I wonder if people are aware really of the topography of the property. I mean, if you stand in the parking lot, right, it looks like a flat spot with some hills. But if you walk it. Yeah, I mean you get a workout area for is really to have, you know, passive much steeper than the bottom. So I wonder if people's input will be better, a little more nuanced. If, if we arrange for a tour or a couple of tours of the property, it'll be nice weather. Better than the winter. So just just a thought. Yeah, we, yeah, that's not bad. That's a good idea because we, you know, we did the, we've been doing onsite meetings with each of these stages but do an onsite and the first one we did actually do a site tour site walk so it would be probably wise to do that again now that we'll be hosting these in April May. And it might be tolerably not muddy, we'll see. And that, that's a good point and we can point out some of that. But again, I think in that kind of matrix we're envisioning, we're showing the strengths and weaknesses of each of each decision, you know, if you put housing up on the ridge, you've got implications of, you know, visibility and site but you also have the advantage of, you know, nicer views for some folks and you have nicer, you know, it can nestle into the hill more so it's not standing out. First thing when you drive on the site. And really your point about that slide is that not everybody's going to be happy and my, I'm just praying somebody's happy. And so my comments are the tip of my hand. I mean, I, I think the more options we can give people for input, the better off we'll be. I mean, the last thing we want to hear is when we're halfway through the project. You know, you didn't tell us that, you know, so I think with the kind of information that you're talking about sort of cost pro con list some sort of narratives that explains the ups and downs of one or two or three options. That we'll get, we'll get better results and maybe even more, more results. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, the options, like multiple options versus also quality of data. So yeah, we're giving, we're trying to window the options in some ways, because, you know, we can't have everything on the table this entire time. But at the same time, upping the quality and upping the information that goes with each of the options, as some have been eliminated but the ones that have stayed. Now we have more data, and now we have more robust context. Yeah. Tim. Yeah. This is even since the other days. You probably need to be on the mic. Am I okay. So a couple of questions and thoughts. And I think in terms of citizens being able to make nuanced decisions. I still think the key piece that isn't in the mix yet that needs to be is, and hopefully in the next phase will be because I think there's an engineering firm this part of your team is some engineering data about this project, because there will be tipping points represent large amounts of money that will impact the feasibility of different options. And that's not being discussed at all. We're in kind of a dreamy phase right now, which is nice, but without knowing the cost to actually get utilities roads. If a secondary road is going to need to be created to connect back through, you gently mentioned it in your report but if that has to happen, you're talking millions of dollars. That's, that's not a couple hundred thousand dollar a little add on, and that will impact how far you go with this project. I think I really want to see more engineering data help people make these nuanced decisions and not just keep going with what would you like to see here. I'm feeling like we're bringing people down a path that we may end up pulling the rug. And that's not good. We have keeping lots of options available so like the phase one piece, having some housing on the lower end help pay for some of those utility costs going up may make a lot of sense may not be the answer right now but I think we should preserve options like that. Because I really don't have a problem of being in a place where if the rec centers up the street some cars are going by my house, other people might not like that but on main streets. So I think really I guess my point for the moment is, let's start looking at costs to get those water lines up there I noticed in the new water report we just got this one little line in there about just getting the line to country club road, I think was 285,000. I assume that's the bottom of the hill to get it up the hill under the railroad tracks and up to where we're going to start building facilities and homes. The numbers will be significant. You've also got sewer lines, all the sewage in that part of town is on a pump station I believe that comes back through. Will that station handle it or do we need, do we need a new bigger pump station. If so let's know that does the intersection have to be rebuilt will country club road actually handle X units, or does it need a substantial rebuild and redesign. We got a railroad track crossing. It's just a lot of factors which is true of any project. It's not unique to this one, but we need to know some of those answers to guide us and how we proceed. Stephanie, how much engineering do we have do we. I mean it's not a big hill of sand right I mean rock and right. We do have due diligence we do have a natural resources assessment and we have the preliminary traffic assessment transportation traffic traffic assessment. The Tim's point. Yeah, you could parse what you said basically, you know, we have some preliminary base data. And that is what has informed this initial concept conceptual road alignment and positioning of these buildable areas and so forth so it's kind of laid the groundwork, but to his point taking that, you know, now it's step two, which is now we need to assign costs to some of these, some of these pieces and once we're clearer on, you know, is this going to be, you know, now that we're at this point where we know it's not all going to be recreational fields. For example, that gives us the green light to go ahead and start pricing out. Okay, how would it, how would it cost what would it cost and how is it feasible to get the water and sewer out to zone 345 for example. So it is the next step, and we have the baseline to do that. Okay, so your, your report to us mentions inclusion of the city's infrastructure components. So that's what we're talking about you're going to try to forecast what those costs might be for water, roads, which is, and specifically looking at the differential between multiple concepts, not necessarily. So to your point, you know, there's a, there may be a tipping point of units. So if we were looking at costs, let's say with concept those test sketches we looked at with ABC, where you talked max housing which could be 500 units or something versus 200 units. So what we'd look at is the differential between those two in terms of the city cost because it's going to cost something to get water to the site, but then is it going to also take an additional, how much more to provide that much more water and additional pump station, etc. For the purposes of additional have you know 200 300 units more so what we'll be looking for is the differential between the options and highlighting those costs. So those practical things I've cost is coming next in reality. I want to go back to your two pictures here, this one and the one before right. This is one of your questions right it is yes. I like the one before, because I feel the housing should have at least a potential future of sort of gathering together, whether being sort of isolated on the other side of the center. I think so that's the one that I prefer to start with as a rough draft. And I do think it's helpful at the council narrows it down to three or four choices like I just don't we've had it open wide and it's now time to start narrowing it correct so that's where I'm at. Big picture vision of this thing in terms of process. So we'll need it active 50 permit at some point right. And so once we have that. We really need to have a pretty solid format for what we want to see because you don't want to keep going back and revising and changing active 50 permits. That's another costly adventure that's not real fun. Um, so do you see it being maybe like five pods where you'd approve 100 homes here and whatever, but have like sections that we could then parcel off to a phase. Yeah, a phase act to 50 approval. And probably the next step in phase two is actually going to be preliminary conversations with state agencies before we even get to an active 50 level, because we need to clear some hurdles around primary soils and wetland impacts. If the desire that's why we couldn't do it during this state phase but if the desire is to put multi family housing in multiple of those spaces versus open space and conserve land. Yeah, great. This is related, I guess to the next phase. I worked a lot with blueprints many many years ago, building homes and things and very few of my clients could imagine a three dimensional objects from a two dimensional drawing. It's an issue we have here. And I just wonder if you're equipped to produce a model maybe not a physical model but a three dimensional models of things like a five story building versus a three story building I think, I think there's a difference between those two buildings and and the context is different to in a flat site, a building plop down the middle of nowhere is very different from an even taller building tucked away somewhere so is there a way that you can, in this next phase, give a three dimensional idea. So we actually did it in our last stage in the winter stage there were two different site corridor mothers that the site view shed corridor and then there was the site scale graphics that we presented to the public and to the public at the time which was showing how, if you did a cross section across the entire site because of the topography of the site, you know, it is hard to see it in plan view. And so rather if you were to take a cross section of the site and stand over in the natural East area, and look, and you had a five story building over at the top of the site on the right on the north side. And it was just kind of fill in with those trees. And so we did do something just like that and I think we could update it to some degree for for some of the concepts we're talking about budget being what it is for this phase. I'm not we're not going to be able to do too much representation visualization, not to say that that couldn't be or shouldn't be part of a phase to to really illustrate some of that. I know you did. I know you did it and I like those cross sections very much and I understood them but but I doubt that any of my previous clients would have. Yeah, yeah, it is. Three dimensional objects, I think. Good point. Thanks. So is the question before us right now about the two different choices of these two different drawings that you've shown us. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to go to the other side but these are great. Yeah. All right. So I agree with Donna. I like the one that has the recreation as the first thing that you get to when you drive in and clusters all the housing together. Lauren, do you have anything to ask or add. I'm also, I like the idea of the housing being clustered. I mean it doesn't sound like there's a strong difference. I mean, I don't have any ideas or anything that we're hearing. So I mean to me that, you know, keeping the people together seems like a good community building so that seems good. Yeah, I guess just on the broader conversation. I mean the piece of, like, as we get to the costs, being able to understand like opportunities and you're talking about phasing, which I think could be an important way to actually implement development on this site. But like, I guess being able to understand, you know, does it make sense to maximize the water sewer infrastructure now a big upfront cost even if we don't develop all the housing now or like what are what are our options going to be for different price points that would give us the opportunity knowing there's so few buildable sites that the city like has control over so like creating maximum opportunity but looking at kind of the pros and cons and cost. Spectrum that that would create that just hope we're going to get that kind of information to be able to see our options for different phasing over time. Yeah, I think that one of the things we're seeing here. And is he came here with with to us saying, I want the answer to this small question, and people have gone to there are all these big questions that we really need to address before we know the before we even know what the small questions are to answer. You're doing the answering of the small questions and I knew you'd give me more questions to answer so that was that I didn't even put that on a slide. Now that is exactly the kind of direction though that we need. And I knew we'd get some, you know, as you ask the questions that's going to inform this next stage. Not hearing anything else from members of the council I see there are some. There's at least one member of the community and possibly more who want to be heard. Peter Kelvin. Yeah, thanks, Peter Kelvin. Mountain Dew. A number of people salve and particular have talked about ways to make sure that ordinary people can actually make intelligent opinions and I just like like to sharpen it in a couple of ways. One is it's very as you as you learn from your to your your surveys you did before the way you ask a question matters. People, they say solar rays and people assume one or the other so I would suggest you do some beta testing on your questions try them out with some people before you go public. And there are two areas. You've mentioned it, but it's really important. You need to talk about net costs, not the up, not just the upfront costs. And for example, I don't want to argue with Jack, but the question about the about the swimming pool. Of course, the swimming pool is a big, big cost. But I know for example the Claremont Aquatic Center has brought in a tremendous amount of revenue. And I'm not, I'm not advocating for swimming pool but I just want to say that you need to make sure that people understand the net cost of something which you've made that point about taxes of, you know, grand list. Another thing besides net cost is when you talk about outdoor or indoor recreation, I think you need to give examples is a big difference between skiing in the winter and tennis courts, outdoor tennis course, there's a big difference between an indoor gymnasium and an indoor. It's a model golf. So, I think that you did some of the more examples you can give and not just these large categories and there are other things like that. So I'm just suggesting that you beta test your questions before you go public. Thanks. Thanks Peter. I'm not seeing anyone else online who's looking to be recognized I'm not seeing any hands up. I'll get to you, Caroline. Okay, we'll go into the room. Caroline gruditsky. Step right up. Would you start by. I'm just going to go into the room. And, and I live in Montpelier. And my only comment is just, I don't know what naturalists have looked at it, but the fact that the natural areas are all fragmented and I don't see like any quarters linking them. I appreciate that because that is one thing we affirmatively want to show on the next in the concept plans, and I didn't get to mention that, so thank you. Okay. Steve, are you seeking to be recognized? I want to come in or Ditto Councilman, Haney's concerns about the cost of infrastructure. I raised the concern about the intersection, the stopping the VTrans requirements for a certain size level zone before entering a state highway that can't be met with that railroad and the VTrans is not going to give up that railroad spur. So we may have an enormous cost based on the amount of traffic that we're hoping to accommodate in this site that we should have known before we bought the property. I have a question about who owns the 3D modeling. We ran into that with the garage fiasco where they claimed, and the city mismanager supported the architects in claiming they owned the 3D models that we paid them to create, and that's absurd, and I just couldn't afford to litigate it, but you should get in front of that now. If we're building 3D models to visualize this site, the city needs to own those as public records. The idea of having all the single family traffic passed by the multi-family scene just strikes me gut level is really classist, both from a noise which has a health effect and the pollution of the vehicles has a health effect. I think if you're going to do site visits in the spring, you should stake out these numbered zones ahead of time, so that they're clearly visualizable from where certain zones would start and stop. I think when you're talking about market-rate housing, you're talking subsidized housing, how those impact the grand list value and the taxable revenue from this project, I fear that this could go as sideways as most of the other projects have gone under this manager's jurisdiction. I think we should explore with Down Street the issue of the societal impacts, the challenges of mixing folks of different cultures and backgrounds and experience and societal norms. We've had graduate degree people having to move out of the transit center because there's child abusers yelling and abusing their kids right next door, and it's atrocious in the way people manage their garbage and the way people just, I don't have a solution to that, and I'm not trying to be classes, but that's very real when you start talking about packing a bunch of publicly funded mixed housing into these types of areas. So the rec center needs, we cannot make intelligent informed decisions about the recreational use here without finishing the downtown master plan and whether or not we're going to have a rec center in town. I'm still not just at three minutes now. Well, do you want to hear the comments or no? Well, we have a standard for comments. Well, you break it whenever you feel like it. Are you singling me out to narrow? I'm asking you to wrap