 our first meeting of the Winnieski Cannabis Control Board. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance, led by its Deputy Mayor Jim Duncan. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay, so the first item on the agenda is request for a local retail license for Native East LLC doing business as Winnieski Organics and Eric will introduce for us. Yes, thank you very much. Just one quick correction. This is technically the Cannabis Control Commission. Oh, okay. That'll be corrected for future meetings. But tonight we have an application before you all for a request for a local retail license. This is for a property located at 165 East Allen Street. They've currently been running a CBD organics, Winnieski Organics, they've been doing CBD. They've applied to the state for their cannabis retail license. There's still some back and forth with the state to see where they are in that process. But as I understand it, this is the last part that the state needs before they can issue the state license for retail cannabis. So included with the application, sorry, included with the agenda, I prepared a memo kind of outlining some of the information about the establishment. There's very little that we can actually provide based on state statute. So the applicant is free to talk as much as they want, but the information, we're limited on what we can share with the public on these applications. So I included some information in my memo, including three conditions for you to consider. Just a quick update on that, the condition two, the receiving the certificate of fitness and closing out building permits. I spoke with Fire Marshal Palmer today. He is, if he hasn't already, he's planning to issue a temporary certificate of fitness, basically indicating that the majority of all the work that they have under permits right now is done. The major life safety issues, just a few minor things that they're finishing up. So he's comfortable letting them occupy and take over business with that. And then also condition three about having a discussion with the police department. I heard from Lieutenant Heisinga that on Saturday he went down to the establishment that'll walk through with the applicants and so they're comfortable with everything that they've seen. So right now the last part is basically just getting the state license. I think some of that's a timing issue. So it may be that we have to issue first before the state will issue. So condition one may not really make sense. Again, there's some different information coming from depending on who you talk to at the state. So that's the application. The applicants are actually here tonight. If there's any questions about the procedural piece, I'll take care of that. Otherwise, I will step away and let them speak. Thanks, Eric. Thank you. Procedural questions from anyone? I have a procedural question. I'm curious why this is followed by item B and not the other way around. Yeah, sure. So the application for retail licenses opened up on Saturday basically for sale on October 1st. So since this is the first application we've had in, it's an existing business. They've already been operating as a business and it's not a new application per se. They're just switching what they're selling. It seemed like a fairly straightforward application to bring forward, but then also wanted to make sure that there was some discussion about how we bring these forward in the future so that if we do start to see a lot of applications coming in, or at least requests for applications, we will know how to better coordinate this with the state. So we're not getting out in front of the state if that's not appropriate. So also that'll allow the city to make sure that the applicants are consistent with any building, zoning, or public works permitting that might be necessary before it comes to you. Okay, any process questions? Sorry, can I ask one? So Eric, on the conditions for approval, then do you have a recommendation on a condition for approval on number one or should we just not consider that? I think at this point we can probably not consider that. Again, I think it's, as I understand it, the state is waiting on us to give them indication that we've approved locally before they will issue. So I think at this point it might be that may not be a necessary condition. And I'll try to get more information from the state on how they intend to handle this in the future. So I did reach out to get a status update of where they are with their review and they basically said, we can't tell you anything. So. So Eric correct me if I'm wrong, but they cannot operate without both anyway, correct? That's correct, that's correct. Issuing a non-condition approval is not gonna pose a problem in terms of allowing something that shouldn't be allowed. Actually could I ask, and the license, I know in the other memo you provided, you talked about the provisional license versus the operating license. So would this be an operating license? That's my understanding, yes. Yeah, the state will be issuing the operating license. I think the provisional license, as I've read through the information, is really more of an indication that the state will accept the license, the rest of the application so that an applicant can start looking at financing or finding a space to locate in things of that nature. It gives them more of a, everything seems to be on the right track, but you still need to get your final operating license. Okay, thank you. Thanks Eric. Okay, absolutely, thank you. It's a completely new law and process and things are not 100% clear from the state. Do you guys wanna come up and introduce yourselves? Sure. Yeah. Please join us at the microphones and share your name and tell us a little about your business. Yes. My name is Eddie Fursey. Dylan Lovell. Nice to see everybody in person. Yeah, we're excited and happy to be here. Thanks for taking the time to consider us. So we've owned the building for a few years now and we've been working on building up assets and stuff and getting the place ready for what we wanted to do. We've been open for since May selling CBD and other herbal products and it's gone well. We've gotten good feedback from the neighbors and everybody is excited to see us there. So yeah, I guess if you guys have any questions for us about what we're doing, our goals, feel free to ask. Yeah, we're just happy to be here. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Do you guys have any questions? I was able to see the facility. Thank you. And my review doesn't matter like the building inspector or our police department but did appreciate seeing security measures in place and important logistics. If we don't have any concerns, are there any questions from members of the audience? And do we have any public line? We do. If you're a member of the public in attendance, you can use the chat or raise hand feature if you have any questions or comments. Jeremy, what's up? Hello, hello, I'm a local Winooski guy. I'm actually the volunteer coordinator at the food shelf. These guys have been really great kind of working with the community and kind of putting their best foot forward. And I actually know for a fact that they're gonna be requiring their employees to work down at the food shelf for an hour a month. So definitely a good company to support. So that's my comment. Thank you. Thanks, Jeremy. Any other questions or comments? Okay, knowing that this business can operate without state approval as well, is somebody comfortable making a motion to approve the local retail license for native East LLC? So second. Motion by Jim, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you so much for coming in to see me. Thank you guys, appreciate it. That was momentous. Yes. It was very first. Our first one. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Come visit us. Okay, so moving on to item B, this is on for discussion or approval the future application review process. You'd like to give us a brief overview? Yes, thank you very much. So yeah, this is really more of a procedural, a procedural question for you all with how you wanna see these applications come forward in the future. The state pretty much has full authority over how these applications get reviewed. There's really limited authority by the municipality to impose additional regulations outside of the standard zoning and building laws that are in statute now. So to me, it seemed to make sense that we would wait until we had some indication from the state that they were planning to issue a license before we brought it forward to you all. Again, that way that'll give us a chance as the city staff to review any building or zoning permitting that might be needed and be able to have that lined up so that when an application does come forward to you, you'll be fully aware of what the local processes look like going forward. So I don't know if this needs to be a formally adopted procedure, more of a guidance, but that's really what wanted to get your opinion and your input on how you wanna see these applications come forward in the future. And just for reference, this will include retail licenses, cultivating licenses, manufacturing, testing, and I think there's another one that I'm forgetting, but it would be any of the potential licenses that the state would consider issuing if they are available and can be cited in the city. I have quite a, it's kind of tangential to the procedures, but related. So what exists to prevent nuisance for manufacturing similar to what we saw on the west side of the city? Sure, so that would still fall under the zoning powers that we have in our land use regulations. So any applicant would still need to be compliant with our local zoning and land use regulations and any building codes as it applies to the actual use itself to all of our performance standards, which includes nuisance and signage are the main components that would be reviewed against. So we still have the authority to issue citations and violations in that regard. And just because I'm not up to speed on some of the nuances of the state legislation, is there, is onsite consumption permitted as part of this legislation? It is not, no. I don't believe there's any public consumption that's permitted as well. I think it has to all be done privately. Okay, all right, that answers my follow-up question. Does the state legislation require the use of security in the building that Christine mentioned that she felt like this place felt secure but I don't know if that was just something we were assessing? Yeah, no, my understanding is that the state is requiring that there be a security plan and specific security measures put in place. I believe they do require cameras, at least at the retail establishments and for the retail, they would have to have specific security to ensure that there's no one under 21 on premises as well, either there to purchase or employed. I think the product has to be like in a safe. It has to be secure. Right, yeah, okay. There's even one-way traffic allowed. You can only go through, circulate in one direction, you can't come back. Yeah, and just as a clarification on the previous, on the application, the request from the police department to review was really more of the police chief and I had a conversation and he really just wanted to get a better sense of what their security was, not to try to regulate them in any way because they wouldn't be able to. It was really more of an informational visit that he wanted to have just in case an incident came up, they would know what to expect when they were coming onto the scene. Do we anticipate that just being in best practice as part of the procedure moving forward? That's a good question. I think I would leave that to the chief just in case as they see more of these they might get more comfortable with what's going on and not need to visit them all and it may be, it depends on how many applications we see as well. Share what our general signage requirements are in zoning related to other substance advertising like signs that can be placed on the establishment's grounds for alcohol and tobacco. So we don't regulate content because it's considered free speech. So what we do regulate is size and location of the signage. So all of our zoning districts have specific regulations for where signs can be located, the types of signs that you can use and how much square footage of signed copy you can have. We can't specifically regulate what it says. So, but the state does have, in their rules and regulations, they do have some pretty strict guidelines on advertising more for where the businesses and yeah, where the licensees can actually advertise their product. It's less about signage and they really rely on the municipalities to enforce the local regulations on signage. So we would treat it like any other business right now as far as what kind of signage they can put up, how much of it they can have, where it can be located on the building or on the property itself. I had one follow up question to that because I don't remember where this conversation was left the last time that we talked about it. In terms of minimum distances from schools and those that we talked about prior, I don't remember if that was being covered by rules adopted by the CCB or if that's something that we were gonna revisit. Yeah, so the state currently has in the legislation, I believe it's in the legislation or maybe it's in the rulemaking, but they do require a minimum distance of 500 feet from properties from it. So I believe it's the way it's written is the a retail cannabis operation cannot be located within 500 feet of the property that where a school is located. So there's also some additional language in there about adjacency. So I'm not fully clear on what it is, but they do have specific requirements on distances from schools. And that applies to any public or private school, pretty much K through 12. And I believe daycares as well if they're state licensed. Do you have questions or prayers? Oh, I just wanted to just clarify. So it sounds like at least the understanding right now is that the state won't give the operating license until we've also given approval. So just to understand you have we received after notice is received that the CCB from the CCB that an entity will be issued an operating license. So is that just on you then to check or reviewing to check in? So my understanding was that when an applicant when an application was made to the state, any municipality that has a local cannabis control commission would get notification that an application was received. I'm not sure at what point that goes out if it's done at the provisional licensing stage or when there I was under the impression that it was that they would issue that information when they were prepared to issue a license. And then the municipality would have a certain amount of time to act on that if they had a local commission, but it sounds like that might not be the case. So that's something I need to clarify as well. Okay. But in any event, we are supposed to be notified when an application has been made at some stage in the state's process. Okay, sounds good. So you would hopefully have that kind of on your radar before they submit anything to the city. I mean maybe they'll have zoning and stuff. Right, right. Or ideally we would have the conversation if they needed any type of local zoning permit or building permit, we'd at least have an idea at that point of what they were doing and could advise them if the use that they're proposing would even be permitted where they were intending to locate it. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. There's a follow-up. I'm curious and what areas of the city would be zoned for such operation, for retail specifically. I know there are a number of different operations, but let's do it with retail. So for retail it would be along the gateways in the gateway zoning district and then in the downtown core, the commercial, the central business district which is just outside of the downtown core and then what we call the general commercial which is really the only property that's not owned by the city that's in the general commercial district is the Hillside Industrial Park out on East Allen Street. So it would pretty much be the gateways and the downtown area is where we have retail. All right, thank you. Any questions from members of the public? If you're no concerns, it sounds like we are on board with what Eric is proposing here for a future process and we can revisit this as things become clearer. Right. It is on for discussion or approval. We can take a vote. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the future application review process? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. At the end of our Cannabis Control Commission agenda, may I have a motion to adjourn? Second. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. I will now call to order. The Whenuski City Council meeting, it is 6.20 p.m. on Monday, October 3rd. Let's, we have agenda review first. Are there any questions, concerns about the order of this evening's agenda? Okay. We have public comment next. This is a chance for members of the public who are attending. If you want to address something not on tonight's agenda, if you are here for an agenda item, please hold until we reach that. If you are attending by Zoom and wish to speak, you can use the raise hand or chat. We did get a sign up in advance. She is not here. From a resident named Jane Weiss, inquiring about the Pledge of Allegiance. So I'll just read this out since they submitted in advance. She said, my comment is this. I find it very interesting that you say the pledge before starting a council meeting, but school students in K-12 aren't allowed to start their day with the same pledge of allegiance. Why is this? Given that she's not here, I can follow up with her and let her know that her questions about the school operations should be directed to the school board that we can't really respond on that. And I know we have somebody here in the audience for public comment, if you want to come up and introduce yourself. Hello everyone. My name is Parker Silver and I am hoping to be a part of the inclusion and belonging commission and specifically also to be an ambassador for the financial commission. So I wanted to say hello, introduce myself and answer any questions as well. Thank you for coming in. Yeah, we weren't able to get full commission approval to actually get it in time for the agenda. Correct. Yeah, yes. Yeah, so we can vote probably at our next meeting then, but anyone have any questions for Parker while she's here? Oh, they. They, sorry, she missed. I interviewed Parker along with Jenny, so happy to answer any questions if they come up or not. I have a question. I just want to know a little bit more about your particular interests and anything that drew you to those particular commissions. Oh, yes, of course. So I believe in equity through action, especially, I do believe that money is one of the biggest gateways and how we allocate them and where we allocate them need to be equitable so that we can, you know, in essence, really raise our community up so that we can all thrive in Winiski because, you know, Winiski needs to thrive because it's an amazing place. So that's part of what you may, I really do believe in community action, community work. That is something that I've done through my work as a content creator. I was part of Vermont Cast and I've been to several of those centennial events. Didn't make it in time before Vermont Cast switched up their processes, but, and I also have had a past since I was about 16 working in finance. I used to volunteer to help low income residents with their taxes in undergrad. I did inclusion work as well as financial work and so it's just something that I've been doing. I feel like I can add, and I, you know, I love Winiski, I'm part of Winiski, giant club. Thank you. Wonderful, thank you so much. I liaise to the finance commission. It sounds like you could be a good fit when we get to the point of being able to make an appointment. Thanks for coming in to introduce yourself. Thank you. All right, I don't see any other hands raised. So we can move to our consent. Oh. Oh, no. No, there's no one else here. Okay, sorry. We can move to our consent agenda. We have our council minutes from 9.19, council paper warrant from 9.29, paper warrant from 9.4 to 17, the 21C grant approval, that's a long standing thing we are renewing. Authorizing official resolution to accept the Northern Border Regional Commission grant that we were notified about a while back and then the event permit for your annual Halloween Winiski. Quite a few items, any questions, concerns about these? Any questions from members of the public? Okay, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. So we are on to council reports. I've lost track of the order I've been operating in. Can I start on the center? Yeah, I'll start. I actually want to speak about one of the items that's on the consent agenda. So Halloween celebrations are coming up and I think as everybody knows, we, Winiski has all the pumpkins in the circle, which is always fun and beautiful. However, that takes a lot of volunteers to carve out those pumpkins, get them ready, light them, all of that shebang. So anybody who is interested in volunteering, volunteers are definitely wanted. I do believe downtown Lemuski will be putting out a volunteer form sometimes soon. Elaine, I don't want to speak for the city, but I'm assuming if anybody wanted to volunteer, they could maybe contact us here as well at City Hall. But yeah, we can't do it without help. So anybody interested in volunteering to make that pumpkin bonanza happen, please do. That's all I've got. Thank you. Thank you. So the Housing Commission met last Monday and spent the majority of its time discussing the question we posed around whether to prioritize housing quality work through the public building registry or just cause eviction or some other form of eviction protection work for the discussions we've had over the last couple months here. We didn't have a full attendance from the commission, but there was a robust discussion as well as participation from the public during that meeting. And the commission, I think, spent a lot of time in question and inquiry around the subject and thinking about different ways to pursue it. Ultimately, they decided that there's an existing work plan with resources allocated to support the housing quality work. And that didn't feel, they did not feel that they were adequately set up to succeed on the timeline of a town meeting day valid item for just cause eviction charter change. There was a lot of discussion about other ways to still lend support to the effort. And there was, I think, interest in continuing to discuss that and then providing some form of support for statewide efforts, recognizing that we're a small municipality with not a lot of resources to implement something as complicated as this. Should it be done piecemeal municipality by municipality? So the commission is interested in also continuing to discuss some form of eviction protection, either advocacy or actual change alongside the public building registry housing quality work. But the priority for the housing commission, the recommendation back to us is to focus on housing quality. So thank you. I just have one update to share. The city manager and I met with representatives from Comcast Cable Company to, they were sharing information with us on affordable home internet access programs. And so there's like this internet essentials thing where you can get free or $10 a month internet home. When we were doing our bill listening sessions, we heard from residents about how it wasn't good enough to support online learning for multiple kids. We shared that with them. We heard from them that they have since increased the speeds to some degree. And are having a follow up contact with Comcast to get materials that we can help push out to the community but also to connect them with other service providers in Muruski to make sure that everyone knows about access to these programs to make sure everyone is connected. They also have like technical literacy training for you, which I didn't even know. So maybe some more resources we can help push out there. That's it for me. Thanks. Not too many updates. The Municipal Infrastructure Commission hasn't met since our last meeting. We will be having a joint commission meeting with finance on October 11th. The Municipal Infrastructure Commission just received a new application. So we anticipate completing an interview sometime this week or next. So maybe by the time we meet again in October we'll have another candidate to review. It would be for an alternate position at this point. Last time we met, we did approve the energy efficiency day resolution. That is October 5th. And just want to celebrate that day and recognition of all the opportunities that we have to save and reduce energy and help prevent contributions to climate change as we're seeing severe weather impacts in other parts of the United States as well as drought impacts, et cetera, that we experienced here in Vermont. So just recently for the summer. So looking forward to doing some recognition work on that. The Chinatown Waste District met last week. We will have a presentation here in a moment from the staff on the municipal, on the material recovery facility and the bond vote for that. That's on the ballot for November. And at the meeting, the board also approved the executive director to move forward with exploring rental agreement for administrative offices. Their current space in Williston does not fit the size of the staff as well as just the HVAC system needs, et cetera. So they will be pursuing negotiations on a space in South Burlington. And that's all I have. Thank you. All right, so this coming week. So on Tuesday, October 11th at 6.30, there will be a meeting of the Safe Healthy Connected People Meeting Commission. We'll be primarily reviewing and recommending awards for the COVID-19 Recovery Nonprofit Grant Program. So hopefully that will then be on the following council meeting if everything goes well. So if anyone wants to join, that again is on Zoom. On Thursday, October 13th, we have the second meeting of the Winooski Commission for Inclusion and Belonging. That is going to be held in person at 6 p.m. at the O'Brien Community Center. So if anyone wants to join us, that's where it will be. That's it. Alayna, city updates. Yes, so a lot of repeats from last time. COVID wastewater detection trends are still, well actually last week they were unknown, but previous to that, they were increasing. So please do mask up, get your free tests from the city. You can get them at the city clerk's office, at the library or the senior center, and you can get your bivalent vaccine, which should protect you against the current variants that are circulating. To find a walk-in clinic near you, visit healthremont.gov slash COVID-19 slash vaccine or just call 211. Board and commission seats are currently open, Winooski's Commission for Inclusion and Belonging, Town Meeting TV trustee, Finance Commission, Municipal Infrastructure Commission, and Safe Healthy Connected People Commission. To learn more and apply, please visit our news updates section at WinooskiVT.gov or give us a call at 802-655-6410. Please consider serving Winooski through AmeriCorps on recreation operations. You can learn more and apply at WinooskiVT.gov slash jobs. The November election is coming right up. If you're not yet registered to vote, remember you can register all the way up to the same day at the polls, or you can register in advance, which is a little easier on the clerks. You can visit WinooskiVT.gov slash vote or come to the clerk's office. If you have any questions in advance, again, feel free to call 655-6410. We can email them at clerk at WinooskiVT.gov or drop in Monday through Friday, 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Finally, if you are looking to develop affordable housing as a developer, as a homeowner on your own property, or need a bit of extra help with a down payment for buying your first home, and it is in Winooski, please note the Winooski Housing Trust Fund is available to potentially help you. Go to WinooskiVT.gov, click on current initiatives, housing resources and initiatives, and then Winooski Housing Trust Fund, or call 655-6410. Applications are available in English, Arabic, Burmese, French, Nepali, Pashto, Somali, Swahili, and Vietnamese. Spoken language support and application support is available through the Loan Program and Administrator, Opportunities Credit Union. You can stop in at their branch in downtown Winooski at 25 Winooski Falls Way. Thank you. All right, we are onto our regular items. First up, we have Chittenden Solid Waste District bond vote presentation. Um, this is Jen Holiday. Is she, she's not in the... It's gonna be Michelle, it'll be Michelle Mars. Oh, okay. And then I see another CSWD. Yes, hello, can you hear me? Yeah, could you turn it up a little please, Kevin? I can, is that better? Can you hear? I can speak up a little bit. We're gonna turn up the speaker a little bit in here. It's new, so it's not quite tuned in. Can you say something again, Michelle? Sorry. Testing one, two, two, three. Okay, that's better, that's better. Thank you. Okay. Okay, welcome. Thank you, thank you so much. So are you running the presentation? Should I do the presentation? How do you, how does it run here? What's your preference, Elaine? She can share. Okay, you should be able to share your screen. All right, let me see if I can make that happen. My video, there we go. Oh, we can see you now, that's good. Great, thank you so much. And let's see if I can get my slideshow going here. Can you see that, are you still seeing me? Yeah, we don't see your screen. All right, it says the host has disabled participant screen sharing. Oh, my bad. Try that please now. All right, there we go. Get it up to the correct place. That's great, I just lost one of those screens. Thank you for your patience. You might be able to see it through your glasses. Yeah, great. Oh, I see it. Let's see if I can get it to play, there we go. Does that work? Oh, we've got your presenter view. Okay, better. Swap, swap. Oh goodness. There we go. Excellent. Now we're going. All right, sorry about that. Thank you for your patience. No worries. Thank you for having me and making the time here this evening. I am not Jen Holiday, I just messed that up, didn't I? It's okay. I just want to see myself, that's fine too. I'm Michelle Morris, Director of Communications and I appreciate the time where I'm just going to tell you a little bit about this special election vote that Chipman Solid Waste District has on the election November 8th. We can't early vote, but it's a little different. We weren't eligible to have our bond issue included in the general election ballot, so we're trying to get the word out so everybody knows about this initiative, why our board has decided it is an important initiative for us to bring to the voters and what it means and I'm happy to of course answer questions. So for those who don't know us, we are the Chipman Solid Waste District and we are a municipal district created by our member towns and cities. We exist just to manage solid waste and local and state mandates around solid waste. We have facilities and services around Chittenden County including last but not least the Materials Recovery Facility which handles actually about half of the recyclables, what we call blue bin recyclables, generated in the state of Vermont at that facility. So what is a MRF? I just described that it sorts and processes those blue bin recyclables for end markets. The current one was built about 30 years ago. CSWD owns the MRF building property and equipment and it is the only publicly owned single stream MRF meaning it's a place where you can put all your recyclables in your bin and it'll get sorted out and shipped to market from that facility. So here's why we need a new one. So I took this picture on after about three days when the baler broke in the current MRF, the baler we call the heartbeat of the facility because it takes all these streams and it turns them into cubes that can be put onto trucks and sent to markets. When that baler breaks, we are dead in the water and this is what happens. The pile that's behind the person shown there is typically what you see on this tip floor, this area. But this is what it looked like after just three days. So the equipment is older. We have since replaced that baler, but we have just one. So we can't, we don't have any backup for that. The facility is as large as it can be given the footprint. It's at maximum capacity and it just cannot. So other reasons we need one, there's no flexibility. So if, for instance, markets for a certain material were a little soft, we cannot wait those markets out because there's no space to hold on to the material. As soon as we have it baled or processed, we need to move it. It was built to handle 25,000 tons of materials a year. It's currently processing about 47,000 tons. So nearly double what it was designed for. We anticipate needing capacity of about 70,000 tons actually. So it's currently limiting potentially the amount that Vermonters can recycle. What you see in this picture here is the current state of the sorting that happens at this facility. It's hand sorting by people whose job it is to stand there and sort through that material and pick out the type of container or material that can be sorted. So because it's inefficient and people just aren't as good as machines, frankly, at doing this kind of sorting, we are losing some valuable recyclables because they just make mistakes as humans do. So the last bit that tells you why we need this new facility is the limited storage. So as I mentioned, we just don't have any space. This is a picture of baled materials sitting outside, which is not good because it sunlight as well as Vermont weather makes the material less valuable, degrades the material, which reduces the quality and hence the value of what we're trying to sell. It also hampers flexibility, as I mentioned previously, if we wanted to ride out a soft time in the markets, we can't because we just don't have space. So that brings us to the new facility that we need. On this slide, it shows the current square footage of the current Murph and that would be compared with what we're proposing to build. The location is still in Williston, which is where the current Murph is located, but this new facility would be on Redmond Road, on land that CSWD owns. It's kind of on the backside of the Global Foundry's entryway. So benefits of this new facility, sorry, would be that optical sorters and eddy currents. So optical sorters, this machine that's shown here, the orange machine, material would flow underneath that and it would actually ping infrared laser off of that and very, very high quality cameras would take a picture of the materials and then a puff of air could blow the material that was identified into the correct bin. These sorters can pick, I believe, at something like 600 items per minute. And I don't know about you, but my hands couldn't move that fast, for sure, if I were doing human sorting on those materials. This kind of sorting is essential for meeting the quality standards that today's markets demand and it can help alleviate labor shortages. We're having trouble staffing a certain area. These machines can help with that and the humans that would have the jobs there would be deployed to things that humans do better, which is quality control and that sort of thing. Capacity benefits, the more square footage equals a higher quality output because you have more space. You can space out the conveyors and you don't have the material piled deeply and unable to be seen what's there. We'd have adequate bail storage, as I showed previously, and everything would be inside. Right now, half of the processing we do for glass that's crushed to use as process glass aggregate is outside. And for times of year in Vermont when the conditions, the weather conditions aren't agreeable, we have to send that out of state for the process. So this would all be indoors. Preparing for the future, this is, again, machinery that is what the vendor that we've selected provides, it would be 40% more capacity. So equipping us for the next 30 years of processing and that would give us the ability to adapt to evolving packaging equals removing more valuable materials from the waste stream. Environmental benefits include continuing to preserve dwindling land with all space. We're down to one land farm in Vermont. And as I mentioned, it would process up to 70,000 tons of materials a year and the more you recycle by keeping that material in circulation, you're preventing finite natural resources from being mined, trees from being cut and all the other benefits to reducing climate change impacts such as carbon emissions and that sort of thing. So coming down to the last and certainly very high in the list of importance is the benefits for the workers. It would maintain the current 21 jobs at the current facility, create some higher skilled positions and certainly have better working conditions for the current workers being brighter, better lit, more spacious and better ventilation. This is going to be funded by a bond and that's the vote that I'm going to mention in a minute. I'll talk about the minute. We would go to bond for $16 million. We are getting a 0% interest loan from the closed loop fund for $6 million. We have three and a half million in cash that we would contribute and we're anticipating, we will certainly be applying to the EPA for grant funding that has just opened this month to reduce the amount that we would be contributing. And then there's another $500,000 from the recycling partnership in the form of a grant. We would repay that loan or the loans over 25 years from the MRF operations, operational revenue that would enable us to continue operating this facility without profit as a motive because we don't exist to make a profit or pay shareholders. And that means we can keep our fees as low as possible and provide the maximum opportunities even when it's not profitable. So to vote on this important issue, you can get your ballot in advance now by going to the My Voter page and requesting the CSWD ballot. You can call or visit the town clerk's office to pick it up and all polling places in Chittenden County will have the CSWD ballot on hand for voting. That is the end of my presentation if I don't mess this up. I can stop screen sharing and I am happy to answer any questions. Thanks, Michelle. Do folks have any questions? You probably have none. I have one question. I think it might have been answered, but I just wanna ask again. So this new facility, it seems like it's gonna last for another 30 years or is that just an antidote and it could last for longer? That's correct. 