 I am seeing 632. So I will call the meeting to order and you can get started. Ah, here's sound. Excellent. Nice sound. Okay. Since we're all. Appearing remotely, we all need to start by introducing themselves. Ourselves, I'll introduce myself, Jack McCullough, Mayor. And then we'll start over at Donna's end of the horseshoe. So Donna. Uh, Donna Bay, District 1. Kerry Brown, District 3. Sal. Sal Alfano, District 2. Tim. Jim Heaney, District 3. And Ellen Cohen is not present. And Lauren Hurl from District 1. Okay, great. Thank you. I'll mention the meeting logistics and briefly anyone who is participating remotely, which is to say everybody, please set your, your name to be your full name and so that we can get you on the minutes, right? Anyone who's called on to address the council, please state your name and where you live again. So we can get you in the minutes. We ask everyone to keep your any comments you make to under 3 minutes. And if you're speaking about a specific agenda item, keep your comments relevant to that item. Anyone who wishes to be recognized must be called on and recognized by the by the mayor. And you may make a statement or ask questions, but if you have multiple questions, please get them all out at once. Anyone speaking out of turn discussing non germane topics or exceeding the time limit may be interrupted and Donna Bate, our council member will help us with keeping track of time. Jack, my yellow orange doesn't have one minute on it, but that's what it means. And the red means time to stop. Great. Thank you. Okay. The first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Has everyone reviewed the agenda? And is there, are there any proposed changes? Okay. The agenda is approved as circulated. Next item on the agenda is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any item or any topic that is not on the agenda. Again, we ask you to be to raise your hand either electronically or physically to be recognized. And I will keep an eye on the participant list to make sure that I don't miss anybody, but I'd ask anyone else to chime in if you, if you, if I've missed somebody. Again, the time limit for general business and appearances is three minutes. So is there anyone who wants to address a topic that is not on the agenda? Okay. I'm not seeing anyone raising their hands or requesting to be recognized. So we'll move on to the consent agenda. Is there any, is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? And the motion to move approve the consent agenda? Is there any discussion? Just one question before you vote. We did get a question from a constituent. I see that they are on the call. I just want to make sure they got the answers to their satisfaction. Thank you. And that's a yes. Linda. Great. Thank you. Okay. Any other question? Any other discussion on the consent agenda? Hearing none. All those in favor are signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Okay. Consent agenda is approved. Next item on the agenda is item six relating to the update from Cassella on the Meech-Aid treatment. Bill, do you want to keep that off? And I assume we have someone here from Cassella. Yeah, I'm going to hand that directly off to D.P.W. at Cassella and I see Sam is on and I'm not sure I think our DPW folks are here. Uh yep this is this is Kurt um I'll try to do my camera here I'm on my phone on the computer issues. Uh so yeah um as I wrote in the um cover sheet um the initial deadline for a leak treatment was July 1st um Kasella came in did an update and uh that was uh extended until tonight's meeting and um the main concern was the status of permitting um so with that I'll turn it over to Kasella to give it an update on the status. Thanks Kurt. Okay great thanks Kurt. Can you guys hear me okay? Yep. Great I'm Sam Nicolai with Kasella and Joe Gay is uh with us here today as well. I appreciate the chance to come in and give you an update. You may recall we talked during the May 24th City Council meeting about the status of our treatment system. At that time we were awaiting one last permit which would allow us to proceed forward and we told you that we expected to get that permit fairly shortly and to be proceeding with the installation of the building and the treatment system later in 23. We're really pleased to report that we did get the permit in the timeframe that we expected. The Act 250 permit was received on June the 30th. We appreciate that the City weighed in and indicated that you'd like to see a timely decision by Act 250 and that was certainly the case. Act 250 didn't move forward so that is the last permit major permit that we need. I'm also thrilled to be able to tell you that the building is on order and the contractor is lined up. The treatment system is ordered and we expect to receive it a little bit later this fall probably in the August timeframe and we expect to be installing and running a little bit later this year. So we're consistent entirely with what we shared with you in May. We're really excited about it. We believe that this will be a great solution for treatment of leachate and will allow us to continue to operate a state of the art facility here at Coventry and continue to work with the City. So happy to take any questions but but really pleased that we're on track and moving forward both with permitting and construction. Thanks Sam. I think we're all happy when we got the news that you got the permit approved. It's just for the sake of being potentially pessimistic and I'm not a pessimistic guy. What else could go wrong between now and when you start building? So we've done a pretty thorough evaluation to try to prevent that from happening. We have the ability already to serve the treatment system within an approved area. So if the building is delayed we have the ability to to move forward without the full construction of the building. But with Joe here he's done a great job of getting in front of this having a contractor lined up having our treatment system basically ready to go. So we feel really good. You know we always worry like everybody does so will we see some more flooding? Will we see some other crazy things that could happen to us? But you know barring something really unusual we believe that the treatment system will definitely be on site and running. We will certainly have kinks to work out. So either one of the system is running you know week to week you know we'll during that initial startup you know we're going to have to to work through those and ensure that everything is running properly before we get to a hundred percent continuous flow. But we feel really good about it and I feel strongly that we've prepared ourselves for contingencies and are on track to to have system running. Thanks. Any other members of the council have questions? Lauren? Yeah thanks. Great to hear that update Sam. Just two quick questions. One just remind me so this is going to be a pilot project to begin and would the leachate coming to Montpelier be the pre-treated that's going through the pilot or would you be sending us untreated as you're doing the pilot program? And then my second question is I know there was a there's something about a loss regarding a nipty's permit does that intersect with this at all or does that raise any potential concerns down the road that would intersect with this project or would that have any potential to derail the pre-treatment? Great questions. So can I jump in before you answer that for those of us who are not environmental experts like Lauren what's that permit that you mentioned nipty's permit? What's that? Sure so I'll tackle the first question first. Our goal in our commitment to the city is to to bring you treated leachate as quickly as possible so our goal is to run the system to be able to treat the leachate and bring the treated leachate to Montpelier. It is true that there's nothing stopping us from bringing a mixture of treated untreated and it's likely that to have that occurring while we're doing startup but our goal is to treat leachate and treat as much leachate as we can and bring Montpelier treated leachate and our expectation is that we will be doing that in 2023 so there's certainly no reason not to try to be bringing you treated leachate. So the second question so what is a nipty's permit? A nipty's permit national pollutant discharge elimination system if I get my acronym correctly it is a permit that derives from the federal government down to the states that allows discharges to occur. There has been some back and forth at the landfill about a nipty's permit but it has nothing to do with the system. There is a underdrain at the landfill which is totally unrelated to leachate and there has been much discussion about whether that underdrain should be regulated by a nipty's permit and ultimately the agency decided that it was not the case but regardless of that outcome it does not and has never had anything to do with leachate or leachate treatment it really is a totally separate project. We are essentially discharging under a nipty's permit we're discharging under your nipty's permit. The city has a nipty's permit for its discharge into the Wadooski and so our leachate by virtue of going to you under the first the pretreatment permit and then ultimately is discharged under the city's permit not our permit. I hope that answers the question. Yeah that does thank you that is really helpful. Just back to the first point then so we had as a council established a target of 20 parts per trillion in line with you know what was what is the state's drinking water standard as a target for the leachate. Is that going to be feasible to meet given that you know once you have the system online and even if there's some mixing if it's getting most of it out or are you looking for a change to that just trying to understand what you're going to be asking for from us. So our goal certainly is to get as much PFAS out as possible so far our testing has gotten the five compounds individually down under into single digits. So we're getting the five compounds individually under 20. Now the drinking water standard is the sum of the five compounds for for 20. So our goal is to get there now leachate whether treated or untreated is not drinking water no one will be drinking those but but Lauren to your point that has been our goal is to get to that point. We're not going to know exactly if we're able to achieve that goal precisely or if we're going to be a little bit higher than that until we actually go through the pilot testing but we know that we're going to be really really close because we're already producing levels in single digits and I think our best results are sort of in the 30 to 50 range we think as we dial that in we're going to get even lower but ultimately you know the the agency has asked us to do this pot test work to figure out how close and how low we can get with this technology so we're thrilled that we're going to be getting 98 99 percent removal our goal is certainly to get it as low as we possibly can. Thanks. Any questions for any other members of the council too? Thanks Jacques. So a couple quick questions just in terms of the active 50 permit is there an appeal period that follows the issuing of that permit? There is I believe the general standards of 30 day appeal period and that permit has been appealed so we being the the public company that we are we frequently have our permits appealed so that along with many of our other permits are in the appeal period that doesn't stop us from being able to move forward that appeal process will work and if someone determines that adjustments need to be made then we have to act at that time but from the agency's standpoint in our standpoint we are good to go only if if there is a successful appeal what could there be a change? Just the equipment that you're using is it something you already have I think it's specialized equipment and just knowing my experience is lately with getting anything specialized or even garage doors you know elevator control cards are 20 weeks out I mean what's you know is it really realistic to have this done this year? It is we we intentionally did our testing with equipment in advance of you know the permitting as we could so we knew that the treatment system that we wanted we've had reserved so it's it doesn't need to be manufactured it's sitting on the ground so it's literally has to be shipped to us as opposed to actually being manufactured so we're absolutely on track to get the equipment we do not expect any delays there whatsoever since the equipment already exists and it's literally sitting on the ground to be shipped to us. Thanks. Any questions from any other members of the council at this point? Okay looking to members of the public I see Casey Whiteley you've got your hand up first and you are still muted. Thank you thank you mayor and Sam. Sam I had I wanted to ask a question about a concern that I and many other people have about potential hazards of the treatment system up there potentially leaching it those toxins leaching into the surrounding watershed namely the Black River and the South Bay or Lake Mefremagog I just wondering how that how you're accounting for that and how how you propose that that will be contained from having an impact on a further impact on the environment. So the leachate by regulation and as well as our own standards has to be managed in a way to prevent it from spilling that's the case whether we're just storing it whether we are pumping it somewhere or whether we're treating it and so the treatment system has to meet the same requirements that we do today for all of our leachate which means it's got to be within tanks it's got to be within storage areas or secondary containment so the treatment system itself doesn't change anything on the site in terms of how we manage leachate leachate is will continue to be collected it will continue to be put into tanks and containment areas that prevent it from being discharged and once we treat it it goes back into a tank so that it can then be hauled for disposal. So we're very confident in our ability to manage the leachate in a way to prevent any potential release. The treatment will lower the concentrations which will make the receipt of the material more amenable for the state's wastewater plant