 Okay, well it is 6.30 and so we're gonna get started and I just want to start, I'm gonna call the meeting to order, but I want to just start by saying how delightful it is to be back in person. I have missed having you all here together. I feel like that that makes a difference. Anyway, it's good to see you all. Yeah, so delighted to be back. All right, so the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. Okay, you know, I also, normally if there is a projection I try to move out of this seat but I'm just gonna hang out here and my apologies in advance if my head blocks somebody behind. All right, so in reviewing and approving the agenda, are there any changes that folks want to make? I didn't have anything on my radar to change. I just wanted to comment, to follow up on your comments, Madam Mayor, that this is our first attempt at a hybrid city council meeting using Zoom. I know some of our committee meetings have done this but this is our first real attempt at going live and we know we have a topic that there's a lot of people that would be that we want to comment. So we'd ask you to please be patient. This is a this is a work in progress. So hopefully all will go well but we'll try to improve as we go forward. Okay, any other thoughts on the agenda team? No changes? Okay, so without objection we'll consider the agenda approved. So on to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any item that is not otherwise on our agenda. If you have a comment you'd like to make that does pertain to something in our agenda then we'll ask you to make those comments either as a part of that item or just before but if it's not on our agenda now is the time and as is true for all of our public comments if you would say your name where you live and try to keep your comments to about two minutes that would be excellent and I think that oh the other thing is in the past we've had a microphone set up separately but for tonight's meeting and this is you know we're seeing how this goes for members of the public who would like to comment there's a chair that's set up here at the table and there's a couple microphones here because we want to make sure that you are adequately picked up particularly for folks who are remote so I think that is everything I need to say about that. Would anyone like to address the council on a topic not on our agenda? Yeah, go ahead. Hello my name is Kiana Bromley I live on 45 Easy Street off of Town Hill and I am coming today I got a chance to speak to Jack earlier. We live in a spot that has a really nice large lawn and I am a theater and music person and we're hoping to host a music series for the community free event on our lawn but it will and it's gonna be on either Saturdays or Sundays through starting like we're hoping again August 15th through October 3rd we have five bands lined up we might have a sixth but the and it would happen during daylight hours a starting music would be from 6 to 7 o'clock these will be amplified in some way so that the people at the event can hear it but we would try to contain that amplification to our space and to the yard but there's bound to be some sound that escapes out to our neighbors and we have one band in particular that might be they are a rock and roll band they're local they live one of the members lives in town and they're gonna be loud so we are actually I'm going to be applying for a variance to the noise ordinance and I'm hoping to add it to your agenda for then for August 11th I will be giving a letter to all of my neighbors in the vicinity in the 250 foot radius I'm speaking with them in person but I just wanted to come and say that I would love it to be added to the agenda so we could have that happen and then get that up and running so the only issue with that is that we don't actually have an August 11th meeting okay still coordinate with us and get us the letter in and we can we can maybe do a special call-in meeting for that cool thank you you have some tough neighbors across the street so okay well there we go so I think this is gonna be great I can't wait cool thank you thank you yeah sure I kind of missed the beginning but there's a rumor in the homeless community about something allowing people to camp out in place yeah so we will be taking up that as an item on our agenda in a little while and this time is for topics that are otherwise not on our agenda okay and so if you that's why I missed that so great meeting no worries yep you're at the right meeting yeah and so we'll be taking that up a little bit later and if you have a comment about that yeah yeah yeah we'll be inviting the public to make comments then so thank you yeah Steve Whitaker if you don't know me by now regarding public health and safety I hear that I see that on a lot of agenda items that were really taking care of this the Gerton Park structure seems to be it's a real hell hazard right now I've asked the chief to speak to it but he is bound by chain of command the puke the vomit the feces the trash the dog food the dogs rolling in it everybody's petting it it's it's a it's a scene and I was assured that it was gonna get powerwashed weeks ago but apparently now public works and in parks and everybody's pointing at each other and nobody wants to get it done it's a hell hazard I encourage the chief to string it with police tape right now it's it's a hell hazard and I acknowledge that prior I went to bat that the folks using it deserved a place until other alternate places are found but right now those people are so abusive even throwing a water bottle at a 95 year old man who came to take pictures and what lodged his complaint was with the count with bill so it's it's out of control the sooner it gets moved the better it needs to be cleaned tomorrow morning I'd ask you to take action on it tonight to make sure that that thing gets cleaned you're gonna need a truck to get a mattress and wet clothes from under the bridge this can't wait any longer I suggest as moving it well either decide tonight or take it to the town garage and decide later but if you decide tonight to move it to 12 main decide whether you want it privacy or not privacy consider the lot behind 12 main on the backside of the lot facing the river would give a little bit of privacy with proximity to restrooms and maybe serve continue to serve the population it serves I think people would be less likely to get as rowdy and rude to people as they do now so those are my I'm trying to be concise and quick but we can talk about it more the bridge along the railroad track the new newest bridge multi-use bridge there's a gap on either end two and a half inches the there was an aluminum formed piece that set in it to protect it and it's too wide strollers scooters wheels fall in I similarly watched a five-year-old boy on a scooter coming down school street today his he went head over the scooter hit the sidewalk faults and he went head over the scooter these are hazards and we keep doing optional projects and we've got we need to prioritize these kinds of public safety projects and another 90-year-old woman walks around with her rectangular shopping basket she asked me to raise two things enforce the ordinance about bikes and skateboards on the sidewalks and to repair or restore the access between the multi-use path and the capital Plaza lot in between the capital Plaza lot and the Haney lot those two irregular dirt slides are impassable for an elderly person frail pulling a shopping cart those are things that should not have been interrupted in accordance with our plan about interconnection of trails and walk ability it got disrupted by the new bridge and the assumption that the garage was going to fix it it didn't so it's time to fix those two dirt slopes coming right off it may be the railroad right away is is an issue you may not be able to construct a ramp in the railroad Steven I can I can answer that but it's private property and they won't allow it okay so then do it this side of at the edge of the right right take a hard right off of the bike path and then do a ramp attached to the blocks that we built the embankment with we've been looking at all those okay but looking at it and getting it solved is is a issue similarly the Main Street travel lane is continues to be blocked every Thursday morning and others by delivery trucks for Abishan the he's the Abishan manager is risking losing a load because of the potholes in that alley the forklift going down that alley can tip a whole pallet off so using the new road in eliminate four spots in the back corner by pee pie the first two on the end of the first peninsula and the second one on the the north end the north same north peninsula will create enough turning radius for the trucks to come in on the new road unloaded Abishan's the beer trucks similarly and exit through the the alley by Jacobs beer garden I'm over time I'll leave the others for the next meeting thanks thank you and thanks for bringing those things to our attention all right anyone else okay all right so we are on to the consent agenda is there a motion regarding the consent agenda Jack move the consent agenda I'll second motion and a second further discussion yeah Lauren good just curious pull that even closer yeah closer yeah yeah right I know yeah it's gonna be loud COVID friendly just just curious when we're doing like tractor purchases and things like is the city looking at electric yet for these kinds of purchases I know they're probably not yes cost competitive I'm just curious if we're like getting in the practice of I'll have to check I don't know the answer to that we'll check on that just nothing to hold up tonight but just hope that we are building that into practices and encouraging I was also thinking about that in my understanding I'm very willing to be wrong about this but my understanding is I I don't know of any that exist commercially so to be continued all right there's been a motion a second any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye hi hey and opposed okay so the consent agenda passes so we are up to the we have a couple of appointments to make so the first is to the historic preservation committee and we have one applicant for that which is Yana Walder is Yana here okay don't see Yana and I suppose they could be in attendance remotely okay all right fair enough though if you are on Yana you can go ahead and unmute yourself and let us know that you're here so okay fair enough we have I'm gonna move right into the other appointment and then we can consider both together the other appointment is to then what is going to be a newly formed public restroom committee and for that we have a couple of folks who put their names in Shayna Casper and Carolyn Ridpath I don't see Carolyn I'm sorry I don't see Shayna here and I don't think I see Carolyn here either either of them on otherwise if you yes Connor go ahead sorry mayor oh you're gonna have to get real close real close usually very loud yeah I'm on the homelessness task force as a liaison from the council there and my recollection was we appointed Carolyn and Zac Hughes the question came up do they need forms again and I said I thought not probably because we had previously already appointed them to the homelessness task force okay so I know Zac Hughes was also selected by the task force thank you for that clarification okay just double checking so yes go ahead just for clarification Zac his app his name should be put forward with these others too I believe so yeah okay so assuming that none of these folks and Zac I don't think is well he could be there on a different page I suppose again if any of you are on remotely go ahead and unmute yourselves and let us know that you're here but otherwise it sounds like none of the the folks are here so what would you like to do team or appointments I'd make a motion that we go into deliberative session on this as is our normal practice to consider the appointment as allowed under one VSA section 313 there's a second further discussion and I it's executive session it's okay yes kind of would we be selecting I think we have two counselors tonight as well would it make sense to appoint them as well so the committee can get up and run it I think so yes yeah a further comments on this okay all right then most there's been a motion in a second all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay so we are going to go into the other room for a bit and hopefully we'll be back relatively soon all right thank you all right is there is there a motion to go or to come out of executive session I'll move a second okay motion a second all in favor please say aye aye and opposed so we are back into regular session and is there a motion mayor I'm moved we appoint Yana Walder to the Historic Preservation Commission and Shana Casper Carolyn Ridpath and Zachary Hughes to the public restroom committee along with City Council representatives Connor Casey and Dan Richardson okay there's a motion and a second any further conversation okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed all right thank you for to all of you for stepping up to serve in this way we're so grateful all right so all right so now we are up to the the city encampment response policy review and I think we have some presentation from our assistant city manager so Cameron are you gonna be presented I am so for that I am gonna move okay so while I present I'm gonna remove folks ability to unmute themselves so that I don't have to check on that I don't think I'm unmuted hopefully that works all right John do you mind hitting the light so folks in the room can hear see thank you so much all right so I'm gonna do this in the dark apparently no kidding so I know a lot of folks are here and I'm sorry my back is to you so if you can't hear please holler and I'll speak louder we're here to discuss a proposed policy that we're calling the city encampment response policy I know that there's been a lot of conversation about this so hopefully this presentation answers some questions and adds some clarity to why we're doing this what sort of process we went through to get here what sort of impact a policy like this may have on our community I've got some common questions and answers that have come up through this process just so that I can hopefully answer some questions that from some folks may have and then I'm gonna outline what sort of next steps the city is doing regardless of steps and actions taken tonight so to get to really well first I'm gonna take a moment to say I know that this is a difficult conversation and that a lot of feelings have come up during this conversation so when we get to the conversation part or the question part of this presentation I'd like us all to remember sort of the humanity of the folks that we're talking about things that this policy folks at this policy could impact and also remember to not generalize anyone I'll certainly aim to not do that as well and just be respectful so I want to sort of get into the why we created this policy and why we're proposing it to council to be very frank there are folks camping now in our public parks and our public land and there will continue to be folks camping because there's a lack of better or other options and the city does not currently have a policy in place for staff to address those encampments we were trying to make a policy that made restrictions available to the city so that we can improve on what's in place which honestly is not much there is also a need to determine where camping is and is not okay which is what guidance we're seeking as staff from council and our other elected bodies this aligns with both a court case out of the night district and guidance from our own state's attorney which is really aiming to not criminalize homelessness I'd want to start out also by acknowledging that this conversation in general can seem frightening as I've heard a lot of feedback that says I think this policy opens up the city for camping or it can say that why would we put boundaries in place at all and so I would say to that it's just we need to be nuanced in how we talk about it and how we think about it you know we're not trying to open up public land for anything that it shouldn't be used for so I do want to talk a little bit about like the legal responsibility and why we put forward this policy so there is a case precedent out of Boise that set legal precedent that basically ruled that public sleep people who are I'm sorry I'm gonna restart that sentence folks can sleep or camp on