 So it is 631. We're going to get started. Um, so I'm going to call this meeting to order. And so I, I would ask everybody to, uh, uh, find an end to their conversations. Thank you so much. Um, all right. So, uh, first thing is to review and approve the agenda. I've, I think I am aware of two changes. Um, I hear that we may be postponing the ARPA discussion. That's correct. Madam Mayor. Okay. And the second thing is, um, so we had a, an item added to our agenda within the last couple of days or so. Um, so it's item number 13, um, regarding PFAs in leachate, um, as it relates to our wastewater or our water resource recovery facility. And so I think there's probably some folks here who are interested in that topic. Am I right? Okay. So, uh, we are going to move that item up, uh, to appointment of city staff. Um, I think we should probably do that after the appointment. So it'll be item five and a half, if that makes sense. Um, okay. Uh, so I think that any other changes to the agenda. Okay. Great. So with that, we'll consider, without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. Uh, so onto general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on a topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. And, uh, if you would say your name, where you live and try to keep your comments to about two minutes, that would be excellent. And that is true throughout the evening, even if you have something, um, relevant to say on a topic that is on our agenda. Um, but if it's not on our agenda, now is the time. So, um, I'm not yet on the zoom. So, um, Cameron, I'm going to rely on you to see if there's any hands. Uh, but Stephen, go ahead. Um, I am raising a repeated issue about the website. Uh, there's been some controversy around three or multiple violations of open meeting law due to meeting warnings at the, uh, infrastructure committee meeting at the parks commission and at the CV PSA. And I just went today, looked just moments ago, trying to get the packet to see what the later items backup material is and the packet is not available on the meeting. And the assistant city managers has go to the link on the homepage. I've done all of that the packet. So there's functional deficiencies also with the calendar at the website. An event can show up in a list of upcoming meetings or not show up in a list of upcoming meetings, but yet show up on the committee page. So it's really a dysfunctional website, which is creating violations of law because people are not finding the warnings that they're supposed to be there. Um, so I want to raise that as a, as a problem. Um, the other items relate to public safety authority. Uh, I think that's a separate agenda item. Correct. So I'm sorry, what is it related to the appointments to the public safety authority? Yes, and the process of that. Okay. I think I didn't get a chance to raise these at the joint meeting with the very city council. As long as it pertains to the appointments. Okay, well, and I'll use my for us to my two minutes on this. That's fine. The, the multiple failed warnings are being cavalierly dismissed as, oh, well, we'll just ratify it at another meeting and we, we, in fact, I would say all of y'all were counting on Dan Richardson to do due diligence with regards to that appointment and he was doing it. But now that he's not there, we've got, uh, leadership, which is running it off the rails. And not only do you need to fill Dan's, I would suggest you appoint somebody else, uh, for the city appointment because you can't just violate the law and hold meetings that aren't warned at a restaurant and shift the date by a day and consider and then figure you can unilaterally respond without the law requires the board to take action to respond to a violation. The board has not even heard or been asked to take these up at the subsequent meetings. So you've got somewhat of an autocrat running it who happens to not be here tonight and you need to rein that in because this city is, uh, a key player in that organization. Thank you. Um, Doug Hoyt, I see you've got your hand raised. Oh, no, I think you momentarily unmuted yourself but you are still muted. Double click, sorry about that. That's okay. Uh, I just wanted to encourage you to turn the volume up. I've got my volume up all the way and unfortunately I could not hear probably about 20% of what Mr. Whitaker has to say. Okay, so I think we're working on that. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for letting us know that and if it doesn't get better please, um, raise my hand again. I'll raise my hand again. Okay, sounds good. All right. All right, so I think we are, or anyone else, um, in person, uh, like to make a comment, a comment. It's something not on our agenda. Uh, okay, um, and just checking, is there anyone else online who would like to make a comment? You could unmute yourself, you could, um, use the raise hand icon, you could just wave, but I am not seeing anyone. Okay, so, um, we're going to move on then. So, on to the consent agenda. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? Move the consent agenda. Second. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay, I'll, oh yes, Jack. I had some conversation with the, with the clerk and there's some changes being made to the minutes, but they're just, uh, okay. Okay, thank you. So, uh, nothing substantive then. Okay, great. Uh, all right, so, uh, there's, thank you for that, letting us know. Um, all right, so there's been a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay, so on to the appointment of city staff to the central mont public safety authority core team. Uh, and for this, I am, I'm either looking at you, Bill, or perhaps at Doug. Um, yeah, I think, I think you should hear from the CVPSA folks first and then we have some comments about that. Okay, CVPSA folks here. Chief White is here and Paco Armand is here. Okay, great. Well, I will turn it over to, uh, to you, uh, Doug and Paco. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. I'll try to be very brief here. I think most of us are pretty much in agreement that the best way that we can approach the continuing efforts of the public safety authority, uh, in conjunction with activities regarding communications in the public safety area in central Vermont, is that we continue the work that was set up and established with Televate and report what you have had the opportunity to receive. Um, there's a lot there. I'm sure it's going to take you a couple of minutes to digest it all and I would not be surprised if you have a few more questions that need to be answered. Um, but we believe that the best way to move forward is to have a core group of individuals that can guide and manage the future efforts as it relates to the establishment of priorities, developing a funding mechanism, enhancing a governance model, and move forward. Briefly, the Televate plan, which the Public Safety Authority has received and endorsed, has three major projects or phases, if you will, and obviously number one has to be done before two and three. The report is not all-encompassing. We don't expect, I don't think anyone expects, that all of this is going to be done in one full swoop, but having staff that are intimately involved in the communications efforts in this process, we believe would make the process a whole lot easier. So that's what we're asking the Council for and it's my task to also move forward and talk with the Barry and ask them to do the same. And we're also involved heavily with working with members of Captifire Mutual Aid. So I guess I'll turn it over to Paco if he wants to add anything, if you don't mind. And if you have any questions, I'll try to answer them. And if I can't, I know Paco can. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you, Doug. As everybody knows from looking at the report, this is a big project that's going to require a lot of planning. And that's where the group, the two cities, the members of CVPSA is right now, is trying to bring together relevant stakeholders that can help in the planning process. Those relevant stakeholders are key staff in each of the two cities in Captifire. It is the public safety personnel that are going to be using the equipment at the end of the day. And so we're just basically looking to the city councils to appoint some of their key staff to a planning committee that's going to get together. We are calling it the core team to help guide this project forward. Any questions for either Doug or for Paco? Okay. Do you have something to say? Yes, I do. Go ahead. This is, this request has not been made or discussed by the CVPSA board. In fact, the Televate Report does mention this as one possible path forward, but this is an example of the way that the CVPSA is being managed. The CVPSA you've heard for several years, the Public Safety Authority, has requested that the cities, the members, appoint chief or administrator levels, appointees to this body. That in effect would keep the process above board managed in transparent and recorded public meetings, et cetera. And instead what happened is we got this Televate Report and the city managers and chiefs went behind closed doors to come up with their recommendation and put their own spin on it. You understand or all council members should understand that this the city has a conflict of interest here and that they're relying on the three or four hundred thousand dollars that they collect for a dispatch facility, which is running at cross purposes to what regional dispatch will necessitate. Regional dispatch will necessitate inviting other served towns that we dispatch for into the organization and that cannot be done in a third rail process. So the fact that this request has not been made or discussed by a vote, I've been through the minutes of CVPSA and they have not discussed or requested this. So this is part of the problem I'm trying to raise with you is that you you have a derailed off the rail system where accountability and transparency are suffering and the only way CVPSA is going to get on the right track is through appointments that to people who will show up to regular meetings that are recorded and that are minutes created. But this process of creating committees and ambiguity about what's open meetings and who's meeting privately with who, it's not the way to go about it. Thank you. So I'm interested and well actually unless there's any further questions from council or thoughts or comments I am curious for for your thoughts on this topic though. Sure. Well so I think in general with regard to managing a large project it makes a lot of sense to have the key people from both cities involved. Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry. Is that me? I can't hear anybody. Okay. Is that better? Any? No? I'm like my mouth's on the mic. Is that okay? I'm fine. I'm told. People over here don't think I'm fine. So I'll do my best. So in general we think that having key staff involved in making decisions on technical projects like this is is essential and we don't necessarily disagree with what's been suggested here to the extent that Mr. Whitaker pointed out that the board hadn't discussed this. This hadn't really been discussed with us either in advance of this. I mean in general there has been talk as as we just referenced that it would be good to have people like the chiefs and the managers on the board and we've heard that we understand that. So I would say it might make sense for us to just table this till the next meeting so we have a chance to talk amongst ourselves and to talk with our counterparts and Barry and maybe understand what a little bit more of what's being asked of us. I think we understand but give CVPSA full board a chance to to really deliberate this so we're not trying in any way to stop this or say that we disagree with it but we guess we're just not quite ready to say we're in because we don't know what we're in for yet. I think that makes sense and one of the things that was so for all of the reasons that you said that I think that makes sense but also in addition I mean I was even just curious to hear from those folks whether or not they were willing to do that. So if if it means that unless there's an urgency to make that these appointments tonight I think it would be wise to to put this off. And I just just checking in Doug and Paco I my understanding is that that would probably be okay if we if we made these appointments at the next. Oh yeah go ahead Bill. I can't unmute myself. I don't think you want to unmute yourself. But I'm muted. That's good. But I want to talk. Oh oh right I'm sorry. Yeah it's okay. It's okay. Heads in a lot of different places here. I'm sorry. I think the biggest issue from my perspective that I don't know what Doug and Paco would say is that to the extent that we want to budget for funds that we decide it's a viable project we want to get money in these budgets we'd probably want to make sure that Barry you know that we were working on the same track with Barry. So that would be the urgency but I'm not sure that you know we can still have those conversations whether we're officially appointed to anything or not. And I don't think there's anything that prevents us from waiting till November 10. Okay well it's unless there's strong objection. I think that's probably what we should go with is that all right here team. So I don't think we need a motion to to table officially we can just put this on another future agenda. Is that agreeable? Okay. All right thank you everybody and we are going to move on then to our discussion of of leachate regarding particularly regarding the the PFA's that the leachate contains. So for so I'll just start by saying as someone who appreciates science the PFA's are deeply concerning and they they should I just want to start even really by saying that no one really should be making PFA's it's it's awful that they exist first of all. So I think the question here is so they do exist they're in the leachate. What happens to them and where do they go? And so we have this opportunity as there are the agency of natural resources is accepting comments currently regarding PFA's that now's an opportune time to to talk about this. Anyway so I want to be on that I would like to have an opportunity for any member of the public to have a chance to share their thoughts about leachate or PFA's with the council and from there have a actually if I don't know if any staff have anything that they want to say but otherwise after the public comment we'll go to council discussion in light of public comment. All right so from there I'm going to start with folks in person. Anyone who is present wish to make a comment and don't read it. Say your name where you live and try to keep your comments to two minutes if you can. Sure. If you've got more than that then okay close to the mic. Yeah we'll get closer to the mic. Sorry I've never done this before. My name is even closer. Yes. Oh my gosh. Delta down. Is that better? Is that good? Okay great. Good evening. My name is Christy Binzen. I live over on Franklin Street in Montpelier and I've lived there for almost three years now. Prior to living there I lived in Wilmington North Carolina which is relevant because of the conversation about PFAS. So that section of North Carolina is a watershed that has been seriously polluted by PFAS that have been discharged up river and the end result of that is a very serious situation for the whole watershed for fish life and for people living in the area for whom that is the water supply. I'm here tonight because when I learned that PFAS were being discharged into the river here through our city I was very very concerned. I can say that I just urge the council to reject the proposal that A&R is making to take an increased amount of leachate. I think that now is the time to act on the side of prevention. You know there's an old saying about an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Unfortunately with PFAS there is no cure right now so I think prevention is the way to go. The agency the EPA right now is making a priority of looking into PFAS and how to really react to all the PFAS that's in our environment and one of their key components is prevention. Prevention, prevention, prevention. So I think that we as a city have an opportunity right now to take action to prevent further discharge of PFAS into our water system which obviously is critical for all of us and our children and the future of our communities. Thank you very much for the time tonight. I appreciate it. Yeah thank you very much. Go ahead. Sorry to belabor my presence here tonight. The PFOA and PFAS has been something that I've paid attention to for some years now and I'm in touch with folks who have had surgery organs removed. The engineer who worked on the design for the sintering towers down in Bennington County where the sheets of Teflon were raised and all the airing debris blown out across the landscape. In short we don't have the right to to put this into the river for those in Middlesex and Richmond and Burlington to swim in. This is a question of morality and I know we have economics that we get revenue from using our sewer treatment plant to process leachate from Coventry but this is where we should take a stand and do the moral right thing. David is having to deal with issues of having his blood removed and filtered. It is not easy to get this stuff out of your body and we all have it. Almost everyone who's ever been tested has shown that they've accumulated some of this Teflon residue. Maybe that's a misnomer to Teflon's a subset of this but my point is this is not something to play with and we certainly not stuff to take liberties with other people's life and livelihood with. Thank you. Good evening thank you for letting us speak to this important point. Obviously we all know PFAS are a scary toxin that is there and it is associated with any number of serious health concerns and I just want to make the point that I and others are not saying not in my backyard. We're saying not in anyone's backyard and that excuse me city council has the status to go to the agency of natural resources and say you all the state needs to take care of this and if it's building holding tanks there are things to be done in order to keep this leachate from going into the water and the agency of natural resources in my opinion needs to step up and pay attention to that and one of the ways they will is when folks like you and other municipalities say this is not a hot potato for us to toss around among us it's your mess so thank you for letting me speak. Yeah thank you. So what was your name? Can we get your name? Where are you from? Sorry I can't let that. Got excited. Daryl Bloom Montpelier I live on Summer Street. Thanks. Anyone else in person? Thank you and I know you've all been putting up with hearing a lot from me on this subject of late. Thanks for making it a serious priority I appreciate it. I just want to say that I don't think toxic waste disposal is a Montpelier problem it's a state of Vermont problem and a big part of that problem is that the state of Vermont and the agency of natural resources doesn't have a plan for how to take care of our solid waste instead they've given over a great deal of authority to a for-profit company that makes money on that solid waste. Now that the public is finding out more and more about the environmental dangers and serious health risks about PFAS discharging them into our waterways is not an option unless there was a safe and effective treatment that removes them safely from the waste stream. The ANR permit sets up a pilot project but there is no safe technology determined yet for taking them out of the waste stream and since there isn't we have to do something like what Daryl just mentioned which is some find some way to sequester them out of anybody's watershed until such time as we do have store it safely until we do have a treatment allowing the company that makes millions and millions of dollars off our solid waste to make the decisions about how to manage it is the wrong way around this and the permit clearly gives a lot of authority to Cassella to make decisions that I think the state should be making. It is the state's responsibility to protect the public health and our natural environment it's not Cassella's responsibility. ANR's draft discharge permit I hope you will table and reject until the agency develops standards and regulations for the disposal of leachate. Montpelier shouldn't be responsible for absorbing the toxic waste coming from not only Vermont but other states as well. This is the state's responsibility and the sooner we join Newport and Essex and stop taking the leachate the sooner the state will begin to take on that responsibility. So we ask the council tonight to begin to make a plan to stop taking leachate and to put public safety and the protection of our natural resources above any of the economic considerations. Thank you. Thank you. Hi Kathy Squires Montpelier. I'm also really concerned about this leachate as well I'm sure everyone is. So my concern is how are we going to separate the leachates out of our sewage given there's no way to do that at this time not a good quality time or not quality. And the other thing is taking it on from other people so it just seems like we are just harming our rivers and our waterways. So that's my concern. Thank you. Thank you. And John did you get her name? Welcome. I'm Elisa Dorske I live at 31 First Avenue in Montpelier and I'm frankly new to being aware of this issue. I didn't realize until this week that Montpelier was already processing this leachate and releasing these toxins into the Dog River because it couldn't be processed appropriately by our wastewater treatment system. And I guess in that sense I may represent the point of view that maybe not that many people in our community or maybe people are starting to realize this is an important issue and I think that's a strong reason to not accept further leachate into the wastewater system. We need time as a community to understand this issue and I very much support the fact that I think you're in a position where by rejecting taking further leachate you can send this message to the state and put pressure for other solutions to be arrived at and I think the storage concept that other people have articulated makes a lot of sense but to act quickly and to move forward with the status quo clearly doesn't make any sense because the risks are so high. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Anyone else in person? Okay I'm going to turn to folks online. Anyone who's with us digitally wish to make a comment? Okay Shayna see your hand go ahead. Hi all my name is Shayna Casper. I work with a group called Community Action Works from Lee Toxic Faction Center and I work with community groups fighting pollution threats in their neighborhoods and for the past five years I've co-facilitated the National PFAS Contamination Coalition which is a network of 40 community groups fighting PFAS contamination in their communities and I am so grateful to not have to be a part of this team. This is a group of volunteers of folks who have had cancers, have had kids with cancers, have had trouble having kids. I'm really seeing the impact that PFAS in people's drinking water in particular and in their occupational exposures has had on people's health and full disclosure too I just want to say that we are also in pending litigation with Cassella over Clean Wider Act violations in Bethlehem, New Hampshire and the Amadoucic River contamination. I really don't want this stuff to be contaminating my community and and downriver of when you speak because I'm also you know I'm a Montpelier resident. I live on Kent Street. I care really deeply about this community and serve on several city committees. I don't want to take significantly more PFAS into our wastewater treatment facility and that's why myself and as of right now 37 other people are calling on the Montpelier City Council to first of all write a letter to agency of natural resources calling on them to deny this permit for taking increased leachate and to commit to not taking leachate through our wastewater treatment facility. No matter where the the permit ends up the city can make a commitment to not take any more leachate from into our wastewater treatment facility and as Darrell said finding a solution is not just closing our doors to taking this leachate. We don't want to take this here and we also want to go upstream and turn off the tap of contamination. You know we need to make sure that this garbage juice isn't just not going to Montpelier but that it's not going anywhere and so I think you know connecting with other city councils in Concord, New Hampshire and Platsburg, New York to collectively commit to not taking landfill leachate until it is treated and PFAS free as an important next step. So that's kind of the things that I want to propose today and yeah really looking forward to this conversation. Thank you and I see your hand. Deborah go ahead. Hi I'm Deborah Dwyer I live on course street in Montpelier and I too just recently became aware of this issue and it's pretty shocking to me that we are dumping this stuff into the river and letting it go downstream to you know to our neighbors. So I urge the council to reject the proposal to take an increased amount of it and to instead make a plan to stop taking it all together. Thank you. Thank you. Paul Burns go ahead and then we'll go Renee Ansel. Thanks so much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. I am Paul Burns I live at 18 Isabelle's Circle in Montpelier and lived here since 2004. I also am the director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group or VPIRG. VPIRG has played a role in advocating for solutions to hazardous and toxic waste problems for many years and just earlier this year we're one of the leaders in helping to pass legislation to address the presence of PFAS in commonly used consumer products some of which get thrown away after their useful life has ended and end up in landfill and thus contributing to this leachate problem. So I agree with other speakers I want to echo and appreciate so much of what has been said already that the best solution is to stop making and using this this family of chemicals which is some 9,000 chemicals in total in this in the PFAS family. So I recognize there is no easy answer to this but I also know that Casella has a at best a spotty track record when it comes to environmental protection. PFAS is a very very difficult issue sometimes by forcing the issue by saying no to this proposal which is significantly flawed I think it helps to drive better answers and better solutions. So again I appreciate the comments that have been made so far. We support a rejection of this proposal no to any leachate in Montpelier that contains PFAS. We support a treatment system for this that can help to address some of the problems and again I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. Thank you Rene. Hi I'm a resident of Montpelier too I live in Kent Street and I echo the same way what has been said by other citizens and I just want to add that so far people have come through this pandemic lots of people have decided to get vaccinated and according to the environmental working group PFAS stopped the effectiveness of vaccination so it's another concern for the community and also I want to add up that there is no money in the world to put toxic waste into our water system and poison our community I agree that there has to be more studies and other ways that we need to address the use of this chemicals and people need to be more conscious about what they buy but at the moment making a decision to to add more gallons of this poison into our water is there's no money favored to that and I encourage you guys to say no and send a letter to ANR saying now we won't take it as other communities have. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else with this digitally wish to make a comment? You can just wave your hand or just unmute yourself. Go ahead Peter. I would just like to add one thing that I haven't heard yet. A number of people have said that they were unaware of this I'll add my name to that as well I'll bet that 95 percent of people in Montpelier are unaware of this and are probably unaware of the products that they buy and throw away that contain PFAS and it seems to me that that is a step that some of the city agency in conjunction with perhaps the Central Vermont Waste Management District could be proactive about name the names of products that contain them and urge people not to throw those away into the dumpster at Casellas or anywhere else. Thanks Peter Kalman sorry. Thank you. Anyone else? I guess I'll open back anyone in in person or digitally wish to make a further comment. Okay all right well thank you and so this was brought to us actually by Councillor Hurl. Do you want to jump in at this point? Sure. I can kind of give a little overview of what I've been kind of hearing from community members and thinking about this topic and have some thoughts on where we go from here for council to consider. You know like I imagine all of you I've been hearing from a lot of constituents and as we're seeing tonight you know a lot of concern about you know our practice of importing PFAS containing leachate which our water resource recovery facility is not fit to filter as no such facilities anywhere are set up to do certainly in Vermont so we know it's going right into our rivers and someone might have mentioned it but you know these again are called forever chemicals because they're incredibly persistent so we know as they're going into our water they are staying in our environment forever. They're mobile so they move around they're shown places where you're putting it into the environment it's getting into groundwater that's why you're seeing all over the country you know these huge issues with people's drinking water being contaminated you know and we've heard tonight of the many places that these chemicals are used you know non-stick pans, Gore-Tex waterproof gear stain resistant sprays and we're throwing those products away and then the leachate there the chemicals are getting into the leachate and coming here and so you know again we've seen these this contamination of you know really devastating impacts in communities all over the country I was just talking to a friend in Bennington last night where of course was the first discovery of PFAS contamination of drinking water in the state and I was asking about connecting with a person who I've worked with a few times who had really high levels of PFAS in his blood and he told me that in fact he had died this summer of cancer and I was just like devastating to hear I mean it just reminded me of you know the serious health threats that exposure to these chemicals cause you know we heard about the action the legislature is taking to ban these chemicals from all kinds of products this is a great step we need to keep on that track and in the meantime we have you know decades worth of PFAS that we're going to continue having to deal with for generations to come last week the federal environmental protection agency put out a roadmap and it clearly showed that they are acknowledging the urgency and scope of the crisis it's the EPA so it's slow moving and it will be years of work to really get things going but it you know it definitely signaled that you know wastewater treatment facilities are going to be regulated like this is the track we're going on so us being proactive and getting ahead of it I think makes all the sense in the world for all the reasons we've heard tonight and to be clear I don't blame our facility for this problem and in this situation I don't blame Kasella this is I blame you know not all of us who unknowingly use these products with these chemicals I blame the chemical industry who knew for decades that these chemicals were toxic and persistent who hid it who lied about it and continue to manufacture them and continue to this day to manufacture them and reap billions upon billions of dollars in profits as they poison us so that's who as we look down the line to who are holding accountable for costs of prevention and cleanup that's where I think we should all be looking but in the meantime we need to figure out how you know where we go from here you know I really have struggled with this because you know on the one hand we could just say let's stop today taking it but this is a regional problem and I don't really love the idea of us just saying no not doing anything to help push to address the issue upstream and this just going to another community often you know we've seen time and again where you know environmental justice issues where it goes to low-income communities communities of color and you know us to make a decision that just results in that without getting at any you know bigger longer-term solutions concerns me so I'm really wrestling with that so you know I was thinking about some principles that maybe council could consider adopting and you know maybe we could shape it into a letter from the city so the kind of high level I was thinking of and interested in people's thoughts on this so number one Montpelier is committed to developing a plan to eliminate intake of PFAS-contaminated leachate and associated releases into our waters in the short term Montpelier expects A&R agency of natural resources and Kasella to move forward with treating leachate as quickly and effectively using best available technology as possible and our must have a much stronger oversight role of this process with public health and environmental protection front and center and that oversight must extend to determining the pretreatment technology testing monitoring and timeline to ensure it is successful and the state and or Kasella should provide much more robust monitoring of the current and any future impacts of PFAS releases into Montpelier's water soil and fish and wildlife so that those were the what I'm thinking I mean that clearly we need you know more discussion more I think understanding of implications of you know turning off the tap of bringing PFAS-contaminated leachate into the city but I think putting that commitment forward to coming up with that plan and then you know as Kasella as A&R is moving forward with a permit expressing these kind of concerns with the current construct of it and pushing for a more a quick and more effective approach than what we could happen under the current scenario just like two other thoughts one I think it's worth also potentially looking at federal or state funding opportunities for improved filtration at our own water resource recovery facility so not taking on the Kasella pilot project around leachate pretreatment but I know that there have been discussions federally around increased resources for dealing with contamination because this has been such a huge issue all over the country so there might be some resources we could get to improve filtration there was an A&R study looking at the facilities all over the state and ours was either the highest or one of the highest because of the leachate we taken for PFAS levels in the affluent but every single one had PFAS coming out because of you know all of us washing our clothes that contain PFAS and other things so I think you know either way it's not going to be an ongoing problem so I think looking at better filtration and I think the city when we look at our legislative agenda should support efforts to hold toxic polluters accountable for the harm they cause great thank you I have a lot of thoughts on this but I'm gonna see if other folks have thoughts first go ahead Conor I'm just wondering if it makes sense for maybe Kurt or Bill to go through the memo that was released there because I think they could should some light and I probably have some follow-up questions on that sure yeah um sure we could it'd probably be easiest if Kurt who is our most technical expert on this uh if he cares too I think he's on the call Kurt you you can you try talking now Kurt oh yeah you hear me or me well we can hear you but it sounds a little bit like Darth Vader oh yeah no that's not going to work but he's going to call in okay translating uh okay well maybe um we can wait for Kurt to call in anything you also want to you want to add I mean I think everyone's really summed it up that we the city certainly has the same concerns that everybody has as far as this goes and we've been taking leachate for many many years and we're not interested in increasing the amount that we take we do understand that we all societally contribute to putting stuff in and using these products and we all societally have chosen to have landfill as our waste disposal and so that produces leachate we contribute to the landfill as well with our own you know waste sludge uh so it's a complicated situation it certainly is a big financial issue for the city but I also understand the perspective that you know people's lives and health and safety is takes priority over that um and it's you know we don't know how to how to solve the problem I think we fully agree that you know stopping it at the source is the best way banning it completely would be you know even but even banning it and stopping it banning it for the future this stuff's in the landfill and will be for a long time so the question is how do you treat what's what's there before we get it or when we get it um because it's not it's not a great situation I think our concern is as health member hurl says is right now it's it's in the leachate it's being produced and it's got to go somewhere so um you know if it's not here then where and who's going to take it and what's going to be done with it because it's got to be disposed of so I don't know the answer to that and I think the state should be um this should be at the head of their class in terms of stuff they're working on well unless oh maybe Kurt have you joined the zoom on your phone at this point I think you might have uh yep I'm here now oh we can hear you very well go ahead okay uh so yes we uh also heard from a lot of residents myself and Chris Cox is the chief operator at our wastewater plant and so we um put together a memo just sort of giving some background on uh this issue um I'll just kind of run through the highlights of that uh so first is the um just to kind of start out this is um an emerging chemical uh emerging issue um there's not a lot of while the one there's not a proven uh technology to treat PFAS um the currently the only um mechanism for treating PFAS is at wastewater plants wastewater plants when we're not designed to remove PFAS um we can treat the leachate very well we can remove the metals the the BOD um all you know pretty much all the other contaminants but we we were never um anticipated having to remove PFAS so um but that's just kind of uh at one point I wanted to make um start off um the other thing is the testing methods for PFAS um and wastewater so historically they've been using drinking water standard um just recently uh just last month EPS uh EPA has announced um you know some guidance on uh surface water uh treatment techniques so we actually don't have any data um any sample data um that actually you know follows a true um procedure for um surface water disorders which is the effluent from the wastewater plant um and then you know as was discussed a little bit um earlier that the um the permit for Kasella um it does it does require some pilot testing of treatment um on you know a point source treatment um but you know I think the the options right now are uh incineration which you know there's concerns about you know what's going to happen um you know for air quality uh using that another method is potentially um capturing the PFAS in carbon um which again uh you you're left with a concentrated volume with PFAS that then has to be dealt with likely back to the landfill um and then the other one that they're looking at is as deep groundwater injection but um you know none of those are really a great option at this point but um you know the the technology to treat PFAS is is really in development there's not a great option at the moment um and then also you know there's been a lot of discussion about increasing the amount that Montpelier um will take under this permit really uh the permit and it does increase it does state an increase in the gallons um that can be um brought to Montpelier but really the limit under the existing permit is through the biological oxygen demand which is kind of the strength of the of the leachate call it BOD um and that is actually there's a a new condition of the permit to limit um the maximum amount of BOD um that can be brought to Montpelier daily so when you factor that in um it actually puts a more restrictive cap on the total gallons because although there was a limit of 24,000 gallons in the existing permit um they that could that