but nothing will change in terms of the site's ability to manage leachate properly and keep it contained. We're very confident in that it's critical for us to continue to manage that leachate correctly. Thank you I just I just want to also express you know the knowledge that the leachate has has leached into Lake Minfermeagog and everybody knows that so I just want to make sure that there's additional accommodations being made for this treatment that will prevent that from happening again. Appreciate your comments I have to strongly disagree no leachate has ever made it to Lake Minfermeagog and we will continue to operate the facility in a way to ensure that will never happen. So I know that there have been many folks that express concern but we are very confident that the lake has never been impacted by leachate and that we will continue to manage in a way that prevent that from happening. I just want to I appreciate your point of view and and your commitment to that to that view but I I just want to go on record as saying that we know that PFAS have been found in Lake Minfermeagog all the way up to Maygod and so I just want to I just want to say that that's that's you know been confirmed. PFAS has certainly been found in surface water bodies which include Lake Minfermeagog. There are a lot of sources of PFAS as we all know it's coming from industry residential areas again we're very confident and the agency is very confident that we're preventing any releases to the lake. Great thank you Linda and you're also muted at the moment. Yeah thank you. I have questions for the council. Leachate contains high strength organic waste which causes odors. The current odor control system in place after phase one upgrade to the plant was complete upgrade to the plant was completed was not meant to filter a leachate tank is undersized for the volume of material it was expected to process after phase one and is in poor condition and is not fully functional. The timeline for constructing an appropriate odor control system is December 2024 to December 2025. So my three questions are one why aren't you suspending processing high organic waste until a city is fully in compliance with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation Air Pollution Control Regulations. Number two what entity authorized again accepting leachate from Cassella and when did this recommence. And three is Cassella's leachate the only leachate we take and if not what volume of additional leachate is coming into the plant and does the total amount exceed the designated capacity of the plant. Kirk this might be an answer a question for you for starters. Yeah yep I can jump in on that. So leachate is not considered high strength organic waste that's really the food waste material that we're taking in the fat soils in Greece primarily. So it's really a totally separate process to handle the high strength organic waste. It's true that we have odor control issues associated with the high strength organic waste the phase two upgrade will address that we are also planning to include odor control on the leachate tank itself but we don't believe that leachate is the primary source of odor issues at the plant. I think it's actually very minimal based on the testing that we did. Right now we're only taking leachate from Kevin Tree. Historically the plant has taken leachate also from the Moorland landfill. Currently that's not the case and I think they found another outlet for that and so there's no plans to resume leachate receipt from the Moorland landfill. I believe the approval for leachate acceptance was in the early 2000s there was a project that included septage and leachate receiving and that was included in our nipty's permit and has been amended with each renewal of the nipty's permit to allow the city to continue acceptance. If I missed something Linda let me know I think that was the questions you had. Yeah well I just would like to respond that I have been reading up about leachate and by definition some of it is contained has contained high organic waste. That's part of the odor issue part of it. The other issue about leachate was the business manager had informed me that there are other sources of leachate coming into the to the plant other than Coventry. So if she's incorrect then she needs to somebody in the business office needs to be corrected about that. Yep there could be small traces amount of organic waste and the leachate but it's really the the project the high strength organic waste project was primarily focused on on food waste materials fats oils and greases and I'm not very productive in the business office but like I said we used to take more town landfill but that but currently we we do not and we did not have plans to resume that. Also add that we in terms of revenue we categorize septage and leachate as a revenue line and so it's possible and I don't you know it's possible that septage receipts would be from different sources other than leachate and someone could look at that and say we're getting it from multiple sources. So I guess what I'm hearing is you're not considering leachate as an issue in the meeting the violation requirements of the DEC. Well no we we do plan to have order control on the leachate receiving tank but based on the testing that we've done with our consultant that's very low levels of offensive orders it's primarily coming from you know high strength organic waste receiving system and then secondary from the septage processing building this is kind of the second highest source of odors but we will include treatment odor treatment on the leachate tank as well. Thanks Curt. Thanks Linda. Before we move on are there any other questions or comments from members of public and then we'll return back to the council Donna is so you're raising your hand. I just can't hear you all the time Jack you seem to move that's all so I'm just trying to get listen everybody's a different volume so I keep adjusting my speaker sorry. Thanks sorry about that Lauren. Yeah I was just going to propose that based on what we've heard tonight that we update our standard that January 1st 2024 we'll accept leachate up to 20 parts per trillion so just kind of move the date to January 1st I you know I hear Sam that they're they're working really hard to meet that standard I want to keep pushing for hitting that standard we could always come back and if there's some tweak that needs to be made we could have that discussion but I think having that timeline keep try to try to do our part to keep everything on track for as quick construction and even just you know the mixing that could be done with untreated leachate I want to I want us to be getting as clean of leachate as possible so that would be my proposal. I'll second it. All right any discussion Tim. Oh okay sorry so the only question I got is so our meeting kind of based on the way and we ended up playing with the dates for this one would be if we have one the week of the holidays would be well actually December 20th no it would be the second and fourth Wednesday is when we meet right. Yeah so then it would be December 27th which we probably won't have a meeting. Make it line up with the meeting assuming we have a meeting during the holidays. Right typically so following Tim's logic there it would be the January 10 meeting we would probably meet on January 3rd for budget but that's usually a budget meeting the next regular meeting would be January 10 if if you want to line it up with six months. Does that make sense to you uh motion that way to January 10th. Sure. Okay all right Kurt. I just have a terrifying question on that so the city is currently taking small amounts of leachate approximately one truckload a day. Does that is the intent of the council to allow us to continue that level of leachate acceptance or is it council's intention to suspend all leachate acceptance. Lauren go ahead. In my proposal I was kind of continued business as usual until January and at that point we would put in place the 20 part per trillion standard for PFAS and leachate. And city clerk is that clear enough to you to have that be the form of a motion. It'd be great if it could be restated especially with what Kurt said I'm not sure how to fold that in. Okay yeah just one one more point that we were planning to move to two loads a day you know following this meeting. So if we could also clarify if we're allowed to go up to that level until January 1st you know it would help the city's finances. You know we have a lot of you know expenditures related to the flood so every little bit helps but we'll leave it to the council to make that decision. Tim. I don't favor increasing the amount for 8100 gallons a day I assume that's weekdays that's still 180 000 gallons a month and this material that's still rolling right down the minute just give it over to Lake Champlain to a lot of people that's water supplies and I think we've got to keep the pressure on to deal with this thing and I don't want to accept any more of it. Okay Lauren do you want to try to rephrase your motion so we can then continue to discuss it? So I propose our policy is to allow current levels of leachate acceptance at the water resource recovery facility until January 10th at which point PFAS levels cannot exceed 20 parts per trillion or can we just agree to stop it January 10th Lauren? You make it a hard stop producer. I really like you stop and we assess it at the time and I would second the motion that she stated. Okay so there's the motion is continuing current practices up till January 10th and it's been seconded is there any discussion by members of the council? Hey Linda I see you have your hand up can you get something in in 30 seconds? Yes I can one I'm still not clear on when we started accepting leachate again I know that the council had stopped it and then I started seeing line items in the budget where it was being accepted again I'm not clear about that. Number two the council isn't considering the air quality issues of the leachate I understand PFAS is huge and I don't dispute that but you're also under an order from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation to deal with the air quality issues so continuing to accept leachate is although it's not the only part of the problem as Kurt indicated it is a part of the problem. Okay thank you um council are you ready to vote on the motion? If so all those signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay we'll have a we required to have a roll call uh vote uh bait. Aye. Brown? Aye. Elfano? Sal, you're muted. Aye. Heaney? No. And Hurl. In the car. I'm sorry uh Lauren you said aye. Lauren did we lose you? Can can you hear me? Yes okay okay sorry yes I said aye. Okay uh the motion carries thank you um folks thanks for for your presentation and members of the public thank you for for all your comments and observations um we're moving next to the item about the Greenway Institute regarding purchase of Vermont College of Fine Arts buildings and and this is on because very recently I received uh texts and emails from Rebecca Holcomb about this project and and they're working on putting together all their financing and they're asking us to sign off on a statement that uh that the city supports their proposal to move their new uh to create this new educational program at uh this uh VCFA buildings and so uh I talked to Bill about this and we put it on the agenda for tonight um Bill do you have anything to add okay so does anyone on the council have any questions or comments? It looks like an excellent opportunity. Yeah carry. Thanks um so just a couple of quick things um there it Montpelier is misspelled at one point in here so I think that's really important to correct um and I uh so when I read through this I um I feel like there's a few you know in general it's fine I'm fine with it but there are a few statements in here that I I don't know that I have enough information to really get behind um I you know I don't know what the presence of students will actually be I don't know how many they're talking about I don't know how long they're going to be here I don't know if that's really going to bring any meaningful revenue to downtown businesses um maybe um I I don't know I don't have any information at all about this program supporting incubation of new businesses that will bring revenues and high quality higher wage jobs to the region so I just feel like it's I'd be fine with saying this can you know we're we don't have we don't see an adverse impact we we feel like it's consistent with our our um strategic goals and we're fine with it and that's probably all that they need right but um I also wasn't sure why every other paragraph is italicized and seems like is there some copying and pasting going on so it's just a little odd there yeah it's true that she she sent me this and she told me it doesn't have there's no magic formula that the that it has to be and and I think you're probably right about the cutting and pasting for the italics and and I think if uh if the motion uh tracks what you just said I think that would probably be sufficient to meet their needs uh Donna oh I guess I felt they may be overstated but indeed when we had other colleges there we found students interfacing some staying and starting new businesses so I didn't think it was totally off just maybe a little extreme we stated that's all anyone else on the council have any thoughts um yeah so I just saw this for the first time I guess it wasn't it wasn't there at least when I accessed the agenda earlier today um I kind of agree that it's it's a little a little overstated I mean I I know virtually nothing about this program other than the sort of outline that we you know we received um so I would I would uh prefer to have it tone tone down somewhat and um along the lines of what Therese is suggesting I'll direct a question to the clerk um were the comments of councilor brown sufficient to formulate a a motion that we could vote on well um I would say I guess yes a little odd but but there was enough there that I can you know I I can just essentially transcribe that and it is you know cohesive enough to be a motion could you just um I'm taking a look at this uh if maybe if you just if we just deleted everything after so what was his