 All right, we are all set now, ready? Okay, so good evening, everybody, and welcome to the South Burlington City Council meeting for April 1st, 2024, and that's no April Fools. Our first item on the agenda is Pledge of Allegiance. So Elizabeth, would you lead us? I pledge allegiance to the flag. Item number two, instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency. Thank you, so for those in the room, thank you for joining us. If there's an emergency, you can go out to either side of the rear of the auditorium and then turn left or right to get outside. For those participating remotely, thank you for joining us as well. If you'd like to speak during any item on our agenda, please turn your camera on and the chair will recognize you or you can indicate your interest in speaking in the chat and I will have the chair call on you. Other than that, we are not monitoring the chat for content. Item number three, agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in the order of the agenda for tonight? Thank you, we will make arrangements for that. Yeah, thanks. All right, so no additions or changes. Now it's time for comments or questions from the public for items that are not on the agenda tonight. Are there any online? It looks like that's a no as well, okay. Item number five, counselors announcements or reports on committee assignments and the city managers report. Laurie, would you like to go first? I have not been to a meeting yet and actually I'm gonna miss, I actually may be able to make the natural resource meeting which I thought I was gonna miss, but I've contacted the committees and getting up and running. That's all I have to say for now. And will you be working the election on Thursday? I believe I will. Good, great. As with Laurie, I did not attend any meetings but looking forward to working through each meeting starting this week with the natural resources and energy. Meetings and also just for the note, I will be in Mount Pealier on April 3rd, but just to make it clear not as a city council member, but as one of the commissioners for the Green Mountain Transport, they're having us, some of us go down there. So I'll be there in that capacity just so it's clear for the record. And I look forward to working the elections on the fourth. Hope everyone comes out. Very important choices to be made. Andrew? Sure. So I attended the Planning Commission meeting along with Tim, I think maybe Elizabeth, you were on as well. Very interesting discussion about conforming the LDRs to the Home Act. And interesting discussion about EV charging that it sounds like the Planning Commission is amenable to kind of thinking about enhancing our standards for when new buildings need to install EV charging infrastructure. And at some point the council then may consider that if the Planning Commission moves that forward. Also attended the legislative forum. Our legislators are really busy. They're working on lots of stuff. Lots of discussion about need for revenue and taxes and education funding and other things we've all talked about here. So that was interesting. And Lori and I actually viewed a film on noise in Vermont, which was really interesting in Montpelier. And I guess we're hoping at some point we'll be able to get that film here in South Burlington. I think it'll be really nice. Elizabeth? Great. I did attend the Planning Commission as well. And as a result have requested additional training from our city manager. But there was a lot of discussion in addition to the EV charging on minimum lot size as well. I attended the affordable housing committee meeting and I noticed that there are not any solicitation of community members onto that committee yet. But the committee itself was identifying several openings that may come open this year. I did forward to both the city manager and to our chair some suggestions that came out of this group in terms of committee selection criteria. So I hope that may be the subject of discussion in the future. And then I wanna put a plug in for an ADU forum which is being held on April 18th. That's accessory dwelling units. And that will be available at the library both in person and online in the evening. I expect there'll be some additional promotion on that coming up. Notably the affordable housing committee group did not have a quorum. So no action was taken but a fair amount of great discussion. Thank you. I also attended the two planning commission meetings in the last two weeks. They had a special meeting and like Andrew said there was a really good presentation by the energy committee about perhaps making our regulations about the initial charging infrastructure for commercial and residential building new construction. A little bit more aggressive than what the state is requiring so that if you do you need to put in just the conduit to a spot where a car would be parked or do you need to put the conduit with a wire with the breaker in the breaker box or do you have to have the full charging station there? All of that was discussed. There also was discussed the next planning commission meeting about reconciling the new state regulations, the post S100 world with our current regulations. And it was also noted at that if you didn't know that Burlington last week did pass one of the largest sweeping changes in their zoning system allowing for infill dense construction and ADUs around the city. And it's pretty different from what it has been in the past. I also attended the legislative forum which was well attended and there were some excellent questions asked by the public. And I really do appreciate our five reps. I think they do a great job. And I just wanted to remind everybody if you didn't realize that on April 12th at 10 a.m. at the Baptist church on St. Paul Street in Burlington will be the funeral service for Sarah Dopp. Just to remind you of that if you didn't know I will be attending and I hope I think other people from the city and council will be attending as well. I also wanted to make a brief statement and it's directed to the public. I want to talk briefly about public statements by the public about the council and or the city staff. I want to make it clear that the public needs to be careful in public criticisms of counselors and make sure that their facts are correct and that they are not personally motivated. My mother taught me if you can't say something nice about somebody don't say anything at all. If you dislike a process or an outcome you can criticize those but please be constructive and mature about it and don't make it personal about the people involved. If you are not in the council or a committee or a task force please honor the work of these volunteers and think before you speak. If you or others think you have misspoken please take the opportunity to apologize. Apologies go a long way and they do help. The city manager and I are always available to talk directly about policy or operations and we're happy to meet with people individually. And that just wanted to make that statement tonight. Thank you very much. Moving on to item number to you. Oh, the city council, the city managers report. Sorry. Thank you. So we have a lot going on in the city on Saturday we had our Easter egg hunt here in city center. Over 400 children and family show up to collect candy which was great, very vibrant downtown event. And of course as others have mentioned on Thursday is the school budget revote. Friday and Saturday evenings is illuminate Vermont here on Market Street in city center. Please come and join us from five to eight. There are 42 vendors scheduled, seven food trucks and lots of music. So it should be a fun evening. And then of course on it's eclipse day next week. So mark your calendars for that too. Your EOC will be set up and ready to go in case anybody needs anything in the city. Tom and his team who you will hear from a lot tonight have also secured a fair amount of outside grant funding in the last couple of weeks. So we got notification that a few years ago Tom put in a request for a congressionally directed spending request of $700,000 for upgrades Bartlett Bay and that has been approved and has moved through the federal budget process which is very exciting. The stormwater team also obtained 600,000 in grant funds for Culver's at Butler Farm and another 44,000 for a stormwater project off Kimball Ave. So great job bringing in non utility and property taxpayer dollars into those projects. Steve and I also wanted to share that today is the first day of staffing on the second ambulance. As you remember that's been a huge conversation over the last couple of years we hired up for that. We started at mid fiscal year to ease in the property tax impact. So now that we have our team trained up and ready to go today is the first day of that operation. While we are able to maintain the minimum of 10 staffing until the new contract is implemented we will be running that second ambulance during those times. We also have 130 properties registered in the rental registry system that goes into effect this week. Of those there are 14 that accounts for 1,400 homes and of those 16 of those are short-term rentals. So those are off and running. We will start invoicing those folks this week. Just of the 16, how many would be the grandfathering or how many are on occupied? Do we know? Of those 16, that 16 is all non-owner occupied with 22 units. Some of those are duplex. We've only had one owner occupied short-term rental register so far. Jesse can you, what's that number again of the total registered so far? So, Steve, I'm sorry. It's now 139 with about 1,400 individual units or homes. And did we ever estimate what we thought the? Our estimation was about 3,000. Thank you. And about 400 or 375 so far are permanently affordable units. Talk about permitting RP. We had placed this team working on modernization of our permitting process. I had put an RP on the street maybe three weeks ago for our new software. I was thinking we would get three or four vendors back. We had 22 responses to that RFP. Yes, 22. And so over the next week or two, we'll be looking at those narrowing the list down and then bringing back some more for demonstrations before we move on to the next phase of that process. But we're getting there. Big step. So two other things from me as most of the counselors know we added in this year's budget a full-time data GIS analyst to our team. We have not had great luck recruiting for that position. We have not yet identified a candidate for that position. And we continue to hear both from staff looking for data to make operational decisions as well as you all looking for data to make policy decisions that that really is a priority. So we are in, Steve and I are in the final stages of negotiating with a consultant who will come on for a period of time and help us identify what are the data elements that you all are interested in to inform policymaking? What are the data elements staff is interested in to inform operational decision-making and then make recommendations on what data sources we have and how those will line up. So the council will be involved in those conversations more to come on that. If I can just go back to the question I meant to ask Steve before you jump. We had, you had mentioned to me earlier that the $5 from each fee will go towards a fund. I was just wondering in the timeline because I was just struck by you said that only one owner occupied and I've had a number of owner occupied people come to me with this concern that once they get registered they have to meet the electricals standards and the ability to access funding to do that. I was just wondering the timeframe for that. So a couple of things. Understanding we have just started the process of voluntarily asking people and we haven't done a lot of community outreach. Most of this has been word of mouth. So I think we are in the, we're in the also the hiring stage for rental registry manager. So what a long way of saying we're hoping to get the person hired, doing more marketing, getting the numbers where we anticipate they need to be then starting to build out that team, including, yeah, so as of today, we've received zero revenue. Now, if Martha was in the room, she'd say we have about and she is in the room. I'm not gonna look at her because she's, you know, until we started coming in as it is set up as enterprise fund, we're trying to be conservative on. So we will be a while before we see, we'll be 60 days before I suspect we see revenue coming in. And then obviously the new managers are gonna have to build all those programs. Thanks you. No, no, no. And the intent of this is really an education and assistance tool to help get the housing up to the standards. So we are not going to be enforcing within the first six months or a year if folks aren't working towards that solution. And finally, one other update. The council is aware, council's aware that in 2017, 2018, the managers and the police chiefs from six communities around South Burlington and five other communities worked to stand up the community outreach program, which is a partnership with Howard Center where we embed caseworkers in our police department, do co-response. Sometimes they respond directly to neighbors in crisis. That program has been hugely successful, not only for our neighbors getting better connected to service, but also for our first responders having a new tool that they can bring out to the community. That's not their expertise. This week is the first week where that program is going seven days a week. Those caseworkers historically have been five or six days a week. As of this week, they are now going seven days a week between the hours of 8.30 and six, which is great. They do still follow up on cases off hours as well, but this is a huge expansion of a really successful program for us. So I wanted to share that with you all. That's all I got? Thanks. Thank you. Moving on to item number six, which is the consent agenda. And that consists of five parts. A, consider and sign disbursements. B, adopt the local emergency management plan. C, approve the forgiveness of the historical VCDP loan and accrued interest for the Queensbury co-op as outlined in the request from the Champlain Housing Trust. D, approve the grant application to the Northern Border Regional Commission for $1 million to support the water tank project and approve the city manager as the authorized official. And E, approve the submission of an application to the state of Vermont municipal highway class to grant program for phase four of the Dorset Street paving and authorize a director of public works to sign all the paperwork. The residents of Queensbury are here and they would like us to, I think, pull item C out so they have a chance to make a statement about that. Would we like to have them go first before we deal with everything else or? Okay, so now would be a time for you to come make a statement if you'd like. Here, look if you don't mind coming up. We have a microphone there and a little button that you push to make it green. Then we'll hear you now loud and clear. Bright green, okay. All right, my name is Julie Hannigan. I reside on Queensbury Road. Been there since 1997. The co-op has been in operation since 1995, I believe. Looking to my co-member, Beth, has also been there. But we're just here to advocate that we've been running the co-op all these years and are advocating for the approval of the loan to be converted to a grant because year to year, we're going through our budgetary process and this has always been understood as a grant from our point of view. So we just, we hope the council will vote to approve it as a grant. And that's, and we represent 22 adults and about six or seven kids in our co-op, so. Great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So would the council like to go ahead and have a motion for it to accept all these or approve all these? And then would the city manager like to comment about the Queensbury and give some background on that? Okay. So I'll maintain a motion to approve these five agenda items. So move. I'm sorry, Tim. Sorry, Tim, are you taking the Queensbury one off the list? Well, I was going to, but it was just temporary so that they could make their comments, so. I did have some outstanding questions. So could we keep that off the agenda? Sure. So let's pull C to the side and we'll just be approving ABD and E at this time. So we have a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second. So we have a motion and a second. Now, is there a discussion about ABC, ABD and E? I just have a question on E. So that's great. I hope we get it. I hadn't been aware that we were applying for that. Was that kind of facilitated by the potential delay or those two things not connected? Come up to the mic. We apply for that every year. And some years we get it and some years we don't. And it's a little bit arbitrary on the state's part, but we have been kind of in every other year receiving it. Could you just identify yourself real quick for our note taker, our minutes taker? Adam Kate. Thank you. Adam is our Deputy Director of Public Works for Operations and you will hear from him a lot later on. So we have a motion to second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Unanimous, all right. So now we're gonna take item C, which is the Queensbury forgiveness of the loan. And you had some direct questions about that. I did, thank you, Tim. I asked a question earlier and I know our city manager made an effort to respond to that. I guess I just need to, and believe me, as I'm onboarding, I'm gonna ask a lot of stupid questions. So please, my fellow counselors, forgive me. The way that Jesse responded is this was a pass-through loan through Vermont Community Development Program and it was intended to be a grant, but because of federal requirements at the time, it was set up as a loan. So I guess my question is we were, the city or municipality was the pass-through organization. So one of my fundamental questions is, can we, as a body, forgive that or convert it to a grant in arrears? And I guess the, or after the fact, and so one is just on authority. And then I guess the second question is the amount, what the process was for the balance of that original, it was, it's described as a mortgage here. What was the structure of that that the balance of it represents about a third of what the original amount was that's being asked to either be converted to a grant or forgiven altogether? So I'm trying to understand the structure of what and the authorization the council has to even take this action. Sure, and first of all, there are no dumb questions. And if you have a question, I mean somebody else in the community has a question. And so thank you for asking that. Amy Dimetowitz from Champlain Housing Trust, I believe is online. Amy, are you there? Yes. Hi, yes, I'm here. Did you hear Councillor Fitzgerald's questions? I did, I did. And I absolutely agree. There's no dumb questions. And I think in some ways this is a great opportunity to learn a little bit about the Vermont Community Development Program, which is a program that's administered by the state, but it's actually federal community development block grant funds through HUD. Those funds come to the state and then the state contributes those funds to projects that are happening in different municipalities, including a lot of affordable housing. So in fact, we have a number of other projects in South Burlington that have this similar setup. The funds are federal grants, they come through the state, they have to be granted to a municipality. That's one of the restrictions on that particular source. So the VCDP funds come from the state to a municipality. And then back in the day, back in 1995, because of the other funding that we use for affordable housing, it needed to come into our project, not as a grant, but as a loan. And so the city of South Burlington loaned it into the Queensbury project, which is largely operated by the folks that you just heard from. And it has been affordable housing for 30 years and will continue to be affordable housing operated by the co-op. The municipality officially has the loan, the expectation and we've actually, the state officials have been on the email chains for this request. They're actually recommending that municipalities at this point with affordable housing, forgive those loans when they come due. You have the authority to do that. And it just cuts down on any kind of ongoing reporting or tracking. They really are officially grants from the federal government. And so it makes sense that they're just grants to produce affordable housing. But it's a technicality of the financing that we use, which is the low income housing tax credits that they're put into the project as a loan from the municipality with a 30 year term. Did I, I think I didn't answer your question about the principal versus the interest. So the original grant was for 87,150 I think was the original grant amount or loan amount. It was again, because of the financing structure, it was put in with an interest rate. So it was bearing interest. And over the 30 year term, the accrued interest on that has come to 225,000. So this request is to forgive the entire balance, the principal and the accrued interest to do otherwise would mean that the co-op would need to raise rents, take on a loan and put the affordability at risk. But more importantly, they've got old buildings that they need to maintain. So whatever capital they have, whatever rent they raise, they're using to maintain those buildings. That's helpful. Thank you. Just clarify, you had indicated, or maybe you know this, Jesse, it's to forgive the principal and interest. So what's the total amount again? It's the original principal balance was 87,000, I think 150, and the accrued interest was 225. So that is true. I do think that it's important to know in my experience, I've done a number of these loan and interest forgiveness programs and when you scan here, it has not been our intention to collect this interest. This interest does not sit on our books anywhere. It's never been a revenue stream we had anticipated because of this, and Amy, correct me if I'm wrong, because of this requirement of how the funds came into the project as a loan and not a grant to meet federal requirements. It had been hoped, I think by past leaders that it would be treated as a grant in the future for the financial sustainability of the perpetually affordable housing. So while it is a lot of money, it is not money that we have ever anticipated using for anything. I can also let you know that in, so that was in 95 where the requirement was that the funds go into the project as a loan bearing interest. More recently in the last 10 years, they do go in as a loan at 0% interest, and more recently they are actually just going in as grants. The state has found a way around that issue and they just put the VCDP funds into affordable housing projects as grants. But just to be clear that the money came from the federal government, passed through HUD to a block grant and came to the city as a block grant, to pass through to the project, right? Came to the state as a block grant and then we applied in partnership with a co-op to the state's block grant for this particular project. And then the money moved through us to the project. So for the current counselors, this is very similar to the agreement we made with Summit for the perpetually affordable housing at O'Brien Hillside as well. And Howard. And Howard. Can I answer, I guess my question, this is basically putting the finances in order and as you said, to stop the requirement for continued reporting on something that it was always intended not to be a permanent cost for the co-op. Do we have other such examples in South Burlington? You've mentioned two examples. Is this an opportunity to basically, I mean, put a lot of different things in order or is this sort of the last challenge or arrangement of like this that we have in South Burlington? Because it sounds like if we're gonna go forward with it and I'm predisposed to that, it's a good opportunity to cross to South Burlington to basically all affordable housing situations that have a similar nature. If it's always been the case that as I understood you, there was never the intent of the city to use the funds accrued towards its budgets use. That's a great question. I traditionally how I've seen these come forward is at that expiration date of the grant. I don't know off of the top. I don't have that inventory on the top of my head. I certainly could work with Amy to develop that from a CHP perspective. I see our finance director lurking. Perhaps she has a better sense. Amy, do you know while Martha's coming down? I have some sense that yes, there are certainly our other projects. And as Jesse said, typically we would wait until the full 30 year term is up. But I can certainly look at that. There isn't any kind of restriction on doing that sooner. So I mean, that I think it's a wonderful opportunity while you all are kind of thinking about these funds to look at that and perhaps forgive some other loans. And I can certainly come up with our list. Cathedral Square may have some as well, although I'm not sure what else they have. Oh, perhaps at Anderson Parkway. So we can look at that list. Be happy to do that. I can confirm that we do have maybe about five or it could be more. I do have to confirm the amount annually for the auditing purposes. So yes, there's a good number of them and different maturity debts. Satisfied? Yes, to me again, it sounds like if the intent has never been to... I mean, this is basically a financial exercise that is kept on the books without any intent of ever having it paid back. As you said, now it's being issued as grant at the front end. To me, it would just seem to make sense is to use this opportunity to basically put the books in orders for all these communities and give them the confidence and assurance that those affordable housing areas aren't in good order and do not have to worry about this fund somehow becoming back to Honda. Thank you. So we have item C that I would like a motion to approve. So moved. Second. We have a motion to second. Any further discussion? I do want to just clarify. I'm sorry. That's okay. I assume there was a grant at the start of this that again passed through the city. And for the residents here, this is not about your request. It's really about understanding the financials. So I'm sorry, I heard our guest speaker from Champlain say, I'm sorry, Amy, you had said 200,000 on interest, but it's 25,000. Is that correct? I'm looking at the sheet we got that we're looking at. I guess I'm trying to figure out, are we forgiving just interest? Or if we did receive grant money, so we're forgiving that as well? Yeah. For a total of 87 plus the 25 interest. Where is that in? Amy, go ahead. I don't have the exact number here in front of me. I apologize, but it is, we are requesting that the grant, the initial grant amount and accrued interest be forgiven. So in your memo to us, Amy, you indicate it's 87,150 for the 18 affordable housing apartments that are there with approximately 25,000 of accrued interest that was due on January 31st. Is that the correct? Yeah. Sorry, I thought Amy, you said the accrued interest is more like 200 something for over the 30 years. But I heard that I didn't. Yeah, so not just to be clear. Yeah, I apologize. I don't have that accessible to me right now with my setup here at home. I believe that it is, I believe that it's 225,000, but I'd have to confirm that. Here comes Martha. With her laptop and her financials at her fingertips. Yes, good. The accrued total accrued interest is 25,000, $1.75 cents. Could you say it again? 