 I am going to call to order the Board of Finance at 5.08 p.m. And the agenda tonight is focused on three potential ballot items that would be on the town meeting day. Town meeting day. And we've called this special meeting to work through remaining questions with extra time so that we are in position to collectively make decisions and move forward this coming Monday, which is essentially the deadline for items to be put on about. So thank you, and thank you for your time. Councilors for agreeing to this, this additional meeting. The first item on the agenda is the agenda and I welcome motion to adopt the agenda. Present Tracy. So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Any discussion of the agenda. Okay. Seeing none. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any opposed? The agenda is adopted unanimously. Next item. Is the. On the agenda is the public forum. And. I am looking if you are a member of the public and you have logged on, you'd like to be. And. Rich Goodwin is at the physical location for this. I'm meeting Rich. Is there anyone in the room that wishes to speak to the board of finance? No one present. Okay. Thank you. I am not seeing any hands. Virtually either. So. I'm going to close the public forum. And move to the first item, which is the capital bond. And. See, we have a number of members of the capital. Capital team that are here to help with this item and answer. Questions if there are remaining questions. We talked about. This, of course, at our last board of finance meeting. And. Did. Go back one more time. Thank you. Councilor. You know, we had a good discussion at that meeting. Councilor Jang requested that we look. Again. Whether there could be any further reductions and. And this is, I will say this has been a challenging exercise. To do. And one thing that I know counselors are focused on, I think public has questions on is. You know, how does this local. You know, infrastructure spending intersect with this big, you know, very significant first in many years. Federal infrastructure bill that. We all have a lot of hope and optimism. There's a lot of talk that it's going to have an impact on municipalities. And a challenge while we know a lot more now. Then when we were debating this in the fall, there continues to be. A lot of people have been asking about this. I think we've been talking about this for a long time. And I think we've been talking about this for a long time. And I think we've been talking about this for a long time. And I think we've been talking about this for a long time. Before we are. Certain about what those programs are even going to look like, much less how much Burlington will actually receive from these new infrastructure programs. That said. We have. If. Is someone, I'm not sure who's prepared to do this, but. Is someone can show the. I'm not sure if the, the currently posted item. Are you in position to do that? You're muted. I could share it. If someone could enable. Yep. Just one moment. I will enable you. Waiting. Sorry. I'm really managing a little bit too much here. Director Spencer. I. I'm sure it's here. Really. Still can't seem to find you on my list. To an okay. I'm so sorry. It's because you were right at the top. That's so embarrassing. Okay. Director Spencer. Here we go. You're all set. All right. Great. So. Okay. So. Share this and. Make this full screen here. Are people able to see this? Yes. Great. So in. Mayor, would you like me to go through the different lines to identify the numbers that have changed? I think, yeah, exactly. Great. So, yeah, since the last time we discussed when there was a 25. $9 million proposed capital bond. The changes are as follows the third line of police and fire emergency radio system has been reduced to 4 million from 4 million 300. And that is a. Reduction of 300,000. We also have reduced, excuse me, in that top line. Originally there was four and a half million for local match funding to draw down additional federal dollars, largely the federal infrastructure bill. That has been reduced by $500,000. Scrolling down. The next adjusted area from your last meeting was the transportation safety improvements line that went from $500,000 to $1,500,000. Scrolling down civic buildings. Civic buildings previously was 4,300,000 has been reduced 300,000 to 4 million. Those changes together. Result in the revised total of $23,800,000. Great. Thank you. Thank you for walking through that shape and. And. Again, that does reflect it in part, especially with the transportation safety improvements, some optimism that some of the new federal programs being set up are going to be targeted at transportation safety. And that we'll be able to fill it from those projects. We're hopeful to be able to fund those projects in other ways. So. With that, why don't we. Pause there and welcome any questions from the board. So, you know, to be clear. It's not my thinking that we're taking. The board to take any action tonight. It is the administration's hope that the. Board is in position to make a recommendation on these three valid items. To the full council at the Monday meeting. And so the hope with tonight's discussion is that we. We'll be able to. Answer, use this form to answer any remaining questions that you have or at least flush out issues. If there is even still further follow up that. Is necessary after night. There's still some time between now and Monday. So if they're, you know, either to answer questions tonight or identify. Areas where there's still a desire for more information. I did see, I will say, Councillor Jang, I see that we just received the. Email from you just before the meeting. You're a question at your, your call, of course, whether you want to want us to follow up with you. Offline on some of those questions, or if you want to ask some or all of them now, but I, you just want to acknowledge that I see that we got that from you just now. Thank you. I think. Yeah, if you can answer me offline, but I mean, the questions. In general, it's many of them. I think we need, we haven't. The reason for it, we have how much left in our part, how much left around. You know, a lot. And also a question also is about the fire trucks. Why can't we do it incrementally? Why do we need three news on the spot? We can buy one today and, you know, 2023 another one. And also the local match for the federal infrastructure bill. Knowing that we don't know how much we, we will be receiving. Why do we have those 3 million point five? You know, or you guys have information that we have not access yet. And yeah, bunch of other questions and offline would be great. Somebody right. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. We will, we will follow up on each of this. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Paul. Thanks so much. So my apologies. I wasn't at the board of finance meeting on the 10th of January. And I imagine you may have gone over some of the questions that I might be asking. So I apologize if I'm making anyone repeat something. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The original amount or the amount that you proposed on January 10th was the 25.9 million. And I haven't done the math. So I'm just wondering, what is that equate to when we did the, when we did the prior bond that went to the voters, there was a figure of what was the amount in a, you know, the amount that went to the voters. I don't remember what that amount was, but I'm wondering if you've done that calculation based on the 25.9 million. On a median homes. Yeah, we have done that. Catherine, would you like to speak to that? We have done that. And if you give me just a second, Councillor Paul, that was posted with the January 10th materials. And then we have run more recent analysis, but I think that is a helpful place for us to start. So. The December projection was. About a was approximately $13 a month and, and. Right. Reduced amount is definitely less Catherine will come up with that figure. But. So I think that's a really helpful place to start looking at that. Just a little bit more momentarily here. Right. And then while you're looking for that. Just when you had said that in terms of some of the things that you would. That you were reducing from. The 10th of January to today, that you were hopeful that you could find other sources of funding. And I'm just wondering. What those other sources. realistic those sources are? Yes. Specifically, so, and I'll turn this over to Chapin in a second. We, there is one thing that has happened and I think that does, that should allow us to speak directly to voters questions about this and that we've tried to reflect in these changes is that it is clear that there will be federal funding available for bridges and we are, I think it's less bankable but we are optimistic based on our current understanding of federal and state planning that there will be creating new programs that will help with transportation safety. And so, you know, we indicated to voters two voters last December that if we were, you know, because when we had less knowledge about what would be in the bill, the bill hadn't even passed yet and we indicated that the priority, you know, of course we would be looking to use federal dollars if possible. Now that we did have this greater clarity about these programs, we thought it was consistent with that to make reductions here. There is some level of uncertainty about it though. Can you add any color to that or detail or norm? I see you have your hand up, sorry. Go ahead and if you want to go to Norm. We have reached out to, we've attended webinars, we've reached out to the heads of various state agencies to get additional information. We've reached out to the CLT and we have gotten the additional information that the mayor referenced. They are still forming plans and they are still developing guidance and trying to understand how the money will flow and what the restrictions are. So we have been diligently chasing that, budget that's in front of you and in your packet shows a breakdown so we heard there was a desire to see what the breakdown would be on the local match. We've identified where the local match is needed for existing commitments of around 2.8 million and then additional $2 million of a prospective local match to meet the upcoming federal funding that we know will be coming in some version. It's important to note that one of the things we were successfully able to achieve is to knock down the purchase price of the communication system by $300,000. So that is still able to proceed at that lower amount. The other cuts