 to see town TVs there. So are you taping this now, Kevin? Thanks Helen for reminding me. I would like to call to order- This conference will now be recorded. I'd like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, February 1st, 2021. Welcome people from who have joined us. And the first item of business is to ask if there are any additions, deletions or changes in order of agenda items. Oh, and I have- Are there any? I have two. Yes. I'd like to remove five, D, five D is in David from the Consent Agenda. That needs a little bit more staff time before it comes to you, which would likely be next at your next meeting. So the grant for the Better Places Grant and also to remove the consideration of the fire department, Professional Firefighters of America. That's item 13. Yes. So I see- Keep the Ask Me Local 1343 on the agenda and take the Professional Firefighters of America off the agenda. Okay. All right, okay. Are there any other changes, additions, deletions? Megan, were you gonna bring something up in, no, okay. In new business or other business? Okay. All right. So then we'll move on. I'm sorry, Helen, part of the clarification. I believe the city manager meant to remove item five C, not five D from the agenda. So the Better Places Grant only. I'm sorry, I had the item for the Better Places Grant. Oh, that's C. Oh, I'm sorry. I've got an old agenda. Pardon me. Thank you, Justine's five C. Okay. So five C will be removed. Thank you. Okay. Comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Dave, you've got your face on. So did you wanna say something, Dave Crawford? No, I'm fine. That's okay. Okay. I'll turn it off. You need to take your video off. Right, but can you close off your video of you? But we just, then if you wanna speak, you turn the video on and I can identify you. So seeing- I turned it off. Here it goes. Item four then is announcements and the city manager's report. Are there any announcements by council members? I don't have any either. All right, then we'll move on to the city manager's report. Kevin. Thank you, Helen. For members of the public who may be watching right now, there's a report of a shooting at the University Mall. The police are on the scene reports at this moment, say one person injured by shrapnel, not directly by a bullet. Police, most of the people in the mall have left. The police have secured the area and are initiating their investigation. And I will report throughout the meeting as I get updates from the chief. Thank you. The Economic Development Committee has received your request to review the cannabis legislation and they will get to work on that, recognizing that it could be some time again for the public vote, most likely next March, when the public would have to, or when the voters would have to approve that. Station two, the fire station two down on Holmes Road is the upgrade of that to create new bedrooms upstairs for the firefighters is nearing completion. This is being paid for through CARES Act funds and it's a huge improvement to the quality of life of our firefighters who are there, as you know, occupying that facility 24-7. It should be done within a matter of days. The Community Outreach Steering Committee met last week. We are looking to plan a significant meeting of our legislative delegation, senators and all house members from the nine, now nine member communities to talk about some issues that Chief Burke has championed, related to people who are falling between the gap on treatment, people who have both addiction and mental health issues, both of which are served by separate agencies, interestingly, or separate departments, excuse me, one, the Department of Mental Health, the other Department of Health, and programmatically, people are falling between into the gaps, so we're gonna try to get our legislative delegation involved in this discussion with the Department of Mental Health and with health. And that should be some time later on in February. I'll get more information out to the council on that shortly. Tom did a phenomenal budget video. I hope you'll all take a look at this. It's on City News, it's on our website. It's really good. We're gonna do another one on the TIF vote. That will hopefully be filmed. It was gonna be this week, but with the snow coming, perhaps not, because it will be outside. Anyway, I need a counselor for the next City News. If anybody wants to do a video presentation on anything or even a written presentation, let me know. As soon as possible, because we need to have that in the can by Friday or Monday of next week. And last night, lastly, Justin has informed me of our plowing plan for tonight. Justin's team, three of whom will be on at about three o'clock in the morning, and the rest will be coming on at their normal time. If you'd like Justin to elaborate on that, he's on the call here, but the team's gonna be out tonight. And we've got a pretty significant snowstorm coming here. So that's all I've got, Helen, right now. Like I said, I'll keep you updated on the other matter. All right, well, thank you. And I wanna put another plug-in for Tom Hubbard's wonderful presentation. It was really great, Tom. And I think David and I certainly have to be excluded from going on the newsletter. But so that Lynn, Emory, excuse me, Megan did a wonderful one. So that sort of leaves Tom and Tim. I don't know which one of you would like to do a video, but they're fun, they're easy. And I think the public really probably watches them and appreciates that perspective. So you guys can do get out or do- Can I sing a song? Rock, you know, whatever. Eric Achever? I do a mean Margaritaville. You guys could do a duet. Hey, you wouldn't have a quorum. Yeah, that would be tough to be six feet apart and in the same frame, but I guess. We do it on go to meetings. So it's just like you're appearing right now. Right, so it's pretty easy. So I would encourage you to do that. And thank you for the updates. That's very disturbing, but it sounds like it's not as bad as it could be. And let's hope that whoever was injured is not injured badly. The next item is the consent agenda. And we have four items. A, consider and sign the disbursements. B, consider and approve the FY 2022 Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission unified planning work program. We will delete C, we'll go on and include D, the grant authority to the city man, granting authority to the city manager to negotiate a contract with the consultant for the Underwood phase 1.2 design work. And item E, approve the airport drive infiltration system maintenance. Do I have a motion for approval of those four items? No move. Second. All right, are there any questions? Well, can I just make a couple of comments? You may. Thank you. The design for Underwood looks good. I appreciate the work that's been done so far. I like the concept. I remember going to the park in 2017 and watching Maggie go up in the balloon when we walked around the park and left post-it notes about what the citizens wanted to see as functions in the park that could be used in the future. So the thing to design, it does a good job. And personally, I don't use the park very much, but since Thanksgiving, I've had opportunity to go through the Great Swamp from Cider Mill over to Dorset Farms and then take the entrance to the Great Swamp Forest and then work my way through and come out at South Point and then go into Underwood. And I've done that several times now and it's a really beautiful place. And so I think Underwood is such a gem of an asset for the city that this will be a really nice improvement. So, and the second thing was that the infiltration stormwater design looks really cool and it'll be a great boon for Potash Brooks. So I'm really pleased to see that work moving forward. Good. Any other comments or thoughts? All right, are you ready for the vote? Okay, I'll call the roll, Megan Emery. Okay, she votes aye. Dave Kaufman. Aye. Tom Chittenden. Aye. And Barrett. Aye. And the chair votes aye. So that's approved five to zero. You know, I meant to comment, Kevin, I am so glad that you are coming together. The communities are coming together around the mental health issue that was, is so needed to fill that gap. And I know I went to a number of meetings with you. Gosh, it probably was two years ago, right? And we couldn't quite get there. So I hope another try and engaging the legislators will get us where we need to be because it's very, very, very important. So I thank you for that. Thank you, Helen. I really appreciate that. We'll be letting you know about this meeting. Did we skip over the public comments? No, I asked for them and there weren't none. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm on the phone here. Yeah, no, I understand that. I'm getting good at not forgetting that. Yeah, thanks. I don't know if Karen Horn is on yet. Yeah, she is. She is, I see her. So we move on to item six. It's a presentation and a council discussion regarding Dylan's rule and the proposed charter amendments that provide additional authority to the municipalities. Hi, Karen. So Karen Horn is the Director of Public Policy and Advocacy for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. She sent us all a presentation. I don't know. Kevin, are you gonna put it up on the screen for us or should we go to our email? It should be up on the screen now, Helen. All right, thank you. Is it up? Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's a... Yeah, it's up. That's up, okay. Karen, take it over. Okay, excuse me. So thank you for having me. And I wanna first apologize for the date at the top of that memo. I happen to know it's not January 20th this evening. So I'm really welcoming the opportunity to talk to you about self-governance. And actually, Kevin, I don't know that we need to keep the memo up because that's all that it is, a memo, like it's not really interesting to look at. So that's up to you. It's easy for me to see people. Yeah, thank you. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what Dylan's rule is. And I know that you as city counselors have been living this for as long as you've been on the city council, but I thought it might be helpful to sort of go over it again. We're a state where cities and towns can only do those things that the legislature specifically allows them to do. And in a lot of other states, most other states actually towns and cities can do what they feel is appropriate in their community unless the legislature specifically preempts them from doing that. So we're kind of the flip of that model. And as a result, we need to go to the legislature for anything that might be outside of the regular practice and things that are in the statute already. So the governance charters, you have a very robust governance charter in South Burlington, but governance charters are one way that towns and cities are able to undertake actions that are outside of what's specifically permitted in the general statute. And as you well know, you have to put a charter change to a vote of the people, the voters in your community approve it. And then it goes to the legislature, it gets sent to the House or Senate Governance Operations Committee, and they can really do anything they want with it. And I think with your local option tax proposal, was that last year, Kevin, or two years ago? They... It was last year. There was last year, yeah. They let it sit on the wall and that's one of their options, of course. They could approve your charter change, they could amend your charter change and actually even if you don't propose the charter change, the legislatures authorized to do whatever they want with the charter without it being initiated by the local government. We have 60 cities and towns and 24 incorporated villages that have governance charters. We have 246 cities and towns, so you're still in the minority in that respect. And I did list here the communities in Chittenden County that have governance charters. What's interesting is that even though there's only 60 cities and towns, it's more than half the population of Vermont that's represented by governments with governance charters. So let's see. Last year also the town of Williston adopted language at town meeting that said that any charter change approved for any other municipality may be adopted by majority vote of the electorate in Williston without the need to return to the General Assembly for approval provided that notice is given to the Secretary of State within 30 days of the vote. So essentially if there's anything that has been approved for any other city or town in their charter, the town of Williston would be able to adopt it without going through the whole legislative process again. So all those other towns are setting precedents. The city of Winooski adopted that same provision in November at the general election that was on their ballot. And it was approved by a vote of 2,587 to 724. So pretty overwhelmingly approved. The Williston charter changed last year, sat or hung on the wall of the House Government Operations Committee. The bill is reintroduced this year and the Winooski bill will also be introduced this year. I do have to say that I don't think that the House Government Operations Committee is gonna be too enthusiastic about taking it up this year either. But the more that towns adopt those kinds of provisions and sort of challenge the status quo, the better it is, I think, for the overall conversation about what's appropriate for cities and towns in terms of governing themselves. So I'm sort of running through this. If people have comments or questions, I don't know how you wanna deal with that, Helen, but it's fun with me if people break in. So if you're comfortable with that, we'll break in when we feel compelled. Well, thank you. Okay, all right. So the VLCT adopts a municipal policy every two years. We're the organization that you are members of and we are the organization that advocates on behalf of all the cities and towns in the state. And even without the sort of apparent differences in size and population and outlook between towns