 He doesn't tell me everything, but he tells me a lot. Okay. Is this on? Charlie, are you ready to go? Okay. So I would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, December 17th, 2018, and will rise to pledge to the flag. And, Kevin, I want to start by pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So, since this is our last meeting of 2018, we should probably thank the public. You said party? Have a party. Have a party. Oh, have a pardon? Pardon, yes. We could do that too. What do you want to pardon? But just to really thank, I mean, there's not a whole lot of people in the audience, but there certainly are people who will listen to this online, at least for the next several months. See how the funding goes. But thank you for all your participation. And I think 2018 was a pretty exciting year for the city of South Burlington. Some of the major issues that were discussed and worked on and loaded upon. And 2019, I think we'll start to really reap a lot of those benefits. So for me, 2018 was a good year. I enjoyed working with everyone. I think we had a, we had a sad loss, but we also had a good, have a good replacement with David Kaufman. So I think we've moved forward in a, in a good way. And I'm really looking forward to 2019. And I want to thank the council and our city manager and deputy manager and Charlie and Sue, who have really helped bring democracy to our residents. So with that, we'll move on to instructions to exit the building in case of an emergency. Thank you, Helen. In case of emergency this evening, please go out one of the two doors here, exiting the side and go out to the parking lot to the south side of the building. If these doors are blocked, go back out into the main lobby out the front door and gather again in the south parking lot. Tom Hubbard and I are responsible for making sure the building is cleared. So please leave expeditiously. Agenda review, welcome. I forgot I had to pick Jane up at the office. It wouldn't have been good to have left her there all night. No, she wouldn't have been happy. Additions, deletions or changes in order of agenda items. I would like to add very briefly an item to other business so that we can, I can query whether we want to put that on a future agenda. There actually are two issues. One might be considering the early next year a naming rights policy. And then since we're building a lot of new buildings. And then the other is just a personal concern I have with all the signs that businesses put up to advertise something on a weekend. And I see it as litter and our road crew is very good about work on them all down Monday morning. But I think it's a real different situation than a political campaign or a nonprofit that's having a bake sale and that's how they can get their, the word out. So I would like us to maybe consider some kind of policy for the city and a process to maybe enforce that without being signed police. It's just an irritation to me. I think it really makes our roadways look pretty crappy. And so, and it is really against our ordinances, but people still do it. Yes, I again, there wasn't agenda item for committee reports. Oh, right. It wasn't on the last agenda either. So if it's a copy, paste issue. And the other thing I'd like to add under other businesses. Well, I've talked with individual constituents as well as individual counselors and I would like us to discuss and it doesn't have to be a full blown discussion tonight. But the possibility of putting on a future agenda some kind of message letter that we could write to legislators and possibly the governor with regard to the governance and what we've been all learning in the VT Digger articles. The National Guard of the National Air National. The last part. Yes. Yeah. I so we'll talk about that later. Okay. So that's another other business item for tonight. Sure, at least to just raise it and then see if we want to go forward with having a fuller discussion or whatever. I have a really tiny item for other business. Okay. All right. One more. Okay. So a Tim tiny issue. No. And I have, I have actually two. Okay. So we're getting up to six, six. So I would ask the council to strike item 16 on your agenda for this evening. Okay. That is not quite right yet. And we also had a very late warrant come in and I would ask if you would consider and you have paperwork on your desk here, adding approval of a warrant as a special item relating to construction on Marcus Street. Oh, okay. It's the two page one. Yes. Okay. And that's so small. It's just $199,000 in change. Yeah. For Marcus Street, that's pretty small. That is pretty small for Marcus Street. Okay. So we can, do you want to, so we have to discuss that and vote on it separately in other business or can we add it to... Place 16 maybe or... 6A. Or 6A. Signed disbursements. If you wish. Yeah. What, what's your... That's fine. Yeah. I mean, is someone going to say no? Didn't we see anything? It was, yeah. Wait here. Is it here? Yeah. Just a little memo. Uh-huh. Gotcha. Okay. You got the sheet to sign tonight? Is it... Is it in the book? Yes. Oh, good. Did we get all the disbursements that were in our packets? Because it was a pretty sparse, at least what I opened in my packet was not the usual... Box had everything. Box had 212 pages. What we got in email was only like 98 pages. So I didn't notice what the differences were, but the box version was a lot bigger. They have the feasibility report, and I'm guessing other things. So are we okay with adding this to... Okay. Great. All right. So now we're up to item 4. Possible executive session to receive advice from legal counsel related to collective bargaining agreements, as well as other matters related to contracts. So I would move that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of contracts and contract terms between city and third parties related to the new community center would clearly place the council and the city at a substantial disadvantage. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. So having so found, I now move that the council enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing contracts and contract terms related to the community center with the library board of trustees, the city manager, and deputy city manager inviting into the executive session city manager. And the city... The council? Right? Is Amanda going to go to this too? Or is she part of that or not? Amanda... Point of clarification. It is not. Oh, okay. Do you? I would not. Yeah. Point of clarification. You stated the community center, but the item 4 is talking about collective bargaining agreements, as well as other matters related to contracts. So what are we going into executive session for right now? All matters related to contracts. All matters related to contracts, not just the community center. They all tie in. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. So just the city manager is the city manager. That's it. Okay. And Patrick Leduc. Patrick Leduc. Initially, okay. Okay. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. We should be back in about half an hour. Oh. Help yourself to those cookies. What cookies? Cookies? Yeah. Again? Like the 12 cookies I had at work today and... Appears as if you're facet and can handle them. Having the following done? Uh, no. I don't think that they are. Okay. Or can we go into a little room? It's just a small room. I know. I can. Yeah. Okay. So I would like to call back and to order the South Wellington City Council meeting of Monday, December 17th, 2018 and move on to item five. Any questions and comments from the public not related to the agenda? Are there any? Jimmy Lees. Welcome. Thank you. My name is James Lees and I live in South Burlington. So the VT Digger articles highlighted commanders who abused alcohol, they sexually abused, they were alleged to be sexually abused women and retaliating against the person who did his job to hold them to account. But the commanders did one more thing that hasn't really been highlighted in some of the media reports that was included in the VT Digger. The VT Digger, the VT Digger. The VT Digger, the VT Digger. That was included in the VT Digger stories. And that was that the commanders did a very deliberate cooking of the books. And they did that about personnel numbers. And Jasper Craven elaborated on it in his interview on VPR. He said they did that cooking of the books about personnel numbers to facilitate F-35 basing. That was the only place that the F-35 came up in his reports. And one thing that struck me about that seven article series was that all the allegations were against commanders, not against soldiers or airmen who were regular members of the guard. It was all the commanders. And none of these activities, of course, can be considered honorable. That we have commanders in our Vermont Guard who are doing these things that they must know are not to the high standards of honor. But the very deliberate cooking of the books that was mentioned by a former senior official in the Army Guard I think is what it said in the article. It was not just a dishonorable thing. It was also raised credibility, dignity, and trust. It's a matter of honesty. And this was not the first time that Guard commanders misled the Air Force. The Boston Globe had a whole story about it in 2013 where they talked about Guard members fudging. They used that word fudging, the data, to get the Burlington Air Guard station into the running for the F-35. And they fudged how many houses were in the crash zone. Did you know there are 1,400 houses in the zone designated by the Air Force for crash at each end of the runway. It extends three miles on each end of the runway and it's got a certain width, about a half mile. And this is where not all crashes happen, but a larger fraction of crashes happen either on the runway or in those crash zones. So we have a huge number of actual houses. You really want zero in that zone. And this was something that was fudged by the Air Guard or by the Vermont National Guard. So we have a serious problem with the commanders and their leadership didn't succeed in protecting the men and women in the Guard, particularly the women, but also the truth in reporting. And we had a problem with the commander in chief of the Air Guard. The governor failed. He's not going to, he wants to suppress and conceal this. Let the story go away is what he pretty much indicated. We're not going to have further investigation to root out the problem, root and branch and fix it and get a Guard leadership that is going to be honorable and honest and have integrity and be the kind of Guard leadership that we want. But this goes so much deeper than just what's going on in the Guard. We see the F-16 afterburner in 2008 being implemented without any kind of environmental review. And the Air Force knew and the Guard knew that this was going to harm children in the neighborhood. They knew it was going to harm both learning and hearing for people in the neighborhood. And what about the passengers at the airport? What about them? 4,300 passengers, I think it's 4, or is it 3,400? 3,400 passengers a day passed through that airport according to the numbers given by the airport. And they say it's 600,000 employments, 12 or 1,300,000 or so departures and arrivals. Works out to 3,400 people a day at the airport. They're very close to the runway. They're going to be hit with hearing damage. By the F-35 afterburner. It's going to be way louder than the normal ordinary military power. This is not the usual kind of airport where you base this kind of thing. Usually it's at an Air Force base where you don't have commercial aircraft. You don't have civilians. You don't have unprotected people. You don't have children. You don't have families. This is the kind of airport where you don't want this kind of military equipment. It violates the rules of war to do it. It violates the Department of Defense's own law of war manual that just came out in 2015, two years after the decision was made. It gives several principles by which military is supposed to operate, a fundamental one of which is to protect civilians. Even during war, even during the heat of battle, their job is to protect civilians and civilian property and not do things where it's not necessary to harm the civilians, where you can, where you take feasible alternatives. Here they have plenty of feasible alternatives. And these laws of war apply even in Vermont where we don't have actual fighting going on. The law of war manual makes that clear. James, is there something that you would like us to do? Yes. Okay. So what I would like this body to do is to consider requesting investigation by the legislature and by the state's attorney. I think there are damages to civilians and civilian property and the thing must be investigated and the people who are making these decisions and forcing it, now forcing it in view of the votes that we've had in Burlington and by this council and by councils in Burlington and Winooski, forcing it on the people. It should be investigated and those who are responsible held to account. I would also invite or encourage the council to hold a public hearing on this and to invite guard members, political figures, the leadership in the state, the congressional delegation and the members of the public who, and to have this in the Chamberlain School neighborhood, maybe at the Chamberlain School itself, to have teachers and students testify. I think that they should have a voice in this as well. And I think it would have a big impact, particularly now when this huge opportunity is opened up with these reports in VT Digger. So, and I think that we would, I would ask the council to encourage the legislature to have hearings, not just about the particular inside the guard problem, but the larger problem, that the guard is putting so much damage and injury on members of the civilian population who happen to live in this working class neighborhood right outside the runway. And those who live in Winooski with a runway aims right at the center of Winooski and at Williston in the opposite direction. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Are there any other issues people want to bring not on the agenda? All right. Thank you. Moving on to the consent agenda, we discussed briefly ahead of time to add one more item to the signed disbursements, which are two payments to J.A. McDonald for construction on the market street, construction of the market street that failed to get in the, I guess, published list of disbursements. One item is $151,000, excuse me, $936.08. And the second was $47,708.02 for a total of $199,644.10. So I would, and then the consent agenda would include that addition to A, B, approving minutes for November 5th and December 3rd, C, review and resolve to not file inquiries or comments regarding prior notice of an application for a certificate of public good to the Public Utility Commission for installation of an approximate 150-kilowatt grant net-metered solar panel array at 650 Spear Street. D is review and resolve to not file inquiries or comments with the applicant regarding prior notice of an application for a certificate of public good for the installation of an approximate 80-kilowatt group net-metered solar array panel at 705 Spear Street. E is accept irrevocable offers for Mary Street extension and Winslep Lane. F authorized the city manager to sign an MOU with Poon Trust regarding parking and city center. And G, authorizing the city manager to submit an application to the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank for voter authorized debt related to improvements at 180 Market Street. So do I have a motion to approve as amending? So moved. One second. But I want to have some discussion if we could. Yeah. Okay. What do you want to discuss? So the question would be for the city manager about Mary Street extension, right? Is the city, I thought I had heard that after one of the last most forms, if we're accepting the street, does that mean that public works is going to plow the entire street and where it connects to Market Street or is there going to be temporarily not plowed during construction phases of other things? No, it would be plowed. It will be plowed. By the city. Once we accept it, we will be responsible for plowing it. So the Jersey barriers were taken down? No. I think the barriers will stay. I think what hearing from the residents in the area and concern about traffic, what we have intended to do is leave the barriers up at least until Market Street is completed. If not until Market Street and the northern portion of Garden Street are connected so as to not turn Mary Street into a high speed through lane and then engage in a dialogue with a Mary Street residents well in advance of doing anything about traffic calming measures and things of that nature. It has always been intended to be a public road that passes all the way through. But until we get some relief for the expected traffic, Market Street and maybe even Garden Street will keep the Jersey barriers up unless I hear otherwise from the council. That's the staff recommendation. Is it possible to make Mary Street do not enter from Market Street until such time as there's Right now all it does is service Allard. We have Jersey barriers up right now. So you can't pass. You can't come from Market all the way down Mary Street, right? Because you've got barriers. You can come on Market Street and turn on to Mary Street and get into Allard Square. But you can't go all the way down Mary Street. Right. But at some point you want to lift the barriers, the Jersey barriers. Eventually. Eventually. Okay. So the question is one of the things you could do is say do not enter, right? That it's effectively a one like one way coming out into Market Street. I mean, I don't want to make this. Yeah, I think that that there's a lot to discuss with that. So for now the barriers are going to stay. I think that would be easy for the residents. I think they would be a federal. Okay. All right. That's great. We're going to get into Allard, obviously, and eventually to the school parking lot. And is public works, are they plowing windswept lane now? They would, they would. They will. They will be, but they're not now. Now once we accept it, we're responsible. Okay. Great. And I'm really glad that UVM is supplying to put in 230 kilowatts. It's a really small array, a couple of small arrays on those cement pads that are over where they used to do composting and things like that. That's, that's a nice use of their land. You noticed at that farm, they already have the roof entirely filled. Then they have another rack that's between the barn and the road. So that's really good. And then what is the annual cost for the, for the, for the poon parking? It's a dollar a day per space. For 40 spaces? I think it's 14,000, 500 bucks so roughly a year. I think I did the calculation. That's my question. Resolution twice. It says there are 100 spots and it gives the rate, but it doesn't say how many spots we're negotiating for. We are looking at 40. 40. But if we need to fill the gap with the permit, it could go to 45. It could go to 38. But 40 is the number we're looking at. So if you were to reduce the number, would the contract be written in such a way that you could reduce the number for a given year or for a given quarter or, I mean, is it? Well, we have, we have permit obligations that we'll have to meet. So if we wouldn't reduce unless parking became available someplace else. But we, we know what we're, we're pretty sure what we're going to get in the Marcot parking lot extension. Pretty sure we know what our permit obligations are. And so that's the number we'll get to. It'll, it'll meet our permit obligation. So then would there be a dedicated flashing crosswalk with a red light to stop traffic to let people cross? There are no lights on Market Street, but there could be a, there could be a flashing light, one of the flashing lights like we have out here for crosswalk. But then Justin said that the the Feds weren't allowing anymore. But they put a new one on Will, on Heinsberg Road. It's wonderful. They put a new one on 2A at, at Birch. We'll look into, anyway, we'll look into it. Absolutely. We want that to be safe. We don't want Market Street to be a high speed road either. No, but I mean, if you have people that need to get to the library from the Poon parking lot, they're going to need a really guaranteed way to get across without any interference from, from moving cars. I mean, some that were traffic just stopped. We do. Well, we do. And now's the time to talk about it. Right. So, uh, is there anything else there I want to do? Is there a musical band? Oh, okay. We have a public hearing that's supposed to start at 730. Okay. Are there, we're a little bit late. Do you want me to talk about the, um, 2050 transportation plan under other business then? I was, there isn't a committee update, uh, report. Right. We have a motion on the table. Right. We have a motion on the table. We have a motion that was, uh, made and seconded. So if there's no further discussion, all in favor of agreeing to the consent agenda with that one change on the disbursements signified by saying aye. Aye. Okay. So we'll now move to the public hearing on amendment to capital improvement plan with a possible approval by the city council. And is... Martha's here. Oh, Martha's going to do that. So I need a motion to open that public hearing. Second. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Welcome, Martha McHare, McHare. Hi. My name is Martha McHare. I am the Deputy Finance Officer. Here to present the capital improvement program for public hearing. Uh, for the record, capital improvement program is, uh, tool used to improve timing. Get the mic a little bit closer. I don't know if everyone can hear. People can hear. Oh, okay. Speak up. That better? No. How do I do that? Okay. That better? Yeah, yeah. Then I'll have to bend down. I'm just going to go down. Okay. So Martha McHare, the Deputy Finance Officer, here to present capital improvement program for public hearing. Uh, capital improvement program, just for the record, is a tool used to improve, uh, timing of major projects and plan to replace capital, uh, capital replacement, future capital replacement for the city. It is a roadmap that just helped in identifying the need for the community and when they will happen. It is not static. It is adjusted every year, depending on the need and the availability of the resources, and, uh, also ask the data becomes available to adjust it. Uh, just also for the record, what we have done differently this year is separate out the open space projects from the Recreation and Park CIP. We've combined them in the past as one, but this year we've separated them out, so open space project are standalone. We've also replaced, uh, rec path, road, and sidewalks with the bicycle and pedestrian improvement. And also done differently this year is that we have taken out the indoor recreation facility from the city center CIP and added it into demonstration CIP. And, uh, just to outline a few things, that only two things, a few things that we've added to what we presented last time, uh, last month in November. Uh, we have reduced the number of vehicles proposed for the police by one cruiser, and that has reduces the amount to be proposed to be funded with the general fund by $36,000. And that's just a reduction from what we presented last month. Also, the few other edits that we've added happen with the bicycle and pedestrian improvement and they happen in the future years, beginning in FY 21 to 29. And those are the few edits that we've added other than those, the proposed CIP that we are presenting today for a public hearing is as was presented last month. And also just for the record, we have sent out a copy of the draft the planning commission into the committees so they are aware of what has been proposed to in the CIP this year and also as the city council, and then the CIP, the FY 20 in the 10 year plan will be added into the budget process. And if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer other than that. Are there questions? So just so I'm clear about the $36,000 for the vehicle, that so what we're proposing then is to have one less vehicle than the police department, I guess, requested. Is that right? Some other funds that are funding it. And we've discussed that with Sean and he's comfortable with the three cruiser replacement. They're the bigger cruisers now, right? The standard size car, these aren't the explorers. They're just regular cars. Are we, as long as we're talking about, are we not evolving to all-wheel drive? We are. We are? Yes. Are those regular cars all-wheel drive? These are all-wheel drive. They're all-wheel drive, yes. So the standard cruisers that we see are now all-wheel drive? The new ones. This would be the second year. Are there any other questions about the CIP? I actually did have a question and that is, I don't know where it is now, but when I was looking through, I think it was in this, where it was talking about the funds for the reserve fund, this coming year it's $860,000. Yes. In the current year it's $750,000. I'm sorry, in the next one, the proposed. But then after it, it goes way down. And I was just curious why. It goes down to $747,000? Yes, it went down and that is because $860,000 included the recreation facility and with the recreation facility taken out, the reserve fund went down in the city center portion of the CIP. But then the amount that it went down is added to the administration CIP. So you'll see the difference in the administration CIP. Okay. All right. So we're not really reducing it. It's just in a different place. Yes. My one question is, this is a blueprint, a roadmap as you said, and have we kind of compared it with our gas allowance? Are we going to be able to take that ride? Is that something that goes into the CIP in terms of plotting out the expenses per year? Is it with fair certainty that when we pass the CIP that it would really become a reality? The year that we'll go into the budget will become a reality. That is what is proposed to become a reality. The future year might be changed depending on the availability of the resources, as I say, because some of the projects are presented where the funding sources grant donations and a few other things. If we do not meet those, then those projects might be pushed into the future. But if we do meet them, then they will happen. But yes, they are changed. FY20 will become a reality as proposed. Any other questions by council members? All right. Are there comments from the public on the CIP? Yes. Would you like to come up please? Martha, you probably ought to stay in case we can't answer the question. You can try. Hi. My name is John Kell Canning. And I'm here just to support moving forward with making improvements to the recreation path. And I know the bike and peg committee had put together a whole list of top priorities for the town. And on that list was completing the section going south down Dorset Street. And I've noticed that the engineering was kind of placed or a plan to start at one point in the fiscal year 2019. And now it's been pushed back to 2026. And I'm just, again, here to kind of show my support and the community support with that. And the initiative that just got passed by the town, the pennies for paths initiative, was passed overwhelmingly by the town. And that being the top priority within that bike and peg committee kind of survey and finding, I was a little surprised to see that it was pushed out seven years or so. And I didn't know if there's any way to reconsider. Yeah. That's correct. It was out seven years in what we saw in November, but that updated version for this time is now out at 2021. 2021. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So maybe that's taken by that. Yeah. It moved from 19 to 21. And sort of last month, I think because of conversations, Bob Britt from the bike and peg committee had on this, it's at 2021 now. I know because I'm intimately attached to this. Sure. Very pedestrian issue. Okay. And the new version of the, the updated on this online. So if you go online, you'll be able to see those. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other comments from the public? All right. Hearing none. I guess we can close the public hearing. With a motion and a second. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. So we've closed the public hearing. Thank you very much, Martha. So what's before us now is approval by the council of this proposed, um, CIP, um, going forward. And just to clarify, this is, this is an amendment to change the, um, the capital improvement plan. You still have the ability at the, um, budget process to reallocate dollars, but the dollars that are proposed in here for the general fund projects are currently included in the draft budget that you've seen for tonight. So, uh, but even up until the, the budgets adopted, you have the ability to change those figures around this. This is basically just acknowledging a change to the con, uh, the capital improvement plan. Question before we vote. Sure. And this ties into a future discussion item for tonight. But if you look at, uh, the city center overview projects overview, uh, where it's got market street library, city center, Wilson road street, scape garden street, one line item here in this again, we'll cover extensively. I'm sure I'm sure later in the agenda, we still have, uh, the performing arts facility, uh, as a $30 million line item here. Is the location of the city center going to still fall within the TIF district and be a city center project? Does this still belong on this CIP page is my question. Um, yes, it still belongs as currently planned. And being discussed, some of which, um, it's just beginning. It still belongs on this page. Good, good question. Okay. Are you ready for the vote? All in favor of the amendment to the, um, capital improvement plan for 2020 signified by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you very much. Moving on to, um, item eight, which is errors and omissions report from the city appraiser and update on reappraisal. So Todd, welcome. Oh, uh, every year this time of year, uh, you get to see me. Um, it's required in state statute that any changes that the grand list made after the grand list is, uh, lodged in July have to be approved by the city council, uh, by December 30th. Uh, you should have in your packets a list of what happened this year. Um, basically nothing exciting. And it just needs approval. Can I just ask on all the list of the homestead status, are these all changes? So they weren't all these homes were not on or hadn't filed last year and now they are filing. These are lists of changes that happened after July. In this case, I think it was around July 2nd. Um, the homesteads are a very dynamic, uh, instrument that's used by the state. And this year they were extremely far behind. Uh, there was street, uh, shorthanded down in Montpelier. So it took a long time for some of these homesteads to get actually filed. And that's something that happens up to even this morning. Uh, I did one final, uh, and there was one person on it. So little things happened with homesteads. Um, but in order to get the proper tax rate. Um, and the fact that if you don't file a homestead, you're not eligible for any type of state payment that happens throughout the year. Those are not required to be approved by the city council. I like to keep them in one packet so that this packet goes and it lives forever with the grand list in the clerk's vault. This way here, all the changes are together. But you're only, uh, interested in the first spreadsheet. Okay. So these changes come from the state then. Yes. Oh, okay. This is a huge number. It is a huge number. Yeah. I mean, but it's 296. Yeah. So you don't get this kind every year. This, this, this volume every year. But that, that it's, um, it's substantial. Yeah. But the folks that were off last year and then got on this year. Sometimes they're new owners. Right. Um, people who have gone from using it as a second home, using it as a primary residence. Um, Just seems like a lot of homes in our community. You figure we're, we've got like 7,000 residential properties. So, Yeah. I guess it's not that huge. Yeah. Hot market. And this doesn't even count the ones that happened prior to the grand list being set in July. I mean, that's a, another, that's a bigger number. So this is my pillar telling you that these homes are going to be counted as homestead for the next for your April. The tax bills that went out in July. For July. These are the changes that are active as of July. Right. And this, this changes how things happen. Um, in the, in the school, especially, because the tax rate changes. So there's an impact that it gets chewed up in, honestly, January, February. We'll do a final grand list and the state will say, okay, here's your final number. Live with it. Our first tax payments were before this list came out. I didn't hear you. Our first tax payments were before this list came out. So does this folks pay the phone? It makes a lot of work for Martha, the tax collector. Every time we get a download from homestead, uh, police, she gets a whole list of, of tax bills that may be changed. And if they've already paid, if they haven't paid any payments yet, hooray, after that she's got to go in and manually write on each tax bill. Here's what you paid. Here's what you should have paid. Fix it and adjust it. Yeah. There's a lot of background that happens. So the homestead act was, is really a full employment act. Certainly could be. The motion to approve these. Do we need to approve these? Yes. Okay. So I'll entertain it. A motion to approve the errors and omissions report. I just seconded it. Okay. Any further discussion? Just, just so in, in the, the current and previous house site value differences. What causes that? Is that like an accessory? Is that apartments type thing changes? If, if people declare a use, a business or rental use. Yeah. It's going to change that. Okay. Okay. And I mean some, some people will declare 40% rental use. And then that same homestead declaration will come through three and four times during the year. Now it's 38%. It's back to 40%. No rental use. Every time we get a new tax bill. But that's, this is just a summary of it. When they do a percentage rental use, they're implying that they have a duplex? No. You can rent out a bedroom, but you can't count that as taxable, a tax liability for the state to then calculate a state payment. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. So it changes the value for the purpose of the homestead. Yes. Even though the value doesn't really change. I mean. Then that income from that person doesn't count for that percentage? The income from the rental space would count as total household income. It still counts. Yes. But the tax liability, they don't want you to have a big tax liability if you're using part of it for technically a business. So they exclude that part from the part you can claim so that when they look at the two numbers, they only give you whatever number they want to give you. It's a mystery to me, but. Okay. So the value of the home on the grand list is, is, would be the, I guess, higher figure, right? Or the current. Oh, I'm not sure what you're looking at. Well, I was looking at the homestead house site comparison report. Homestead house site has nothing to do with the real value. Okay. Nothing. So this doesn't really, this doesn't change. It's just to get the taxes accurate. The correct portion of each property with the correct factory. Her home site, isn't that the assessed value? Isn't that? No, there's a real value, your assessed value. There's a homestead value and there's a house site value. Yeah. That's what I usually say. Full employment. You need a lot of people to figure this out and then make all the corrections. Fortunately, we have time. Right. Okay. So we have a motion on the table for approval. In a second. In a second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. I've got a copy that I signed. I would never be able to do this. Here's a copy that I signed already. You need to sign it all then the negotiation clerk shall sign it and put it here. Okay. Here I go. Do you want me to sign this one? Yeah. Okay. So let's move on to item nine. We have one other issue we want to talk about. Oh, excuse me. Okay. We don't have to. That is a real praise. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Commercial. We had, I had been in front of you a while back about doing a commercial real appraisal. We did an RFP. We sent it out and we got absolutely no interest. None whatsoever on somebody willing to do it. Well, you predicted that. Did you not? Yeah. Yeah. It's a drop in the bucket compared to doing a full city appraisal, which is where the, the few companies that are doing it nowadays is focusing. So we're looking at that and looking at, we're 12 years down the road from our last real appraisal. We're probably going to shift gears and go to a full city-wide real appraisal. It'd be at least two years down the road. This is the type of thing where between the RFPs, funding company, getting them in line, the process itself, you're a minimum of two years down the road. So we've got a plan ahead of time, just like with the commercial, just it's a little longer process. So we're looking at two to three years down the road. But that's something we've got to start. Putting the feelers out there now. The funds for that come from the state? The state gives us money each, each year for maintenance and programs. Making the money and put it into it. We've got a fund that's held separate for this purpose. And there's $460,000. And what do full-blown real appraisals general? Our last one in 2006 was around $400,000. And at that time they used, I want to say five years of previously saved money and five years of yet to be saved money to fund that. But other than that, I don't know the specifics of dollars, but we've got sitting in the fund. These are done every 12, 15 years usually? The state has actually talked recently, I want to say recently the last year or two, about limiting the span to 10 years. Just because of all the things that happened in that period of time. When the market tends to go down, people like to come in and say, I'm over assessed, but not everybody does. So the people who do come in because of the statutes where I can't assess properties for anything over 100%, I've got to lower their values. So if you three come in, you get a tax break. And if those three don't come in, they don't get a tax break. When in reality the market itself changed and every one of your properties could very well have changed. So that's an equity issue. And that's analyzed by a coefficient of dispersion. Our numbers are still pretty good, but I can see in the sales that it's going to widen soon. The market itself is higher now. It's higher than it was in 2006 overall. Some of the sales are actually surprising at this point. So the dollars that are being collected as a whole don't get to change because of a reappraisal, but the equity throughout it helps. And I'm sure the school would be interested in a reappraisal because the CLA tends to rise closer to 100%. We're down around 94 now, and I'm guessing it's going to go lower. And that would cover both residential and commercial. So it would be every piece of property in our community. Excepting probably the airport properties. We don't need to visit that again. Okay. Well, they wouldn't want us to. Okay. Unless the legislature required it or something. Yeah. All right. Any other comments or questions? Good enough. Thank you very much. Already then. We'll move on to item nine. The council will receive and discuss a report related to a proposal by the Dorset Park skating association related to plans to construct a new entrance facility to the Karens Arena. Welcome, Mr. Karens. Thanks. What do you pronounce his name? Let's read it. Wherever you like. Sure. I just want everybody to be able to see him. Oh, go right there, Kevin. I can't see that actually. Okay. You know, three wants to see him too, probably. Oh. You put him up there, but then nobody will see him. Okay. Okay. Good evening. My name is Tony Karens. I'm president of Dorset Park skating association. Along with me tonight is Bob Leclerc. He's the manager of Karens Arena. And I think the probably to start out, take it a little back a little bit. Probably everybody forgot when we built the first rink. That was done in 1995. The second rink was built in 2001. And if you've ever been up there, you know that the entrance to both arenas is on the south side of rink number one. And for the longest time, we have been trying to figure out how we can build a central entrance and be able to afford it. Your facility by, I might add, it's a, it belongs to the city, not us. But we thought we'd try to, it's very difficult right now to have a function. And Bob can speak to this better than I can. But it's very difficult to have a function where everybody goes in the south entrance and then decides they're going to go, which rink are they going to go to? And you're trying to charge a mission. And they go, oh, well, I'm not going to there. I'm going to here. Oh, okay. You're going over there. But really they're going to the other place. So it's, we've been trying to figure out how to do a central entrance, but to get a cost that was reasonable. And we can never figure out how to do that. Because a central entrance really doesn't make any money. It just, it's, it's, the amenity is great, but it doesn't contribute to the bottom line in any way. So it would just be an expense and a lot of upkeep because it's a lot more square footage. So about three months ago or so we, as a board, met and decided that we would look at, take another look at it. This was back during the summer. And we found somebody that we thought would work with us. And we got a number and we're kind of at a place where we think we can do it for a number that we can afford. And if you look at the plans you have in front of you, and I'm sorry, I apologize that they're so small, but I was able to print those off a computer about five o'clock tonight. I didn't get any with the, with these plans that came in. But the bigger, the bigger plans are over here. It shows that the central entrance would be right between rank one and rank two. So you'd go in and then you'd take, if you look at the lobby, you'd go in on the central entrance and I can point it out to you if you want, but I can't really be in front of a mic when I do it. But maybe Bob can do it for you. Is that you go in on the, right there and that takes you into the central lobby so you theoretically could go either left or right, depending on which rank you wanted to go to. There'd be a new snack bar to the left of the entrance, along with the kitchen and new offices for the staff, new restrooms and a upstairs also that would be able to be leased. We have a gym that's interested in leasing up there and maybe some conference rooms and the, if you look at the left side of the prints that you're looking at, there's an elevator and stairs. So that's how you get access to the second floor. I think that this, right now, if you remember, you go into rank one and you walk down that link, that link in the back there that says, is how you have to get access from rank one to rank two. So it's not very functional and this would improve the functionality of the building tremendously. So I know you're thinking about doing something next door and that's great. I think the timing is great that we're kind of in this together, so to speak, because I just saw your plans. I hadn't seen the plans before, but I just looked at them and that's exciting. So we were looking at possibly going for approvals this spring and then maybe start construction around July, if we have your approval. Obviously, it's your facility. You have to decide whether you'd like us to do this or not. So we're here to ask your, okay, and I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any specific questions. Maybe myself or Bob can answer. I have a question in terms of improved viewing area. So for the, I guess, the North rank, you will improve the viewing area you're adding on. So it will be sort of like what you see now on rank one. Right. We have so many senior citizens and people right now that want to view activity in rank two and they would have to go to the bleachers to do that, but this will give them a protected warm space where they can view the activity. I think that's been a big plus of rank number one, that we've had that viewing area where, you know, somebody could stay warm and kind of watch what's going on. I think that was a pretty nice feature when we build it. So we'll have the same thing in rank two. Do you have any meeting space designed into this? Well, where the old pro shop is now, we'll turn into a conference room. I see that on here somewhere. No, that's not detailed. Too far south. But we will turn where the pro shop currently exists into a conference room. We can either use ourselves or we can rent out, right? Well, use ourselves or all our groups, you know, hockey groups, high schools, whatever, you know, they'll use it for conference rooms, which would be a big asset. Lieutenant, up above on the second floor, do you have somebody in mind that you can? We have some interest. We do. Yeah. That would be for office space or what? No, probably like a fitness area of some nature. Right now we, most of our groups, they're all dying for places where, you know, they can lift weights, do whatever, and we, and they spread out amongst these other fitness centers around, but they're all interested and have been for some time of, you know, having a second facility in that area. So there's, there is a lot of interest. We, we haven't made the hard decision on whether we want to go that route or not, but there is that possibility and it really would compliment everything that we do. Well, I'm sure we'll talk about this as a board as well, because as you all know, I serve on that board as well as city council. If you look at something, if we look at something like fitness and weights there, you've got to pay real close attention as to what's between the first floor and what's under it. Right. Because I ran into that problem with a building not that long ago and it takes quite a bit to make sure that that's going to be compatible. And then the only other thing I mentioned is I look at all at the restrooms just, I think the architects got to keep in mind that we've got to have a couple of single stall restrooms, unisex restrooms. And they're not, I don't see them in here and we've got to have them and we can't not do that. I think the design, to be honest with you, is still a work in progress. As a matter of fact, the elevator originally was in the snack bar and I decided, I said, that's not a good place for it. And I just saw tonight that they'd moved it over to wear and I like where it is now. But that was new to me because I just flew into data and saw this plan. So some of the things I think are still a work in progress. I think that the major thing to accomplish tonight would be is just the intent to let us go forward because I think that some of the design might change a little bit and we can always come back and say, well, this room is going to be here and that room is going to be there. But I have to tell you that I saw the design of what you're going to see next and I really like the design of what you're going to do if you end up going with it. I'd like to incorporate some of that if we could into this building with that slope, you know, design of the roof. I like that. Well, that's what I was going to say. If indeed we are going forward with the rec facility, which is the intent, if we can move fast enough and do them both at once, right? That could work out pretty sweet. And of course we would want the designs to be compatible. So what we need is a motion to an enabling motion to enable Dorset Park Skating Association to proceed. Is that what we're looking for? Well, I'd like to be able to at least move to the next phase so that we could take it to our board, which we have a board meeting tomorrow night, and then we could go to whatever the process is for DRB or whatever we need to do to get approvals to build. I think we also have to go through Act 250 because I think we're part of that. And so we'll do that. But that's going to take time. So that probably will take two or three months. Would that be a minor Act 250 as opposed to probably because a lot of the capacity is already there. The capacity is there. It depends what happens when we tag on the South Burlington facility as well. So do we need a motion to... I don't think you can tonight. It's not worn for action. What you can do is give Tony and Bob a strong head nod or thumbs up, and we would then prepare a resolution that captures