 meeting. So I'm going to call the meeting to order. And the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. So looking at this agenda, I don't think we have any changes to what's online at this point. Does anyone have any information to the contrary? I printed it off, but I'm not sure it's the one that Cameron sent. She added. The most updated version has additions of possible closure of Langdon Street as well as. I think it was actually I'm not sure what the other one was. It was something up in the consent agenda. Was it? Oh, okay. I got confused with all the additions trying to compare what was added. So thank you. Yep. Okay, any other thoughts on that? Okay, so that objection will consider the agenda approved. Next thing is general business and appearances. So this is an opportunity for any member of the public to comment on any topic that is not otherwise on our agenda. And if you would keep your try to keep your comments to two minutes or less or and also try to keep them relevant, well, I guess this can be anything. But when we get into topics, people can keep their comments relevant to the topic that would be great. Cameron, do you want to unmute everybody? And we can see if there's anyone who would like to make a comment. Everyone should be unmuted if you would make a comment. Anybody like to say anything? Okay, hearing nobody, we will move on then. So the next time is the consent agenda. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? So moved. We got a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Yes, Donna? I'm really pleased about the Green Mountain Fund. I just wished it was more money that we were looking for these repairs and helping with services. Okay, any further comments? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Hi. Opposed? So the consent agenda carries. So we'll move on. So we have an appointment to the homelessness task force. And for that, we had one vacancy and one applicant. And that was Francis Kuzki. And I don't see Francis here. So with that in mind, is anybody like to make a motion? I'll move to a point, Francis Koki to the homelessness task force. Kuzki, yes. I'll second that with a proper pronunciation. Sorry about that, Francis. Okay, so motion and a second. I'll vote for it. She'd be a great addition. Oh, okay. All right. So all in favor, already, sorry, any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you, Francis, for your dedication and time. Okay. So we have an update from the Central Mont Solid Waste Management District on household hazardous waste. And I see Kathleen Gent is here and ready to go. So I will turn it over to you, Kathleen. Thank you, Ann. Thank you all for inviting me to participate in your meeting tonight. As I provided a memo and outlined some of the things that I did want to talk about, but first and foremost, CVSW MD is hard at work on getting a household hazardous waste facility that would be open, will be open year round. And we are still in the planning phase of having such that HHW facility has been an expressed need for a number of years in the district. And with Act 148, the universal recycling law and state plans in place, central Vermont has been seen as having a gap because we are a large region and we haven't had a permanent facility for HHW. So the state recognized that and awarded us a $500,000 grant earlier this year. Our Board of Supervisors has committed $594,000 from our general reserves for the project. There's still a gap of $300,000 approximately, $200,000 and $300,000. And we are looking for grant funding for that right now. So we anticipate having a facility open by spring of 2022. And we still have to purchase property. So we're at the very first step of that project. We're looking at Barry Montpelier, Berlin area, because most of our population in our 19 member district reside in this area. And so we think this is the best area best location for it. Right now, we hold five different seasonal collection events, including one in Montpelier and all likelihood, if we get permanent facility constructed and it's located near Montpelier, we probably will just continue having that special event. We just do want to let you know about that in advance. I also did want to mention, speaking of the seasonal events that due to COVID-19, our contractor had to put all events that they run across the state on hold. And just a couple weeks ago, they announced that we could actually hold the events. So there had been one planned in Berrytown for April that got canceled. We've been able to reschedule that date for August 1. And the Montpelier collection event is scheduled to take place on September 26, barring any unforeseen changes with the pandemic. We expect that both those collection events to happen. So Donna, Donna's on our board of supervisors. Did you have anything you wanted to add? I am just so happy that this Hall of Waste District is at this point where you can be promoting the construction of this facility. Hazardous waste, I think, as most of the counselors know, small amounts are very toxic. So while the amount of material collected may not rival what goes into landfill, it certainly exceeds the environmental damage if it's not properly disposed of. And this gives the district something that it's long wanted to have. So it's amazing that you've managed to take it this far. And I think we should all be looking forward to a successful outcome. Thank you. This is not our first attempt at this facility. But I think we're in a good position for making it happen. I did want to briefly talk about our response to COVID-19. Our office, which is located on Berry Street in Montpelier, is still closed to the public. Staff, a small group of staff do work in the office, but most staff are working remotely. Our additional recyclables collection center, which is in Berry City, which is our recycling center, reopened on May 20th. And we're taking some but not all of the materials. Right now people can bring paint, batteries, bulbs, computers and TV electronics, and food scraps for a donation. There's a much longer list of materials that we take at the ARC. We're hoping to reopen for accepting those materials later in June or possibly July. And when we do, there are some materials that we will no longer be able to take because either the markets no longer exist. It has been a pretty volatile time in the recycling markets or because of COVID-19 related precautions. Certain materials are more related to personal hygiene and we might not be able to take those at that point. We also have been doing curbside sales of compost equipment, and those in the last month have been really well received. We have a couple more dates on our website, CVSWMD.org, and we'll probably schedule additional curbside events because the office isn't open. That's not available for people to pick up compost equipment right in Montpelier, so people will have to travel to our facility and bury, but so far it's been going really smoothly. And we've moved to online platforms for many of our workshops and school programs. And again, our website has a full list of those opportunities as well. Anything that you wanted to add, Donna? Okay. And finally, I really was asked to speak briefly about Act 148 and the ban on food scraps in landfill in particular, as I know that is an important topic to Montpelier officials. Every indication is that the landfill ban for food scraps will go into effect as of July 1st of this year. There has been some testimony taken by the House Natural Resources and the Senate Natural Resources Committees. Some people are advocating that that July 1st deadline be delayed. Others have been advocating that it should stay in place. And in all likelihood, that is going to stay, that date of July 1st is going to stay in place. There is probably one particular COVID-19 related piece of legislation that may come to pass and that is a provision that would allow exemptions for a hauler or a facility that handles solid waste or recyclable bowls or food scraps to get a temporary reprieve from having to collect that particular material. So it is very specific in nature and that has not yet been passed by either House, the Senate Natural Resources has discussed it, looks like they are very interested in that going forward. As far as I know, it has not been discussed by the House and it is really not certain that it will become law, but that is the only change to Act 148 and it is really a variance to allow temporary ceasing of certain types of collections. Other bills that have been traveling through legislature appear to still be in place. So it is a time when my understanding, I am not an expert on the legislature, but is that unless something has bipartisan support, especially in both chambers, it is not going to likely move forward. So things have to be very clearly supported and especially with COVID-19 and the budget, those are priorities right now. Any questions for Kathleen? Yeah, Bill. Kathleen, thank you for this. What is the messaging for residents? We are getting questions. July 1 is a little over a month away. Do people know what they are supposed to be doing for household scraps? Is there going to be a PR campaign in the next? I think it is great that this law is going into effect, but I guess I am concerned and we from the city at least would like to help you or the government for that, but the state, get the word out so that people can know what their expectations are. The state, if not very soon, I guess I expected that by now it might be running, but soon we will see another campaign from the state. There have been some previous in the year and we all recognize that it is confusing, especially when you see editorials and testimony. It is really hard to know if in fact things are going to move forward on July 1. I think the state is going to be very accommodating to try to help residents comply and understand what the requirements are. It is going to probably take a longer process, especially with COVID-19 than any of us would have expected, but if there is something in particular you can suggest that the district or the state do, like I said, there is going to be a campaign very soon from the state. Donna. Kathleen, thank you so much for all this information. I have actually heard state ads saying July 1 food scraps all through the month of May, so I am assuming they are on target until we hear otherwise. Should the city not put that information on our website? That unless we hear otherwise, we are expecting July 1 to be the effective date? My suggestion would be yes, please do that. The state of representatives, especially in the past couple of weeks, have been more and more certain that it is going to take place. What is there already published or prepared guideline for telling people what to do and how to do it? I mean, I know we are running to the city too. We tell people six months in advance, we give them all this information, and so suddenly it is a week or two before, then all of a sudden, what am I supposed to do? How can we help people know what they need, how do they do it, who does what, what is it going to cost them? Well, the cost might vary depending on where you live, but certainly our website lists all the top people have, and I will see if there is a link to something on the state website or some material that I can send to Bill and distribute from there. Yeah, I had thought that there was a one-stop, clear, frequently asked questions, or these are the guidelines. What if you have a backyard compost file, what are the expectations? Stuff like that. I seem to remember that document. Yeah, there has been such a document prepared and distributed some months ago, but now is a great time to circulate it again. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that I could picture putting on our website and pointing people to when they, inevitably, you know, they're going to be calling lots of people, but they may call us and so we can point them there. That'd be great. Any other questions? Yeah, done. Kathleen, do you know if there's going to be a relaxed enforcement for the onset just because they're getting information out very late to the general public? I'm not sure it would be called relaxed enforcement. I think they're doing it as a educational process. Okay. Knowing that it's going to take some time. And so we could also be posting dates for residents to encourage residents to get their own onsite composters and digesters. There is an in-ground digester option available for them too. I don't know if they would want to go to a digester option for home use, but certainly a green comb, which people can put in the ground and you can place meat, dairy, fish. It's not, it doesn't have the same function as a composter, but it does help with allowing people to do those in their own backyard. And one thing I don't think many people know about is that you're not required, if you're home composting, to deal with meat and fish any other way than you are right now. So if you're throwing those out in the trash, you can continue to do that. If you're home composting, the state recognizes that those are materials that you simply cannot put in your backyard successfully when you're composting. Okay, thank you. One last question for you. Is there a special line for residents to call just to vet their composting questions, or is it the general number? I don't want to tie things up if we could add some information. You mean for the state? No, for central Vermont. Oh yeah, it would just be a regular number. Okay, great. And our website does have a lot of information. It has, in addition to information about the compost approach, a list of all the transportation stations that accept food scraps is there. And we might list haulers as well, but that's certainly something the city could provide as well. I've seen a lot of questions and posts, responses on the Montpelier front porch forum, people recommending various food scrap haulers, although there aren't many. Thank you. Lauren? Yeah, just two quick questions. Thanks for all the great information. Looks like a lot of really good things happening. For the household hazardous waste proposal, I was just curious. I know that there have been a number of agency of natural resources grants and other things that have been put on hold or even clawed back in some cases. And just curious if you have any sense of how firm that might be or is it a wait and see? I presume we would just continue doing what we're doing if there was a delay in getting that money, but I was just curious how certain that seemed. Yeah, that's a really good question. And our grant agreement is in place, so it can't be clawed back. I know that grants that were still in process may be an on hold, but our $500,000 grant is in place. That's great. And I guess my only other question was just it looks like the solid waste management districts in really good shape financially for this year. Are there concerns going into next year for impacts from COVID and everything that's happening with the finances of most institutions right now for next year that should be on our radar? We are very aware of potential impacts from COVID-19. And so we are looking at ways that we can streamline the expense side of the budget because we can't control the volumes of materials that result in income for surcharge or other fees that we receive. So we're just tightening our belts. Thanks. Anyone else have questions? Kathleen? Okay, well thank you so much, Kathleen. Thanks for joining us. And this is great news and thanks for all the updates. All right, well thank you all. I really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. I'll come back or we'll be sure to let you know how things progress. Okay. All right, so the next item is an update from Montpelier Live and the Montpelier Development Corporation. So this is, it really is just an update. I don't know who would like to go first, but either way is fine with me. I'll jump in. The council, as you know, adopted, recently adopted a strategic plan with a priority for a better understanding of Montpelier alive and Montpelier Development Corporation partnership. And I think we'll be working together to really iron that out and present something to you. I think tonight is really a chance to talk about what everyone's doing right now. We've got a big crisis on our hands and how people are dealing with it. So two separate tracks, I think. And obviously everything's welcome to be talked about. But that'll turn it over to the main parties because I think both of them have a lot of exciting things going on. You're welcome to go first, Erin. I would see maybe starting with a recovery navigator, Dan. Sure. Yeah. So I think you've heard about this by now, but Montpelier Live partnered with the Center for Women and Enterprise, which is an SBA affiliate, to hire a dedicated individual to serve as sort of the point person for business recovery questions for things like that. So through the Center for Women and Enterprise, we hire this woman, Jean Kistner. She's been really well received. She's spoken to about 90 businesses so far, answering questions on anything from unemployment to cash flow to social media to e-commerce. One of the great things about the partnership with Center for Women and Enterprise is that in addition to leveraging a lot of federal funding, so we're locally only responsible for a fraction of costs of that program, she is able to refer people to other consultants in their network and have that covered as part of under the same sort of package. So instead of hiring one person directly, we sort of paid into this program with Center for Women and Enterprise, where they're able to refer people to other consultants in the network. You may have seen that the program was cited as an example of best practices by the State Agency of Commerce and Community Development. It was also used as a template for the proposal by the governor to provide recovery navigators in every community. So really exciting to be setting that standard for other communities in terms of what we can be providing in terms of hands-on support. She will be with us for a year, which I think is really wonderful because what we're hearing from a lot of businesses is that the immediate need is great and real, but also the ongoing, what does the new world look like is something that people are dealing with and she'll be here to support them. So that's really exciting. That's been partially funded by MDC and partially funded by a grant from the Vermont Mutual COVID Relief Fund. Any questions for Dan about that? I guess I'll just say it's really encouraging that Jean's already talked to 90 businesses, did you say? 87, I think. That's fabulous and hopefully that is perfectly valuable for folks. So that's great. Thanks. Sarah and Bill. So our exciting news, hopefully you've heard by now, is the launching of the Montpelier Economic Need and Just Stress Fund, MEND for short. It was announced last week and prior to the second round of funding from the federal CARES Fund, there was quite a bit of interest and concern about how to help downtown businesses, of course, and especially among some of the larger businesses in the community, one of which I am thankful to be employed by. So this fund has already raised over $200,000. There were five corporate sponsors that really came up with that total and then there's been some additional individual fundraising that has followed that. And we now have dozens of applicants, downtown businesses, who have, we've asked people to take a pledge to pledge that they are going to either reopen or continue to be open and money will be doled out in the form of a grant. So not interested in having people incur further debt or having to get involved in complicated financial proof and document disclosure and so forth. Just really wanted to give a real shot in the arm really quickly and help some folks through. Would love to have been able to have this open to every single business in Montpellier, but it's a piece of the puzzle, as all of us, all of you and all of we work together to try to get our community through this pandemic. And we're very pleased and thankful for the corporate sponsors that have been willing to really pony up and help us through. So that's our biggest, that's really our biggest news right now. I don't know if anybody has questions about that or wants to hear more about it. We, MDC has hired and paid administrator, Catherine Codius is our fund administrator. So we want to make sure that all donated funds were flowing directly through and became aid and no funds were used to pay for any of the administration. So also just because we are a board without an executive director, we needed someone to handle all the communications and documentation and so forth. So, so far so good. The pledge we're asking for businesses to pledge or apply by June 5th, and then we hope to have checks out