30 years is about the anticipated lifespan of any Murph. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. And for the funding sources, is this already built into the budgeting you've been doing so it's not gonna require a rate increase? That's correct, yes, that's right. We do not assess towns of fee. We don't receive tax funding and that's the way this has been budgeted. Did you wanna add anything? Yeah, so I serve as the commissioner from Wanooski to the St. Genin Solid Waste District Board. Just for context there, the staff has put in years of effort into getting to this point, have hired consultants to advise the board and the staff on the best course of action from gutting the existing facility and reorganizing the layout to building new as well as locations. So there's been quite extensive work on this and just really proud to see it get to this point. Are there any questions from folks attending on Zoom? Reminder to use the raise hand or chat feature. We had our own bond vote a few years back to go from manual sorting at the wastewater treatment plant to mechanical. So, and I thought we were pretty behind. So this looks very exciting. Thank you for coming in to share about it so we can help get this out to voters in our community. Well, thank you for your time and your patience with my screen sharing. I appreciate it. No problem. This was listed as discussion or approval, but I don't believe we need to take any sort of vote, right? Correct, that wasn't oversight. Okay, great. All right, thank you so much, Michelle. Thank you, have a good evening. You too. So we'll move on to item B. This is town meeting TVs municipal update and we have Megan O'Rourke joining us. Please join us at the table. I'm going to hand you, these are meeting TVs, co-director. One of the co-directors is on the... Oh, Jordan Mitchell, just to introduce you to her as well. It's nice to see you all in person and come here and test out the system, which was partly what I wanted to see. Is that why you're at the person and then Jordan's on the camera? Yeah, I'm going to cut it. So town meeting TV, as you know, is the nonprofit community government access channel in Chittenden County. We serve seven member municipalities and Winooski is one of them and we consider ourselves a partner with you all in opening the doors to local government. Certainly your job to be the elected officials and to do the work. And for the last 32 years, we have been being eyes and ears for folks who are not able to attend meetings and have continued to build that muscle of opening the doors to local government. And I was just having a conversation with somebody today about when we started in 2005, live streaming the Burlington City Council meetings. And that was the same year that YouTube was invented. And so we were live streaming them on the TV channel. Now we are seen not just on the TV channel Comcast 187, Comcast BT17 and 217, but also make all of our content available on a YouTube platform. Make all of our content available on our own web platform, which is really important. And then have increased sort of our outreach and marketing efforts as well. So for example, the municipal update that Elaine Wang gave tonight is excerpted from the meeting and we share that with the community in various ways as well. You'll see here that, you know, what we're here today is to ask for continued contribution. The City of Buenos Ki has offered to contribute in the past and we've been raising that contribution by the $1,000 increment since 2018. It's outlined in the chart below and then this also includes just our general update of what we have done in this last fiscal year 22. It gets a little confusing because our fiscal year crosses your fiscal year in a funny way. So we're just entering our fiscal year 23 and asking for a contribution from your fiscal year 24. So I'm gonna pause there and just see if there are any questions. Well, let me just say, you know, this outlines the fiscal year 22. We also have our budget outlined and at the beginning it may be important. I see some new faces. Hello. And it may be important to read just a little background summary on how Tom Meeting TV is funded and what supports us historically. So I'm wondering if folks have had a chance to look at this or if you have any questions. Question. Do you have a space on your website where you capture a strategic plan or any performance goals? That's a great question. It's not necessarily on our website. We certainly do have a strategic plan, both as CCTV. So Tom Meeting TV has an interesting relationship because CCTV is the mothership that runs it alongside other projects. And so CCTV has a strategic plan. We use results-based accountability to develop that. And then Tom Meeting TV has a contract. The trustees will review annually and we're about to come up for a review of the contract. And that's the closest probably to the strategic plan that Tom Meeting TV would have is that contract of services. And I'm curious, now that you see that I'm curious, I can see if it's on our website. The contract may or may not be. So it would be interesting because you mentioned just in your opening comments efforts to expand user and viewership but I don't even know what the baseline is. Or year over year month over month goals are for that. So it just seems like if you had something like that to share that would be of interest. I think I'm not quite following. I mean, I said tonight expanding viewership of your meetings. Is that what you're saying? I think Tom Meeting TV generally. Okay. Not necessarily of Winooski, but generally that was part of what I reviewed and heard. Yeah, so we can measure cable views because that's proprietary information that if the cable company does track it doesn't, they won't share that with us. The only approximation we can have of views of meetings or any of our coverage is on our YouTube channel so we can extrapolate. It's kind of useful so we can extrapolate from that. Sure. I'm not necessarily asking for those particular numbers. I'm curious what your performance goals are and how that relates to year over year baseline. Thank you. That's helpful. Yeah, it's a good question that, yeah. I have a question and this might be just kind of clarifying I see both here and I believe in the documents provided talking about requesting from the legislature. Oh yeah. Any hundred thousand? And I'm just wondering is that CCTV because then I also see, quoting in here about your projected expenses for FY23. So I was wondering what happens if you do get that money from the legislature in what you're asking for the municipalities you work with to compute you? So it's worth pausing on that. And the handout that I gave you, it comes from the Vermont Access Network. So town meeting TV is part of a network of access centers around the state. There are 24 of us now. There used to be 25 and then the media factory which was VCAM and RETN. They've merged in the south end and they provide public and educational access. So just a funny little thing that there's multiple of us in the same community doing various somewhat similar things but also pretty distinct cultures and pretty distinct coverage. So those 24 access centers have as close as we can call it a trade association, the Vermont Access Network. There's no paid staff. I think maybe we're about to have a part-time paid staff. And since 2018, those folks have been working with action circles doing work in legislative advocacy around replacing cable funding. So all of that meeting coverage, public access, educational access is paid for by cable subscribers. You buy cable, you pay a peg fee. That peg fee is then given to access management organizations that leverage that for the public good. And that's exchange for the public rights of way. As cable subscribers decline, these services are both increasing. People want more of them. They want more technical services as you've seen. And the cost to do those is increasing and our revenue is declining. Across the state. So we're looking, working with a legislature to craft new legislation to fund cable overall. And easiest way to think about it is FY23, there was a $900,000 outlay. It came in two chunks, a budget adjustment in FY22 and FY23, and that $900,000 was distributed across the state to those 24 access centers. So that's about 36,000 that came to us as an access center. There will be two more years of bridge funding as we work to craft new legislation. And we'll have to do the work. And so that's what you see in that Vermont Access Network paperwork and so support. And even then, it's still a portion of the, it's replacing a portion. It will not replace all of the cable dollars, which is why we need to continue to ask for support from municipalities and continue to do fundraising, community-based fundraising, to do the work that we do and grants. Thank you for clarifying that. I do want to ask why the views on the website aren't trackable, or if that's something that you could add down the line to the TMTB website? Yeah, because of the player, the way the player is embedded, and this may, this is the best I can answer right now is that the way that the player is embedded, we can view when someone looks at a webpage, but not how long they look at the video that's on that webpage or how long they watch. So you can track the webpage views, but not the actual player, the media content? Yeah, so you can actually check when people, I suppose I could also check. We could do Google Analytics to check because on our webpage you can view items by agenda. So if I want to see just the part where we will share later like historic moment, Winooski approved its first cannabis. So we will probably share that, and then we can click to that direct spot in the agenda so you could look at those clicks as well. Oh, I just want to admit, I think I'm a little bit nervous speaking in front of people and I really should have called out Jordan Mitchell who has joined us and Kevin Harms who is here who you all know and does this work because the other thing about doing this kind of technical work in a time when everybody is exhausted by their use of technology, it follows us around all the time. The ability to have folks who are both knowledgeable and friendly and can be helpful, I think is really incredibly valuable and it's something that we see as part of our work with you and so Jordan Mitchell is one of the people you'll see and maybe if you have patience for it, we can just hear a minute or two from Jordan about how she came to do the work that she did with us. I hope that doesn't put you on the spot, Jordan. It totally does Megan, that's fine. How I came to do the town meeting TV. Yeah, sure. So I graduated UVM in 2021 with a film degree and prior to that, two years before the pandemic, I volunteered town meeting TV in my undergrad and as a volunteer, I would come in mostly doing studio shows and help the community, mostly members of the Burlington community or greater Burlington area, create content, create shows that were meaningful to them. And that's really how I got my start at town meeting TV, what was then channel 17. And then now in my current role, being able to either go to municipal meetings and record them and make them available to the public or a lot of what I've been doing recently is scheduling and the organizing to make sure that field producers such as Kevin are at those events and that they are live streaming to YouTube and that everything's working as it should. It's just a really valuable resource, which is a part of why I love the job. I see the value of what we do in the community and it's how it's appreciated, which is really great. Thank you. It's not to underscore one of the things that Jordan's brought is she's working as our archivist right now and that's another resource that we provide to the community is Jordan has been digitizing content that goes back into the ages, but also providing this archival resource of video content in a time when for better or for worse, minutes of meetings are not always sufficient. People want to see how the conversation took place, how decisions were made, not all the time. They don't want to watch the whole thing, but they want to be able to watch the piece that they want to watch when they want to watch it. Yeah, I do want to express appreciation for the service that Tommie UTD provides in helping create that more detailed record than reading minutes could give you. Helping us with this continue the hybrid access and even before that just being able to stream and have people access from home with their convenience. Also for some more background for my newer counselors, in FY20, there was this doubling of the contribution request and you all worked with us. We weren't able to meet that gap at the time and so we have been doing this $1,000 annual startup. And I guess technically still meeting the threshold of what you would initially requested from us, but having that flexibility has been really helpful given the limited resources we have here. So this is all background for, this will be part of our budgeting processes. We have partners like Tommie UTD who ask for increasing contributions and that is something that goes through the budget that we approve. So thanks for coming in to tell us more about that. Yeah. Are there any questions from members of the audience from Zoom participants? You can use the chat or raise hand feature. Is there anything else you wanted to make sure to share this evening? Well, I did point out that and I heard you put the call out for all of the various committees, including town meeting TV trustees are looking for a member and we appreciate Mayor Lott stepping up to be the ad hoc or the temporary interim representation on the board. I'm here, if anybody has any other questions, if you wanna follow up about the performance measures, I think that's great direction. Feel free, something comes up. We really just wanna be a partner to the city in doing the work that you do as well as being available. You do have more community content coverage. So that's not necessarily meeting coverage, but come to the pumpkin carving. So letting us know about community events to cover, to build and be the eyes and ears of community is I think really important. Yeah, and if there is an organization or event that you know about, somebody else, you know it's not a city thing, we can actually provide contact information to someone at town meeting TV. So if somebody else is like, let me invite somebody and I wanna get this covered. We can help the sales with that. I did have a follow-up question about funding. Outside of the participating community dues, what are their funding mechanisms are being explored since you are seeing the decline in the peg fees? Yeah, so CCTV does fundraising efforts and there's an agreement in the contract with the town meeting trustees for CCTV to carry some of that fundraising. And that has been in philanthropic asks, will you support us in some way? And then grants. We are at CCTVs in the process right now of hiring a development director, along with a lot of other folks. So if you know anybody who's looking for a development director job, point them in our direction. For example, the internships that we're undergoing right now, second year of neighborhood media internships is underwritten by the Vermont Community Foundation. People's Bank has supported us, various other MIT bank grants. The work that Jordan Mitchell is doing is a grant from the Northeast Document Conservation Center, I mean the NEH, I'm sorry, doing work on archiving with Northeast Document Conservation Center is underwritten by an NEH grant. I ask also, I haven't seen any dedicated fundraising efforts similar to what we see and hear from Vermont public. So just thinking about like, if there's any campaigns that are run or that would be helpful to get the word out. Yeah, yes. We will add you to the list if you'd like. We do about six asks a year to the general community fundraising efforts so we can share that with all of the counselors as well, it'd be great. Okay, I have a question. Go ahead. So I don't know how common the franchise fee being assigned to pegs is around the country. Can you're gonna get outside my wheelhouse? Well, this is probably a take home anyway, so I'll just go for it. So I'm curious if there's any discussion among the Vermont Access Network members about potentially lobbying YouTube to turn over a portion of the fees. I would have thought that would have been impossible to get sales tax proceeds from Amazon. Of course, the difference is that everybody's in the same boat, but it's a possibility. Yeah. That's a great question. I'm curious about that in YouTube. Vermont has regulated very differently. As Vermont regulates its utilities in a different way than other places in the state right now. In the state of New York, for example, they're working on a community media preservation bill with the New York state legislature that's around a streaming tax. Vermont actually already does levy a streaming tax to a degree, and that goes to fund, I believe, E911 