public property if there is no shelter space or legal place for them to go so people can be offered appropriate shelter space and if there is a space open camping is not legal but it basically says that we can't bar folks from getting a night's sleep on public property if there's no alternative shelters so I've heard some feedback about the night district court case and how it does not extend to Vermont currently and that is true but it's also a case that is the highest presence in the land right now and it is an approach that's being supported by our state's attorney which I'll talk about a little bit later so again you know we've been told as city staff by our legal counsel that it's appropriate and good to be proactive about this issue and you know we realize that this is something that will impact us has impact us will continue to impact us and we'd rather have standards in place to approach it than not so as you may know or have heard the state's hotel motel program which was housing folks that were unhoused during COVID in our local hotels and motels has ended and so general assistance housing where people could petition the state to get housing vouchers has returned to pre COVID eligibility restrictions and that is actually pretty restrictive I think priority goes to folks with children folks with disabilities and folks with families and so unless there's a weather event that's really who's available to get housing and to be honest there's limited shelter and housing capacity and all of our social services partners to begin with and so what we're looking at is an increased number of folks experiencing homelessness in our community and a lot of those folks will be turning to emergency camping outdoors because they may not have any other options including sleeping on people's couches going elsewhere continuing to stay in the hotel motels or going to a shelter because our shelters are at capacity right now I talked to good Samaritan Haven who is one of our sheltering partners and they are bringing a lot of new places online they're working very hard to expand their shelter beds and hopefully by the fall they'll have over 80 or over beds available for folks which is a huge expansion on what we have available now so there is a solution if you will short term emergency solution for sheltering that's being expanded as we speak but doesn't exist currently so we created this policy to respond to both those legal responsibilities and for what we want staff to know what to do when they approach folks so the policy itself is based on a local model from Hartford Vermont we worked very hard internally with a lot of staff from multiple departments who would be touched with it by this and we also worked with our legal team with Hartford Vermont our homelessness task force the cemetery commission the rec advisory board and I met with the parks commission last night I do want to give you guys a report from the parks commission they met they asked to table their conversation to have a longer one this Thursday and just for folks awareness they're meeting here in this room tomorrow at 6 p.m. and they voted to ask council to not take any formal action on this policy tonight but just have a discussion until you can hear back from them okay hold on sorry folks all right so the proposed policy really make sure that we're responding to the idea that it is okay to sleep on legal art it's I'm sorry emergency camping has been defined as legal on public land and so it's necessary that we have a staff response to this and so there's two major parts of this policy a part that says where emergency camping and sleeping will be allowed if the shelters are full and a person has no other option and that's the part that needs public I'm sorry this Connor it was your computer right back again okay so so again there's sort of two parts to this policy there's one which is where and how we sort of put boundaries around where people can camp because the Martin versus Boise case that sets precedent for this really says that municipalities and jurisdictions are able to create boundaries over when and where people can camp as long as there's reasonable opportunities for them to camp elsewhere on public land so that's the part that needs this public opinion needs this public participation from all the folks sitting behind me and all the ones who've been participating since early June when we started this conversation with some of our commissions so the other half of that policy is what staff is going to do if they encounter a camper or a sleeper or an abandoned campsite that's gonna still need to be internally established no matter what council and our other elected bodies decide to do about putting up boundaries so that's sort of the the two parts of this policy however in general this policy would if adopted in whole spell out what public land is available for emergency overnight sleeping and then how staff will interact interact with that it also outlines high sensitivity areas that would not allow for camping and then set up a staff response asking folks to relocate and how we would do that so the next slide really outlines where we've come up with those high sensitivity areas where we would prohibit camping or sleeping so this kind of came out of conversations with staff with community members with our committees and our elected bodies like the Cemetery Commission and the Parks Commission is being asked to weigh in on this list as well so these were the boundaries that we're asking council to help us examine the other properties that have been brought up for addition during those feedback sessions that I have not included here include the 12th Maine Moe at lot I know that the Parks Commission has not weighed in so I will not give any feedback about the parks locations that may or may not be added to this list so just for folks who are listening in this list is not formalized this list is not don't take this for gospel this is what we're proposing to council for feedback on so having a policy like this in place protects both emergency campers the community and the city as it clearly explains what we expect from those who are emergency sleeping on public land if there's no other shelter available and it communicates what we would call high sensitivity areas where we'd ask people to relocate but it also holds the city to a standard I think when this is why this is so important to me to bring this policy forward to council and to have it as a public discussion so that folks who would be impacted and those who are emergency sleeping know what standard they'll be approached by the city I think it needs to be standardized because we've heard very much like very strongly from our community that and even from our own police department that that should not be the first answer and that should not be the first line of defense against folks who are just trying to sleep out of the elements right and so holding to that non criminality mindset is very important to us as staff and we want to ensure that that's sort of what is codified inside of policies so folks know what they can expect if they're camping in a place where we have asked them not to so I've been rambling a lot but what it comes down to really is the policy response to a legal responsibility of jurisdictions after a case that is also been sort of aligned by our local state's attorney it communicates our out and outlines our expectations to the staff and to the community it reinforces the city's response to people who are already camping because I cannot emphasize that enough that this is already happening and has been happening for a long time it also makes sure that there's boundaries around where the city cannot support emergency sleeping and camping what it doesn't do however is allow for camping for non emergency reasons I have a home in Montpelier I cannot go camping in Montpelier because I have a place to go if the shelters are open and there's a place for someone to go and they're camping in a high sensitivity area we would ask them to leave that area so that they could go to a shelter that's more appropriate and safe and it does not create permission for any illegal activity if somebody is doing something illegal we still ask that you call 911 and report that so I talked a little bit earlier about how our state's attorney has made clarifying statements that align himself with sort of the ethos of the Martin B Boise case he has stated that he's limiting the amount of infractions his office is willing to prosecute because he would like officers and police around the state to ensure that officers consider people's struggle with poverty and homelessness before they make citations he's made it very clear that offenses such as minor property crimes such as unlawful trespass which is what this would be are are prevalent amongst those individuals and he would like us to take caution before citing folks for that so he really also called out the importance of working with some of our embedded social service agent like our social service partner that we have in our police department to make sure that we are addressing these calls in a mindful way and not just citing folks he also made it very clear that municipalities are are likely to be forced into serving as systems of last resort to mitigate the suffering of folks okay there we go this is fun for all of us and so he's I guess I'll get to the point of this is saying that like he wants to make sure that incarceration he wants to make sure we know as cities and as cities that have police departments that incarceration and fines will only exacerbate the difficult circumstances of individuals who are facing homelessness which is why a responsive policy such as the one we're proposing is the way that the city staff would like to go when we're responding to emergency sleepers we would like it to be a discussion we would like it to be a partnership with things like Washington County mental health or our peer support outreach worker which is super important for us as the city in partnership with Good Samaritan Haven to really address folks where they're at and meet them where they're at and make sure we are not criminalizing homelessness so I'm going to sort of take a step back and sort of respond to some community feedback and questions that I've gotten as I've spoken to folks about this policy so does this allow any resident to camp on public land I would say no the city's responsibility is to allow sleeping on specific public land if no shelter space is available so again if you have a place to stay or shelter is available that does not allow for emergency camping so we also talked a little bit with the parks department or the parks commission yesterday about how this will impact park participation and again I think it's important and I think this conversation that's come out of this proposal has been really interesting because I think it's bringing awareness to the fact for the first time for a lot of folks that people have been camping on public land we might not see them which is why it's it's less of a thing that's reported our park staff has reported seeing very little folks I think one or two in the last year because people are trying to stay out of the way but it has been and there will I think probably always be a population of folks who need to stay intense because they don't have any other option and so then I would always just say make sure that if you have dogs that are loose in the park just make sure they're under verbal control and again if you have if you see a legal activity please report that to the police so some other questions that have come up are some issues is does this adequately address hygiene concerns for those who are out there emergency sleeping and definitely not it does not do that nor does it purport to solve that problem this does however sort of talk about outlining mitigation strategies just remember folks if you're on zoom please meet yourself thank you okay and we know that public facilities are limited and hours and locations throughout the city and we are looking to the literally just formed public restroom committee for recommendations on that issue I've also heard that this policy doesn't do anything to address the root causes of homelessness and we agree that it doesn't the only aim of this policy is to outline how staff should address emergency campsites found on public land that city owned so again I sort of talked about this a little bit earlier but those high sensitivity areas that were asking council to sort of help us work out and the community to help us work out was really taken into account through our staff and through community partners our committees and our legal team so another question I've gotten is why even do this at all why not have no policy why are we even talking about this I would argue that if we don't have an internal policy for at least addressing folks who are emergency camping or emergency sleeping the staff our staff doesn't have any direction on how to address it also if we don't develop an internal policy or boundaries around where we would like folks to camp or not camp it would still be enforceable under the Martin v. Boise case if that decides to be tried in our area and those things would already be happy like the things like people emergency sleeping on city owned land is already happening and it would still be happening and so this is a bad map that is of course not in frame so there are copies of this online and if you need a physical copy I can get this to you but note this is a draft and we are working on a nicer one with the planning commission that right now this is what this looks like if you did not take out anything from the list of high sensitivity areas this is what remains as public lands that would be appropriate for emergency sleeping if no other shelter was available so I because it's a draft and because this hasn't been approved I'm not going to go through them one by one but I want you to see what that looks like and I also kind of want to note and I think this is going to be important for the public restroom committee to talk about is how far away city owned land is from things like amenities so our next steps which I think are very important and the policy passing or not does not preclude us from taking any of these steps is to continue work with our community partners we funded a peer outreach worker through Good Samaritan Haven through 2023 and I think that that's a huge step for us and very important I want to call out the work that Don little is doing I think she's been a godsend for us and does a lot of work and I appreciate all the time she puts into that we would continue work with the Washington County homelessness action team which is looking to form a sort of hub where folks can go if they need to receive wraparound services so that's their goal they're working towards that and we're here to support them through that we'd like to receive for support and guidance through our homelessness task force and the new public restroom committee to address those underlying issues of hygiene the city council had appropriated funding for two years for the homelessness task force and that's something they're currently working on creating a priority list for for y'all's consideration we'd also liked and I think this is an important part and an important note here is seeking clarity from the state on how they're going to be addressing emergency camping on their land and at advocating for more state funding and services to support those who are experiencing homelessness I will say that a lot of folks have been put out of the shelters that they did have through the state and the hotel motel program that don't have anywhere to go and don't feel like they're supported in services from the state also there is a ton of state-owned land in Montpelier that currently does not have a plan you know I've been told anecdotally that people are already being asked to move off of that space and where does that leave them so it's something that we need clarity for and we can certainly ask someone from the state to brief council in the community and what the state is doing to support those who are experiencing homelessness and so my recommendation was to approve this proposed policy so staff in the community have an understanding of how we've been addressing emergency encampments or emergency sleeping but the parks commission has asked for just a continued conversation and I think that's also important and so you know I'm also fine in