that next week. Great, many questions. Donna. I said your deadline is June 5th, so you may not be able to answer this, but did you have in mind the size of the grant or what the applications so far reflect? So, you know, what we know what we've raised so far, which I would say we had we had 200,000 in corporate pledges. And we are asking for individual and other business donations as well. Those can be made. It's actually the Montpelier Foundation that's hosting the donation site. But you can get to it through the MBC website as well. So part of the answer to your question is it depends on how much is raised. We would love to raise $300,000 by that deadline if we can. But the idea was to distribute funds according to we wanted to just do a very sort of easy and objective criteria, so by square footage. So depending on how much we do raise and then the division of square footage by those who have applied and are eligible. So between you or Montpelier Live, has anyone actually done a survey to say how much do you think you need for the next six months? No. We would be sort of afraid to ask, right? I mean, we know anecdotally, I would say just looking really quickly at some of the information that Catherine has compiled, because when businesses took the pledge to stay open, most of them answered them, what would you use the funds for? And overwhelmingly, they said, I'm two months behind in rent or something to that extent. So we know that the need is great and is certainly great. Yes. Right. And I'll just add that I don't think that local state or federal programs can necessarily be anticipated to replace a full amount of revenue that someone might have expected over the next six months. I think the goal is to cover some of those fixed costs like rent, utilities, payroll, so that businesses can survive as much as possible with obviously the hope that the economy recoveries and people are able to shop and dine and go about their business again. So I don't think that the goal is to really cover those fixed costs that people can't avoid. And we're obviously encouraging people to slim down their expenses however they can and maximize their revenues however they can as well. I was just wondering on the bulk number, it wasn't so much just what they replaced dealing with art organizations and some of the grants I've helped the theaters submit, people were asking and they got a general idea, you know, whether it was this much for three months rent or just some ballpark numbers. He's at 5,000, 10,000. That's all I was looking for. But I understand you don't have that yet. Thank you. Sure. Yeah. And to be clear, we're not collecting that kind of information. We really wanted this to be a very quick and easy and I said, you know, a real objective process. The donors expressed little interest in, you know, a complicated give and take and so forth. So we just wanted to do a quick pass through. But I also just wanted to mention that. So, so yes, this men fund is a piece of our community wide effort to get us through the pandemic. The other thing that MDC has done is we've hired a lobbying firm to help push for federal and state aid to downtown, to Montpeliers and both state downtowns. Really, we're trying to want to get other communities involved as well, but to try to get some more of the state and federal funding to our designated downtowns and villages. If I may, is there a deadline for donations or what if someone comes in after June 5 with money? Sure. So if we have a fantastic response either before then or if we get funding after then, then we would consider a second round of funding for businesses who were not, didn't make it through the first round. We're eligible for the first round. So, yeah, absolutely. There's no, we won't turn any dollars away. We'll make sure they get into the right hands, I should say. And I saw Jay and Jack. Yeah, just my question for Sarah and Bill was, was kind of following up on what Bill Frazier just asked is what, how do we leverage that $200,000 for next steps to be able to expand the pool so, so that it's not necessarily just this first floor downtown businesses and others that are so important to our local economy and curious about how you, you know, we can leverage that initial round of fundraising to increase more to expand that pool. That's all. Yeah, well, good. I'm not sure that we would leverage this, but we have a longer, we have kind of a short term immediate approach, which is this money being distributed 100% pass through. And then we're making a longer term investment, trying to get a an allocation of some of the governor's funds and some of the, the federal funds that were allocated to the state to go towards designated downtown. And, and that would be, you know, a broader coalition of downtowns and cities across the state. So I think that's really the long term. I think in the short term, you know, we have to just do what we can quickly so that people kind of get a little breath of fresh air and feel encouraged by the community and, and we're getting a great response on that. Can I ask you a question about that before Jack goes? So was that the lobbying effort that Sarah was referring to? That is, yes. Yeah. So, so who did you all hire to do that lobbying? We hired Downs-Racklin and Martin. Downs-Racklin. Okay. All right. Thank you. Jack. Thanks. It relates to the, the federal, what is it, the PPP payroll protection program. Do we have any way of knowing how many businesses in Montpelier were able to get funds from that? And is the lobbying effort sort of tied to try to expand that or make it easier to to get funds through that program? I think the short answer is no. Dan has some information. He surveyed some folks on how many people took the PPP funding, but this is not related to the PPP funding. This is related to funds beyond the PPP that were given to the state, federal funds given to the state and the legislature and the governor will decide and are deciding currently where those funds will be put into use. And as I understand it, they pretty much have total discretion that beds are not telling them how to use it and where it can go, right? I think there might be some there, you know, I think it's got to be COVID related, but there's, there's wide, there's wide discretion. To answer your question about how many businesses receive the PPP, I won't quite answer that question because I don't have the exact number, but I'll say that I'm not aware of any businesses who wanted to apply, who were not successful in applying. And there remains actually outstanding PPP funding available to everyone's surprise, sort of there, there is still money left. So if businesses wanted to apply, they, there is still money available. You know, what, what we're hearing from businesses is that, you know, the same thing you've heard doesn't necessarily work for them. The guidelines are very unclear and complicated, etc. So I'm happy to see that the, the MEND program and what the state business recovery program are much more simple and immediate for businesses. Thanks. Dan, did you have a question? I did. You know, apart from rent, what are the other, and I guess this would be to Dan or to Bill or to Sarah, what are the sort of other needs that businesses are facing that you're finding as you go through this process? It's sort of the secondary or once the rent is under control, what is what are likely to be the driving factors? Oral. Yeah. Yeah. I think you, I mean, right now you definitely have some businesses who are having difficulty having their employees come back to work because they're making more money on unemployment. So that could last through July because I, at this point, I think that's when those supplemental unemployment benefits continue. I think we're going to have a lot of businesses who are struggling to figure out a different model, you know, shifting more towards takeout, for instance, or trying to deal with the fact that everyone won't want to be confined into small areas. And then maybe businesses that will need to make structural as well as organizational changes to put in takeout windows or things like that. But yeah, I think, I mean, morale is definitely a big, a big part of it. So getting, getting through it and convincing people to come back, you know, come back to shop and play and and eat. And Dan, I mean, and Dan's work with the businesses has been, I mean, this, this man has done some Herculean efforts over the last couple of months. So a lot of cheerleading, handholding and supporting. And I've heard from many businesses that that's been very appreciated. Thank you. So our, our marketing efforts are a part of that, the sort of getting people comfortable coming downtown again. So that's really always been a strength of Montpelier lives that we're leading into. So we've come up with a, sort of a, we're calling them on your way campaign, which is about sort of going above and beyond the safety guidelines to make people feel comfortable. Part of that was committing to requiring customers to wear masks. And I know we're going to talk about that later, but we've had 58 businesses who have signed on to that pledge already. And that's become sort of a core part of our marketing campaign. And I think stands especially in opposition to some other communities who have not chosen to pass mask ordinances, for instance, that when people are, are looking to, you know, people safe going out and shopping and dining again. The fact that it's a core part of our message is that businesses are really, you know, going above and beyond to keep people safe, I think is an asset. And so I was wondering if, if there was any sort of costs, like in equipping these businesses for, you know, with, with the shield number from crop up in retail, but I mean, if there's any sort of thought about making funds available or, you know, structuring this kind of support that we would get from the state to make that segue to this sort of post COVID retail environment. I think that's why we decided just to give the money and figure that every business is different. And, you know, business owners deserve the respect to know where they want to put their money. So you give them the money is based on something so that it's fair, but they're free to spend it however they wish. They do that, I doubt it, but, but that's what we chose to do. You're going to have very different financial burdens, you know, a business that has, you know, payroll, you know, restaurants say maybe primarily payroll costs, whereas a retail store will have, you know, inventory that has to be paid for within a period of time, regardless of what a revenue is coming in. So yeah, there's a huge range in what, what burdens they have and whether they have debt, you know, credit lines or other debt that they have to pay. So, so I mean, just to be clear, I mean, we can't, we can't possibly make them whole, you know, neither the MDC nor the Men Fund nor Montpelier Live. We'd love to, but, you know, it's just not, that's not the world that we're living in. It's just like, we're just trying to find a bunch of different pieces to help as many as we can and they'll try to come at it in different ways. Right. I definitely hear, you know, cost of acquiring sanitizer, hand sanitizer, lifestyle type sanitizer, you know, face masks, things like that. They're definitely, you know, they're there. You know, we've done some little things, we negotiated with Bar Hill to provide a wholesale rate to any downtown business for hand sanitizers. So you might see a lot of little honey bears downtown. You know, we've just, we've done a lot of little things to try and take some pressure off businesses and providing signage, like printing copies and providing signage to businesses that they need from the state and other, I'm sure, seeing the big two by three marketing signs that so people can educate whether they're open or not, things like that. You know, we're really trying to play to like, what can Montpelier Live do and what are our experiences in organization and trying to do that as best as we can. Yeah, I think Dan's done a great job networking like that. I also think that we, you know, the thing that was great about this effort that we just started was that we had community members, we had, you know, Dave Kelly really initiated this on a call with Bill Frazier and then we had Leonine donated pro bono, the media attention and work that really got this a lot of attention and has helped this kind of move forward and be known by others. And I do think, you know, the idea that morale and awareness and information is kind of the best cure for this in the long term and it's, but it's an educated one. So we just have to keep getting the information out and keeping people kind of informed and as funded as we can. But it's not just a money issue, I don't know. Any other questions for this group? I have, oh sorry, I have one more thing and it's just that just sort of in a bigger picture that MDC and Montpelier Live, you know, we're both committed to working together, we compliment each other nicely. It's, you know, without an executive director on the MDC, I think Dan, it's been a struggle for Dan to keep to communicate with us and get responses from us and so forth. And, you know, acknowledging that we have now at least appointed a liaison from our board to be the Montpelier Live, the Montpelier Live connection. So, you know, we're stumbling a little bit as we figure out our new model without an executive director. But, you know, like I said, are committed, are committed to working cooperatively. And I think that this liaison position will help quite a bit with that. So, is that liaison Catherine and Kodias, is that? No, no, it's Terry Kahn, Harrison Kahn, he's one of our board members, yeah. Got you. Well, so I had a question sort of related to the plan with, you know, knowing that you all don't have an executive director at the moment. We had talked about at one point in the past project managers for things and just curious if there's any update on, if there's any project managers for projects in the board, or just anything, you know, any update on that. I would call Catherine Kodias a project manager for this project. This allows us to be nimble and create a position where someone is fully dedicated to an immediate need or a project. So, this is our model. This is how we did it, you know, it was, I think it was effective and efficient without having someone kind of there on staff all the time. She's now addressing this as this project fades down. You know, we'll have other project managers. We can have concurrent project managers. We're going to talk about one for, you know, other projects with the city that are coming up. And that's our ability with this model to actually get someone who can focus on it and we can have much more adeptness in and specialize in those areas as opposed to trying to have a jack of all trades who's there all the time. Great. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Any other questions? Okay. Well, thanks to you all for your leadership through this great trying time. And I have to say as a mother of high schooler, I appreciate especially the mayor's efforts. Thank you. Well, and thank you for for your work. I know that you've all been very, very busy with this as well. And I'm sure I know I don't know if Sarah and Bill, you're sticking around for the next conversation, but I know Dan is so I'm looking forward to seeing how the city can otherwise help with the relief efforts here and in the way that we can. So thank you again. Thank you. And real quick, I do believe that, well, I someone raised their hands in the, not sure they have a comment. Leeds, Brewer, you have your hand up? Yes. Thank you. Yes. I'm curious about whether or not there's any listing of what disqualifies a business from this. I hear that there's lots of quality, not lots of quality. There are qualifications, but not all businesses are going to have the ability of this grant. Yeah, no one's disqualified. It's for stores. We decided on, you know, to have big impact and the donor intention was that we have storefronts kind of vibrant and alive on main and state in our designated downtown as we reopen. So that's the group that's targeted by this effort. I think all you have to do to not be disqualified is to say that you, as one of those people, as one of those businesses, you just need to say that you plan on being open and continue being a contributing member of downtown. Great. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Okay. Thank you, Cameron, for the reminder to check with the public. Any other questions from anybody? Okay. All right. Well, thank you again. All right. So moving on to the coronavirus updates. We have some updates specifically from the city. I assume we should start with that. Cameron or Bill want to take that? Bill, you're on mute. I think he just told me to go ahead. So okay, very good. So I'll review the memo that I sent out today. Hopefully you all had some time to look at it. But in general, I went through the state updates and what has happened since our last council meeting. On May 15th, Governor Scott issued addendum 14 to his executive order that extended the state of emergency for Vermont and all his previous addenda through June 15th. So this did loosen some restrictions on where we can travel and included in state stays and available campgrounds, lodging and marinas. They also extended some lodging for housing vulnerable populations such as emergency shelters like we have at the Econolodge and allowing hotels to have accommodations for healthcare workers. On May 18th, the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreation did say that they will be opening and operating state parks this summer, but there will not be any camping through at least June 25th. May 20th, Governor Scott has proposed a $400 million economic relief and recovery package that has yet to be approved. On May 22nd, the governor issued addendum 15 to his executive order which had additional guidance for outdoor restaurants, bars and other establishments. This did put out some guidelines for opening restaurants for outdoor dining. That can be found in the addendum and also an ACCD memo. There's also guidance that was released to allow barbershops and salons to start opening May 29th, so in just a few days. There's also been additional openings in health services and churches and other formal places of worship have been allowed to open to 25% capacity starting on the 23rd of this month. In this amendment, the state has also canceled any traditional fairs or festivals. And then today, Governor Scott held a press conference that said, you know, our data trends have been positive, but we do need to keep in mind that there has been a drastic increase in numbers of positive cases in almost all the states that surround us. So that information needs to be taken into account as he's looking at his restart strategy and he will probably be announcing this week an increase to the number of folks allowed to gatherings. So that's it for the state updates going into our updates later tonight. We'll be presenting. I think I'll be doing that at some point on this agenda item. Our phase one reopening plan for approval by all. And as much as this makes me sad to announce the city pool will be closed for the 2020 summer season. We will be using this time to work on any updates and repairs to the pool as financially feasible to the pool, the poolhouse. I want to call out that this decision was not made likely and we try to wait as long as possible to make this decision because I know it's a huge service and impact to our community. But it really does come down to the financial strain of opening the fact that most of our staff is furloughed. Many organizations and by many I think everyone that we've used to train lifeguards are currently closed or remain closed. So we don't have enough lifeguards and we do worry about maintaining the health and safety of our residents in such a congregate facility. However our summer camp program will be moving forward for summer 2020. It will look a little different. We're working right now on creating our operations plans to fit into the state regulations and we'll be sharing that information as soon as we solidify our plans. You heard some updates about our regional aid groups sort of in general around the area. We still do have meal sites for those who need meals at all the churches Monday through Friday. Those locations can be found on the website MontpelierMutualAid.org. I do want to give you some updates on our communications. We've been really upping our social media use and most recently we've been averaging about 988 interactions on each of our posts which is a huge upswing for us and our most recent posts on the pool closing has reached over 3,000 people which is one of our biggest posts of the last year. So that is exciting