students bring youth and energy to our community that seems pretty innocuous but then everything after that starts sort of getting into specifics sort of take everything out after that and leave the rest I think that's what I heard councilmember brown saying Kerry does that work for you yeah I think that would be fine with the correct style they're not feeling right above there yeah that's a real place it's and it's not here um is there a second okay moved in seconded is there any other discussion if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye anyone opposed all right thank you we've adopted uh that resolution now we're up to item number eight which I suspect is the uh main thing that people are here to talk about which is blood and flood recovery updates and I think we'll start by any to you go so um I think what we were hoping to do tonight I was going to give you a quick update on city infrastructure and we have most of the key department heads here who could talk about anything in more detail I was going to quickly go over the frequently asked questions that we published I'm not going to read them all they're they're lengthy but at least hit the main topics and then afterward if then if there's anything that any of our staff want to add that I I missed I'd like them to do that and then after that we turn it over to the council to answer any questions or respond any comments or then the public of course uh that people may have them because we know there's there's a lot out there so if that sounds okay to people that's well proceed if you'd like me to do something different then I could do that works works for me okay so quickly for city infrastructure uh city august growing down building by building uh city hall the cleaning is completed the the cleaning company has come out of the building that's it's still a long way from being usable but they've turned it back over to us so uh the elevator is still out of out of wack the generator still needs to be fixed we have to move a bunch of systems out of the basement and up and figure that out uh are the memorial room and council chambers are still just packed full with boxes and things that moved up from downstairs that didn't get wet uh but needed a place to go we've got conversations with the teen center about whether it makes sense for them to come back to this space or to seek other space uh and then of course we need to start our own decision making process internally and with you as a council about how we put the puzzle pieces back together uh so I know everyone is plenty busy right now but we'd be happy to walk you through the building uh you know to see the shape that it's in uh downstairs is really just walls and studs and um you know it's really it's really a shell of a building right now but it does have a clean floor uh so here's well with regard to uh to city hall I believe I heard uh early on that there was there were mold issues and I wonder yeah those have been addressed um and you know there's still I think it's still gonna need to air out a little bit longer before we don't have a lot of people in there uh one side the the finance office uh side uh that I think needs some carpeting and some sheetrock put back but that could be functional you know relatively soon maybe assuming the other systems were go but but we're still a long way from really fully reoccupying that building and a lot of decisions left to be made police station is generally functional the elevator is out and they've had some issues with their phones I I think they are corrected but if Eric is on he can correct me about that fire station fire department he's back using the fire basement but fire there is still their first floor not the apparatus room but the offices in the back have been cleaned out so they they're going to decide about what how to put those back and then there is some structural damage in the back that is starting to collapse and it has to do with their basement access so we've got to figure that out and maybe correct for those of you've never been out behind the fire station there's an old ramp that goes down to the basement and that's just a perfect place to funnel water in whenever we have one of these events so we're thinking maybe there's a way we can correct that access to the basement as and that's also where the structural failure is so that's still working. DPW has three pump stations out of four that were underwater damaged they are in the process of getting those completed there are road washouts around the city we just signed a contract today for if those of you going I've got Main Street have seen if you're going up the hill on the left there's a pretty big sink hole that we believe is a collapsed sewer pipe and that needs to be completely replaced and fixed to stop that wash out there's also a big problem with a prospect street there's a a lot you know an undermining of the the hill so we're trying to take care of that so those are big projects and some small ones the debris clearing of course is the biggest effort that they're coordinating that's pretty visible around town and DPW and through Evelyn's are trying to give everybody update each day of the progress made and where they're going to be the next day I know we get a lot of questions about you know when are they going to be in my neighborhood and the answer is we don't know for sure because they're they're really seeing what they can accomplish in one day and then where the next you know what the next day's effort it would be best spent doing so they're often just a day ahead of scheduling so you know we know that they're going to get everything done in two to three weeks but we can't say for sure we're going to the street or that street the next next week yet recreation department dog river dog river field is completely flooded and is unusable so that happened in 2011 as well so we're taking a look to see what kind of coverage can be there or whether we could use funds to sort of build the field somewhere else and maybe convert that to different use but that is you know out of commission for this season for sure the rec center has been used for storage of a lot of the facilities that we a lot of the donations and supplies that we've received it's now going to be converted into use for a disaster recovery center for FEMA for the next 30 days or so so that's great we have that facility it's great that it's handy to downtown but it does mean that in terms of impact on programs it's not available for basketball pick of all and some of the other rec uses so country club road site has been used to store new trash containers people see trash containers up there we clear those have been newly delivered they've never had trash in them they're being used there until they can be deployed somewhere else and those kind of things and some of the trucks are staging up there and then we are obviously looking at other things finance planning clerk my pillar alive in justice center are all functioning at senior center on the second floor or justice center in their case the first floor and until we figure out what we're going to do with city hall and how to bring them back that transition has now been completed and is functional that does however relieve the city senior center with two activity rooms that they've traditionally used that are now taken up with offices so there's a negative impact on senior center we are looking to see if we can move some of their activities to the elks former elks club building at least temporarily until we get the offices back in the city hall and lastly the hub the lack of better name the hub section there with all the tents in my pillar alive where the volunteer hub is winding down you know that the intense activity is you know there's no more food happening there house french fries is closing up as of today this was their last day of serving you know the big rush of volunteers is over there still doing the volunteer management and pairing so if you are a building owner or a business owner and you need help please ask they still have the list of volunteers and they'll will still be managing that but there will not be as much of a presence after this week at that 12 to 16 main street site FEMA has had people sitting there this week and have had a lot of business of people just walking up that was a request of ours that they do that and they they have done that now as I said they're going to be setting up their recovery center at the rec center so they will have a place so um that's kind of the status of city infrastructure right now we you know just on our own we've got plenty going on if there's anybody from the city staff that wants to add that i'm something i missed i welcome that okay i'm not seeing any hands going up yeah okay great star council members do you have any questions on this part of the product presentation before we move on carry yeah thank you for all that um so i know that uh the city has been i know you've been devoting every every moment of your time and your energy and your thoughts to all of this and i really appreciate it and i know how complex it is and i know that it's going to keep going for a long time um and so as we're thinking about the future of operations within the city hall building itself um we've i know there's been kind of some thoughts tossed around about trying to get everything possible out of the basement and just thinking in terms of when this happens again because it's going to happen again and so we need to be going forward we need to be thinking always in terms of what happens the next time we get a flood like this or maybe even the worst one and so i know it's very early and you don't have plans yet but can you just share some of the the discussions the thinking the possibilities that you're tossing around for the future of that building and how it will be used yeah absolutely um so i think i think you're right i mean that's exactly been the top thing is what you know what question do we not want to answer next time that we you know we could have done this time and uh so i think the number one thing is looking at all of our systems that need to come up uh even the elevator or mechanicals everything uh that we can get up onto the first floor and out of the basement as possible and and then what might be left the boilers and things like that how we can harden and protect them even you know better than we have knowing that that's imperfect but um and so then so i think this the general assumption without without having done any design is that the best place for all those mechanicals would be you know in the back of what we call the memorial room now you know so that room you know there's our already closet there that has all our computer equipment which was moved up um to avoid the situation so thank goodness for that uh but you know a tremendous picture like that front going all the way across the back of that room with all of our other mechanical stuff in the back of there which then makes the council chamber memorial room much smaller uh and i think the next consideration would be to probably convert that to offices so that we have no offices downstairs um and um so with computers desks personal materials files all you know those kind of important things that that we lost um and you know probably having some form of you know meeting spaces community spaces those kind of things in the basement if you go through it now with the walls down it's a pretty large space uh so you know i think part of it is what and do we put the offices back where they came from or do we you know is our way to make our functions more efficient as we is everybody's out if we move everybody back into a different place maybe there's a better way to do it but uh but i think uh you know i i think our general thinking is not to have anything of huge value in the basement meeting space is important of course generally day in day out and you know might be that we would lose some you know thinking about the current council chamber i mean most of the cameras and things are up high uh but maybe the you know it might be the console that runs a video system maybe a tv you know there would be things that could get lost but they might be in the tens of thousands and not hundreds of thousands of dollars and you know meeting table and some chairs versus the kind of actual operational losses that we suffered this time and especially with you know the ability to run things virtually we have it's not ideal but we have a backup you know option so we're really at the front end of this but that's that is what we're thinking and and i think we probably will seek some you know architectural help or something to think about programming and what's needed and then obviously engage the city council this is your building is communities building into what what needs to be there and obviously we need to have a functioning elevator but it needs to have it you know part of the reason it's not functioned now is its mechanical system got flooded and that mechanical system can be on any floor so why keep it in the basement just because that's where it always was so those are the kind of things and the generator same same thing so oh lauren thank you um yeah i just wanted to uh throw out an uh idea that i've been thinking about and really coming out of a lot of conversations that i've been having with residents and business owners and a lot of people just spending a lot of time thinking about you know what are we doing right now to develop plans and make sure that we're making our community more resilient to floods and our changing climate um you know i think tonight is a great opportunity to start getting feedback um i am hoping we could create a space um for the community to come together um ideally with an outside facilitator who could help um really start a a process and a conversation in the community you know we've been seeing a lot of ideas a lot of you know how do we build ourselves in a different way and make sure that we're not just rebuilding you know we've got we're talking about city hall right now but you know all the businesses and all the homeowners who are impacted to you know how can we be together working to to create a more resilient community knowing that there will be more floods and so i'm really interested