around the state, when it gets to issues of governance, local governments are pretty unified in wanting to be able to make more decisions on their own behalf. So the members this year adopted a statement that says VLCT supports voter approved self-governance on matters solely affecting the municipalities that are taking action. And then it lists a couple of the examples. And that's a policy that we're hoping to promote in the state house or in the Zoom state house. The last year, no, three years ago, 2019, there was a bill introduced S106 that would have put together a pilot program for towns to be able to go to a self-governance commission outside of the state house and have a conversation about what kinds of policies and ordinances they would like to adopt at the local level after they've been approved by the voters, always after they've been approved by the voters. And that self-governance commission would have a conversation with the city or town and make a determination about what would be workable. And then you would implement your ordinance proposal or whatever. And the governance commission in that pilot program would remain in place for 10 years. And then there was a sunset. But if you had adopted an ordinance during that intervening period of time, the ordinance would remain on the books. But the ability to work through that commission would sunset. That bill passed the Senate and on a vote of 21 to eight, I have to say that two of the senators who voted against it are Chittenden County senators. Nevertheless, the bill then went to the House Government Operations Committee. And again, it sat on the wall. So I think what's clear in terms of legislative action is that we absolutely have an uphill slog to get this conversation even rolling on the House side. But the Senate has been pretty supportive in the last several years. And the chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee, Jeanette White, is very engaged on this issue. She's the senator who really got the ball rolling on all the COVID legislation that let you meet remotely and address arrearages or delinquencies in property tax. If the town decided to do that, lets you move your town meeting if you think that's necessary this year. Most of those kinds of bills originated in the Senate GovOps Committee. So, I have here a list of kinds of issues that might be appropriate for self-governance. And we've talked a lot about these on, again, on the Senate side. I'm hoping that we'll have that conversation again this year on the Senate side. The Senate GovOps Committee is interested and there will be a bill introduced that addresses self-governance again. So, one of them that raised a bit of fire at the Regional Commission on January 20th was the issue of on-street parking and speed limits. So, if you in your city or town have a state highway that goes through your downtown and you want to lower the speed limit, say to 25 miles an hour, you may not actually do that unless you've done an engineering study and then the state transportation board agrees with the results of that transportation study and allows you to lower the speed limit. So, that's just one very small example of what towns might be interested in doing on their own. Another is, and it was amazing to me, actually I didn't realize this, but there was legislation last session at the end of the session that let towns mail Australian ballots or let towns go to Australian ballot for their annual meeting, go completely to Australian ballot if they're not already there. And they could do that for this coming town meeting, but it didn't say that you can mail ballots to every registered voter. And we actually had to go back and get permission to mail ballots to every registered voter. So, there are some pretty substantive ways in which towns might want to act on their own behalf, but there's some also sort of ridiculously detailed and picky-une ways in which towns could just work a lot more effectively and efficiently if they didn't have to keep running back for permission for something from the legislature. So, I think I'll kind of leave it there and I'd love to have a conversation and get your thoughts. I don't know how much time you have, Kevin or Helen, but. You're on the agenda till 7.20, so we have another 20 minutes if we can use all of it or part of it. So, I'd love to have a little bit of a conversation. I just want to clarify, I think there actually were three Chittenden County Senators who voted against it. I think Pearson, I think that was, that's Chris Pearson. And Sirachan. And Sirachan and Bruce. Yes. I'm sorry. And Ash was not there, so I don't know how he would have voted. And that's picky you. But that might give Tom some good information if he didn't catch that. Dave, Coffin? Yeah, I think an observation and then an example. Well, the observation is that in talking about Senate, government ops and house gov ops, where I serve for one term, I think, I'm amused by the fact that a lot doesn't seem to have changed. The House Government Operations Committee way back was never really interested in giving up its ability to review absolutely everything. And I always found that ridiculous. I still find that unfortunate. It's unfortunate that's still the case. So good luck. I would hope that you can make some track on that. The other piece of that is, you know, if they would give the town is the ability to make some of their own decisions, they could free up time for other things that I would consider much more important for their legislative business by eliminating perhaps dozens and dozens of these little decisions each year. And then on your speed limit example, we're right in the midst of that right now, wanting to lower the speed limit on Heinsberg Road in the city of South Burlington. And now we're held up from doing that because the state's gotta go through this complete traffic study. And it's gonna take months, it's not a year, to get to the point where we want to get to when the community has been very loud in saying we need to lower the speed limit on Heinsberg Road and the council agrees with that. And so we're stuck there. So I commend everything you're doing. I'm surprised maybe not that the House Government Ops Committee hasn't moved into the modern age on some of this stuff, but I say great and keep working at it. Thank you. Well, thank you. It's interesting that almost half of the House Government Operations Committee is currently serving or have served on select boards. If I may, there is one bill that just got introduced H-126, that would do a pilot program for towns that want to do pedestrian safety. And one of the components of that is dropping the speed limit. And Maitre Townsend is the co-sponsor of that bill. So that may be one to keep track of. Thank you. Megan, Emery. That was linked to my question. I was curious to know if all of these items, areas right from municipal self-governance, if they were maybe whittled down in order to have a smaller number for them to get an appetite to allow with that. I don't know what besides that I'm wanting to to micromanage the towns and cities in the state, but what else could have been a factor that meant that this state on the wall? I don't really have a good answer for you. Those examples are just that, they're just examples. They were not actually in the legislation. When people discuss the subject of the legislature, they always want examples. So that's what that is. Was it kind of a blank check? Was it kind of in any matter then? That the... No, no, no, no, no. The Senate, before they passed it, they actually put a number of sort of parameters around what issues local governments could address. A lot of them actually that were prohibited in the Senate version had to do with transportation issues, interestingly, but they did constrain the universe of possible topics. The other piece is that the self-governance commission, if it was put in place, and we would love the self-governance commission to be put in place, say whatever you want about what it has to do, but it would just be really good to take that conversation out of the state house for a while. So anyway, but the self-governance commission would go through some of the issues whatever was proposed by a local government and approved by the voters, and they would make a determination as to whether it was appropriate or not to be implemented in that community. So there's a lot of controls in the bill that was passed by the Senate. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Tom. So everything seems to make sense to move this forward and you've laid out a really strong case. What's on my to-do list, and if this isn't something that you'd be willing or able to do, that's fine as well, but I'm curious why the people voted against this. So on my to-do list is to ask Senator Baruth and Senator Sorokin what their opposition was, but if you could frame their argument and the counterpoints, if you know what it was, I'd love to hear that. I think, well, it's been a couple of years gone now, but I do think that they had concerns that local governance might get away from them for lack of a better term. And I think Senator Baruth had some concerns around education-type issues. He was chair of the Education Committee at the time. So I would welcome your asking Senators Baruth, Sorokin and Pearson what their thinking was on that. We really thought Senator Pearson was gonna vote with us and then he didn't. So another interesting issue is right now, I probably shouldn't even go here, but right now there's a bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee that would prohibit the carrying of firearms in municipal buildings, in government buildings. And that's something that needs to be decided at the legislative level because municipalities don't have authority to address that issue. So that's not an example I tend to highlight because firearms are such a controversial issue, but it is one that's out there as well. Are there thoughts or questions? Ken? Oh, I would strongly encourage the council to consider engaging the charter committee at some point in the spring or summer to look at taking to the voters an identical language as was passed in Williston. I think that if enough communities step forward and ask for this authority, eventually the House of Ops committee and the legislature will agree to it, but I think it just takes numbers. It's too bad we're not gonna have another vote until next spring, but so be it. Eventually, charter changes carry over from legislative session, from biennium to biennium to biennium. So you don't have to keep passing it. And so I think that would be a good step forward for the city to consider next year. I think that's a good idea. We were actually gonna test them. It's sort of a charter change. I thought about how many people could be on like the planning commission, which is another one of the items identified, but probably looking at the larger issue makes more sense that we'll take you in one. Pardon? You have to go ask Mother May I to the legislature to ask if we can have a couple more people on that project now. I know, I mean, it was pretty crazy. Those to Aaron's point. Right. Kim. Yeah, so I agree with this whole thing. It seems like it's just a waste of government time to have to consider all these requests. And then, you know, affirm each one independently. And if it was just up to local control, it would be a lot easier. So it's a no brainer. Okay. I'd be happy to talk to your charter commission at some point once it gets convened. So. Okay. Is the council interested in tasking the charter committee to look into this? Do I see agreement? Okay. Well, then let's do that, Kevin. We usually have to call them together. I think Peter Taylor remains the chair. I can't remember. Tom, did you get appointed to that? Oh, you wanted the cemetery. That's right. But I think we have at least two members on that. Maybe three out to look. But does Tom Sexton job go away if we get the Dylan's rule repealed? Well, that's right. Yeah, we can do what we want with the cemetery. I've been a terrible Sexton, so I probably should just resign. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Karen. I appreciate your comments and we'll try to get our charter committee revved up and let them know that you're more than willing to share language with them that's been passed, the different bills and any kind of information that they might need. So thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Thanks, Karen. Thanks, Karen. Thank you. Moving on to item seven. This is a council discussion and possible guidance regarding the schedule for completing the reappraisal of South Burlington commercial and residential properties. So we have Todd. Welcome Todd LeBlanc. So what do you have to tell us, Todd? We had a notice that we were gonna post social media about where we are in the reappraisal and what the schedule is gonna be going on from here. And I guess they wanted to run it by the council. Okay. Well, we've got it in our packet. Does anyone have any concerns with the language in this reassessment schedule? Oh, Tim, sorry, I didn't see your hand. Yes, I was just curious. I mean, what is the normal schedule? There was like a pre-release and then the actual release. And what is the total difference in weeks among those two? There's not a normal schedule. The normal year-to-year schedule, we send out change notices about the first week in June so that we can have our grievance hearings done in time to get the tax bills out. They've got to be out by July 15th to be valid for August 15th. And in order to get imprinted and mailed, there's a timeline that we sort of back into. In reappraisal, we had planned on sending out preliminary numbers in January. We, the COVID happened, slowed down our inspections. So the inspections right now are just about done so that they just have to be data input. So our preliminary numbers, we're not going to be able to do, but we're going to give a longer period of time for the official appeal period. We'll send values out in April versus June. And that'll give us time to get this done. I think, Helen, we wanted to let the council know we're coming to the end of the process here. And we just want to make sure that the communications that went out and how we put the communications out to the property owners was known in advance. That's why Todd asked that we put this schedule out to the public, but before doing that, I just wanted to make sure we had some oversight from the council and any feedback. Okay, great. Tom? How much different is an appeal during the preliminary window versus an appeal after it's officially announced? Is it more laborious for the taxpayer and related to that in your experience, Todd, is there usually a large number of appeals or objections in response to the normally communicated preliminary values? Normally, no. We don't get a lot of inquisitions, if you will, but we've been in a rising market. So when you have a rising market, people don't tend to come and say, hey, my value's wrong when it's going to go up. Doing a reappraisal of preliminary numbers, they're unofficial, we just give the data, put it out there to the people so they can check it and sort of do a process where we can eliminate a lot of the possible appeals by having taken care of them beforehand. This is a process I do every year. It should somebody want to appeal their assessment or have a problem with their assessment. I haven't contacted me any time they want where we can put it on the calendar and keep it on and take a look at it so that when the change of appraisal notices go out in June, that problem may already be fixed, in which case it doesn't produce agreements in June. That was the thought behind doing a preliminary release of the unofficial numbers in January was so that people could take a look at their stuff and if they had problems, inquire. Prior to the release of the official numbers. In reality, whether they question their assessment in the informal and then don't in the formal or simply wait till the formal, the numbers aren't going to change. They'll release the information, they'll be able to review it and once they've decided whether or not they like it, they don't really have to like it. That's part of the problem we're going to have. We're in a rising market, values are definitely going to go up. The biggest thing we need to probably get out there is that in a reappraisal, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow doesn't get to change and as the values go up, the tax rates go down. That confuses a lot of people. In the last reappraisal, we saw properties, residential properties double in value on the grand list and it freaked a lot of people out and until you talk them down off the cliff, which eventually they got through to. So eliminating that, a lot of that by allowing them to do it in a preliminary fashion eases some of that tension but it really doesn't change what's going to happen in the end. So we're going to take two processes, reduce them down to one and make that process longer to accommodate everybody. Tim Barrett. Todd, when you had the last reappraisal, can you tell me, Ballpark, how many people challenged you? That was in 2006. It was a few years ago. A lot. Was it a couple hundred or? Oh, several hundred. We appeals took several weeks and it wasn't just the eight to 430. We had to accommodate people. We'd come in early, sometimes six o'clock in the morning so they could hit us before they went to work. We went through lunch. So some people on their lunch hour could be accounted for and then we stayed late so people who couldn't get there during the day could come. But there was a lot. And during this reappraisal, I mean, I can't even guess what'll happen because we're in an identical situation where values are rising and that's probably the worst time to do a reassessment. But if we can get people to understand and to realize and honestly, look at the number and say, realistically, could I sell my house for this value? And if you can, then you don't really have much to gripe about because that's what we're looking for. And the question that comes in every appeal that happens is they say my taxes are too high and my answer is you're absolutely right but how's the value of your property? Because that's all I can deal with. I don't spend the money. I just assess value. And generally, they're okay with the assessed value and in most cases, a little education as to the process, the why is the where is the house. Generally get some back out the door because they just want to be updated, knowledgeable, if you will. This year with remote stuff, it could get interesting. I don't know for sure what'll happen or how it'll happen, so. So from the time that you release the new values, people have two weeks to make an appointment with you to challenge the value, right? They have two weeks to notify us in writing of their request to appeal the value. That'll get you an appeal and then you have to present market data to show why our values are accurate and people will a lot of times they say, well, the house down the road, just sold for this and you've got minus S for this and when you look at it, the house down the road is half the size of yours so no, it can't be the same as S value is yours. There's a lot of things that go into the appeal process and basically during the reappraisal year, it's just magnified multiple times. So just to get the rules clear from the date that you release the numbers, they have two weeks, 14 days and that envelope has to be postmarked by that 14th day before it's received by you or they can drop it at city hall. It has to be received in our office within the 14 days and the day- It has to be received within 14 days. It's supposed to be received, yes. Okay. All right. The days start counting the day after we mail them. Okay. So what it comes down to basically is if we mail them on a Monday, you have by the second Monday, you have to have something in our office. We'll see how it goes with the numbers of appeals that we get by putting the data online, the property record cards online, people will be able to review their properties in the comfort of their own home and hopefully understand at that point in time, here's my value. It says I have eight rooms and three bedrooms and two baths and a fireplace and that's all accurate and we're good to go. It is what it is. And I believe that that value is what my house is really worth. So we're good to go. So hopefully that'll eliminate a lot of the appeals. That's something we did not have in the last reappraisal. So they can use the online data. They don't have to wait for the letter to arrive at their mailbox. They can look online and then write the letter if they want to. They'll be able to look online once we post the new data. The data for this past grand list is on there now. And I had somebody just today asking if that was right because it didn't match up or something, I forget what it was. Stuff that's on there now is not the reappraisal data. That data will go out, I imagine, real close to when we mail the notices because I mean, we'll mail the notices once we have the numbers all done. My point was that when you release the new data online, they don't have to wait for the envelope to arrive to make the appointment with you, right? If they want to write the letters challenging the number they see online, they can send you that letter right away. Yeah, you don't have to wait. Okay, and the last question is, can you tell us on average or can you tell us how much the grand list total property value has gone up from what it was to what it will be, total, all buildings, all properties? I can't tell you that. I'm guessing residential properties are gonna go up 20, 25%. Commercials, we just don't know where that's gonna end, but I don't think we're gonna have a huge impact here in South Brogdon. But again, that's using the crystal ball, but I can't give you a number overall now. But do you mean the commercial is not going to go up or is gonna go up? Some of it will, some of it will go up. Yeah, like the anything that's got a rental on it, housing are definitely a value. Thank you. Okay, any other questions? Oh, Tom. I'm expecting a great deal of outrage and outreach on this. Is that wrong, Todd? And the second question, will you be publishing a communication that will summarize the number of houses that have had their increase and just really laying out the things that you would say over and over again when they just, that when they contact you so that we as counselors can anticipate that communication stream that we're gonna get when these numbers go out? We're gonna publish it any way we can. Not only, we haven't decided if we're gonna mail out a newspaper, which is what we did in 2006, or send individual notices to the homes. And if we do send them to the homes, which is probably the best way to do it or the property owners, I should say, if we can include a copy of the property record card that goes along with their property so that they have it in their possession, that would be a change because normally the reappraisal notice simply has, here's your old value, here's your new value and here's what you do if you don't like it. So we're gonna try to put more in that envelope, explaining the process, why your value is where it is, and here's some places you can go online to find other values of other properties. Sounds like it would be a good thing for the newsletter and maybe even have you do a video to walk people through. There is stuff on the website now. There has been, since we started, when it first pop up, it says reassessment and you click on the link, it brings you in, there's just frequently asked questions and there's the contractors' faces and names and cars and they've got my contacts and all that on the website. We will try to get, I'm not a social media guru at all, I don't have any social media. So I guess Coralie will post that wherever she can. It's gonna be something that really needs to be publicized. The more people that can sort of get educated ahead of time, the better I guess. We will have a very robust public education and information effort on. I think that's important because that might cut down on some of the outrage and then understanding the process. David? Yeah, I think that's very important. I hope you'll do something in the local paper, in the other paper that will grab people's attention because everybody gets that in their mailbox once a week and a couple of times of that should help inform people ahead of time. So I encourage you to be sure that that happens and maybe you and Kevin have that already planned. I do know that when I have stuff like that, I send it to Tom and to Coralie and she does her wizardry wherever she sends stuff to. The Northern area, but I don't do that end of things. So I know in the past, just in regular years, I've worked with the library where we've had little sessions where people could come in and simply ask questions about taxes and their assessments and whatnot. And it was well received and the people that came in, you know, have legitimate questions, but had the same issue. It was simply a little bit of lack of knowledge. And once they left, they understood it and maybe that would be something we could do through one of these meetings where people could just chime in and say, hey, you know what's going on? Out of why? Whatever. That's a good idea. But Kevin, I think we should be sure that there's something in the paper at least a couple of times because if that's what some people look to for their information, well then this needs to be there. We will do it, Dave. Thanks. Okay, Tim, did you have another question? Yeah, last comment is that, you know, I was asked by somebody this weekend about the reappraisals, why they're needed and how they're done. And I think it's always a good idea to reeducate the community on the relationship between, and here we go with the buzzwords, the CLA and the yield for the education part of the tax, right? And the state ed formula is very fair, but it's very complex. And it takes a lot of different pieces of information that plugs in across all the properties of the whole state. So you take the whole state perspective and you bring it down to one person's home and then how that person's home relative to other homes and the last time they were reappraised and how the assessed values have gotten out of whack with the sale values and why that's important to the state ed formula and the tax rate for our city. So that's the kind of thing that people would, but they like that they need to hear that relationship over and over again, you know, so that they get the concept, you know. Appraisals have got to be right on at 100% so that the yield is at one so that our tax rate isn't boosted by a yield that's 0.85 like it has been for the last few years, right? I'd like to speak to that. That's something that is very confusing because the education tax rate includes the CLA. The CLA is in the denominator, which means you're multiplying by an increasingly smaller and smaller number which makes the taxes go up and up and up. It appears that way, yes. But you have to look at it as if we did a reappraisal every year, our CLA would stay at one, but our assessed values would be 100% of fair market value. Okay, right now our CLA is telling us that we're only at 85% of market value which is why we have to increase the tax rate to bring it to 100% which is what they do with every other municipality in the state, okay? The CLA's scare tactic is not real, okay? People really confuse that. It's simply to make things fair. Okay, well clearly lots of education might be needed just even among the council members. Tom, did you wanna make a comment? I know we're at time and you wanna move on but Todd to that point, my concern is I understood our CLA to be like 0.85 but I just heard you say that house increases are likely to be averaged around 20 to 25%. So my naive understanding of this that does translate to an increase in taxes even with the CLA adjustments that occur with education but it's a complex formula and maybe I'm not