 All right, so I'm going to call the meeting to order. First, I think it's to review and approve the agenda. There had been some discussion. There had not been some discussion. So someone had suggested to me that we've, since Ashley Hill is not here, that she was particularly interested in the item number 12, the Social Economic Quality Committee. I think we can have a conversation about it and see if we want to take some steps forward there. So I'm inclined to leave it unless people feel we want to wait. Another thing, too, to consider is that, again, Ashley's not here, and we are scheduled to do committee appointments. She did tell me, you know, sign me up for whatever, which it's all solved. Perfect. What? What committee does no one want? Great. I have an idea for one. So what are your thoughts on keeping or leaving that one? Well, I already had my bias. I would really like us to discuss this within our retreat. But so I would rather sway. You'd rather sway. Do other opinions about this? Are there things that we need to appoint? Well, I did notice the most updated list doesn't have Glenn on the Building Appeals Committee, and we did make a motion on that. So if we can just update that one. To me, that's the one that may have been. I'm sorry. One that may actually have an action. And our retreat is? Not for another month. So are we just going to? How much trouble is it to take someone off the committee and put them back on? A lot of hard. Is it possible to do the appointments tonight as needed and then come back to them at the retreat? Sure. Is that acceptable? Is the issue for the retreat actually appointing people or the role of committees? Well, I think as a new board member, a council member, I was just surprised so early in my term, we did committees when I didn't know that much about committees. And so I felt it would benefit everyone to have a more holistic view of the committees. That's all. Yeah. I guess maybe we should keep it tonight and then revisit it after the retreat. Does that sound? We can even revisit it next meeting if Ashley's here. OK. That sounds great. If we can make a note of that, just didn't have it on the agenda against it. Or maybe we can just touch base with Ashley and see how she feels about it. OK. Cool. I just wanted to make sure that we brought that up. So forget the word words. But we're going to consider that. Without objection, approved. There we go. And so general business and appearances. So this is time for anyone from the public to make a comment about any topic that is not on our agenda. So if you would please say your name and your street. That's going to be the first one because it's after years of get your guys going. My name's Karen Clement. I live on Emond Street in Montpelier. And I'm representing the Montpelier Downsizing Group. So it's mostly because there are two new members here. And I thought I would say something about what our group is. We are about database of about 200 people who want to downsize into smaller homes on market rate primarily. And would like to be able to request that a future agenda topic. The market rate housing for doesn't necessarily seniors. But that tends to be what our group is comprised of. Also, we formed a smaller court group of about seven to eight households that are really pushing this forward. And they meet at my house. And we meet pretty readily in a couple weeks. So we're in the process of discussing forming an LLC and being able to move this forward. Some of us may be able to come to future meetings if that is requested. But anyway, so requesting a future agenda piece, thanks. Carrie, can I ask you a question about that? Do you have a preferred timeline for when you would want to see something? Yes. OK. No, I mean, this has been, this is going on three years as a group. We've had meetings at the library. We've had, you know, the larger group. They've been also available through OCRA, as well. So this is something that is pretty critical for a lot of people who have wanted to downsize. We had a survey that conducted. And they want to downsize between six months and three, four years. And every year, it gets tighter and tighter. So a lot of it is that there are a lot of affordable rentals and housing coming up. And those with deep pockets, they go to Wake Robin. But those of us in the middle just don't have a whole lot available. We couldn't qualify for affordable. But we still would like to remain in the city. And people who have moved out of the city, because they just don't have any options. So thank you. Great, thank you. Donna, a staff question related to that. I had this survey because I was on your mailing list. But did we have that copy distributed for the whole council? I don't know if we do or not. I haven't eaten that. OK, because I would want all our new council members to get it. It was a very good survey. Could you just send that to me, Carrie? Sure. That'd be great. And then we can send it out, put it in the weekend. I know it's kind of stuff. It'll be in touch about scheduling agenda item and what. Well, and then, too, I'd love that document to live in our Google Drive, something that we can cover how to access. Yes. Maybe that's something that we can just go forward when we can actually reveal where we are with those. Great. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Anybody else? OK. All right, so consideration of the consent agenda. You just mentioned that I did fix the date on the minutes. Great. Thank you. Donna, don't we have a swearing-in to-do? Oh, that's it. I've already been sworn in. Oh, you've been sworn in. Oh. I missed it. Fair enough. OK. Well, welcome. Thank you for that, Donna. So we're back to the consent agenda. There are a motion. Second? Any discussion? No one wants to pull anything? OK, no discussion? All right. Paper, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK. So we have a series of appointments to make. So the first one is to the Emtik Popular Transportation Infrastructure Committee. And I believe for this one, we have, sorry? We have one vacancy. Just one person? And one person to be applied if you need to be interested. Is Ian here? Would you like to come up and introduce yourself? Tell us about your interest in this committee. So again, say your name and your sheets. My name's Ian Anderson. I live on Hill Street. I applied for the appointment to the Mobility or Transportation Infrastructure Committee. I'm pretty new to town, but have been interested in getting involved. I am a civil engineer by practice. I finished up a PhD at the University of Vermont in November. We've recently moved here to take a position at the agency of transportation. So a bit of a background in transportation and just looking to get involved. Great. Thank you. Any questions? Any other motion? I'll make a motion to nominate Ivan Anderson. Ian, Ian, Ian. Ian, Ian, excuse me. Second. For the discussion, on fair, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Congratulations, Ian. Thank you for starting. First Tuesday, 6th of August. All right. The Design Review Committee. Also has one slot. Hannah Smith is seeking the appointment. So you have a motion? Or not. I'll make a motion to appoint Hannah Smith. Second. Daughter? I had a question about the terms, and I meant to do it before the last appointment. In August, when we do the alignment of the Planning Commission, the one thing the Committee on Committees didn't yet get to was looking at the appointment dates and getting them all aligned. And when we reappoint someone to fill a position, they don't automatically get a two-year. So I'm just looking at all the dates on this committee. And everybody is September. But this one, is there any way we can align this appointment up with September? I think with this one, you can. This is not a charter driven. So the Planning Commission, DRB, were set by charter. And we're waiting for that charter to go through the legislature so we can actually do it. I believe, and you might want to just make sure we're correct on this, but DRC, I think, is set by our own rules and procedures. There's no terms in the charter. I don't think. So if there's not, then we can set the dates of the terms. And you just don't know whether it's an ordinance amendment. So I'd like to do a little more research on the DRC terms. But I believe you can do it. So we should just leave it as it is for now and come back to it. I would, and then we can always amend it. Even at the next meeting, I'll make a note here to check on the DRC terms. I don't think it's going to be extensive to find this out. I just wouldn't want you to do it on the floor. OK. Any other questions or discussion? So, Don, you're happy? Yeah. OK. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK. Congratulations, Hannah. All right. The tree board. Tree board has three slots, seeking appointment to existing members. Abby Collahan and Lynn Wilde are seeking reappointment. And there's a vacant slot. And Janet Wormser is seeking. Is there a motion? And already have them here? Second. Great. Any other discussion? It's the same thing about dates. Check on that one, too. OK. That's not just one of ours. Some are these. I think it is. But again, I just don't like it. OK. So I won't bring it up again. We'll just check on the dates. OK. Actually, just one question about that. When would we hear back about that the next time we're making an appointment? We can do it next meeting, I think. And we can just read. OK. We'll see what's involved. OK. Great. OK, great. OK, so there's been a motion and a second. For the discussion, on paper, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? And central internet board. And I know we have a couple people here interested in that. So one possibility is, well, I guess what I'd say, let's hear from you all if you would introduce yourselves and tell us about your interest in this. One regular seat, one alternate seat. Yeah. I am Dan Jones, Northfield Street. I have most of you know me, so. But you know me in a different context, which is through the sustainable Montpelier effort. It turns out I have, in a few lifetimes ago, an experience of being a telecommunications person as well, and worked with the city of Boston, doing the cable franchise, and then worked for numerous cable companies and cities during the 80s on new technology, et cetera, and along with trying to do a startup with interconnecting cable companies. I learned in that process a whole lot about the legalities of franchise law, the development of technology. I don't profess to be an engineer or an expert in this in all ways, but as you know, I care deeply about the sustainable future for the town. I think a communications system, especially for central Vermont, with some independence would be crucial to that. So that's why I'm putting my name forward on this. One other thing too, I think you might want to have a check with the city attorney whether our membership in EC Fiber should be removed because we seem to have, we can't be a part of two unions, I believe, and EC Fiber is pretty much said they're not coming here any time in the near future. So I would recommend that we get some clarity on that. Thank you. Thank you. I have already looked into that issue, we can be members, and I would ask that you consider maintaining the membership and serving as the bridge between EC Fiber and its successes. Would you like to introduce yourself? Stephen Whitaker. And I've been at this for 24 years in telecommunications planning here. Prior to that, I was climbing towers and building cable systems in other parts of the country. Communications union district is a new law at a couple of years old. As soon as that law passed, I had been involved in the White River Valley many years ago as a regional planning commissioner. And then as central, as EC Fiber got successful, I attended a lot of those meetings with my friend Charlie Larkin. He has withdrawn his nomination for this spot due to health reasons. He's in Zagansnaya. But he was the telecom engineer with the Department of Public Service for many years. So some of what I would ask you to consider is that Montpelier as the seat of state government and as a owner of a municipal heating system with fiber, unused fiber attached with a point of presence, it's called a fiber access point, FAP, at the Velco substation out on River Street, we are uniquely positioned to set statewide leadership. We could near term bridge to CV fiber using that Velco interconnect. We can light up downtown buildings along the heat system. We will probably be lower priority in the 12 town districts or 12 and growing due to the fact that most all addresses in town are served by Comcast right now. But the addresses that can be commercial buildings, especially that can be interconnected with symmetric high speed fiber could really set us into a new direction. The interplay which I'm also involved was frequently with Paco and his work with telecommunications planning for public safety. You've seen a lot in the news lately about the wireless access points, coverage code being disconnected. We could immediately prioritize the known dead zones and build fiber to those locations because we would not be redundantly planning where tower coverage will be. So I've just been doing this a long time. I've made the pitch to the Regional Planning Commission hoping they could get this started two years ago, but their executive committee didn't want to wait till they rewrite the plan. So I'm glad that I'm clear I sought it to join to create one, hitting the ground running with integrated planning along public safety, civic engagement. I won't go into the details about what we've, I've talked with the mayor and the city manager briefly about the use of that heat pipe fiber. I'm open to questions. Should you see fit to appoint me? I would not only be keeping you well informed about it, but be trying to get you more involved because there's a lot of work to do. We're a decade behind. Thank you. Any other questions? So this is sort of an unusual appointment, particularly because with this other board, it is also possible that a council person could be the representative on there as well. I mean, are there any other council people who who might want to be considered? If not, that's fine. I have the interest, if not the expertise, but when I looked and it's just one regular and one alternate, you know, usually, I guess if they were like two, I don't know. I have some interest, but. Okay, this late date. No, no, fair enough, that makes sense. Well, it's particularly because we have an alternate position and a regular position. Probably it makes sense to me that we should probably go into an executive session and then come back out. Does that sound? Okay, yes. Before you, I have a non-executive section. Question? Yes. I don't. I'm speaking to you, Mike. You gotta get close. Thank you, yeah. How many members are on this committee and how many do we have compared to the other towns in the group? My understanding is that it's one that's representative for town. It's permissive municipality. Most of them, all of them voted in March and I think it's 12. It takes, under law, it takes two towns to originally farm the district. Any number of towns can move to join it on that same town, meaning additional towns can join in a bilateral vote by vote of the select board. And then a vote of acceptance from the district of the vote to join it. Also, because of the nature of the business, the town is not funding this other than appointing a representative. So it has to create a business and funding plan as a sort of first order business. So where there are areas that might be opportunities, there also has to be the area of figuring out who is going to actually pay for this and how the funding will take place. Now, the towns almost universally within the central district voted to say yes, we want to be part of it in the meeting this year. Now the question is, how does it put together and how does it get funded in such a way that it could actually do something as opposed to have good ideas? So it becomes almost more of a business proposition to begin with rather than an operational problem. And just for the new members, info under the statute allows these to be created that actually prohibits tax dollars from being put in. That was, it was a created the opportunity for communities to join for these things, but not for state or local tax dollars to prop them up. So they can't, we can't put the money where we chose to. All right, so the second session is probably the thing, I think. So hopefully it won't take four hours. Yes, we know how to recess now. Would it help to have a one minute synopsis of what the sister district does and customers and revenue and finance, just so you know what we're getting into or does it matter, it doesn't matter at this point. I don't, well, what's your, I have a good understanding of it. I'm feeling pretty good as well. But thank you, all right, to be in motion. So. We gotta cite. Is it Title III, 13? It's the one, say one to appointment of public official officer, 313. I think it's 313. So appoint, Title III, 13. You don't need to have a finding for that one. That's when you're allowed to go. Right, that we can go into a second session. So was that a motion? Yes. Okay. Second. All right, on therapy, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, we'll be right back. Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Great. So we'll start with the motion. I would like to make a motion that we make Dan Jones, the appointed regular representative on Central Vermont internet, and that we make Steven Whitaker, the alternate. Great. All second. And all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Great, thank you. So especially since this is a new thing, oh, we didn't specify the length of time. It didn't. I would move that we make the terms for the Central Vermont, what do we call it? Internet? Two things at once here. Central Vermont. Central Vermont internet board appointees from Montpelier to be a one-year term. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. So especially since this is a new venture for us, I mean, we're excited about it and looking forward to hearing back from you, you know, how it's going and, you know, hoping that it's a really positive, collaborative relationship with them. So, and do you have a... How long would you like a report back? Especially given that it's new, I would think on the scale of like every three months or so. I mean, hopefully it doesn't... Or is there a significant... As for community, is there a significant... And it doesn't need to be like, you know, coming to the council, but even if it's something that we can put in the council, city manager, mayors report or whatever, that would be... Sure. Yeah, we receive a written report from the city manager every week on Friday and this would be a wonderful place to have a written update. Yeah. It doesn't need to be in this setting, so. Okay. Great. Unless there's an action needed. Great. All right, thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you. Okay. And a green update. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Actually, I don't want to just hand those out. I just want to take it off. Good evening. My name is Nate Hausman. I'm a player of your life board member and I also help coordinate my player of your life's green update efforts and I know since we have some new city councilors, I thought I'd sort of apprised those who don't know a little bit about green update and also I'll tell you about one new element that we're adding this year that I think would be helpful. So in case you're not familiar with it, green update is an annual statewide effort. It brings over 22,000 volunteers from around the state to pick up litter from the roadways and public areas around the state. It's been happening since the 1970s. In Montpelier, we have a robust effort. It's coordinated through Montpelier Live and really the way it works is that we have provide bags for volunteers to use to collect litter at the Montpelier Farmers Market so they can come down, they can pick up bags, they can pick up gloves and they can be assigned or claim a stretch of roadway or a public project. There's some other projects that happen around town. It happens to coincide. This year it's May 5th, so it happens to coincide with, well, it actually annually coincides with Montpelier's May Fest. So that's the event where the three penny does a Montpelier. There's a pie breakfast. It's the first outdoor farmers market. There's a lot of events and hubbub around town. So as part of that, we do green update and as I mentioned, people can come down to the farmers market, they can pick up supplies and they can get assigned an area to green up. They can also pick up a coupon sheet that has goodies from local businesses that they can redeem from around town as well. Bags can be left curbside across town or the folks at the Department of Public Works pick those up on the Monday, typically or the following week after green up day. In addition to coming down to pick up bags at the farmers market or if you're not able to, you can pick up bags at the city clerk's office in advance of green up day. And that's really, well, and also I should say there's some corporate groups because we have a large corporate community, there's some corporate groups that green up the Friday before green up day. But part of the coordination, one of the challenges with coordinating the event is that it's sometimes people are greening up and we're not aware of it. So to help us sort of coordinate efforts and not be duplicative and also track how many volunteers and how many bags, we're rolling out a new app or an online mapping tool. And you can see a URL in the sheet, I just handed you. But the idea is it's only gonna be effective if we roll it out on a widespread basis. And so the idea is that I just wanted to sort of inform you and apprise you of that so you can help spread the word. We'll also make these sheets available at the city clerk's office when folks come and we'll have them down at the farmer's market. But I just wanted to briefly leave it there and see if you have any questions about the day. Is this mean that there will no longer be giant maps and everybody write their name on the road and they're picking? I understand the practicality of the app but that has a space in my heart for the tradition. I remember as a little kid, writing my name on a street in my hometown. So I'm just a little sad. But I understand why we... I appreciate the nostalgia. No, it just is hard because people are collecting, as I said, in advance and greeting up sometimes that doesn't happen at the day of. And so this will allow us in real time to coordinate and track those volunteers. So I think it'll be more effective if we'll also probably have a paper version and I know I'm keeping track, not electronically as well for the corporate groups anyhow. So does that mean that because my ultimate Frisbee team has a tournament on that day that we could go before or after and this app would help us pick a place to go? Correct, yeah. And I should say... Just as an example. That's a great example. No, and I know you did that, your team did that last year and I really appreciated that. And just as an example too, if there are particular projects, so Greenup Day, while we embrace picking up litter, there are other projects happening around town. I know there's an installation going into the North Branch. I know there's gonna be some beds being planted around City Hall. So there's some other efforts. And if you have particular efforts, I've put an email out to the tree board folks. If there are other efforts that you'd like help with, that you think would be in the public interest, I'd be certainly willing to take those as well. Great, thank you so much. Thanks very much. Excellent, Greenup Day is one of my favorite days in Vermont. Thank you, Nate. For the new council members, Nate is also Mr. Skating Rink. Yeah, so grateful for that too. He works hard. It's now gone. He says it was a big plan. Okay, we're up to the police department presentation. You're gonna need a second? Huh? You just have to hook up the public here. Sure, yeah, but maybe we can take a little five minute break here while Tony sets up. Okay, so we're... All right, this is the... License ordinance? This is the John as an idiot. No. Oh, it is, this is, I'm gonna blame my, being my first term at the time and I didn't know what was going on. I was young and naive. We went through, at my own encouragement, we went through a couple rounds of conversations about the crazy licenses. And when Rosie brought up the screwy ordinances and it was like the license, I was like, oh no, no, those are all out of date. Well, it did back through the minutes. Turns out they weren't out of date. We went through and made two rounds of it at the time and we took sort of the first wave out and then there was, we came back to it and there were some different requests that came from the council that I was supposed to get back to the council with something more formal about and it got put off and put off and put off for months and it went into oblivion. And, somewhere along the line, I decided that they must have magically happened because I've been acting as though they have. I've been bragging about how I was responsible for getting rid of the dry cleaners ordinance, what a ridiculous thing that was and we, in fact, still technically require a license for anyone who would want to come in out of town to have their dry cleaning done in Montpelier. That was, in fact, the very license that inspired me to say, let's go through these. So anyways, what I have here is a list of the things that we were supposed to come back to minus the dry cleaning ordinance. I'd love to get rid of that too, but these are the, there was some concern about environmental contamination or something so that got sort of left hanging. But if I had come back, and this was largely Tom Galanca who had wanted some other changes, this is what would have come next. It would have included an addition, you see in the thing I printed out there, of section 912, which is sort of an odd place to put it, but it's where you want to put it, requiring that a license fee schedule just gets approved annually by the city council, taking it out of the ordinances entirely, which I actually think is probably a pretty good idea. And then all the repealings that you see underneath are those sections of those license ordinances that set the rate. So that way all the sort of hardwired license rates are out. There's a license fee schedule understanding up there that I would just bring to sort of re-approve, re-view. And then a couple of the licenses that had gotten added in at my request were then supposed to be pulled out again at my request just because the circumstances around them had changed and they seemed needlessly punitive. So all that stuff just literally never happened. So I just wanted to run this by you all, see if it's still something that the council, even though it's a completely different council, would like to do, and I hope you'd also be interested in getting rid of the dry cleaner license. And I could draw it all up as a proposed ordinance change and just start throwing it at you all next time because it's pretty goofy and it's pretty embarrassing that I dropped the ball and then told myself I hadn't. So the dry cleaner license is what? That someone who doesn't live in Montpelier and brings their clothes into Montpelier to... Well, the dry cleaner is supposed to have a license and then you're supposed to come and get a license from my office if you're from outside of town and you wanna have your dry cleaning done in town. Let's see that one. Yeah, yeah. It's right up there with the dairy ordinance that we did get rid of. We did manage to make the cut there. But yeah, yeah, so it's, you know, and there was also one that was discussed around back and forth with the blacksmith one. And I was actually the one who encouraged that to stay in because I was like, you know, that could be kind of a boutique kind of thing somebody might wanna do and that could be a massive crazy fire hazard if somebody wanted to and we might wanna license it. You know? So that was the other odd one, but you know, whatever you all make the rules, like just, you know, type things. He just confused us. I'm very much in favor of doing this. I would encourage you when you bring it back. So I assume that we have to go through the normal process, we've got to have two hearings. Yes, I was just looking for guidance. So when we do that, I would simultaneously like to adopt the fee schedule so that we're not operating for a while without fees. Right, so I guess if we're gonna do it in the order of operations, because we would probably have to do that immediately after the second reading was passed. Well, we could do it in the next meeting because it wouldn't go into effect for another 15 days after second reading was passed. So that would theoretically put it to the next meeting. So the next meeting, you could just approve it. It would probably be the order of operations. But the hearings just will propose the changes along with the sync up. Okay, well, the fee schedule wouldn't be part of an ordinance change though. Rosie's suggesting is that we approve that at the same time we do. Yeah, and the second reading. So we have new fees and plates for the same thing. Okay, I'm just saying they wouldn't, the change wouldn't affect for two weeks. Right, that's all. So that's the end of the meeting. Just have any more on that, Rosie? No, that would, that's good. Dry cleaner up, down. Well, okay, so I'm gonna put in my two cents here, which is that I think it does not make sense to require a license from somebody out of town to get their direct cleaning done in town. That does not make sense to me. But I do, I would like to see dry cleaners, like the, that operation continue to be licensed because it does, you know, it has the potential to use some pretty gnarly chemicals that should they're, you know, kind of like the issue with the blacksmith, right? Like if, if something were to happen, like we want that paper trail and we want to make sure that they're doing their due diligence. And I would actually also make the same case for gas stations. Oh, gas stations. I would like, those are the two that I would, I mean, I might be in the minority, I could get outvoted, that's fine. But those are the two that I would want to retain of all of those that are listed. Dunnan and John. Well, I mean, you're the chemist. Versus listing those specific, what if you made the general heading that things that dealt with certain chemicals or potential, do you have to name the producer, such as the cleaner, the gas station, or is it the, the businesses that deal with certain products that are potentially in danger? I think naming chemicals that we want to prohibit is. Or the, or the characteristic, no, okay. I don't think there's, I don't think there's any way to really effectively do that or enforce it or. I think the only thing I would mention as far as the potential pushback is part of the reason why I got here. I just sort of realized these things were here is that the gas station license, the dry cleaner license doesn't look like they had been enforced in, in decades. So I will be going to them for the first time in, you know, 50 years and saying, hey, guess what, you owe us money. So you might get some pushback on that. My understanding is that the dry cleaner that's in, in town, that's, you know, a very main, that's not actually a dry cleaner, it's just dropping off the point, right? So. Oh, I don't know. That's my understanding of that. Yes, it's a drop off. Because it's a drop off, I would guess that they, well, I don't know. I mean, is that covered by dry cleaners? I would guess not, but yeah. It sounds like this is a discussion we should have in the discussion on whether to feel that. Yes. I'll build something for you all to bounce off of, and then you. I'll give John the go ahead to, to do this, and we'll have two carries. Okay. You didn't get anything else from this, right? Nah. Okay. We're good. Okay, great. So, back to the least department presentation. Great, I'm gonna move. So first off, this is our plug. We run Apple products in the cruisers. So. So. Sorry, you're back. No, that's okay. I'll tell you, okay. We're good. Oh, well, yeah, actually, thank you. Sorry. So this is, last meeting, we just did the real quick one on the admin. This is the first of our department presentations, trying to get everyone acquainted with the functions of the department. As you know, we all took, except for Jack, took a tour of the police department last Wednesday. You may have forgotten that. There were a lot that's happening after that tour, but we did spend an hour with the police chief. And this is really the follow-up walkthrough and a chance to have an