in exploring community conversation with an outside facilitator i've talked to some amazing folks we have such resources in our community who have real expertise in convening this kind of conversation and there's i think a willingness and eagerness and generosity to to partner with us on this and so i'm very interested in exploring this and just wanted to um get councils um kind of feedback on if that kind of initial meeting and potentially leading to a bigger community conversation and process to look at you know real strategies that can be actionable for flood resilience just if there's interest and if so i'm very happy to spearhead some work and bringing some people together to think that through more but just wanted to throw it out well i'll jump in first and just say yes i think this is a great idea i think it's great that you have come up with this lauren i think that lord knows in the next six months we'll have plenty of work to do as a council that if we could also have outside professional facilitators who have who are experienced and and respected in the community i think that would be a tremendous benefit to the city i see some other heads nodding if there are any other council members have any comments to make yeah lauren or sorry sorry donna it's okay you call whoever you're up donna i just wanted to second that and i would hope that we can really ask for volunteers we have a lot of professionals in our community i mean we are cash cash short and so i think it's very appropriate that we can you could ask more than many people in our community who might help facilitate the small groups as well as a large i mean there might be ways to do this whether it's online or in person depending on what kind of spaces we can find in the future dim you did have your hand up a minute ago did you put it down or i'm just gonna say i agree with lauren i think it's a great idea i think it's truly master planning that we need to look ahead and um you know even with city hall i think we just have to have a very open view about how that building will be used in the future um and i know we've got some neat things going there but there's also a lot of great space upstairs and and i think we've got to look openly at how we can use it um maybe city council meetings go upstairs too i mean and so uh yes i i agree as well i i think um i i i welcome the the the idea of getting the getting the community together to come up with a um with hopefully a long list of potential solutions to explore um for both short term but also for a long term i mean i i agree that i i mean i i can't possibly predict uh but i i can't imagine that this won't won't happen again and i don't think that that's acceptable frankly i think we should push for a solution that makes it as unlikely as possible much as they must have done after 1927 um which helped us a lot a hundred years later um so i i don't know if it can be done in the same process but i think we ought to plan not only for the kind of solution that would um would help with things like the the changes we've made in the the river hazard area and so on but also um large-scale um projects that that might actually make this um more unlikely than likely in the future thanks so so carry yeah i also think this is a great idea um i i i like the idea of kind of starting off with a a chance for people to think kind of in a short term because there were you know lots of questions and uh and lots of people have ideas for things that could have been done a little bit differently that like some there was some information that could have come from the state that didn't come from the state or um didn't come quickly enough things like that that i think would be really helpful for us as a city to compile and give that feedback and say this is what would be helpful for the next time this kind of thing happens but then also that ongoing much longer term discussion about resiliency and about how we um you know if we could turn back time and tell the people who first started building along the river in Montpelier if we could tell them maybe you want to move back a little bit and not build right by the river but we can't do that so and we're not going to move downtown Montpelier somewhere else so then what can we do though rather than just um hoping it doesn't happen again or scrambling around again the next time so so i love this idea thank you Lauren for for bringing it up and i'm happy to support in whatever way i can okay thanks bill i know we kind of interrupted in the middle of your presentation but i also see some some community members hands up and so i'll start calling on them because i think they're probably interested in this topic too starting with linda young hi i'm linda young i live over on winter street and i have a question about the debris pickup um and this is not an indictment in any way just a genuine question um i went over to barry last wednesday to support their farmers market and was stunned by how clean the downtown looked what drove right down main street there was one dumpster and otherwise everything was just completely clean which was a stark contrast obviously to what we were looking at um so i'm just curious what what how did we end up in that position was it just the difference in degree in what we were experiencing in our downtown or um a difference in our what our contractors were able to do i think it would be helpful to just know how that happened that i've been asked that question a lot and um i went over to barry myself and checked it out um barry's downtown didn't get flooded really at all there was a little bit of water in some basements the massive amount of flooding that happened if you're familiar you know with sort of mr z's down toward the salvation army that area that's where all their flooding is and there they just began their debris removal yesterday so they're actually about a week and a half behind us on that that's where all their debris is that so you're right you go through their core downtown and you think how how did they get so clean so fast they didn't have the mess that we had with the basement type thing so they they had massive flooding they've had a lot of home losses they've got a ton of debris but it's in a different part of town and to you know of a different nature thanks bill caron golden i hope i'm pronouncing your name right it's sharing thank you uh first i just want to i'm i'm a i'm a monthly resident for 36 years and um uh and um retired about a year and a half ago from the vermont department of health i was the director of operations the head of the continuity of operations planning and of course a role with whenever vermont emergency management was open i i want to say that congratulations to the city manager to bill and to the mayor and and council this was a herculean task you had to take on very quickly and coming from one event that might have happened several years ago is not going to be the same event moving forward but um i was wondering a couple of things uh and i was first like to look at the um the uh continuity of operas operations plan of the city not not physically look at it um because there was some conflicting information that came out you know there were so many emails or uh from port forum and then uh other emails that were coming out and there was one i recalled that came out that said that the city management was looking at where they are moving their their various departments too which uh kind of struck me as is there a strong enough continuity of operations plan that type of plan is obviously a little bit different than what you've just been talking about about bringing the community in the continuity of operations plan is where are your three locations that you are have pre-wired that your incident command structure that you're working out of so that you get there quickly and you can begin business of running the city while dealing with the event you might have that i don't know that yeah so i yeah if i may respond to that because so we do have a continuity of operations plan and we actually executed it um you know i think that we we haven't responded to every comment that's been made just because you can't but we actually trained on this exact transition a few years ago where we moved our operations to the senior center uh yeah which is where we've moved them to uh the only difference was is that point we had trained on a like it was a temporary one day type jump as opposed to permanent fix uh so that was what we had to that was the difference so we were we knew where we were going and we were able to do so pretty quickly um it was just getting things like copiers and things like that that were destroyed and we wouldn't preload those uh phone systems and the other major continuity operations was moving our operations center up to the water treatment plant because we had always anticipated that the biggest disaster we would probably deal with would be flooding and it would have packed the middle of our our town and you know as i think i said before we actually moved our dispatch center at four in the morning from uh its downtown location to the water treatment plant along with berries because their plan was to come in with us which they did uh and we did that without missing a single uh E-911 call so all of those plans were in place and executed and had been practiced although it um it's funny now it wasn't funny that night but we had just been talking about actually in august doing another run of practicing them yeah we got a good uh yeah i think you've always got it you've got to kind of always exercise the plan exactly but i'm glad i'm glad i'm glad to hear that that there was because some of the information coming out it did it seemed a little bit um off off but i'm glad there is a plan i i would just suggest you look at a one day a one week a two week and then beyond thanks Donna and Sharon that's there's a signal of one minute left so let's let's finish answering the question the the only other last thing i'd want to say is the vermont college buildings i think we have some opportunities as things arrived to the city that is there a way to negotiate use of those properties in the event of emergency whatever who becomes the new owners if that wasn't done yet okay thank you bill did you have anything you needed to add to what you've already told us i think it was a pretty complete answer no and only no i think i've covered it except to say that we you know we have been in contact with my college throughout this disaster about possibilities and you know they're in a funny situation because they're about to sell so there's i i think uh we we have already had outreach from the new potential new owners and we hope that we can work out again it's that kind of contingency planning with them okay thank you um thank you Melissa Sharon hi thank you um i just wanted to speak in support of Lauren's idea um thank you for bringing that up i would be great to be able to do that even sooner than later if possible um i think it would be really good to re-envision together what this could look like i've been working with Christ Episcopal Church which has really flooded and we're in active conversations last night about do we raise up the flooring right now and we have people coming in to do that and you're just wondering like it you know there's all these questions about where the resources could come in for things like that too and i know that FEMA has some grants you know perhaps that we could access as a city through the public administration program or the flood mitigation assistance program that they were talking to me about when i was meeting with them the other day and so i know we're making a lot of choices i'm sure tim you must be thinking about like well what resources if i did these mitigations in some of my buildings could i get back and reimbursed for because some of that you can and so perhaps also having someone from FEMA or you know the sba program on site to answer questions that might come up during a conversation like that could be really helpful um also i would um thank you so much to all the work folks have been doing in the city it's it's amazing you know Herculean really so thank you for everything that you're doing and i would love to hear what grants you are thinking about applying for i know that is like a second phase you know when i was meeting with FEMA recently they said we're doing the individual phase the business phase through the sba loan and then we're going to have these experts on site that can talk about the the grants that we are going to be helping on the resilience side and that maybe those folks would be more based in water barrier than in the Montpelier burlin area but i'd just love to hear from the city on like what you're thinking about applying for and how we could be considering this in a revisioning um conversation thank you thanks thanks elissa so i i i don't like what so i would say we're trying to understand what's available first of all uh yeah and also there we we you know like a lot of operations we're dividing and conquering so uh obviously we're trying to get our own city operations and the general community put back together and provide that kind of logistic support on the ground and making sure that we're tracking everything we're doing so we can be you know reimbursed for every nickel we can get back from fema mike and his department mike miller planning department are already starting to think about the long-term funding and grants and opportunities and i think you know i just want to add by the way that from staff perspective we are 100 on board with the the proposal of laura i think it'd be great to have a community conversation about you know if we're gonna if we have big changes people need to be on board with them so rather than have the city manager and the city council for something down people's throats i think having having a big buy-in about how we go in the future and if we're going to invest local resources what that looks like so all in on that and i um so mike do you want to weigh in on funding what we know right now yeah i guess the best i can say at this point josh your own has been um doing most of the homework on this there are there are some because we have a hazard mitigation plan there's some hazard