completely understanding it and I'll take that offline to educate myself better. Oh, you heard right and that's actually a good pickup while you picked it up. The CLA is about 85%. The CLA is comprised of a three year average, okay? There's three years worth of data and the market as it increases it's getting faster and faster and faster. So that our CLA is dropping faster and faster and faster. If the last reappraisal we had the state told us we had to do a reappraisal because we had dropped below we were at 70% by the time we did the reappraisal but in reality when the sales came through I could see a house here's a house that's assessed for $200,000 and it says for $400,000, okay? That's a 50% ratio. That was the norm. I could see it transfer after transfer after transfer it was roughly 50% of value but because it was three years worth of data the 70 hadn't got down to that 50% yet. And the reason this happens and the reason they use three years is to soften the curve. Okay, we heard soften the curve with a lot of the whole presidential thing but basically it takes out the peaks and the valleys in the CLA. So you're right, you did hear that right and that was a great question. Okay, we ready to move on? All right, thank you very much, Todd and Will. Thanks Todd. We look forward to your video on the newsletter. Thank you. Okay, moving on to item eight. This is the council discussion and guidance to staff on potential amendments to the South Burlington transportation impact fees ordinance and we're back with Paul Connor director of planning and zoning and Justin Rebedo director of the department of public works. And if you recall, we had a presentation was it two weeks ago? It was actually late December, but a month ago, at least a month, a little over a month. Okay. So basically this is really a follow on conversation back in late December, you had a very packed meeting but John Slason had come in and given a presentation about the work that's been done to update the transportation impact fees. The last time they were updated was in 2007 ish. So just a little bit after the last re-abrasal. And John walked everybody through sort of how does impact, how do impact fees work in general? And then talked about our process for whittling the whole project list down to something that is essentially mirroring the 10 year capital improvement program, your 10 year CIP. And he showed a bottom line number as to what this would be of somewhere in the neighborhood of just under $2,600 per trip. A single family home is considered to have one trip. So as an example, a multifamily is usually technically two thirds of the trip per household. So think of that as being what the fee per household or per housing unit would be. And then for a commercial, it's all sorts of different ones and John had a little chart in there. And I think where we left it off was that John had described the comparison to a handful of other communities in New England that have impact fees. And this is the follow on conversation to see what your comfort level is, where you'd like to see the fee wind up. And from there, we'll take those that direction and put together the final list. We're still working through some of the little bits and pieces of some of the projects and we've gotten some great impact input from folks in the bike pet committee, but they're not things that would substantively change the numbers. Okay, what's the pleasure? Are there questions by the council or are there comments from the public on? I mean, we're talking about $2,596 for a impact fee, correct? That's correct. So that's the average. The average of that. For PM peak hour trip. Okay. So that, as I said- So depending on the formula for determining the trips. That's okay. So that's- Right, so a single family home is typically one trip. So think that that is being a $2,596 fee for a single family home for a multifamily that winds up being closer to a little bit under 2,000. And then for commercial, I can pull up John's little chart, but it really depends on the type of use. Is it a heavy traffic generator, like a retailer or a light traffic generator, like a industrial? So Paul, just before Councillor Barrett, it's that represents roughly a $1,000 increase once we stack the $600 wreck fee on top of the 1,000. So we recognize that $1,000 additional dollars probably gets some feedback. So we're here, as Paul said, we're here tonight to see what you want us to work backwards to or if you're comfortable with this number or some other number. Right, so a thousand on the residential side and about $1,600 on the commercial side because they weren't paying the wreck fee before, the wreck fee. Okay, Tim? Yeah, so, this is gonna ask, oh yeah, so for like an apartment building of 40 units, if it was market rate, would each unit have to pay close to that amount or? Right, so it would be, let's assume that it's a brand new development. There's no, it's not a tear down or a place, it's just a brand new development, then it would be 40 times, about two thirds of the $2,600. So 40 times 18, so about 70 to $75,000. Okay. Yeah, now if they were replacing, say a single family home, then they'd get the credit for $2,000 of that because it was already a house there before. What if it was a senior housing center, whether people, nobody's really driving? Yes, go ahead, Justin. Yeah, so that's as Helen said, that's all predicated off of a nationwide manual that is used, and you remember this from your time on the DRB, the Institute of Transportation Engineers trip generation manual. So to your question of a senior housing facility, they're gonna have less PMP trips, therefore their fee would accordingly be even smaller. So it's a use category that you look at a table, okay? Which yeah, it's 100% attached to the lane use. Okay, all right, thank you. And then we have some buildings like the, what is it called? Garden Apartments, the new one that CHT put up, and they pay a reduced property tax because they're perpetually affordable. Do they pay a reduced, or did they pay a reduced impact fee or are the impact fees not even living? Unaffordable housing like that. So they paid the full impact fee, although they, I believe they got a credit for having built a decent infrastructure that was in the impact fee list. So when we have, if there's a road that's on our list, that's on the list that impact fees are intended to pay for, if as a developer you happen to be next to it and you happen to build that infrastructure, then you can get a credit because you're doing what this, what the impact ordinance was intended to do. But so in their case, I believe that they got a credit of their impact fees for having built part of Garden Street. But as a general rule, no, the city does have the authority if you choose to make, to exempt certain things like affordable housing. The catch that John had described last month is that the, that cost amount then needs to be, can't be assigned other impact fees. Basically, the amount of fees that don't get collected by that need to be made up by city funds. General fund, yeah. The general fund. The statute requires us to come up with a per trip formula based on projects divided by trips and you can't reallocate the responsibility of the project or the trips from one lane use to the other. So other uses couldn't subsidize the city through other funds would have to subsidize any types of reductions that the council chose to implement. So that's why sometimes when we have our housing transportation, affordable housing trust fund, when we give a developer $25,000 or $50,000, we have that conversation about, we're sort of just paying for some of the impact fees that we then collect. So we're sort of paying ourselves. Yeah, I guess the one benefit that comes out of the structure of giving the money from the affordable housing trust fund is that that funding is typically unrestricted and so they may be able to use it for things that they might otherwise not be able to use state or federal funding for, but in general, you're correct. Tom, you had your hand up. I apologize if this was presented in December and I just didn't pay enough attention, but we can't really do exactly what we wanted with affordable housing, but are we proposing this city-wide or are we proposing to have certain areas like our transit overlay district where we encourage and want more infill and redevelopment and more concentrated density where there's already things? Are we waiving that in areas where we don't want these fees in order to financially incentivize the reinvestment of already developed areas or is this city-wide and that's all there is? Well, I guess I'll give you a two-part answer to that, Tom. It is a city-wide number. However, the ordinance provides for opportunities to reduce your trips. If you can demonstrate to the city that you've taken actions to reduce how many vehicle trips you have to begin with, then your total number of trips dropped. So you could say we're along a transit line and therefore we estimate that 5% of our vehicle trips won't happen because people are taking the bus. That's 5% of your trips that get knocked off the top. Therefore, you're paying for five fewer trips. And it encourages people to work creatively if they're joining Car Share or being a member of Katmah or things like that. So that's the manner in which this, the ordinance would support what you're describing. Did I miss anything on that, Justin? No, it does create some creative solutions on behalf of developers. And this is, in a way, some of the improvements that will be coming along Wilson Road in front of the redevelopment of the Holiday Inn are a function of this exact same process that Paul just described. And one other thing I would add, Tom, is that it's brand new in this book that Justin was just referring to the Institute of Traffic Engineers book, but their latest edition starts to differentiate their assumptions between suburban environments and urban environments. And so it's not across the board. It takes a long time for the book to really catch up to everything going on, but some of the things, some uses are now sort of built into it. So the developer doesn't have to prove anything. It just says, a suburban environment, it's 100 trips to do for the store and for an urban environment, it's 50. And so right there, they can just point to the urban environment in certain parts of our city, and that would be simpler. Megan. You get to benefit from my daughter's practicing. The question I had was, see, life is never the same, Paul, I don't know what you're saying. So the question I had, and I looked through RSGs, it's presentation, and I still don't have answers to two things. Why is a multi-unit residence cheaper? And the second question I had, oh, shoot, is how do we respond to our local stakeholders when they say, Burlington is so cheap, Williston is so cheap. I don't see the numbers on how much it costs to build a road, for instance, in order to justify these numbers as opposed to going to Portland, Oregon, or Concord, New Hampshire, or somewhere else. Sure, well, let me take the first one, and then maybe, Justin, you can take the second one. I'll take the easy question. Basically, it comes down to the demographics associated with single-family homes versus multi-family homes. And so if we look in our housing mix, which is really not different from that much different from the rest of the country, and you think about all the studios and one-bedroom apartments, typically speaking, there are fewer people per household in multi-family housing than there are in single-family homes. Fewer people translates into an average of fewer vehicle trips, because you will tend to have more one-person households that live in apartments, and therefore they have one car, and so there's only one trip being made, potentially during the PM peak hour versus on average, there's more people who live in, say, a single-family home. There might be two people with a car, in which case you have two trips at that time. So that's where that comes from based on the review of our and a wider demographic. Also, if you look where we concentrate density in the city, it's generally near services. So the people that live in the O'Dell apartments are more likely to walk to Shaw's than someone that lives in Cytermill. So these nationwide surveys that feed the data that result in what you just asked, Megan, they take into account the fact that the housing unit in Cytermill is taking that vehicular trip, whereas O'Dell Parkway or hopefully city center in the future, they're not taking that trip. So it's only more or less expensive because those are the amount of vehicle trips that, again, whether it's demographics or where density is generally placed next to services. And these are typically based on dozens and dozens of studies and its statistical averages. So one of the things that's challenging, I know Tim can remember this from the times in the DRB, is any individual project doesn't exactly match the averages, but this goes on the statistical averages, which can be the most fair for everybody. So and to the second question, if you recall, John, we had discussed back in December how Burlington's hadn't been updated in quite some time and it was due for an update and the update is probably gonna generate a decent response given how old and how low their fee is. Also with regards to Williston, it has to, we have a robust capital plan. So there's a lot of projects and a lot of things that we're desiring to do. The impact fee is simply the output of what our capital plan is. So if other communities have less projects, and I know, for example, when Williston first established their impact fee, it was in response to the tap corners in general development. Those are the projects they wanted to pay for. A lot of it was also privately funded. So it's really just a function of how old is your fee? I'm like the assessing discussion. How old is your fee? And also what are you trying to fund? How thorough and how complete is a town's tenure capital plan or and or how many projects do you wanna pay