 having a discussion. Oh, it's item number seven, a point official voting representative for the legal cities and towns annual meeting. So I mean, we can, I suppose we could still like, briefly talk about that if you want when we get there. But otherwise, I think that's kind of a non non item. Take it off. Okay. Jones up. I got a leftist today delivered to me another liquor license application, a second class application for the Savoy Theater. So if we can toss that in with the other one on the consent agenda, that would be awesome. Okay. And they'll be at the police station tomorrow. Absolutely. Along with all the warrants. Great. Okay. So any other changes to the consent or not to the consent to the agenda in general? Okay, great. So without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. So onto general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council about any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. And yeah, if you would say your name and where you live and try to keep your comments to about two minutes, that would be excellent. And yeah, so would anybody like to address the council? So you can either turn your camera on and give a little wave, or you can use the hand emoji. So we know that you would like to speak. Steven Whitaker here. Yeah, go ahead, Steven. I am taken aback that after all that work two weeks ago, the issue of the public restrooms didn't even make it onto the agenda for discussion. I sense that the council got it in some sense that there's an emergency here. There's a pandemic. There's nowhere for people to wash their hands. You know, people are cropping in the streets in and you just like treated as if it's, you know, someday we'll think about it, we'll talk about it. And it's outrageous. And it's a crisis. I've escalated to the health commissioner already. The city council needs to take this seriously, instead of spending a quarter million dollar on fluffy signs for businesses that aren't here anymore. Okay, thank you, Steven. Just thinking about that. Was there any, because we did talk about short term things, when were we going, I know we were going to revisit that with potentially as a budget item, where we what are your thoughts on addressing that any sooner? Yeah, go ahead, Gary. I have pulled together some internal folks, and we are working on a proposal for y'all of a couple different options that we've been investigating. They might not all be budgetarily feasible right now, but we're looking at both short term and long term options for you to consider. We'll have that by your next meeting. Great. Thank you for that update. Oh, anybody else? Oh, karaoke. Alright, and Cameron doesn't see anyone. So, alright, so on to the consent agenda. So is and we're understanding that this includes the liquor license for the Savoy Theater. Any other motion regarding consent agenda? Go ahead, Jack. I move the consent agenda as amended tonight. Okay, motion in a second. Any further discussion? I have one question on the coming street where it's changing to gravel, just as a clarification, that until the water main is replaced and then it would be repaved. So it's a temporary situation. Is that correct? That's correct. It'll be newly paved and improved. Okay, that's all. Any other thoughts on your discussion about the consent agenda? Okay, so there's a motion in a second. All in favor, please say aye. And opposed. All right, so the consent agenda passes. And we are on to the homelessness task force appointments. And I think we had one vacancy and one applicant, if I'm not mistaken. And I don't see Diane necessarily on right now. So we do. So yeah, what's your pleasure, Council? Jack? I'm going to executive session to discuss the appointment of a public official. Second. Motion in a second. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. And opposed. Okay, so we are going to hop off this call, though the line will still remain open. And we will return to this same line in a bit. All right, we'll see you soon. I think we have a Donna. All right. Okay, so Donna, we just came out of executive session, but we have not yet taken a vote yet. So just FYI. All right, is there a motion? Yes, stand. So I move that we appoint Diane Matthews to the homelessness task force to the vacant position for which she is applied. Okay, motion is second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. All right, so thank you to Diane for stepping up to serve on this committee. All right, so we are, I guess we're skipping item seven, unless you want to say anything about that Donna. No, okay. Other than the actual, it was about the town fair and being the delicate. Okay. And because it was on Zoom this year, the Vermont League of City and Towns divided up the business portion, which was this week today, and the fair, which is next week. And I registered for one, but I had some problems getting authorization to vote in today's meeting. So I ended up not being omitted. So next year, we'll plan ahead. Hopefully next should be back in person. Who knows? Who knows? Hopefully. But people should. Okay, so it is free and people should consider zooming in for a few sessions next week. That's all. Thank you. All right. So the next item is a discussion about the Central Mont Public Safety Authority and the potential appointments to that. But we don't have any appointments to make this evening, but I think we're just talking about it generally. So for this, I'm turning it over either to Bill or to Donna. I'm not sure. I would. So I could just quickly say that we do have two vacant positions on the committee. And we've advertised for them a new number of times. Both Donna is one of our reps and Kim Cheney is our elected rep in the current chair have spoken to me about this and had asked that this be on the council agenda to discuss the situation. Maybe the CVPSA in general. So I'll turn it over to either one of them. Just a correction there, Bill. I'm actually not an appointed from the city council any longer. I got on the ballot in March. So I'm an at-large. Yes, correct. I'm sorry about that. That's all right. And part of my doing that is I was hoping to free up spaces because I do think that particularly as we're getting so much into equipment and expertise of public safety staff, I feel is essential to be on the board. Other regional public safety groups have their chiefs on their board. Only their chiefs, actually. So I just felt that it was a good time to do that. We're looking at this needs assessment. It's going to be coming back. A lot of technical aspects that we all on the board can learn from, but it's really better if you have some, I think, base expertise there. And commitment. The one thing that I felt missing from Montpelier is we have a lot of opinions, but we haven't voted for any commitment to see it through. So I hoped that if we had some staff on the board, we could get that commitment. And I understand Bill feels there's a conflict. I can respect that. I was just hoping that maybe we could do something with staff. There have been some staff members that have volunteered to oversee the consultant once we hired them. And that's much appreciated. So as they do their work, there's somebody they are knowing if it's completed and completed the way we want it. But I do feel that the Public Safety Authority Board has been stymated because there's been two empties vacancies on the Montpelier side and one in Berry. So it would be really appreciative if we could put somebody on. Dan Richardson had his arm twisted and would consider it. And I would like to propose him, even though I didn't do an official nomination, but if that would be the pleasure of the council and Dan's still saying yes, that he'd be willing to try it out and add another voice to the table as we go forward in choosing this vendor and seeing this need assessment done for all the Central Vermont towns because their communication is light years behind. And it's really time to get everything updated and make public safely communication. More not you know, not of the most expensive, not the but much better than it is and moving us into the 21st century. And this is a good time. The state's new Public Safety Commissioner is really has an interest in regional dispatch centers. He has an interest in the state sharing some of the costs. So I think this is a good time to get our need assessment done so that we can go to the state and the towns and say, This is what we need. This is why we need it. And this is what you have now. And this is how we get from where we are to where we want to be. So I would love to have Dan aboard. And if you're still willing, I'll nominate you want to speak? Sure. No, I'm I and I've had conversations with you, Donna, and I've had conversations with Kim as well. And I'm certainly willing to step up in part because I as you put it and very put it very well, which is that, you know, there are there is this point of a needs assessment and understanding how to integrate some of these communication systems in the region as dispatch and as community as needs become more more integrated rather than less. I mean, the idea that we exist as these little fiefdoms separated and out of communication is just not a reality. So I'm I'm happy to step up forward. I can't make a you know, I can make a long term commitment. But I will certainly serve and hopefully add add to the voice of my billier in this because obviously we have a big stake in this. So I'm I'm happy to I'm happy to step forward. Of course, if anyone else on the council has a greater burning desire, I'm happy with draw in lieu of that individual, whoever he or she may be. Oh, but we have two seats, Dan, they can join you. Well, I'm expecting a stampede of names to come forward is what I'm looking for a second to my nomination of Dan. I'll second that. Okay. Any further discussion? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Overcuse myself for and yes, Donna, go ahead. There's a board public safety board meeting tomorrow night. I've already talked to John Odom, and he is willing to do the oath. And we can either do it right now quicker at the end of city council meeting, whichever is your or the mayor's pleasure. But you do need to take a swearing in in order to attend and vote tomorrow. I think we should probably do that at the end. Is that okay? We'll still be here. So yeah, that's fine. Thank you. Can't forget. Yeah, don't forget, Dan. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Are you willing to take public comment on this topic? Absolutely. Go ahead, Stephen. Well, I think that Donna has articulated well, the problem, the stagnation that has occurred due to I only realized recently that very folk officials have safety issues, not dissimilar to Montpelier's, but we just don't talk about them here in Montpelier, where the radios don't work. And they resented paying their share of the money, even though it was the voters that appropriated the money to be spent on a study when they have like threatening lack of communications in certain zones. So I think that's the going to be have to be addressed early on in this study. But more importantly, it's the billions of dollars in the both the house in the coming from Congress that the treasure reported to the fiscal committee that we need to have a plan in place by next spring, if we intend to drop on any of those grant funds to upgrade any of this infrastructure. So it's very high time that we get get off the dime and get a plan together. Montpelier need this probably needs to be a half hour on an agenda somewhere or a subcommittee appointed of the council to get into the nitty gritty. Montpelier is in a conflict position with its agreement with cap West, capital fire that does not adhere to open records or public meeting law. And they in effect are a contractual obligator of the city or contractual partner with the city. So we've got in effect a conflict in how we run our dispatch, which will be remedied long term by the success of CDPSA. But in the meantime, it's an impediment. And that's why I think it's good that the chief may not be on this council because there are vested interests here that need to be fleshed out and brought into the light and equipment inventories and valuations, etc. So I just want the council to be aware of how important this is that it's been neglected for far too long. That's thanks. Great. Thank you so much, Stephen. Good points. Alright, so I think we're ready to move on. So the next item is the potential new winter parking strategy or plan. Jack, did you have something? Yes, I just noticed that Kim Cheney just turned off his cloak and device that is now visible. And so before we move to the next topic, I just wanted to see if he had anything that he wanted to add to this discussion. Yes, thank you. No obligation, of course. Thank you, Jack. And thank you, Donna. Thank you all. And thank you, Dan, for volunteering. This is a critical time. And I really appreciate your support. I look forward to working with you. I've had some interesting conversations with Chief Pete. I think we can work together and do something really good for both cities. So thank you all. And thank you, Kim, for all of your time and dedication to this group as well. Thank you, Jeff. Okay, so the next thing is, well, actually, does anybody else? I don't want to go too clearly here. Anyone else want to comment on the CVPSI? Okay. All right, so the next item is the winter parking plan. So I'm going to turn this over to Donna. Donna Casey. Yes. Yes. The So Zachalogic is here with me. I want to acknowledge that this alternative way of dealing with our winter parking is here before us because of his innovation and convincing us that this could be a very good solution to some of the challenges that we have. He will go into greater detail, but I'm just going to hit the high key points of this proposed ordinance. So first, there are sorry, I just want to find my place. Okay, so we've had a variety of people ask us why we're proposing the change. And these are the reasons why it is intended to simplify winter parking, plowing, we know we'll be able to be accomplished more efficiently. And roads and sidewalks will be cleaner, because it allows us to clear the sides, the sidewalks and the sides of the road at the same time that we're clearing one side of the road and then moving to the next side. And so we don't have the snow buildup. We'll have less. We anticipate we'll have less overtime logged throughout the year, which is both critical to the city's financial situation as well as to our staff's personal situation. We end up having people with hundreds of hours of overtime towards the end of the year. And that, in my estimation, is not the best option for managing our staff. We also anticipate that once people adjust to the system, we'll have fewer parking tickets issued by the Montpelier Police Department. And the result is that costs to residents will diminish. Public Works as of today posted information on our Facebook page. And we'll be continuing to do that. We're inviting residents to listen, look, read over the proposed new ordinance and to send us their questions. Three of them have been posted. We'll post them on Facebook and we'll archive them on our Public Works website so that people can review them before they make another ask. We're going to go into more detail tonight, answer questions about the proposal. But in its simplest form, the proposal is that on calendar days, having even numbers, parking will occur only on the side of the street that has even numbers on it. And the same will be true for the following day when we ask our parking to move to the other side of street. Again, visually, if you can imagine that, it makes it so much easier to plow to the curb, clear the sidewalk, and move on. It does require that residents will need to shift their cars to the appropriate side of the street on a daily basis. We've looked into situations of how other communities in the United States who have this kind of ordinance, manage it, and there are a variety of different ways. So there's no no obvious preference that was determined by that review. So what we're proposing is that no earlier than five PM on any given day, all the cars would move from five PM to 10 PM on the night for the following days side of the street. So if you are parked on an even side, and you get home at six o'clock in the evening, and you could just park on the other side of the street, and you would be safe for the following day. But you could park anywhere between and move that car anywhere between five PM and 10 PM and not be out of sorts with the methodology that we're proposing. We do expect that there will be a little bit of confusion at the beginning. We don't anticipate that we'll be issuing tickets for cars that are parked there a little bit later or a little or in the evening, but we may be leaving notes on the windshields reminding people of that we have yet to work that out. If the council does end up adopting this proposal, the alternate side parking, as it's called, will begin on November 15, and end on April 1. And that's whether or not there's any snow. So if we don't experience snow, we are going to start that on that date in order to get people oriented to the process. There are streaks that for a variety of reasons, and Zach will go into this in greater detail. Can't accommodate alternate side parking programs. And depending on what those issues are, there are different rules that will apply. It may sound like we're going to have an awful lot of idiosyncrasies, but that's absolutely not true. There's only four different tables that would occur. So I'll go through them really quickly. So there are some streets that absolutely will not allow parking at any time during the winter. Table one in your packet lists those streets. There are streets where cars can only park on odd numbered side of the street or only park on even number side of the street for the entire time. And tables three and four identify those streets. One other exception is where parking meters are located and also in areas nearby schools. Both of those circumstances. There are exceptions to the alternate side parking rule in those areas. Parking is allowed between the daytime hours of 7am to 5pm and table two indicates where those streets are. So that's the quick version of that. I'm sure if you've read the ordinance over and I'm sure you all have that that sounds familiar to you and Zach can get into more details. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. So first of all, I actually have a question. Do I need to physically read the ordinance as presented to make this a first reading or are we set to continue to have a conversation? Yeah, you do not need to read it. Awesome. So as Donna talked about, we've already gone through the majority of this on the odd number days. So you park on the outside of the street even on the even side of the street. We've gone through and taken each street and tried to find a place to find a appropriate spot for them. Meaning table one is there no parking anytime. Table two is the downtown area where daytime parking would be allowed. Table three is the even only even only and table four is odd only. I have not I did not provide a list in your packet of all of the streets that have alternate side parking. But we are we've been working on that and then I have it in front of me being currently developed. So in areas that you'll see on the no parking list that there is quite a few streets that have no parking all the time. Those streets are typically they are narrow or they have a really steep grade, which has been problematic for us to clear, which is why those streets have initially gone into that list. There are we can have discussions about if you feel like a certain street shouldn't be on that list and should be considered first even or odd only or alternate. But we tried to take a stab at what we thought would work operationally and for the residents of Montpelier based on what we see with parking counts. So we did go around and do some some count data to see how how much parking was utilized on the various streets, which is where we started in terms of where we wanted to allow on an even side parking. And so with that, I think we can just open it up to questions clarifications and have a little bit of a discussion. This is we're not I will tell you that we're not completely not everything is set in stone here. We can bring things from one table to another. But where we are now is having a discussion about what we have proposed and if there needs to be changes made. Okay, thank you. So I'm going to officially open the public hearing. Since that's what this is supposed to be. And actually, just a clarification on this. For our procedural purposes, are we thinking of this as a first reading of the ordinance? Okay, we are I just wanted to make sure that that was true. Okay. Well, I have just one very small comment. I well, besides that, I think this is great. And I am looking forward to this being implemented. I think this is going to be a really good thing. And certainly, the transition will be tough. I mean, it'll be a learning curve. But the sooner we can communicate. Or actually, I know it's already sort of started to get out there. But the more we can promote, you know, that this is happening, I think will be will make that transition better. I appreciate the part about five to 10pm being the transition time if somebody needed to switch sides and street, you know, if it's if it was parked during the day and needs to be on the other side the next time that I think that's helpful. But super small. In the table that says daytime parking, I think it would just be helpful to call it daytime only parking, just to help clarify that it is still not okay to park there. Correct. It becomes alternating at night. Correct. But that is an important distinction that we need to make in the flyer and in other places that that, you know, it at after 10pm, you need to be on the correct side so that we can when we get in there at four a.m. in the morning, we can clear to the curb line and do what we need to do prior to the downtown reopening. I have one more question, but I'm actually going to save it and see what other thoughts. Lauren. I have a few little more like typo-y things that I can email to everyone in a second. But one question, I mean, I think it's a somewhat clarifying just getting some language in here, places where like the even only parking streets, it's also just even only days just being really clear. I'm assuming that's correct, right, Zach? So it is on those streets for even and odd, it's all over the time. So we're asking people to move to the other side of the road between five and 10. So during that window, people could theoretically be parked on both sides of the street if it was allowed during that time. But at that point, then by 10 p.m., they need to be on the correct side of the street. But for an odd only street, then they can park on odd days on that street on the odd side. But on an even day, there's no parking on that street. So that's something that we need to kind of have a little bit of a discussion about. There's places that I'm not sure that that will fully work. Erlen Hill being one of them. I know that there is a lot of residents. We can't just put people on the other side of the street. So I could kind of go either way on this, but I had a feeling that it would be an exemption, a full exemption to the rule where we would allow it all of the time. And that would mean that if we needed to clear there, we would have to post for no parking. But that's why we're trying to keep this list smaller so that if the amount of streets that we actually have to physically go out and put middle parking signs is very few. Okay, so I might look at just the ordinance language again to make sure that that's clear if that's the way it's going to work. You need to add another thing. I think it works. People have more parking options. Just a couple other questions. I guess one, just can you remind us what the signage will be like just knowing that there's a lot of streets where there isn't necessarily a building nearby with a street number that's easily visible. And I know you had mentioned last time that there's a lot of signposts and things you can just use, but can you just speak a little more to what the signage will be like to make so people know? Yeah, so I've done a little bit of research looking at other communities and other communities have simply kind of passed this and not really change signage at all. With that being said, I don't think that that is necessarily a great idea for us in Montpelier. So what we're looking at is the alternating list and putting up a sign underneath it saying like alternate side parking, even side, or something of that nature so that people understand where on the street it begins and that they're allowed to do the alternating side there. And I think for the majority of our streets, if you posted them on intersections, I think that that would work fairly well. I'm thinking of like Berry Street, if you said alternate side, even side parking begins here and then ends here type thing that that would be sufficient. Thanks. I think my only other question, which sorry, these are super nitpicky, when you have the intersection as describing the start, is it always clear? Is it like where the street starts? Is it where it ends? Is there going to be any confusion? I mean, I assume there'll be a good adjustment period this year as we figure this out. It's going to be strict enforcement at these, but just so people know what, if in front of their house is going to be part of it or not. So I think it would be important to include the state statute of how far people should be parking regardless away from the intersection, which I believe is like 20 feet. So I think that we, I know that last year we had a lot of instances where we were working with residents and with PD for to try to correct some of those behaviors because people are parking like right up next to a stop sign and making it problematic to begin with. So I think if we kind of reinforce what people should be doing naturally anyways, that that will help clarify when these zones start and stop at the intersections. Other comments, questions? Jack, go ahead. Hi, just a couple. I like, I like this idea generally the idea of making, you know, saving the overtime, making things, reducing the burden on the workers and improving safety for workers. I think they're all very good. A couple of detailed things. Do we think we'll be able to get the flyer into the next water bills? Is that what your plan was? Yeah. So we will have the opportunity basically to put whatever information with the water sewer bills. We can have up to one page. So if that's the flyer, then that's fine. If we wanted to have a little bit of a more informational pamphlet, that's fine, but we're limited to basically one additional attachment. So it would probably be the flyer, but we may want to include a little bit more information on there, which I haven't quite worked out those logistics yet. I think that's great. I think it's nice and graphic. I like that more information would probably be a good thing. And I would also encourage you to put a phone number and the web page link on there so that you can hear from people. Absolutely. Phone number, web page. Okay. Thanks. Okay. I see Donna and then Heather, did you want to address this issue? Okay. So we'll go Donna and then Heather. Mine's real short. You know, you have two sides to that one sheet. So think about the other side of your paper. Yeah. So I think that includes the front side where the bill is on. We're only, I believe we've already accounted for that. I thought you're inserting a whole new sheet of paper. No. If we can, we will. And then we'll have both front and back, which would make it a lot easier, but I gotta make sure that we don't have anything else included and there's no, no. Yeah. Right. Just that it would help spacing out some of the words. So when people read it, you know, people are so short of patience reading flyers. So if you can give them a second page and and resay things, spread it out. It's easier to read to remember. Thank you. That's a great idea. If we can do that, we will. Yeah. Really good work. Really appreciate it. Okay. Heather, go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. I just had a few questions. So you said this is the first reading. So in other words, there's not a vote happening tonight. The only vote that would happen tonight is probably to put on a second reading, unless we were gonna, I don't think we were gonna skip that. So yeah. Yeah. I agree with Lauren that I think the signs will be really important. And you know, I'm sure that there's probably a lot going on and signs might not be able to get up as soon as the proposed ban starts. But I have a feeling a lot of people in the city would would like more specific signage up. That's permanent. Are the tables available on the Facebook page? They can be. They certainly can be. We can have them posted probably by the end of the week. It's our secretary's birthday tomorrow, so she's not in. But by the end of the week, we can put them up there. Okay. And it sounds like you guys are still ironing things out in regards to the odd and even streets, like streets that only have odd and even. Last year, there was the discussion about turning some streets into no winter parking and Sibley ad was one of them. Yes. So I saw on the Facebook page that it said some streets may be too narrow and would accommodate overnight parking. But then I was confused when those streets would be plowed. So I let's just talk simply because I think that's the one that you're referencing in particular. So the section between Barry and college, the section that we discussed last year during during the winter months, that would be between Barry and college, it would be even only so you would be able to park between Barry and college on the even side of the street on even calendar days. And then on from college to Saban, it has both sides. So we would allow odd parking on the on the odd side of the road above college street. And that is really was to address some of the resident residential concerns that you yourself and others voiced. So that's we looked at some of these areas that might be a little bit trickier and tried to make sure that we had reasonable accommodations for the residents living in those areas. Yep. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. I do want to say I think it's a really good idea. And I agree that I think this proposed plan would make touting a lot more efficient. And I think it will be a little confusing at first, but I think it's a good idea. Thanks, Heather. Thank you. Other, actually I kind of want to jump in on that with you know with the question about posting the the the tables. I don't know if if this is too much work like that's perfectly fine, but I'm I could also picture having a map that's like maybe color coded that has like you know so you can just look up your street that way as well for those who might find that easier. If that's too much you know like fair enough, but just in terms of communicating that that might be a useful tool. And that is absolutely fine. And if you actually look here we have so we did a draft map that goes up. So we have already gone through and done that. The what we just haven't quite made it public viewing yet. We are going to I have a hard copy here. We are going to put it in City Hall so that people can stop by and look at it. And if if anyone had specific like areas of concern, we could take a snapshot and send them have a discussion like on a one-on-one basis to address a specific area. Okay and then I'm going to tag on one more thing here and then we'll go back to other comments. Sort of thinking about the map. I again this is like this is too much work and that's you know that's fair. But just thinking about places where like as we transition from the last configuration of winter parking where there were you know there were some places that no parking was allowed ever. I assume all of those places are on this list as well. And I guess I'm wondering about like are there would there be places that show up differently in a negative way. It sounds like there are some places where we had to bid it because it was too narrow but too narrow in the last scheme. But maybe we could do alternate side and that'd be okay. So that's actually like broadening you know the available parking. But did any go the other direction? Does that make sense? There were a few and that's why we're kind of leaving it open for discussion like Wheelock Street is a super steep grade. I naturally just don't see much use of people parking there. I have come by early in the morning and seen one car parked on the street so we may have a specific issue with that resident towards the bottom of the hill. But there were a few that we put in there because it seemed to make the most sense. There wasn't a clarifying ordinance one way or another. But on areas like Phelps and Wheelock we put them as no parking and we could have a discussion if there is. I mean we could end up doing something with alternate side parking there. But you know if we if it's slippery and we're coming down the hill then you know it it would be better for cars to be off the road. But with that being said we're not against having the discussion on some of these streets. And one I mean I particularly for those streets especially if there's not very many of them I do actually wonder we should send out some kind of notification to them to let them know that that's of the change. See yeah some some of the hard thing is that there was not any ordinance language written on the streets. So because there's never been an issue they weren't included one way or the other. Right. Okay. On the band to where we were in the last couple of years there is no reference for a lot of these streets. So this we're developed we're now developing the first spot within because historically everything has been done really on a case by case basis. It stuff in our ordinance just gets added and it not so we're kind of looking to overhaul everything and to clean it up so that it's consistent. I mean you'll notice in areas where we have residential parking programs along the first avenue Ridge Street West Street. So those we are going to propose for alternating but there's just been a lot of trying to clean things up and trying to make it consistent so that it's not it's not so it's hard to follow the ordinance and I read the ordinance several times and I find it a little bit hard because you have to look in multiple sections you have a nighttime restriction for the winter you have restricted all the time you have your residential parking program so we're trying to kind of retweet and clean everything up in the same process. With that being said we could just go through the ordinance and you know identify which ones highlight them which ones are changing from how it was written to where we are and we can start with developing that list first and see how many it is and how much manual notices that would take. I think that would be helpful again if it's yeah I think it would be helpful. Can you take any more public comment? Absolutely Stephen go ahead. Yeah it's unclear I think Lauren made the point some sections it's not clear which there's no street numbers on some of the buildings so that and is this a nighttime only issue or is this going to be daytime for maintenance as well? It's all the time with the It's all the time. It's in the built area which is a different exception rule but all of the other streets it will be all of the time. So even if there's no snow on the ground or no snow to be cleaned up we're going to forfeit that many parking places? So there almost every day I think there was two days of last winter between November 15th and April 1st when we were not doing winter operations related events which is sanding, salting, clearing snow, pushing back even if it doesn't seem like it's snowing or does not seem intuitive we are most likely out there doing work cleaning storm drains. If you all remember last year or two years ago we had the bad water break and our storm drains weren't cleaned and it made a mess of our downtown. Those are the type of things that with the availability of being able to actually get to the curb line and have those spaces available that we would be able to accomplish. I just want to push back on that to the council that this seems like a gross overreach because we know that we're short-staffed and that those storm drains go months without being cleaned and the ice I've had to call public works regularly because the ice stays on well past the time many people have fallen so you know to basically pretend that by eliminating a lot of parking public works is automatically going to step up and start doing all this stuff is fallacy so especially school streets specifically there's you know we're going to forfeit 30 places you know in one of the most congested and convenient parking areas when there's no snow on the ground just seems absurd second you know we got a lot of visitors coming to town who don't know the the rules and if they're not clearly marked they're going to violate it and you know unless you're going to bag the meters on the sides that you know are are not banned that's going to be a problem and then secondly as far as the notification I mentioned this last time I think you should look at some large posters trying once you figure out how to explain it and we're not there yet some large posters you could probably negotiate with city center to put them in the old lobbyist windows where people can see them put them outside the front city hall portico where they're covered on a weighted easel but where people don't have to go in and we go in the the covid zone so my point is that this is going to take a whole lot of education I've raised the red flag of the issues I'm opposed to that I hope you'll give it more thorough consideration thanks okay thank you Steven all right other comments questions thoughts Connor go ahead and I'm happy to make a motion but you know I just want to say I think this is a really creative solution and I appreciate our staff thinking outside the box on this so much you know and we begin ourselves if we didn't say we we've got probably pretty tough times ahead fiscally here so if this can save some overtime that's important but also the quality of life for our DPW workers here again I think we'll unfortunately be facing more water breaks and type of thing so to have them devoted to those projects I think that's a good thing and people will get used to it so unless there's much other discussion I would move that we go to second reading on this and I see Lauren just sent us some changes that hopefully we can incorporate before the next reading I'll second that okay there's a motion and a second but I do want to check any any other thoughts comments including from the public Lauren um I would just say I think what I what I sent and um are just really nothing that changes any meaning in the ordinance it was just a couple kind of phrases I think just clarifies a little bit more I do think if we need to figure out the odd even and if if we're going to I think it needs some clarifying language in the ordinance if we're saying that on the odd only streets that you can park all the time and even only you can park all the time or if we're saying that it follows the rule because the way I would read it it's either confusing or I would think that if it's an odd only that it's only odd calendar days because that's what it says earlier in the ordinance so I just I think we need to clarify