open conversation about department issues. We'll be doing these systematically. Next meeting will be DPW, which is why we're scheduling the tour for the next meeting. Kevin, what's up? So. Without a turning, what do you think? All right. Thank you all for the opportunity. This is gonna be, I'm gonna start off with like a 10,000 foot view, but we can, if there's any questions at any time, by all means, you know, we'll all try to address them, as best I can. And the main point is to take away from tonight's presentation is, first of all, Montpelier is still an incredibly safe and very healthy community. So even though things that I focus on sometimes are the darker side of social challenges, from crime to even potential terrorism, to opiate addiction, all those things. But overall, Montpelier is doing very, very well. So I'll start off with the, just our organizational chart. Next one, Bill? You have the, oh yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I just don't think. Okay. You can see that, but our authorized strength right now is 16 police officers. We currently have a vacancy that we have been, we've identified at the candidate, that that vacancy was, came about last June, when an officer left our agency for another agency up in the northern part of the state. And it just, so one of the challenges there, highlights how long it takes to identify a police officer candidate. And then this person, she is actually currently, has been a dispatcher with us. She is a level two part-time police officer with another community, but she is the one that we've identified as the next full-time Montpelier police officer. So she'll, she finishes her testing later this month. And she is, all goes well. She will be starting the full-time Basic Academy at Pittsburgh in August of this year. The Basic Academy is 16 weeks, and then there's a couple weeks of post-basic training. So it just gives you a sense of how long the process takes. Because she's already part-time certified, we're able, we'll be able to hopefully start front-loading some of her field training. But just because for any candidate when they go to the Police Academy, they also still will have several weeks of structured field training with a certified field training officer when we've got a few in the department. Just to make sure that from a legal process to the Montpelier way, if you will, that any new officer is still with all those skills. So we know they're gonna be effective once they are on their own. So it's a very lengthy process. This is the, there's been a change. I wasn't able to update on this slide. This is our structure for dispatching. And as you see on the end, dispatcher Danielle Fratini. She is the candidate that we've identified that will be our next police officer. And we've already hired and are training Maryam Larkin, who's not on here as she is our newest full-time dispatcher. In addition to the structure here, we have seven full-time dispatchers, one of whom is a dispatch supervisor that's Fred Cummings. We're also very fortunate that we have three part-time as needed dispatchers. Each one of those was a former full-time dispatcher with our department. So that really helps us out when, you know, cover time, vacation, or when we get down staff. And parking division, we have one full-time CS community service officer. That's what, it'll be different when Tom O'Carroll talks about CSO from when I talk about CSO. And then we have, and the other, and Sheila works half-time. And Charlie is retired from the Paranapalic Works as a supervisor. And he is, so he has very limited hours, but what he does is he does a lot of the mechanical, the behind-the-scenes maintenance downstairs in the basement of our, from the meters to helping work the kiosk and also does the collections. So it's a very small, but very potent little team. I'll just real quick again, what does CSO stand for for you? Community service officer. Thank you. And a lot of that because they are represent, they do represent the department on the street, especially during high tourist times, but they can handle a variety of general questions. And also when we have big events, July 3rd, Corporate Cup, where we also, they will assist at intersections and with traffic, they can't direct traffic in the same legal way that a police officer can, but we do, they definitely are part of our public safety team and augment us very nicely during those big events. It's just a snapshot of the operations side of an expenditures. What's not included here is the equipment side and also the station and the big picture things. So most of this is in salaries. And also when we look at the communications budget, what's not included there is for example, it's some of the revenue offset between like for this, for FY19, our primary partner, which is still a contractual client relationship is Capital West and their portion for FY19 is about $340,000 that they pay to the city of Montpelier for dispatching services. Then there's roughly to shy of another $10,000 from the Capitol Police. Those are the, that's the department that actually works inside the State House. So in total, we have about $350,000 in revenue for that year. And we'll talk a little bit more. I'm sure there's any questions about dispatching as in turn. I just wanna clarify that $300,000 or so is that reduces this line item or that's on top of it? No, no, that reduces it. So our primary function, it's we have to be a jack of all trades in some regard and a master as many as possible. Primary function is just general police and duties that is be available for calls, we have patrol functions and it's, one of the benefits to being a law enforcement is that you never know what you're gonna do from day to day. There's a diversity of needs for any community and that's, so it really requires a work of police department that is well-trained and really engaged in the community and that's something that we really pride ourselves on. To be effective in our mission, we rely heavily on partnerships and collaboration. In particular, we work very closely with the Vermont Drug Task Force. That is overseen by the Vermont State Police, many of those cases, though the larger ones do end up being prosecuted by the United States Attorney's Office in Burlington. We also work very, very closely with the alcohol, tobacco and firearms that's our most close relationship as far as all the federal agencies, so we're also well with FBI and DEA in particular, as well as the US Attorney's Office. Project Safe Catch is something that started in Montpelier back in 2016 and it came out of a conversation before the city council in the fall of 2015. We just, what's, where was Montpelier at with the opioid crisis? And this was a program that became basically a police assisted addiction recovery initiative. We looked first of all, matter of fact it was a clip that Bill had sent me from I think it was 60 minutes or something about what Chief Leonard Campanella was doing in Gloucester, Massachusetts. And it was kind of, it was definitely groundbreaking at the time where instead of just arresting and prosecuting addicts was really how to facilitate getting them to treatment. So from that, many, many communities, it's not fairly common, but merely many communities are looking at if that makes a lot more sense. We were one of those communities. At the time we were still less than 100 communities that were doing it across the country. We were closely with Deputy Chief Dave Grover up in Scarborough, Maine. And their model is what we try to replicate. The difference that we had on the ground here in Washington County with our hub and spoke was that we did not have a waiting list. I didn't even know that until that council meeting in 2015. So working with Deborah Hopkins from Central Motsom Services, she's like, hey, that's not the situation here. But yet we always saw in the media mostly originating out of Burlington back when TJ Donovan was the state's attorney and Eric Miller was the US attorney there. We kept hearing about the six month wait list. That was the challenge that Jenin County and the Burlington area in particular had. So when there were all these press conferences we just, that was just being drummed into our heads. So when I also working with the undercover community, Law Enforcement Media said, what are the addicts saying? I mean, what's, do you have the other opportunities where you're talking to these people? Why aren't they getting held for treatment? And a lot of it was, they were saying that they weren't even bought, besides their own addiction, the way addiction works. But also they just didn't think that it would really help readily available. So what, so a project safe catch, which is now county wide, every police agency has signed on to this is that we would help facilitate. Somebody initiates at two o'clock in the morning, even, I need help. They can come to the mob, put your police permit, they can go to it. Then they can fly down a trooper, they go to a very city police department and we will get them to where they're gonna be supported. Now two o'clock in the morning, the hubs, you know, they're not gonna have immediate treatment. So what we've done is we were able to leverage and partner with Washington County Mental Health and the Lighthouse. That's our public inebri event, which happens to be basically co-located with the hub up in Berlin. And they've modified their mission so they could take somebody that's, that's not the opiate, but that was the focus. They can be, at least they're there with somebody else that can keep them supported until the hub they're able to go in and start, you know, it's not gonna be full-blown resident treatment, but they can start that support and start that hopefully recovery. The other important partner we probably safe catch is the Emergency Department Central Medical Center. In particular, Mark Dehman and Dr. Javad Mishkari, they've worked very closely right from the beginning. So in case any patients need more critical care. Also, as we, the other part of the opiate challenge is with the over-prescription. And, you know, Central Medical Center was one of the first emergency departments to restrict the amount of prescription narcotics that would be coming out of the emergency department for an issue. And also, what's vital to any, you know, strategy like this is we have to have the prevention of the educational side. So working closely with Ann Gilbert from the Central Monteney Directions Coalition was also with us right from the start when we launched this. So we're pretty proud of the work. It's, the numbers have been unfortunately underwhelming, but the impact so far has been substantial and the impact from a positive standpoint. We don't, without any, I don't have the statistical enough cases to show what the true impact was to my failure, but we did know that in 2017 we did not have any fatal overdoses that we know of in my failure. When I say that, it's also in my failure fire department. Berglary was an unprecedented 50% burglary crop and we had an overall crime decrease last year of roughly 13%. And one, the only operational thing that we've done differently is project-saving catch. So anyway, it's just, it also, symbolically, it's important to show law enforcement is absolutely committed to the health crisis that addiction is. And so anyway, so that's project-saving catch in a nutshell. Next, I mentioned briefly in the walk-through, that in fact, Councillor Bate asked me about the President's Task Force Report on 21st Century Policing. This is, it came out in 2015 and it was really when, after Ferguson was really, was obviously a flash point for where police community relations really started spiraling downward and this Task Force Report highlights essentially six core pillars of policing and from our perspective, those are timeless and those are essentially our guiding principles and for the most part, even before this report came out, we were doing most of these things. Of those pillars, the last one, which is officer wellness is something that we really took to heart more recently and that includes, we have a police psychologist assigned to the police department that works with our dispatchers and our police officers. We have a dispatcher that's part of a peer support team and we have a police officer part of a peer support team and they're able to assist any other colleague or any other agencies and that's all part of the EAP program called EAP First so we're also definitely involved there. Physically, we, besides our training for officer wellness, that also includes, we carry a lock zone and which is not, which is primarily there in case we get exposed but also we're there for the community on that and other tactical casualty care type training that all of our officers receive as well as appropriate defensive, ballistic protection and keeping our officers safe and so that's really the big focus whereas the other, the crime prevention community, policing, public trust and accountability, those are things that I think the Montpelier Police Department historically have always valued so that's why I say the officer wellness piece is kind of the crystallized new part of how we deal with our department. Dispatching, Capital West and Montpelier, we deal with 18 communities that we provide fire EMS dispatching and it's really gone from a smaller contract to we're really building a partnership and that includes radar procedures protocol and there'll be a lot to discuss later on. I'm not gonna do a presentation regarding the CVPSA but those are all things that we've been all working together what's the right next step to take for a dispatch. Parking, those who don't know, we roughly have 425 parking meters scattered about this city and we also manage a variety of major events including even today our department participated with the security and preparations of the governor's bill signing. So performance measures, how we're doing. Right now we start off a couple years ago on our strategic planning process and unfortunately I will tell you that it is absolutely stalled. Part of that is what is the right information? What are the right benchmarks to determine are we, you know, how is the community better for what we are doing and how we are doing? So our feedback comes from a variety of sources but that's something that we have not lost sight of but it's an area that we need to work on certainly again making sure that we're just putting in, it's easy to say how many car stops we make but again, what's the relationship to those car stops and traffic safety. Can I ask you a question, what's RMS? Records Management System. Right, okay, yep, thank you. And we use what's called Valkor, there's two systems in the state, that's one is Spillman, the other is Valkor and it's not, it can't do, it's very limited as far as it's not a computer-y dispatch system and some of the report features, it's getting a little better, so I can run some basic statistical reports but from a true robust cop stat model where officers can have kind of a real-time snapshot of where we need to focus our attention and what partners we need to bring to address a particular problem in a timely manner, it doesn't, we're just not there. There's just more some of the, just giving a sense of how busy we are and we are struggling especially with the nature of protests on the last, really last two couple years, special events. We just don't, quite frankly, we're really beyond the limit of having enough officers to do what we're doing but to meet the expectations of the community and also we have to think about, back to Officer Welles, we have to think about those police officers. The captain and I teamly come in on weekends to assist when there's protests, major events. The city does a lot of wonderful events but again in today's, just the nature, the threat nature, the potential. It's not what it was five years ago and even certainly 20 years ago. So there's things that we're thinking about that kind of keep us up at night. So everything feels the same and how, whether it's a farmer's market, July 3rd, corporate cup and whatever the event may be but a lot of these unplanned ones are really starting to burn out folks because people, it's hard to plan on things when there's another event that's around the corner. Do you have the ability to call on like sheriff deputies to assist with some of these big events? Yes, it's come a long way but there's still certain things that are absolutely