the relationship and everything and get it back to you officially for the first meeting in January, maybe. But in the meantime, you can probably give them enough of a... Do we keep working? I know David will have some wonderful ideas about how to make the bathrooms efficient when we were in the Rome airport. They had... No, they had this fabulous thing where you didn't need any paper. They had hidden behind the wall were little signs. The stalls for God's sake. But not paper that didn't flush. And there was a sign and you put your hand under and the water came out. Then you moved it to the left and got a little soap and washed it and then you rinsed it and then you went over and you dried it. I've seen those. And you didn't need any paper? All in one sink. Yes, and it was this big, long sink, so there were three spots. Very expensive, I will say. We looked at doing those back when we were building stores and they were... You could go like this and they were very expensive, by the way. And you needed a lot of room. Well, but it's just... I don't know. It's for high traffic. You didn't have to clean it up and you didn't have to have somebody... It just builds room in a day, as they say. Yeah, but anyway, he has pictures. Anyway, the bottom line is we can get creative and we do have to have single-store and we do have to have unisex restaurants. I'll note that. The cost and the relationship. Is that what we'll see in a future resolution? I think the cost to the city is anticipated to be zero. But the resolution will capture the relationship between... We'll enable the association to work on the city building and add to it and have your blessing. Well, I personally think it's beautiful and I would encourage you to go ahead. Thank you. You can work with the city on that MOU. Of course, you don't have to worry about what I think. We have one question. You got to recoup yourself, though. I don't know if I do it or not. Well, I don't either. We get this... No, he just recues if he's going to financially benefit. Yeah, and that's... Okay. Time to go. Let's go. In fact, you'll be tapping him for money. This will cost him, probably. Tim... Yeah, I have a question. And it's related, but not directly to your proposal here. You have a lot of roof area facing south. Have you been approached by anybody for solar, passive solar? Well, actually, we were approached on the existing rank, rank one for solar. Leana came to us years ago. I can't remember how many, three or four anyway. And the problem is that rank was built in 95. And that rank, if you put solar up there, first of all, it's not structurally set up for it. And the second thing was it's eventually going to have to be replaced. So you wouldn't want to put solar on that rank and then have to tear it all out and have to do a new roof. So that kind of precluded the fact that that didn't work on that particular building. And that's the one that faces south. So does rank two, for that matter. And that's newer, but same idea. You have to engineer them from what we understand. You have to engineer the roof to be able to support the solar. So the rank two can't support that way? I don't believe so. It wasn't designed for that. And then I think, didn't you put solar up in the north end of the park? Yes. Anyway, a little bit. What's your monthly electric bill? You'd have to ask me that. I wouldn't have any idea. Tens of thousands or 20s of thousands? Oh, we're over 20. Over $20,000 in month electric bill. 22 to 24. Mostly to keep the ice from melting probably right? Oh, the ice. It's an incredible battle. You know, we need to keep the buildings cold, but yet we've got to keep the spectators and the participants warm. So we're heating and cooling, heating, cooling. So it's continually year round. And I had given it some thought, you know, it would be nice. I mean, they're flat roofs, but if we did solar panels on those roofs, I'm not sure how the appearance is going to look to the people as they're coming into the park and so forth. You know, you're going to see the solar panels and you're going to see the reflections. I was just thinking with the amount, immense amount of roof facing south on those two buildings that you could be a benefit if you found somebody would work with you to do a project. But if you don't have the weight support for yourself. Can't do that on rink on rink. Yes, nice. Well, we have to replace the roofs at some point. I was going to say when those roofs are replaced, which they will be, and they're getting roof. Rink one is getting close to its expected life. And when it gets replaced, I think that would be the time to do the, to do the solar. Yeah. Yeah. Because you'd get 20 years out of it after that. And I don't think people object to seeing. I don't think they believe it to be ugly to see the. I mean, I think they think smart. These people are, you know, I don't know if you're aware of it, but way back when years ago, we tried what we call a Tico gen unit. And you can speak more about it than I can. But we tried. That was a unit that was going to save money. It was done through. Through Vermont gas and. Go ahead. You can. Well, we need a cooperation from the two utilities between Vermont gas and green mount power at the time. And green mount power was really unhappy that we were basically taking some revenue away from them. And so they were butting heads all the time. We were, we had the capability of producing probably about 40% of our energy and that included all the free domestic hot water and free heat for the building. And we, it was very difficult going back and forth. And it ended up not really being a big savings because of certain practices that were brought about by certain utilities. So anyhow, it just didn't work for us. So we had to do away with that. But we're continually trying to find ways to save because utilities is a big portion of our budget. We switched all LED lighting. We did. We switched all LED. Yeah. That's how much we save in a month on with the LEDs and the ranks. Well, it's, you know, we just had a really warm summer. So it's, it's hard to project, but we, we no longer have, you know, everything in both facilities is LED lighting inside and out. And the projection is we should save, you know, neighborhood of about $30,000 a year off our electric bill by making that change. So we've gone ahead and, and we just completed that project about two and a half months ago. So we'll, we'll see how the savings, you know, compile year down the road, but. So you've already worked with efficiency Vermont. Oh my God. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And we've had a lot of parties because you haven't been before the council in a long while. Right. Long time. And last time it wasn't a great experience. We had 400 people in this room, I think, but it's about 10. Very undesirable management. So, so we're much better off. But Bob is extremely great at finding ways to save beating vendors up for improvements, whatever we need. And probably, probably one of the best ring managers. How about shoulder because he's not going to do it himself. Probably one of the best being that ring managers in the facility that runs just fabulously and has for 23 years. So it's something that we should already really, really proud of. So there. Thank you, Dave. Well, no one else. Oh great. Yeah. We don't waste any money. Have you been there off 23 years, Bob? Actually 26. 26. Yeah. Yeah. Well, worse than that. Well, no, I guess taking minutes for the whole time. Yeah. But no, I've been there since the start and it's just a tremendous, you know, operation. I mean, it's incredible to see the people coming in every day and joining themselves. And, you know, we, we basically would have the need for another eye surface because there's enough demand right now, but you never know what's going to happen with the sport. I wouldn't want to jeopardize what we have by adding, you know, more than feeling the crunch, but it's gone very well. People enjoy themselves. They've been happy all these years and it's been nice. Yeah. No. Sure has. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I think you've gotten a sense from, from the council. Good. All righty. So, um, kind of moving into phase two of this item 10 council review of proposed plans to construct a South Burlington indoor recreational facility. So we've got Jennifer Cokman and Holly Ries is Lee. Good. And leave the door. So welcome. Oops. Exciting. Okay. It is. It is very exciting to see this plan come forward. Uh, I've been on recreation of parks committee for 12 years and this has been a priority for 12 years. And, uh, we have seen a number of iterations of, of this. And to me, this makes the most sense. It is in the right location. There is parking. It is a great synergy with the Kairns arena. We had 15 pickleball players come to recreation parks committee and they said, we want, we want the outdoor facilities in the summer, but we want, we want, um, we want an enclosed facility so we can keep playing in the winter. And we like to have a little socializing after we do our pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports in the United States. And lo and behold the Kairns people are building amenities for cafeteria and a little wine and beer and coffee and all of that. And so it just all works out. And it's just great. So we, um, in November, I'm sorry. Who are you? Who am I? Jennifer. I thought Helen introduced me. Jennifer Coakman. I'm chair of recreation and parks committee. Holly Reese, recreation and parks director. And I'm lead door with Doran with your architects. So, um, thinking about this, our committee met on a Saturday morning for three hours and we, we had previously met a few of us with Kevin and Tom who set out a timeline of what was going to happen, how it was going to be funded and so on. And we wanted to just review all of the notes we had made over the years of what were our priorities? What did we want to include in this kind of building and, um, and our priorities for this? And I shared this with you. Uh, it was in the packet. I said it to Helen and Kevin too. Okay. So what this takes care of is, um, three courts, multi-purpose, uh, a turf field, a walking track on the second story. And that is very important to us to have a two-story structure with the walking track. Otherwise you've got people walking around. You've got to walk, you know, get through those people in order to get to your, whatever you're doing. Um, a maker space that is less outfitted. It's minimally outfitted. Um, unlike the senior center, it would be, uh, a kind of space where you could do arts and, and various kinds of things that would be a little bit messy and possibly also some yoga and, and other kinds of things in there. We think that eventually there are other kinds of spaces like that that we might need. But this building does, it's absolutely essential that we have that kind of, um, of performance space or maker space or whatever, uh, you want to call it. We really want to see that included. Um, and then the other priorities that we've had for a senior center auditorium, those will be met in the community center, in city center, and then operational space for our, uh, our department. So, um, the committee met tonight and we are still very excited about this and, uh, we're eager to work with city council and the city planners and, and in, uh, advocating and fleshing this out. Great, Holly. So Jennifer speaks so eloquently off the cuff and I have everything raging in my brain from senior holiday meal to lights tour to budget and CIP. So I've written some things, um, that I will speak from. So the need for an indoor recreation facility to support our active community has been long established. In 1998, the work of identifying program needs as ingredients to a community center began with formal plans for a significant facility to be then built at Dorset Park. While the need was well identified, documented, and supported, the concept was never placed on a city ballot and was an energized potential and the energized potential was then shelved. Current use of our community schools provides basic space necessary for programs, though not always ideal or consistent. Without space to facilitate independently, we're beholden to the school's availability. School sports, clubs, and enrichment activities book much of the highly desirable spaces of gymnasiums, libraries, and cafeterias. School use is further pressured by a district run after school program at four out of our five community schools. Additionally, our community benefits from active PTOs who schedule space for school community events, plays, fares, and the like, leaving few options for our department's consistent use. While we continue to offer an array of programming to the community when and where we can, results on regular participant surveys indicate that both time and location of programs is less than desirable. We were limited as to what we can offer by the spaces afforded to us. While rich in parkland and open spaces, we lack the indoor facility required to satisfy the population that we have been served to call to serve. Too often, residents are leaving South Burlington to access affordable recreation needs and desires in other communities, not because they want to, but because they have to. In a moment, you'll hear from Lee Dorr, who's been working with the city since 2013 to help design and realize the potential of an indoor recreation facility. Initially, Lee met with both recreation department staff and committee to get their list of facility needs. This initial process developed into a several month project as a final list of needs for dedicated indoor space was formalized in January of 2014 with a vision of a grand community center at Market Street. The regional concept for this was to be comprehensive of City Hall Library and indoor recreation facility all in one location, but it was deemed that both the footprint, still on, and the price tag of a combined community center and the needed infrastructure at 180 Market Street were too large. As plans began to take shape in the past year for a combined City Hall and Library facility, the senior center concept was actualized as a component of the design. This served as the first space to be managed and programmed by the recreation department. For the past year, both staff and committee have been heavily involved in both design and advocacy for the senior center space and look forward to its realization. In partnership with the program space at 180 Market Street, additional spaces at City Center were explored to erect a facility that would meet the indoor active recreation needs of the South Burlington community, long planned for in the comprehensive plan. Though options were explored, a suitable resolution was not found and again it was back to the drawing board. With land as a sizable expense, we began to inventory city-owned properties that might support such an endeavor and came back time and time again to the original designs from the 1998 Dorset Park designs. Veterans Park has proved to be the pinnacle of outdoor active recreation regionally and as it ages, the needs for upgrades in infrastructure, namely parking and bathrooms, has risen to high priority. Looking to improve both of these elements while learning of enhancements being made to Carons and plans for a central entrance between the ranks, pointed us back in the direction of placing the indoor recreation facility at Veterans Memorial. The committee once again went to work sharpening pencils and reviewing previous and present studies, updating a need list of inventory recreation space. The presentation you're about to receive is comprehensive of all of our highest priority needs and in collaboration with the Senior Center provides terrific opportunity to finally meet the needs of our bustling community. I'd like to welcome Lidor to present some concepts of our indoor recreation facility at Veterans Memorial Park. You'll find the designs streamlined to the community's needs, taking full advantage of the established park resources. Thanks, Holly. It's technical difficulty right now. I'm just going to stay off the bat. I'm really excited about this, too. I think this is great. I just wish there was a pool in there. Thank you, Sue. You're wondering how long it was going to take. Let's do the first step. I always got to put the pool. One of these years. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Those acres. I brought cookies there for everybody. Please help yourself. Put the Costco over there. Yep. It's almost. You, too. I know you've done it. It's good to see this getting this far. Yeah. It's good to see things moving along. That's good. We have another one-sitter. I get the coconut. Coconut and seven layer bar. Did you do this? Yeah. I know. We can't remember how to figure that out. You just started explaining. Oh, there's a die for it. They are awesome. I mean, is that what you found? I've already found cookies there. I didn't find cookies there. Yeah. I went to a holiday party where they had what's it called? Oh, I didn't know. I didn't know there was one. Oh, good. Oh, good. We got it. We got a picture. There we go. Thank you, Charlie, for being a host. Can I do something? Thanks. Oh, there we go. Am I forwarding through? I think I can get it from here. If not, I'll just tell you to tap. So thanks for having us in again. I'm Lee Dore. I'm a principal at Dore and Reader Architects. Born and raised in South Brunelington and very happy to see some of this stuff materializing. It's very exciting times for the city. So as kind of has been framed for us, there's been a lot of work going on into the programming and conceptualizing of this facility. And just wanted to walk you through kind of where we are. And we're very preliminary in this right now, and it's very conceptual, but we wanted to give you a flavor for where we are. Do you want to hit just the forward button on there for me? So what we were tasked with was coming up with, because we're in Vermont and looking for indoor space, some climate controlled indoor recreational space for the residents of the programming were to create kind of a registration customer service area kind of greeting lobby that's warm and welcoming for the citizens. We're looking at four courts, three of them being high school regulation size basketball courts, and one of them having the option of having artificial turf on it for different program uses. There would be an indoor elevated three lane track going around these. We have a movement studio slash maker space slash conference room slash lots of multi-purpose. Lots of lockers and we've tried to kind of make the lockers in modules so that they can adapt to the user groups that are using the facility. So if there's an all female group that are in there we can expand those to be able to have more locker room space instead of just having two and everybody clamoring. So I can show you those in the plans. Also it'll be the new home of spaces for the rec department and one thing we can never have too much of storage both inside and outside. There's also a couple of different building types that we've been tasked to look at and we've kind of narrowed these down just to be covering the court areas. So covering the court areas we've been asked to look at what it would look like for an inflatable bubble over the courts and another version is kind of looking at more of a semi-rigid structure kind of a sprung system that's a little bit has a longer life span than the inflatables and then more contemporary traditional structure and the way at least I'm looking at these things is there are different times of solutions for the city. I look at a bubble as being more of a you know 15-20 year solution before that has to get replaced the more rigid structure has a little bit longer life span maybe 25 years in a traditional municipal project we're looking for a 50-year life span of the building. So these are all things to take into account when you're looking at the cost because you know you may have first capital cost reduced with some of these things but you need to look at the life cycle cost also as well. So we're going to be analyzing all of those. The building footprint itself is about 44,000 square feet on the main level there's a second story that has 14,000 so we're looking at a total program of approximately 58,000 square feet. The conceptual design as we have just to orient you those are the rinks that we just talked about and we've actually at least from the last time we have met with the rink group to talk about their addition that they're putting on to see if there was synergies between the two and we're also looking for some connection points because I think it's important that these facilities all at least have some indoor connection to them. So this would be going on the south side of the rink we'd be in increasing parking as well so these are kind of conceptual in nature but if we dig into the floor plans on the next slide this is a blow-up of the first floor plan so we've got the four court surfaces these are the locker facilities right here and they're all set up identical there's a unisex gender-neutral bathroom with shower in the front of each of those with their own private entry so they can double if you have refs coming to the courts to be able to use that and they can shower and change there's connecting doors between each of these locker rooms so if you needed three that were female for a night you just lock that last door and you've got three that are female and two that could be male so you can change those up they're all exactly the same another problem we were trying to solve is bathroom facilities for the park itself because right now underneath the little pavilion there's some seasonal bathrooms less than desirable in most cases I think they use everybody uses the rink bathrooms summer as well so there's some, oops sorry there's some bathrooms here that have access to the outside when the facility is closed this gets locked off so you can use it there's also the same one in the back of the facility for if you're using any of the play fields out back there's circulation between the courts so you don't have to actually cross courts to be able to get a crew from there'll be, you know, drop down curtains to be able to divide all of those off into unique spaces this is, you know, the main door lobby there's kind of a little lobby lounge with some soft seating a registration desk in here here's that kind of multi-use space that can be used for movement studio for yoga, it can be used for maker we're going to have to do some work to figure out what the fit up and finishes of that space to be able to make it as flexible as possible but there are also some you know, gender neutral bathrooms located right off of that this is a connection into the rinks also with another exit and we'll have to work that out as, you know, the rink plans materialize and move forward too so we can get that connection point down from a site perspective we're trying to hold the building off there's a lot of snow that comes off the existing rink so we're about 75 feet off of that existing space there's no room for that snow to pile up without damaging anything we're providing a paved service road around the back and the parking that you saw on that previous site plan is about 211 spaces conceptually at this point that we're adding to be able to help the rink and the park users as well down here along the bottom is storage space specifically, if you're taking balls and all the other materials that you need for the wreck so it's inside access storage there's a garage in the back that has overhead doors to be able to bring stuff that you're storing outside inside and the mechanical space will be in the back there's some work to be done on engineering to see if there's any way that we can have some good cost savings if they're trying to exhaust a lot of heat from the rinks, which they are if we can capture some of that and reuse it to be able to heat our facility so there's some good synergy there to be able to look at in the future if we go upstairs Sure. One thing I noticed that other places like Calian Park and other events places like this I'm not saying we want to staff this permanently but on that main lobby area a place for non-profits for like concessions so not like a full fry bar or anything but something where you could easily set up coffee if you have something like that is that part of these plans? So we had an area in here to be able