funds. But I'm gonna take that home and find out about YouTube because I'm not sure if that would then violate like an internet taxing. Right, yep. Good point. Because you're not allowed to tax the internet. Right. Except in very little limited cases. All right, thank you so much for coming in tonight. Yeah, okay, thanks, folks. Jordan, I'll see you in a six. Thank you, Jordan. And thank you, Kevin, for sticking around all night. Okay, we are on to item C. This is on for discussion or approval. It's a reserve fund request. And we have John. Everyone. John, I'll kick us off if you don't, if Christine doesn't mind. Yeah, whoever. Well, John, I'll get to you in a second. So for the public's information, city policy does allow the assignment of surplus on assigned operating reserves to one time or infrequent operating costs or capital projects. Staff is requesting assignment of funds for line striping to the tune of $46,000. TIF report, we'll get into that a little bit, $2,000 in multi-factor authentication for $6,500. John, go ahead. Thanks, everyone. So as Elaine mentioned, and I did mention this sort of alluded to at last meeting, we were gonna be coming forward with a fund balanced request for contract line striping work. So as I mentioned, we're unfortunately down staff right now, so a lot of the in-house line striping work that we've done previously, we just could not get done with our current staffing. And we actually wanted to do a bit more given the conditions of some of the roadways out there. So this is, on the line striping piece, this is a request for an additional $46,000. And we would utilize the existing budget at $12,000 for contract painting work. This would be an epoxy paint material, so we should get at least two or three seasons out of it versus the water base that we typically use that gets plowed up after during the winter season. So if the contractor is able to get this down this fall, it'll still last next season and hopefully a bit longer. I mentioned the memo, the areas, and it's basically the higher pedestrian areas, especially the school routes that we're trying to cover. So the whole downtown area, excluding the V-trans work, Mallets Bay Avenue, all those crosswalk stop bars, the fog lines, meaning the white lines along the roadway, and then the Main Street crosswalks, intersections, really those main school crossings and then some of the Weaver Street crosswalks. So I'll leave it there if you have any questions. Yeah, and let's do these one by one. Focus on this and then Tiff and the other one. I actually have a few questions about this, John. And the first is when do we anticipate starting construction on Main Street revitalization? Yeah, so in the spring, so that's why we, unfortunately, I think it got lopped off in the original submission, the memo, but I showed the scope of work that we bid out and it's pretty minimal on Main Street because we knew that we were gonna be in construction. So really on Main Street, all we would be repainting are the crosswalks and the stop bars, the intersections. So obviously we wouldn't do all the parking stalls and white lines and all that work because eventually it's gonna get torn off, but basically those crosswalks for safety. Okay, that makes sense. I do question why we would wanna pay extra for two to three season durable paint. Again, if we're gonna be starting construction in the next year or so. Yeah, the reason is if we do the water-based and one, you can, we can have the contractor come in and kind of switch materials because they would just be using one type of material, either the water-based or the epoxy. And if we were gonna do Main Street this fall, again, primarily for those crosswalks from school use, we'd wanna use an epoxy just so if we put it down this month, it wasn't, we weren't gonna rip it up this fall. So in granted, Main Street will, if we get decent bid pricing, it'll start, but that doesn't mean the entire corridor is gonna get ripped up next season. So they can do, depending on the needs and methods of the contractor, they may do a quarter or half of the roadway. So we may not lose all of that line striping work. And I will say the line striping work, the majority of the line striping work is downtown in Malts Bay where we're not, obviously not touching any, not doing any construction work. This is just refreshing a couple crosswalks on Main Street and University. Can you elaborate on the plans for Malts Bay Avenue too, please? Yep, in Malts Bay, we're basically refreshing everything that's there. There's nothing new that's proposed, but refreshing the bike lanes, refreshing all the crosswalks, all the parking stalls that are currently there. So we're not changing anything, we're just trying to bring back those lines before they completely disappear. But the bike lane on the Colchester bound direction was just done this summer and it looks great. And the other side does not look bad either. So I question why we are redoing all of that. Yeah, I will take a look at that. When we did the initial inspection, it was not great. I mean, we have the ability to kind of flex the scope. So the amount that's approved is not necessarily the amount that we would pay. So we would pay an invoice based on how much paint they put down. Okay. So it's not a flat fee, it's more of a do not to exceed. Correct, so right, it's, you know, in the end we'll get an invoice when they're done that says we put down this much linear foot of paint. So this is just a budget amount. I do appreciate the durable paint because I do feel like all the work you guys do every summer is gone the next year or actually even before the winter's over, right? And there are a lot of, we don't have cross looks in the middle of the place. It's incredibly frustrating. Just want to make sure we're not doing that in areas where it is unnecessary. Thank you. Just a follow up on your question, Christine. In terms of Main Street John and maybe it's not plausible, would it be possible to get two separate contracts to do one to do the epoxy paint and one to do the water paint? Yeah, I mean, actually we can talk about that with the contractor. So we could hold off. So the problem would be if we would have to hold off until spring to do the water based paints. And you know, I'd really prefer to get those crosswalks than as soon as we can just because they are pretty faded. So I can chat with the contractor to see if that might be feasible, but I'm not sure if that's gonna, you know, if we're gonna be able to get those crosswalks painted properly. Thank you. And I will say Main Street, it is, it's only a couple. That is some pretty, that's pretty minimal scope that we're looking at Main Street. It's just mainly crosswalks. I would say from an impact for school safety, it's the most impactful, having almost been hit by cars in daylight with kids and a crossing guard on that strip. Like once it's dark, once it's winter, that's gonna be even more necessary. So it is a shame to potentially rip it up in six months, but I think it's worth the benefit we'll get in those six months. Is there a future consideration? Like, okay, if this epoxy paint goes two to three seasons, does it make sense to use it every year going forward? And then you're only dealing with one third of the city potentially each summer? Yeah, that's our plan is get it on a rotation. So we're doing one gateway or the downtown once a year and we just circle back to it. That's kind of where we're heading right now. And I will say, especially with, you know, a lot of the new, like if you look at East Allen Street right now and what V-Trans will be painting, you know, there's some added bike lane features and that's starting to get a lot out of our internal comfort zone for painting. We only have like a little walk behind here. So we're gonna have to contract that out. Main Street will be similar where there's gonna be more bike accommodations. So, yeah, that's basically where we're heading right now is to just have an annual contract, do a gateway year and put downtown in there as well. So we're hitting it, you know, every three years we're getting these potentially. Thank you. I do think as far as, I agree with Councilor Duncan about the elements for safe streets and increasing visibility as much as possible for the school corridors. And just in terms of our master plan and efforts to make it walkable, bikeable, I think this really hits the nail on the head and hopefully we can talk about the ongoing funding for it a little later on this meeting. But it is one of those elements that I think really does make a big impact. As someone who lived recently at that Main Street, Tygen, Norman Street area, it so desperately needs it. And just second again, yeah, it's so dangerous. They're actually coming into at that turn, there are so many cars who go in the wrong lane because they don't know. The amount of time to just hear crunch in the distance. So I would definitely be for putting those in to be safe than being concerned over them potentially being taken out before they're fully gone. Good. John, I almost hate to bring this up, but the crossing at Normans will not be repeated, right? And I know there was a conscious decision to not maintain that crosswalk. I'm wondering if that's been reconsidered or if that still seems like the best approach for pedestrian traffic management at that intersection, given people are still using that as a crosswalk whether it's painted or not. And even if there was a police officer there, I watched it, but I think they tried to have an officer there for a while, still people crossed every day. Yeah, I witness every day too, people are still crossing there. So it's not gonna be painted this season, but as part of the Main Street project, I think we're looking to re-engage the school to see, given that kids are still crossing there, it's probably worthwhile to have a formalized crosswalk there since people are using it that way. So, and I will say with Main Street, there's gonna be, I forget the actual number of additional crosswalks, but we're obviously adding quite a few new crosswalks and some mid-block crossings with the rapid flash vegans. So there will be more opportunities to be able to cross Main Street safely, but I think more than likely, kids are still gonna cross at that modern street crosswalk regardless. So yeah, we'll be engaging the school on that. And I wanna flag too, that even if it's not currently there, the bumps are there on the side, so someone who is blind, they're still there. And so someone tried to cross there and didn't know. So yeah, there's a lot of danger and there's a bus stop directly across. So so many people are trying to get to the bus stop too. Yeah, no, that is a good point. Those detectable warnings are sort of deceiving there that we've sort of closed that crosswalk off. And I think, yeah, we may have to do some additional signage or work there just to make it more clear. As a reminder to folks in the Zoom audience, you can use the chat or raise hand feature if you wish to ask a question or speak. Any other questions on this request? Elaine, you wanna move to the, is the TIF one next? The TIF report. And we do have a guest. Ted Brady is the Executive Director of Vermont League of Cities and Towns. I'm going to, if you wanna bring him over, Mayor Huala, I can continue. So VLCT convened TIF municipalities to discuss a report they would use to lobby the legislature as to the benefits and outcomes of Vermont's existing TIF districts. VLCT says that all those present, including Winooski, agreed to contribute or bring a request to their elected bodies. VLCT requested Winooski contribute $4,000 towards that report they developed that may have helped head off changes to the TIF program. Winooski wouldn't have wanted. John represented Winooski during that meeting. Given that Burlington and South Burlington were only asked to contribute $1,000 more, 4,000 from Winooski did not seem quite equitable, which is why I suggested that you allocate $2,000. Ted tells me that several of the other communities have paid their full freight. Very City, Montpelier, Newport, South Burlington and St. Almond's, Burlington intends to. And he has not heard yet from Bennington, Harford and Milton and of course us yet. And Ted is here if you have questions for him or if you'd like to allow him to make a statement. Welcome, Ted. Do you want, can you just give us like a brief overview of the report and the purpose? Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me. It's nice to see all of you. Sorry, I couldn't be there in person. The impetus behind the TIF report was after about four years of an attempt to expand the tax increment financing program, as you may know, it was expanded in 2016, I believe. And after many years of trying to expand it further and make sure that it was available to more communities, we decided in the league that we had to do something and bring new information to the table to talk about TIF. Montpelier and the State House, they're very skeptical of TIF's effectiveness in our communities, you folks being a prime example, St. Alvin's and several others, Burlington have seen some great successes from TIF. And so we wanted to tell the story in a way that wasn't just anecdotal. And so we hired a researcher out of the University of Wisconsin in partnership with the Center on Rural Innovation, which is a group out of Hartford, Vermont, Matt Dunn, you may know Matt Dunn, manages that program. And we commissioned this report to drop during the legislative session in hopes of providing new information about the tax increment financing program. In the end, it did, it had nine findings, all of which provided some new information. It showed us that TIF, the TIF policy in Vermont is meeting the state's Community and Economic Development goals. TIF serves as a powerful long-term planning tool in a state that doesn't have many long-term planning tools for economic development. It also found the measuring TIF district's performance is complicated. It found that the revenue story is equally as complex. So it didn't give us the kind of tight-fisted punch we were hoping for on those two. But it did find that TIF generated a clear rate of economic growth that hasn't been recognized in previous analysis, that forecasting, the rate of TIF is complicated. That TIF produces conditions that allow communities to leverage other assistance as you folks certainly know and all the grants you've managed to secure as a result of the TIF. And then the combination of the safeguard and the ultimate TIF maximize its effectiveness and compared to other TIF, other, sorry, economic development programs, TIF is one of the most comprehensive and effective economic development tools. So that landed in the legislature right when they were talking about limiting the number of TIFs further, restricting them a number of TIFs to the point where you'd have to go to the legislature to actually get a tax increment financing district approved. For the last several years, there's been an allocation of tax increment financing districts. There were restrictions, there were proposed restrictions on what you could use TIF for. And in the end, we managed to keep the status quo on tax increment financing for the current time being. I anticipate that it will be the topic of much conversation going forward. And I hope this report provides it. So we came and offered, we came and offered to do this work for the TIF communities after that meeting. We fronted the funding and as Elaine said, relied on the communities to go back and the representatives from those communities to go back and either allocate the funding once the report was done or come to their legislative bodies and ask if they thought the the report was worth their contribution to the effort. Thank you, Ted. I think to your point, it has been a very successful tool here in Munozki. I would love to see it available to other cities and towns in Vermont. Is there additional funding source or are these listed communities, are we paying, like we're paying for this whole report effort? The 10 communities, the 10 TIF communities plus VLCT are paying. So we allocated $40,000 to the 10 TIF communities and then VLCT committed to paying $10,000 kind of distributing that across all the other members that have not been able to access TIF but would like to. Because it feels to me like the outcomes of this report are more beneficial to communities that don't yet have a TIF district and being able to access one. And so I question like why the primary financial burden is on the towns that have done this already. Yeah, the logic there was one, the communities have benefited and continue to benefit for TIF and will continue to benefit for TIF for decades. But also that the criticisms of TIF are actually targeted largely at the communities that have received TIF or using the TIF program. So the auditor's office has been very critical of how St. Alvin and Broenton have executed their TIF. And so the hope was that some of these findings would also provide some feedback and some education to the legislature as to why some of those ideological opposition to TIF might not be actually accurate when it comes to a straight objective review of TIF. I'm not sure if they were candidly. If those nine findings gave existing TIF communities the ability to talk to their legislative delegations about the importance of TIF and why some of the moves and some of the changes in how payments are calculated and how the bonds work and such and how the debt repayments work. Some of those things that the auditor's called into question his audits of the existing TIF programs. Our hope was that the report would also help those communities as they go through that process. Thank you. Did other folks have questions about this report and what this ask is for? I have a question about how the fee structure was decided. It seems like quite a jump from per capita of 5,000 to 20,000. It seems like it would make more sense to have had that at 10,000 and distributed that fee expense a bit more equitably if you're looking at the populations that have 10,000 or more residents than just the two cities that have 20,000 or more. Yeah, welcome to the greatest conundrum of being a Vermont League of Cities and Towns Executive Director, how to balance the small town and large towns and budgets and dues. You know, when I looked across the spectrum of the 10 communities, we issued the invoices based on population but while we were doing that analysis, I also looked at the grand list increase in TIF. I looked at the municipal budgets that each of them have and tried to balance some of those things as well because it wasn't just population that determined that. And I'll candidly say