affiliate responsibility but a lot of the protests are really centered on state issues and nothing to do quite frankly with the city whether it's the pipeline protests or even today I was in the command post in the unified command with state police and then all the capital police. So we're kind of all in it together so that's come a long way. We have an MOU and there's a crisis that any of the departments in Washington County will support one another includes the state police but one of the challenges that we have in the summertime is that the sheriff in Sam Hill is a little bit limited as far as when he has resources available to us as well. So and then somebody did so in short answer, yes we do get help where we can but it's not the kind of situation that we can routinely depend on and also we have to be careful of, we have a standard, not to say other departments are on the same standards but we don't use part-time police officers here in Moctilier just because you never know what they're gonna have to deal with whether it's a mental health call right in the middle of a major event, things like that. So we're very careful in how we do that and there is a shortage of statewide law enforcement. Thanks. Can I ask, how many statistics are these annual in the past? Yeah, I'm sorry, all these numbers here, this represent 2017. Our social media, we use Facebook and so take it for what it is but right now it's been has been quite successful for us. We've not started some departments, we'll use Twitter feeds and for more timely communication exchanges with the community, but again, when you do that and you create that expectation, it better be there all the time and that is absolutely, we just don't have the capacity capability to do that. This might be more of a question for Bill but is that an area where we could potentially, does the police department have to be, the ones actually doing the posting could be managed from this? We were routinely, especially when we've had situations at the high school, I don't just mean this January, but other very serious situations that we've had at our schools. As soon as I can, I'm communicating with Bill and because I'm not in a position where we have a fully established incident command where we would utilize, like Sue has been, I was our public information officer at a unified command, for example, at the March for Our Lives command post but when things are really happening in the moment, I absolutely rely on the city manager's office to really get that word out for us. Yeah, just to expand on that, the city has a Facebook page and the police do it and we always will repost theirs and usually likewise but they post on their own, it's usually very informative things, like this is something, it's usually not during a crisis, it's like time to get your bikes inspected or did you know that your police are doing it? It's very informative and I think they actually like that part of it. For emergency communications right there in the middle of doing what they're doing, we take that right away. Okay, that's just an area I'm wondering about, efficiencies in one person responsible for all the city's Facebook pages or something, but if it's working then. Yeah, and for emergent notifications, we use Vermont Alert and there's certainly a lot of templates and that's something that an incident commander, whether it's from the police, fire, we can get those out pretty quickly, which can also be geo-fets, in other words, something, even a situation that only involves the metro area, we can just highlight that area and anybody, depending on what level somebody is signed up for or we can do, it's kind of like the reverse 911 for landlines too. So if it's an emergency, we can do that type of notification and that'll be the part of the Vermont Alert system. Tony, can you break down 481 accidents? It seems like a lot. What does that, what does that make? Parking lot, fender benders. Fender benders. Uh-huh. Is there a particular part of town or roadways that have these fender benders? Because it doesn't say auto accidents, so I wasn't sure. Yeah, those are, you know, the serious accidents I must say are, and I give a lot of credit to Better Road Engineering and the work of Public Works and AOT. I don't know if you called long, a long time ago, the intersection of 2302 by Formula Ford used to be one of the very dangerous intersections, statewide, we've had horrendous, very bad, bad car accidents there and now, knock on wood, are serious accidents unless it's somebody that's driving at insane speed or drunk driving, very few serious accidents, fortunately. But we still have to respond to those and essentially we're just facilitating exchange of information. We're not investigating those, but it certainly takes a big chunk of our day and it's usually on day shift, so. I, forgive me, I don't actually know this, is it required that somebody call in that situation and if not, should we do some better public information about if it's just a fender bender, just exchange your insurance information? Yeah, we certainly have, we've had a lot of internal conversations on and other at state level even about how to best manage this because, you know, slide offs, for example, for the state police, same thing that they're frustrated with, you know, during a snow storm. Which ones you go to, which ones not. A lot of times with fender benders too, sometimes people, you know, get pretty hot headed. So, just once we get there, and if we're busy, you know, we'll prioritize calls still, if we can't get to it, we'll just have dispatch explain to them, just have them exchange information. So we do try to manage it there, but we also, yeah, again, we're not doing a full narrative or detailed investigation, and then the rest just becomes, goes into our records management system, and then later the insurance company requests it, so that's one of those public record requests, technically, just getting it to the insurance companies. I'm just wondering if we could reduce that cost by doing a little bit of, you know, reminding the public that they don't. Yeah, the duty, you know, to report the accident to DMV is by statute, and that has to do, if there's any injury, you know, we should definitely be called, obviously, if there's ever any injury, potential injury, and if, or if there's potential DUI, you know, there's a lot of factors, and that's the other challenge that we may have, I mean, when you do have someone who's intoxicated, whether it's under drugs or alcohol, you know, we don't wanna miss that either, but. But we're always looking at his, it's certainly a major resource challenge for law enforcement, it's a whole. Chief, what's overtime looking like these days, especially with, you know, all this on your blade and having the vacancy compared to previous years, so mandatory overtime? Oh, it's a lot of mandatory overtime, and actually we are still, I'm surprised, but we are under budget at the moment, you know, by my budget, not much. You could say we're not over budget. Right, right, which is, you know, and I don't have a great explanation for that, but I think, you know, because usually, yes, when we're full strength, we can reduce that when we're, you know, on a donor or full contingent, that then we certainly have to add to that. But a lot of it is, you know, training can be part and part of our overtime, but also, it's like public works too, what are the events, you know, what's the weather? There's a variety of factors that I can check, but yeah, but right now, this, right now, we're okay. And this is actually the, probably, I think since I've achieved the first year that I can remember at this stage of the budget that the overtime has not been starting to look a little on the security side. Thanks. Also, the other thing that's suffered, but we try to, when we had 17 officers, bike patrol is something that's, I think, very near and dear, turn to my heart and to the department. And it's just a, I can't say enough about how valuable the tool is of just bike patrol. I would like to do more of that, but it's hard to do that when you're, you know, you've got two, generally two patrol officers on the shift. And, but it's something that I'm hoping, as we look at, you know, at least getting back to where we used to be at 17 officers and possibly at least considering 18, but doing more of those of that particular. Now, look at that as a program. It's just a good tool. So, you know, foot patrol is very important as well, but as a former bike officer, I can tell you that the bike is just, you know, you still have all that, you know, you're very approachable on the bicycle, you know, from adult to child, you know, a seven-year-old could say, hey, you're on a bicycle, I'm on a bicycle, we have something in common. And also, the bike can get, we get from point A to point B very quickly with stealth. And also, as we all know, living in my peculiar, we have two main streets and sometimes it can be like driving in midtown, you know, when those two streets are all jammed on traffic and the bike is just, it can be very quickly and then safely through there. So, coffee with a cop is only that one of our, Mike Philbrook had brought to our apartment a couple years ago now. And that's also been just a really great opportunity to have a very low-key, non-adversarial setting. Just talk to anybody about anything. As a matter of fact, many of these Mike and other officers, they will bring our policy annual. They will bring a copy of the task force report on 21st century policing. And, you know, unless it's an active investigation or something that's operationally sensitive, you know, any one of these officers can answer any question about how our department functions and where our priorities are. On that, do you have one coming up or is it a regular schedule? That's not really scheduled. A lot has to do with what Q wants to host us. So, the most recent one, we were over at Down Home a couple weeks ago. We've done them at the Senior Activity Center on Berry Street and the very first one that we kicked off several years, many years ago now was First Grove. So, we keep moving around and so it's a, but it's a really just a great opportunity to be with the public where it's not a car stop. It's, you know, we're not focused on something else, like during the parade or something where we can just really have a conversation. And that's really important and that's one of the beauties to small town policing. So, we've had a lot of successes. I've touched upon many of these. What's gonna be really important when we think about the budget and I will be as we prepare for the 2020 budget trying to hopefully there'll be an opportunity to get the department back to full, what I would consider full strength. But what's always been really important and the city's always been very supportive is that we always maintain our training goals. Even when we had to do staff going down to 16 officers many years ago, you know, city manager was made clear to me, do not cut your training because when we were looking at what's left to cut, what's left to cut and that's something that is absolutely critical in today's policing environment. Is it the public expectations, the demands, the diversity of the job require us to have the best training that we can afford and still without having everybody in school all the time. And for example, right now, one of our officers is at Roger Williams for two weeks. He's the last of our supervisors. He's a corporal to go through the command training. Earlier this winter, we were very fortunate opportunity. Brandon Dalpozzo was able to get Dr. Bryant Marks who used to be part of the White House team under President Obama, who is a subject matter expert on implicit bias training. And I was able to listen to his presentation down in Washington back in 2016. He was able to come up here and we were so fortunate to get every one of our sergeants, captain and corporals to go through that training. And that was like $20,000 to get him to come up to Vermont. And every one of the officers had the same reaction that I did. I mean, that he's just one of the best in the business, quite frankly. So that's the kind of training that whenever we see those opportunities, we always try to seek. So to make sure that our officers are on top of how we, because sometimes we might say, hey, we're doing it right, but you have to look at, what is the data telling us? We need guidance on looking at ourselves in the mirror. And especially it's a little easier for our department because the statistical, the data is smaller. As a matter of fact, most recent report that Dr. Cenguino of UVM just released. She really only had to focus on, I think, three departments, just because it's good to have the relevance needed. And that was the Vermont State Police and then we're at Burlington PD and I think South Burlington. I don't even think Rutland was on there. And our department was one that did participate with our data. But again, there was nothing on this report because the last report was heavily flawed from various standpoints. And so she tried to correct the process and also the Vermont Chiefs of Police also helped support some second matter expertise to get that. So those are the things that we always need to be doing is looking at, it's one thing, do we think we're doing it right? But how do we know we're doing it right? And that's always has to do with listening and then looking at what are any patterns that, again, that's what implicit bias is. It's a bias that we have but we don't really think about. Explosive, that's the easy one. But that's, so anyway, that's just an example of the kind of training, the diversity of training that we're always seeking in our department. Tony, is any of your training that you have appropriate to open beyond the police department? We talked about things like Citizen Academy, but once again, I mean, we are so bare bones with our staffing, but there's so many things that we would love to do for the community and for ourselves too, it's a two-way street that we just don't have the resources. We are just, right now, we are barely keeping up with the day-to-day challenges. So I think that's the best venue to do that is to have like a Citizen Academy where we can talk about these things and bring in outside educators that can help be there for both the community members and for the department. But generally, it's most are law enforcement specific. Mental health area response is one other area that we are very proud of our reputation and our collaborative work with Washington County Mental Health in particular. Back in 2011, when Mary Moulton was Interim Commissioner of Department of Mental Health, she had an idea to launch after we lost after Irene when they had to revamp the whole mental health system. It really wasn't a system, even from my perspective, then is that how do we, how can we have better outcomes when there's a police involvement with somebody in a mental crisis and team two was born from that, from Mary's idea. And our department, the Mont State Police and other stakeholders, and I'm still on the steering committee for the team two training model, but it's a joint response training between mental health and law enforcement working in a, it's an eight hour program to, and it's a scenario based training where you really understand who does what. In other words, once the safety issues and some legal issues are dealt with, the whole point of response to somebody in crisis, whatever that crisis may be, is to get them to the appropriate level of care, which once the safety piece is done, it's not a law enforcement issue. And that's where, so team two is based on the model of the historic model of how Montpelier PD has always worked with Washington County Mental Health. And even as a former negotiator for our department, I've had difficult scenarios and scenes where I was negotiating. And even though it was because of weapons or it's a lot of weapons, it was always important to have knowing that I had a mental health screener right there with me just in case. And sometimes if I wasn't getting through this to somebody, I'd introduce the screener. We've worked so closely with them. And so that's something that we're really proud of or how that works. So if I can, sorry to interrupt. I just wanna express that I'm feeling the tension between wanting you to be really thorough. Oh, okay, I'm sorry, yeah. And I know we've got a few more slides to go. So, but I am really