gallons could be exceeded provided the BOD didn't exceed um 1200 pounds per day so um so it's actually more restrictive but also you know we keep a close eye on um on the leachate that we take in and you know if there's any issues with treatment uh our operators can restrict that volume so uh and and historically that's been what has been limiting um the amount of leachate that we take not so much the uh gallons in the old permit so we don't anticipate taking you know uh you know doubling our leachate intake it's really going to be you know very pretty much the same as that as it had has been under the old permit so I just wanted to um you know clarify that point I mean and then the other thing you know that was in the memo is the financials um you know we do take in a fair amount of revenue from leachate and we're using you know that money goes to the sewer fund to help fund improvement projects and you know one of the main um goals of city staff right now myself and um and the rest of public works uh supported through you know the manager's office is CSO reduction so you know that's another um environmental impact that we have through our um combined wet weather overflows um and so you know if we do um you know halt receiving leachate then that's you know less investment we can put into um cleaning up you know the the discharges from combined sewer overflows it's that's a very expensive another very expensive issue that uh the city faced with so that's kind of the thigh-level overview take any questions if um if there are any thank you curt yeah go ahead tony yeah sure curt uh are we the only municipality accepting this now in vermont in vermont yes under the permit um that's correct likely if the city were to stop taking leachate um what we heard from cosella is that majority would go to platzberg which would you know um discharge into lake sampling which is the eventual water source um that our discharge goes to and curt could you talk about um a lot of folks commented maybe an option would be like storing this until the technology catches up and we can think of a way to treat it uh is that just impractical because it's tens of millions of gallons of this or it is i think last year we i'm gonna have to look it up that you know it is millions of gallons um that we take a year so i don't know that that's really feasible to construct the storage tanks of that size you know that could really you know um store the volume that's being produced uh for that sort of duration thanks very much curt other thoughts from council well i'll jump in here and say that uh so what you're proposing lauren that we write a letter with these guiding principles uh i i think is um at the very least a good plan um uh i my gut is that i just want to be done with it like i let's just cancel it let's just not take any more leachate and that's in a sense like the easy the easy decision to make um even though we know that that would not eliminate the amount of PFAS that would be in the effluent because every wastewater treatment facility in vermont had PFAS coming out of it regardless of whether or not they took leachate having said that uh the question that i find myself wrestling with is is it better to just cancel and be done walk away and say you know ship it to platzberg or is it better to try to keep tension on an r somehow and it seems to me that we could potentially and i'm i'm open to being wrong about this open to discussion but one potential path forward would be to say uh you need you need some kind of pre-treatment solution you need to do something uh maybe there's not perfect technology but there there may be options uh and so uh if if there is not uh i'm making this up right now okay then we could we could wordsmith this but um one possibility is that we could say uh we would like to no longer have PFAS in our leachate or not be taking leachate at all in two years right like you have two years to like get this together uh if in two years you there is still PFAS in the leachate then we're out um and in a way that might keep uh the tension on an r keep tension on kasella to keep making progress so that it can not end up in anyone's backyard right because we don't we don't want to go into platzberg either right um we don't want it to be to be going anywhere and really if we if we just say we're out you know does that does that put as much pressure on the progress and i i will confess i i don't i don't really know it seems to me that um having a uh writing a letter saying these are our principles and we would uh here's what we want to see from uh from you kasella or from you anr um and giving them a sort of a deadline um that's that's one option i just want to put that out there go ahead jack is it's two years i know you just thought five years it could be whatever but is there does the technology exist or is there even a time praying and you can think the technology will exist to to to effectively treat it to get it out go ahead learn so my understanding and there might be people in the room who know for unzoom who know more um so essentially what this permit is giving is kasella two years to decide on a pretreatment technology they already did a feasible feasibility study of a couple options that's already been done i mean it is emerging technology and you know no state has done a better job than vermont yet and stuff you know we're not but but there are technologies that do exist so there's the filtering it out and then you have to deal with the residuals because you know if you capture it then you've got you know concentrated PFAS that you just throw it back in the landfill and it gets back in the leachate or is there you treat it as you know hazardous waste or again incineration as kurt mentioned is is an option but then it just puts it up into the air into a community so there's they're still wrestling with some of it but kasella did identify some potential technologies and so what they're being asked to do on the next two-year timeline is um decide on one come up with a plan build one within the next year and then basically have a year if i'm remembering right to kind of do the testing and monitoring and see if it's working so that's what this you know permit right now that's out for common is essentially approving that kind of timeline and and plan for test doing a pilot test of one of these technologies to see if it is effective so you know i do think putting some pressure on you know on some end to keep them on track and making sure that they're going to choose a good technology and i think you know this should be a and r's responsibility and not deferred to they defer extensively to kasella to just figure this all out and you know their their motives are their mission is not the same as a and r's which is to protect public health and the environment so um that's a concern which is where i think peelier pushing on more oversight more um more of the agency taking this on as a state responsibility than hunting it to kasella an important consideration to me other thoughts yeah oh go ahead connor than jay yes i just wanted to start off uh thank you lauren for bringing this up here and really pushing the issue i think it's incredibly important and the other point to make you know before the only municipality taking this in the state this isn't a montpellier issue this is a regional issue right here and i i i think what that means is we need to redefine our relationship with a and r as we go forward here you know i don't want to be going hand in hand and asking could you do more than four tests a year on the water here we're your partners you know and we do have we do have the trump card that we don't have to continue taking this but that's a very good point do we want to just you're either at the table or on the menu do we want to punt this off the plant spurg and see what they do with it i i think there is there is some logic in using this to push a and r in the right direction push kasella in the right direction and i'm not sure the actual timeline but you know i i think we can make an impact on policy here i'm really glad i see representative hooper and senator comings are in the meeting here and i know they've been following this issue closely so it's good to have them on the team but you know i i definitely like to get a and r staff in here asap i think they're are they scheduled for november sometime to come in i think it's time to bring them in here and just have a really frank discussion about how we move forward on this but uh in the meantime the principles that lauren's laid out i'm really comfortable with and again wouldn't be wouldn't be beyond saying no thanks at some point if it feels like we aren't considered a partner in this and uh just submitting comments before deadlines and that type of stuff i think regular meetings with the agency j go ahead um yeah thanks kind of i'll just follow up on that a little bit in that um lauren i appreciate how you've kind of laid this all out and i appreciate the conversation my sense is that that i don't like making a blanket statement and just sort of like pulling the plug and saying okay we're not going to take these anymore but at the same time i want i think we're in a position to take we should be taking a proactive stance about this and not yes we should be partnering with a and r and figuring out what the solutions are we're not going to solve what people solve PFAS you know sitting around this horseshoe you know um but what we can do is is you know as the council that runs the capital we we can take a stand on what we're willing to accept and so that being said i think the more sort of forward-thinking proactive we are about what we're willing to accept which in my mind is the less less is more but understanding that it's a complicated solution the better off will be so you know this is sort of open-ended but i i do think that if if we were to um you know be able to have a meeting with a and r be able to set a deadline where like you know after like if a and r gave kasala two years then we'll give him a year and say hey you know that that's good great because you because lauren your point is so well taken they have different price kasala's different priorities than a and r and what we might have and so i i still appreciate their priorities but at the same time i think that we need to get ahead of it and and just you know i'm not sure what our action is tonight per sit necessarily but like i'm not feeling patient about this because it's a really significant issue so i do think that um we need to have that sort of more accelerated timeline in mind as a city so thanks Jennifer go ahead um i just wanted to chime in real quick um i appreciate all the work that you've done and taking the time to sit and explain things to me because i too was not aware of what was about pfafs and all these really horrific things and being an ojibwe woman who is you know deeply connected to waters um we just had a pipeline through my reservation and through our wild rice fields and so protecting water is a very important thing to me and i don't feel okay just handing it off to another community to handle because that's always what happens and then somebody else is dealing with everybody else's mess so i think what you're suggesting is something that i i can sit with with my conscious and and with my water protecting self i think giving them a a short amount of time like you just said jay i can get down with that thank you yeah one of the phrases that comes to mind was uh from someone who said you know we don't want this to be the hot potato right right that we're just passing around somebody so how do we you know how do we apply how do we best apply pressure and it could be that the best way to apply pressure is to stop but i i think it might be to to make it clear especially for the only vermont player right now um so here's what i would propose that we do as an action moving forward is uh direct staff and or lauren or collaborative collaboratively between staff and lauren to uh to draft a letter with these guidelines perhaps with a deadline or or if you want to be in on it too great whoever wants to be in on um and uh i don't know if we need a motion on this would it be useful if there was a motion um i don't think we need a motion unless there was a specific uh the council wanted to decide on a deadline and maybe that's a little early yet that card i think it i think that's could be a part of the the further conversation once we have a draft in front of us um something that we could um digest and and react to um go ahead well i i was actually going to defer to lauren on this but the only issue i think is isn't isn't there a deadline with a comment period or is this different than that there so there is a comment deadline period november eighth our next council meeting is november 10th i'm fully confident if we give the agency a heads up that we're going to be submitting something a couple days late as the only off-taker that they will still consider our comments seriously so i would not person easy for me to say i'm not worried about their um but i mean we could you know i could i could also reach out to a and r and if if there's some urgency on the other end i don't know about you know we'd always do a quick noon meeting or something if it's approving a letter yeah but i would i would think it'd be fine for the next if you if you do find out that they are really not going to take those comments on let's say the 11th or 12th really um let us know and we'll we'll call another meeting um there's some other piece oh one of the other things that i'm very interested in uh in conjunction with this topic is if if we were to stop taking leachate how does that affect us how does that affect the wharf uh financially uh and how does it um we i mean we just completed phase one of a major upgrade um i it's not clear to me like what percentage of our total intake is leachate and so will phase one continue to be functional uh even uh if if we stop um i just think it's important to be eyes open about that aspect um so if you along with with that draft have some further clarification um does that sound like an okay plan team okay great thank you and thank you again for bringing this up i also want to make it really clear that i think our wastewater treatment our water resource recovery facility is amazing i'm so proud of the work that they do um i think they are um um doing a wonderfully admirable job and and it's it's only gonna get better so thank you um all right all right so we are i think that's it so we're gonna we're gonna move on for now and so we are up to taking uh well i we have a question about uh petitions for the ballot from cvhhh and from the library though i think they might have just stepped out uh oh okay sorry if you need another minute we can go to another item no okay are you ready for the library i think we couldn't talk and oh yeah so i i see we could go in either order it doesn't really uh matter terribly but um uh let's since you're you're standing here yep go go ahead go ahead thank you welcome yeah hi um thanks for uh adding the library to tonight's agenda i'm carolyn brennan i'm one of two co-directors of the kelo covered library uh with me here tonight is judy walk who is one of two city council appointees to the library board of trustees uh on the zoom call earlier but i don't believe he's there now was graham sheriff who is the other city council appointee um before i get started i wanted to thank the city and particularly kevin casey for helping us with the community development block grant uh that we received that helped us rebuild our elevator recently uh so tonight uh we are asking to be added to the ballot for town meeting uh in the amount of three hundred and ninety five thousand six hundred and twenty six dollars um for the past three town meeting days we have we have requested and received level funding uh so this is our first increase in three years that we're asking for uh we are requesting that the council waive the petition requirement based on our strong and consistent support from the community i looked back at our town meeting results from the last decade and we average about a little over 80 support from the montpelier community and the last time we requested an increase in and at town meeting 2019 the council graciously waived the petition requirement to add us to the warning and then despite it being an increase year that year the library article still carried 1567 to 270 um so and i would i would love to talk about what our year was like but i don't want to take up a ton of your time i have copies of i have copies of our annual report that we produced over the summer that has a wonderful highlight of our community impact uh and where our funding comes from and uh and uh i would love to pass these out to you i don't know how you feel about handouts i'm gonna keep one unless anyone objects thank you so despite the pandemic year and changes in our services if you walked into the library today uh our hours are back to pre-pandemic levels our services are back to pre-pandemic services uh despite being curbside service only for over for some time in this past fiscal year we still circulated over 290 000 physical materials and over 33 000 digital materials uh we added in a streaming video service so now all of our library patrons can access free streaming video uh from from their internet connected device they can download ebooks and audiobooks they can download and read digital magazines we have a a wide variety of really wonderful services that we offer we're back to seeing after school kids which is very very exciting for us um and uh last year we offered let me see if i can remember over 200 um programs for adults and children and our attendance at those those programs was still up over 9 000 despite them being digital or outdoors any questions for caroline what can i tell you about the library i'm ready to go guys in the past when you have uh well i i wonder if you know this and in the past when you have had to have to collect signatures sure um how did how did that happen did you just leave something out for people to sign or sure so that's part of the issue with this actually so we always leave petitions we we have to petition for um some of our other member communities and but particularly in montpelier because we need 10 percent of the um voter list uh in addition to leaving petitions out in the library which gets some signatures we do have to go door to door throughout communities and we do have to go to community events and of course that's going to be a significant challenge and when we were looking at our funding needs for this year that was those discussions were all happening back in the spring and over the summer when things looked like they were going to significantly approve and improve and that would perhaps not be as much of a challenge as it's turning out that it would be so uh i do have a significant concern that it would be particularly onerous to get uh this the number of signatures that we would need from because there's a lack of community events community events are not advisable right now uh and um and uh i would hate to ask for volunteers to go knocking on people's doors and i don't know what kind of a response we would get despite strong community support thank you yeah many other questions okay uh so um at this point we're going to shift gears thank you um and uh shift over i think it's to to sandy ruse is that right okay so cvhh go ahead you're still muted okay go ahead we actually have just a few slides to share and i don't know if i can share them or if they're being shared on your end and you have them in front of you um they were shared with cameron today okay apparently you have permission and if you would go ahead and share uh your slides um that would be great can you see my screen uh yes we can and you see the powerpoint right because i have two screens so i just want to make sure i get the right one so thanks for having us i am accompanied by two individuals um kim farnham is our director of community relations and development and also mary kate moman is the vice chair of our central remont home health and hospice board as well as a mom pillier residence once again my name is sandy ruse and i'm president and ceo and i had the opportunity to visit with you last year which was um really great i'm gonna just give a quick kind of update as to where we're at and just to let you know that we are asking for a one-year exemption of