for this way? So there's no real clear interest to why one community is more expensive than the other. But I know in those, you had mentioned those two towns specifically, that's my understanding. Right, and so ways that you could, if the council decided that the fee was not the right fee, then ways to adjust it would be to remove projects from the list, from the tenure capital list or to identify alternate funding for those projects. A larger reserve fund, for instance, or something like that. And so as Justin said, it's essentially the output of the projects that have been identified for the next 10 years. And David, you're on mute. Sorry about that. There seem to be multiple ways or instances where the fee is not charged at its maximum. So what percentage of the impact fee is actually paid at the maximum fee? I'm just curious, I don't think you said that, but I'm curious as to overall, what percentage of the estimate of the fee is paid at the top fee versus allowances for elderly housing or whatever the case may be. That's a good question, Dave. So I guess I'd say for most housing, other than something where it's replacing something in kind, like the Larkin Terrace building that went up that has Bliss B in it, was replacing 60 apartments. And so they didn't pay a significant fee because it was already there. But for the most part, housing pays pretty much its full fare. On the non-residential side, there's two big factors that weigh into it. One is, is it a redevelopment property? If it's redevelopment, you can get potentially a pretty big credit for what was there before, which is great and should be the case. And otherwise, the other factor is what exactly is the use? So something that's a destination, like an office, tends to pay pretty much its full fare or industrial, something where somebody's going to work. Uses that are what we call pass-by's, the kinds of thing that somebody's just going in between A and B, the methodology across the board on these is to give a pretty substantial credit because let's say it's a gas station. Most trips to a gas station aren't being made specifically from your house to the gas station to your house. You're on your way to work, you're on your way home. And so most of the trips that you might associate with a gas station are called pass-by trips and wind up getting a credit because they're not actually created by the gas station. So it's really pretty use dependent. So think of, I guess, think of the ones that people would be, that's their trip. They pretty much pay a full fee. Things where it's on their way, they get a substantial credit. So it really depends on the type of development that we might see in the future. Hotels tend to be destinations, industrial offices, retail tends to be more of a pass-by. And something like a coffee shop would tend to be a pass-by because people stop for a cup of coffee on their way to somewhere, right? Correct. Okay, so you've got, and what you've done here is calculated what you think is appropriate for South Burlington to support our CIP, correct? I would say that this lines up with what your CIP says and leverages the other dollars that you've put forward, such as the Penny-Sapaz, your TIF district, reserve fund, et cetera, to minimize, as John said, this puts almost nothing in the list on the grand list. That was sort of what is prioritized in here. Another community might decide to put, the same total amount of projects to be built, but put more of it to the general fund and put less of it to impact fees. Thanks. Yeah, here's another question. Megan, yes. For the multifamily homes, you said would be perhaps closer to services and amenities. And so that cost would go down. Well, how about the office space and city center? Yeah, same thing. That cost would go down. So it depends on location, not only on type. Right, so what happens is if you picture this list as being, I can't remember the exact number of trips that we're estimating, but it's a certain number of trips in the next 10 years, vehicle trips, that's essentially a fixed number. If some of the development occurs in the next 10 years that doesn't need a car, for example, that office and city center instead of needing 100, instead of generating 100 car trips that only creates 50, then you're only generating 50 new trips. And so you might push the, you could accommodate more development without any additional trips. Does that make sense? So you might have more total development under the same assumptions that we made. Okay, I just have an observation and tell me if I'm correct. So it sounds as if some of this of the dollar figure that is driven by having what I consider an excellent management tool in the form of a CIP. So we've laid this out for 10 years, all of the projects, and they're not all transportation projects, but all of the projects that we need to, or we believe we need to build. And since we've done that, that influences the number and makes it larger than some of our neighboring communities who perhaps haven't created a management tool of a CIP that's robust enough to really be a good working document. Yes, and like Paul said, I think our CIP maximizes other people's dollars to the fullest extent possible. Another easy way to make this less small or as key projects on the CIP, but on the revenue side of it, you swap out impact fee for something else. And right now, this project is trying to shoulder, the fee is trying to shoulder projects that would otherwise be borne by the taxpayer. Yeah, and maybe Justin, you can speak to this also because I'm probably more eloquently than I can, but part of the purpose of an impact fee is to spread, or the purpose of an impact fee is to spread the cost of identified needed transportation improvements that is created by new development across the board. So it's not as, so that it is less frequent that it is a single developer that is paying for the traffic signal or the specific improvement that they are benefiting from in part, but not in whole. Yes, exactly right. In the state and councilor slash Senator Chittenden will probably get exposed to this. The state has been for years trying to implement what they call TIZ transportation impact zones that will essentially do the same thing at a state level. The way it has always been is the 15th project that actually causes something to break. They have to pay for everything. The first 14 didn't have to pay for any of their impacts. And in the same way that our impact fee is trying to spread the burden of new demand across new development, the state is also looking to the same tool and then they're calling them TIZs of if you need another acronym tonight. So it's exactly what Paul described and I know the state is trying to do the same thing. Tom and then Megan. So I think I understand the affordable housing caveat and how we can still do it, but we got to fund it from a different source. Is there another way to look at this that's in conformance with the statute where we could apply some sort of reducing scale of density factor. So I'm just thinking of a 10 acre parcel that you put two houses on, they're gonna pay the 2000 bucks each, whereas you put 20 houses on those 10 acres and they're gonna pay it. Do we want to look at some sort of density ratio to not eliminate as to making more affordable, but to reduce it by some potential factor or is that out of compliance with the statute? You want me to get that baller? Go for it now. I'll think about whether I can add anything to it. Yeah, I think the answer is kind of the same Tom. So whether it's affordable housing or if you want to incent density through reduced transportation impact fees, the other persons, the other entity subsidizing whatever land uses you choose to give credits to, the other entity that has to pay that subsidy is the general tax base. It can't be other new projects because the trip cost with the trip cost, we can't change the number statutorily for one land use versus another. We can change it internally, but we have to make up the difference. I guess what I would add to that Tom is as just straight density, if it was all the same use, it's probably exactly what Justin described. If you start to get into either being near transit as we talked about or having a car share, car share Vermont car hosted there or you talk about having a mix of uses. So let's say no neighborhood included a neighborhood store, they could probably make a pretty strong case to say that, well, the store normally would be 50 trips, but given all the people that are gonna be within walking distance, we're pretty comfortable in saying that, 20% of all those trips are gonna be on foot. And so that's the way they would get their credit through density. So it's in the combination of activities and uses that they'd really be able to average this stuff or by being near services and somebody built a big neighborhood that was already right near stores, they could potentially make that case at least on the commercial side. And I don't know potentially in the residential side, I don't know if that's the way to do the process as opposed to through a legislative motion. Okay, Megan, so what is another question? Yeah, would it be correct to call it a smart growth planning tool? When you put it in that light, that if there is housing close to a grocery store or another service that they assume that there will be fewer, or you will assume that there will be fewer car trips. Yes, I would say that it's a smart growth tool in two ways. One, from a developer's perspective, you can take trips, you can just remove trips from your calculation by being near these services. And this was the decision that we had given John Slason guidance on a while ago. You could calculate impact fees based on every single trip, or you can calculate it based on vehicle trips. We gave John the guidance to calculate it based on vehicle trips, specifically for the reason that you're asking about Megan, which is to incentivize people to think creatively and push trips away from being necessarily in a car and reward them for doing it. So that's one. And then the other part of it is it helps to reinforce the city's CIP. And if the city's CIP is smart growth oriented, that we are supporting transportation improvements that help to foster our downtown and things like that, then that in and of itself is smart growth. And so a place like the Garden Street Apartments, they had to build Garden Street because our CIP lined up with the impact fees they were able to get a credit on their impact fees for building in an area that we had identified transportation projects for. Okay, great. So do you need a motion or further? I would say at this point, a strong sense of the council would be good because we're going to release John to write up an ordinance to give it to you, but we wanted to, if you have substance, if you wanted to significantly change the number, now would be the time to know. Otherwise having a sense of the council. I'm interested in changing the number, Tim. So where are our developer friends tonight to talk about this with us? Do they- They love it. They love paying impacts, apparently. Well, we know a lot of them. What do they say to you? Well, the big single family homes that are far from downtown from city center, right, that are on quarter acre, half acre lots, right? I don't think it's a big deal because they're gonna be going for $500, $600, $700. Anyway, what's 2,600 bucks, right? What I'm concerned about is the effect on affordable housing clusters and their ability to be able to deflect trip ends, right? So that they don't overpay if they don't have to. It sounds like it's structured like that and that won't be a problem. So then my next question is, so Williston's charging this and Burlington's charging this and we wanna charge this and when was the last time we raised it? And I don't have a problem raising it. If it raises more money for the list of very important projects that we have to do because climate change is probably involved in some of them, right? So that's my take on it. Okay, Tom? With what Tim just said, I don't remember the December meeting well enough. Are we like this and Burlington and Winooski are down here? Are we really that in a step with all of our neighbors with this number? Then I would have pause. I would wanna calibrate and I think you open this up by asking if we need to scale this number back a bit. I don't wanna be ridiculously overpriced compared to our peers and if that was presented and I didn't pay attention, my apologies. Let me just pull up the numbers here. Yeah. The other thing is you wouldn't have to change it for a while, Tom. Yeah, we could wait till they catch up with us. If we want South Burlington to be an inclusive, welcoming community and we truly care about affordable housing, I would hate for us to pass an ordinance that is this huge amount compared to these for these transportation fees. So I'd love to know how at least we compare. So Tom, based on regional comparisons, I'll start with a single family home because that's an easy one. The draft that you saw in December was about $2,600 per single family house in South Burlington. Today it's about $1,600. Other communities in Vermont, Winooski's draft one is $1,200. Williston is $1,950. Burlington, which is a much, much older one, is about $400. St. Albans and Georgia are about $300. That's about it who have it in this area. And then more regionally, Concord, New Hampshire and Portland, Maine are $2,000 to $2,200. Freeport's $1,500. And the national average is $3,600. But a lot of that I think John had described was based out of California. Last thing I'll say, Carrie Lee, I'm sorry. Yeah, and then I can speak about commercial industrial ones too, but I didn't, only if you wanna hear about it. One last comment. Yep. Of those communities that you just listed, I would find us most comparable to Williston, which was the highest because they are also a suburban type environment dealing with growth. So I'm more comfortable being in that Williston range. I think I sensed from you looking for an indication of the amount