it's absolutely an imperfect science or art to figure out what the allocation should be. When you look at Winooski, Winooski is the second largest beneficiary of TIF when you look at grand list growth with their TIF. And so it would seem unfair to charge the greatest beneficiary less than a community that has 10,000 but only benefited in a few million dollars of grand list growth from TIF. And so that was the logic as to why we ended up, you know, $4,000 for Winooski and $5,000 for Burlington. And why a town like Newport, which had much less growth is down there at the, I believe, $2,000 level if I remember correctly. Yeah, and yet at the same time, we may have had a significant benefit but in terms of our operating budget were the second lowest. Yes, how to balance all those wonderful numbers. I don't pretend for a moment that what we did was perfect but I do think it was fair and equitable. And to what Elaine has brought to you, the invoice or the letter asking for payment said, if you disagree with this number, please share anything that you folks don't pay is gonna be distributed across the membership as a whole. It impact all VLCT members, which is every city and town in the state. So welcome to the collective of a member-owned nonprofit, right? I don't think either way is perfect. And I welcome, it would be wonderful to have Winooski participate at that $2,000 level. We felt $4,000 was fair, but we would love to have you just as a participant recognizing the benefits of TIF. I am generally supportive of our manager's recommendation here. I see it had been that it sounds like you are as well-bred. We are willing to contribute, but we do feel that we're aligned with Elaine's recommendation for the lower contribution rate. Thank you so much for the support of this study. I think it has paid dividends and I hope it will in the future. And thanks for your membership to VLCT. Yeah, thank you, Ted. And I can certainly appreciate that you have a lot of factors you're trying to balance in how you figure out how to disperse funding burdens. I would agree. Neither path is perfect. We don't know what that perfect path is. So thank you so much. It won't be the first time that Elaine was right and I was wrong. So we have one more ask on here related to cybersecurity. Thanks, Ted. You can hang out if you want, but you can feel free to join the rest of your evening if you like. Angela, are you on? I'll take a... I am on. Okay. I'll just do an intro and then you can tack on if I'm missing anything. So of the cybersecurity measures we could take, multi-factor authentication is among the most important or at least among the more important. If you do need more explanation, I'm happy to provide that one-on-one. But frankly, I'd rather not go into the details in an archived public forum. But if there's any other information, Angela feels fit to share, I'm happy to let her do so. I mean, as I mentioned in the memo, this is a recommendation that came out of the cybersecurity survey that was conducted by VLCT last year. We worked with SimQuest to address some of the findings that came up during that review. Is this, Angela, is this something our current? So this is, like SimQuest has to add this on. We don't like go out and solicit bids from other agencies. This would have to be something from SimQuest because it would be access to our network and specifically to our email, which is web-based email. Yeah, okay. Thanks. MFA is the thing now that everyone has to do. So, any questions? Nope. Okay. Any questions from members of the public on this reserve request to ask? All right, I feel like I've heard general approval to move this forward. So I'm expecting somebody to make a motion to approve. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, reserve fund request approved. Thank you all. Thank you, council. Okay. We are on to item D. This is our goal update for a safe, healthy, connected people. All right. And can everybody hear me still? Yes. Welcome back. Perfect. Thank you. So happy to present the quarterly update here on behalf of myself and the chiefs and a little bit on behalf of Jesse from HR who had an item here. I think overall pretty straightforward. I think the one area obviously in red was that public health huddle, which I mentioned. Based on some feedback from community partners, there was a desire to sort of recenter community and voices, community-based voices and voices of color, running those meetings versus a bunch of government officials. And I think unfortunately in making that shift, we've sort of fallen off a little bit. So definitely very much still in touch with those partners, but not in that kind of formalized structured way that we had been kind of during the main throws of COVID. So definitely we'll see if that comes back around here as the winter comes at us. But that was really the one area I think we wanted to kind of highlight some, I guess, outcomes that were not in line with our hopes at the beginning of the year. And then also just wanted to note added in here at the very end some operational updates from the pool from this summer. This felt like a good spot to plug some of that in. So happy to answer any questions specifically on that as well. But overall, I think a pretty good report for the first quarter and feel pretty excited about what's here. Thank you, Ray. Ray, for the benefit of the public that might watch this, you want to summarize the pool results? Yeah, sure. So, sorry, I'm just scrolling down. I mean, I think broad summary statement, really good summer overall. Definitely saw an increase in usage in terms of season tosses and certainly in terms of usership. I will say I think the user data, sort of that estimated number of users, the numbers last year, I think we're not as accurate as they are this year. I think our data systems are getting better and better as we move on. And so I think not to get too far into the weeds, but the way that we're checking in season pass holders is more accurate this season than it was last. So I think that's one reason you saw that large jump in visits. We're gonna make one additional tweak in the coming year. So we, again, may see that number jump a little bit, but I do think overall we saw more swimmers this summer than last, I think that's a fair statement to make. And the number that really I'm feeling super proud about and wanted to highlight is that very bottom point. But we had over 950 individual kiddos past the deep water swim test this year, which obviously the pool is a recreational asset and we want to have people in there having fun. But I think when you look at it from an aquatic safety perspective, especially given the demographic of our community and the demographics of water safety, that's a huge deal, a huge deal. And so that is just, I think, a really enormous point of pride for the community, but for my team as well that I just wanted to highlight. Thanks, Ray. Yeah. I want to extend thanks to you and to all of the staff that supported the pool and the success this year. I know there was concerns from the onset about getting enough staff and lifeguards. A lot of work went in to lead up to that and then just a second year of operations and kind of getting the hang of things. So again, thanks for the data collection and the report out. It's really nice and valuable to see that the investment that voters have asked for is showing an increased value year over year. So. Agreed. Glad to see it. I heard improved user experience this year over last year, so. Yep. Something to be proud of having taken it in-house. Agreed, yeah. And I think having all the staff working for the same agency, certainly nothing against the Y who was managing lifeguards last year, but I think just having that continuity management and sort of expectations across the staff team was really a big game changer this year. And kudos to Jason Benjamin, too, from Public Works. He was really the wizard behind the scenes that was keeping the pool afloat through everything from chemical problems to dead skunks this summer. So it was really, we could not have done it without him. So kudos to Jason as well. I think some of the increase or potential increase is folks accessing scholarship opportunities and easier access to the scholarships. 100%, yeah. We definitely had a much increased number of people using scholarships this summer to get into the pool. And I think that's also why you see a little bit of a drop in some of the day pass numbers. Cause I think a lot of the kudos that were coming in on day passes last year, families were able to get season passes this year. And so I do think that really helped with access quite a bit, which was also a really nice change for this year. Wonderful. On the flip of that ray, the good word of the pool is cuddly traveling cause the non-resident use like went up a decent amount. So everybody knows the Wendyski pools where you want to be this summer. Yeah, I don't know if this will be a trend, but I will say last summer and the summer both, the last like three weeks of the season, the number of non-residents that came in for the first time all summer. And we're like, oh, you know, I haven't been here before and had a great time. And we're like, I'm totally going to buy a pass next year. We definitely had that happen both summers so far. So I think hopefully that number will go up. We'll see. Yeah, piggybacking on that thought. I've actually heard compliments from a Burlington family with two young children that came in, really loved the pool and had been returning customers. So really exciting to see young families as well. I had a question about the tower ladder replacements. Probably Angela, can you confirm we pay for that upon delivery? Is that right? That is correct. We would pay for that upon delivery. So we are not yet bonding for that. Okay. And then Elaine, maybe there's no information yet. The school resource officer, it says timing is still TBD. That's, there's no like tangible update yet there, right on when that might shift. Yes, there are some funding challenges there, which is affecting their timeline for the eventual plan to scale down the SRO. Okay. From the school side. Right. That's what I said, but good to clarify. And jumping down to the child care conversation, I just want to continue to express interest and support on that. You know, as we bring in additional housing and modify our zoning to allow increased density, child care should certainly follow in tandem with some of those options. If I could make a comment on that, certainly don't disagree. And our fire prevention slash response is potentially about at capacity at this point. So just thinking about as we add housing, add buildings, add facilities, add population, that's something to be aware of in terms of municipal services and to make sure that those people have proper health and safety concerns addressed. Yeah. And Brent, I'll just add to, you know, I think certainly getting a slow start on that was really a function of high levels of programming this summer. You know, I think as our programming kind of winds down a little bit during the school year, I think we will have some more bandwidth staff wise to kind of dig into the child care piece a little bit more. Just that first quarter was between the pool and running nine weeks of summer camp. There just wasn't a lot of extra space to be doing that community outreach and making partners, et cetera. So I think over the course of the winter, I expect we'll dig into that a little bit more. Yeah, certainly not a dig at all. No, no, no. I just didn't want to, I didn't want to indicate that it wasn't still on the radar because I agree with you. It's a huge deal for us to figure out. Questions about any other items in here, Jim? I was just curious if you could speak a little to kind of the current state of the PD-K9 program, as well as the, we just had a couple of new officers join them. I'm just curious how things are going with the staffing and retention and how the police force is feeling in terms of support right now. Let's see, so. Could mostly just be about the K9 program because that was one thing that she brought up as like an added benefit for staff that are joining the department. Sure, I actually did not, we didn't get a specific update on that. It was just kind of ongoing. So, and we are short staff right now, so the chief's actually been working shifts and not as able to think about big picture stuff. Staffing is, I'm not sure how much I can share right now. That's fine. But we do have some great new people. I can certainly say that. I was just gonna say, so my recollection, when we talked about the strategy and priority, I thought Chief Hebert said like it wasn't, he wanted to keep it in the list, but it wasn't a high priority, like it wasn't something he expected to take action on any time soon. Mm-hmm, yeah, that sounds right. Doesn't hurt to ask if there was an update though. Sometimes. There was a reason it was yellow as opposed to green and something we'll tackle later. And I was just gonna say, sometimes no update is an update. Indeed. And just to put a finer point on it, you mentioned like fire service, emergency services. You know, between that, the new fire truck regional dispatch school resource officer, like there's a lot of strain in public safety in general that we're going to have to be making decisions around how to address amongst all the other bandwidth of things that we want to do in the community. Yes, you'll be seeing some, I'm not raising items in the budget, but we'll see what makes it through with budget Congress at the leadership team level. More public attendees right now, so. Are there any additional questions from Council on this update? Okay, thank you, Ray. Thank you. Let's move on to item E. This is on for discussion or approval of the Communications Director position scope. Yes, so, reading from my cover sheets, members of the public. So in September, 2021, City Council approved a title change from Communications Coordinator to Communications Manager to reflect an expansion in job responsibilities that change did not come with any compensation increase. The Communications Coordinator position had been designed as a relatively passive one to push information out that was provided to the person filling it. As a manager, the person filling that role, Paul Sarn, developed the city's rebranding and associated policy with that brand branding. That effort included implementing that brand policy across city departments, which according to the city's position classification rubric could have warranted a higher job classification on its own and therefore a pay increase at that time. Not only that, there is the need for increasing the city's capacity to deliver on its key goals of equity inclusion using communications and dialogue tools that are new to the city. Paul Sarn has learned new skills, in particular qualitative data analysis that's providing some of that capacity for dialogue with residents, not just pushing information out. And that is where the city is better able to take in information in an unbiased way. So he does have interest and potential for increasing the city's capacity to reach more of our community. For example, those with limited English proficiency by managing a language access study, supporting the development of a language access policy and supporting city officials to implement that policy. Given the equity impacts of a communications director compared to communications coordinator slash manager, I request that the position title and scope be changed to reflect the city's equity mandate. The compensation increase that's in your packet, which is in the amount of 22,000 some not pulling up. That reflects an updated job description graded using the city's 10 point position rubric. Do you have questions or concerns? Oh, and I'm glad you shared that description. You weren't just reading from our agenda item, were you? I feel like I missed some of that. What you just described connects back to feedback we got from our former equity director about embedding equity work across roles and not sitting with one person. So hearing this role managing language access, that makes sense. And that should live with a communications person, not like an equity director. So I think like that trajectory is right in the data collection, like how to expand who we are reaching. When I read this description though, it didn't seem substantially different from the manager description to me. But like what you just said does seem different. Okay, fair enough. That's my initial reaction though. So this is the, I would call it a scope. I think in the past it has been presented to you as the description. There is a three page description which you did get last time. That I would say is different in substantive ways. You're welcome to see it if you'd like. Generally we try to keep you out of the weeds of the level. But understand in this case, if it looks not very different, then that could be a concern. But that is the intention. Yeah, well I'd be curious if how other people viewed it. Maybe I might be just missing something. I did interpret the change in scope to be slightly like to be in elevation. It is very broad, but I think as you said Mayor, the way that it's going to reflect in the day-to-day and the job duties, which I see is different than the scope, I think makes sense. And I guess might get reflected for me. Yeah, I was reading the communications manager saying this is all they do and that is actually in relation to a direction position. Any questions? I'm just letting other people go first. Cause I'm just... Oh, do you have any comment? No, I think it's good to have the context. So yeah, this is for the purpose when the actual job description. Britt. I have some questions about, so there was a title change last year. This has been just about a year for another title change. What comes after this? So just wondering like, we've seen a couple of these come through and whether or not it's past due, that might be the case. I just think about the frequency of the change and basically fostering restlessness of wanting continued annual promotions or having something of that variety. We just approved a recent union contract and thinking like, when I think of a director position, I also think that it usually comes with supervisory components. It doesn't sound like that's part of this. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. Actually, it might be useful. Have you seen the full grading rubric before, Bryn? If I have, I forget. Okay, I mean, it's probably been a bit. It may have been approved before Bryn was on council. Yeah, I don't think it's come back since. Yeah, that would be helpful for you all to see because you would have some confidence as to where these numbers are coming from. I mean, we could go ahead, Angela. So the things that changed about this position, I'm one of the two people who reviews the positions for scoring so that we reduce the amount of bias from a single person scoring job descriptions. The changes from the previous position to the one that exists today was the addition of policy development that impacts citywide. And then additionally, there was less supervision for the job. Those are two key criteria of a job description that impact where it scores on our rubric. Not all of our division director level positions have direct reports. Eric Warwald is a one that does not have direct reports. The HR director does not have direct reports because we are so small and these are such specialized skills. Some of our departments are very limited in scope and will not have supervisory responsibilities. I do see, and I'm glad that you pointed out directly. I don't know if I think I might have missed this, but this comes with a change in compensation. A change in title is something, but it's not as big in acknowledging, I think, like the work that he's doing. So he's getting the change in title to acknowledge that work, but also the change in compensation. It was also flagged during the last change to this position by myself to Wendy at the time that the change to Paul's title put him at the level of other leadership team members, but he was not comparable in pay to those other leadership team members. And it's one of the things that we look at when we're scoring jobs is this person on par with their peers. So that is one of the reasons why this was looked at, again, so soon after its last revision. I mean, that's certainly a fair question, especially to a new manager. So I'd say that, you know, I'm seeing this increased need for a director. It's not that Paul did this and that. If he was not filling a need, I would hope that I wouldn't be in front of you asking for a promotion for Paul. This is a need for a communications director for the city. I don't know what to predict for the rest of the positions, but I'm not necessarily seeing at this time, huge, well I shouldn't say that, because I'm about to undergo a job description review of all the leadership team members, so I can't promise that it won't be in front of you for something else, because their jobs have changed over time. I don't even know the last time most of them were reviewed by a manager. I would guess probably when Jesse was here, but I know. 2018 is when the non-union pay plan went into effect and I believe that's the last time most of these job descriptions were reviewed. So it's been four years then. So there might be some others, but I would see that as catch-up. And then going forward, we would, as the manager going forward, hopefully, the idea would definitely be to make sure that creep was not happening of its own accord, whether it was strategic, it was planned and matching what the community needs. As a follow-up question, expenditure required, is that the high end of the range with the new title? Angela? No, that is step one of grade six, the differential between Paul's current position, which is a grade four. All right, hopefully we keep him. It would also be going from an hourly position, which gets paid overtime or earns comp at one and a half times for a crude time off to being an exempt salary position. So there would be no overtime for this decision any longer. And that includes French benefits as well as salary, I'm presuming. That includes all changes, any salary-based benefits, FICA, METI, retirement, workers' cost, all of it. All right, this is the cost of the city, not what he's gonna see in his picture. I do wanna highlight something that Angela said earlier about us being small and having specialty roles, because I think for a lot of residents, the organization feels top heavy when they hear the titles that people have here, when they're used to other types of work where you have more of sort of a pyramid going on. And it's just the nature of the kind of work that's happening and trying to do over the small team. You can't have like all associates or whatever, entry-level, it can be like all entry-level people doing all the work, right? So I just wanted to put that out there for public record. Are there any other questions, comments? I would move that we approve this change. Second. I won't second that. But mm-hmm, doesn't count. Motion by Jim, second by Aurora, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, it is 8.06, I'm gonna call a five-minute recess and bring us back together at 8.11 p.m. Okay, we're back. 8.13, we are back to meeting. Are we unmuted now? Okay, I am reconvening this council meeting. And we are on item F. This is on for discussion or approval, the Hulking request. Yes, so I don't think that Hulking representatives here, I did invite them rather last minute, so they may or may not join unless Mariel is with Hulking. So Hulking is addressing a building-wide sprinkler issue that has affected its finances. It's not an upgrade that the city co-department required, but they did feel it would help them avoid unpredictable expenses and temporary displacements of tenants in the future. Hulking has requested an extension of their interest-only payment period by three years from now, meaning whenever they would close if approved. As noted by the Manusia Finance Director, approving this change would reduce the revenue Manusia was expecting by $5,364 each year in the next three years. However, it also increases the amount of money paid by Hulking over the life of the promissory notes or promises to pay by $194,733.60. So given the relative benefits compared to impacts to the city, staff recommend council approve Hulking's request to extend the period of their interest-only payments by three years from closing. If you'd like to hear from Angela, of course she is still here. To be clear, am I reading this right? That they haven't made a payments in two years? Anyhow? That is correct. I ran the numbers when I wrote this memo. We have not received a payment since September of 2020. Have we talked to them about that at all? Have they said why or they'll follow up? They have not said why and Elaine has just gotten settled in that with Andy very recently. This was not a huge concern at the moment. They have been in advance of the payments that they voted to the city. They actually started making payments on their principal early because of the frequency in which they were making their payments. So was not a huge concern in the delay. Okay. We don't send anything like that to collections or? I wouldn't think in a two-year timeframe. It's also secured by a mortgage on the property. So we would be guaranteed collections at some point. Which is one of the reasons why they're asking for the extension. Gotcha. And then the transfer of limited partner interest. I'm not exactly clear on what that even means. And also this reads like we previously approved it but they want us to approve it again. Right. So that part is actually already been handled but certainly you should know the answer to your question since you have a question about it. So you did previously approve it. It was to a slightly different configuration of partners because they needed more financing at that time and that somehow was going to help them. But they have since secured enough money for the current partnership. And so it needed that tweak in who was being granted. If you want to see the art chart, it's very strange because it has almost all the same names on it. But the town attorney or city attorney rather did review it and said the previous one was fine already approved by council. The current one shouldn't be a problem. Okay. So I've actually already executed that. Thank you. Jay, anyone else have questions? My one question was about, yeah, that they hadn't paid. Could we, if we approve this, could we include in that we expect that... Like are we asking for back payments? Yeah, are we asking for back payments? Are we asking them to start if they are currently had paid so far in advance that it's not a worry but when we get at that point that they will in a timely manner start payments again. So any payments they make now are gonna go against their crude interest until they've paid off the crude interest and then it'll start going towards principle again. In the meantime, every January 1st, we accrue 5% interest on whatever principle balance is outstanding. So per their letter, they do anticipate repaying the loans within three to four years. So could be moved if they actually prepay within four years instead of another 20. Will this have any impact on tax rates? So for the next year, two years, this is within the TIF district and will not impact tax rates. In FY 2025, this would reduce the amount of money that was anticipated to come in from the TIF district. So you could say that it could impact the tax rates but it would be about two thirds of a penny on the tax rate at the current grand list value that we wouldn't be bringing in. And if council doesn't fully allocate the funding coming over from the TIF district, it would also not impact the tax rate. Any concerns with approving? I was initially hesitant. I think that in the long run, it gets us more revenue is what would push me over. So, yeah. So I'm gonna make a motion to approve. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Hold still. All right, motion carries. Thank you. So we are on to item G, American Rescue Plan Act, also known as ARPA, tax increment financing, also known as TIF, context for FY 24 budget goal setting. Before I pass this along to Elaine to introduce, I do wanna clear up that I have stated that FY 24 is the budget we would be receiving these funds while we do pay off, are on track to pay off the TIF in FY 24. That was incorrect. We actually wouldn't be accessing them until FY 25, which is good that we have more time but important that we get some foundational knowledge this evening. Elaine. Sure. Just forewarned, I'm gonna talk for a little bit for the benefit of any watching public. So next meeting or actually the mayor did ask that council be provided an overview of how the city can spend some unusual money because that context might affect there, your FY 24 budget goals that you'll be discussing at your next meeting. At the next meeting council will be discussed to consider your priority areas to fund, potential areas for service reductions of cuts are needed. New initiatives or programs, you want staff to consider for the budget and your tax rate goal for FY 24. The unusual monies we have are, we've been calling ARPA and TIF for your information for the public. By ARPA, we mean federal COVID relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA. The city will receive a total of $1.9 million that hasn't already been allocated for some purpose by council. ARPA rules have said that a city our size could have claimed more than that as revenue losses rather than prove out the COVID relevance of spending each of those dollars. So city council did so claim, meaning that we can use that 1.9 million for pretty much anything except for reducing the tax rate if I'm not mistaken. By TIF, we mean new revenue from the tax increment financing district. Ongoing the city should have just over $1 million every year from the TIF district expiring. TIF districts are state approved areas for municipalities can borrow money for infrastructure improvements against future development and the increase in tax revenue from that development. The city's TIF district is much of the downtown. The TIF district is expiring in May of 2024, as the mayor just said, meaning the debt we incurred to improve the municipal infrastructure downtown that attracted much of that private downtown development will be paid off in May of 2024. Once we have a clean audit on all of that, the city can then start spending the tax revenue no longer needed to make the debt payments. So ARPA money can be used pretty much for anything except for reducing the tax rate because it is one time money. It is more appropriately used for one time expenses such as requiring say long lived equipment. The TIF money because it is ongoing is more appropriately used for ongoing or operational expenses. Now note that there is some nuance to these rules as noted in your packet. For example, if there's going to be a gap in funding after the TIF expires, and before we can spend the TIF tax revenues, namely June of 2024, ARPA could be used to bridge that gap. Also either ARPA or TIF could be used for catching up on expenses. The city has had to underinvest in over the years. For example, say deferred maintenance on roads. Ideally the city would also have a long-term funding and plan to avoid falling behind on those types of expenses in the future before you decided to allocate it that way. Note that there are two expenses the city is currently carrying through grants that council and the community has expressed ongoing interest in. Recreation positions and free programming that are serving our historically underserved residents and the equity director position. As you heard at your last meeting, there may be other expenses you'd want to take into account that you haven't heard about yet that could come from the city's leadership team, city staff or community members we still plan to get input from and to consult. So all that is important context for your FY24 budget goal discussion at your next meeting. Now this puzzle, this, I don't know, Tetris of money can be a little confusing to keep straight so I thought it might be helpful to illustrate this with an example. Say everything else stays the same as this fiscal year except you want the TIF money to pay for the equity director's salary out of the general fund rather than rely on grant funding. Say the grant term for the equity, that's currently paying for the equity director ends in May 2024 and I say it ends because the end date is actually uncertain at the moment because spending on the grant is on pause for right now. That means there is no money for the equity directors June 2024 salary unless you allocated that amount from ARPA. If you don't pay the June 2024 salary from ARPA you then don't need to, I'm sorry, if you do pay the June 2024 salary from ARPA you then don't need to increase taxes for the general fund in FY24 to cover that salary. On the other hand if you use up ARPA on other expenses then you will need to increase taxes for the general fund in FY24 to cover the June salary. Hopefully that helps instead of making you more confused. So you can see how the availability hopefully of ARPA and TIF money may impact how you consider your priority areas to fund at your next meeting. Priority areas for potential service reductions if needed new initiatives or programs and your tax rate for FY24. And you might consider next time discussing criteria for staff to use to rank and recommend ideas. For example could be addressing a key equity concern as one of the criteria that it addresses or and or it's in alignment with the master plan and or meets a deferred maintenance need. These are just examples, whatever would be important to you. And I'll pause to see if Angel would have anything to add there or correct. I just wanted to add that the use of ARPA would not just be limited to any expenses for June. If you wanted to start something that doesn't exist today and want it to happen in FY24, you could use ARPA money for all 12 months of the year and then transition it to TIF money in FY25. So is that clear to folks like how this all kind of fits together even though we're not trying to make decisions about how to use the money right now but just to get a sense of the picture. So what's included in the packet tonight, we have some data on historic tax rates. We have some analysis from Angela on the impact of either buying down debt or investing money versus dedicating it to like operational things or like spending on something new. We also have the memo on the TIF model that came to finance commission that Angela put together and you received the actual Excel file by email. So that file included a list of items that have been potentially discussed for funding and you could say yes or no to those and see what the long-term impact would be. Some things that I wanted to call out as we think about the money. Just tonight we had a request for the use of reserves to increase a role in salary. We heard about strains in public safety and significant requests coming from that in the future. We know there's wage compression between our union and non-union employees. Inflation hasn't receded to normal levels. We don't know how that's gonna continue. We have a lot of staff wages tied to COLA. We know that we're underfunding our infrastructure and we have a bunch of position grant funded positions that we're going to run out of funding for. So there's a lot of potential need coming. I think like what I hope tonight is that this helps us understand the picture of the different pieces of money but also that there are different ways to approach how we use it. I wanted to share from the Finance Commission when they looked at the TIF funding model, they shared a recommendation that we should be prioritizing existing commitments and capital investments. You know the bond for TIF when that was voted on by voters was described as being for the purpose of mitigating, constantly increasing tax rates or high increasing tax rates. At the same time like growth creates new expenses. So there's some things to balance here. And when we think about just returning to what Elaine shared earlier, really thinking about TIF as being for operational ongoing costs and ARPA as one time funding, unless we want to use part of that for some sort of gap to do something now. So it is a lot of stuff to look at and think about, pause and see what questions folks have. And we don't get any money from retail sales of cannabis? Not yet. Can I ask just a couple of questions of our information points on our Excel sheet? How would you characterize the relatively conservative aggressive estimate on the property grand list growth that doesn't put a point eight percent? Does that seem, does that feel like a conservative like very likely to hit that? Or does that feel moderate like it could or could not? I'm just curious what you're feeling on that is. So that is about where we've been hitting as a minimum for the last five years. The past year's growth was 1.3% outside of the TIF district. And once the TIF expires, any growth within the TIF district would be also included in that grand list growth over time. So we're projecting 0.8% for this coming fiscal year and we're likely to