mitigation funds that can also help uh there's uh there's what we call brick funding there is fma funding so we're looking at a whole bunch of options and we have a planning meeting scheduled for tomorrow with staff to kind of start laying out you know you know needs in one column and the grant opportunities and another so we can start understanding where we should direct our efforts first because you know we obviously can't apply for five different grants all at the same time we're going to have to pick which is which is the one that's going to have the best bang for the buck and and make that proposal make that pitch to bill and to you guys that we recommend x then y then z um and and kind of get our education done and then try to get you guys educated on what the options are um but we do recognize fema has a limited amount of uh options for direct assistance and most of the rebuilding going forward if there's going to be financial assistance is going to probably be passed through funds through the planning office um and so we've got um you know we have two buckets we're working on a we've got our regulatory requirements we're trying to make sure we get the message out on what the requirements are that people have to meet for our flood hazard rules and then we've got our program side you know you have to do this and how can we help you do it so we kind of have two hats going at once right now um thank you for that one thing i wanted to add too which might help elissa is that i forgot to put this in my overviews we're also working on uh engaging uh fema consultant you know people that specialize in navigating the way through fema uh right the state has a person a company on contract that we're looking we think we can purchase them through that state contract without having to go through but there are others so we have people that speak the language and know what they're doing and that is reimbursable so meant to put that in your students that's really smart i think um you know i feel like after one one hour conversation i have just enough information to be dangerous and probably not fully accurate and so having folks on hand who are much more expert on this is really would be great and i guess just one thing that i took away from the conversation and just any business owners might also have as a takeaway is that some of these rebuilding if you do rebuild in a more resilient way there is the possibility that you can get reimbursed for that later through some of the city funding should you get those types of grants i know a bunch of that's up in the air but that was very so obviously we all need to be keeping our receipts and you know making the decisions but there is some incentive to not just build back in the same way it seems to me do you think that's fair to say was that a yes bill i hope so i think you know i think my personal view and this isn't necessarily you know i i don't i can't i don't have enough knowledge about what FEMA offers but i feel like we as a community need to figure out what is the right way to rebuild and we need to figure out with along with the state how to provide the resources for people to do that you know i think it's got to be more than just you got to do this i think because there's winners and losers no matter you know i mean winners and losers may not have the right way to put it but for example the dams that saved us you know there are properties upstream that got flooded because of those dams right so for every action you have somebody's paying a price for it and you know way back when people lost their homes in order to build those dams so i think as we think about yes we want a resilient community so say for instance we want to fill in basements and raise things up you know building owners and business owners are going to bear those costs and you know maybe lose you know i'm looking at city hall we're going to move all these things upstairs great we're going to lose a whole bunch of space in one of our buildings well that's great we're not leasing it by the square foot but if you are that's an issue so how do you assist people with doing that in a way that's you know helping our community sustain itself in the long run and still making the right decisions and i think that's where our community you know conversation needs to happen to get to a place where everyone you know there's not sort of one side pointing one group of people point to another group say here you fix it tim it looked like you had a response specifically to something mic was saying so i'm going to call on you now yeah i'm struggling with the the the two directions of the conversation one is this you know planning for resiliency you know looking forward really giving it deliberate thought and trying to create positive results and support property owners to improve properties to make them safer and have better longevity for the future and then i look at the communications coming out from the city right now and from mic's office and it's really kind of heavy-handed it's causing a lot of people a lot of stress anxiety and it just doesn't feel right to me because i you're presenting things or we're presenting things to the city government is if they're edicts and you have to move everything up right now we're in the middle of a crisis people are spending huge amounts of their money and resources just to try to stabilize these systems that need to be moved up electrical systems heating systems all that we're working on it it takes time and a lot of money and it needs to be done deliberately not need your right now or in the middle of a crisis and and i think these communications i have friends who are really stressing because they just need to fix a furnace and their heating person shows up and says gosh the city's saying we have to move it upstairs is that true so the answer is is yes that's why we have the we're talking about temporary and permanent fixes in some cases we have people who are making permanent changes and they only want to spend the money once so they're like i've got a limited amount of money i don't want to spend something to make a temporary fix so that way next year i have to make a permanent fix i would rather make the permanent fix now so what we're trying to do is to get the word out that the the answer is all all of these temporary fixes the permanent fix is the utilities and when we say utilities we're referring to like your electric panels your furnace um tying down tanks so if you if you had a tank whether it's propane or an oil tank that got dislodged that's going to require an engineer certificate these are just some of the the major things that have occurred that people are going to need to be aware of so they don't make a quick fix and spend some money and then have to redo and lose some money and in some cases the answer is i got to do a temporary fix now you know i'll have to spend 500 now to spend a thousand dollars later because i don't just am not ready to make that thousand dollars now but the flood hazard rules the flood hazard rules are very they're they're very strict and they've come down um because so many people in so many communities this isn't this isn't um directed at anyone in Montpelier this is nationally so many communities simply go through and say i got to get back on my feet i'm just going to fix things and then they never get around to making those other repairs and moving those things up um and then by the time these programs come it's it's not available that's why FEMA has been continuing to tighten the regulatory rules to try to get more and more of these things moved up at the time that they happened um and so that's why you know we're in a tough spot we're trying to work with people to let them know make the temporary repairs we don't want anyone losing their house because they don't have electricity fix the panel get the electricity um we're trying to get in touch with the hardest hit because those are the ones who really have some hard decisions to make um but the people who have water in their basement and need to work on on moving those up eventually um you know the state has told us uh you know temporary should be about six months our office is saying there's no way that would ever happen so we're already looking at what's probably going to be one to two years and it may be like a one year with a renewable automatically to two years because we've got a we've got to still follow the nfip rules so we're trying to walk a line between what nfip is telling us we have to do and how we can kind of get there it in the right amount of time so we're trying to walk a line and that's what we're trying to do but we want people to know eventually things have to get moved up if there are unique cases and we know there are going to be unique cases um we're going to have to have we have a process and we're going to have to go through that process with individual homeowners um people have already told us hey if you've got a if you're a big commercial building if you've got a steam boiler in your basement you can't elevate that it operates on gravity there's no way to move that and we've got to work with you um and we work with people different times different ways uh the sewer plant had a flood issue um two years ago we got a waiver for them because their pumps were going to be below flood stage but they have to be below flood stage so FEMA we worked through the state and they approved it they just um Kurt and the people at the water plant they actually have extra or the sewer plant they actually have extra pumps on site so they're allowed to keep this stuff below floodplain even though you normally wouldn't so we work with people to come up with a solution but if you can meet the rules we can issue the permit you come in you apply we issue the permit in 24 to 48 hours you've got your permit you're ready to go if you need special considerations we need more time to work with the state about whether that special consideration is okay under NFIP or not a couple things just to reply um NFIP for people who don't know it's national flood insurance program and basically um so these are federal government agencies rules that are coming down they're not my clear ordinances they're not state laws not even federal laws they're in agencies rules um that they seem to be imposing the message from the city right now that i'm seeing Mike still is you have to change i mean you have to move them up it doesn't clearly tell people they have an option for a short term fix maybe i'm missing something but what i've been reading is pretty strong and that's really causing some tough reactions in the community i think the reality of doing this work we've already started investigating it we had been in some cases before this flood and what it's going to take to get the permits i've been told right now for one building we've got that the electrician submits the permit the state will maybe get to it within a month um from then on the electricians have to order the hardware which is not readily available so yeah you are right that the six month timeline is absolute dreamland it just it needs it needs a lot of thought and a lot of work and i think we have to help people through this right now our approach with making people go in and get permits for everything they're doing to keep their buildings running it's just it's punitive and i gotta tell you i don't have time for it i'm dealing with insurance adjusters and contractors and i stopped to make a living too um and to add city permits to that list just feels really bad to me i don't think it's the right way to go well the permits the city permits have no fees i i don't know if you're at the last council i don't know if you were there at the last council meeting but the council has waived the fees so there are no city fees other than a recording fee um that's the only fee that you'll pay um for any of the ones well we recognize it takes a lot of time tim because okay i see a couple of other council members hands up that i want to get to carry and then sell sorry uh so as we were sitting down to this meeting here in our dining room our neighbors came and knocked on the door and they said we heard that everyone's going to be required in the entire city to move their furnace up out of their basement is that true and i said i haven't heard anything about that so now i'm wondering did i steer my neighbors astray and i have not gotten the communication that tim has gotten so this is all new to me and um we need we need some clarification and people have already made repairs so it's not a matter of um deciding whether you're going to make the long-term repair the short-term repair people have already made repairs and haven't had a chance to even do that assessment of do i want to do the short term or the long term because they haven't heard anything about what the requirements are so we need we need some clarification and needs to go out to everybody absolutely immediately i know we've been we've been working with um and unfortunately the the nature of this has been that there's been a lot of these public notices um but i know evelyn has been doing and putting out a number of notices on this we were just talking today about getting another one back out um on a more regular basis so we can keep reminding people because a lot of people have had their heads down just working on stuff and we got to keep getting the message out and that was a conversation we had with evelyn today so um i get that so there there are distinctions and i will say this for anyone here and if you if you have anyone and they have any questions emailing audra brown a brown at montpelier-vt.org um not everything and this is why it makes it so hard to try to condense something and then it's complicated so if anyone has questions if you email audra she will get back to you in writing with the with the response and the best part of that is that you have evidence of what was said and they and we have evidence of what was said and it works well if somebody is repairing something there's a distinction between repair and replace if you're repairing something it does not need to be elevated if it's replaced it does so a lot of what we've been telling people is you know if you're going to do a temporary repair go ahead and do it that's