2,5001.75, 25,000. Thank you. I apologize for that confusion. It's only a decimal point. All right, so we have a motion and a second. It's just one quick thing. I'm sorry. And this is really maybe for Martha that, so when we forgive this, I guess, the borrower, Queensbury Road Housing Limited partnership will have income, right? Cancellation of debt income, which we'll have to report to them. So, right, that how these normally work? Yeah, okay. That's correct. Yeah, okay. And that maybe that's not why you don't want to accelerate it, right? They don't want to have to pay tax on that before they need to. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. It's unanimous. Thank you. Thanks for attending. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Moving on to item number seven, which is approved resolution number 2024, debt one for recognizing April as fair housing month, asking Chris Trombly to come forward from the Affordable Housing Committee. He's the chairperson. Good evening. I'm loving the affordable housing theme this evening. It's interesting to hear about the complexities of having put together that capital stack for affordable housing to make them work and you're still working on them after all these years. So thank you for the opportunity. The Affordable Housing Committee each year coordinates opportunities to inform the residents of South Wellington about what is fair housing. CBOEO, that's kind of their wheelhouse from a statewide perspective of what is fair housing. It's the equal opportunity in the rental sale and financing of housing under federal, state and local laws. So in your packet, you have the actual resolution and this declaration is a vital step in reinforcing our city's commitment to fair, equitable and accessible housing for all residents. So in conjunction with fair housing month, which this council approved in 2023, thank you. The reason we're bringing it forth again this year is one, give an opportunity to share that information with the city council, reaffirm our commitment to fair housing and today, April 1st marks the first day. Two other events that we're coordinating, so if the council were to consider approval of the resolution, there's two other critical housing forums that we're hosting, creating an ADU, is that right for you? It's got a nice ring to it until you'll see that publicized in the local paper that is something that we're co-hosting with the South Burlington Library and AARP. So very exciting and hope you can spread the word about that. Also continuing a community conversation about housing and homelessness, again with CVOAO as part of their fair housing project, hosting a book discussion of homelessness is a housing problem by Greg Colburn and Clayton Page. So part of our mission of the Affordable Housing Committee is educating the public. So let me pause there and ask for your support in adopting the resolution and if there's any questions that I could ask or answer. Does the council have any questions? Is there a councilor that would like to read this resolution? It's not very long. The public probably doesn't know the content. I will since I'm the new liaison. Thank you, Elizabeth. All right, city council resolution declaring April 2024 fair housing month, let it be known to all persons that the city of South Burlington wishes to join with the state of Vermont and the United States of America in affirming and celebrating the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, which serves as a powerful statement about who we are as people and the values of equality, equity and dignity that we strive to uphold. Whereas Vermont extends these protections to people of all ages, marital status, gender identity, sexual orientation, sources of income and people who have experienced abuse, sexual assault and stalking as protected classes. And whereas Vermont took the further step to ensure fair housing by prohibiting discrimination against housing developments in land use and planning decisions based on the income of intended residents. And whereas inclusive, welcoming and affordable communities promote diversity and a climate conducive to equitable and thriving communities. And whereas the city of South Burlington supports the efforts of fair housing organizations, concerned citizens and the housing industry to create broader housing opportunities for households of all incomes throughout the region. Now therefore be resolved that the city council of the city of South Burlington, Vermont hereby proclaims the month of April to be fair housing month and urges all individuals, institutions and agencies to contribute to the observance by continuing our efforts to eliminate housing discrimination in our community and to increase housing opportunities for all. Thank you, Elizabeth. And I think that, you know, it's pretty obvious that the city is a strong proponent of affordable housing by virtue of the actions taken over the last six or seven years to include inclusionary zoning in our land development regulations and our support of several projects by facilitating these grants through to these projects and also making contributions from our housing trust fund which helps to attenuate some of the costs for permitting. And you can look around and see like off Kennedy Drive, those two large summit buildings which by the way, if Mr. Getz is listening, I just wanna say, I really enjoy the fact that they're symmetrical, they're mirrors of each other in terms of the textures of the siding of the building. I think it's kind of nice, so I enjoy that. So thank you. We need to have a motion and a second to approve this resolution. I move that we approve the resolution declaring April 2024 for our housing month. I second that motion. We have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. It's new Namas, thank you. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks for coming. Item number eight, orientation on public works. Town to Petro Public Works Director. Thank you for coming. We get to hear about stormwater tonight. And wastewater. Always. Always. Let me share my slides here, do that correctly. Thank you everybody for putting some time on the agenda to hear from public works this evening. I'm Tom DePetro, Director of Public Works. I started my career in South Burlington in 2006 as your stormwater superintendent. I have held various titles in the intervening almost 18 years, I guess, until about two years ago when I became Director of Public Works. So what we have tonight is a series of slides. They're intended to be a very high level overview of each of our different divisions to kind of give you a little bit of a flavor for what we do and kind of how we do it. We don't really dive too deep in anything, but certainly if there's burning topics, we'll have time for questions we can get into it then. So again, just by way of overview, the Department of Public Works is made up of a variety of different divisions. A couple of those are supported by the general fund. So tax dollars that come into the city pay for those programs, like the highway division, parks maintenance and our mechanics. We also have three different enterprise funds. So those are supported by different rates. So when you pay your water sewer storm water bill, those fees go and support the programs individually. So there's no general fund dollars that go to support those. And we also manage a variety of special funds. And we'll talk a little bit about those as well, paintings for paths and open space fund. That is our FY25 city budget breakdown in the pie chart there. About 20% of the larger general fund piece is public works. Again, that's the highway, parks and maintenance mechanics. You can see our enterprise funds on the left. And then we also have a piece of those special funds. So we're about half the city budget just in the Department of Public Works alone, which you add us all up. So a good chunk of the spending throughout the city is managed over in public works. This is our org chart. So we have 39 people that work over in public works. I think we have four vacancies currently. We will be adding a highway position in July 1st in new fiscal year. So we're excited for that. But we've got a couple of vacancies in our highway division right now that we're working to fill. We are bringing on board somebody for the athletic fields maintenance position in our parks division. So we're really excited for that person to start. The timing is great in April. In April, we'll be starting. And so you'll be hearing from everybody on this kind of the top row across there. Those are our different deputy directors and superintendents. So I'm not gonna kind of go through it because I'll introduce each of them or actually I'll have them introduce themselves as there are a couple of slides come up this evening. A lot of information on this slide. So you'll see this. This is sort of a typical slide on a lot of our budget presentations, but it's just a good overview to give you an idea. I know those numbers probably don't mean anything kind of on their own. But if there's a take home message here, it's that public works maintains miles and miles of things underground. So of course, you know the roads and the sidewalks and the shared use path and all of the parks and open space, et cetera. But there's miles and miles and miles of different pipes underground that we're also responsible for and different pump stations and valves and all kinds of things. So over time as you're on council, you can compare these slides as I update them each time I come here and you can see kind of the growth of the city. At least for an infrastructure standpoint. So I want to say a little bit about our facility before I get to our first division. So the department of public works, we are off of patching road at 104 landfill road. So that's by the transfer station where folks bring their trash and recyclables and compost. Though they are not affiliated with us we're just adjacent and they get a lot more visitors than we do. So our building's over 20 years old and we're working on a variety of improvements right now. So we're adding an additional garage base so all the way to the right in the photo we're adding additional wash bay and then the existing wash bay will be used for equipment storage because we've added equipment over time and so we need some more indoor storage. We're working on a project to add some electric vehicle charging stations sort of right out front in that pavement in the foreground. We're really excited about that. And then our facilities department it's working on a variety of projects new windows, new roof, new HVAC units. So that's all going to be happening in the next couple of years at Public Works. And then kind of looking out into the future a little bit other facility improvements. We've got money in the budget for around FY28 to replace a fuel station. So we also have a fuel station that's used by the school and our vehicles and others. And then we also have a large salt shed. So that's nearing the end of its life. So about five years or so from now we'll be looking to replace that. And those are all both in the CIP as well. So unless there's any general questions I think you'll see kind of our parade of folks tonight. I'll have Jay Nadeau come down. He's our water superintendent. And he'll present a couple of slides. And as Jay is making his way down here actually I neglected to mention it on that one slide. So the Champlain Water District Jay is an employee of the Champlain Water District but we use them as our water department through a contract. So there's a little confusion sometimes about who's who but they're the water district and Jay is our superintendent he serves as such. And later in this evening we'll probably talk more about that when we get into our water ordinance on a future agenda item. So I'll turn it over to you Jay. Good evening. As Tom indicated I am the distribution director of the Champlain Water District which by default makes me the water superintendent for the city of South Burlington. I've been with CWD since 2000, 2010. Took a little time off. The grass is not greener on the other side and came back about five years ago. And I am just now entering into my 40th year in the field. Little bit about the water department. We provide safe drinking water to all of our citizens all of our businesses. That water is created is provided to us by the Champlain Water District that serves about 85,000 customers in the Jinden County area. Our role here in the city of South Burlington is to respond quickly to emergencies. That's number one. Water breaks, water leaks, anything of that nature. As important, we provide services to our customers ranging from billing, which we also do for the wastewater and storm water departments. Reading water meters, everything customer concerns, customer complaints, everything associated with customers. We serve as the South Burlington water department as I said earlier, through contract services that have been in place since I believe it was the early 1980s. We provide through this contract service, our water operators, our water technicians are on a as needed basis. Now that may sound like we're just waiting to find something to do. It's not the case. We have, as Tom indicated, over 2,100 gate valves alone in the city. We have over 1,300 or 1,400 fire hydrants in the city, 125 miles of water main, 6,600 customers. So we've always got something to do and we're always there. We pick up our work orders in the morning and come back at the end of the day. One of the components that Tom asked to highlight here, project funding. How do we fund some of the projects that are going on? Well, the fact of the matter is in water, funding is slim. There are SRF loans through the state. Tom did a great job in finding opportunity through the NBRC for the second water storage tank going up. But primarily our funding comes from rates and ratepayers, water users. Where have we been? Where are we going? Well, we've been converting to a radio read system. When I started back in 2010, we would have two, I'm sorry, 2000, we would have two to three readers taking one third of the city, taking about three weeks to read the meters. We now read in about a day. We're almost fully converted to radio read. Can I ask how you do that? How do you do that? Sure, the meter is in this picture. The meters have a radio transmitter head on the meter itself or they're mounted to a transmitter on the side of the building. We drive by, we've got a special receiver hooking a magnetic antenna up to the top of the truck, drive by no faster than 25 miles an hour based on the signal output from each meter and can pick up our meters just like that. And we've got a heck of a range almost up to 1,000 feet. Coincidentally though, if a meter is in the deep confines of a building, we may have to walk right up to it, get out of the truck to get it. What powers those meters? There's a battery on every meter head that's got a lithium battery with a 25 year life. These transmit about every 14 seconds. And the unique thing about this, it comes into our readers. Our readers download to the computer. There's no one writing numbers. Nobody transposing numbers. So it's all automatic. It's better than the postcard that they used to fill out in 1992. That's right. A lot better. Because it was the basement. I have to, I'm going to date myself. When I started in this field, we were doing walk-bys and at that time, we would knock on a customer's door to go inside to read the meters. And if they weren't there, we still were allowed to go inside to read the meters. We don't do that anymore. So again, we talked briefly about the second tank that the citizens approved in overwhelming margin. So we've got that project coming up. Some of the ongoing projects that we have, we try to identify water loss. American Water Works Association encourages water systems to have a 10 to 15% water loss. That is water that we purchase from CWD. We don't sell it all. Some of it is used by public works. Some of it is used by fire department. We use it in flushing hydrants. So that's accounted for. But we want to reduce that unaccounted for water. So we're constantly on top of that. We're currently in the midst of a lead service line inventory program that the EPA is mandated. That program has to come to completion by October 16th of this year. I will say that it's phase one. Phase two is if we find any, then we have to address them and take care of them. I also want to state that I don't think we're going to find any, but I'll come back to that. As I said, we've been upgrading our water meters and we are working on continuous water asset management programs, which helps us identify aging infrastructure like fire hydrants, gate valves, water lines. A large portion of the sitting was put in in the 1940s through the 1960s. The life expectancy of many of those assets has come and gone. So we have that to look forward to. Finally, some of the things that were emerging issues, as we'd like to call it, tonight you're going to get the opportunity for the first reading of the water ordinance. That was last written by me in 2002. Prior to that, it was written in 1978. So it's high time. That's not true. There have been some improvements in the field which we are trying to collect in this updated ordinance. The water tank construction and financing, I believe, is slated for next year now, but everything's moving ahead with that. And as I said, I've been in the field for 40 years. I'm getting out of the field. So we are going to be hiring my replacement, who of course will hopefully continue or do better, hopefully do better than what I've been doing. Lead and copper rule, we continue with lead service line inventory and lead service line replacement will come into phase two. We're working on keeping track of aging infrastructure and replacement needs. And then we have to find funding for those replacement projects. Any questions? Do we have PFAS in our water? So the short answer is no. Joe Duncan is here. He would be better suited to that, but the short answer is no. Now, one could say, hey, I've looked at your test and there was a positive. That was a, we think it was a sampling error, but in general, no, we don't. Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. Great, thank you, Jay. Oh, one more question. Has the frost gone out of the ground yet? To be honest, we didn't get the frost. It really didn't ever went in? No. I always know when the tap water gets really, really cold in April that it's gone out, but it's, yeah. We just didn't get it. We got six inches, perhaps under black top, but the launch didn't get any. So we were doing some fall work all winter. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Jay. So next up is Bob Fisher, our wastewater superintendent. Thank you. Once again, we're buried pipes. You don't know if generally know we're here. It's generally about the most expensive thing a South Burlington resident owns. They don't know they own. And we don't normally get to brag. So about our award-winning water quality department, but I'd like to go back since they didn't brag. I believe that the CWD won the national water tasting several years in a row now. You won in New Inc. Okay, you won in the region also. And I thought I'd just put on a plug for them. Did we beat Burlington? That's the question. Thank you. Thank you. So this is really top facilities. This is the top facility airport parkway, basically in the state. The only one to be comparable to the SX junction that also produces electricity, so we put out higher quality effluent. And the Butler Bay be certainly in the top five to 10 in the state, and we may be number one when it's done. We manage two wastewater treatment facilities. As I said, they're highly advanced. They're tertiary treatment with 10 micron filtration. We make exceptional quality bio solids for beneficial reuse. And we produce electricity off the methane from the digesters. We have the two wastewater facilities, 32 wastewater pump stations and three stormwater pump stations that we manage. I have a staff of seven. And just to give you an idea, that's eight of us for two advanced facilities and 35 pump stations. Burlington has a staff of 25 for 25 pump stations and three very primary facilities. And one of them, they're mothballing turned into a pump station. So they'll basically have two facilities. So it's a very lean, well run, long since before I got here. I've been here eight and a half years. And so there was a rate study done a year or two ago and we had about the lowest rates in the state. So it's a very well run utility. I came here eight and a half years ago where I served with at that point, assistant city manager in Montpelier, Jesse Baker. So what we do is a protection of public health in the environment. We have two federal permits. They are five year permits, the renewable and a solid waste certificate. And basically just to brag quickly on the staff of seven, Robert Belargeon, today is his official 40th day here with the city, which I believe by far is the most tenure. And I believe, 40th year, what did I say? This is 40th year. Today, April 1st, he started 40 years ago. So we have three operators, two of them are the most recent acquirers. One of them was the facilities manager for UVM, they're both licensed plumbers. We have a truck driver. There are five grades in wastewater licensing, just like there's four classes in water. I'm also a 4C water operator. I'm the only water operator there that's a water operator. But for wastewater, the first three are grade ones, Mike is a grade four, and then the other three are grade fives. And Robert, so some quick acronyms here just to quickly. So the trade associations, so at the national level would be WEF, the Water Environment Federation, it's been around since 1928, that's about 22,000 members. At the regional level would be New England Water Works, I mean, I'm sorry, New England Water Environment Association. I should know this one. And that has approximately 2,200 members, and these are the top regulators, EPA, top engineering firms, top vendors in the state. And at the state level, there is a Green Mountain Water Environment Association with about 300 members. It's a dual water and wastewater association. The city has been very good on professional development. They have highly encouraged it. These are all non-paid volunteer positions, but I'm a formal past president of Green Mountain Water Environment Association, as is Tom. And Joe Duncan is the current president of Green Mountain Water Environment Association. Jennifer, my lab, but director also is on the board. I'm no longer on the Green Mountain Board. And Monica Ingalls from, I'm sorry, what's her last name? Anyway, from Stormwater is the secretary. So basically, a quick thing here, I guess, to brag somewhat. All these are on-paid positions, but I'm the current past president now of I was the president last year of New England Water Environment Association. I'm only the second one from Vermont since 1929. It's a small state, so I'm on many things. I'm on the licensing board. I'm one of two operators. I won a number of awards. The 2050's Governorate Award for Environmental Excellence. I won the Efficiency Vermont Award that same year. I won recently the American Public Works Association, the Northeast and the National Awardee for Professional Manager of the Air and Water Resources 2022. A bunch of other awards. I'm also on the Vermont Citizens Advisory Committee for about 15 years now. I'm also edge and professor for SUNY, I teach classes, a couple classes a year for NCCC, and they're also asking for some other ones. So moving on, and I can throw in one more, that there's anything to do with it. I'm also just finished my 23rd season as a on the top freestyle team, and I have three of the top women in moguls are now mine, and two of the four Americans for China and the Olympics were mine. So I'm well over three times the tenure of anyone there, and I'm very sore at the moment this season, just having ended. So speaking back of wastewater, so we passed the $34 million refurbishment bond. These facilities do only have a 25 to 20 to 25 year for the equipment. This stuff's run in 365, 24 seven, very high usage. And so the citizens are past it, and we are working diligently with that Tom and Dave and me. Additionally, I put in for an industrial user survey grant, which was funded for 199,000 an ARPA grant that was received. You may see it going out now or in phase two starting. I also wrote a security upgrade grant this last year, and which we received just last week officially for a final review for security upgrades. And when I first started here, eight and a half years ago, I did discover a $4.3 million reimbursement that had not been turned in. So I turned that in. So I think I paid for myself so far. There's now the Bob rule, as you would call it. You can't go back more than three years now on the intended use plans. So we've already talked about awards there. Recent initiatives, Provement in the Allocation Process, that's basically Tom. Tom has rewritten quite a bit of it. Tom is extremely efficient and organized and is really bringing everything into this century. And some, it's very impressive. So I've turned that over to Bob now. So how he turned it to me, so it may not be quite as efficient, because Tom is very good. So some of the things refurbished in Bartlett Bay, we're just at the start of it now, where you're gonna probably use effluent heat recovery, which has been used somewhat, but rather than using fossil fuels, we can use the differential. There are things nationwide, or even some places are starting to use the heat in the collection system. Pump station upgrades, there always need upgrades. We're talking to the airport and we're digitizing everything. So really the Bartlett Bay refurbishment, you're gonna hear a lot about that because that is a large thing going on. We're replacing Queen City Park pump stations, they're all from the 1970s. There are three of them and we also have Bartlett Bay, so there are four pump stations, but we were eliminating one of the Queen City Park pump stations, which was actually Tom's idea, very good. And you'll see that. Regulatory changes, so basically biosolids management. There's new interim strategy started today, increased PFOS testing. Basically, so at the moment, we produced EQ biosolids. We made a decision a few years ago we don't really send it to farms anymore. They're using it, V-trans is using it in a 5% mix with ECI, with wood ash and dirt, and it's because of all the nutrients in it. It's basically the same stuff if you would get a Walmart. If you went and got a bag of potting soil, if you read that, a lot of them come from wastewater facilities. Anyway, we don't put it, I wouldn't put it on my garden, but I shouldn't discuss that. You should probably read your back. But obviously, PFOS is a big issue. We currently pay about $110,000 for the beneficiary. It only goes about five miles down the road. It was used for the airport. It was used for the park and ride in Winooski. It's used at the St. Albans Airport and it's just basically a fertilizer that's mixed in. So it's areas that won't have any human contact, but the levels are quite low and their background levels basically. In the event that that does no longer become an option, we will then be forced to landfill that will be a minimum increase of 200,000 a year, but it'll also be an incredible increase in greenhouse gases because we'd have to send it to Coventry, et cetera. We'd have to then, they would have to import more phosphorus in on trains. At the moment, it's a challenging situation, but it's still working well. Lastly, there was a lot of our chemical costs almost doubled over COVID. It really shot up fast. So there's been a lot of costs. We've been very good on kind of managing our budgets and keeping in there. And the last little chart you can see here basically shows we're putting out incredible water here and I'm glad there's a tour coming up and many of you can see it. For 2023, we put out 422 pounds of phosphorus. That's for approximately 22,000 people because we also take an all of cold chester. Your average house of 210 gallons a day puts out about 51 pounds. So you figure that about six houses we do for 22,000 people, the same amount and their phosphorus, their PFOS, et cetera goes right into their yard because you know, up to 10 to 15% of those are failing. So some of those go straight to the water system. So there's huge land application of PFOS going on now. It's called septic tanks. We have the most in the country at 55%, the most percentage of 55% of people in Vermont are on septic tanks. And unlike at our facilities where we can mitigate for anything, we can put PFOS filtration on, we can, everything's expensive, we can continue to mitigate for things. Well, you can't do that on a septic system. So that's basically what I have, Tom. Any questions? Council, any questions? Just, yeah, quickly, I'm just interested and we don't have to do this now, but I'd love to learn a little bit more about the thermal capture that you described from the wastewater. Is that just to heat the, you know, the buildings or is there enough to kind of do more or just mostly for the buildings at the level we're looking at right now? Yeah, so we're early in that process. We determined it's feasible at this point. And so now the engineers are going back and looking into it a little deeper, but we're hoping to be able to heat all the buildings down there. Can I ask what a percentage of residents or homes in South Wellington are still on septic? Very few. Yeah, it would be in the Southeast quadrant of the city. I'd have to go and count them up, but the majority of the city is served by our wastewater system. In not too many meetings from now, we're gonna have a map that'll show you exactly those areas that are in or out, like we will later on the water side, but we'll be coming back in the future with kind of that exact information. That's a good question. It was fairly low. It was a time when the west side of spear, right, didn't have sewer, I believe, and there were, there's a variety of homes still kind of off, yeah, downhill that are, yeah, they still have their own septic system, but the majority of the city does float one of our two plants. Bob did mention, but we have one plant off of Bartlett Bay Road down by route seven, and then the airport parkway plant up by the, by the airport. So I have some more questions, but since we're probably gonna have a tour of one of the facilities. Yes, a week from Thursday. Soon, I can't wait, right? I keep hearing the term force main. Can you just give us a definition of what that is? Certainly. Waste water is basically like a roller coaster. It comes from your house. It's really coming from the water system. There's pressure, the tanks are sitting up high. There's a pressurized system, the water, and then when it enters your sink, showers, you have to think about it. What comes to your wastewater plant? 99% of it's water. It's not solids. It's not your toilets or whatnot, because it's your showers, your sinks, your washing machines. It's only about 1% solids, so in even of that, a lot of that's just dirt and whatnot. But. So, the force main. Sorry, is it a pressurized pipe from a pump? Pressurized pipe. So what happens? Yep, it all its gravity. It all runs down the hill, but where it's too low, it's like a roller coaster. It pushes it back up, and then it's free to go down again. Okay, so. Sorry, my long episode. So the clean water from the CWD goes to a tank. One of the tanks is on the market street. It's gravity-fed throughout the city. That gives you tap water, flushing, and toilet showers. But then the wastewater that's collected then has to go downhill to somewhere. Probably some kind of a tank. To a pump station. To a pump station, and then it has to be pumped uphill to the gravity feed, maybe to another tank, if it has to. Some of them go through four to five pump stations. So eventually it's all downhill either into Bartlett Bay or at your port. That is 100% correct, yep. And so force main is, yep. Sometimes what? We paint the pump stations. Sometimes, yeah, they work better if they're paint. You'll be familiar with that. They also work better if they're not crashed into at the middle of the day. That is correct. Tom is working on some traffic improvements in that area, correct? So I was gonna ask if you give us a 100 word summary of how the wastewater is cleaned up before it's put back in the lake, but we'll wait till we come. You should probably. It's a very complicated system. You'll be very, it's extremely technical. It'll take more than 100 words. I'm not sure I could do that in 100 words, Tim. I'm very wordy, too. What about the plan to put a generator in the outflow? That plan is still, we have it on the shelf right from the engineering firm. At the moment, it wasn't economically feasible, but this continues to increase. Unlike almost any other wastewater, like in Montpelier, anywhere I've been or Bartlett Bay, it is the lowest thing in town. Basically in the 1960s, when federal money came around, they carved a wastewater plant at the end of the pipes. Airport Parkway is 104 foot fall down to the river. So A, I'm not as concerned about flooding as I was in Montpelier when I was standing there and during Irene and whatnot. And that can be used, that gravity to turn a turbine. Cool. And you just touched on another issue, which is the number of wastewater systems in Vermont that were affected drastically by flooding last year and this year, I think, right? And then, of course, last summer. And so we're not as exposed to that risk as other towns are, right? That is very correct. Also on the Vermont Warn network with Vermont DEC and Vermont Rollwater, I'm one of the steering committee, which is the water, actually, it's a FEMA thing, response network. So yes, we don't have CSOs. We have no combined sur-overflows. Unlike Burlington, when it rains, it goes through the swirl system or even Montpelier that still has, the system's got overwhelmed with water. This is a very solid system. A lot of it's just had to do with age, the fact that Burlington, some of the pipes are from 1800s. There wasn't many people living here at that point. So as it was built, it was a fairly good system. But yeah, no, there's 94 wastewater systems, 97 if you count the three, in Vermont, at least four of them were badly. We assisted Montpelier. We assisted several others because we are very fortunate here from our location and not that things can happen. I mean, the mother nature can overdo anyone. But as systems goes, this is really probably the top system in the state. When I was at town fair at the Double Tree last fall, right, for the BLCT town fair, I ended up running into somebody that was from Montpelier and they said, oh, South Burlington, Tennessee sent us a couple of truckloads of starter, right? If you want to call it that, right? To get the reactions going. So it's a very large, so my degrees are in biology and history and I was a federal fishery biologist. It's not sourdough. It's basically- Do you or talk- The same. Do other people know what the two of them are talking about? Yes, but I did one quick question. What is the elevation of the Bartlett Bay facility? Above the lake. Ooh. Yeah, that one makes me remember this, but it's inland a bit. Yeah, flood levels 100. Do you know what the elevation is of Bartlett Bay? We can follow up with you on that. It's out of the flood plain, certainly. It's out of the flood plain. The exact elevation. 2011 was 103 feet and some inches and that was the worst that we've seen so far, right? So the last thing I have- I did mean to interrupt the conversation about the sludge. The conversation they were having, and you'll hear much more about this on the tour, is that the process really relies on the microbes treating and when your microbes get flooded out, they have to be replaced. So that sludge from our wastewater treatment plant is what reseeded the Montpelier waste. And we also did S6 after the December flow and assisted with pipe and some other facilities. But that's it. The last question was about IT security. So- That is very big now. I worry about ransomware all the time. Yep. And for any other IT systems that are related to the city of land, like wastewater. So I'm also on the EPA cyber security thing for the state. It's a small state. And yeah, that's the biggest push now for the rest of the money coming on is the cyber security. Bartlett Bay at the moment, we don't even have it hooked to the internet. That was the easy solution just to unplug it. When we need someone remotely to get in, maybe once a year or so, and we then will plug it in. Airport Parkway, it's not as easy. We do have log me in and whatnot. We've also just got a proposal for a much more robust system from Champlain Associates. So yeah, that is a major concern. But at the moment, we haven't had any issues yet. Thank you. Tim, that might be, and Jesse, that might be a good subject for a future agenda would just be, and I don't know if it would have to be an executive session, but something about cyber security. And because we've heard that across a number of departments that there are, there's a lot of IT issues going on that would put any municipality at risk. That might be a good future topic. And I'll note, so you may have seen there's a security grant that Bob obtained. That's actually for security cameras. It improves sort of exterior type security. So anything you do necessarily with cyber security. But it will tie into our pump station monitoring system, which will then alarm the operators and whatnot if someone unauthorized access. Because we did have someone in Bartlett Bay last year that the police were able to get out of there. I wanna highlight one thing that Bob said earlier, which I think is really remarkable for South Burlington, which is, we do not have stormwater overflows. I think we're the only place in the state. Is that right? That is possible. It could well be possible, yes. We certainly are, the vast majority do, yes. But that's a really big deal. That is. Especially being next to the lake and kudos to you guys for that. Is part of the work in Burlington that's going on with the activation on Pine Street and Main Street, are they actually installing separated water, I mean stormwater and sewer lines, do we know? At the moment, I know that just repairing all the damage that was done. Repair, yeah. I think it's just repair at the moment. The answer from the public is no. No, that's your stormwater superintendent. Stormwater superintendent. Yeah, and the answer was they're not. Okay. I take that back entirely, sorry. But that's one of the reasons why we don't because we have separate system, right? Yes, and they were the first stormwater utility South Burlington before I got here. That Tom was the first tire. Don't you wanna slide? Yeah, I'm sorry. All right, we're done with wastewater. We're gonna move on. Stick to our time. Bartlett Bay is 120 foot elevation. Counselor Smith, Paul, look it up for us. All right, so joining me. Sorry, I'm forgetting ahead. 280 one? That's the elevation. 120 is Bartlett Bay. 120 is Bartlett Bay. Yeah. So, okay. It's a good, so. The reason for a lot of the resiliency that you guys were all talking about was all the work we've done in our stormwater division. So Marissa is gonna introduce herself and then tell you all about what stormwater has been up to. Thank you. I met you all last council meeting briefly online, but hello again. I'm Marissa. I'm the stormwater superintendent. We have two of the, or the two preceding stormwater superintendents in the room here with Tom and Dave back there. So we got a full house there. I started with a city in November of 2022. So only been here a little over a year. I came from an engineering consulting firm before that. So a little bit about the stormwater utility. Bob is correct. We are the first stormwater utility in Vermont. The stormwater utility was created in 2005 and Tom was the first stormwater superintendent for the utility. I was actually Tim Grover for a year. Sorry, I apologize. The main things that we do at the stormwater utility is we maintain the MS4 permit compliance for the city. And that involves implementing our flow restoration plans and our phosphorus control plans. Our crew maintains 93 stormwater treatment practices throughout the city, about 80 miles of drainage pipe, 210 outfalls and over 3,000 structures. So that would be catch basins, manholes, that sort of thing. We also construct capital improvement projects. That would be part of the flow restoration plans and phosphorus control plan, as well as upgrading existing infrastructure that is aged out or is not large enough anymore. The stormwater utility has six full-time staff, the superintendent to the project manager, and then we have our crew made up of our foreman and three crew members. The crew's day-to-day operations are overseen by our deputy director of operations, Adam. Funding, we are an enterprise fund. We are the third enterprise fund. You've seen the other two. So we are funded by ratepayers. That is paid as part of the, seen as part of the water bill in the city. We are not part of the general fund. Our projects and our operations are not funded by the taxpayers. And we have a couple different components. Those would be the operational and then the capital improvement. A couple stormwater successes. So in the past calendar year, we have obtained about 1.2, well, again calendar year 2023. We obtained about $1.2 million in grants for stormwater projects within the city. And as Jesse mentioned before, we just found out on Friday that we got another $644,000 in grant money for two more projects. All of the projects that we currently have in engineering or that are slated for construction are at least partially funded by state or federal dollars. So none of them are completely funded by our residents. Our main goals right now is the implementation of the flow restoration plan and our phosphorus control plan. We currently have 22 projects in various stages of design and implementation that will go up to 24 with these two new projects. The flow restoration plan is part of our MS4 permit and it needs to be completed by 2032. I believe we're about halfway through our estimated timeline for completion and we still have a lot of work to do. Are those restoration and phosphorus plans related to impaired waterways like Potash Brook and is Bartlett? Yes, correct. Yep, we have a few different stormwater impaired streams in our city. That would be Potash Brook, Bartlett Brook, Centennial Brook, Monroe Brook and Engelsby, so we have five. Potash Brook would be the main one since a lot of the city is in the Potash Brook watershed. And the flow restoration plans are in response to stormwater impairment. So they're trying to decrease the peak flows in the streams and then also increase base flows so having more even flow through the city. So the idea is to cash stormwater during large events into small ponds or whatever and give it a chance to flow out slower maybe to another pond, eventually to a tributary to the major brook before it hits the lake, right? Yeah. When it's in those smaller ponds, is that another opportunity for other things to be removed from the water like sediment or be volatile organic compounds or? Yep, so all of these stormwater treatment practices in the city have a couple of components to them. One of them being the flow control which you're talking about and then there's also the treatment. So stormwater treatment practices in Vermont are mostly targeted towards phosphorus removal and that's part of our phosphorus control plan and we all have seen and heard about the algae blooms in Lake Champlain. We're trying to do something about that. So all of our stormwater treatment practices have some mechanism of removing phosphorus depending on what it is, whether it's a head's orption or other things. And then most of them will also have a pretreatment component such as a forebay or swirl separator and that's where the sediment gets settled out of the water before it actually goes into the other treatment part of the system. So it's easier to maintain pulling the suspended solids out before it goes through the treatment. Okay, on Nolan Farm Road, I've noticed that there was some change that was made like three years ago and I think it's on the north side, right? So the water travels in one direction and then it comes back in another direction sort of like in a serpentine arrangement to try to get a slow grade as it travels through probably a lot of plant materials and things like that. So that seemed innovative when I first noticed it in. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Very quickly Bob Fisher, before we change the picture there, I just wanted to point out that's my pillier actually and that's Adam and their flood, they also assisted. Yes, July 10th, yeah. July 10th flood, in addition to seeding the wastewater treatment plant, we also sent our crew down to help clean up in on pillier and that is our streets weepers. Just to follow up on some of Tim's questions, do we have metrics on the streams and whether they're getting better? Is there progress I guess? And do we have projections about when they may no longer be impaired if that's the goal? Such a good question. The state has a model, had a model that the entire flow restoration plans are based off of. It's called the BMP DSS. It was on a single machine that broke. So that model, we can't access it anymore. So as of right now, we can't make a determination on how the our flow restoration plan is actually working for going into the future with implementing it. The main thing that we're looking for is when the aquatic organisms come back though, if we're talking about in the stream real world. We wanna see the aquatic organisms that we've lost return to the streams. That's all the managers and do we monitor that? Do we go on check? The state of Vermont goes out and does that. I'm not sure what their schedule is. It was every three to five years. I don't recall off time when the last time they came to our neck of the woods was. And then just related question in terms of the lake, the cyanobacteria. Are there projections? Like, do you have a sense of is that gonna get better or worse? Is all this stormwater mitigation helping timeframe? So, I'll jump in on that one. So that's a complex issue and there's a number of different pieces there. It's not just stormwater, right? It's also wastewater and agriculture. I would say residents in South Burlington have a right to be very proud of the contributions we make towards the phosphorus reductions between that chart that Bob showed you about the phosphorus that comes in and is removed, the millions of dollars we've spent on our stormwater treatment systems and the millions more to be spent. We're really making great progress towards kind of the individual goals for the city that the state has set. But on a statewide basis, they do an annual report card for the lake. So I might kind of send you to look at that. But, you know, whether it's so variable and sometimes we have a huge storm and a big flood and the amount of phosphorus that's transported to the lake and just that one event sort of eclipses other efforts at time. So it's a complex question. Yeah, the sediment plume from the July 10th flood did a lot to negate what we do. All right, emerging issues. We just, the state came out with a new MS4 permit in 2023. So it's similar to Bob's permits. It's on a five year cycle. It is a Nipte's permit as well. And so we are now covered under the new 2023 MS4 permit. And there are a couple updated requirements that come with that. And so you will be seeing a new, some, a couple of new things in the ordinance when that comes to be updated. And our ordinance is combined with these wastewater ordinance. So that'll all be coming to you at once. The other big thing is we are now the proud owners of chloride-impaired streams. Chloride impairment is rhodesalt. And we have currently from the 2022 list Centennial Brook, Potash Brook and Anglesby are chloride-impaired. But we have been told that when the 2024 list comes out, Bartlett Brook will also be on that list. So what that means with the new MS4 permit is that we are now required to have a salt reduction plan for our municipal operations. And so we are required to reduce the amount of rhodesalt that we are using in chloride-impaired watersheds. The good news is they have not defined an exact amount that we have to reduce it. And the even better news is that Tom and Adam have been working for over a decade to reduce the amount of rhodesalt we use on our roads. So we are actually already very much at the forefront of keeping that number down. The first chloride-TMDL in Vermont is in the approval process. That's for Sunnyside Brook in Coldchester. We are expecting the state to begin working on rolling out TMDLs for our impaired streams in the coming months and or years. So once those come out, we will know more about what we need to do. Quick question on that. So is the chloride impairment exclusively related to rhodesalt? It's salt applied to any impervious surface is how I would describe it. So people see our trucks out there applying salt, right? That's what you want them to do for public safety. There's also a private property component of that that is quite large. So I can't remember if we have slides in Adam's presentation about how we regulate and have worked to reduce our salt. You don't necessarily see that in the private sector, right? Because they're concerned about liability for slip and fall type things. So there's a lot of education, a lot of outreach to be done on this topic. And then it's again another complex topic because without some sort of protection, my opinion for private property, they don't have necessarily incentive to reduce their use, right? So I think one of the first things you'll see coming years is educational material sent out by our stormwater folks to private property owners across the city to at least try to teach them to use less and get the same result. That's an excellent point. And New Hampshire has a model for training private operators and that then reduces theoretically reduces their liability for slip and fall risk. The state of Vermont is looking at that, but I don't know. We don't know what they're gonna end up deciding. In the sunny side, Brooke TMDL, they did acknowledge that they have no mechanism right now to incentivize private property owners to reduce their salt use. So yeah. Is that Burlington looking at or moving towards using liquid application of chloride? We already do. Yeah. Do we call it pretreat or pre-wet, these salt piles? Pretreat our salt, it reduces sort of the bounce and scatter so that you drop that individual salt crystal, it doesn't bounce off the road, it's a little stickier. So that allows us to use less, right? Because the salt stays where we want it. You can spray it at the spinner, you can pretreat it in the shed, you could just spray directly on the road. You may have seen V-trans do that in the past. Are we doing liquid application in South Burlington? Yes, we are doing liquid application. We are pretreating that salt pile and they also use the liquid application at the spinner on the trucks occasionally. And the liquid that we use is a magnesium chloride which de-ices at a lower temperature than your regular road salt. So that decreases the amount you need to apply at lower temperatures, although we're not seeing a lot of lower temperatures these days. Do we know how many tons of salt we use after a season? We do. Pretty good records on that because we've tried to drive down that number. I mean, again, every winter is different, right? So we might go and salt 25 times one winter and 15 another or whatever it may be. So it's hard to... We were looking for a downward trend on this kind of the way we're looking at it. And it is a downward trend. The data looks great. I've seen some private property roads and parking lots that are way over salted after a storm and they should be held accountable to some standard. And the only way to do that is to, is have the state tell them what the standard is and teach them how to do it and maybe convert over to a liquid treatment. I know some place I can't say where I've seen it like that. That picture is a local picture that was taken this winter on a private... Mr. Bed, you can't go back out after a storm after it's dried up and vacuum it back up. It's stored for the next storm, but that's the future, I guess. Any other stormwater topics or questions? Thanks for your good work. And for all the departments so far too. All right, you ready, Adam? That's right, we did. So we'll move on to highway, parks, maintenance, maybe a little about mechanics. You wanna introduce yourself? I'm Adam Kate. I'm the deputy director. I deal with all the day-to-day operations for the highway crew, the parks crew, the stormwater crew, the mechanics. There's a lot of crossover there. A lot of the things we do, if the weather's not bad, we'll dig water breaks for, Champlain water, we'll dig sewer breaks for Bob. So we kinda touch everything across the board. It's kind of a maintenance construction crew that is, I guess, what do we have here? Crew of 16, we have been shorthanded for a number of years. All of our staff have CDLs and getting CDL drivers. It's been a little challenging. And the state, the federal government actually changed the rules during COVID to make it even harder, so we had to have more training. It's really maybe a misnomer and maybe a little bit more aimed at cross-country truck drivers rather than municipal drivers. But at any rate, we have a trainer in-house now, so we're getting through that. We maintain all the sidewalks, the roads, shared use paths, the traffic signal. That's an evolving technology, I think, as we've learned with the whole Dorset Street project. That's gonna help us a lot. We're looking forward to that. A lot newer stuff, stuff that's not on on Spandwire. Spandwire stuff was old and gets banged around a lot and catches on fire and stuff, so, literally. We continue with our paving, this coming, this end of this fiscal year, we'll start the Dorset Street project, which will be phase four to Aspen Drive to Kennedy Drive. We'll be next June, we're hoping, right? One school's out, it's right in front of school, obviously, in the fire station, so we'll have some challenges there, but we'll figure that out. We do all that right-of-way permits through our office so that we've, Tom's insisted that we do a better job on that, we certainly have. It's way cleaner now than it has been in the past and easier to find stuff, so. I'll just note, as part of our crew, we have one arborist and one horticultural specialist. So it breaks out trees versus other landscaping and maintenance. Back to the salt discussion, we've spent, when I should have said this before, I started in 2010, I've been here 14 years. When I started here, the way of dealing with snow is basically put as much salt on it as you could to make it go away. We've changed that, an enormous amount, and we've now tried to reduce the amount of salt used by every operator. We track every truck individually, contract, the rate in which they use it kind of became a good mechanism for create a little competition to get the operators to actually reduce their salt use because we do a graph after every storm. You can see how much you used. Typically, in terms of how the nomenclature for what we do, we apply X number of pounds per lane mile. Now, you'll notice that slide on the bottom, that's three lane miles. You see those trucks driving, okay? Because they're each taking up a lane, so they may, they'll each use, hopefully, we've gotten down to 150. Again, when I started here, common place was 500 pounds per lane mile. So if they drive one lane mile, we want them to use 150 pounds of salt. There's some variables to that with temperature and stuff, but, and then the liquid, liquid has been a great addition in terms of keeping the salt on the road, as Tom mentioned with the bounce and scatter, but also it lowers the eutectic temperature. So actually use it as colder temperatures. Regular rock salt doesn't really work that well after 21 degrees. Which is, is that the salt saver plow? Yeah, the top screen. So that's another, so that's where it's going with us is we've, the mentality is involved and it's become more about mechanically removing the snow. So what you see on that truck is one of three or four that we now have. It's basically a second plow behind the initial plow and it's got a number of fingers. It's kind of like a York rake, but it allows them to get down into a lot of the uneven road surfaces and stuff and it adds an additional level of scraping. They've reduced the amount of salt. They bill it as a salt saver, the company, it does, but it just does a wonderful job of removing the snow. So we have invested in that and that's something we'll continue to do. The operator buy it was very quick, which is sometimes in this business, not the easiest thing in the world. And the guys, like I said, the operators with that little bit of competition trying to get the salt used down, we've increased the significant amount in that area. So continue to be proud of that. I know we are, I don't know of anybody else in the state that does it to the extent that we do. And all these other people will tell you that, that have witnessed what we've seen, including the truck manufacturers and stuff like that. They always comment on the lengths we go to get the right equipment, stuff like that. So I'm also in charge of the fleet and purchasing the fleet. So those real life experiences make it pretty easy for me to apply it to what we're actually buying, probably drive some crazy with my single source requests, but that's how we get here, I guess, some days. We have hired another ball field employee this year. Traditionally, we've, the ball fields have been taken care of by a seasonal or we've made that a full-time position this year in response to some increased needs in the parks. Looking forward to that, that person will start next month or next, the 15th of next month, this month. Yeah, that is the first. Also looking forward to the possibility of putting electric vehicles into use when we expand our facility. I'm all for it, for the smaller vehicles. Look forward to doing it. Swapping out a bunch of these kind of, I call them run-around vehicles, just a truck, like a supervisor truck that doesn't have to have the ability to push or power or stuff like that, just get from A to B. So I think that'll be, we'll be doing that robustly when we switch over. Before we go to the, can I ask you something that I saw that really intrigued me at the PCI? Oh yeah, yeah. I just explained a little bit how it works. I know when I was going around, you have different communities that say, why is my road not being addressed in the other road? And as at least as I read it here, that you make data-driven decisions, which is fairness, no one had a problem with fairness. People are just trying to understand how the decisions were made. I think this would be a great thing to highlight, to send out, because I think that creates a sense of everyone is being treated equally and the same. Sure, in full fairness, Erica is the guru on that. Usually we know what roads are bad, so we can be like, hey, no, I know we've filled 5,000 potholes in Thorsett Street, so I know we need to deal with it, but Erica can speak that to that much more cleanly than I do. I'm sure you know it's bad, but there's always the perception of, why did you choose that? Oh, absolutely why. So I think the ability to advertise to the public, how these decisions are being made, I think creates a sense of, okay, every corner of the city is being treated fairly. That's exactly right. So we also have an opportunity then to make some other decisions. So do we want neighborhood roads? We can allow them to get maybe a little more deteriorated than we would sort of a collector road, like a Kennedy drive and things like that. And then we can really kind of tweak where we are and be more efficient. And then once we have our paving plan, we can line up all the stuff that's buried under that asphalt, right? So that we're not three years later having to come back and maybe replace a water line. So that's sort of the work we did last year is sort of the crux of kind of lining everything up over the next 10 years and getting them on the same cycle. So yeah, that's a good starting point. We'll do exactly as you said. The charging stations that you're hoping to put in, are you looking at doing level two or level three charging stations? Do you know? These are level two right now. Four again are kind of the vehicle iDrive that doesn't need any power at all. And some other vehicles that we used to get around town. And then for some of the larger vehicles like the plow truck you see up here, we're not quite there yet with technology in our opinion. But this will be a good entry for us because we do have a, I forget how many we have, we're putting in 10 charging stations. And I think as we replace vehicles, we'll fill those up pretty quick with our smaller vehicles for now. Just asking because I know that there is a real shortage of level three charging stations in our area for people that are driving through and need to get charging. And municipal buildings are a great place to consider putting them so that travelers know I can actually stop and get a charge on my way through. So I would encourage considering putting one or two and when you're doing it to improve that infrastructure for all of us. Well, it's a good time to have that conversation because at this point we were just kind of a paper plan with here's going to be the spots and then how many can we fit? And so pending funding, we can look a little closer at the different levels. And we have an electrical engineer who's very informed on that and Lou Breesie in the city is helping us as well. The other side of that coin, in terms of like powering your heavy equipment and trying to meet some climate goals is biodiesel. And the question is, we can't even get it. I don't think in Vermont yet, right? And I don't know why that is. I just, I don't know why, but if it would it be possible to put like B10 in some of those trucks, would they perform okay without any changes or modifications? I don't know the answer to that. I know, I will tell you that the diesel stuff, all the particulate filters and all that are finicky. And they have, they'll shut a truck down in the middle of the road. If it doesn't happen the other day, if they don't, we have to put the DEF in there, which is a diesel additive and that stuff can even go bad. So it's got a certain rating. And we've had that those get some bad stuff in that it'll shut the truck down and then you can drive five miles an hour. So it is very finicky. And my assumption up here is probably because it's colder that some of that biofuel is probably not gonna be as viable in a truck that's out in 30 degree below weather, you know, plowing. Did we have this this winter? No, fortunately not. So it's no there. Yeah. Well, yeah. Okay. Watch out, watch out. I don't know, something dropped. Oh, your power supply, hold on. Technical difficulties here. Can you see it? There you go. Speaking of charging stations. Yeah, just to finish up here, some of our initiatives as I think some of these neighborhoods probably been built faster and we've been able to accompany. So we've entered it in some maintenance agreements with them because they want us to take the roads over kind of as soon as possible. And in order to facilitate the residents are living there even before the whole neighborhoods are not done the desires to have us plow the roads, which is understandable. So Tom's entered in some agreements with a couple of these new, I guess they're not fully accepted. They're in the works period. In prior councils have seen the agreements that get us out there to the maintenance. This council will likely see two roads in the O'Brien development and a park in the near future that are being offered up for city acceptance. So we're working through that with the developer right now. We continue to focus on pedestrian and bike safety around the schools. We've been looking quite a bit at bike path paving and tree work and stuff like that, address that with some CIP money. So we'll continue to look at that. We already spoke about the chloride. That's pretty much first and foremost on our mind in the winter. When I mentioned CDL drivers, it's still hard to come by and we have an aging workforce and within probably four or five years we'll have another five retirements. So that ends up being quite a bit of our staff. So the recruitment is gonna be really important moving forward. And finally, like everything, equipment costs have gone up tremendously. So as the city continues to grow and we need new specialized equipment the cost for that stuff has got up so much in the last few years, it's pretty outrageous. So that general information there on our highway parks management, any questions before we turn it over to Erica for open space and paying for pads? So one quick one. So I get all these news feeds about how to reduce carbon emissions. And one thing that pops up every now and then is green asphalt, low temperature, cold temperature or warm temperature asphalt where is less emissions when you're producing at the plant and lower emissions when you're laying it down because it's at a much lower temperature and actually safer for the folks who are laying it down with less fumes. So have we, Tom, we may have talked about this before. I think we emailed about that and it wasn't an opportunity we currently take advantage of certainly I don't know if it was available in Vermont so I'd have to go back to our emails Councillor Tonic and remind myself, but yeah. Okay, yeah. Just wanted to say, I'm sorry, let's be quiet. Sorry, Tim. Can I just get clarification on one of the points on this last slide is when there is a new development approved, what is the process for assuming responsibility either by the city or when does the discussion occur of sort of what the maintenance needs are of the neighborhoods that are coming online? That's a good question. So a lot of the time during the development review process there'll be a discussion with the board about whether a road or a piece of land infrastructure park would ever become public in the end. And so it's at that point that sort of the initial decision is gonna be made that it can go kind of down that path, if you will. The maintenance piece of that is something we've been working on very recently trying to tie those sorts of approvals any CIP projects back to future maintenance needs and costs, right? And so that's something we're actively working on. Erica, who will be up in a moment, she has put together sort of within our CIP, we're trying to account for that. So that's included in those spreadsheets when you see them. And it's process wise, so they'll build the infrastructure, they'll request a bond release, eventually they'll say it's done. And so we have a different warranty periods for different things for a road, for example, to two years after they put down that final layer of pavement, we get a variety of opportunities to inspect it during that time, but then we'll do a final inspection, go over the deeds with the city attorney, and then we would bring sort of a recommendation to council to say, we do not recommend that council accept this road as public. I just wanna say thank you for all the accomplishments on Dorset Street so far with the timings of the signals and the sensors, and it's very easy to get up to Williston Road now, much faster than it was before, because they're not on timers anymore, they actually have this nice little white monitor, whether it's infrared or radar or whatever. And more to come there, Councillor Barrett, in the next couple of weeks we'll get our switches in, and so then we'll really be able to run the adaptive software, and we'll get some of our yellow flashing arrows back and things like that, so it'll be even better. What are the white antennas that have the dishes that point up and down the road? That'll connect all those signals together back to this building, so that we'll be able to access that information remotely, so that radio. Yeah, Adam can sit at his desk or whatever computer he's on, make adjustments or keep an eye on something if he needs to, and we don't have to run out there and plug into the actual box, so modern times, modern times. Thank you. All right, thank you. All right, and last but not least, we've got some open space and a penny for Pam. Hello, everyone. I'm Erica Qualan, Deputy Director for Capital Projects. I'm gonna talk to you about open space projects, the bike ped projects, and then I'll stick around for your next agenda item. So thank you for bearing with all of us this evening. In Councilor Scanlon, I will talk to the PCI briefly when we get into the bike and ped also, because we're looking to kind of expand that into other pieces of infrastructure. So the open space fund is one of our special funds in here and it is split into half cents. It's a one cent tax revenue and it is split in half, and I am managing one half of that scent that's designated for improvements within the three parks here, Red Rocks Park, Hubbard, Recreation and Natural Area and Wheeler Nature Area. Mr. Paul Connor has the honor of working with the