mom pillier's petition rules and to allow cvhh's funding request to be a line item on the 2022 ballot in the amount of 23 500 so i'm sure many of you are aware of my service our services and our mission primarily we have our feet kind of in many different worlds we care for individuals um prenatal moms babies families all the way to end of life the majority of our care is provided as medically necessary care orders from a doctor are required for that care and then also promoting the general welfare of our community with health promotion activities such as all our vaccination clinics and foot care clinics and then also long-term care services those services that are non non medically necessary although there are services that keep individuals in their homes and out of long-term care facilities so for mom pillier residents just to highlight we care for about 2,800 patients per year on any given day we have about 800 patients on service you don't see each of those individuals on every day but they're out there and certainly we cover all of washington county and three towns in orange county williams town orange in washington in 2021 our service numbers remained quite stable if not increased a bit from from 2020 and there also are telehealth visits that are not billable that are not actually shown in some of these numbers as well so lots to do with our coveted response i know last year i went into a bit greater detail but i think the biggest thing that really happened for us was our doors remained open the whole time and there were really only a minimal amount of services that were considered non-essential and more or less by the state but we really had to triage through those because some of those that are considered non non-essential really are essential so we had to come up with a plan of how we were going to deliver these services to individuals in a safe way and still continuing to do that because some of those clients still are fearful with the delta variant surging and and all of that you know we're really trying to mitigate risk we accepted all referrals across all programs we saw covet positive individuals we still continue to see covet positive individuals certainly the staff i can honestly say from a workforce workforce perspective this is probably the worst i've seen it in my tenure of 20 years and what i want to say is i'm really proud of the staff for doing everything they possibly can to meet the needs of their community so certainly i'm not going to read to you all the the different things but i think a lot of the things we really expanded our offerings bringing care to those in transitional housing and certainly we facilitated meal deliveries through the vermont everyone eats programs we're still continuing to do that that actually not only helped our clients but it also helped serve some of our staff and their neighbors as well and we've done a lot of reach out for those clients that really haven't wanted to have a lot of people in their homes still to this time to really prevent social isolation and make sure they're in touch with those individuals that they really need and are getting the services and care they need and we did all of this in conjunction with many organizations throughout central vermont we're really fortunate to be in central vermont certainly we do a lot of work with washington county mental health with the family center of washington county also with the good samaritan so we we really walk across many community partners and of course our medical partners at central vermont medical center um excuse me full of capstone and many others really reducing exposure to the virus the thing that was really fortunate for central vermont home health and hospice is that we were able to be quite nimble we had a telehealth program that was in place prior to covid and really what we did was expand that connectivity we were really able to shift from in-person visits to video visits to phone visits whatever seemed to meet the need of that individual and that was really across the whole system so in looking at this program we've really been able to support statewide um covid mitigation efforts we've worked with programs with the green mountain united way to really get families connected that really helped some individuals that had children that were at home for school they didn't have wi-fi and or they didn't have the equipment and we were able to give them ipads to make that connection all while taking care of families and children as well so really able to extend our the breadth and depth of our services and the biggest thing with our telehealth program is medicare is our primary payer medicare and medicaid actually are our primary payers we have very little commercial insurance so being able to cost shift doesn't really exist in in our world so from the medicare medicaid perspective medicare doesn't pay for any telehealth services we still continue to offer them our help you know even with our health care system being stressed it's really important that we get eyes on those individuals as much as we can to keep them out of the hospital to really help the surge in the system currently history of our partnership with Montpelier we've had a long history of voter support for our town funding request last year 93 of total votes were in favor of our request as more Montpelier residents qualify for services we've been able to take them on to service once again workforce really stressed our staff are tired you know but we're really trying to come up with innovative ways to really work with our other partners that are providing care and touching base with these individuals and families and really trying to find creative ways to stay in touch with them to keep them safe to keep them at home and give them the care they need and really providing that essential medical care and going out and doing vaccinations we're doing boosters we're still doing testing in the home there's just a whole host where you know flu clinics last year became really important because individuals weren't the primary care practices weren't conducting their normal clinics like they do to to actually reduce traffic flow and the practices we were able to jump in and do extra clinics we're doing the same thing this year really trying to support those individuals in getting what they need when they need it where they need it supporting Montpelier residents like I mentioned Mary Kate Moment is here joining us this evening she is vice chair of our board of directors and she's a Montpelier resident and I thought maybe she could just say a few words I know she knows some of you and and certainly has been very actively involved in the health care landscape in the state of Vermont so Mary Kate probably has to be unmuted it looks like she's it's possible to unmute Mary Kate Moment so yeah Mary Kate it looks the the word is you should be able to unmute yourself have you tried that that doesn't allow us as participants to unmute ourselves there we go okay there you go thank you um hi yes thank you for having us here um thank you Sandy for introducing me I just want to say I I've been aware of and involved with CBHH for many many years my mom was actually on the board um back when I was in college so I had known about them for a very long time and then I had the opportunity to serve on their board they've also I've had personal experience with their services and in the care of one of my family members so I know firsthand that they the quality of the care that they provide and the the well the well-being of the patients they serve it's really it's a high priority um and as Sandy mentioned I'm also in the healthcare policy world um and I just said I just want to call out how impressed I am with this organization and how they have responded to the COVID pandemic and supported our community um I say this like I'm a member of the board I've been in healthcare policy and that and also I'm just formally a staffer at the agency of human services and I was really a part of the rollout of the vaccination effort and there is so much effort and commitment that people the vaccinators put in towards working and providing the vaccine to our communities and CBH was right at the forefront of doing all of that so I just want to call them out from those um those perspectives and that's that's all I have to say I just I'm so thrilled to be connected with this organization and so why we need town funds um certainly our the workforce shortage and the reliance on travel clinicians driving up operational expenses without workforce services wouldn't be there traveling clinicians isn't ideal it's not that they're not good people they're just not from the community um you know our permanent staff just make certain sacrifices and commitment for the community um that's a huge thing so they have stood up to bat and they have been there and like I said they're tired but they're still doing it there's still a lot of work to do as I mentioned Medicare is our primary care it doesn't reimburse us for our telemedicine visits or any of our tele health program we're going to continue to provide this vital service in conjunction with in-person visits in the future it's the right thing to do it improves quality outcomes and improves patient experience and certainly it helps us collaborate with our providers and keep eyes on individuals they can contact us at any point in time we have a nurse overseeing that whole program we are able to you know really provide that care to those that are underinsured and uninsured that's how we use these funds too and to also be able to you know come into play with some of these community health efforts where the need is needed when it's needed even though there may not be reimbursement for it and we ensure availability of critical health care for those that are most vulnerable in Montpelier in central Vermont we are able to meet that need like I said workforce is a real challenge for us I can't say it's been easy but what I can say is staff care about the people that they call their neighbors great thank you all I have that was a bit quick but I didn't want to hold you all too long well thank you so I have the same question for you if you were to be gathering petitions it you know before before you were you know we had a history of just like putting you on the ballot how did you go about that what did you do so we actually had to do a lot of different things some similar to the library we would put petitions out in certain storefronts in certain stores that we had them there but primarily we had our volunteers and board of directors out there at whether there are events or just hanging out on the streets collecting signatures and really you know at this time as a health care provider organization that's done so much to mitigate the spread of COVID I'm not sure how that would be looked upon right now and I know we really struggle with doing that most of the towns if not all of the towns that we are requesting funding from do not have a petitioning process right now and I know they didn't last year certainly you know I think that's our our biggest issue and trying to get you know close to 800 signatures is a lot of work it takes several months and it takes several people in several different situations such as different events and all that which aren't really occurring the way they normally have in the past okay any other questions or Sandy uh Jack go ahead thanks for the presentation you said you uh last year served 2800 residents of Montpelier which is striking that's almost 40 percent of our population is that yeah is that high this year is it because of the so actually we serve right we serve about 2800 to 3000 patients overall we served about 400 to 500 patients in Montpelier okay thanks and that's more in line yeah yeah that doesn't count those individuals that we actually see clinics or we've been doing vaccinations for and through foot care clinics blue clinics and other sorts of health promotion activity that we do those are true either medical or non-medically necessary services under some of the umbrella of our programs such as home health hospice long-term care maternal child health so my understanding of our history is that we have had sort of a guiding policy around this right like if for example with the library if they were not asking for an increase that we would just put them on the ballot and this is a year that they are asking for an increase i'm going to come back to that but and also thinking about um cvhh they came to us last year with this request uh to forego uh to forego the the petitions um because of covet um and i think there was also um they had been um separately on the ballot uh previous to that and had been approved uh and so one possibility is that because i think it's important that we have some guidelines around this uh and so one possibility is that we could say if you were on the ballot last year um and we're approved that we could consider putting them on the ballot again without petitions due to covet uh but we could also but we don't have to do that what are your thoughts team yeah go ahead Lauren i mean my inclination is with that narrow criteria that doesn't open it to uh to others is to let it go on to the ballot i mean i think just like this staffing the exhaustion of covet we're still in the midst of it we're still trying to minimize gatherings and other things um so to me i think there's there's some rationale not open-ended we'll do this forever but still being kind of in the thick of pandemic i'm comfortable with these two particular requests with the narrow criteria that you had to basically get the same approval last year which is just these two entities other thoughts Connor yeah i think there's you know there's value to the petitioning process i think it results in good community conversations but it's a bit insincere of us i think to like be preaching public health and then say okay you gotta knock on like two thousand doors to get 500 some signatures it seems a bit irresponsible so i'm definitely comfortable with these requests uh jack did you something else yeah the uh the concern i have i wasn't on the council when we uh when we did sort of the two things in tandem one was to create the the community fund and two to uh significantly increase the number of signatures required uh for petitions to get on the uh on the ballot and uh if the if we're gonna get get into a process of regularly granting waivers from uh from the petition requirement i i just wonder if that raises the question if the picture is oh it's just too hard to get this many signatures which i recognize it's hard to get that many signatures did we go too far did we is it too many that we're asking uh organizations to get and we should we review the whole the whole uh system that we have including the number of signatures that are required and the uh and the community fund part of the package too that's not we're not going to fix that today but john can i ask you to weigh in on this it's what percentage of the population to get a money item it's 10 percent which is about 600 and was that changed recently like within the last five years now within the last five years that was changed in the last 15 years well it was more recent than that because i was here um it was 10 years ago i think it was the first year what was it changed from straight up five percent for everything well that's possibly a thing to consider for another time if that's okay yeah yeah oh yeah i wasn't expecting you yeah let's just change it right now yeah right right uh see you guys i want to add a slightly different perspective and and support both of these requests one get it gathering signatures and getting within six feet of somebody in passing clipboards back and forth is a health risk that shouldn't be imposed upon anybody right now but if the city were slightly bigger it would have its own health department in effect home health and hospice is doing much of the work that our city health department would would be doing with vaccinations and checking on people similarly the library is maintaining public bathrooms and public computers and accommodating a lot of the unhoused uh when the city has fumbled royally on that so i would you know encourage you to look at how these in effect are our complementary services uh that should be unquestioned as far as funding them in fact some of the COVID money that we didn't anticipate doubling should be considered for both of these as well um but the fact that the library does a better job of ventilating you know and maintaining public access than uh even our city council chamber is uh is noteworthy thank you all right so is there uh i think we need a motion um for this so uh is uh yeah kind of sure i'll move to approve both requests to waive the petitioning requirement and put both organizations on the ballot for the uh specified amount second still conditions on it like what yeah oh oh I mean we could I mean does that need to be in the motion I guess my my thought on that is if you don't state that now if you say that now it's really clear otherwise we'll have other groups come in say okay you know we wanted to petition but it was hard and you approved them so you know you can say this is these were the conditions under which we approved these two the same conditions that you approved them both last year basically does that make sense it does I don't know if i'm comfortable to blanket at this point because I think there could be exceptions that we haven't thought about uh with needs specifically with organizations providing like sort of COVID services and I just want I wouldn't want to take it off the table anyways but generally I agree with the with the principles later perhaps that we can um at least consider that that is those are the guidelines that we are uh moving forward with at the moment is that fair okay uh okay so there was a motion there's seconds uh any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye aye and a post okay so that passes thank you thank you so much guys yes and thank you thank you so much I appreciate it I hope I was picking off thank you all thank you thank you for coming all right so I just want to give us a heads up the 830 we are going to take a break um Dan that may be uh I don't know where that will fall in your presentation but I just want to give you that heads up um yeah I faith you're gonna be great uh so uh to the the DID budget presentation um Dan go ahead I will be done by 820 if you let me awesome we'll hold you do it can I share my screen please yeah I we've just got a thumbs up from Cameron now I can great um can everyone see this yes great um so thank you um this is our annual tradition of being late at getting ATIT um budget approved um for this is for the fiscal year that we that started July 1st um we're on a different fiscal year than the city so um our spending doesn't quite line up and that's how we end up I think being late in your process sometimes so I apologize for that um uh essentially we are uh our budget operates under the same amount of money the assessment has not changed since the downtown improvement district was um started in 2013 um approximately $60,000 total that's two pieces the um the sort of general downtown improvement district uh tax on the merchant property and then the pilot funds for state properties that fall in the district um for the equivalent amount um we're asking for the same breakdown across general categories um that's marketing downtown beautification event grants um and uh I just wanted to give an overview of um how we plan to spend that next year this this year um and how we have spent that in the last year so the first category um being marketing um and the biggest project that we're working on is a new website some of you may know that we share the same back end as the city's website um I think you heard today and I'll generally agree that the city's website has some challenges um and um we're really excited about launching a new website that will better serve both um local residents and visitors to my pillar um will be easier to navigate um more dynamic updated more frequently and easily um etc um so this is a big project um there was some funding for this project in the last DID year and additional funding in this current year um the total cost of the redesign it's about $22,000 um and um so it's a big project it's an ongoing project um and I'm really excited to launch it um hopefully at the end of this calendar year if not early in