that we've made will reduce the amount of reinvestment that we're able to make. Okay, actually, I think now that Catherine told me where to look, I did find the amount it was, and my apologies for busying you up. It was on a median home, it's $35.17 for the first year. Obviously it's different as the bond over those years, and that is an annual rate, right? So that means we're talking about $3 a month. Correct, so it would peak in FY25 with an extra $7 a month. Okay, and so with the amount that's come between January 10th and today, which is a reduction of $2.1 million, for all of those things, the difference is just pennies a month. Yes, that's correct. Okay, all right, that answers my question, thanks. President Tracey, go ahead, Norm, I see your hand is up. Did Chapin address what you were trying to do? I was actually trying to raise the issue that there's an updated spreadsheet that provides specificity to all these items that may be helpful for the council members to consider. I think we've heard from the public that they need specificity to understand and know what this investment involves. Chapin framed it to some extent, but this graphic or the spreadsheet is a good visual. That's an update to what was in the packet. So I just wanna note that if people wanna see it, I can share it. Otherwise, I will kind of step back and let the discussion continue. I know I'd like to see it. I think we should, I think you're right, Norm, that any additional detail we can provide here is helpful. So why don't we see where the rest of the conversation goes, but definitely share that with the board and the council. President Tracey. Thanks, Mayor Weinberger. I appreciate staff putting some responsive content in the memo specific to concerns around the cost of not moving forward with the bond. What I guess, and maybe I should have been a little more specific, but I guess more what I was looking for is like some sort of percentage or dollar figure. I think it's a lot of what's there is good and important information, whether it's the risk of failing assets or just kind of the general concept of exponential growth of the, of paving and sidewalk projects. But I was looking for more of an estimate of a dollar figure just so that we had that hard information to be able to provide to voters. So that, because I think it's gonna be so much more expensive. I think it stands to reason, but I'd like to know just how much more expensive it will be if we don't take action on this because that feels significant and something that voters should know. And I think sort of in addition to that, I know that there's some general categories where or some specific items like the fire trucks and the emergency contact system that we know would be a challenge to fund. But if there are other ways that we can communicate what wouldn't happen to voters because I guess I'm just foreseeing a situation where if we aren't able to move forward with this and assets continue to decline that people become frustrated with those declining assets and that we've had, we were very, I just wanna be as clear as possible to people what won't happen if either in terms of costs and the increased costs, but then also the physical assets like what streets aren't gonna get done, what sidewalks aren't gonna get done, that kind of stuff. Cause I think that's really meaningful to folks in terms of making their decision. Cindy, I see you, would you like to respond to that? I just wanted to note on Councilor Tracy, I just looking at a list from the facility side that there's significant investments there. There's a couple of roof replacements. So it's hard to know like, so if you don't do that for the next three years, if your roof goes, then there's significant deterioration from what's underneath that roof. So it's just wanting to note there's two pieces right there of if you don't replace your roof, as we know every year with the house or any building, they begin to fail, then you've got increased risk. Okay, maybe GBW, I know that if you don't have it on hand right now, if you could provide some of that information, maybe like what you're looking at in terms of costs for some of that capital work, like what the cost of us doing a street or doing a particular sidewalk and how much you would forecast that to increase. Understanding of course, that we're in a pretty volatile moment right now and we don't know how costs are gonna kind of progress, but. Right, we gave the 70% cost increase to go from a mill and fill on a street to a full reclaim, which is having to do a more substantive renovation. So that's a data point for you that's numeric. The challenges that our paving and sidewalk list does shift even after we put it out to bed. It's hard to say these streets will get done in two years, but these streets would get done with bond in two years, given that we coordinate our work with water and other considerations, depending on winter, deterioration, et cetera. But that said, we can look at things like fire trucks that are at end of life, how much more it costs to maintain them than a new fire truck, because that does take a significant amount of our teams bandwidth. So I hear what you're saying and looking for for the public. I think we can move for further to a numbers-based evaluation, but I don't think we can get it for the entire capital plan. Okay. Yeah. Whatever we're able to do would be super helpful. And Chief Locke, I see you turn on your camera. I don't know if you had something to add on the fire side either in terms of the radio system or the fire trucks. I see that also as just being a public safety issue. Yeah, and I think that's what's important to understand is even if the voters passed this in March, we're 24 months before we see a new fire truck back in the station and our spare, we have one spare, which DPW would tell you that spare is in service the same number of hours annually as our frontline trucks, because we always have a truck down. So the fear becomes, if we don't have a process, if we don't order the truck soon, we already have a truck down every day. Sooner or later, we're gonna have to brown out a station because we don't have a truck back into that station because it's broken down. And I think that's our fear. And similarly, our radio system is at end of life and we've had some quirks in the middle of the night, just very recently where the system hasn't worked and they've been able to go out and get it going, but we are working with antiquated equipment that one day and then not to distant future, and I don't mean to sound scary, but it's the reality. We're not sure we're gonna be able to communicate back to dispatch to say, hey, we've got a problem or here's where we have to go. I think that's a fear for us. And another question that was raised to us is, I don't think there is, we don't have a plan B for these large expenses that we have. And I think that's that again, is one of the more scary parts of this stuff. Well, we have done some additional work since as part of this conversation, and specifically in response to Councillor Jang, really challenging is there a way to get this number down under 20 million? We did look at what the alternative, there isn't a plan B in terms of we need this equipment. It is a basic public safety need. If we're gonna have dispatchers and firefighters and police officers able to communicate with each other and we're gonna be adding, we may be adding other services to that dispatch system. As you know, the whole conversation about a crisis response team, we need a functioning system. It's not, I don't see it as a viable option not to have it. So bonding, we are proposing bonding as the way to pay for the update to the system by doing it through bonding and allows us to spread these costs appropriately out over a 20 year period. The alternative on this one to present trace your point about costs, we do have some non-bonding options for paying for items like this. They involve leasing, which ends up being substantially greater impact over on tax rates on the budget over the next 10 years. We would be looking at instead of about a little more than $200,000 a year for the cost of this system in payments, we'd be looking at something in the neighborhood of $500,000 a year. So there, I think there is a very direct, like the alternative to bonding is not, is requires more resources to be found up front, unless you're gonna say it's acceptable to, you know, step away from us having the ability to respond in emergencies, which I don't think most of the Burlington Public thinks is reasonable. Right, right. Well, I certainly appreciate that additional clarity, Mayor. Thank you so much. And thank you to Chief Locke and Director Spencer and Director White as well for all those explanations. All right, so I think what Norm has brought up here is this is the same spreadsheet, Norm, right, with some additional detail in the notes on each item. I don't think we, time, I would not recommend that we go through all the notes now, but I do think, I appreciate you raising this. I think this is a definitely helpful supplemental document for counselors and the public to show the additional detail and the thought and the analysis that has gone into each of these lines. So unless, if there's some major highlights you wanna hit here, go ahead quickly, but I don't think we can go row by row on this. Yeah, I think local match was kind of a focus of many people who raised questions and it was part of our discussion last night at the commission. So one thing worth noting on local match, there's what we have existing commitments and then we have prospective commitments in terms of ability to capture federal dollars. So there's some flexibility as it relates to prospective commitments, but it's lost opportunities with capturing federal dollars. And so, Norm, can you just, I think if you're gonna speak to this section, I'm fine with you going through the local match. I agree with you that people wanna know about that. I would recommend enlarging your screen. I don't think it's just my eyes. I think it is too small for us to- Does that help? Yeah, that's getting better, maybe even a little bit more. So you can see here this detail of level of existing commitments and the dollar value associated with that in total in the list of individual projects. And then there is what is prospective commitments in terms of pursuing federal dollars in local match. So there's choices that can be made above and beyond this 2.87 where, but you lose an opportunity with capturing federal dollars. So how this fits within the other priorities of what we've got to do are commitments. So something to consider, but at least the public has confidence that there's detail that backs this ask. So that's all I just wanna make sure people understand that. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. And let's post that document as an additional document to this item so that counselors can access it as they- Yeah, instead of people want me to stop sharing or they want me to- Somehow that has happened. So we are looking at each other again. Thank you, Norm. I am gonna, in the interest of time, I think I'm thinking we should try to close out this item soon. Are there any final questions people wanna air here again with the caveat that Catherine and I and the team will make ourselves available between now and the decision on Monday for follow-up as well. I see Councilor Barlow's raised his hand. Thank you, Mayor. I was wondering if you could talk just a little bit about Memorial Auditorium. I can tell you it's an area of capital spending that I get a lot of questions about from constituents. And the main question is, why would we put any money in the Memorial before we know what we wanna do with it? I'd also say I didn't see on Norm's list, but on the list that I have, it talks about heaving and increased security. And most things, those seem more like operational expenses to me than capital expenses. If you just talk about how a million dollars even would be spent on Memorial. Thank you. Yes. So this plan, the biggest change in this plan, I think is clear to you is that the Memorial Auditorium investment has been reduced from $10 million to one in this total. And that is explicitly a response to the feedback. And I do think some of the people who voted against the bond item in December were specifically concerned about that level of investment in Memorial Auditorium when there's both this major question about the high school and the capacity that's going to be needed for the high school hanging out there, as well as we were pretty clear in December that was, we did not have a, we didn't have a firm plan of exactly how that $10 million is going to be invested. This, the approval by the council and voters of this plan would be explicitly acknowledging we are, we do not have a path forward for a major municipal redevelopment of Memorial Auditorium until the high school question is settled. Having a million dollars there would give us the ability to continue to at least control the fate of the building and ensure that the heat remains on, which will likely require capital investment to do that, the very old boiler system there, we're talking like World War II era, I believe boilers in the building. And we're not going to make it through another two winners without some kind of capital investment in that system or replacement of that system with alternative heating. If there was, there is an envision of potential additional reinforcement of the building to make it less easy for people to break in, which is something we're frequently dealing with now. So again there, I've been advised that what we're considering there does would qualify as capital items and could be the cost of that would be, would last some years and could be amortized over years, but we're explicitly not moving forward with the redevelopment plan with that million dollars, which gives us the ability to have some additional time, frankly, to figure it out. I will tell you, we're not going to just like, we're going to use that time well. We are going to, with our new assistant director for community work, Samantha Dunn now on the team. This is one of the items that she has focused on. The two of us had meetings last week with potential, well, with one of the butters there and she's been having meetings with others. So if there becomes, to summarize all that Mark, Councillor Barlow, this gives us the ability to keep the building from falling down and keep it better secured for another two winners to give us options and about what we do longterm. If we are actively working on this and if we find a way to bring some resolution to that site sooner than those two winners, we will, we're actively working on it. We'll continue to keep the council updated and we may not need to spend all of that million dollars, perhaps, if we find another way. But this gives us the ability to keep the building from keeping the instructional integrity of the building, which I think is important. Thank you. Okay. I think we've had some good discussion on this. We know we have some follow up with a couple of members of the board to do. We're gonna get President Tracy, we're gonna do it. We're gonna, again, attempt to give you some, as much detail as we can about what non-passage of bond, the impacts of it, and Councillor Jang, we will respond to the list of new questions from you. I'm gonna, if there's no objection, the next item on the agenda, is the FY23, is the FY23 budget. And hopefully members of the board saw the, we tried to take into account the conversation we had a week and a half ago and refined this presentation. We added a narrative, two board docs last night. We got feedback on that narrative from some of you over the course of today, even. And so, Catherine is gonna lead us through a PowerPoint that tracks quite closely with that narrative. I hope this does not feel like a bunch of new information coming at you. We have made some refinements and adjustments, even based on the feedback that we got today. This is a really important conversation. And we appreciate the partnership and patience of the board as we work to try to get this right and refine this under the pressures. We're under here in terms of time and to get this right. We again are facing for the third year in a row a really challenging and unusual budget given the way in which the pandemic continues to impact and add uncertainty to the local economy and the macroeconomic issues that are going on as well. So with that, I'm gonna let Catherine lead through this and I'm sure I'll jump in with some additional thoughts as appropriate. So, Catherine, turn it over to you. Great, thank you, Mayor. It's always good when the PowerPoint doesn't even advance. Okay, there we go. We're gonna keep this brief so that we can have as much time for discussion as possible, just getting everyone on the same page. Over the last couple of years, we know it has been very tumultuous. As I said to the mayor recently, I haven't been through a normal budget cycle yet despite being in this job for two years. And so because of that, we have slowed the implementation of previously approved tax increases. And last year specifically, we used $5 million of ARPA funds to help soften the blow for our citizens and taxpayers. The FY22 budget also included significant new investments that did not have an identified sustainable revenue source. There are things we are committed to and we're committed to finding that revenue source, but that's what we need to work through. And we did indicate last year that a property tax increase would be likely this year. So as we see it, there are three big challenges that face us as a team and as a community when we're working through this. The first one is substantial inflation. Everyone knows about it. We won't belabor it every time you listen to the news or pick up your phone. You see something about the inflation rate and that affects us as a city, of course. We also have these new equity investments that we've made over the past few years. We are committed to those investments and we need to find a way to integrate those into our structural budget in a way that works for our citizens. And we are still suffering from shortfalls in certain areas of our revenue due to the pandemic. So, yes. Before you go on, I just, if you just go back to hit the first item, I just wanna talk a little bit more about inflation and make sure we're all, it's just really clear that this is not, you know, this isn't an abstract issue. It's one that has real implications for city services. We, in a couple of respects, and I just wanna, I wanna belabor this, but I just wanna make sure we're all on the same page about this. We, the inflation that we are all experiencing in our daily lives when we go to buy goods that we are used to buying and we are seeing the cost of them go up substantially. Our employees, of course, are having the same experience. We will be negotiating new collective bargaining rounds, new collective bargaining agreements with all four labor unions start, we're in the last year before your contract just to remind everybody. So all four contracts are up at the end of June and we certainly expect that we are going to be, that we are gonna be pushed for because of the reality of inflation, larger colas than we have been accustomed to paying in recent years. We have not been in an inflationary environment like this since the 1980s. We hope it's not a long period like this. I think there's reasons to be hopeful that the kind of macroeconomic trends will sort out, but it's no longer possible to look at this as some sort of passing. There was a lot of talk earlier in the pandemic that this might be something that just goes away in a matter of months. We're now, we have a full year of inflation behind us that was 7% as that item shows. I just, the other point I wanna make here is that people who have been with me for past budget cycles have heard this before, and I won't belabor it here, but I will offer this to anyone who doesn't really get what I'm saying here and wants to understand it better. Our municipal budget, when there is always structurally is challenged by inflation. Our costs go up with inflation. Our revenues, only some of our revenues rise with inflation. Our biggest and most important source, the property tax, does not rise at all with inflation. And that creates, that means that we have to have these conversations every few years if we're going to avoid major cuts just by the nature of inflation. If we're in a period of high inflation, it's a even more significant conversation. So with that, back to you, Catherine. Thank you. And that's a good segue to this slide, which clearly shows what is really close to being a $7 million gap. It's a little bit off there, but we'll call it $7 million. And you have seen most of this chart before and it is the equity investments. What's new is this line at the top that says wages and other inflation. And that accounts for the COLA and STEP increases for FY22, this current year, as we anticipate them. We know what we've bargained. So we can get pretty close on that