exceed that once we hit the April 1st deadline. Those are my expectations. You probably used the reliable minimum. And the other question I had was, oh and just in setting the future budgets that are used for driving this tool, you're just assuming kind of straight line growth across the existing suite of services, positions and expenditures. So it's not assuming any kind of jumps in the future. It's just kind of everything progressed at the percentage increases you kind of forecast that would be. Yes, it is straight line progression because it is a pretty complex model. It actually is probably higher than what we would normally budget because some of the operating lines that we usually hold steady were included to have increases due to inflation in that model. So it might be a little bit conservative on being high on the expense side, but I'd rather do that than tell you something too low. Right, so this is in some cases a worst case scenario for anything. That's usually what I present. Right, which I assume, but again, I wanted to make sure before playing with it, there's a lot to play with here, and I think that's a reasonable way to approach this and I appreciate this approach. So that makes sense to me. Thanks for the better find. For our next conversation for budget goal setting, are we going to have, I feel like usually you provide like estimates on COLA, benefits, all of that stuff. Yep, that memo has been prepared. You actually are gonna see it in your finance commission packet. They're gonna discuss it as well. I can give you the information right now. Right now, COLA is trending towards about six and a half percent for the February to February mark. We do have some contracts that are marked against October to October. That's skewing higher, about 7.3%. We take the average of three different forecasters and compare them. We kind of, some of them are high, 8.3. Some of them are saying 4.4. So we kind of split the difference there. Our health insurance rates for 2023 just came out and they are 10.1%, I believe, is our benchmark plans increase. So we are carrying a 13% increase for 2024 based on inflation and the fact that our plan estimates are that they will continue to grow over time. And then we flagged a 0.8% potential grand list growth. Those are the three things that we've identified so far for next fiscal year's budget. The three items of concern are obviously still the SRO position, which is $55,000 of revenue and whether that's gonna continue at the same level. And then inflation is absolutely still a huge concern because it's not only impacting pay, it's impacting our ability to obtain contracts and supplies with fixed budgets that have carried forward from year to year. It's making things more difficult. And then finally, that non-union pay plan that council approved in 2018 is actually up for review, both due to internal review guidelines to make sure that we're staying up to date with best practices and add the recommendation in the equity audit to take a look at some positions and the way that we score positions to make sure that we're factoring the equity concerns around childcare. Thanks, Angela. And just given that Thomas Aurora, this will be like your first round with the annual budget process. We typically in goal setting share in what Elena alluded to with criteria, like value area, the conversation is meant to be like, what do we value? Where might we wanna see investment or where do we think we're over invested, for example? Like we don't typically go into that saying, keep or add XYZ staff, do this specific, you know, sometimes some things rise to that detail, right? Like do Main Street. But it doesn't necessarily need to be like a very in the weeds discussion or it's kind of more values based. But this is an additional opportunity to ask questions about budget, these funds, if you wanna know about finance, it's a lot. This is more complicated than any other year that I've seen. So one of the things that really usually, maybe you can point to the line item elements for commitments that we have to community TV to town meeting TV to the public bus transportation, both seeing increases in anticipated year over year increases for the next three years or more. So town meeting TV is in the Marin Council's professional services line items. So hard to pull it out specifically. When you ski Valley Parks District is another one that's in the model that is not currently fully funded but requests more, that's in our regional programs department and then CCTA or GMT is also in the regional programs department. I do have a relationship with Nick Foss who is the finance director over there. We both serve on the Vermont Government Finance Officers Association. He stated that while they do anticipate a continued increase, they do not anticipate it to be at the level it has been recently. So I don't think we'll see the same percentage increase in this coming fiscal year as what we've seen in the last two years. And we're hoping to have GMT in again soon. Did we know if that's happening yet? I haven't requested it yet. I had it as a plan because of the feedback during the ARPA sessions. But I actually haven't talked to them yet because I'm hiring. Oh, that's right. They are still going up. But yeah, if you'd like. I'll reach out to our rep and see if there's any, if it's possible to get an indication of where they're trending. For the question about the memo. Could you say a little bit about what would be envisioned for the $100,000 annual or initial investment? What's that? I just want to make sure I understand what that's intending. This is in the memo to counsel from you. It says estimated earnings in a max per year and over 20 years for 100K initial investment, 100K annual investment and 1 million initial investment. So our investments have strictly been in certificates of deposit at this point. The current offering is at one and a half percent. With what I meant by initial investment is it's a one-time initial investment and we just continue to invest it over and over again for a period of 20 years. And then the 100K annual investment is the 100K gets contributed each year and we continue ballooning it. And so it's a reason for including that if we were to consider investing some of our excess funds right now and drawing off of those in the future. These were specific requests that Christine had submitted. So yes, having had conversations over a period of time with all of y'all, there was interest in understanding if we invest part of this money or buy down debt. Like how does that impact instead of trying to allocate it all out right away? And these are primarily CDs. That's the only investment tool of that, which makes sense. That's the primary one that we use due to the security and the flexibility of terms so that we can create liquidity if we need to in the short term. We can investigate or you can direct your treasurer to investigate alternative investment opportunities. So like thinking about the TIF model, you know, even if you don't spend the whole thing in FY25 and there was like a tax rate decrease, we could take that decrease and actually invest it instead. So we hold flat and then have additional revenue and sort of extend out over time what we're paying for or like mitigating the increasing. So there's like different strategies to consider. And as I called out in the memo, these are strictly based on current rates with the Fed changing the interest rate over time, our amount that it's gonna cost us to borrow is gonna increase and the amount that we can earn from search pieces of deposit will also increase. Did I see your hand out of the corner of my head? Okay. Yes. And I went back and forth on how to even frame tonight up, so. I'm not done. Funding Tetris. Yeah. Would you, do you either view of having or other counselors have any, I mean there's a laundry list here and it's gonna get longer in terms of the modeling which I think can drive us into a rabbit hole like looking at trade offs, right? And I know I appreciate that like values approach and recommendation from the finance commission. I'm just curious if there are any other lumping or filtering strategies that you all talked about or like how to parse this list of 20 or 30 items. Think about what might be bridge out, what might be good bridge or like sunsetting funds. I don't know. I'm just curious about any other ways to, that you had thought about that that you didn't include tonight because it would be too confusing but things that you found helpful in thinking about this bigger list and how to collapse it or filter it. Well, so Angela, I feel for your time in a bit here. John Rauscher did share preliminary draft memo. He still wants to check with his leadership team about specifics, but he did include his criteria for reviewing those projects and initiatives. It's kind of a long list, but maybe it will be helpful. So his activity identified our line to the city's master plan goals. So I tapped into that one as well. And the activity identified, is the activity identified in one of the infrastructure master plans? Does activity support the replacement of an existing city-owned asset that came from Finance Commission? Does the funding support activity currently performed but under-resourced? Is activity a regulatory requirement? Is the activity an upcoming capital project with high long-term debt? No, we're touching on that one. Is this activity identified in the capital plan but under-resourced? Does, for example, road maintenance. Does funding support an existing asset constructed as part of the downtown revitalization projects, i.e. TIF? Unfortunately, there's a list of those that is a little disturbing. Does a one-time funding request support the initial Arpa Treasury eligible criteria? I actually don't know that that's particularly relevant, but it's an indication of what the general society thinks of as important. So there's that aspect of things. I feel like there was another list. So these are clearly very relatable to capital improvements, but might help trigger thinking on other items. And from my perspective, one of the things that we directed the Finance Commission and was helpful in their discussion was don't necessarily look at this as the specific projects that you can fund, but the types of things that you want to invest in because between now and when the TIF expires, the things that are available to us and the actions that we could take could change. So if your direction is a little more broad around the policy that you'd like to see the staff implement and giving us criteria to evaluate the different options would be a good way to do that rather than having us be directed to do specific things with the money, more broad goals to accomplish. So something that I wanted to say in this discussion is I would hope that we are setting ourselves up to try to pre-plan the next two fiscal years and how to use all this money, but we should think about it. We've been working with a really tight staff and underfunded some things and have some bigger needs coming. And we are in a position in these next couple of years to actually scale a little bit and close some of those gaps. And so I hope how we think about this money in this budget cycle is, is there, you know, in prior years, we've often said level service. Is there somewhere that we feel like we should go above the current level while we have an opportunity to do so? And somewhere where we feel like we need to do that this year and not wait until the actual TIF funds come in. I think like those rubric categories sound very useful. This list is not exhaustive. There are other things that have already been discussed even just tonight. And so thinking about like highest priorities, I feel like, is there somewhere that we need to increase funding that's like a very high priority? And to Jim's point, you prompted me to think about how we present that laundry list to you. If we could lump them, that would, might help you pick categories as opposed to getting into the leads on specifics. Yeah. I think it's helpful. I do think it is helpful to see like we requested additional sidewalk maintenance funding two years ago, I think. And like that was a useful like one time thing and it's persistent, but seeing what that means to carry that forward. I think it's helpful with a scale of different types. Instead of like, we'll just catch up on our infrastructure. Like that's not a useful statement from council when there's not dollars. So I do appreciate the list. Like I don't want to get away from that or not have access to that maybe as examples rather than like the full list or the full menu from which to choose. And I think that's helpful. Right. I mean, I could picture, I feel like I have a mandate on equity when you hired me. So this is why I'm harping on that. But the, you know, it might be like infrastructure that with a priority on accessibility that might be a way to put a finer point on it. Yeah. I also like the value of basically seeing what category something might be lumped into or under, but seeing what that is for context. Cause I'm going to ask you anyway. Yeah. And this is the time for this occasionally it's appropriate for you to see everything. I feel like this is one of those times. And I think it's also useful for us to know what that translates to when we're asked or when we're talking about it with others. I like having the matrix rubric. And I think, you know, ensuring that of the matrix having that equity component as its own called out column. And if there's waiting, then having that have a particular, a higher weight for it. So I'm not quite sure, you know, how the tool exists right now. If that makes sense, how difficult that would be, but that could be something that could help direct some of our own personal preferences. I like that idea of, yeah, we were talking about how do we embed equity. So maybe thinking exactly of what items are embedded in equity, I think is what. Or do they serve as well? Yeah. Right. As you did during the policy parties and strategies, I still cannot remember the order of those three words. You had that additional column, it's just an equity impact. So something like that. Yeah. I also want to call out too, like this model that Angela put together. You know, she highlighted in green the ones that were real placeholders, like not a real dollar amount is known for those. But there are certain other places where we're not like held to a dollar amount. Like we added that sidewalk maintenance. I'm not sure how that number was determined. Like if we said we wanted to fully fund pavement, or maybe that's a bad example. If we said we wanted to do this downtown capital contribution, maybe we only do part of it because there's priority items there or something. So there is I think some nuance there to your point about like a category and then knowing what's underneath of that and the actual cost. Yeah. And I could see like for this tool, how I would not play with this is when I flop things to yes, see where do I end up overemphasizing or under emphasizing broad categories of spending could be helpful. I think it'll be, you know, you could do a portion of it, but I think this is helpful to see visually where you end up putting the money compared to where you think the priority for investment should go. Or what's worthwhile to spend on now in order for the benefits down the road. Because I think that's the other, that's the other side of this whole picture is that we're looking at how we're spreading the benefit of having done the tip and having received our but over time and investments made now may be more valuable than investments made every year. So I think that's, there's a lot to consider in terms of what's high priority now to right size or fix or shore up. I think that's another, and I don't know if I could, when thinking about Rubik, like what is it, is this a deferrable? Like do you still get benefit if you don't do this this year? Or do we gain extra value out of doing it this year as opposed to waiting the year? I think that might be something I'll try and thinking about because that could help direct some of our one time spending too. This is for this conversation. Stop, if not, but one thing that's coming to mind for me, especially looking at one of the items on here is the English language learning for adults. Just definitely something that came up in our listening sessions and I think is just a general known need. But thinking about what items on here could we partner with other existing organizations that are also getting funding either from the state or from the federal government. So that we could pitch in one time funds or help set up a program. Like I'm thinking, because I work with the Vermont State Colleges like the work that they are doing and trying to be more accessible and CCV is getting a ton of funding to provide free tuition. Our grants available to provide free tuition. And I don't know, that might be a lot of staff work or is I guess slash, would it be beneficial to put some funding towards having someone to do the outreach and see where we could partner? I don't know. Again, that's probably going too much in the lead but there are definitely things on here that I was like, we only have so many funds but could we help or partner with others to get to kind of increase services overall? Too far in the weeds to actually discuss it but what you've just said is very useful. Okay. Agreed. That's something else that I've been trying to track is where the state is already using their funds to meet some needs and so making sure we're not duplicating. Well given the volume of discussion I was useful to have today. You also certainly have more time with this information to think about it and to reach out to me and Elaine with additional thoughts or asks. Right. I have been trying to keep Council on arms length a little bit given the history but especially for this topic. Yes, feel just copy email me and copy Christine on anything that comes to mind between now and then your next meeting probably because I have several conferences, a couple of conferences in the middle so the more lead time we have to discuss the staff or whatnot would be helpful so that we can better advise you all. Were you having another thought? I can ask in a one-on-one situation. All right, I'll just say I think it'd be helpful to see the states. I don't know one place that I would go to find where the state plans to invest above and beyond from ARPA and BIL and there's several sources of funding coming down that will triple to states and I don't know how that levels up above the traditional expenditures so if you have a magic tool that you could share then that'd be great and that would be my