that um in our own minds and in the ordinance language and I mean I I like the idea if we can make it work that people could park there all the time I mean the more parking the better it seems like it creates potential challenges with the street um plowing and stuff so I don't know how that would work but um if we can do it great but if we need to follow the way the rest of the streets are going to be that would be understandable um I did uh Don and I were talking earlier today um I think that it's important that we write in some language about um the ability to make changes um if we're realizing that something is not happening allowing bill to authorize a change to maybe take something off of a no parking list um so that it that we don't have to go back through all of this to get approval um I think that that's important if we want to really look at being having a successful program we need the ability to tweak it if we need to one thought on that and then I see you Heather um for some other ordinances we have the ordinance just reference a table which is not included in the ordinance language itself um so I wonder if that's a possibility um it would make it easier for it to be a little more flexible but anyway that's something y'all can okay we're determined uh Heather uh I apologize if you already said this but like currently there's still those designated areas around town where overnight parking is available uh for example I think you know so the street on the by the co-op stone cutters right so let's say uh certain streets were just too crowded to park there there would still be still over parking lots right that is correct um one of the things that we looked at is I we did some counts about our parking lots and we can really only truly the way that it's signed accommodate 72 people to overnight park between the lot that we have behind city hall and stone cutters uh having driven down stone cutters during a storm um everyone parks there um so I'm not sure that there we're not overstepping the bounds into parking into permanent areas or the the nature conservancy or other areas um we've only I mean we have that one specific spot on stone cutters um where we would sign for overnight but we would still allow that and the other thing that um we are looking at is providing a long-term overnight parking at um poolside drive up by the ball field so if you ever got towed um your car was towed to the ball field road um to allow for people that don't have a driveway and that need long-term overnight parking um the thought is that you could go up to poolside drive and be able to park there so that if you're gone for a week during the winter um you're okay you don't have to have someone come out and move your car you don't have to worry about any of those issues great thank you Mayor can I make one more comment about the notification uh I think it's unwieldy for uh notifications to have to go into multiple venues uh Facebook puts a paywall or a registration requirement uh front porch forum could be argued I think creating a more usable city website and just making one destination where everybody finds this information is better in the long run because the information can be inconsistently interpreted or reposted on those other forums hmm it's a good point about posting it on the city's website and I assume we'll have that pretty prominently um once again we're gonna if you've ever been on to our website we do have a page for the winter parking ban um we will be in the in the process of making a draft page that will include comments and a log of any concerns that people have raised and providing a link to the map um and some more information we just it's been moving pretty fast so we're doing what we can to stay ahead okay all right well thank you um and so this will be on our agenda for the oh actually we're about to say a vote on on that I can't can't say whether or not yet okay so um there's a motion a second any further comments on this okay uh all in favor please say aye hi hi hi and opposed okay so that motion passes so we will be taking this up again for a second reading thank you for all of your work on this uh Zach and Donna so grateful thank you thanks for having us yeah absolutely and we'll try to help push out the information ourselves as well all right thanks so much okay all right so on to uh a discussion about uh it's fall up to the policing a discussion that we had um can't remember if it was the last meeting or a couple meetings ago but um right so for this I am going to turn it over to uh Bill or the chief I'll start but I see the chief is here uh so two meetings ago the chief outlined you know his thoughts and his memo about the department and the council in general approval to plan to move forward but one of it involved specific requests involved the creation of a committee to look at uh you know the chief specifically talked about for strategic planning for the committee but I think there was desire to look at other things as well and so we said we get back to you with a specific recommendation that you could work from and so we've provided you a memo with that also at that meeting where uh you know the group has been active and I see a couple of them here presented 11 requests or demands so we provided our responses or thoughts on those uh clearly obviously the most substantive one is is how we're going to handle the budget and that's still one or two away but uh certainly the biggest impact um I did want to talk quickly about the very first one about the school resource officer because that has sort of pushed to the head of the class um as as many of you may be aware the the school board last week voted to temporarily suspend the activities of the school resource officer while they formed a committee to take a look at actions um there seems in communication with school officials there's a couple of issues one uh there's not complete clarity that that was intended to include the city um I think some people felt it was and some that wasn't so I think it would be helpful if the city tonight if we made some sort of motion to formally request that the city government be involved in in this process so that it's on record that we we think that because we're partners in in this situation uh that that we be at the table um and obviously we would provide whatever information was necessary for that process at any rate uh and secondly just so that the council's where there's been communication between the chief and the superintendent and the school board just about clarification of actual roles um and so you may hear about that but I think just to make clear what what the expectations are and aren't for response uh and that what what these decisions mean so that there's so that if something does occur or a situation comes up if it's been thought about in advance as opposed to you know why were the police there why weren't they there etc so that sort of interim conversation is going forward but so otherwise I think that that first issue the SRO issue is really being led by oh one last thing on that so in addition to the um school forming a committee and probably you know I'd advise you to if you wish to be involved to make a vote to to add a formal request and I can drop that for you um the plan that had been discussed with between the superintendent and I and the mayor and the chair of the school board prior to last week's vote was there would be a joint committee and that we would get an outside facilitator so that was a more neutral party operating the meeting so that all people with all voices felt um safe and that nobody was trying to drive an agenda so we reached out to the group creative discourses who is already we've already hired to do our diversity work here in for the city uh from the social justice committee they've provide provided a proposal to um school and to us and the plan was that we would spit it us spit it split it the cost financially if uh since we split the officer and we would be joint partners on this and our share would only be $2,400 that's within you so I told them we were okay with that since that's within my dollar limit um but making sure that you've all heard that and if you have concerns about that uh again some school board members may want to not have the city of all in which case I assume the school school would then assume the full cost but uh it's to be worked on at this point I think the assumption is we're going to be collaborating and cooperating working together hiring uh sharing the neutral facilitator and um folks from this council would have a seat on that committee table and when I talk about city officials I'm talking about you the elected officials not me not the chief not anyone like that so that's the overview happy to obviously talk about any of these issues so I actually wonder if we should take up the uh SRO question um actually first um and then move on to talking about the other like the proposed strategic planning committee um so how so taking this in two separate parts um how do you all feel about requesting to participate on that task force um so I see uh oh I see some thumbs up but I also see Dan and Lauren well we'll go in that order okay um I would support being a part in any making a motion to that extent I think in part and I listened to um a substantial part of that school board discussion last week um it seemed as if a lot of the discussion involved some assumptions as to how um some of the functions of the SRO would act going forward which I think necessarily implicates us as a city as well you know the future of the SRO whatever shape or form it would take because it is a partnership um you know we I think our input is pretty critical to this process um and you know we have a role and need to provide input at the table with this with this conversation so I would I'd fully and strongly support that and I you know I think it makes sense you know it's each board can come to their own conclusions um or a joint conclusion but I think the process has to be shared and there has to be a shared conversation about it um so I would strongly support that that's just my point okay thank you Lauren yeah I mean I would I would echo that also um listened to the most recent school board meeting and there were you know I think policy implications and also potential budget implications for the city so having us be you know at the at the table and um you know there are also discussions that seems you know I think the way they even boarded their resolution was you know the kind of policing in and near the schools which seems like pretty encompassing and you know gets into city functioning as well so I think uh just to bring that broader perspective um would be really valuable to the process um and also kind of keeping uh good communication with the the rest of the conversation we'll have tonight of the um you know the the broader conversation that we're having as a community around policing and how the SRO doesn't doesn't fit within that um I think would be valuable to just keep good communication and collaboration um and I'll be at the table together so I'd also support a motion to that effect great and then did I see Jay and then Connor yes I quickly I'll just add to you know support Lauren and Dan's comments um uh you know watching the um the school board meeting from last week and seeing the resolution and how broad it was and um as much as you know they passed the resolution knowing that they need to form this committee but didn't necessarily provide any specific guidance in terms of who was going to be involved but seeing the obvious implications to to the city um uh and that it makes a fully supported motion that we would um want to have a you know place at that table and and be a part of it because it's um yeah as Lauren said it goes you know as the resolution that they passed it goes even beyond um you know just the community around the schools etc so thank you great uh Connor oh yeah just a question is the thought and I I'm sorry I didn't see the school board meeting is the thought that this would be resolved within the current fiscal year or you would gather the information you need to make a decision for the following fiscal year I think that's I think that's uncertain from the schools um you know presumably the city and school need to make a decision about any number of these budget issues by say November December-ish as as we prepare and so uh and that would be for the next fiscal year so you know it would seem that if there's a can if there's a decision where we're going to not have the SRO for example then both the city and school would know that in time to prepare their budgets accordingly conversely if the decision is to to go forward with it then it would be you know in time to have in the budgets uh so you know maybe we could have preliminary budgets prepared in December and the final decision not made till January but I think both both the city and school would have to decide before their budgets are put to vote what was included for next year this is my assumption only nobody said this but I would presume since both the city and school have a budget before in this present year that if the decision is made to go forward in the future that it would continue then it would take up during this year as well from that point forward but that's just my thought of that that's not based on anybody else's statement or comment um Donna and then Lauren I just had a question about the suspension does this impact the officer involved in any way is he or she reassigned duties just so yeah so the officer SRO Diane Matthews is continuing to work on patrol and you're working homeless and doing other things um but basically there were specific school resource officer functions that the school said you know we would rather not have happened while we're sorting this out but they would that left a lot of unanswered questions and so in addition to this committee we're trying to sort out what what that means you know if we're called to the campus what does that look like because one of the concerns was officers in uniform but if there's no SRO who would be in more casual dress then the only people that would respond to campus would be any campus would be officers in youth and what if a third party calls not a school official as somebody witnesses something out of school you know so there's just a lot of practical questions and we're not trying to create problems we just want to make sure there's clarity the SRO has handled truancy issues you know getting a truan student is that something they still want the police to do even things as simple as some of the officers drop off and pick up children their own children at school in uniform you know our assumption is they can still do that like any other parent but is you know not ought to be clear so um well part of my asking was for the person but also was i felt like in the motion maybe we need to push i feel it's very time sensitive for this year i mean a committee can go a long time before making decisions and i didn't get a sense from the school board they put any time limits on it did i miss it so i would like us to make maybe push it to say that we'd like to have this resolved um soon sometime maybe you and brian can make some suggestions on time june did you have an answer to that well well my understanding is that um you know part of the the school boards um thought around paying as bill mentioned paying somebody to facilitate this process and to and to engage the community is to not necessarily sort of punt it to the next fiscal year as a question that happens as we're putting our budgets together but rather something that can be resolved by the end of the 2020 calendar year so that we can move so that the school district can move into the second semester as we're in starting in january with a plan of what exactly the role of the sro would be um so and then of course yeah there's so there's that short term looking at the you know the calendar the school's calendar year but then also thinking about what the budget implications are for our next next fiscal year but but looking to you know get this resolved you know in a way that still allows for appropriate community engagement but can get us all to a point where we can make a decision to finish the school year and then move on from there hope that helps and i think part of the idea with of having outside facilitation is that you know the conversation at school board meetings and at city council meetings is great but we also have other agenda items and so if the community can have a couple of focused meetings of you know two or three hours where they can really focus on this issue and all voices can be heard and listened to and um you know we can maybe focus on the things we have in common and the goals we're trying to accomplish and and talk about the best ways for those to happen um that's that's the goal you know we're open to any kind of conversation it's just i think it's important that people get away i mean we've heard a lot of voices that have a lot of concerns and those need to be aired and vetted and taken seriously so um we you know appropriate time by both boards needs to be given and so rather than i think the initial thought that the mayor and i had with the school board chair the superintendent was rather than city council embarking on the process to hear all these voices in the school board and embarking on process that since we share this position it made more sense to have the process together and have everybody hear the same comments at the same time and working through together and well lauren did you have something and then donna yeah just i mean i came up a little while ago now but um just for clarity for those who uh did not um have a chance to listen to the school board meeting so they did make clear that they were going to follow through on the financial commitment for this fiscal year they said you know voters approved the city and the school board budget i mean that was kind of the conversation went a little um all over the place but then they did land there so it it was looking at budget implications for the next fiscal year um and you know i think it became clear and i think kind of feeds into that broader discussion we're going to have have soon but you know there's if they're going to change the system you have done you know this process looking at well what systems have we put in place and we can't just take them away without anything to um to do instead we need to you know build all their systems and so i think you know the the timeline i think will partly depend on how quickly could you get other things in place if you did want to transition to other models for certain aspects of um what services are currently being provided by the school resource officer so that was my interpretation of the conversation um so for what it's worth okay oh donna just a short question about bill do we we have funds sort of loose hanging around to pay our share of facilitator i presume if we're wanting to be partners we are paying yeah so i mean we don't right we we don't have money for anything um i mean honestly right where we're in a bad situation but this is a really high priority issue for the community and i think there are a lot of um pained voices that are that are communicating and speaking out and they need to be heard and they need to be done the right way um i think community trust is really important so i think if the school board were running this or the city they'd be concerned that somehow we were driving at an agenda or whatever that that we had arranged process so we've reached out to a group that does work like this and asked them to design a process uh and we would support it and our shares is $2,400 it's not exorbitant um you know obviously if you all tell me you don't want to spend that money on this process i won't but that that falls