up. I'm asking you to resign. Any other members of the public who would like to be heard? Yes. Hi, Nat Winthrop. I'm vice chair of the hub, but I'm not here tonight in that capacity. I'm a 40 year resident, and I have sort of a question comment about racket sports. That's a, I'm a tennis player and I have a lot of friends who are tennis or pickleball players. And as you probably know, we used to have four indoor tennis courts in Berlin and now we have one. And I did not see a lot of emphasis during the public hearings or in the survey about racket sports. And on a more micro level, and this concerns the rec department study that's coming up. So I guess it's a question for you Kelly as to if there is a building up there with say two basketball courts. My understanding is that still wouldn't be long enough, big enough to accommodate tennis courts. It would be for pickleball. So anyway, I just hope that the possibility of including indoor tennis would be part of that study and the costs entailed in that. On a more general level, and I'll be brief, Stephanie, I thought that was a really clear and comprehensive report. Thank you. And one thing that I didn't hear emphasize that I heard at a number of the public hearings was the emphasis on creating sort of a community vibe up there, a neighborhood. I know one of the premises is this is gonna be extension of the downtown and not a separate community. However, there was quite a bit of feedback during the public hearings that I attended on this community feel. And that's one of the reasons people preferred the hybrid model, but the one suggestion was retail, you know, a mom and pop type store there, which I didn't hear mention of in the report tonight. Thank you. Thanks, Nat. Anybody else in the room who would like to be heard? Okay, so Stephanie, I think there you are on question number one, to the extent that you were looking for an answer, I think you have some guidance. Question number two is the commitment to the Abinac recognition site. Essentially a yay or nay, essentially a yay or nay on how it was shown here. We've got, again, if you can see this, says as an option for the public to respond to Abinaki space and get a feel from the community about where they would like to see it. And that's not the final word because again, that would need to be a conversation. But if this council was not interested in accommodating that on this site, we didn't wanna present it to the public. So that's the question. Council members, this might be an easier question to answer. Thumbs up, thumbs down in general. There you go. And any uses in the buildable areas that you oppose that you didn't want shown as an option for the community if there was something that really struck you as not syncing with the goals of the city? I haven't heard anything that you suggested that I would say no way, man. We're not having that little grocery store there or we're not having single family houses or. It truly was a question about single family housing because we heard there were some people who really did want that here. And so we think it should be a part of the conversation and as an option, but not, but that's not universal. Donna. I would prefer not to see single family house. But you still wanna see it put to the community for this stage. And then, yeah, I get that. Yeah. I noticed that something that I thought was in the survey and in the presentation, the live presentations that I didn't see in the results and that was townhomes. Yeah. Which are essentially attached single family houses. Yeah. Are they? Yeah, it's, we would put that under the bucket of multifamily because it is not a single family but you totally caught us on that because there was a nomenclature spacing. So they'll be represented. Yeah, triplexes or duplexes or townhomes. That's kind of part of the conversation. We do need to get our nomenclature right. And maybe it requires a little more defining to Peter's point, we did beta test the questions. I pointed out some of our weaknesses. I didn't point out our strengths. Some of the questions were excellent. And so we did what we could, but it's totally true. There's gonna be gaps, but we'll continue to test them. And some of that may be defining the terms a little bit better. So duly noted. Anything else from council before we take comments from the public? Peter Kalman. Stephanie, what is the meaning of the slash between single family and tiny house because are you saying that that's what you mean by single family? I mean, again, this is a definitional thing. When you say single family, I think a lot of people are thinking, oh, that's a big split level or what did you mean there? Yeah. I don't know. No, I'm just saying, I'm not a hundred percent. The graphic for tonight is really representative and more of a placeholder for what's coming next. And we will, you're right. I mean, if you point out, we have to get a little more defined on it. I think when we talk about options, when we look at presenting a few different options, how are we going to represent single family or tiny homes? Do we do single family on one concept plan and tiny homes on a different one? Or do you show them both on one concept plan and then another one's showing Miss Multifamily Housing? Those are some decisions for the design team to make at this point, but we kind of put those in the buckets for tonight's purposes just to get the general feedback and direction from council. Thanks. Josh, is there anything from the planning department that you think we should be talking about that we haven't talked about yet? It's okay to just say no. Yeah, I don't think so. We do all the speaking, so yeah, no, you heard it all. Yeah, I wasn't going to put you on the spot, but I didn't want to overlook your concerns either. So, Stephanie, where are we now? I'm satisfied. I have my answers. We will be going forward back to the design team to create these concepts and you can expect public meetings at the end of April, beginning of May and we'll have those and then we'll be back to you in, we want to attempt to attend your second meeting in May for a final decision on concept planning and a presentation of the actionable master plan in June. I won't be here. It's like very likely I will have a newborn. So I'm just warning you that you may get another design team member at that point. But that's the next step and you will see marketing going out. Those concept plans, we hope to launch middle of April on the website and do lots of promotion at that time in advance of those public meetings because the public meetings are only one way to engage with this. The other way is to view the materials online and engage with the survey. One thing that I was thinking about as you were talking about or as we were talking about the topography is that it would be potentially cool to have someone go out there and do a video on the site with the video cameras so they're walking around on the site or driving an ATV on the site or whatever. So people who watch the video can see, well, I'm going over hills here, I'm going down a dip, I'm going, this is a flat area and get that spread around. That could be a very good thing. Anybody have a golf cart? I bet we could. GoPro? Yeah. Right, yeah. Thanks, Donna. Good point. That's Josh. Carrie. Thanks. So a few questions were brought up tonight about costs and about infrastructure and things like getting water and sewer up there and road development, that kind of thing. And can you just refresh me? Is that the kind of thing that you're going to be addressing at some point down the road? And as well, are you going to be looking at sort of how we might, once we decide on what our vision is for it, how we might, what opportunities there might be to work with developers or to find funding or to actually get this development to happen. Is that, are either of those within your scope of work that you anticipate? Yeah, Councillor Brown, that's a really good question. I had a note here from when someone made a comment about the cost implications and or the net costs and thinking specifically around at this stage, we can't be exhaustive. So, it may not include every source of funding you could find for this infrastructure at some point because we don't know when it will be built and we don't know when that, what will be available at the time. But what we're going to attempt to do is to try to show, like we said net cost of where some of the income could come, come from or that's more operating costs or look at capital expenses and how to bring those down, that is part of this next stage. So, April timeframe to have order of magnitude, not dialed in just so no one gets, but it will help in terms of, I think the most important piece is looking at one versus the other and trying to make this an apples to apples comparison between the options. And we know we can't predict in 2023, what's going to be built in 25, 27, 29 and those costs are probably going to go up. So, we're not putting a price tag on these affirmatively but talking about comparison wise, you can see the differences. And I think where we can't dial in some of the numbers, what we can do is talk about low, medium, high, certain aspects just may not be able to be quantified because we don't have the known use yet, exactly the known placement of things. So, we'll do our best and we're going to come back with those implications and try to show apples to apples amongst the three in terms of net cost and net implications or strengths, weaknesses, however you want to frame that. Bill, actually my question, I was going to just make sure we talked about what to expect on costs, so thanks. Great, thanks. Thanks, Stephanie, another great presentation. I just want to remind all the members of the public, if you had comments or questions or thoughts that you did not think to ask tonight or you want to add to anything you had to say, you can send your emails to, you're saying to Josh. Yeah, that's... His information is right on the website. Jay Jerome at Montpelier-BT.org and anything that he gets will be shared with the council and will become public. Thanks, Stephanie. Thank you very much, we'll see you. Knowing that our next item is also likely to take a fair amount of time, I think I'm going to say we can take our break now and come back at about 8.22. Okay, we can call the meeting back to order. Next up on the agenda is the homelessness report from Parker Advisors. Do you have any setup or anything we need to throw out? I can give a quick setup before they start. I just remind the council public of how we got here. A few years back, a couple years back, we set up the homelessness task force and they have proceeded to look at issues of homelessness in and around the community. And one of the projects they did was a sort of root causes of homelessness that was done by Beth Burgess and that setup kind of hears what's going on in our community. And then in and around the same time, the city council set aside a sizable sum of the $425,000 of ARPA funds to go toward something undefined but to deal with the unhoused community. So at that time, the homelessness task force developed an RFP professional assistance that they wanted. It was the council, the council approved it, went out to proposals, Parker Advisors were selected bidder and they've been working really closely with the homelessness task force over this time, I'm meeting with them regularly, dating them and have talked to a lot of stakeholders and the original report was due to be delivered in February and I think we collectively decided that it made more sense to do it in March with the new council. And I refused to let them do it at the last meeting because I was going to be me talking for two hours. And so they're here tonight. And I know the homelessness task force looked at it last week. I don't know if you'll make it in today. No, no, sometimes. So, and we as staff are still really looking at it but I think we're all looking forward to hearing the presentation and seeing where we go from. And so what are you expecting as the outcome of this presentation? I would move it to them as well but I think most importantly to hear the presentation for you to ask whatever questions and offer whatever comments and feedback you get. I know we as staff would like the opportunity to offer you some thoughtful feedback. I think nothing negative but just we, they raised a lot of good questions and clarifications and those kinds of things that we can have. But I would hope this is the beginning of a good conversation about where we go but I think that's partly of what you all will tell us too is just something, where do you want to take this? So I think we're at a crossroads of this journey and it's kind of going from consultant work and committee work to some extent into your hands and maybe kick back to the committee for certain aspects of it. So I'm stealing their thunder. So I'm going to turn it over to Dan Tol and Paul Capcara from Parker advisors. Ken Russell, the chair of the committee, I think is not well, he might be online but I don't think he's here. Great, I will move out of the way and hit the lights again. Great. Oh no, leave the lights on. Okay. That's okay, Jack, please. Thanks. Yeah, and we don't want it. We want to see if anybody's falling asleep too. If people can see, that's the reason we do it. Graphics, but if there's a point at which folks can't see, let us know and we'll dim the lights for them. And again, I just want to thank Bill, one of the great pleasures of this project is actually been getting to know and work closely together with Bill and other officials in the city, as well as a lot of our colleagues in the nonprofit community, the housing community and the homelessness tax force. It's been a wonderful thing. My name is Paul Capcara. I'm here with Dan Tolle. He's, we're both representing Parker Advisors. We're both Montpelier citizens. I'm a homeowner on Berry Street. Dan lives over on First Avenue and Parker Advisors is a Montpelier based consulting firm. So we're all here as representatives of the community as well. I do want to say we're also part of the conspiracy to put you guys into a coma with consultant reports tonight and acknowledging the toll you've already paid here with that first report. We're going to take a little bit of an unorthodox approach. We are not going to show you lots and lots of slides and further push you into the coma area. We've all been working hard all day, I'm sure. So we're going to try to hit a couple of key highlights about how we did the process, layout our key recommendations and then leave lots of time for you all to ask questions or the people online or in the public to ask questions because we really want to engage with you and find out what's important to you as part of this. So with that being said, I'm going to turn this over to Dan to give you a little bit of background about the process we followed in developing this recommendation and action plan and then we'll go into some of the specific recommendations. Great. Thank you, Paul and thank you, Council for having us here again to speak to you and we are delighted to be able to give you the results of the report that we started in October of last year. What I'm going to do is just give you a very brief overview of the process, as Paul mentioned. We started by doing a comprehensive review of data, primary secondary resources, reports, plans relating to homelessness, housing insecurity such as people who are in hotels or couch surfing, affordable housing and housing in general. Then the most labor intensive part of the project was meeting with stakeholders. We met with over 75 individual stakeholders including over a dozen people who are currently experiencing homelessness, housing and mental health and social services agencies, city officials, first responders, faith community members and business owners. We also participated in over 40 meetings of housing and homeless associations and entities such as the Washington County Action Team, the Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness and the Vermont Associate of Affordable Housing. And then lastly, we used multiple methods in our stakeholder gatherings, both in person and Zoom doing listening sessions with the multiple listening sessions with the community as well as with business owners, downtown business owners and doing panel discussions and presentation. And then finally, you know, beyond the scope of our project, we also supported the homelessness task force around some initiatives, the winter over overflow shelter, like the common gathering space and also helped in the beginning help facilitate communication and collaboration between the task force and the housing committee. Paul? Okay, I'm gonna cut right to the chase here to some of our key recommendations and then we're gonna open it up for questions. You all have a very detailed report in front of you. We did try to provide an executive summary for those of you who maybe aren't looking forward to 30 pages of reading in your free time, but I'll just say the first recommendation which became apparent as we worked with people, we heard over and over again that really, if this problem is to stabilize and improve in the future in Montpelier, we need a plan for how we're going to create more housing in general, as well as more affordable housing as part of that. So it became pretty apparent that one of the pieces that's currently missing, one of the unmet needs is a master housing plan for the city, which takes into account what is the housing mix we need going forward and how are we gonna create that in the future? And part of that plan definitely needs to prioritize affordable housing. The one piece we heard and the data we gathered supports which you'll see in the report is it's becoming increasingly difficult for working class, low income people to afford housing in Montpelier. And that's no, I'm sure, no surprise to any of you. It dovetails nicely with what the previous consultant was talking about in housing creation. And there are a number of projects in the pipeline and being discussed, which would create some affordable housing in addition to other types of housing in the