that's not going to be as as big of an uh of an issue but if you're going to if somebody's come in to say that furnace has got to go and we got to put a new furnace in the new furnace has to be elevated to the next floor um and uh you know the electrical panels you know there's only so many electricians electrical panels have to get moved up that's really that's the number one safety issue um the big issue about the furnaces is is losing it if we get a ice jam electric panels people can die from electric panels underwater so that's our big one we want to make sure we get the electric panels up we want to make sure we get those furnaces moved up so that way if we've got flooded in in january because of an ice jam um there are three hundred and seventy five buildings in the flood plain um if if it's a hundred year flood event which is about what we had there's three hundred and seventy five buildings um and that's a lot of a lot of stuff that has to get fixed and a lot of um potential damage if this happens in the winter thanks uh sal then Donna and then i want to get back to members of the public uh i just wanted to say that i i agree with both Mike and Tim i think like for example that distinction you just made Mike about repair versus replace is in the language but it isn't really clear to people i don't think i think you need to call things like that out i think a lot of people don't know where the river hazard area is they need a map and i think they are unclear about what FEMA will and will not reimburse whether they'll reimburse a short term fix and then also uh like if you fix your electrical panel today to get get it up and running and then you move it upstairs six months from now are they uh paying for one and not the other how does it work so there are a lot of questions like that and i won't be able to help with any of the FEMA stuff um the what they reimburse and what um because there are many avenues of getting FEMA assistance if you have insurance then you're going to have to follow what the insurance rules are if you've got the the individual assistance then that's going to be a different set of rules and i i just am not familiar enough with those rules that is always always something i'll direct people talk to FEMA if you need FEMA advice if you have permit advice absolutely email our our office it's it's what we do doesn't cost anything to ask us a question it's just time i just want to interject here too we actually did put in a formal request uh to have FEMA representatives at this meeting tonight uh and they were not able to do so because there's a statewide meeting with the congressional delegation on zoom and the governor and so they are on that but they they did say perhaps at a future some future forum they could participate but we we knew we would not be able to answer FEMA questions that we wanted to have someone here so it wasn't for lack of trying well i have sort of three points one is bill is there any staff available to help people with the FEMA process it is overwhelming and very intimidating and so i don't know if they're going to have people here or if we can have some staff to help people because they say you know they say register but then you've got to do all the stuff online and it's and i feel i've heard from people being confused so just ask if that's possible um the problem is that you don't understand it really a lot better than either so so i you know we've been trying not to give people bad advice um and and you know speak for FEMA because you know people will then say well you know Bill Fraser or Mike Miller or Kelly Murphy told me this and that didn't work um so yeah we're trying to steer them to the right people so having said that you know we did ask for FEMA representatives to be at the hub and they have been this week and there's been a steady stream of people talking to them i don't know how that's going they are opening their disaster recovery center for at least 30 days at the rec center which that's what it's for is to provide you know an on-the-ground resource for people as opposed to just going online you know i think the first wave of people was going door to door trying to assess what the damage was and have initial conversations so again i'm gonna try to apologize or speak for FEMA but i do know that they are bringing more resources into the community to try to work with people and that's fine i did get an email saying FEMA was going to be at the tent this week and i did remind people that have been in touch with me to go it's good to hear that they're also going to be at the rec center for the next 30 days um my other question was dealing with uh DP i've gotten so many goals and i'll go to mics um somewhere i read that you could do repairs and get your permit after the fact you didn't mention that is that still true for a repair not a replacement yeah i mean we're we're kind of getting out of the emergency phase at this point so we're trying to encourage people at this point um during the emergency phase we didn't want anybody saying you know be concerned about saying oh my gosh maybe i shouldn't have the electrician fix my electricity i'm just going to have to move into a hotel until i can get my permits we want people to say no if you need to get electricity back in your house you get electricity back in your house and we will deal with your permits later um okay and do do your temporary fixes but at the same time we were trying to get this information out and apparently not not clear enough or and maybe a little too forceful about making sure people knew eventually these things got to go up go get elevated um that's just one of the requirements and um so we're trying to do a better job with our communications going forward we will yeah uh luckily i understood that piece between repair and replacement but it is i mean i think we're just overwhelmed so thank you for keep making it clear clarifications and it was tough it was tough not having an office for you know we lost for people who didn't know we had 41 inches in the planning office and so we lost uh i had a computer uh and i think one other person had a computer but we had no phones no desks no pens papers no phones um and two computers and we didn't really get set up for about seven days for most of the time we would have been right out right away to try to to get the word out but we were kind of playing a little bit from behind for a bit and uh it didn't help when we rushed the messaging it got a little maybe got a little too uh didn't take the the time necessary to make sure we had vetted that to make sure it had the right intent um yeah well so you can just keep putting it out and a little softer that's good now this maybe DPW um there's a lovely chart that came with one of the DPW newsletters about separating your debris and it talks about appliances and then electronics and then household hazard so they have literally like when i was helping with some people with the boomer they had to move their stuff from underneath the trees then we brought down the paints but when i read this chart it would say appliances are coming next so that's another schedule of the boomer going around and just doing appliances and then another time they'll go around and just do electronics and then hazardous is that how it's going to flow um deferred a DPW right i'm not sure they're going to be using the big the big rigs for those things i think they're you know for example we've done a lot of separation and we've been collecting a lot of that next to city hall there's a huge amount of paint cans and saw central vermont solid waste management district today loading all the paint stuff and taking those away so that was separate than the the big company that's doing the debris removal so i think there's several but uh if if DPW wants to actually say something that they know that'd be even better my understanding is that the appliances will be picked up separately um i think like bill said the smaller items won't likely won't be you know done by the large truck there there's going to be kind of a cleanup sweep there's areas where there's very small amount of trash sort of like out on the outskirts of town along the north branch there's a property out near google hills that's a minor flooding so i think for the smaller items it will be a different type of pickup but i do believe they will be doing a separate run for the they call it white goods which is the appliances you know we have these small streets i think of the one that goes by mom that you're in i think took a lot of their wood and debris and they put it out but decided that little street that's off of main street that's sort of their driveway but actually i think has a street name or did uh wasn't it brown street at one point it's actually a private street brown street it's private okay well not their stuff brown street is not private barred street is the private street that's the one you're talking okay uh barred street thank you so i don't know that me if the boomer's going to go there are they going to hit some of those little side streets i'm just a little worried they'll get missed yeah no so in the areas that are too tight for the the boom truck um dpw is actually moving the debris out closer to the right away on the bigger street where we where they can access it so we will get it it's just uh it might take a second move okay i just i just i've got they asked me and so i just wanted to check thank you thank you very much thanks kirk thanks donor i'd like to move back to members of the public who have their hands up and i see conard kennedy first thanks jack uh sorry i'm having internet issues so i can't have my camera um i was wearing my hat coming into this as a resident but wearing my other day job hat uh working in the legislature i think everyone on the call to know that we know there's a lack of resources for communities across vermont and we are working to make sure that there are individuals that can support um come in and support towns municipalities and cities to navigate a lot of these tricky challenges um the one i showed up tonight for is i'm just curious about the housing thing i know sharon brought it up earlier and wondering why the state college or the vhf a has taken so long i think many of us might have seen the article yesterday that there are 300 to 400 displaced people out of berry and then within our own city we're going to see people that were fine um on second or third floors but there needs to be work done and so they need a place to go for you know a week two weeks or a month and if we've had any thoughts and what else we as a community can do to like sort of bang that door to make sure that this dorm that has 150 beds can be available for folks bill do we have uh i'd refer to that question to vermont college and let them respond to that there's space there um i think i understand there's been some conversations and i'm not sure what their position is at the moment i think it's a very good point connor um stan brinkerhoff thanks jack uh stan brinkerhoff main street um mike i i spoke with your office early on when some of that news you know first came out around lifting utilities um and also you've spent two weeks in homes cleaning basements ripping out walls uh and spoke with a number of h-fax folk and electrical electricians who who really had no knowledge uh they even needed permits in some cases uh they they considered their work to be you know repair work even if a panel was being replaced um and i i have seen the press release you know thank you for for putting that out i saw it in the bridge i saw it in some emails and i i think i read it differently than maybe tim did but also tim was on some of my early emails when there was a bunch of confusion um it it does seem like now is the time we you know we have a list of addresses that were impacted you know my player live has the ones asked for help uh we know the ones that have trash out front um i don't know to what extent the city can make you know a recovery guide for folks that's short and visual and and isn't scary but but folks do need to know that they need to move those things up and if you're moving an electrical panel up now now is the time when your walls are open when your floors are open right a lot of these homes have their floors removed it is significantly cheaper to move an electrical panel now or replace a furnace with something that fits better now than than to replace it now not knowing you need to then replace it in the future so i would implore the city to more actively not just publish fresh releases and put things on front page form but but either use volunteers or individually just go door to door to the impacted houses and and help people navigate an expensive time of their lives thank you thanks Tim um you know we have response to that mic or just take that for what it's yeah no the recovery guide is a good idea and uh it's understandable the in general the the plumbing which is the hvac and furnace and electricians we don't do um those permits but because we've got the flood hazard rules uh they come in so generally they don't need to be doing that so it is from their standpoint they're not they're not wrong um usually it doesn't come into a come into effect on them this is one of the few times that it does come into effect on them um and the state electrician and the state plumbers are trying to get the word out from from above to let people know that these are actually the requirements as they apply through fema and fip so yeah and the recovery guide is an excellent idea we're as i said we have a meeting tomorrow um and i'm going to bring that up as as one of the options for us to to consider thanks mike thanks and if i can help it all let me know christie binzen oh i thought we had you there for a moment sorry sorry in and out really fast hi i'm christie binzen i live over on franklin street um my question circles back to this conversation about moving furnaces and utilities up into the main floor of your house and one question one part of that question is about what financial resources will be available to help people do that and the other part of the question is just the logistical practicalities like is everyone's house going to accommodate something like that and how do we imagine that