 Welcome, Councilor Chang, we're about to get started. I will call Board of Finance to order on the Monday, January 22nd, at 4.50, 2.00 PM. The first item on the agenda is the agenda. Welcome, motion. So we're about to do that. Thank you, Councilor Barlow, seconded by Councilor Piquet. Discussion of the agenda. Seeing none, we'll go to all those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Second. That brings us to the public forum. Second one this year speaks to Board of Finance. Go ahead. I just mentioned, I don't know if that goes on your agenda, but there's a new report about financing. And I haven't reviewed it with any care, just reduced coverage of it. I saw that Maroy said it was bogus, I think, or parts of it were bogus, maybe not all of it. But it does concern me that there was a previous report from the auditor that was critical of the city's handling of its tip accounting. And now here's another one, which is a pattern that I've seen with auditors reports as well, whereby an auditor's report calls attention to some deficiencies. And then the next year, the auditor's report calls attention to the same deficiency. Okay, so that's my concern. I don't know if I can rest it or not, but I'll put that out there. I appreciate Michael probably don't have kind of fully addressed it tonight. I will say the others reports this time and recent for my reaction is are about entirely different. What was raised last time and issues, you know, an opportunity to raise previously and chose not to so. In fact, it does know that there was a market improvement. I do expect that at some point the council report will be we have communicated with council, but she will come up further. Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak to. And Michael, I just this isn't normally a time for back forth. I'm happy to have a book out there today and happy that it's great. Looking online, I don't think so. Okay, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Speaking about something that you're going to be dealing with, but it's not necessarily on your agenda. And I'm talking about your proposed city tax increase. And I know that everyone's aware of this that that are watchdogging this is that the cumulative impact of schools and cities is devastating for the average person. Otherwise we are not responsible for the schools, but nor are we blind with the impact that the CLA plays in their request, and how that's going to translate for property owners. And I wanted to just point out, make sure that everybody understands that as taxes go up. This plays a big factor in the affordability affordability of housing, whether rental or owner occupied. And I really feel that have both the city and schools coming forward with increases, especially the impact from the schools. I'm just fearful that both will go down. And I don't even know if I can afford to say yes to these. So I need to give you all a heads up that I don't know the answer. But I do know that there isn't unlimited funds from the people that live in Burlington. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. We will be having an extensive discussion of that with the full council later today. Is there. Just be recognized online here so so I'm going to close the public forum, and we will now move to set agenda. Welcome a motion to adopt consent. So, second. I should have made a stop. Is there any further discussion? Soon now we'll go to the vote all those make a motion to say I. Thank you item number 4, which is a presentation grant support. Thank you. I'll just say, as you will recall, about a year and a half ago. We created a very small two person team of grants. And the city office, and that was. In large part to respond to what we were seeing. In terms of grant large federal grant opportunities. So, I'm going to go ahead and make a little bit of recovery. And since especially this is a new function. We want to report out to you on a regular basis about what we're doing and how we're doing. And so I asked the poll to do that. And so take it away. Thank you. All right, I will jump right in. Epportunity. We're going to be. It was a big year for our team that the biggest award was through the race program, which was a department of transportation award to connect bank and cherry streets. We'll also approve. And also, most importantly, get the pine in St. Paul to reconnect to those two streets. Part of that effort was a downtown workforce development component. And so part of that grant will go to support that work. We also received an award for Champlain Street Park. A neighborhood equity index, which was part of a larger grant included a main street traffic safety pilot. We received a small grant to do some window work at fire station 1 from the state. Another small grant to do some planning work related to the south end innovation districts neighborhood planning. And we have an opportunity to the regional planning commission to. Advance transportation planning activities and so we received about 380,000 from the regional planning commission this past year that went towards several different parts. We want to be helpful to kind of show how this work is supporting the overall project cost. And as we're thinking about where some of the challenges and opportunities are lying in the coming years, looking at where grant opportunities exist and where we've been successful. It'd be useful information. So this just shows the numbers will be a little bit different than what you saw in the recent grant awards, because this is trying to capture larger project costs for some of these. So reconnecting bank and cherry is much more than the grant award that we received. We do have another grant that adds on to that. But this is a very, very large project, you know, close to 36 million and the local contribution is just 3 million. So it's only 8% of the overall project cost. Similarly with workforce developments, things like the neighborhood equity index traffic safety. Transportation related initiatives I'll say I have a fairly low global share, not really above 20%, sometimes down to zero, where we're really struggling or things like facilities. You know, we managed to get a small $20,000 grant facilities is still deciding if they're just going to reduce the scope of that project and do it and pay this or just try to pitch in more local money to get the whole thing done. Champlain Street Park is another one trying to pull all kinds of funding sources to get that one done. Next slide kind of highlights. Oh, sorry, one other pending announcement. We do have two awards. One, we should hear it in February earlier enterprise project, which also include a workforce development initiative. We requested just over 26 million would be another zero match opportunity if we receive that award. So we're just keeping tight. Hopefully we will