other half-cent that's designated for land acquisition. So it's a half, I thought it was five percent. The five percent, yeah, it's changed many times. So half-cent is designated for improvements in these specific parks, and then there is a five percent piece that is for maintenance in our parks and open space more generally. Five percent of the half-cent, is that? Yes. So if we bring in a dollar, half, 50 cents of it goes to Paul to work with land acquisition, what we use to purchase Hubbard or recently with Eau Claire. Another half-cent is to be used for things like we have recent trail improvements in Wheeler, upcoming improvements in Hubbard and also Red Rocks, and that gets 45 cents. And then there is five cents of that dollar that goes towards parks and open space maintenance generally that is not tied directly to those three parks. Dave Wheeler and I spent about a week trying to figure this out with graphs on my whiteboard. So today I'm gonna be primarily talking about what's going on at those three parks and open space. First, she's not here tonight, but a big welcome to Silken Kirchner, probably the biggest success of 2024 so far. We welcomed a new team member, a new project manager for both transportation and open space. She joined us from the private sector and has just jumped right in. You'll see a lot of her with Adam Math for the third item here of the Open Space and Parks Master Plan, which is a really exciting new effort that I believe you're getting a presentation on fairly soon, maybe just your next meeting, yeah. And another exciting piece here is that Wheeler Park, we have been working on a conservation easement for a while there, and we're getting close on the one at Wheeler Park. So that has been really exciting there. And that leads into what is really one of our biggest emerging issues is how we balance conservation and development and even within the open space area of where things for active recreation, like a ball field or a playground compared to what you're seeing in the picture here at Wheeler of real open space. And how can we balance those needs? Make sure they're done equitably across the city. We have limited space and limited resources. So how can we allocate that appropriately? And the Open Space and Parks Master Plan is really one of the ways we're gonna try to figure that out, bring in a good consulting team and work closely with the public to figure out what some of our best options are there. And then two real boots on the ground things here is that we are moving towards bid and construction for trail improvements at Hubbard and Red Rocks. So the previous council had a few different discussions that I had set up here about Hubbard. And so what came out of those discussions that share use path on Hubbard is moving forward with as many of the elements that we had in that motion from council as possible. And Red Rocks, this is a very large store, modern project more than anything, for trail improvements, improving the outfall at the beach, improving drainage throughout the park so that the trails can stay in as good of condition as possible. Any question on Open Space? We've gone way over time. I'm gonna try to keep it quick for you. Okay, bicycle and pedestrian. Division next. And this is primarily about Penny for Paths, which is the other special fund. And again, it's a one cent property, it's one cent on the property tax bill that I'll show a graph of the impact it's had and when it started. But this one cent goes towards planning and design of specifically new projects for walking and biking infrastructure that can be anything from a crosswalk like the new ones you've seen on Wilson Road that just came online to large shared use paths. So any scale, but as long as it's new, Penny for Paths can be applied. Maintenance, on the other hand, has to come from a different source. That's the way that the Penny for Paths ballot was written. So we have a bike pad maintenance budget line item and also a curbs and sidewalk budget line item, both of which have steadily increased. Thank you to the council for helping us be able to maintain this infrastructure and supporting that as a priority. Over the years, South Burlington has really grown. We have the highest number of shared use paths in the state over 24 miles, which is very impressive. And that got us a bronze designation as a bicycle friendly community in 2021. And next year we will apply, hopefully at least get to silver. We got a lot of recommendations out of that. So we're working through them. Some of our big successes and goals here, that graph on the right shows the impact that Penny for Paths really had. It was approved in August of 2019 and went into effect in FY20. That dark blue is the Penny for Paths funds that we've used. And you can see when it first started, we had to use all of the Penny for Paths for projects, but it's been recognized that we have this funding source and that is a great source for grant matches and that the city is really doing the work. And so you can see just how steadily the grants have been coming in since Penny for Paths. This past year was very exciting. The Climate Action Implementation Plan was completed, which has a lot of bicycle and pedestrian goals and targets in there. So that has laid out many years of work for me. And starting with some of the projects that you've probably seen, maybe even on your way here, some new crosswalks going in, they went in on Kennedy Drive. That was right when I started here. And then Williston Road this past summer, really exciting example of how a seemingly small project can be really impactful. I've actually gotten emails from folks saying, thank you for this specific crosswalk. So that's been great. And from a policy perspective, something again small but really impactful is shifting to Ray Stripe, Ignis City streets down to 10-foot lanes, which in many cases gives us now room for bike lanes. So without having to spend massive amounts of money to widen a road, we can do it without increasing impervious and slow vehicles down and make a designated space for bicycles. Erica, what are the constraints around that? Can you restrict spare to 10 feet? I don't think it is. Spear was the first big one that we did and so that's how the bike lanes got on there. I know when you striped it, you couldn't narrow it down to 10 feet and that's what it is now? Yep. And so now it's the only place that 10 feet isn't really appropriate are turning lanes. Usually you want 11 or 12, so people have some flexibility and on really heavily industrial traffic roads. I'll just jump in there and note, so we're restriping them at 10 foot. These lines are gonna get worn off quicker by people driving on them. So something we're looking at, we wanna get the lines back down right now, but is maybe we can kind of grind out where the line goes and paint in that area or different materials. So right now the focus is getting the lanes there, getting them reduced and then we're gonna try a variety of things in the future. And so some things that we're moving towards and looking at doing. Increasing, we have an increasing need for maintenance here. We're putting all of this great infrastructure in. It looks great on day one. It might even look great on day 100, but we do have to take care of it. And as Adam discussed, we have a lot to already take care of. So between staffing and financial resources, but this is where we are trying to really pull in the data component. So to get to that pavement condition inventory, just keep it brief. We've already done that for the roads recently and we're looking to also add our shared use paths into that inventory. And so the way it's done right now is a very manual process if you go out and you measure a crack, you say, in this 100 foot section of Dorset Street, there was X number of feet of this type of crack, X number of feet of this type of crack, this many potholes rank each of those distresses, low, medium, high, and the software that we use can then give it a score, which is the PCI from zero to 100. And then we can do what Tom was talking about, classifying a lower volume road. We might be willing to get to one score, which is lower than what we'd be willing to see on Spear Street, which is lower than what we'd be willing to see on Dorset Street, just examples that don't take those streets for absolute certain. And so we're looking to do that with our shared use paths also. And within this software, we can also do a lot of our budgetary planning. We can go in, we had someone go in and say we spent this much money on this type of work in this year. We ground out two inches of pavement or replaced it with one and a half. It cost this much money. And the software can learn from all of that data. And we can say, okay, we have $1 million for paving. How best should we spend it? And looking at the scores that it sees, what we're comfortable doing, it will say, okay, you should spend all of it on reconstructing this, or it'll say, just fill potholes for the next two years. We knew a lot of planning there. So I'm- Tree roots. Yeah. Tree roots on bike paths. That's a big problem right now, creating ripples. And you have to excavate the whole thing, right? And then cut the root out and then go back. But I mean, you did that down in Stonehenge, right, last two summers ago, right? Where you fixed the entrance to the bike path. That one was very much an extreme- And also at Noan Farm and Dorset, right? That was excellent, too. The Stonehenge one was really extreme. The Noan Farm and Dorset ones were ones that we could do with the crew. And so that's what that bike path maintenance line is really going towards and why it needs to grow. Because the more miles we path, the more tree root potential you have. A really big thing going on right now that is a big focus of mine is our active transportation plan. This is, it has been known as a walk bike master plan, a bike ped master plan, a lot of things. So the active transportation plan is underway. We've had our first public meeting and the big push right now is our online survey. We've had probably 200-ish folks respond to it so far, but spread the word. We are continuing to take input for another month and a half or so. But so I think that's it. Yeah, any questions on either of those departments? Any questions? So there are a few maps in the city. One particular, Samansky Park, which shows our bike ped network, which is pretty dated because it doesn't really reflect anything we've done over the past few years are supposed to be done. So I don't know when the right time is, but at some point we need to update the maps so people actually know what the current infrastructure is when they're biking around. That's a great point. And I've gone back and forth with the folks at Rackin Park is also about our wayfinding generally. So those park entry signs, but also the little signs that say Overlook Park half a mile that way and Dorset Street a mile that way. So yeah, I agree. They definitely do not show all 24 miles. So a wayfinding investment might be a worthy endeavor. Yeah. We've got 24 miles of mixed use paths, which is a lot and great. Very few of them are interconnected. Is that a primary focus of the active transportation plan? And when will we see what the plan is for interconnectedness? Yeah, that's a great question. So penny for pass was put out to voters as a way to fund closing those gaps. And so some of those have been done the top of Allen Road, but some of those bigger gaps are ones that are either being engineered and designed right now or will come out of that active transportation plan. That plan is expected to be fully complete late this fall is kind of our timeline, but our next public meeting, which is probably gonna be the end of May, will be when we start showing what has been mapped as the gaps identified based on public input and based on just looking at a map and doing exactly what you're talking about. I will say that the, it was real point of pride for me as we're having a little bit of a bragging night too, that when the consultants were starting to dig into the data, they compared that to our currently currently in design projects. And it was like, these are really working on most of these big ones. So a lot of the projects in our current CIP are addressing those, but that is one of the biggest outcomes from the active transportation plan. I'll just note to the end of May, we'll have something to look at. Yes, yes, there will be some draft forms there. To go from concept to design, permitting right of way acquisition, final engineering construction is a multi-year three to five year process at this point. So I think they mean three to five is five-ish. So those ideas and those things that you're probably thinking of, we're working on them a lot. So you'll see that in the future. So if there's nothing else for this, I know we went a little long, but it's also hard to capture all the things that Public Works does in an hour. Hopefully you came away with a sense for all the different things we do and sort of how innovative this team is and has been and will be going forward to our different programs kind of across the board. I was anyway reminded and I do this every day with all the innovative things that our team's working on. So any final questions or we'll move on to our next item, which you still get to hear from Erica and I. I think there are no questions, but I wanna ask the council if they want a five-minute break before we go into the next one. Is that okay? Would that be acceptable? Yes. Yes, okay. We're gonna take a five-minute break. We will be back at 8.43. City Manager, Jesse Baker, Paging City Manager, Jesse Baker, code 97, code 97. And here she is. I think they're good. I mean, I can pull that foot. Okay, thank you. We're back at the second half of the South Brilliant City Council meeting for April 1st and we're on item nine, which is Proof Resolution Establishing a School Zone and Speed Limit on Dorset Street, Tom DiPetro, Public Works. Yes. Thank you all. Tom DiPetro, Public Works Director. With me is Erica Qualin, who helps with a lot and does a lot of our traffic management and planning. So what we have before you tonight is an update to our Speed Limit Resolution. You have seen something similar twice in the past. So two years ago, we did not have any school zones in South Burlington. We created the first one on White Street, second one on Market Street in front of the Rick Marcotte Central School. And at this point, we have finished the engineering study necessary to evaluate and determine the need and the recommendation for a school zone on Dorset Street in front of the high school. So the language that you see there in front of you tonight will do that. And it sets it up very similar to the other two. We will order the hardware and signage necessary. It'll have the blinking yellow lights. That's how motorists will know that the school zone Speed Limit is now 25 instead of the posted 35 normally on Dorset Street. The times are a little different in this school zone, but that we reached out to the principals just to make sure we understood sort of the timing of arrivals, which is a little different in this case than it is to the other two schools. And then also, I didn't mention when I said the hardware, so it'll have the flashing lights, large yellow signs, and then the radar speed feedback. You know, you are going this fast type sign like we have out here on Market Street and White Street. Did I forget anything? That's the general overview and kind of approval is the resolution as you see it in front of you. We'll put that in place and with that approval, we would order the hardware and everything. It's a number of weeks out to get this, unfortunately, eight to 10, maybe 12. Once we place the order, I can update council. So it may be there before the end of this school here, but certainly before the beginning of next. I have some questions, unless the council has other questions too. I'll just go ahead. So will there be extra sign, so you're going to have sign posts that flash that would indicate when the school Speed Limit zone is in session or is active, right? Which is those times that you said, does there have to be extra signage ahead of that signage that warns that there's going to be a school zone? I just can't remember if you have that or not. So this isn't one that would have warning kind of the warning signs before the school zone itself. It would be at the school zone boundary, but the school zone is spread out from roughly Kennedy Drive to the light at Town Square Drive. So the light just beyond the parking lot signal. And these signs, because it is a wider road, we're planning to put in an oversized sign. You can put in larger signs here because it's a multi-lane road. Will this replace the two flashing crosswalk signs on Dorset? No, so this is kind of part one of the study that's been happening in this area. The engineer from Hoyle Tanner, who's been working on the Dorset Street Paving Project council, I believe it was the previous council allocated funding to include some more safety studies around this area. And so this is part one and further recommendations regarding the crossings would go along with the Paving Project. Thanks. Any other questions from the council? I had a question, Tim. Is there any flexibility in utilizing those safety zones for hours outside of what was in the resolution or in the, it is in the resolution? For instance, if there's sporting events or school events that are widely attended outside of those other hours or even weekends? I am not sure. I think we would have to use what's in the resolution there. I don't believe there's a clause in there, anything that says, or when the lights are flashing outside of these hours, it does specify the time. Do you know? It becomes a management issue as well. So part one is sort of the ordinance. So if the police were to give a ticket, right, it has to be backed up by what council has established for a speed in the ordinance. And if it was a 10 o'clock at night, for example, and that's not written in there, they, somebody could challenge that potentially. But also we don't have the people to be running out kind of on any given evening because it's not consistent, right? So in the summer. I guess that I'm asking for a safety reasons, not so much enforcement in the moment, but really the opportunity to recognize when there might be increased safety needs at that location. So these operate on a timer. And as we learned the lesson the other day with daylight savings time, we have to get that in our calendars to make sure we adjust them on Market Street, for example. But that's how they operate. So we'd have to have somebody in to make adjustments for flashing lights or to do I think you're suggesting. Okay. And then just I wanted to clarify, has this, did the school district have an opportunity of the superintendent to review the resolution and add any commentary on it? And we emailed a little bit with Violet. And I said, I reset to the school principals for Tuttle and for the high school just to make sure we had the times, right? And they were well aware because of other task force, task forces and committees that were all part of, of this was happening. The resolution language was posted online. I don't recall if we'd sent it directly to Violet. Yeah. All of your council packets get sent directly to the school administration as well. This resolution is also, as you can see, it's a resolution we're updating. So everything but for F3 has been existing resolution for at least two years when we started doing it this way. So the format the school has definitely seen before as we have approved other school zones. The only change is the Dorset Street commentary that as Tom said, was informed by conversations with the principals and discussed at the safe routes to school, task force meeting, discussed in city school leadership team meetings, et cetera. Thank you. So yeah, thanks. Though the resolution seems appropriate and fine to me but I have a related question kind of looking forward to the safety improvements through next summer. Tom, this is something that you and I have also kind of touched on a little bit. But Hoylentown, I guess in this report says two things. As many students walking or riding their bikes. Sorry, it says drive is turned left out of the circling drive. We think it's a high school, had difficulty finding a gap in traffic turn left. And then it says not all vehicles stopped for the rectangular rapid flashing beacon, flashing lights. And I guess I just want to put back on the table or make sure that we kind of fully explore the possibility of the traffic light instead of an R of FB because the traffic light there would both require vehicles to stop and provide a certain gap, right? For folks that want to turn left out of the high school. I know there's other considerations I know it's expensive and maybe this thing's a school could do. I just want to make sure that that's something that's really considered in the proximity of a new light to the other lights, whether we just carefully evaluate that. Sure, we take that feedback. That doesn't impact the resolution as I think you noted, but yeah. So I would consider a motion as stated in the original bottom of the note from Tom that says resolution establishing speed limits. If somebody could create a mistake in motion for that. It's in the memorandum. Okay, so I move to adopt the resolution to adopt school zone policy and speed limit in this resolution and establish a school zone on Dorset Street. Well, no. How about right here? I'm just saying I move to recommend that the city council vote to approve the attached resolution establishing speed limits on public streets and highways in the city of South Wellington with the proposed amendment to section F. Thank you. A second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? I did want to just acknowledge Tim Warren from the school board is in the audience and I didn't know if you wanted to make any comments, Tim. No, no, this is the opportunity right before we vote if you want to make a discussion. So come up to that podium and push the button to make the light bright green. The light is bright green. Okay, we're good to go. So all right, first of all, let me say I speak on behalf of the board when I say thank you very much for moving this forward. This is a very important issue to the board and what I think that most parents and are really greatly appreciative of. That's a very tricky area right there. I have kids there who go to school and pulling in and out of there is really challenging. So just a couple of quick questions. We weren't aware that this was going to be on the agenda tonight. I'm not sure if Violet was entered. So I have a couple of questions from her. I may have been talked about already. So the delay and paving that's happening when again, if I can ask, just so I have that clear. So our evaluation of this section adores it and the work there. It's sort of multifaceted, right? So the school's own resolution that's under consideration tonight is very much the first part of that. We had the engineer move that study forward so we can consider it tonight. We had planned to pave Dorset Street this summer of that last section four or four. We did not want to get that pavement done and then make changes in the road for the crossings on Dorset such that we'd be cutting into fresh pavement. So we've decided to delay that pavement and do all of anything that comes out of the work that the engineer is currently doing to perhaps consolidate those two crossings into a single one, pedestrian islands, other things we've presented previously to our safe routes to school committee and perhaps other places. So that'll be next summer now. And the goal there, it's tricky because that's a lot of work to get done in a tight timeframe. We'd like to do it when school's not in session. Thank you. I'm in also coordinate with the fire department who's across the street. Okay. So this resolution is just right now for establishing the zone and the signage. There's no lines or anything being put down at this point in time. That's all part of the paving project. This is just for the school zone and there may be some paint on the pavement associated with that. Okay. We have our typical line striping program to redo the lanes. And then once we finally get out of the snow plowing mode our crew can kind of de-winterize the line striping and do crosswalks and things like that around the city. We typically focus in front of the schools first with our crosswalk striping then go to other places. So. Great, thank you. The last comment I do have is the comment on the timing. There is in the school calendar a number of days that are scheduled to start late. Those are teacher learning community days. So those are pre-planned. And I'm not sure you said those lights were on timers but those are days when they start much later or there will be days where they're out potentially earlier. So I'm not sure if that's something that we could coordinate. So those lights are timed appropriately at that point. So it's like once a month or but if we check the calendar that may be something to talk with Violet about and see if we can coordinate that. Because those would be days where the lights would be timed and flashing and there would be nobody at school and it would look a little odd. If it's the council's desire, we can further discuss that. I know we've had the other two school zones and that conditions existed in those areas since we've established those. Okay. And I haven't had that request yet. So I think it would take some rejiggering of the language. It would take perhaps a plan for us to have staff and it would be some coordination. I'll be brief. Tom, is that software? Does you have to physically go to the light and reset the timer? The ladder. Is there technology that we could install that would do that or that's available? I'm not sure. I can certainly report back on that. The equipment we're getting for this school zone is about $26,000 with the timer. But we could certainly answer that question for, yeah. I'm sorry, just thought I'd turn it on. Are these items that, is something that you would want us to hold up this approval for? It may be worthwhile only because I think, you know, if Violet couldn't be here tonight and she's not aware of, and she may be, I'm not sure, but in my email conversation with her, I was planning on attending tonight because I saw this and she just happened to see it and sent me a few questions. So if that's an issue where the lights may be mis-timed, she may want to speak to that, I'm not sure. I think I'd like to get this approved tonight because it establishes a school zone. That's number one. Number two is the signage, right? And three, if you're hitting the signage at 95% of the time, that's important. So if we need to investigate additional technology that would give us the flexibility to, you know, modulate those times, let's do that later. Yeah, and personally, I don't think that's an issue at all. I'm happy to see this move forward. I absolutely agree with you. I can't speak for the entire board, but personally, I think that's probably, you know, an inappropriate approach. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. So we have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? A member of the audience, Mr. Doyle, can you make a brief please? Ryan Doyle, I'm really glad they're going with the oversized signs and due to the fact that Dorset Street is two lanes in both directions, I really want to encourage having the signs on both sides of the travel directions because if you are, if there's an 18-wheeler, for example, or even just the way vanity sizing is with pickup trucks now being very large and over 50% of vehicles on the road now are light trucks, SUVs are considered light trucks, it can be very hard to see past those two signage. And so if you put the signage on both sides, so to the left of the left lane, the right of the right lane, it creates more of a gateway feeling and make sure that other vehicles can't be blocking the signage. And given that speed limit signs tend to repeat and also be kind of not as precise of a sign, whereas the school zone sign, we very much want super high compliance with that at those specific times, that I would encourage doubling up that signage to also be present in the median. Thank you. Ready for the bow? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. It's unanimous. Thank you very much. I have a quick follow-up question for you guys. Just a question about the crosswalks, particularly the new crosswalks at Dorset and Kennedy. I believe right now for a pedestrian to push the button, the timing is set up so that it waits until the cycle comes around to get them, which penalizes the walker and benefits the driver. I understand there's some quote climate issues around that because you don't want to stop traffic more than necessary, but we want to be a bike and pedestrian friendly city, we claim. And I think that when a pedestrian, particularly in inclement weather, comes up to the crosswalk and pushes the button, it would be ideal if they get preference. And I'm wondering if that's something that has been talked about or could be addressed because I think it's a big issue. Nope. Okay, responder. It's out of context for this item. Maybe we could postpone that to, so this is just a comment you're making? Okay, great. I'm not going to respond to that right now either. Thank you. It's 26 seconds or so at Kennedy and Dorset. Yeah. So now you're going to leave. You're leaving and Tom's going to stay and we're going to go to item 10, which is the first reading of a drinking water ordinance. So you're in fact done with me. I'm going to take a backseat and let others, one more member of our team is going to lead the charge on this one, Dave Wheeler. But Jesse, I believe I need to do some screen sharing. Oh, I think I pushed this button and hold on. Maybe I'm still, oh, I was already enabled there. Sorry. Hi. Seats one, Tom. Thank you all. Dave Wheeler, Water Resources engineer. I'm with a large team tonight. So Paul Connor, Jay Nadeau from CWD, Colin, Joe from CWD as well. And Tom, they've all contributed on updating the water ordinance. So big thank you to all of them as well for their help on this. So as Jay mentioned earlier, the city's water ordinance was last updated in 2002. And prior to that, it sounded like 1978 or something of that nature. So since 2002, we've been tracking a lot of changes to make to the water ordinance. A lot of this language is kind of boring, honestly. I gave this to Colin to review and he said it was boring, which is considering he reviews legal documents all day. But for the most part, we're just kind of bringing it into modern day, whether it's kind of the more infrastructure technology type language or legal language or standard policies and procedures. Up here, you'll see a list of various sections of the water ordinance that were updated. There are additional sections that didn't have many updates that are not included on this list, just to give you an overview. So that's two slides worth of sections right there. So just jumping right into what, so I already touched on this. So again, the water ordinance was updated in 2002. Jumping into definitions. We updated a lot of definitions. We added definitions about the water service area, which we will address later. Just to interrupt for a second. So these sheets or this PowerPoint, we haven't seen this, it wasn't in our packet. So just let you know that. So we're reading this as you go along. Gotcha. We added a bunch of definitions about terms like design capacity, there's committed reserve design capacity, system water flow, the committed and uncommitted reserve design capacity, those types of definitions, miscellaneous technical definitions for pipes and parts and pieces of the water system. And then kind of a miscellaneous category, I just called legal here, defining what a premise is or a bedroom or what a change in use is. A lot of that type of definition update. And then I'm gonna hand it over to Paul here. So there's a huge component with updating this on defining a water service area for the city. Yeah, hi folks. So what you're seeing tonight is a hybrid of work that the city's public works department has been preparing for some time that has to do with a lot of important, though apparently boring, technical components, and then one really exciting component that I get to talk about, which is how the water ordinance interfaces with Act 47 in the past last year. So for just a quick orientation, the state legislature last year passed a new law that said in all areas served by municipal water and sewer, by public water and sewer, there the municipality wherever it allows for housing must allow it at a density of at least five units an acre, five housing units an acre. There are some exceptions baked into the law there that if there's wetlands or if it's intended only to get to an industrial park and it happens to go by other rural areas, but essentially it is all areas served by public water and sewer must allow for five units an acre. So our planning commission has been doing work over the last few months to update the zoning regulations to match and our stated goal from day one with this has been ultimately to make sure that all of our policies align and for the first time we are proposing to you that the city's water ordinance include a water service area and that is essentially the area both within which you must connect to the water system with some exceptions and you can speak about that which already exists, but also any areas not in the water service area would not be authorized to connect to the city's water system. And so that's how we align our zoning and our policy here. You'll see that there's a bunch of purple in there the purple is the areas that are already served and or in our city's comprehensive plan and zoning for the most part are anticipated to allow for future development. By contrast, the inverse is the white and the white is areas that are identified in our comprehensive plan and through work that the planning commission and your practice ministers have done are areas designated essentially not for development. So that includes habitat blocks, habitat connectors, the natural resource protection zoning district, hundred year flood plains, the river corridors and some areas of the city that are at high elevations unable to be served by water that Dave can speak to a little bit more in depth later, but that's essentially what the white represents. And the conservation communities? So the work that the, so good question. Can Paul, can I just interpret for a second? So council, I have just emailed you this presentation. So if you want to zoom in on things, it's in your inbox. I can also pull up, I am mindful of the time tonight but we can pull up GIS mapping that can zoom in to anywhere in here that you'd like to talk about tonight or if you wanted a future night. So we can have a more detailed conversation. So the purple areas are the areas intended to be served, the white areas of the areas that would not be able to be served. The planning commission recognized that our current regulations have a limited number of sort of exceptions or difficult interfaces between the state law as passed last year and what our regulations try to do. So two examples, one of which councilor Chalmick brought up. I'll speak about the other one first and then I'll get to the second one. So the first is a couple of years ago the city adopted habitat block regulations and essentially that is forested areas of the city where the city's regulations say essentially no development can take place in those areas. There is an exception baked into the zoning regulations where if your property happens to be more than 70% covered by habitat block, you can build on 30% of it. In order to comply with Act 47, the planning commission has been working to identify and it's shown on this map, those specific parcels where that's the case and rather than writing it, you can build on 30% and have the developer identify that 30%. This map and the zoning map would show the exact 30% because if it's a floating area of it could be any 30% you choose, there could be an interpretation of Act 47 that all of it is buildable. And so we want to be very clear to protect essentially the policy intent of the city to make sure that it's as clear as possible. The second example that Councilor Chalmick just brought up is in various parts of the Southeast quadrant of the city so the southeastern portion as aptly named, the current regulations state that if you're a parcel of more than four acres in size outside the little village area and you have housing development potential so you're not entirely in the natural resource protection district, then you must conserve at least 70% of your parcel and you can build on the remaining 30%. So that's how the conservation PUD works today. It's a mandatory action. That is a floating zone again and it's potentially very tricky as it relates to Act 47. And so the Planning Commission did an analysis of each of the circumstances where there's an eligible parcel for that and I don't remember the number off the top of my head but it was under 15, very, very few. And the Commission saw an opportunity to be much more a nimble in the use of the tool of the conservation PUD so that in some properties where there are habitat blocks or natural resource protection districts and the number is at around 70% that should be conserved then it would be identified as 70% of the property is unbuildable and just market on the map. And in some properties where perhaps it's surrounded by development and it just sort of happened to be caught in this, all properties more than four acres. If it was surrounded by development that's served by water and sewer, Act 47 is pretty clear that that area should be served. And so in some cases the number that would be conserved would go down for that given parcel and it would essentially just be as marked on the map of what are the flood hazard areas, obviously wetlands, river corridors, et cetera. The Commission had staff do an analysis of what the net changes are in all of this in doing so and updating to reflect some of the conservation activities that the city has done like completing the conservation of the Eau Claire parcel and places like that. And the net is about 30 acres of difference in the southeast quadrant ultimately. There's different ways that you can calculate it. It's more conservation if you consider that the city has taken over some land for parkland. It's maybe 30 acres to the minus on the scale of 10,000 acres in the city. If you were to sort of view it as could it theoretically have been built upon? So that's how that's how that's addressed to try to comply with the Intent of Act 47. I'm happy to go into more detail, but I will let also happy to answer any questions. So if you then that notice, if we have water and sewer on a property that say is or in areas otherwise NRP, that Act 47 would then require us to allow five units per acre. Those two things are incompatible. Like once you have water and sewer, then Act 47 requires five years per acre. If you allow for any housing, yes. However, that's NRP in those because NRP does allow for some housing. If it's in your planned service area and that's why there's so much of the NRP or essentially all of the NRP is excluded from the water service area. So therefore it's not applicable because it's not the policy of the city to extend water in those areas. We found a very tiny handful of parcels, like less than five, where a portion of the NRP, a house already exists in there. And in those cases, we cut a small piece of the property to be served because it already is. And then our recommendation of the Planning Commission is that the NRP is removed from literally an acre or two, not the entirety. And therefore the overwhelming majority of the NRP is not currently served by water and sewer and therefore would not be eligible if you were to move forward with this plan, not be eligible to be served and therefore would not be applicable. Does that make sense? Okay. Great. I guess, yeah. So jumping into just more from the water side of things, from the water side of things, the area shown in white, there's a certain land area above an elevation of 430 feet that we're not able to serve water to. So there's the water tank by the country club. When that tank is operating at its critical low level, we have to be able to provide water pressure at 35 PSI. So any houses at an elevation of 430 or higher, we can achieve that 35 PSI, it's just water pressure. So that land area was excluded from the water service area. And then, and just to speak about where that is, it's an oval shape that's essentially off the southeast corner of Butler Farms on Hinesburg Road, down to basically where the, you see a little tag of purple down by the Auclair parcel. It's a little oval that just sort of surrounds Hinesburg Road on both sides from Butler Farms down to just just at the very northern tip of the Auclair property. And then touching on something else that Paul mentioned, there are folks in the water service area that are not provided service by us but adjacent municipalities and they're connected to their services. So either water, sorry, Burlington or Shelburne. And that goes both ways we provide water to some folks over town boundaries as well. Then the section on water main construction, this is more just kind of the technical standards that were updated. So you may be aware public works adopted standard specifications relatively recently. And in the DPW standards, we reference the CWD standards. So they have their own technical specifications. So this ordinance was updated to refer to that document many times. So we've specified minimum pipe diameters, establishing 20 foot easements, prohibiting booster pumps. So in areas where we cannot provide that 35 PSI, we're prohibiting the use of booster pumps to make up that pressure because we would be obligated to supply water at that pressure. If that booster pump were to go down, if there's a power outage, we would have to have a generator to supply power to that booster pump. So it just becomes more cumbersome and much more complicated than providing water by gravity. There's two sections on private infrastructure. So kind of the process during development, CWD will provide a private system maintenance agreement during the warranty period. So maybe a developer doesn't want to maintain their water infrastructure during that period when they're waiting for the city to take over the road. So they can pay CWD a fee and they'll maintain it because CWD will be maintaining it into the future. So there's also some kind of trust there of who's maintaining your system. And then there are ongoing fire-hydrant maintenance agreements, so we require agreements of any privately-owned hydrants. And there's a fee where they'll do leak detection and exercising the valves and even painting the hydrant for the fee associated with that. And then there's also language on who's authorized to operate hydrants and if they find a leak or an issue with a private system then putting the property owner on a schedule for repairing those leaks. Section on water meters was pretty robustly updated. There's a lot of, again, kind of specifications, locations of meters, the type of piping required on either end of the meter, backflow preventers, pressure reducers, things of that nature, location of where the meter should be. So that way staff can read the meter as necessary. The property owner is responsible for paying for the meter up front, but then it becomes city infrastructure thereafter. Requirements for a licensed plumber to do the plumbing work associated with installation of the meter. And then you heard about the remote reading of meters, so we've added a fee in there. If there are folks, we're near 100% conversion, but for folks who may not have converted yet, there'll be a fee to basically recoup costs for going and doing the manual reading of the meter and to encourage them to convert as well. And they are actually required to convert under this ordinance. Quick question on that. Is this intended to be for new construction or would for the remote reading? The installation of water meters. You mean the cost of the... Well, I'm... Very specifications around the piping and valving. Does this cover both homeowners that don't have the automatic meter reading to install? Yes, so we're converting 100% of the meters to... And it would be at the homeowner's expense? Jane. Right now, water meters that are in place are owned by the city. As we upgrade them, we do that at our expense, not the customers. What the customer is paying for the first time around is the meter, but after that, we take ownership. So is this cost of installation for brand new construction? Is that what this is for? This sheet here says cost of installation paid by property owners. So he takes over ownership. So is that for new construction? Yes, that's new construction. Yes. And then language for temporary meters during construction. So that has been added in. Upgrading language for internal piping. Again, language about valves and things of that nature. And to is responsible for the cost of repairing, replacing a whole section on owner responsibilities. One important item is how service lines are abandoned. So not only installed, but if a house was demolished or something changed on the site and the service was abandoned, then how that is technically physically done. There's a section on the city center service area. So we have established a map defining that area. And we've included, but the calculation requirements are generally for water allocations. We require them to submit project timelines. We've added some expiration dates in there. So now when you get your preliminary capacity allocation, it's good for two years. If you have not applied for your final capacity allocation, then it expires. For final capacity allocation, if it requires a zoning permit, then it's good for five years. If it does not require a zoning permit, then it expires after two years. And just a quick note on the geography of this map. This map is the city's designated new town center under the state downtown program. And in addition to being good planning for the area that we are planning for growth, it is a requirement of the new town center of designation program that you demonstrate that you have reserve capacity for that area. So that's why we've lined up the map to that designation. And we worked with Jay to establish a number. So we, I think allocated an additional 250,000 gallons to that area. There's a whole section on water conservation. So if there was some sort of crisis or who knows what emergency, then we could curtail these of non-essential water such as landscaping, filling pools and prioritizing health and safety above all other things. I don't know if we've ever had to attempt any water conservation efforts like that in the past. There was one time when either tanks were down or the plants were down. It was in the 1990s. I think that CWD has for a voluntary water conservation in their service systems. And yeah, hopefully with a new tank, we won't ever need that, but maybe even perhaps during the construction of the tank, there'll be a couple of day period of voluntary, you know, reduced service. We've updated the civil penalties and waiver fees to be consistent with other sections of the ordinance. So, you know, increasing what was it before, you know, a $50 fee to a $200 fee on the low end and, you know, a $500 fee to an $800 fee on the upper end. And then there's other miscellaneous updates to fees, revenues and payments. So, council establishes these various fees and we're just, you know, putting it all in writing now. Fees for turning on and off water services, fees for connecting, hydrogen use fees, et cetera. The remote reading fee you see there that I mentioned before. We've also included a base rate into the user fee. So, currently that base rate is set at $0, so it's just allowing that mechanism to be available to council if they choose to go with a base rate model in the future. And then you can also modify the volume, so we charge a minimum water use. And it's based off of 1000 cubic feet of water, so you could, that's now in the fee schedule, so you could adjust that to 500 cubic feet or 2000, you know, to kind of, it's another nod you can turn to adjust policy. For excess revenue, you know, we've specified how that money can be used. It can be used to pay off debt and you can