one because we know who we've employed. It will just change a bit through the year. And then as the mayor indicated, we have to plan ahead for FY23. And so we have included a larger than normal estimate in here. And I can't give you the exact math because we're in contract negotiations, but I did wanna explain to the best of my ability that's where that figure comes from. So what do we do now with a $7 million budget gap? We are solution-oriented administration. So we come to you with solutions. We realize that we are fortunate. Many of our projected revenue streams are coming back. And you have seen that as I've presented on the big five and the slide six, which is my fun names for our revenue streams. Not all of them have been predictable and we'll get to that in a minute. But one of the exercises that the mayor and I went through was going back and level setting those revenues, going back to FY19, looking at what was both budgeted and achieved in that year and then adding a small level of inflation to get us to what should be a normal or achievable level for FY22. As we've mentioned, we're also looking at ARPA funding to help us phase in some of these new equity investments without having to ask the taxpayers to take on all of that at one time. But we are also asking for a 4 cent tax increase which would fill just over $2 million of that gap. Mayor, would you like to add anything before I move on? I just wanna make clear that like blood number one really represents a strategy and it's a strategy we're gonna need the board's support for and the council's support for if we're gonna implement it in this respect. And I think the later slide speaks to this as well. So to restate what Catherine just said that we are taking a, we are basically assuming that the world and our revenue streams are going to return to normal. That's what that $3.5 million of increase is from FY21 represents. Essentially return to normal meaning that these revenue streams are back to where they were in FY19 and in fact, a little bit ahead of there because these are revenue streams that do go up with inflation. It is an approach that I think makes sense. We might not always recommend this for approach. Often we might recommend a more conservative approach, frankly, we often have with these. However, because of the financial crisis what we are recommending here is given the uncertainty that if we were to take a really conservative approach I think that would do real damage to our city team and we would have to, we would, a conservative approach would basically mean either really high tax increases or significant cuts. Given that a clear purpose of the ARPA funds is to replace revenues that have been impacted by the pandemic, we think a prudent step here is to budget as if we return to normal but to have a replacement reserve, a significant replacement reserves this year and next year in case that does not materialize. And I think if we go to the next slide I think we might have more on that. So essentially that's what the top bullet is showing here that we would have a $2 million replacement reserve using ARPA funds for FY23 and that we would recommend setting aside now also a million dollars for FY24. So again to kind of, we talked about this a little bit a week and a half ago but there currently remains a million, about $15 million of uncommitted ARPA funds. We would be saying let's reserve not commit but set aside these three million and not commit them to other items until we know in fact that our revenue has recovered. In addition, I guess I'll finish up with the ARPA funds. In addition, we are proposing that we set aside an additional $2 million of ARPA funds. So essentially five total that would allow us to phase in the impact of the new equity investments that we made in the current year budget and that we're committed to continuing forward. This is a way, there's lots of precedent for this. The most recent one that many counselors will remember is just a few years ago when we saw and received federal grant dollars to expand the size of our police department. We basically were able to hire those officers up front and then phase in the impact of that or the cost of the amount of money and the impact of that over multiple years. And therefore, you could just phase it in and make the impact on any one year of the taxes less. This is a similar strategy to phase these in. And it is something that we will need the board and the council support for in committing these dollars in this direction. I certainly see this as a strategic investment in key equity issues that were impacted by the pandemic and that these strategic investments make the city a stronger city and make us a stronger community. I think it's certainly consistent with certainly both the spirit and the intent of ARPA dollars to allow us to find a way to change the city by making these investments over a multi-year period. And again, we will be bringing forward if we decide together to go in this direction would actually take a council action to commit to essentially encumber these dollars. If we didn't do it that way and we were just to put all of these investments on the local budget in one year, that would require a substantially larger tax increase. So that's instead of a $2.2 million one, you can see we'd be looking at something more like four. And so that is why I'm recommending why we're recommending this approach. And that's a good segue. Despite the other solutions that we've mentioned, we are still recommending a property tax increase, a 4 cent increase. However, as you know, we have heard from the school district that the education rate will be decreasing and that will be decreasing by 7%. If you had not heard that that news, we got earlier this week. And so when you do the math on that, even with the increase that we are proposing the total, and I see that it still says increase on this slide, and it should say decrease over on the far right there, because that is a decrease. There's a negative number there and it is in fact a decrease. So I apologize for the confusion. If we don't move forward with a tax increase and it were not to pass, we face a $2.2 million hole. And to be clear, we would look to all departments for those potential solutions. On the upside, if it passes, but we do not need all of that authority, which the mayor tells me has happened before, several times, we would not fully use that. So mayor, is there anything you'd like to add about either of these slides? Yeah, let me just reinforce both of these points. We are sitting here in January, only partway through the current budget year, and we have to make a decision now for what gets placed on the ballot in March, but we don't actually finish this fiscal year, as you all know, but just to make sure, I remember the public is watching, we're only partway through the year. The fiscal year goes all the way through June. There are a lot of moving parts to our budget. There's a fair amount of uncertainty in our budget that's particularly true right now as we continue to come out of the pandemic. So it has happened multiple times over the last 10 years where we have at this point in the year gone to taxpayers to request an increase in the cap, but haven't actually needed to use that increased authority. At one point actually, we went, we asked for an increase, and then we didn't use it for three years. So people, that certainly could happen again. And I hope the fact that we have a track record together as an administration and a council of making good on that is not lost on the public. At least some members of the public are aware this is raising the cap. It does not necessarily mean the full cap will be used. And then finally, yes, I do just want to make it very clear that if we aren't successful here, if the voters do not, if the council approves this plan and then voters don't get behind it, we would go back to the drawing board and everything would be on the table. And as we reviewed here, this is largely being driven. This, people should understand this tax increase is mostly being driven by the inflationary period that we're in and that's inflation that impacts every department. And we would have to go back to the drawing board and consider cuts to all the general fund departments as well as potential initiatives is what we looked at. So I just want to make it clear that how we would solve this is a separate calculation from the... Basically that everything's on the table. I just don't want anything about this presentation to leave any uncertainty there where we want all of this to go through if the voters aren't there, we're gonna have to come up with a new plan and everything will be on the table. I think that was the full presentation and we would welcome your questions on any aspect of that I do, again, for these three big solutions to work, each of them will require council action, board action in one way or another and anything that we can speak to that will help address any questions about that action. We hope to do that tonight. Councilor Hightower, I see you have your hand up. Great, and I apologize, my camera is not working. So it will just be my disembodied voice for the meeting. So I have a few questions, which I'll just say two of them and then I'll pause and or give other board of finance members a chance is that, and I apologize, I missed the first part of the presentation so it could be that you answered some of these and I just didn't see it, which for the solutions, it looks like right now we're planning on setting aside $3 million from ARPA funding and I know that previously it was 1 million. So just wanted to, I think, or at least as I remember it, I think previously it was 1 million. So I just wanted to ask about that. And then on the timeline, I'm curious like if we end up not having, if we end up having those revenues come in, how much time we'll have to figure out alternate uses for those ARPA funds and if that will still be a feasible thing to do or we would risk losing part of them. And then on the cost side, the $5 million and I think Catherine may be even pointed out that that was new, I guess I'd love to see a little bit more detail about that, like what department it's coming from. Again, it could be that I just missed that at the beginning of the presentation but I'm not quite sure what with that, that's the biggest bucket by a large amount and I'm not quite sure what that means. Great, thank you, great. Appreciate the chance to speak to all that. So let me be as clear as I can about the ARPA dollars because really two of the solutions