next year um some of the things we've done in the last year and examples of what we do with DID funds um we did a campaign with seven days um their brand studio which is sort of advertorial paid um editorial content essentially um they said that that was the most successful campaign of the sort that they've ever done um over 300,000 impressions across various channels including a print spread um in their sort of um state tripper section which is like for uh Vermont residents to encourage people to travel throughout the state during the pandemic when we couldn't have visitors from out of state we leveraged a state of Vermont grant for this um and had a contest component that allowed us to track the economic impacts and nearly 10,000 in direct trackable impact and that's just people who came and actually entered the contest as a result of the campaign um leveraging funds is something um we do a lot with this money as you know we don't receive any administrative costs under the downtown improvement district so all of the staff time that goes into managing all of this is paid for out of other Montpelier live funds um a digital ad campaign with Vermont public radio that had 67,000 impressions um encouraging people to shop online um with Montpelier businesses um holiday advertising campaign um this is the bridge the world is in the Times Argus um other area media at the point um about shopping in Montpelier um and the other uh big project that we've done over the last year is a market research study um which is really helping us understand who's coming to Montpelier why they're coming to Montpelier and will help make our future communications more targeted and effective the second category is downtown beautification again same request uh for the categories last year this is divided between holiday decorations uh downtown flowers and plantings um public art projects and a contribution that we make to the city's public art commission which we helped found um some of the examples of what we've done around this page I won't name them all but that includes new new work and maintenance of existing work 900 feet of fresh garland wrapped around 60 light poles um 47 hanging flower baskets um that we water install remove every year um this was our one of our public art projects at the transit center maintenance of the mural in the 60 state streets parking lot projection of some holiday decorations um on the side of the room Vermont building on Langdon Street a reef project where we had community member secretary reason hang them on the link uh we also bridge the next category is our event grant program um this supports events that take place in the downtown we also provide um 10 hours at least of consultation services and technical support for these events emotional support access to all of our event stuff like our sound system our sandwich boards our walkie-talkies so on and so forth here are three of the events and a lot of creative pandemic solutions um you'll see uh on the left is um an event that Shida projects did this year on July 3rd in spite of the terrible weather they had a lovely turnout um the top right is crab mountain music doing a zoom performance from bear pond books as part of a series of pop-ups that they did at local businesses and the bottom right is um a performance that was at uh outside at the calico bird library um that we helped uh fund so that's uh that's my presentation it's 820 exactly um so you have no time for questions or comments sorry that is impressive you've done this before um any questions for dam nope okay uh well so just coming back to what i don't think uh yes you need to approve this these are technically city funds they're they're through our downtown improvement district tax so we collect the money and then appropriate it to um we've we've allowed my pillar alive to prepare a budget in use for it and you've approved that we do include this in our annual budget so you do need to actually vote to approve their budget is there such a motion jack go ahead when i reviewed the packet i was actually thinking well we should just put this on a consent agenda we this is we should definitely do this so i i move that we approve the i move that we approve the proposed budget okay motion and a second any further discussion anyone online okay um all right all in favor please say aye hi okay and opposed great thank you uh yeah for sure um since we are at 821 right now i would suggest that maybe we take our break right now do you think about that team okay sure and so let's meet back at 831 in 10 minutes and we'll pick up um with the budget overview uh process okay great thank you all right i'm gonna um uh turn it over to kelly unless you want to say anything first uh yeah actually i'd like to turn this over to kelly all right um but i'll try um and i can be a little bit of a fast talker but i'll try to slow it down so a little counterintuitive but we'll get started here um i've got a slide deck which is included in um the packet for you and it's representative of the memo that was also provided um and generally um this um presentation will give you kind of a snapshot in time of where we're starting the budget process um i was wondering that a little closer like that i can do is that good okay thank you um all right so it looks like screens up so we'll get started here um so i'm gonna get started um with some of the assumptions oh this is a little off-center it's not on the zoom screen just on the projector we have to are you are you all good with this okay all right then i'm just gonna go with it then oh okay are you are you good okay all right um so essentially there is a couple points in the assumptions that i do want to highlight um first and foremost is that um the targets were set um at three percent up um from the FY 22 budget um that is representative of a blended rate of cpi it's also reflective of what the state's um rate for budget development is as well um and so i've been watching cpi a little bit it's been increasing um as we've been moving on here so we'll see what happens as we get underway um but this is a pretty conservative estimate for folks to build their budgets on it also seems no growth in the grand list which has a little bit of a a little bit of a wind at our back um if you will and then there are some items down at the bottom that i do really want to um well actually one thing in particular in the middle health insurance is actually down um which is amazing by five percent based on what's been proposed um we're keeping that level because we're not sure what will happen with COVID and if there will be impacts in the calendar year next year which would then impact the second half of FY 23 so would you like questions now or at the end i can take them whenever this is a question about the presentation i don't know what you're showing on the screen but we're still seeing just the cover page presentation all right let's see what we sorry about that i can i don't know i don't know if you guys on the other side are saying that explains the confused looks is it like crashing what's it doing i don't know why don't we stop the share and restart let's try this again a little bit of not better uh no weird affair but good online it's good and if i click through the slides or am i moving oh no madding slides now that's not it's not at all what i wanted to do i'm gonna leave it just in this presentation form then if that's good and just keep going now there's a moving oh it's on oh jeez okay hold on let's we're gonna get this try screen two this one here just clicking everything now see what happens i don't know i'm trying to stop share sorry everyone at home if you're getting a little flash from this i'll put the link to this presentation in the chat so people at home can follow along and you can just share without sharing your screen okay i can take it from there too see no is this the same presentation that is it's the same one that's linked in the agenda right so we could theoretically follow along yes from that yeah okay so maybe i'm just gonna i will do is i'm gonna stop my share then or just me whatever the case may be but if we're good i'll just keep kind of moving through this um and folks can kind of follow along at home um so we'd gone through the targets um the health insurance and then um i'm gonna start to get into some of the new items that are in the instructions for fy-23 one is accepting proposals for new positions if they can be adequately funded um and with justification of course and then also any new initiatives should consider the city's fy-21 equity assessment and then also align with the strategic plan and so departments have been working to that end and things have been getting underway pretty nicely we'll try to share my screen as i get on here i've got a presentation of the new budget development platform that i did want to give everyone a demo of that's pretty exciting so um hopefully that'll work out um so these um key dates are the next slide um and some of the dates have shifted just slightly as it relates to getting into sort of capital planning and we're on target um right now as of the 22nd we have received most all uh capital submissions from departments um we're working to get um an internal group together to review those submissions and then we'll work to schedule um sometime with the cap committee based on the outcome of those meetings um i also am working to put together a survey for public input um so then we can kind of see you know what what the thoughts are within the community um and then there are a few other dates here submissions are due on November 15th to us uh budget congress is where we meet to review as a staff all of the budget submissions that's happening on the 16th and 17th and we're looking to get any bond proposals by the 1st of December um and then the December 8 meeting touches off the um presentation from city manager's office on the proposed budget to kind of touch off your process and so then that'll kind of kick off the council deliberations and then that'll take um from the 8th through January 20th when um the camp meeting warning needs to be officially warned and then town meeting day is on March 1st so it's kind of a rough sketch of the calendar um as it is right now one thing can i just toss one thing in there that we just don't have it on there oh never mind we do the capital improvement committee so um so we'll have more to come on that um we're working through the process it's really great to have a calendar so we can stay on task but um it's also just making sure that we get everything in for consideration there so more to come on specific dates um this year we are using a budget development platform called clear gov and it's pretty exciting it's um a dashboard based application that all departments have access to and we're using it for all funds which will be really nice as it flows into our budget book so i'm gonna skip a few slides here i'm gonna see if i can actually um take and just show you an example of a budget book maybe i'll try to share my screen here so this on the screen here is let's see if i can share this screen nope nope sorry camera thank you um so there you go thank you okay you see that that's good something's working all right cool so this screen here is this is the city of malden they are also a clear gov user and this is their fy 22 budget book so we'll be having a website this year and also this book can be published in a printed version as well um and so what's really neat about this is everything that we do within the system flows into this book and so just looking at you know sort of generally um on the introductions tab here there's a bunch of things here some really cool things like demographics um restroll down here you kind of see some of them um so just kind of gives you some insights into you know our city as a whole there's also a really neat elected officials page here within the book which gives some bios and pictures of the mayor and council um so pretty pretty fancy um and then there's more traditional things that we have in our budget book year over year like the organizational chart um and then just some of the financial policies that will be uploaded as part of our budget book that we do have available in the council handbook um but then also be showcased here within this um platform um and then just moving on to the budget overview this is where it looks pretty neat let me show you some of these um so this executive overview is you know bill summary that he does year over year and then we've got some other factors here that um I think will be nice and timely some of the short term factors that the city's been facing um will be highlighted and then um this piece here is pretty exciting to me and it may be to you as well as some of the personnel detail that will be identified in this budget so we'll have a module that will identify changes within personnel year over year and then also um really kind of dive into that detail um so then I want to show you what the fund summaries look like and so each fund is broken down in the summary dashboard form let me see if I can just minimize that a little bit we get a little better for you um and so what you'll see is you can toggle over any of the graphs and so it's interactive and so you can kind of see the totals um year over year um then as you get on you can kind of see what is comprising that fund um and so it's pretty user-friendly and then you've got sort of the nuts and bolts down below with all the line items looks good good um and so then um you can do that with any of the funds um and then um just taking an example here so the fire department um this is what their page would look like and also what the page would look like if it were printed um and so it just gets into some of the summaries here globally for their budget all funds and you can get into expenses by type and you can really see you know how the budget sort of operating personnel is comprised and then the line items um so we're using this platform to not only develop the budget but then also using it to feed through into our budget book which will save a ton of time and then also be way more user-friendly um for the public but then also I think um for our record keeping as we go through the process and our ability to be transparent um and so there's another piece that I do also want to share with you that is part of this um application is we have access also to a transparency site which is kind of neat because it just pulls you know the data from the budget um development but then also some of the other factors like the demographics um and such and then there's also some ability to create data sets um to then publish for the public so I'll show you this one and so okay um so this is just the overview page and so this is the demographic snapshot you saw a little bit of that in the budget book um so these are pulled from the census it's a little bit stale and dated just because these numbers are coming from the looks like the 2000 census here um but hopefully we'll get updated as we get on which is kind of nice um then you get sort of your financial overview what's really cool here is you can toggle between different funds so if you wanted to see um what different funds look like from you know revenue revenue or expense um breakdown and then it's charted down below and then we've got this open checkbook feature which we kind of do now on our website but this is just a I think a more user friendly way to kind of see the vendors that we're paying sort of in a checkbook form um then the other thing I wanted to get into here which is kind of exciting and also part of the budget book is we will have project pages like this um and so we'll likely select five or so to publish within the transparency page but something like east state street but have its own page and so then you'd have program details and any of the documents that staff wants to share um so that you can really see where it falls within the city and then you can get more detail aside from just the normal presentation which is just in summary form within our current budget book and then this dashboard piece is something that hopefully we'll be able to develop in short order but in time we definitely will but what I wanted to highlight here is the police department um there are some neat data sets here that are available within the transparency site to share with folks of calls for service or you know whatever whatever we wanted to develop or put up here um just to to you know share with the public um so they can be in the know so with that I'm gonna stop my share and then just kind of continue through sort of the rest of the presentation um as it is and at this point I'm on the revenue projections slide um so that's just over after the examples portion um and so just running through this quickly in a nutshell you know things are looking better uh that being said there's a lot of pressure a lot of pent of demand there's a lot of need for resources and so you know we are projecting that revenues will come in higher um on both the general fund side and also on the parking fund side which is where we were losing some revenue um but you know things are still slow to return and so based on these projections on the general fund side there's about six hundred and thirty thousand dollars additional that I think we're going to pull in and it may be more but this is a pretty conservative estimate and then parking fund annually I think we'll get about fifty thousand dollars there that will come in um and so that's good it's just but all that we need to fund it's going to be tricky um so then moving on um to the other side of the equation where the pressure is question questions yes just a quick question if we had conversations about the eyelet affected like wasn't it down this year over what we had anticipated and just curious if the conversations have happened or this is just back to look so we actually didn't receiving our pilot payments from the state and so that's that's good um and fantastic which we didn't anticipate in our projections because we we took a very conservative approach and that we saw that local options taxes were not coming in the way that we thought they were going to and we weren't sure what was going to happen at the state level um ultimately we ended up receiving that funding um and it seems as though we'll receive it you know ongoing um so that's good news um but local options tax is still down and so is parking thank you sure um so then getting on to sort of the pressure side of uh things um right now and the set of assumptions um that i'm working off of just to give you sort of broad strokes um it's the last year of the capital plan in FY 23 before we're going to need to do a major um reconstruction and so there's about 2.5 million dollars or so that we have you know sort of in the plan for capital spending um that includes debt service projects and equipment um and so what will be interesting especially in light of all of the things that are on the table um is how you know we'll be able to spread those resources um and so then uh moving on into personnel costs um contributing factors we've um negotiated with all four unions and so those uh costs are included here um this is a estimate at this point um once we start to drill into the numbers a little bit more the things might fluctuate a little bit and it also includes um the increase for um the non-union folks um and so there's about three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars there in pressure and that's what all vacant positions filled um and then moving on there uh there's a little bit of pressure associated with um insurances we don't have them all yet the big one we do have and which is the health insurance which is a really great thing to to have locked in at this point um but the other is we've got to really take care to to look at such as workers compensation um and some of the other insurance is just to make sure that we're sort of on par there so this is just an estimate placeholder um so all told um you know there there is going to be pressure associated with personnel and we'll keep track of it and as we get underway um we'll share with you updates as we load the positions into infinite visions and do the official projections which we have not done yet um but we are scrubbing those positions actively right now um so then on into some of the operating line item estimates that you know our points for discussion um IT investment