and where we are. I'd love to be in the ballpark around that Williston number rather than $600 or proportionally 30% more than that. That's just my inclination from what I know so far. I agree with you, Tom, but here's the thing is that, you know, with the amount of growth that's occurring that's new broken new broken land versus redeveloped existing properties that ends up sort of confronting this diminishing return on the, you know, the traffic capacity of the city, right? So I mean, there's a maximum buildout level, you know, for any amount of property that you look at. And it seems to me that as you start to get closer to that you'd wanna keep raising that value to make it harder, you know, or at least to get the money back that you need to implement projects that would counteract the negative, you know, effects of that kind of growth. So I mean, 2650 sounds a little bit higher than the other communities, I'm comfortable with it. But if the rest of the counselors wanna bring it down a little bit, you know, you could. Well, I think that's why I asked the questions I asked. And Williston though did it a while ago. I mean, Maple Tree Place was done some years ago, Tom. So they might be looking to, you know, do it again soon. I mean, I don't know. But I think the fact- It was two years ago for the impact fees, Megan, just to not, sorry to interrupt, but their impact fee was updated, I think two years ago, is that right, Justin? All right, thanks. So it would, it would, all right. Well, let's move that argument out there, but let's look at it also as a smart growth planning tool. I think that that is something that is compelling. I don't know what it's like in Williston if it has that smart growth planning tool, you know, for all the new housing that's gone up now. What's the name of that corner? Task corner? Yeah. That, do they have the same thing with the multi-unit? So they have the same kind of rebate idea and close to services. Although that's not a very pedestrian friendly area. I have to say, I am, I'm very proud of our city center. Yeah, Jenny, their similar land uses would be eligible for similar reductions in generated trips. They're not necessarily, yes, to your question, yes. Okay. David? Yeah, I think at the beginning, Paul and Justin, you made the statement that part of the reason for where the fee is, is because we have a very well crafted and well thought out capital improvement program that looks out 10 years. Is that, is that correct? Was that part of your reasoning, your explanation? And so, I think that has to play into it. We are fairly, we've got a lot of people that come in and out of South Burlington. We're a capital intensive community. And I agree with Tom. We don't want these numbers any higher than they need to be. On the flip side, we don't want to short change the realities of what we need and what we have planned. And I have a fair amount of faith in you guys to be able to have got that crafted really well. So, and I think if we set it, and it sits there for several years, the other communities are going to catch up anyway. What I'm saying, Tom, is I don't think it puts us at a non-competitive advantage at all. It shows that we've given tremendous amount of thought to what our needs are going forward. And we've probably worked harder at that than some of the other communities. So with that, I'm okay with it. I said I want to say one more comment, Helen, really. Sure. I would just go back to where are the developers tonight? And so I'd love to hear from them. So I'm sure there's a flip side to this and having them weigh in on it. I don't know if they're not here because they didn't weigh in or they wasn't warned as an action item to officially enact the ordinance, but hearing from them would be useful to better inform this number, at least from my perspective. And we're going to have a hearing. If we tell them to go ahead, it will be for a hearing. Right. Bob, Brett, do you want to make a comment? I'm just going to ask a clarification to Paul and Justin. Just this fee is never going to pay for all of the road and bike and ped projects, correct? I mean, this is just a contribution. So is that correct? That it's the 2600 wasn't set based on paying 100% of the projects that are under. No, as I said before, this, well, the impact fees are a component of the full 10-year CIP, including your assumptions around grants, penny for paths, TIF funding, all of those things. So this would, while individual projects could potentially be swapped out if one project has legs and another one doesn't, the purpose of the 10-year CIP is to do a 10-year look forward and to be prospective in our planning and not have surprises of, oh, and we think, we're going to add this new traffic signal two years from now that we weren't thinking about. It really is to plan out the full list of 10 years, but this is a portion of the payment. I think John said, I can't remember the total number, but it's something like $20 million with the total projects of which this pays six, seven, somewhere in there, was that right, Justin? In the ballpark, yes. Okay, thanks. Do we have to decide this tonight? No, no, they just want guidance. So if it would sense as if the, I mean, I'm not troubled necessarily with the 2500. I'm happy to go forward with that work and there will be a public hearing. And at that point, if we hear from people who are really opposed and saying, you're making it unaffordable for me to make a living, building anything in South Burlington, we can reassess. But this is what, I have people more knowledgeable than I, and I suspect any of the counselors about this kind of thing came up with. So that would be the guidance I would give Paul and Justin if that is reflective of the rest of the council or the majority of the council. Does that sound okay? Tom's got to sum up. As long as we've got a hearing ahead, that'll bring in the comments and that's good. So we're good. Okay, thank you very much. And that was a good discussion. I didn't think it was going to take quite that long, but there were a lot of very good questions, I think, and I sort of understand it a little bit better and that's great. So that was the point of this, I guess. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Let's move on to item nine. This is with Kevin Dorn and Alana Blanchard. It will be the discussion regarding potential adjustments of the boundaries of the South Burlington tax and the government financing district. Alana, welcome. Hi. Thank you. I'm not sure if Kevin, if you'd like me to present, I can go home. Okay. Okay, great. Can you pull up the map and this is to get a little bit of input from the council. We don't need to be making a decision tonight, but I want to give you a heads up that you may want to make a decision on this in the months ahead. So Alana has just pulled up the map of the downtown and now the TIF district. So our TIF district is 106 acres. It includes the area that is city center, but we think of it as city center, but also the San Remo Drive area that we think of part of city center as well. We have been meeting with representatives of the ownership of the University Mall. The bondholders of the mall, the owners of the mall have been looking for three years now to sell the mall to another owner, a potential redeveloper of the site. When the prior owners went bankrupt, the bondholders took the property back and have been trying to fix it up as best they can and lease it up as best they can in order to increase its value. They're still interested in doing that. They just have yet to get an offer from potential buyers that meets what their expectation has been. So we've been talking with them about some form of a partnership that we could have with them or with new owners that led toward the redevelopment of that property in order to have it become an integral part of city center and a rejuvenated, let's call it, and vital part of city center. For us to do any kind of partnership on infrastructure and infrastructure by way of public amenities, parks, skating rinks, or infrastructure amenities like roads, stormwater treatment, and so on, this would have to be TIF financing to do that. We don't see the capacity from the taxpayers or the general fund or elsewhere to be able to partner on large ticket items of infrastructure in public amenities. So in order to be able to do that, we would have to amend our TIF district boundaries to encompass the University of Mall property, which I think is at 55 acres. Now, to do that, just the process, council would have to approve that. We would have to go to the Vermont Economic Progress Council and get their approval and to get both approvals, we would need to have a good development agreement and master plan with the U Mall to understand what it is that they're trying to accomplish and what role we could play. They are working on their master plan currently. We've seen a lot of Paul and I have seen a early version of it. We've given feedback to them on how we think it might be improved. We think it's reasonably, at this point at least, consistent with the form-based code. It is mixed use. It does have housing in it and other kind of destination amenities, which is a direction we'd like to see them go. But then we would have to develop some type of a development agreement with them, which states who does what with when and with who and when. Only with those in our hands would we be able to go to VEPSI and convince VEPSI that this was good for the state, good for the development and that it couldn't get done without city involvement through the tax increment financing district. So tonight, we're here to just get council input on expanding the TIF district and we may have to take some of the area away from another part of the current TIF district. Alana, do you wanna weigh in on things I've missed or additional thoughts on this? I think you covered everything. I think that we would need to work closely with FCE staff on this just to make sure that everything's clear to them. In terms of what would happen. This is something that had been contemplated before and I think in preparation in the past, the new town center was expanded so it does include the university malls. So it is something that has been discussed with the state in the past. I think we discussed it a little bit as a council several years ago as a what if or is this possible? Which is, I think that's when we asked you to include it in the town plan or whatever it's called. So this isn't new to me, but then that mall owner lost the mall. So the conversation kind of went silent. Tim, did you wanna make a point? Yeah, Helen, I enjoyed your pun. What TIF, you know? So, right, crickets everywhere. How much time is left to do this, huh? What'd you say? Hilarious. How much time is really left to do this to, I mean, we're running out of time on the TIF district, right, so I mean, is it feasible to get a plan out of the U mall owners that we could then take to the state and actually move forward with this something? Well, you're bringing up a really good issue, Tim. As you know, we have some deadlines that we have to meet. Fortunately, the legislature extended the deadline during which we can incur debt until March of 23. But as we've discussed before, given how we go about incurring debt through the Vermont bond bank, it really speaks to the public having to make a decision on this in August, maybe September of 22. Because it's about a year and a half. We've pushed the U mall hard to try to get the master plan process moving forward based upon this issue. But yes, we would have to commit to debt for a new project in this area by August, probably of 22. Do we believe that the redevelopment of the U mall would increase its property tax value? Based upon the master plan that they have, they would be adding considerable amount of square feet in the form of housing, in the form of additional retail up and along Dorset Street and even interior. Now they may plan to tear down the parking garage and they may plan to do something somewhat different with the Sears building. But the Sears building, as you know, is owned by Sears. So nothing's gonna happen to that facility, that building without Sears agreeing to it. So yes, I think the square footage would increase. And I think that the assessed value would increase or the appraised value would increase. Does Sears own the garage too? No, but they do own the auto center. Right. And so as a community and looking long-term at city center, part of this discussion needs to be about that parking garage. Do we need 900 dedicated parking spaces to ensure adequate parking throughout all of city center? That's an important question before it gets ripped down. And I'd like to have a seat at that table, frankly. Oh. Okay, comments or thoughts or Alana, do you have anything else to add? I'm sorry. This is a lot of the work that will fall on your strong shoulders, one thing. Comments from council. Megan. What kind of projects and the violence, sorry. What kind of projects would we see going forward on the Yuma property? Public projects, Megan. Yeah, exactly what would we be voting? We might, we might look to participate in some of the stormwater or road construction. We might want to participate in a public park or community setting or multiple smaller community settings, grass areas, possibly an area that could be a dual-purpose skating rink, sprinkler, what do they call those things? Alana, sprinkler pond for kids, splash pad for kids. Things, public amenities that we may not be able to afford, frankly, in city center, that if we were able to get them in the Yuma property, it would augment the overall experience in city center. So basic infrastructure things, Megan, but also public amenities. Tim, I think we cut you off. You asked some questions and then Dave. Yeah, that's okay. What area do you think you might have to pull the perimeter in on the TIF and exclude some areas? Go ahead, Alana. Yeah, so it's not clear to me whether we would or would not need to. I think that's something that we can discuss with Pepsi staff. So