 It is six o'clock on Monday, March 21st, calling to order this meeting of the Winnieski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Deputy Mayor Jim Duncan. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You're welcome. Agenda review. Any concerns, changes to the agenda? No. All right. So now it's public comment. This is a chance for members of the public, if you wanna speak to something not included on tonight's agenda, you may do so now. If you're here for an item on the agenda, please wait until we reach that item. Do we have any public comment here in the room? All right. And in the attendees in Zoom, you can use the raise hand feature or the chat. Seeing no public comment, we'll move to the consent agenda. We have our minutes from City Council meeting on 3-7. The accounts payable were and payroll were and subsequent payout weren't. And the City Council meeting calendar, which we discussed at the last meeting, you'll notice that we did move the July meeting to the 18th to accommodate schedules. Are there any questions, concerns on consent agenda items? Any questions from the public? Okay. Hearing none, I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. So who? Second. Motion by Jim, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Council reports, can I start on your end, Aurora? Certainly. So we're doing the assignments for City Liaison appointments tonight, so I don't have an update related to that. I don't think there's anything else. All right. Brydon, any reports? Also, haven't had an infrastructure committee meeting since February. We don't have a date selected yet for April, but are working on returning to regular monthly meetings and are nearing in on a new date, and weekly regular date for that. So to be determined so far, no other updates on the infrastructure side of things. Chittendon Solid Waste District has their full board meeting on Wednesday. And I encourage folks to attend that. That's also available through Zoom and virtual attendance. And it's so, we'll have that this week as well. Thank you. Jin. The only thing I have to report is the tree committee met last week to talk about the centennial tree planting and plans for having that event on May 7th, which will be the day after Arbor Day, but on the Saturday of that week. So excited to continue working on that with the city and the tree committee. They have some great ideas around tying together a couple of events related to tree replacement in the city. And they also began work on revising the tree ordinance, which is on our strategies and priorities plan for this year. So looking at some initial changes to make that align with the new statutes for tree wardens in the city. So looking forward to that progress continuing with them. Thank you. My only report is that the planning commission met, I don't know, last Thursday, the other one before, and called a public hearing for their next meeting, April 14th. They are looking at regulation changes related to priority housing incentives. Any reports for you? Similar to Aurora, I do not have anything about our commission yet. All right. Thank you all. So we'll move them to city updates. Wendy. Thank you. And mayor and council, it's nice to see you all in the same room. That's terrific. I have a few updates. Pool passes for the 22 season at the Myers pool will be available for sale starting tomorrow, the 22nd. And we're doing a special this year where the first 50 season pass purchasers get an invitation to a pre-season pool party. And the rest of the public can look forward to the pool season opening Sunday, June 5th. Also in the community services department, we still have community garden plots available at many of the sites. You can check it out on the city website or call the community services department at 655-1392 to sign up in the community development area. Business ARPA grant applications are online. Grants up to $10,000 are available to Winooski businesses. There's a total amount of $100,000 available. The applications are due April 8th. And you can also pick up a hard copy if you'd like to at City Hall. Wanted to let you know the ARPA survey is live. And this is a survey to Winooski residents, businesses, families, students. We want to see how you were impacted by COVID so that we can inform our plans for using the ARPA funding. From the airport, beating night flying operations are going to happen this week and next week. The Vermont Air National Guard will conduct tonight flying from Tuesday the 22nd to Friday the 25th. And then again, Tuesday to Friday next week with two takeoff periods. Again, that's on the website. And hopefully most of you have heard about this last announcement, which is that the boats announced last week that they would not be evicting tenants from 300 main. Now this doesn't solve a larger problem of not enough housing. Not just in Winooski but in the area. But the immediate problem for those families is no longer eviction. What the boats say they are planning to do is to renovate two units at a time and move the families into the renovated units. So it will be a sequential operation. I don't believe we, as of Friday we had not received any plans again. So we're just going by what we hear from them. Thank you very much to city staff who worked on this, particularly the code enforcement and members of the 300 main round table, which was created to address this issue. The folks who are part of the round table are discussing how to continue that collaboration. Because it's a terrific group that includes providers of housing as well as representatives of folks in the housing and the city and to the housing authority and CHT. So it's a very helpful group. So we are discussing how to continue that collaboration. It probably wouldn't be on a weekly basis but it's such a helpful collaboration that we wanna continue it. So that's what I have. Well, thank you, Wendy. So the next item on the agenda is a public hearing that was warned for 6.15. I've got to wait for it. Yeah, if you wanna ask a question, you can. Yeah, hi to Bruce Wilson. So is the rates gonna go up for them? And how much? For the housing, 300 main street? Will the rates go up? And if so, how much? My understanding is that it will still be affordable housing and that the vouchers will still be accessible. So what we've heard is that if it does go up, it would only go up slightly, but I can't tell you for sure because we're not in charge. We don't know. But what we have heard is encouraging. No, that's good. It's good news, you know. I was talking to my parents on my camera show and she told me there is gonna go around. So, you know, I think when it got to session eight vouchers or whatever, help that it got the new Americans who live and do the main street, that that was part of their affordable plan. So I don't know how that's gonna work. I'm sure it'll work. Right, originally we understood that those tenants were gonna be evicted so that other tenants could come in, but now the understanding, again, just from what they're telling us and what they're telling the media, is that the current tenants will be able to stay. I mean, if there's any other questions, that's fine on this topic. Our next item is the public hearing and warning for 6.15. It's only 6.12 on this clock, so we have to wait three minutes to start that. So we can take a three-minute recess and reconvene at 6.15. A public hearing has been noticed for the consideration of draft amendments to form-based code included in Appendix B of the Unified Land Use and Development Regulations. At this time, I'd like to open the public hearing and have our zoning administrator, Eric Fourwald, give us a little overview of the changes. Yes, thank you very much. So as mentioned tonight, we are scheduled to have a public hearing on proposed amendments to the form-based code in particular parts one through four and part nine. These specific sections relate to the general provisions, the administration application process and appeals, the regulating plan, the building form standards and definitions. A lot of what's included in these sections is intended to clarify and help clean up some of the regulations to make the interpretation more consistent and clear for folks. This information was discussed at great length with the Planning Commission over the last several years. In December, they had a public hearing and forwarded on the draft amendments to the council. The council discussed the amendments at the meetings in January and February, both in general and in detail. On February 22nd, the hearing was set for tonight. Last week, I met with counselors, Herd and Renner to, sorry, Herd and Renner, to go over the proposed amendments and to answer any questions or address any specific comments that they had. So tonight, we are here to take comments from the public during the hearing and then later on on the agenda is another item for potential action. So you don't have to adopt the amendments tonight, but there is an item on for adoption under the regular items. Also, I believe the Planning Commission chair, Mike O'Brien, is in attendance or was planning to be in attendance tonight. So I don't know if he is here or if he wanted to provide any comments as well, if he is, but that's a general overview. Happy to answer any questions from any of you all before opening it up to the public. Thank you. Any questions from council? Any questions? No, great. Thank you all very much. All right, are there any questions from members of the public? You can use the raise hand feature or chat in Zoom or if you are in attendance. Looks like Mike is joining us. Welcome, Mike. No questions from council or the members of the public yet. Eric just gave us the introduction. Is there anything you wanna share on behalf of Planning Commission? I don't think so. I'm sure Eric did a fine job introducing it. Thank you. Okay. So seeing no comment from the public, I will now close the public hearing. It is 617 p.m. And we will move on to item nine. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Eric. A public hearing has also been noticed for the consideration of the OSHAX. What does it stand for? VDCP grant. Reminds community development. Thank you. It is 617. I'll open the public hearing now and John, if you wanna give a little overview. Sure. So this was first brought to the council back in January, January 18th meeting. Three projects were presented for a potential VCDP grant. Of those three, the council selected the project for rehabbing and capital improvements for the O'Brien Community Center at 32 Malts Bay. So as part of this grant, we have to hold a public hearing and to solicit feedback from the public for any questions or concerns on the proposed application. So the application will be presented to council. I think it's item B later on the agenda. So the application will be for $500,000 and it's a 10% local match for the scope. Do you wanna share any like broad strokes about the intended improvements? So we do have, as council knows, we have a third party contract, third party, just say third party involved with this project. So we are in discussion with CHT on this. So we're working with them on the potential improvements. The way the grant is written, it's funding comes to the city. So if for some reason we cannot come to, negotiate an agreement with CHT, there's a lot of needs at the OCC. So HVAC systems need, there'll be other useful life, tenant space needs to be improved. So there's definitely, even without having that third party involved, there's a lot of actions we can take down there with half a million dollars. I'll start, see if there are any questions from council on this before we move to the public. Okay, so are there any questions? Bruce. First of all, what is a CHT and OCC? Sorry about that. Oh yeah, yeah, lots of acronyms. So CHT is Champlain Housing Trust and OCC is the O'Ran Community Center. So that's the facility, the actual facility. Sure. And half a million, right? So what are you gonna do then? You're gonna build a new one? So the intent would be to do needed capital improvements. So you can imagine that's an old shopping center. So a lot of them. Well, let's go after that, you know, because it, yeah, I know it's brand new, but I don't know that it has, it was really ready to make it a buying center before you guys go to the buying T.A. and the underbought of the center. And so let's not go to the shops and let's go to where you're talking, the ones you're talking about. Sure. So right now we have a lot of updated equipment down here. So like our air handlers that are on the roof, they're well-known in their useful life. The tenant space does need to get spruced up. You know, you did have other tenants on their one point to fit out that space for new tenants. You would have to do some work. So between all the HVAC improvements, emergency generator replacements, all the capital needs that come with a building like that. And so you got a plan that's gonna bring your tenants. So what type of, so you got some capital on your roof or some type of tenant, right? So we are negotiating with CHT, you know, CHT. Champlain has to try to help us find tenants on the roof of that space. I don't think it's gonna be like that. I don't want to mention that because I'm very confused. You know, we got a half million dollars and then I'll give you, you know, you're gonna have a champion housing for you to help you find a tenant for a plan. What's your plan? What is the plan for, what type of plan do I have? You know, if you're gonna bring a tenant, you know, it might not even help you bring a tenant. What is the plan to help take a tenant you bring in? You know, I mean, that's the one that I'm stumped. Yeah, so I can't speak on the tenants right now because they're, we're still on negotiations with those folks, but it's tenants that we are, our city values, not-for-profit, you know, health service type. I don't know if this is, we can't, so like John said, I can't speak to who, because there's still negotiation happening, but there are some particular organizations interested in the space who would bring more, like human and health services to the community, potentially some more targeted youth programming, but we have to get through negotiations and actually receive this grant to have the funding to do the fit up in the space. So it's, we're probably still a couple of months out from direct action. I know there is other interests in the space. I think once we understand where the grant is at, are we gonna receive this funding or not? Then we can actually, you know, dig into who we'd be leasing to at that time, but it's hard to say right now. And for also adding some clarity, part of the impetus for going to the grant is because it is necessary building improvements that we need, regardless. Yeah, regardless of who tenants there, the building has some serious needs. Yeah, we have a whole other capital plan with that facility right now. We do have a lot of outdated equipment that we just, we don't have the capital, we don't have the capital dollars to replace that. So this, even if that program didn't work, we can still use this funding to do what, you know, the base replacement capital needs where we need to do it. Yeah. Are there any questions from folks attending virtually? Okay, any more public comments? Okay, can you use the building, can you chair down and visit us our residents who build the residential units? In theory, like that could be a plan if this didn't work out or something, but we don't have any plans like that. Yeah, it has to happen to best fit for that location. Okay, so at this time, 626, I'll close the public hearing on the VCDP grant. We'll move to our regular items. So item A, this is on for potential approval. It is adoption of the Unified Land Use Development Regulations, which we just had the public hearing for and visited a couple of times. I'll just one more time if there's any questions from council about this item or from members of the public. So since we have some new folks at the table, just to clarify process, anyone can make a motion to approve if they wanna move these forward. There has to be a second to have a vote. If a motion is made, but there is no second, then it dies. If no motion is made, then we're not taking action and we could revisit it at a future meeting. So with that clarified, if somebody wants to move these forward, they could make a motion at this