 can folks stand a little bit back for these corners and do a little bit well? I'd rather folks were back while I missed, actually, no. All right, I'm going to call the meeting of the City Council for Wednesday, January 24th to order. Do we have any agenda additions or changes? Sorry, I'm brown. Just one step, let me just start the recording and then if you can say that again. I'll do it again. Recording in progress. All right, I'll call the Wednesday, January 24th, 2024 City Council meeting to order. Do we have any agenda additions or changes? I'd like to pull the minutes from the last meeting. And that's session. Six. What? Six A. It becomes five F. And how about you, Regina? Anything? OK. So without any other amber, nothing. OK, do I hear a motion to approve the agenda as amended? So moved. I'll second. Great. Motion to second. Any questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I suppose nay. Motion passes. Great. Could we just take them on to explain that where Amber is and where Andrew is and where Regina is? We have a City Councilor who couldn't be here tonight. We have our manager online, Regina Mahoney, attending from home, Amber Tebow and other Councilors attending from home. They're both on screen on either one of these screens. We do have a quorum. We are going to do public comment first on items that now with our new meeting policy are on and not on the agenda. So if anyone has any comment about anything that is business before the city. If you are here for the rental registry, you will also have an opportunity to comment on that. But if you'd rather get it out of the way and leave. Either one is fine. But in a few minutes after this portion, we're going to get into the public hearing for the rental registry. So Dottie, I think you had your hand raised. So once you come on up and she's going to come right in front of you two right there in that chair. Watch the watch the TV, Dottie. Yeah, don't bump your head on the TV. And if you could, because we've had, we want to make sure everything's accurately represented, Dottie, in the minutes. Can you say your full name? Okay. I am Dorothy P. Bertendoll. Dottie, you're addressing me for this. Okay. I'm Dorothy P. Bertendoll, otherwise known as Dottie. I live on Taft Street. And I am here as a library trustee. To bring attention to the record that the library budget that was worked on two weeks ago. Was inaccurate, inaccurate in the area of salaries, which were calculated incorrectly. So the supposed 8.7% increases really 5%. And as the trustees, we are going to have to pay more attention to the whole budget. But I have to say that it was very late in reaching us. We did not have a copy of the whole budget at our November meeting. So we couldn't react to what was appearing to be a rather startling increase. We will try to do better. And yes, and I hope that the information gets to us in a more timely way. Do you have any questions? Not at this time. That's not the portion of the meeting. Thank you. Thank you. For anyone else in the room that has any other comments or in the hallway. Look online. I don't see any hands. Do you see one hand? Yep. And he's got her hand up. Yep. Just once that's it. Any Cooper. Hi, thank you. I'm going to read an email I sent earlier today. Hello. I am confident that in this evening, sorry, I'm confident that this evening, both the council and involved staff will offer the Brown out library of public apology for the errors in the budget. We would set in motion a public attack and confusion reigning on the library unnecessarily. I think it's the only way to ensure that we retain public trust and confidence in the good works that does on a daily basis. That along with the decision to create a fair and equal ask of all other departments. As was asked of Brown out. As well as a fair and equal study of the entirety of the remainder of the budget for each department for FY 24 and FY 25. Those are the expectations one would have of any business school or municipality in a similar position. Thanks. Looking forward to this getting sorted out by the transparent and outstanding municipality. I know you strive to be. Oh wait. I'm so silly. Of course. Now that you've seen the budget corrections for those two years in a row. You no longer have to make that demand of the library anymore. Because that demand was based on the errors. As we all know. Libraries are a place we have to protect because of how at the national level it starts with something like we're seeing here. Slow but small attacks on a library can grow into something else. I am so grateful to the professionalism I know our city staff and council are capable of. That removes all singular asks of this one department. Now that these areas have been made apparent. Thank you all for all you do to serve our community. Great thanks. Anyone else online. Raj can I just add one thing. Sure. Just want to let folks know because it does look like we've got some people just on by telephone. So it's star six to mute. And star and star nine on mute. So just I'll put that in the chat too but just so folks know if there is anybody else who wants to speak. Great. So we will. Move on to the public hearing. Let's see. So I'm going to open the public hearing on the proposed rental registry for the city of X extension. We're first going to hear a presentation from Chris Christian our community development director. Then we will take comment from members of the public due to the number of people here. We will have 90 seconds for folks will give you a warning around 80 and please try to wrap up by two. I realize there's a lot to say that said if the person or five people in front of you has made the point that you intend to make please say that you agree with the points of the person in front of you and add something we are keeping track so you won't be. Discounted by not repeating what someone else has already said please just add new business we have a big budget meeting after this and we want to hear from want to get a good count of what people have to say. Folks will need to come up to this microphone here this one share we have left and read their give us their full name residents community where they live and whatever you have to share with us we love to hear it. After that I'll close the public hearing council will talk about it decide what we do next if anything and we'll move on to other business. There's no guarantee that we're going to act on this tonight and we may keep considering it we may make changes to it and more in another public hearing. So rest assured if we do anything differently than what is proposed there will be another opportunity for comment if it changes at all. Already asked how many people want to speak it's pretty clear. So Chris if you're ready. Going to this thing on here. Okay there we go. So hi I'm Chris you and I'm the community development director and I am the staff member who has been working most closely with the planning commission and the city council to develop the details of the proposed rental registry and inspection program for members of the public who haven't said who are just joining us I just have a few slides here to go over some of the basics of this proposal. So first of all what is a rental registry and inspection program it is a program where rental properties rental units are required to register with the city where there are regular inspections toward a set standard. In our case it would be the Vermont rental housing health and safety code. Some other cities have their own building codes as well and there are municipal programs in place in a few jurisdictions in Vermont that includes Berry, Brattleboro, Burlington, St. Albans, St. Johnsbury and Winnowski. I should also