community. And one of the things we heard from many of the stakeholders are in the past, there were often many barriers to completions of those projects. So as part of the master housing plan, we wanted to make sure there was a special focus in on how do we identify barriers to project completion and how can city council and other entities seek to remove those barriers to ensure that projects that are talked about actually get realized and we create some real new housing. So we looked back at the previous master plan for the city which was done quite some time ago. It serves as a very nice blueprint from what we might be able to do an update. But again, times change and there's new needs and new focuses and certainly the housing market has changed quite a bit since then. So we feel it's important that a new master housing plan be developed, especially because there's a lot of fragmentation that's going on right now. We talked to a lot of people involved in sort of standalone individual projects, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of coordination in terms of citywide, what's our goals for what type of housing we wanna create, how can we create it and how can we also use existing housing stock to provide some additional housing opportunities for people in the community. So that's our first recommendation. We're gonna go through all three of our major recommendations and then open it up for questions at that point. So the second major recommendation is to create a housing hub in Montpelier that would really serve two purposes. One purpose is to provide a place for the winter overflow shelter. I don't know if you're all familiar, but in past years, Montpelier has been sponsoring an emergency winter overflow shelter. It's been in several locations in the past. It's been in different churches in town. We've been told going forward that the past church locations are not available for us to use in coming years. And one of the inefficiencies in the past has been each year there's been sort of a scramble in order to get that organized to make the space appropriate for the use for emergency overnight shelter. And it's almost like we're reinventing the wheel every year as we're trying to put that together. So one of our goals in proposing a housing hub is really to have a permanent space that can be used for that purpose. And really the goal is to provide emergency housing to folks who otherwise in the winter might not have anywhere to sleep. So we're really literally trying to keep people from freezing to death. The second piece of the proposal in creating a housing hub is also then to have a place where social service providers and others can engage with those folks in order to provide them support, in order to hook them into the services and resources that might help them transition from being acutely unhoused into affordable or more permanent housing situations. So really not just treating it as a bandaid as we've maybe in the past have been forced to do because we're providing an emergency overflow on a church basement and there's not been as many opportunities to have supportive services present. But in this case, it would be a place where there could be supportive services, social workers, street outreach workers who can help hook people into housing opportunities going forward. And then I'm gonna turn it over to Dan to talk about our third recommendation. Great, thank you, Paul. So our third major recommendation is implementing a public education plan. And what this is the city under the supervision of the Homelessness Task Force would create and implement a systematic publication, public education plan to that among other benefits would increase awareness about homelessness and housing issues and then secondly help reduce stigma around homelessness. More specifically, the plan would help build support and momentum around not only these recommendations but other related housing and homeless issues here in Montpelier and Washington County help build understanding, empathy and knowledge, breakdowns, stigma and discrimination, encourage volunteering in this arena. And then lastly address inequities of the marginalized communities such as BIPOC and LBGTQ Plus in the context of housing. We envision a multi-faceted plan and among other elements I just wanna talk about two major components that we're recommending be part of this. The first is a homelessness peer council and this would be a formal council of 69 individuals who are either currently unhoused or have been unhoused in the past, what we call homeless peers. The major tasks of this, there's a number of different directions that the council could go and it would be up to them once they're formed to really form their charter and chart their own direction. But we see that at least two of the major tasks being advising the homeless task force, the housing committee, the city council of course as well as other service providers in the communities who are intersect with issues that they're working on. And then secondly to be involved in community outreach and public and legislative relations. One of the key things that we see this council doing is bringing the voice of people with lived experience. Not just as a token, a little few token comments but involved in every stage of the process of some of the major initiatives, major things that are going on that affect them. Second, the second big component that I wanna talk about is developing a systemic program of community outreach and education. And the purpose would be to normalize, to start that to normalize homelessness and the folks who are people who are currently experienced homeless in the community to educate the public, not only about homelessness, housing insecurity and affordable housing, but also about the critical housing issues that are faced by all of us here in my period in Washington County. Another purpose would be to create a communications plan and that would address the unique characteristics and the unique housing service needs of the different subgroup including the homeless, the housing insecure, as well as people like myself, over 60 that are looking to downsize, growing families and workers who are looking either to maintain their housing or move to the community and get involved as residents and as workers in our community. And then lastly, under this idea of the community outreach and education, it would be an opportunity for the community to interact in positive ways, to cultivate a real and balanced view of homelessness while dispelling stereotypes and biases. For example, the homeless, people who have experienced homelessness are no more likely to be dangerous or violent than any of the rest of the community and often are blamed for acts done by folks who are not homeless. And then lastly, opportunities for positive interactions would be expanding volunteer experiences like we have the wonderful crew that's working at in the winter overnight shelter at Christchurch. It's been a tremendous experience. We've gotten some really good feedback from the volunteers about what they've learning and that whole experience of being part of the volunteer core and addressing this homeless need. So in conclusion, when this entire public education plan, this entire recommendation three is implemented, it'll not only address misconceptions and biases, but also build connections and enhance this wonderful city of Montpelier. Thank you. Hey, it's the exciting part of the presentation. None of our recommendations actually require any new allocation of funds from city councils. So I'm just gonna lay that out there right now because I've noticed that seems to be an item that comes up a lot. I've heard a few rumors of people saying like we're asking for millions of dollars to deal with this issue. We're actually not. We're proposing that you use the money that was already allocated through the ARPA funding to implement these recommendations. So just wanted to get that out there right away. Not asking you for five or $6 million to deal with this issue in Montpelier. Definitely recommending we use the already allocated funds. So at this point, I'm gonna open it up to questions. We really did wanna leave the bulk of the time for you folks to be able to ask questions, debate issues, get more information if you need it. There's quite a bit of information in the report itself and we just didn't wanna rehash all that and again, cause everybody to slip into a coma and die. Yeah, Bill. Tell me that we were so excited about your first recommendation that we actually started a housing master plan about a year ago. So we were anticipating that recommendation. So all kidding aside, the planning department is actively involved in updating the city's master plan. It's what I call city plan. And I spoke with planning director today and they're very active. So the new housing plan, this council should be getting it this summer. They've looked at your recommendations. I think they may even have some more that would be I think helpful to what you're doing. So that one is already actively underway and your completion, I think are relatively near completion. See, I just wanna point out some people complain about Bill, but that's proactive right there. He's already a year ahead in implementing our first recommendation. So I just wanted to let people know that that part of it is already underway. Okay, thank you. This is an unusually crisp and snappy presentation. I'll express my appreciation for that. In part because this is about my bedtime. So council members, do we have any questions? Lauren. One first one. So really intrigued by the housing hub recommendation. I know I've talked to a lot of people who've been involved through the years with like setting up the annual scramble and so love the idea of pursuing this. I'm just curious, is this, are there models from other Vermont communities? Can you just speak a little to like how this is working elsewhere and what we've learned from other communities' experiences? Yes, thank you very much for that question. So in my previous life, I actually ran the homeless shelter in Brattleboro for many years before I moved to Montpelier. And so I do have quite a bit of an experience with a model used there called the Drop-In Center in Brattleboro. And really the purpose of the model of a housing hub with a Drop-In Center and the overnight shelter is really to engage people who are experiencing acute issues, being able to give them something and build some trust with them. So it might be a place where they can get information, they obviously can get in out from the cold overnight. You may have social workers who can connect them to food or other resources. In fact, oftentimes there's some level of food distribution that might help happen on site. And it's really a way to build trust in a relationship so that then you can engage them in getting other supportive services to help them to move from being homeless to be able to move to a more stable situation. So there is quite a bit of experience with these. In Brattleboro, we eventually merged the Drop-In Center with the actual organization that ran the homeless shelter. Here, obviously, the shelter is for this region, for this area is run by Good Samaritan. And I would say in moving forward with the idea of a housing hub, that would be one group that I think you would want to approach to see would they be interested in integrating that into their system? Because one of the things you really wanna do is build a system that has a spectrum of options that meet people where they're at. So for instance, you have what sometimes are colloquially called rough sleepers. They're people who are acutely homeless, who are used to sleeping outside, who may not be interested in the moment in engaging in a lot of services, or they've not been successful in living in more structured housing. In fact, many of them maybe have not even made it in the shelter like is run in Barrie. They then have a system to get those people engaged with the emergency overnight sort of setting, try to move them into the more permanent shelter. And then they have a series of shelters that involve more autonomy and more options for people as they're starting to become more stable and they're improving. And then you would transition them into some kind of affordable or supportive housing situation. So really building that kind of infrastructure and that kind of spectrum for folks in Montpelier who are experiencing housing instability is pretty important. And the bottom rung on that layer is what we're missing right now, which is that sort of permanent home where people can get emergency overnight in the winter and where they can go throughout the year to connect with supportive services, get some resources, get some support. Did that answer? That was very helpful. And can you just speak a little to, and apologies if I missed this, is the vision that there would be a contract with someone like Good Samaritan to be staffing it? Like how are you envisioning the staffing and how that would play out? Yeah, great question. So first of all, it's important to note a lot is gonna depend on location. So one of the locations that were raised as a possibility was the existing rec center with the idea that that function of the rec center may be over time transitioning to the new country club road property. And in talking with the stakeholders, many people felt it was very important for the location to be somewhere downtown, somewhere easily accessible for walking. So if that were to be the location, you would then want to implement this in phases. So the initial phase when the space was having dual use, just like we've been doing with the churches would be just the emergency overflow shelter. And then over time as the rec functions transition out of that building, you would be adding additional services and additional resources for the homeless. How do you staff it? If you initially, you have two steep street outreach workers that are currently being subsidized through city council, I think you would start by placing them there and then a volunteer coordinator to coordinate the overflow shelter. You can then approach social service providers to see if they're willing, maybe one day a week to send somebody from economic services to, for groups to run AA, NAA sort of supportive meetings in the facility and basically draw in other social service providers to provide services on site without necessarily hiring staff. Over time, it may be if the community need requires it, you may actually move to having the need for permanent staff. In which case, again, I would think you would want to work together with an organization like either Good Samaritan or another way, because they have the expertise and the staffing and the resources to do that. Yeah, and not intentionally, but we actually, something that in retrospect, could be looked at as a pilot, there was something called homeless days of action where at Hilltop, Aconolodge, and who's the third? Whatever, at the three hotels that we have people staying at, that we had an afternoon that had service providers all coming there and providing services. So that service providers coming to a central location, helping people enroll in services, answering questions, and we have really good feedback from them from not only the homeless folks that participate, but also the service providers who had this opportunity to really leverage their time very, very effectively and efficiently. And that's one of the key advantages of creating that housing hub here in Montpelier. It doesn't, no location exists now that's permanent where you can build those kinds of approaches. It's tough to ask a social worker to come at two in the morning to the church basement in January to do that kind of work. So this would provide that opportunity to sort of build a foundation and that over time be able to flex what's offered to the needs of the community. As you all know, we're facing a potential housing crisis coming up as people who are currently in the Motel program are going to be basically forced to leave that setting. So I do believe that the problem in the community is about to get more acute when that transition happens. As you also also know, the state legislature right now is looking very carefully at how to allocate additional money and resources for housing. So one of the advantages of two of our recommendations, the Housing Master Plan as well as establishing, you know, a housing hub will be that it will position Montpelier to be able to access some of those new funds, you know, so that we're in a place where we can say, oh, we're setting up this new housing hub, there's new state money available, sport that kind of thing. We can incorporate those funds to sort of build out what we're able to offer. Yeah, and also you'll see in our report, one of the secondary recommendations we make, it's really more of an inventory of alternative funding sources, which we offer to the city as many of those funding sources they're already pursuing, but we've tried to put together at least a, you know, a decently comprehensive list of other ways to generate funds. More, not so much for the short term, as Paul said, over the next year or so, we think the funds that are allocated the 425,000 or it should be clear for marginalized communities, I think is the term, but if basically for people who are unhoused and for public bathrooms. And that's the other advantage of this housing hub is it would, one of the components of this would be structuring it so that there's a public restroom piece that people could use, and there would be staffing and so forth to help monitor and oversee the activities there. Thanks, Ellen. Thank you for your hard work and presentation. And I just saw that if I'm not wrong, I counted 72 people participated to make this report, so it is very important to appreciate their effort too. And to many of them, they're homeless individuals. So when you talk to them, what was their number one choice among your recommendations? We are talking about the housing hub, but did they mention anything else? And also what was their number one problem that we could help with? Thank you. Yeah, that's