question if there is a one-stop place and I'm guessing no but if we have a list of those places and I have this to be all my fellow Councillors like I think sharing those resources as we come across them would be really helpful to you because we mean others of us may not have access to know about them. I'm sure we're in a good company with that. I had a question that's not gonna show up on here but something to think about is lean and the ability for continuous improvement. So looking at basically within the programs and services we provide is there way to do some reformatting, restructuring so that there's cost savings yielded. We've done a lot of work at the state level as it relates to that when I was working with the agency and natural resources and that was eventually pulled up to the governor's office, to the administrative level to look across agency programs while it's not really something that we would see as a light item here, just wanna just plant the seed for that. Yeah, I'm wondering, I've never been through a lean or six-fig model or any sort of training like that so I'm wondering if there's an overview. I mean obviously people go through whole programs for this but if there's an overview you could send me as a starting point and be happy to look at it. Sure. I remember that from the either interview process or in the job scope, so yeah, I hear you. We have some piece of more conversations about that, yeah, but I'd love to see one sort of rubric you're thinking of. Sure. Questions, thoughts? I guess just other questions we're talking about spending money and then general buckets of revenue. What about any conversation of, I'm just gonna ask my question and then, yeah, see where that goes. But essentially there are fees that we have like landlord rental fees. I think that hasn't changed for a number of years. I'm just curious. Other revenue sources? Yeah, other revenue sources that haven't been looked at. And I appreciate there's some complexity with changing those fees and that one may be a bad example because it would likely be a pass-through but just thinking about some additional revenues that we could consider for increase. You know, we did look at the water, wastewater previously and we held that or tried to help, kept that as a self-funded mechanism. Well, I think at a minimum for the next meeting potentially we could have the breakdown of here's a list of what our non-tax revenue is, non-tax revenue sources. Yeah, thank you for summarizing that. Sure, I can have the sources available and provide the section of the ordinance that outlines what those fees are. And we can take a look at what ones, if any, you would consider increasing because they are gonna impact different residents potentially. So somebody getting a building permit right now costs $75 days fee. Increasing that for somebody who's redoing their roof might make it cost prohibitive to continue to do the maintenance on their homes. It's one of the reasons why we made the scholarship policy as broad as we did so that if we did start to increase fees beyond the point where something was affordable that people could potentially apply for scholarships for those types of things. I'll note that we are, you know, direction now would, of course it would be helpful for budgeting. We are planning to bring the fee ordinance to you in January to look at a few. So you could actually enact earlier if you wanted to from that review. In terms of a list of other non-tax revenue sources that you haven't considered before, Angela, I'm wondering not necessarily you, but perhaps our treasurer could look into and do some spitballing before the 17th. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, it would be at council's direction, but given your daily interactions with him. So I'm not certain of his availability. I know that he's been traveling for some weddings and he does have an upcoming treasurer's report to council for the quarter that just ended on September 30th. So he is going to be spending some time doing that before your next meeting. I do think like maybe that's an ask we want to make in the future. It doesn't feel necessary to deal with it by next meeting. Like we wouldn't take action on a new revenue stream that fast. So, yeah. Yeah, probably three quarters of your budget currently comes from taxes. And then another 300, 400,000 is local options tax though. Is there anything else that would be useful to you to hear? No, there was some good stuff there. Yeah, I just appreciate it's a complicated time. So, if new things come up, it's understandable. And hopefully all the patients with us as we try to figure this out together. Yeah, I mean, we're asking to do and see things that we haven't in past budget years like it's new. We got some new people. And some very exacting tenured folks like Angela. Thank goodness. Yes, thank goodness. Yeah, I know the finance commission really liked the model that you put together. I heard some things from council too, so thank you. It was fun. I liked it. Can I just say she took her first day vacation to build that thing. I did absolutely. She wanted to. This is the gem that we all have here. My God. Thank you, Angela. Okay, I think we can wrap up this discussion item round. Thank you. So we are on to item H. This is on for discussion or approval, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns policy. So this, we previewed this at the last meeting. VLCT on behalf of all cities and towns in Vermont creates this list of policy priorities that they share with the legislature. So it's really extensive. It includes things that don't matter to us, probably things that we maybe don't support or are neutral about what have you. It's not intended to be, we participate in voting on this document via we have delegated this to Elaine at the annual meeting. So it doesn't need to be reflective of all of our priorities or like perfectly aligned to what we want. I had asked all of you individually to review and flag if there was anything that you had strong feelings about one way or the other. The only item of shared common concern was the transportation funding. Let me find that. So on page four of the PDF where VLCT opposes using transportation fund money to pay for non transportation purchases or to pay for projects required by the agency of natural resources such as stormwater mitigation projects. This was one thing that not all of us were in support of. So to give Elaine guidance ahead of voting on our behalf at that meeting, wanted to see if this is something we want her to not support or bring up in that discussion. Prior to this discussion, I'd like to identify conflict of interest as an employee of the state. I don't feel comfortable. I feel I should not be weighing in on what the advocacy is or it's not for VLCT in this conversation. But so I'm just gonna stand from any voting in this session at this point. Thank you, Jim. I would say if we all flagged and yes, I personally would support Elaine bringing that up at the meeting. Well, can I ask where the concern comes from in not the opposition to using transportation fund money to pay for non transportation purposes? Actually, the first question might be, Elaine, do you know the context of why VLCT opposes that? I have a general sense, but I do not remember the details. I'm forgetting. So maybe if you say that I might be able to supplement the sentence or two. So what I recall from a few years ago, the legislature was trying to use transportation fund money to do something that was like completely unrelated to transportation. And so I think that's where the opposition came from. I don't remember like how far removed the thing was that they were doing. That's as much as I remember. Yeah, okay. And on the positive side of this, they generally cities and towns around Vermont feel underfunded to deal with their road maintenance. And a lot of that money goes towards grants. I mean, that's how localities see it is grant funding for class two paving. So that's probably as much as about that as it is about don't use it on other things. Yeah. Saving it for helping cities and towns with their roads. Right, because it's insufficient as it is. What I'm most curious about is like not using transportation fund money for stormwater mitigation because I feel like those things come together often in projects we have with roads. I think it's probably the same thing. But I wasn't, I'm part of the fair committee annually, but I'm not sure where this one came from. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of items in here I wouldn't expect anyone to remember the full contents of all of them. I don't know that I've seen this one before. So, but it could be mistaken. And I guess for me, I said, I'm okay with funds being applied to other projects and stormwater being one of those cited in here. My caveat was so long as municipalities have in can influence what those local, what the funding goes towards. That's outside of transportation. That's outside of transportation. If it's within their boundaries, within their jurisdiction, then I would want municipalities to have some seat at the table to influence that. So the stormwater item, again, I think they were trying to preserve transportation for transportation because just below that, 2.02 additional funding parties, number three is about adequately funding for stormwater standards. So I think they're trying to just raise more money. Okay. My concern had more been until like, if we were using transportation money for anything else, I would want us to continue to be able to do that, but it's a bit we weren't, so. To my knowledge, any transportation fund money, like explicit that's coming to Manuski has come through like road projects or the grants that we've received. I could be missing something though. Angela, are you enough first to comment on that? I'm here, but I missed the topic. I'm sorry. Not expecting to listen to every little thing once it's beyond the topics they're specifically listed for. Do we receive state transportation fund monies outside of transportation, like road work projects here to your knowledge? So we do receive our annual lane mileage payments. It's our state payment in the general fund. It's about $63,000. That's based on the amount of mileage of road we have in the classes of roads that we have. The only other money that I can recall is receiving from transportation funding. We have some transportation fund grants that are outside the class to repaving. We just received $75,000 for the Hickok Street sidewalks and we have some other transportation awards that are associated with Main Street for pedestrian crosswalk improvements and some other transportation associated projects. I believe the Tygan Street signal is also transportation. So while not roads, they are related to transportation. All of the transportation funding that you can recall. I believe all of the transportation funding is related to transportation. The exception might be occasionally the transportation department is the pass-through agency for the public safety, DUI and occupant protection enforcement grants. Oh. It's the government, highway safety grants. Sometimes it comes through the Department of Transportation. Not every year. I think this year it came through the Sheriff's Department. So it did come through transportation. We would want to continue to use that for that non-transportation need. And it is, you could argue that it is transportation related because it is regarding occupant protection and DUI protection traffic enforcement. Okay. That may be why they passed it through the Department of Transportation. Also, I suspect that what VLCT is opposing here is transportation fund money to pay for non-transportation purposes that is not allocated to municipalities. Or maybe not, because this is a missed policy. I feel like what they were spending it on before was not. I don't remember the details. Yeah. So one way to resolve the Gordy not here could be because what, I'm sorry, it's late but I can't help telling you the story. The reason why they changed the procedure for proposing amendments is because of me. Oh, this is who you tell. So Barry Town assigned me to go advocate on its behalf. That year, the select board got really into the weeds with the policy. I don't think they'd really had an opportunity to interact with it before. And I was on the fair policy committee, a fair section of the committee that year. And so I was like, oh, maybe they should see this. So we put it on and they were like really in the weeds on all these little things. And so I was proposing all these very boutique amendments from the floor and they're like, this is not sustainable. So the next year they're like, you have to propose exactly like a jitted pants. So that's all just a backstory on, ideally you would be voting on language for me today to vote on. But if there is something, if you wanted me to ask for clarification, we can certainly do that. It may or may not, it may not get through, because of the number of people involved, it might not pass, so, but it would inform you for next time. Yeah, if you could ask for some clarification on that. On number three, correct? Yeah. Opposition number three. Using transportation, money to pay for non-transportation purposes. I'm feeling like it would be fair to say, if you discover that that would inhibit us from using funds that we currently do or have in the past, then we would ask you to oppose that. Can I get a motion on that? That particular item. That particular piece of guess. Yes. Second. Okay, a motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those abstaining. Aye. Or abstain. Yes. I'm not sure how to succinctly, okay, and then, so you were asking for, if you would allow it to be used for non-tea fund stuff, if municipalities had a say in what it was. Yes. Do we feel like this is applicable to, if the project is in your municipality? Yeah, if it's within your own boundaries. Okay. So then, so this guidance to Elaine then would be, well, no, because that would require a language amendment, right, if we wanted to change the position. From that intent? Yeah. I mean, that feels to me at this point to be enough, potentially, so I could see what I could do with that. Okay. I mean, I'm not. It's just an element that would help sway my decision, I guess. Would someone like to make a motion to give Elaine guidance that we would oppose using, no, that we would remove the opposition to using transportation fund money for non-transportation purposes when municipalities have a say over the project within their boundaries? If I could offer. Yeah, thank you. So the LCT opposes using transportation fund money to pay for non-transportation purposes unless? Unless, yes, okay. Unless the municipality that is impacted has input on that use. Works for me. Motion? So moved. Second? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those abstaining? Abstain. Okay. Okay. So that was the only item that we needed to address here. I will say that the feedback that you all have given me and combining with our previous legislative positions as a city, I'm also doing some outreach to our existing legislators to find out what is on deck or potentially moving. And so we'll be coming back to you all not at the next meeting in November with the drafts. So we actually can put forward a discrete set of our own priorities to share out. And I got through almost all of it, but I wanna call out three items that I do feel strongly about, which are 5.01, number 11, 5.06, number one, and number two. So holding municipalities harmless from liability for presence or consequences of four of our chemicals as well as under 506, holding municipalities harmless from liability for any hazardous material incident at any facility or property that conforms with all state and federal permits and regulations. Holding municipalities harmless from liability for any PFAS related contamination. I don't even know if that would be able to pass because of federal circular legislation, superfund legislation, but also just as a resident, I vehemently oppose all three of those. I think that joint and civil liability is embedded in superfund legislation and I believe there's quite a bit of case law on that. So those are the three that I would feel strongly about. No one else raised those as concerns, unless somebody else has. I'm just wondering, is the intent of those to protect the city from a private business being involved in a hazardous material incident? Like I'm wondering if that's the intent of this as opposed to us doing something like if one of, I don't know, I don't think TwinCraft has anything hazardous, but if they had a leak, like I think it's protecting us from being sued. There's already PFAS in the river from industries outside of our borders. Yeah, I think the intent is more that there is historical impacts. There's nobody to hold accountable. They don't, the LCT doesn't want municipalities to be left holding the bag on their own at least. And I personally understand your point, Bryn. I was gonna hold that. I mean, for the record, I don't want Winooski to be sued. I would love it if we're able to manage all these hazardous chemicals appropriately. And I do think in terms of the adverse impact to communities that does happen, having a mechanism to have some restitution for that is part and parcel to government. That's fair. I don't want to dig into this any further this evening, however. It's okay, I just wanted it to be on the record. Okay, let's move on. That's the end of our regular items. We have worn an executive session. Yes, and I would like to propose regrets for not thinking of this earlier. If you would all would like to meet in the clerk's office for executive. It used to be held in the manager's office, we're now under COVID, so I'd rather not have all of us crammed in there. That way our recorder can go and we can just report out on that when you adjourn the meeting and you don't have to tape that. Okay. All right, so I am looking for a motion to find that pursuant to state statute 3131E, pending or probable civil litigation or a prosecution to which the public body is or maybe a party. We should have this discussion in an executive session to not put ourselves at further risk. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Looking for a motion to enter into executive session. Inviting city manager, Elaine Wong. Angela. Could you stay? Yes, I can. And Angela Aldiari. Thank you. Motion by Jim. Second. Second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. We're going to enter into executive session to discuss this topic alone. No other business will be discussed. When we exit executive session, we will only take a vote to adjourn the meeting. Okay.