time. I actually do have a question. I know that sounds like there is that the planning, the next planning commission meeting talk about the affordable housing and thinking about that. I would just wanna make sure, do we know if any improvements to affordable housing would kind of come into these changes? Yeah, that's a good question. And that is something that we talked about when I met with, just for everyone's knowledge, when I met with Councilor Herd and Renner. I think ultimately what we would end up doing is once the final language for the affordable component is finalized, then we would look at what might need to be changed if anything in this section of the code. I think right now, the way it's drafted, the proposed language going forward to the planning commission would not necessitate any changes for the form-based code, but it's possible depending on if that language gets altered. So we may need to revisit that in the future, but it's hard to tell right now until we actually have the final language on the affordable housing incentives. Gotcha. So this would in essence help move some things forward that have been looked at for several years while we're finalizing some of the affordable housing stuff that could be applied later. That's correct. Yes. Thank you. And for public knowledge, these changes have been understudied planning commission for two years. At least two years now, probably, yeah. And so again, any questions, comments from members of the public? Raise hand or chat patrons. So if someone wanted to take action now is the time. If nobody takes action, then we. Yeah, I'll make a motion. One second. Motion by Thomas, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much. My ego, Brian, please notify the planning commission. All right. We are on to item B. This is also on for approval. It's the authorization to submit the VCDP grant, which John was just speaking to. Yep. So the same grant, half a million dollars. I will note that we should hear results in, I believe, mid June on this grant application. So the one thing with this grant is, as mentioned back in January, is the city can only sponsor one grant. So this is why we're bringing this one to you all. All right. And a quick question, a timeline for, which it needs to be spent? I believe, I'm not sure actually. Yeah, I'm not sure when the funding, usually it's a year to two years, the funding is. Okay. Should we be fortunate enough to be awarded? It would be good to know if we have some flexibility on that, given the workforce challenges and supply chains. Yeah. So it may be worthwhile to just inquire in advance, but certainly if we are fortunate enough to get the award to see if that makes its way into the contract language, or the grant agreement language, I should say. Yeah, good catch. I just have one, oh, do you want to go with this? Okay. I just have one question. I believe you said it was a 10% match. I was wondering, is that already been budgeted, or is that something we would need to budget still? So we have around 80,000 in our capital plan for the OCC and that money is set aside currently for capital equipment replacement. So we know there's things like HVAC units that are going to fail. So the intent would be that that funding, if it's just us doing work, we would basically use that money to support capital needs. Awesome. Perfect. Thank you. And my question is going to be on a similar thing with what our current reserve status is for the OCC. We didn't see the foreign after this were awarded. Yeah, we have 82,000 right now, which is, we've been trying to kind of build that up that's dedicated for the OCC, but that's even a little small for what we need to do down there. I'd make a motion to authorize the grant proposal for BDCP for the O'Brien Center. Motion by Bryn, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. There's a comment and a check. Oh, I, oh, there it is. Okay, yeah, that's fine. I just want to go. Thank you. Okay, so moving on to item C, this is on for discussion approval. It is the mask mandate reconsideration, which Wendy will introduce. Yes, thank you. Mayor and council. Tonight staff is recommending that the council rescind the mask mandate resolution effective immediately. At the December 6, 2021 meeting, that was the first time that you adopted the temporary mask resolution, which needed to be reconsidered every 30 days. Current resolution would cease to exist by itself today, if you did not rescind it or extend it. This is consistent with what the state has required or is recommending the Vermont regulations were updated March 14th to no longer recommend wearing a mask in all public indoor spaces. And we've provided that information to you. The department still does strongly recommend vaccinations and also that people who wish to wear masks indoors or outdoors be permitted to do so. And that's the way that staff intends to regulate city fall is that masks are not mandatory, but they're certainly welcome if folks want to wear masks. Thank you, Wendy. And along with the state guidance changing, the school guidance has changed too, right? So even our school district is no longer requiring masking. Yes, I can't speak to exactly what they are requiring because different school districts are doing different things, but I believe they're not. I don't remember the details, but I did see an email that said that they had changed. Yeah, they haven't required masks since last Monday at school for teachers or students or staff in a school building. And we also received, have received data recently that cases are significantly down from where they had been before. So I guess I would go, actually instead of council, I would go first to see if there's any public comment on the mask mandate. Bruce? Take these masks off. I'm going to take them out right now. And again, if you're attending via Zoom, use the chat or raise hand feature. And in the meantime, if there's anything else. I just wanted to ask Wendy, how does this, I've seen signage about social distancing in city buildings as well, which wasn't part of the mask mandate. How does this, so say the mask mandate were allowed to sunset or we voted to rescind it? Is the city planning to update its guidance on social distancing given that we aren't able to do that in council chambers right now? Right, we're updating all of our guidance effective tomorrow. That guidance was put in place before the mask mandate. And we actually would have liked to have implemented it earlier, but we didn't want to conflict with the mask mandate. That was an extra layer that was added. And let me just add one thing. I did receive a call in the last week from a business that had previously supported the mask mandate, but because they were recently getting, pretty hostile messages from customers, they are in favor now of rescinding it. I just want you to know, because in previous meetings, I let you know that the businesses were generally either neutral or fine. But now there's one business in particular that's really having a problem that would like it presented. All right, you have something. A question that I had is, should there be another surge or another reason to consider bringing a mask mandate back? Does what we do today have any effect on that? Is that even a possibility? What you do today does not have an effect on that. The current mask mandate authorization was a temporary legislative action that was when it was negotiated with the governor. The requirement for the 30 day extension was put in and it ends, I believe the end of March or April 30th. Okay, so that authority ends April 30th. So it would be a complete new discussion at the state level about what the city could do regarding masks in public. Now, the city does have the authority to control its own buildings. So we can require masking and different schedules and that kind of thing in our own buildings and facilities. And if there was suddenly a surge in like two weeks, we could reinstate this just only through April 30th, unless and until the state gave us more authority than that. Yeah, because I know that it sounds like the UK is having surges or looks like it might, which tends to translate to the US similarly. And I know there's talk about a variant of the BA2 variant as well. So I'm just thinking, I don't want this to completely, I think like preclude future action. Exactly. Yeah, it wouldn't today. Has staff requested any input from committee, other committee partners aside from businesses? Not specifically. The folks we know of who have this ability to regulate our stepping back, we do want to make sure that we have masks available. So we have quite a lot still. So we're going to make sure the masks are available at city buildings. And if we do have interest and need from our partners or masks, we'll do what we can to help them out and provide masks. Does that answer your question? I'm not sure. It sounds like the short answer is no. Not proactive outreach. Well, I mean, we've been talking about it a lot and it's been widely known that we're talking about it. So I'm not sure which partners. There is the weekly COVID huddle call with like Department of Health and Burlington and other organizations. And I don't, the last one was canceled. And I think I missed the one before that. But in previous ones, when the state regulations were rolling back, I don't think everyone loved that, but they also weren't saying like, please don't or like, please keep your regulations as they are. Oh, Ray's got his hand raised. He might have more insight. Yes, sir. I didn't want to jump in if you guys had the answer there. But yeah, so the last meeting was canceled, but two meetings ago, we did talk about the likely outcome that council would not re-up or the high potential I get that council would not re-up the mask mandate and there was not really a lot of effect on the group. I think Burlington, like Christine had said, had already done so. So those partners all seemed pretty comfortable with that move. And I think based on the data we've seen and the trends we've seen, it's in line with what the rest of the state is doing at this point. Thank you, Ray. Thanks, Ray. I mean, I'll just share my perspective on this. I think that we are at a time when we have the tools, masks are one of our last-ditch tools for dealing with this pandemic and that we are in a spate now where we're gonna be dealing with this for years to come where we can pull back our restrictions and then we may have to put them back in place. So I think whereas before we were looking at a progressive linear approach to this pandemic, we are now in a reactive phase using the tools we have. And this is what we, I think need to do is to figure out how we can open up on a stage and how we can pull back when it's not. And I think we'll probably see it happen at least once more before the summer. And this is kind of our test run as I see it for when and how we do that. And I think we've seen municipalities and other entities moving this way. And I would say that the other side of that is that this doesn't mean that masks are not allowed. And I think we also need to make that clear to our community in all ways that if anyone feels that they are more comfortable wearing a mask, that is something that they can do. And that's not a grounds for discrimination or harassment at all. So I think that if there's ever a time, this is a good time to figure out how this works for us as a city and how it works for our residents and hear from people how it feels to take this next step. I have support for sending the mask mandate or not voting to extended. I would agree with that. And I would imagine staff has already thought about this. But when we update that the mask guidance having statement in there, like a business can choose to continue to enforce this privately, individuals should not be, everyone has their choice. Wendy, can we actually take a vote to rescind? Is that allowed? Yes, I would recommend that you do take a vote to rescind effective immediately so that there is an action and it's documented. And if you wanna add to that the direction to staff to include the language that you just said for businesses, that's fine too. Okay. So I think somebody will wanna make a motion to rescind the mask mandate effective immediately and direct staff to provide public and business update on the mask mandate being rescinded, including being clear about non-discrimination for mask usage and the ability for businesses to still enforce it. And just a question, can we also include a statement that vaccinations recommended? Great. I'll make that motion. I'll second. Motion for discussion. What's that? I have another question. Okay. Will there be additional communications tied with rescinding the same way there was with putting it in place? I think that's what we're directing right now to say that there should be. Okay. To me it sounded like it was just businesses. So I wanted to make sure it was also to... Business and public. We can do a push out like we did when we put it in place. Just wanted clarity on that. Yes. Sorry. Can I ask one other thing as well? Just thinking about providing access to the boosters because I know looking at Chittenden County in general, it looks like we're at about 66% of people who have their boosters but thinking about how can we support the unique Winooski community? I know at the beginning of the pandemic that testing and vaccinations are very inaccessible due to language barriers and just where they were considering that we are a city with a lot of people without cars. So making sure that there are easy accessible ways for all of our community members to get boosted especially considering if we're going to rescind this. Ray, do you want to speak to that? Ray, hook me there. There has, or I don't know, maybe Yazz, you might have information too. The COVID huddle and the Vermont Health Equity Group have been doing a lot of work on this. Yeah. So I can speak to that a little bit and I see that Ray has come back as well. So just to give you a little bit of background where the COVID huddle was developed in response to the fact that there were more challenging needs for specific communities within Chittenden County and that's why the partnership developed and since the partnership has been in place which is before my time at the city, that is exactly what the group has been addressing. And so all of the outreach, all of the efforts for additional testing sites, additional sites for vaccinations, all of the pop-ups that were done, everything that came of that was as a result of this task force group. And so that's going to continue on. You know, people's goals are kind of somewhat changing in the group as we go, but I think everybody on that group is under the same, under this, everybody has the same agreement that should there be another type of surge or should COVID start to become more prevalent in our community? Again, we can reconvene that group in the same way that we did before and roll out all of those same processes that we did through the first few surges and over last summer and through Omicron as well. Thank you. Ray, did you have anything to add? No, thank you. Sorry, I had a small, one of my housemates here jumped in. Ray does that question that's being asked, so I'll get that. That I think was a great answer. And again, I think, you know, there's some track record group of that that huddle sort of flexing up and down as the pandemic shifted as well. You know, we were meeting at point through the pandemic three times a week and then have scaled back as far as twice a month, depending on where things are at. So I think it's a pretty nimble, pretty flexible model and I think we plan to keep moving ahead with. Thank you. Yeah, thank you both so much. Okay, so I had a motion by Jim and a second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. I think that was everyone, right? No, okay. Those opposed? Those abstaining? I'll abstain. One abstention. Did you say aye? I did. Okay, okay, sorry. Motion carries. Thank you. Sure. So, so I think it's still important that we have my asking of sanitizers. I mean, my hands haven't been so clean. I'm all like that, I mean. And I look forward to that fresh smell of sanitizer. So I don't want to get rid of it. So I think we should have sanitizing masks still in places that wherever you have them. Yeah, and we can keep those in city buildings. Well, I can take