happening so thank you for taking my question yeah it's a good question uh it's it's going to be a challenge and it's going to be a case um a case by case as we help um individuals as we've had some conversations with people so far we've talked about um potentially putting a small addition on the back of a house um and really let me back up a half step to say the requirement is it has to be two feet above the base flood elevation so in certain places that's going to that's going to differ as to you know in some cases elevating it a little bit in the basement may get too high enough um but for the most part if you've got flooding in the basement that flooded your furnace um chances are good the base flood elevation is higher than that so that's why we say the first floor um a lot of older furnaces are very big many of the modern ones are are smaller they're much more compact so uh you know uh trying to fit them into you know taking away a half a closet um you know we talked to some large commercial you know if you have a big building and you've got uh 12 apartments in it then you know that may mean going from a three bedroom to a two bedroom for one of the units on the first floor and taking a bedroom or losing an apartment and we don't really want to be doing that but as we look at the other equation of we want to be more resilient how can we be more resilient um and one of the things is all of the buildings that have been built over the past 15 years 20 years 30 years that have been built to flood standards none of them suffered any damage in this flood so if you want to know how can we be more resilient the answer is meeting flood codes but it's expensive and that gets to your second point how do we help people do that um and obviously if we knew this flood was coming in July we would have been preparing last year to make sure we had grants ready for people but we we've got to kind of work on the fly now to say all right here are the rules and if everybody does this and everybody's supposed to do this we're going to be a much more resilient community coming out of this than we did coming into it we will be much more resilient but we've got to try to find and that's uh goes to the question that was earlier what about you know these fma i mean if there's something on emergency emergency management there's certainly alphabet soup so um of grants and opportunities and we are currently just breeding 600 page things just to understand is this is this eligible will this help us how can we how can we use this tool to bring some additional resources but it's going to take time even if we find a great grant we might not get the money to the city until next year um so that's why we're trying to see maybe some of these things are reimbursable after the fact somebody made that point i don't know it may be reimbursable under this grant not under this grant so maybe we have to consider that's a better grant um and we'll we will look at that we know and we're trying to get if and here's another request out to the public if you've got um numbers and estimates if you can get them to my office we would love to have them because as we communicate to people they're like what's it going to cost to raise an electrical panel in a house i don't know uh but if people as people get us information we can then turn around and give that information back to say well we've seen a range from this to this depending on what your house is how big your house is how much you know obviously a eight unit building is going to have a bigger electrical panel than a single family home um we we want we would love to have information if you have information get it to us but we we were going to get to that down the line we want to make sure we use this first time right now to get people as tim had pointed out we got to do a better job getting information on the permits out but eventually we want to get we want to get these cost estimates because it helps us get information back to you and it helps us know how much money do we need to apply for at the federal government um because we need to be able to tell the federal federal government every electrical panel is going to cost x thousand dollars um and we have this many panels that need to be moved and um this is how much money we need to to make our community more resilient um and so i hope that kind of gets around to answering the question there thanks mike um while you were while i was hearing a bunch of answers i i got a text from a legislature saying what is taking so long to open state street in front of the capital so i promised that i would ask um well some of it is they've asked us the state has asked us to keep it closed while they do repair so um they may want to ask bgs that question and not us um but part of you know because they have those big heavy equipment and major things down there so they've asked us if we would keep it closed oh that's good to know thanks um let's see going to people who have not spoken yet uh barberina hi there um i have a few quick related questions just has the city done a canvas or a survey of how many people lost their housing during the flood do we have any numbers i've talked to rick de angeles and i've talked to connor kasey and i've heard some pretty high numbers but i wonder if the city had gone door to door to find out how many families are currently have lost their housing all right does anyone have an answer to that i don't know if we go back door to door we've we've operated off of information that's been turned over to us from those individuals or building owners that reported displaced housing and do we have a total you could say also that we're working on compiling that yeah that is somewhere on um i yeah i would want to give a number because i think it is incomplete uh so i we're aware of one major apartment building that everybody was displaced in um and a couple people that were hit some people that were moved but we don't have a total number according to rick de angeles there are dozens of families who are trying to navigate camping and there are increasing conflicts with landowners and so that's a so there's a different issue there um so there are people that have been displaced as a result of the state's hotel programs no this is because of the flood people have been displaced because of the residents one pillar your residence all right well i'm going to be seeing rick tomorrow so i will ask follow up with that because that is not information we have but a question that i had given that the city owns the elks club property and because rick said there's increasing conflict between people who are camping and property owners whether the city could open up that for sanctioned camping and maybe ask the national guard to build 20 outhouses so that people add sanitation and whether people could access potable water from the elks club building it just feels like it's it's a pretty challenging summer to be camping i've done a lot of camping and this is not the summer i would choose to camp in especially not having access to reliable potable water sanitation and my understanding is that elected officials even municipal ones under these kind of natural disasters have emergency powers where they can ask for things from the national guard you need to pay for them but like getting a bunch of outhouses built requesting camp stoves and giving people access to potable water just feels like in this kind of a humanitarian crisis that might be a strategic and a compassionate thing to do so um it's a great idea like i said i'm meeting with rick about shelter emergency shelter uh to either tomorrow or friday and get on that you know we the city does have a camping policy uh that we follow and we are we have some people that are already camping up there uh so uh those are good suggestions we'll follow up on thank you thanks barbarina um i want to look over the list to see if there's anyone who hasn't spoken yet uh before i go back to people who have and i'm not seeing anyone so i'll go back to connor hi thanks jack i'm sorry i i cut out a little bit so maybe you covered this but i just think um it's one of those times where we have to be creative and nimble find all solutions um and what barbarina just said and what others have said like we have people that need to find housing temporarily and the fact that we have a space at the top of the hill that is available and is usable i think we should use every ounce of our energy to try to make that happen and i i gotta be i gotta say like it's stunning to me that we haven't made that happen yet so if we need legislative action state action like we have people that need housing and we got to make that happen it it's it's just unfathomable to me that we're going to send people to the berry auditorium when they just need temporary housing but again thank you for all you do you guys are working overtime but we have a solution and it's right next door thanks kasey whiteley thanks um i just i just want to second what barbarina and and uh connor have just said that you know between the dorm space up at the college and and this new property that we have i i mean great we have a camping policy but this is a catastrophe and we need to we need to respond to it um and then i just wanted to so i wanted to support that that point of view uh strongly i just want to go back to what mike was saying about everybody moving their utilities upstairs um you know i i i lost i live in an 1880s house on st paul street and i lost my hot water i lost my furnace and honestly i wanted some hot water i didn't want to wait for uh anything to be moved upstairs and i didn't even know about that until tonight's meeting so i've already installed a hot water heater that i didn't that's not as nearly as good as the one i lost and um so i and i'm on a i'm on a fixed income so when you're talking about these major huge like home home improvements and changes and like the cost of wiring to move elect electrical boxes and things like that it's like i don't know i i there's no way i could afford to do any of that and i honestly have to say that so i just want to put that into the hopper thanks thanks um all right on our agenda i i want to give people plenty of time to to come in with any uh comments or questions they may have that have not been addressed part of what we have on our agenda for tonight is the frequently asked questions page i don't think we need to go over uh what's in that document but i think we do want to make sure that everybody uh watching and everyone in the city knows that we have a page on the city it's a web page that addresses a whole bunch of questions um some of which have probably come up tonight and others which have not but have been asked by a lot of people and uh and that's a living document that things get added to it as we find out there are more questions being uh being asked yeah just one quick question that's occurred to me listening is so the whole cleanup operation is happening and thanks to those guys who are out working in this heat doing that it's awful work and they're doing an incredible job but how long will this go on i guess is my question and it seems like people are starting to abuse it for starting to see trash coming in from outside the player or people are just dumping off sadly so i think we're gonna have to define a limit say we picked up once in front of your property or that's it but i think we have to start telling people when it's gonna end because they're gonna keep putting things out just thinking it's gonna magically disappear yes i can i can address that tim so generally there's a three pass policy for these female eligibility on removal and um we've just we're kind of still in first pass and we do plan to message um that that you know there is going to be a cutoff date we're looking at um maybe two weeks uh remaining of debris removal um so yeah we do plan to message that and and there is going to be a defensive sort of cutoff date um associated with that and to Donna's point like the white goods you know i expect they will also be taking second pass of construction debris removal at the same time you know there's two bays in those trucks so one will be white goods the appliances and either will be very likely but we do plan to message that soon and we'll get that out thank you uh bill yeah thanks i want to go back to the housing question that a couple people raised and i'm gonna probably give unpopular responses to this but i think it's fair um the berry opera have a very obvious berry auditorium is the red cross and fema funded shelter for our region they have cots they have medical they have food they have mental health services they're able to take pets um there people do not need to camp they can go to the berry auditorium and get those basic supplies i understand it's not immapiliar but there is a whole support network around that and that is what has is designated as so these are red cross centers are set up on regional bases and so the berry odd is the regional uh center for these kind of things so it's the whole washington county area and fema and everyone says that's what they're going to pay for they're not going to pay for additional sites secondly um i don't really i've been reluctant to speak for vermont college but we have talked to them about this and it's not that they're not willing to have it but understandably they'd like to get paid because they usually get paid for rooms and they want to know how we are going we or whoever does it is going to provide basic services including cleaning including managing the population that's in there including providing support services to them and they have said that if somebody can provide can present all of that to them they will consider it at the same time they're selling their property to somebody else so they're very concerned about the condition that it be sold as so it's you know it's in a strange situation so they're not refusing to do it but they are asking for uh understanding how how things are going to work their entire facilities people are in colorado right now they're not there to manage their own facilities so they're it's not as simple as simply saying we are going to take their private property and put 150 people in it and i can understand that people don't like that and it is