note that South Burlington is working on a program right now but so they do not have they have not passed an ordinance on that yet. So it's important to note rentals are a significant part of as exjunctions housing supply. We estimate that about 40% of the housing units right now are rentals but the new housing stock has been built are predominantly rentals. And you know this continued growth in rentals is not surprising given the extremely low rental vacancy rates and this trend towards multifamily buildings being rentals is a nationwide trend and it's influenced by things like national construction lending rules, finance rates and default risks. We don't really control ownership structure but we can ensure that existing codes are met for rentals. We estimate that there are about 279 rental properties in as exjunction and within those there are 1,954-ish rental units. This is an estimate based on the grand list data and we wouldn't know for sure until folks register if this is passed. Out of these 1,954 about 116 are within rental units within condominiums but it would still count as rental units. This is a map of the spread of the rental units. You can see that the vast majority of them are kind of the larger apartments. Like Riverside by the village over here, Auden, Poland, there's a bunch of stuff along Pearl streets. Cathedral Square has a non-profit housing over here and of course in the village center there's a bunch but pepper throughout the rest of the city there are kind of smaller landlords out there, smaller rental situations. There's single family houses being rented out or some units within smaller homes being rented out. So just a little bit of history of how this proposal came about. 2016 was really the first recent mention of a rental registry. It was first investigated at the request of the residents. And back then the village board saw a presentation from the city of Burlington's program. The city of Burlington has had a rental registry and inspection program for a while and they were just kind of showing how it worked. In 2019 the city went through a comprehensive plan update and the comprehensive plan is a high level plan that turns inputs about the community's vision and aspirations and goals and objectives. These goals and objectives are then meant to be put into action through lower altitude policies and programs. But in this comprehensive plan one of the goals was to provide a variety of housing opportunities for all present and future residents of the village of Essex Junction while creating and preserving quality residential environments and existing neighborhood characteristics. A specific objective under that was to identify funding to compile a rental registry and rental inspection program. The comprehensive plan also says that the major component of the plan is to ensure that the aspects of thoughtful growth are met through maintenance of existing housing and the development of new housing. And the intent here is really to ensure the maintenance of existing housing as more rentals are added to the city. So in 2020 the joint town and village housing commission is created in a combined village board and towns that board meeting. And in this meeting rental and housing were discussed as a actually rental registry and rental and housing was discussed as an area of focus. Rental registry was specifically requested by a member of the public in the comments at that meeting. Moving on to 2021 the housing commission created a task force to explore the creation of a rental registry and inspection program but the commission ultimately decided to table it because at the same time the state legislature was considering a state-wide rental registry bill now it's a Senate bill based on the original bill of 1879 but that bill ultimately did not pass so it was back upon municipalities to enact rental registry if they wanted to. In 2022 the state legislature made some changes again and they transferred primary responsibility of fire safety. The changes were implemented in December 2023, so that's very recent. But at this time, there's the departments, sorry, the Division of Fire Safety has added several state fire marshals to provide a limited complaint space inspection program for complaints about rental housing. So this is, I would stress this is complaint space they don't go around on a scheduling proactive basis to inspect rental properties, but if anybody does have any issues and and and they understand the issues and they understand the rules, they can bring it up to, they can bring it up to the state fire marshals right now. In 2023, this last year, the City Planning Commission looked at other municipal rent registry and inspection programs throughout Vermont. And they looked at, they spent many meetings trying to figure out how a program could work in this extension. And they ultimately recommended a draft ordinance to the City Council, which has evolved into what is being proposed today. Around the same time, the University of Vermont's Master of Public Administration program had a few students that were assigned to study rental registry and inspection for the city, and they provided us with reports and presentation as a part of their capstone project. The Planning Commission took that feedback into accounts when they were developing the draft ordinance and program proposal. So the proposed ordinance itself, where this would be named Municipal Code Chapter 20, Rental Registry and Inspection Before Ordinance is available online at bit.ly.slash-ej-rental-registry. It's also available in the City Council packets, and I think there might be some paper copies floating around in person right now as well. But the objectives of this ordinance are first and foremost to protect the life and safety of all residential renters. Number two, it is to develop an inventory of residential properties and as extension. And number three, it is to improve opportunities to connect landlords to adequate resources for improving their properties. It is all rental housing, which is defined as all dwellings, dwelling units, rooming houses, rooming units, or mobile home lots, led by the owner to one or more persons to be used as regular residents or as defined in the current version of the Vermont Rental Housing Health and Safety Code. It would also, this ordinance would also regulate short-term rentals just to the same extent as the regular rental housing. Unlike some other municipalities who have stricter rules on short-term rentals, the intent right here based on previous discussion is to have the same, just to regulate short-term rentals at the same level. So short-term rentals would be defined as a dwelling unit that is rented by guests for less than 30 consecutive days and more than 14 days per calendar year. So 14 days, that does not be consecutive if somebody has an Airbnb and rents it out for weekends at a time, but seven weekends in a year, that would count. And the short-term rentals can count as either a partial, they can either be a partial unit, which means a room located within a host's primary residence. That's, you know, this is kind of rare, this is when you just rent a room within somebody's house, you know, you're sharing their kitchen and things like that. More commonly we see whole units, meaning you have the entire dwelling unit where you have your own door, you don't share, you don't share a kitchen, you don't share a bathroom with a host or any other people. So those are short-term rentals and those we've regulated. Owner-occupied exemption. So there in the proposed ordinance there is an exemption written in right now for owner-occupied dwelling units containing one or two rooms of which are rented out. And I will stress