interested in the challenges, so. All right. I just wanted to make sure I said that out loud. Okay. Besides, right now I think we're police officers and I want to maintain the training and what we've been doing. We've got good equipment. Can I ask a couple of questions about those challenges before you move on? Or maybe those are like an expanded version of the challenges. Some, yeah. Okay, well I just saw on there there was a facilities need. I mean, I know we have a .25 facilities guy. Is that enough? Is that working out? It's so far we're getting by. As a matter of fact, Steve Twombly today just is finishing up the RFPs for our, to get rid of our chillers for our cooling system, which have been very problematic on the station to the heat pumps. So again, it's once we've identified those projects, who's gonna manage those projects? And then secondly, I saw also on there just an increased reliance on IT services. And again, like, is it enough? Or is it working? We keep working. You know, I know Seth, the city's IT person spends quite a bit of time in our police department. Yeah. And we're getting by. Okay. So it's working. Okay, that's all I need to know. Thank you. And also to get a point out, we also have an officer that does a lot of in-house work on some of the other systems, whether it's a cruiser video, station video, an audio, to even our ID card badges. Have you had any need that interfaced with the consultant IT? You know, we changed from two. No, that is, you know, Todd can talk more about that. As far as, you know, we have it, you know, I'm always having that, you know, keep my fingers crossed, especially when we look at Atlanta and the Denial Service ransomware. You know, trying to make sure that we are not vulnerable. So I am hoping that, and again, I'm pretty old. So I think we put, there's too much reliance on communities in some regard, but I also know it's the only way we operate. So, but it's so far, we've been, it seems to work well. But again, Todd, Todd can explain more. As far as ransomware, we do have services in place to back up everything. I'm finding that a lot of these instances that we're hearing there in the mainstream news, that failure to back up or to back up, that is not offsite or protected in a manner that allows the community to restore. So our, while we couldn't lose work or data, potentially we're looking at, probably a two hour window. So if we were at a 10, we couldn't lose, you know, between eight and 10 a.m. worth of data. But as far as critical backup and infrastructure, radios, communications, those are all, have secondary systems to follow the wrong, too. So that we wouldn't have the, wouldn't jeopardize emergency services. Thank you. The continuity of the operation plan, which we have for the police department, the police department, all of our sites, our, you know, our department has a generator, the city hall has a generator, which also powers the fire department. And our radio system, which includes national life, is a generated site. And our secondary, we had to back up the police department, our secondary location, which was also one that's generated. Is that, oh, as far as the challenge is, I think. Yes, that's great. Thank you. I'll give you a look at the news. Obviously this, you know, what's happening, dark web, big, big challenge. People are buying narcotics that way. To most recently, we also saw a back page, something that we've known about for quite some time, as far as potential prostitution and other, was finally, was shut down just the other day. The mandatory domestic violence training for this year, all police officers are required to have, is based on the cyber crime scene in intimate relationship violence. And so, so technology is something that we are doing the best we can to stay on top of. Major problem, I alluded earlier, just recruiting retention quality officers. So we all, for the most part, we've had a very stable workforce. And as a matter of fact, last year, until that officer left, we had, we were at, as far as we could tell, a historic high as far as stability went. And it takes a long time to train officers. We're coming up on both state police, having many, many people retiring. Our department, we anticipate one retirement this year from the senior year of college. Then, Captain and myself are looking at that age too, where we're looking at two to two and a half years. So we're also trying to, as we can, with succession planning, making sure that the department is at, hopefully, its full strength. So, whoever succeeds me, whether it comes from outside or inside, that we're off on the right foot. Do we do anything with internships or as a school resource officer getting kids interested in careers in policing? Or is there, I don't know. Yeah, we do, we have had interns from Norwich in the past, and then various projects with us. The challenges that I talk about here, whether it's the Montpellier Police Department, I've even had, this conversation I've even had back when he was still director with Drencher Comey a couple years ago, the FBI was facing the same challenges that we are. And especially with the, a lot of fields do not want to go into public safety for a variety of reasons. This is a national conversation. Oh, I know, yeah. I see many conferences, it's one of the top topics. Is there anything here we could be doing? Well, we look, yeah, we're doing, we've made our commitment. We're doing more at Norwich just last week. Norwich, every year, does a CSI symposium. And we had another Norwich alum, Mike Philbrook, was there to do a mentoring piece. And we had one of our dispatchers there as well to, so we're participating there. We, you know, and so I've reached out to all of our, our folks saying, could be a Champlain alum. We have some Castleton Norwich to just use those opportunities we already count to help plant seeds. So, but it's a really, you know, it's just a difficult person's profession. And, you know, even other city jobs that are available, you know, the pay is comparable for other departments and it's not being a police officer. So, with the working hours that these folks do. So, I think everything else is pretty, you know, we're not aware of any questions or anything else, but some of the key, I've already hit on that, some of the highlights here. Officer safety issues, fentanyl, it's also something that's been on the news quite frequently. As I mentioned earlier, that was one of the main reasons early on in 2015 that we started, we see training and started carrying the lock zone. It's just one more layer of danger to get that third officer's face routinely. And still one of the largest, larger, you know, I don't know if it's still as large as the largest, but fentanyl arrest in Vermont was here until a couple of years ago. Top of the pride of safe catch, just noteworthy events. The case of the killing of Marcus Austin, Javon Caballero's case is still a process. And we've done really well. And every time we have, even today, when we have these protests, marches, major events, we bring in a lot of partners, Intelligence Center, Homeland Security, State Homeland Security. We do debriefs and hot washes, what can we do better? For example, the Women's March, which overwhelmed us completely. It wasn't a matter of needing more law enforcement resources, it was a matter of, you know, we didn't have any coordination in a timely manner, so we weren't expecting it, it was a transportation. So since then, we've, so from March for our lives, we had AOT, along with our public works as well from the early phases of planning. So, but we were doing pretty well there. And then, even though I had a very tragic outcome, the response as difficult as it was for the bank robbery at the BSECU this winter in January, you know, my highlight is that our school resource officer that have me at the high school, there is also one of our negotiators. And so he was able to track the subject and then coordinate the containment of him, get this, you know, the school is able to implement their safety, their procedures that we train on with all of our three schools, our safety planning. So, and that's something that was obviously a little bit more coming, we're just waiting for the press conference with the attorney general as well as the state's attorney. So we can then really, people will see a lot of, there's a major investigation involved, both for the robbery and then obviously, obviously the officer about shooting, which was the first one in the apartment's history. So that, sorry, I went on a little on a little bit. Any questions about anything? Quick one, chief, I said 425 parking spots were enforced in the city. Well, that meter's anyway, yeah. Meters, still, I had heard there was an arrangement with the capital plaza there in the back, is some of the private spots enforced as well in the city? Yeah, we have an arrangement with, there's a lease that the city has with capital plaza and we do provide enforcement for those spaces back there. We also have our, we have our kiosk area as well as working with capital plaza. So in that particular case, the city leases part of those four public spaces where people can purchase space, but it's part of the lease if people are parked in their area without a hotel, of course. Depends on how big their events are. But, sorry, I just wanted to thank the department for their work today. I was at the bill signing and it was extremely adversarial. And the fact that there were no incidents and nothing really bad happened. That's off to yourselves and everybody else for your work today. Thank you. There's a lot of moving pieces behind the scenes. I've got one more. Yeah. So in the past, we have kind of asked you to keep tabs on the costs of those protests or the street closures, especially street closures for various events. And I would just like to keep tab on that. So we don't need to talk about more tonight but just know that, I don't know if others are interested but I'm interested in kind of keeping track of how much are these things costing us just so that we can weigh in the future if we do need to charge fees. And I know we've discussed whether or not that's practical, that kind of thing. But so we know what the costs are. And also in our conversations with the state about payment and low taxes, if it's, you know, their events are costing us a significant amount of money and we can show that, I feel like that's... Just as a quick... Yeah, we are tracking that on the larger events. We're working with the Corporate Cup to something like that where it's a planned event that does make money, that they can add enough to cover not only our overtime costs, that's one that requires about 90% of the department to participate, but also the fire department as well as public works on that. So it's, so we're trying to work there. The only other way to look at it to like take it today, for example, we did have, my peer did not spend any overtime but it, and we participated in the planning but it takes me out of my office to do my peer specific things. So I will say that to the pilot conversation, what the state police has brought in and how they stepped up their participation not only for the state level events but also for our own major events. I gotta say it's a true relationship that is balanced in that regard. And I don't feel like that my peer is now owning too much of a state problem. The protests are frustrating. We're never gonna be able to build for a protest and we'd rather have one of the reasons also for the permit process. At least we know, it gives us a heads up and to at least to a certain extent who's responsible for what. But on the protests, you know, some of them in the past, it's, you know, we might get a, we have a good working relationship with some of the groups on the environmental side but it's always kind of moving around. It's things like the farmer's market, if it requires another event, I require additional resources to have the conversation. So I have a couple of questions. One of the parts, well, first of all, thank you for all that data. That was great. One of the things that I'm gonna, I anticipate we're gonna continue to do as a council is think about the data that we wanna see over time. And so I'm just anticipating, you know, which are the pieces that we pull out from the, you know, the RMS that you all have. And I appreciated that. You separated out that there are, that there's data about the city in terms of like the number of crimes, the number of burglaries or what have you. Some of that is, or number of car accidents, right? Like we can't necessarily directly affect the number of car accidents that happen if we have safe laws or, you know, driving rules, if there's a problem place or whatever. But that is, that feels more indirect than, you know, ways that we're evaluating, you know, I guess we're not really evaluating the department, but like, you know, and just in thinking about like, how are we doing as a city? And so, you know, one of the things, just in terms of data that we might want to be front-facing for the public, I mean, we as a group, I guess I would encourage us to think about like, what are the key indicators that tell us whether or not we are a safe community? And that tell us that our police department is doing well. And, you know, things that come to mind are obviously like, you know, how we're turning out and like the racial profiling evaluations and, you know, I love that in your presentation you had that the things that was under performance measures. So I assume those are sort of performance measures that you're inviting, but part of that was feedback from prosecutors or feedback from outside agencies. Like that stuff's harder to quantify, but that can be the most meaningful. We have an in on the council on there with the process. Yeah, right, right. So, in any case, you know, those are the, I guess, you know, thinking about how we are evaluating ourselves is something I'm very interested in. And it doesn't all necessarily need to be hard data. But I assume that we will, we will want some hard data to show the public as to. Yeah, the hard data is the easy one. It's the, you know, that's why I kind of threw in there from again, people from the prosecutor's office, also a circle, which is our partner with domestic violence. There's this reason why our department keeps getting asked, hey, can you serve on this? Can you do that? It's because of relationships and, you know, the efficacy of our and value of our work that we do collaboratively. But again, but what are, you know, but I need to know too, besides the day to day things, how, where do I focus our department and our resources in the most effective way I can. Right. Well, great. Part of an ongoing conversation. We'll always be ongoing. Yes, yes. Any further questions? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. We've done the licenses and ordinances. So I know Ashley is not here to necessarily talk about the social economic quality committee, but I mean, my, my understanding of this is that, well, I mean, it's even here in the, you know, in the information page for this item. Actually, unless Bill, you want to introduce it. I mean, I, I just talked with her and tried to brand this body. I dropped it before her and she said, this is what she wanted to say. So I don't have, you know, I think she's interested in looking at these issues. And I think she's kind of sees a combined effort. There's, you know, my concern, but also an excitement about this. One of the things that are within the cities, you know, there's certain things that the city government isn't, you know, we're not going to cure the causes of poverty, you know, like those things. So what can we do within the resources we have that we can make differences in how we reach out to populations? So I think part of, part of this committee's role might be to think about ordinances or policies is to have a look at the looks and say, what are we missing? Those kinds of things. And also our own, you know, what would be easy to happen. But then she was also interested in then engaging the broader community on some conversations that I would be on, so the government would be like, how did this work? Those were our twin goals. We talked it over, actually. Also last Wednesday night before, before the tour. And then I quickly wrote this up and sent it to her. She said, yes, this is it. Yes, Donna. When Ashley and I talked, we thought, I felt this was a real good follow-up from our resolution that we wanted, when we wanted to support and acknowledge the high school for Black Lives Matter and by the same time knowing that we needed to engage the public with better opportunities for all of us to grow and become more aware. So I saw this committee as being both systemic, dealing with the institution, but also bringing the community together for really community sensitivity awareness on all sorts of inequality issues, whether it's race or economics, but I would hope that would also come out of this committee. And this read this way, I appreciate what you wrote here. It seems to nail it down. So, other thoughts? The other thing was I'd really like to see some clear stakeholders or whether we name a variety of people like high school students or people from organizations within town, but that we actually think about the stakeholders and not just open it to 12 members or something. Yeah, Rosie, so not responding to that, but separately or in addition to this, I had a conversation with Bill about whether this is part of the work that the committee does or just alongside that we would ask city staff to think, and this is work for us as well, but to think about the ways in which their different departments interact and if there are areas for potential inequity in our application process for something or the hours that we have a service open or how we advertise that there's financial aid for something, I can't name all the ways because I don't know, but the city staff are more familiar with their programs and if we just make some time to mental space to think about those issues, I would encourage Bill to make that a priority for staff, but I wanted to kind of open that up and make sure that everyone else felt that way as well and then maybe with that direction that kind of empowers that conversation a little more. That makes sense to me, I think from my thinking a good analogy for what this is trying to do is sort of similar to the energy committee in that they have, you know, they see their mission as advising this council, but then they also become, you know, a catalyst for public conversation and outreach and other efforts besides things that are specific to the city, but I love this idea too of like if there's city staff that know, like this is potentially a problem, like of course that would be a great place to have that discussion and then bring it to council for an action if something needs to change or whatnot and recognizing that people probably don't know right now that there's a problem because if there was, I'm sure they would have identified it, but to set aside some time to say, okay, we're gonna think through are there things and actually do that work? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's where, you know, I think we, in terms of our own departments, we have what we call leadership teams and we've developed just some topic about pictures as being a topic, how could our departments reach out to the population of people who are missing in the department and those kinds of things. And I think as far as the public piece, and again, the city engaging in community conversation, I think we need to be careful about the morality of priests too, telling everyone how they should see and feel, but creating form for people to have those interactions themselves and then see the ability to be effective and then also check our own activity. So one possibility is that it feels like there needs to be a little more definition as to, you know, are we looking for 12 members and if we were looking for 12 members, are we saving seats for any particular organizations? Part of me feels like we're not quite ready to put this out to the public yet. I guess maybe we can throw it back to Ashley to say, come with a specific proposal about, or unless people here want to make that proposal. I feel like it needs a little more time. Yeah. Do people have suggestions for, you know, how it goes in the long end? I guess at the High School of the Justice Alliance came to mind and I can't remember the name that Kathy Johnson. CQ Strategies. But Kathy is an individual group. Yeah, right. I mean, she belongs to a group, but likewise talking to those groups and who do they interface with? It's like expanding that thought process. And maybe you have basically an information meeting to sort of sort out what this looks like and who should be members before we try to make a decision in such a shallow knowledge base. Yeah, Justice for All comes to mind as well. But then, you know, I'm also thinking about if there's somebody from the Bethany Church with a homeless shelter there that might be good. I mean, just brainstorming that. Okay, so maybe we can ask Ashley or to work with the city staff to come up with a solid, like more concrete proposal. That's something that we could put out to the public to say, you know, we're looking for people to join us. Okay, yeah. Can I, so that that work that I was suggesting can happen simultaneously, I guess I might make a motion that we direct the city manager to make inequity or, you know, looking for unintended areas of inequity within city business, a topic of conversation. I don't want to be too specific here Does that seem reasonable? Yeah. Okay, cool. Oh, second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Okay, so thank you. And, okay, and I guess we'll look for this on another upcoming agenda. All right, moving on to council appointments or committee appointments. So some of these, if I am not mistaken, like the first one, it's yellow. I assume we should just go straight through this, right? There's no council rep on the Americans with Disabilities Organization, but that's okay, unless somebody wants to. Correct. Yeah, we have had council reps and we have not had council reps. Does anybody want to? And what do they do? Does, I can imagine that some of these committees are committees that have a name that don't necessarily meet all that often. Some of them might be particularly active. So this group's pretty active. They try to meet monthly, I think, and they're working specifically. So their main function right now is we're required to create this transition. We're fully compliant with ADA and they're heavily in the work side of getting a consultant to do that. And then they will also discuss initiatives like if the rec department comes in and wants to talk about a program that gives some advice to how that didn't work and sort of vet it out. And they have on occasion, very rarely, there's been a community problem. Somebody's raised a non-city that there's a building that we can vet out. That happens a lot less frequently. They meet about, I think Sue's there, so I'm looking to her and nod, but he said monthly, right? It's monthly. And they do things, for example, mountaineers appear before them to talk about some changes they want to make to this stage and make it more ADA compliant. And the committee looks for ways to pay for that and ways to help them achieve their goals. So I think maybe doing a little bit of intro for each of these groups might be useful. So is anybody interested in, or shall we leave it as no councilor? Okay, let me on. The Building Code of Appeals, that we do have Glenn actually pointed to that, that is a group that hears our building code does have an appeal process, and if someone wishes to seek some sort of variance or appeal of a ruling made by the building inspector, they can go to this board. They used to meet fairly regular basis of the change in sprinkler regulations that were just going on, drastic, there's almost all of their appeals but at this point it's Rosie and Glenn. Great. Capital Complex Committee, the city is entitled to one rep. The appointed rep, and Paul has been our rep for some time and I think he's a solid job representing us and fighting what is sometimes an uphill battle. But it does, there's no requirement. For a long time it used to be a member of the planning commission but that change now is just a new person. I personally see that as a new change. Capital Projects Committee, that is a committee that meets two or three times intently around budget time when we are putting together our capital plan, sometimes meets occasionally outside of budget season to go over status of projects and those kind of things, look at policies related. We've traditionally had three council representatives. The last two were John, Holler, and Justin Turcotte and I think Jean had been on before that so they're all here, so they can see that Donna has sort of recently. Don't we give this a different name? We call it the CIP, Capital Investment Plan. Yeah. I want to stay on it. I want to use that. Please. Interchangeable, so they're right. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that's the one I thought it was. Same one, yeah. That's all right. Just to, I want to flag that, so Bill and I have had some conversation about this group. I mean, this is where decisions are made about which roads get paved over the course of the summer and what stormwater projects are we going to tackle and any recreation path improvements or whatnot. Recreation path improvements or whatnot. All those decisions get made there. So I mean, it seems like there's a lot of folks who would be interested in that, like those decisions. So I'm interested in seeing what that process is like and if we need to, I know they haven't, or they don't necessarily meet that many times but it might be something that we reevaluate what that process is like. And I think we will talk about this depending on time when public works comes in. There's a lot of public works that will probably be even longer than the police. But typically the process in the past, the council has established a funding policy for four capital projects and we've been following that and it's been budgeted accordingly and so then it's fitting the projects into the funding. And typically DPW and staff puts together a rough draft. This committee reviews that and goes back and forth, helps prioritize and put those things in and I hate to correct them. The actual proposal was made by the city council. That's nice. The committee makes the recommendation. It's usually listed in the budget document. This year, there really was zero discussion about that council doing the budget. It was just adopted as part of the budget in other years. It has been lengthy conversation here. So, I think. I'm sure that will not be the last time you correct me. Clarify, let me clarify. Yeah, that's fine. So, other people who might be interested in that. It's a great committee folks. Really. Where the money is. I think I could potentially be interested and I'm also curious since there are three spaces whether it might make sense. And since it's such a wide ranging thing whether it might make sense to have one from each district, does that make sense as a pattern? So, back when that is what we did intentionally. And then over time, council got away from that. So, we're back to the future. And the mayor was on for a while. And the mayor wanted, yeah, so that vested on too, but also just sometimes it was more just. Anybody can come. It is, but that is true. In some years, we have had more than three on the committee, 10 meetings now. We have to be careful about how the participation goes. You are allowed to attend a public meeting. You just have to be careful about it. So, if the committee is discussing and you're the fourth or fifth council member, you can't really weigh in with your opinion. You can listen to the conversation and become informed. But you can't necessarily say, well, I'd be in favor of that. Now we know we have four votes. So, you gotta be careful about that. But people can attend. It's a public meeting. It's a public meeting. It is public meeting. You have to be careful. Yeah, it's posted. It's very clear that in, I checked that, actually, you can attend public meetings. Yeah, no, I'm not disputing that. I'm saying I think you might be able to say your opinion. Well, maybe you can. We've tried to be careful. It's in public. Yeah. There you go. I mean, if nobody else wants it, I mean, it is something that I'm very interested in. Unless, you know, other people want it. Take it while you can and make it change tomorrow. Okay, I'm gonna volunteer myself because I can't get enough committees in my life. I will say, for Glenn, is that it is really good for a new person to be on because you really do learn a lot about all the projects going on and things that are happening. It's a good way to get acquainted with what's happening. But we also try to squeeze a fair amount of meetings in at a short period. They're usually almost like three or four weeks and that's maybe one other one the rest of the year or something. So it's short, heavy lifting. And then, since we're my regional planning commission, we have a planning commissioner, Kirby, and Mike is our alternate. That's all set. Regional planning commission, TAC, which is Transportation Advisory Committee. Council Member Bate has been our rep and Tom has been our alternate. Okay, so these are two different things. Yes. Yes, yes. There's the actual commission, which we are entitled to have a commissioner on and an alternate and then there's this, and again, the TAC, they really, they're the ones that deal with funding, transportation funding for the region and make recommendations. We negotiate which road gets done with a little bit of pennies we have regionally. And it's really a good group. They do think regionally about the volume of roads and how much use and pivotal. It's been a very good group to be associated with. Such a remote, solid waste management. We are also a member, a voting member of the district. Ellen Cheney has been our rep and Donna has been our alternate. I don't want to keep the alternate. Okay. What else can come? Doesn't have to be a council rep, although it had been. In fact, for years, we had a council member in Cuba who was our rep for a while. He couldn't keep it up, so he dropped the alternate on the basis and then just kept the council alternate. But there is no require that either. It's an interesting group. You do learn a lot. Nobody's interested. We could also put it out. Yeah. Or we could appoint Ashley. She did say it, right? Whatever. Should we put it out and then if the tails are put in? No. Yeah. And we've had some really good citizen reps of the Allens. The community services steering committee, I'm not sure we need to continue that anymore. This was a committee that was created by I just skipped a citizen advisory board for the community justice center. So we have our community justice, there's a cap advisory board that they rely on heavily. Ashley has been very involved. I would suspect she wants to stay on. She's been a pretty, pretty services. When we were looking at combining or merging some functions of the departments with the community services, we had a big steering committee with the facilitator and we had a council rep just in turn about us. I don't know that it's active. I don't think so. I think that's probably scrapped for now. Yes, Tom. Do you think you'll recreate it if the feasibility study happens? Oh, the feasibility study for a facility? Yeah. And certainly this. I think that's different. This was about the actual story of themselves. I think it would be a different group. I think we would consider doing that of a facility study group that would be different than this. I think, you know, we got this study. We have the plan and we're trying to follow it to still implement the plan. And I think we're even having some conversations coming up in the next couple of weeks about that. But I don't know that this group needs an energy advisory committee. No need for that. Yeah. Well, actually, to be fair, I don't need to be that person if anybody else would like to be that liaison. It's interesting. It's true that I don't really spend enough time with Kate. So that would be a way to correct that. So you could be on the lead. Yeah, there you go. But no, I think I would be very happy for Anne to continue that. Okay, that's fair. Well, I'm happy to do it, so. All right, Green Mountain Transit Authority advisory. Again, this is, we have a place on a designated seat on the board. Harold Garabidian has been the city's rep for a long time, has, I think, had active interest. We could check with him if he wants to continue, but last I knew he was pretty engaged with that. Okay. That's something that I'm semi-interested in. Should it ever become