frustrating but there are others there are other things along with it so i get it and we can certainly will take a look at what we can do at our own site but we are told over and over and over again by people you know depending on the nature of the shelters that's being provided that you need to have more support services than just a campground for people so um and and as i've we've talked the city staff uh is really full out on sort of flood recovery right now and don't have anywhere with all work or money to do this so that is why things are the way they are um and again there is the last i knew and i haven't checked this week there was still yamble capacity at berry odd to take more people so uh there there is a safe place for people to go you know barbara in a very briefly please i i don't know what the capacity is but i talked to rick two days ago and there were 200 households in the berry auditorium two days ago and that's a whole lot so just i guess you have more recent information than i have so i will check on that for sure right and i understand the complexities with the college the other thing that occurred to me is we have a bunch of school buildings i mean it's not designated shelters but the city owns them they've got sanitation they've got potable water they've got places for people to plug in their phones i'm just feeling for people who lost everything on the 10th and the 11th and is there anything the city can do i mean i'm so grateful for the incredible volunteerism to help our businesses but i'm hearing about families who are just in desperate desperate situations and if we do have properties i guess just wondering is there a way that we can as a city help and just a friend of mine interfaces with fema a lot and just after katrina fema paid for people to stay on cruise ships i mean just they have paid a lot of money and if the berry auditorium is a capacity is there a way we can think outside the box to get people at least potable water at least sanitation at least a place to charge phones and we have heard that we have heard that femo under you know depending on again this is where an individual has to talk to fema they may put them in hotel rooms too that there is that there are programs again we don't control what fema does but we are trying to work with them to do what we can i just i really want to just address the issue that there was sort of a suggestion that there was some lack of effort or a lack of willingness on vermont college's part to just take people and i wanted to be clear that there's more complexity to that and that the the funding mechanism is really built around the berry odd and this whole support network so that was my main point but if if they're up to 200 households then maybe they are a capacity that is that is news to me bill i can tell you that i just got a text from someone saying that he had heard that the berry auditorium is going to be closing within days so i think that's something that we really need to be looking into i know you're going to be talking to rick tomorrow so that's just part of part of your conversation i'm sure okay just the updated info i just got from the police chief was that there were 22 people in the auditorium last night so i think we need to ground truth some facts as well and uh this is this is uh bob gallons i just talked with one of the directors up there they are still open and they have plenty of room at the berry auditorium tonight thanks chief um folks i there is a lot that we're going to be dealing with over the coming months and and so i i don't want to prematurely cut off this discussion but i also know that this is far from the last conversation we're going to have on this topic so unless there's something else i'll move along and laura i see your hand up yeah just a couple quick things um one just appreciate i mean i know the city has spent you know we've all spent a lot of time on homelessness and so just encourage the the staff and obviously i'm happy to help myself too in any way of just thinking creatively and trying to pursue and you know even having things lined up in case the berry auditorium closes and we still have needs and so on so um and you know there might be a wave given what we're hearing of some other reports of like households and berry and stuff so um just just urge us to really pursue that as i'm hearing that city staff is saying that they will um and happy to help um also just wanted to note um i hope part of the conversation i and i don't know what the city staff are putting out from um about like heating systems and stuff there are options like heat pumps that do not mean you have to change the layout of your um you know upstairs or build an addition on your house um so i i just hope that there's information there's incentives there's zero upfront cost financing options there are like a huge amount of effort the state is putting into helping people transition to cleaner technologies you know you've torn out your house maybe it's a great time to weatherize and there's there's like if you're low income you can get free weatherization services there might be a long wait time for that but anyway there's there are a lot of programs there's a lot of state incentive so i just hope that somehow we're connecting those dots for people too um so we're not like locking in a bunch of new fossil fuel systems at a time that we're trying to get off of them as we're dealing with a climate fueled emergency um and lastly just it was great to hear the interest in the community process and resilience so i will follow up um about that um and just wanted to um thank one of the people who was helping me think that through um some ideas with was paul castello who's an amazing community resource i just wanted to thank him for um helping me uh think through some ideas and i'm going to be following up with him and many others so look out for that thanks paul was on the meeting earlier uh and is no longer here i know there there are a lot of people at at the meeting but that's that's what we have now i think we from now we can go right to council reports starting at donna's end of the horseshoe okay well i'm going to start with some good news from a college of fine arts they responded a hundred percent willing to let the lost nation theater move their rehearsal to their building noble hall they give them plenty of rehearsal space plus the kitchen dining room they were just so gracious to let them move in when the theater no longer had access to the city hall and likewise berry opera house uh it did cost them a little bit but they made a deal with the theater to allow them to perform two shows of adam's family this past weekend and again it was community working together and i i think when the situation is right people want to help when they can't but we can't all blindly help or we'd all have people in our own homes so there's your limitations so i just hope you consider those and recognize the good deeds we do even when we can't do everything and just thanks to everybody for being here thank you thanks donna uh kary um i just want to say thanks to um the debris removal folks for coming down st paul street today and cleaning up st paul street we were we were prepared to wait a long time and it's very nice to have the trash cleared away three so um well i i just um i guess i i just want to say that i appreciate the uh what i heard today from the city about their appreciation for the sort of pickle that people are in particularly financially with the kinds of replacements and repairs that they may need to make um i hope we pursue that vigorously i wonder if we can do more along the lines of the things lauren was talking about to help people realize that it's an ideal time to weather eyes and and maybe replace um fossil fuel technology i mean the the cost unfortunately i think is an obstacle for a lot of people i don't know for what we can do in the short term but added to our list of grant research to do might be um some energy related stuff since we still have a few months uh before people are going to need that i i hope um so thanks for all of that thanks so tim echo the tone of comments with thank you it's it's been an amazing experience for us i mean people we don't even know coming into our house and carrying muck out of the basement in sheet rock pales just the outreach of people helping people in this town is is astounding and gratifying and um yeah having one crew member who's on one of our buildings sitting on the steps taking a break one day we just come from a another disaster in florida and said yeah this town is really amazing so i've i've been other places i've never seen a place where people come together like this and and do this so i was kind of neat to hear from a young guy um and also you know it was my role in the mom player foundation i have to say people are also donating their treasure and they're they're they really are donating to help each other to financial donations that are coming in to help the citizens and businesses in mom player really gonna help and it's gonna make it's help us to bring it back so thank you all and and also thank you to the city team you know watching you kind of working in similar circles running around downtown the last two weeks everyone i've seen at every level it's just been incredible um making things happen and helping us get back so cheers thanks tim uh lauren yeah thanks um yeah just just echo that really inspiring all the all the volunteers mom player life has been an amazing partner stepping up and just so much gratitude to go around um the i know that um the one kind of committee updates the energy committee did talk about potentially serving as a resource we recently set up an outreach committee so we might be able to be someone who could help pull together resources on what's available for you know clean energy and efficiency incentives and things like that that people might be able to access so just just sharing that there's some interest in that and we're trying to meet soon to explore how we could potentially be a resource for community members right now as they make decisions about re rebuilding thanks thanks lauren mayors report is is quite quite a bit the same of tremendous gratitude for the for all the work i've been uh meeting down at the hub with the with the manager and department heads and people coordinating the volunteers to talk about well what what are our needs for today what are we going to do what are we going to ask fema and the national guard and all these guys to do and seeing the people coming in and volunteering showing up to pick up shovels and gloves and shovel out people's commercial properties and and homes has been great people coming down unasked to just come down and say well i'm just gonna stand out here for as long as it takes and cook meals for people so that the volunteers who are who are coming down don't have to deal with trying to find find lunch while they're doing it it's just a tremendous outpouring of support people love this community and see why and we've got plenty of work ahead of us but i really appreciate everything that people have done city clerks report i don't have anything okay city managers report it's been it's kind of all you all the time tonight bill but maybe you have more i do have more actually uh just a little bit more on barrier just to close that loop we did our thanks to our folks our public safety staff who reached out while this meeting was going on so we confirmed 22 people in the odd last night and that they are not families but only individuals there were 22 individuals we're not families and they are looking to wind that down because it's there are not that as many people there but they they haven't made a final decision about that yet just to prove that we're not that i am not all cold black heart recognizing that homelessness and shelter is a big thing i'm meeting with rick de angeles and the the team on friday about winter shelter that is still very much on our minds so i will certainly get his take on what the situation is in washington county currently they were almost ready to go with a either a winter or year-round shelter at bethany church and of course they're they're completely flooded out now and i i don't know what kind i haven't been in the basement of that building yet to see what kind of shape it's in so that is also they are talking to us and one one option is the country club road else club site so we are going to be discussing that possibility it's not the best location but given the need and given the circumstances i think we need to be open to that and see what we can work out with them so we're beginning that conversation at least for this winter this week so that is happening shelter is still on our minds even while flood is happening to lauren's question about energy we are advising people to look at energy and specifically downtown businesses we've been reminding them that district heat would remind would be a way for them to get furnaces out of their basements we have at least one interest very interested building owner and potentially others so this is you know while they're ripping their buildings out i mean and and there's a lot of costs while there's cost to hooking up this is a good time for people to consider doing that so if you're talking to commercial building owners and you know tim i know you do this is you know this is a good time and as we all know the more people we can get on the lower the cost is for everybody so it becomes you know a kind of a self propelling success so we're trying to to look at that to bring that to people's attentions lastly i'm not the most popular topic but the grievance process for reappraisals has been moved it is now happening between july 31 and 8 august 4 at the senior center so those hearings were all postponed and will be held of those dates so basic the first week in august that's all i have for now thanks bill great work all of these last couple of weeks i really mean that i'll follow up donna what before the meeting i mentioned to donna that my granddaughter just went to see the adams family play the other day and she told us it was the best play she had ever seen so she was very enthusiastic and with that we can adjourn at 8 46 p.m thank you everybody thank you jack thank you