within my approval level and to me that seemed like something that was worth taking a chance on and um you know investing the money in for the sake of the community thank you great uh connor yeah another just quick question do we know is the community justice center at the table on this because i thought like maybe one thing on the side of keeping the officer was that bridge with the CJC and coming up with like alternative methods of discipline that you know then entail like you know putting somebody in a car or something you know so uh they have asked to me and i think they probably would be a part of it as this group meets i want to so you actually said a couple words that i think are really important number one is that the school news officer is not involved in discipline uh school makes its own decisions about that um and so they you know that's so that i don't want to be clear about that um no one would be taken away in a car unless they committed a serious crime and it couldn't be handled otherwise number two the schools have adopted the restorative model for dealing with students uh in crisis or in situations and the justice center helps has helped train the school and help facilitate that and on occasion has has taken referrals when you get out of the school one of the reasons frankly that we didn't ask the justice center we talked about the justice center to lead this effort was they are an arm of the city government and even though they do what they do and they do it really well again and we just felt it was given people's um comments that it was really important that it not be led by the city or school an agency in the city or the school great Adam are you going to take public comment on this section yes we will um go ahead Steven and then Lauren go ahead so I think you should exercise real caution while I don't uh oppose the idea of uh a kind of a collaborative uh issues uh process it's also very possible for the city to be intruding into the school board's domain here with a heavy hand and I think to the degree that it just like if Barry took issue with us on cvpsa they don't come in and insert themselves into your city council meetings the school board is its own elected body and to the degree the city wants to get involved it needs to do so very likely with my invitation and not by you know insertion uh so I just want to caution that that there's a likelihood the sophistication of manipulation that goes on within our city government doesn't need to be imposed upon the school secondly the caution about the school resource officer who has lied on official papers multiple times and and misrepresented statutes and so I have real concerns about the character which I've called to the attention of the chief and got no response so in the latter half of this section I want to strictly you know advocate for the the uh oversight body with subpoena power that can really investigate uh not not an advisory strategic planning you know we'll tell you what we want to hear but it oversight commission so okay thank you um Lauren oh I was just going to uh to say that um hiring creative discourse seems like a great move um you know we're already hiring them as bill mentioned for the social and economic justice advisory committee process so this feels like a good way of kind of building some community relationships and kind of they can I think feed into and help bolster even further that work that we're already investing in so at least I like the idea of if we're gonna have to spend some money that's so hard to come by right now that um in some ways I think I can make that process even better with some of the groundwork that it can help lay in the community yeah and just just a point actually that Steve Whitaker just raised um you know I think we prefaced this by saying we would we're seeking a vote to request that the city be included in a joint committee that we aren't that we are specifically not seeking to go to school board meetings and participate in their meetings we are seeking to form a joint committee with them to work independently collaboratively so I do appreciate the point that we're not trying to muscle in on on school board uh Dan right and I guess I'll just pick up that thread as well I mean you know this is this is a place where there is overlap this is a city employee who has a contract with the school board to perform functions within the schools um and so it necessarily you know in implicates the city um and given that the discussion as Lauren pointed out has has ranged well beyond um so the four walls of the school to the school yard to even outside in the street I think this is again this is just an important um issue in which we're not looking to substitute our judgment or impose our judgment on the school board they're duly elected body they make their own decisions but in part so that we understand um and there's some joint process because of the overlap in some of these issues so it's to me this is just something that that makes basic sense and obviously we're not approaching this as a um you must do this but um that we expect we would we would strongly uh encourage participation uh with the city because of the importance uh and because we take this seriously yeah and I guess I would also just add to that um that one of my hopes for this committee um in addition to um just digging into thinking about specifically the the SRO is also you know that they whoever's on this committee will uh become experts on this and that requires uh taking some time to understand to understand so that everyone's working from the same facts um so I just want to put that out there too uh all right so I don't think we have a motion on this do we have a motion on this I'll make a motion that we um direct um or let me phrase it this way I make a motion that we make a request to the school board that the city be included uh the city officers be included um in any joint committee that is formed uh to discuss the future of the student school resource officer in Montpelier Roxbury public schools second okay any further discussion about that including from the public okay um all right so all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay all right so um thank you for that and we'll um we'll see how that goes right so moving on to uh the follow-up from the uh policing discussion a couple meetings ago one of the proposals was to form a strategic planning advisory committee uh board and so for this either um uh Bill or Brian would you like to say anything further about this particular part or um we can also just start getting into questions if you if there's nothing more to add I really don't have anything to add we this is you know we described this broadly or the chief described this broadly at that august 26th meeting and we we put some specifics to it and some thought about what it would include um to the point that mr Whitaker raised um you know we our our form of government doesn't allow for subpoenas necessarily we have elected uh state's attorney elected attorney general who can perform that role um our governance creates the city council as the oversight board for all city government city managers operating so we tried to create a structure that respected the form of government but also provided constant information and public discussion about the issues that were involved so I think it probably makes sense to um talk about this generally and um and then we can get into more specifics so uh general thoughts on this proposal uh Dan go ahead um well I think one of the things that I'd like to see uh on this committee or subcommittee whatever we would dub it um would be a little bit of a deeper dive um than necessarily is what for what is proposed in part it seems like a lot of the discussion that we've been having as a community um particularly at these these city council meetings um but I think in a larger context in the larger community is a question about you know what are the roles of uh the police department what are the uh current trends and future directions and I I think chief p did a great job in his report um but I I think one of the reasons at least I was motivated to um to think about and support the proposal of this committee was to look at have a group of people as you said mayor about the SRO to do a deeper dive and educate themselves and become you know start to become subject matter experts about these these issues um as a way of building uh an understanding in the community um which is you know that's the I want to say the downside but that's one of the functions of a you know professional driven city government is that average citizens may not have necessarily the full understanding of some of the more technical features of any given department I certainly you know wouldn't know where to begin it's and some of public works if if we were discussing that um other than to you know say those are great plows um but I think you know in when we talk about policing um and we talk about 21st century policing and we talk about some of these community policing concepts um they can be a bit abstract or they can be um a bit dense I think for us as city counselors but certainly the larger community so I'd like to see you know at the very least um one of the charges of this committee to be to looking into some of these deeper issues and that may be embedded in the idea of helping to build the strategic plan um but I think it needs to be explicit that this would be this would be a subcommittee that looks to you know become um more versed in some of these some of these issues some of these topics some of these trends some of these data points um that we can then use as a resource as a city council um and and the community to use this resource as well so that's those are my initial thoughts and I'll stop there but I have more to say fair enough other thoughts uh generally also I think it's uh a great idea to consider that we need to you know with the forming of this group that sort of step zero is getting ourselves educated um whoever's on that committee um and and taking a deep a deep dive I appreciate that um other thoughts Connor go ahead I was just a bit unclear if the committee has like sort of a thought that it's like a start and an end date where specific recommendations will be brought to council and you would expect that they'd be acted upon or whether this will be an ongoing committee that goes years into the future because I know I think like you know if you're going to commit to serve it on it right that's a it's a horse of a different color there so um yeah just uh we wouldn't wait I can tell you we we talked about this and I and maybe you know we didn't want to complicate things right so we didn't want to create like two different committees and you know also I think the idea is and you know you could end up transitioning people along the way so so let me answer I've said stuff without answering your question the idea is it would be an ongoing committee that but that it's initial work in I don't think I almost speak to the chief but I think we have any objections to a deep dive and I think that is what you know when we talked about a strategic plan it means how will we strategically address these things so if you want to add those kind of words to it that's that's in sync with what we were thinking so I thought we'd be doing that kind of stuff first you know maybe taking a hard look at the policies that are already in place taking a look at the 21st century police and all those things that we talked about that and so that that may come out with some recommendations to the council that says here's here's how we see the department moving forward in the future but similarly there ought to be a group that is you know I mean we provide all this information to the public we provide all to you but there ought to be a group that's maybe you know looking we suggested quarterly but I mean as much as you want to add at things like prime statistics at things like use of force reports at things like incidents the things you know we listed some of those things so that in addition to planning it's kind of how's the department doing and what are the key trends that we see in the community what how are things being addressed and providing a place for that conversation to occur on a regular basis so it may be that there's a group of people that form do some of the early work and then say okay you know not time for some new members for the more regular ongoing reporting but the idea is that you know if people really want transparency and policing there needs to be a regular review of what's happening in a regular place you probably can talk about it with more time than just in the council meeting. Fair enough Donna go ahead. My question I at first initially thought it was a bit top heavy with three council members a discussion with Dan Richardson helped me understand better perhaps the advantages but then I'd want more stakeholders I feel especially initially when we're going deep for understanding that we need to share this knowledge and growth and opportunity to do some assessment with our stakeholders so it says two to four and I feel that's sort of wimpy. Let me be clear this is if you choose to do this whatever you add for the charge and however you form the committee is your committee this is an outline that we provided so you know we can't tell you how to do this I think I understand that I'm just adding from my perspective it was just more thinking about what makes for functional committees so five to seven people or functionally you know what point does it become too large and unwieldy but that's that's not my decision to make that's yours. That's what I would add to it I would just sort of find more stakeholders. Madam Mayor whenever you taking public comment. Um sure go ahead Steven and then Jack and then Lauren. So I think it's important to distinguish between a strategic planning educational committee and an accountability commission that when when I have raised to you over any months or a year various issues of you know officers stealing unopened beers from homeless people prior issues with internal affairs officer refusing to report to the superiors or to the council you know we've got two shootings in as many years and this chief hasn't even seen fit to go through the whole file and see whether we've got a dangerous cop on our force and I've called the issue of the SRO Diane is a liar. So we can't let those things wait till this you know strategic planning commission may or may not end up with a recommendation to form a accountability commission. There needs to be some real oversight here and if the city council wants to air it all out in public that's one way but I think you know I did hear Jack McCullough you know last meeting or so uh speak similar thoughts about a accountability board an oversight board that can actually dig into this and take it seriously and do it sooner than later. So I want to just reiterate that that's not what I hear going on here it looks like a deflection. Okay thank you yeah interesting thoughts there um Jack do you want it to go? Thanks I don't consider my support for a process like this to be a deflection I think that we've got I I agree with Bill's idea that this would be a standing committee of some kind it would have ongoing functions. The uh the strategic planning as I see it naturally probably comes first because although I support some form of civilian review and oversight and review of uses of force and a lot of the things that I said last time and that we uh that are talked about as the memo I don't think the council is in a position to make a decision sorry to make a decision for what should happen tonight and I think that the deliberations and investigation of this committee will be part of the input to decide what what the needs are what the possible mechanisms are to provide the oversight that that the community decides is needed I'll cross your judgment on this one Jack um thank you yeah um Lauren I think you are next uh yeah that's a few thoughts um so I mean I also think that you know although it feels like uh you know we can be ponderously slow in governmental decisions um I mean I I think having this kind of um group created is really important I don't think it precludes at all creating other structures and I think it's exactly as has come up several times the kind of expertise and deeper dive to figure out what structure would make sense I've read and heard really conflicting things about you know even citizen oversight panels that are created well or poorly and how they can function and well for a community so I you know I think taking that lightly or trying to just you know jump into something without that um really hard thoughtful work and that's the kind of thing that I think this group could really look into is what you know what structure you know is that a good idea for our community and what would it look like if so um so I I think this is a great idea one thing I was wondering about and I think it's something that potentially the group could maybe put thought into it first and I think it goes into the strategic um planning piece but I know that you know we've certainly heard a range of perspectives you know here at city council heard a lot of thoughts at the recent school board meeting on policing I think there's you know a wide spectrum of perspectives on the future of policing for the community so just thinking about what kind of you know shared goals that a group could come up with and I don't know at some point we as a council need to give more clarity to you know what the what the vision of the city council is to give them more specificity I mean if you look at the the charge that was proposed here I think it could be information gathering and could um but I you know it might be tricky for them or people with different positions to know how they're bringing um bringing forward I know I know a lot of us will be on it so we could represent ourselves there um but but just you know wanting to hone in potentially um and again I think the group could do that early meetings of just more like what what specifically are we trying to accomplish what's what are the shared vision and values underpinning this um together um really hope it's a a process with a lot of public engagement and you know beyond just being open meetings but really soliciting a lot of um feedback and participation um I agree with Donna we probably want um you know a few more people I think getting a breadth of perspectives would be helpful and people can either be members or maybe it's just actively soliciting participation for different issues um and it talks about policy recommendations wondering if we want to also be clear that that could include budget recommendations as well if there are any budgetary implications maybe that's implied but just that seems like a big piece of what um what could come out of it and hopefully that would you know this group could be looking both short term recommendations and this longer term vision and policy analysis um so that's my hope um so yeah I leave it there thank you other thoughts Connor go ahead and then Dan I will be interested in hearing some public comment here because we do have a group of people who have been coming you know to most council meetings um and I've asked the question I I don't know if I've gotten an answer is it a formal group you know are these demands made by consensus are there point people to the group are there folks we should be meeting with who can we contact and I really would like to know um from this group of folks uh is this something you're like willing to be a part of um or do you see this is kind of like window dressing or the illusion of public impulse um so yeah I think that like drives some of my decision making um what the folks who have been coming in here every week think and if you're if you're willing