here to hear feedback from both the community and the council about this issue I want to also thank everyone for being super engaged and having thought-provoking conversation about this issue I think it's been eye-opening for a lot of folks on both sides of the conversation and also I want to invite you to the homelessness task force which meets every other Wednesday in Zoom or in person from 1130 to 1 if you want to continue the conversation with us outside of this venue the next meeting is August 4th so that's my presentation to y'all well the mayor is coming back I'd like to add a couple more comments to take cameras thank you for that I'm talking right into the mic here I'm assuming we're able to carry that in a second so I'd like to just add a couple more comments thank you Cameron for that excellent presentation there have been a lot of comments made and many of them directed at Cameron and I want to be clear that this is a policy that our whole team worked on she a Cameron is our liaison to the homelessness task force and I asked her to do this this is not her agenda and I want to make that clear as people talk about things she's certainly done a fine job in that but our whole department head team has recommended this and for the reasons she gave there's been some changes first of all as she said this has been happening already second of all we've had a pandemic and now people have been let out of hotels and no real transition plan from the state to deal with it third of all we've heard from this the state's attorney about how he wants to see cases handled and not criminalized and there is the Boise case so those are all things that have caused us to look at this issue and say to the city council and to the public this is something that needs to be talked about and we can't just stick our head under the sand and ignore that this is happening lastly I want to know that we're talking about people that these are these are folks that are unhoused that are living in great challenging circumstances and sleeping is is what we're talking about there are many legal things that people can do they can stand they can sit in benches they can be in Harbord Park and they can do that for many hours of the day those are not those are things that can happen now they're not talked about in this policy and I think many of the comments that I've heard if associated certain behaviors and attempted to identify to to sort of spread that to all people who need to sleep at night and that just is inappropriate people need they don't have a place to be home people that are standing Mr. Whitaker mentioned Garten Park those people may or may not be camping at night they're sitting there doing things that are you know maybe not good but that doesn't mean necessarily they're the population so you know I understand people have fears and it's important to hear from them but the folks we're talking about also have pretty severe needs and I asked that we remember that they're human and keep that in our minds as we're talking about this thank you so moving into the next part of this so because the Parks Commission has asked us to hold off on on a decision I I could picture us potentially I'm game to and to hear from you all your thoughts on this as well I mean I could picture us moving forward with this with a potential vote on this policy absent the high sensitivity areas but it's also possible that the Parks Commission may want to weigh in on the other parts as well and so I'll leave it to us as to whether or not we want to take up the rest of it but I recommend that we at least not vote on the high sensitivity areas portion of it tonight the opinion of the Parks Commission matters a great deal to me and I think that it may matter to other folks as well but having said that the way I picture this portion of the item going the this agenda item going is I want to start by hearing from the public I know probably many of you would like to offer a comment on this and so now would be the time to do that once we hear from the public then the council will have a discussion about you know having heard from folks what our thoughts are and where we might want to go next so again if you so thank you again Cameron for your presentation if folks want would like to make a comment if you would say your name where you live and try to keep your comments brief I'll just say that for now because I suspect that we may have a lot of folks who may want to comment on this do you want folks on zoom to go first or folks in the room that is you know what I actually think that I would prefer to have folks in person go first once that has run out then we'll transition to folks who are remote I have people already started raising their hands yes and folks on zoom it'd be great if you did raise your hand if you go under the reactions button at the bottom there is a raise hand function and so that we can put you in a queue okay thank you that would be great we already have hand here if you would like to make a comment welcome you up here and then if you would like to add something after whoever is speaking now I would recommend just forming a line over there by the table is my recommendation hello everybody hello yes go ahead I'm Jamie Swan I currently live up at the Econolodge I've been homeless off non since I was 15 I have a video on YouTube about very homeless on with over 8,700 views anybody wants to pay attention a little bit about what goes on the homeless but the letting the homeless people camp I think I think if we had a designated area for people that can't be the reason they're so scattered is we don't have a designated area and they're in fear of getting in trouble so they go everywhere in a scatter everywhere and personally they make a big mess I've been homeless for a long time without proper bathrooms and stuff and they have to go there they make a mess and I don't properly like seeing all that stuff and if we had a designated area like sometimes Burlington do it would give them an area to have bathrooms restrooms porta-potties you know proper washing facilities and and to we could police each other and help each other to kind of pick up things and then keep things clean and organized but right now we don't really have that and people got soft with this hotel thing you know they they got put in hotels and got looked after for a long time and now there's a lot of fear going on about what what to do and a lot of people I understand that you know as long as you say as long as there's proper place to go like the shelter a lot of people have fear of going to the shelter a lot of people just won't go to the shelter because they fear they have it I have any social disease disorder it's not the best thing for me to put me in a bunch of people it's it's really not so you know I I'll go to the woods first I I've got a camp built in Mount Plymouth I built years back I got a camp in Berlin that I built it's two windows wood stove in a door you know it's we do what we have to do after we you think that we're just going to go and camp somewhere for a nice sleep you say sleep and then we're going to go and hang out in the park all day and now we want to home too we don't necessarily have it and we'll go build it we'll put it somewhere you know and that's why you don't see a lot of us because we hide it we we we camouflage our areas to stay away so we don't get in trouble because of the fear we have police showing up and you know we're just trying to live it's all we want to do we we don't have everything that everybody else has out there you know but we can get by we really can but you know the fear that most of us have getting in trouble is not not a pleasant thing you know you give us these rooms and people look down on us and stuff you know the hotel you think these hotels are comfortable they do they look down on us and it's it's not a good feeling it's it's really not you know we appreciate everything that they've given us we do but it's not the best of things for some people it's not you know but I just feel it'd be better if you designated a place where most of them to go to look after each other then then let them scatter and make messes all over the place you know I help build the fitness course through Hubbard Park I was the first one to help cut it through with a school project back in seventh grade I don't want to see that park get messed up you know if you put it maybe back at seven fireplaces old spot you know where you had a porta potty or something to to take care of you know but don't let them scatter everywhere don't mess up everything they will I hate to say it but they will they'll make messes everywhere all of a sudden they'll have housing somewhere and they won't care about their tents their camps everything to walk away from it and they'll leave it right there and it's it's wrong it is I hate to see it and it's just part of it some of them ruin it for for the rest of us you know but if we're together we can pick up that stuff we can get it done but right now we don't we don't have that that safety you know so that's about what I got to say about that thank you jay you gotta give us some place to go thank you yeah I appreciate that other uh comments sorry I'm just making sure everyone on zoom is muted so we don't have any other interrupt interruptions you can go now go ahead Steve Whitaker Montpelier uh I've studied this extensively I've attended a couple of meetings of the homelessness task force on this and a meeting last night of the parks commission the draft policy to quote the late great Whitney Parker from Baldwin street ass in two it's upside down the foundation of any sound policy that truly intends to be compassionate and uh supportive would be the sanitation toilets and showers uh in small clusters I support the comments made by the earlier the person just before me uh small clusters distributed uh Peace Park Gateway Park uh North Branch Park so that no more than 10 or 12 people are are gathered they can self govern as far as the noise the quiet time uh a supervisor should really be hired to keep the peace and know when to call for help uh toilet trailers every site should have a flush toilet trailer uh those should be procured with ARPA money and they well maintained can last 10 or 20 years for other emergencies shower trailers could be less frequently distributed as long as there's a way to get to them the parks commission did indicate from the conversation and I would encourage you to watch the orca video uh that they intended to do due diligence uh no pun intended uh they do not have the capacity to pick up uh the trash and the do uh so to speak uh they do not have the capacity to mow or pick up the trash in Confluence Park or to power wash uh Gertin Park uh right now um so they were much more realistic about the need to preserve Hubbard Park uh and how quickly this could get out of control uh social paths breaking off the ranks of the official paths etc uh due diligence housing homelessness task force not so much uh when we attempted before the special meeting last week to get the sanitation uh needs on the agenda it was skipped it dropped off the end of the meeting it similar was on course for the same today uh when i left um the definition of high sensitivity areas is arbitrary arbitrarily narrow um we say where no one can be in the floodplain yet we allow our police department and fire department to be in the floodplain uh floodplain even the memo from mike miller which i received in a public records request did not rule out uh homeless folks being able to camp in the floodplain uh when i mentioned the clusters i believe that i i think that we should invest in the little huts the conestoga huts i've shared this before because they are secure against uh theft and assault there's a locking door there's a steel uh framework of reinforcing wire that prevents someone from attacking someone in their sleep which is one of the fears that i think guided this is fear of somebody getting rolled with their twenty five hundred dollars um ruling out the multi-use paths the floodplain fifty feet from a private i mean we're just inviting a challenge a legal challenge similarly the policy fails to address what are the rights of someone who's being displaced from a uh a camp uh to appeal uh to attempt to get an injunction so they can't have their camp torn down or put into storage uh there's no provision for that addressed here there's no provision for folks in the bus and campers and car campers um i i'm aware that false information was uh shared about state law on car camping by one of our esteemed officers sarcastically delivered uh so this is somewhat of a bluff that we're going to bluff the folks into being anxious about where they can and can't be and we're going to narrow down the allowable sites down to where out of sight out of mind can't see it from my house um the oh nothing on a small cluster designated camping okay designated camping sites with trash and sanitary facilities with nearby walking paths to the some folks as again the prior witness said are going to want to have more privacy not be in a cluster but i believe that folks will uh appreciate and honor the value of proximity to facilities uh although some will need to be further away i'm almost done uh non-involvement this pretends to be a non-involvement uh policy but yet it has anybody who finds anybody reporting it to the city manager and the police chief and then as soon as they decide to do an invasion they're going to washington county mental health is there so not only are we the and then we're going to come and look and see where you're pooping because that's our first reason to throw you out and that's because we didn't write the policy right and take care of the sanitation at the at the get go so this is not a non intrusion or uh forget the word used folks do not want to be mapped do not want to be reported to the police they don't want to be tracked but if you make it easy for folks to take care of their hygiene needs you'll make it simpler everyone is not a mental case so the the inclusion of washington county mental health really offended folks that i was talking to over at curtain park this afternoon um parks commission is considering gateway park uh as an option of where to put the the dedicated dog park um it prompted the comment last night that in Montpelier dogs get better treatment than the homeless humans um that's enough thanks thank you Stephen I hope people can hear me through my mask my name is Seth Collins I live in Berlin Vermont and pretty much everything I wanted to say was covered but I would like to reinforce something involving some little armored huts or something I I think to move in the direction of of tiny houses to start off where there was some some like collect or like some sort of shared bath house with those tiny houses around it to move in the direction of tiny houses with full facilities would be a good next step but this certainly this certainly is a step in the right direction thank you thank you Seth I'm also closer to the mic yeah okay I live on northfield street I'm also a member of the bar and have a history of homelessness um and want to say that when these issues came up over front porch forum I was retraumatized by the extremely judgmental and dehumanizing comments that I heard towards other people who are experiencing homelessness um I want to share also about the voucher program and my experience talking to people who have been on the voucher program during the voucher program and I like to say that it's somewhat of a myth that um it was stable for the people who were on the program um it there are many instances where they were um losing vouchers for unknown reasons for reasons unrelated to behavior they were um put into housing uh told they had a voucher working with the pathways folks working with other agencies uh and would receive eviction letters meanwhile the landlords would be continuing to collect rent uh it um really dehumanizing uh I've seen a lot of people when they see someone who is presenting as poor or perhaps ill uh they are not treated well by other members of the public um and you know I shared a poem uh that young person uh wrote who has been in and out of this system uh 22 years old I just wanted to share it here tonight it's called fall uh she says fall he excuse me fall is a friend of mine one of the kindly kind whispers of it in the woods following the kids with our hoods secrets we keep hidden inside secrets we keep keeping us blind wherever I go I keep your