vacant in the future? But I'm happy to have him continue doing the work if he's, or you and Harold could share it, you know. You could talk to Harold. And you told me that the meetings were at 7 a.m., so I'm sort of into the interrolling thing. Yeah. I'm not that interested, but I. Gosh, maybe there are eight in here, but I don't know, it's, yeah, it's not super. I mean, I think for the Chippin County people it's not so bad, they have a right to decide. There is that. But if you're interested, I'm sure you'll be happy to form another interest. Harry shared in the scholarship. I, I enjoy being that. And I would personally be the most logical. Yeah, being connected to the school. Yeah. Yeah, so my knowledge. Stay there if I can. Housing task force, we have, vacancy in the housing task force. We do have a council rep who's at times chaired the housing task force. Go for it. No, I am happy to keep doing this, but I heard Rosie, but you were also interested in it. I'm interested, I don't need to be on it. I'm happy to just go occasionally and talk with the housing task force, but if nobody else wants to be on it, I can also be the, be a pointee. Well, I'm happy to be it. I think people, I understand that there are people on the housing task force who would be very happy if it continues to be there. If I'm, if I'm there. Well, I do hope Rosie, you know, can get to go as you need. Sounds good, lots of you. And then the housing trust fund, which is slightly different than the task force, which deals with the funding that we actually put in the budget each year and even our. Well, we haven't gotten to meet yet, so I would like to stay on there so that I can be a part of at least one meeting. As I understand, it's usually only one or two per year, I don't know about per day, so it wants to figure out how they want to send out our fees and then meet to figure out where the money goes. And I'm also on that board now. I've been to like, like you, one or two meetings or something. I haven't been to any since I was appointed. So I don't know if I missed one or. No, I didn't. You were appointed. March of, well, it may have been May or June by the time I was appointed. I don't think they did anything March of. You'd have been allocated across, okay, across to see if they could. So we'll really have two reps there inadvertently, I suppose. But that's okay. Okay, great. It's not burdensome. Yeah, yeah, great. It's probably good, actually. Investment committee? Again, it doesn't have to be me. I've been involved with conversations around environmental, social and governance related investing. But if anybody else is interested in mine, does not need to be me. I'm happy to keep it. Give it away. I know, right? I know. The Montpelier live board. Montpelier live has a board of directors a few years ago. They opened up a seat for council rep. And then at some point, he may not be voting this evening. I'm not exactly sure how that all happened. I think I know, but I'm not going to disrupt it. But Jean Olson had been our liaison to attend the meetings, so obviously she's no longer in the council group for us to have a contact with. Is the mayor on by default? Is that why I'm there? I don't know, is it? Maybe. I don't know why. I was a little surprised to see my name there, which is fine. I mean, I'm no longer on. Okay. It is a group we give money to. It is a group that we depend on a lot of good partnership. And obviously we have a good relationship with their offices right here in City Hall. And I think that's what I'm looking for. I'd be interested in that one. I'm going to fight for a vote. I'm going to fight for a vote. Montpelier Foundation is a group that takes donated money basically and has a charge to help take applications specifically for public infrastructure and things like that. Jean Olson was our rep and has asked if she could do it. Even I say he actually knew where he was going. Is the seat allowed to go to a non-council person? I think it's two city appointees. Okay. Same thing, it was appointed. What happened, very briefly, is that kind of engulfing the dormant for a long time to get it going. And I think they've been successful. So Tom and Jean as council members that will participate to try to keep the council presence as it keeps it going. I don't know. We could check with Tom. I might nominate Ashley. Well, where we can come back. I'm happy to have Jean continue on. Oh, sure. Yeah, oh, that's fine. Yeah, Jean is very clear that she wants to, Tom is the one in the line, 100% certain. Sure. That sounds good. Transportation Infrastructure Committee, that's the city's version of that. You just appointed someone to that tonight. I'm not, it's been the council rep. That is a designated council rep. See? Yeah, I'd like to stay and invite anyone to come to any of our meetings, but I'd like to stay. One Taylor Street Design Committee, she and Donna have done that as well along with Jessica, and along with Vincent State. So I'm interested in that one. Okay, we may never meet again. If it ever meets again, I'm interested. I am getting some connection, some push from former members who would like to get together at least once to sort of see where things are. I think the tension is that, they had a lot of role in beginning the thing out. The tension is, we're about to go to bid on this and build this, and suddenly having it redesigned by committee, so I've been looking for what are some small decisions. And I don't mean to make it meaningless, but what are things that there's still room for people who like to call a meeting that was meaningless. So what I gather is it would be Ian, Donna, and Rosie. And you might just want to call it at some point when the project is like a ribbon cutting kind of, or whatever, or maybe some information before that stage just so people feel included. You can put it out as a party. That's what that means. I'm not sure that particularly people don't want to take part in this. NGD, you're sitting on bars, you're sitting on a snail, I don't know. One or two, one of the citizen reps has already been brought in. Yep, yep, she's a woman, yep. Okay, such a wrong public safety authority, we do have two reps to that. Council member B, former council member Gulmaka, are you seeing these reps? Yeah. Showing you exact terms. Well, I sent you an email. Actually, the public safety authority terms are two years. So, Tom's would have been 217 when he was re-appointed to 219. So I'm the one that expires. It expires the same way as your seat does. That's how it's lined up. So mine expired this year. And I'd like to continue, but if there's somebody else, I mentioned that to Ashley, although she didn't think she was still interested at this point, but express your desires. Can you say a little more about it? The public safety authority, it's about the regionalization of all, ultimately police, fire, ambulance, and dispatch. And we had originally, we had started out with a one center facility and then an employee input decided to have two facilities that could talk together. So we've done and see in Barry and Montpelier. And then we got really far with that last December and heard again from employees that they really feel like it needed one. So we backed off and now what we're looking at is getting a third party. Both Montpelier and Barry would like to have a third party participating. And we have a memorandum of understanding out with the capital West that Tony talked about, the chief talked about. Capital West is the part that's just the dispatching. But Capital West is part of a bigger, far mutual aid organization. So we're looking at the public safety authority is having a vote on the 16th with this mutual aid society to join the public safety authority. And that would give us our third municipal group. Hopefully to move forward to perhaps bond for improved communications. We need a major tower. And I would have to have my paper in front of me. Tony could probably give you all the terms. But the fact that right now our towers, our radios are so impacted by not having the correct infrastructure that we talk over one another. We even get Canadian chatter. And so we really need to clean that up. But it's a major couple million dollars, right? 1.3. 1.3, okay. I over judged it, but it's a big project. And the idea is by getting the mutual, far mutual aid involved, then everybody who has a contract with Montpellier now for dispatching would also have a commitment to help pay back that bonding. Versus right now all the towns who have contracts can leave anytime they want. So it leaves you pretty vulnerable. So the public safety authority felt this was a very firm way to bring in 18-some communities to join us in a regional sense for dispatching. And then from there, hopefully it'll grow. Being a shorter version of that, or an additional version, I think Donna explained, so Donna explained what, well, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. She explained what they're working on. I was just trying to explain the authority itself. It's a quasi-municipal authority. Charter has been adopted by both Barrie and Montpellier, approved by the legislature. Barrie and Montpellier are the only two members. So each community has two appointed reps. And then there are three representatives elected from amongst the two communities to serve. So it's an official board. So it's just a classical committee. It's an award movement. Yeah, but I wanted to get enthusiastic about it. And we actually had a recount or a challenge to the elections over the last year. That's right. Sam, right in. Yep. Sam and Jim. Yep. We both ran as write-ins, I think. Yes. Yes, we were part of that recount. Yes. Right back there. Yeah. For hours and hours. So that's what that committee is. So do we reappoint Council Member B for two years? I'll think about that. So, down here, willing to stay on. Right. We actually meet, that group meets twice a month. First and third, Thursdays, 6.30. Center of the Mont Chamber mostly, but we do move around Barrie to Montpellier. You say you're meeting on the 16th. Is it April 16th or May 16th? The Mutual Foreign Aid vote on the 16th, and hence we, I think we have, trying to get a committee with the, a meeting with the two mayors and the two city managers with the Regional Public Safety Authority. On the 17th, the day after the vote happened. On Tuesdays? I have the dates, but I don't have the day of the week. Sorry. Well, you just said Thursday. Well, we, our regular meeting is Thursday, but this was a special, their voting on the 16th. On the 16th of April? Of May. May. They are distributing the memo of understanding all of their 18 member towns have to vote on it. And then we were trying to set up a meeting on our regular third Thursday with a meeting with the new mayors and city managers. On the 16th and 17th. But I thought the 17th was already reached out to you too, so I may have misspoke. 17th. So you're trying to, yeah. Can we do that? I just wanted to try to get a sense of which month, actually, because it was 16th this next week. May. May. May. So, but we can figure it out. Yeah. There hasn't been any sports at all, but I'm curious, what are the two towns in the county, I don't know. Pardon me. So Berlin and Berry Town were originally scheduled to be, when this was first considered, was proposed to be the four communities, the true and regional hub. And in the process of developing that and discussions, Berry Town and Berlin dropped out of the process and went ahead with just the two cities. I think most people's opinions that was too attachment. Project doesn't mean something can't happen necessarily, so I hope as far as true and regional system, and hope we don't love to get them back in somehow, if we could. Water rate study committee, are we doing anything with that? At this time, I don't expect a lot of lifting. However, depending on what happens, with our wastewater treatment plant, and those types of bigger issues, it may be appropriate to convene a committee to discuss rain structures to address that. Otherwise, I don't, you know, so it's really kind of, we should have someone on hand, but I don't expect much heavy lifting out of the meeting or two to address rain sometime around first of the fiscal years. Usually, after a while, the screens have the rates that makes recommendation of the council for water and sewer needs. I would be interested. You know, the second time around would be a sign. I am not on these water committees. There you go. I'm not sure what the study community is. I know I was just looking at that. It should just be that the T.W. would board. Yes, I think it's got a rate study attached to it. Yeah, right. Well, the printed one is and I think the mayor is sort of by by default a member. So I was the mayor's rep when I was a council member and I mean, it's a great group. I enjoy being a part of it. The thing is like I just don't know if I'll be able to go consistently to the meetings. So just having if there's anyone else who's interested. President of the council, I seem to be interested. I am interested. When are the meetings? Is it a regular? They are regular. I should know on the top of my head when they meet. Don't remember. Oh, yeah, it's the first Tuesday of the month. But yeah, I mean, if if that if that works, I mean, I know you also if I may, right, because I know you're also involved in the front, right? So does that the question is like is that a conflict? It's a good question. I'll I'll say that I don't think it is, but I think that that's based on my understanding that the Wood Gallery and the front are different sorts of organizations in a lot of ways. I'll also mention that I am already on the TW Wood committee. What is the committee that they have that helps choose shows and so on. So if that conflict of interest exists, I am already in trouble about it. It hasn't caused any overt trouble with either organization so far that I have seen. I mean, we're both trying to sell art to the community. So in some way we are in competition. I think that neither organization depends heavily enough on art sales that there is significant actual competition between the two. So until it comes up. Yes. I'm happy to respond to any challenges. I guess the other thing is like if it does come up just recuse yourself when if it's ever even a question. Yes. So when is going to be the rep or the mayor's designee? That's yes mayor's designee because I don't think I can recuse or not recuse. The same way John does it. Right. Exactly. Great. Thank you. Parking. This is going to be a big one. I'm going to have to silence away. Me too. Parking. Unless it males wants to. We had two I think only because those are the only takers we think so. I will tell you I mean obviously until you really lay out your priorities but we've challenged our staff to really look at this and we're going to have a lot of construction we're going to have possibly a new parking garage and we look at expanding that you know on our own as you know in partnership not just counting what we might do to create more parking when everything's done there's going to be a reduction in parking so I think we really I think this is personally we'll see not maybe we have to deal with I think we have to kind of head on with the emergency so we're already less we're told than may not do and I think so all I'm saying is if there are council members interested in this it's going to be probably more than just the demand manager isn't an important thing but I think we're going to have to look here is it going to be structures is it going to be a train is it going to be shut I mean it's going to have to it's going to where are we looking to work so I just have a question about it I've had some recent conversations with Sue about different stakeholders do we have to formalize this committee a little bit more we called it together short term to have an immediate right working group on looking at some of the things the staff presented to us but if we're really going to deal with all the over 300 or more displaced cars during the 219 construction I feel there need to be major stakeholders there employers as well as GMTA as well as so we agree and we can reach out to them we had a committee that was established with the state of Vermont the state employees union we had you know downtown businesses we had GMT was involved I'm checking the rules and people regional parking committee one by one people started dropping off and it was left to city staff and folks so we're going