to participate in this so not anything anybody on count council can answer one um with that I might pause here a minute is there any any other comments from the public on this I've got a comment it was let me start the video it was more so on some of the other items addressed in the memo but um since Connor had asked I figured I'd chime on in um I'm not sure I do think people would be interested but there is not a unified group it we are just uh concerned community members so I'm not sure at the moment but it's definitely something I'm sure others might want to speak to and maybe I'll make my comment later if you're going to address the other parts of the memo sure let's let's take that separately okay thanks okay thanks for that question though um okay any other comments I guess that answers your question more or less Connor or sort of right um okay so Dan go ahead um well just along not Connor's point but back to sort of Lauren's point you know I I think that this subcommittee I guess I would give it about six things and I've actually sort of wrote it out a little bit to think about some of these things um you know I think the charge I think that the function of the committee is we're talking about two two things but it's not two mutually exclusive things I think they build upon each other and when we talk about the sort of deeper dig and and education that that almost comes first but it builds up sort of the second function which is where the committee sees itself playing the best role um going forward and I think there is a tension you know between do we set this up as an as a as a resource for the city council in the city council playing an oversight role or does this does this subcommittee eventually take on some oversight functions uh or review or is it a mixture of the two and I think that comes I don't think anyone can necessarily answer that right now definitively um and I think it builds out of you know these some of these initial conversations and so you know I would see the six things that at least I would think for this committee would be to review the historic functions of the Montpelier police department you know where have we come from and those builds I'll let Chief Pete put into his memo but you know sort of going off of that um the other is to as I said before to review modern policing trends of practices such as those embodied in the president's task force on 21st century policing and other reference materials uh and then the third part which gets to the point that I think it's Lawrence point is I think we I think we do have to reach out or this committee would have to reach out to community stakeholders and you know I think we have to cast a fairly broad net on that not just not just members of the community individual residents but you know some of the law enforcement partners so the state's attorney's office but also the public defender's office and the crime victim advocates office and the Washington county mental health the Montpelier business community the Montpelier social and economic justice community you know these kind of groups that are already established and and you know seeking some of their input on that and then the fourth thing I think is to review um you know to review the data that they've talked about about crime trends department activity race data complaint resolution major incidents um and analyze and provide you know some some observations because I think you look at that data um and it's it's very you can draw some very clear and powerful conclusions as we did last time but it would be nice to have this this committee be able to look deeper at some of that and look at it in the context of either the state or national um and then to review the functions and analyze the functions of the Montpelier police department as part of its current strategic plan existing policies and going forward um and then I would see at least as a first phase this coming to a report or some some type of goal where we as a council would receive some of this the benefit of the work that we would expect the subcommittee to do um maybe not in a form of we recommend x y and z out of this but just simply the the fruit of this labor and then and include in that you know start to build some of the recommendations of where this committee would go forward from there so that that I guess is a little bit more expanded about where I think the subcommittee could go and what I would see is a deeper dive looking like yeah thank you those all sound good to me um cool other thoughts on this if there's no thoughts um generally uh about this then oh thumbs up awesome um then um I think it might make sense to start talking about some specifics it sounds like people are generally on board of the idea of creating um this board or committee whatever you want to call it and so that leads me to a couple of a really it's actually a series of questions so one question is uh and well there's and there's a number of ways to to think about this so one question would be how many city counselors either should be on it or are interested in being on it I think you'd attack that a couple ways um and then a second question is either um how many um other seats do we want to create for it um and then all all of that is sort of in the context of you know do we want to set some kind of a size limit um on the group and to be fair if we are creating this then we can adjust that number anytime uh but you know it it could be good to um have a goal um some kind of a goal there in mind um and then beyond that um just to clarify the the process and so this is how I understand um this that this would go if we do have other you know stakeholders that we want to to be there I'm thinking of this process is similar to when we set up the homelessness task course where we said you know we'd really like to have a seat at the table there for someone from the business community and we'd really like you know um representation there from someone who has the experience of being homeless and um and I think we probably want to do that um here again and I mean in the end with the homelessness task force we still put out a call and said who's who's out there that would like to participate and then we we made those appointments um so unless someone has other ideas as to how of the other stakeholder piece would go that's how I'm envisioning it any other bills that how you're envisioning that part going or or chief yeah but really I you know we want to be careful not to be dictating who you put on you who you think is best to provide you the input that you need but I I had in mind that similar model of the homeless um and then you know I think it's probably when we get to the part of talking about stakeholders I think it's worth um having this consideration um too that Dan brought up about um the some of the different parties that are involved it's worth considering the question is our is this a person that is a stakeholder and should be a part of decision making the decision making process or is this um uh the kind of position that we would want to invite in for some expertise uh though they're not necessarily a stakeholder um so I just want to be thoughtful about that so I know I've said a whole bunch of things here um I'm happy to start with either what we think the total size should be or how many counselors um should be on this I mean the initial proposal was that we have one from each district um yeah what's uh anybody have thoughts on any of those um pieces uh go ahead Connor I mean I'll just throw it out there I think three is probably at least one too many counselors on this you know if we want this to be a process where you know we we think we're engaging all the stakeholders it's pretty close to a core on three there and I don't know if that might give the wrong impression um I could be convinced otherwise but that's just my initial take on it sure oh Lauren um yeah I agree I think probably two is a pretty good number if we have um two volunteers um another way I mean I like the really trying to think through a variety of stakeholder voices we want to include also wondering I don't know that I definitely don't want to slow anything down but wondering if um if we're high recreative discourse if them giving us an idea because I do think we have a tendency to think of the same kinds of people and part of the process there is um that I know we'll go through with the social and economic justice is you know who are what are the voices that are not often at these tables and the same people that are part of processes so I just wanted to flag that that could be something they could maybe quickly and easily say have you thought about including um and trying to you know have a seat for for certain voices um and you know and maybe it's here people that we definitely um you know either groups or the the types of expertise that we want to solicit and I think that doesn't all need to be people with official like voting member seats but just people that were keeping on the list and inviting and you know make sure people know that meetings are happening so I don't think they need to be um you know a huge voting group per se but really thoughtful about how people are being engaged and invited Dan um so maybe two a few sort of overall thoughts I mean I think it's certainly fine if we have just two counselors but if three wanted to volunteer I wouldn't see that as a problem either I think this is a a working committee so the more hands to lift the the vote the better um I also think that we have to think uh about the difference in stakeholders that we would want at the committee table versus those we would want this committee to listen to and when I was thinking about this initially I was thinking oh you know we probably want want a representative of the um either state's attorney's office or some judicial arm of you know where law enforcement goes and then I thought no you know as long as that group is is heard from and is they may not necessarily want to be a decision maker but I'm sure that they would want their feedback as as part of this and so I think we really have to think about you know who are the people at the table and and in part I would I would want to keep this sort of membership open and not necessarily say well I want one person from a business community I want one person from district one I want one person who you know drives a yellow car and more keeping in mind in general when we start to look at who we would appoint to this committee trying to have a balanced set of of of voices and it would be driven you know frankly this is a lot of work to ask anybody to do and and if we get people they're willing to do it that that's a primary qualification for being on the committee so I think we have to and we have to keep it into a manageable group if we get it too large you know if they're they're you get beyond like 10 people at a table it's really hard to schedule everyone to come to the meetings and it gets hard for everybody's to sort of talk at these at these meetings unless you they run really long or they're dominated by a strong chair so I think we have to keep it as a as a good sized working group of people that are willing to sort of get their hands into some of these issues and start to have some of these conversations I also you know I also think that it's it is something where you know we keep it you know we may have people who represent you know somebody who's a resident and a business owner and that may have or you know is a crime victim and a business owner that may have a particular perspective and we wouldn't want to necessarily have boxes that we want to check off as opposed to just letting people participate that are willing to take the work on fair enough Adana and then I have a thought go ahead a question procedurally mayor are we actually trying to decide in fine detail are we just making general suggestions so I'm just checking how long this conversation is going to be it's 830 but so these are suggestions we're going to send the staff back to or are we going to leave tonight with a very clear we want this tonight I mean my thought would be that we would leave this conversation with instructions to staff to say advertise for so many seats and and I feel like we're kind of at that question actually now and then we'll be able to have the conversation and actually to be fair we maybe don't have to have that conversation tonight about who from council is going to be a part of it okay that's good I just need to hear that and yeah I sort of go about the stakeholders the ones at the table to be non-professionals non-traditional stakeholders community members who have a perspective a different perspective about our police the ones who are not normally at the table but have very clear opinions I really want to see some grass root stakeholders and how can we get them here to the table to talk and then you bring in all the professionals all the service groups as resources so that's my bias that's all fair enough Madam Mayor if you will take an input on this topic um yes go ahead and and then I I've got a comment go ahead okay I think it's it's imperative that you consider the impact that the informal community group of people who are speaking up uh and insisting on changes to the way we allocate our money we're in a financial crisis and a health crisis and if if we are going to reallocate resources you can't use this committee process as a reason to defer that for another year or 14 months if if we've got a you know a three million dollar department and we only need a million and a half dollar department now's the time to be thinking about it so we need in effect to accelerate this process in time for budget discussions and I don't know if that's possible I don't want to be rash or unsafe but I I'm also willing to volunteer because I'm a unique victim of a a victim of a crime by the police department so I'm happy to bring a enlightened perspective to this discussion but I do want some urgency the fact that he used the homelessness task force which has existed for a year and not even inventory bathrooms showers or hand washing is an example what I don't want this to become you know yeah thank you and so you raise a good point about how we'll be making decisions around on the budget and my my assumption is that uh at least for this year it'll be the council that makes budgetary decisions and unless the group is you know able to make some quick decisions in a short amount of time otherwise my assumption is that we will will have the budget conversation at this level though we will you know particularly talk about that all right so I think probably what makes the most sense well what's making sense to me anyway is that we mostly just decide on um roughly how many actually maybe we don't even need to decide on number of seats we can probably just say that there's a ballpark and then as we're as we you know get names in we can um we can make and we can make the size decision once we have names not necessarily once we have names but um you know we can see what makes the most sense because um unless we are also deciding the number of counselors tonight um then um I think it makes sense to do that sort of all at once any any opposition to that idea so seems like we could probably just uh direct staff to um to advertise for this uh board I could offer a comment I think that's fine um as far as size goes that's clear you know that makes sense um if I were a resident thinking of applying for the board whatever clarity you want to put in is to the the purpose or goal or charge for the committee I realize it's going to take some work so you might but whenever you can say I did write down some of the thing you know Dan's things and we've got our list and if you want me to just take a stab at synthesizing that I can but I just want you know be clear that I want to make sure we reflect what you want yeah that list seemed like a a good list to me I don't know if anyone has any other thoughts on the charge of the group um us either in addition or subtraction of that list go ahead Donna well I remember even with the homelessness I think you know you can make a fairly broad charge and then as the group meets and they come back to us saying this is what we think we we should be looking at for the next six months or whatever um so I don't think it has to be hugely detailed but it has to be enough so people know whether they're interested in putting their time in and whether they will make a difference if they put their time in I think it would be good to make it uh yeah clear I think it might also be good to at least specify like do we think quarterly is um sufficient now or do we let that group decide um maybe they want to meet more frequently I don't know yeah to be clear the quarterly part was really for reviewing certain data you know I I mean I think some of the other work might be it was I was thinking you know the chief and I were thinking once we get through some of the first heavy lifting the committee may evolve to a group that that now we've made some changes and they want to look at the the trends in the data and talk and have a place to take complaints from the public or whatever but that you know we weren't necessarily saying quarterly right from the gate on all these issues yeah I have a suggestion that might work um we'll take a stab at drafting a charge I'll put it in the weekly memo this Friday so that you all and the public can see it um and before we advertise it and if people have objections let me know if I don't hear anything we'll go or anything major um I'll go forward next week and we'll put the ad out yeah do you need do you need a motion for that wouldn't hurt yeah their motion I'll make I'll make a motion um that we direct staff um to create a charge based on the um the language that we have discussed in this meeting in particular I'll send bill um the written items that I had I had itemized along with the contents of the city manager's memo to the city council to develop a charge for a subcommittee on public safety um authority uh with with the goal to advertise for potential public members somewhat convoluted but I think it gets us there okay we so one of the things that oh sorry is there a second second okay um one of things I want to be a little bit intentional about here is what we're calling it and you you just called it a public safety authority sorry I'm an advisory um okay clear if we called it police I mean I we suggest the public safety thinking that over time you know might want to look at fire department statistics too but we have a public safety authority and it could get confusing so maybe for now the focus is on police and I'll just call it what it is and that that was my bad I was one that said policy how do you feel about that uh Dan and Jack since you that's okay I'm fine with it okay Donna go ahead well just in the document Brian uses the term in the very last when it comes to city ordinances he calls it a public safety advisory committee and I didn't know if that was a different group bill uh Brian all meant to me the same and Brian and I drafted this together and if you go right back to the very beginning where it says committee the actual second paragraph it calls the public safety advisory committee and again I think we were thinking that over time you know people might want to say well how's the fire department doing but I think that's they can we can change to that and we do have the public safety authority so it might be clear to make sure this is something different so that I should have thought of that I'm sorry I wasn't sure if it was another group thank you yeah I think police is good okay any further discussion on this okay all in favor please say aye aye aye and oppose okay uh so and Stephanie I know you were just in talking about that second part of the memo um I hope you hang in there where I we're going