pen in my pocket wherever you go I hope you're keeping my locket hand on my heart your heart in my head wherever you go I hope you sleep in a bed kids with hoods they're ready to go where they're going hell only knows play it by ear listen clearly my dear fall comes again once every year thank you thank you you're not the resident of mothpillier that's okay okay I'm in berry one more week and then I will be living in my car so uh which I'm gonna write about I hope to the Times Argus but we'll see would you share your name first for the record oh Mary mess here thank you um so I recently um about two months ago I wrote to the homeless task force with about a company that I found through the internet while I was exploring tiny houses which is kind of my enjoyment of looking at them and etc and they're called pallet shelter company and they are doing wonderful work in this area of homeless needs so what they do is they build tiny modular shelter they can put up a building in two hours because it's modular they work with municipalities to have wraparound services it's just looks amazing I've read some of their site I've called them they ship six uh units at a time six thousand each six thousand dollars each each one I think they could set up in some areas like for instance maybe they set up like 50 of these or 20 I don't know all the specifics so I sent that information to the homeless task force a couple months ago then I've posted it on front porch forum and um today I was trying to send that information to the governor I sent it to Anne Watson um I think it's great because they're working this is what they do they hire homeless individuals I think it's really great and we're going to need this no matter what happens um seeing there's climate change there's emergencies I was in the Irene flood that was an emergency my house was destroyed um you know there's many things coming down the pike we need to have a source of shelter that can be invested in when you need it and also it sounds like this can you know if they ship six at a time you know these can be stored I would think uh what my suggestion was or idea was that each uh large municipalities say like Rutland, Burlington, White River, Central Vermont you know that the state could invest in places somehow I don't know lease or buy land area and these can be set up and for emergency shelter use and they're engineered and designed for this purpose that's all been worked into this company the pallet shelter company um I sent Anne the information and I also have posted that again on front porch forum today um but I just think they're really I think they really know what they're doing and this would be great because sometimes um when people are all in one big building I think kind of problems can get exacerbated and this is so that you know a person could be in their house by themselves they can lock the door um and I think what they do is they set up with whatever site they're going to do they set up a community bath house um you know you really really would need to look on the site to get all the specifics I don't have all the specifics but they they've done a lot I think they've done a lot of these I I would just guess from looking at the map and I didn't study it probably about 15 major areas in the United States um I think Texas California maybe Michigan or or Minnesota and um so I've sent the information out and I really hope that something like this can be done and and along with other ideas the tiny houses and the uh you know there's just so many possibilities and not one size is going to fit all thank you Mary. Good evening Ken Russell homelessist task force um that previous comment is really wonderful and it's the the sort of thing that I'm I I'm seeing right now a lot of you know very engaged discussion on these issues um we endorsed this policy knowing it was a work in progress knowing that the park commission hadn't weighed in yet knowing that we need a big community-wide discussion on this and and it takes all of us to solve this problem we've worked really hard in many areas but our our capacity is limited so having people coming out saying we don't want this but why don't we do this and or this isn't good enough this is what we really need we really do need to build collective will to do something really innovative like it would be great if the city would issue an rfp on city land to build something like she's what she's describing and somebody figure out the funding for this so um I do want to um acknowledge the hard work that the city has done on this policy um Cameron is um taken a lot of input been able to incorporate it it hasn't made everybody happy the thing about Washington County being that you know the the sponsor the responder um we'd like to see a broader group respond um but overall it it's it's heartening to see folks affirm behavior that's already happening setting a tone that folks can live in this jurisdiction the human lives do matter um but there's it's a work in progress and you know and to do justice to this conversation doesn't always fall into a a format of a few meetings so anyway um thank you for your good work thank you thank you again before we have people go again I also want to let folks who are online go and then we can see about um there's an opportunity for for any um repeats anyone who has not who's here who has not spoken yet like to share a comment yeah go ahead hi there Kathy Partlow and I live in Northfield but I work here in Montpelier at the family center of Washington County I manage our homelessness programming and uh we work as you might imagine with pregnant and parenting families um so some of those folks I will say choose to be camping in their cars or camping elsewhere versus being in these hotels if you've watched any of the news you know that sometimes these host hotels can feel a little less than safe for folks um and while that's being worked on it can be really difficult for families with uh young children or children in general so what I want to say just briefly is that we are so encouraged that you are taking this step and that you are thinking so um holistically about this problem and acknowledging that folks who are experiencing homelessness are people in your community uh that they exist here and that you need to really be thinking about how they are going to exist here because they are not going away regardless of whether you put the policy in effect or not so uh we just want to say we thank you for that and if you need to partner with us anymore we're happy to do so thank you right anyone else who is not who's here who is not yet uh spoken okay um Cameron can I ask you to facilitate uh folks who are uh online who have either their hands raised or who um yeah of course who want to speak folks um again just use a reaction button and say raise hand or you can physically wave um I see Morgan's hand is raised and so camera I'm gonna let you just call on people since you're running can do okay Morgan go for it oh hold on okay Morgan sorry I had turned the volume down so now we're good okay walking brown resident of district three can everybody hand me yes yes we can good thank you um first I would like to request I know you're doing sort of a public comment period right now but I wouldn't like to request it before the city council considers voting on this that there be a uh two hour at least one two hour public hearing held before making any decision on the policy uh secondly on page seven of the policy um Washington County mental health references on contact um I have a real major problem with that and not speaking for anybody else but I've heard of this as well and I'd like to see that uh changed and you know Washington County mental health could be on a on a um menu a list of social service agencies that you know could uh uh could be referred to uh if a person's interested but it should be voluntary and it shouldn't be uh automatic you know where we're sick in the mental health agency on people and assuming you know that their problem can be solved by Washington County mental health and all next disposal of property right now it says 30 days uh I've been asking that it needs to be at least 90 days and maybe 120 days but definitely at least 90 not 30 uh on the 72 hours where a camp is found and considered abandoned or whatever uh that's not enough time there's many cases where you know a person might not be able to get back there and this has already been spoken about but I would uh second that uh I would think that what needs to happen is the ordinance uh now not camping um you know in the box needs to be revisited and I would urge you to consider revisiting it and amending it so that uh emergency uh camping for those that have no other choice you know uh be allowed and that would help solve this in a lot of ways uh so please consider that and uh I I agree with Stephen Whitaker on the appeals I think there needs to be an appeal process so I urge you to consider that and you know I heard uh one of the speakers mentioning about how a front porch formed they found just some terrible stuff you know about to the people we're talking about and it goes beyond maybe not in my backyard it's no not unplugged and I had one last thing I want to if you give me a moment sorry for the emotion I would like to read a poem a home is a garden of life let people find a place where they can plant fertile seeds that contain their own hopes and dreams from which they may then draw a harvest of plenty to share with others in which they will call home for it is a garden where lives thrive and now grown thank you thank you Morgan thank you I just first of all I would like to acknowledge you know the hard work that's been put in by the city and all the resources that have been applied to this people really putting up their heart I think everyone wants to come to a point at which we're treating people with dignity and we're moving this community forward in in a positive direction having said that I think that as you have heard more and more people present their their experiences with homelessness and their experience as professionals working with these communities you know there's there's probably work to be done on on this proposal I would encourage you to continue even though the state has you know provided is providing $2,500 and is providing up to $8,000 all these various things that you continue leaning on the state because I do feel that this situation has come about because of a policy that was well intentioned that has come to an end and has you know put you in a very difficult situation so I would say that if you can continue putting pressure on them and also looking at what we have which is you know faith communities various non-profits organizations to not just partner with them and you know lean on them a bit but to figure out ways to help them because they have so much experience already doing this you know you as you know meals are provided in town by various churches there is you know a whole number of non-profits some who have already spoken who are involved so you know to sort of take all that into consideration and maybe hopefully we can obviously we have this deadline coming up and it's going to be difficult but we can come up with some sort of comprehensive plan that is better than what we have now thank you thank you hosé thank you next we have alex hi we can see hey my name is alex i have a few sections the kind of three that i kind of grouped my comments into three smaller sections and i want to start from a thing that will come from a point where we are concerned about well-being of the people who find themselves in a whole situation and i hope that none of what i'm saying will be interpreted as a criticism my problem is with the implementation not with what we are doing and so first is i wanted to find out like what have we done to see what what can be done to avoid even becoming a subject to the boys in the sense that we can't have reached out to churches to see if they maybe they can temporarily house some of the people who need places to sleep at like what have we done to see what else could be done other than or immediately falling back on where the boys in law case says we need to open the woods so have we also researched what it has something similar been done elsewhere in the country and what were the where outcomes or are we the first ones that we know about who are doing this so the second section is obviously like are you putting people that are trading one set of risks for a different one like in the forest we have a lot of ticks we have a lack of easy medical access and no sanitation if somebody is experiencing an OD it's difficult to even know what is going on so just and third look it has been said that we know we're not sending the message that when pure is open for anyone to come and camp so here we are talking about maps about critical zones that are sensitive zones that are not places where it's possible to camp places where it's not possible to camp so are they expecting everyone to have a smartphone and go on the internet to read about it probably not so does it mean that we are going to have a map somewhere the entrance of the park i don't see how else it can work so and if we have a map at the entrance of the park how is it anything but an invitation and the last part i have is if you need to wait the boysy the potential liability of a boysy case versus introducing new liabilities for the city and by introducing let's say the maps are are we saying that ct will be taking the responsibility for every wildfire that starts from having people camping in the woods what if adjacent homes burn and even worse if somebody dies in the wildfire in the fire as a result we're going from the star squad to explicit policy that says yes you can do it so does it put us in does it make the city liable for the damage to those homes or to the park thank you thank you elix you can do a lot of things if you have my attention peter kelman uh yes i'm peter kelman i live in district three i just i want to say how impressed i am by the process that the city council that cameron and the city manager have taken and on the comments that we've heard from a very wide range of people some of whom i have experienced direct experience in this area others who are professionals and all of this is in stark contrast to some of the very disturbing comments that have been spread on front porch forum i wish that the city council would look at this as a great example of how to take on some of these issues i've before pointed to the way my ride has been developed in a similar way going out and finding the people who are affected starting with a philosophy of doing no harm and this is one of the reasons why i have been so disturbed by the way the energy information ordinance slipped through without this kind of very important conversation thank you thank you peter hi thank you very much um i just kind of want to echo the thanks and the appreciation to all of you for the thought and the diligence that you've put into developing this policy um it it makes me feel really proud of montpellier and and really proud of being a part of the city where we are we're really trying to think about our neighbors and how we take care of each other and i am also really impressed by the the various ideas that i've heard come up as people are talking about well you know maybe we could try this maybe we could try that and um i it's really inspirational to me that there are there's so much energy for thinking about ways that we can be thinking about longer term solutions which is really what we need to do and ways to get people into more permanent housing and so i'm um you know i know this is all being recorded and and you're all everybody's taking notes and i i'm very encouraged by that i assume this will all be you know the homelessness task force will be thinking about this and all of our our housing committees and um that we can take some of this energy that to uh to go towards long-term solutions while at the same time recognizing that right now we have people who need someplace to stay and we treat them with compassion and we need to treat them with respect and um we need to to try to help them have as high quality of life as everybody who lives in Montpelier ship is our thanks thank you carrie zoom who would like to speak up you can just unmute yourself raise your hand whatever you want to do or i'm not seeing anyone else i'm venessa right yeah if you have something else you want to add