a great question. So unlike your previous presentation, we weren't presenting to this people, this to people as choose among these things. We were really listening to people to try to see what they saw as an unmet need in the community and what could be done in order to help meet those needs. So to answer your question, we heard repeatedly, we need more affordable housing in Montpelier. So that was what drove the sort of housing master plan idea. There are a lot of people that are maybe not yet homeless or unhoused, but they're right on the verge of that and they're finding it harder and harder to find affordable housing in Montpelier. So that was a recurring theme that we heard. A second thing that we heard from the people who are currently unhoused is we need a place to go where we can number one, know that we're safe. We have an environment where we can be safe, where we can get support, where we can learn about resources. We heard repeatedly that right now we have a lot, our system is very fragmented with a lot of silos. So for instance, if you wanna know how can I get, support around nutrition or food, or you wanna know how can I get help finding affordable housing or if you wanna know how do I find job support or how do I get help with substance abuse issues and counseling, all of those things live in different organizations in different places right now. I mean, you almost need a full-time navigator to help you figure out how do you piece together all of these pieces and how do you meet their criteria to get the help you need? And it really is overwhelming and exhausting. So one of their suggestions was, could you have one place where we could go and we know that the people there have the knowledge and the expertise to help us navigate all of these various systems. So that's what created the Housing Hub recommendation. Yeah, and in terms of the third recommendation, I spoke to some of the unhoused folks about this notion of a peer counsel and one had a very long, several long conversations with one of the leading homelessness advocates in our community was very excited about this, about this particular concept. As long as it's set up such that as I said earlier that there's real meaningful input and it's not just token, just the token rubber stamping type of input. And then regarding the community outreach component of that plan and a recent, the Washington County Action Team committee that I mentioned which is comprised of the head of Down Street, the head of capstone among the head of Washington County Mental Health. One of the big themes of a recent meeting was the fact that as a community, we need to be spending more time telling stories about the homeless, appealing, getting people to understand who these people are. There's a, let's just go back up. Here's a quote here from a woman who's Colby Lynch. She and her husband are both working but it's a combination of the amount of income they're making and or the bigger issue is the availability of housing. So this notion of getting people to understand that many of these folks, I was just to give another example, I was one of the folks who I met the first night of the winter overnight shelter as a chef for the picture in in in in Waitsfield. If those are the aware picture in a pretty high-end facility. He doesn't have, he has a decent income but again, unable to found housing. In his case, he was focusing on the Med River Valley which is similar cost dynamics and supply dynamics as we have here. So I think that's how follow-up question there. I will just say thank you for answering the question and I agree this idea is great. It is not only a shelter but it will provide other like social support community support because I see that most of the people don't have family. Any like family support or social support so it will be good. I just, I want to add that, thank you. Just wanted to add to that. We also envision that being a place where if you are the person who just moved to the Montpelier area because she took a job as a chef but didn't realize how challenging it was to actually find housing that it could also be a place where you could go and there's an active list of, these are apartments that are available. These are the costs, these are the, so it really could be a hub that meets the needs of a broad spectrum of the community, not just the actively unhoused. And that can be part of also addressing the stigma of really, we're really all in this together and there's not too many of us that are that far away from having a hard time affording our mortgage or our rent or whatever the case may be. As a homeowner here in Montpelier, I can I confess up to that challenge at times too. So yeah. Do you have any other question? Do I think I saw your hand up earlier? Sure. Yes, Paul. And thank you very much. Good presentation. A couple of thoughts I've been working through is, listen, it clearly is a regional issue and it's being dealt with regionally here, with Good Samaritan and Berry and the Twin City on the Brown-Pelier Road. And it feels like people are moving back and forth. I know there's a large group of people who live behind Price Chopper. It's just, so I know your scope is Montpelier but it's obviously, as I listened to you, it's part of a bigger solution or contribution toward something better. So I hope that's really the way you looked at it. It sounds like that. Yeah, what we don't want to do is create yet another silo, right? So we want to integrate it, particularly with systems like Good Samaritan is already set up in the region. Ideally, the best case scenario is ultimately for people to be able to be in affordable housing independently, right? But to get them from where they're at to there is sometimes a process. And again, you need to engage the folks where they're at and then try to move them through that process to get there. And those are the kind of additional supportive opportunities that Good Samaritan provides in this area. And I do think it's also important to recognize that we're going to utilize existing service providers to do this. We're not trying to create a new position, a new job. When we did the sort of needs assessment, there are a lot of these individual pieces already in place in this community and this region, but it's a matter of giving a place where that can come together. And we can really make it easy to have one stop shopping and low barrier to getting to help people need. Yeah, that's part of it. I'm looking at your chart on page eight with like the middle and lack of effective family or social supports. I think other things you mentioned that didn't make the chart, but I think connections for potential employment or helping people get a job with Department of Labor here or whatever. I mean, all those pieces can fit in there or if it's someone that has childcare needs and maybe help with childcare. I mean, it feels like all that could fit. Absolutely, yep. And we did hear that over and over again. It was hard to predict what was the piece that we're tipping people into being unhoused. Sometimes their car broke down and they couldn't get to work anymore. Sometimes they couldn't afford childcare. And really, I wanna address one issue that came up with some folks and I just wanna make it clear. There was this fear that it's sort of the belief if you build it, they will come. That somehow if we created this housing hub, there would be a flood of homeless people moving here. First of all, having run a homeless shelter for many years in the Southern part of the state that was right on the border of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, we heard that quite a bit. It actually doesn't happen. Folks who are moving somewhere to be homeless choose like Arizona or California or somewhere where the weather is a whole lot nicer than Vermont number one. And number two, we're not talking about a program like the Motel program that is offering somebody a free place to stay for an indefinite period of time. We're truly talking about replicating the emergency winter overnight shelter and then having also social supports available. But nobody's relocating from another area for the chance to sleep, for instance, in the rec center on a cot, night by night. It's just, it's not that kind of a situation. So I did wanna alleviate those concerns. Really the folks we met with, the folks that we talked to are largely folks from Montpelier in this area. And they've really, something's gone wrong in their life. They've had family problems. They've had transportation problems. They don't have the education and training to be able to earn enough money as the housing costs have gone up and up here. And that's why the bigger piece of creating more affordable housing is also important. Donna. I appreciate everything being in one place. And I like the idea that all your three ideas have been discussed and that you've put it here and made it really concrete. Like we dare you not to do, this is good. But I do have a question about the hub. Now we looked at the rec building for all sorts of things, even just showers and ADA comes up and you make it sound real simple, just a ramp. I'm not sure it's that simple. I also have an issue with staffing. We talked to Sam and another way. They don't have the staffing. We can't even hire people for positions we have money in our budget for. So some of this avoids that. It's like another way is mission is not those who are unhoused. Their mission is mental health. So you sort of gloss over some of that. Help me out. Okay, so great point. So again, a couple of things to keep in mind here. So for instance, you raised another way. They're actually the ones that stepped up this year and ran the winter overflow shelter. So. I can't keep reminding me of their mission. Okay, that's right. I got you there. I talked to him a lot. Yeah, yeah, I got you. So one of the things with the staffing, you raise a point that one of the city officials raised with me is look, we have this police social work position that's open and we can't hire anybody. Again, in this model, we're not talking about hiring new people. We're talking about bringing existing people to that location, maybe one day a week periodically. So it's not new hires, it's not new money. These organizations actually have people, well, and you're already subsidizing through city council, people like street outreach workers. Right now they don't have a home. They literally work out of their house. So this actually provides them a location to come to without the issue of, oh, do you have to hire somebody new who's going to pay them? Sam said they asked out. Sue, Sam. Every time we would approach them. Yeah, the Samaritan. Oh, you're talking about Good Samaritan. Okay, so we have worked really closely with Good Samaritan on this. And again, I don't want to speak on their behalf because again, city council would need to have a discussion with them. Oh. That was, but what I want to say is having run a homeless shelter, it's not the kind of business where you want to say, oh yeah, I've went more business, like I want to take on some additional, so I do think though it is within their mission, they understand the need and I do think they would make great partners going forward to work out. Could whoever's doing that please mute themselves? I thought that was maybe Rick turning over in his grave because I was suggesting he could help with this. Is it possible to mute them centrally? Thanks. Thanks, Kelly. I really like the process that you went through and the thoroughness of the report. I, at a point when you're talking about the rec center, for example, and you mentioned earlier that you weren't asking for any more money. Assuming that, I mean, you do mention it's a large building, it's got a lot of square footage to be developed for other uses. Assuming that you got what you just stated, you know, a winter overnight and a place for rotating social services and maybe showers and a restroom. How long would that sustain you before you needed to do something like transitional housing, which I think you mentioned. I mean, what's the timeline for expanded services because I think there are costs attached to that. Yes, so if you're talking specifically about the rec center site, I just want to point out two things. The funds that would be used to make that accessible, also upgrade the facility for the current use for rec at the same time. So people now who go to the rec center, it's not accessible to everyone. So by using those funds in that way, you actually are improving another community service to the point at which then they transition to a new facility in the future, maybe up on Country Club Road. At that point, you would be looking for additional money in order to implement some of those more. Other parts of the building. Other parts of the building, maybe some transitional housing, but you would be going out and seeking grant funding for that, right? So it wouldn't be a matter of coming back to city council and saying, oh, now we need another $2 million because we want to create three transitional apartments. It would truly be going out and partnering with people like Down Street or other nonprofits and seeking grant support. Because then you have an idea that's actually concrete that you can sell to foundations and grants. And I spent many, many years doing that. So I can say with some confidence that, the idea of being able to have a one-stop shopping place like this is something that is very attractive to funders and that I do believe you could go out and get supplemental, bring new resources into the community to support that, not ask city council to support that through tax dollars or appropriations. And not only seeking alternative funding for phases two, three, four down the road, but also starting to bring in other types of partners, private developers. Or there was a presentation last week, our Congresswoman, I love saying that, our Congresswoman from Vermont, Becca Balin had a session on housing in Barrie. And there was a gentleman who owns a business in Randolph, Vermont Club, who has bought a congregate facility and renovated it for his employees. So we also have employers, and we know UVM and middle barrier are also doing that same sort of thing. This is like the first step in a many-stage process. So we see it as an ongoing process that would lead to, yeah. Yeah, that would evolve. But the key piece, again, is I don't believe you can start doing that until the rec center function transitions out of the building. Because in the meantime, you're going to be using that facility jointly, which is going to limit a certain amount of- Which is a good segue to my next question. You mentioned sort of high level talks with the rec department. Is there been any detailed discussion about how that would actually work? Because you folks are talking about this coming winter, right? Yes. So step one in our implementation, if you were to choose the rec center for this, would be to sit down with them and do a detailed shared use agreement with them. I will say two things. One, we weren't in a position to do that because it would have been a little difficult for us to show up and say, we want to figure out how to share your space with you. But city council hasn't really told us to do that. And we don't own the building. But when we did talk with them, they were receptive. One of their clear concerns was, if you put money into this building and improve it, making it accessible, making other improvements, fixing the roof, we're afraid that city council will make us stay here and not move us up to the new facility. So I just want to be transparent about that seemed to be their biggest concern. I did not hear strong opposition to the idea that in the winter, you all would set up COTS and there would be people in here and then you would get them out in the morning. Because it would be literally a day-to-day transition from one to the other. Much like we're doing right now in the church. That church, exactly. Until the point that they moved out of the facility. In the meantime, there would be restrictions on the ways we'd be able to use the facility and develop it. But we'd be no worse off than we've been for the last five years. And we would know that that's the permanent. Place where this is going to happen. So there'll be a lot of advantages. Christ Church has also indicated that it's probably unlikely that they would want to host it again next year. So we're also at pressure for not being able to use the facility that we're using this winter currently. Thanks, Gary. Carrie, I saw your hand up. No, I'm fine. Thanks. I can't put my hand up because my picture is not there. But I do have a question and some feedback if I may. Wait a minute. Who's speaking? Oh, my name is Ron Berkin. OK, why don't you hold off? I'm still taking comments and questions from members of the council. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that. It's OK. Palin. I had something. We are talking about winter a lot. And I understand I live in here. How about summers? Because summers are getting very warm, hot. And some of the days, I feel like there is a heat wave. And my house is not with AC. It is really, really difficult where I have to put an ice pack on my hair. So do you have any plan for summer days? So the point at which the housing hub transitioned to also being able to offer drop-in center possibilities, that's the point at which there would be a place people could come during the day. And again, hang out in the cooler setting, get water, get other kind of supportive items. I would love to say we could do that right away. But the reality is with the money available, if we wanted to do that, that's when we would be approaching you saying we need $5 million to build a new building and want to do this right away. And we purposely heard from folks that that approach isn't going to work. We can't turn to the community and say we need $5 million to implement this thing right away, that using the existing resources to build the foundation and then add those as we go as we're able to attract new resources was really the way to go. So eventually, yes, probably not this summer. Lauren. Thanks. I was just curious from city staff's perspective, are there barriers to doing this initial step that haven't yet been named? I mean, my memory of the upgrades for ADA accessibility were more like $2 million or $3 million, for example. Just curious like what health, are there other things that we should just be aware of to inform? Sorry. First of all, I do like this idea. I want to be clear about that. I don't want to be the person or the representing the folks that are throwing the wet blanket on this. Because I do think it has long-term legs. And we had a lot of talk about this. I think one of the biggest pieces of advice I gave Paul and Dan when I talked to them was make sure that this idea isn't wed to one location, that the concept could be somewhere. And I believe strongly in the concept. So speaking specifically about the REC, I think first of all, the biggest problem we have is REC has three issues. Candycap or, excuse me, ADA accessibility. It does not have sprinklers. So it would require Department of Public Safety approval. Now they have given waivers to the churches the last couple of years, but very begrudgingly and did not seem, they basically told Christchurch not again. Lastly, there's asbestos in the building. We're actually having that assessed right now. How severe that is in part because of questions. People raised as part of this process of what exactly are we dealing with. So those are just real issues. And some of them could have some real financial applications. The best recommendation for accessibility is an elevator. That's not cheap. We're just having our elevator redone in here for just about $200,000. I don't know what a brand new elevator in there would be. You know, we've looked at ramping. Because of the slope of those front stairs and the height and to meet the ADA standards for ramp, I'm going to guess this. And I know there's people that know a lot more than I do in the room. But as I recall, it has to kind of go all the way around the side of the building. It's a pretty substantial ramp. So I'm not saying these things are insurmountable, but I'm also saying they are definitely things that need to be addressed before we could sort of commit to saying this building can accept people. So I just offer that in terms of planning to say while it would be awesome that we could be in there next winter, there also could be some very real reasons why we can't be. But I think these ideas are all very sound. And of course, we're all making, I think, collectively, an assumption that the rec department will be moving somewhere at some point. And personally, hopefully, that is the point. But until we complete all the work we just talked about and the voters approve something, there's that. Now, the shelter piece of it, if assuming the building is usable, could be a shared use. I do agree with that. So just two things in response. That one is I heard there's this building of 106 State Street that the city was purchase. That would be another great location. Do you want to go? No asbestos there. Secondly, one of the issues we had is trying to determine whether this was feasible at the rec center. Again, because we don't own the building and because we didn't have guidance from you, we couldn't really ask the contractor to come in and do the quotes. But we did look at existing quotes from previous studies that had been done. One did come in at $5 million or $4 million. But that was a really comprehensive bells and whistles transforming the building. There were several that were in the $100,000, $200,000 range that we believe that this would be within. And the money that's already allocated for this is $425,000. It was $425,000. Some of that went to New York. So well, you've got a lot left. But half of it went to New York. We're still a little over $400,000 left. Yes. And I will say that step one in our recommendations, if you were to pursue the rec center location, would obviously be have a contractor come in and let you know what is the bottom line to create accessibility. And are there asbestos issues that would need immediate abatement? I mean, you do have kids in there right now playing basketball every night. So let's hope there's not too serious. I'm actually already doing that. Yeah, yeah. OK, great. OK. I'd like to I see that there are people online who've been waiting to be heard. We have Carolyn Redpath, V. Rodin. And then after that, I think we're going to do Ron Merkin. So Carolyn. Oh, Elizabeth. OK, I didn't see her. All right. My name is Carolyn Redpath. And I'd like to speak and support of the proposal to improve the Barry Street Recreation Center and create a Montpelier housing hub. Like many, I am concerned about what the future holds for us in regard to accommodating people without housing. The 2023 budget adjustment bill will impact those living in motels by limiting eligibility to prioritized groups. The remainder will be exited. Currently, we have 450 folks living in motels and shelters in the Barry, Berlin, Montpelier area. And a large number of them will have to leave. Where are they going to go? The shorter term goals in the Parker Advisors Report are going to be critical in the coming year. They recommend a properly supervised and maintained place for winter overflow, 24-7 public bathrooms with showers, and a location for outreach workers in rotating social service people. Due to funding limitations, the Montpelier housing hub will be developed in stages, with the first stage making the building accessible, upgrading bathrooms, and bringing the building into conformity with city regulations regarding overnight shelter. The recreation department programs would continue until new facilities become available. When that happens, then the building can expand its services to be more comprehensive. And I think that that pretty well summarizes my understanding of the Parker Advisors Report. Thank you. Thank you. V. Rowden, before I call on you, I want to just point out that there's been a couple of mentions of the intention that the Recreation Center will be moved up to Country Club Road property. And I should just point out that is by no means a decision that's been. So that's one of the options, but it's not. No decision has been made by the council to do that. OK, next up, Ms. Rowden. Hi, thank you. My name is Victoria Rowdeen. I live in Montpelier. I'm a social worker here. I'm also a member of the homelessness task force. I want to appreciate the clarity and groundedness of the proposals that have been shared. And I also want to appreciate how welcoming and curious council members have been about this. I think it's wise not to get into the weeds about what building, if any. I know that in both White River Junction and in Brattleboro, once the idea was clear about what the community needed, ways were found to find an appropriate building, ways were found to fix the appropriate building so that it could be welcoming to the people who need support and to the entire community. And I'm very confident with a kind of positive welcoming approach that the council is showing that we can find a way to do that in Montpelier as well. Whatever the building turns out to be. I also, I just wanted to comment on the as a social worker. I understand that we have a labor shortage, but with the social with the social worker that we desperately need to hire in Montpelier, which is the social worker embedded with the police force. As far as I know, the only advertising that has happened for that is that there's announcement at the very, very bottom of everything that's open at Washington County Mental Health. We had several social work students from UVM come and visit the homelessness task force a few weeks ago because they're doing a community inquiry project on the circumstances of unhoused people and outreach and street outreach workers. And they're very, very interested in the model here. Those are people who if basically if energetic outreach were done to fill that position, that position could be filled tomorrow because it's a very, very interesting position. But the word has to get out to working social workers and the word has to get out. Thank you to students that that that position is open and that future positions with the housing hub would be open. I'm sure you would find enthusiastic people who would want to do that work. Thank you. Great, thank you. Just kind of make one comment to Tories in terms of the staffing issues. And I won't get into detail, but another source of staffing for this hub are peer support workers. And that dovetails with the homeless peer council. Okay, thanks. Ron Merkin and then Elizabeth Parker. Yeah, first I have a question. I wonder if it's possible to estimate among the people who are in these different places. For instance, the proposed rec center, can you estimate how many of those people have the mental problems or their alcoholics or this sort of chronic homeless people and how many are there because they just cannot find housing because it's so expensive today? And then do you have another question after that, Ron? Well, it would be more of a feedback than a question. Do you want me to go ahead with that already first? Yes, please do. Okay, sure. I read through your entire paper about, especially about your proposal for the rec center. And there's one paragraph that says some concerns have been raised about the potential impact on seniors utilizing the Montpelier Senior Activity Center located just across the street. However, the location provides an opportunity to involve willing seniors in volunteer service activities that would generate goodwill and understanding between the two groups. All I can tell you is that I have spoken with almost all the seniors who live in the senior center and every one of them laughed at that. I'm sorry to say, I think they would have absolutely no interest at all in doing that type of volunteer work. They're also quite old and they want to be in a place where they can feel secure and happy, et cetera, can you still hear me? Something else came up on the screen just now. Oh, hello. We can still hear you, Ron. Okay, I'm sorry. But... I hear your comment. I think Paul's ready to answer your question now. Yes, thank you. To answer your first question, again, I've spent my career working both in the homeless arena but also in mental health. And I will say one thing is for sure. If you are not encountering mental health problems before you become homeless, you will certainly be encountering them once you are homeless. There is a lot of trauma. There is a lot of stress. It induces things like depression when you're unhoused. So I think it's safe to say the vast majority of people who are unhoused are experiencing some degree of mental health issues. You pointed out some of the sort of chronic problems that can be there. People can have chronic mental health problems. There are sources of support for that. So part of the goal is really how do you engage with those folks? How do you let them know how they can get that support? And how do you help stabilize them? But it is truly the community has a range of people. I am familiar with two young people right now in Montpellier, both working, no mental health issues whatsoever, just can't put together enough full-time income in order to be able to afford housing. So there really is a range of community people with all kinds of different challenges in their lives that are homeless. To your second point, that's truly up to the individuals, whether people want to engage in volunteer activities. I've personally found it very, you know, something that adds a lot of meaning to my life. I volunteer with migrant health to help migrants. I've always worked with the homeless. I mean, I would encourage people to keep an open mind because I do think what people find when they volunteer is that the folks they're helping aren't all that different than them. And it does help address some of the misconceptions they might have about danger. I've personally has felt as comfortable with a group of homeless people that I have with groups of housed people who might have other issues. So I just think it's an opportunity for people. Thanks Paul. Elizabeth Parker and then Rick D'Angeles. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. So I'm Elizabeth Parker. I live on Hillside Avenue. I am the senior warden at Christchurch. And I just wanted to clarify that I think Christchurch has been very clear that we will not be hosting the overnight shelter next year. I really appreciate that the work of the Good Samaritan last year and another way this year and all of the wonderful volunteers that have been organized to help with the overnight shelter this year. However, I just want to give a very clear message to City Council that we are now at the end of March and we need a solution this year. And if we were in a position where we could offer basic needs such as a shower and several other issues that we have, it might be different for us, but we really feel that the time has come to offer a long-term viable solution. And I really encourage you to take action, whichever of the two solutions that have been offered or possibly others might have all, but that this become a priority. So thank you very much. Thanks, Elizabeth. I'll just take the next comment, Rick. Yeah, hi. Thanks very much, Jack. Rick DeAngelis live on Edmund Street in Montpelier and I'm the co-executive director of the Good Samaritan Haven. And the other co-director, Julie Bond, is in the virtual room as well. First, I want to say how appreciative I am for this report. I think Paul and Dan have done a great job on advancing this discussion. We support all three of the recommendations, but I guess the recommendation about the siting of the housing hub and the overnight shelter, we do think it needs further development. One thing that hasn't yet been identified is, how do you actually pay for the staffing that's going to be needed to operate the overnight shelter? That's a fairly significant number. And I think another concern around that that we have is that it's true, anybody can become homeless, but many of the folks who are homeless and on the street in Montpelier and who are, let's say, are using the Christ Church this year, many of those folks are dealing with some pretty significant challenges, including substance abuse, mental illness. They might have fallen out of the correctional system and don't have a lot of opportunities in the job market or housing. So you have to have a program and you have to have a staff that can effectively work with that group of people. And so we're very interested in what's been presented. We've been talking a lot about it internally, but we wanna make sure that there's a robust service program as part of it. And thanks very much. Thanks, Rick. Morgan. Hello, Morgan Brown, district three resident. First off, I wanna thank the council for hearing this presentation and reviewing the report. And I wanna thank both Dan and Paul for not only the report, but the presentation. It was very well done and thoughtful. For those council members that might not know me, I'm a person who had lived unhoused beginning when I was 17, my 18th birthday, fleeing severe domestic violence. And then off and on for many years of my adult life. The last go around was 12 years until I finally became housed about 13 and a half years ago. One of the things that's important to know about housing people is it not only takes housing, and then the money and subsidies involved in that, but it takes meaningful, healthy relationships. And that's what helped me get housed. Helped me get housed and stay housed. And I didn't go through a program. But it most well had been one. And it was much like a housing first model. And I support the housing first model on pathways for monitors really good. And I would like that to be part of the soup because I think that's how we get people from being out on the streets to being housed. And it doesn't always have to be a program. And that's where street outreach and other people are involved. And it doesn't necessarily take a ton of money. I got housed with a no strings attached kind of model that wasn't a program, you know? And if I can be housed and believe me, if it wasn't for all that, I'd be the still on the streets institutionalized or dead. And that's a fact. And the thing is, is it can be done. But what it takes is exercising the political will and making things a high enough priority. It's been done elsewhere. It can be done here. We need to, you know, get going on this, quit talking about it, quit studying it and let's do it. You know, and it can be done. So thank you for saying, I just want to finish if I can, Jack, thank you for everybody who's been working on this and let's do it. Thank you. Thanks Morgan. There are a couple of people in the room who've been waiting for a while, Steve Whitaker. Steve Whitaker, Montpelier. For those of you who weren't on the council, I believe it was 2019 that I badgered the council to finally create a homelessness task force. And I recommended it not be loaded up with service providers, but people who would then engage and invite the service providers in. They packed it with service providers and nothing got done. So 2019, the charge, I would encourage you to review the charge of that homelessness task force when it was created and compare it to the charge that was given to the consultant three or four years later and realize how little honest intention this body has demonstrated to get here. So I would question who has the mental health problems? The folks that are forced to live with no access to a bathroom or the folks that sit here and tolerate it year after year after year. The fact that you're proposing a model to leave people outside continually spring, summer and fall even. And these congregate shelters in a gymnasium might not be adequate for many of the folks who are outside. If there's 450 people in the area, that's commensurate with the senses I took years ago before, back in 2018, 19, 300 of those may end up leaving those hotels. Good Samaritan's new facility on a very Montpellier Road has 38 beds, okay? There's just a real disconnect with what the need is and