to take a quick break and then we'll come back to that um part is that okay team how long oh good question let's go five minutes it's five it's five enough okay we're going to aim for five well you're the boss so we have to wait for you anyway okay no thanks I mean you could you could carry on um all right so um all right so just taking up specifically the second part of that memo um that addressed um some of the requests that we got um so I think to start this um Stephanie since you wanted to talk about that would you like to start sure and hopefully you'll excuse the toddler's squeals he is a late nighter um well first of all I agree with Donna on who should be on the subcommittee in terms of not law enforcement I think it should be community members who represent the perspective that's not already there it just seems like if we'd be if that group would be coming together to talk about new solutions to change the future of policing it wouldn't be appropriate to have law enforcement on there that would make it feel to me and I think some other members of the community like it was um sabotaging the effort from the get-go and just making it into an empty gesture so I'm glad that Donna said that um my other comment or about the rest of the memo um it makes me feel like a lot of our demands have been dismissed as not being um and I quote directly related to inherent bias concerns and the thing is none of the residents in the community were that you're referring to here actually said that this was about bias the whole point of systemic racism is that it's inherent in these systems we're discussing even in the absence of any bias in a particular individual so um that's what many of us have been trying to convey I had at least and I was discouraged by the fact that it seems like you're ruling out taking action on things because they don't relate to bias again in quotes when that's not even what people were asking you to address in the first place I planned to email a response to all the responses but um right here I just thought I'd address one in particular um you're right the budget is the most substantive issue but it's not everything I wanted to talk about something that seems to be a glaring example of how something doesn't need to be about bias in order to be about systemic racism and other big problems and how something that doesn't seem like it's about policing actually is and that was the item about um banning the use of prisoner labor by the city and ending all contracts with corrections so um I just want to read this for anyone who doesn't have it in front of them you had said this is not about police or bias the only use of corrections cruise is by the cemetery for lawn mowing and grounds maintenance this particular work cruise made up of volunteer inmates who are able to reduce their sentences by performing the services so first of all I want to say this is about police and bias because how do you think these people got to prison in the first place if not for police and um if not for bias that potentially affected the course of their sentencing so all this is connected which I've been trying to get across I know others have been as well anyway regardless I just want everyone to think more about this because I don't want to see something that's dismissed in regards to this particular clue of volunteer inmates first of all volunteer I don't know if your offense is considered mild enough that doing some long work might reduce your sentence you're in a situation where you're buying your freedom by working so instead of supporting our local economy by paying individual or a company to do this work who would then go out and spend their money in the community we're paying a literal prison and we're supporting modern date well you're literally supporting modern day slavery to maintain the grounds of the cemetery and for what I mean don't we care about who the city is this I was thinking about how like cosmetics companies garner support and goodwill by refusing to test their products on animals and shouldn't we be able to proudly state that Montpelier uncategorically does not employ prisoners period not now and not ever it doesn't matter who this particular work who is or why they're in prison what matters is that Montpelier no longer participates in the prison industrial complex for something that it can pay someone else to do a local company that employs people for fair pay who live within the community and not behind bars so yeah this is just one of the 11 demands that we're discussing and that you address here but I want to highlight it because it's something we can't so easily dismiss uh I just think it's indicative of a larger problem that I and others have been bringing here and it's really disappointing to see it kind of well again dismissed as not being part of whatever this problem is which by the way isn't the problem we were presenting uh so that's that's basically my comments but I do want to encourage you to think about that yeah first of all I'm sorry if you felt dismissed Stephanie um we were just trying to figure out so and if we misinterpreted your statements about this being about systemic racism or inherent bias and I apologize for that that appeared to me at least and I think many of us on staff but that was the message so we were just trying to parse which of these were directly related to that and which weren't um and with regard to the the cemetery here you point loud and clear I guess for just another you know our police certainly don't arrest people just so that we can have people that mode cemetery and here here the point loud and clear we could be paying somebody else to do that um it's also a case of you know and I completely agree with you by the way about the prison industrial complex and all of that fairness and sentencing we unfortunately don't really have anything to do with that and if there are prisoners that can reduce their time and when I say volunteer they they choose they can you're right they're in prison but they're not made to do this they say we'd like to be part of this crew because they can reduce their time and so is there a social good there if if their people be coming back to society and learning work skills that said the other piece of this is that the cemetery commission is actually some a separate independent body from the city council so while we work very cooperatively with them that's actually a decision that the cemetery commission is going to have to make and I probably should have been more explicit about that in the memo I do know they're taking it up I don't know the exact date but I was told that it's on their upcoming agenda so stay tuned other thoughts or comments um I I would just say um uh Stephanie I also like what I just in reading through that um there were there were some parts that started like you know this is not related to bias and I I will confess I had a similar reaction and I was like well it could be you know like it's maybe not like directly related but it's you know but I mean I live in a world where like I mean I teach physics right like I think about how like everything is physics um it all it all relates and and you know maybe that's not a great analogy but like it certainly it certainly relates um even if it's not um direct um and you know for any one of those um items like happy to have more conversation about those and to be fair um you know the entity that we just created would probably be a good place to start but even in the interim um you know I'm happy to talk about what any of those um to look like so um in any case uh thank you and um any other comments well Lauren go ahead and then Jack yeah I mean I was just gonna echo I kind of had a similar reaction like it felt a little disjointed to me on the one hand be like let's create a group that can like dig in and on the other let's already answer a bunch of questions that I think do bear for their conversation and um you know so I don't want to approach this committee and you know assume that a bunch of issues have already been dealt with and answered and checked off the list and um you know dismissed out of hand but more like okay let's have these on the table let's see what other issues are coming up from community members and stakeholders um and you know so I hope we can really start it off with a inclusive process that is really hearing from each other and digging into you know why were these issues raised what else is missing you know how how do we move forward and I think part of that is again is going to be some work on you know what are I think shared values and vision and there's I'm hoping short term ideas and recommendations and then longer term ideas and recommendations um so that's that's my hope thanks jack just very briefly I read I thought that the memo from the chief and the manager was a constructive contribution to the discussion and uh what I see them doing here is for some of the issues that were raised to try to respond as readily as they could to issues that they uh they could have a straightforward response to I also think though that it's very clear that the new police advisory committee that we're establishing is going to have a broad scope of activity and and the fact that the city manager the police chief has one opinion on a topic does not foreclose further discussion or or disagreement so I'm not worried about the commission being unduly constrained in in what it takes up yeah I I want to add to what I was saying before as well I because I agree it was it was helpful um because I think it's it's important to know sort of what the background is for for some of those um topics and requests so um yeah sorry grateful um Donna I appreciated the list and maybe I was just sensitive but I found the tone just condescending um I just really did I mean I mean to list that there were 11 requests I mean I felt would you normally say that um so I I think we need to look at that seriously and try to get away from it if possible and it's hard it's hard for all of us when we're looking at what we see and what we understand and that's part of the hard work we're all doing now so please take the criticism as I intended it it's not something I don't do myself so just keep it in mind when you're writing well I appreciate that and I want to be really clear um that I was the drafter of this you know Brian had provided me the feedback so if I just don't want him to take the the fall for this that um the words were mine and that uh certainly you know it's interesting actually looking at it again I can see the point you know well we were trying to be sort of I was trying to be sort of matter of fact um and I can see why people would object to that and I think to just to explain um and certainly I'm happy to acknowledge if I fell down anywhere was to try to respond to what we know factually you know to me there's a lot of really interesting policy discussions here and to the extent that and I don't want to you know certainly can speak for the the group but that some of the issues which may have a legal obstacle or you know in my view at least you know pay pay adjustments for police officers those kind of things you know that is separate from the size of the police department and the functions and all those kinds of things and so it was so how do we how do we focus you know the 11 I mean they gave us a list and they said we have 11 demands I wasn't trying to be pejorative about that that was how it was presented to us would respond to them similarly to the you know we had eight before and we were I responded to those in the bridge I think so you know my I think I was like where can we really where's the room for really constructive conversation that can move this forward and where is stuff that you know is and I appreciated Stephanie's comment you know there may be more nuance there than I was giving it credit for and that's on me so no worries thank you I have a comment yeah go ahead Stephen uh the I want to just use an example of this inherent bias um this no one but Billy no one but a homeless person would the would the officer steal their unopened beers I mean there's I mentioned this three times now there's no evidentiary value to an unopened beer that a homeless person spent you know precious nickel cans collecting you know so the treatment I know the treatment I get when I drive a newer car for them when I drive an older car uh and I watch the the disparity of treatment of how this community despite its you know self uh perception of progressive liberal you know compassionate has has neglected you know toilets for old people and homeless people for over a year so the the biases is inherent in the in the system and while I don't I wouldn't come at my petition for change with a list of demands because I'm likely to not get them met and then they weren't really that demanding um maybe it's a bit poor choice of words but when you're going up against the power of incumbency you know a sophisticated $130,000 a year city manager who you know is expert at you know manipulating information you know you've got it you've got a word and we have to basically build the capacity among our citizens to hold our officials accountable and that's what I see going on here so I would ask you to consider those as legitimizing some of the requests and the uh direction that you're hearing from this emerging citizens group so I'll leave it at that okay thank you okay um all right I think we're probably ready to move on unless other anyone else wants to address this topic chief p would you like to talk about this at all no well just good evening I just didn't want to I just wanted to give everybody just to say hello and uh and thank everybody for the constructive uh for the dialogue and uh and and for everything and I please forgive me I got a little science headache going on it's not COVID um but I just all I ask is as we as we move I consider myself a very reasonable person um and with that I'm just asking that as we move forward and and and working with the community that we're talking and we have constructive dialogue together you can't make decisions about like for example when Nani one of the biggest things in mental health is you know don't no conversations about us without us and and and we're talking about an institution wise thing everybody needs to be respected everybody needs to be heard but everybody needs to be constructive in the conversation so I just want to make sure that I listen to anybody I can learn from everyone but as we as we move forward with the with the group I'm just hoping for people who are open-minded and who want to learn as much from me in my experiences as I can learn from them in their experiences and that the the concept is that we work together to strengthen something um and and that that's my only hope and my only ask for this and thank you all very much for your time thank you and I agree I think that is going to be an important quality for anybody who participates in that committee uh okay and just to clarify um one of the comments that Stephanie made was about Donna's comment about um staff participation and I mean my assumption is that um this committee that we've that we've asked staff to create will be staffed um and I think you know in that same spirit I know that was not um something that uh you know Stephanie just articulated support for but I think it makes sense actually to have um participation of um well let that whoever staffs from the city be um police officer and probably in the chief um but of course that's that's your your decision um as uh staff folks oh humbly ma'am I'm just I'm looking for just folks who have just been a volunteer to work with me I have I I look at it as a team of community members who are going to provide impact and help us to see and find out different ways that we can address the needs that we that we need to address going into you know the our next few years so it's I'm just I'm looking for a partnership team um that can help me so like for one of the things for example is if we're talking about how do we improve minority and diversity recruit but you know it would make sense to me to say if I've got a very robust relationship with with members of the lgbtq community how can I reach out and and how what are the things that I need to do and to show that we're very open and forced and that we want to have people you know how do we how do we appeal what are we missing because we can't see the the forest from when we're living in the trees so I'm just looking for that that partnership and groups that are going to help us to provide safety um for the city and then we make sure that we do it in a very fair um and a fair way for everyone yeah any further comments on that part madam mayor briefly on this on this staffing issue I just want to recount before I resigned from all of this task force it was due to the staffing basically suppressing ideas before they were allowed to develop the idea of sanctuary camping areas that are solely needed by the unhouse so they don't have the police don't have the free right to just roust them and move them along at whim you know to the interdiscriminatory matter even the people that aren't making trouble so the idea of having staff has to be limited to a non intrusive to keeping notes not basically prejudging what will and won't fly and suppressing it that's that's what killed the helness's task force effectiveness in my opinion so just a note of caution here that what I hear chief pete's idea of what this is is to advise him on how to do it but I believe there's a need for a broader discussion on what is our expected role and how might it need to be changed so that's a caution on staff I now call it a night okay thank you Stephen okay um I think we're probably good to move on any further comments okay um all right so we are up to our COVID-19 update and so for this I would turn it over to a Cameron hello let me pull these up because I have also combined resuming meetings in person a new recommendation for you so in general um this was a pretty busy COVID month since we last met um I'll just briefly go over a few things that I think will be important to call out for folks in the community the accd recovery resource center has a link to help landlords and property owners repair homes and rental units up to $30,000 in grant funds are available to make sure that the housing availability in Vermont is of quality and is affordable and available to all there is a new capital equipment assistance program open for applications for um farmers to get new equipment for nutrition management planning that's at the Department of Agriculture and is open now the accd has updated their current restaurant and lodging guidance so restaurants and bars can now use bar seating if patrons are six feet apart and there's a partition between the bar and the bartender um the capacity limits for restaurants have not changed just that bars are open accd also removed capacity limits from all lodging properties like hotels allowing them to book all of their available rooms if they want to um there is now also uh free technical assistance available through the small business recovery technical assistance program um to help folks um get some new resources and that's also through accd the schools had some significant updates this week too i thought i would start including that because that has been a focus of our uh the governor's press conferences they have moved to a step three opening plan starting this set saturday september 26 this means uh that they will allow inter scholastic competitions for their sports events and programs they can consider the use of common areas like gyms and cafeterias and um allows the schools more flexibility in grouping students outside of the pod model they were using before so i would direct folks to the um education department's website and then also know that our travel map for the state is