go hold on a second here thanks thanks for hearing me again um you know yeah thanks and praise i you know no one had mentioned the martin case on front porch forum and so it was a surprise to me when i saw it in the policy um you know uh what was going through my mind when i was looking at it um was mainly around sleep um so um you know i'm just you know running through the scenario i'm trying to figure out okay how am i going to know what the highly sensitive area is you know the point is sleep being a human need and oftentimes people are distressed exhausted maybe they've gotten into a fight with somebody else during the day that's they want to go find a safe place to be being woken up are people going to be identifying people and asking them questions in the middle of the night about whether they have you know shelter you know so it's like thinking about you know folks like you know folks in town camp camp right who have homes so i'm thinking about that and then just how are we how are people being sorted and the sorting seems a little kind of strange to me i hope it's not happening in the middle of the night uh i also hope that um other residents you know if i'm sleeping i'm homeless i you know kind of want to be asleep at night so not feeling like i want people to approach me at night when i'm sleeping and more in case there's a lot about sleeping so sleep sleep sleep please let people sleep um and um i guess that was really it just clarity around what these vague highly sensitive areas might be thanks thank you go ahead mary um i just wanted to briefly say on my idea about that company that is kind of a um in between building a big a big new house or what's going on now i'm not really in the loop um i don't know all the details about um the camping around town that's being um discussed i don't know everything about it but i hope it does come out good for people and people need to be able to you know have that place to lay down and be comfortable but uh i wasn't uh four or against the uh where you can sleep in town i don't know enough about it right now but i'm trying to learn what's going on i was out of the loop for a little while in town i lived here five years and um trying to get back into town but uh housing is the worst i've ever seen it for finding a place so anyways i just wanted to speak to that that my idea wasn't uh on this particular hubbard park or or that thank you thank you mary thank you i'll try to be even briefer this time um the failure to address state-owned lands which are equally applicable in the context of the martin v boysy case uh is a glaring omission especially in that montpellier police resources and and social services city manager public works etc would all necessarily need to be involved in any such intervention so that fundamentally needs to be addressed because the state-owned lands are some of the most attractive and are currently being used as campsites um the undue burden on churches i don't i think we underestimate the burden that we put or that we expect the churches to step up to because the city has not here to for wrestled with these issues um i think it's an issue these are government issues and it's high time and i'm glad to see the council i believe that this meeting is making evident that the council needs to be involved uh because after two years the homelessness task force has not gotten to where we need to get and now it's emergency level um the fires uh is going to be a real issue i think there's only a few sites that i mentioned i forgot to mention home farm road even though the title is ambiguous but that that's an ideal site because there's water and sewer capacity there there's agricultural jobs available there the dignity of work and the investment in opportunity to give folks a ladder up from this situation is really the part of the design we need a strategic plan that includes uh all these factors and i i don't know where who you're gonna rely on to get that plan but it's it's long overdue and it's urgent um with regard to the sort of i did mention site coordinators at each of these small clusters uh the advantage of a two thousand dollar hut is it's an incentive for someone to agree to abide by rules since they have the right to camp on public land there's nothing you can take away from them you know if they fail to if they want to create fights or make noise all night etc if somebody has a hut that's that's a privilege um the hut uh is secure the hut or the pallet shelter i think the huts are a little more attractive physically but you know um also having engagement from the site coordinators with washington county mental health if necessary and or even the police department if necessary to create the right mix of folks at at the various clusters you can't put all the t total drunks at one and expect there not to be uh problems so by creating a uh a healthy mix of folks at various sites how are you gonna do that steve i wouldn't do it i would rely on experts i mean we're gonna breathalyzers as we come in no it's that's what good sam does but no i think the uh i'm not saying behavior-oriented but temperament wise and and some people want to go to bed early some people have kids whatever but i'm suggesting that the site coordinators with some surrounding some social services could uh find the right mix of folks to use the different clusters is is what i'm saying we're getting into more detail than we have time for tonight i didn't intend to i wanted to plant the seed and invite further discussion um yeah creating opportunities as so as apartments become available which might be years from now uh and or tiny homes or whatever tiny homes with land and plumbing is is a multi-year investment uh in design and engineering so we need emergency uh without plumbing shared plumbing facilities we need emergency facilities that are safe and quiet and restful and distributed that's that's enough thanks and just to check in again with the folks online is anyone uh yeah alex uh go ahead you have to mention that thank you so in the future steven if you would ask one of the staff to do that that would be very helpful that actually preferred thank you no no no the first time but not not this time okay um thank you alex and anyone else okay all right well first of all i want to thank everybody for your comments on this i i agree this has been really helpful and it's really good to hear from uh folks with a variety of backgrounds and kinds of experiences especially like how this may help or hurt or you know affect folks who are experiencing homelessness uh so at this point i would like to turn over to the council including you donna so we'll we'll check in with you or actually i might rely on cameron to to know if uh if donna's raising her hand but but for now um council thoughts reactions comments i have a couple but i'll just hold on to them for now connor go ahead all right so i i'm on the uh homelessness task force i've been on for a few months now so uh i've been hearing a lot about this issue and i i want to start by thanking cameron because you know cameron's taken a few hits on this and i i really believe um she's gone out of her way to do a good job fleshing out um and sound and as kind of policy as we can come up with um and and certainly you know you know we're doing the best we can uh let's start off with a positive it's we have 50 people here right now sitting down trying to come up with solutions for the mid and long term here and i think you know as a community it's going to take that kind of effort to get anything over the finish line um so this is one issue this is a response to a crisis uh but like we said we have a homelessness task force we've got city council meetings ideas such as who is going to provide some of these services how are we going to pay for it you know we're largely volunteers here we need the whole community to come on board and help us out with this and i think we can commit to being receptive to these ideas and doing our best uh we've taken some strides you know we uh created the homelessness task force uh today we appointed members to the restroom committee uh we have a homeless liaison she's here don who's done a great job with the outreach portion and we've uh embedded a social worker in for barion montpelier so we're taking steps but the steps aren't enough right um this is a crisis statewide 700 hotel vouchers have dried up the agency of human services has come up with no real plan to address this so very much it's left the municipalities um to respond to this and i i i think this policy does the best we can at this moment knowing that a policy can be nimble and a policy can change uh to address the issues that come up out of this and by no means is this a perfect policy uh but as we talk about folks you know and i i i heard the conversation on front porch forum too and was alarmed by some of the comments of generalizations about this population um and you know i i it hits home when folks who have experienced homelessness come up here and speak today and i think they're very brave for doing so uh but you can see it hurts folks and when we say they in many cases it's us i was talking to uh a fella a few months ago uh broken glasses you know hat in hand and i asked him about himself i mean you know and the first question this is on me where do you come from you know that's uh well he said i went to montpelier high school i i grew up here i lived on north street i think he said growing up and my parents aren't here anymore but this is my home and i i've been through the mill i've had a tough time but this is where i come because this is where i know where to come because this is my community this is my home um kathy partlow stood up she spoke about some of the uh folks she serves there uh i'm on the board of mosaic and you know if you're in a situation where there's domestic or sexual abuse and you're living in your partner's house all of a sudden you find yourself homeless so what are we gonna do what is the practice now what is the practice now if somebody sets up a tent are we gonna take someone like that and arrest them if we did rory t bowen prosecuted properly are we gonna tell them to move on somewhere where are we gonna tell them to move and if the answer is a designated area where's that designated area and what providers are going to provide the services and what resources are going to go to that to make sure it's a safe area because again some of this population might not feel safe in a very condensed area uh you know when they've experienced trauma when they've experienced addiction um so current current status quo is much broader than this policy right any policy we pass is going to be more restrictive than what we're doing now because we're not going to arrest people we're not going to criminalize homelessness um so i think it's it's time to start talking about this policy just as a very temporary measure to address the 700 people uh who don't have vouchers anymore who find themselves in crisis and it's the best we could do to do that we need to think of the long-term solutions we need to think of the mid-term solutions uh but what we shouldn't be doing is vilifying people for being homeless and um you know at the very least this gives staff some direction on how to handle folks and we can iron out and I think we should wait you know uh to do the due diligence let the parks commission weigh in um but you know we should pass something knowing that it's not perfect um this issue has gotten out of control as far as the framing of it some people have pitched it as an anti-camping policy some people have pitched it as you're rolling out the welcome at nationwide to invite people here to camp in Hubbard Park it's neither of those things it's direction for our staff right now in a crisis and we have a lot more work to do so that's my initial thoughts on it but you know we got to keep working and thanks everybody who showed up tonight thank you thank you uh Cameron yeah go ahead uh thank you um Connor I appreciate that just real quick just for clarity around Montpelier specific situation we don't have 700 people in our community yes okay I just want to make sure that's very 70 in Washington yes um last counts from our peer outreach worker was about 20 extra folks who are immediately facing um emergency sleeping in our community so just so we're all clear on the numbers thank you and when you say 20 extra could you be super clear yes extra in addition to the folks that have habitually um needed emergency camping in our community that we knew about before which is approximately 15 ish thank you other thoughts or comments go ahead Dan um so the thoughts that I had um about this I think are Connor did a great job of uh summarizing and quite passionately uh some of the feelings that that that I have had uh in response to this one issue that I feel that I can perhaps offer some illumination on I know there's been some questions out there in regards to martin versus the city of Boise which is the case that Cameron referenced and you know there have been some people saying well that's a 9th circuit decision so that's not something we have to worry about because the 9th circuit is out west it's California or again Idaho Hawaii I think in Alaska uh in Washington state but it's uh we're in the second circuit so it doesn't apply to us but I think that misses I think a larger point which is you know the martin case really is only the tip of the iceberg of a series of cases that have come out that have all said when courts have been faced with this question of fundamental you know are you criminalizing an activity or are you criminalizing a status um that of course have consistently said you cannot criminalize a status that violates the United States Constitution the 8th amendment of cruel and unusual punishment you cannot punish somebody for just simply being who they are um and so martin versus the city of Boise really reflects a trend on that um and while it may not be technically binding in a legal sense it is the leading case in the United States on that um and uh it's going I haven't found a second circuit case that says otherwise uh or that we disagree with the holding of martin versus city of Boise or the underlying cases that martin builds upon um so this is this is something that's pretty well established um and as I've said to some people who've approached me when they've said well it's not binding one is do we want to be the test city so that does become binding in the second circuit uh when someone challenges us and two uh do you have an argument that says why it shouldn't be and I think it there isn't one in the sense that um we are looking at these fundamental status-based issues um that if somebody is in the situation that this policy is intended to address it's not because they've chosen to be there or because um you know this is a lark this is this is reflective of the complicated homelessness issue in our community in our state and in our nation and so you know in a lot of ways this is a very smart and reactive policy to deal with an issue that is there and I would point out that this is the first season that we are living in this sort of post martin versus city of Boise world it came out in 2019 2020 was the year of COVID when everything was wonky and people were you know in different housing situations but now we're we're starting to regain normalcy now this issue it's time for it to be addressed so I think this is a timely policy in that respect um and you know as far as I think some of the details I would support you know the the parks board is an important elected body in the city and they have asked for an opportunity to revisit and look at some of these issues I would give feel strongly about giving them their due to have that final say to have that review of that um I would tend to the question you asked the beginning about whether we would feel compelled to uh vote on part of this I would tend to not want to vote on part of it only because whether or not the parks commission is going to weigh on both sides of it I'd rather tackle tackle this as one final policy in case they make a change that causes us to make another change we might as well deal with it at once rather than piecemeal it's an important enough policy I think it gives people an opportunity to think about this and I agree completely with Connor this is neither a camping policy that opens the doors nor does it legalize or you know uh the opposite of threatening you know and cracking down this this is