the emergency is and what we're talking about for solutions. To come to hear from a peer counselor, yeah, I'm here for you, I'm paid by the city to hear for you, but I don't have a sleeping bag. I don't have a phone for you. I don't have a tent for you. What good is that? It's like we're wasting money on false hope for folks and we're pretending that that's actually beneficial. So the chronic tolerated emergency is not an emergency. That's negligence, okay? You are negligent in not having addressed this with a plan, with sites identified and vetted for water and sewer and capacity to hold trailers with water, showers and toilets. That's what should have been done years ago. I've been talking to Tim Haney for years about this and y'all just have not given a shit and you leave everybody to do it in the alleys and do it behind the, you know, under the bridge and on the riverbank and it's just unconscionable. So I already said, why is it okay to leave them out without access to publicly owned bathrooms which we own in city hall and in the transit center, we lock them out because it's convenient for us, right? It's convenient for, and it's convenient for you to cut me off as I know you intended to. Thank you. Nat Frothingham. Nat Frothingham, I'm over the task force and I live in Montpelier. I've had the good fortune to work with you, Dan and follow with you and I feel some skepticism about parts of what we're discussing tonight. It may well be that leaving this meeting, we won't have to ask the council for an appropriation for money but I can't believe that this problem will be faced and dealt with without spending some money and some of that money, it seems to me may well be taxpayers' money from Montpelier. And I don't think it's, I think it's great that there are funding mechanisms, there are foundations, there are other branches of government, other resources, of course exist but I believe the council and our taxpayers here, including myself, I think we too are a resource and to indicate that we're not gonna come back, we're not gonna ask for money, I think it's, I'm skeptical of that claim. We've got whole buildings in town that are 80%, 90% vacant and they could house people, they're privately owned. We don't have the mechanisms, I think, to insist that people who own property that could be rented, that they square that property together and get it cleaned up and renovated. I don't believe politically that that's probably a possible way to go. However, we can sit down with people, we can gather people together and we can communicate to them that they're a resource and a valued resource and I believe we probably could get some action from those people. I guess I'll leave my comments there. A little more realism, a little more realism, I think would be an order tonight. However much people have given of their intelligence and creativity in addressing what is a complicated problem. Thank you. Zach, are you moving up the mic? Okay. Zach Hughes, a member of the task force and I do a lot of community outreach in the area. So I did take the moment to, first of all, I wanna say this is the closest thing I've seen to addressing or attempting to go there. I've been here for 30-something years and all I've heard is, oh, we're not gonna do that here. They can be in Burlington, they can be in Barrie but if they're here, we don't have anything for them. This is a start. I know there are many, there were a few who's who want to mark up this report. That's fine, but this is a starting point. Let's not mark it up and say this, if y'all thought this was gonna be the final all, no way. This is a starting point and it's the best starting point I've seen. Now, I took a few minutes or a good half an hour to read the report and identified some interesting aspects. One of them is bathrooms. It's not acceptable to have the police department be the only alternative. Do you know how many people aren't gonna go in there? They just won't. It's their choice, it's due to trauma. I wanna push the Portland Lou and I'm gonna keep pushing that. It's gonna cost money. City staff today kind of said, well, but this and that, we need to do it. We need to do something. I understand Connor's got his bill. That's great, but we've also identified bathrooms within the city, but that's not gonna be enough. Yeah, we're gonna have to invest. The second thing is lighting. Lighting was identified in the report. Yeah, I would love to bring lighting up because there's plenty of dark areas in the city. I'd like to know why that is. And then I wanna talk about the third aspect, long-term. The city will have to invest. I agree with Nat. It won't be just funding, but other sources, city will have to step up. Now, the other aspect, long-term, so don't worry about it tonight, but Montpellier is gonna have to face the idea of possibly opening a shelter here year-round. And I'm tired of hearing that can't be done. It won't be done. That this is a starting point. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks, Zach. Ken Russell. Hi, good evening, everybody. Ken Russell, I live in the, so far east of Montpellier. I'm in the next town over east Montpellier. Thank you for letting me be here. I do spend most of my working hours in Montpellier. Really grateful. I'm the chair of the Montpellier Homelessness Task Force. Really grateful for Paul and Dan for putting for their hard work and putting this together. It definitely provides a good solid framework for carrying the conversation forward. Like others really appreciate the openness to count this new council to this conversation. I will agree with Nat that we need some realism. And as others have expressed a sense of urgency. Winter's coming soon. My board has said we're not gonna do what we did this year next year. Christchurch is not gonna do what they're doing next year. The two possible locations mentioned in the report could both be dead in the water for different reasons. So we need to muster the collective will as a community to figure these tough problems out. And so it is good as Paul mentioned, the report is envisions the housing hub is not married to a specific site. But it does to me represent a collective commitment on the part of the city. And that's all of us, the people here to take this on. And I think it's important to think of this problem. It is a very complex problem. It's important to be able to draw down resources from the state and from the feds. It's also important to think about this we're in a community that we share together and we need to problem solve from the ground up and look at folks as our neighbors who and how do we share space and how do we consider the common good here? So it's impossible to underestimate how strongly we need to galvanize ourselves. And this is a hugely challenging problem. And I see Donna with a one minute science very nicely done, Donna. Did you do that? I like the good handwriting. So anyway, I'll save some time, but really thank you for, oh, the last thing is housing, housing, housing. And it's the housing economics and under the supply and demand curve of housing is just getting worse. The next rungs up in the ladder are gonna get harder and harder to reach. So this isn't easy. So thanks for everybody's work over. Thanks again, Peter Kelman. Thanks, Jack. I'm Peter Kelman, Mountain View Street Montpelier. I'm a member of the Mount of the Homelessness Task Force. I was a member of the Housing Task Force when it existed. And I am the coordinator of volunteers for the overflow shelter this year. And I was the coordinator for the Homelessness Days of Action. So I've been pretty involved in all of this. I believe that the three major initiatives proposed in this study would, if well implemented, go a very long way toward addressing the needs and challenges faced by maybe 95% of the people in our area currently facing housing insecurity. Primarily those who the report refers to as being episodically or acutely unhoused, not chronically. Chronically, there's very little in this report that is really addressing them. And it's something which is troubling because they are the most visible part of the iceberg of homelessness. They are the ones that Ron Merkin was referring to that he's worried about. So we've got to really think about that more clearly. Look, we need all of these. We need a housing plan. Bill says the housing plan will be ready this summer. I'm pretty familiar with the development of that housing plan. It's part of the entire city plan. There's a chapter on housing. I've read the drafts of it. It doesn't really say very much about homelessness. It talks about low income, but the people working on it are not experts in this area. They need to bring in some of the people that Paul and Dan have worked with. As far as the hub is concerned, Bill raises these questions. He's raised them all along. How's it gonna be funded? Rick raises it too. How's it gonna be funded? How's it gonna be staffed? How's it gonna be managed? Where's it gonna be located? We could ask those questions again and again and again. And the only thing that we'll get out of it is we won't do it. I think Carolyn and Nat raises the point. Very important. On July one, in our area, there are going to be easily 450 people who were in the motels who are not gonna be in the motels. Where will they go? We have to act. We can't just keep studying this, writing reports. And by the way, Steve Whitaker is correct. In the first preliminary report that the housing task force put together in November delivered to the city council in 2019, almost everything that is in this report was identified as a need, but hasn't happened. And I told Paul and Dan, the first thing you have to figure out is why hasn't this happened? What are the barriers in our town that it prevented the obvious? These three recommendations are obvious. To present it from happening. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. So there we are. We've heard a lot. I am mindful of the time. I know that Bill, city staff has gotten this. Excuse me. I think there may be one more comment. A question from the zoom land, Mary. Mary, do you have a question? I'm not. Okay. Mary, if that's you, you're muted. Is that working now? Yes. Yes. While I can support the hard work that went into this report and the need for education and a hub and of course, housing, I still think similar to what Nat was referring to, we will need a more immediate housing. People can go to a hub. They can get resources. They can learn things, but they still might not have housing because there isn't really enough. I still think how it company sheltered housing units can be an interim thing that most of our larger cities are going to need to have. There's 14 states right now that have been using the pallet shelter hub systems. And no matter if we have a hub education, I think we're still going to need that. The world is in a housing crisis. America's in a housing crisis. Homelessness is extreme. And I think we're still going to need that little in-between part that can be utilized with pallet shelters. So I support the work here and the ideas, but I still think a step between permanent housing and homelessness, we need that step. And I think that's the pallet shelters. Thank you. Thanks, Mary. Excuse me just a second. Mary, what was your last name? Wait a minute. Who's speaking? This is John. I'm sorry. Okay. I just didn't catch the last name for the last speaker. Mary, is that Mary Messier? Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, Bill. You indicated that you're going to. Yes. Yeah. Quickly in summation. I appreciate everybody's time. I think you have a little better appreciation for how challenging this work was for us to develop. We spent many, many hours with many of these people on fielding ideas. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point because I do want to point out something that's been said repeatedly by several speakers, maybe in different contexts, which is we need to move forward. And I think one of the virtues of the proposal for a location like the rec center, is it somewhere that's feasible to move forward quickly. If there's somebody in town that has an empty building, they want to give to the city. Or if there's somebody in town with $5 million, it's a good point to move forward. I think that's a good point. I don't want to go into any further approaches, but I just want everybody to keep in mind, let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good in terms of making some forward progress on this issue. And I do think there's viable ways at least to explore. Can the rec center work? It does. Also, I want to point out to everyone have a very nice suite of bathrooms and showers on the first floor with an outside room problem. So I just want to throw that out there. There is no perfect answer clearly. Great points. Council, we're obviously not making a decision tonight. The question is, when do you think you can be prepared to have a. First of all, great conversation. We also have our team here. We're taking a lot of notes. I think we will do a weekend. Kind of like the last conversation. I don't know if it'll be detailed, but to at least come up with. With a real clear. What it would take to, to use the rec center, what, what the state might require, what those costs would be, at least get an inventory of how we would tackle that. We have a pretty, you know, we know what the needs are. I think it's the, it's the cost and what, what that kind of thing. You know, I think the, the Portland, the exact mentioned is something we've been looking at and. We've been looking at. A lot of things that we've been looking at. You know, a lot of this comes down to, and again, it comes, it's not as much the initial investment. It's the ongoing costs. So, you know, Burlington has one in city hall park. It's generally been successful. They check it and clean it and maintain it four to five times per day. They have a staff person that that's what they do. And so, you know, it's, we can put it up, but if it's a mess, if it's dangerous, if it, if it's a mess, it shouldn't do it, there's, it's, that's a key piece of it. And the pallet shelters are something we also spend a fair amount of time on. And again, not opposed to that at all. Finding a location that is relatively flat has water. So, very important. And most importantly of all, and this is what held Burlington up for the year with pallet shelters is that the company that sells them will not sell them to you. Because unless there is, there is an associated service provider who is helping manage the site because they know these are these can be problems and so I took you know Burlington had the order for the places they had the location they did not have they took them a year to find someone who would manage you know and I'm like and I'm going to give a property manager I'm taking social service manager who can help deal with the folks that are in there that need issues and you know kind of like a shelter person deal with the folks that are struggling so given you know given what we found just trying to staff shelters again not trying to be the naysayer I'm trying to say this is what it actually takes to get this stuff done and so some of these are not just one-time costs so if we are you know and I think this is where you all need to think if we're really going to take this on what are we willing to commit and do and go forward so what we will do is try to give you some feedback about the specifics in the report and come up with some numbers so that you can make informed decisions as soon as we can hopefully even by the next meetings to have reviewed that so okay thanks let's let's shoot for that really important that the council members especially new ones actually go and walk through the rec building I think that's really important it's a different confideration than you may have in your mind the other thing is I visited the pilot community in Burlington as it went up and after and it is really well well done and we can look at what their costs were because it's much more beyond just the building and the structure it's also the services so please those are two things I would ask my fellow council members to try to find time to do okay thanks guys thank you and as we wrap up this contract project I just want to thank Bill and his staff and and Ken Russell for leading the task force and the task force has been great to work with it's really been a privilege and a pleasure thank you thanks okay folks Mr. Mayor yes the interest of time I was I was my next thought was going to be we should look at the agenda and assess where we are because it's 10 o'clock well I know Shayna Casper has been on the call most of the night to talk about the declaration of inclusion which should not I wouldn't imagine take a long time I would say that the strategic plan presentation is really for your benefit Kelly was going to walk us through it so that you all become familiar with what we have and more importantly if there were changes if you know if people are on board so but it's not necessarily something we have to do tonight we should do it soon because you know it's council policy until it isn't and so we're going to keep moving forward on all those initiatives so if this group has major changes we should know that but you do have you have it in your packets the outline and you can take a look and if there's serious concerns you know at least be thinking about that's probably something because it is a presentation it takes you know to do it right we should go through it shouldn't shortchange that so we shouldn't do that that's what I'm saying tonight yep unless you want to I'm just trying no I think that's uh I was I was thinking that too because it does take uh it's there's some need to that discussion yeah yeah okay and we also have the conduct and the group norms I don't know that we need to do those tonight code of conduct we um listed so many things we could do right as a city council our responsibilities if we are not discussing it tonight is it possible to add like one sentence for public's responsibility uh like using polite civil and nice language towards us because we are representing people who