for us and I also want to share something I was just made aware of. There is a donation drive this weekend for our to support our homeless population in the Montpelier Barrie area. There's a group that call themselves the street medics. They're working with a few of our local advocacy groups and they will be hosting a donation drive this Saturday from 9 to 12 on the state house lawn looking for donations of camping and outdoor gear like tents and sleeping bags, personal care items, any hygiene related products, and bug spray and things like that so if you're interested there is that and that is my memo if anyone has any questions. Cameron I had a quick question you all so along with the pool being closed I saw that playgrounds are closed and I just want to clarify which playgrounds we mean. Any city-owned playground and I do believe that the school has still we maintain those for them and the schools are closed. So there's a school playground that we maintain are currently closed. We're just not maintaining them in any way. So people could potentially still use them but sort of at their own risk or is that I do not advocate that for that at all. Okay okay just one answer and then the other one that I I think we do some clarity around is the playground behind senior center? Yeah I if I understand correctly and I am willing to be back check but obviously I don't think we own that. I think we use that for like an agreement so I will check in on that and I will get clarity on that. Okay that would be great and it might be useful to when we say playgrounds are closed maybe even name them. I don't think there's too many of them. So okay cool thanks. Any other questions about this portion? I have a question about playgrounds. Since I violated using them this past weekend I mean the playgrounds when schools are not open we use that well at our own risk. As long as we're keeping social distance is there a reason why they're totally closed? None of those um uh so um none of them can be sanitized none of the structures that you're touching can be sanitized and what it also means when things are closed is we're not maintaining the fields so not pushing back the the soft grounds to be under the swings that kind of thing. So um it just we want to make sure that people know that we're not uh liable if they do decide to use it at their own risk. So if I go back will I get arrested? No okay I understand the city reducing their risk but it seems very odd that we're allowing adults to have all this walking space and not letting kids keep their space on the playground. So my one argument for that is that you know the virus does live from a moment that we've seen the virus lives on surfaces and children who especially ones under two are not advocating for wearing masks to their face, to themselves, to their equipment and we're not cleaning it no one is there to clean that equipment. So I understand for toddlers totally get it yep yeah thank you okay any other questions about that and from the public uh yeah or Dan yeah I'll just say I'm like I understand why the pool flows but I guess I have to express a great deal of disappointment that that can be open. I think that is a really incredibly important part of our city resources in the summer and widely used but I can I can understand well a difficult decision but one decision for safety sake but just a great deal of disappointment on the personal level. Lauren and Connor? Just on that note there was a kind of nice update on right full reservoir and how they are working to open that so people looking to swim not going too much further up Elm Street and it is sad to not have the pool this year but but that will be open and it sounds like they're putting a number of you know precautions in place uh and maybe letting people and they're encouraging people right now to go on and buy season passes so you don't have to even interact with someone with exchanging money or anything um so that that will be an option though we're all sad to not have this the pool of the summer um Connor I'm gonna ask about the status of right so each but counselor girl is noted about us uh okay any other any other questions from the public and you can unmute yourself you have the ability to do that if you're a member of the public who would like to say something and just so you know camera or not I can't necessarily see the blue hands so I'll rely on you to watch it out okay super um all right let's move on to the um next portion which is um the mask mandate um so uh either camera or bill do you want to um frame this up or or Dan I think I'm probably want to participate as well um you know obviously we were told by the governor that that the state at least currently wasn't going to do a statewide mandate but was going to leave it up to the local government um they requested basically some backup they said you know we really need you to help us in situations if we're sitting by first of all this you know the same playing field for everybody second of all someone challenges us we you know we have a regulation to fall back on um we certainly think it's in in uh safety you know to practice staff felt okay with that uh what we're really looking for tonight is simply a discussion from the council whether you you think it's a good idea to see you or not you won't be enacting that tonight we will then put the actual order together based on what we want to do um and um so so that's basically it our suggestions are that it be for indoor businesses only not all public places of sidewalks like pounds and things like that this is something you all might want to discuss and then there will be for all businesses in the city not just downtown but any functioning businesses in city uh indoors and uh and we just know that um we don't really please partner with the resources to be actively patrolling this going into stores and you know as people put masks on they certainly can respond if there's a altercation or argument or something like that or a customer or owner or employee of a very massive they can they can reply to the situation with that I think it's really did you want to jump in I was just gonna say I think you covered that very well this is something that um businesses are encouraging um I'm aware of three other communities in Vermont but there may be more um who have passed an unordinary um I think Brownington, South Burlington and Prattaburro um I think um Prattaburro is kind of a good example that um we're maybe most closely looking at because that um is specific to um while you're in commercial establishments versus and any sort of public spaces um and um the only other thing that is that um you know there would obviously need to be some exception for like if you're sitting down at a table in a restaurant you can't be wearing your can't be wearing your mask while you're eating your food um so you know or there may be other then there may be other things that come up where you know they say that it's long you're allowed to take your mask off so that they can bring your beard out you know I'm not making this up but um you know there may be appropriate um examples of where there may be exceptions there so right as I said we have a draft of GCF but our thinking would be if the exceptions would be if there were specific guidance or specific guidance like restaurants or whatever they might be and then those would apply otherwise to be the blanket for fallback on you know I wondered if it made sense to frame it as just retail businesses for now but uh I'm sure there are some services that maybe make sense to still have them wear masks what do you think about the idea of just keeping it retail for now and then waiting for guidance for um service providers and then including you know restaurants I don't know if Dan has an opinion on that and I'm just trying to pull up um the survey responses uh the pledge responses to see um there were actually a fair number of non retail businesses who have taken it including realtors uh I see Dan Richard on here law firms um tattoo parlors salons um so I'm at a restaurant actually um so yeah I would I would encourage it to be um any any financial establishment so I would I would understand that you know I certainly understand that okay um yeah my sense uh we know this is a public health thing if we think we need to think masks or preventive measures if we don't if we think they are then they ought to be everywhere unless the state or the health department exempts okay uh Jay and then Donna and then Donna and then Lauren yeah hopefully we're not too redone but um I think that the Brattleboro um piece that that you know got sent out earlier was a really good starting point for us um in terms of around indoor commerce if you know where where there could be multiple people inside not necessarily distinguishing you know what type of business is happening um I've talked actually uh over these last few days I've talked to a few folks um like out on roof road or two um outside the downtown just like hey you guys don't require a mask but what do you think and the over what like everybody I talked to said we they just want a level playing field they would love it if we just said yes you need they don't want to have to decide themselves because it puts them in an awkward position but if their belief was that if they were if the city said this is what you need to do then they would be more than half they would they would welcome that maybe I'm sure that's not everyone but I think that that um I think that that would cover a lot of uh of businesses you know outside of you just downtown and I think that it just makes it um makes it uh fair for everyone so like I said there's a level playing field I'll also throw this in here and we can talk about this as sort of the next as like the next step but I think one thing that's um relevant to point out is I think there's an opportunity for us as a city to support the process and support businesses and I look at you know a town like Stowe that partnered with their fire department and fired a local tailor and manufactured 2400 masks and sent them to every year-round resident in the town I'm not saying we need to do that but I do think that what what could happen is if we could look um consider ourselves as resources to try to manufacture um some masks that can be available in commercial spaces that are running into conflicts so that it could just be very easy just like the co-op did like hey if you don't have one here it is you don't worry about it here it is and you had it off before there's an issue um I think that we could think about looking at some sort of resources to make the transition of a mandate more manageable for business owners all across the city uh Donna I'm also Jay like that part of the Brattleboro that you quoted because it says all establishments that invite the public in and it's very broad it does I'm not sure if it includes taxis and transit so you might need some language there the the other thing it talks about making sure that it's posted signage as well as mask available I think those are both good ideas and the Hawaii executive order that I believe Cameron sent us talks about how if people are engaged in permittal outdoor exercises they don't have to wear a mask as long as they're social distancing I think that's also good and I think we need to talk about the age requirement because all of these are different uh Brattleboro has children under the age of five some of them go as high as under nine so I think we have to look at that and make a decision that's all good points um Donna I think uh personally I think it's an probably no brainer to do this it's a workers issue as much as anything and I would have a broad it's your receptionist law firm you know um you do the same protection as somebody in a retailer restaurant and the business is going to do it it's up to the government intervene and I want to address like some frustration I think the state's done a pretty good job handling this pandemic so far um but it's really just passing up the bucket to push this some municipality you know we're all the same pool here um so I don't think that's a very good way to go about it so yeah if we have to be the bad guys we'll be the bad guys um but I think the state has some responsibility for measures in place they think this is a public safety issue they should have gone ahead and done it so um I'm all for it you know um I think a lot of businesses I appreciate Dan coming in uh with business being proactive on this um I think it's ready to move uh Dan oh I'm sorry Lauren was first and then Dan um yeah I would just echo and don't need to be too redundant and I think it seems incredibly unfair to put the burden on every business to come up with their own rules and regulations and then have to enforce it without any force of law so very much support the city doing this um I think that the Brattleboro one did like a good model to me um you know and looking through some of the specific questions that a couple others have raised I think indoor makes sense I think as broad as possible makes sense to me as well um you know having a five-year-old he can wear a mask fine so I don't think we need to go as high as nine and I think we could go I think a lot of kids um wearing them fine so you know maybe it is about five but um but certainly you know I think a lot of a lot of kids in the realm that I'm in being able to wear them especially for this kind of situation where you're just requiring it inside a establishment like that um and you know just one other angle that hasn't come up you know I've got a friend in town who's who's in the high-risk category and she was talking about how and unless something like this is in place she feels entirely uncomfortable going into any store so I think it's you know unfair to the workers that they or seeing the most people are exposed but it also makes our residents feel unsafe they don't know what they're going to encounter when they get into a store or they might go in and everyone hasn't asked on but other people are coming in so I think just that peace of mind and you know across the board detecting public health um just definitely strongly support this thanks. I like the other uh counselors thoughts that this is I like the idea that it would be broadly full commercial or business however we choose to define it um whether they be retail restaurant service or other um the one question I do have is about enforcement um and how how we see this being enforced and you know one thing I think that the state has done is that a good tone for voluntary enforcement um which I would see us doing as well but um I'm just wondering and maybe Bill you you have an answer to this as to how how we can send out a signal that this is something that while it's pregnant and it does carry a certain force of awe um that this is really something that we're intending voluntary compliance on and this is really to make everyone's life easier not create difficult difficult boundaries for people um and maybe Dan if there's a way in which you know these businesses take the pledge then as a result of this you know would effectively be able to deny people access because of this ordinance as a way of enforcing this. Yeah I can you know that was my sense of this was that we would be you know I had to I mentioned that we don't have the peace of passage or actively love and demand that people put masks on um we you know I I'd like Don's idea about signage and maybe we could work with the public to get signs you know on stores and masks are required by city ordinance uh you know and um I think we want to follow the same tone state has taken and I think highly successful honestly uh there you go uh um Jack uh thanks I was I'm following up on Dan's observation I'm thinking some of the same thing I wasn't haven't seen the ordinance adopt ordinance is adopted by Burlington and South Burlington from the news coverage it it appears so they were talking about having they're having passed resolutions rather than ordinances and um I don't know if that really is the case I'm a bit concerned about passing ordinance when we're saying right now that the city is not going to use as far as the government body to enforce the uh the ordinance and that would that's how I would feel about any ordinance that uh that we're considering passing and so I would encourage us to think about that as we decide whether to call this an ordinance or to call it a resolution or something else it's clear that any store or any whatever we do uh any store or any business has the legal authority to uh to put up a sign saying you're not allowed to enter if you're not wearing a mask and they can refuse entry to anyone who's uh who's not wearing a mask um and so I just want to go into this advise of me so uh I want to uh highlight that question so Bill what is uh you're thinking around um this is sort of a broader question I mean this maybe has a more specific um to uh aspect to it because it's not something that we're anticipating enforcing but what is the um the thinking around temporary ordinances or um emergency measures that kind of thing so a couple things first of all you know tonight we really want to get a sense of what you want us to go ahead and have something either for an emergency you know especially maybe next week or two weeks from now so um I think part of the do the follow-up we would do is figure out what the best way to recommend it what I believe that all of the three orders and states of our legal resolutions or some emergency orders that have certain ordinances um we're preliminarily thinking the best way to do this is health order um it's you know it's health crisis you know the issue of health order doesn't require the same amount of time as ordinance and it can be reached you know withdrawn when the health issue is so we you are the board of health so we'd be pro-order the board of health massively required with regard to enforcement I don't want to be clear but we're not you know we have lots of ordinances we don't necessarily actively proactively seek to um what for that matter state statutes but when appropriate we will cite them and when appropriately we will enforce them all I'm trying to say I don't think we're going to have to please start walking around downtown every day going to the stores or you're walking people about to walk in the store and say you know we're not pleased but we are saying that if if the store owner has a problem and if someone's giving an argument we will respond and if there's a regulation we'll enforce we're not saying you know it doesn't mean anything I think there's a difference between going out and looking to create conflicts over the resources but it will definitely have to I don't want to leave okay that's that's helpful yeah uh yeah go ahead and then Connor yeah I I I support that that method I you know I was thinking that the public health direction was probably the way to go I would be um a little bit reluctant to make it in a resolution just simply because I think resolution doesn't necessarily carry the force of law that at the end of the day we may want this to happen frankly the business they want this to have and the residency of this requirement um I agree that there has to be a soft touch and it's application and you know really a emphasis on voluntary compliance but you know Connor's point about safety of workers that all depends upon this being um an enforceable uh action as opposed to a more um uh praktory or or you know aspirational um type type language but I think we we have to be we have to be careful and I like the health order because the health order also has a lot more flexibility for enforcement um if there are issues that arise because it's really talking about a public health issue as opposed to just making an ordinance and a rule um that uh you know is just one of general flexibility it goes through the civil enforcement process so I'm I think Bill has the right idea and I would support that um Connor yep uh and I think you know it does have some weight um with the health order just having the police department call up a business you know I think they're I think they're going to cut that out you know if they're in violation of us but I have a question about the uh timeline on this are we looking for something we could ask tonight that would come into effect immediately I just think like you know two weeks there's only two weeks to do this the next two weeks is a lot more important than the two weeks after that right agree so right because we want to have this conversation about what you wanted um what I'm looking for is two things really one do you want to do this in the sounds based on our comments that everyone thinks it's a good idea to have an answer so we'll prepare one I think the other thing would be we could either do it at the next health order to take you know have it pretty quickly um or we could