that we're proposing here involve ARPA dollars. President Tracey, I see you have your hand up to you. Is that, if I go ahead and try to address these questions and then come to you or did you want to add right away to Councilor Hightower's point? No, I was just curious about the, as you get into the ARPA stuff, I'm just curious, I guess as an addition to Councilor Hightower's question, just we've been discussing ARPA, use of ARPA funding for some time now, we have the surveys that were put out. I believe we've had those responses for some time and we've been wanting to get to that conversation but haven't yet to have that conversation. Meanwhile have been taking out additional money from that pool to pay for different needs of the city. And so it doesn't feel ideal in that sense. So I'm just wondering if you can speak to the process of how that's gonna play out in the context of this. Yes, thank you President Tracey. And let me try to, I appreciate, let me step as far back as I can to give the full context with ARPA and try to answer both President Tracey's and Councilor Hightower's questions. So we have $27 million of total ARPA funding. We have been successful, although I think it is a fair characterization President Tracey that together we did make a number of commitments both in the budget process and then as events have unfolded since the budget process began, we have succeeded at a full $15 million remains uncommitted and for some time we've been able to hold that as the goal, hold that line to keep that full $15 million uncommitted. With the strategies we are laying out here, we are proposing using some of that authority to pursue these strategies. The two strategies that involve ARPA usage are the revenue replacement reserve as well as the phase in of the equity investments. And perhaps I'm not completely sure Councilor Hightower, but I think one of the things that is maybe a little clearer in this presentation than it was when we talked about a week and a half ago is we're trying to give you two-year projections now and be really explicit about them in both respects because we are recommending two-year strategies with each of these items. On the revenue replacement side, we are proposing that for the upcoming budget year, for the upcoming budget year FY23 that we would set aside $2 million and that we now plan on setting aside an additional $1 million for FY24. We have until, and Catherine cracked me if I don't get this quite right, we have until the end of FY20, the end of calendar year 24 to commit ARPA dollars. And I think we even have some years beyond that to actually expend all of the ARPA dollars. So I certainly think Councilor Hightower, another major check-in point with the necessity of these reserves will be approximately a year from now. We will have a much better sense halfway through FY23 as to whether we're actually going to need a reserve of that magnitude for FY23. And I think we'll know a lot more about the return to normalcy or not for FY24 at that point. So I would think that would probably be about the earliest and this isn't totally thought through. So if others have different views on this, maybe I don't have this exactly right, but my thought would be we would probably check in on this issue about a year from now and consider whether or not we want to release some of that reserve. And so, I think this is clear, but just in case it's not, if we don't need this for the revenue replacement, it would then have another opportunity to take that up to $3 million and designate it for other eligible purposes. So we'd be having that conversation, at least starting that conversation in January of 23 and we would have a full two calendar years to make commitments with those dollars and then even more years to spend it. So I don't think there'd be any risk of not, you know, of losing that money as long as we stayed checked in again on that kind of schedule. So that would be $3 million of the 15 for this strategy being set aside, not necessarily spent, but set aside. The other strategy is a two year spending strategy investing in a range, you know, the range of new equity investments that we collectively felt compelled to urgently take coming out of the pandemic in response to some of the clear inequities that the pandemic brought to the front, whether that's disparities and racial health, racial disparities in health outcomes or the extra challenge and burdens that various communities faced and from both the public health and an economic perspective during the pandemic. It is clear that from the survey and I do believe this is public and out there, if I'm somehow wrong about that, I apologize. But I think the survey is clear that the racial, there's a strong desire for racial equity and justice in investments that people, I think this is very consistent with what the survey says for us to make new investments in equity. And so I don't see this as being done sort of outside of or not responsive to that public process. And this two-year phase in period, again, we would be using $1.2 million this year and then stepping that down to, I think about $800,000 next year. So that would remain, that would then, you know, there would be at least $10 million more still uncommitted for us to talk through. I agree with you, President Tracy, this urgency to where we, Carla Alnes Rao has been leading that effort and we're prepared to start that conversation. We, that will follow on this conversation very, very shortly in a matter of a short number of weeks we will be able to move to that conversation once we get this, once we get these town meeting day items fully resolved. If I could ask one follow-up question on that. Please. I don't mean, I don't mean to stop Councilor Paul. I think I saw her going for the new button as well, but so along those lines for the, and I forget, I think it's 1.25 million on the RAIB staff, just wondering, you know, based on the survey results, how much the ARPA funding would could just like, I guess immediately cover those costs or to what extent that isn't followed. There, those don't qualify. Great. And sorry, I realized I didn't speak to your inflation question either. So let me speak to that too. We believe that those costs are all ARPA eligible. So we could do what we, you know, an alternative strategy here would be just to fully use ARPA dollars for those costs for another two years. From my perspective, I'm concerned about that strategy that we would then, because we want these to be ongoing costs, we are not going to, you know, I'm sure we all agree that our work to achieve greater racial equity and racial justice is not going to end at the end of FY24. We, if we don't start taking steps to build this into the structural budget and just completely use federal dollars to cover these costs, I think we would be looking at potentially very challenging budget year for FY25. And that's, to me, that seems like, yeah, it's something we could do. It could create bigger problems down the road. I think my, you know, I'm very interested to hear what you think of this Councilor Hightower and others. To me, it's time for us to, if we're serious, I think we should be building a sustainable budget for the longterm and starting to make sure that we aren't facing some cliff a couple of years from now. I think that could, you know, that's what we're seeking to avoid with this strategy, but if the Councilor, Council see it differently, that's why we're talking about it. And then in terms of the inflation, I do think the last presentation, this isn't new, the inflation, and we certainly talked about the inflation in the January 10th meeting, or I think it was January 11th, whatever the day was, a week and a half ago. But I think this presentation is just clearer about what that number actually is, two years of significant inflation. Just, and all that's represented there is a continuation of existing programs. That is, there's not new, that is just continuation of all the existing city programs. I'm proud that we didn't make cuts to city services during the pandemic, as many municipalities did. We, you know, this budget, this budget conversation is assuming that we continue all current services. And if we do that for another, you know, that's what the inflation impact is over two budget years. Right, and if I can just respond to the other point, and this isn't a question, this is just a comment, but I do think that it's hard, as we saw, I guess, in the last vote, to ask, and I hear that, you know, we think that there's a school budget adjustment coming, but I don't know like how folks are gonna perceive that or everything else, especially with the new high school and some of the concern about that. So I think it would be really great if we could hold off until people see that hitting their tax statement before we did ask for an increase. And I say that also knowing that, you know, it has been remarkable how much, how stable the municipal budget has been and that it's been a reducing part of kind of the folks' property tax, but I think I'm just, you know, I'm wary of that, you know, our residents are getting wary of tax increases. Under, thank you, Councilor Tau, I certainly agree with the sentiment and have always agreed with the sentiment that Berlin Tonings pay a lot in property taxes. That's why we have worked so hard to keep our rate increases on the municipal side under the rate of inflation over a full decade now that you can be confident that would still be the case, even with this unusually, you know, this year, if we had this 4 cent increase, we would still, that would still, if you took, if you zoomed out and took that decade-long perspective and we can produce those, we can update those graphs for you, we'll do that for Monday that show that, you know, we really have been very attentive to that concern and kept municipal increases under the rate of inflation. I guess I'm not, I certainly understand and I think we've tried to be really responsive to the question of not minimizing our use of bonding capacity until decisions about the bonding for the high school have been made. And that's why, you know, we have this substantial scaling back by over 35% of the proposed, you know, of this bonding item that we had been planning on and working for towards for many years. This will mean that substantially more than half of the city's overall bonding capacity is being reserved for the school district and for there to be a big increase in the $70 million that has already been committed to the high school. So I think we're being good partners to the high school in