vote for us and when there's something to us I think it also goes all the people who voted for us so one sentence uh to show that they have a responsibility to thank you thanks do you want it well I think I think we should go to the declaration of inclusion adoption uh right now and then we'll see where we are with that and Shayna Casper are you the person who's going to be the presenter yeah we ended up not meeting last week so I know Michael Sherman and Jeremy Baudry are also on the call if you guys want to join as well that'd be great um and then also obviously Lauren and Pelin and any other and um and Al is here as well hello Al wow look at that I didn't see you on the on the calendar on the on the on the zoom um so those who I don't know I'm Shayna Casper your share pronouns I'm the um chair of the social and economic justice advisory committee and we are established in 2018 to support the city council in addressing and shaping the systems policies and practices that perpetuate the barriers to racial social and economic justice in our community um we've gone through a lot of different things over the past few years including an 18 month long process with creative discourse on make having different um just consultants to help us figure out our strategic plan for what are our priorities to make our city operations more equitable and just and this has um you know included a formal initial equity assessment um if any of the new or existing city council or previous city council folks who have stayed on um want to talk more about that would love to would love to find a time to connect um but one of some of the other things that we've been doing as well as we've we have a pilot project of $50 stipends for city committees we have a budget equity assessment tool we've updated the history section of our website and this next step is um is is more um a kind of compiling all those different pieces and putting it into this declaration of inclusion we recognize that this declaration of inclusion alone does not create the operational relational and structural changes that we need and that we want to see happen to um close some of the belonging gaps that we've seen in our initial equity assessment but we do think it further develops and articulates our goals for an ongoing equity plan and vision for Montpelier so we were first alerted to it and alerted to it in December of 2022 um after many many tents had already adopted it um as of right now 100 municipalities have adopted the declaration inclusion which covers over 60 percent of Vermont's population um including many of our neighbors we wanted to wait as a social economic justice advisory committee had a decision to wait until after the new city council was seated to to implement it uh or to introduce it and wanted to introduce it um with this new city council and as well before the may week um of declaration of inclusion kind of celebration um so all the materials are there we've got the um the draft declaration of or the the declaration of inclusion proposal that we wanted to put forward um and maybe we can see if anyone else has anything to say or take any questions or I don't quite know what the next step here would be okay council members and does anyone have any questions or comments or thoughts or i think it's true i'd make a motion that we adopted sarah second any any discussion from anybody much appreciation I was surprised and very impressed that there are so many municipalities in Vermont who have already adopted uh such a resolution uh 60 percent of the population of the state right had had no idea that this was even a movement that was uh happening much less that uh it had taken such uh it made such progress so I appreciate your having done this and palin so before being a city councilor I was part of the essay jack so I just want to thank my team members and Lauren was them still is the city council representative so she helped us a lot and I think this is a huge improvement for our city I just want to say that how much I appreciate being part of uh say jack thank you thanks Kerry AC you've got your hand up yes thank you everybody this is great um I really appreciate that you took the time to think about what it should say for Montpelier instead of just taking the the stock one that was provided um I think you did a really great job with that so thank you so much um so the only thing that I wonder about is the very very last sentence where it says the city of Montpelier has been and will continue to be a place where individuals can live freely and express their opinions and I noticed that in and every all the rest of it there's much more aspirational language which I appreciated a lot because I'm not sure that Montpelier has been this kind of place and will always continue to be I think we have a commitment to its drive to be that and you know that's a value that we have but I think I just think there may be some people living in Montpelier right now who would say I am definitely not free to express myself and so I wonder if you discuss that and what your thoughts are about that I don't know that's is that to see Jack um yeah I um I maybe will yeah call and see if Al or um Jeremy or um Michael have anything here to add to did Michael leave here too I mean I think yeah just as you know as we said we really identified this real um yeah a significant gap in a sense of belonging in our community which is why we want to do this and I think you're right that the language is maybe a little bit stronger than you know as part of our revisions and then we um had perhaps initially intended we do really want to make sure that this gets passed in the next couple of weeks and so I don't know if that's something that we can line edit here in this call or um bring it back for um consent agenda next week or or next meeting or what the process would be um to make any of those changes it tends to be pretty tricky to do line editing of this kind in a meeting Donna verbless change that we both striven driven for or strive to instead of saying it it happened put it in different tents carry with that address your concern um yeah something like that would definitely address it I'm not sure the exact way to word it but the city of Montpelier strives to be a place where individuals can live freely and express their opinions striking has been and will continue to be that sounds great to me so somebody is that uh accepted as a proposed amendment to my resolution yes okay all right great anybody else have anything they want to say before we proceed to a vote uh Lauren yeah just quickly again um gratitude to the social and economic justice advisory committee who has been working really hard on a lot of projects as Shayna mentioned really encouraged the new counselors to look at the equity assessment because it really identified a whole suite of kind of many year ways that the city can continue to improve um and I was really kind of heartened to see in the presentation we had earlier that being a welcoming inclusive city was something that the community identified as a really high priority um in that outreach project which I think just reiterates this this commitment and one thing that Al said at one of our cjack meetings that I just wanted to lift up was um you know passing this is one thing but the whole idea is the follow-through in the action and actually the implementation so just us all you know in passing this I hope we're keeping in mind it's the it's the follow-through it's the actions that we will take as a community to actually try to live up to this and implement and take take step so just just highlighting that thanks uh John Odom before we vote do you have the language of that amendment for the minutes uh yes um but I also am sitting six feet away from the person who suggested it so I can always get it from her too I'm wrong sounds good well I've got you I just want to throw in something as a as a staff I'm really glad for that change um I was thinking about saying something myself because I immediately thought back to the survey we did where where I found out that you know a quarter of people of color did not feel comfortable in the clerk's office and that that hit me hard and it has stuck with me ever since so the idea of striving is we get strived to is is a lot better than we are because I think it really does depend on on who you are to make that state so just say all right I looking around the room I think we're ready for the vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed Donna could we possibly ask the city clerk to post it in the glass cover with all the other certain notices at least for a while great thanks folks yeah congratulations thank you for coming and staying on for so long it's been interesting now well I suggest we move we'd move the code of conduct and group norms to a future meeting and try to get through the committee assignments tonight because uh you know and it's it's an easier call for me than for a lot of people because I think my bedtime is later than a lot of people but but but I think it's I'd like to get the committee assignments done as quickly as possible because the sooner we get that done the sooner people can start going and contributing to the committees they're on so is that work for everybody all right let's go now where were we did bill do you have uh or it is so where the things were that people volunteered for and I know oh so it's on the screen but not on the paper got it got it got it got yeah there you go I knew we had it okay yeah this is very small but let's just go down the list um and I'm gonna what would it be helpful for people to have this up on the screen or you're happy with it the way it is yeah Kelly can we do that that way if if there are still people online who want to uh see what we're doing they can see what what's being put up oh but you're not sharing it are you and I'm not going to move this time because there's nobody in the room that I lose who's who my head would be blocking it no she's making it bigger okay first up we have the ADA advisory committee one of the few committee it meets during the during working hours and I believe that Jen was on that committee and she is no longer on the council is there someone who wants to be on that yeah all right oh now I see it yes okay great yeah I think that's a perfect thing for your no uh building code appeals so you're up again who else yeah okay being pulled together quickly great um capital improvement plan committee I'm happy to continue on this one great Kerry Lauren shoved off so new people would come on the idea is that new counselors get on so they start understanding the index and the pavement and choices that we do so I still think we should we should encourage new councilmen okay well I'm not interested in I'm not interested in shoving anyone off who wants to stay though I think that's a good point and and everybody can go anywhere cemetery commission so where was the decision Donna stolen there's uh no oh but Lauren and Kerry yeah there should be three okay Tim yeah that's great yeah okay cemetery commission that's elected that's it'll be that oh right was it just dying to get it transportation committee of the regional planning commission I you want to stay yep okay any objections to that and Kerry you should yell out if you do it because oh there you are I'm seeing it on screen um solid waste management great um community justice committee panel and you indicated you want to do that cjc right yeah I think those are the same thing sorry it's yeah it's just there's two columns two rows but it's really one of the board of the justice center yeah okay um great uh community fund board we have we have not had a city yeah I didn't think so it's okay um complete streets committee have we had we haven't in the past we haven't okay no no I hear a lot about it in my in tech yep in tech okay anybody want it or just keep going um conservation commission you don't necessarily need someone for that okay design review development review now meaq energy advisory community salier wanting to be on that yeah and and Lauren uh stepping back yeah okay great Harry shared in scholarship and Watson said she's want she's willing if not desirous of staying on that so yeah that's a that's a committee that you know it's an annual scholarship for a high school kid and the city has a seat on selecting the committee so obviously during in Watson's 10 years here being working at the high school it was a natural that you know she knew the kids and she's willing to keep doing it but she also knows that if somebody else would like to do it you know because they may have been so she's willing but not demeaning okay that she do it everybody happy with that I think so too yeah so it's a lifetime appointment for her so her son is in high school you know I think it's I don't know how I think it's a one-time thing and they come in and they discuss you know I think this is one kids apply for and you know whatever you know I mean I don't you'd have to ask her if you're interested you know I'm sure sure she'd be happy to relinquish it but she doesn't know the kids in terms right so there you go yeah yeah great uh senior center advisory committee very advisory council we have not had a council rep but if there was someone interested in that I think that would be a good thing that it doesn't have a lot of authority but it does have a lot of informal authority and senior center they wheeled a lot of opinions there's no shortage of opinions I've noticed um and I don't hear any takers for that historic preservation commission do we have someone that we put on that we don't have to okay I think when it happened in after one of the last weeks we were trying to put all the committees together so they were all in one place so some of them you know I've got some reps and yeah homelessness task force Palin and Sal sounds great yes great so housing committee looks like a new shelter will be in district too you're worth worthy of the opposite or definitely won't be that empty funeral home yeah it's in your district um housing committee yeah I'm sure I'm sure you know all about that given carry great investment committee so that committee meets I know it's technically not the finance director anymore but how frequently do they meet and is the purpose to like oversee and review performance of the city's investments and on rare occasion they'll recommend to get out of a fund and this committee has to make the decision the review okay not seeing any takers okay where do you need us the most right yeah so I did that one and then maybe I'll go for him well housing housing's a regular thing yeah that's like a monthly thing this is a meet for 15 minutes at lunch right here something yeah this is sold all right yeah right no yeah that sounds no set meeting for it's usually this finance director sends out of things as we need to get together when can we and then it happened meeting every week are we putting the two of you are we just down I think I heard Sal yeah yeah yeah well yeah that's right yeah perfect great um I feel you're live board Palin great uh I'm for your foundation Tim and you're are you already on that yeah so yeah so then you guys would replace you right didn't we change the monthly foundation that they appoint their own members except for the council rep so if you're going as the council rep would they replace you there's a well that's something you guys can talk about it's not the treasure I mean you can still be alive yeah they'll figure that out that's not our problem right planning commission is all set park's commission rep well we don't actually I mean we well we have had and they the chair was glad to see me back oh it's a it's a liaison liaison person that goes yeah you should definitely keep doing that thank you um planning commission now public art commission has not had a council person but if someone was interested it's a Wednesday we meet all right okay uh yeah well it's a way to keep the meeting short I go in there before this one uh recreation advisory board that that has never had a council rep that I'm aware of okay restroom committee carry great c jack that's lauren and pellen right lauren you want to keep doing that don't you but potentially interested like right now the schedule doesn't work for me anymore um and it's been on it for four years uh-huh thinking I'd be happy to do it great great and pellen you want to stay on it okay okay okay okay so carries thank you was that it was that a no from pellen I couldn't hear what you all were saying she's she's going to justice center okay so it's all on you carry so okay fine I got it I could do it okay great sprinkler variance so that doesn't really meet anymore uh that would fall into the building code appeal committee so that's really when somebody you know when we had the sprinkler ordinance people that's this group met pretty regularly people seeking variances but now that that doesn't exist anymore they don't really meet except once every couple years if there's something really weird all right um stormwater utility committee currently lauren and I are on it even though it's not listed here and we're just about to set the rate so I would definitely like to continue and it's fine Tim also wants to join I'm happy to continue or I could just go for now and you want to be the official it's a big thing I mean three you can have up to three honestly yeah oh it's huge and we've been spending this last year so we're just about to give the council recommendations for rates so I just like to see it through great in 10 and so three so three are we adding to great great uh intake you want to stay on I really would like to stay on it it's in transportation infrastructure so it deals with streets roads but also bikes walks pedestrian issues the infrastructure is the committee that developed the uh traffic calming policy main street and berry study scope uh increasing the shared use path flashing beacons and stuff no no I don't think so no idea oh conflicts with housing oh you're not on housing okay then then you're I think it's I think you're good yeah why don't I jump on you and Donna did you want to stay I I would so both of you thank you you know