to provide vending services for that because what's happening over the rink is they do have cafe space and not knowing exactly what that schedule is it wasn't in the program for this facility it's certainly something that can be looked at but trying to look at something that's complimentary for the full site and not compete so that's certainly going to get investigated as we move through this further popping up to the this is a blow up of that connection point of where the existing vestibule is over there on the southwest corner of the rink so we would have entry coming into that here's a movement studio it could be a folding partition there to be able to subdivide that space further if you have two different events happening simultaneously there's some storage associated with that there's a couple janitor closets to be able to deal with that on the first floor for any of the maintenance needs those two doors on the left there are the doors to the current rink 1 correct and so they would now go into that entrance to rink 1 straight ahead of that is the pro shop which Bob said is going to become meeting space and so we do need to figure out exactly what their layout is and trying to find the best thing for circulation inside the building back and forth without competing against them but if there was a big tournament over here and maybe the pro shops closed or that cafeteria is closed to be able to have a nonprofit like a rotary or some other group be able to sell coffee and maybe a hot burner to do hot dogs or popcorn a popcorn maker that's just what I was commenting on if you don't have that anywhere although I think Bob's thinking is that with the size we're going to make the cafeteria that would be open we're going to probably hire a full-time cafeteria manager and I think and significant seating is what we're looking at I think that's probably what they explained to you as well and so I think that's going to handle all of those all of those needs as I understand it the rink schedule of operations is nearly 24-7 we're darn close light yellow space like on the lower left that goes up to the top and moves across all that space there that's corridor space just a corridor connection like even the entrance way that the bottom left over here that's kind of a lobby vestibule space this is a blow-up of it that's probably 150 square feet that vestibule is not that big so is there any capacity to look out at the courts and see what's going on or watch a game so if we go up to the next slide I'll just kind of give you the overall of the upper floor so there is an elevator here to be able to take you upstairs there's the three-lane track going around the outside these are the rec administrative offices because director, actually if you go one more there's a blow-up of this leave so upstairs you can come in an elevator, it's got two sides you got a pass key you can come into the inside of the house part of it there's programming and interns that we've got set up as part of the program director, conference space storage, a little kitchenette and some bathrooms for upstairs and communicating stairs going up and down so this whole side we envision being able for administrative from a supervision standpoint to be able to overlook the courts for the public access between each of the courts we have two seats on bleachers on the length of each court so we weren't looking for a large spectator capacity for these things but enough to know that if you've got a rec program you can bring your parents and everybody can sit around and watch the game what's approximately the space where it's white between the two courts what is that 20 feet, is it 10 feet or 15? it's about 15 feet between the courts how many laps to a mile in the inter-lane? I think it's about a 10th of a mile around one lap it's moved a couple of times we had a couple of different configurations for the fields that I haven't taken the circumference around it again but it's about a 10th of a mile Jennifer knows that we've been talking about in meetings that we've had those basketball courts are convertible to virtually any netted sport volleyball, pickleball however that works in the flooring so that stanchions, I don't know how that works but I know it works but the court could be able to be played on those what is it, three pickleball courts to one basketball court, Holly? it depends on the configuration it can be as many as four but when we get to those fit and finishes we'll be looking at lines and make sure that whatever multi-purpose lines are still usable and that there's just not a rainbow of paint on the floor that is confusing but the intent is to have a lot of flexibility in the court spaces and the surface would be the surface is at least for the three courts we're thinking of a hardwood floor system for basketball, the fourth court would be an inlaid turf system or it could be another basketball court with a rolled out surface for flexibility and those are some of the details that we need to keep working through on the design process on the next slide this is just a quick rendition of what this could look like and this is thinking that this is a traditional structure so over the back is a big kind of vaulted roof we're planning for 30 feet clear to bottom of trust so you can be able to handle volleyball and everything else that happens inside so again what I mentioned what we're going to be pricing out is what's happening kind of back of this, what type of structure that we put on and see what potential cost savings be able to come back with here are a list of savings and potential compromises can you put on a semi-rigid and still have a second floor in the track you can on the semi-rigid the inflatable makes it a little bit more difficult on that one, there's lots of other things that go along with inflatable but we'll come back with our laundry list of items for each of those different things so you can make a decision with semi-rigid have solar or does that have to be rigid definitely not with inflatable for rigid you can they got to beef up the structural system the initial beef up the cost and certainly for a contemporary traditional build we would size that so that you could be able to take solar I think that's an important piece of it too at least to make this solar ready it's a great orientation up there I don't know how much heat we shed from the rinks that we don't use certainly we'll use what we captured to heat the new addition but there's probably left over after that because I think you probably know at JP I think the number is 80% of the water park heat comes from the skating I think it's 80% how ironic I took the tour it's a huge number I mean the best systems for that is actually a pool to be able to use a pool to be able to capture all of that heat but there's certainly a different items to be able to save some of that to be able to heat the air well the potential is tremendous for being able to provide the power for this place with the leftovers from the rinks yeah there's certainly potential there really cool but that just illustrates the problem with the efficiency of trying to make the ice on the ground without a more efficient system ideally you wouldn't need all that power to freeze that water if you had some sort of geothermal thing but that's really expensive I'm just saying that in order to make the ice you're using a system that adds that much heat because it's got to do that much work ideally you wouldn't want to have to do that but then you would lose the ability well Bob explain we tried something on that much earlier many years ago and the savings that were projected weren't there we're running about as efficiently as we possibly can at the arenas right now but it's an inefficient activity we're running as efficiently as we possibly can with an inefficient type of flow I noticed there are no brackets on the summer it's expensive no brackets along the roof line here and every new building in this city has got brackets can we rectify that somehow just kidding just being sarcastic sorry this is fun I like this design I'm being sarcastic because I'm tired of all the brackets all over the network okay you don't have any brackets, thank you so this is where we're at right now again very conceptual level and what we're going to be working on between now and mid-January is to put some numbers to each of these options and kind of come up with the good things and the bad things about each of those systems so you guys can make some good informed decisions since media inflatable given what we want to put in there with what we want on the second deck is not realistic is that reasonable I think it's a very reasonable take away from that we've been struggling with it ourselves just on how we make that work why don't we forget about that what's the point in spending time on it if it's not going to work why don't we just look at the semi-rigid in a traditional and see if there's possibilities on the semi-rigid of saving a couple million bucks I think it's a fantastic idea myself I think it would be good to know what an inflatable would cost you already did that a while back yeah I know but this is a different product yeah I wouldn't spend much time on it that is also where the committee came out so he gets a vote on this while you're at it why don't you see how much it costs to put a library there too and a senior center now ideally if we can start construction on the rinks in July which if we don't need a complete act 250 if it's just a supplemental the reality is there that we probably can do that it would be great to have this thing ready to go at the same time just to let you know we're on a fast track from my perspective that's what I keep hearing speedy gondolas over here in red we can do it we've been missing it for years let's go really fully supportive this is great the community needs rec space so we'll get there maybe one quarter of the space could be you know we've left room for you to plan that future expansion down the road this is pretty neat we have in between because the snow could fall into the pool fresh water yeah okay any other questions or comments thank you very much great we are running touch late but we have one thing not on the agenda but it is really close to nine o'clock so I would like to take a five minute break and then we can get the presenter ready if they have you know any electronic stuff so we'll take a few minutes and pass those cookies around sweeten up the crowd yeah I think it's terrific the south city council meeting of December 17th 2018 and we'll move on to yet another exciting topic this is project evening at south burlington woo hoo time for item 11 is receive and review the feasibility report authored by the south burlington city center for the arts related to a proposal to build a creative arts facility in south burlington and we have tom bardon and don hirsch welcome thank you take it away so yes my name is tim bardon was tom it's tim that's not a problem just him on here yeah that's okay not a problem I'll change my name to tom please don't so I'm the executive director of south burlington city center for the arts we're a 501 c3 non-profit that was created a couple of years ago to look at the possibility of a creative arts facility in the city center for south burlington we have several members of our board with us tonight my lovely wife jennifer bardon tom done andy pierson frida tutt and david shraffenberger I won't tell you how long I've known david but you can probably guess because we're the same color hair and all that so and with me is don hirsch from don hirsch design studio don is a member of this American society of theater consultants and was the consultant for us on this feasibility study um I'm just going to speak very briefly briefly before I turn this over to don this initiative came out actually of a free press article that I read a little over two years ago where there was some discussion about what might be happening for university mall and reimagining of that and one of the ideas that was outlined in the article was a movie theater and I thought to myself well we have lots of movie theaters around but I wonder if anybody has ever thought about um a mid-sized creative arts performing arts facility so I reached out to to Helen and asked that question and the answer was g no so on we went and in that period of time we have put together a board we've done focus groups we've done surveys and now we have before you for your review of feasibility study which is really to me just a checkpoint on this project we have a lot more to do um we have a lot more to think about but I'm very happy that we've gotten this far with it and I'm even more pleased that what I think the results suggest um those of us who've been in the arts community for a while and I've been involved for 30 some odd years and past president of Lyric theater co-founded for my musical theater academy um I'm a professional performing arts photographer companies like Martha Graham Dance and um August Wilson ensemble New York stage originals but in my prior life I was a geek um I did technology management for companies like IBM Bank of Boston I was the first information technology director for the city of Burlington and six or seven years ago decided to hang all that up and join forces with my wife and have a great time teaching kids um so we've been having a lot of fun with that since then but we've known we've known and and pretty much everybody else in the arts community has had a sense that there was a need for a min size performance venue for a long time something that is in between the real the smaller houses like the black box theater that we have that has 80 seats main street landing which is in the neighborhood of 150 or so and the gem of the community which is the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts which has got you know roughly 1400 seats there was nothing in the middle and that's created a vacuum that's generated issues in terms of programming in terms of what kinds of things can come to Vermont um accessibility in terms of some local uses so for example we along with lots of other dance studios in the area do dance recitals every year um uh and uh it's always a challenge to find a good place to house those that's affordable um a midsize venue made perfect sense but nobody had one so we couldn't use one um so uh a midsize uh facility offers a lot of uses that are not currently supportable in the community and Don will get into some of that in more detail but some of the other things that distinguish our um our concept from what else is available around here is that we intend to be primarily a producing venue what that means is that to a large extent although certainly in the beginning there will be many acts that we bring in what we're interested in doing is actually producing uh shows um and doing that on a collaborative basis with connections and people that we know in regional theaters and also in New York um we've done that at my wife's studio now for two summers um where we brought professional Broadway performers up to work with our academy kids um and do brand new shows that have never been done before um and it's an amazing experience to see what happens to these kids when they get an opportunity to work with people who are the top of their game um it's incredibly inspirational so when we think about education we think about educating beyond just performing so one of the things that um the uh facility like this could offer us the ability to do is to think about the broad scale of jobs that are available in the uh in any performing arts venue so it's not about just being up on stage it's about the marketing it's about development it's about all the technology that goes on behind the scenes so we're thinking about internships apprenticeships collaborations with schools to look at some of the act 77 initiatives that are going on um and all of this is with an eye towards figuring out how to uh attract people to come here and stay here and how to get some of our kids to not leave uh when they finish with school um the other thing that we're fortunate uh to be able to consider because we're looking at this as a brand new facility is the ability to embed some emerging technology into the facility as well so uh we've had discussions with people like Vermont PBS uh companies like uh Scenarium which is a Brazilian based um performing arts streaming service um companies like 59 productions in New York that does mixed media performance technology stuff because we think that we can actually embed the technology in this facility to drive down the cost of production to drive down the cost of capturing new works and either streaming them live or capturing them later for further distribution down the road and part of the idea behind that is the ability to create revenue streams that are actually funneling money from people and organizations outside of Vermont back to our non-profit to make our what we do that much more accessible and uh and really elevate um what we do in that what I call theater in a cloud to the point where it's way beyond Shredden and County or South Burlington in terms of visibility so that's my uh my initial uh thumbnail with that I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Hirsch who knows a lot more about this stuff than I do so I'm Don Hirsch I'm the director of Don's Design Studio we're based in Montpelier, Vermont we um work with communities like yours throughout the country in um designing and developing performing arts centers and we've been in business for 30 years this year um this project began and slightly more than a year ago with a series of focus groups some of you attended um there were quite a number of South Burlington folks in attendance at those there was a tremendous amount of excitement and visioning going on about what the possibilities could be for a performing arts center or creative space um shortly after those focus groups the feasibility study commenced um it's really at this point it's about a 30,000 foot view of of the space of what can happen in there the programming etc um I took a very very conservative approach um we can talk about the pro forma if you'd like but we were we were very conservative if there was profit we went in on the low side if there were expenses we went in on the high side um in general um it's a fairly large facility so as as Tim mentioned we're looking at a five to six hundred seat main stage theater may or may not be traditional proscenium um hundred and fifty seat black box theater so that's pretty much a a square volume if you will no fixed seating very flexible space um an atrium lobby so not only is it welcoming and concession space and what not but it also works as a small event space um dance studios rehearsal places um costume shops and scene shops so it's a fairly well outfitted space um for the study we looked at chinton county and I looked at the whole county because it really is all pretty much here you know it's pretty easy to get to south burlington from anywhere within chinton and county and the population base of slightly more than 160,000 was an impressive number to think about um if we go just beyond and look at some of the neighboring communities we're up at about 300,000 people and if we start to get down my way into washington county that number increases um we looked at age education income and as I said the population all of those were very positive factors when we look at a feasibility study for a performing arts center um from an operating point of view uh the south burlington city center for the arts operates on a year round basis uh it's um as tim mentioned it's a the model at this point is for a producing venue and I'll just explain so a producing venue like st michael's summer theater so they go out they identify a play they hire the staff to design it directed et cetera and then they perform it that's a producing versus uh the second component of the of the space would be a presenting facility and so that's where we would go out and hire a touring artist um should johnny cash still be alive we might go out book johnny cash bring him in and and present him um rental would be would be another source of income um as well and then and then some of tim's ideas of streaming and and partnering with with other um with other organizations there's a fairly uh focused education opportunity so working with schools as tim talked about and part of our part of our overall operating including uh internships we looked at other venues um in the study I think we called them competing complimentary um as tim mentioned so I started doing theater in in about 1976 I think and and I can remember um at that point we were performing in a tent over the um downtown mall on church street and at that point it was a single story with a big atrium that stuck up and we had a tent behind it and um if we finished that summer of performance and somebody said gee wouldn't it be great to have a 350 seat theater so as far back as 1976 um chinna county artists were talking about a 350 seat theater and uh numbers really kind of dictate uh often the success of a space like that and so we're really more in that 500 to 600 and to be honest when I started the study I was coming down more on 500 when I finished the study I was really at six um I think I think as a designer point of view I would probably do 350 seats down 250 seats up you get that intimacy if you don't sell the balcony it still works um economic impact it's really really pretty astounding and I hope that you take a look at at that part of it in the in the study um the Americans for the arts have conducted a number of economic prosperity studies um talking with theaters around the country in different size communities and different size theaters and came up with a formula whereby we can plug in certain numbers and end up with uh the numbers of jobs that they create uh how it rolls down into the community into restaurants and hotel rooms and and um that sort of thing on that end of it I used the smaller end so so the there were a number of categories in those communities and so they looked at communities that were 50,000 to 900 I mean 99,000 so I took that rather than 160,000 that we really we really talked about and um the numbers are significant in there really uh I'm pretty impressed with all that and from a management point of view we looked at a pretty thin um management staff skilled I think we started out with five um I think and I enlisted some of the uh some of the responsibilities that some of the folks might have and um I think we covered all the bases pretty well as you all know that high end of any of any business like that it ends up in salaries and so I always try and keep those numbers low it means everybody uh kind of really joining in um uh focusing uh sharing responsibilities and being very efficient uh to what they're doing um from an ownership point of view really there are a number of scenarios and is it a is it a private that owns it is it a commercial entity does the city of south Burlington own it and within each of those scenarios there are a couple of other uh scenarios that I detailed in the study um funding that's discussed in there too at this point it was a little difficult to really because we're not completely sure of the of the program um what kind of funding is available um the pro forma um we show the first couple of years in the red by a slight margin uh that really could go the other way as well um for me the most exciting part of the study was the appendices um we included in there the results of the focus groups to really pretty exciting and more importantly a survey um we sent out a survey to 39 uh stakeholders we heard back from 24 and if you really take a look at the comments in there they're pretty excited about the possibility of a venue like this happening there um one group said they would be using it 40 times a year some of those were rehearsals and some were were performances um so in the end you know I kind of looked at it I spent over a year on this thing for a number of reasons and it's still a very fluid dynamic um process and Tim came up with another revenue source two weeks ago um it works for me um you know I think we're in the right area of the state um one of the things I looked at we don't have we don't have we have a great audience base up here we don't have as a new venue we don't have to go out and educate an audience about performing arts and that happens in some of these other places where I were