just something that's in line with very basic humane policies and I think a lot of the conversation that people have engaged about ideas of what do we do next what's how do we tackle start to tackle the homelessness issue because you know whether it be uh palette houses or you know tents or conestoga wagons or such that's a bigger question and I guess I would the one response that I would give is that you know local government has been genuinely ill-suited for this question because we haven't been a provider of these type of social services and so there's a there's a question of authority do we have the power to do this how does it fit within our state statutes and regulating you know you anyone who's I've had clients have tried to put yurts on their property and they've run afoul of sanitation issues and you know we're not exempt from those issues because those are state issues and those are big issues and and frankly this is a regional and state problem and a lot of these solutions as I think one of the speakers said you know has to involve the state has to involve our regional partners and I would echo some of the gratitude towards you know another way good Sam you know the various service providers that have been doing a lot of this work and I think what this is is another step that we're here at the table this is a something that deals with an immediate issue but it doesn't it's not intending to put that other bigger question off or or ignore it it's just it's slightly different than what we're being asked today thanks I just want to jump in to say you know as I was saying you know do we want to consider voting on part of it or just wait entirely it occurred to me that I think we should just wait so I agree I had thought maybe maybe we could but I I don't think that's a good idea unless other people you know okay I'm seeing seeing some shaking heads here Jay go ahead no I agree I agree with you but I just wanted to offer up as a point of clarification too for those and I know there were people at the parks commission meeting last night that they are appreciate the urgency of this issue and really feel a responsibility and the need as elected officials to be able to provide feedback as soon as possible so I think that they've they've called for a special meeting tomorrow evening I think that was as quick as they could do it maybe helped it in terms of warning that I think it's going to be in here like it was mentioned earlier tomorrow evening here so I think that we're not in a place where we have to wait too long to hear from them which I think is important to continue that conversation yeah thank you other thoughts yeah Lauren and then Jack yeah thanks first just I'm really grateful for the amount of engagement I mean I've heard from a ton of people on this issue personally calls emails in addition to you know the public forums and you know thank everyone for coming out tonight agree and appreciate the bravery of many speakers and all of the input and appreciate all the work that staff and our homelessness task force have been doing on this issue you know and again appreciate everyone keeping front of mind this evening in their comments the dignity and humanity of everyone we're talking about of every person in our community housed or not you know I echo the disappointment that we're not getting more support and help from the state I know Cameron mentioned in her presentation but I I think we should invite to our next meeting as you you know mentioned as a possibility a state official let's get them in here what are the programs what's happening what resources might be available is there an opportunity to pilot something is there an opportunity to you know they got all of the American Rescue Plan Act money you know there's it seems like there should be some resources and maybe us just forcing them to come in here and talk to us could help shake some loose and we can you know get some more ideas on the table in addition to to the work that's been done you know I know obviously people are thinking about the emergency response in this policy and also the medium and longer term so you know I think a conversation with them about all of those you know and part of that could be asking for clarity on their policy for state-owned land given what a big chunk of state-owned land there is in Montpelier so I would love to to have that conversation really better understand you know any opportunities there and what might be happening that they might not be advertising as much to us you know I definitely have you know just want to note I've gotten a lot of input of you know a whole host of concerns about the policy impacts to our public lands safety concerns people whose land abuts the various parks and wondering about their own you know how that might impact their their property concerns about how we're dealing with people's hygiene needs you know a lot of people wondering about the pros and cons of the aggregated area versus a more dispersed area so I think you know maybe some more conversation of the pros and cons of the approaches or you know maybe an aggregate area you know while still allowing it elsewhere but providing you know could we look into you know a flush toilet trailer as one of our speakers or you know and maybe that's the kind of thing where our state resources could help make more feasible something like that I do a couple ideas some community members had offered to me one was an idea of whatever policy we adopt of considering sunsetting it so that it would just force us to continue revisiting I think we're going to do that anyway but it would just you know I thought that was an interesting idea it's going to be an evolving issue potentially so just thought I'd offer that and you know I think the the thought of taking some more time makes sense we can get the parks commission input and you know I'd love to hear some responses from staff on some of the ideas that have come forward like more time for holding on to people's property what the issues are there who's responding and the appeal process and I don't know if if the current policy addresses bus and car campers I know that's come up tonight but that was a point that seems like worth looking into I know a number of people have asked for more opportunity for public input so I think the fact that we're going to take this up again means there will be another public hearing so I think that's great and you know keep the conversation going and I think just one other thing I think we could think about so the police review committee which Jack and I are serving on we're going to be we've tentatively we're working on the recommendations but one of them is to increase funding for our peer outreach work for the city so and we could think about and we're talking about our own American Rescue Plan Act funding next maybe we expedite that so we can get more support out on the street for folks knowing we're in this crisis time so I wanted to put that idea out on the table and yeah I would just echo the appreciation and agree to wait to vote continue getting input and some more answers to a lot of the good ideas and issues raised tonight and again thanks to everyone who's weighing in and to the staff for taking up this issue great thank you Lauren so Jack before you go yeah I know you had a comment do you think you can hang on to your comment until after we take a break okay we have a practice that we have started within the last year so of because these meetings are so long taking a break at 8 30 regardless of where we are so we are clearly not done talking about this so we are going to take a 10 minute break we'll be back at 8 40 and Jack you'll get to start us off okay great thank you and during the break I discovered there was someone who did not have a chance to weigh in and who would like to offer a comment and so before Jack goes I'm gonna give the floor to Don Little our outreach our homelessness outreach specialist thank you yeah thanks Jack um there are a couple of there are a couple things that I I think could use adjustment but one of them that I really wanted to mention is that I'm hoping that the council will consider making adjustments to the 72 hour definition of an abandoned campsite um partly because there are a number of reasons why someone is likely to be away on occasion for more than 72 hours um job possibilities emergency room visits in clement weather you know a lot of things the other thing is that people who live in houses and particularly people with cars tend to very seriously underestimate the amount of time it takes an unhoused person to do anything whether it's going to the bathroom getting a drink of water going to an appointment running errands you know I mean you and I can go to the bathroom we can get a drink of water anyone outside has to walk across town to do any of these things it can take a very long time so 72 hours may seem like a lot of time to us but for someone who's every action is magnified that way both in terms of stamina and in terms of time that's a really short length of time and and I'm hoping that either you know either we could change the time frame or find some compromise some way that the person could notify the city that they are not able to return home but they are not rather than forcing them to abandon everything or or pick it up and pack it away and leave it out in the open you know just because they're going to be gone I would really like to see that revisited there are other things that I won't go into very far at the moment such as the the necessary onsite convening of various agencies that may not always be necessary but I think that's probably a minor adjustment that we can work through similarly the reference to Washington County as the people to be notified I think that's I have talked with someone at Washington County and also with Susan Lemire and I think that's a pretty easy adjustment as well but I really did want to draw attention to the 72 hour thing especially in the winter when it snows if someone finds a ledge to sit under they may not want to slog through the weather to get back to their camp and it may take them a little longer to get there especially people with disabilities I would also draw your attention to the fact that because of COVID and the changing bus routes a number of the sites that have been suggested as not part of sensitive areas are located in places where there is no public transportation right now and there are a lot of people who are able bodied enough to walk but there are many many people out there with chronic illnesses who would have trouble walking to Dog River would have trouble walking to North Branch and that's just another consideration when you look at the time frame for their response to our requirements and just a general thought when you're looking at the map and revising it is is it possible for someone you know to travel back and forth is there a way to address this whether it's my ride or some other you know or volunteers or but that's just another issue that people are dealing with in terms of where they choose to live so but please consider the 72 hour if there's some way we can compromise or find a way to work that out it would be great thank you very much thank you oh don what would you recommend Don what would you recommend for a time I mean a week would be nice that that may sound excessive if it's in a sensitive area a week would be nice or even if you even if you gave it another day or so and allowed the person to contact you or someone to contact you on their behalf and say look I'm coming back to this it is not abandoned or perhaps if the person people aren't going to want to leave a note that says hi I'm gone for a week because it's an invitation to to losing everything but if they were to somehow indicate or have someone else indicate to you that the site was not abandoned that would be you know that I think that would work okay thank you so okay thank you anything else or question no the only thing I was just going to suggest on on this topic is you know and it's too it's a little too vague but you know in Landlord tenant law there's often the idea of what constitutes abandonment and it allows a certain level of factual inquiry I don't know if we want something that I mean that that's very fact-based which we probably don't want to quite go down that road but it might be helpful to have some sort of language that would allow for that kind of factual inquiry or if there was sort of some notice that this wasn't abandoned and it would just enough time you know a couple more days maybe to allow people to maybe designate someone to go and either make contact with you or move their possessions or you know whatever needs to be done because again with the with the transportation issue with the health issues it's it's very likely to come up I think so yeah all right thank you very much all right and Jack go ahead thank you I'll be brief I do have a few thoughts and questions about the details of the proposed policy I think probably this might not be the best time to do it it might catch up with with Cameron or the parks commission after we get done with with our meeting tonight before next time I think it's important that we should be doing this it is not within the capacity of Montpelier under any imaginable budgetary scenario to end homelessness in Montpelier so the proposal tonight and the other steps taken by the homelessness task force are a step toward using the resources we do have to mitigate the dislocation and suffering confronted by members of our community with the fewest resources and the least ability to afford a life of even basic comfort and dignity I think the proposed policy strikes a humane balance between not bothering people and providing information and access to needed services I've heard some people say well don't map us don't find out where we are don't approach us don't interact us in any with us in any way and I understand that privacy concern I think that the interests of public health and safety and the desire to let people know what resources are available outweigh that concern in my view but I think it's encouraging that we're having this conversation and that we're going to continue to do that and move forward with this policy at our next meeting thank you donna is raising her oh donna donna go ahead a mysterious voice I don't know how I come across everybody in the room well we can hear you but everyone has been so eloquent it's just I mean every all the speakers thank you thank you and I would highlight two of the things being said one is we need everybody to go to our legislators to call them to write them and attend the meeting when they come to city council that is so important because they don't get enough contact from general population they really really need to know how important this is and secondly I really feel that we need to be more proactive with our housing task force and really think about that I mean we could have 20 pallet houses for 120 thousand dollars now you add a community building for meals showers and toilets so it's not going to be under 150 I mean to me that's totally doable it's something that could be a small but significant project as we work on bigger housing issues so I definitely want to have a conversation with the housing task force and down street and other organizations that work on housing so those are my only two points thank you very much great thank you because you know in the spirit of being inclusive here I do see Jose and Morgan you have something you'd like to say Jose go ahead yes um you hear me I wanted to again thank everyone for all the hard work that's been put into it and actually bring something up but I think it kind of I was trying to think about it is that this idea of criminalizing I don't think any of you have advocated for criminalizing anything and so therefore I think that this this thing of bringing up the Martin versus Boise case which was actually in response to criminalizing the activity there you know it's something that we should you know think about because I don't think it's a great idea and the other things I'm really happy that you're going to give an opportunity for the parks commission to to kind of take their time and tomorrow have their meeting because they they actually mentioned their meeting they were not informed of any of this they found out through the newspaper about the proposal so it's good that you give them time I mean it's important because they do have maybe some fiduciary responsibility