call especially for next Wednesday just to deal with these two or three items or downtown uh to move them more quickly I would say too um that I think it shares this American real you know our traditionally our traditional passing ordinances is that um we have a first and second reading but that is by tradition our chart only requires an action by the council doesn't require the multiple readings so you know again if we're considering any of these as an emergency actions I think we could pass them other than a meeting and you technically they go to effect in 15 days but we start to start you know for the things like if we decide to depart it looks like we can start out immediately so okay so I mean I would well it's immediately after it's um approved right so I mean I would anticipate potentially Wednesday next Wednesday at the latest I mean because we can always call a special meeting whenever it's ready I can also take a look at it I have to talk to a wiser person than me that might be someone to counsel but whether or not the health officer can issue could issue a preliminary health order and then have the word of health approve it so it could might be faster but I want to be sure we we did that correctly sure um so do you uh for the purposes of of the math and would it be useful to you to have a motion or do you feel like you have enough well actually it would be great to have a motion certainly that you like to have um you know a city requirement that there be masks and then if you want to put I mean I don't I would put in the motion things about like science and providing that for all good ideas we should follow up on um or at least maybe that's a separate motion if you want to add things about age limits or those kinds of things and you want to do that now or you want to think it over and add that to whatever regulation goes in next week or whatever we do it and that's fine too well I was hearing a lot of support for what rattle road did so maybe that's a place to start and and then we can potentially um it's sometimes easier to to respond uh to something so um unless others want to hash that out right now I think it probably makes sense to have a starting point and then when when uh when ready people have a discussion just about well maybe a special meeting just about this um jack on timing I'm uh I'm certainly available to do a special meeting uh next Wednesday if people feel they want to do it that quickly and I I think that's fine I would be reluctant to try to do anything any faster than that partly because it takes time to put something together and think about it partly because I think we want to make sure not only with this but with some of the other things we're discussing we want to be sure that uh the members of the public have ample notice to uh of what we're considering doing and an opportunity to come in and express their opinions because I think it's very possible it's not likely that that with this and some of the other proposals people may not uh all agree and I want to make sure that people have the opportunity to express whatever their support or disagreement is fair enough Connor is it appropriate for a motion to call special meeting for Wednesday then I think that would be great okay I'll uh I'll make that motion that meeting a week from today at 630 or we think on our we're going to do it earlier 630 straight okay 630 today consider this issue second and would you have motions that do you want to call do the okay to include uh the direct city staff to draft the language um um and you agree jack yes okay um any further discussion on this okay oh i'm sorry yep it's okay I understand that as directing bill as well to you know bring any city staff such as a health officer into the process um of drafting and reviewing and possibly attending the meeting um and I understand the idea is that because this is such a major thing rather than going through say a public health officer we want to have it as a council as a public health board for the city that that we would it would originate with us as opposed to assigning it to a public health officer to issue in the interim is that right okay and jack you're clear of that yes does that mean that the note the warning of the meeting has to be a warning of the Montpelier Board of Health in addition to the city council yes I think it would be yeah big clarifications um any further comments actually any uh before go any further any uh comes from the public camera do we have any hands raised and people can unmute themselves they have anything they want to add yeah okay um I will say um uh I did get a letter um from a citizen and I or a resident rather and I don't know if you want me to read it at this one she supported um a mandate for wearing masks indoors so I don't know if you want me to read it today or if you'd rather me read it next but we put it in the records the next weekend with the meeting material can do thank you okay great any further conversation okay on favor if you say aye okay great um all right so the next uh uh thing on the gen online is the city reopening plan but I'm wondering if we can shuffle that a bit uh and um I assume the emergency business ordinance is for 2020 is about parkless yep um we could do either that next or possible language closure um and then we should probably let's take up the park let's yeah let's take up the parkless and then do the language street there's someone connected anyway yeah um so again this is we're looking for a direction from the council not you know to approve an ordinance tonight or a regulation as you know we have a very prescribed part of the ordinance we don't use six bases there's a process there's dates to apply and essentially we're we're suggesting that we suspend that for uh the future but certainly no later than October 25th when we pick that date because that's the end date for parkless in the current word so it will be up to the length of this season um so we would suspend the limit on the number parking space to some of the requirements of the construction obviously they still have to be a ccg guidelines so um you know and basically what if this is something that the council wants to do again we would come back and tweak with proper mechanism for doing this and and rather than right now the permanent so-called permanent parks have come to the council to approve the location our suggestion is that you typically authorize the manager or staff to just approve because you wouldn't have to be hearing you know having all these applications that council needs we would just set up the rules but I mean the idea is that that we talked about and I think we'd like to talk with the business community more is that these are really before we're in the proxy area of businesses in front of them so so people can expand their either receiving capacity or their retail capacity uh out into the parking lot their parking space the reason to connect to the land industry is so narrow that to do that and have traffic you think you know might not be safe so it might be better to just close the whole street and and how these kind of so they're connected but they're not exactly the same thing um nobody has to do this uh you know it's completely voluntary for the businesses we cannot create a public flow so we can't create sort of an attraction so let's have you use it let's have a fair let's always seem to bring people down and go by day these businesses these have to be independent to businesses places where someone's going to look at merchandise or sit to enjoy food or beverage um and in the public space specifically the land it was simply a walkthrough on city street it would be sidewalks so there'd be public spaces for the walking but the parking spaces can be extensions of business uh again the state has issued guidelines for these uh you can't just put up you know cones and then go to town or we have to deal with balancing and those kind of things to try to work our way through those but we would like to certainly try this but somewhere to give more people the opportunity to have more retail space to be able to go to restaurants and space um and do that and so as I said related to that we'd be the same scenario Langdon which would be before businesses on Langdon although I know possibly it might be something that we were around the corner or whatever we could talk about uh but the idea is really to help people uh in these spaces and the only reason we would think about closing that she's just because it's much narrower than the state of Maine to have people out of the you create a walkway through the center with the merchandise going on the side we haven't got all the details fleshed out in this I think Dan has had done a great job communicating with the business community we want to hear more from the business community about this is what this is you know some city is doing for the city so we want to make sure it meets the needs of the business community but our follow-up and we will come back either at the next week if we have it all together or the following meeting to put together again in order to see order that basically says okay article 20 is suspended till October the one the one caveat we want to put in here and I think we need to talk just through the businesses it's a kind of catch 22 right if it gets really successful and people are coming down and we could then have a shortage of parking so we want to have some opportunity to have that conversation about do we then suspend this or do we just deal with the parking that we have left so we want to have the ability for the council add one public meeting to say okay we're going to stop this in 15 days or next month or something if there were a reason to do that but right now it's predicated on the thought that most of the parking spaces are empty this is a chance you know how we have that empty lots of people use the lots and and I think it's a chance to try I think ideas that have been talked about for years and this might be the time to give them to see how they work in the sort of limited control that are on the nice beach. I have a question for Dan you have an indication that people that were businesses downtown would be interested in parklets? Yeah I don't have a good sense of exactly who would end up taking a step on it I think it some of it might depend on what the requirements are and how much of an investment it might take some of it's also going to depend on how the restaurant guidelines shift and change you know I will say that in you know even two parking spaces a restaurant probably only 10 or 12 people at the most so you know it may or may not be worth it to any specific business but we think that providing this as an option is great and I have heard some you know creative ideas already from different business owners who would definitely be interested in taking advantage of it and I know that they'll have talked about you know making sure to reserve delivery spaces and hand-to-hand pick-up spaces and potentially also per side pick-up spaces if it was you know so popular that we needed to make sure there were a few spots available on any ministry so I think given that the parking band is so much lower right now I think it's worth the worth the shot here great Dan and then Lauren and then Donna I support this idea fully and I think the best way to go about it is much the way Bill described it which is sort of a non-linear way which is let's not regulate let's let's you know let's put as few restrictions as possible on this so that people will be as creative as possible because knowing that this and letting you know this is a you know this is really a reaction to this year to this situation these circumstances but let people be creative and and let's see what happens because of the unique parking situation and if we reach the point where we needed more parking downtown because there were so many people coming and shopping I think that's a problem that well I don't know if we want it necessarily but it's it's certainly the retail businesses would be would be happy about it but I think you know there's there's less risk in a year like this where the parking issues are evaded because of the changes but I strongly think that if we could build something that that gave people freedom that that's the way to go about this and I'll just note that a Rotterdam in the Netherlands is doing this this summer and using the same sort of model which is trying to regulate this as minimal as possible to let people you know businesses that are trying to survive do with without you know sort of having to conform to any particular type of standard or permit regulatory process so speaking of that I'm going to just interject really quickly that I think I want to make sure that it's clear that if we are blowing up the rules be as creative as you want but meet ACC guidelines that that is for a temporary park but if someone wanted a longer term park that they might have to they would have to go through the regular process is that right is that that's also your understanding though I would say my sense would be you know we've got five spaces of art that's constructed now um you don't really know where the former down home may be going but it'll probably end up somewhere personally I'd say for this summer rather than to try to overlap the processes and have a formal I'd say let's just suspend that process of this year have people do these smaller parklets um and you know we may need to do a little research to see what it's going to take and I think there's going to be some platforms required to because AC says you have to flush the curb to for access onto them so it's not just putting up like I said tones and yellow tape it's it's going to be a little bit of something so um but but maybe just say hey we're suspending that process next November you know after after this ends on October we'll reevaluate how this went maybe we decide we can have more parking spaces because whatever you know make those decisions at that time that I personally think we should not I mean your policy decision I think we gotta not do more formal parklets if we're doing a free free for all okay um Don I think you're next okay um I I do like your letter thank you Bill and the simplicity of it I strange enough I have just a bit of a concern if we're wanting parking spaces for people to come and do takeout and then they don't want to stay in one of the newly available sitting spaces can they get there I mean I've been going out almost every day for my picnic car lunch it's nasty weather or picnic table lunch and I'm amazed how many cars are on State Street and so they're not paying so how are we going to limit their time of the few spaces left so between you and the police department's our department dpw I want you to really look at it holistically and know whether we do need to start maybe having meters effective or some way of time limit some two two hour limit something to keep it moving because it's going to be very dense activity area and bicyclists have been petitioning to have some more space and if we give it all to parklets and they're not gaining anything so I'm just going to put that out there in the consideration thank you Lauren and then Connor um yeah I also think this is a great direction go and good chance to try out you know ways to be nimble and flexible for businesses a few thoughts to consider and I agree with the concept of really trying to be very nimble with this and not overly burdensome for businesses um you know it might even be the case where someone wants to be able to do like pop-up sales and then if there's you know even like structures that could be shared as the businesses so that you don't need to you know lock in to try to get this for the whole summer or something but maybe there's flexibility in that um I was curious the geographic scope you know there's obviously our core downtown and I would have to refresh on our parkland ordinance or does this um you know just thinking about which which streets and you know this is all down Berry Street this is just state main and there are other um what that looks like I don't know the ability of thoughts straight away obviously that's your decision our suggestion is that it simply be uh main from you know berry to school and state from Taylor to main um not estate and land would be its own thing so uh and that would be it you know I think after that we've got you know community traffic I mean we already have enough downtown but it's a different character I mean I don't picture one being on uh like with going in the bakery on Berry Street um so I don't know it seems like there might be other potential maybe the others by request or something sure sure sorry go ahead Lauren um so one other question I don't know for um if we're trying to be this nimble and flexible there's anything we need to think about correctly for liquor licenses for businesses doing that they make a lot of their money so just throwing that out there um and then just you know I like the giving the flexibility to city staff to be able to implement this so it can be responsive and moving you know quickly and all that um just just thinking about an accumulative impact so either how we structure it and or just a regular report to council of you know what what has been approved you know what is what is the you know totality of what is happening and what's coming on the bikes that we are keeping an eye on you know each project not just you individually but um the overall impact on the city I can respond to that just quickly I agree that's one of the things that you've been trying to figure out because sort of what's the what's the balance between saying hey we want everyone to do this and saying well wait a minute you know we I think we need to think through things like what happens if you know we get two businesses and there's sort of one parking space between them and they both want to ask us for that and there's a lot of things we need to figure out um but we wanted to again get a sense of is this a direction we want to go with regard to liquor licenses and things like that uh other businesses you know this these are you know it would still be up to the business to obtain whatever approvals they need we're not we're saying here's the public space we're willing to make it available instead of a parking we're willing to you know allow you to use it here's the guidance from the state we'll work with you to make it as simple as possible but people still need it's still their business space it's not a public you know I think if we were doing the different if we were sort of talking about permanently closing one street so they make it a public Plaza you know church you think we would put benches and tables this isn't what we can't do that actually that's one of the things that we would not to do so um so I think we would obviously try to help people but they need to still get whatever permissions they need and uh the Department of Liquor Control has a um new uh provisional outside consumption and permanent process that they've outlined and then it includes um approval by city council over the provisional permit great uh Connor and then Jack uh uh certainly support the idea and I think um they'll want to build a good idea by request they think um you should be able to go outside the state of mainstream I think I like uh virtual day three you can see them send one up or like the second mayor um Bohemian I spoke to a few business owners today and there was a lot of support for this idea I think a couple things to make clear is like one of them was saying my god like like go down home kitchen did I can't afford to be built in the Taj Mahal or something and I think we need to make clear that no we've got to be able to be safe you know but it doesn't have to be a monster for structure it could be something that you can you know put it up and take out easily enough there um so I think that's important I think it's also important to make clear to businesses because a lot of them seem to know um you know parking is so free down down until we say otherwise and we have not said that they don't think that the meters turn back on and I think we can be flexible um like they're saying there's a lot of demand coming down down or something I don't want to do uh turn those meters back on but absolutely I think we should plug forward on this okay uh jack um I like what I heard I think uh there there's some potential here I think um again as I said with the uh with the passing I think there are considerations that uh we're we're gonna want to get uh public input on one of the things I'm thinking about is that uh a lot of these locations are adjacent to uh to housing and so hours of operation is going to be one of the things we should be paying attention to um and the safety factors of whatever structures are being built to hold the uh the the parklet and the other thing is I