where there hasn't been an opportunity for folks well here we have a pretty a pretty good uh arts educated community uh and that's that's kind of a struggle you know when you're starting out you're probably doing recognizable things and you don't want to go too far out and push people and make people too afraid of what they're what they're going to see so you come in with really with name recognition you know here we have a pretty good sophisticated audience I think um I think we're we're the uh size of the venue is there I think we have a great number of people who are interested in in rental and that's always a pretty good benchmark or pretty good marker um who's looking to to come into it who's looking to use it so for me I think this is a really exciting opportunity for for uh South Burlington and it's something I think would work question to comment I did see the just over 13,000 dollars where you fell under the the revenue and expense and did you um want to perhaps follow up on that with you know discussion so so why what why did I say we're 1300 13,000 in the red because we are but what what to do about it in other words well you know I think um I think as I said I was I was very conservative so I went low so so I built that on 500 seats so if we had 100 seats more there well there we are but but let's we'll stay with 500 so so when you're when you're programming of any like that and I and I know we have a head programmer back here but um um when you're programming like that you you pick a percentage of your house that you expect to sell so so in this one I took 50% you know we really could be at 60% that 13,000 is really I think pretty simple to make up you know I kept our ticket prices really low I think the average ticket price in that first year was about 35 dollars um so if those ticket prices are 37 50 or something like that you know it really if it really didn't concern me that you know I figured it very very conservatively and like I said when I started if there was profit I kept that really low and if there were expenses I wouldn't know and I just had a second question it was the the salaries with the number of staff um average is about 25,000 dollars annual salary I'm assuming that some won't be paid that much and others will be paid more no you know I think if you look in the assumptions it has like 70,000 very specific right if you look at the assumptions Megan I detailed all of the salaries for the staff and they were you know in that 70,000 range and I think the low salary was 55,000 on that first year of operation but the numbers didn't work out that way the FTE jobs this are total number of full-time equivalent jobs in the community that are so are you looking at the economic impact oh okay yeah that's different it's a whole budget that talks about what this would right so so that's I hear this right here I'm not the economic but I'm not seeing any so so that's not salary for the employees right that's a community member exactly right and that comes from that America for the earths okay right that's from that that's from the that's sort of the impact impact so if we look at I'm sorry Megan if you look at that top line that's 645,990 so that's the total expenses right so Americans for the arts plug in your total expenses for your first year of operation and then I had to figure out what our total audience was and so in that first year of operation I figured 50,000 in attendance that shows whether they were rentals or presenting or produced shows and then and then I think that was it and then they calculate out based on data that they receive from communities of similar size and venues of similar size around the country and the below that under definitions it kind of it kind of says what what those household income full-time jobs etc so those full-time jobs like Tom was indicating could be servers could be concessionaires vendors there could be a whole variety of things of how that rolls out two questions on your pro forma and then a nested question in there so you said you had a conservative estimate of 50% bookings for 230 events a year is that what I saw in here so 50% attendance at a show so 230 events out of a year I'm really glad John Kalaki's here because I don't know this realm and that seems like a lot of events because there's only 104 Fridays and Saturdays in the year but the second part of my question I don't see any rent or debt service in your estimates here so that's somewhat assuming the city would be where would the where would the coverage of the facilities be you know that we don't okay so we don't know what the building would cost so whether this is owned by a nonprofit owned by a commercial entity we just don't know so pro forma your 13,000 doesn't factor into rent to the facility or debt service not debt service not debt service okay then the last question I promise I love the comparators and I didn't see my more out of the tutorial and I saw in October and then in early December two articles in the Burlington Free Press about how Miro is really hot on revitalizing that space how do you see that plays into this is that should that be reconsidered if this moves forward I don't know what it is memorial auditoria but I don't know what it it's to become I think that's still is it an event space is it a performance space is it both you know I can only go with what I what I know I can't you know and even then I'm projecting following up on what what you said the location for this I don't is this on the proposal is this on property that's owned by by Joe Larkin we don't know that you know what's made this you know I said Dave I've been I've been working on this over a year it's and it's still so fluid and you haven't determined ownership or how that would one of the things from listening to you it could turn out I mean it could be like a Dorset Park skating association where the city owns the infrastructure and operating entity operates it provided you can operate it profitably that's a model we're really looking at because that's the only way the city can really justify being involved in something like this we'll talk about that in the next section all right I think you know at one point at one point Kevin said you know we're 30,000 feet you know we're gonna you know our next step is probably you know 10 10 or 5,000 feet you know we really need to dig into this you know now that we have this kind of laid out now it's really you know come back and take another look at it one one thing I'll just jump in with is that to some extent the concept for the facility was born out of a visit that Jennifer and I made to a facility in Rancho Cucamon California it's called the the Lewis family Playhouse and it's actually theirs is actually adjoining a library but we met with them and spent a day and it was actually very interesting because that actually is a city owned and run facility I would say that in my research that model is definitely in the minority but they've been running that for close to 15 years I think in a just gorgeous beautiful little facility in fact that's the entryway to it right there the city owns it and the city runs it and the people that work there are all city employees any other questions Megan I don't know this business either and I'm a huge supporter of the arts I patronize the arts as much as I can and the just kind of the stories I hear from long ago Broadway maybe it's not the same case but if you don't get the ticket sales that you're expecting people don't necessarily get paid so I was just curious about that how that all happens today in your world for me that's part of the reason why we're trying to think of this in a non-traditional way and why I'm thinking about it in terms of an integrated performance education and producing facility there's no question that non-profit theater organizations sometimes struggle and they sometimes fail oftentimes they can fail typically ticket revenue usually only represents 40 to 50 percent maybe of an operating budget so a lot of it is made up by charitable donations foundation support endowments grants you name it but we know that we're living in a world where that's harder and harder to get so part of what I'm doing and have been doing for the past year is reaching out to commercial organizations to sift their possibilities to create commercial non-profit partnerships to find a way to bridge that gap because to the extent that we can drive the cost of running the place down or endow it by bringing in some commercial profit what that allows us to do is make the entire thing more accessible so for example at northern stage down in White River Junction the top ticket price for students is $5 all the time for any show doesn't matter that's the kind of thing that we want to aim for and part of it is bringing in outside organizations and partnering with them so we have as I might have mentioned before relationship with a company called New York stage originals that does touring shows and one of the shows that they have is called tap kids and it's a show of eight teenage performers basically telling the story of their senior year through tap dance and music and every year for the past I don't know how many years how many years has tap kids been with us? Okay, 10th year they bring 80 kids, 80 of the top tap dance kids from around the world come to Vermont for a week in our studio along with their parents so they basically take over Green Mountain Suites and several of the top tap dance teachers in the world come in for a week and work with these kids and at the end there's a show and it's typically been a main street landing that's one week and the amount of revenue that gets brought in it's not just kids from our area that are that are paying tuition and being educated it's other kids and that inspires our kids too we've been fortunate that we usually every year there's one Vermonter that makes it so it's that kind of thinking about the facility as a pathway to income and connections and collaboration outside of the state that I think will help make this really succeed and a good chunk of that is looking at the way the technology is changing live performing arts and much the way that it's already changed the music industry and the cable and television industry and we think we can be on the cutting edge of some of that Well thank you very much I think this is another kind of exciting idea or concept and I appreciated reading the report and we look forward to continuing the conversation thank you okay item 12 further this conversation in part council discussion on an amendment to the city of south to authorize the collection of an additional 1% on the local option tax for the purpose of financing certain identified public projects and possible call to convene the city charter committee so Kevin you're taking the lead on this yes I am so tonight you've heard about two projects that have both come from committees one your recreation parks committee and the other is one formed as a result of your meeting of two summers ago where with the initial conversation over at spotlight was about such a facility being built here in south growing both exciting projects question becomes how to pay for it among other things we recognize that the school district is also working on some project ideas for the middle school and the high school that will undoubtedly go before the public for support driven by the property tax the only revenue source that the school district really has so not wanting to to compete or otherwise confused the public with municipal projects to pay for and school district projects to pay for what staff have identified as a potential revenue source for these projects would be another 1% on the local option tax currently we have 1% on sales 1% on homes and meals it raises about 3.5 million dollars annually with target here it might raise a little bit more but and those funds are used to buy down pay down the debt on the police department but also to hold down property tax increases so we put the 3.5 million dollars against the demand for higher property taxes and it pays that down well we would recommend consideration is increase in the local option tax at 1% that would be 2% ultimately on sales 2% on rooms and meals with the additional 1% dedicated completely to debt service on these projects until such time as the debt is retired at which time the additional 1% would sunset. Tom? I think Tim knows the answer to this with online purchases will that 1% be assessed on anybody that lives within South Burlington in theory is that how it's supposed to work so if you order things to your house that 1% should apply and that should be collected by from Amazon is that correct? If Amazon is the primary vendor well anybody who ships into South Burlington that 1% should be assessed. Unless there are vendors that have less than 300 whatever there's a criteria for Amazon but potentially you know all most of Amazon sales would be they would have to charge that extra percent of course all the stores restaurants and hotels would have to charge that as well now the state would not return as the full percent we would get a percentage of it right? What we would propose to the state is that as currently exists with the 1% we have even that 1% the state takes 30 cents out of the dollar so it's not good enough that they get 6% on a sales tax and 9% on rooms and meals they also want part of our tax so that's the way the system operates now except for Burlington they get the whole 100% as far as I understand it we don't get me started so we believe that if the existing if we project out total cost for projects and this is just let's just say we had to raise $45 million let's just say we had to raise that at current 70-30 split we could pay that off in 15 years 15? If the state granted us the 100% based upon the points made by the presenters that this really has regional or even statewide impact it could be paid off in 10 years so with the projected revenue of how much per year directly net to the city we're talking about both the rec center and the city center for the arts so the current 70% of our 1% raised at 3.5 million the full percent raises a little bit over 5 5.1 5.1 5.5 so with those amounts we could pay it off in 15 years or we could pay it off in 10 we would avoid going to the property taxpayers to say you know to make a demand on the property taxpayer we also would not be looking at this as a either of these as a TIF project on the one hand the veterans park would not be eligible for that on the other if we built a performing arts center in city center it's possible that some TIF revenue could go toward this as well but we haven't figured that as part of it because of the other TIF related projects already approved in the financing plan so from a timing standpoint in process standpoint the council would need to approve going to the voters in march with an amendment to the charter it's through the charter amendment that we would generate the additional 1% if the voters approved in march it would go to the legislature for approval they have to approve all charter changes in march or even before immediately immediately after the vote if the legislature approves the additional local option tax it would undoubtedly have some kind of triggering mechanism so the triggering mechanism would likely be vote by the voters on actually incurring debt for these projects so the actual debt vote would come at a later time but initially we would have to show the voters we'll have to show the council we'd have to show the voters and we'd have to show the legislature that these are the projects we'll have enough information on the projects and the program and the costs to make a convincing argument that it warrants the additional cent on the local option tax at a later date perhaps perhaps June or perhaps in September one or the other of the projects or both could go to the voters for the actual debt vote and we would if we go to the legislature would we also include this sunset clause or how would that work because we wouldn't necessarily know what the debt is it would be at the point at which the debt is retired whatever the debt is so if the debt were $30 million you can calculate out when that would be retired knowing within a good proximity what the local option tax is going to be I would my recommendation though would be to engage the charter on that on that issue to engage your charter committee and ask them to come in and work on this over the next few weeks so the charter committee knows that we're looking at amending the charter and they can work out the language so the trigger would be the vote for the debt I think that that would be a reasonable trigger for the tax to engage David? A couple of things one, I think there was an excellent presentation on the arts I'm big on the arts the only way we can justify is a city being an active part of that if it was a situation similar to the ranks in other words a city would have to own the facility and have to do a much closer examination of their pro forma and be assured that it's going to run in the black on a continuing basis because gentlemen, for Tim or Tom Tim mentioned that ticket revenue only covers 50% of an arts facility at the arenas ice rental covers 100% and then some of our operating costs and then we get to keep what we make from the cafeteria and the pro shop as well from a and so that's a much more secure because we've run in 23 years 25 years whatever the heck it is of operations we have never really seen more than a minor blip in our demand and so we have a much more certain revenue source than the presentation on the arts center because 50% from tickets and the other 50% from contributions or partners or whatever that's got to be pretty darn sure before the city can commit to funding a building like that so that's just one piece I'm all for funding the south burlington recreation facility without engaging the taxpayers at all by going for that extra 1% I was at a state chamber of commerce meeting last week and there is going to be as always upward pressure on taxes especially the rooms and meals tax which if I remember incorrectly hasn't changed since 19 oh to 2002 or 2004 or six somewhere in there it's back you know 15 years ago tremendous pressure on that what happens if moves the rooms and meals tax a percent then all of a sudden we are 2% now instead of 11 we're at 12% you know that's going to be you can't you can't crystal ball that see how it's going to roll out either I don't think we can worry about that initially going forward but it is something to be concerned about because the legislature is spending more money than they have to spend and they got to find money somewhere and the rooms and meals tax is a perennial target it's been a target ever since I was in the legislature back in the 80s every year this pressure raised rooms and meals tax and so that could be a challenge on rooms and meals there's just a couple of red flags out there but the idea of moving South Burlington Recreation Facility forward using other people's money because a tremendous amount of that money is paid by non-residents of South Burlington especially in the hotel end of things and a lot of the retail too low and the walls over all people coming in from people that are climbing up our access roads as well spear street right so yeah it's other people's money that's what you know that's all good I you know it just it's impossible to predict what the legislature is going to do about the rooms and meals tax I don't think they're going to monkey with the sales tax I'm a very similar mind of what I just heard Dave say I'm fully supportive of the rec center I'm not necessarily so that we need to go to change the charter and raise one percent through this sales and meals tax you're going to sell your three acres and then contribute the money and pay for it no contribute the money no I'll sell the three acres but no I am completely supportive of moving forward with the rec center but I think this needs a little more we need to flesh out the pro forma a little bit more we need to understand some of those finances understand a site location and I don't necessarily I wouldn't want to stall progress on the rec center to move forward the charter language change that's where I am so you don't want to move forward on the charter change I would be very concerned if it was restricted if the language was restricted to specific projects if we justify one percent increase to pay for all of the city services that we need increase fire increase police because of us being a magnet this a municipality where people come here to Lowe's that makes sense to me to raise the one percent I'm just not convinced we're there yet well we could we could also allocated in percentages you know X percent goes to capital improvements and don't restrict it but no I wouldn't see necessarily the sunset clause just a different point of view the taxes the taxes tax and I'm not in favor of having this being an indefinite I agree with you absolutely Tom if we didn't if we didn't try and add one percent where you're going to get the money to pay for the rec facility so what are we talking about four million five million ten million twelve million looking at those pictures it's very different from what we were talking about a couple months ago it's not against the one percent I just don't want to restrict it to specific projects like necessarily the city center performing arts tell me again why not I just would want to flush out the more auditorium question just understand where that is I would hate to over saturate the market I'm concerned too with the 230 events a year just the numbers that they put down I would want John Kalaki I would want to bend your ear since you know the Flint theater is on those estimates so I'm not ready to go full throttle on the city's collaborative well I don't disagree with you and I express that concern that the revenue stream from an arts facility is not as certain as the revenue stream additionally the rec center will immediately benefit potentially every resident of South Burlington that wants to go in and use it the art center is not going to be free for everybody to go to the rec facility won't cost money and some will but there's a whole different structure there one is for the benefit of everybody in South Burlington from a recreational perspective the other is dedicated to the arts keep in mind the five dollar student prices that they're... I just you know like you concerned about the revenue stream and whether that's going to be secure and how far in we want to jump on something the question for tonight though is probably do we want to ask the city charter committee to work on a charter change that would allow us to increase the local option tax by one percent and then let them flesh out and the other projects continue to flesh out what the actual costs are and how long we would have to put this in place or what the payback would be are we agreeable to at least task the charter committee to ponder this and come back with language? they obviously did this work for the first one percent that we added on right they already did this kind of work for the first one percent how much work they had to do in terms of what they had to submit to the legislature right? I think we have a very good idea about what it's going to be a brief but with an eye toward process and engaging the committees we thought calling the charter committee would be a good idea well I think this is a little bit different if we take the administration's recommendation that it be used for debt and debt alone for these city projects when the debt is gone the one percent is gone the additional one percent which might be a better sell to the businesses in our community who will have to collect that and be at odds with everyone but Burlington and Williston especially performing arts center would be a draw for people to come to their places of business right? so there is and spend money and perhaps stay overnight and eat in the restaurants and leave money in south Burlington and we can also if we get started at some point if you set the trigger for the tax at the point at which debt is being incurred and the public decides they want a recreation facility but they don't want a performing arts or creative arts center then all the money raised is going to buy down the debt of the rec facility that much faster so if you set that out there as a trigger then the public ultimately decides whether or not to invest in that project or neither project