and um so that's great and thank you again for everything you're doing thank you Jose and Morgan yes uh thank you uh I'll try to be brief um on the question about the 72 hour um if you since I raised it earlier um at least five days you know and if it could be a week and I agree with everything done and articulate it very well uh so I would please encourage you find a way to work that out it would really be good thank you thank you all right well I have a few comments that I want to make here first of all I am also I just want to echo the gratitude that others have expressed thanks to Cameron and the staff for putting this together thank you to the the homelessness task force for for spending a lot of time I'm talking about this I know the Green Mountain Cemetery Commission has also spent time talking about this I'm grateful for for their input as well and I'm grateful that the parks commission is meeting tomorrow that they're taking the time to have a special meeting to to discuss this that's really valuable so just a few things that I want to highlight um really that came from people that spoke this evening that I want to just at least highlight as potential tweaks um so one is I thought Vanessa's comment about not wanting to be woken up was really valid and I wonder if we could include some language in that um you know that it's I'm not sure what the right framing is but something like during daylight hours or you know when it's you know clear that the person is not asleep or you know just something to that effect I think um is reasonable um I I'm hearing you know I really appreciate um what Don said uh about and and Morgan too Morgan and Don both mentioned this um the the idea that 72 hours may not be enough and um if there can be some some tweaks to that you know whether that's five days or notifying um someone either at the city or an agency or something uh that a site is not abandoned and that folks are coming back to it um that seems valuable and again uh something that Don mentioned that Morgan also mentioned um is is Washington County the just the the right um the right person or should there be uh as Morgan mentioned a menu of folks and I'm sure one city staff is is aware that it may become clear like who the right um folks might be um I'm not sure how you frame that but just want to echo that um and then um something that Steve brought up uh about state land now to be fair I don't think this is the right policy to have to to mention state land because that is outside of our purview uh but just want to highlight the importance of state land as a part of the conversation you know especially as we hear from the parks commission what their thinking is uh around how this applies to parks I think there's going to be a question of like what land are we are we really talking about and uh the fact that state land is already in the mix certainly and uh the state to my knowledge does not have any policy similar to this um you know I think it's fair to to consider holistically what areas we're we're talking about um so for now those are the things that I wanted to highlight and um yeah I am I think this is the right direction um for us to go in and you know I really appreciate folks comments about the desire for uh tiny houses the desire for uh uh staffed congregate space uh or you know uh not individual sort of dispersed space I suppose uh and that there are a lot of challenges to that and this does not preclude pursuing that sometime in the future but this is I think the the right first step uh for us um so having said that any other comments uh yeah go ahead so we certainly appreciate all the feedback and we'll take a look at the issues that were raised specifically the ones you are articulated but there were some others people wanted to get some feedback on we will also see if we can invite a state official to our next meeting um one thing I did want to mention is that a key part of this is sort of direction to our staff about how to handle this so what we'll talk this over tomorrow but I may issue an interim directive to staff along these lines with some of these changes in it um so that at least between now and whenever we vote a policy we have some clarity for our staff obviously that wouldn't deal with the land and that kind of thing but just so that people understand that um so our staff isn't like what do we do but certainly uh we would err on the the broader side of any of these topics that have been raised you know I think they're all great points thank you so I just want to say thank you for everyone um here for your feedback and for the folks on zoom and we'll be meeting a staff to sort of look at what we can implement and what we can change and I look forward to taking all of the suggestions and looking over the policy so just appreciate that thank you um okay 30 seconds but you got to come up and sit up here Steve Whitaker again uh don't underestimate that this is an emergency created by the confluence of the governor's action the economic services the hotel voucher the ARPA money that's unspent right now might never be seen again and I would ask you to consider moving with all urgency to get a plan in place for this what I call interim scalable solutions because we might not have this money available in 2022 uh or 2023 thank you okay all right so we are going to move on um for now then and I anticipate that we will likely take this up again at our next meeting which is uh August 18th um which is not I usually we meet on the second and fourth Wednesdays and that is the third I believe so it's sort of an oddly scheduled meeting okay all right so we are we're going to move on uh to the conversation about uh ARPA funding and sort of where we're at with that and for this I um am I turning this over to you Bill or sure well I'll uh Kelly great uh but basically while while Kelly comes up and we can go through this in more detail I think the short story here is as you know we had originally um been told we were going to be getting a little over two million dollars for two years over two years so one point one million a year essentially um that's been revised now to seven hundred and seventy one thousand dollars over two years um because of the county provision now um as we understand it there are still discussions uh our our delegation the governor are still urging Treasury to send this money directly to cities and towns um but there's also a discussion that if the money does go to the counties which is what Treasury is interpreting it that the counties may turn it over to the state and or the cities and towns however um we understand that there are some county needs as well you know old uh courthouse buildings that need HVAC systems and those kinds of things so there may be some negotiations and we don't know if we'll get it when we would get it and what the quantity would be so at this point we don't believe we could rely on any of it until we know more of that so what we do know is that we'll be getting about three hundred and eighty five thousand dollars this year and three hundred and eighty five thousand dollars next year and you know in prior to the conversation that we've had tonight uh we were looking at our earlier conversation when the council outlined three or four sort of general guidelines for use of this money but the biggest one being um restoring lost revenue and restoring projects and work that had been cut last year and this year because of lack of money and given the relatively small amount uh in the scheme of things our recommendation was to put this into the capital plan um for to restore those types of project paving etc um obviously we've had to delay a lot of that and it's it's getting bad but clearly if there's other things that are eligible that we want to figure out well of course it's your choice um but that's what we do need to make a decision we would expect to be getting the funds end of august probably mid august mid august about 30 days out from when we certified we're just about 13 the money in place so that's the background we can talk in more detail Kelly can talk more about anything including the financial reports that we got earlier sorry is this and is this list the order of which we would spend it then um so the priority list that you have in front of you is the list that we put together with the original sum of money in mind and now you'll notice that it's much smaller and so we wanted to come back around and talk to you about that funding and how we might utilize it now and in the future and then we do have a little bit of time to spend this money but we also have some pretty significant infrastructure needs um and on the consent agenda tonight for example there was the paving contract and these funds could be used there um to really do some things great so we bid out the paving contract with only with the money that we had in our regular budget but this can supplement that you typically get a better price the more you do it's I think those are gonna be the kind of things I mean we all hear about the condition of the roads and they're in terrible shape but they're certainly pretty good but at this point we would simply say identify it to capital projects and put it to the highest priority needs unless you want to do something else with all the work we're part of the money but we would like to get we'd like to know at least how much is going to go toward capital projects so we can start using you know this it's already mid-summer our season of using it is shrinking anything further you want to have a lot more to present on it we just really wanted to bring it for discussion purposes just because we do have a need now um that you know would certainly help us going forward but we also know that based on the last conversation there may be other things that you wanted to think about with this first um allotment comments thoughts yeah go ahead Dan do we have any senses to a timeline you gotta talk into your sorry do we have a sense about the timeline for you know when this sort of county um issue would be resolved is this so it could be a year or two hopefully not two hopefully yeah but i mean there's no there's no promise that they're just around the corner or that they're engaged in substantive we don't know no yeah okay it did get the opportunity to meet with senator sanders the other day and we talked about that very question and he mentioned that they that he does not know when uh what the timeline is okay yeah we'll just keep our eyes out for gilded courthouse towers and we'll know well no it's been released other thoughts or comments and donna oh yes donna go ahead i just you know i guess in a quick priority to me are streets and sidewalks and as far as going through and picking the exact ones i'm not equipped to do that today no and we're not asking the council to pick specific projects i think just getting for uh if you can just say we want to allocate all or whatever portion you want to the capital fund we will do the priority of the projects and and i think we agree with streets and sidewalks um but i also lose that housing trust money so i want to give them some of it i'm confused by that comment can you explain that well when i first glanced the the equipment and streets i guess are my priority but i also there's money in here for the housing trust fund i well on the one million dollar list that it was that was so this was the list going down the list of items that we had had in the budget and took out due to revenue shortfalls and so the to qualify for revenue replacement this was basically putting those things so so we had reduced the housing trust fund by sixty thousand dollars or not took it from them but didn't appropriate as much as we might have sorry so can you say that it one more time donna you would prioritize the housing trust fund money or not i guess if i had to do a proportion i guess you take we'd have to go down percentage wise but i see streets and sidewalks but i want to share to go into the housing to restore the money we took from that even if it was just a little bit on the list is sixty thousand dollars you know maybe twenty thousand dollars but something to get the housing trust fund back up yeah fair enough i don't want to delay the trucks i see there's at least three trucks on here but i want to note that we are going to be having a presentation from vic net zero twenty thirty plan and just yeah go ahead just to be clear we're the the trucks aren't really in play this was this was really i hope that i'm sorry if this is confusing this was the list we had okay back in this you know when we thought we were getting this much money what we're saying to you is we can't buy all of this if we want to do road and street projects that we cut now's the time to do it so we'd wreck when i say the capital fund i specifically didn't say capital any equipment fund so i don't want to be any okay so we really want to put this to capital projects the water and sewer projects are different they're funded separately and there are additional ARPA funds for water and sewer projects so we would be talking about specifically street sidewalk you know retaining all those types needs that are pent up and old that need to be addressed sorry thank you for that clarification uh other thoughts comments are you looking for sorry sure go ahead are you looking for a motion along those lines well i don't think there needs to be well actually so before we go there uh lauren did you have a comment um yeah i guess just wanted to raise so i mean i think this approach this is what we had all agreed to this general you know i think we all know that our infrastructure needs uh needs work so i think this makes total sense i am still interested in i mean maybe if we said like i don't know what the right amount is 50 000 like we kind of temporarily put on hold and come back august 18th with some of this work that's happening if there is an opportunity i don't even know if we could staff someone quickly enough to do additional peer outreach or i mean i'm just thinking you know this money is for you know responding to the covid emergency so if there's human needs there you go yeah fill out it's good better yeah good um so i mean i'd be interested in exploring if there's still doing it um if if there would be you know some way and i don't know from the homelessness task force or again this is a recommendation that we're going to be putting forward i believe from the police review committee to to beef up um that kind of support for community members so it seems like our buffons would be a good you know helping people in emergency in our community right now some piece of that so i don't know if we could just say like let's explore a little bit of this to be go towards that and could look at some proposal and i'd be happy to work with city staff in the over the next month if that's if people are amenable or open to that so to answer both questions both deans and and yours i think we do need a motion because we'd like to get if we're going to go forward to allocate this to projects we'd like to know specifically what you're putting toward it i don't see any reason why you can't put money on hold even for undesignated purposes to be further discussed and we can look into the eligibility and how that would work you know if even if at the next meeting you say okay we'll just put it to more streets we can add probably add on to the paving contract and so i don't think there's any preventing work from being done if but i think that would be a perfectly appropriate way to handle it if that's what you wanted to do go on and go ahead lauren want to make a motion i would second that but uh otherwise similar to dan i think we're generally going in the right direction i wouldn't want to micromanage staff so much on some of these projects here and i think we all know the the roads and the sidewalks are in this repair so um a lot of this seems like you're going in the right direction yeah i mean my inclination is to to uh is to try to replace the the projects that were canceled uh because i feel like we we have some obligation to the public on that um because that is what they voted for uh and if we are uh so uh i realize that's a little bit in conflict with like saving out 50 000 but i'm i would also be fine to do that and we can come back and have that conversation about that because we could still decide like yes this we are still uh it it would still be worthwhile to to replace projects that have been canceled um versus something else but um