this is about dwelling units. So a person can own a house which also has, let's say, a necessary dwelling unit, you know, it's an accessory apartment that has its own entrance at the back that they rent out. They are not living in that other unit. So in that case, the unit being rented out would not be exempt. We're treating accessory apartments the same as we would a duplex that is owned by, you know, one of the people living there. The unit where the owner is living, that would be exempt. The unit where the owner is not living would not be exempt under this proposal. I would also stress that the Vermont Rental Housing and Health and Safety Code still applies even if we have an exemption for the municipal rental registry and inspection program for owner-occupied units that have rooms being rented out. So if there are complaints, they could still be addressed. So inspection procedures. Under this proposal, every unit would be inspected at least every five years. But the inspection frequency would be determined based on risk factors, like violation history, age of building, complaints history. So yeah, basically, if a unit is doing well and we are confident that it will stay that way, it would have a certificate of fitness that lasts five years. If deficiencies are found, the landlord, of course, will be notified and given time to address the issues. And the reinspection within 90 days would be free. But of course, if the landlord takes much longer than that to address the issues, there would be an additional fee to cover the cost of sending staff out there to inspect. When conditions are met, the inspectable issue of certificate of fitness valid for one to five years. The fee structure, this program is meant to be self-funded. There would be no impacts on the general fund. So there would be no impact on property taxes directly. But there would be $120 per unit fee charged to landlords. And I said, and I said before, there's no additional fees for regular inspection. There's no additional fee for reinfections within three months. There would be a fee after three months if there's continued noncompliance. And what have we done so far in terms of public engagements? We have sent an information postcard to every single address in Essex Junction and to all landlords, even if the landlords are living outside of Essex Junction. We've also communicated through the websites, social media and print media. This is being covered a few times by the Essex Reporter, most recently I think in December. And the previously received public comments that I got over the last two or so weeks are in the packets. I've received a few more in the last two days that have forwarded to the city council. So yeah, that's the end of this presentation. There's more information online and I will pass this back to the city council. Thank you, Chris. Regina, did you have something you wanted to add here? Rosh, I've got just a few things to add. Great. Sounds good. Go for it. If that works? Yes. Bella, I think I'm muted. I can't hear you if you're saying something. Can you hear us now? Yes. Yes, please go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so just want to let folks know that we have been contemplating this under the community development department since the budget cycle of last year, FY24 budget development, that has been to address the council's desire to increase the capacity to do code enforcement more broadly for the land development code as well as incorporate the health officer into the position that would do this work. We have since heard from the fire department about the potential of posting this program under the fire department instead. There are pros associated with it being under either department. The pros under the fire department would be somebody on staff there Monday through Friday as a full-time position, which we do not have any of right now that could assist with providing fire and EMS calls. The program is contemplating a new vehicle for this person to do the inspections and also would be available to other staff and specifically community development staff that currently do inspection work out of their own private vehicles, but the fire department would has a vehicle already, so that's a potential pro in thinking about it being under the fire department. Just wanted to point that out and we can talk about that a little bit further, but just wanted to make that clear in the public hearing portion of the meeting. Also, I just want to say I think I explained if you're joined by telephone, the mute and unmute incorrectly. So star six to both mute and unmute, star nine to raise or lower your hand. That's all I've got. Great. So I think what we're going to do is we're going to do one of each. We're going to start in the room with one person and we're going to go online and we'll do that until we exhaust everyone online and then we'll just keep going in the room. I don't know who got here first. Actually, I do know who got here first. I just can't see them. So we're going to, like I said, we're going to try to keep it to a minute 30, two minutes. As I implored, if you agree with the person previous to you, please say so. We are keeping track. This meeting is being recorded and we will be going back through to make sure we capture all of the sentiments, including I agree with the person two people in front of me when they said. So who would like to go first? Bridget, you were the fastest. Come on up here. Please state your full name. And as I said, folks online, if you want to raise your hand, we'll come to the Zoom attendance right after Bridget is done. Okay. For the sake, can you hear me? Everybody? Yeah. I'm Bridget Meyer. I live on Pleasant Street. For the sake of brevity, I'll read what I wrote for Front Porch Forum. Apologies if you've seen this already, but here we go. I will attend the city council meeting on Wednesday evening and will advocate strongly for a rental registry. I own a duplex in Winooski, which I purchased in 1978. Winooski established a rental registry about a decade ago, and the quality of rental housing in Winooski has improved 10-fold since then. I pay $120 a year per unit, and the units are inspected by professionals from the fire department every four years. There is substandard housing in Essex Junction. A rental registry will improve housing quality and is good for everyone. This is a public health and safety issue and deserves to be implemented for the common and community good. Please educate yourselves by reading planning commission and council minutes and attending the meeting. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about my experience with the Winooski registry. I have questions about who will inspect. I believe the fire department is well equipped to handle the inspections while the city seems to want to make another department to inspect, or you're suggesting to do it under community development. I truly think in terms of my experience with Winooski, the fire department does it extremely well. They're very, very professional. From the comments I've seen online, people barging in and inspecting, that doesn't happen at all. People make appointments, they come in, they inspect, they tell you what you need to improve, you do it, they come back and they say, okay, you're all set. I hope that this program, if implemented, will be self-supporting. I don't see why it can't be, so I'm really hopeful for that. And if you had asked me a decade ago when Winooski proposed this registry, I would have voted against it. I definitely would have, as a property owner. But not now. I've seen the units next to me improving quality. I've seen, and that's what we need to do. Thank you, Bridget. Online, I saw Beth Ann Lawrence first, and I apologize if I get folks out of order, but we will get to you. Thank you. This is Andy Lawrence, sorry about the name. Either way, it works. We'll know who you mean. And I just wanted to say, Bridget, you're one of my favorite neighbors. So this is, even though I disagree with you, I love you, Bridget. I feel like one of our biggest problems in the city is cost of living for renters and non-renters. And I don't think we need extra costs. And I don't think, although I'm sure there are bad units somewhere, we do have ways of dealing with it. I don't think we need costs. I'm a landlord of one unit attached to my house. Perhaps this could be good for larger units where the owner doesn't live there, something like that. But I think we don't need this. Thank you. That's all. Okay. Jess on the floor. Right up here, yes, please. If you can stand after sitting on the floor for so long. Yeah, I was here. Right over here. But okay. My name is Jess. I was last gay. I live in the Junction on Redwood Terrace. I have a bunch of questions from my mom who is a town resident and also owns a condo that she rents. So first, like some of the questions are, I think in the last slide show that was presented back in December or November when this first came up, it noted that the majority of units are owned by just a few landlords. The majority of like the most landlords have only one unit. Is that the right way of saying it, Chris? Like the majority of landlords have only one or two units? Well, I don't know for now. Okay. I think it was in the slide show that is online currently on the Junctions website. So the points that my mom wanted me to help her make is that small-time landlords are going to be the most impacted financially. Many of these people are retirement age, nearing retirement age. This was part of their retirement, like their ability to pay for retirement. And it's the kind of cost or burden that could lead people who have such options as creating accessory dwelling unit or renting out a condo to no longer do that, put it in the market and get out of being a landlord. And the problem with that is those are some of the most affordable units probably available. The big-time market rate landlords are the ones who have no problem maybe picking up some of these repairs. But if you have a small window and one thing that my mom has brought up as a concern is that the state changes code all the time. So it goes from you can't have a flat handrail, you now have to have a curved handrail and like small changes that are constantly updated. And she had a question like what's going to trigger the inspections? Is it a legal change because the state decided to make a curved handrail requirement? And does that mean units now all have to do an update and everybody in the registry is going to be checked to make sure they change the handrail requirements? Or is it that it is your when your time is up and you're being inspected on year four? Also in the earlier presentation, you're over too. I'm sorry. In the earlier presentation, they said it was a yearly visit. That would mean six units a day. This person has to visit. I don't know when they'd have time to do paperwork or take EMS calls. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Taylor Wessels. And if it's not, if it's not you, Taylor, just let us know who you are. This is Taylor Wessels. My home is in S6 Junction on Corderoy Road. All people deserve safe housing, whether it's a young professional, a family, or someone staying in a short-term rental or a retiree. We don't rely on complaint-driven enforcement alone for cars or professional licenses, and we shouldn't rely on it for something as important as the roof over someone's head. Proactive inspection of rental properties is the most effective and equitable way to ensure safe housing for all, including children and people who may not feel empowered to register a complaint with a government entity. All people deserve safe housing. I'm not a renter or a landlord, but I feel it's in the best interest of all people in S6 Junction that S6 Junction is known as a safe place for all people to live. Thank you. Sir, come on up. Second row in the gray sweater. Jacket. Watch the TV. It is something I can't wait to change. Hi. My name is Jeff Rubin, and this is Brad, my son. We own Autumn Poland, which is a 300-unit complex, and we're hoping to build another 117 units beginning in April, so it'll be a 400-unit complex. We go through five annual inspections every year. We get a sprinkler system inspected, a fire alarm system inspected, a fire extinguisher inspected, boiler inspections, elevating inspections, which are enforced on us yearly already, that we have five inspections. If we add this inspection to us, it will add $50,000 to the budget. That's what it will cost us a year, which obviously we would push off to tenants, which is what will happen, unfortunately. We probably will be inspected once every five years because we're new units. We keep our units A+, as best we can. We go through all our inspections without any trouble, and so it'll come down that I'll get inspected once every five years for a quarter million dollars, which doesn't seem to be appropriate. The mechanism of inspecting 400 units is time-consuming for your inspector, and hopefully he'll be licensed to inspect, because there are certain parts you can't do without a license. We have to notify all our tenants 48 hours beforehand before we can get into their units, and then 70% of our tenants have dogs, so if they're not there, we have to deal with their dog. I just think the mechanism is difficult as well, so I hope you give it a serious thought, and maybe there's some different way of approaching 400 units than there is two units, because the costs are very heavy. Gotcha. Thank you. Go ahead, Brad. I'll just add quickly, Brad Rubman. You say that you want the program to cover its cost, the cost to cover the program. The cost, if you multiply it out, it's going to bring in $235,000 a year to the town, to the city. I can't believe this program will cost anywhere near $235,000. This should be an inspector, maybe a vehicle, it sounds like, and I don't know, there might be a little bit else, but it's nowhere near $235,000. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Online. Lydia, Kenny. Hi, thank you. I'm a renter in S-Extunction, and I'm in agreement with this proposal, but my concern is that this fee will be passed on to renters, as the gentleman before said, with affordability, with rent being so high. I would like to see it prevented from being passed on to the renters themselves. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Lydia. Sure. Have a seat. Thank you. Don't be shy out there. My name is Lee Barnett. I've been a resident of Essex Town originally back in 98. I then moved in Junction about 15 years ago. I have a place right down the road, right here. I'm totally against this proposal. You cannot compare this with Winooski because of the massive gentrification that went on in Winooski, let alone if you go the other side of Mallets Bay Avenue. I don't know if those units have ever been improved in the last 20 years. It's not even comparable. We don't want to compare ourselves with Barry, do we? Winooski, Burlington? I think this is a massive grab of power by the government, quite frankly. It's an intrusion on our private property rights. What are the foundations of America? You're going to pass me, not the crowd. Okay. I have my house here who I'm renting the entire house at a pretty good rate. It's a nice facility. My three kids graduated from this school. By the way, I'm a public high school teacher for over 25 years. I teach social studies. I know exactly what this will lead to. You're going to have to hire somebody. You're going to have to then enforce codes. Who knows what that code is going to be? Remember when they raised the handrails that went up an inch? Across condos all over? I have a moving company. I had to deal with moving people's stuff. Simple costs that you don't see, like moving out of a two bedroom condo. Not everything fits coming down those stairs down because they've raised the handrails. You literally, people have to remove the handrails to get me to move some of those condos that were built in the 70s. It happens all the time. Those are hidden costs. All kinds of hidden costs. If we don't have a professional who's going to inspect, they don't have any idea really what the cost is. No, if you're a handyman, obviously you're going to make some money off this. The rest of us are going to pass the costs onto the renter, who actually the poor people are the ones who end up always burdening the costs. And ultimately, this is exactly what this will lead to as everybody passes the costs on down the line. That's it. Thank you very much. Enjoy the day, guys. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Is there anyone online? I don't see anyone online. So anyone else? Yep, sure. Sorry, you were just outside my view until the last second. Buddy Gamble. Buddy Gamble Six Athens Drive. I have an accessory unit in my basement. Chris, I hear the three things that you're trying to accomplish with this life and safety inventory connecting landlords. I agree with Lee. I think there's, I agree with the folks who had to head out as well. There's mechanisms in place for that already. If it's a larger facility, you're getting all those things inspected. If it's a smaller facility like my own, then if you're going to do things above board, you're going to register, you're going to be a part of this. If you don't want to be in the system, then you just won't register. So you're not going to have any way of getting the inventory. You're not going to have any way of controlling the life and safety. It seems like an extra level of bureaucracy that's being added with no added benefit. I'm adamantly opposed to this on all levels, big and small. I think the small guys are going to feel it. I think the renters are going to feel it. I think it's just more fluff in the city that doesn't need to be there. I didn't do the math in my head, but the cost that was quoted earlier is astronomical, and it just seems like a bunch of fluff. Just for the record, I did not receive a postcard. I did not receive any notice of this. Andy Lawrence, who spoke earlier, was the one who let me know this was happening. So I live in the junction. I'm a landlord in the junction. That broke down, so it's a little frustrating. I've got to head out, but thank you for the time. Sure. What's your name again? Buddy. Gammel. Gammel. G-A-M-M-A-L. Oh, thank you. Buddy's real frustrating. Thanks. Thanks. I was going to check online one more time. Yes. I'm Meg Armstrong. I'm not a resident of the village anymore. I am an owner of Whitcomb Farm. We have two units down there presently, and I am totally against this proposal. We work really hard to keep our units up, but there is already all this in place at a state level. The fire marshals do a great job. One of our units is an ancient house, so I deal with lead-based paint stuff. The health department does a great job on that. I see no reason to duplicate this at the village level. I read through the ordinances, and it seemed very gray as to what would be enforced. It's not just $120. It's going to get passed down to the tenants. It's the landlord's time to meet with them. It looked like there was almost a month-long window that the inspector gave himself to give you back a report. So if you bought new property, you could actually be out of rental income for almost up to, I believe, three months. By the time you notified him that you bought the property, then got an inspection, then got a report back and a permission to rent. So that's huge. That's all going to contribute to higher rental costs. I think it's a solution in search of a problem that we don't have here. So that example, I just want to make sure I get that down so we can look at that. The example you just gave is you buy a property, there's a transfer. There's a transfer, and then if you wanted to rent that property out, they give themselves a month to do the inspection, a month for the report. All of a sudden, that's three months after you've gone through the closing, before you can even rent your property out. So it's not $120. And there's a lot of time involved with the landlords trying to, it's a lot more than that. And that I heard the renter who would like to make sure that doesn't happen, that's going to happen. That's the way the world works. I understand. Well, we're not getting into answering, but thank you for that. Right. We did write down the scenario, so we're going to look into that. Thanks. Thank you. Sure. Yes. My name is Michael. I'm an Essex resident of Essex Junction. I am here to just state opposition to this plan, specifically for a lot of the reasons mentioned by several thoughtful people here. I appreciate the idea of improving rental safety and all that. We have all of these things through the state already. My particular primary concerns are the idea of a complaint-based inspection. We've had neighbors make very false about things we've done to our home and our property that have cost us time and money. And I just find that just the worst possible model you could go by because, and then on top of that, an inspector can make a decision as to who they think is suitable or not. But there's have all sorts of mechanism to protect themselves through the state. And I do want people to have safe housing. I'm not against any of that. But with that said, short-term rentals, if you have a residence and you are renting something and we rent a bedroom, which helps pay for our kids' college, which is thousands of dollars, we're citizens, we're trying to be dynamic and do things for ourselves. At the end of the day, people that stay with us, they voluntarily choose to. We've gone through all the appropriate inspections for our home to be safe. We live there. And so it goes back to this idea that if you're going to create a system which is just fraught with the potential for corruption, not really solving the problem, costing taxpayers even more. I mean, I'm from New York. I thought I paid a lot of taxes there. I love S-exjunction. Boy, do we pay a lot in taxes. And all this will get passed on to citizens, to renters, whether people like it or not. So I just want to leave it there. Thank you. What was your last name? Min. How do you spell that? M-E-E-H-A-N. Okay, thanks. I'm looking online just so I'm diligent about that. Anyone else in the room? Richard, I'm sorry, in front of Richard. Yes, ma'am. Come on up. And then you, sir. You, sir. And then Richard. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Cindy Provost. I do not live in Essex, but I have two rental units or buildings in Essex. I used to own a property in Burlington that I rented. And like you said, Burlington's had a program like this for a long time. And that program, I did not support landlords at all. I'm totally opposed to this, opposed to this for that reason. But not only that reason, I've listened to all these other people speak and they're right on the money. It's going to raise costs for tenants. It's going to raise costs for landlords. It's going to cost landlords. All this grief and agony when we do have state, all my buildings have been totally updated to code. And that's why we have a code. The program in Burlington, they want you to pay every year, which is what you're proposing, but they come to your place every five years. And otherwise, you don't see anybody. They don't know anything. It's fraught with problems that just, as everyone has said, gets passed on to landlords and tenants. Landlords have a hard enough problem keeping their places presentable and everything with all of the tenant problems we have. And all of the all of the programs that are there for all the informed educated tenants that try to rip us off and screw us. So not to be blunt that way, but we already have to deal with that. And it happens all the time as property owners know. And oftentimes we have very little recourses because the tenants get all the rights these days and it's going to get worse right here. So something like this is just penalizing landlords further. It's not improving. Like they said, it's going to pass on to tenants because I'm not taking, I'm not going to take that and have to pay it myself. It's going to pay it because I'm not going to lose that. My apartments, I price fairly for my tenants. They're, I don't make them my family because it's not good practice with tenants, but my properties are under where everyone else is are because I treat people well. And I think people should respect that of landlords that people do try to do that. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good time. Rich, we're going to go with the stone here first. And then we're going to go online because I just saw someone raise their hand, but I won't forget you. My cop would, I'm a landlord have been for 24 years here in Essex Junction, lived here myself in one of my units before I started renting it, have a couple of units here in town. So we heard that all this stem from one person asking for this registry. That was like one of the justifications for it. We were given a lot of data about how many units are in Essex Junction and how many people rent, but there was not one bit of data about how many complaints have been received about units in Essex Junction. So I'm just wondering how has this whole thing come about based on one person asking for it? If I ask tonight for my taxes to go down, I mean, I'm not stay later. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to be facetious. I'm just saying that it just seems remarkable to me that this whole thing has come about because of that. And it's going to be a serious cost to landlords that are going to, that's going to be passed on. And I know that's been mentioned a couple of times, but every day we hear on the news about how the government is trying to fight inflation. This is inflation. This is exactly what inflation is. It's when costs are added to something that's working perfectly well and for no good reason, the cost goes up. And I think that the city council really, really needs to think about that because it's going to be a lot more than the $120 a year. About five seconds. Sorry. Sorry. About five seconds left. Can you wrap up? I'll wrap up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Cecilia Polanski online. I'll give you a couple of minutes to. Fine. Yeah. Okay. I'm the Cecilia Polanski and her husband, John Hermans. We are, we rent two properties here in Essex Junction since 1988. And we are adamantly opposed to this, to this new regulation. And I agree entirely with the last gentleman who's this. So some people complain, they have the right to complain. And what you want to do is set up a mechanism whereby somebody can complain and you can follow up on the complaint, just like they did in Burlington recently with that tenement house that's been a, and they shut them down. If somebody doesn't comply with your regulations, then shut them down. But don't penalize people. We rent for, we have one, one unit at $1100 and one unit at $800. This is reasonable rental. This is, these are for people who can't afford and we keep them up. We do everything. So don't make this into like obligations. Every year we're going to be put that, and they're going to make these reasons. It's about corruption too, because this opens the door to enormous amounts of corruption with contractors who are going to do the work and with your inspectors. So I would, I'm against this and I would, I would say that this is, this is just a bad idea. Thank you. Thank you. Next in the room. Oh, Richard. Sorry. Yes. Oh, okay. Are you speaking as a resident landlord or firefighter? Speaking as the landlord resident. Okay. So I do want to point out that I do have concerns about how this was staffed. The biggest concern I have is as this was being worked through the community planning process, the state was actually changed the process of how they were doing it, moving it from the health department, which seemed to get missed over to the state fire marshal. That was not missed. Okay. Through that process, as they were working through it, the website is set up as a complaint base. There's actually a button to click to submit a complaint for any tenant that feels they're not being taken care of at this point. So there is already a state process that does exist in this process that is complaint based. So we're going to take that from the state, which we already pay the tax for, and we're going to move it to the village and we're going to add a cost to all the landlords that already we're going to then pass it down to their tenants. So I have concerns with it there. Also have concerns as a resident in the sense of if the city lists the number one objective of the registries to protect the lives and safety of residential renters by moving the registry under the s6 junction fire department, the city has an opportunity to initiate a program that would raise the safety notch for those who rent in our community, but for the community as a whole by adding somebody who's actually there 24 seven instead of leaving it as a on-call department with nobody administrating the department. That's it. Sorry, I'm not ignoring you. Nope, you're good. That's all I have. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Let me check on that. Yeah. Yes, please come on up or just right in front and sit and see like Oh, thanks. Hi. My name is Diane Stevens and I'm a landlord in s6 junction. I'm not in favor of the program. I don't really understand a lot of this with being put on the table. It seems to be such a disconnect of these rules and regulations everyone's developing for a good cause but it comes right down to it. Landlords at the enemy, we have folks renting from us. It's too many gray areas you're putting on our plate and a lot of it goes down to folks that are rented. We can only absorb so much and if a lot of these folks that rent from us anyway, they've grown up in ethnic, their parents are ethnic, folks that retire, they're working full time. This is such a black and white conversation, but it comes down to the landlords and the folks that rent from us. I mean, what do you want? It doesn't make sense to me that so much of the pressure that folks want to see the right thing again is being put onto the landlord and the renter. It's almost like you want to come, I don't know, a gated community or something. Everyone wants things a certain way and that sounds grand. I have nothing against it except we're gonna fund it. It just doesn't make sense to me about it just seems to be a disconnect in a lot of areas and I think there's a lot more that it needs to be explored before you ask the landlords to pick all this up because again it comes back to folks that are renting. As I said, we can only absorb so much. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Checking online again. Nothing online? Anyone in the room? Don't be shy. Come on up. Skip LeMore. Skip LeMore. I have a small duplex here in town and we have some young tenants that are working there, both them doing a great job of work and trying to save money. We kept our rents down as a result of trying to help those folks out because we do realize the reality that rent is really expensive and much what's been already said here today is just another cost that's going to be pushed on to the tenants unfortunately here and the obvious to it's on the news all the time the governor's always preaching if there's not enough housing out there and I think you're going to be driving people out if you keep finding these ways of you know increasing the costs here and the other thing that hasn't been touched on that I haven't heard about anyways is where is this inspection list, this criteria that you guys are going to have so that we can see what you guys are looking for? Is that out there or is that something you guys already thought through or is there something out there hard copy? I believe it is and we'll get that as soon as we close the comment. We'll see if we can see if I can clarify that for you okay well and closing I'm up I'm opposed to this I think it's a great idea okay thank you somebody just raised their hand right next to me though I'm going to go oh sir come on up with the hat yes my name is Al Pirella I live at 20 Maple Street just down the road here I'm opposed to this proposal it's mostly financial is what I'm looking at I think there's enough of inspections going on already I I ran to a lot of section eight people and they have a whole inspection program before those people move in and on my apartment's pass all the time I was 30 years in Burlington thrilled to get out I mean I sold specifically to get out of there because of the regulations and we and we were on the three-year plan at that time because our they said my apartments were always in good shape and we weren't on the annual but we paid the fee annually paid the fee annually they came every three years and they had nothing to write up so I was good for another three years so I am opposed to this it's it's a financial thing I listened to Scott do his budget presentation a couple days ago affordable housing was a subject in there this morning there was an article on the radio about affordable housing again and this flies right in the face of affordable housing it's working correctly against affordable housing because the tenants will pay I know we heard from a person that said you want to not have the fee passed on but this is a business I mean it becomes a business so we've been doing it for 35 years it's a business if you don't pass if you keep absorbing the taxes and keep absorbing all these fees you're out of business is what you are basically I am opposed to it thank you thank you sir oh blue coat just said sorry yeah blue coat yeah right by there good evening my name is Breck Robowski I'm a property owner here in the village on several apartments and I hope to be developing several more here in the future I'm kind of just reiterating a lot of the comments that are given this morning cost is a huge issue and all these costs will get passed directly on to renters but it's not just the 120 a month but it is as the Rubens explained when they were sitting down here there's a lot of things there's a lot of other costs that go along with basically these inspections and timings and notifications of tenants I think this you're also duplicating a lot of a lot of in discussions about the over the last year how everything is being passed to the state fire department state fire agencies that is a program that is actually working very well there is an online complaint system and its feel that they're aggrieved and they need a complaint about an issue they certainly have the the means to notify the the the proper authorities and it's mandated that the the fire marshals do come out and review every single complaint that that is there a lot of the other issues is a lot of these apartments in the area are already subject to extensive inspections elevators sprinklers alarm systems bank inspections insurance inspections boiler inspections I mean the list goes on and on and on so there's what you're proposing is a gigantic duplication in the process that is already happening to ensure that these buildings are all up to code and and and and our our our meet the goals of being safe for residents if you look at the list that you list in regards to the objective of the program like I said there's duplication here I think to protect the life and safety of all residents or renters those are already being met by other agencies if you look at as you go down through and develop an inventory of units what is is who is that inventory for I mean is it just that the city wants to know how many units out there are for rent you're just you're over time but just okay so there's a lot of other ways to do that and then the third item improving opportunities that just I mean we all have access to to the proper trades to get the good things fixed so I think ultimately I think the board just really needs to look back and see that there's a huge duplication of processes that already exist at a gigantic cost in a time when the housing is extremely expensive in in affordable okay thanks yes sir you can come on up over here you can make it across check online too hi my name is Elton Ernest we live in the junction upland road and we my wife and I call inherited our our house when my parents passed on and so we've spent a lot of money upgrading our house to get it current we'll call it just current I think that what's being missed here I feel like I feel like that people are called the government is attacking us and we're being put on our heels with with being accused of not having good properties and stuff like that um the this is this is increasing our cost the first of all what some people haven't said already is as homeowners what if I feel like there's a negative connotation when people are talking about short-term rentals and stuff like that with whether and people stereotype it with Airbnb sorry folks if you're going to talk can you go down the hall please we can't hear in here sorry sorry to interrupt you whether it's air b&b and then there's probably people that know there's other platforms for short-term rentals we've been we've gotten our place up to and we are encouraged we are encouraged to keep our property at a really good level so people you get reviewed online you have word of mouth of you know with staying people staying at your property so so there's a lot of incentives for keeping your property in good condition this is inflationary we've there's no question we we know this right anytime you add costs to things that's inflationary your time so you're a little over so if you can if you have it a point that hasn't already been made I want to reiterate what lots of people before that I'm against this um and um anyways I think that's I think I've made some yeah absolutely understood thank you it's going to peak online again anyone else in the room sure coming up just want to start oh yeah my name is Chris McEwing I've done property management of some apartment rentals in the junction for gosh more than 10 years now and I want to agree with a couple people before me I'm opposed to this it feels like this is trying to solve an issue that doesn't exist it's also already dealt with on the state level and there's a reason for that there's licensed professionals that know what to look for the know how to enforce things and you know every landlord I've talked to it there's no way that I see this as staying at $120 a year that just seems like something that could easily jump in addition to that it's definitely