definitely like the idea that it's focused on the debt for whatever projects the community votes for and if they don't vote for any then it never gets triggered versus just adding to the coffers and we'll just spend it on whatever how can you word that in a way that it's legally binding is that possible? well I think that's what the city charter committee would work on that's why I don't think it's just the language from last time we do it now the language is restrictive now on the 1% restrictive the debt service on the police station and on buying and paying down property tax you can't so that's wide open to pay down the property tax assessment is applied to everything but you could come up I think you could probably come up with some things that you couldn't use it on okay but even if it was just that to just pay down the burden on our property tax payers then we can move the money around to different debt I'm just not supportive of restrictions and I look at Tom because he manages our budget every year now these monies come in I don't know if you have thoughts on any restrictions tied to a possible 1% increase I'd love to hear I guess my only comment Tom is that just knowing the capacity for the general fund right now in the budget that to be able to finance this through property taxes would be a real strain and trying to keep the tax rate at a level that I think you would all feel comfortable with so I think the thinking outside the box was to place it elsewhere as Dave pointed out more regional draw actually for both the facilities but especially for the performing arts kind of made sense to look at the local options as a viable possibility for this well I think it's particularly important to be sensitive to what the other side of the street is going to be asking the property tax payers to so I mean I I don't think we should just go hell bent on election and get our stuff in first using the property tax before the school comes across with what they need so I think this is a creative solution to allow the community to decide if they want to support a rec center because it can't happen unless they vote for the bonding with first they have to vote for the charter change right right now how are we going to convince the state to give us 100% of that extra penny well don't say you're not they want their cut because we well that's why John will be so that's right persuasive you know we have to make our case it'll be hard but our neighbors next door get the full 100% there's a unique was a prior authorization but I think we need to ask and I think we have to make the case that this does have a regional and even potentially at some level statewide impact I'm not sure that's going to get us any far we make that case and the state's going to say all the more reason you should share it with us because it's benefiting everybody in the state we should get a part of it I'm not sure that argument's going to work the facility is for everybody in the state this would be the state's investment in a facility that benefits the whole state it'll be a challenge can we pull it off and testify and John and the other representatives and we've got one state senator Michael Sorokin in south Burlington it's also benefits us that one of our representatives is chair of the committee with jurisdiction in the house anyway this will be the first community to have a second percent sales tax no Burlington has to on rooms and meals but not on sales they only have a 7% sales tax we would be the first to have 7% on sales tax we'd be the first to have an 8% sales tax which just means that means that everybody else is going to come right behind it saying well if they get the one we want one too and now you just added a 14% increase in all sales tax across most of Chittenden County and governor Scott if he's still governor then is going to not take a nice light view of that to the previous point I think the rec center is going to if it's $10 million that's about half a million bucks a year in debt service but I'm expecting some revenues to pay that down a bit so I'm not saying I want to put the burden on the taxpayer I'm just saying that there's a long established demand and need for rec space indoor rec space in this community I fully support moving that forward but I am increasingly skeptical of wanting to support being the first to go to 8% of local sales auction we should move down the road of the charter committee and everything I'll hear more let's keep going but if we get 100% we could just do rooms and meals right because that's 3.5 million that adds up to about the same amount those are combined rooms and meals and sales are combined but if you take out the sales and you get 100% of that 1% rooms and meals yeah I don't know what that does about 1.5 million for 100% rooms and meals this is a residential tax increase and it's also a tourist tax increase a drive by tax increase drive through we got to get money somehow anybody that shops here is going to see that people that live here are going to see that if you go to a restaurant you're going to see that you almost need to quantify it if you already quantify increases in taxes by saying a 3.14% municipal tax increase equates to $24 on an average $250,000 condo or blah blah blah you almost need to say if you are on the average of spending $100 a month or whatever you know on going out to eat and or buying things here and there you will see it will cost you this much so just thinking ahead to if you had to quantify for an average consumer what that would be but if you're going to advertise an increase in your sales rooms and meals tax you need to be able to explain that some of the money is going to go to a facility that really only benefits south brunnen people whereas this other thing is going to benefit the whole county right so those are just some more things to keep in mind okay so what is your pleasure shall we ask the charter committee to work on this well they're bored right now and have nothing to work on they don't have anything to work on let's ask them to work on it and see where we go we don't need to vote on that I don't think we all in agreement you probably can anticipate though if they do their work quickly and if you want to stay on the schedule possibly a special meeting of the council about mid january to make a decision as to whether or not you want to move forward alrighty thank you why not the gas tax why not the gas tax okay moving right along item 13 comments from the energy committee I understand yes us in march and then go to the legislature immediately isn't that too late not for charter changes they typically take them up because town meeting is always in march we want to use that leftover heat from the skating room I briefed made on it I briefed made on it the other day so she chairs the thank you okay welcome would you please identify yourself for the camera yes my name is linda mcginnis I'm the current chair of the south burlington energy committee and I'm Don Cummings member of the committee so thank you for allowing us to present to you this evening we know that it's a long night and I will try to keep it brief we're seeing this is the first in a two-part series so we're hoping that you'll have us back sometime early next year but it's also because we think that there's a couple of asks that we'd like you to really seriously consider at this stage so we're here to talk about how to accelerate our progress towards reaching our energy and climate goals that you have so beautifully laid out in three resolutions I'm going to go over first just to give some background so that we can bring it fresh to your mind what those three resolutions are the first is in 2014 you had an energy efficiency resolution actually I want to preface this by saying we are not as exciting and sexy as city art center or a rec center but we do have the added plus that we can save you money so that you can spend it on the things that you want to spend it on so I just want to put that out there alright so in the 2014 energy efficiency resolution you laid out a goal to reduce energy usage by 20% by 2020 to have an energy efficiency plan developed and to report the results to the city council on an annual basis in 2017 you had a resolution that said you would use the solar landfill revenue to support energy committee initiatives together with the city and that's about five to nine thousand a month that you're already generating the first year has about ninety thousand dollars excuse me already and then the third is the climate pledge coalition resolution which we are very excited about to meet or exceed the Paris goals of 26 to 28% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2025 we're going to focus on the first two this time because it has a couple of asks that we want to discuss with you we were really pleased to have Helen and Kevin join us in last month's energy committee meeting and Kevin committed to on that first one not much has been done on that first one and he committed to working with us on a quarterly basis to lay out an energy efficiency plan and report the results back to you and on this next part I'm going to say that you had said a really great excellent policy context and framework but the implementation in getting us to those goals has been pretty relatively slow and we have a good start but there's a whole lot more to do and a whole lot more money to be saved for the city and I'm going to be two examples of what are a good start and then go into the other things that need to be done so over the past four years around four years 2012 to 2016 you have invested in energy efficiency projects added to the tune of about half a million dollars and over that period of time you've generated if you look at the cumulative savings about a million dollars in savings which is remarkable I can guarantee you there's no other project that you're investing in that will give you that kind of return that's pretty incredible okay so that's one of the things that is a good start but there is a whole lot more to do on that the second as you're well aware is the solar landfill revenue which we worked really hard with you to help get going and that has an annual revenue of around $90,000 we expect it to continue that way for the next ten years that's a total of around $600,000 to a million dollars over the next ten years again you're not going to find any other projects that you're investing in that give you the kinds of returns that these do so what we're saying is that there's a whole lot more that remains to be done we've been working really closely with efficiency Vermont to prioritize and look at what remains to be done these are obviously things that efficiency Vermont has been working on with the city and this is the type of work that we plan on looking at with Kevin over the course of the coming year and the key on this is that these priorities have have a payback which is really you won't find anywhere else the ones that you've already invested in had a payback in about three years and they will continue to generate savings over the course of every year you can buy is the energy you don't see projects are all about so what we'd like to do is take it one step further and make sure that those savings that are generated are reinvested back into energy efficiency savings projects so that you continue to generate savings and have this positive effect that you'll constantly have several hundred thousand dollars at least to the tune that we see right now coming back at you as a city to reinvest in more important things than sending our dollars out of state for fossil fuels so what we feel that we want to focus on with you and we have three asks which I'll get to after this is that we need we can generate far more with putting more priority on these types of projects by allocating some resources and we'll tell you about that and especially staffing these projects are hard to manage as anybody on the city staff will tell you they take a lot of time and a lot of effort and staff are overtaxed as they are and so what we're talking about right now is what it takes is time of someone like an energy services manager there are three other towns in Vermont that are currently doing this then invest in an energy services manager Hartford Lebanon and Montpelier what we're talking about is this person would manage energy projects across all departments and again these are all projects that generate savings or revenue for you they would scope out the projects that are on the priority list that the city has worked hard to pull together with efficiency Vermont they would present an annual report to you and what we're talking about as an ask is a minimum of a third of a full time staff and it doesn't have to be an energy specialist it could be that it's a person who does part of let's say Ilana's work so that she can focus on managing the energy investment but what we're saying is it's going to take at a minimum from what we've looked at we've talked to the other towns that are doing this a minimum of a third high level full time staff equivalent now how do you pay for this right we know okay there are several available options for doing that you have the solar reserve fund which is generating 60 to 90k a year you also have efficiency savings right now that we have worked with efficiency Vermont on that show that you're saving around 190,000 a year but if you invest in new efficiency projects and this is what's happened in Hartford the investments in the energy efficiency projects are paying for their energy manager there's a stewardship fund which I know has some Kevin described to us has some of the efficiency projects in it if part of that could be dedicated to a third of a full time equivalent energy services manager that's a possibility to and then for the types of investments that you're making going forward we'd like you to consider looking into the possibility of a municipal lease taking the solar reserve fund around some portion of that whatever you feel is useful and using that to be able to generate additional funds that you could get through a municipal lease as a possibility and we'd love to talk about it with Kevin we don't have to come to any conclusions right now but it's one of the ideas that we're talking about right now the second is a revolving fund that ensures that the savings that you're generating from investments and efficiency get reinvested back into more efficiency projects so that you're constantly reducing what you're spending on energy so that you can spend it on more important things like a rec center or a city art center whatever you want to do it for but it's basically to reinvest those savings so that you're constantly generating more what is a municipal lease so for example if we are getting revenue from the solar array might not be sufficient if we collected that large list of energy efficiency projects for example changing all the LED street lights at once might be in the range of $200,000 you can't cover it with simply one year's revenue from the solar fund however I think from what little we know about municipal leases you could engage an outfit that provides municipal leasing and use the revenue from the solar fund to pay down say a five year or seven year note effectively oh so you lease the street lights like a school bus that way we referred to this sort of as a big bang approach to doing energy efficiency projects all at once so that you get them done now and so you start reaping savings that very year the way we've been doing it now we've been doing projects out of maintenance budgets and so we get a little incremental savings each year whereas if we group them did them in a big bang approach paid for them all at once the solar reserve fund could pay the note so the three asks that we're asking you to consider as appropriate for the operating budget is funds for an energy manager and we identified where those funds could potentially come from energy projects that are actually generating revenue or savings to consider municipal lease to do a higher level a higher amount of efficiency projects and then three establish a revolving fund for reinvesting those additional savings so that we can ensure that we have continued savings going forward so that's the the three main asks that we have of you I'm sure you'll probably have questions if I could just generalize the last two I think in general we've had two two issues with three issues the city is very busy running the city smoothly and with city center energy efficiency and climate change has got to be a third priority if you've seen anything about the national assessment the recent national assessment it's critical that local governments and state governments along with individuals and businesses even for for local governments it has to become high on our priority list secondly we need a responsible high level person who can can take charge do the prioritization run the project plans work with Tom on financing work with Justin on the implementations whoever that the right people are the key person is important it's beyond us but again work with Tom and the right financial people to ensure that there's money coming in to invest in the efficiency upgrades that will then return savings to the city in a subsequent year and there are models that are working right now Montpelier is doing that right now and as the three towns that I mentioned before have an energy manager and each of them is bringing in savings that can pay for the energy manager which is pretty remarkable and we have job descriptions from them we've been talking to them from Montpelier we have how they set up the revolving fund so that you can ensure the reinvestment can take place so we have lots of examples and those are all the types of things we'll be meeting quarterly with Kevin we're starting tomorrow that we'd like to bring up but we wanted to make sure that the city council was aware of this because again this is the only thing that you can invest in that's going to bring you returns as quickly as it does and on top of it can bring down our greenhouse gas emissions which is something that we'd like to talk to you about more in depth in the beginning of next year so Any questions or comments? The projects that remain like the traffic signals that are 80% complete and street lighting and efficiency we've been working with efficiency Vermont the whole list of the ones that at least have been identified together with efficiency Vermont in the city of South Burlington some of them like the traffic signals 80% complete there you have that on that page we have a spreadsheet that shows what the investment required for each of these things that's the scoping that an energy manager would need to do that's a lot of hard work not the full scoping of these ones not that we know of I think to the best of our understanding these projects have been undertaken when there's funding and there's an immediate need for example the lights traffic signal we will upgrade the traffic signal but what we're what we're requesting is in a proactive manner let's look at all the potential projects lay out a project plan identify the value of each of these projects how much it costs what is the benefit put them together into a plan prioritize them prioritize them have someone who's managing that whole process the way it happens today is kind of a secondary process to other business is my view Bartlett Bay 20 year upgrade that's another whole ball let's exclude that I would take that off the table because when that happens there's a bunch of things that new things are going to be purchased that these concepts will be in there you have to understand this wastewater pumping stations I don't know what the frequency is for purchasing that kind of equipment but those are pretty large capital improvements which is why we're talking about trying to look at different financing mechanisms that can allow you to do bigger purchases that's where I want to have Justin come in and say what the expected lifetime is for those pumps where the payback point is this is a list that efficiency Vermont when they did an audit for the city this is what they came up with it's a fully vetted list they didn't just pick the low hanging fruit they said these are the things that the city needs to do that's why some of these are pretty large these are some of the things we have a 75 page report just one thing that's the biggest bang for the buck yes creating a complete list with the value and the cost so a thorough evaluation and a prioritization could be done which is why we're starting with an energy manager it takes work to do that but the benefits as we can see from the work that the city has already done are enormous right you're getting right now from the energy projects I just listed around $300,000 a year of savings no if you're looking at efficiency plus solar that's about $300,000 a year savings that for the efficiency projects continue ad infinitum and so what we're saying is that yes these are some big projects that have been highlighted by efficiency Vermont as things that really South Burlington could get a lot of benefit out of but it takes project scoping and that project scoping takes someone to do the work so in Hartford what they did is they the city council put aside $40,000 and they actually hired VEC to come and do an energy plan for them and that's what they did that's not what everyone else has done necessarily but that's one way of doing it that was a 40,000 that was before they hired their energy manager after they did that we have to hire an energy manager to make this happen now they have one and they're going through those projects like this and reducing the amount that they're spending overall by leaps and bounds and so that's what we'd like to see here and it's a lot of work I mean Kevin's staff is doing a they're stretched thin we had the discussion they came Kevin came to the last meeting we totally recognize they're stretched thin you have sources of financing right now that can potentially pay for this right? you have solar funds that are coming in every single month that could potentially pay for it or you could project forward and say these are efficiency savings that are going to come forward from these projects that could also potentially pay for a manager we're talking about a third of a full time staff that's I think Dave and then Megan so that list of priorities can you share that 75 pages is an expansion of those items there is that one? no there are many other projects oh this is just the priority these are the ones that Efficiency Vermont has identified as priority after having done the audit with the city about what three years ago it's unfair to say this is a prioritized list this is a list of some of the projects that were identified you got 75 pages of projects both all the details of the projects that have been done and identifying a small and large ones that could potentially be done but these are the main ones we're fortunate that Tim Perron who has worked with the city he's with Efficiency Vermont he's on our energy committee and he's the one who's picked these but to clarify there are audits and process evaluations and other sources that date back from 2010 and so on that may contain other ideas that are not included in this list this is not a complete list there are very few ideas about building envelopes for example you know heating keeping the heat in the buildings they're mostly about equipment within the building or infrastructure outside of the buildings I think you heard what you were sitting here when Bob Lecker was talking about the rinks we're saving after putting LED into everything we're saving 30 grand a year it only cost us 55 thousand so we got less than a two year payback if I'm not right amazing really what can be done there's probably work you could do with the compressors outside that are making that cold day done a lot of work with those if there can be savings had Bob finds them but I just want to underscore this is I didn't show this earlier but this is the spreadsheet that the officials were on has pulled together just for the period of 2012 to 2016 which I talked about before I'll read it out loud to you but this is the projected costs of all of the efficiency projects that you did from 2012 to 2016 and the total projected cost was $537,000 if you look at what the annual savings are depending on when the project started cumulative annual $195,000 that payback on $535,000 is three years you're not going to find that I'm an economist