that respect. I do think people, I think that one point of confusion that I think is starting out there and that people to understand is the impact of the high school expansion project on tax bills is not imminent. There will be, I don't know the exact plan for new bonding that the school district is considering, but they, you know, they will not incur major costs for this project until they are in construction with the new high school. The earliest that is slated for, what they are aiming to start construction on is essentially two years from now. And then they are projecting, I hope I have this right, I believe I do. And then they are projecting a two year construction period after that. And so they would not fully draw down on the bonds until something like four years from now. And that's when the full impact of a high school expansion will be felt. So I hope that we can help communicate to taxpayers. This is a big financial decision that is coming that is absolutely appropriate for people to be wary of that. The actual impact of that major project is not gonna kind of directly coincide with the kind of the budget years that we're talking about now. If you follow me. Thank you so much. Councilor Hall. Thanks. So I guess just a couple of thoughts. For me, one of the key takeaways from this is that despite the highest inflation, at least according to the CPI that we've seen since 1982, I think it's pretty impressive that there is only a 2.7% growth in the budget. If anyone was wondering when the amount of wage pressure and labor worker shortages, when those liking indicators would come home to roost, they're coming, they're here, they've arrived. I think what's also impressive is that, as I think you've stated perhaps, that the amount of the increase, the tax increase would still be below the rate of inflation, which and would keep your just over 11 year, 10 year track record in place, which is not just nice for a track record, but also very good and good for property taxes although as we all know they are, we are a burdened tax burden city. So the one question that I had was, and maybe you've already sort of answered it, Catherine, is that the figure of the 5.2 million, it seemed to me just based on the budget and what percentage of it is wages, that seemed like that was actually low, that it actually could be higher than that. And I'm assuming you're basing it on the 7%. Maybe you're basing it on 8%. I'm not sure what you're basing it on, but just wondered how that was calculated or if you use some sort of smooth inflation figure, how you, and I understand you did that based on contracts, but is there something else? Obviously that's the lion's share of it. I'm just wondering where the rest of it came from. Yes, I appreciate you asking for the clarification because I think the way we label that category is confusing and it's really for FY23 in order to keep the tax increase as low as possible, we are going to keep anything that's not a labor cost flat. And so despite the fact that there are 7% inflation, like department heads will be tasked with essentially doing more with less, although their budgets will be level funded, hopefully, just due to inflation, that will be a problem. So it's not captured there. What is captured there is our estimate for COLAs and steps for FY22, which is pretty close, and then our projections for FY23 on the labor side. Okay, and then the figure that you got for the budget reduction, the tax reduction, the reduction in the rate for the schools. I mean, that's a large number. And I think anyone would be like, wow, that's a large number. And I assumed that that's something that you learned very, very recently. Do you have, I mean, I'm assuming that there is substantive information to conclusively say that that is what they will be going to the voters and asking for. And you have that in writing. And as well, the backup for that information that came from, I assume the Board of Ed, so that you're like 99.9% sure that that's what they will be going forward with. That is a great question because I also don't like to count my chickens until they hatch, so to speak. So we had put in just level funding until I got the ballot question from Nate Lavery. And what I put in was the language, what exactly they had, which was the 7% reduction. Okay, because it seems as though usually when they come forward with, one of my complaints that I've always had about the wording of the school budget is that it's almost like impossible for the average person to understand. It's never done in percentages. It's always got a lot of legal ease that just never gives you the bottom line. So is that the same thing this year? Or does it actually say what the decrease is? I am actually happy to just quickly read it to you because it's not very long. Just give me a quick minute here. Of course, now I can't find it. I think I have it, Catherine, if you... Great, thank you. I think I filed it so I would have it with the budget. Do you mind reading it? Yeah, we'll forward the full item, but it does conclude with spending at this level could produce a property tax rate decrease of 6.98% parentheses current estimate. Okay, that's pretty clear. Again, I haven't been here before, so I wasn't aware of this lack of clarity previously, but I will find that email and I'm happy to forward it to you, Councillor Powell. I mean, I know that the language that we see on the ballot is state law. It's not that they are trying to make it difficult to decipher. It's just, it is difficult to decipher, but I don't wanna infer that the school department is trying to do that intentionally. They're just complying with state law. So that would be the only... If certainly part of the argument, and I'm not necessarily saying it is, but certainly the timing of looking at a tax increase now, given the other dynamics, I just wanted to try to figure out, be sure that what we're saying that we have that in writing somewhere, and we do. So I guess the... So I have one other small little question for you, Catherine, and I realize it's probably sort of a little nitpicky, but it's $118,000 worth of nitpicky. So I hope it isn't too small. Is that you had said that the budget gap was $7,018,000. And you've got revenues for 3.5 and you've got ARPA for 1.2, and the four cents is 2.2. And it seems as though 2.318 is actually needed. So I'm just wondering where you see that $118,000 coming from. That is an excellent question. And one of the things that you will be seeing on Monday, and that we'll be talking about is, we'll be proposing in this new era where there's a lot of grant money floating around, some strategic new positions, two of them a grants director and then somebody under them an assistant kind of position who will help us both with the infrastructure money as well as to make REIB and those equity investments, hopefully more sustainable. That department's been extremely successful with fundraising and securing grants. And we hope to be able to leverage that. And every year we have a little bit of money in grants, miscellaneous. We are sometimes successful at that and sometimes not. This year we'll have a strategy and personnel. So that's likely how that will be made up. Okay. And then I won't go on and on. I just have one other one last question. And that is when you look at the tax rate, as we all know, the tax rate is made up of a lot of little tax rates. Some of them are revenue neutral. Some of them are voter approved and then some are just budget driven. One of the budget driven ones is retirement. And you have that one in your and the recommended general fund tax, the chart that you have, you have that one for FY23 as level funded for retirement. It's the exact same number as for FY22. Now, inflation doesn't usually help retirement funds. And there, I don't know, it used to be that the report, the valuation would come in at the end of December. Now, maybe you've already received it and you've already even talked about it and I'm just not aware of it. I don't know if you have that and you already know what the annual required contribution is. But if we're talking about a tax increase or a tax decrease, in the end, voters don't really, people who pay property taxes don't really care whether or not they approve this or they didn't. All they know is that their taxes have gone up. And that is a substantial amount. It's 8, well, it's 8.3 million or 8.5 million. So I'm just wondering if you could just speak to that so that we have a, in the interest of transparency, you know, how much, why you've level funded that? I will, and I will ask. I saw Rich Goodwin had turned on his camera and then turned it off. So he'll help me in a minute because he has the details on this. But I will say I believe as soon as we have a free minute at Board of Finance, maybe at the meeting on the 31st, we could have a report out because we do have a finalized actuarial report. I'm gonna give you the good news because I never get to give good news. But we had achieved a rate of return of 35%, which never happens. And it's so great last year and it's historic. And so that is part of the reason why that's level funded. But I will turn it over to Rich to say more. There is, as you've noted, it's a huge part of the tax rate. And so it is something that we're very mindful of as we're doing this budgeting because it does drive the tax rate. Rich, is there any more you'd like to just say quickly to Counselor Paul about this? Sorry, you're still on mute. I echo what Catherine said. Our return on our investment portfolio was the best ever in the history of the city of Burlington. And according to our actuary, we outperform other municipalities that they have clients with. And that has basically put us in a very good position to have a level dedicated tax for retirement period. Well, maybe it'll go down. It's possible. I mean, 35% is great. And of course, it is based on a smoothing average, but all right, well, that was really my only other question. And then I would just say that in closing that, I personally like the way that you have approached this. I think it's important to use ARPA dollars, but to use them responsibly in the sense that it's very easy to just fill in a hole with funds that are available. But that's not what the intention, I think most people want us to use ARPA dollars for. I think there's a lot of other things out there and $15 million can go pretty fast when you start doing it, when you just use it for, instead of for building reserves or for building other initiatives, you just use it for budgetary purposes. And so I like