right now, the new town center is 174.5 acres and it includes sections, for example, the southeast corner of Dorset Street and Williston Road that's not currently in the TIF district. So the Vermont gift barn, Greer's, I wanna say the double tree so badly but I know it's the Delta, Marriott Delta are currently outside of the TIF district. So I think it's really how comfortable the Pepsi staff and board is with the boundaries. So in order to include this whole area, these properties down here were not included when the new town center was amended down between Dorset and San Remo Drive at the southern end. So I think that's a discussion. Okay, David? Yeah, I think in reference to University Mall, the new city center project, the Market Street area is really the future, that's gonna be the future downtown, so to speak, of South Brilington, which was the plan and the intent. University Mall is an immediate proximity and I think it's absolutely essential that whatever happens there is extremely complementary to what's going on in Market Street city center and indeed that's probably not gonna happen with TIF financing. So without going any further in discussion, I think it's essential that we find a way to include that University Mall 55 acres, that's a lot of land in the TIF finding and be able financing and be able to incorporate that as part of a future real core of the city. And so I know Kevin, you're pushing them, the folks that own the mall as hard as possible to come up with a plan that really meets the needs of the future of South Brilington. I think we need to continue that and I think we need to get that into the TIF district. I don't really see any doubt about it in my mind. I think it'd be great for us going forward. I agree with that. Other comments? I think I would encourage you to go keep talking, keep pushing and seeing if that's a possibility because I agree with David. I think it would really compliment the downtown and in some ways then Dorset Street becomes our main street. Yes. And that wouldn't be such a bad thing. And maybe this would help convince the tiger funds to put the bridge over the interstate. I don't know. These are things that can happen along the way but I think if we don't keep moving now it'll never happen and I think it would be important for us to have a say in some of the decisions they make would be helpful anyway. Oh and that's a really good point also about the bridge. They're very interested in the bridge. And I know Councilor Kaufman has talked about it with me as well. If you look on the map, the bridge comes onto the property about right into the back of the mall. So you can envision a way that the bridge carries onto the second floor, an upper floor of the mall and then carries all the way across to Dorset Street bringing people right into the heart of city center. But if we had a partner who's gonna be partially financing, could partially finance the bridge along with the federal grant and maybe our TIF funds, it might give us a leg up on getting that money. Absolutely. Okay, are there any other comments or thoughts from Councilor should, is that enough encouragement to go forward? Okay. Yes it is. Thank you very much. I always appreciate your creativity and efforts to go pursue something that is close but takes a lot of work. So thank you both of you. Let's move on to item 10. This is certification of increment and presentation of the 2020 tax increment financing district annual report. This is always such a fun report. Thank you for the record alone at Blanchard. So each year we present a report to the Vermont Economic Progress Council on the tax increment financing district. And just to remind everyone, it's a bit confusing because we're presenting, we're putting together a report that's on the past fiscal year, which is FY 20, which begins in 2019. It ends in 2020 and June to July. And it's on both what happened during that fiscal year and on what happened to the grand list in 2019. So April 1, 2019. So, which is before fiscal year 20. So the first thing is I wanted to present the certification from Todd LeBlanc. We have to certify to Pepsi that we have presented the certification of the taxable value as of April 1, 2019 to you as the council. So this is the certification that was in the packet and so briefly, the original taxable value has added approximately 4 million over, I'm sorry, the taxable value of the TIF district has added approximately 4 million in value over the prior year. And that's overall about eight or 9 million in value over the original taxable value. So sorry, let me bring you back to the beginning. So this year, the increment on that taxable value or in FY 2020, the increment on that taxable value was 159,869. That's just under our annual debt service. Next year, our increment will surpass our annual debt service. But this is the first year we're really actually approaching that and it's substantially higher than the prior year. In general, the annual report which you have now seen several times, very little has changed in terms of the total parcels is very similar. There was some subdivision of the South Burlington City Center LLC property generally by Snyder-Braverman. There were some development that occurred during this period. So Ellard Square went onto the grand list during this period. The Poon Trust developed four units on their property and Black Bay Development developed some units. In addition, there was some subdivision of this property. And so each time that a property subdivides it and becomes the pieces of the property become smaller, they increase in value. So during this time, we did not take out any additional debt and then our payments are the same. We're essentially paying the interest on five million, on a five million dollar bond and we'll continue making those payments for an additional two years at which point we'll start making principal payments. In general, the projects that we advanced included obviously Market Street was the big one which had substantial completion during this period. We also worked on design for Garden Street, the Williston Road Street scape, a little bit on the I-89 pedestrian bicycle bridge and then of course advanced the City Hall, Library and Senior Center. So we used a variety of funds in order to advance these projects including tax increment financing which was a large chunk of what we spent but we also spent debt which the city incurred, federal aid and we did receive an efficiency from our rebate which will show up in the next year's expenditures and then we had some roadway impact fees and that would be it. Sorry, we had federal aid for the Williston Road Street scape as well. And I think I pretty much covered the activity for private properties. As part of this report, we also have to report on employment within the district and what changes have been. So this year for the first time we sent out a survey to all of the businesses. This was partially because of the additional COVID question and because we haven't actually had that much direct contact with businesses in the past several months but we would go ahead and just contact them directly. And so we had a pretty good response. We had about 21 responses and it showed that there has been some changes mainly in retail and restaurant uses and then some while they went down at one point or they went up at one point might have changed by one or two employees. The largest change was in groceries which actually had an increase although there was initially some reduction. And then we also report on the amount that we spend on Vermont firms that's the bulk. There's a few firms that are not within Vermont although they tend to be very close to Vermont but the bulk of our expenditures are on Vermont firms. And then we also report on how we are meeting the state's criteria. So we met the second of the approval criteria this year meaning that we completed Market Street and we were able to report on the impacts of that project. And then we also reported on COVID-19. So this substantially delayed our ability to talk to developers about their projects or potential projects or potential development agreements. It also slowed down our conversations with private landowners regarding impacts of projects that are ongoing. And that pretty much concludes the report. I did include a adequate tip district stats just to give you a sense of how this year compares to prior years and what we anticipate next year to look like. Great. Well, I think these reports, they must be a real pain in the neck to make or to put pull together. But I find them over time really informative and helpful and sort of understanding how this, how the TIF work is going forward and it's some financial impact. So I thank you. Are there other questions or comments from anyone else? Okay. Well, thank you, Elana. Thanks. So we, yeah, you've already handed in so we don't need to approve or anything. Okay, moving on to item 11 then, this is the council discussion and guidance related to the role of the council relative to the Burton corporation higher ground application under act 250, the state land use law. And Colin is here as our attorney. And as you know, Megan at RBS went to the outside review or walk of the property and then she kind of got entwined in the conversation by the chair, Tom Little. And so I think Colin is needing, and I think the council needs to clarify what kind of role we're going to play and how we're going to be able to do that. What kind of role we're going to play and how much further we want to go. I think as we originally decided Colin was going to send a letter that reflected our concerns. And then I think two new ones were identified, the well potential well water or the water district some pollution factor. And then we wanted to add noise. So I think Megan had some wrote a memo and that was kind of confusing to Colin because it was his understanding as I understand it is that when you write them then they're anticipating that you will provide testimony and we as a council had decided that we were going to do this as inexpensively as we can and not really present experts but just retain our standing. Is that right Colin? Did I raise that right? That's fair, yep. Okay. So this is a discussion on where we go from here if we want to go further or what are the kind of options? Megan? Yeah. Thank you Helen for providing that. I just wanted to clarify for the council, Helen and I and Kevin I think was in on that conversation had seen a response to my inquiry to Erin about what a memo would obligate. And he said absolutely nothing. So I thought it was important for kind of the record to be clear which is why I wrote the memo since it didn't obligate us to do anything. So I just wanted that to be known. That's why I moved forward with the memo. Right, I'm sorry. I forgot to mention that. Yeah, you weren't intending to get us into a more expensive role but you were given that assurance and you wrote a really nice memo. But that Colin had some concerns about that. Do you want to share? I mean, concerns or needed a little more guidance from the council about what it is we really wish him to do. So Colin, do you have anything else to add or? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think just for this setting I just want to make sure that we're not talking in attorney client privilege information stuff you want to be confidential. I mean, normally we would talk in the executive session. So I just want to be clear. I'm just going to be talking really in generalities and I don't really want to get into litigation strategy if that's what we want to do. I can do that if you want. But so I think that I guess that would be helpful for me to figure out for next steps if you see the, I sent out a memo that the, not a memo, a pre-hearing conference order that the active 50 commission sent out that obligates us to provide a response about what witnesses we wanted to provide if we wanted to provide any witnesses. And so it seems that at least with our memo even though it didn't obligate us to do anything that we're by doing so there's some anticipation that we're going to provide some testimony. If we're not, that's fine. We can just go forward and I think it would be helpful for me to maybe write a letter just outlining that if it's our intention not to provide testimony that we had asked the commission to consider the comments as Megan did well write them and set forth but we're not going to be providing testimony on them. So is that the wish of the council? That was my understanding. We weren't going to provide expert testimony. Lynn, can I add something? Pardon me? Can I add something? This is Laurie Smith. Sure. Yes, you may. I just wanted to add that the CRZ group is hiring expert witnesses. And I don't know if this is a question for Colin or whatever, but we are very happy to have the information that we get available to both South Burlington and ourselves because we'd very much like to be collaborative with you folks in protecting our community. So it may be that the expert witnesses that we enlist may be available to the city as well. Okay, Colin, can you respond to that? Is that a- I'll just say, thank you. I don't know if we, that may be helpful. It depends on what the council really wants to do. I mean, as you and I have talked, I mean, I'm the attorney for the council. I represent them and speak for them. So if the council wants to go forward and focus more on being involved in the proceeding, I think that would be helpful if we're just highlighting that the concerns we've already raised are it. I think we'd be happy to be a part of it, but I don't know what we would do with them. Okay. Michael Mitek, you wanted to say something? Yes, I had a question. If Megan does give testimony, then she can call all those expert witnesses that have been retained by the residents down there without having to say anything else herself. She can call those people as witnesses and they can give the expert testimony that the residents would like to have heard by the commission, by the active future. Am I correct? Except I think the resident group is going to be laying out their case and calling the, I mean, I don't think Megan is interested necessarily in being on the stand, so to speak, and calling witnesses. The city has standing, but do the residents have standing? We do have standing, yes. And I know that you folks were also talking about noise and I do have some information about noise if you are interested in hearing that this evening. If you could indulge, I had one or two other questions. I understand that the soil has been tested for contamination on that parcel of land that's where this business will be located, is that correct? Not yet. There's a war plan. There's a hazardous waste work plan that's been submitted to the stage. Helen, I don't want this meeting to devolve like this if we could avoid it. Right, I think the point of this was really more to clarify for Colin what the council would like him to do. Well, I have some experience that might be relevant in my own business experience that might be very relevant about soil testing because we were- But I think there, I mean, I'm sure that we're not involved in that, I guess, Michael. So I'm not sure how- It's a question for the residents then. Okay. Yes, I think so. But- But can I get back to the council? What is your feeling about how deeply we want to go? Is what I outlined or what Colin outlined writing another letter, mentioning those things and then that is the role that we will play. That's what we decided before. And Colin? Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like this might be best in executive session because if we reveal how far we are willing or not to go or so on, it sends messages clearly to this legal matter. So I don't know what you're looking for me here, but before I were to indicate how much support I do or don't have for any of these future possible actions, I wonder if it might be better to not reveal our hands, so to speak, since this is a legal course of action. I agree with Tom, yeah. Okay. We had sort of felt we weren't gonna need an executive session for this. That would exclude the public certainly. And I guess I'm not certain we're revealing anything if we reiterate that our intention was for our lawyer to submit our concerns again that were discussed prior to this and then partake in the, be part of the hearing, I guess you listen, right? You sit in, Colin? I would if that's, yeah. I mean, that's one way to do it for sure. We do have party status, right? Yes. Okay. We do. And so that's what we decided to do is to retain that and just send those letters or comments so that the Act 250 board was aware of the concerns that the city had expressed in the early years of earlier discussions. With the DRB. Okay. With the DRB. Megan? Got me if this is turning into an executive session discussion, but if we have expert witnesses that the residents have brought forth in our questioning and I can attend on March 10th as well, let's say Colin is there as well and he has a question for the expert witness. Can he, even though he hasn't specifically brought that witness forward, if it's something that would involve South Burlington's interest, I would certainly hope that our representation would ask the question that's burning inside of him. I would certainly wanna ask a question if I could. Well, I've never been to an Act 250 hearing so I don't know what the process is. Is that, would work Colin or not? It could perhaps work. I mean, it's all in whether you want me to be a, whether the city wants to be a passive party involved in this process or take an active role. And I think it's a determination that I think we need to hear from. I mean, we've raised several issues in this memo about criteria. And right now, I don't know how much you want me to get into an open session on my thoughts, I guess is. I think we should go into executive session for this. All right. Well, we have to go in a little bit later for another topic. So if you can stick around Colin, we're almost through the agenda. I have a question about executive session. This is Lori again. And the question is, if in executive session you're going to be talking about active or passive involvement and whether or not to question expert witnesses and we have hired expert witnesses, would it be helpful or useful for us to be part of that session to be able to discuss what we are able to contribute? That's a question for you or for Colin. Yeah, I don't think we need that level of detail to determine whether we want to be active or passive. Okay. Personally. I mean, just Wendy and then Doug. I can wait. I'm Wendy Bratt and I'm wanting to comment on the support of my city on my neighborhood. And I ask you from my depth that you give us the support that we need. We're a small group coming at this with funds that are private. I'm investing money in this. And I would like my city to also invest in not only this 88 neighborhood, you know, 88 resident neighborhood, I don't know how many people, 200, 250, but also support our beautiful park to support our police department now, you know, to find out what our future expenses are gonna be in terms of our municipality. I don't think that being penny-wise, I think it's penny-wise and pound foolish to scrape a little bit, you know, like not give this what it deserves right now. And then down the line realize, you know, we're responsible for putting in infrastructure for something that wasn't put in prior to the opening of a massive venue. This is, you know, 500 cars, a concert is a low number in my opinion. And there is not the infrastructure right now for bikes, for walking, for cars. And I just ask that you support us because I don't necessarily think we need to be doing this alone without a lot of help from you. And I appreciate what you're doing. And I'm so grateful and just asking you to support us. Thank you. Deb? Thanks for the opportunity. I agree with what Wendy says. I think that whatever happens there is going to be forever. So the people in the community have been putting money into support hiring an attorney and also expert witnesses. But I know that when that's there, it's not going to go away. We're going to have a venue. We know where the higher ground was on Willisville road for however many years they've been there. But we're looking at a place that has twice the capacity. And once it's in, it's going to be there. Burlington's proposing right now will make 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. police patrols. So somehow that's not a good thing. And it just, there's a disconnect. There's a political imperative in the city of Burlington to put that in. Well, even if John Shannon is the consultant for the South End who made a comment about looking for having to be able to bicycle to a venue like this. So I think you could also take a passive role to begin with and watch how things evolve. Because at this point, we don't even know how far we can go with it. Okay, Paul, you know, I appreciate your comments, Doug. I really don't want this to be a public hearing because I think we've heard a lot of these comments before. And I understand and appreciate your passion and concern. And I think the city is involved to the extent, I guess we'll figure out in executive session if we want to go deeper into this, but I think we have been there for you at the DRB and our letters. And so I think, I don't think it's fair to say that we've abandoned the 88 residents or the 88 homes in this area. It is of concern. I think it's a question of how we can effectively support this without spending lots and lots and lots of money. That's kind of where we are. It was a tough budget year for everyone, including the city. So Dana, if you have something new, but not to reiterate the concerns you have with Burton's proposal, I'd be amenable to hearing that. And then I think we'll move on. Great, thank you. I'll be very brief. When we were granted rights to speak in the 250 hearings, one of the differences is that most of the residents didn't have the right to comment on the facets having to do with protecting this natural resource and historical realities of the park. And that was granted to the city of South Burlington. So we're really grateful that you're there to advocate on behalf of the city and really on behalf of everyone for that. So, but that is just one of the key differences between what residents can do and what the city can do. So thank you for bearing that in mind. Okay. I think we'll further discuss this, discuss this or finish the discussion in executive session. So Michael, I think we'll move on from here. Thank you. Let's go on some items. And we're kind of getting behind ourselves here. We're not too far off, but a little bit. Tom Hubbard. Thanks, Ellen. Yeah, just to give you not a lot of change since the last update on the financials, we're really looking at the month of December. We'll have the month of January for you at the next meeting. Expenses haven't changed much. We're still revenue is just under 61% in the general fund. Expenses are just over 43%. We're awaiting our next allotment of the local options tax in mid-February. That's gonna be a key indicator for us in terms of one of the huge revenue sources that we're looking at. And still really concerned more about the revenue than we are about the expenses which we know we can control. We're still holding on much of the capital expenses for this year until we have a better sense of where we think we're gonna fall. And the allotment that we get in February I think will be a good indicator for us of that. Our other concerns with our fire inspection revenue right now is that 23% of the 440,000 that we had anticipated by the end of the year. Invalence billing is at 33% of $710,000. Our planning and zoning permit revenue is down. In our interest on investments which I'd indicated in the budget presentation we're at 9% of $225,000. So we know the shortfall is gonna be in the revenue. We've got to protect the amount of expenses and what we allow for to help balance that out. And as we continue to move through the months we'll continue to keep you apprised of that and come back to you for decisions once we have a better sense of where we might end up the fiscal year. The enterprise funds are all doing well. Sewer revenue is at 39%, expenses at 38%, stormwater revenue at 35% and expenses just under 20%. So things are looking good there. Happy to respond to any questions but more look forward to seeing what our February numbers from the state reveal. Okay, any questions? So we will know when in February on the local options. It's usually around the 14th of the month. So maybe for the next council meeting we'll have that information. I'm hopeful that we will and certainly update you as soon as we receive that information. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments? All righty, we'll move on to item 13, which is to recall we eliminated the professional firefighters of America. Is Andrew on? No, I think Tom and I are, Andrew or Tom and I are gonna handle this one. Oh, okay. So this is consider and possibly approve a one year collective bargaining agreement with the South Burlington chapter of the AFSCME, probably as a acronym you can say aloud, but which is the City Hall Public Works Association. Thanks, Helen. We're here tonight to present to the council the contract with the union which is a simple one year extension that goes from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. And the only real change in it is the compensation rates in the cost of living increase. And if you combine the step model which all of our compensation is built upon and a modest COLA it turns out to be 2.6%. So it's 1.1% on the COLA and the traditional one and a half percent step increase. That's the only real change other than there may be some grammatic changes and those sorts of things, but that's the change in this year. So the union, I want to express my appreciation for agreeing to the proposal we put forth to just extend it one year given the change in the administration. So we would ask the council tonight to approve the existing contract but with the change in the COLA. All right. Are there any questions or thoughts? I would entertain. We approve that. We approve that change. And Tom, it looks like you're seconding that. Okay. Are you ready for that vote? I'll call the roll. Thomas Shinden. Aye. Tim Barrett. Aye. Megan Emory. Aye. David Kaufman. Aye. And the chair votes aye. So we approve that five to zero. Thank you very much. I know those are always difficult and time-consuming experiences and we're hoping that the rest fall in line soon. Well, thank you, Helen. We would hope to have the fire department and the police department before you at your next meeting on the 16th of February. That's our hope. Great. Thank you. Item 14, reports from counselors on committee assignments. I suppose I should, I think you all know, but the outreach committee for the city manager met and we winnowed down the 11 applicants to four, two tiers, sort of two top and two other and we'll be interviewing the first two on this Friday. So we'll see if we need to go deeper into the applicant pool but we'll start with the top two was the decision by that wonderful committee. So that's up for this Friday night. I guess other business, is there any other business other than going back into executive session for two issues? You need to finish our original discussion and the one we just kind of had. All right, should we, I think we're not gonna come back into session after the executive committee meeting. So I guess we can adjourn this one and go into executive session, is that all right? I think. All right, so a motion to adjourn the council meeting and move, we make it a double motion to adjourn and then to move into executive session for the purpose of what was personnel issues and litigation with Colin McNeill, Kevin, and Tom, and anyone else? No, I don't think so. Okay, that's moved and seconded. Seconded, okay, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay, thank you. And we are now in executive session. So who has to leave?