just want to tag as a or flag as a possible point of consideration whether we want to say limit the the number of uh parking spaces that uh are are dedicated to parklets and retain somehow for uh for parking downtown do you have any um thoughts or suggestions on that I don't just it should be part of the conversation next time okay um I think it uh what you were saying also made me think of uh the current limit that we have on parklets is that it can't take up I think it's more than two spaces um and I think we for this especially if we're trying to maximize the opportunity for businesses particularly in the downtown if you might want to limit it well well I think we should keep a limit too so okay at least consecutive um for one for one business um we talked a lot about that and again we you know I think for if you're dining establishment you definitely need to because as Dan mentioned just to make it worth a while have the dining people you know if you're retail and you're just gonna put it out merchandise or you know tables or something maybe one is sufficient um if it be you know also I think depends on you know part of the part of this is you know we don't know specifically who's interested in who isn't so it might depend on who has neighbors you know someone may want to have three but none of the neighbors want one so what's the problem whereas there may be another where three in a row all along so you know how do we sort that and and I really want to hear from the people but this is designed to benefit from I don't want to create rules that don't work you know this is so part of the process is to to get you know out with the end folks and hear what people want and I know a lot of us are on this is all right now so yeah for sure um Jay and then Donna and then I'd love to open it up to the public yeah thank you just quickly I think it's the bill reference I think it's good that you know what we do here is provide some guys uh some art rails around sort of what how we can manage the process and then leave it to the business community to decide how they can best use it and utilize the space and I certainly think that there's opportunities for sharing of a lot of this is suddenly the hours that staff and there's it would you know be great to be able to rotate one or another our conversations about having a stable space that the farmer's market could rotate through so I think that there's a lot of opportunities there so I'd love to um sort of have our job be to provide these guard rails that make it safe and then let the business community decide how to best utilize it and what works best for their business thanks great um Donna I guess in DSGA's language of guard rails I see the city manager and the department heads of our police and DPW to be able to do that with the business community to mix what's safe what's reasonable and if that does the staff do what they can be the most flexible once we've said yes to the concepts so I think the more open we can be that the staff make decisions after our guidance the more flexible it'll be and and the more satisfying great all right comments um from the public I know we've got a few folks on here so Andrew Brewer had his hand raised uh Andrew you want to go hi um my uh my comments were more about Lang Street in particular I know this is the part of the section but Bill started talking about Lang Street so it's his fault um but I know it's his fault Andrew it is always your fault though um and so I'll actually wait until you get to Lang Street to talk more but I do a couple years ago many years ago when we were discussing the um we had the idea of the downtown improvement district and the idea was still in its infancy I'm not sure anybody on City Council now I'm looking around was it was involved in that back then I was I was okay thank you man um and uh I had been talking about that idea for years and it really took um well it took Sarah Jarvis a great guy yet who was the president of Montlear live at the time to really grab ahold of that idea and start selling it pushing it and we got it done but I remember that we had uh we had an Ernie Pomerlo from Burlington come I think you were actually at that once and you know here's a here's a conservative businessman but he came down and told us you have to do this this is a great idea you have to have a downtown improvement district and he owns several properties up on Church Street he was one of the founding members of the Church Street Marketplace and they have no up a million dollar budget up in the Church Street Marketplace and he talked about kind of the history of how Church Street Marketplace came to be and then I remember him saying that it was great in the beginning so that the real magic of Church Street did not happen until the restaurant spilled out on the Church Street that's when it really took off that's what really gave the whole street the vibrancy um that it was it was kind of lacking for the first couple years of the Tree Street Marketplace so um and I we we kind of kind of long gone to that as we went around trying to sell downtown improvement district to businesses and landlords and property owners in town um and so years you know years later monthly you're still kind of in the frozen that of what what makes for a vibrant downtown what's going to do that and Parklets is I've always been a big supporter of Parklets and I appreciated the council's cautious approach um to you know how many spaces you're going to give uh toward Parklets um in a particular instance um you know there's some opportunities here because you have a chance to try some things out that normally you probably wouldn't try out um and so you have some you have a chance to do some of that you're going to have to set a kind of a sunset on this you're going to say we're going to try it for X amount of period and then there's a sunset on any uh ordinance whether frankly whether it's mass or parklets or closing line is all these things kind of all tied into the same issue of trying to trying to provide some flexibility for downtowns in this very troubling time um and you have a great chance to see whether they work or not whether they work or not so um that's my kind of comments on Parklets um I'm the favorite of them you're right Bill you don't want you know sticks in a cone and some tape around they do have to be substantial they do have to be a legitimate um you all know for sure you're going to you're going to get destroyed in social media about lack of parking in every park spot you take away is going to be a detriment to downtown just be aware that it's coming um but I think this might be a good opportunity to try and and I support would have you try I'll say the rest of my comments later on thank you okay thanks everyone else I go for us um I um also I huge fan of parklets I think there should be parklets everywhere I love the whole downtown build the parklets um if you know that starts butting up this proposal you know then there's a parking issue maybe council explorers building parking garage I don't know um I do um three just for like the two sets of business um three money would not put a part of it in um one we have just a very problematic parking spaces in front in front of our space um two I have um lots of concerns as a restaurant with the restaurant out down you know door dining prayers again from governor um and then three uh we have to be viewing risk curbside teams I take away the three or two spaces in front of our place um that doesn't work I also so but just more generally just kind of for the council's consideration I guess um you know I do find it very curious if the state is telling the city don't put in your own uh parklets to be used as a little bit of a public plaza space um but they're telling me I can put one in um so I don't know the difference between eight people at three penny parklets versus eight people at the city's parklet um and you know the more cynical take is that sounds like my life building sure and covers it if somebody gets sick but um what the other thing I have to say um I guess around you know if uh we get down the road and the you know state restrictions were eased presumably because it's deemed safe to do so um I would love to put a part that I would figure out or won't be sorry you know spaces in front of us um that would be really tremendous one thing I thought I heard mentioned was this idea of um you know rescinding it because of all of a sudden there's not a parking if we invested the time or the resources for any kind of parklet other than some cones with some sticks and some dangling things um and then the city was capable of just taking that away from us two or four weeks away um that would be pretty frustrating I think the appropriate on a public record way to put it um so I guess it's just like some of my thoughts around um you know those those considerations I do I'm all for parklets I think cover the whole everything the parklet sounds awesome your points are well taken there um I wonder if so just getting back to your last point I'm thinking about um the the process potentially for next year and um if a parklet is constructed and um meets the guidelines for this year you know what assurances if any can we give them for following years and and I don't I don't have a good answer to that but I think it's worth chewing on and we don't know I don't know I don't know Dan's a little bit more research than I had there's nothing really required in ACC that as far as building parklets you can actually just have you know posts or whatever it's that it has to be flushed to the side so you're going to create something that that allows it to be accessible so it could just be a platform we actually talked about uh you know maybe seeing if we could get a design for your generic platform that people could use you know we're gonna have ourselves here with details yeah I would hope that people would do the absolute minimum that they need to be able to do for this year in a way that we don't know what we're going to do next year and and it may you know it may be that it's too expensive I hope not um and and you know as we learn we'll get to figure out but what do you know I think from my perspective we wouldn't be necessarily opposed to just posts and things uh but the state is the one that you know especially controls the route 14 I mean route 2 whatever the roads are route 12 and 2 um so they're gonna they're gonna give us the rules as far as transportation stuff um just one further thing um Dan if you hear of businesses that are not getting a parklet because they're afraid to make an investment that the city is then gonna somehow send um permission to to put that out um that would just be really helpful to know um I don't think anyone's talking about it next year yet necessarily but I think there's interest in ensuring that it can be in place for this season at least um and at a minimum people may have to invest in tables umbrellas chairs you know things like that um not to mention whatever platform and so you know there's gonna be hundreds or you know thousands you know even for the minimum viable part so um some assurance that they at least have it for the season and then I'm not to be pulled away you know a week after they spend my money that seems that that seems reasonable um uh yeah I think it is reasonable and I think we really have to be thoughtful of the fact that you know the normal issues that we think about when we think of what we've discussed part that's in the past parking um you know access the idea that um you know some businesses like part but some don't are a little bit out the window at this point in time because so many of the rules of retail and and traffic and downtown you know suspended for the summer and and the fact that we're you know there's going to be a change in all kinds of different activities that you know for this season for this summer season are limited window to the outside and not freeze to death um I you know I think we really have to be creative and this is this is one of those opportunities where if we can as council be creative it's a positive and and maybe we think of new ways you know gives us an opportunity to have experiments that work and experiments that don't work but those experiments that do work may change the way we approach these artlets along the lines of like uh what what Andy Burr said um you know that that changed the way we think about some of these streets and so you know but keeping in mind obviously some of the considerations that west has but I think we really have to err on the side of experimentation in this because I think there is that opportunity there um and this is a really positive unlike the masks which are prospective and things we have to do to keep ourselves safe this is an opportunity to help businesses try something different than who um that benefits them anyone else from the public um we have a number um someone was dialed in their number is 223-9964 hi yes that's me this is Adrienne at Alavida hi ultimately I'm here to talk about the language disclosure but I just wanted to be a little input on the parklet issue um now the businesses are open for input and shopping the reality is that most people are still ordering ahead and stopping by for pickup so what I'm hearing from my customers is that they're so happy that they're parking right in front of a business so that they can quickly come in and pick up and be on their way doing whatever else they need to do um and the other thought that I had was that um right now the the rules for outdoor dining are that tables need to be at least ten and be apart from each other I don't know what the dimensions are in for a total of two parking spots but how many tables would it actually fit in that space and is it really even worth it to take the parking space for what I think is two very few tables um so I will um hold the rest of my comments or when we're talking about language history thank you okay thank you good points to Donna I just saw her comment I mean you could designate clear parking spaces for pickup like on each side of State Street so that within a parameter there were very easy to see and limited time you know pick up everybody at least hopefully try to allow those to be you know take up take out orders without having to lease it but you know I think she brought a good good point um anyone else and Cameron we don't have any other hands raised or communications okay um is there a motion regarding directing staff to come up with new language for a revised parking ordinance or a parklet ordinance I'll make that motion for direct staff to make revised to make a revised standards and and guidance for parklets for the uh 2020 summer season 2020 season order we may not have to rescind what we have I'll leave that would be what you would do next week okay okay thank you I'll second it okay uh so motion it's been a seconded uh for the discussion Jack do you have something to add yes I assume that uh this is something else to be added to the agenda for our special meetings next week so I was just gonna I was just gonna comment on that that would be our goal um this one's a little bit more complex than the masks um and and in our current you know what level of conversation we have with the business community we really want to get it right for them so I just the shot would be to try to do it for next week but also if not follow and just stop part of the motion so if it doesn't make it it doesn't make it that's our goal right okay okay any further discussion on this so Lauren just one thought kind of building on what a couple of the comments um we heard from the businesses that sound like are really relying on the access of parking for takeout you know we could think about structuring it where um you know there's essentially the guard rails we talk about for different sections of streets at a certain amount we give a lot of flexibility and um and nimbleness to the city staff to just move ahead with and then if we reach just a certain critical mass we might start kind of interfering with that ability for parking and then we revisit and you know see how it's going and hear from various businesses and you know expand it further if it's a roaring success and um could just just you know keep ourselves within a certain containment so we don't create inadvertent problems with this but I can really support the businesses and want to pursue it Jay well I just want to add quickly too that I know when we all tend to think of park we associate park with food service but in my mind a lot of what we're talking about is providing sort of outside retail space for different businesses so I think that there's you know the uses of the the outside space um will surprise us at the creativity of our business owners downtown and how they can utilize I think that we need to make sure that they're safe and we're managing traffic and you know our ADA compliant and all those things but I think it's you know I know that there's lots of downtown businesses that are so small retail space that they have art they it's really difficult to maintain six feet for their customers so it might it's it's to provide more space and unique opportunities for for business owners to be creative and and help grow other businesses great yeah any other comments or from the public okay um all right on favor please say aye aye aye opposed okay all right so thank you that carries and we'll add that to the list maybe for next week if it's ready but not that's okay um so if we're ready to move on to the discussion of the possible closure of Langdon Street um thank you for everybody's patience uh who are online for this one um so uh I'm gonna either turn this over to Bill or to Dan maybe I'll start with Bill okay uh you know I don't know a lot to add because there's already covered it briefly since a memo I think it was really just an extension of the part that I yeah but recognizing the unique situation in Langdon the key questions we were wrestling with uh you know do you have a full street closure or do you just have partlets if you're going to close it do you close it in an entirety or do you allow people to sit down to the other outdoors parking lot there's also issues with back access um to come from business business of back access um obviously with liveries there's residents that live there so there's a lot of things to consider um um but we also heard that Dan heard a lot of support from business on Langdon Street to at least have this conversation so we're throwing it to you um Dan do you want to add about this before we jump into discussion um I think the only other piece that I'll say is that um it could certainly be considered that maybe it's not 24-7 in fact I wouldn't insist that it would be 24-7 you know maybe we're talking not only Friday evening and Saturday and Sunday or something like that so um I think you know the flexibility that may be more or less impactful to negatively impactful to some of the conflicts that that they'll refer to um before we move forward I just want to check in is 846 it's been more than two hours since we started um are we do people want to take a break now or should we finish this conversation and then take a break that's sort of my inclination but um I want to be sensitive to what what your needs are dear counsel finish this because people might hear just for this yeah let's do this okay um okay so uh go ahead yeah I'm sure I am you know I'm generally supportive of the idea uh Jack and I did go down I think it was something Jack and we met with Juliana from Jay Langdon uh graduate season here I think and Melissa sweet Melissa's so you know few of the concerns I came you know I don't like to partly think I don't think Melissa's on uh Melissa does a space like immediately in front of her shop like really uh fit the tables especially the socially distanced level so in some cases you might need to give businesses the flexibility to actually set up shop not directly in front of the storefront and you do some room on the bridge there um so the sheriff's um hard god is right at the end so I don't know if I have to do it like diagonally if we were looking at the road scenario for the restaurants but it does look like I mean it looks like we would all fit it as we resist a lot around there and certainly Juliana was interested in maybe bringing Juliana out the shop so but there's a big day point you know it's more than just restaurants um and most of the businesses I think we're fairly enthusiastic about it you know we're getting right away and he was thinking maybe from four to eleven or something um and I think all Adrian and Gigi's online I just thought that's one of our concerns um I feel like it's one of these things where you know people are going to be upset no matter what we do on this to some extent and I think we need to be a little bit minimal and maybe adjust as we go on and just keep