now going to be updated on tuesdays instead of fridays um and our city communications also remains very high in engagement and we are um as you heard earlier with our winter programming uh discussion our winter parking discussion looking at different ways to communicate with the public so um that is my covid update does anyone have any questions on that part it's just great news um kids are psyched to be able to play inter scholastic sports uh yeah good i had a two residents asked me if pickleball is going to be started the rec department so i read what was listed i didn't see it so if i don't see it specifically listed it's not restarted no we i didn't include any of our rec updates right now um we will we are working on getting the website more up to date um we're still not opening this the rec center for games inside but pickleball is still welcome and open on all of our tennis sports right now so folks are able to play at their own risk on our tennis courts all the stuff for pickleball is there but we're still not opening up the rec center yeah they were they were looking for inside thank you very much so i will move into um the next bit which is the resuming in-person uh city council meetings um we had a really great discussion last time about that and there was a really great idea brought up about opening up um council chambers for the public to use that gives a nice space where people can come in and be in city hall and opening the council chamber up so that it could be its own sort of zoom station so if y'all don't want to be there you do not have to be there we would sort of let anyone be in our space in the city council chamber um we have an extra laptop in there for the for that room it's been in there um so we can set that up as its own zoom portal so folks could interact if they want to speak to y'all um they can walk up to that computer interact with that computer um without any touching or or it's anything like that um because you know the distance on a laptop is pretty great you can sit pretty far back from it and so um anyone would be able to be a participant on a zoom platform while still maintaining social distance and being in the council chambers so that's what i would recommend that's the staff recommendation i also included the other proposals for in person um configurations there is um a fiscal component to that because we would need to upset the council chambers a little bit but um the good news is the grants have been extended until October 1 so if that is your choice and you want to move forward with that we can we can still apply for um getting funding for things like a plexiglass barrier so i have two thoughts on this so one is that um at some point we are going to go back to being in person and it would probably make some sense to figure out which path we want to pursue and if it means that we need to apply for funding to pay for things like plexiglass then we should we should do that my second thought is that just by choosing a path doesn't mean that we have to go back right now if that's not what we feel is right for this you know for this moment if it's not eminent that's okay um so there's again so i see this as like two separate questions are we ready to to pursue any one of these now and then second one being like which which option do we like so curious for your thoughts team go ahead jack i have a question and i don't know if this is even feasible but if we set up plexiglass barriers between each pair of seats on the dais are we still required to maintain six feet of interpersonal distance physical distance i think that's recommended um it is a barrier just like a mask is a barrier but it's a barrier and right so um i would i would recommend the plexiglass and masks if you wanted to go down that road um i think that that would probably reduce the risk of the six foot transmission but that i mean i guess it's really up to y'all's comfort level because it's all suggestions anyway thanks i think there's an issue right the plexiglass would go as far back as the desk goes but the chairs go further back and you've got a neighbor yeah that's fair i think depend like i guess to interject the recommendation the first recommendation of allowing in-person meeting space available for the public we've talked internally and the staff that stays here um is comfortable with that um level of engagement with the community we feel like we have pretty strong um you know PPE protection here we've got really great cleaning procedures in place and so regardless on if y'all would like to be physically here i would like to be able to set that up for the public regardless if that is okay with you as a whole because i you know i didn't we did hear a lot about how that impacts folks last time who talked about this and i think it would be important to offer that as an option oh lord and then dan um yeah i i really like the idea and appreciate the you know um working to set up a station and even having the building open one evening a week um seems seems like a great idea um i mean i think it's to an point is there is there a downside or what kind of cost share is there for the grant i mean it does seem like you know there's so many unknowns about how long this will go on so having that available for for this purpose or even if it could be you know other city purposes um at some point if it's a resource we can get grant funding for now should we just apply the plexiglass yeah okay and it's just literally plexiglass or if there's any anything more but not really no the plexiglass that we've gotten it's just that it's they set it up so that it can like rest on either side of a desk and they just set it up that way so they've done it for the rest of our desks so um that's something we can explore um and we'll we'll look into that i don't see any reason not to and in either way that um setting up the community opportunity seems like a great thing in the short term to get going mad mere i've got a comment on this um yeah uh dan's next and then you can go after dan sure okay um we talked last time about um alternative spaces and i'm thinking in particular the um the stage space upstairs on the second floor um one of the limitations seem to be orca and whether or not they could run lines up there or cameras um was that looked into at all i have not spoken to orca okay it just i mean i think that's it strikes me that you know we can try and retrofit the council chambers as a safe space but there are inherent limitations as you've very well outlined kameron and your your memos that you know we're basically putting mandates on this trying to make it work as opposed to exploring other potential spaces that have a broader you know just thinking there's a way to socially distance upstairs in the uh you know the lost nation space in the voting space because it's a big wide open uh you know half court gymnasium um or i mean there's there are other spaces like that around town if we wanted to really explore those opportunities um and it it strikes me that those might be more for more flexibility overall it's just whether or not um you know they would they would have inherent limitations like filming that would make it make it a limitation on us but i i'd like to explore i'd like to see that explored um as as another space where we could sort of break out of the limitations that we're just going to face no matter which way we turn it in the council chambers for the time being i'll talk to orca cool uh steven go ahead uh so i'm aware that orca has a box a streaming box that's portable and if they can get anything that connection they can it won't be the full high resolution uh signal that they normally get out of the city council chamber it'll be streaming only but so is zoom so it's not a lot lost but i would encourage you to start with the city council chamber and get that set up i did mention last time you need to think about ventilation in any space even the large space you need to think about heat recovery ventilation because it's the the the aerosol uh partners of a protected particles of a protection potentially infected person that is going to be the hazard and the energy grant that we talked about or that was available or made a presentation and or other state funding you could exhaust the city council chamber effectively through the side windows and recover the heat from the outgoing uh but that needs to be planned and engineered quicker but i would suggest that you proceed but also because you're talking about moving the pocket park you're talking about bathrooms you're talking about winter and camping areas there's a disenfranchised population here that is routinely ignored that they need a place to come in and make themselves heard i've been talking to them but they don't feel like they have a voice they don't have phones they don't have installed on laptops so if they if you really want to take some of these issues seriously and hear from the affected people you need to make a place where they can participate so uh those are some ideas i would not wait i would move forward with the city council i bought uh the work that was done on thinking about that get started on the ventilation issue and then maybe as a phase two if you over crowd the city council chamber which is i believe is unlikely uh then you could move upstairs into a bigger room i'll leave it there thanks thank you uh jack would it be uh an appropriate time to uh make a motion uh and i'll make the motion i'll see if there's a second i move that we direct the city staff to proceed with uh proposal one to as a first step open up the city council chambers for for public participation in our meetings while we're addressing the other issues we need to address i'll second that okay uh any further discussion on the motion go ahead dana what we meant by one and two i think it was just on proposal one to do something the two was like to not the number two okay proposal one is is in person meeting space made available for the public in county i understood the one i just didn't understand the to thank you feel yeah um jack did you have something else you want to add to that well yeah i also agree with dan that i'd like to see us explore if we can set up council ma'am meetings for in-person meetings in the auditorium space we can space it out so we can be all be six feet apart um that's that takes some more doing but uh so that's not part of my motion except that i think that you know the staff are probably getting the sense that at least some of us are interested in exploring that that seems fair and i um you know i we're gonna vote on this motion but um i think another part of this is considering whether or not we move forward with plexiglass so that we have it if we need it unless unless you don't need a motion around that um we'll look into it um i would say it requires upfront capital it's a reimbursement grant only so we'll we will just look into that as an option okay seriously and then we will also look about how we can configure upstairs if that's an option okay uh donna well when you're indoors the ventilation is as important as the six feet apart so i would like for the staff to look at what kind of ventilation improvements would be needed whether it's in the lower council chambers or upstairs in the auditorium even though it's big it's still not well ventilated they sealed all those windows for winter savings um so i i you know i have lots of anxiety about going inside in the fall the winter i think that it's wonderful that people are having sports and we're not having the bars open but to me that just means a likelihood of another breakout so i'm sort of in a wait and watch mode but i'm concerned about the ventilation so if you check that that'd be good if i might add to that i mean this might be inherent in your request donna but um i think if it is separate is the filtration um being sure that the filtration is you know what senior center about a few standalone um filtration systems so we do have a price that we can look at for that as well um so we will look into that as well okay great okay well there's a motion on the table um any further discussion this is about opening council chambers up to the public oh i oh yes dan sorry just one clarification i mean i i guess in looking at the space i i wouldn't and i wouldn't understand this motion have to be changed for that but i would i would assume that there would be an ability to to look beyond i mean i suggested the upstairs but you know there's a number of large public spaces in town there's the auditorium at the basement of the pavilion whether or not the state would ever let us in there is a is another question but um you know there are various churches and um you know there's city center itself and the question you know i think we have to think outside of the box on some of this stuff and if it was available or applicable um but i would understand that that that would be part of what the staff wouldn't necessarily need a motion but can simply look into some of those ideas as well i'll look into it um heather did you you turned your camera on would you like to say something yes sorry i got lost a little bit so the meetings would still be available for the public through zoom too yes and as under the staff's proposal the council members would still at this point be participating by zoom and the it's a proposal to open up council chambers so people who want to come in in person to be to speak to the council but don't have the ability to log on themselves would have that as a way to address the council um donna i saw you had a hand well just to follow up dan's proceeding to look elsewhere i wouldn't want the staff to consider it and give us an idea what is the inconvenience of us not being in that building staff goes to their offices or waits in their offices or copies things i just would want a mindset of how inconvenient to have council meetings outside of the building would be for staff if you just have that in your mindset thank you i also assume that other places would require a rental fee yeah sorry go ahead yeah no i mean i i think that's all fitting into the the feasibility is just you know because we're looking at these two different options i wouldn't want you know because i you know just if there was a facility that said sure you're welcome to use it and it did fit our needs well i wouldn't want to avoid have looked so narrowly that we missed looking at that other available space but all of these none of these are perfect it would be great to go turn back the clock to january and go back to council chambers and also around in each whizzlers but you know that's not where we're at right now i should probably throw away the twizzlers that are in that please don't get any twizzlers who pass those around i did i didn't pass them around but chocolate last forever yeah okay uh all right so there's a motion at a second need for the discussion okay i'll in favor of tuesday i hi hi okay and opposed okay and uh so the last item for a regular business is uh oh yes before we get off the covid report and covid topic um i i heard the assistant city manager say that there's uh there's funding available to municipalities to make covid related um expenditures of various kinds and that gets me that i immediately thought of whether you know we've been hearing suggestions for even at night opening up the uh downstairs bathroom rooms for people to come in and use them and i think that that's been the reaction has been that that seems to be impractical because and probably because of security and needs to isolate the bathrooms and and the stairwell and vestibule from the rest of the building and so i just wonder is it possible to look at what physical changes would be needed and whether that's something that uh we could get reimbursed from the federal uh covered covid relief funds to do well i will say that um one thank you that proposal is going to be on my next uh the october 14th agenda regarding the the bathroom update we are looking into that how much that would cost i would need to do more research if that was a refundable cost they aren't necessarily doing tangentially related costs we could loosely say that because some other bathrooms have been closed we need more bathroom facilities but i'm not sure if that would be something that they would reimburse and we might be on the hook for the funding so i would need to look into that and ask um our uh some of our agencies that have been helping us with this is funding um these grants to ask that they think that's something that would go through so i'm not sure and we will look into it oh man we're just in sync aren't we okay nice to be all right um okay so the last item is looking at the calendar for uh the next couple of months as some of the days fall on uh holidays so i don't think we need to change anything in october is that yeah we would we make a very impassioned request that we don't change the october 14 day we just have a lot of things already teed up for that um you know after that we've got more flexibility but i'd love to keep the 14th i think the key i think so there's there's three dates that are really problematic uh specifically problematic one is november 11 which is the would normally be our first uh november meeting and that falls on veterans day we always have a meeting right around them but it's either the day before but this you know it actually falls on the holiday and we could still mean if we wanted but you know there's that the second november meeting is would be the 25th which is the night before thanksgiving and that's that's been an annual conflict that comes up because we meet the fourth week and that's always it's typically we've just moved that to the third week um you know i think way back we sometimes would move it from wednesday to monday but the last several years we've just met what would be the 18th this year but as jack correctly pointed out not only is the 11th a holiday but then that's two weeks in a row and then we have a similar issue the fourth week of december where we would be scheduled to meet the 23rd which is festivus but um technically isn't conflicted the christmas holiday but it certainly is close enough i think for a lot of people certainly members of the public and others that might be traveling or whatever uh and again we have in the years past moved that meeting as well to the week before so that would be the 16th um and i just say you know once we're getting to december particularly this year um you know we may need you know budget may be a lot more complex this year than it's been in prior years so we may need to meet weekly anyway or have an extra meeting in there i hope not but i think that's probably the reality um so you know i i don't know but those are the so the december 23rd november 25th and november 11th a very specific conflicts with holidays and how you want to move it after that um i will note that not that this is a big deal for us um but the first of the third weeks are typically the school board weeks so for people who are trying to follow both it seems delcore on the line and others but you know the press and the public that want to participate with both groups that is a conflict so we've we've tried to work around it obviously occasionally it happens and there's that so that's what i have to say you can schedule your meetings when you want we'll be here okay um jack you had a proposal about this um in a previous meeting do you want to talk about um your your thoughts on it i did and my proposal in started out by doing but for one thing uh covering october 2 the theory being that that by starting in october that's the way to keep us two weeks apart for almost all of these meetings um but i hear what the manager said about specifically not screwing up with things screwing things up that we already have uh have scheduled um so i'm happy to have us meet whenever bill thinks we should meet