these masks off, right? You can right now, actually. Okay, so we are on to item D. This is on for approval, although we could discuss and put it on our next meeting as well. This is the council liaison assignments. So, there's a number, there's a couple of things happening in this document. So we have our five sort of policy advisory commissions and we send one counselor as a liaison to each of those commissions. So those are listed here with the current liaison and then some openings you'll see. We've also listed and highlights an equity inclusion and belonging commission. That does not yet exist, but we may be creating one. We'll talk more about that in this agenda. Further down, we've also included just some information about other liaison type roles to show a bigger picture of all of the, all of these sort of liaison responsibilities. One is myself as the mayor, serving as the direct contact with the manager and the treasurer. We have a couple of partner organizations that we can send representation to. So the partnership for prevention, Councillor Colston used to do. Downtown Winooski is one that we send, typically send a council liaison to given our relationship with that partner. Green Mountain Transit, we have appointed a resident, some resident representatives. I participate in a mayor's coalition with the other Vermont mayors. We have resident appointees to the Regional Planning Commission and Chittenden Solid Waste District, which Councillor Oakley happens to serve from previous to being a counselor. There is also an alternate for that role, which I forgot to include here, Ron Stanton. And then the heart of Winooski, an organization through the school that Councillor Duncan has been liaising to. And then BTV Sound Mitigation is something we put as a placeholder, awaiting the Winooski seat on the airport advisory commission. That charter change finally went through. And I have been recently in contact with the City of Burlington's lawyer or attorneys for what the process is to actually make an appointment there. So that could be a member of this council. We could potentially do a resident appointee. And so that we will not decide this evening, I'll bring back to a future meeting, but just to give sort of the scope. There's also the Tree Committee, which Jim participates in, and then the Library Committee. So there are a lot of these roles. Coming back to the liaison appointments. Per charter as the mayor, I am the liaison to planning and zoning. The Safe Healthy Connected People has an opening. Bryn has been on municipal infrastructure. I have been on finance. Jim has been on housing. I did hear some in preliminary discussion, some interest from you Aurora for Safe Healthy Connected People and from you Thomas for downtown Winooski. If the two of you would like to stick with your current assignments, I think we could maybe move that forward. How can you tell me about that? Okay. And then, so that would be our liaison assignments for the partnership for prevention. I am not certain of their meeting schedule if they're monthly or less. I could probably find that out, but if anyone has interest in serving on that body, please let me know. I'll add it to my to-do list. The heart of Winooski, would you like to continue on in that role, Jim? Unless someone's really, if she needs to do that one, yeah, I'd like to stay involved in that. Any questions about that one from y'all? That's fine with me. Okay. And Chittinsall Waste District, when does your term end? Third, two year terms. I, my term will end next, and that goes coming June 2023. Okay. And you're fine to continue on through there? Yes. Okay. And then I will say for the airport advisory commission, as we move towards filling that seat, I would ask you all to think about, A, whether it's something you're interested in, and then B, whether you, what value you see in appointing someone from this body versus somebody from the community. And then we can have a discussion about that. Probably the next meeting. Imagine you'll stay on the tree committee. It's not an official commission. Right, yeah. So I think the library committee, how used to attend that as well, but we don't do, he did not? No, I don't. My understanding is that council member can't be on it. Cannot be on it. Oh, right, because it does act separate. Okay. Yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. Okay. Are there any questions from council or from members of the public about these liaison appointments? Okay. Can I point out one pitch that like, while I've been doing the tree committee for before I was a councilor, and this time I would welcome anyone who was interested in getting involved in the tree committee. If there's someone who's like, would like to actually work on this work with me, I think that would be awesome. And I don't need to be the official council liaison. So someone who's interested in working on trees in the city, I would welcome that. Yeah, and you were actually, you were doing that before you even got on City Council. That's true. Yeah. And I'll probably keep doing it. Yeah. If I want to get kicked off. So, yes. But yeah, that's not really an official appointment. It's not. It's not. In our ordinance, we could appoint a commission or a committee, but we haven't done that. And it just acts as kind of a subcommittee or an ad hoc committee of the Municipal Infrastructure Commission. So in some ways, Councilor Oakley, if you're already serving as a second liaison to that work through the NIC as well. This opening up of, I don't need to hold the trees. So let's plan to proceed. We three will stay where we are. We'll add you to safe, healthy, connected people. You did downtime when you ski. I'll bring this back for the consent agenda at our next meeting. If those bodies have a meeting before then, you're welcome to go before it's official. Or that's my old commission. They're very awesome people. Well, I'm excited that the library, it was over the library committee. So I feel like it's a scene a little bit of it. Natural progression. Yeah. Okay, so since we're, I'm gonna bring this back to the next consent agenda meeting. We don't need a motion for approval at this time. All right, so then we will move on to item E. This is on for approval. It is a public records request policy. Good evening. Thank you very much. Tonight, this item is on your agenda for consideration of approval of the public records request policy and additionally appointment of the city manager as the public records agent. This is an item again that the city has been working on for quite some time on and off. Most recently picked this back up in the last several months. The city doesn't currently have a public records request policy. We do utilize guidance from state statute on how to process requests for public records. So this would be a policy that would help guide the city specifically on how we respond to public records requests. What we consider public records, how we respond whether they be requests for inspections of records or transmission of records. This was last reviewed by council at your meeting on the 22nd of February. At that meeting there was several requests for changes to be made. Those changes were related to the potential to either waive fees or provide financial assistance. And then also regarding the format for transmission of records. Both of these changes or both of these comments were incorporated into this latest draft and can be found on page five in the red and strikeout versions. So hopefully those address the concerns that were had at the last meeting. So happy to answer any other questions or take any other comments. Oh, I thought I saw your head first. Oh, I hope it was a pretty easy one. So I know we're thinking about the language access policy and plan. I assume that that would be applied where applicable or when applicable when requesting documents through the public records request policy. That's right, yes. And it mentions a fee schedule. I don't, I believe that would just refer to the state. Yeah, so right now we're also working on updates to our fee ordinance, which is, yes, which is chapter 28 of our municipal ordinance. So until we have specific fees outlined, we would just default to the Secretary of State's fee schedule. Great, thank you. And do you feel your concerns were addressed from the last meeting? Yeah, I appreciate the way that those are incorporated. So thank you for taking that on. Absolutely, thank you. So I'll ask if there's any public comment on this public records request policy. Who will we expect an update to our fee ordinance? I know that is underway right now. Angela, I know is on or should be listening in. So I know that there's multiple staff have proposed amendments. So I think we're just trying to finalize to make sure everything's incorporated. So I would imagine in the next month or so, we may see something come forward. We do anticipate that coming in April. We've got most of the changes updated right now. There's only one outstanding change that will not be incorporated, but we'll come at a future meeting. Okay, all right. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the public records request policy? I will make that motion. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye, aye. Motion carries, thank you. Thank you. Also, sorry, Mayor. Also to appoint the city manager as the public records agent. May I also have a motion to appoint the city manager as the public records agent. I'll make that motion. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye, aye. Motion carries, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, we are moving on to item F. This is on for discussion. We have equity updates from Yasmeen Gordon. Good evening. Oh, I don't know what it's like over there right now, but I'm so happy to see everybody sitting back in the same space for a change. It's very different. I feel like it's a sign that we're starting to come out on the other side of this awful thing that we've been in for a couple of years. So it's exciting. Thank you for inviting me to come and just give you all a few updates on some of the work that is occurring in the city in relation to the working community challenge grant. There is a document that was included in your packet that's entitled the timeline of the UC specific history of equity initiatives. We thought that it might be a good idea to give some of the newer folks in the room and some of the public who are attending just a brief overview of where we got to, where we are at now, how everything kind of started and where we are at this point. So I'll go through just, I can just rattle off the first few items and then we can talk specifically about the work that I've been doing since I came on board last May. So the thing that started all of this was a training in late 2017 that was a training through the Abundant Sun Consultant Agency and they came in and did an all staff training on unconscious bias. And then a couple of years later, there was an equity summit that was conducted by the city that had formal and informal leaders from all across the city, all across partnerships in neighboring communities. It was facilitated by creative discourse and I believe there was a couple of legislators as well that were, I believe that Keshia Rahm was also a facilitator of that group. And as a result of that summit, a couple of smaller work groups were formed in order to kind of move the work forward and through those work groups where it came the recommendations for hiring an equity director myself. So thank you work groups, appreciate it. And also the suggestion of doing completing an equity audit and establishing an equity commission, which I will give you some updates about further down the road. So after that, clearly the city was awarded the working community challenge grant through the federal bank of Boston to spearhead and fund the position or the equity director and also continue the work. And then also in spring of last year, right before I came on board, I'm sorry to have missed it, the leadership training around structural racism within health service provision and housing was conducted with Dr. Mercedes Avila. So those are some of the things that happen. I'm gonna pause there and just let you know, I'm just wondering if you folks have any questions and also put out the caveat that I don't have a lot of detail around, but I believe that some folks sitting here in the room were a part of those structures. So if anybody has any questions about that, I'm sure that you can refer to your fellow counselors and possibly fill you that in. They just wanted to pause there to see if anybody has anything to comment or question. Yeah, Jim and I were both part of the summit and Jim continued on in the work of one of the small groups. So if you guys have questions later, we are available to answer. Thank you. Perfect. Okay. And so since I've come on and mind you, I just wanna say that this, the things that I'm going to talk about in my update are things that are a direct result and directly related to the working community's challenge. And they were laid out in the work plan that was created by the leadership team, which is a group of community partners and city staff that basically get together to help direct the work that I do within the city. So, this is not an exhaustive list of all of the work that I've been involved in across the city since I've arrived, but it has been, this is a list of the things that I particularly have spearheaded because they were listed in the work plan and continue to be goals from the WCZT. So I'm sure that you all know that there was an equity audit that was conducted and is now complete, which is wonderful. We began the audit with opportunities consulting who is a firm that we hired from Washington, DC, we began that work in late September and it is now complete. It definitely took a little bit longer than we anticipated due to the Omicron surge. There were a lot of things that we ended up having to postpone late this winter. And so we were able to wrap up those pieces and on March 30th, the consulting group will be meeting with the city leadership team to present the findings of the audit and also present their draft recommendations in the final report and to get leadership feedback around kind of the doability of the recommendations. They really wanna hear from leadership team our opinion about what the city is really able to do and what could be like a potential seriously long-term goal for the city to work towards. So once that is complete on April 18th, they plan on attending the city council meeting that Monday night, zooming in to present the same findings and the final draft of the final report and recommendations to city council and to the public. And so the city will conduct direct outreach to make sure that we make that space available to anybody who wants to attend to hear the information that's being put forth. And so you will see some information come out around that outreach at a later time and hopefully you will be able to see some of the efforts that we are in getting folks coming to being able to come to the table or perhaps watch from different spaces so that they are able to have room for interpretation and things like that. The second thing that I wanted to talk about today oh, you know, I'll pause and I'll ask if anybody has any questions now I'll just do that after each item and so then we don't have to try to remember all of our questions from before. So does anybody have any questions about that structure for me? Do you anticipate, I'm just thinking about having time to receive and process the results of the audit prior to that meeting on the 18th and I think it'll be also helpful to have like the consultants there and your expertise to provide context and kind of explain the bigger picture but I'm just thinking that's council that will have a chance to see that report ahead of time or if we'll get it with a normal agenda packet on like the 15th or whatever it is. Yeah, you know, I can bring that back to the consultants. I know that one of the things, you know they do value having city staff and folks with city leadership able to look at the findings beforehand. I know that there is definitely some hesitancy with them releasing the report prior to releasing it to the public because I just know that that can get tricky when you have a consultant who's been hired to do some work just to make sure that everybody is receiving the information at the same time is typically the way that they like to go about their work. So I can talk to them about that. I don't, you know, I can't give an answer definitively but I think that we could definitely work something out where perhaps there are some like snapshots or something like that ahead of time so that everybody still has the ability to receive the information at the same time as all of the residents and the folks who are involved and to give you all as council members a little bit of a heads up. So I can get back to you on that. It's a short part of the answer. Well, alternatively depending on their timeline and what the consultant wants, possibly receiving it in the normal like three days before might be fine. You know, that meeting is the chance to ask those questions. And then just, is the consultant willing to follow up? Like if counselors have questions, can we direct them to you to get more follow up information after? Ah, yes. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, so the report will have to be included in the notification of the meeting a few days beforehand. So you will have it then. And so I do think that that's a good idea to make, to provide time for the consultants to possibly meet with you to answer any specific questions. If there isn't enough time during the meeting, I think that that's something we can work out for sure. Yeah, because I think in the past other similar reports we've received from consultants, you know, that first viewing is a chance to ask more questions and learn more. We don't take action right away and that gives us time to do follow up with that. Yes, absolutely. Bryn? I think the, I don't know that I ever saw the, I believe the RFP for the equity audit. So maybe it was before? I think it was probably before, yeah. So can you go into what the audits comprised of a little bit more? And specifically, I'm curious if it'll include phasing recommendations or proposed plan or structure for implementation as well? There will be pieces of that included. And so the RFP and information on the equity audit is actually on the website and it's listed under the initiatives tab and equity initiatives. And so all the information that we have about the equity audit, the methodology behind it, the proposal from the group that we chose and the RFP is all there online. And so basically, you know, because of, it is not all inclusive. The funding that we had for the equity audit needed to match what the feasibility of the project was for the city. And so we've basically focused on three areas within the city, city workforce, voting and housing quality and access is what the equity audit is basically focused on. We have drawn other conclusions from the information that we've gotten within the data that we've seen from those three areas. So there's definitely going to be recommendations that fall outside of those areas and there are gonna be findings that fall outside of those areas, but we really needed to kind of narrow the scope. I know that, you know, most folks when they come in and they do an equity audit for municipality, we're talking about, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of a project and we just did not have that budget. So we utilized what we could in order to have it, you know, be valuable to the city in areas that we know need a lot of focus and also thinking about what the target was for the working communities challenge grant as well. We tried to match that with what the grant proposal was and what was written in the application for the grant work. Great, thank you so much. Yes, I mean, I was wondering those three areas, were those three areas determined by the consultants or by the Winooski-led leadership team? Well, it was actually both. It was a joint effort. The Winooski-led leadership team has been meeting regularly with the consultants in this project and that was one of the first groups that the consultants wanted to meet with to try to determine how we could narrow the scope and that was what that group of community partners really said would be of benefit for the city as well. Perfect, thank you. All right, I will go ahead and move on to the second. So we are going to talk about this next. So I'm not gonna try not to go into great detail about it, but one of my second charges on the work plan from the grant work was to develop an equity. It was called in that document equity commission. However, the name is kind of beside the point. It's really around a group, a body that will work towards the policy direction that needs to happen to make our practices and our operations a more equitable process. So it's really diving deep into the systemic change. So I will be going over that with you Nick. And I will probably take questions about that afterwards as well. I think that makes sense. The third thing is something that will be coming and dovetailing off of the equity audit. I think it's something that the city has needed for quite some time and that is a language and possibly communication policy and plan for the type of access and really diving deep into what the actual need is because there isn't a lot of data within the city, within the municipality around our processes, around language access and there isn't any data that documents what the need is for certain places and different practices. And so we really need to start to examine that to make sure that we are creating a policy that makes language access more widely available for anyone who needs it as well as the way that we communicate our practices and programming with folks in the community. And so we secured a $25,000 municipal planning grant to do that work. And we are hoping to partner with another consultant agency to do the language needs assessment that is going to then inform the policy and the plan I'll be working very closely with Paul Sarner, communications director to be able to execute that when that is done. And so that's something that is coming next. Does anybody have any questions about that in particular? What do you estimate being the bid amount for the consultant? Well, again, I think that's difficult. That's difficult. When we put out the RFP for the equity audit before there was such a wide range there was a seriously wide range of figures that came in. Consultancies are definitely in this area or something that has become extremely abundant especially in our community. And I think everybody has different rates. So I'm hoping not to necessarily use the entire $25,000 I think we'll need some of it for operations afterwards but I definitely think that it's going to be upwards of 50 to 20. It's just somewhere in that range if you can get a good partnership going. And talking with Paul around what it is that we seriously need to focus on if we aren't able to include the communication piece in this then what we could do was just do the language needs assessment. And then as city staff we can work together to utilize or to produce the outreach as well. We don't necessarily need a consultant to come to do that. And so that's why it's not listed here but it will be a part of the end result of the policy and plan moving forward. Okay, I do anticipate that with the reproduction of a number of our city materials that that will be an investment in and of itself. And so just the curiosity of what if any amount of the grant would be able to be directed towards the implementation piece and not just the audit piece? Yeah, I mean, I think that that question will be answered once we get the audit because it might necessarily not be that we need to print a ton of different materials or get all of our policies and things translated all at once, you know, really the focus of looking at the needs assessment is, is the language barrier really the problem? Is the language barrier truly the gap or is it a lack of education? Is it a lack of understanding around where to go to receive the information? You know what I mean? And so it's difficult to say if that's going to be a result is that because translation isn't necessarily the answer for all of, you know for a language access policy. So I hope, I hope that that will be great and that we won't need to utilize a translation service to translate all the different documents in the city. But if that's what the needs assessment suggests would be helpful to the community, then I feel like we will need to think about utilizing some of the funds for that implementation. Regardless, there is going to be some costs on the implementation as well. There are grants out there. We'll find them. This is the way that the city of Manuski works, you know where we've got tons of people that are always keeping an eye out for grant opportunities. And right now I think there is an abundance of grant opportunities specifically for this type of work as well. So I don't have any doubts that we'll be able to fund any type of implementation. Okay. Thanks, Ed. I do have a follow up question. Sure. Sure. With the drafting of the RP, do you know of other municipalities that that'll be modeled on or just examples? Yeah, actually. So Burlington actually has already done one. That was one of Taisha Green's first tasks that she did when the first year that she was here, it was over COVID. And so I think there wasn't a lot of outward public comment or information about that plan. And so I have, I did definitely, you know, talk with folks who were involved in that process in the development of RRP and kind of consulted with them on how they went about doing the work as well. And so that's the great thing about having the same type of community partners and very similar looking need with the folks across the river that we are able to kind of not have to reinvent the wheel every single time. So yes, that was definitely utilized. Burlington is the only city that I could find in the state of Vermont that has done such a thing. And so, you know, that's who we went with. Great. Thank you so much. I just want to say that I'm really excited about this. It wasn't one of the items in the initial like grant focuses, but it's clearly in need. It will be exciting to not approach this in such an ad hoc manner. And I like the approach you're describing that can get us towards prioritizing the implementation essentially. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was definitely one of the first things that we discussed on the WCC team was, you know, how do we, you know, how do we start to shift Winooski's focus and their reliance on our community partners for translation and interpretation services, you know, while we were, we will always utilize those partnerships, but, you know, I think it was an absolute concern that was definitely voiced from the beginning when I came on that, you know, Winooski needs to start looking at prioritizing the way that we do our outreach and the way that we engage with folks who are non-English speaking specifically. Jim. And I think this has been a great evolution. One of the original work groups is around the homeschool liaisons and multilingual liaisons at the school and having that, like extending that work into the city, which is more of that kind of reactive or without having the directed plan, the needs assessment. So I think this is fantastic to think about reorienting this towards what is the need and then how do we fill it. I'm curious to what extent you're thinking that this language access policy and plan will actually rely on the school or interact with the school since they do a lot of messaging and outreach in multiple languages for their purposes. And we are in the same area. Is there, I'm assuming that you are already thinking about this, I'm just curious, you could speak to how the school might intersect with this work. Well, I think we're already doing a lot of how the school intersects with this and it's more around not necessarily a reliance on the school, but a partnership with them, knowing the community, the, knowing the connection that they have to such a large portion of our community, there is kind of already a working procedure that we utilize when we partner with the school in order to get the information out there. The focus will definitely be on the multilingual liaison and how we interact with them because the current structure that we have isn't really sustainable. And we have to really start to look at how we can shift the city to be able to take on some more of that work. And it's more, like I said, it's going to be interesting to see what the outcome is from this needs assessment because my hunch is that it's not necessarily going to be about language and Translation, it's going to be more around education and really being able to connect with people and from different communities in the city so that folks know where to go when they need support. So the school right now is where we go when or where folks go because the school is a community school. As it should, as a community school, that's how it should operate. It really should be the hub for the school community to be able to go to access information. However, there are gaps there because the school doesn't have a lot of access to the information that we around the programming and what we provide as a city. And so I think we're going to have to do a deep dive into that relationship. How can we share information so that the school community folks who rely on the school as they should to be able to get information outside of the newsletter that goes home, how are people able to get real-time information about the city without necessarily relying on the multilingual liaison to get that information to them? So I think that there are already some systems in place that work well, but I think the focus is just going to shift slightly in the operations and what it is that we're sharing with folks and how they're accessing it. It'll be interesting. I'm interested to see how things are going to iron out. This is something that I have not done before, specifically, is embark on a project like this. And so I think it's going to be extremely useful to both entities, if we can do it right. Yeah, and I think we can- Is that into your question? Well, I think it's actually, what we were discussing in 2019 and 2020 was that there are already these positions who are doing brokering for the services of the city. They just weren't being supported by the city to do that, right? Families are calling multilingual liaisons about anything, whether it has to do with school or not the liaisons show up in health. And I think there was a concern at that time that this is an underappreciated, underpaid, undercompensated, recognized role that we were benefiting from as a city without really putting any recognition or funding into it. And so I guess I'm wondering can, what I would hate to see is for us to not make good on that recognition here too three years later. And I'm not saying that I think you're talking about it as it will be looking at the systems we have, the existing people in our community who are creating those connections between the school and the residents and are also acting to create connection between the city and the residents. But can we professionalize, support, augment and compensate those roles as part of our implementation of this plan so that we're not creating two separate systems? I hear you saying that, that's great. But I just wanted to kind of reflect back that we've had this recognition that these folks are in our community doing this work already and we are asking a lot of them just from the school, let alone the city. So how do we have those systems developed or kind of coalesce when we can? Yes, so I don't want to give too much away because there are, I can let you know that there are like very solid recommendations that are coming through the equity audit to address that exact thing. But also just to give you a little bit more of information, I'm now realizing that maybe not all of the counselors know is that the city does have a stipend contract with the multilingual liaisons. It was expanded like the week before I came on to compensate them for the work that they do to help and assist families with any city related tasks. And so they have the opportunity to earn cash and earn money for any of that extra work that they're doing that is non-school related and then build the city to be able to get paid for that work. That model, as you