tree board do we need to have someone on that TW would we do okay and we have technically it's the mayor or their designee that's the mayor one so so uh nobody else volunteers so that if the mayor happens to be married to someone who has a significant interest in art that person might be a good designee or does it have to be another council member so the city so the city owns the collection it was donated to the city and it is cared for by the TW Wood Foundation we are almost city-owned paintings well I guess we should put me on for now it's the only committee some mayors have loved being on it Mayor Hooper was very active other mayors less so yeah I'm probably more in that towards that but uh but we we can put put me on that for the for the president yeah yeah great can we scroll down farther is that it tell me all right the committee that existed was the microtransit and Connor and I were on that initial committee my ride has continued but it's no longer a pilot project so I'm assuming we're not going to continue okay well done okay good work yeah now that's my agenda I think we're up to other business should we talk about the legislation under other business okay sure I have I was going to do this under the manager's report but there were three um I was going to give updates on three issues that are in the legislature right now that affect us and at least in my view and based on our policy uh really none of them are going the way we would have hoped uh the first is the project based TIF which is very important for us particularly for country club road project but even some others uh according to senator Cummings it had been in senate finance she told our folks that had not made it out of crossover I did contact representative Casey and asked if there's any way we could put that in in the house our lobbyist Maggie Lenz sent me an email I should join this meeting that she still thinks there's something in the senate we can get it attached to that there is some interest in that so that is not looking good but it's not dead very I you know we've already given up our TIF district project based TIF would be really excellent for lots of things and so hopefully that doesn't happen uh the housing bill already sent you the information about that um you know the the only real change that's happened in in the designated areas is you know going from 10 to 25 units in a designated downtown without needing act 250 and you know for the kind of housing in my opinion for the kind of housing that's needed in the state but certainly in our city even as we talk about these projects you know we it needs to be more than that and you know the proposal really had been to eliminate active 50 altogether and designated growth centers and designated downtowns I know Mayor Weinberger is pushing all in for Burlington is pushing an alternate whether if you're in a city and you can demonstrate capacity you can actually take on the active 50 so the the regulation doesn't go away but you can be the state's agent so it can be done at the local level um that there's something to be said for that but not doing anything I mean they you know at this point the only the only real change in the bill is to tell local governments what zoning they can and can't have um and no real state change and so obviously my local government had um but so we were trying to push on that and and frankly it had some pushback even from our own senate delegation including some who may have voted for that policy position so uh we'll work it on her and then lastly uh before you yeah I I had talked to our lobbyist about this and I talked talked to uh senator Watson about this and she had questions I didn't really know the answers to and this is there's going to be a or as of yesterday there is going to be a proposed amendment on the floor of the senate uh tomorrow and I'm not sure where things stand but as I said I tried talking to Anne and I really didn't know the answers to the questions she was asking so yeah I reached out to her today just reminded her how important this was and uh you know I think I think what's happened is there's been this suggestion that there's going to be some big active 50 reform bill next year and we'll address that and you know I'm not a politician I'm not there but almost every year I've heard there was going to be an active 50 reform next year and it seems like it's a it's a carrot that gets dangled now and I know there's important issues I mean I know there's there's issue but I think in terms of that one of the core things of active 50s to try to protect our country's sides and to have development be where it ought to be and so to try to encourage it in our cities where there's infrastructure and where it just seems like this should be somewhere where everybody could get on the same page so I don't it's never as easy as it thinks lastly and I think this is really concerning uh just if I'm I'll I'll be testifying tomorrow on this uh there is a dispatch bill and in an abrupt turnaround the state now seems like they want to take over dispatch for the whole state after saying they were going to get out of the business and they are creating some new commission potentially to oversee dispatch and to study where the dead spots are and all this other stuff and I think um and so there's a lot of concerns including what they what they define as a regional dispatch it's not clear that a municipality with contracted partners counts um they seem to talk about municipal authorities interestingly enough um and uh so there's a lot of that language is confusing straight to the point way at the back of the bill it talks about repurposing it says first it says all of the unobligated money from last year's 11 million um in dispatch will be used to help fund this study at all this project and then later on it defines unobligated means includes anything that have been told by joint fisculator approved so that's our money so they're taking our two and a half million dollars and re and three reappropriating um so you know I don't know what the plan is but they're obviously not talking about actually taking a highly functional existing dispatch and improving a regional system and putting in the infrastructure so um that's not good news and I I don't I I don't know how this all it it came out of senate gov ops uh and um we'll just leave and so anyway I'm I'm testified so now it's in senate finance with senator Cummings so I'm testifying here tomorrow along with deputy chief alzworth from barry and cary mccool our dispatch supervisor we'll try to uh see what we can get with that it is so far from the allocation language of last year oh no and it's clearly said it will is re appropriating yeah and it actually says there was a statewide study about dispatch in 20s whatever in in hindsight we didn't give this enough time it's written in the bill so we're going to redo it so there's a study committee there's a new board that's going to be formed regulatory board and the only conclusion I can draw is that they're gonna say the state is now in fact there's even a pay-in formula every time we'll pay in at a certain rate and then they'll get paid back to dispatch centers this is serious they would be turning public uh dispatch centers into schools and all the money would go to the state and then be redistributed back exactly that's exactly right you don't want that no that's exactly what that and uh and it sounds like this board would be controlling the dispatching so be a drastic change for us and um and you know for the newer council members we have a very active project which we have invested some funds in at the state's encouragement uh and placed an application and was awarded the grant and the legislature approved it last year and in fact the the um the the um the contract you afforded at the last meeting for the follow-up study was related to that because one of the things they want to ask was to make sure that we could demonstrate long-going capacity and so this was the follow-up study for that and um and so you know we were supposed to get in this would have provided all new towers and radio systems throughout the whole region not just to my pillar it was actually to help the whole central Vermont yeah yeah just just four total but that was awarded to state projects yeah um and 2.4 was for us for this regional dispatch and and we're getting it because we were ahead of the other we had a fully designed system and we were providing regional dispatch and it would have and so the caveat was by improving the infrastructure so this all started because the state said we state police are not going to provide dispatch and we're done providing free dispatch to towns and partly because people like us complained that we were getting double charged we're paying our own dispatch plus we're paying state taxes so we're paying for everyone else's so they're like we're out of it and so we want to help provide beef up these regional dispatches so people that are getting left out have a place to go and we had already done a study thanks to CVPSA and Donna that had laid out everything we needed so we went in and they said oh my god you're ahead of you're so far ahead of the rest of the city and so it was to beef up our infrastructure so we could take on new customers along with Barry who also has they have a lot less customers but the idea was together we would do this have separate dispatches but get all the back you know equipments we could back each other up the whole we've been working completely completely handed you know with Barry and um you know I read the bill today and it's just our money's so that's where that's at so so right now it's dispatch housing and project-based in a great way but it's not over this but but this bill reflects such a split from the state staffing department of public safety commissioner was ready to go with where we were headed yeah I totally supported it now these legislators are off I don't know if they would I mean they had our committee and testified but after that they haven't talked to her no I know yeah no the state does not want because they're having the same problem they can't find dispatchers and it sounds like they're going to be in charge of finding them for every place in the state but let's do that to our staff okay I mean the way they treat the state staff is just bad okay well there's nothing we can do other than oppose it right right so I'm just giving you an update on what happens I can't hurt I would certainly you know at this point it's in senator Cummings committee so by all means communicate with her it did come out of senator Watson's committee so I don't know if much she can do but yeah it's work on the folks in the house it's the senate bill so let me just sit in the house well yeah when it gets to the house yep and it's a money bill so that's when it's gonna cross over this week so all right so I'm sorry about that city council reports third on your end of the theory okay well bill told you all that bad news parks commission it has moved ahead towards their final report I mentioned last time about dogs they have established a focus committee to study what trails will be having leash required however they did keep the towers and the parking areas areas that dogs will now be in the future I think it's July they're going to start will be asked to be leash because that's where there was so much conflict happening with people dogs on and off leash the Montpellier transportation infrastructure committee that sound is joined I wanted to it's been a while and bill probably knows exactly what had happened but staff got a grant the committee wanted to link the dog river field with the shared use path right now the shared use path just dead ends out there under the interstate and we wanted to have a scope done to go to dog dog field dog river field rec field and so we did get a grant to do that scoping so that's really important and in fact I was told you may know more about this but I was told by Kirk that it's a joint proposal with Berlin and so they're going to be extending it on the bow inside too yes so it's so we're doing our part with dog river great and again it's staff we talked about the idea but staff acted on it and it's been really good I'm no report tonight thanks so no report but I know an opera was made at some point for tours of different city apartments and I'd like to take advantage of that I don't know if any of you are going to want to do it but maybe we could oh yeah do them together water cream and planter whatever they're all great so yeah I've been force tours just to see facilities and understand what's out there yep we will we'll get that we'll start a ring to you that was yeah try to get boys into the class next when everyone gets if you choose to you get to slide down the phone with fire department there's the highlight of the tour it's there's a video of me on facebook sliding down the pole yep I just gotta say my in my tour I was told no more sliding down the pole I didn't get to do it so don't get your hopes up would you like if you like I will see to it it's okay wow that was that did not come from the top I can tell you yeah from our insurer which is really the top yeah uh paleon so I visited um voice department two weeks ago it was very nice tour uh very detailed so I just want to thank everyone including uh chief and I'm planning to do other visits so if you want to include me it will be great and also I just learned that high school Montpelier high school will offer three name classes and one of them is very very needed I just want to um say thank you to them uh the class name is a healthy masculinity since I have a 14 year old uh boy I said yeah that's great we should start early as possible so I think our educators know what they are doing so as a parent I just want to thank to them considering this kind of courses being offered uh being offered at the high school thank you Lauren no report but would love to be looped in on the tours I've revisit schedule of tours and let everyone know when they are and obviously if we have to do we're also happy to do individual ones if they don't work for groups um and uh and you know there's so you can do group tours and you're also you can do ride-alongs at the police department schedule that if you want to go out with the officer some night you can do they'll let you even stay over at the police fire station if you want or just stay for an evening hang out with the crew and see what happens I think Bob told you the story that Ian Watson stayed three different times and nothing happened and finally went home early one night and five minutes later they got a cough so but yeah you know it's how that's how it goes um and then the water both the water plant and sewer plant tours are great they're a good two plus hours each really honestly just so if you want to really get the full detail of them DPW garage is great um rec facilities you may already know but um what happened in the rec building it's certainly worth going through especially with all these decisions taking up some of this time oh no that's that's fine great um I think I do not have well I shouldn't say that congratulations to Montpelier basketball and debate teams great work um do you have anything else in your your manager's report well if you are doing congratulations you should put the U32 hockey team in there because that also includes Montpelier high uh players so if they else okay and oh my gosh what is is there a report no pressure is there a report from the city clerk tonight uh yeah just really quickly um it has been suggested that I should just really quickly review the kind of uh licenses you all vote on there is a new one but just just sort of FYI a first-class liquor license is to serve like at a restaurant a second-class liquor license is like pull it out of the cooler pull it off the shelf you know just sell it like that the third-class license is for actual liquor liquor um it's served you know the harder stuff tobacco license is obviously a license to sell tobacco outdoor consumption permit is obviously allowed to serve outside and the new one is uh tobacco replacement I think is what it's called which is vapes and such and um so the only other thing I would add is I am so tired my humility circuit has shut down so I'm going to brag that for the third year I'm going to be presenting at the world's biggest hacker conference in Las Vegas on election security so it's like Vegas going back to Vegas now you're going to be swimming or glory oh I'm going well I guess you it's kind of a trade-off you get the honor of being the thing but you have to be in Las Vegas to do it so I know what a shame okay nothing else we about it oh I'm sorry I'm sorry but no so I just get a couple minor things um just a reminder actually one major thing and then minor things one so we just an FYI you heard it here first as a result of some of the issues that did come up we did take a look at the asbestos in the rec center and it appears it may be way worse than we thought it so we're getting it evaluated um and so who knows what that's going to mean it could be either not either an expensive fix or closing the building so to be determined but the news was not sort of business as usual as we thought it might be and it partly came up because of these conversations we're having and people saying appropriately you know I think you know it's right kids are in there we said you know we've been relying on sort of the the word being passed down through the media let's get someone in and look and so first lumber our facilities and sustainability coordinator got someone to look at it now we're doing follow-up testing and evaluation and all that so more to come but that could be an unexpected gift for us secondly just a reminder I will not physically be here next weekend next meeting so dump everything you want on the agenda for next meeting Kelly will be sitting in the seat so we can load it up and then the week the meeting after that I'll be participating by zoom so sorry about that just to get to the fell but thank you for understanding okay and at that point we can adjourn at 10 49 p.m thank you all not as I was strategic player now