you're not going to find that anywhere and the cumulative savings that you have over a four year period of time is $927,000 and growing because the savings come every year now that's like it's not revenue like the solar revenue fund but it is savings and if you can capture it in a financial mechanism that allows you to reinvest that exponentially grows it's a really one of the major cost drivers there was the treatment plant which was the largest single you had to upgrade the treatment plant and so there was a major piece of money spent and it produced savings if you look at some of these other things much smaller costs so relatively a much higher return on investment on the other savings so I'm willing to bet there are a lot more of these small things or $35,000 or $30,000 or $40,000 the examples are here here's just such a few that could be done easily this year sort of if you were doing low hanging fruit we would like to see the whole thing looked out together there's the municipal street lighting phase two energy savings projected are around $8,000 we don't know yet what the project cost is because it has to be scoped out but it will be significantly smaller so police station these are boring things to go through bit by bit but they're really important because each one of them begins to generate savings from you from the get go and then you pay it back in three years maximum five years we looked at the average for people who would ask a really great question of us earlier which was we've done the low hanging fruit which had a payback of two to three years are these next projects what is the payback going to be on them we talked to efficiency of your mom we went through some of the major projects and they said payback in five years on average for some of these bigger projects that's still better than anything you're going to find anywhere else you're talking about paying back the mortgage or whatever you were talking about earlier on 10, 15 years or 15 if you're not so lucky this is a payback on average of five years and then it's gravy after that that you can then reinvest Megan had a question and then Tom just a statement I think it was very right of Linda to remind us that we passed three resolutions and I think that when we decide on something that it really it's up to us then to follow through and not only should we follow through but when we have our investments paying off and making it possible as Linda and Don have shown us to really help us meet our expectations without asking for an increase to hire a third of an FTE yes I mean the answer seems obvious one we have to meet our goals that we've set for ourselves and when it seems that the role there requires an extra staff member and I agree that our staff has a lot on its plate when we can already pay for that I think the questions are good, it's vetting it but I think that we have to meet our obligations Tom no question just a statement you said and I think we should do everything you outlined for all the reasons you outlined so let's do this question we're saving money now right we're saving it no that's what we're asking the cost just goes down if we are to we've got a stewardship fund that in theory takes that revenue much but the stewardship fund is $125,000 125 125 I think and that's from the savings where is it from we're not spending as much money on electricity in some one of our buildings so that's a savings where are we going to get the money paid for if we're already spending the money saving other stuff well you would need to set it into a reserve fund you would need to set it into a reserve fund that's used specifically for that purpose we did with the solar fund we said that should be spent on energy efficiency items and hopefully there's some other funding ways to buy the solar for the library so maybe some of that we'll be able to have this trust fund if you will to plow back into savings that would be from future savings from current savings we're spending that money yes so we're going to do what you're suggesting if we're going to do that we're going to stop spending that money on other stuff what's the other stuff what's the other stuff what's the rest of city operating so in order to do this what are we going to have to short change I'm saying we do have a fund though we do have the solar array income fund it's not a whole lot it's 90,000 bucks a year well it's enough to fund a third of a position yeah that's well yes except we've committed that to the library solar thing however that was just buying it up spending that money every year for 17 years to pay off the loan there's another way to do it but the energy committee has some information that there's another way to do that so we won't have to commit 90,000 dollars a year of that fund solely to the library so that's I think how we can work creatively to find the third of a person we get the top half right exactly the brain the brain and the heart it's all you need right the other thing to consider is if it's a one year ad because if for example for the 40,000 to see let's just assume you needed 50 grand this year over and above the solar array that 50 grand should pay for itself in savings next year if you were to do if you were to do a bunch of efficiency projects we already see what they can generate in terms of savings and you ensure that that savings is utilized to pay again for the person so some of it is tracking and you do get to the end the next year and things have gone up in cost it's saved here and it's more expensive but this is what this was intended to do when we passed these resolutions it was to be reinvested in energy savings so it wasn't intended in our resolution to pay down other city expenses so let's be very clear on what we agreed to as the council you weren't on the council at that time Dave but it's what this council agreed to well it seems to Tom and Kevin it's priority we just need to prioritize this is anybody in DPW has the bandwidth to do this kind of work that has the ability and the bandwidth I think Kevin and Tom just need to hear that this is important for the council and that you gotta bake it into everything we do this is hard we invest in energy efficiency projects it's an ongoing I mean there are some things that we want to do but frankly there are very important projects for us but it's the tracking, it's the scoping it's the project management it's the project management scale of we don't have it passed and I think it's the scale of what we're asking Justin when he's gotta repair a traffic light he'll see to it that it's repaired and it's new LEDs and at this time he's changed out 80% of those lights and it's accrued to savings to the city and he's done it with his operating budget or his maintenance budget that doesn't have to be managed that's on its own self appropriate path and we're grateful that he's been able to do that to mount a big project like to manage changing out 300 city-owned street lights and changing them to LEDs that you can't manage on an ad hoc basis that requires analysis it requires putting RFPs out it requires you're already 80% complete right it says here that's traffic signals I'm talking about street lights we have switched out the ones that GMP owns the city owns over 300 street lights for example street lights out here there are 50 traditional city-owned that aren't changed out by GMP they're not LEDs yet it's up to us to change them there are at least 50 on San Remo that the city owns so what's the problem with developing a project to do that work it's time consuming I'm asking this guy because he owns the DBW and that's where the responsibility is right now Dave asked the question the energy committee would have you track all the savings and reinvest it in more savings and energy efficiency so it's a solid known concept Dave's saying well what do we do with the savings now well you put them into other things you put it into salaries, you put it into paving, you put it into every other because you're saving money on energy so you have to make a decision as a council, as a policy decision are we going to forgo the use of our savings wherever they're found in the union contracts in energy in retreading tires are we going to take this savings that they're talking about that's documentable you put it back into energy efficiency programs rather than the rest of the budget and now you'll have to increase property taxes just completing the loop here or finding revenue of some other way to fill the gaps on healthcare costs on personnel costs but it's a clear policy decision to make and if you want to make it because the model is there recognize though when Tom says healthcare costs are going up 7% and and that's going to be a burden on the property taxpayer you're not going to get the savings that these guys are generating to help pay for that so the council could make it I would offer that there are also middle of the road options that you don't have to commit 100% of the energy efficiency savings to a reinvestment you could pursue the possible path of a municipal lease saying you have 100 out of that 190 that you're going to do for efficiency we totally get that you guys have competing priorities we do that on the open space fund and we do it now on the rec pack we've already done that we've financed over 10 years also increased I mean I give what you're saying Kevin but I come back to the three resolutions this council passed and I also come back to this is a policy that was passed perhaps two or three years ago that is potentially paying for itself as opposed to pending for paths as opposed to the local options tax as opposed to all these other things that we're looking at and so I think that we have to think about what obligations that we have already signed on for right and either make good on those or admit defeat I think we have to have that kind of conversation that we can't meet that obligation that's what Kevin is putting out there it's just about how quickly you meet it that's what it is and whether you're willing to put money up front to do the big job right away changing it it's a smaller amount of money compared to other big things like pending for paths or the library I mean this is $40,000 a year and it's malleable so it's not locked in for 30 years so I think this is a priority for us it's more than $40,000 a year $40,000 is a person and then you need to have funds to favor the project but the solar reserve could be utilized to help doing this police so you have these you could call it pending for photons but it's not locked in for 30 years that's another big decision and then we probably should move on I've got this you're suggesting that if we can if we can figure this out for one year then the new funds that are generated and savings can carry forward and that we can allocate a percentage of that into reinvestment and still use and still use the funds that we've been using for other city obligations we just can't continue to load on to that because now we're going to take some of these new savings we're going to go on indefinitely and reinvest those into energy maybe one year off the top of my head is a rash assumption maybe it's one year two years for a payback period of putting somebody in place to manage this and accelerate our energy savings so we will save more so that some of it can be reinvested and then we can continue to support city functions with with a percentage of it as well because we kick it all into energy reinvestment then we do have to shortchange lots of other things but if we can not shortchange anything that we're paying for now and accelerate the savings and put those into a new spot that we're not going to touch for anything but energy then we should win but Kevin's correct if you if there's 300,000 or 200,000 dollars worth of energy savings coming in now and it's directed to pay pensions whatever and we're now asking that money is committed we're asking for money for a third of an FTE say that's 30,000 and we're asking for the full 90,000 from the solar reserve fund that's got to come from somewhere if if you can untangle the solar array from the library that's an easier one because the solar has been dedicated through resolution to right and the money is separated out I mean it's in a special fund so now we're talking finding 35,000 for a third of an FTE in the draft budget that was given to you this past weekend the stewardship fund was increased from 75 to 100,000 dollars so there's a 25,000 increase in that that you could designate for whatever purpose you want that would give you 25,000 dollars towards a third of a person if you so choose to do that Tom is that the fund that Justin also dips into to change the traffic signals I think he has a list of projects for the next year so we're going to steal from one side of the energy equation I'm just saying we're increasing it 25,000 the goal was to increase it 25,000 every year and we've always cut it back to 75,000 because we've needed to but this year it's still in there so there's potential to earmark that for a specific so if we take 200,000 that's currently being used for other things and we accelerate our savings to let's say 300,000 next year and you take that 200,000 and add to that whatever is a natural increase in expenses a percentage of that cost of living or whatever it's going to be and then we dedicate the rest to reinvestment that's a formula that should work because we'll then be saving stuff that we wouldn't be saving if we hadn't done this correct you're hired when we get to the budget we'll do it if that's what you would like we'll try to find the money and we'll see what the balancing act is the sweet spot there's no arguing that it works right it's bringing money into you and as Helen says Megan says you have three resolutions that might tell you to do this okay it's all good thank you that was a long five minutes I'm so sorry what else I just turned up the heat I didn't well I put my coat on so here's the copy the budget okay yes let's wait on the budget all right so let's since we've got some people in the audience waiting for item 17 if everyone is agreeable let's go from item 13 skip over 14 15 we've already eliminated 16 and go to 17 the IZ appointments and discussions related to committee memberships and possible amendments to the interim zoning work plan ten minutes let's do it okay so in my memo to you yes you have the committees nominations for the committees if you wanted to go ahead and discuss or approve those those are the committee suggestions and I have an additional one let me see where was the memo recommendations for appointments yeah okay so they are Andrew Chalnyk for the transfer of development rights committee he is from the energy committee Sam Swanson for the open space committee again a member of the energy committee I'm sorry those have not been that's a discussion that you need to have oh okay at the top of the weekly updates is it and that's the weekly I see natural resources committee Allison Chalnyk and Duncan Murdock recreation and parks bicycle and pedestrian Amanda Holland is that it planning commission Bernie Gaggin dog park committee Betty one city counselor the TDRs affordable housing committee economic development affordable housing has appointed Tom or has nominated Tom Bailey that's an addition to this that came in today economic development do we have anybody yes uh Michael no I'll get there in a second Albertson I think check with Kevin Michael Albertson Michael Albertson I'm sorry you're right I was at that meeting yeah Michael Albertson good okay and then we have Patrick Ryan for the public member of the public he is requested to be the public member we also have Vince Balduc who is requested to be a public member of I think open space yes so that's in the memo now unfortunately Patrick put in a he said he wanted to be on the PUD committee we don't have a PUD committee no TDR committee yeah oh that's right yes that's right he's just and I think he can go to all the planning commission meetings and they will listen to whatever comments he has because they're moving ahead on those so maybe that is just a clarification he needs because we did talk about that's what they were going to work on first so I think he got a little confused that that was an IZ issue although they actually think it will be helpful so do you want to yeah let's appoint all those people of those people to include what's not on your list Michael Albertson from the Economic Development Committee from affordable housing sure so the ones Allison, Duncan, Tammy Amanda, Bernie, Betty and then Michael Michael and Tom yeah I'll move to approve them well do we have the national public if they have any of them stay around for this point and then but then we have two more that have been recommended by the Energy Committee which is another conversation okay but we have this motion on the table so let's just do you get seconded? second okay any comment from the public? yes so I didn't get no members from South Burlington Land Trust we haven't gotten to that yet they haven't submitted a name I don't believe Vita she she was a while ago you're right you did Sophie Maso Vita Duncan Alan Strong sorry okay why don't we do this and then we'll take that up because we also have some from the Energy Committee this isn't the final we're not closing the door to additional ones just so we get we really know what we're doing we have the list okay so there's a motion to second are you ready for the vote? all in favor of all those names that we just listed from the different committees to serve for IZ committees I okay now we have two more members from public members I sort of from the South Burlington Land Trust is that well the original work plan did not accommodate specific other people it said that the committee the council may appoint other public members as needed so if you want to make that make that case and do that I mean that's something to do I just wanted to say that those more allocated positions in the work planning right but I know we did discuss the importance of having some public members and it may not have gotten included you know in the minutes in a way that was the conversation was a little more scattered than it should have been to be clear did we just appoint Vince Bolduke and so I mean I think having some additional people on these committees is always there's a benefit I mean it's a little harder to manage more people but I think they bring a good amount of thinking a variety of thought and a real cross section that's important I guess my thinking for the open space was really using the open space plan that came out of the previous IZ and really looking at it purely from a conservationist point of view and not you know a broad spectrum of perspectives and obviously there are different fields within conservation you know and so I guess that went behind the choice I didn't have the dog park committee originally but for that reason because of the conservation but I can you know see that Betty Militia is a fantastic person to be on it but for South Wellington and I've known her she's worked for the city in various things as a student doing studies of red rocks and Wheeler and she knows our city well she's been tracking animals she seems like a perfect fit and on the night of the hearing she volunteered herself to be on this committee I don't know Alan Strong I know the name Alan Strong and he wants to be on which one the open space did he apply he's been nominated Alan would be great I think he's the first dean in the emergency school I know him okay yes when you say that he's so I think those two people would be marvelous additions to open space Alan would be I mean they're public members with expertise what more could you want denying Vince Bouldock's request so not appointing Vince to the open space one my initial you know, purely from a position of expertise is what my thinking was. And not, that's what is the public one in general. It's more here's what this open space plan has listed as criteria for prioritizing these lands. And then you have people representing, you know, various, there are various things to consider in land conservation in open space. So who do we have on the open space committee right now? Allison, Charles Nick, Duncan Murdoch from Natural Resources, Tammy Zilka from Recreation and Parks, Amanda Holland from Bike and Ped, Bernie Gagdon from Planning Commission, Betty Malizia from Dog Park. And then you have an opening to appoint a counselor too. And that was what was previously authorized. And so you have those two that we just identified. Who was the other one, Allison Strong with one? Who was the other one? Sophie Masawati, who's a master naturalist. So that makes seven and then, no, eight. And then if we have a council, that's nine. Nothing against Allen and Sophie, both great candidates in very in-depth perspective. They have got a lot of city history. I just would not want to turn Vince away. Vince has been, is this open space owner in South Burlington. He's been involved. He's a sustainable agriculture committee. He knows these things. So if he's ready to volunteer time, I would hate to turn Vince away. That's my only point. I think Vince Bouldook and Allen Strong are two very strong candidates. And I'd love to plug Sophie in somewhere else. She's perfect for open space. She's perfect for a priority. Ellen, why not have 10? Who says 10? I'm not opposed to 10. There you go. Let's do it. Then why even? Well, I just want to speak for Vince also from a historical perspective. I think he used to be on the head of the planning, or something, because I know years ago when we were interviewing Paul to come be director, and there was a sort of a community interviewing thing. He was brought in because of his historical participation in planning stuff. Yes, no, I, so I don't know if anybody else that has that long historical perspective. I agree. I'm wrong with another college professor anyway. That's right. As long as they're not all lawyers, we're probably they can come to an agreement. I agree with that. Well, I mean, right. I mean, he's, that's fine. I don't see his expertise, to be quite honest. But that's fine. I think what's in his history, though, is his background and his stick of longevity as part of the city. And he's one of 10. I hear you. I hear you. I mean, I think that's fine. So let's, let's add those three people. We have a motion for those three people. All in favor? Aye. Okay. So we have a group of 10 working on open space. That works to what they have. Oh, and then we need a counselor. Is there a counselor who's interested? We need counselors on open space, TDR as well? Yeah, I think so. And but not beauty, because that's planning. No, that's planning. Just those two things. Where's your expertise more on open space? I'm not going to attempt for TDR. I wouldn't be interested in it on me. TDR. I wouldn't mind being on the TDR. Can I hear it? Okay. And you would like to do open space? I'm TDR. Okay. Who? Who's open space? Megan. Megan. Perfect, of course. Well, then you're, and what about Patrick? We don't have a PUD. I think that was a misunderstanding of his. We wanted to have a developer on the TDR subcommittee. So can we just quickly ask it? Let me text him. Yeah, at 11 o'clock. Do you want to provisionally appoint him to the TDR? Yeah. Subject to his approval? Subject to his approval. Yes. I think that's a good. He's interested. He may not be, but he's interested. Well, yeah, on the TDR. On the TDR committee right now it's just Michael Miteg and. Michael Albertson. Michael Albertson. And Tom Bailey. And Tom Bailey. Oh, so we need to, and Tim Barrett. You're going to be on that. Yeah. And then the energy committee wanted, they have two people. Oh, they have someone for open space as well, Sam Swanson. And one to the TDR. Yeah, Andrew Chalman. The husband and wife. So do we want another, an energy person on open space? Well, you want a person with a lot of energy, I don't know. Exactly. What is Sam Swanson's background? God, everyone on that committee has a lot of expertise on energy items. Yeah. You're talking about TDR, not open space now, right? We've got 10. No, no, we got, no. I was going back to the energy, the energy committee requested two people. I mean, we don't have to take the request. They have someone for the TDR. We need some more people on TDR, correct? A member on the TDR committee that hasn't been filled, possibly Patrick O'Brien, that's correct. OK, he's the senior policy advisor, Pace Energy and Climate Center. That's Andrew