the diversified approach that you've taken. And I think that a 4% tax increase while nobody likes tax increases, I think is a reasonable amount. And I don't know what you're looking for from the Board of Finance this evening. I'll let other people ask whatever questions they have, but just wondered where you'd like to take this from here this evening. And then, but please, I've taken up enough of time. I'm happy to have other speak. Thank you, Councilor Powell. I was not thinking that, I appreciate all the feedback in the comments. The, my thought was that the Board did not need to take any action tonight. The goal of tonight was to put the Board in a position to take action on these three valid items at the Monday meeting so that the full Council will definitely have the benefit of the Board's recommendation when it convenes on Monday, since we do need a decision on these items on Monday. So if people are ready to recommend, we could, but I don't think that's really necessary. I think Monday we'll be looking for those recommendations. All right, well, I think the, in the, certainly when we get to that point, I think also it is extremely important to note that the way that we collaborate is by everyone taking, everyone taking the same level of responsibility. If this tax increase does not pass, the effects of that are shared by all of us. And we face it together, we figure it out together, and no one area of the city or departments feels that pain any more than any other. So, I appreciate that comment and I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Councilor Powell. President Tracy. Yeah, I also really appreciate that. And thanks for saying that, Councilor Powell, I really appreciate that. That wasn't totally clear last time we spoke about this issue. And so I just really appreciate that being made explicit within the presentation, because I was concerned about, you know, this not a potential tax not passing, and then that being the automatic outcome of that being just the cuts to the equity investments, which I don't think would be fair. I think we should really take a step back. Should that be the case? Look at all, all departmental spending and then really go from there and try and be as fair across the board on that as possible. Certainly not focusing on REIB, which has just done incredible work over the last several years. And in this last year in particular with some of the expanded events and trainings, I know I'm very much appreciating the racial equity training that we're engaged in currently. The thing that I'm curious about is knowing that we have this budget shortfall, I was just working on the agenda for Council on Monday. And one of the things I did notice, and I think we'll be discussing at Board of Finance on Monday, is the creation of a number of additional positions. And we've talked about other positions at other times that haven't necessarily been proposed, but like additional like the communications person, for instance, at the BPD as a proposal. So just wondering what the administration's thinking is recognizing we do have this shortfall at proposing potential new positions in the intervening period and just how you're approaching kind of some of that additional or new spending as we consider this tax increase at this time, recognizing that we do have this shortfall. Where, how are you thinking about some of these other positions that you're thinking about, that we're thinking about creating for the city? Thanks, President Tracey. And I appreciate, I'm glad we've had the chance to have this additional conversation tonight. And it feels like this is the way that Board of Finance is supposed to work where we're able to kind of work through our issues over some time. These are challenging issues. These are challenging times. And I'm glad we've had a chance to do it. I do hope it's just clear. I just wanna make sure it's clear to everyone that this is what we are communicating tonight and have refined the presentation to be crystal clear on. It was always our intent. This has always been, the goal is to find a way to get to a successful budget and if we don't get there that we would, like we always do in times where we have had setbacks as we have, you know, we didn't get initial approval. Of course, on the December bond, we haven't given up on solving the challenges that we hope to do with that bond. We've come back, we've come back to first principles and come back with a substantially different plan. And if we face new challenges here, we take the same approach and that's always been our intent. As far as, so, you know, we are specifically with respect to, you know, this is always a challenging part about the way the city budget works. We have this town meeting day tradition and statutory response. That's when we make these decisions about the tax rate. We are many months from passing a budget. There are a lot of detailed questions that we're unable to fully address and resolve until we get towards the end. So certainly there may be, not everything's been figured out, I guess, is one point here. I do think within the police department budget, that we see as what's happened within the police department budget, if you recall, is that the, when we passed this year's budget, there was as a result, there were substantial uncommitted funds within the police department budget as a result of the reduction in officer staffing in the very, there are a lot of moving parts within the police department budget, is what I'm trying to say. We are still, I think this year's budget and we owe you, it's another piece of analysis the council has requested and that we are working on update for is to show where we stand with respect to all the moving parts in the police department budget. The reduction of officers from where we were in FY19, the stabilized levels under the new authorization projected going forward, the addition of CSLs, the addition of CSOs. There's been a lot of moving parts. We have, it's been sometimes since we kind of updated that. We are assumption with the kind of budget concept that we are discussing tonight is that we are still kind of working within, within those constraints. We're not gonna be, you know, as we are in agreement we're not gonna be spending money in the police department budget on the same line items that we were back in FY19. We are working within that basic level of spending with all the new resources and items and the crisis response team. We're trying to work within, our goal is to work within that framework even as we consider additional changes like the ones you mentioned. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I appreciate that for sure. Okay. And then the last thing was just, I was looking for, I'm wondering if we might be able to get that ARPA survey information if that might be made public just as we're considering this just so we can understand that. I don't know, I don't know that that's happened yet. I see. Okay, fair point. Let me appreciate the request and we will, we're eager to get to that conversation and we'll get back to you on that quickly. Okay, thank you, Mayor. Director Pine, Brian, I see you've turned on your camera. Were you trying to get in on something here or were you anticipating moving to the TIF item? And it was a little bit of both. Councilor Tracy's question about the ARPA results can be found in everyone's front porch forum today that came out as CEDOs message includes the ARPA survey results. So that was one thing I just wanted to let all the council know in the public. Okay, great. Thanks, Director Pine. Thank you. Sorry, I lost track of exactly where we were at. So, and great. So we'll be talking more about that going forward. I am gonna, I'm not seeing any more hands on FY23 budget. The hour is getting pretty late. I'm hopeful that the last, I'm gonna shift us to the last item if there's no objection and we will talk about the TIF item based on our previous conversation last time. I'm hopeful we will not need as much time on this but we, you know, this is a really, this is a really important initiative for the future of the downtown. We have an opportunity for positive transformation of Main Street as a result of these decisions going back a full decade to the KISS administration to create a downtown TIF district. And as discussed last time our window for making these investments is, we're at the point where we can see that at the end of that window basically a year from now, March, but we need to commit these dollars by March of 23. Again, it's always important to remember all this has a big number attached to it. We were talking about a request to voters authorization of $25 million of new tax with rent financing borrowing. This is very different than general obligation borrowing in that there is no direct impact on property taxes as a result of a yes or no vote. Unlike general obligation bonding which does have an impact as we discussed earlier this will have no impact. People can vote yes for this and there will not be a change in their taxes. The concept here is one that we've been talking about for a number of years. It's the Great Streets Main Street concept that would lead to major new investments and Main Street would be totally transformed and have protected bike lanes would have beautiful stormwater rain gardens that are both making Main Street a better more appealing place and protection playing from phosphorus runoff and other contaminants and it would create a new tree belt that would allow us over the years to restore the once great canopy of Main Street tree canopy of Main Street and more. The place making the improvement of Main Street would really be quite dramatic even greater than the improvement that we've seen on St. Paul Street since we took a similar approach. Main Street has even more potential because it is a 99 foot wide right away. We have begun since we last talked we have had more conversation with downtown stakeholders and we have more public events planned for the weeks ahead. We know there will be questions about construction disruption. We know there will be questions about what the impacts on Main Street businesses will be and we're having done a smaller project and learn lessons from it with St. Paul Street. We believe we're gonna be really ready to make this a successful project as we roll it out. So with that are there any further questions on this? Brian would you like to add anything to my keying it up here? I think you covered it. Mayor I just wanted to add that we've spoken before the NPAs of Ward one and eight, wards two and three. In a couple