in mind maybe the first time we do it it won't be the right way maybe the hours should change maybe the parameters should change um but if you're looking at some of these and again I'll use like some of the restaurants as an example I think that could have a very real and immediate impact on their viability going forward it was so much uncertainty just to have the guarantee of having some tables out there that they could use um so I think it's going to be clunky I think it's going to be awkward if we do go forward with this but overall you know we can take into consideration the needs of as many people as possible um it's a positive thing to do so if I may um I think there was um so I was copying a lot of the emails that Dan received from businesses uh all their thoughts on the possible closure of Langley Street and very generally like very positive I think um I think it would be good to clarify that just a few provisions so one is that we would definitely need to maintain a lane for um safety for emergency vehicles correct um beyond that and there I think one of the concerns that I heard was around that the parking space um that is sort of across from uh any other outdoors or next to get up um just uh so in with that um space in mind uh is so on the one hand parking is free downtown there may be other places to park but they're slightly less rest less proximal um alternatively is there what is the opportunity for people to um continue to use that if they live there um what are your thoughts on that bill uh we don't you know that's when we got to work out we don't have a I don't yet have a clear sense of who's using that space um you know at one point I think you had talked with the owners of the building they were all my 10 no they can park somewhere else it's free but if so presumably you know safety would be good options since we're right next building but if there's going to be parklets there you know that's why I think we do need to look at that holistically for where people can park and if there's someplace nearby that we can provide for them I don't know you know like Connor said it's going to be like you want to take everyone's needs into consideration well and I I know I and Connor certainly tried to reach out to um then Jack you know well tried to reach out to a number of folks um in those either businesses on Langdon or those those particularly those business owners um so what I'm envisioning the conversation is tonight is to is this a direction that we want to go and that between now and our next meeting um we would have more detailed conversations like more detailed conversation to happen um to frame up um a solution at least the the the first solution again maybe it's clunky but um what does that first solution look like um if that makes any sense um other thoughts on this uh jay yeah I mean just I fully support the idea but you're right we've got to have the input from the business owners and to figure out exactly what this looks like so I don't think we can have something tonight that's gonna make sense for everyone so if if we were looking at it um for our next meeting to be able to gather that information to try to come up with some guidelines to make your work for everybody on that street I think um that would make more sense um just while I'm thinking about it uh the I did talk with um one uh property owner on State Street about the possibility of making the closure just from the parking lot on so that people could get in and out of that parking lot and I mean he's one data point but he was particularly not interested in um having two-way traffic just at the beginning of Langdon Street he thought if you're gonna close it close the whole length of it so again one data point Jack well another tricky thing um I think it's kind of a complicated place to make this work you know I've always thought it would be great to have uh have it as much as possible but you know we have I hear outdoors where people bring their bikes they pick up bikes and stuff like that and I know there's a lot of people a lot of little kids get dropped off and picked up at contemporary dance fitness and this might be a good time to do it because they're probably not doing in person classes up there this year but uh but as we think about this long term that is a place where at at times your classes are starting getting out there's a lot of people who go through there but I like us to try to make all those things work yeah I read um any thoughts from council uh Connor and uh first of all the emergency vehicle laying I know um that that ridge is such a large piece of Langdon Street and I think I like the fire truck going down there that makes up the whole space pretty much right uh so are we taking a lot of that off the table uh no um we would certainly want to talk about this the fire chief has talked about this in the past he says and I don't want to speak to them we would include them we did talk about this this morning before this meeting he says basically as long as things can be quickly removed um so if you know they've got to come through it's like oh the table's out of the way it's just it's it's building permanent structures that would prevent the the vehicles from getting through they also have you know again I think they're if there was something on the other side of the bridge they could approach it from Elm Street if there was fires just so they you know crossing the bridge is an important thing to be able to do if something's happening right there you know the against you know the anniversary of Andrew's building then they need to get right there and they'll land and to to deal with it um so that's that's the issue so it's it's making sure when I say keeping laying is this what I mean keeping it open and making sure that it's not nothing obstructing I'm going to leave obstructing the emergency vehicle from getting down the ambulance or uh fire or park good right well yeah I need to uh right right if they were to go out into the street partly in the parking space is probably fine if we were to allow those to go out into the street they'd have to be wide enough to get a truck through a comment from the public on us so thank you I own building at um on the on the the big building on Langstreet eight through eight through 20 languages and I I should preface I don't I no longer I don't own a business anymore so I'm not speaking for anybody on Langstreet necessarily but I have an experience being a business on Langstreet um and I had sent when I got noticed that I had sent an email to a lot of the a lot of the people in the neighborhood a lot of the business owners in the neighborhood um in no particular order I said you know there's some of the things right off the top of my head to concern about would be deliveries and trash pickups um the cells comes down the street um that monster truck uh they pull up in front of on any rivers front door and they actually back up they reverse back into um my parking lot so that they can then pull forward to get out those dumpsters um they need 90 feet um that's 90 feet to be able to get out one of those dumpsters and they cannot pull down he's in place which is that little alley um you cannot get down there um and then I the senior mr. ruler is also on the call here he owns the building across the street and same thing he's got Kasella picks up on his side of the street as well um delivery truck because the dumpsters the cells come very early in the morning that you know if you were thinking about a timing of when you close the street that probably wouldn't be a problem to come very early and there's a reason for that they come because there's nobody in town at that time no cars in the way there's no little kids uh walking to school they have to worry about um that's why they come that early um so that probably would be a problem if you're thinking about hours delivery trucks is a different matter for the most part there are a lot of deliveries in the morning whether it's food deliveries your truck deliveries um but deliveries do happen all the time of the day UPS comes late in the afternoon usually um same thing they have a very difficult time getting down easy place um I dare say possible UPS can probably be down there but nothing bigger than that can get down easy place um if my industry is closed at the entrance to land right at the front um that leaves places the only access to those parking lots back there um this should be parking lot in my own parking lot um so you're gonna have people coming in there and trying to execute some kind of weird point turn to get back out of there when they do that um over the years I'm gonna go back to my Ernie Palmer analogy um you know I've always the idea of closing my industry has come up and I've had this conversation several hundred times over the years um and I and I I don't know if I've ever been forward or in it I've always said there's some things to think about and um again as Jay said we have an opportunity here to experiment with some things um always been worried about closing it permanently because you're never going back when something like that is closed it just it just seems like there's no going back when you do something like that and and as Jack said you know the type of products on the river cells the customers do want to park relatively close to the store they're not going to park behind they're not going to take parking behind the sea hall and drag their bus to bike you know across the across main street station intersection to get to get to get to on your report they can be relatively close to that store to get there um but I always thought a lot if we're going to try this I wouldn't close it at the end just like then I would actually close it you know at the corner of money river but of course that brings up the parking lot behind my dad's building thinking that as the you know the backboard the capital grounds that parking lot back there the WCAX parking lot right across the street they do need to be able to get in and out of there um I don't know if there's if the landlord's being on the whole for any lease obligations they have uh you know in terms of people having their lease they can park back there the only way for them to get out of there would be to come out zing across my parking lot and then go out of place assuming they can't go out you know the wrong way down the line but that would be the only way for people to get in and out of there so even closing land in on the corner of my dad's building to be increasing a lot of a lot of traffic you know there would be a flow coming in and out of there but would be increasing a lot of traffic um in terms of closing line you generally you know it's about vibrancy and if you're going to close the street i'm in favor of it there's a good plan for what the vibrancy is going to be what are we why are we closing the street um and to me it's restaurants being able to spell out in the street um that's the vibrancy it's difficult for retailers to log after inventory out of the street every day and pack it back in every day it's a great idea um but it's not as easy as it sounds um being able to do that so um having settled that is just a great opportunity to try it to see where it works as Connor said whatever you decide this week it probably isn't gonna be perfect you're gonna want to tweak it and change it um but there are definitely some things we have to think about here the dance studio you're right there not going to be holding the classes this summer so we don't have to worry about parents picking up kids um coming to go in there um but those are my thoughts and I see that there's some other people on here who are also in your area so hopefully they'll weigh in thanks uh Kevin my name is Kevin I live in east Montalier so I'm not a taxpayer but I do uh use the city of Montalier as my office and I'm proud to do so um and I now the down home it's gone I'm not sure where I know it's my meetings anymore but we'll figure that out this is an opportunity to do two things it's an opportunity to uh uh uh protect the safety of the public so that they can instead of being cramped on the sidewalk as we were last Saturday uh still let into the street and have more space to walk and and socially distance if we continue to allow to give the streets over to the automobile and confine people shoppers to the sidewalk uh that hurts businesses and it also threatens people's safety in the pandemic number two it's about prosperity uh by bringing what Andrew calls vibrancy back to downtown I the data on this issue is very clear um uh rents go up uh the amount of revenue made by merchants goes up 20%. New York City is closing 40 miles of streets since Natty's doing it we're doing it all over the country and we're going to be a city of that that moves into the future we we I urge you strongly to do this the merchants will innovate people will innovate uh they will some will move their stuff out in the street some will not some restaurants will like it some won't but we will move into a future where the downtown is about uh people gathering and enjoying the city um instead of circling the city in their car looking for a parking space um I've been on this hobby course for a long time I think we should make uh Barry Street one way I think it's dangerous I think Langdon is dangerous right now and it is it's no fun to be on because there's too many cars and um I hate to bring it up but god Dan I had a good you know that suggestion about Friday Saturday Sunday maybe is a decent compromise if the design of this is too difficult politically but I would urge you to try to do it uh every day at least in the short term thank you um sorry needs ruler oh yes yes um before we just want to highlight um something from what Kevin said which is that if other cities are doing this I wonder how they are navigating issues of access to parking lots and uh obligations that landlords may have to their uh tenants we're not in we don't want to invent it um uh leads hi um the parking lot that everybody's talking about this is behind my building which is the building that a junior land is in and also uh get up uh there are six parking spaces back there that I own um presumably one for each apartment in the building and uh there are actually only I think four people in the building now they have cars out there um so a lot of lots of people just one of those spots around there are also three spaces back here that are owned by Steve Everett that are occupied by the dentist and the shop oil shop there and the floor shop and I guess the floor shop is gone well anyway um and then also Steve Everett owns the lots that is right directly across the Andrews building that has a WCA that's fine in it and a couple other spots um one of my problems is that one of my tenants works and works out hours she's a new nurse so she doesn't go in and out at hours then normally would be good for having to be closed or rather she does go in and out at nine hours then we could get as close and uh also the other thing that I don't think everybody's really maybe even knows about is that um Julianna Jennings uh does a lot of her business with his kickers um gets stuff for her to sell in her shop if she requires to do this and they come whenever it's convenient for them to come drop off their stuff so they don't have any kind of schedule and uh they they are going to be able to want to get in and out whenever it is they come um so I just think that I kind of throw that into the next to make sure that it gets it out faster than somewhere you're at actually uh and that's about it thank you um especially as we uh consider the specifics of this and working out those details I think knowing who those players are is going to be really important because it's going to come down to some of those um those details um I did chat with Steve uh Rolini and Steve ever got a that that list of folks um that uh that they had for attendance and anyway I can be in touch with uh Bill or whoever about some contact info there and I know Connor's also reached out to some of them as well so thank you and we'll make sure that we follow up with folks yeah yeah okay thank you yeah um uh Ejin yes hi thank you um I do parking where the spots um that um I want to see that right I pay pay that back as part of my rent um I have for six years um and I'm concerned about um about losing that spot first of all and also about the fact that um I get deliveries uh multiple times um the day um all week long and I I know that you um raised earlier about deliveries and said didn't really happen in the morning well that doesn't happen anymore that's not really the reality right now um they used to all happen in the morning and now I get deliveries all times of the day every day because of the fact that um you know the other businesses are uh that are delivering are that restaurants are open and other stores and shops are open so they have fewer deliveries as they've cut their you know drivers down and they've adjusted their schedules so that deliveries come all the time during the day right now and then they always park on the street and come in my back door which is the easiest way to get in my space to deliver and then multiple times a year I I get deliveries from uh for products that uh that come in very large trucks the 18 wheelers and when I first opened my business they used to park on day street and come in through the front door which was very problematic because you know cars couldn't be around the truck so it caused all kinds of traffic issues and then how it were on the sidewalks and keeping you know people walking on the sidewalks so you know quickly that switch a lane country and it's so much easier to get the deliveries in the back where there's not as much traffic and um you know you can kind of come along the pallet and things like that and you have that time and in that parking lot um to do that so if if that's not available then it's going to end up on day street again and and if there's parking then where are they going to go so I just see multiple problems with this um so I just wanted to voice my opinion about that thank you yeah thank you it's good to know what your reality is some other thoughts or comments and and just for context I feel like this is all a just a time to take in what people's reality is so that we can um if we're gonna move forward craft something that makes sense for everybody or as many people as possible um any other comments from the public um I I see that Wes is still online I do have a question um just thinking about restaurants um I wonder if there's if there's interest um do you think that there's interest from restaurants to spill out onto Langley Street if you don't want to comment on that that's perfectly fine yeah I mean in this sorry my I decided to sit outside um well um like a David Lynch movie thing going on um yeah I mean I very much echo um Andrew's opinion I think there's a lot of logistical questions but I think closing Langston seems great um in a general sense uh you know we are not technically on Langston Street um you know in some kind of broad scope of things I'd love for an exemption to be able to have a space on Langston Street um to put out tables and chairs um it's very much the same part as the part that thing for us I under the current parameters that restaurants are allowed to have outdoor seating I have no interest in putting outdoor seating out um but down the line uh you know I don't know if it's a month now or whatever um if it's healthy and safe uh for increased capacity and for people to be gathering more um I was certainly loved to set up tables and chairs in an area on Langston Street and have our guests sit outside that would be for us preferable to park it out front um specifically because of what the street looks like physically in those parking spaces right in front of our place um I could very much imagine um uh the tavern and um St. Melissa's putting out spaces out on Langston Street and I think that that would look very great talking about vibrancy and um like I definitely also agree with everything Kevin Ellis said earlier um and I guess I just as I was listening to this whole discussion um my two cents since I'm talking is uh it seems to me if you just from the corner of Leeds building there where get up is to the corner of Andrews building um if you cut it off there um and allow the actual car traffic in the first part of the street um and signed you know at the entrance and said you know no outlet uh you know local traffic you know traffic only and made it two way then everybody could get in and out of behind Leeds building and the CAX law and everybody could then turn into um Andrews parking lot as well or use that as now um that that seems to me to solve it and you just close the street from there on down um just as an idea maybe grab the you know where where Mary Alice had her parking uh parklet maybe