Chalman. Sam Swanson. Oh, Sam Swanson. He's on the Vermont Clean Energy Board. Well, let's put him on open space and put Andrew Chalnik for the TDR committee. Are we, I mean, Vince worked on TDRs. I just, I don't know why he's, I don't know why he's not going for the TDRs. Well, maybe he has one or something. Maybe it'd be a conflict of interest a bit, you know? I'm hearing whispers in my ears about concerns about any biases that Andrew Chalman might have, is do you raise something last time? Is he the guy suing you? He and his wife live on no one farm road, I believe, right? And so I don't, when I ask directly, are you involved in any legal aspect of a challenge to the Dorset Meadows? She said, not me, not me anymore, but I don't know whether her husband is or not. And I just don't know. So, I mean. I've been told to find that out. I might, you might want to figure that out, because you don't want to disqualify any of the outcomes of this if there's a specifically vested individual or one specific project that might have an outcome. I think it'd be okay on TDR, maybe not the open space. I think they're kind of tied together. Well, he shellnecks on the TDR. TDRs affect that project as well. Do they not? Well, I mean, it's pulled out, yeah. You could speculate that the legal team is using, here Meadows would be applied to Dorset Meadows as well. I'm not far against him. I just felt like raising that since I was hearing some. But that could be, it could be cut off the past by the. I'd like, Chair, if you want to recognize Sue, I don't think it seems like she has something to say. I spoke at the appeal of the Dorset Meadows and spoke against what the DRB had done. In that appeal that was heard a couple of weeks ago. Were you doing menace there? Yeah, yeah. Right, but. So how does that relate to a conflict with it? Looking at how viable the TDR program is in the Southeast Quadroner and the city of South Burlington and what would be a better methodology, if any, of TDRs? If he's successful with his legal challenge, I'm guessing this has to do with Dorset Meadows, then that would then put the TDR changes under the purview of a body that he would be influencing. So it's since, I don't know, I guess that's where you're coming from on this. And I don't know these things. Thank you for that. Ready? Wouldn't that, I mean, if you looked at it that way, wouldn't that mean every single resident of the Southeast Quadroner has a conflict? Right. Because they're all living in this, they're virtually all living and receiving districts. Not every resident has contributed money to a legal fund. Just raising that point, right? So, I mean, there's room for discussion. Well, but still, how it comes out will affect landowners down there, whether they're involved in this suit or not, or could increase or decrease the value of their property. I mean, I guess. Yeah, I tend to agree with Sandy. I just don't think you, just because he's an activist, your decision, but it's. I'm not ready to support him, but I could after some more conversation and then have a lawyer tell us with some thoughts on this, so if we can want to appoint him next meeting or something, I'd be ready to appoint him next week meeting. Is that what people are interested in waiting? Is it Andrew Jellick to TDR? Yeah. Our lawyers say if there's a concern, I honestly don't have a real concern. How many people are on that committee? Five. So we've got plus that. You're interested in being on that committee. Yeah, we'll keep him in line. Oh, you didn't? I thought it was the TDR committee. There's a TDR committee. He'll keep him in line. You're on that committee. There you go. Yeah, I mean, I'm counting on you to maintain balance. So there we go. I don't honestly see it as a real. I know. There's some people on both committees that we've got checks and balances. It is a commitment. I'm not too concerned. That's exactly right. It's not a body of law. They're going to come back with recommendation. I mean, recommendations. That we can take relief. OK, so shall we appoint then Andrew to the TRDs and Sam Swanson to the open space? Are we OK with that? Sam Swanson's number 11 on open space. 10. No, he's 10. Oh, he's 11. That's like the legislative committee. 11. Perfect number. Did you say TRD or TRD? Did I say TRD or TRD? But it's after 11 o'clock. I'm just a slack. Let's kind of go slow down and stuff. I am trying to move this along. Let's have a vote. I'm not sure we want to go more than 10 on either committee. What do you think? It helps with quorums. I think it's after 11 and I got an early morning tomorrow. Oh, why? Let's just go the open space. Just not have Sam Swanson on the open space. Just go with Andrew on the TDR. Put him wherever he wants. Fine. Well, they recommended him for open space. So that's the question before us. We'll go with it. Save his legislative committee just like you said. They all work. Ah, it's an odd number. That's good. They're not. OK, some of them are. So we are going with I have a motion and it's been seconded. Right, Megan? Who's seconded? I didn't hear the motion, but I will second it. The motion is to add Andrew Chalnick for TDR and Sam Swanson for open space. Just vote no. I'll second. I'm going to abstain as I'm not familiar enough with the intricacies of the concern race. So I'm abstaining on Mr. Chalnick. We have a second. OK, so all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any, your what? Or say I'm a aye. We're doing them together. But we can do Sam alone. OK, we got five for Sam. And now Andrew Chalnick. Aye. Aye. David, aye, aye. And you're abstaining. OK. Is that all the appointments we have? I think it is. All right, please let it be so. All right. Good, we definitely. What are you doing with Patrick O'Brien? I'm going to reach out to Patrick. I'll see if he'll. He's on the TDR. To the TDR, right? Provisionally, he has to agree to it. Yeah. OK, let's go back to the general fund budget overview. Yes? The memo from the regional plan commission. Right. And the affordable offering that is very, right out there. I think we may have to. The centrum zoning work plan. I think they have a lot of time. Yeah, they want $15,000. So I think. And they can give $800 to $100 to the inclusionary. Yeah. And they won't need to do this. And call it set $60 to $80. The lead rule if needed. OK. So I guess the question is then, is it worth $5,000? I would say yes. And this is where I come to my committee follow-up report. I don't know if you want me to report it now. It appeared in the minutes. And as I stated, and I misstated, that the 2050 transportation plan called for, and I'm quoting the minutes, and I was quoting myself, 25% increase in population, but it's actually of traffic on I-89. And Charlie wrote back with more details about that. So you don't have to change the minutes. I'm now fulfilling my role by giving you more specific information. So 25% increase in traffic on I-89 is forecast between now and 2050. The county-wide population will increase 12.78%. The number of jobs is forecast to increase 35%. And the number of households, 25%. So that's very interesting. So we're getting smaller households. So when we think about this opportunity to include in this time of interim zoning some focus on getting inclusionary zoning in these transit overlay districts, when we look at the forecasted population, smaller households, that would make sense. That type of housing would fit the needs that are going to be rising here in the next 30 years. So if we have apartment buildings going up, it would be nice to have some affordable housing in them. Is there a proposal here? Well, we're looking at the Charlie Baker came back with. Charlie Baker's thing. Same, 17, the work plan. This really isn't, we were talking about, yeah, but we're only, the agenda item is appointments and discussion related to committee membership and possible amendments to the interim zone work plan. And that references your note that was like who is going to be assigned. There's a simple one, yeah. It did not, Megan, include agreeing to the CCRPC their capacity. I think we need to discuss this, but I think we're going to have to hold off till January. Does this really need us to weigh in on? I mean, it seems like small change. My understanding is that the last meeting that I was not at, CCRPC and ask what kind of support they could provide for IZ projects. And that we could get it tonight to act on it was my recollection. This seems so small enough that Kevin and Tom could just do it. I mean, but sure, I support this, but let's move on. I don't think we need us. I think Kevin and Tom. Well, I just want to say it's not just affordable housing. I mean, $15,000 for all the work. And I guess what they need is do the contract. Is what they need from you is because time's marching on. Yep. I support it. All the other work that we support. Well, I guess the question is this is, is the 15,000, does that include the inclusionary zoning too? Yes. Oh, okay. That's the land use bylaw housing. That's 140, okay. Inclusionary zoning. So this is $15,000 for the technical assistance that Paul says he needs. Yes. Is that something that you find in the budget? Do you need us to? Well, we're gonna have to, we've also reached out to an economist to help with the cost benefit analysis. So there will be some expense associated with this. Where that comes from, I'm not exactly sure. We need this is what you're saying. Well, I mean, that's all he asked for. Paul suggested that he really needed the help. So I think this is a nice offer. And to the extent that the council is agreeable that at 50 bucks an hour, that seems pretty good. I think Paul was very pleased with the. Yeah, so I think we should take Charlie up on that. And I guess you need to let us know where you find the money. And we'll make those arrangements. And then you will get back with us when we can figure out you're talking with someone now about the financial impact analytics. So we'll have a full picture of what this will cost. So I think this is great and tells Charlie thanks. Okay, so now we can go back to the overview of the general fund budget. So I know you've received a tremendous amount of information in your back. It's getting late here too. I think what I'd like to focus on is it's within your guidance, it's at 2.84% right now although the chair of the GMT board tells me that their assessment hasn't come through yet and it's going to be higher than what's in the budget. So there's a little bit more money going into that. Tom will know within the next few days and we'll plug that figure in. It's kind of a work in progress. It's based on a 1.25 growth in the grand list which Todd is comfortable with. Last year was it 3.25%? Yes, yeah. And we ended up with significantly more than that. So we feel good about what's being proposed. I think I'd like to just encourage you to look through it as you have time at this busy time of year and as you have questions to feel free to funnel them to me, I'm happy to respond to anything I have for tonight. Don't get me wrong, but I know you're probably getting tired too. So if you want to email it to me, if I don't have the answers, I'll make sure I get the answers from the managers and get you the information you need. Because part of the session on January 7th, council meeting will be the working session on the budget. They'll all be here that night. All the managers will be here and I think I'd like to spend any capacity that you do have tonight, just getting your thoughts of what would be most meaningful to you. Is the traditional way of having them come in and just kind of go through their budget the best or what kind of interaction would you prefer? Well, quite honestly, after reading what you have shared and said, I don't think we, personally, I don't need to hear from everybody about everything, just significant innovations, changes, or adjustments. I don't need to hear from a single item, just the highlights. What is it that you should know, we should know that might be different, that we might want to have an opinion on, not the everyday stuff. That's helpful. That's my... I would like to present and have the department heads here in case you have a specific question for them. That might be good. That'll be much better. You're pretty concise. That's fine. I just thought, you know, here's this department and here is a significant change or difference or everything's status quo from last year. We haven't made any major changes and it's operating well and we're going to go check. I honestly... Well, feel free to reach out to me with any questions, concerns, or whatever. Well, it's a work in progress and but I'm happy to take whatever, whatever you have tonight for questions as well. Right now you're saying 2.84 GMT? 2.84 increase in the tax rate. Or GMT. That's a... Yeah, yeah, so it will go up slightly. There's, I think I built in 3%. Well, they cut four bus routes out, then it would... If that's a segue to our board, I'd be happy to give one on GMT. We used to have financials, you want to talk about? Okay. I'm sorry. We have October, November financials. Were there any questions that people had? I read through them and I didn't have any questions. All right, I mean, the ones that are off are usually are things that you pay twice a year so it's like the percentage is weird. I didn't have to go through. The energy raise announcement. GMT's having a really rough budget year and we're looking at a million dollar shortfall and we are approving the budget tomorrow. So it's translating to expected increase in assessments to our member communities. We're also cutting service. We're also looking at fair increases. So I'll have a lot more to report. On the bright side, we are finally seeing ridership to increase after about four years of steadily declining ridership. But I'll raise a couple questions as well for personal issues. So that's where he's talking about it. I've been working to get him that number but we have had some very difficult decisions to make and we are coming to a conclusion on one. We will have that number by Friday. Close of the day. So a million dollar shortfall. We already pay half a million just under. Brunham pays like $6.50 or something. Everyone else's. 88 ridership was down last year so it might balance out. What's their total budget? How much? $2.20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Something about 5% though. That's big. All right, well, okay. I'll order a report next meeting. So I'm snuck it in but go ahead. All right, so are there any other questions on the October, November financials? Yeah, we're in good shape there. So you have both months. We're at 60% revenue, 45% on expenses and still a lot to be done. Still got winter to go. We'll see. We'll have three times in November and that gets me nervous. December's been better. I called state tax to find out if Target's forwarding money and they won't tell me. Can't give planning on purpose for that. I have another call scheduled with a superior person who haven't called them back yet. I just want to know that the pipe is boiling. That's all I want to know. Are they remitting anything? Because I don't know that they are. You don't know that they are. When you get your next check. We should have Tim come down with us when we make that appointment to the state. I think you should come with us. It's a phyton down there, it really is. Are we going to do announcements in the city manager's report? Let's skip the announcements. Do you have a big report? I do, but it's nothing that's earth-shattering and I'll put it in a memo. Okay, because the other memo was great. Yeah, I love those maps. They're really great. Those are very helpful. They're really, very helpful. I don't think she saw that. So, other business, we got, I have a copy of this naming rights policy and I just, I think it's something that would be helpful at some point to review. I send it out to everybody, so you all have it. Yeah, for buildings. I just think it might be good to look at. Light bulbs, light bulbs, I don't know what to do. What do you mean you say? The Tim Bernlake bulb, LED. Ambulances, fire trucks. Or Megan Ambulance. Over the Adirondack, everyone was named after somebody. Yeah, it gave money, put their name on the ambulance. Well, you want to put that on the bike rack thingy? At the bottom? Elaborate the naming rights policy. I don't know, how soon will that be coming up? For naming? Yeah. Well, I mean, it probably doesn't have to be done on January 7th, but I think before we get too far along with people saying, I want my name on something, I think it would be good to have a policy. And it might be helpful in informing to the library. Maybe the second meeting in January, the first one in February, we're not sure. Yeah, I think that's fine. The other thing, and we can do the signage some other time, it's just a pet peeve and I'd like to know what we, you know, if there's a process that would work more effectively. Who's filling in for Ray Belair right now? Because it's usually he who did that. Our new zoning administration. Okay, because Ray would drive around. And then Tim has a tiny issue. Tiny. I've had a complaint from a non-resident, a working, you know, an employment resident at all groups. The parking on both sides of Green Mountain Drive during the daytime has constricted traffic so much that it seems unsafe to him. And he doubts whether an emergency vehicle could navigate easily. Green Mountain. Oh, Green Mountain. Yeah, it's between Heritage and Willie Racine. Oh, that whole street. And I'm not sure why everybody's parking on it. This must be some reason. Okay, Megan had sort of the issue that Jimmy Lee's raised. The governance of the National Guard and do we wanna, as a community, you know, write a letter maybe, or something, you can talk about it to our legislators to say, please, we want some better oversight. It's concerning, or maybe it's not. I don't think that's something we can address, 1120. Oh, no, just do you wanna put it on a future agenda? Should we put it on a future agenda? Helen Head supported it. I talked. They vote in February. John Colackey. For the new, for the new commander. Supported it. And really, it's intended, I mean, I come at this as someone who has seen in our fine place of work, cultures that sometimes go sour, and it took going to the boss of the boss to make things change for the better. And I was very disheartened to hear the governor say that he didn't see any need to do anything more. I'm glad to see that there's a will in the legislature, but I just, I think that there is a place for the commander-in-chief here. And it's not only my opinion, I've been hearing from constituents and people who are very concerned that this this limited response is not sufficient. So talking with Helen, she encouraged me to not, Helen Head, right? To not only contact the Senate pro tem and the House Speaker, but also to talk to the majority leaders in both houses, to write to the chair of the Senate Sexual Harassment Committee, Jeanette White, the vice chair of general housing and military affairs in the House, Representative Thomas Stevens, in addition to the governor, in order to discuss governance. Now, Jimmy Lee's brought up T.J. Donovan. That did not come up in my conversation with Helen Head. But I think that what we saw from Martha Rainville's, the former adjutant general's interview with the VT Digger was that a lot is delegated to the wing commanders. And so I think that this is a leadership issue. I really just, culture is not just bottom-up apples because a leader can squelch it like that. That's just, that's the power of a good leader. So you're asking whether the council might think about a resolution to ask the legislature to move on this? And the reason why is I think that as a council, we have had some experience with the guard leadership. And I think that they've maintained a decorum, but at the same time, I think sometimes they have not been the most forthcoming with the council about information that we've needed. And so when we see that there has been perhaps some dismissal of important items in other areas, it's something that I've seen in our relations. So I, that's why I don't wanna be, you know, just, you know, what do I wanna say? This isn't gratuitous. I think that this council has had some frustration. You think that's because the airports in South Burlington, I mean, it seems to me the National Guard, it's Vermont National Guard, it's the state. My general perception would be that's a legislative, we elect our representatives to the legislature to represent us in all things state and let them deal with it. You know, it's kind of like us getting involved with the nurses or involved with this, or if we can get involved with absolutely everything. My general thinking is just that's a state, let the legislature deal with it. I honestly have not read most of this. I just haven't had time in the last couple of weeks for the end of the term. Well, if you read the VT Digger articles, I mean, specifically on the legislative response. Yeah. One of my good friends is Bill Stenger. He's an Indian who's a meat grinder, totally unnecessarily and inappropriately. I don't have a whole lot of use for them. Well, I'm just talking about quotes from Senator Dick Mazda, for instance, and another senator who said, you know, none of their constituents have contacted them and so they don't see a need. And so I think that we're constituents and I think that the constituents can do anything. I'm not sure as a council, but again, it's now 1130, we can't do this tonight. No, no, no, but. Well, I think the question is, do you want to discuss this at a later date or discuss it off, you know, with each other? I mean, it seems to me, we all have the option to write a letter that says to the legislature, you really need to dig into this and when certainly when you select the replacement. But that's what I'm saying. I would hope our legislators, that's what we're elected them to do. So I don't even feel I have to write to them. That's what they're supposed to do. The only effect we have. The democracy. We can, I'm not going to that. We can have individual effects, but the only other effect we can have a city council is whether or not to renew their liquor license next time. Do they have one? Come on, we got a question. We just renewed it. So my question is, you know, every liquor license has to go through a process where the chief of police or somebody has to give an okay. Some of the insinuations in the Digger article say that there is excessive consumption that occurs there. I mean, if that's true and that's in violation of DLC laws, right, then something needs to be done. So one question is, and I asked Kevin earlier today, is there a process for revoking a liquor license that we've okayed? And I'm just curious whether or not we have to do that. So that's a question that I'm going to let you explore with the lawyer, because I just don't know what the rules are. I think that's a fair question. It is a very fair question. And it's in our city. Yeah. And they're driving home from work. Right. And I think that we do have. Every other drinking establishment in South Burlington is governed by rules the state has. I don't know if the state has jurisdiction even at the V-Tank base or not. So it's a valid question to ask. And maybe we need to ask it. Okay. Is that, Kevin? Well, I think the liquor license that processes through the city is for the officers club or the enlisted officers club. It's not the, that was not the subject of these articles in there. What was the subject was this other facility within the wing that was separate facility. Oh, really? That's my understanding. They have two bars on top. Well, there's the official one and then there's perhaps an unofficial one. Great. And I don't know that for certain but that was my perception. Okay. I don't know either. This discussion is deteriorating. We've, Kevin has two small items. Those are the facts, man. Oh, one was the, one was the, you took care of on the war. Okay. I don't remember what the other one was. Okay. Okay. So I guess we're done. Emotion, we have emotion. Do you remember? Yeah. Oh, okay. We already did that. All right. Motion to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Happy New Year. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy whatever. Happy belated high. January 7th is our next meeting. Correct? Yes. Bye, Barb. Bye, Barb. Barb's service is watching. Sure. Barb's service. Thank you. You're welcome. Ha, ha.