i would propose for just november meeting on the first and third so that we avoid veterans day and the day before thanksgiving and i know that that puts us on the same night as school board but you know that that kind of thing is actually pretty normal for this time of year um so you know it just happens um so that's one part of it and then and actually uh for december um the sixteenth is actually also the sixth day of hanukkah um so either like i i think it would be better if we could um move it to like well i guess my proposal would be that we move it to the second and the ninth um i realize that's two weeks in a row um but that also allows us time like if we decided that we did you know urgently needed to meet um more i because it's a complicated budget that that gives us a little more flexibility with the later part of december potentially um other thoughts i mean and this doesn't have to be what we do that's just um i'll put it out there what do you think that that's fine with me too so before eighteen two and nine in theory we wouldn't meet again from between december nine and january six no way we generate yeah generally well january 13 but technically right but we almost always and if we follow this schedule we will certainly win the budget meetings the beginning of january there it is but we do have possibilities of the 29th and 30th in december if we had to oh during the holiday week yeah i mean if we had to do a special i'm not wanting it i'm just saying if we had a real demand and that's not in anyone's holiday we're traveling this year than in most years i mean that is a good point and so maybe we'll just take stock of the ninth and see where we are and what we need to do um you're right i mean there may be less traveling and we're doing things remotely i mean i go it would be somebody coming in here but i mean for council members even if for most of us even if we were traveling maybe we could still participate it's going to be if we have to meet then it's going to be a heavy lifting meeting i think that's saying it will be a budget meeting there shouldn't be any you know we will be for some little thing it would be important i mean not that they're not all important but are you going to end up adding some extra in january to make us pay for some time off well you know it's not me how fast you get through the budget i as far as i'm concerned if we don't meet till from june december nine to january 13 i'm sure the staff would love it i'll you know if you can all if we can present you a budget on the ninth and you can approve it on the 13th then we're the month in between the yeah good but i i i don't think we'll be able to do that and i don't think we'll really be on target to you know the night that meeting is usually when we present the budget first the second tuesday in december that's usually when we have it ready and i don't think we'll be i i i mean i can talk to kelly but i'll think we'll have it ready for the second especially with the holiday right before that good but there's also another meeting we usually change about the timing with the ballot and that means on thursday so earlier that would be good so this year actually so that's interesting too so that's a good point i'm glad you reminded me of that donna the way the calendar falls this year the deadline for us to have the budget and the ballot is actually thursday january 21 whoa which is the third week because because town meeting this year's like the second or or first the second of march so can you say that again when is it the 40 day deadline yeah for us to have stuff on the ballot is thursday january 21 so that our last meeting january 27 would be too late so we'd have to have our normal thursday night meeting to get all the petitions and all that in you have to be on the 21st so we should put that in our calendars now anyway yes so then we can decide you know maybe we'll skip the last one in january if necessary but we certainly you know okay you wouldn't like a little buffer make it on wednesday the 20th well we could so the problem with that is here's the issue that we run into and again this is all your decision but the debt the same legal deadline for us filing our ballot and finalizing the warning is also the legal deadline for people that are submitting petitions oh right right right yeah so we could meet on wednesday yeah and vote on the warning and vote on that and then have to come back on thursday if petitions are submitted to vote to accept the petition i forgot about those petitions yeah yeah that's the reason we've traditionally moved into thursday so that one time a year so that we can do everything on the same if there's if there are petitions out okay um so we'll put together all that calendar and okay i was just saying i don't think we need a well do we need a motion on that i don't think we do yeah no one's really opposed to that right okay okay great uh all right so that is the end of our regular business so on to council reports dana okay well i just want to brag bill and staff the link that you've put in your manager's report is to mind thank you thank you i have been struggling to find everybody because particularly short of staff some committees are having a hard time posting so if any of the public haven't seen that go to the manager's weekly report and there's this awesome link to all the meetings going on it's terrific i want to thank dan and the council for his appointment to the public safety authority board i want to mention that the park commission did discuss uh the gruden park perhaps finding a place for it in fact the new pump station that was part of what was opened this last week when they opened the extended bike path it could be there a place for parents particularly to sit and wait while their kids are having fun on the pump station so at least they're discussing it and they're going to come back to the city council with an option for us to consider uh also i want to really um pleased to say that the rec department put in an application to renovate the bathrooms at the pool house and i got the pleasure of signing a support letter that they wrote beautifully so let's hope they get the money um and the other thing is i really do think that steve uh whitaker has a point about us getting to the public bathrooms we need to do something and whether that's directing staff committee whatever we need to move that forward the months are coming that are going to be nasty or the now and it's sad watching people hunt for bathrooms thank you okay thank you uh connor not too much um i think at some point i you know especially as bill saying that the ballot has to be ready in january it might be worth a discussion if there are any potential charter changes that we need um to sort of adapt to the new uh pandemic economy i i felt in several cases we were sort of waiting on the state um to make some big decisions here and uh just that maybe we could start putting a list together of things we think would be a comprehensive charter change uh to give us a bit more control i also like the idea um i think we said it a couple meetings ago just acknowledging that the economy is not going to be coming back to normal anytime soon you know like you look at australia they close the borders to 23 i think you know um well what do what should we be taking into consideration as we form the new budget and you know how will that be different than what we've done in the past there because i think business as usual isn't going to get the job done going forward so i think having some of those discussions right now rather than um you know when we need to do it um it would be helpful so that's it for me tonight thanks thank you uh jay yeah i'm going to take a pass on everything thanks all right uh dim thanks um but i want to offer congratulations to john holler who led the uh extended bike path project and i was unable to make it out to the to ribbon cutting but um to migrate disappointment but it i have gone out there and it looks fantastic um i'll echo some of connor's concerns about you know where we go as a as a city this fall and this next year with continuing um issues covid related issues shut down related issues um i think we have to keep close attention as the weather turns and i was reminded this week as the weather turned really cold some of the benefits that we've been enjoying about after our activity outdoor dining are going to start to go away um and then as donna mentioned you know that's when uh we go back inside when outbreaks reemerge but i think we have to be be thoughtful and because i think as a community we're gonna have to really prepare for another onslaught so that i'll leave it there on a happy note um great thanks jack um a couple of things one uh also congratulation to mamma the Montpelier area mountain bike association uh the park's department and everybody who was involved in putting together the uh mountain bike trail project a tremendous amount of fundraising and uh and physical labor went into it it was uh it was great to be at the at the ribbon cutting even though alec could not quite get his son to operate the scissors and cut the ribbon um it was a good effort anyway and i also want to mention for anyone who's uh who's watching that there are um a rearage assistance programs available for uh for people who've had uh income losses due to the coronavirus and i particularly want to mention that the public service department has an a rearage uh for giving the assistance program uh funded out of covid funds to enable people to get their electric bills paid if they're uh if they haven't been able to pay them and that's uh that's a fund that has been really not reached anywhere near the number of people who probably need it and who who could uh benefit from it so public service dot vermont dot gov is where you would go and then there's a bunch of stuff after that but uh i encourage encourage anyone who's had trouble paying their electric bills to uh to contract the public service department they've made it uh quite easy to uh to submit the application and and qualify for funding and uh if you if you've been managing now because there's been a showoff moratorium in place it's it's not going to last forever and you're going to need electricity in this in the winter and that's all i've got thank you lauren uh yeah just a couple of quick things um one i wanted to mention that the um social and economic justice advisory committee has been um holding a couple uh forums trying to educate the public on this process we're undertaking and also doing some fundraising so we can hopefully expand beyond what um we have funded through council on the city budget um so there's an event uh this coming saturday at four p.m. um or you can watch a recording if you just want to learn more about kind of an overview of what the city is undertaking and how you can help so i hope people will check that out um and we've been posting information and thanks to camera and for doing a great job staffing that and helping keep that whole thing moving along um and um this i just wanted to uh throw out there for whoever's watching um curious what's happening with uh our wonderful halloween we normally do as a city i know this is probably more of a popular alive but i just know we have so many creative and um you know interesting folks in the city that could probably think of some really good socially distanced fun and it's usually just such a great event and with the local businesses in downtown so um was just kind of curious or hoping lots of good conversations are happening with you know what what that could look like this year and and is there a component that could also be how do we you know safely patronize local businesses and do do something to support our downtown community so just wanted to raise that as something i'm interested in exploring um and anyway i can help um and the last thing i've talked to a couple business owners especially heading into you know what might be some kind of tourist season with foliage um and one thing that's come up a few times are some business owners just bringing up like trash removal and especially during you know whenever having tourists come wanting our city to be you know the welcoming beautiful um thriving place that it is um and you just really staying on top of that is you know one of the things that they're most concerned about so i would just want to raise that as well thanks all great thank you uh so i also want to add my congratulations to all those who worked on the north branch trails off of coming street uh very exciting to have those open now but i also want to add um my congratulations to the cross remote trail folks because they also had an event this week uh they had a groundbreaking they've raised enough money to start construction of a bridge across the muski uh to this is like the biggest part the biggest uh uh chunk for them uh in getting the the cross remote trail uh going and so it's kind of like they're doing the heaviest lift first and so it's now that this is underway uh it makes the rest of the process um well a lot a lot easier which is great so this bridge is uh sort of off um off of gallison hill more or less uh so um very exciting for them to and for us really to be uh you know embarking on this and be connected uh with a nice bike path uh to parts outside from up here so uh anyway that's it from me uh john john adam are you there kind of sleep no i can you hear me i haven't gone to sleep my zoom isn't coming up it's very sure you can hear me though we knew you oh good yeah where did it go um well anyways um the ballots in the all mail election um went out today and yesterday if uh you registered to vote in this month you probably won't see them going out until next monday but everybody's getting something if you don't see them in you know week week and a half give me a call anybody's listening and there are a number of reasons why you might not have received one all of them very manageable but um so going into with a brief break another round of completely unknown territory and incredibly busy elections so the clerk's office is once again going to be all about elections elections elections but we've got a drop box set set up including a nifty one in the back and um you know i do need to remind people that for any kind of in-person voting you're going to have to sign a little thing that you know either bring in the ballot your center sign something that indicates you're not trying to vote twice not that you could do that in our system but you know we we expect you to sign the thing anyways um and that in-person voting then you know the office is only open tuesdays and thursdays but yeah so we've got a huge amount of volunteer needs a huge amount unprecedented and i have never seen people are like falling out of the woodworks to volunteer on this it's extraordinary i haven't even had to put the squeeze on people or send out the the annoying emails and we're already almost all staffed up not just on election day but through you know the beginning of october all through so um still some out there so y'all still get hassled but um yeah it's a weird time but kind of looking good that's what i'm doing tomorrow but um but for the public for you mentioned people are coming into the clerks office to vote just so that i'm clear and the public that would mean bringing in the ballot they were male to hand it in well i mean we won't stop you from voting if you don't if you don't have the ballot with you that you were sent then you will be asked to sign a legal affidavits saying i'm coming in without my ballot you sent me i am going to destroy that ballot and as i say the system does not allow you to vote more than once um if we punch in one ballot for somebody they can't send in the other ballot it will uh it will not get counted and in fact they could get in a little trouble if someone's looking too closely but if you don't have the ballot with you or you don't bring it no we will not stop you from voting in the office okay that's good to know thank you uh bill go ahead uh just a couple of things um for the 28th meeting we are going to be we at least technically had scheduled to talk about our legislative priorities so i'm thinking our legislative committee we may want to pull together a session in advance of that just to at least have a draft of something for the council to talk about you may recall what we said we would do was the council would talk about some priorities and come up with a preliminary list invite the legislators in you know in november and then you know hear from them about what's doable what isn't their feedback on our list and then adopt a formal sort of here's our legislative agenda after that meeting so anyway just heads up we'll have to get in touch I don't think so and those of you on that committee be thinking about what what that list might look like in fact all the rest of you just to a couple of the comments that the council made next meeting we will be going over budget stuff and we will be so we've set that aside we'll be going over the first quarter finances of the current budget because you've probably made budget changes with the idea that we revisit those quarterly and see where they're at at that you know I think when we did this it was the actually with the idea that gee things will be getting better and we'll be able to restore things and I'm not sure that's going to be the case at least for the first quarter but then we'll also be talking about the process coming up and the challenges we might be facing so to Connor's point that we should be thinking about this I don't think it will be business as usual so we're going to have to have some hard conversations there I'm trying to think there was something else somebody said and I know public bathrooms that will also be on the next agenda and Cameron is heading up the toilet task force and they are they've done a lot of things but amongst them was to identify existing resources that potentially could be put back into action soon for the winter including city hall I haven't seen the full list but even private ones and state well you know I think there's some at state buildings and since the state is technically supposed to be the lead agency on human services we're hoping that maybe the very least they could do is open up some of their bathrooms to the public to help with this issue so but we'll know more about that with a list of ideas and then obviously some longer term thinking about where we might construct something so that's all I have okay well that is the end of our oh there's we have to make sure to swear in Dan yes John do that can you still hear me yes okay oh good because I can't even pull up zoom at all so I'm just like talking to a magic screen so I'm glad you're all here for me I can't hear you so so no face to face here but it is legal to do this I've checked over the phone so I assume over video conferences even better so Dan I'm counting on you to raise your right hand here because I can't see you then there's two oaths as he probably can remember okay do you sound me swear or affirm that you will be true and faithful to the state of Vermont and then you will not directly or indirectly do any act or thing injurious to the Constitution or government thereof so help you God or under the pains and penalties of perjury I do do you sound me swear or affirm that you will faithfully execute the office of city council representative of the central Vermont public safety authority for the city of Montpelier and will there do equal right injustice to all persons to the best of your judgment and ability according to law so help you God or under the pains and penalties of perjury I do all right you are duly swerd thank you John thank you Dan okay I think that is the end of our our business so yeah so without objection I will consider this meeting adjourned thank you everybody bye all good night