get that one also. And we have an active grant with the agency of transportation. For a lake street shared his path. It's a very, very small section just filling a gap in our network across the railroad. But because of the railroad crossing it really complicates the design. And so we put an initial request to the state for some additional funding to make the rail improvements that the. Real numbers are working. Kind of tying back to some of the opportunities and challenges with the grant programs and where the funding seems to be lying. The infrastructure investment and jobs act and the inflation reduction act, those funding programs are generally still getting most of those are five year programs. There are some new programs that the IRA kind of created, but other ones it's just stacking funding into the programs that it created. And so it creates an interesting opportunities to kind of collaborate and cross sectors. General focus areas for those opportunities seem to be surface transportation improvements, workforce development, equity, energy and regional economic development. We do also have congressional directed spending again. So those opportunities cycle through every year now. We've had a bit of success trying to sort of play matchmaker between different departments to get some of the collective efforts done it's harder to find standalone opportunities at times, but we can. Join different projects together. We're having success there. And one thing that's been more difficult to quantify is just how the grants teams contributions to that grant writing is freeing up project managers time to actually get some of these projects done. But we just wanted to highlight that that's definitely an opportunity and something that we hear often from other departments is being very helpful. We just have not, you know, be able to capture what that really looks like. Some of our challenges that we're seeing is that we do have a lot of needs for things like fleet and facilities and public health. There are very few funding opportunities with those, such as federal. And we have a very limited local map remaining capital construction projects. And so we're having some very difficult conversations about how we prioritize all of our big projects and all of our needs and see how we can still get things done. As we're looking ahead, the areas that are probably our targets and priorities. We have championed Parkway phase 2. Just had a little asterisk on this one and we're not seeking grant funding, but we're just acknowledging that this one requires a significant amount of capital for local match. And so. It's just always on our minds that that one is going to need a pretty heavy lift financially. Really enterprise project, as I mentioned, we're waiting for one potential grant award, but we keep applying for grant opportunities for that one seems unlikely to be able to do it with this local funding. North Beach Overpass. It is the one section of the Waterfront Greenway Greenway that has not been reconstructed. We're struggling to find some funding for that one. It's not eligible for federal grants and it is a high dollar amount just due to some of the construction requirements. We're taking a slightly different track lately to see if we can negotiate with the state for any changes to their requirements to make you lower that cost for us. Queen City Park was bridge is another one that's a high priority for public works to reconstruct. It is eligible for federal funding. Capacity wise, they're struggling with all of the other transportation projects that they have and local match wise, we're also struggling because that will require funding for not sure if we have. Main Street, Great Streets. We are currently writing raised grants to try to do more of that project that will also include a workforce development component. One's due in late February. So, South Bend coordinated redevelopment projects. We're continuing to talk with CEDO and just stay and move on their timeline and look for opportunities there. I think that one will have some good opportunities. The Gateway Block Memorial is another high priority area. There's a lot of planning work happening now. I think there will be some good opportunities for funding that one. The last 3 though, again, are where there are still a lot of needs and where it just are very limited grant opportunities. So fleet facilities. I like the ones that at least across my desk is areas of need. And then some of the community kind of activity, whether it's programming, trying to get incubator space, kitchen access. Public health needs, housing needs. These are all ones that we know there are significant needs, but we're really struggling to find. Significant grant opportunities to make progress there. The last slide is just last year when we started, we share that we were trying to get some information online to make this more publicly available. And so this is just a little snapshot notes hard to see with everything else on the screen here, but our data hub on the city's website now has a little link to a summary of our successful grant awards and how that is helping us to leverage our limited local funds. With that, I will stop talking to getting questions. Any questions. Thank you. I appreciate the work that is going into finding this extra money to do the things that we need to do. I'm painfully aware of the short pulse that we have. I only have one question. It relates to the general focus areas for the federal legislation and the regional. And I'm curious if that means more of like a county level, like someone was designed at the federal level for any government that we don't really have in Berlin. And if that is something that we're still able to apply for. Yeah, that's a good question. And it's really being clarified by it's actually more about. So, thinking of transportation projects as an example, there are several programs that projects would only be eligible as we can make the argument that it has regional importance. So that's, that's the regional tie in most of the green opportunities. Thank you. There's no further discussion. Okay, I can't see you right now. So, are you wishing to be recognized? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for the presentation. And my first question is the list of the grants that were received they all come from the same source. Right. CC shooting down county. Only the projects that were listed as transportation planning. Some from the regional planning commission. The others a lot come from the Department of Transportation at the federal level. And then we received a couple of smaller grants from other agencies. Okay. It is just that also, I remember one grand that was not listed, and it's coming from the regional planning, which is the reinventioning of North Avenue. I am not sure why it's not included on this list. The presentation projects that are funded through the regional planning commission. It's such a long list of small projects. We thought the text would clutter up the presentation. It is included in there. Happy to provide that list of the projects that are included in their planning programs. We just didn't provide that level of detail tonight to just minimize the amount of text in front of everyone. Okay. Also, what are, what methodology do you use to prioritize those projects that you shared and not others. The ones that were shared in today's presentation. Yes, as we are looking for new opportunities for today's presentation, we highlighted the ones that we were that the Court Treasurer's Office of the lead on or helped with and that were successful awards. So that's, that should include everything we did not sort of like a pick and choose, which grants to show here again that the regional planning commission ones were the only one we grouped in one header of transit agent planning. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Greene. We have time for one more question. And we do have to do one more before 5. So go ahead. Thanks. I'm curious. I'm sorry. I'm still on the clock. So the there's a phone and bringing. Okay, someone got it. Great. So I'm curious. I have some grave concerns about our situation with regards to fleet. And are we planning to have a strategy for addressing the issues around fleet. In particular, I have some concerns about the fire department, but I know that this is an issue in departments city wide. I, I find it interesting that like, even if we order, say a fire truck or ambulance, we don't get it for a couple of years and we don't have to pay for it until we get it. So why can't we put in orders? Like, why would the order have to go on next year's budget? I'm sure there's reasoning for that. I just want to be able to understand it. And as I said before, I want to know that we're going to have a plan for fleet because that's becoming a very diet, not becoming it is a very dire situation. Thank you. I'm going to take a shot at this counselor grant because this is not really a grant issue. So I don't think Nicole has a lot of expertise to offer us because what she has done is try and look for fleet brands. That don't exist. Unfortunately. But as someone who sits on the fleet committee, I can say this is of the utmost importance to that committee. You may recall that we're working with a consulting firm called move. And we're actually expecting a draft report from them in the next couple of weeks. So I think by February, that's something we would be sharing with the board of finance and city council and part of what we have hired them to do is to help us come up with a sustainable fleet financing plan. One of the items that you mentioned was why can't we order a vehicle because we don't have to pay for it until we get it. Oftentimes we actually have to pay for it in advance. And one of the problems that we have encountered through coven as a new problem beginning and coven. It is my understanding is that. A lot of items we put on what's called a master lease for financing purposes and. In fact, we start making payments and it can sometimes be up to 2 years before we even see the piece of equipment. And so that's something we're obviously trying to avoid making payments on something that has not been received. And so we're working with Dave and Lee over in DPW on the fleet team and darling in my office to make sure that doesn't happen. But there are larger issues that we will continue to discuss throughout the budget process because it's something that you're correctly identifying was an issue last year and it's something we are still certainly wrestling with. Mayor, is there anything you would like to add. You know, just that we obviously with the fire department in particular that you have ongoing needs, we also have being more invested in the fire department fleet. So we're much better there than we have it historically. But we'll have other nights to discuss this further. If there are any more. I think we need to close out the questioning and go to the last item here. Thank you. The next final item is the creation of a waste of operator position. Thank you. I will say a few words and we have on to Matt Dow and Jaggen Moir from Water Resources as well as Tony from HR. Thank you for being here. We are in a situation with our aging plants where we need this extra person to provide a minimal level of staffing. It used to be that our main wastewater plant could survive without a an operator during wet weather storm that's our plant no longer can reliably operate that way. And I just want to give a special shout out to Matt and his team for filling in this additional responsibility without to date having increased staff. I've reviewed the recommendation from Raf tell us the consultant and fully support this doesn't impact the general fund it impacts the enterprise fund. It was budgeted this year already was presented as part of budget. So Megan and Matt probably said too much but take it away. Um, I mean just so one thing I can say is that, you know, I think probably everybody knows about the how important wastewater is for public health when especially when we end up shutting down beaches. Um, and because of that, or through that and through our aging infrastructure. It's, it has turned into a much more labor intensive job. We do have operators who have to stay overnight to run events when it's raining and where the risk is for us on that is, if we have somebody who's here overnight when we only have a staff of four operators, that operator can't be here the next day. So now we're down to three. If somebody's got a vacation or somebody calls out. Pretty soon you can be down to less than a skeletons get staff. So, basically, the the idea is that this position would be able to give us a little bit more ability to, to make sure that we can cover the minimums that we have when we need them. How do you proceed? Good. Um, just say quickly before I make the motion. Safe staffing across all of our central cities. Um, I appreciate all trying to make it work by having taken a tour of the wastewater treatment. I think that's the main point. I certainly appreciate the work that your team has done. Yes, to this point. So with that, we have to make the motion was recommended. Thank you, Councilor Geary. We have a second second by Councilor Farrell discussion. Seeing no hands. Yeah, hi. I did not hear the conversation. So, okay, if I just stay to that. Little bit. Great. So the passage by voted for it is here with one extension. With that. Thank you, we will thank you. And I get to do that there. We did that concludes our all the board finances for business for tonight. So without production. I will adjourn the four finance by the team.