could probably know is difficult because it's not sustainable in the way that they work full-time. You know, the group of people work full-time for the school. And so any work that they're doing outside of that happens after school hours. And so even though they're being compensated for it, they're still being asked to do, to work above and beyond what any typical person would need to work for. And so while it might be their choice, it's still a system that doesn't necessarily support the systemic change that needs to happen. It was, it's kind of basically, that system was basically just adding more people. And as you know, if you build it, they will come, right? Like that's pretty standard practice. And that's a pretty standard outcome when we just add people without changing systems. And so the recommendations coming in the equity audit really provides some insight into how we can systemically change both systems at the school and at the city to make a more cohesive system that will better support employees or employment such as the positions that the multicultural leads on the poll. And so I'll stop there because there's definitely going to be more to come on that and it's exciting. That sounds great. Thank you. Yeah. And so the third and final update that I have that's come as a result of the WCC team is training, personal development, specifically for city staff. I have partnered with Kayla from Spectrum Vermont, which many of you might know, and Mike Hill Jr. from EJH Futures, which is a BIPOC owned consultant agency that he does work for school districts. She does work for cities, small groups, small businesses to develop professional development series that are very much focused on and designed specifically for the entity that we're training. And so it's not a box hand curriculum that it doesn't address adult learning theory. It's something that has been specifically tailored to the city of Lewski and our community here because it is extremely unique. And so the professional development series that's coming in the spring is going to be a seven session education series that is designed for the city leadership team and for city council. That's going to be starting on April 20th, in April, we're still working out the schedule around that. It's something that I wanted to present to all of you to take part in. However, I think the structuring on how can our take in the actual learning series is something that we're going to have to iron out given the fact that you all work for time jobs and meet every other week on Monday night specifically. So I think that that's something that we can partner with the city manager and talking with you all to figure out how you can engage in that. It's totally optional. If you would like to, we would absolutely invite you to take part. And I believe that you have a copy of just a little flyer that we made for folks to see what the main focus areas of the learning series are. And if you have any questions, I'd love to hear them. Will the training be given to all city staff after the leadership team or an abbreviated version? It will not. The series is very much focused on cultivating leadership skills to guide equity work and to guide anti-racist work. And so the hope is that at the end of this particular training session, the leadership staff will then create an ongoing work plan to make sure that what we are learning in this series is then implemented among their departments. And so really it's putting the responsibility, it's putting the onus on that trickle effect that we would like to happen. And that's how we see culture change happen within an institution is when leadership has the skills and the knowledge to be able to lead in a certain way, then it begins to reflect in the departments in their employees. There will be future professional development trainings that we are looking at for all staff, but this one in particular was really, really designed for leadership. Okay, thank you. That makes sense. The any sense of being able to open this up to commission chairs in our community? Yeah, thanks for that question, Jim. I think that's a possibility. The contract that we wrote for the work with involving Kayla and Mike was specific for a number of people. And that was how we base the price tag was for the amount of people that were going to be involved because it's geared towards small sessions and having a certain number of people be within the session or take part within the session. And so if we wanted to extend it to the commission chairs, it would be a matter of first of all, finding out if Mike and Kayla have the capacity to be able to do that and renegotiating the contract, I think to increase the amount that they're being compensated for the work. It wouldn't go up necessarily like an astronomical amount, but it would require some, an additional compensation for those folks. See, sorry. Okay. You already mentioned the complexity of scheduling to make it open to us. Do you have any like tentative thoughts about timing or you're still hashing that out? That I actually wanted to present to you all because really it's about the time that you have knowing that this is a professional development series that is contracted through a consultant. We could look at different structures where we had you all maybe, where we possibly can schedule a special meeting and have it be an executive session or we could think about adding an extra hour or two maybe onto a city council meeting every other Monday night where we begin at five instead of 6 p.m. I think there are different ways that we can work it out but it really depends on your schedules because we're city staff, we know when we work it's scheduled for us during our leadership team meetings on Wednesdays. And so we already kind of have that time set aside, but for you all, it is gonna be a little bit tricky. And so I would love to hear your thoughts on, you know, if not necessarily now, if you don't have any ideas, but if you do have some ideas, I would love to hear from you to think about how we could structure that. Okay, so be clear then. The leadership team is doing this and then we would do it separately. So we were not, okay. And then is there like, begin in April, is there an end point in mind? So a number of weeks. It's seven weeks. Yeah, so it would be seven. So it would be, it would actually report team weeks because we meet as a leadership team every other week. And so that left the weeks in between that open at that same time. And so that's where we're filling in so that we don't take over our leadership time where we need to discuss, you know, important matters and put together the city council agenda and things like that. So it'll take about 14 weeks to complete because it'll be in every other week structure of the city leadership. Okay. Would you envision council following that same every other week pattern? We're open. Mike's open, Kayla's open. Maybe I'll just wanna make sure that you all if you would like to attend that we can make it work for you. And so, you know, if you have ideas around that I could possibly invite Mike and Kayla to come and chat at one of the future meetings to discuss the scheduling. If you wanted to do that, that might be beneficial so that everybody is at the table at the same time to talk about what that might look like. I think that could be useful for the next meeting potentially. So we can have a direct discussion and then we can also think about our availability in the meantime. Sure, that sounds great. I can extend the invitation to them. Do others have thoughts or something you wanna share? I mean, I'll say, I think this is an exciting opportunity. I would love to be able to participate in this. And so I keep asking questions to know what you expect from me. Because I think it would be valuable at this moment in time when we have the work ahead of us to also have these skills further developed and have a calling and a reason to get more engaged in this topic in this way right now seems really, really appropriate. So I'm all for trying to make it work. It is a lot of time, but I think if you feel it's gonna be valuable for the city leadership team and we as a council can also be developing those skills in tandem, I think that is particularly valuable. So, you know, I think it's 14 weeks from April puts us into summer. So we'll have to look at a calendar and think about it. But I would like to see if we can make it work personally. I would like to participate. It'd also be nice to get a cost estimate to open it up to commissions, commission chairs. Just to broaden the reach as much as we can and have an idea of what that, what the expense would be whether or not that's something that is reasonable within the budget or not. Sure, yeah, I can, when I sent him the invitation to invite him to Mike and Kayla to the next meeting, I can also put that in the invitation just to ask them to come with, you know, a possible extension of the contract to see if we can do that. I'm sure that it's, I don't wanna speak for either of them, but I foresee that that would not be necessarily a problem. And we can figure it out as the city as well. I can speak with Angela about what the professional development budget has left. So you can think about that. Obviously it does make it more challenging that more people you have the harder the scheduling. But at the same time, I agree that the value is great enough that extending it to at least a commission chairs would be worth a consideration. Absolutely, yeah, we'll definitely try to make that happen. And maybe not to make a third group that they don't have to come back for, maybe the chairs could just join council. I didn't, yeah, I was just- Is that what you're gonna do? Yeah, yeah. And I'll throw out a wrench, but I don't know, I forget and forgive me if you've already covered this in the inclusion and belonging advisory commission, but would those folks be eligible for this training or interested? Do you envision them getting separate training that would be enough or is this something that they would be wanting to participate in as well? I think that's a really good segue actually into the next item. If you wanted to- Can we pause for then? So to see if there's any- Right. It's from the public on the updates you've already provided. Sure. No, okay, thank you for that. So we'll move to- Yeah. Gee, and discuss the equity advisory commission. Perfect, thank you. So just to quickly answer your question, Jim, in the charter, there is language about them receiving training. And that was something that I would probably just do myself when the commission begins and make sure that that is an ongoing training for the commission. It would likely be based very much on this professional development series, but I don't think that there isn't necessarily a need to have the partners involved in that training as well, because it's such a small group that I feel like I could manage that on my own. But extending it to them, I think once again, it would be an additional cost and so we would have to think about where we would budget for that. But I do, I have full confidence that I could provide them with that training without needing to necessarily contract with somebody else. So I'm just gonna go to the next. The draft charter is in hand. I'm certainly not gonna read the whole thing out loud, but I would love to just, am I able to share my screen on this meeting? Paul, everybody? Cause I'm perfect. Just for those in the audience, I wanted to just bring up the visual that I find I'm hoping it's helpful for folks to understand as I explain the structure of this commission because it is not a traditional commission structure whatsoever. And so I just wanted folks to be able to be able to see that if possible. If I am not able to share my screen, I wonder if one of the hosts might be able to do that. You should give it a shot. If not, I can definitely pull out of that. Sure, so. Says who can share. I'm not sure how to do this, Paul. It's saying, oh, okay, perfect. Got it there. There's a, it's in the bottom middle. Yeah, now I got it. Thank you so much. Now folksy, this, I'm gonna give me a thumbs up. Okay, perfect. Thank you. So this is the structure of what we're calling that inclusion and belonging advisory commission. There will be a main group that is the actual commission, which would be compromise of myself, one council member and five calling equity ambassadors. And those folks will be chosen through an application process. The equity ambassadors, the five equity ambassadors would then be selected to be a part of and sit on each existing city commission. And the purpose of their role on that commission is to bring a lens of an inclusion belonging to that process, to that particular team. So, excuse me, then what is discussed on that particular commission, the information, anything that is equity related, if there are questions specifically around inclusion or how we might make a process or a policy or something like that more, it's more inclusive. The hope is that that ambassador will be able to provide that some knowledge and insight. And if they weren't, then when we meet as a commission, as the inclusion and belonging commission every other month, they would be able to bring back information that we could all talk about and kind of problem solve for them to then bring back to the initial commission to help them along on the process. And so really, this is about recognizing that equity isn't necessarily its own separate thing, that all of the practices and all of the commissions and everything that happens within the city should be seen through a lens of inclusion and belonging for all of our residents to make sure that people have access and opportunity to be involved. And so this is also meeting the goal from the WCC grant to make our city government processes more inclusive and to get more marginalized places to the table. This does exactly that. And we'll hopefully provide an example of ways that other folks can enjoy the commission as well. But it just makes it a little bit more formal. So this also helps with representation. It helps me the goal of having different perspectives brought to the table that wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to do so in this place. So with that brief description, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. From the council, I would love to hear comments from the community about the structure. I know that it is extremely different. And I don't believe that there are any other municipalities that are doing anything similar. But like I said, it really does focus on the fact that equity isn't its own separate thing and it really needs to permeate through all of the city and all of the processes that we have. I'm gonna keep this up in case folks wanna refer to it while they ask questions. Yeah, that last statement, I like this approach, right? Like this pivot from the initial conversation of an equity commission. One question I wanted to post to you in council is, what if the equity ambassadors were cross appointed to fill existing seats on those commissions? So they had voting rights in the existing commission, but then also did this piece, not necessarily something we have to answer now, but I thought, do you think that- Well, they will- Sorry, go ahead. No, well, my question, I actually, I don't wanna answer question with question, but they, so they will be voting, the five ambassadors will be voting members of the Inclusion and Belonging Commission. And so I guess my question to you is, is it possible for someone to be on multiple commissions and also be a voting member for multiple commissions? That's a good question. I don't know if we've appointed someone on two before. Any staff have thoughts about that? I want it because I, I feel like that's maybe our own rules and not like a state thing. I don't think it's a question. I don't think we've ever appointed, by knowledge, at least someone to multiple commissions, but I don't think there's anything expressly precluding us from doing so. Like, I think each of those charters is pretty separately crafted. So it doesn't, it doesn't specify that you couldn't be on multiple commissions. But I don't know of anybody that's done more than one at a time. I agree with you. I think it would be important for them to be voting members on both commissions that they serve on for the purpose of the Belonging