and alignment is a piece that I want to bring up we are overrunning our contract right now um just because there's a lot of need there um there's a lot on the back end in terms of moving to the cloud and all of the IT infrastructure that's needed but then there's a lot that's needed to support employees and the remote work and so we're really feeling that pressure um and so right now if projections continue we're about sixty thousand dollars up this also includes some items associated with some of the platforms that we will need to contemplate replacing such as ticket track um which is beyond its life right now um and then there are some other modules that public works uses like manager plus and such so um there's pressure with IT um and we're trying our best to kind of get that down as much as we can but also weighing that with the need and also being secure um with the public utilities and all of that um then um we are in the second year of payment for our reappraisal um so there's only two years for that the total contract was 260 thousand dollars um but I'm highlighting it here um because it's still a payment that's gonna come do in 23 as we round out the process um and then in addition to that um we've got some ADA projects here in city hall the biggest one is the elevator but there are other things too included um and then um a really large expense um that would be the point for discussion is the TIF bond um and the garage expenses that you know we will need to consider what we want to do with them um and so at this point um that's over 1.1 million dollars um and at some point we will have to um cut our losses so that then there's not a liability on the general fund so those are the operating highlights um some you know things to consider and then getting on to some of the other pressures within this budget um that are definitely worth noting but um and you know appropriate um you know are pretty important um Confluence Park or these are in no particular order but I just wanted to kind of lay everything out there um Confluence Park there's the staff has done and the community has done a really good job of fundraising for this and has come up with a lot of the money I think we've got um 600 thousand dollars or so covered already um but we need an additional 300 to 500 thousand to complete that project um parking meters right now um our credit card acceptance of those meters is outdated with old technology we would have to upgrade those meters if we were going to continue to use credit cards at the meter we can just use park mobile but it's something to talk about whether or not we want to just do point and park mobile or credit cards um so if we were to choose to continue with all of those services right now it would be an additional 270,000 to come up to speed um then you get led street lights for 120k very street intersection for 550,000 route to sidewalk 225,000 the route road bridge is listed here there's a grant that we did receive for this bridge um and so this is part of it the total project cost is 500 thousand seven thousand dollars um and has been sort of on the list of things to complete for quite some time um and then moving on from there um the east state street project um is seven million dollars and three million of that is general fund we did get some good news that we got some grant money to cover the utility side of that equation um but we'll still need to come up with a good a chunk of change for that project to be completed and then as was mentioned earlier the cvpsa funding um is noted here you know as it might be a decision item um as we come on down the line we've got about a 1.1 million or so um sort of stake in that project and so we'd have to just see you know what that that means um as continued discussions happen um and then also noted there we last year in the capital fund we did have a little bit of money for con schools and so that's also something to consider here um as we move forward and then we've got other community needs that have been identified such as the homelessness task force housing trust fund um community survey and the capital needs assessment for our city-wide buildings and infrastructure and then there's the net zero plan um that does have uh some dollars attached to it and also the police review committee recommendations um so there's quite a list um and once we get the lists from departments um this is a generalized list but there may be additions to that list but just sort of this in general summary um and I'm moving on to sort of the the gap um sheet or slide as I would call it um if we were to fund sort of the the general items um then you know we would be still looking at a little bit of a gap that we would need to be that we would need to cover that would be above and beyond the three percent target based on inflation which would be about five percent or just under eight hundred thousand dollars which is um including the increased revenues that we are projecting at this point so as we get on we'll continue to scrub the numbers and see what they look like and I'm sure I'll be back to provide updates and hopefully good news um but no guarantees unfortunately um and um we'll continue to work through the budget development process but this general um context is how the departments have been briefed to so it's pretty conservative um to keep us safe um but you know there's still a lot of uncertainty um related to the conditions that we're in and so things are getting better they're just not fully recovered yet um so I think this budget build will be tricky to say the least because there's just a lot of pendent demand um and so next steps for us um we are um working with departments to go through their budgets right now um they are using the Cleargov software and it's been awesome um sort of a point-by-point line-by-line review um so we're really getting into all the details um we'll continue to sort of scrub those as we get on um and then we're really taking a keen eye towards what's in the base budget to make sure that it still makes sense um in some cases that may harvest us a little bit of savings and in some cases we're seeing especially with energy costs and some of the spy costs um it's getting a little bit expensive and but it's also reflective of what things are actually costing um we're also going to work to leverage uh state and federal funds and so there are things that are starting to trickle out from the state um based on federal funding and hopefully there will be more to come and so as we consider ARPA and how to use those dollars hopefully you know other funding will be part of that conversation as well and then we're also evaluating right now as I mentioned ARPA the categorical eligibility for ARPA because you know well we did lose revenue in some instances we didn't lose as much as our projections um and so that's a good thing but then we also just need to make sure that then we can use the money with the broadest category and avoid fallback so we're just um looking into that now too and so that'll be part of the conversation as we proceed um and so we'll lock the budget into ClearGov and into Infinite Visions which is our accounting system and we'll have a budget for you on the eighth and so if you have questions a number of questions but go ahead Lauren. One of the point about the federal and state funding I mean I'm wondering if you should invite that representative Mary Cooper and Sue to talk to us about like how the state's thinking about funding and any opportunities she sees for a city like Montpelier I mean I know you all are thinking about it but just better understanding where the opportunities might be so if there's things that might not have been on our next year list but might make sense if there's a funding opportunity um just making sure we're aware of all of those um just one idea a couple questions so this uh software sounds amazing um wondering about whether or not we will have the kind of uh excel sheet that we've had in the past to manipulate numbers ourselves and play with things uh to see how the how it impacts in bottom lines and etc okay so we'll still have that that's great and the software should be able to do that too change right in at live okay uh I would assume that if we were playing with it on our on our own we would not have access to that so okay this is as long as we have something that we can sort of manipulate uh that that's that was very useful I think in the past for us um I noticed in the memo that you you all cite uh CPI right now for the northeast is about the was it three percent well so it or four it was four it was 4.4 and in September it's 4.6 and so it is going out yeah well and um I also just noticed that cola right now is like 5.9 percent um and is does that I mean I guess cola really would mostly factor into uh personnel you know like salaries and whatnot but those have been negotiated generally so but that doesn't otherwise come into your uh considerations I mean it's in the mix okay okay and I think those are that leads also to where you all end up knowing those kind of costs because yeah I think when we started this we picked three because we knew that's what the state was doing and that's kind of where we had been but you know as you can see we're really like five so yeah you know or maybe that's not off and from the list of projects that you I mean there are there are many potential projects right uh and some of them may be eligible for ARPA money and some of them may not be but um one of the things that I I may just give you a call tomorrow about this uh because I I'm about to hit send on a budget survey to the council um and one of the questions I would like to be asking in that is uh for the council what potential bonds uh are you interested in at least having a conversation about and so but I I feel like I need to have a list of like what are those bonds and provide you the list what's that I can provide you the list that public works has come up with and that we've worked on for debt service calculations that are in the memo just for ideas that that would be great and the the thing is like I know some of them might even be able to be grouped together because they're similar or um or do we split them all out I I'm not sure what's the best I'm not sure what's the most useful to you all um but anyway we can talk about that or if you can send me that list and if I have questions we can I can follow up so I can send out the the budget survey yeah I mean I think obviously the more we know about your thinking the better and looking at the strategic plan and trying to pull Project Sonata you know I hope we don't like read prioritize stuff you've already prioritized so I think we want to look at that too um and at some point we can even maybe use a ranking you know thing like you did with the with the strategic plan normally what would happen is we would have this list we hear the council's input we would draft this and then the council's capital improvements committee would look at that and that's when you weigh in and then come to the council's for consideration so I don't know that's what we had to anticipate it doing but I think getting some early way in can't hurt well and to that end and anyone have thoughts oh oh carol plant uh thank you like carol if you have a comment now oh no that's the oh that's just the that's just the cursor never mind nonetheless carol if you have something you want to say um but otherwise uh um any other thoughts comments from council on or questions um on the budget so far okay okay uh and uh just one more time you're hoping to have a budget uh to start with in front of us by um December December 8th December 8th okay so we have another couple meetings to have some preliminary discussions uh okay if we if we want to or at least you'll have the survey results by then yeah so we'll be um let's run back to so you have meetings on the 10th and the 17th by the 17th we will have already had our we call it our budget congress but that's just really when we get everybody in a room and work through the budget so we will have completed that probably that day so if you were to then say something different we'd have to scramble but that's okay we'd still have a couple weeks to do that but certainly next meeting okay and and I say that it's not like it's final when you get it on the 8th I mean you still don't have two months to make whatever changes you all want to make so it's not like we're just giving you a recommendation and you then put your magic on it so so I'm hoping to send out this budget survey by tomorrow and uh if once I get this this last piece of information and then I think it would be great if we could have folks uh reply to that by uh at least the friday before the 10th so we can that can be a part of your thinking okay anything else you need from us at this point okay great thank you thank you thanks for your your diligence on this yeah you're welcome and we were looking forward to showing off the software to you in part because we think it's really great and the public's gonna really like it but also the budget books that you get will look differently this year than they have in all the years past so that would give at least heads up in that but yeah it's very exciting yeah if you know it does just to make a comment on the budget in general it it does feel like if I I guess I was feeling what you were saying Kelly about like feels like there's pent up demand and uh you know on the one hand I'm just speaking for myself like I want to be able to help meet that demand but if there there may be such a thing as going overboard so uh I'm just holding that intention uh right now and I'm very interested to see how how that that tension plays out and what we are able to build back uh sort of within reason if that makes sense um with a lot of hope that we can be taken care of uh some of these things at least with ARPA money I know a lot of it might be going to to replace canceled projects but there's still a lot to be discussed so um anyway that's any other comments folks want to make generally about the budget at this point no pressure okay all right super all right thank you and I think we are ready to uh move on to the strategic plan yay welcome all right give me a second let's see if we can actually make the um screen share work that would be super great um so thank you for letting me come and speak to you about the strategic plan I think we're super close to passing a final draft I hope everyone has had time to review that um we can go through that today as well but I'd like to start with sort of walking through the initiatives that you prioritized and just checking in gut check on how you feel about those um I did include them in the draft um strategic plan that I sent out in the priority that y'all had individually with your rankings um because I didn't want us to get too far behind schedule so I'll first start with the initiatives and just walk through them so that it you know the public is aware of where those rankings ended up and then we can go into the draft um if anyone has any edits or comments or feedback if that sounds good so we'll see if I can actually do that the big screen well can you see it on your zooms yes but you have the slides side slides but yes is it working now yeah uh no you're back to yeah it looks like you haven't started this oh man y'all try this again I don't know why this is working earlier and it is not now that's just how it is I think I just don't know how to make it not do that it's not on our screens I'm not yet no I'm just trying to make sure anyway well we'll see what happens we'll just go through it in any ugly way and everyone can see it and it'll be fine it will be fine all right we're just going to go through it this way so um individually council members were asked to rank their initiatives that were discussed at our last um council meeting where we discussed this so as individuals you were asked to rank them I then took weighted scores from all of your rankings I then combined those um for an average score those were considered higher scores so I guess I will restate that because I realized that didn't make any sense as I said it out loud initiatives that were a weighted score above the average for each initiative were considered higher priority and those with a score below the average for each goal were considered lower scores so that kind of makes sense when you see them here so for goal one improve community prosperity y'all had a lot of initiatives that supported the strategies that you already voted on the ones here highlighted in green were those that had higher scores and therefore what I included into the draft strategic plan so I'll just please holler out if you have any questions or concerns about any of these or if you wanted to change them or challenge a ranking let me know otherwise I'll just sort of walk through these maybe read the top three um for each goal so for goal one improving community prosperity prioritizing recreation in parks as an economic driver prioritizing rivers for economic development and conservation and and incentivizing new businesses that serve working class residents were your top three priorities for initiatives yep confused that sinks up like so we got one study providing child care the other one provide child care right so all of those are sort of being combined into our work plans so when you see the actual strategic plan it has those as called out initiatives and then what it is is up to staff to say here's how I would do that for them if we're going to look at providing work so that was a separate one providing child care available from eight to six right now we don't we do an aftercare program and so for us our understanding of that is you want to expand our child care program the other one is let's try to get child care for infants we don't have the capacity to do that right now but how do we get there provide council the roadmap to how to get there so those are two separate items that it is now on us now that you've prioritized it to tell you how we're going to do that for you um goal two which was providing a responsible and engaged government your top three here we're fully staffed city departments which I will say was a really heartening thing for staff to see and hear improve the city's website we've heard multiple examples tonight we agree that is on our priority list as well and we are chipping away at it every day little by little I will say in our defense that none of us are IT experts and we're we're trying very hard but we recognize that that is a thing that needs improvement and then your third here was implement the equity action plan recommendations your why can't I make that smaller your third goal is create more housing the top three here were maintain funding for the housing trust fund coordinate with housing partners for vhcb grant funds or look for other housing funds for something like a service hub for those experiencing homelessness if you remember in your last council meeting you did approve funding for the homelessness task force to look into this issue which really shows your commitment to this initiative and then the third one was update the home the housing task forces barriers to housing study the next goal is practice good environmental stewardship your top three here were the implementation of the net zero plan recommendations develop a long-term plan to address the discharge of toxic PFAS chemicals at our water resource recovery facility which we talked a lot about today promote conservation around berlin ponds including acquiring property goal five build and maintain sustainable infrastructure your top three here were construct a public restroom or public community restrooms however that works out you do have a committee that will be working on that and i do know that quite a few other ones are looking at options here like quite a few committees are looking at this solution and i have no doubt that we will get to one a second would be provide sufficient funding for infrastructure investment heli just walked through a lot of those projects so i won't go through them again but we do have identified capital needs and you've prioritized investing in those then provide sufficient funding to attain and maintain at least 70 pc i average for road conditions i think zack just came and spoke about that recently and so that did make one of the top priorities which really ties into that infrastructure investment but since it is a separate project