hours I have Ward five and next week is Ward six and Ward four and seven actually the first week of February is Ward six. So we are getting through the NPAs and DPW Commission spent time discussing this last night. The downtown businesses will be convened. I think it's tomorrow is the first focus meeting on this and a really exciting public engagement process that involves the collaborative of three firms that together are ensuring that this is a really exhaustive and inclusive public engagement process with a real focus on reaching voices that are often not part of the process begins on the 1st of February. So I think we're really open for questions about any aspect of this request. Present Tracy. I had a question from a constituent about what the administration costs go towards. I know there's about a million dollars in administrative costs and you could just speak to what that break down what the spending that that goes towards. Yeah, sure. The district requires that we specifically call out what are referred to as related costs. And so when we incur costs for consultants like the work that Jeff Glasberg did with being example or the work that David White is doing now that's the type of costs that's included. And we're not allowed to actually borrow funds to pay for those costs because the rule that Pepsi came to or the ruling was that you need to take the increment that you're capturing from the district and just pay for those with increment not borrowed funds. So that's basically that's the commitment but for the life of the district we have a fairly high level of burden on the city in terms of reporting and monitoring and tracking and project management, project development. This outreach effort that I mentioned a little while ago all of that's included in that number. So for the entire life of the district from all the way till 2036 is what that covers. And that's essentially staff time at DPW, consultants that you have to hire to assist you with that and the work that CEDO does. So it covers portion of our time as well. Okay, thank you. Okay, it's looking like, okay, Councilor Jang. Thank you, Director Pan. You know, I mean, I think requests that I hear from the community, the constituents are specific to the risks associated with staff and also concerns about extending the life of the due date. You know, those are a couple of questions. And I think, you know, all the questions such as also there is a fear of gentrification. I think all of those people spoke about them but I haven't heard like reassurances, especially when we talk about risk work percentage are we basing it on. Thank you. Sure, I think what we have for, there's quite a bit in this specific project that is attempted to minimize risk to the lowest possible level. I would say as with anything you're doing involving financing, there's always gonna be some risk. And that is ultimately what the voters are going to be asked is if a perfect storm occurred and we were unable to see any new growth in the downtown and there was no new tax, no growth in tax base and we weren't able to repay, we would need to go back to the voters and get approval from the voters. So that's ultimately what we're asking to pledge the full faith and credit of the city. So we need to be honest with ourselves and with our voter, the constituents about that. I would say that Tiff and Brohinton is a tool that's been used since the 1990s. We've never had a single dollar of taxpayer money that was needed to bail out Tiff. So Tiff and Brohinton has been handled exactly how the book says it should be handled. We get reviewed from Vepsi. Vepsi comes and looks at our risk factors. They really apply a level of due diligence and review before we can get approval to go any further. So they wanna make sure. And so what they have is an economist that looks at our assumptions. And that economist looks at if the city assumes this amount of growth in their Tiff district, is that assumption realistic? And so what we've tried to do is only include development projects that are either fully permitted and about to go underway or they're being assembled by very reputable experience development groups like Shetland Housing Trust with the VFW is another example. So we've got basically limited our scope of what we included in the projections. We have to assume no growth in the city's tax rate which is pretty unlikely over the next 14 years to see no change in the city's tax rate. And so if there's growth in the tax rate, that new growth generates more Tiff revenue. So there's a number of factors that really limit our risk. So I just, I wanted to be clear about that. We have a, as far as the deadline end of March of 2023, we do not believe since this has already been extended for the Forest City and actually everyone got an extension, but in this instance, we believe that the legislature would not be favorably, would not view that request favorably. So we have that challenge as well. The question about sort of gentrification, I think is a good one and is a tough one really. It's a tough one to answer because what I think the theory there is that if we invest in the public infrastructure that values will go up so much that some businesses will no longer be able to afford to stay or residents would also be pushed out by growing values. I would say that, you know, what we, I think that a theory, at least the theory that I think is, I could defend pretty easily is that really what we're going to see is an overall improvement in the downtown, both property values, but also economic activity. And the more economic activity that occurs in our downtown, which is where we want it to occur, it supports the shops that are on Main Street, Church Street and all the side streets. It increases, you know, gross receipts taxes. It increases the sales tax, increases a number of revenue sources for the city, but it doesn't necessarily have to lead to, you know, displacement of existing businesses. And so, you know, I think in this case, you know, the investments that we're trying to encourage are, you know, affordable housing at VFW to serve, you know, those who've been homeless, experienced homelessness as well as other workforce housing, that the additional housing that will be built in the other developments that are on our list have to include their inclusionary housing. So there will always be added affordable units every time new development occurs. So I think there's some safeguards in place, but it's a fair question about gentrification. It is definitely. Let me just add a couple of points on both of those. One, with respect, I think people are absolutely right to worry about risk. Cities should be worried about financial risk. I hope everyone on this call is clear, you know, risk is something this administration has been very focused on and worked hard on. TIF, there are municipalities that have gotten in trouble with TIF districts. They tend to be situations very different from the one we're contemplating though, where a TIF plan involves a bunch of new development that is projected and the city goes out and makes a bunch of expensive investments, expecting that tax development to be there. And then a big development project faces substantial delays, which is common as we've all learned with city place. And as the city Winooski experienced that previously were some of their big projects. That can lead to challenging situations for cities. Just to reinforce what Councilor Pine here, like this is not that type of project. We do not, this project is not directly linked to a big uncertain project like that. There are some assumptions that are being made about growth from here. They are conservative assumptions and I completely agree with Brian that there's very little reason to think that somehow this investment is going to ruin, change Burlington's perfect record of having never had a problem with its TIF investments resulting in any general obligation risk. And that's certainly our goal here. And there's, we think very conservative assumptions. If there are detailed questions about that between now and Monday, David White, we can speak to those further and issue those detailed assumptions. I just wanted to, yeah. Well, I was just going to note, the reason why the VEPSI and the legislature also allow for TIF bonds to be issued as essentially revenue bonds. So a 50% margin rather than a two thirds is because they believe they're much lower risk than other requests for tax increases. So there's really, there's a level of safety built into that idea that they believe that's why the threshold should be lower. And I would just add to the Brian's point about gentrification. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding what causes gentrification and what gentrification is. This is a bigger debate, but I think it's worth revisiting here in action. We are certainly hoping that this investment results in more investment and more building, the creation of more commercial spaces and the creation of more housing. That is explicitly something that we are seeking to see in the downtown. My belief is gentrification in communities like Burlington is what happens not when you build, it's what happens when you don't build, when you don't see an expansion of the amount of housing and commercial opportunities that are available. You see that those scarce resources become under a greater and greater competition and prices drive up. And we've seen those pressures at work in many ways and public investment that encourages new private investment that expands the amount of housing and commercial opportunities, I think we'll actually have a, well, study after study shows that that kind of development actually brings down prices for housing and I've seen them in housing. I haven't studied it as carefully in commercial spaces, but I believe the same principle is true. So I think in gentrification, it's something we have to worry about either way. And certainly, I'll leave it at that. Right, it is seven o'clock. We've been going for two hours. I'm getting tired. Since then, maybe everyone else is too. There is still time before these votes on Monday. Again, this is the administration is very focused on this of counselors. Do you have further questions? Please be in touch. And if there's no objection, and I will pause if anyone wants to say anything else before parting, the floor is open. But if not, we will adjourn for tonight at seven or three PM and look forward to resuming the conversation with the board and the full council on Monday. Thank you everyone. Good night. Good night. Good night.