that's still a parklet I don't know um but yeah I mean if the question is like generally as a restaurant owner is in a feeling to have Langdon Street closed and filled with tables and chairs and people buying and um you know the record shop putting the display out um or you know Jay Langdon or anything like all that sounds fabulous to me cool thank you um Sarah um just just just talking it's not necessarily an all or nothing thing because you've got online and you've got two lanes with parking and then one for travel so you actually would have room to put in if you've eliminated the parking you have room to make half of the road and then have the road and you could even do a west side and make it limited you know ask you for just for deliveries or musty vehicles or what have you but then you you you split the baby in a way that I think that you know serves everybody's purpose as well hopefully not split the baby but split the deal just an idea no that makes sense I feel like um you know we've got some good options here um it helps okay um so just on this um so just on this topic um um I feel like we could probably use the motion directing staff potentially to do um something to uh uh to follow up with some language about the possible closure of Langdon Street and come up with come up with a plan um and and we don't there was really there's no plan right now so again whatever plan um staff can come up with having heard all this input maybe we can um continue to discuss that react to that um Dan yeah along those lines of emotion I'm wondering if it would make sense to make a motion along lines of of um maybe not one plan but um you know at least two plans that would reflect uh an options option for the council to consider um you know variations um that we've discussed like because it seems like there's there's the idea of shutting down the street which might include certain uh time limitations and then there's the other option of at least um having a partial closure of the street that would keep it open to local flow at certain times and it would might be nice to see both of those flushed out um and you know have have another conversation like this where people could actually give feedback on specific proposals as opposed to these general concepts sorry did you say potentially come up with um some options or like a couple of plans is that what you're saying right two I mean you know at least two options at least that's what I'm hearing I would cluster the two the discussion into one of two groups um you know obviously leaving it alone doesn't require a plan um but there's two plans really on the table and it might be nice to have those flushed out and then have a final discussion about this oh just point out to you there is a third possibility would you be simply to uh allow the parking lots along Minden like we're doing everywhere else and still have lane traffic and access waiting so so that's also you know I think we probably you know there's really the way it is there's two parking lots only there's two partial closure do full closure or maybe time closures uh so I think there's probably several choices right I wouldn't see the full closure as really an option other than you know with with some timing element because of the deliveries and and parking issues that we discussed right well when I am when I say full closure I mean assuming we can accommodate I think the church street gets resisted at times so right um Lauren um yeah I like the idea of having options and um it would also be really helpful I think to get a sense you know raised earlier maybe by Andrew like what is the vibrancy what is this gonna look like um and we've heard from you know from certain people I'd be curious how many folks think they would you know describe it like it's and the pain that we're in the drain and out every day you know when the businesses are going to do this what might it look like they think they would take advantage of this outer space would um sweet Melissa's and um lane industry and plan to put tables out if we do this or is this you know for the park conversation that we're very much like let's let them decide where and how they want to take advantage some more flexibility um we anticipate that if we did this people wouldn't want to take advantage are we creating something I like the idea and I would love to move forward with it but that was just a piece I didn't hear tonight and it'll be helpful to know this and yeah you said you had talked to a couple of them so maybe people have answers to um to some of the the the interest in taking advantage of this kind of opportunity go ahead I just gonna um maybe it's just like missing all in person so much but if we did less out those three ideas uh would it be possible maybe just have a socially distant walk down the street before we need to get over this on Wednesday I just felt like you know uh when Jack and I went down it made it a lot more real just like seeing the spaces and how how everything would fit so I think it might help guide our decision if that was a possibility just do a quick walk for some time before Wednesday yeah I'm just cautious this was another one that you know we'll shoot for next Wednesday but I'm guessing I think it's gonna be tough I'd also invite um Bill certainly but any counselors who wanted to come to a business association meeting or we wanted to hold a special meeting for for a mainly street specific businesses uh and I know it can get treated with your council meeting stuff but maybe one of you can come in or three of you can come well theoretically would you be meeting with them next Wednesday anyway yeah we have two now weekly meetings on Wednesday mornings one for restaurants and food service and one for everyone else so I'm trying to navigate Connor's request there um I mean so so um if uh so Dan if you wanted to have or shop some options around to just like the street or state street related businesses um uh really let us know when that's happening um and then um Connor do you want to kind of lead it to you to uh uh if you find a time that you think might work for a walk you know we can maybe warn it and have it be a no no agenda sort of meeting does that make sense I think we can probably do this like socially distance right yeah I mean so realistically the only item that we on the agenda next week would be mass honestly speaking I mean we might get the other stuff but so we could maybe at six and walk down the line to see if we'd be time to get back to you there fair enough sorry I gotta I oh yeah go ahead I mean I mean just just to be on the same side we could all bring our mask in case in case yeah keep this seat six feet it might not be practical you might try but it might not be successful I would strongly recommend that yeah yeah you'd strongly recommend wearing masks it's a good example yeah yeah 100% sorry my internet is becoming kind of uh slow so I'm sort of losing good pieces of people um so Bill were you suggesting that that could be in conjunction with next week's meeting it just seemed like a time that everyone had already set aside so yeah yeah okay um meeting first going out after all the eating is a lot of traditions well we can still do it I think we're probably good takeout so well uh I was gonna take you to debate masks but it starts at 6 30 and it's June 3rd and I guess it will still be light after that it's over yes um I don't know what's up you can do before or after you can start at 6 you do like to do them in the back except that people want to go to their homes yeah yeah I guess I'm not that worried about it maybe let's let's just meet at 6 30 we'll talk about masks and whenever we're done we'll we'll head down there um the way we have to make sure that people have time available ahead of time okay um all right so we were talking about the possibility of making a motion to yeah I'll make a motion um that redirects the staff to develop um option plans for uh closing Langdon streets um along the lines that were discussed this evening um giving the council options I'll second okay any further discussion um and there's no no one from the public who wants to make any further comment Cameron I don't see anyone okay okay um all right uh so all in favor please say aye opposed okay all right so um great that carries so we will follow up with that uh at hopefully our maybe not next week but hopefully the next regular meeting um so I just want to be fresh at the time it's 9 30 and we have yet to go through the city reopening plan um as well as the ordinances our chapter 13 ordinances as well as five home far away I'm anticipating that we will probably not get to at least one of those things not two so um uh how much more is left in the city reopening plan I know there's that chart with a lot of like the phase one stuff I assume did you want to go through that more in detail or what's your what's your thought on on that well it's up to y'all and sort of if you felt like you were able to review it in any um uh real way we could also put because it's um COVID-19 related if you want to wait to go over it until next week we have the special meeting that will also be fine if you don't want to go through this in detail but what it really is is asking um for your approval for how we want to start reopening our facilities and our services once we get our our staff to pass you back in July so if you want to take more time to look at it or want me to go through right now that that's I I'm either way um jack go ahead and this all uh notice we're starting July 1st right that's our proposal so that's something that I think we could put off during our next meeting we want to do that speaking of our next meeting sunset on june 3rd scheduled for 8 29 p.m so perfect um Donna question would this stay in place if we end up financially not being able to bring back everybody that's so um that it does address that um it says that our current plans have our employees who have been for a load recurring life first um but that is subject to budget needs and employees returning may be delayed until July 30th so the date of our phase one reopening plan will have to depend on the return of staff but the city's goal is to have it by July 1st and if our budget goals so it is dependent on on staff being there so July 1 July 30 okay I did read that in the sheet but I'm still left with if we're asked to approve this before we really know what our financial ability is seems so awkward well maybe that's another reason to um delay on that um topic um so I think it makes sense to put that off from now and I see that um Dan Dickerson as well as Alec Elworth are online and um I'm guessing that they were waiting for um either chapter 13 or five home far away probably chapter 13 um uh the ordinances um Alec or or Dan um any thoughts on what you're sticking around for chapter 13 chapter 13 that's what about and um Alec I assume you have some thoughts on that as well uh yeah either or both whatever you get to okay well we've got um about half an hour before I'd like to be done um I as our people okay with continuing on with um chapter 13 okay I'm seeing it's not this is great uh all right especially since this is one that we have um put off a couple times so this is a second reading um and it includes a lot of um what's has it changed from first reading uh either bill or camera and you want to um talk about this at all yeah I think um although we're going to quickly balance it too I think park folks you all have looked at it a couple times made your changes have shown and we actually delayed the last time I requested park's mission because they wanted to go through and mix medicine they're suggested they've been provided we staffed and have any concerns with them and so they're here drafted for you um your comments as well as staffs say the only thing that um okay um I would ask park to do one yeah yeah yeah um Alec or Dan would you like to make comments on the chain potential changes to this chapter I'll go ahead and go um do you should I share my screen so you can see the the parks with the language or do you all open in front of you um I've got to open unless yours is different from what was posted online um no it's not okay then I think you're gonna assume that we've that we've got it but you can really reference the different parts and we'll try to follow you okay okay um so I think big big picture you know we saw an opportunity considering the fact that um this language hadn't been changed since 1992 uh crafts a park ordinance that was inclusive of all the parks that we now have and in month earlier um so currently you know the ordinance only pertains to Howard Park and Summer Street Park um we have a lot more than that now so I think that the number one goal for the park's commission was to craft the ordinance in a way that you know we ensure that um the provisions that we want there uh relate to all the parts not just two of them um so that was the big picture thinking but we did see some opportunity to add things that weren't there that you know uh we thought weren't overly controversial they were pretty um they made a lot of sense within the context of parks and so we're hopeful that you know ultimately the city council supports them um but I'll just walk through it quickly um you know in and I'll go through the the portions of red but relating to the curfew um we wanted to be 9 p.m. dusk and and 6 a.m. we're done just so that you know during the summer um when there's more light people could could use the parks uh more readily um and oh sorry I'll go back um we decided to rewrite section 13-500 as a section that pertains to all parts of month earlier and then further down you'll see where we think about Hubbard North Branch and Summer Street um so going down for fires um Hubbard Park already had a fire provision so we just said it must um you know reference elsewhere or authorized self-refires were created in the parks um for picking or ensuring the plants um we wanted to add Fun Guy um because I think Alec might have said that that's been a problem in the park in the past um and then we wanted to add that you know people could take plants that's authorized by the parks and tree staff because we obviously want people to take uh bases when when their um events are volunteer groups that are there to do so um and we want to say and then additionally we wanted to make it okay to pick fruit so I'm going to tend to drink the plant um we don't want people to do some plants um any plants and less authorized by Park Street staff uh we don't want people uh messing with wildlife we don't want people smoking in parks this is the one area that we thought could draw some I guess concerns just because I know a year or two ago there was discussion about something like that downtown um but we we thought it was important that uh people not be allowed to smoke parks and I jumped in and asked question um on the on the smoking provision to you um did you write that so as to uh can include vaping do you think device containing tobacco or tobacco product meaning vapes vaping? um I think so um but the I drafted this I modeled after some existing language in in city code that actually paints to park but the issue that I was concerned about and sorry and it references state law when it defines uh tobacco tobacco product tobacco substitute and then we added um regulated drug uh oh actually there is one addition that isn't in this language and that's um stem sort of email that dill sent asking um I think he was sort of hinting at whether we wanted to ban marijuana usage and I think that state law already would ban it because um if you could only use on your own property um but I wasn't clearly sure and so I had suggested adding regulated drugs since marijuana falls under that so that way it's clear that I think you don't want people you're right that was what I was asking and I think the real issue was what's the you know what's the public need is we just don't like the smell of cigarette smoke we don't mind you know is it smell is it the fire risk is it the health risk so you know we should be consistent with everything that falls within that category wasn't picking on certain substances as much as what are we trying to accomplish um I mean I think I won't speak to the entire park's mission on this but I think for me it's everything you just listed I think it's fire risk um I think there should be um a public space where people don't have to potentially um smell you know tobacco or marijuana smoke um you know I think people go to parks by and large to recreate and so when you're inhaling smoke it sort of diminishes the the positive impact of recreating um so I you know personally I'm not opposed to people smoking if they want to do it they can do it um I just I don't want to be in parks any parks or a place where um if there's going to be one place in the city where um people don't have to worry about that I think the number one place is parks and I'm sorry uh counselor I forgot what your question was and I don't know if I answered yet oh you wanted to definition of weather bathing um I think it's captured because I think you know in my time working for the legislature this definition has been employed with and so I think that they've they captured it but I'm not a hundred percent sure thanks um so let's see going down and then this is the other potential pot topic and I think it's probably more for us than for city council but I think it also impacts council and this is relating to domestic animals uh we just wanted to make it clear that when people bring their dogs into parks that if there are any park out there didn't cover well actually if there are any park they should be following the the city dog word that's known if they're in public they should also be following and in compliance with the uh they can go to find us so if the dogs are off leash they should be under you know their owners control um so and then we we didn't want any other domestic animals to be brought into parks um so we we don't as much as we love cats and and ferrets and other creatures we we didn't want people walking them through the parks um going down Hubbard so they're um I'll run back up really quickly uh the sections pertaining to firearms, destruction, littering, disturbing peace um I think all three of those currently fall under Hubbard and under summer street and so we thought it would just be useful to move them up and have them pertain to all parks without changing them so you had another question? Yes um it with domestic animals uh does anyone ride horses in the parks in Hubbard park and we just voted that not that I've ever seen but I would defer to Alcon hat maybe he knows I never encountered a horse in any in any of the parks and I'm not sure it's a domesticated animal um yeah it was two two one ounce for me okay thanks in the in the um animal control ordinance there is a definition for domestic animal and I'm pretty sure we're just following that um but in any case I you know given the nature of a lot of the trails in our parks um you know what they are generally and how we're just now beginning to experiment with um with a lot of non-biking in the north ranch park uh I would say I would be just inclined to allow horses and in the parks just because the moves um get impacted trails especially during wet periods um but it's certainly you know I think if somebody we're interested in that in the future it's certainly certainly conversation that we have as a park submission um but at this time I'm not inclined to allow it um so going down to Hubbard park um there's uh so we as far as allowing vehicles um or motor vehicles beyond park roads um we wanted to allow for the law enforcement and emergency services to to access parts of the park as needed if they needed to ride in you know an AT or something to get to someone I will say there's one substance change that you will not see and there's there was um under the motor vehicle regulations that's a provision pertaining to snowmobiles and that people wouldn't be allowed to snowmobile on Hubbard park except on trails authorized or as authorized by park submission we decided to remove that we don't people snowmobile in Hubbard um but you will see further down where we've inserted a provision for North Branch that we've put that back in because um I think there is one trail in North Branch that is so used as a secondary fast access trail or or primary um and then yeah that's really it we've we added North Branch as a separate section um you know one thing that we talked about suggesting was uh you know multi-use trail language but we thought at this time because we're just now experimenting with it it's better if the park's mission has some flexibility to to write our own rules and that if it becomes a problem then you know we can consider the code as um you know another alternative but that's where we landed on that um and sorry that was long but