and it does require separate funding streams we saw that as a separate initiative and then goal six improve public health and safety your top three were implementing a definitive plan for homelessness and then creating that that housing hub that we talked about before is a regional effort with services for those experiencing homelessness and the implementation of the police review committee recommendations so you're a top three there so that was sort of the high level overview of the initiative ranking were there any ones that seemed out of place or needed any pushback or reconsideration all right thank you so i'm going to stop sharing my screen real quick oh i'm sorry i just want to observe so i don't disagree with any of them i do want to observe that a lot of the ones that ended up in the top three were kind of the fun ones you know like they were ones that like people are like you know really psyched about or passionate about and i want to just acknowledge that there's a lot of like things that need to happen every day that are a little more mundane it didn't make the top three but are still important and that's okay i just i just want to acknowledge that and i think um you know we talked about this a few times and the things that staff okay so i'll say i'm gonna be sort of frank here the things that are not council projects that were presented and put forward by council as a new idea that has not been something that we've been working on long term for many many years or it's just part of our job we're not if they were not included in your top high scores uh initiatives they weren't included but the things that staff put forward so i have a slide up right now in front of me goal six improve public health and safety for instance um e911 renaming project continuation didn't make it into your list of prior like top initiatives to prioritize in your council plan because this is what your strategic plan is but it is going to be in department work plans it's not going away in in that we are tracking our work towards that we will be doing that work it's just not in what you have decided is your top priorities which helps us fund budget wise right these things won't be unfunded but you're saying to me very clearly i want a definitive plan towards homelessness how do we get there and so that helps us do that extra work that needs to get done because you're telling us what's important to you which is what it's important to community those things aren't the mundane things are important they're not going away i promise we will do mundane things every day we're grateful which is exciting so we love the mundane things it's great well what i don't want to do is open up a can of worms but just looking at some of these things i'm just we all voted and this is sort of how it played out but to your point mayor like some of the things that that rose to the top were not necessarily fun but things that were top of mind sure you know so um so and fun to be fair but so i i don't know that we want to like if this is an opportunity to say like hey do we want to reconsider this but i you know i would just put one thing out there and then we can delve in or not i'm open to the conversation but looking at slide six goal goal for good environmental stewardship you know i think about what the what the community impact of of acquiring property around berlin pond is relative to making sure that we have parks in all parts of the city in terms of what our priorities are i know you know the evening that we talked about this and soon after we you know we all got emails and heard from christine you know saying this was timely this is a unique opportunity that maybe now is a good time to acquire some property and and that there's you know dollars associated with it and it's a it's sort of an easy thing but is that is is that really a when we talk about being a good environmental stewards is that a top priority of ours so that's just one thing that that jumped out to me um you could look at other things lower on the list relative to that but that was one just as an example something that i wonder how like is that is that piece a priority to be fair creating parks in all parts of the city did make it into your higher score initiatives for that one yeah seventh relative to third so again that's why i'm talking about canna worms here like i don't really i think the important part there j is to understand that that means the count that's something that we're going to you know once you're in the list then we pay less attention to the ranking it's like what what were the top ones that made it so that means and you also have implementing the parks commission's green print which is actually calling for parks in all parts of the town so you two things that said almost the same thing we're out of the top seven so i would say you know as i read this i say that's a pretty strong statement from the council that wanted park expansion around the city so and also none of these are tying y'all to any action necessarily um what we're hearing is in this for example using the berlin pond example it's here's like staff is going to get to you here's the the path forward with that here's what it would cost and it's up for y'all to to make that decision with at which point you could say no i'd rather it go to parks in all part you know there's there's options there and the other thing about that that's a good tip because it just says promote conservation around the pond and this is including the property what what this does for us just and i think it's helpful to have this conversation because you know i can understand actually it was a great observation that you made is now if say an opportunity comes up during the year and christine or someone calls me and says hey is this something i can say yes we want to we're in we've already said this is important now we you know we can't commit the money yet but yes we're we'll we'll let's pursue this as opposed to i don't know how the council feels about this we gotta put it on the next agenda you've told us that if to pursue these opportunities you haven't said we're committing money you've just said this is important to us and i really appreciate that thank you to camera and bill i just um i'm trying to be very respectful that there are so many hours in a day and so uh wanting to acknowledge that obviously ultimately we have to make a decision about spending money if we were to acquire property etc but i appreciate that but i also want to make sure that you have you know a sense of yeah hey these these are um hey it showed up number three so we should really spend a lot of our time trying to make it happen but more it falls into that mix of mix of like what's feasible and and and um what's actionable and what we can actually you know make happen so i appreciate that thanks uh lauren and then connor yeah just one kind of question that keeps coming up when i read it i mean i think it seemed to really capture well through this process the things that have been i think top of mind and you know big priorities that i've certainly been hearing from a lot of community members about and that kind of thing like just to the you know like the example of the green print and the crate parks in all parts of the city like i the way that you wrote up this into more of the document it seemed to do some of that kind of collapsing or or there's like funding the peer support work i think it shows up on three different priorities i'm just like i think there could be some condensing of it which um just some of them are either saying seem to be saying the same thing in slightly different ways or just like a part of like there some are really big ideas and some are really specific pieces of ideas so just i don't know if it's helpful to you if you're like no we know what you mean we're fine we're good to go like i mean the rankings might have come out slightly differently depending on how you would slice and dice things a little differently but that is true that that i think that kind of happens in any collaborative process when we're all trying to to get to a final document i think that when we shift this conversation to that that strategic plan document that comes a little bit more clear but there also is conversation among staff is when we develop our work plans to to get to this end goal is where does that peer support worker fall in right is it a public safety thing yes but is it up to my office say instead of chief peep for instance coming up with a plan there so um are you saying are you asking if you think the rankings would come out differently if we had bucketed it differently because i think that could probably be true for all of them i think that could be the case i'm more just wanting to make sure that you all have clarity given that some are pretty specific and i think really clear and some are you know even like you know move forward with the police review committee recommendations like one of those is peer support but like and then there's a whole bunch of pieces and that will be a moving target so i i feel very there's a lot of overlap to me and a bunch of them but as long as it works for you all then we don't need no i i feel clear too and i think you're you know you're right we did go through these and try to eliminate duplicates but you know obviously didn't get them all and uh so as long as it works i just don't want to be giving you we need three more peer support workers that was very clear every goal we do but thank you all right well i i think this is excellent Cameron and i i really i enjoyed the process too i think i preferred it when we brought the consultant then and everything seemed much more efficient one thing i missed though like last year it seemed like we had an opportunity to sit across the stable table from department heads there and get more direct feedback from them so i was wondering if there's any takeaways as you shared these with staff that they thought like you know without fear of retaliation or anything it's like uh like that they think we're going to the right direction on some stuff are they like these guys are bigger wing nuts than we thought probably in some ways it's are they takeaways like that you can share um so conversations with staff has been mostly positive i i don't i'm really trying to even if i was not trying i'm not trying to throw anyone in the bus because there's no one to throw right because the conversations that i've had have been really understanding of how we've done this process this year which is a little different than we did last year obviously we were in person for some of it but they also got to put their ideas on the wall and y'all got to look at all of the ideas your ideas and their ideas with sort of a blank slate approach to it and i think they feel very heard and these recommendations make sense in the context of our work plans so i haven't heard any negative feedback you know i haven't either and i think you know to that point we did a similar process with them to prioritize theirs that bring forward and you know they were invited to all the meetings they think they were all public meetings i know some folks were present when we had the workshop i think some people zoomed in um but i think and i think we were we had said hey if you see them doing something that you're really concerned about speak up but we didn't put a gag order on anybody so um i think i think camera i agree with camera and that people seem comfortable and they understand like i told you um you know last meeting you know this is the clearest sort of prioritization and direction we've gone i think people really appreciate that so i'd love to pivot us to the draft document if that sounds good okay all right let's see if i can share a word document now i don't well we'll see all right sharing the screen all i want is to share this please work okay so we have a in front of you a draft of the uh council plan as it stands now these these plans so this one will be quite a bit longer when we include the the work plans of the staff that will get to these initiatives right so what the document you're looking at now is not incomplete it just has will have a dendym to it when i'm done with the work plans with the staff that basically outlines what they will be doing to make sure that not only these initiatives are accomplished but those sort of more mundane tasks right so um this is a full document for y'all and will be supplemented with a dendym as the work plans are created i do know that uh there was some time to look at our vision mission and values that came out of y'all's conversation so i didn't know if you wanted to start there and see if there's any um uh proposed edits or wording changes scrapping them completely to the three statements comments yeah go ahead j i think that the the spirit of what's in the vision and mission statements are are right on i think that they could um i think that the mission statements a little closer to the vision and the vision's a little closer to the mission in terms of what those statements ultimately should be and could use some wordsmithing um i had hoped to take a look at it before tonight but i wasn't able to so i don't know if you know given the spirit of what's there you know i'm fine with with moving on with this but if if there was a need if there's any value in trying to do some wordsmithing i don't we're not going to do it just right here but then i'd be willing to do that but that being said i think you've captured what we needed to be captured um so yeah i agree and we have it work with you i just i appreciated your comment just now about you know flipping the vision and mission and um so uh as the person did the initial drafting on this what i looked at the vision is what was our vision of the city like just the community so we see it as a growing city we this is what we see our city and then the mission is what do we the city organization do what's what's the mission of specifically the city government versus the vision for the community so i was trying to capture those things is slightly in that fashion but i you know if i didn't if it could be done differently i'm i'm all good for that and and that was basically a summary of what we you all had thrown out at least yeah but i'm better wording is always welcome one possibility is that if you come up with some edits that of for another time we could always revisit it because the spirit of you know the ideas are there i just i've done this over the years and my work has been a little bit different than how all right so let's scroll past that we can come back to that it does not i mean the ethos is great it does not necessarily impacts the plan in anyway so we're going to move on so the first part of the strategic plan explains how we ended up here what the planning process was how we changed it to align with the city's budget development cycle to ensure priorities could receive weighted consideration for inclusion we also really made it very clear as to what sort of the the the situation that we're facing this year is so i did reference the COVID-19 pandemic the ARPA funding and some general considerations we needed to take in mind as we built out this strategic plan i was i did have a very good point and i think i would like to edit this sort of live with y'all is that these goals that you outlined are not in any sort of specific order um so i would like to change them to like bullet pointed instead of numbered because i don't want there to be an implied order of those you're just the order in which we've discussed them so that was some feedback i had received so i'm going to do that this basically summarizes the goals and the prioritized strategies again that is not saying those the only strategies they're the ones that y'all have prioritized for us as staff to implement please interrupt at any point i'm just going to keep scrolling through these if something didn't reach a level that was higher than the average then it didn't make this particular no so these are just strategies so then we go down and we break up each of the goal strategies into initiatives okay thank you thank you yes so you're i again i'm going to change these before so that it just says strategic plan goal improve community prosperity i'm just gonna while we're here take out the number huh strategic yellow yes the yellow goal so our community prosperity sort of explains what we're talking about there again based on y'all's feedback it talked about the economic pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to be adaptive and responsive to recovery efforts there so then it sort of goes into explaining those strategies that y'all voted on and prioritized and then those initiatives that back that up so this is where it sort of addresses what Warren was saying about bucketing these things and so all of these initiatives will be included in some sort of work plan for a department that it best aligns with so this is sort of what we just it went through in a different format and i changed the format a little bit this year to align closer with Invisio because you were getting printed Invisio you were getting Invisio reports ever quarterly and this is the structure that it comes in and i didn't want it to be one way and then you get a report on another so this is how the strategies and initiatives will be in the Invisio programming let's take that number right on out so that it basically goes through in the same way with a little bit more care taken in the wording and less spaghetti on the wall and more of like this is actually what you want to do so the initiatives there improving i'm sorry the strategy for providing responsible engaged government was communicate effectively for instance you had the website intergenerational community events coordination with capital area neighborhood for instance we're working very hard on the rfp right now and looking for responses within the next week so get excited for that so there's a lot of things that we're doing here that takes place sort of cross departmental initiatives that are cross departmental that we will put into plans and explain how we will get there i'm sort of live editing here getting rid of some numbers i'm just going to continue to scroll through these i hadn't heard any feedback on formatting i'm hoping as we are going through these that these feel easily understandable and approachable for folks i try to keep the writing level on these approachable and accessible as much as possible if you've caught any jargon please let me know i'm trying very hard to stay away from that and also using colloquialisms my quaint southern accent does not translate very well into formal documents so i'm just continuing to work through just scroll through these can i make a suggestion yes ma'am you don't have to do right now but just wherever there is a abbreviation like cvpsa or cjc or cit see this is very helpful i forget immediately that these things are real i think all of those they said to be fair as long as it's somewhere in this document what those things are and then like oh yeah we're going to be using the cjc abbreviation i just want to make sure that that is thank you that's very held out somewhere but again it doesn't have to be right now so that might take a while so right because there's a lot right now i will not i'm just trying to make notes for myself to make sure to go back through and take those out yeah like you know pc i was in there you know somebody coming in cold may not know what pc i is thank you somebody coming in cold like me thank you yeah or members of the of the public exactly one thing that occurs when following up on what the mayor just said was that there are references in this to a lot of other documents and it would be cool since this is going to be on the webpage to link to those things so that where you say we're going to update the barriers to housing study link to the study we did years ago or the equity plan or the police review report or all of those things so that people can know what we're talking about through what we have talked about i will do that thank you and so um this last graph um or chart that i included comes from the team so when i said uh there were going to be some other additional strategies um to accomplish your goals these are the ones that the team has um prioritized internally in addition to your initiatives so for instance improving community prosperity some additional strategies will be communicating effectively regarding our budget our