also create dedicated funds to finance major projects. We've added a curb stop operation fee and then we've updated language on abatement. And yeah. Can I do a teeny bit of table setting before you jump to questions? Sure. Which I probably should have done at the beginning of that, sorry. So these are, these, this agenda item and the sign ordinance agenda item that follows this are kind of the first big ordinance changes coming to you all as a new council. Both of these have some time elements associated with them. This one is really around the implementation of back 47. This has been a priority for the city to update this ordinance for, you know, since the end of last legislative session. So we were ready to bring it to you. We didn't want to sit on it any longer and bring it to you. The other one, I'll talk about the time significance later. So you have the option tonight of taking this and asking questions, providing feedback, asking for changes and we can bring it back to you for another first reading or you can set a second reading and a public hearing. If you're making significant changes to the ordinance and Colin jump in here, we really should bring it back to you for another first reading. With the goal of that being the community knows what they're providing comment on and what may change as you go through this or ordaining process. Go ahead, Mike. To be honest, as a general rule, it is a bit overwhelming and especially with that we didn't have it in our packet and I know oversight there. It's a lot to take in and especially the map that you were talking to, Paul, I mean, there's even questions what parts of lands are the over 43 habitats? So I sort of feel like I'm being asked to make a judgment on something that I'm drinking from to not make a joke out of the fire hydrant the water flowing at a high speed. So I think I personally would feel more comfortable to have more time to actually dig into this and make a sort of and good faith comment. Well, to be clear, this is a first reading, right? We would set a date for a second reading and a public hearing and a possible approval of that the new ordinance. Is that enough time to wait until May 20th that you could seek guidance from the... I think if there's ample time to basically come up to speed and not by approving this have somehow signaled an endorsement. We're not going to approve it tonight. I know, you've been moving it along and does send a message that I think like everyone we'll work at a pace in which we basically have had a chance to make informed judgments. So that's my only concern because right now there's lots of questions, a lot of them probably to you are not because you've gone through some of these issues before, but to me, seeing this for the first time at the end of a long night when we've listened to a lot of very informative issues. Well, the night is yet young. For those who are young. So I had a couple of comments and I think that Andrew, you might have pointed this out in an email about taking the fee structures out of the ordinance and putting it into the other fee structure that we... The resolution, right? So is that part of this work as well? Yeah, I mean, some of the things we're taking out but there was still some stuff like a reconnection rate, some of the waiver fees, just in my mind, things that might change and not have to go through a public hearing would be good to have in the resolution. We're out of microphone, so give me some. Colin McNeil, city attorney. So just to back up one second, I just did want to have a disclaimer that no ordinance is boring. They're all very exciting and interesting, but Dave might have caught me in a moment of weakness after 90 pages. But to answer the question, what has to stay in the ordinance is the penalties. So by the penalties per our charter have to be set by ordinance. So the fees, and I think that there's a table still in here about reconnection rates that could probably be moved to the resolution. We can talk about that, certainly. And I don't know if there's any other fees in there we can look, I kind of went through to try to see if there were, but... Those are established by 24 BSH. Okay, so they might happen. So I think, I don't think we can adjust. We can't change them, okay. So what might be still in the ordinance has to stay in the ordinance. I think for the most part everything that has been able to be put in a resolution has been put in a resolution for ease of amendment in the future, but these things have to stay in. So that brings up my next question, which was, and I think Tom and I have emailed back for the couple of times and we've talked about this at previous meetings is the cost per unit and multi-unit residential buildings and how that cost is calculated because currently if they're served by a certain diameter of pipe they're charged per usage, by usage for the whole building. So we don't know whether those individual units are really paying the same equivalent rate that a single family home would if they had their own meter. And they had to pay their own rate per cubic foot after 1,000 cubic, the base rate. So that's my sticking point is that I don't, we don't know, I don't think we've done the research or correct me if I'm wrong, we don't know whether these large multi-unit buildings are paying their fair share of the water cost in South Brayton or not. And I need to know that before I can be okay with this because if we have to change the rate structure to accommodate that so they do get charged the right amount, then that's a sticking point for me, but I'm glad to discuss that. Can I make a follow-up comment on that, Tim, before Tom addresses it? Because I have the exact same concern. So I know we added in here a potential of the base rate, which we've previously discussed that council may be by meter and have the same concern that Tim has. So just, I guess two points on that one, the ordinance kind of says, shall it will be a base rate? I'd love to replace that with May to indicate that it could be zero. But to go to Tim's point, can we provide in here that our multi-unit building owners report into the city how many units there are? So if we do decide to go for a base rate, we can do it fairly and equitably across units and not have a base rate for a building that may have a hundred units and the same base rate for a duplex, which just is not rational. So, Tom DePietro, Public Works Director. What your counselors, your co-councillors are referring to is our rate study that we had done about a year ago. And there were some recommendations in that rate study. We looked at the establishment of a base rate, changing that sort of cost per volume, whether it's $36 per 1,000 cubic feet or maybe that gets adjusted to 24 per 500 or whatever it might be, right, to change that minimum fee. So this doesn't change anything there, but it allows council to set those rates. So I think if there's a question, the base rate is zero, but the old language didn't have base rate discussion in it at all. So now it's in there so that if council wants to circle back to these exact sort of questions, we can certainly get there. But the ordinance itself doesn't make those changes, just allows you to make them in the future, I guess is how I would describe it. And I don't have unit information specifically. I think we could pull that out with some effort out of planning and zoning information, but I don't know that it's certainly not in our billing database. We could ask people to self report, but I'd, you know, the accuracy of that may be different. I'd be more comfortable perhaps, some other way. So there's some data collection, is that as well? I don't know. And the different cost per meter, again, that was going back in the rate study. That was one option we laid out for a way to establish that base rate. So you're saying this ordinance is independent of that rate fee structure that we may want to change? That's right. So council passes a resolution with all of our utility rate fees annually. Okay. And so that's when your opportunity is if you wanted to do that. So if you wanted to make a base rate tomorrow until we update this ordinance, you couldn't because that language just isn't in the ordinance from 2002. So it enables you to move that forward at your leisure. So if that becomes a council priority going forward, we can certainly circle back to that. We have great information in the rate study. I have some huge spreadsheets I can dust off and we can really get into that if folks are interested. Okay, great. Thanks. Now I understand. Any other comments? I have a comment and I'll have to disagree with the call and this was eye socket drying to read. But I asked the basic question around sort of why are the changes being made? And it sounds like many are sort of bringing language up to date compliance and then a lot of focus on act 47, correct? The second thing is sort of what are the material new changes? And I think I got a sense for some of those in here and then sort of who is the most impacted positively and negatively from those changes. So I'm walking away from this education with water service area seems like a material change. A question I would have if we have a second reading, maybe some clarification on is there redundancy in other actions that have been taken and is it, I don't wanna use the word overreach because I don't really know the notion of the map and sort of where there was a selection of properties where the 30% of the 70% is specifically identified and then on the plus four acre rule sort of understanding better where that specificity came from in this recommendation and ultimately the ordinance itself. I don't know how many properties affected but the private systems and the hydrant maintenance, I don't know if that is material or not. And then around the user fee, but again, don't know if that's material or not around. Primarily, I guess I called out the base rate but not knowing what that is. I don't know if that would be considered material or not but I would be interested in getting some feedback on are those the right material changes and then as we approach public hearing sort of making sure we're getting representative voices pro and con on some of those issues. If that makes sense. Do you wanna respond to that or is it, do you want them to respond? Sorry, if you can, that would be great. Are you looking for that summary of material changes now or you're looking to hear that in the future? Are you saying? Well, I guess I'd look to the rest of the council whether we wanted to defer this to a second reading and be able to speak to that point or not what kind of follow up would be appropriate? Yeah, I mean, the whole red line version of the ordinance was in the packet and as you see, there are many changes throughout. So I tried to just in this presentation summarize some of the key things that had changed as far as an analysis of who that impacts, what changes impact who if we established the base rate that impacts everybody. And in the rate analysis, there's a good summary in I think Appendix L that shows what those rates, how they change and for who and how much over time. But if there are any specific questions you wanna answer now, you can do that or follow up with more analysis. I'm happy to provide questions and writing after the fact or whatever would be efficient use of time tonight. I'll look to Tim for you to call that one. So don't forget that. I mean, if we send it for public hearing, that's what it is. It's a public hearing and that's the time for the public to come in and ask these questions and make their opinions known, right? But it sounds like you have more specific information that you wanna know. Well, I think for, I mean, I think the public would wanna know in order to respond because like is a base rate established, for instance. So what's the order of magnitude and things like that? Well, it is, go ahead. No, you go ahead. I think your summary of the material changes is actually very well said, very spot on and very much briefer than I think we could have said it from what you picked up here. The service area map is a big piece of this, right? That was sort of the impetus for why this got done now plus almost 20 years of the way we talk about things and the way we refer to things and the way state regulations have changed and maybe just different little definitions. So there's a lot of clarity improvements here. Not a lot of huge change in all the verbiage that you've seen in his red line version. I just wanna go back to the base rate thing again. So this does not, people in South Berlin can pay a minimum fee right now and that's based on 1,000 cubic foot usage, right? So it's like $36. This allows you to change that even to make 500 foot, right? You couldn't do that in the ordinance as it stands today. It has to be 1,000 feet or cubic feet, sorry. So that allows council the opportunity to kind of twist that knob as we were saying. Also the ordinance today does not have a base rate. This will allow council to create one in the future. So you sort of adjust the knobs and figure out what's the most equitable way to charge for water. Now you have all those options that you're disposal but it doesn't establish that. There's no fee increase with this ordinance. Maybe that's the confusion. The fees don't change with this ordinance. That's helpful on the base rate piece. I appreciate that. And I guess I would just add to that a good summary, Tom. The, you know, this is part of our modernization effort. This is an ordinance that was almost 20 years old. There are just outdated pieces of information. I think it's much more about that cleanup and professionalization than it is necessarily about big policy changes for the community. I think it's an interesting question maybe based on the Act 47 information about the winners and losers concept. To me, I think we have, we are trying to force way too much information into your minds for one night. So I think letting you sit with this slide deck, letting us do a little more work on some data points and bring it back to you for another first reading is probably the best path forward and not setting up an expectation for the future. And I guess I would just say on the mapping the Act 47 work that we're happy to share whatever mapping helps you to do your review. Our laser focus was on how do we use tools like the water ordinance to reinforce the land use policy that has been adopted by the city through the city plan through the land development regulations. There are some minor adjustments that are necessary in order to meet those, but that's the overriding vision is to not change what our course had been. So they're for the overwhelming majority, hopefully what folks do see when they review this as members of the community is they see this as reinforcing the policies the city's already. Yeah, and I guess I would add to that because since it was the presentation was prefaced by the new Act 47, sort of where does that fit into the change in the ordinance? Can you rephrase that? I'm not sure I totally understood that as I write my notes. We need to go much higher level and explain the foundations of those pillar documents first and then explain what this ordinance does to achieve those things. Thank you. And that's why I asked for remedial training. I appreciate it. Again, it is you were asking the question that demonstrates that the community doesn't know so we have not done a good job of that yet. It's just the first reading. Yeah, just on the water service area, I have a question and kind of consistent with the feedback here. And maybe this is the only area, but I know that some of the Hubbard recreation and natural area is marked as a water service area, which seemed odd and because I noticed that they'd be great to see a map like an overlay which shows what portion of the city is protected and their park, but nonetheless, is within the water service area so that any of those odd things kind of jump out and we can understand what they're about. Certainly happy to provide that. The very brief answer to your question is the way that we developed the map was by excluding the areas that are the natural resource protection, that are the habitat blocks. So in the instance of Hubbard Park, a portion of it is still in our natural resource protection district, a portion that is still in a, even though the city owns it's still in a residential zoning district, we didn't go and make that change. We felt it was a little bit like pulling a thread because some parks like Veterans Memorial Park are very much served by water because there's a hockey rink there. Ultimately, since the city owns those pieces, the fact that it is or isn't served is you are the decision makers about whether you choose to allow water to go there or not, but we are happy to go through that exercise. We just didn't want to pull a thread from the staff end that would assume that that's the direction you wanted to go, I guess. I might pull that thread, at least for Hubbard. Paul, in the map, and thank you for your suggestion just to welcome that, is in the map, you lumped into the white space all these different categories. Can you break them out which category it is? Where? Because even in your explanation, you said, oh, if you imagine on this street and you see this, if we could just make it just very clear what part of the, is excluded as habitat, what part is flood, just again, to make it very clear. We have all of that in an interactive GIS. We can either make it available, and we'll work with the city manager about whether it's easier for folks to access it in an interactive, turn things on and off, or a series of static maps, either way. We have all of that, and we would love to make it available. They really just want a GIS technician. That's what that poke is about. So we want to repeat a first reading. Okay, and we'll pick a date in the future for that. It could be May 20th. It might be May 20th. There's a lot of, there are some other scheduling challenges, so it may be May 20th. Well, thank you for all the work that's gone into what you have so far. It sounds like it's educational for council, and then of course that'll transcend into the public as well, so we'll try again. But from what I've seen, this is a really great update and taking the water service map and making it part of that ordinance is also a key step in adapting to Act 47, so I appreciate the work. Thank you. All right, moving on to number 11, which is another first reading. So at the risk of really making your all minds explode here, this one actually is also a very big deal and very complicated and has a bit more of a time crunch. So the context here, and again, it is at your prerogative, whether you want to move it forward tonight. The time crunch here is that this is a very outdated ordinance that we have wanted to update for many years, and city center is opening quickly and they are working on commercial space fit-ups. So to provide them direction about signage, we have a moment of opportunity to provide direction around signage on Market Street and pushing that out too far is going to kind of threaten the community vision of what we want Market Street to look like. Well, let's just jump right to it instead of second reading. Well, let's give them a chance to talk. Jesse, can you give me a permission to share? Do you guys have a presentation? I have a very brief one. I know that everybody's very tired of presentations, but in order to access the information, I was trying to make it a little bit easier for folks. I know how to calculate the area of the sign that based upon whether it's inside of a frame or outside of a frame, and if it's several different rectangles, you take some of the rectangles, they have the edge of the rectangle. Oh my goodness, Paul, can you email me this one so I can share with council? Yes. Or does somebody else have it? I have it. Okay. I will share this with you guys. It's very short, but yes. Do you want me to email it to you now so that folks can follow along? I don't know, I've never seen it. I don't know what's in it. So I'm trying to just give a very brief orientation to it. So we have a sign ordinance. We've had it for a long time. It is very detailed. It is primarily regulating commercial signage within the city, which Chair Pellerin, our deputy city attorney, can speak about what non-commercial signage is, which is essentially much higher level of protected free speech. We do not address that in much level. Focus on private properties and signage, and it operates within the Vermont billboard law. There's a few different types of signs. I'm gonna hit just the main ones. We have freestanding signs, which are the ones either on pillars, or like the Goodwill, or on poles. We have wall signs, which are ones that are attached to walls. We have blade signs or perpendicular signs. We have very few of them in the city, but they're the ones that project out from a building. You might see a lot of them on the church street and places like that. And this is apt for tonight's conversation. We have temporary signs, which can take different forms, but they're typically either little A-frames or a banner. And then there's a whole bunch of other ones that are incidental, directional, directory, lots of little signs about how people get to where they're going. I'm just gonna go quickly through. Councilor Fitzgill had asked for sort of, what's the summary of sort of the major things? So picking up from the last theme, I'm happy to email this to you shortly afterwards, but the main things that are in the amendments that you will see is simplifying process. There's a lot of leftover process from before we adopted a form-based code in our zoning that is very time-intensive for an applicant. It expands the permissibility of perpendicular signs. So those ones that stick out from the buildings right now, they are basically prohibited unless you can demonstrate to us that you can't have a freestanding sign. The next one in there is to prohibit new freestanding signs in the core of city center. So these really come together where instead of having a car-centric community that we've had for decades, as we build out our city center in the block right behind us, shifting over to both allowing these perpendicular blade signs and prohibiting freestanding signs that just don't really live in an urban area. Expanding allowances for temporary sidewalk signs, so those little ones there right now, you have to get a permit every single time you do one and it can only be out for a week and it is very frustrating to the business community and it's a hugely labor-intensive thing for us and frankly it helps promote businesses and specials and things going on and so this would just allow every business to have one within the vicinity of their door and still allow the larger ones that we allow today as a occasional event, like a big event that let's say the Blue Mall was doing as a whole or on behalf of one of their tenants. It lines up our ordinance with some of the work that's been done recently in our zoning where in our zoning we've created requirements to have civic spaces and site amenities, essentially little private parks within development, making sure that you're not then sticking your private commercial sign right in the middle of what's supposed to be the open space for your site, the amenity, clarify some definitions for certain prohibited signs, feather flags, which are those ones that kind of wave back and forth and the inflatable ones which kind of do this, just being very clear, those are prohibited but fixing definitions, expanding allowances on not for the amount of signage, but the number of signs on wall signs in certain businesses. There's been a couple of semi-complimentary, semi-contradictory US federal Supreme Court decisions about signage and so this takes a significant step towards addressing those and Jared can speak to those, clarifies that the school district is exempt under the same allowances as the city is under the ordinance as two public entities serving our community, expands the allowance for help wanted signs, recognizing that this is a different time than it was 14 years ago, we only allow a two by two today and that's frankly not what anybody needs. Expands allowances for commercial flags, just a little bit where it used to be only your business but you weren't