thank you for your consideration yeah thank you thanks for sticking around through all this um park is in the park park is in the park that's an underdog I don't know it's a new new territory there um so I have one question which I think is probably the question for Alec um I think at one point I feel like that we had talked about having a provision for um either aging trees or highly sensitive trees um and that's not in here that's fine I don't want to hold this up I just want to flag that as something that I'm that I'm still interested in anyways like how are we protecting um uh sensitive aging trees moving forward yeah um there is an urban forest management plan coming your way you know relatively in your future so stay tuned for that and and there'll be some things things about those trees in there and and maybe you know maybe ordinances is not the right place for that and it's in a in a plan that works that's great um okay any other questions Connor I think I don't want to go first uh Lauren um just on in this section um age for wildlife I I think it's fine I was just curious I feel like there's like pretty commonly used language and wildlife law um mostly about threatened or endangered species but that you know just pulling up the definition of how they describe like pursuing shooting hunting killing is just like more descriptive and acts that create risk to injury um like placing setting dry for using this to take animals just just a series of thinking of I think you capture the sentiment and it's it's fine but sometimes we try to be consistent with other state laws or practices when we're using our language so if you put if there's any thought around the words that you chose um actually there there was we added a few words over the course of our discussion our last meeting about this language um so release was new antagonize was new um you know we we tried to capture everything that someone could possibly do that would negatively impact wildlife but you know I uh this was this whole thing was something that I've together at late one night last week and so there were some places where I knew that there was a law elsewhere or something included elsewhere if there are other places that I honestly had no idea so I would happily defer you know if there was better language of living wildlife um I would have include that or have it be included or have it be considered but I you know I was just trying to do the best I could getting every starting yeah totally appreciate that and I think it does get at like the only thing that you sometimes see in other wildlife statues are kind of intense you don't have to actually injure it um and you know antagonize kind of gets at that but like doing something like setting a trap that if nothing's injured or killed under this I don't know that you have captured it um or um what was the other piece of it um possibly less um yeah I think I think everything else is pretty well covered um you know I think they just are a little bit more descriptive and what they mean by antagonize so things that people might not you know is that is that a more subjective word to some people like I was just interacting with what do you mean antagonize we were having fun together do you I mean Lauren do you have any specific language I said send the languages from our own Fish and Wildlife Department um I don't know that's perfect and then really I'm not happy to move this forward as I think they did a good job getting the the intent that I can send a council in case it feels like there's anything we're fleshing out a little it's helpful it's sort of it raises the question for for me like we pass this now or is there another reading and what I hear you saying is um that we should pass it and then if there's you know we can forward some language and if if there's revisions we can include this in the next iteration of revisions is that is that sort of what I am I hearing you correctly yeah yeah I'd be happy with that I can send it around and we could always make a tweak in the future if we felt like there's something missing unless uh unless there's other suggestions that people have that we could bond together with another revision um but I wasn't hearing any necessarily yet um any thoughts on that Miller Cameron it's fine with me I think you know yeah we can always tweak that the only thing I'm going to suggest is that whatever you decide you want smoking you're clear about that even in that to the language that you want and I just know that you know the part of the firearms is existing language but I'm reasonably certain I believe we checked with the city's towns that the city actually would not be authorized to prevent the carry or display of the firearms can regulate this charge so you know we don't want to have any authority to do anything with it or just take those out so maybe there are three three things the language about and antagonizing part of the firearms and then and clarifying the firearm thing the smoking thing I think if you just want to can you do that right now that's easy just an amendment now with the antagonizing that's what I'm going to say I don't think I'm there on the smoking and I use the bar almost every day I have asthma and it's somewhat like repelling to me that's all of the trails but if I apply the same logic that I applied when a lot of us made the decision not the band smoking downtown I'm sort of coming to the same place is this you know like sometimes people thought it was a leaders best case you know when that issue came up other people said it was a little further and in the time to get sort of the homeless population out of our downtown areas because they were smoking in storefronts and everything so when I look at Hubbard Park I know like we actually have a lot of homeless population who lives up there and because it's being interpreted as a way to keep them out of there when already they have no place to go so my comfort level just isn't there yet even though personally I probably agree with this I think I might be critical to my last decision uh Donna I'm sorry I thought we already had no smoking in the parks and the whole no-smoking discussion has happened for the last two three years Connor totally unrelated to homelessness and individual smoking so I think one is just a health decision to say is a healthy example like wearing your seat belts that we don't have smoking in public places as much as possible almost strictly our parks and like our playgrounds so I I feel it's important we keep that message of not having smoking in our parks if if I may um there there is language in the code um pertaining to smoking but I brought it up as an issue um to the parks commission in that uh it's basically the same language except um it notes that uh I thought so it says no person shall smoke or hold or possess any lighted cigar cigarette pipe or device in tobacco or tobacco product or tobacco substitute within or on any park field or recreational area owned by the city which is conspicuously posted with signage for hitting smoking and the area that concerned about this is it sort of reads like if it's not if there's not signage then smoke away and you know and if the intent was for there to be a smoking ban then I think it should just be an outright ban and not have this sort of confusing language at the end and so there is language in the code um you know I don't know if the intent is that smoking ban period in parks and fields or if it really does pertain only areas where there's signage but we want to build on that just say uh no smoking so there's language in code if you chose to not accept what we propose I don't think you leave the end of the world um but you know we thought that we should just make it clear I actually like your new language and expansion I just want to mention that it had existed previously thank you for the clarification Dan um uh go ahead Dan sure I I think I agree with Donna on the smoking issue but I don't have much much to add I would my preference would be to pull out some of the language about the firearms to the extent that we can't enforce it only because I get it invites us a challenge to have that um forceful language in um and I had one question I had two questions one um how do we define dusk and dawn um if those are the new alternates and I presume we're not looking to you know please somebody who gets there five minutes before but it does strike me that both terms are somewhat more nebulous than the very fixed hours that are in existence now um could could you sunset and sunrise those are theoretically definable points yeah I think those might be slightly more fixed points but I think you know I'm also not I'm not opposed to that idea I just think that those are difficult to pin down you know it's that at that you know one man's dusk is another man's uh nighttime um I just wonder if if and I don't mean to hold it up on this but it does seem like something that could be fought over if the purpose is to sort of keep people out from more broad times which is you know somebody's there at midnight or somebody's there you know at 1am um but it does it does strike me that it could have sunrise or sunset might be a slightly more more assignable time because those are as somebody pointed out those are times that are actually set by a clock well and actually um I just want to point out that the language as it is right now says not between the hours of 9pm or dusk each day whichever is later and 9pm will always be later because the the latest the day goes as the equinox not the equinox the solstice in june and the the solstice is the sunset is 838 um so that's yeah I mean either it's dusk which is nebulous or sunset which is 838 um and yeah I don't know I've looked up the uh the sunrise yet um but anyway it's a little so um yeah is there anything further on that Dan and then Jack why just I guess I'd ask Alec or or or Bill if this is an issue that that you guys have are wishing to address or having that little flexibility you know that that someone would be there it's why like after uh after the sun goes down is is okay um and that's what you're trying to gain and Alec from the parks yeah if it's not an issue for it to be like in my mind okay I and I'm I'm perfectly fine with that sorry I mean to cut you off Dan if you were um you know the only thing I think broadly as far as the curfew the big concern from you was you know if people are in the parks when it's dark it makes it more difficult if there's an accident makes it more difficult for someone to get to that individual um so that's the idea I guess behind the curfew and you know the dusk and daunting was in addition to a late game how it was just with the intent to you know during the summer when days are generally longer to give people more time to access the parks um you know we didn't really have a great way of of sort of broadening the 9 a.m. to 6 a.m. without saying you know except during the summer it might be 10 a.m. to 5 a.m. but so we were trying to simplify without being too I don't know without being unclear I wouldn't be heartbroken if this was moved to sort of move this far you know I know it's late and you guys don't want to be talking about this any longer um but that was that was the intent was just during the summer to give people a little more time yeah and I'm really fine with that ambiguity um as long as your company you guys are comfortable with it I don't have an issue um and then I'll add another small question but I'm just gonna wave it off so we can move along uh Jack and Donna I'll just point out that uh although the drafters may not have been aware of this dawn and dusk and twilight actually do have defined that defined meanings uh civil dawn civil twilight occurs when the sun is less than six degrees below the horizon in the morning civil twilight begins when the sun is six degrees below the horizon and ends the sunrise in the evening it begins the sunset and ends when the sun is reaches six degrees below the horizon civil dawn is the moment when the geometric center of the sun is six degrees below the horizon in the morning civil dusk is the moment when the geometric the center of the sun is six trees below the horizon of the evening. So for any given date, one could actually look up the time of a civil twilight, civil donor, civil dusk. I don't know if that, people went honestly with those terms of forces just sunrise and sunset, but I don't really think they're at a use. I'd be happy if there was a reference added to the language to whatever resource you just read from. Before you go down, I just want to note that I feel like I'm hearing a number of potential things to be cleaned up about this and I think we're going to need to make a decision as to whether we want to approve this now and then talk out further visions or have a third reading potentially. Or not at all. Dona. I was going to propose we have a third reading and that we get language from Lauren, language from this and some other things and tidy it up before we pass it. Second. As long as we're in that mode, I just noted that in section 13 319, it still includes Jack's name and Dan's name. To be forever memorialized. I was hoping to get into the ordinance. Lauren. It is two other really minor things in 13 318. Unnecessary apostrophe and trees. The other one was like slightly more substantive though. There's still a specific in 13. Like a specific date and or day of the week and time for meeting. And I thought we had that. We would just say like. The only monthly or something like we don't need to put that in. Okay, so just flagging that still in there. Yeah. We agreed to just make it more flexible for them. You can call. Okay. So I think we're going to have a motion for third reading. I did because I feel like there's a lot of edits we need to send into our staff and get it cleaned up. And I think it was seconded. Yep. Okay. Any further discussion. Okay. Please say aye. Aye. Okay. And. Okay. And. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I did because I feel like there's a lot of evidence we need to send into our staff and get it cleaned up. And I think it was seconded. Yep. Okay. Okay. So we'll have some more language there. I think it being 10 o'clock, we are going to put off the five home for my discussion again. I apologize. So I can, I can quickly report. In the anticipation of this meeting, I did receive communication from Karen Freeman. I'm not. I was in the conversation board. And, you know, I actually hoping we can get all the stakeholders together before tonight's meeting. This was yesterday, but we have a meeting next Tuesday with. The more controller the corners. Everyone. Preservation trust. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then bring back those results to the council. And. Not have us to take position yet. Great. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. I talked to your. Jamie. I was going to talk to the general office bill. You may want to look him in on that. He's, he's part of the general office for the nonprofits. And he was already aware of the situation and. And. Suggested that he wanted to be a part of any sort of global conversation. Okay. What's the last name. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Council reports. Order that we would have gotten. Donna. Where are we in person? Well, I want to start off with, I really want breaks. It's not only my ladder, but I need to get up and walk the city. So long in this chair, which is not nearly as comfortable as my council chamber chair. So please. Break in no matter what. You even forgot the break that you were going to do. I know. I know. But. And also just. I want to buy capital calls at the end of the day. And there was the whole share of family out putting out their Park. Putting the flowers out. It's looking good. So thank you all for supporting that. Great. Super. Connor. I hope they had it together. We both got an email out there, but. Talk artists projects. People like our spaces for some talk drawings in town. It's like a really, really cool project. I think. Is there someone on the wedding? We should probably get it up. But, uh, So that would be cool too. Right now. That's it for me. J. Yep. Just a reminder. For everyone that Saturday is. New day for. And so get out if you can. And thanks. For making it happen. And also to the folks at public works. For being flexible. And, uh, Supporting that effort. Despite the delay. Thanks. Great. Uh, Dan. Yeah, I had a couple of feedback from constituents. About some, some noise. Apparently there was a motorcycle incident. Where they were revving up their engines. And so, um, Obviously this is something that the. Single incident is not going to be able to be police, but I think we have to, we have to be aware, especially with people who have been cooped up and may not have. Um, Areas to go that we're probably going to see a rise of, uh, Complaint. Neighbors or people coming through neighborhoods. Um, As everybody sort of gets out of their winter hibernation. We're probably going to see a rise of, uh, Complaints between neighbors or people coming through. Neighborhoods. Um, as everybody sort of gets out of their winter hibernation. Party. Party annual. Okay. Um, Jack. I'll pass. Lauren. Um, I was hoping to, uh, throw out there was, I would love to maybe one of the upcoming meetings, um, update from John on what's happening with our, John Odom with our elections, knowing that they're looking different this year. There's a lot of conversations. John did a great job on, uh, PPR, uh, talking about some of the issues and how, um, I'm feeling is addressing it. So just something to be great to have all of us kind of, I don't understand what that's going to look like. And if we're going to need, you know, what accommodations that the city and looking for volunteers and maybe different ages and stuff, but, um, Nice job, John. And look forward to talking more. And then that's it for me. Great. And I assume since John turned off his video, there's nothing to say about that right now. Um, Yeah, I mean, it's, there's what the state's going to do. That's already sort of a plan underway. We'll see how it shakes out. Legislatures is taking control of the reins on that. There's also something that we might do separately. So John, is it fair to say that this is a topic worth discussing? Um, And out of your meeting. Yeah. Um, I mean, it's, there's what the state's going to do. That's already sort of a plan underway. We'll see how it shakes out. It looks like legislatures is taking control of the reins on that. There's also something that we might do separately. So it's probably worth talking about. Great. So we'll put that on future agenda item. Um, for myself, I just want to let people know that, uh, we, uh, With the energy information ordinance group. Uh, found a grant that was pretty large and we're hoping to have the application ready to go. Uh, for, um, Tomorrow, actually. Um, but with that in mind, this is something that potentially could be brought enough that we could be looking at, um, funding of even like a position. Yeah. Even that could potentially help with, uh, Energy planning for the city. So, um, we're going to try to, um, Work that into the, into the grant for tomorrow. I just want to be aware of that. And hopefully, um, There's no objections. Um, but if you do have objections, let me know. Um, but we're going to work to get that outdoor tomorrow. Um, and then we'll see. So. Any, any comments on that? Okay. Great. Um, And it is also, I should say to, to support, um, potential implementation of any, um, Uh, energy information ordinance. So, um, That's, that's also very much a part of it. So, um, All right. Uh, anything from John. Yeah. Okay. Uh, Bill. I didn't really think. I have a quick, I get a session. Also thank D. B. W. And fire chief. For getting the answers up the high school seniors on. It's great. It's wonderful to be able to honor us. 2020. And, uh, I had a reason to go through several towns over the weekend. To see how they honored their graduates. And there were many different ways, but none is. Not fully understood downtown. So this is definitely the most impressive. Yeah. Uh, great. Um, All right. So that concludes our regular business. And we do have an executive session. Um, on the agenda. Um, Bill, I still assume you would still like to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, Jack. Pursuant to one. Section three 13. Okay. I move that we go into a second session. To discuss, uh, The employment or appointment of a public. Officer or employee. There'll be no action coming out of it. Second. Uh, Favorite. Hi. Hi. Hi. Lauren. Did you have a question? Are we clear that we're adjourning the public meeting? Did we do that? No. Great. Okay. So then we'll hop off this call and get on to the session call. And for everyone else with the public on the hall, I'm going to assist it for everyone. Thank you. Thanks.