Commission to really hold. I mean, the what? I don't necessarily think we should require it though. I wouldn't say that they have to be, I wouldn't want that to be a barrier, I guess. So one thing that's coming up for me with thinking about this is I feel like part of the goal is to bring more diversity and more voices onto these commissions. And if we're feeling an empty role, then we're not, then we might actually be excluding additional diversity. So I do like the idea of them being, having, being voting members, but I also don't like the idea of then you, them ending up limiting the, or yeah, then there being less people in a way. Like this is hopefully to bring more people in. So, but if they were filling a role, that's already, an empty space is already there, then that's, doesn't actually gain someone. Not a disagreement. We have wanted to diversify representation across these commissions all along. Being targeted here with this group and having them like train and supported to bring an equity lens to each of the other groups. Diversify, in my mind, diversifies those existing bodies. And I feel like when we recruit to fill those right now, we don't necessarily get a lot of different voices. There's a pretty like standard person that applies to these roles. So while the volume of people, if we did it that way, this would not increase the volume of people that are in these roles. I think it would change the perspective. I think my biggest concern with this is that we don't require any other commission member to be fully versed and ready to vote in two commissions. And that if we were to make these voting members, it means that they not only have to do the equity inclusion and belonging work on their own commission, but show up prepared to make decisions on the other commission, which is, it's hard because I want there to be accountability and authority in these positions. But I also worry about essentially double-tasking them right away to function in both. It's so, that's my one concern I had when I think about after these as being voting members is it means you have to show up being ready to vote. And that means we're using materials while also doing the work that you're trying to do for your own home commission. So that's one kind of potential downside to having that. And I think that then would open up an argument for something that is referenced in here and I think should be applied to all the commissions, which is that they may be monetarily compensated at a rate determined by the city council. So I think if we are saying that they're going, putting this out, that they are gonna fill these bigger roles, say if they are gonna be voting members on two different commissions, then we should compensate that and should recognize that, but they're doing the additional training. They're doing the additional meeting and they're doing the additional work beforehand. Two different things. I wanna retract my suggestion based on what you said. I do think that's valid that in one sense you can come to this meeting, listen to the discussion and bring the equity lens of questioning to the group discussion without having to spend as much upfront efforts. I think it is important still that you understand what's being discussed, right? At the housing or finance commission or whatever, but it would require as much investment if you're not one of the voting members. Like it's more about participating in the discussion is what I'm hearing. What if we gave the ambassador the option to become a voting member or not on the commission that the ambassador to. So they could choose to do the work or not to do the additional work and I agree compensation comes into that as well, but I think we could pay people but to the discussion we were having earlier about the homeschool liaison that the school offered them contracts to do work outside of their work is still extra work in that area for folks who have families or already have second jobs. So I could see giving that the ambassador the option to choose if they want to take a voting role in the commission as well. So there could be somewhat of a dedicated slot and it's the air coming up probably to speak to challenges of trying to do that on planning but with some of our other commissions we could change the charters to allow that to designate a certain role as an equity ambassador could be ex officio or voting depending on the preference of the appointee and council makes that determination at the time of appointment aside from planning and probably something else. But that's one way I think. So I think giving the power or giving the choice to have that power would be I think meaningful but also not required it would make it a little bit more accessible. Yeah, I second that. I really do think that there's structures to communities that can allow for that that degree of input to be heard and have that element of authority I guess. But in a way that reduces the degree of burden I guess on being prepared for those meetings in a particular way. I guess it's nice to have the ability to also sit back from a group and to observe and to listen and participate in the conversation without that responsibility of voting and having to have as thorough knowledge of that subject matter as the intended focus of that role. Yeah. And I do just want to be clear. I don't want us, my intention was not for us to make a decision about that. I wanted to raise it and then I think Yasmine and the steering committee group like you all could think about does a different approach make sense. But Eric, did you have something to add? Yeah, I just wanted to just to point out and I don't know specifically what all the commission charters say but with the commission in particular we have a seven member board which five are voting members and two are alternates. So if we were to designate someone from the Inclusion and Belonging Commission as a voting member, we would then have to hold that spot in the charter and then the potential that if that spot wasn't filled from the Inclusion and Belonging Commission then we would only have four voting members really that are appointed to that commission. So not that it can't be done but just something to keep in mind that the charter would potentially need to be updated to reflect that four voting members are appointed with two alternates and then the fifth voting member comes from this other commission. Thanks Eric. Yeah, that's precisely why I didn't list them as voting members, realizing that that would mean a charter came for every single other charter commission that is listed. And so, you know, Wendy, sorry, I thought that's all your hand up. No, thank you, you know, what you said is right. I just wanted to point out one of the exciting things about this commission is that it's intentionally flexible with decision making given into the commission on how it will operate internally. That's true, so you don't even need to, once they make a decision, you can change that because it's designed to be flexible. So my suggestion is just keep that flexibility in there because it's something that the other commissionings don't have. And this is an opportunity to let this different side how they want to operate, which is really special. We'll likely come up with patterns that you might want to use in other situations. Well, thank you for the thought exercise. Absolutely, love a good discussion if any call me. But I guess I don't want to lose sight of that. I think that could be a point of discussion for the commission if you want to convene to like how much power and authority do you want to? What would be the right level of, is it just enough to show up and sit with the group and listen and report back and think about how to improve process and improve these systems? But if the answer is like there needs to be voting representation for this issue on these commissions like that's what they'd like to receive, I don't want it to be a barrier that we have to figure out how to review commission charters. So I think that's what that we could take on if this commission and council and others think that that's an appropriate path. Yeah, I think it could be a future consideration. I don't want to stymie things right at the outset. Bruce, by all means. So I'm Bruce Wilson and I agree actually with the mayor said about first on inclusion and belonging commissioning from Chibow twice. But let me tell you, let's get it real clear and untwisted because people are like justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, that wasn't created because they thought the world created it, well not created but thought it should be included because of people who look like me in BIPOC. Let's keep that on the fore most and it's important. It's up to top and they know, let's think about it or whatever. This is why we doing this right now. This is why we discussing this. I know people who don't look like me came really understand, you don't know how much you ever know because you don't look like me. You had a feeling, you had attitudes and your beliefs and you haven't been through the situations like I have or people who look like me. And so what I think, I think Yasmin have done an incredible job first and foremost, I think all you agree on that. But I think that everything that we do in this entire world and like people are trying to do or I do, I don't know how far ahead they are of Wynuski or not but they're trying to put together some inclusion, belonging and equity and diversity and justice for people who look like us or me I mean. And so it's not an easy situation. It's not easy to do but I tell you this that because you look like me don't mean that you had the answer either. You know what I mean? I can tell you a lot of story being born and raised on the south side of Chicago being raised in civil rights movements do you name it or civil rights movement in Chicago I was a part of it. And in here in Vermont, I'm a human rights commissioner for Vermont and sit on the school board for anti-racism committee and all the different things I do is here in Vermont for years. And so I've learned a lot, I don't know at all but it didn't come because I look, it looks like me. I know people, I don't know how to ask how they look like me. I had to go learn the answer. I had to put it together, I had to put it in process where everybody tried to get a good answer to move forward and make things better. And so I'm sure that our equity director was going to make sure that we know when we have issues or situations to do with our other commissions that we have the right answers to kind of make sure that we're all on the same page. It's not just a sit on and make a vote and cause you look like me. It's because we believe how it works and Winooski, our demographics, our economics, how, who we are, 1.7 square mile. This is who we are and our new American, everything what we're about is how we'll make a decision. And that's how we, that's the same reason why we got these five different commissions. People on those commissions, I don't know if I was on there a safe and healthy connected people commission. And I think I was only one, maybe it was another person that looked like me on there but I don't know how many other people on these other commissions look like me. And I get it that as there's a voting, voting piece, you know, you need four or five, whatever. I don't care, I don't care. It needs to be restructured, we've done right now. Right today, this ain't no joke. I'm, you know, this ain't no joke. This ain't no joke. You know, 400 more years or none of that. You know, it's a joke, you know what I'm saying? We got to make it right, you know. Be strong within yourself as belief, as people who work for the city, who has feelings, attitudes, and beliefs about the people who we serve. You'd be surprised how many boards and commissions and committees that I serve. I serve them all, you know. I serve them all. My program is how we have 50 awards for the things that we do for the communities and the family and youth. And so it's not because I think I should do it. I think it's because I know I should do it. And I know, and because that's the main reason. And all of us take these jobs because we social service. We believe in the people who we serve. We take these roles as city counselors, and I'm just using the city counselor, but you know, whoever we are, social workers, mayor, we take these roles because we want to help the people in the community and make things better. It's not nothing that we, it's not no powers, it's not no power struggle. It's no pushing pool and all this stuff. It's just because what's the right thing to do for the people who we serve? And now people around the entire world are somehow, I think it come from Floyd, it come from Black Lives Matter, come from a lot of different police brutality of people who look like me. And I think people say, damn, finally, it makes sense to work with people who look like me or you know, ain't no such thing as we want to bring them equity, don't mean bring them, stop bringing them out. Now you can bring a Black person or me to the back room. You know what equity means? Equity means shut that damn back room down. Ain't no back rooms, no back rooms no more. No more, for nobody. Ain't gonna go no down back room and make decisions. You know, I don't believe you, believe me or not. I don't believe it's gonna happen. All the boards and committees and commissions I sit on through this state since I've been in here since 1989, I don't believe it's gonna really happen. Like, you know, so I think it's people like Yasmin, people like me, all of you, we need to like really think about these decisions we make when we do all the work we do and all our commissions and everything we do. And it's so incredible to have all these commissions and committees and that we have in Manuski. I hear so much about Manuski how it would say we're like us, you know what I mean? Forget that, in 1989 I was here, why the state of America? You know, I know how Manuski, I was on board of the Rexford Park, there was an accident, a lot of things that I was a part of Manuski, still am. But it's so funny here that like most people would love wanna live in Manuski and wanna be built up like Manuski is, that's the shit, you know, excuse me. But so my bottom line on this is that I'm not joking, I ain't messing around, that's gonna be, listen, I know some folks, there's gonna be some changes in one way or the other, you know what I'm saying? But we gotta, it's not no, oh we'll take a bottle that's full of, you know, back on the backburn and all that stuff, no way, I'm not gonna personally, I ain't gonna let that happen. And I have ways to make sure it don't happen, believe me, we know folks, you know? And so I wanna do everything I could do to help all the Yasmin and all of you. Man, I talk to the man all the time, man, how can I help you do this? How can we do that? Can I do this? Can I do that? You know, and she say, let's freak it out, you know? But, you know, cause she wants me to help or she wants me to be a partner, or she asks me some questions. But I'm saying this, there's ain't no joke, you know? There's ain't no joke. You know, I was surprised to see a black person, I ain't going too far to the left, but here in my lifetime, here anyway, there he is and now we got other people that's gonna be in power, that's in power. And Bernouce has really changed so much, you know, since the years I've been here. You know, so all I'm trying to say is, let's just figure this out, let's get people like on whoever's on the Inclusion and Bologna Commission, you know, whoever the ambassador door, let them work with the other commissions. You know, just make sure, oh, I just wanted to make sure that they're not making white folks' decisions on everything. They need to be making all everybody, by-part decisions on the answers that they come out with, right? Everybody needs to. So how do you do that? That's what our actuary director and on the rest of us would be, hopefully I can get on her group, be a bot, you know what I mean? And the city council. How we can do that, you know what I mean? For the move on, cause it's hard. If you're born and raised, let's say my degree in psychology, I can really go right in from North West, I'm not a, you know, I'm just not smart. I always say I'm smart and I was bare, but if you bring, you know, everybody together to make decisions based on what our mission goals and objective is, what the city of Wynuski believe in, that's another thing too. We need to look over our, the Wynuski, I'm not trying to change no charges or anything, but we need to look at what the mission goals and objectives are. We need to look at our mission statement. What, maybe some word or two need to be changed in it. I gotta look at it myself, you know? But all I believe is this, that we're ahead of a lot of people in this state. You know, thank God we're not like a zillion of us, but we just need to make sure that we're making good decisions that everybody agree upon. It's hard to get everybody to agree upon anything, but I think that we have a smart equity director who's real smart about a lot of answers and at least know where to get the answer from. And I think her group, which I hope I be on, will learn the answers. And I think our job is to like say, if you have to connect with people, they're planning to do your role. And our role is to keep learning about equity and inclusion and belonging and share it, right? Share it with everybody. And then that's our job. And so we're not trying to, I mean, that's all we want to do with all the commissions is do our job, you know what I mean? To talk about inclusion and belonging, that's all we want to talk about. We're not even trying to change how the bike path should be or different things that happen in a gigantic way. We just want to make sure these things are included. And that's all. And so I'm telling you right now, I'm honest, like nothing. Anybody know me? I'm staying out on it like nothing. And we know folks, you know what I'm saying? We'll get, excuse me, things will change. I'm telling you, quickly, like tomorrow, for real. Because if this thing, if we just, oh, people just, on one hand, on this hand, now we got to really do this. And it's like elementary, it really is not hard. But what makes it rocket science, that elementary piece that we come up with together, then all of a sudden it's rocket science. I'm gonna say one quick thing and I'm done. Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, he's like, he used to sit on a free throw and hit three, four, five, six shots. And he's like, dang Mike, how do you hit five free throw shots in a row? And to him, those five shots ain't nothing. He's trying to get the sixth shot. He's saying those five shots are elementary. He just need to get that one shot and make it rocket science. And so that's what we're trying to do. We're just trying to get one shot, one step at a time, one shot at a time. But each step is all, I mean, rocket science. It is, it's all, that's what it is. So thank you for letting me blame myself when I'm telling you. I'm not mad at nobody. I'm a little emotional. I've come, I've been through civil rights through all my life. I remember one thing my mother, what was out there on Pick-A-Line in Chicago, we're part of the CLC, our first-year brash family, Urban League, all the, you name it, we were a part of Jesse Jackson's come out house, Mary Hill, Washington, his wife, Jesse Jackie's wife, his wife has come out house. I remember I was in one of the Pick-A-Line, Pick-A-N-P shopping stores. And I'm like, mom, mom, can I go ride my bike? She said, no, boy, until you get to get off this Pick-A-Line. So these little things right there still stick in my brain. How long I've been working for equity and inclusion in justice and diversity. How long I've been doing it. And my first year being up to Vermont, I love everybody. Obviously out of 89, it's the white of St. America. If I don't like white people, don't love them. Why I wouldn't, I've been gone. I've been here long, most, a lot of people. So there you go. Thank you. Thank you, Bruce. Thank you. Some definite public support and reminder of the importance of this effort and potential membership. Thanks, Mayor. I wanted to ask, coming back to the stipend idea, I think that's a, that has to be a separate conversation not siloed from other budgetary discussions. But I did want to suggest maybe we refer it to our finance commission to work with our finance director on what like a potential approach could be. So then we could look at a dollar value and actually seeing what resources we have. Yeah, because I don't. Sure. We can, like this is one of the things when thinking about making systemic change is making sure that people have the resources to be a part of these committees and commissions. And the least we can do is provide them with a stipend to hopefully help bridge any gaps that they need. And I think that this has been looked at pre with previous councils and money had been set aside. I don't know if it's still is. So there, there was not money set aside. Okay. Yeah. So it has not been studied under my, the years I've been sitting up here. The idea behind the stipend was that initially the money could come from the reserve that the WCC grant in order to spearhead this. And then this, that would give, that would kind of buy the city some time to figure out the long-term sustainability of the compensation. So that is a possibility. For the equity only. I'm sorry, what? That would be only for the inclusion committee. That would not apply to any of the other commissions. Yes, yes. Jenny. I was just going to comment. Essex had, we had talked a great deal about paying our commission members because we were having problems recruiting volunteers to serve. I mean, there is time involved people's circumstances. So what we all decided in Essex was to pay just throwing this out. It was $50 per meeting that you attended. And it was effective as of January. So it would be paid through payroll, but it was just a little something that, so for people that had to take, you know, work from other places and to serve on that committee because the town of Essex valued their commission members. So I was just going to say that was just an amount that we all agreed that it would be a good place to pay them. I appreciate that. Some back of the neck in math tells me that's $6,000 a year for one commission alone. And so we're not talking about a few dollars here. Like this can't be a siloed discussion outside of our other financial matters. So I do want to see you. Go ahead. I just want to flag in addition that have run into issues with paying some members of the community who want to be involved in the commissions through the payroll system. Not every resident in our community is eligible to work in the U.S. Yeah, so I would like to table that conversation while we're talking about this charter. I think we could still advance the charter because it says we may and that gives us time to have a more in-depth discussion about potential compensation. So going back to the charter language, you know, this is on for discussion tonight. Want to see if there's anything that might need changing or that we have more questions about. So we could bring this back for a future vote. There's a question from a resident in the chat. So that's a question for YAS about how this fits into the equity audit recommendations. I know one of the original thing recommendations of that we put in the grant coming out of the small working groups, so I think that that means kind of like the relationship and how this team will be impacted by that, by the recommendations. And so the hope is, is to have this team establish, you know, somewhat, somewhat soon. So that this group can, this is a policy directing group. This is a policy advisory meeting to the council. And so if there are recommendations within the equity audit that have to do with a change in policy, a shift in type of policy or any gaps in our current policy structure, this is the entity that would start to examine that more indefinitely and provide council advice around how to go about doing those changes. And they will also, you know, help to, you know, provide input on some of the city and for the council on the upcoming equity initiatives. There will be a lot that is going to need to be discussed and this group will be sounding forward for a lot of positions. Thanks, Yos. I did want to call out the line about training and education on our government structure and policymaking process. I love that for this group. Do you have- Yeah, thank you. What does that look like? I would love for it to be something that happens across the board. And I know it's something of the leadership team that we have discussed for people who are involved in the missions because it's really important for the people who are taking part in our government processes to understand the process that they're taking part in. And so it would look like, you know, this Wendy and I have had some discussions around how that might look. And, you know, initially we were thinking about kind of writing up a packet that folks can have when they, you know, when they are accepted onto the committee that is then presented by the city manager or, you know, folks in leadership kind of around the structure, around how policies are made, how they're approved, you know, how city, the difference between the city council, city operations, just kind of basic background information around our particular municipal government structure and how it works so that folks really understand what their role is on the council or on the commission in particular and what their role will be for the work that they're gonna be doing at that table. So it'll be something that we can provide to them but it'll also be something that we can talk through and provide answers to any questions that they might have by inviting city leadership staff to meetings or getting information from city leadership staff around the various departments. So it's also kind of a spin on the city tour that was talked about at the beginning that is something that hopefully is also coming down the line but it's specifically for this commission. I think it's really important for folks to understand what they're getting into. Yeah, and we, the former manager and I put together an orientation that attempted to get at that for all commission members. I think there's plenty of room for improvement there but there is a jumping off point is what I wanted to share. Thank you, I actually have seen that and I haven't, it's actually on my screen in another tab too. So yeah, I found that in S-River. I was able to, I think that's a great jumping off point for a change. Yeah, and then what you described with some flexibility on the every six months, I think that's good too as far as like bringing in staff or other leadership. So thank you for your question. Other questions, Bryn? I just noticed in the chart of the way it's built now is for the group to meet every other month. Just wondering if that will provide sufficient time. And since we don't have, we don't have results of the equity audit yet, how that will play into the priorities and scoping for the group. You know, we talked a lot at the WCC team at that level around kind of the feasibility of this group, knowing that they are kind of in WWE. And really, you know, we thought about if we really want to have participation, if we really want to have full participation in this group, the expectation for folks to meet twice a month every month is going to be, I think that's going to be a tall order. And I think we will only get certain people that apply, certain people who have the privilege of being able to flex their time a little bit more. So we were just really trying to be inclusive and respectful of the fact that this particular group is going to be working overtime, you know, in regards to, in comparison to the other commissions. And so we thought that at the very minimum, meeting every other month could be of benefit because it's also going to take time for people to gather information about what's going on on the other commissions to then bring it back to the table for the equity commission. And so we want to make sure that we maintain that flexibility. The different commissions have different meeting structures. And so some folks might even be meeting, you know, twice and a third time the month of the equity career, the inclusion and belonging commission month. So just really trying to be flexible and open to making it doable for folks. Sure. Hey, I guess, so one was just thinking about the scoping priorities and being able to have enough time. I know from the infrastructure commission, I don't feel like we have nearly enough time to get through our content. And at least for the last year that I've been on it, we haven't had a regular meeting schedule. It's kind of ended up every other month. And we're working to get back to a monthly meeting, but just kind of thinking about the experience that I'm having with the infrastructure committee and then the ability for the members of the inclusion belonging commission to be able to attend meetings when, especially for infrastructure, when that's still in a bit of flux. I will add the reverse perspective being on planning commission, which does meet twice a month every few months. The members describe feeling like overwhelmed or exhausted. Like twice a month is a bit much. And so I think this approach of every other month on top of the monthly with each of these makes sense. Cause whoever ambassadors to planning could be looking at three meetings a month, which is something we all do, but is a lot of commitment. But I do wonder then, and I can't remember what our other charters look like if that level of detail needs to be in here and maybe the frequency of meeting, if all the other charters include it, then I think it should. But if we don't put in that level of detail, it could be pulled out to add more flexibility. Yeah, all right. Yeah, I mean, that's something that the, yeah, and I think there was just a chat as well, that is another one of those flexibility pieces that possibly the commission themselves could decide on how often they feel like they'd like to meet once they are formed. So I could definitely take that out. Or put language that says like, they may do this or they may consider another schedule or something. Sure, yeah, I can absolutely. I think that that makes a lot of sense. Cause then, you know, I think that's one of those, one of those things that just makes this even more, that might make this even more appealing for folks who want to be able to join if they know that they're going to be able to decide as a group how often they're going to meet. I agree, although I think setting an expectation of a minimum number of meetings is as a group, if we intend this group to do real work on their own outside of the commission is essentially being attending members of other commissions, I think setting some expectation for folks who apply that this is, the hope is six meetings a year solely as the inclusion belonging commission, I think could be valuable to communicate so that people know what the expectation for work is. And also I can see that the first three, the first several months may not require meeting with the commissions themselves. It might be meeting just with this advisory commission to get started up, set their governance processes and decide how they want to operate. And then knowing that they have space to go out to become equity investors on other commissions. So I could, a lot of the flexibility idea that I think, you know, in our commitment to this, I think we need to be holding the members to some commitment as well or expressing a desire so that we actually expect to get work out. I'm trying to see how to phrase this, like I would hate to see this in a year be like, yeah, they just didn't meet for six months cause like everyone was busy and it was hard. And like the work plan was, was challenging at the time. And like I want to have this be hit the ground running as a functional and high functioning commission. And I think a time commitment to expectation is important there. Yeah, that's good. I agree with setting an expectation but still maybe leaving some flexibility. There's a, oh, go ahead. No, there's a hand up. There's a hand up, yeah. We have a public comment. That's what I mean. I gave you host privileges to be able to, to share, thank you, that would be great. Yes, you did one second. Sorry about that. It's okay. I thought that you did. Alternatively, you can also remake me about that. All right, there we go. Sorry about that, Daisy. Can you hear me okay? Yep. First of all, I just want to