allowed to have an open sign, which is a very common thing, so just being a little more flexible with that and then adjusting our compliance period, unlike zoning, there is no right to forever continue to have a sign that the city has decided is not applicable anymore. Seven years is a more standard number than five years for coming into compliance with changes that we've made. It essentially amortizes the value of the sign, it was that's how all the billboards in Vermont were slowly removed and we've used it very successfully in our own community for those of you who've been around for a while, you may recall that there was a giant Sheridan sign and then giant Staples Plaza sign and many others around our community that have come into compliance. So that's my super quick overview. Thank you for the patience of yet another PowerPoint tonight. Does it still restrict the number of colors that could be used? That's one of the things that we propose to remove in the simplification. It's something, so as part of the master signage permit you were supposed to have a maximum of three colors. This was really problematic for the design review committee and then the DRB because it's just fighting the tide of businesses really don't wanna go in the business colors of their competitor and what in practice was happening was that a property like the U-Mall would come in and they'd say we'd like to now amend our signed ordinance to change the color to this for the newest business that comes in and it was really an exercise and just a lot of paperwork that we have proposed to remove and instead sort of have the design of the signs be the focus of if the signs are mounted in cut out letters to have that be the thing that is consistent across the building rather than worrying about colors. Paul, if you add something, first of all, we saw this in the economic development committee so unlike the last one I'm fully familiar having gone through this briefing but maybe also you can share, I think this would be interesting for us to hear who you talk to and that's because I know you brief the business associations and you've talked out so this has also already been, you know, you've gone out there and already impact or talked to some of the people. We have gone, we spoke with the Economic Development Committee, we have shared it with the South Carolina Business Association but only just recently so we'd like to give them some more time. This ordinance as with the last one is very dated, it's been since 2010 since it was last updated and there have been a few different efforts of starting work on it and so I think that giving the business community a little more time to sort of adjust that this is the draft because they've been interfacing with it a few times over the last handful of years would be great. And of course we've met with the folks who are building the core city center and offered to both, you know, have them review and meet in person with them because they are building the first buildings that will really be right up against the street so. Is this ordinance also covering political signs, yard signs? I'm gonna hand that off to our deputy city attorney. There is some detail in here about political signs but we know that the city council has a specific policy about political signs in the right of way that follows or mirrors what V-trans does in that respect. So we're cognizant of that and trying to maintain that same standard. I'd be interested in the standard changing. That's why I was asking and I didn't know whether there was anything appropriate to bring up. So it was the council... Just a question also about yard signs. You mentioned the city example, let's say the energy committee wants to advertise at the energy festival. Is it, can we put out, you know, like temporary basis, yard signs, you know, signs that say energy festival on Sunday, blah, blah, blah. Sure, so if we're talking about signage on city land properties as opposed to the right of way, it's a slightly different consideration. So on city land, the ordinance currently says and it's proposed to continue to say that the city is essentially exempt from the regulations. However, the material should all be provided to the code officer, which is our department for to assure that it's consistent with the intent. So it's sort of to make sure that departments are sort of following a consistent approach generally. Within the right of way, it's a little bit of a different story and this could apply to political signs also. The city could regulate it through the sign ordinance or could regulate or have policy as the property owner through its own policies or its private use of the public right of way. Jared and I went through this and we felt that there was a lot already in this ordinance and so then to take on how the city chooses to have say the energy committee or even partner groups like the Friends of the Library or even sort of one step further partner groups a way of let's say we were start to marketing festivals collaboratively with other folks that those could be addressed either, all of those types of circumstances could either be addressed in the use of the public private right of way ordinance or in an amendment to this in a not too distant but future time because it's just too complex to figure out all those scenarios and policies in one shot. So I'd love to clarify some of that in addition to follow on what Laurie said just to talk about those yard signs generally both for this purpose, for political purposes and then often you see private organizations I think I'm not sure if they're allowed to do but putting up signs for various events as a drug company last summer that splattered signs all across the community. So those are generally prohibited when we pick them up as we as we can where it gets a little bit tricky like I said is you know we're usually pretty clear if it's the energy committee but what if it's the Friends of the Library because it is partnering to the city and we don't have very clear policy on those and that is absolutely an area of work on if it's mattress sale it's pretty clear that it is not a event of a community interest and so we can as long as they're in the public right away we clear them as we get them both us and public works as we see them. And I'll just add to that piece and part of the precipice of making these changes is the law and the First Amendment and are we being content neutral when we're looking at our signage and are we promoting signs because of what's written on them or are we promoting them because of them being a way to advertise and promote business, et cetera. So it becomes very nuanced if you get into the legal side of it in the First Amendment things and so trying to thread that needle can be a challenge but we're happy to discuss that with you all as you move forward. So I would entertain, do we need a motion to set the second reading and set the public hearing date or do you just? Yeah, if you want to set a second reading and a public hearing date, yes you need a motion to do that. So I would entertain a motion for that right now. So I move to set a date for a second reading, public hearing of the revised sign ordinance. I'll second that. For when? For May 6th. For May 6th. I will second that. Could you say the time as well? It says 7 p.m. At 7 p.m. Thank you. I will second that. So we have a motion and a second. Is there any other discussion? Friendly. Oh, yes. If I may, we just also need a motion to pass the first reading. So we're going to pass the ordinance at the first reading and move it to a second reading and set the hearing date. I understand. Okay. Can we have a friendly update to, do we need two motions for that or can we do with all the one motions? So you guys weigh in here. This is a new process for us. We have not done that before but it does bring a key question of what are you moving to public hearing? Are you prepared to move this draft forward to a public hearing? I think that may be what you're getting at. Let me ask you that question. I mean, the group that is going to be most affected about this, have you, you have said that you've been in contact with them, particularly the core group that are here in the city center, but then the business community reached large, but you also said that you thought they needed a little more time to sort of process it. I mean, if we will follow whichever direction the council wants to do, if you get feedback after warning a public hearing tonight, then you can always amend the ordinance after your public hearing, but that would require warning and another one. I think our recommendation would be to take tonight as an introduction, give those folks who want to review it a little bit of time to provide some feedback to staff so that we might tweak the one that goes to a hearing that I think are recommendations that might feel a little more inclusive to them if you were willing to delay warning your hearing for a meeting. So now you're saying we should delay the? Say I have a second first reading. Just have a second first reading. Yes. Okay. It doesn't have to be a long one, but I think just given that this is an ordinance that doesn't go through other committees, other the economic development committee way back seven months ago, this would give them an opportunity to just weigh in a little bit. To give the committee an opportunity? No, sorry. The business community an opportunity to digest this a little bit. But. I thought you said there was time pressure on this. I, this has been a long time coming. I don't want to slow this down. It has a lot of good stuff in it, right? And I think that if you probably deal with the commercial, you know, business owners day after day after day, having to do with signs, right? You probably have made a lot of changes in here to accommodate them and also to move it forward and be progressive because it's been static for a long time. I would like the council to go ahead and make a motion to let's table your motion, right? First of all, and let's have a new motion to approve this sign ordinance and we'll vote on that. And then we'll go and set a date for a second reading. So I make a motion to approve this. So I approve the first reading, approve. What's the motion? I'm sorry. That'd be correct. Approve this first reading of the sign ordinance. And set a public hearing for. No, I thought that's going to be separate. He wants just a motion to approve the. He has. I think they'd be able to approve it before we set it. I'll second that. Okay, so we've got a motion and a second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Mike, did you say aye? No. So opposed? Abstain. Abstain. Because I agree that. Okay, so we have four eyes and one abstain, which is Mike for Sue to hear that. So now the second motion we'd want is to. So I move to set a second reading and public hearing of the sign ordinance for May 6th at 7 p.m. I'll second that. We have a second. Any discussion? One piece of discussion to clarify, this goes to a public hearing. If there's a lot of pushback at that public hearing and it appears that we need to make more modifications, we can always do that and have a second public hearing. Yes, we're not, we're not locking ourselves into something going. But you had suggested that it required an additional step and it made it more complicated. So I was just trying to think of, how do we keep this? It's a style. So I think either way will be perfectly fine. We will get, we'll make sure that the public is, that they are fully aware if you choose to pass the motion that the public hearing is that date that the council is, you know, all ears and wants to hear if there's any additional feedback. That's perfectly fine. So we have a motion to second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And Mike, did you say aye? Okay, so that was unanimous. Thank you very much. Folks, we'll see you on the sixth. At least, maybe earlier. Moving on to item 12, which is consider appointing council liaisons. So you talked about this at your last meeting. There's memo in your packet outlining what I think what the council liaison roles you appointed. So the action tonight is to approve those council liaison roles. I also realized, so that's about our policy committees. I also realized that I did not do a good job in the memo at the last meeting outlining the outside organizations that were bulleted out. So I've tried to provide you a little more context of the roles of council appointees to those outside organizations and who is currently serving in those roles and for what time period. And then at the bottom of that page, what you previous, the changes you previously considered making to those outside organization roles. So first action would be to approve the council liaisons to our policy committees as presented. So I moved to approve the council liaisons to our policy committees as presented in the memo. Second. We have a motion in second, any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. It's unanimous. So then the follow up question for you all is, do you want to, so these outside organizations are their own outside entities, either quasi government, governments, policy boards of other governments, et cetera, the folks you appoint to these roles, their role is really to represent South Burlington in those organizations, as well as to help with the governance structure of those organizations. They all have terms that we all have sitting, they all have sitting appointments right now. You could make the changes you previously indicated or you could do that as those terms are up. So I can walk through what those changes would be or you can... I for one would be interested in knowing when the terms are up just as it's a perspective since this is the city council as a whole engaging through this individual or the person's representing South Burlington, as you said. Do you want me to talk to these? Repeat that. So I can talk through each of these and when the terms are up then. Yeah, just so as a perspective, we know when these are coming up down the line. Oh, when they're coming up. So I'll walk through them quickly. So the Burlington International Airport Commission is a policy committee of the city of Burlington. Currently Helen Reilly is the representative to that group. It's a four-year term ending in June. There aren't alternates to that organization because it is a voting member of another policy group. Town Meeting TV trustees, Cory Burdick is the alternate, Megan is there, they both, or they, sorry, I think Cory is the trustee, Megan is the alternate and they both serve until there's a new appointment. Chinden County Regional Planning Commission, Chris Shaw is serving a two-year term that ends in June of 2024. He is also the chair of their board currently. Megan is the alternate to that. Her term ends at the end of June 2024 as well. So you will be asked to appoint those positions in June. Champlain Water District, Dennis Lutz is our current rep. We found out Andrea did some research, his term ends in 2026. So he's there for a while. Communications Union District, their one-year terms, Tim Barrett serves as the current one-year term with me as the alternate, those are for 2024. You can change those at any time. Chinden County Solid Waste District, Paul is our representative with Allison as our rep or our alternate. They both are two-year terms ending in June 2025. GMT, Michael's serving a three-year term through 2026. Tim is serving the alternate three-year term, also same-time period. And Winooski Valley Parks District, Larry is our rep, serving a three-year term through 2026. So the actions you could take are, Michael could serve as an alternate to the airport commission. This would be participation only as Helen would retain her voting rights, but that could change when her term expires in June of this year. Town Meeting TV as these folks serve as until somebody else is appointed, you could appoint Elizabeth as the alternate to that organization. You had previously talked about Michael getting on to CCRPC. You could do that effective in July 2024 when those terms expire. And then you talked about Lori serving as the alternate for the CUD, which is just fine by me, because that is me currently. Or you can take no action on any of these appointments tonight. Do we know what Megan's availability is to continue serving? That's a good question. I think I asked her that. And I, to be honest, I can't remember what she said. She's abroad next spring. Right. Why don't we, so we've already passed the liaison section, right? And if there are no objections to all the other existings or possible, I mean, these are all things that happen to expire in the future. So if we're satisfied with that, we just accept it and. And do we go with the alternate and actually the one, yours wouldn't be an alternate and you would be stepping forward. Is that what you're just saying? I would still be an alternate. It'd be alternate. Tim, it serves on that. Yeah. Okay. Do we need to do appoint an alternate for the CCUD, triple CUD now? Or we could wait. You can, but you don't have to. We don't have to. So things are fine. It's also 1015. And we have to go through every single one of these bars and restaurants to approve their liquor license. So we're okay with that item. Okay. All right. Thank you. So now it's time to convene as the South British Liquor Control Commission. Can I have a motion to do that? I move to convene as the South British Liquor Commission. Second. We have a motion to second. Any discussion? All those papers say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. So we're unanimous as the Liquor Control Commission and we have a number of licenses to consider. I'm not going to read them all unless you make me. Okay. So if anybody has the objection, state them now. Otherwise, let's have a motion to approve all of these licenses. I move to approve all the licenses as set forth in the agenda. Second that motion. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. So it's unanimous again. Now we're off to other business. Business, apparently. I don't know what happened there. We've been through some business. With the word other? Yeah. Yeah. So just a quick, I had to have a motion, I suppose. I think that was a good one. I think it was. When I think it's a good one, it's not a good one. I certainly think it was really good. I think it was a pretty good one. Okay. So the first item I had one item for other business, and that is, if you didn't notice, I posted to the South London Community Watch page yesterday the details on how to vote in this education budget. And at the end of it, I wrote a very small paragraph because I didn't want to go off and write reams and just said, I support this budget and I'm going to vote yes, and I said why. And I just wanted to tell the council and give them some of their feedback. I'm thinking of doing this also on Fundport Forum for all the fora as a city council representing only myself, not as the council itself, to express support for the budgets, for the school districts attempt to get this budget passed. And so, we have Monday, Tuesday, and basically Wednesday to advertise this, so to speak, through Fundport Forum. If any other councilor feels the same way or has a different opinion, they could also take a different action, but I just want to let you know I was going to do that. So one of the things that we learned tonight is that in lobby voting will be valid through Wednesday, but not on Thursday. And sometimes in normal elections, the day before they cut it off at noon, but this week you'll be able to vote through Wednesday, also because of the storm, the impending snow and rain, whatever. So anyway, I just wanted to bring it up and let people know that. It's important that they get a chance to have a budget and have the certainty of what teachers they're going to be retaining for the following year. And I know it's a lot to ask of the community in terms of being a 14%, but Montpelier's not going to have a solution for this this year. Or next year. Well, hopefully if we discuss it very fortunately with our representatives, maybe something will happen, I don't know, but any other comments over other business? I did just want to clarify, I thought I had recalled Tim that we had some discussion about the use of the platforms, the access to the front porch forums for information only. And I gave you this feedback directly. I just want to clarify with the council and I guess with Jesse too, that where do we draw the line in terms of using the access we have to those platforms as city counselors and expressing a personal opinion? I guess it's a question I have. Yeah, that's the question. It's a good question. And I think the fact that the bulk of the posting is going to be about the details about how to vote, where to vote, what to do with your absentee ballot if it's too late to mail it back, all those details about voting and at the very end of it is going to be my personal Tim Barrett as a one city counselor opinion about a budget that affects not just the district but it affects the whole city. So because of that shared responsibility, I think between these two entities that are both municipal type entities, right? The school district and the city, I feel like that's a valid thing to do. The lawyer is gone. Yes. I just as an abstract way, I hear your point Tim and I fully believe that the two municipalities and I think all of us have talked about the need to be supportive of each other's activities and what role the city can play to help move the score. I for one, you know, will publicly say I will vote for the budget. But at the same time in terms of the way I saw having the ability to reach out and use the front porch form was as a, as to share information as opposed. I mean, I'm just making transitioning from the election mode to being a city council mode and then thinking of forward, you know, if I run for reelection, do I have the right to use all front porch form sites where a candidate does not? So, yeah, so I, you know, as I said, I will support the city, the school budget, but I don't know if I'm in a position at least through this vehicle to advocate for it. But again, it's where's the lawyer because the principal, I'm not disagreeing with you with the substance, I'm just agreeing with the vehicle or the mechanism that is given to us as city council members as not as a candidate, Mike Scanlon. Right, so if I were to use that and hit all the four of from a city council as a city council and express support for a candidate, I think that would be wrong. But to use it to support a policy that the city was trying to create or some other entity that the council supports, right? That's not a problem, right? If it's just pure information. In this instance, it's dual, right? Because it's information from the city and then it's my city council responsibility that I think to have an opinion about something that affects the quality of life in the whole city. So that's, you know, unless Mr. McNeill or Mr. Pelerin has an opinion other than that and advice me not to, I don't think it's the wrong thing to do. Again, if we can, as a technical and methodological way, do that, I have no problem with that. With, as you said, cognizant of the fact that when we move towards election season, none of us here who are sitting basically use the fact as, if we're running against someone else to use the fact that we have access to all six or seven, eight forms and whoever's running against us doesn't, you know? And you made that point. You said it was two different things. Yeah, you can't use it for that purpose. Or just. I mean, for example, I mean, the future is, as we get closer to asking for people to submit applications for committees, right? You could put out something saying, hey, you know, development review board, economic development needs this and here are the details and here's what we do and here's why it's so important. That's perfectly fine. Which I just did for encouraging everyone to apply for the committees. Basically taking the language from the city's webpage. Well, okay. Other business, do we have to sign any disbursements? You got that? Okay. And I can't miss the red book. All right. So we have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you. And it's 10, 20. What? Do you really miss the red book? No, it was, you know.