budget developing finance policies and procedures continuing that technological assessment infrastructure planning that kelly just overviewed with y'all grants management our feast program we're trying very hard to grow that and we're very excited to talk to y'all about what that means throughout the year as we work on that there's some other ones that impacts like the senior center is looking to achieve accreditation a permitting process we want to make sure that's more equitable and improved some of these include things like language access improvements we want to make sure that that's improved citywide and a lot of these tie directly into the goals that y'all have so i've outlined some of those one that i always think is very interesting and i enjoy very much is our cemetery green practices we have a really state-of-the-art cemetery um and i i wanted to shout that out when we're talking about in good environmental stewardship they are a leader in our state um we have other things like our the implementing the home energy ordinance that's very important and something our departments need to work on another one i think is very important to call out is our long-term plan the city plan which ultimately is the city's guiding strategic document that hopefully at the end of that process this document will feed from and to so that's very exciting and important and i know planning and the planning commission has been putting a lot of work into that another one that's come up in conversation recently that some of y'all might be interested in is the snow melt initiative using district heat trying to bring on a new district heat user um and that that would be solely for melting snow um in the back there so that we're not we have a a sustainable way to melt the snow and then add more so we're not just creating a backlog there so um we also truly need to create a more sustainable district heat management and expansion plan we don't currently have that um we have folks who work very dedicatedly on district heat but we could use a plan with y'all's buy-in so that's one of the things that's important for us some things in our public health and safety that i wanted to call out was that e911 renaming project that's continuing we're really working towards improvement improving our national flood insurance program community rating system um we'd like to pitch some building code updates to y'all and um really making sure that the CJC the community justice center is fully supported and so that's something that they want to do they do want to expand some of their programs um and then let's see what else we've got um and then the community resource officer position is new within our MPD and they really do want to expand that and that's a big goal for them is implementing that further within our community so i skipped in and chose some of those but that's what our staff really came up with as additional strategies to implement your goals in addition to the priorities that y'all have identified so that's where we're at with the strategic plan um i'd love for um if you are comfortable with it i would like this i feel like this is ready for adoption so that we can move forward with our work plans with the um caveats that i will get rid of jargon and i will link to those studies and documents which was a great idea thank you jack kind of good yeah now two things we spent a lot of time talking about how covid would be incorporated into this document i think you guys did a great job on that i i think it you know comes through loud and clear and a lot of these bullets without being a standalone one so i just want to say thanks so much because we spent a lot of time on that um i don't know if it belongs in this document but one thing obviously it can be on my mind the responsible contractor ordinance that we put a lot of work into a couple years ago i think like i assume it's going to be triggered for the first time over the next calendar year here with some of the bigger ticket items there so maybe a reference to you know this would be the first time that we would we would use that and also like you know pet ourselves on the back it's going to create safer workplaces and offer prevailing wage and good job for folks are you suggesting that be called out any particular place or just i'm you know just scrolling through like sure you know throw it in there so yeah i think it could go my my initial response to that would be putting it in this this larger goal narrative talking about you know this we're looking forward to implementing this and some of our larger contracts so i'll make a note language referencing other thoughts or comments this is a lovely document thank you thank you i appreciate the plain language yeah i feel very comfortable with this um i'm very grateful for all the work you put into it and helping uh to organize our thinking around this there's a lot of work embodied by this document and i just want to recognize that we have well so normally we do this process at the beginning of a term right like a roughly early april or so and here we are in late october recognizing that we have an election coming up in march don't really expect all this to get done by march no um and please make sure that we are clear about that um so one question do you anticipate uh doing this again next uh fall roughly or in april i would recommend and my uh recommendation for y'all to consider would be to review this in april to see if it still makes sense if you see if there's any changes or direction change that would really like to happen but otherwise this is really setting those budget priorities that will carry us through the next like this fiscal year oh well i'm sorry the 2023 fiscal year as we're creating that document which is why we moved it um and i think to be frank i think that's the right choice i think that really gives us clarity that we didn't have before and i think it also gives people time and gives the council time in the spring to see how it's going to get a report on where we are with as much as we can do right now and to check in and see if it makes sense to the council that's sitting on the dais at that time check with that said i move that we adopt this as the thank you city council strategic plan with the formatting and other editorial changes that staff is going to be inserting they have motion and a second any for the discussion and i i would like to check to make sure because i'm my laptop has also died so i cannot see if there's a hand i will check hold on let me stop sharing i think we might just oh there's one person who is not media and or staff and i okay don't know all right so any further comment public or council okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay thank you thank you guys this has been a really great process and i just really appreciate the time and effort that y'all put into this it's made my job a lot easier and i'm really excited to um share the work plans with you when they're done i'll probably just send those out so thank you very much yeah good job you and the rest of the team thank you thank you yeah what does it mean when you say bless their hearts anytime you're that's not all right well thankfully we don't have two uh intellectually deep uh items left so um we just schedule bill do you want to talk about that this is really not that much different than what we normally do um typically what we've run into starting about now is uh we always seem to run into our third our fourth our our second meeting in november which was the fourth week thank you always falls the wednesday night before thanksgiving and typically councils haven't wanted to meet then i don't know why um so we've all we've moved that up one week to the 70 that's pretty normal procedure but still it's something you need to you know vote to do uh and then we've have run into that in the past with christmas sometimes it bumps up but this year it actually is the 22nd and you know the the christmas doesn't really start till the 24th and 5th and the school vacations and all so i put the 22nd as still being a meeting if people want to change that but that actually gives us a chance to have a budget workshop in between and get kind of ahead of the game budget time on december 15 and then i threw in the the january five budget workshop if we need it you can always cancel them and then the other funky thing is that we have because town meeting falls on march 1st this year and we have to have everything worn 40 days in advance that pushes us up to january 20 is the deadline for any for for ballot items and that's always a thursday night just because of the way the 40 days runs we could meet wednesday the 19th that would be fine it just means that if petitions come in on the 20th we'd have to then meet again to accept them and put them on a ballot now maybe there won't be petitions this year who knows but um so typically we've just done it all on the thursday night so we have everything done it's our one thursday night in the year so again there's nothing unusual here it's just each year we put it on the agenda each year you vote have your chance to weigh in if you don't want to do these dates lauren thumbs up jack go ahead one of these nights is my wife's birthday but still i think it's a sensible so i move we adopt the schedule as proposed oh that was a motion yes okay motion and second further discussion okay uh and camera and anybody online i'll be with the other hand raised okay uh so any further thoughts okay uh all in favor please say aye aye and opposed great just some certainty around that it's nice all right and then filling some vacancies from counselor richardson uh now to be fair i this could be an opportunity to like reshuffle everything but in the interest of time i think we should just focus on the ones that where there is a vacancy uh so focusing on just those pieces uh let's just jump jump into it i'm just gonna take them one at a time if that's okay team um so looking at the building code appeals committee that rarely meets that's a thing right it does really meet that's right what's that maybe we've had maybe three meetings the last year oh they're usually like 15 minute meetings oh okay uh and we need there's like a minimum number of people that we need on that there's been two council members and a community member and i don't think we up the community member i mean at some point we might want to nothing against the individual but just we might consider whether to put that out again but we've typically had two council members and it's this is in case someone appeals a decision of the government inspector you know on a code okay great thanks yeah super sure okay um and uh i i wasn't quite sure what the community advisory board was it just says vacant i wonder if that was like supposed to be the the citizen advisory board of the cjc yeah oh yeah that is the cab that is okay so i'm gonna we'll we'll get to that i'm gonna cross out one out for now um the capital improvement uh plan committee i can go back to that one i was on in 20 and somehow got shifted off okay i don't know and but i'm happy to okay i'm kind of interested but i also don't need to be on it and could come to a meeting if i can get excited i don't have it in front of me who is on it presently okay okay so in let is that okay with you okay great so thank you j um uh cvpsa now we've talked about that kind of last time what we appoint someone we appoint two people actually and three there's three elected positions in the area not failure into point two and donna is not one of the elected positions so she's not a council appointee so i think quite might be one of our appointees and i think dan richeson was and is anyone interested in being the other appointee what is this what is the cdp so central from public safety authority oh how would you well so it's it is the it's this the agency that's overseeing this whole communications okay the the dispatching and you know the idea of looking at regionalizing public safety got you got you okay we could always appoint someone who's not a council correct to that as well no one is interested and i think about our last meeting potentially appetizing for that yeah so i feel okay about leaving that for now because uh things are happening and it's it's going to take a lot of effort but i also think that there's value to having people are doing the work being like maybe having a police chief or a fire chief or somebody be yeah um here's the cgc yeah community yeah so the i think it's just on there twice and i yeah that's okay no worries um so the that's this is the community justice center uh and so they have a citizen advisory board that helps helps them in direction and yeah just advises them and you're interested in that you would be yeah i work great awesome that's i think they only meet four times a year we're changing oh you are yes oh okay now it's 20 i thought it was 52 i think we're changing it to four to six times a year oh okay and then we get hit up to volunteer for all sorts of stuff panels and uh okay and the last one is the t w wood board just the art gallery that is provided to us art in here and yeah as a former member of that board myself it's great board they do meet monthly though i don't think that also that also does not have to be a council member um so it used to be the mayor it was right it's the mayor or the mayors designee right so yeah i think it's okay to put that out to the world if you ask the arts commission or somebody from the oh interesting someone from the public arts commission yeah potentially that's yeah yeah uh so maybe we can reach out potentially to the public arts commission see if there's somebody from there who would be interested and otherwise i think we advertise that and does the city hall art committee do any community basically is they just they come in no but we have a committee here with three i know but that's never as far as i understand it this never that last two years okay then what's gonna be just a little bit i think that's totally fair i feel like we should have a vote to do that yeah is there a vote to sort of officially disband the city hall art committee yes jack i would prefer to undertake this decision with a little more thought that's fair that's a good call i will say that it was somewhat of a new responsibility during the pandemic when the building was closed as eager as i was to join the committee and there was not a whole lot to to get done so it's certainly something that could be revisited yeah i think this was a mayor's initiative to it was about how to redo all the art in the building and we did get rid of yeah yeah there was there was there was some changes have changes happened very grateful uh nonetheless very i think you do think if we i i agree that it might make sense to disband it but maybe another time uh morton on the council building code of appeals ericsson on the capital improvement committee advertised for cvps a morton on the cjc cab and to be determined on the tw wood board and talk more on city hall art okay is that right yeah and i'd say we don't we're fine not replacing that position right on the city hall art yeah yeah there oh we just never replace it uh rid of it by attrition one hypothesis is that we need to turn all of those names into a vote yeah i think it's a good call is there a motion to appoint folks as mentioned second okay motion to second any further discussion one thing uh we do the public restroom committee that then was on along with me we haven't met yet i think we're like looking at some legislative strategies for this but uh might just be worthless than there since dan was a member of that right yep fair um anyone interested in that i mean oh lauren yes okay okay so lauren you're up for that so throwing that out there how many folks we have on the homelessness task works so you you can absolutely jump on that so just so you know when this is done at the beginning after the election you all never make it a motion oh really you know yep that's why i stopped keeping track of i used to put every single one on the minutes i'm like well they're not moving it anymore the motion has been made and to be fair it includes the ones that we just talked about is that homelessness task force yeah homelessness and uh and uh the restroom committee yeah all right so including up both of those uh all right any further discussion i was wondering about that fair uh all right all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay so thank you thank you everybody for uh the loneliness uh all right so we're that is the end of our regular business which is amazing um council reports i'm sorry for you carter because does out of here is that okay yeah no um i think the only thing uh you're probably noticing the news we've got a protest going on in the state house steps with a gentleman named josh listen b and friend of seagull and i think he's done a good job drawing some awareness to the issues we've been looking at on the ground um one notable one i was with him the first night there i didn't stay overnight i but i was seeing what they needed they said uh yeah where's the where's the public restroom that we can use after the state house closes right there was like oh well you know i could drive you to the police station i guess so they had to do that you know so it's uh it's very real and you know brenda started highlighting that in press conferences which maybe will help with our state advocacy on this issue so that's it for me that's it again one quick thing on a bit of a lighter note um as as i imagine most folks know a lot of the uh local um breweries distilleries have moved um away from a from a tipping system with their servers and bartenders and pay them a living wage and and have um then been able to donate the the tips they get throughout a month to nonprofits bar hill does it in town um you know uh hill farm set up in greensboro the alchemist and stow and lawson's down and weightsfield has done it um to all to great success for for local nonprofits and and um happy to share that in the month of november lawson's is going to be um donating all of their tips to the vermont river river conservancy specifically when they do it they do it for projects for nonprofits not just open-ended funds and specifically for the confluence river park um in in montpelier so if you need an excuse to head down if you haven't been before it's a great it's beautiful but um encourage everybody to to get out and support that and that's money that will you know support at the end of the day support our community so that's it thank you i have no updates thank you i may be stealing uh a point from the quirk but i just want to mention people may have uh seen that the vermont the reapportionment committee has been at work and released a report that uh this is the body that uh has been proposing report legislative reapportionment in the state and and they decided this year to uh eliminate multi-member house districts and go to all single-member districts and so that that would uh among other things uh split Montpelier in half we've had a two-member district for for many decades and and the proposal is to split Montpelier into two districts the the next step in the process is for the board of civil authority to meet consider the proposal and make whatever comments we want to make and that meeting is going to be on November 9th and of course like everything else it's open to the public and so if people have an interest in in being heard on that this would be the opportunity to do it and i think it's going to be in this room so the in-person and the remote participation should be pretty easy thank you i will pass tonight i just want to highlight that November uh 18th 4 p.m there's going to be a rededication of the Challenger Explosion Monument that used to be at the bottom of the hill of where you turn up to go to national life and it's been moved to the grounds at the high school which i think is very appropriate it's going to be much more accessible to folks um i think a lot of folks didn't know that it was even there when it was at the bottom of the hill of national life there and it'll be so yeah it'll be much more visible i think it was it was an important event to school children at the time and and so to have it on a school campus i think is really appropriate anyway so we're gonna have a time to rededicate that coming up in a couple of Thursdays so uh it's heads up okay i think that is it so without objection we will consider the meeting adjourned