to be nimble we need to be able to do I think inviting people to participate they've got to they've got to show up to that's been a challenge I can picture I because there is a really a finite task that we are looking at because of all this infrastructure changes that are happening I almost want to think of this as a task force or like a working group rather than necessarily a standing committee of the council and so I could also picture us as needed saying hey Vermont state employees union please come to this meeting you know we're not asking for a long term commitment right maybe come to this meeting see if we need to if you need to be at this meeting again and then so it may be as as needed right my sense would be this group gets together it identifies the players that we want to make sure in the loop and we communicate and say this is going on there's who we are we just here's what we're going to send you if you want to come we'll tell you what the meetings are we got really bogged down with those groups just at the Sustainable Montpellier committee had a transportation group and there were a lot of good employers there and many of them expressed interest in just initially a task force to look at the whole picture some of them are thinking of shuttles themselves but we're trying to integrate it and work with it as many resources public and private so I'd like to have some initial meetings and see what everybody can chip into the pot so to speak funds as well as ideas but and then you're right you may need a smaller group I'm on board with all of them yep we need to do it soon just done yep yep do you want to do this or just done and I'm just going to do this great Ashley might really be interested in this one well again because ultimately I feel what we set up for this temporary and a lot of it is going to become long term has the potential and she's very much I felt actually expressed interest again in trying to make things more available to everybody no matter what your job day or night etc so yep so the city has been addresses yeah we don't we're not as compliant with the E-9-1 law as we would like to be that's going to take a really long time I mean Ashley and I were looking into what it would take to get us to that or make progress on that front and I think we're we're making some progress I don't know that we need a committee so I mean that's something that I mean she and I were interested in separately and we can continue to move on that we ultimately came to the council and the progress process was laid out and all of that we could have we've already got our first conundrum right was we were looking at this if we if we move quickly then we would talk about 61 Taylor and not one Taylor oh so maybe we should change the name of the project so that's why then we can get the committee to get a discount there you go but we we got special permission to make it one because the post office code it wasn't especially remember this was a big deal to make it one Taylor Street I do remember yeah you can't take that number away Bill you ought to be in some of our internal meetings I mean that's not the first for renaming before people move in before people move in that's true better to do it oh I missed one thank you I'm to the original funding patron called Jeffords Plaza love everybody's signature Jack that's amazing I can't read it but it looks to me okay just circling back I I might talk to Sue about a little more about the ADA committee to see if I might be interested in doing that seems like something important to have somebody ah that's how we roll here okay so I also just want to flag a couple of things I know this is maybe something that we can take up later you know after we've done some strategic planning amongst ourselves but a couple other groups that I am interested in I mean I've been talking about this before but just thinking about the data that's available to the public from the city so I've been meeting some city staff recently just about the website and all things digital and so that may be a group potentially if there's some discrete tasks that we think may be appropriate to invite some other expertise in I can picture that as being a group that maybe we want to open up I don't want to do that right now we have some more conversation about that but I imagine that may take some more people power but we'll see and then the other group that I I'm not sure if this deserves to be a group but I a little while ago I had mentioned you know I'm interested in reconsidering some of the art in this room and the pictures out in the hall even and since then it's come up like why is the bell where it is I don't know what that would take to the bell but you know these are conversations we can have and so I can picture that as being a group potentially I don't like I said I don't want to be the person who's making the decision about this art but not that art it seems like it should be a group process well if this is a group that's about it sounds like you're talking about the physical plant of this building one thing that I'm I've been interested in for many years is looking into what it would take to get to get the bell in the tower working again well it's a good question so so I throw that onto the so mission I can show some light on that we can also we don't have to do it now oh this is a funny story is it okay? so the bell as you know worked and rang on the hour by the number of bells we started getting numerous complaints about particularly the midnight the 12 bells from downtown residence being quite loud and it was pretty loud and so there was that and so we were having some discussion about what to do about it and the bell kind of rusted and broke and so the view of the city at the time was well that was serendipity problem solved and it hasn't rung since and we don't get any more complaints about the noise so really it's I'm sure it's just getting the handle fixed I don't think it's a major I mean I don't know the cause it might be some fabrication or whatever but it's not an insurmountable problem it was a somewhat conscious decision to not fix it because of the complaints about the noise so it's something we can talk about I always used to enjoy having the sort of mental exercise of trying to keep track of both sets of bells ringing at the same time here in the courthouse they were precisely I think people that lived down here didn't appreciate that quite as much one possibility is that we just make that a committee right now are there people that would be just in the internal aesthetics yes one two so maybe the three of us can a city called beautification beautification oh gosh have I shown well regardless bell committee there wasn't other things so take the what take that model of a capital is a cake oh what yes yes never read the sign next to apparently I've never read the sign that is worth talking about we have tried to give that including back to Necki where it came from well that's like the school gave you the city the bell the bell was down at the school it might be for the longest time the bell actually gets a lot like people climb on kids get a lot of attention people take pictures of the kids here okay so not to prolong this unnecessarily but since we mentioned Necki I had a conversation actually earlier this morning about the possibility of having a Montpelier welcoming committee for example if a new batch of Necki students comes in or a VCFA residency or something some volunteer or representative of the city could just show up and say hey welcome you know here's who we are and so on I don't know if there's any other interest in that but I thought I'd throw it in could we could we flesh that out a little bit could we bring that up another like absolutely is that okay yeah absolutely okay let's let's talk about that we've done various I know the police have occasionally met with them to talk to them about yeah is that the parking ban teaming yeah we could meet to get the new classes they would call us yeah our drill buddy oh yeah come over to the thing and we talk about everything from parking less logistical issues there and and safety and with the resources and the like that you know their model has changed quite a bit too so I got away from that but that for years and years that was a standard protocol between the department and the dean's students we have not done that we have not called the department let's talk more about that mm-hmm okay um okay I think that's is it for you guys unless people have other if you want to yeah okay um great alright so council reports I think last time we started with Donna but I was called so let's pass so council reports is a time when we just give us an update on the city or really you can say anything you want to you can talk to your constituents or you can pass I don't have anything to report but I do want to say that I know this council went through a very difficult process last week and and heard from a lot of people and I appreciate the vote and the support and I'm since since I was appointed I've had a number of people that I run into who ask me well are you excited and the answer is yes I am so I appreciate being here and looking forward to it I have a couple of things in line of just what Jack said I want to apologize for any confusion and I'm going to read it to make sure I state it right this time that I may have caused by using the terms that were construed as referring to political parties my point was that town meeting vote voting data could be examined differently than just first and second place since 487 votes were not cast for Alex those votes could be understood as votes for positions that differed from Alex I unfortunately used the term conservative and liberal to describe that difference it was not my intention to use those words in the political sense city council has not and does not characterize itself or its actions according to political party labels at least not in the four going on five years that I've been here it has been and will continue to be nonpartisan in all its deliberation and so I just apologize to this council and to our constituents across the city but that was not clear when I stated it before and created such a reaction forward I'll be more careful when I say but I did also want to mention that this week is National Dispatchers Week and so if you have a chance you can stop by the police department and say thank you they would appreciate it and it doesn't matter I will I will remember it later thank you Donna all right I'm still plugging away on my sister city project here actually got a pretty big response with some people's strong feelings about what the sister city should be so with the council's blessing I would like to maybe to mean a little working group to develop a process to get some public input on this and maybe bring it back to the council at some point some people have some very meaningful connections with other countries I think others might just like pasta or something want to partner with Italy so so we'll flesh it out and come back on that one we have more than one yeah is I just have a question if this is like a working group does this need to be an official group of the city or you just want to like have some further conversations just gonna have some coffee come back tell us some ideas around okay great first I want to welcome Jack McCullough of the council good to have you here and also thank the other applicants the position and the residents who spoke up I'm glad that we had the degree of participation that we did I also want to say again and I'm gonna say this every council meeting tomorrow morning Thursday morning I will be at Open Hands Cafe in the Episcopal Church Parish Hall from 8.30 to 9.30 and every Thursday if anyone has anything they want to talk to me about that's the time to come in that's one time yeah we talk about all kinds of things or nothing and I also want to appreciate the fact that we're coming up on green up day and I'm looking forward to doing that and looking forward to seeing a lot of the city out there I usually don't last very long I get tired really fast but I will do my best so thank you great so I also want to welcome Jack glad to have you and then so I just wanted to make a note that I had a meeting today with the investment committee I thought it was a great meeting we talked about our options for moving forward with socially responsible investing practices so I'm gonna be coming back to the council probably pretty soon to have a little bit more of a robust discussion I think sometime in the near future I think we said the 25th right that's the hope but depending on how full our agenda is so we may need to weigh in on what it is that we would like to see we'll have some options I think to deliberate over so that's it for me just a quick update on the charter change process I was wondering where our charter changes were and it seemed like there was a little bit of a snafu in the state house they didn't get crafted into a bill and supposedly got sent to Senate GovOps instead of House GovOps but anyways I got Warren and Mary on it they found it things are moving along swimmingly actually talked to somebody on the agenda yet if it's not on the agenda for next week Warren's on the committee I may nudge him a little bit I might just go talk to the chair have a good relationship with Maida so anyways no reason to worry at this point I would also mention that the community meeting on the non-citizen the possibility of non-citizen voting in city elections has been bumped to the request of a few people so it's instead of next week it's going to be Tuesday, May 1st in this room at 7 o'clock and I'm trying to get the word out far and wide about that John I have a question about that I can and I don't know what the law is but I can imagine that potentially there might be a quorum of this council wanting to attend that meeting would that mean that we'd have to Warren that as a public meeting Boy I don't think so I was actually looking at that recently and there's a specific provision in the cause that says that if council members are attending another public meeting it's not theirs right and this isn't being called under the auspices of the council it's not being convened for the purpose of the council doing business well that's true it's not business there's not anything I think you were here last week my recommendation was not to worry about any kind of council action process play out so that's right there's no business on the table so you're not there it's fine Deliberate a council here there is interested citizens to listen to whatever's being said so I think that would be fine I think you're fine you can double check that but I'm pretty sure cause I was a lot of digging on the open meeting and it's I would brag on myself a little bit I just pocketed another cert I'm now a certified network architect and I just wanna thank Bill a lot he's been very supportive of me doing creative juggling with my own budget my own departmental budget and helping out with some of his departmental budget to do a lot of this professional development work I've been doing which has been it's been getting me a lot of attention I just got and I hope that reflects well on the city I just got an invitation from the Center for Technology 14 people who got invited from around the country a bunch of different states they're gonna fly me to Chicago and put me up and be part of a working group on best practices for modernizing the voter registration process and all of a sudden people are knocking on my door and I just really appreciate the support that's gonna make that happen congratulations yeah I'd like to now sit John Odom's new titles network ninja break I don't have many I don't have much actually just a reminder that we did schedule a tour for next Wednesday night for the public works department and the water treatment plant that's a lot to take in just to know two members can't attend so we're gonna try to get those two scheduled at a different time together and I think we just got something from as well a lot of resources coming in time for that presentation so those are coming up at our next meeting we will be going in addition to DPW we'll also be talking about TIF and a possible tax stabilization applications we could have some real conversation next week in addition to community stuff so any way through that that is it so without objection consider the meeting is adjourned it's not quite 10 o'clock you all ready?