but we don't really know what that something else is uh right now so um yeah other thoughts yeah go ahead dan i i mean i i i think um so maybe this is holy anish but i i have to think that the remainder of this money will be coming to us in some form or another whether it's going to be the full two million that was promised or you know some percentage of it um and i guess you know given the realities of this i i do think that there's an obligation to just you know give the staff the flexibility to um put the capital fund put this to the capital fund projects um with the anticipation that you know once this next sort of segment of money comes free we can start to be we'd start to go back and put on our creative hats and think about this in the meantime but that this is sort of uh not pretty but these are essential projects that are going to really affect people's quality of life um and they're worth their as you say things they voted and approved to do so that that would be my inclination so it sounds like we need a promotion other thoughts or so i just go ahead just quick question is so are we thinking that we would hold back and reserve some funds i mean i guess what i'm trying to square in my mind is you know when we originally approached the full pot as as congressman welch said that hey this is what's coming we approached it as let's let's with the first batch let's manage everything that we had already budgeted for and then when when the second round comes through then we may be able to approach that with some discretion so are are we in a place now where we're kind of want a hedge and where we're going to give discretion to staff which i absolutely agree with to to manage you know you know those original priorities but knowing you know zero has been removed so you know what what what do we want to deal with in terms of discretionary relative to what um is priority you know i agree with donna and you know that we need to focus on infrastructure and these are things that the voters have you know have approved in our budget so i'm just trying to wrap my head around what our approach should be here should we should we withhold some so that we may have some discretion down the road or are we going to take a leap of faith and hope as dances that you know it will eventually come through but not knowing what that timing is so i think that's exactly the question yeah and that was also my understanding right that we would dedicate the first batch to replacing what would have been voted on and then wait until the second batch and and if we had been able to to get the whole 2.5 1 2.1 oh sorry 1 5 8 there's five in there oh there was a five in there okay 2.1 uh roughly um that if i understood that correctly that would have covered at least projects that were strictly just canceled we had about a hundred one point four million that we right yeah out and then the remaining 600 we had right then you had kind of said we'd like to look at these generally as how we do that at this point the remaining 600 is almost the full 700 right yeah it's tough uh lauren go ahead yeah i guess i had i had been thinking it more as the amounts and so we were thinking just given the timing issue you know the emergency is now so waiting a year to address people in crisis is not as useful so i you know i if everyone's supporting moving forward like i agree that you know we need to be doing all of it so you know our i i guess i would just say you know if we could take 50 000 just short term it very well might get applied in august to more paving and sidewalks but if you know talking with people there's some you know addressing an emergency that was created by covid that is harming people in our community and there's a good way to spend that working with the stakeholders i think that'd be a very humane thing to do and it's a small portion of the overall and was consistent with like the theory we had of mostly infrastructure but some portion for human needs due to covid jack i agree with the lauren two things to say one is that we have a member of the public raising his hand to to be heard thank you morgan brown is asking to be heard and i i agree with with lauren's approach and you know i don't know whether it the use for that money will be try to hire somebody or potentially invested some equipment that could be used to meet needs of homeless people or so i i don't think we need to decide that tonight but i do think it is useful to hold back well i'll just make this as a motion i move that we authorize the city manager to or should it be the city manager authorize city manager to make expenditures and allocations consistent with the undone capital projects except for $50,000 that we would hold back for future allocation so if i heard you correctly you said you you would make a motion to allocate $335,000 to the capital fund and the remaining $50,000 to be discussed at the next meeting is that how you said that that's i think that's exactly what i was saying uh kind of just thank you backing off that lauren was saying you know we might have some unmet needs coming up like today we appointed the members of the restroom committee right as this committee delves into the work there may be expenses that come up as far as you know or to think of renderings we're looking for a permanent structure but you need money for that so if we're serious about it you know also maybe interim facilities and washing facilities just to get us through the next few months so is that a second also it's a second it's okay good morgan go ahead yes thank you um thank you jack so on these upper funds funds um not to take anything away from what's needed for streets and sidewalks and also uh the housing press fund thank you comment um it would be good to also if possible prioritize funding for hiking facilities and also uh additional funding for street outreach street outreach worker uh program because you know don's one person and she's working real hard and you know the initial ask way back was for two positions and you know that's needed and really i mean not to speak for don but actually i mean it's it's amazing how much work needs to be done and it's going to get more as there's more people going to be uh doesn't have something to work with please consider those thank you thank you morgan all right well so um also don i just want to check in with you uh about this uh because it's not i you know it's saving out fifty thousand dollars um some of which i suppose could go to the housing trust fund as well but all of that unless well anyway i just want to give you the opportunity to weigh in donna oh when we spend that fifty thousand i'm definitely going to advocate for housing okay fair enough uh okay well so there has been a motion and a second any further discussion okay uh all in favor please say aye and opposed okay all right so thank you um that is how we will deal with that and that we do anticipate having an executive session a little later but before we do that we're going to go uh through council reports and uh donna i know you're not present with us but would you still be up for going first i'll certainly go first and just say i'm just so pleased we had so many people participating tonight that's all i have to say thank you all for coming or getting online with this thank you connor i'll just uh ditto that and that's otherwise thanks jay uh just a quick acknowledgement thanks to um the parks smart excuse me parks department and they're the creation of the Montpelier youth conservation core many of you maybe have seen folks out working building a bridge in Hubbard parka by the new shelter in hazmat suits tearing out poison ivy not always successfully and without without issue but that's okay i and then working out at the at the farm at home way and i think that this you know as an early program has been hugely successful my son participated and just had a great experience and so i just want to um just a quick thanks for for for that effort thanks thank you dan uh yeah i want to give a shout out to the rec department uh for opening the Montpelier pool it was a very big heavy quick lift but they did it fantastically it's operating i've been there many times and you know especially on hot days it's been really busy and uh it's certainly there have been a number of people in uh in this city who've enjoyed that and it's really wonderful to see that i think it's one sign of a return to our towards normalcy so i'm very grateful for all the hard work they put in to make that happen and i know it was not an easy or quick lift yeah thank you yeah jack well i'll say what i think uh all of us are thinking which is that it's really great to be back in person and um this is the second city meeting that i've been to in person this week and uh i think already between monday and tonight we've seen a real improvement in the technology so that people have been able to participate uh in a hybrid fashion um another observation that i would make is that i had a call from from a resident earlier this week talking about the encampment policy and she says to me so do you know about milpawn park and what impact this uh would have on milpawn park and i told her well i don't really know about milpawn park and uh but i promised her that i would go out and and visit it before a meeting tonight and for anyone who doesn't know about it it's a it's a tiny beautiful little park on elm street on the river out by winter street and i walked around there for a few minutes saw king fisher flying up the river and it's something that people should visit it's a it's a great little of all the beautiful spots in montpellier and there are many of them this is one that people probably aren't aware of and i recommend you visit yeah thank you loren yeah i'll be brief um again just gratitude for all the participation and people weighing in tonight and lots and lots of outreach um i know i've been getting and i'm sure all of you have so great to see people involved um and wanted to also just express my thanks to um both the staff cameron and chief pete and the volunteers on the police review committee we've been working incredibly hard a lot of hours going in really excited to bring forward the report that that group is putting together one of our next upcoming meetings but just want to acknowledge an immense amount of time that staff and the volunteers have been putting in so thanks to to everyone for that so i just want to report on um the next meeting is august 18th which is as i mentioned before it's third wednesday so it's a little bit odd uh and i just wanted to note that the um folks that we commissioned to do the net zero 2030 plan veic uh are starting to wind that down they're they're getting some final comments and they anticipate anyway being ready to present to us on the 18th and that net zero 2030 plan it's like a road map for how we could potentially get to net zero for city operations also includes the schools and so just a heads up that i've been in touch with uh jim murphy school board chair to see if we want to try to have some kind of a joint meeting for that presentation since they are very much part of that plan and that he was going to talk with the school board tonight about what they wanted to do it's possible that they that that doesn't work and they don't want to do that and that that's perfectly fine but just wanted to make folks aware that that is a possibility uh and so if we had a a joint meeting well i'm not sure i i assume it would be here but i could be wrong about that too um of two sets of procedures to follow uh similar to the i mean the last time we did that was when we had um berry here for a joint meeting that was uh you know like it was interesting like and it worked and it was fine but we had to navigate by a couple sets of rules anyway uh that that is it for me oh uh john oh just that i love that little park and what you do is you go to birch grove and you get your coffee and your muffins and then you just walk down there and sit there and watch that's what we do perfect that was it no problem so i got i've got a few things um also with regard to the next meeting obviously we will have this homelessness issue on the table as well so between that and net zero we'll probably have a beautiful agenda so i don't want me to talk about whether that's the night for the police it won't be done so so yeah we'll just be looking at our schedules there uh so just juggling juggling and i think c jack maybe uh so they were planning to come that night so we'll have to love to see so just that's so there's that um one thing someone mentioned the pool um some people may have noticed that the pool tower doesn't have the normal plant that you walk out to jump off of those are taken down each year for maintenance and often need some upgrading and repair and they get inspected by an independent third party because of covid and retirements in our rec department they were sort of put away so we're not sure if they're safe to put up yet so we're going to be doing due diligence on that but if people ask or wonder why they're not up it's not that we don't want kids to dive off the high tower it's just we want to make sure if they do so it's safe so there's that uh earlier tonight we mentioned garton park and we've had a lot of conversations about that and as Steve correctly noted there's been a fair amount of issues so i think we reached a conclusion we took a look at counter councils actions and on january 13 and again on march 14 uh april 14 you voted to approve grants a grant which would redesign that whole area on 12 main street and that included moving garton park to that spot and we didn't get the grants for the whole design but unless you tell me otherwise we're going to assume that that vote meant to move the park and we can do that with our own people and we'll be doing that as soon as we can schedule it so we'll be moving it there putting it in the location as per that plan that you voted and um cleaning it and all of that we think it's time probably beyond time that that happened so we're just planning to take that action and just if you indulge me two seconds because you mentioned the double meaning i was talking to someone when i was on vacation a fellow manager and they told me that there's a town in maryland but it's also in Delaware it it's on it crosses both so the i came i'm turning the name of the town and so they actually had two mayors two councils but one manager one police department one everything so they have to do everything not only with two towns but two state laws and funding and all of that so join me when the school board doesn't sound so fast come on yes thank you all right um and so uh we anticipate that we have some things to discuss in executive sessions we do two things so one is a legal update regarding the hotel and garage project the other is collective bargaining statuses so is there a we can have one motion to do both maybe uh yes go ahead just curious i heard from several community members kind of concerned that we're having a garage conversation in executive session i know the piece that we do need to talk about does need to be an executive session but maybe just we could give it i don't know an update of what's happening and why we need to go into executive sessions so people understand why whatever can be said public's well i think sure so we we've had recent decisions from the courts and um we need to update the impact on that and what that means for us moving forward and if we should move forward if we shouldn't and how about that impact so that's what we'll be talking about legal strategy yep thank you yeah that's your question uh yeah jack i move that we find that premature general public knowledge of the contract negotiations and pending civil litigation will clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage second there's motion in a second any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed and is there another motion i move that we enter executive session to discuss the collective bargaining negotiations and the status of the litigation that we've been that i just mentioned second okay uh motion in second any further discussion oh i should say that that motion includes uh having the city manager and anybody else or just and city manager in attendance okay all right so okay um that's fair okay um there's been a motion in second all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay great thank you and we will return to adjourn right basically so you didn't quit doing decision after