say thank you to the council for all your good work throughout this meeting and to Yasmin for the incredible work that you've done tonight. And this is first and foremost, the most illuminating and informative city council meeting that I've sat through in the time that I've sat through a new city council meeting. So thank you for sharing all of this. This is such a priority to a lot of residents. And so I appreciate everybody making this such an important part of tonight's meeting. And councilman Duncan, I think you just said sort of the process in terms of allowing this, this council that we're forming or commissioned to sort of set their own agendas and sort of determine the way that they work and the frequency in which. And I see that in my time working at the state as we stood up a lot of similar working groups. The state was creating policies to determine how to effectively gather information from communities that would inform state processes or policies around inclusion and equity. The frequency of meetings, things came up and who to put in the positions of power and things like this. And it was really illuminating to listen to a lot of the tests to any taken on things like this because when it's something like, like equity, I'd love to hear Yasmin speak on this too. I think we start to inject some of the systematic thinking that we have for long that immediately excludes people. Like the frequency of meetings that we've done in previous charters, for example, that right there excludes a certain portion of our residents or may as an example. So I'm just appreciating the careful thought that all of you are putting into shaping this really important group of leaders. And I want to say thank you. And if you need any for this kind of work recently. Thanks, Daisy. Yeah, I think you cut out Latini but at the end there. So I just want to make sure that you're actually done speaking. Thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to say there are some commissions, especially out of Susanna Davis's office. There were several policies in particular to stand up the Office of Health Equity, for example, and some of those working groups. And there are some good policies around that, shaping working groups in the way that they function that could help inform this charter. Thank you for that heads up. I think that it's something I would love to introduce because I have seen some of that. And my hope was to use some of that once the group is structured to really start to help folks understand how this particular group kind of has the power to shape how they want to govern themselves. And so that was, there were a couple of her policies or a couple of that groups policies that I was hoping to have the commission kind of review and consider when it is established. And but that's a really good point that we could utilize that here in its inception. I like the idea of keeping the language open and fluid. I think that that is really important and not necessarily confining it to a specific structure because we do tend to lean on what we know. And if what we know is something that we know is not always inclusive, I think we have to start to think about ways that we can shift putting things like that into writing as well. So, I hear what everyone is saying. I think this is a perfect opportunity for us to have a second go or to go back to the document and switch some things around before it's adopted necessarily because I was presenting this to you tonight as a draft on purpose because I think the feedback is really important. And then hopefully at the next subsequent city council meeting, bring it back after some consideration to hopefully be adopted at that point, I think is would be probably the next step here. I also am trying to be considerate of the time as well. Yes, now I'm looking forward to it. I think because we are trying to approach this differently absolutely expected tonight to be draft and feedback. Like we don't expect finished product every time we see something here. So, thank you so much. Ask one more question on this. I just wanted to check on the review of applicants by each commission and what the workflow you would participate there. So, to council Oakley's point, we might have commissions meeting twice a month to every other month and thinking about getting through application review and recommendation to council is just a different process than we've used for existing applicants and that may be fine. But I'm just curious if you could speak a little more on how you envision that application. Well, yeah, so that was created initially or really specifically because we want to make sure that whoever is selected has been selected by the body that could possibly house. So, I just want to make sure that I am clarifying that I would love to fit with the different commissions and go over all of the applications. Part of what we were hoping is that the inclusion and belonging commission themselves could work together to appoint people to the commissions that they choose. That's why there's kind of a ranking structure on the application. So, that folks are sitting and joining being an ambassador on a commission that they are comfortable with that they feel like they have some knowledge and background about. And so, it would just be kind of an initial overview of the applicants that are submitted for the commissions to go through to kind of like kind of boil it down to a few folks that we would then want to submit for you to appoint. Kind of, so I was trying to maintain a bit of the same structure that already exists in the city for that appointment where the commission members review the applications that are brought in. And then the, I believe it's the city staff and the chair are the people who then present an applicant or a candidate for appointment by the city council. So that was my attempt at trying to kind of join structures or create something that's different from something that already exists. But, considering what council Oakley was saying around how some of the commissions don't have a current set structure for their meetings, I think what I could do is work with each council and commission chair to possibly have there be a small subset of the commission that could meet to review applications. Again, you know, trying to make it as flexible as possible so that there's many people involved in the process and less kind of oversight from the people who are already in power making all of the decisions. Really trying to boil it back to the people who are volunteering their time to be representative for the city, the people who are, you know, coming in and as residents as the people who have just as much stake in the community as the five of you sitting up there now, I'm really trying to kind of take some power and put that in both hands. So I think once again, it's up for, it's flexible and it's up for discussion. And I think that what I can do is just possibly, I don't know, what I'm thinking now is changing the language possibly to say not the existing commissions themselves, but working with the equity director, the commission chair to go through the initial applications. I think that that might be more doable knowing that the commissions aren't meeting right here. I'd be fine with that. Yeah. I think that makes sense. Yeah, certainly don't want to add any time delays for scheduling challenges to you and to finding great folks to be on this new commission. And so appreciate wanting to have more involvement from the commission, the standing commissions as well, and wanting to maintain the flexibility there. So I think that's great. That works. So I think we could wrap this up but just want to remind in our council liaison roles, we need to add our next commission meetings, preview this change so that the commission see this coming even before we finalize. And so if... Yes. So I was just going to ask if you all can let me know for which meeting you'd like me to bring back a proposed final draft for this, if you have some work to do between now and then, I don't envision it necessarily being on April 4th, but possibly sometime further in April. But just let me know and then I can have it prepared for them. Yeah, you could do either. I don't think you need to weigh on us whether we've been finalized or not. I think we just can preview that it's coming. And if it's not final, we can say that. If it is, we can share more, but whatever. If you can do it next one, if you can't, I think it's fine. We... Yeah, I would love to... Sorry. No, it's okay. It's due to the final. I would love to aim for doing it for the next meeting if that's possible. Yeah. I would love to do it for them. That would be my preference. It'd be ideal. So what I was gonna say is, June 30th is when terms expire. So it would be nice to do a bulk advertisement and outreach across the board for everything. So if we have this in place, then we can advertise for this as well. So we can share it. Yeah, that sounds great. Awesome. Thank you for digging in tonight. No problem. It's not often that I get this opportunity. Usually I'm just sitting and listening. So thank you for hearing me and being so involved in this process. And I think it really... The city of Buenos Aires is really less to have such council and a mayor that are really prioritizing the needs of residents, especially the residents who don't necessarily always have a voice. So it's really empowering. I really enjoy it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So it is 8.35. I'm gonna call a five minute recess. Okay. I've got 8.40. So let's reconvene. We're on item H, which is on for discussion. Goal update for economic vitality. Wendy, do you wanna give like a brief overview? Oh, sorry. We are, it is 8.40. We are reconvening the meeting. We're at item H. Discussion item, goal update on economic vitality. Wendy, would you like to introduce? I hear you, Wendy. Kevin, are they silenced? It might be on microphone. If you have headphones plugged in or anything like that. No. It shows that you're unmuted, that we can't, hmm, that's strange. Do you wanna dial in my phone maybe? Wendy, I just sent you the dial in number in the chat there. I'd like to use that. Okay. Am I here? Yes. We can hear you now. And now I think it's echoing. Okay. So let me just walk away from the computer and I will give you the update. This is, this update is to get us back on track, reporting on the four goals that the council established. This update, the information was provided by the equity director, the public works director and the planning and zoning manager. You can see we're essentially where we were at the last time you received this goal. There's one correction that needs to be made on the third page, the equity audit firm was not IBG consulting. They were opportunity consulting. That was a decision that was made after the last draft. So rather than go over each item, can I just ask for questions if there's anything that you want discussed further? Any questions from council? Looks like a good update. When is the next, when is the next meeting scheduled to discuss the downtown, expanding the downtown designation? That I don't know. That's been put on hold. So I think that would actually be something maybe just to discuss with the downtown, with downtown when you see when you talk about their role because they might take a larger part in that since we don't have Heather's position. Anymore right now, and we're thinking about refocusing that position on more on housing. So like as part of the contract, the renegotiation for? Right, right, you'll be discussing that in May or March. Okay, all right. And then the next goal update will be housing that will be the second meeting in April. Okay, good to know. Thank you. You're welcome. And I'm gonna work on getting my connection better. So I'm gonna break off of both just temporarily. Okay? Good, thanks Wendy. Thank you. Excited to see some progress here, wayfinding, especially that's been lingering for a long time. And the legacy campaign. Any other questions from council? Are there any questions from members of the public attending? It's unrelated. It's related to economic vitality, but unrelated to the priorities update, so. You can ask if it doesn't, we'll just table it, but. That sounds like a plan. I just have been noticing more graffiti in general and feel like that is an indicator that we should, as council and as the varying groups around economic vitality and safe, healthy, connected, should at least have a plan for if we don't already for addressing and mitigating. I, it's not just when you see I'm seeing it more. Every year? Yeah, it's certainly expanded more during the pandemic. And I've seen efforts to cover up graffiti and its return and I just, I don't know what best practices are around that, but I do know that being diligent is to our benefit. Can you send an email to Wendy as follow-up? We can see if staff are already addressing that or not. Yeah. I just have one comment. I mean, we've glossed over pages and pages of really good work. Yeah. You're right. And I just, for those who may be listening from the community who haven't read the packet, I think it is worth looking at the progress that's been made on all of these because they are so varied. And I do think that we sat a year ago looking at things like wind-based code incentives, looking at, I'm not the way of looking at the wave-binding program and some small and big programs that have really made a lot of progress. So I guess I just wanted to, like I was scanning through, it's like, yes, this is all great. I have no questions because things have been progressing. So I just wanted to acknowledge that to you, Wendy, and to the staff to say thank you for progressing these through vacancies and challenging times because it is pretty impressive. Can you include that in your place? Point to this document. I will do that. Thank you. All right. Hearing no questions of public comment, we'll move on to item I, which is on for approval. This is our annual audit contract award with Angela. All right. Well, this one's pretty straight forward compared to some of the discussions you've been having tonight. We just finished in fiscal year 21, our third year of a three-year contract with RHR Smith. Per our policy, we went out to bid and we received one bid from RHR Smith. The amount of their bid is $30,000 a year, which is on par with what we were charged for the most recent audit and is included in our budget. And for those of you who are new, we have used them before. They've been very satisfactory. Are there any questions? Well, if Angela recommends them, then I would ask more. Does someone like to make a motion to approve the audit contract award for RHR Smith? Second. Motion by Brent, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Angela. So we are on to our last item of the agenda, the city manager contract. So last week, we had our final interviews, we had a public event to engage with the final candidates. We were able to do some deliberation since then and review feedback from community who attended that event as well as the leadership team here on staff. So tonight, we are going to meet with the finalist and our recruiter and hopefully take a public vote and make a final decision. I am looking for a motion to, that we should move into an executive session pursuant to state statute section 3133 because this is about the appointment or employment of a public employee. If someone would like to make a motion for that finding. So moved. Second. Motion by Aurora, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. So I'm looking for a motion to move into executive session, inviting the final candidates, Mike Jaylett, our recruiter and Wendy Harrison. So moved. Second. Motion by Brent, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. So we're going to move into executive session on another zoom line. We will only be discussing this matter. We'll come out of this session, hopefully take a vote and then we'll adjourn. All right, so we are out of executive session on item J and I'm looking for a motion to approve the city manager contract with Elaine Wang. So moved. So moved. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you so much. Welcome, Elaine. I'm excited to have her start in a few weeks. That brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. Can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, everyone.