something that's going to increase the cost of housing which is something that we've consistently said we want to work on one second if you're going to speak please go out in the hallway um otherwise you might have to forfeit your opportunity to check to address us we really need to get through this that's pretty much that's everything I was trying to interrupt you no okay I appreciate it got it thank you um we're going to go online I think this is Gabe Handy incorrect it's on Sean but that's okay okay well you're sorry Sean Handy yes sir okay so what I would like to just bring up is this reminds me of a situation I ran into some years ago when uh during these inspections that you know you're you're proposing you're going to find situations where tenants have created their own horrors and ultimately what's going to happen in those situations what happened with me is I found a situation where I had a tenant that was a hoarder she had failed to close her windows because she couldn't get to them throw some pipes and I proactively reached out to Sharon Kelly to find out what I could do in the situation her answer to me was well I can find you until you get it fixed but there's nothing I can do to the tenant so I feel like this is going to create situations where landlords are going to be put in a position that they're only they're only answers to get rid of the tenant so you're going to end up with more evictions more cost of housing because let's face it once that apartment is turned over that's going to cost a lot to fix and the rent's going to get raised so I don't feel like this is a good idea tenants already have the avenues they need to reach out to the health inspector the fire marshals whatever it is if they have an issue and this is just going to create more issues than what you realize and more costs ultimately on the tenants I am adamantly opposed to this thank you sir and then sorry I'm gonna go right to you after thanks just hi I'm John Provancha I rent in Essex Junction have been for over 30 years I'm also a plumber like a plumber like the heating I I did own apartment house in one of the solar a couple years ago I didn't like what was going on down there uh I take care of my own apartment I do my own the plumbing and heating in there take care of it for the owner um they treat me right I treat them right I have I've been in more houses than anybody here's you know I've done everything I've found dead people and down in the cellar before I had to see power in the whole bit um I've been around I've been doing this for over 50 years um Essex Junction to me is seems like the cleanest and one of the best places to be and that's why I'm here I can live any place I want to I'm retired now for the most part um if it's not a good reason to be doing this other than money why do it and I you know I I don't know if there's a problem here but I haven't seen any and I would probably know it before you guys would um I I've been in a lot of places yeah uh anyway that's what I got say thank you thank you thank you you're gonna go on to there's a phone call or on online it's uh 6547 if that's you you can or six on you star six here we go can you hear me now we can okay um my name is Darrell Montague I'm I'm on both phone and video but I'd first like to I am a property manager in both the junction and the Essex town um I'd like to just in an effort of time I just want to date that and duplicate um what Jeff and Lee Barnett and many have had to say about effectively this is this is a solution looking looking for a problem there's an old saying that if it ain't broke don't fix it in Essex junction I don't believe you have a problem um I'd like to ask the question to the to the city council of how many actual issues have there been in Essex junction I don't mean I don't mean when it was key I don't mean Burlington I mean when I mean Essex itself how many of their have there already were and the remind the the council that that this is covered by the state I believe it was act 181 that was signed in the law back in 2022 this is already covered we don't have what what's the purpose behind this other than creating more money which will be as stated several different ways tonight and I can't reiterate more it's as you you must know it's going to go the end result is it goes to the renter not the not the landlord they got to cover their cop that's what I got thank you Darryl yes I have some a couple of quick comments my name is John Williamson I own an accessory apartment on main street a couple of microphones sorry um John Williams John Williamson I live on main street um and I have an accessory apartment my uh comments I don't think I've been mentioned I am totally opposed to this I have just one accessory apartment if they need anything I take care of it I work full time he works full time I'm not sure who has to take time off if an inspector is coming but I don't want to do that um I don't want to pay this every year I definitely will pass it on and the other thing is just trying to get work done on my house that needs to be done when I need to have something done I could call 10 contractors and get almost no phone calls back so to be fined for being non-compliant if I can't hire someone feels ridiculous because if you're going to have a zoning change and you have 2000 units in the junction and we're already stretched really thin in the trades to have somebody come in when I've got one unit and zero pull and I'm going to get fined for that that feels really unreasonable to me so I'm opposed okay thank you let's see no more online emails in the room third in the back with the hat was the fastest draw it's impressive thank you you're welcome I think it'd be quicker because we've been doing this for a while you think people would have the well I got to agree with everybody but first lady could you give us your name sorry Rick which one's going here did this one do the rig nap k and a pp right uh I own a small place four apartments I've only been at it 45 years uh I came to town 65 that's exjunction was a little smaller it's grown I've seen it it's been good but we're getting into something here that everyone in the room here I believe is all in agreeance I haven't seen anybody against it that we don't want this uh it's going to get passed down to the tenants everybody a cost uh as far as keeping up the the properties and everything you drive around Essex they look pretty good compared to other places and I bought the place in 79 and at that time I was going to buy up a bunch and didn't but I said one thing there that I wouldn't own a stick in Burlington and I wouldn't own a stick in Wanooski either Essex I've had for 45 years uh tenants they get a complaint they know where I am I was in Florida this fall I got a complaint it was taken care of within hours that's the rapport I have with the tenants they love it they aren't stepping out of their front door onto uh asphalt there's a grass out there thing well and sat they like it rent they're down I ain't gonna hose anybody why they're trying to get along too correct so the the this just adds to the cost on the monthly rental okay it's it's not right yeah I think someone stated that you're looking for a problem with a solution to a problem you don't have gotcha thank you very much thank you have a good evening somebody else back there I saw a hand earlier I'm doing the dev dev come on up jeff eventually gonna come up here eventually you're gonna have to come up here we'll see which one that either one this one okay uh hi my name is deb bill ado um thank you for holding this meeting tonight uh I've been in the town of Essex and the village of Essex city of Essex junction now for 45 years 38 of those in the city on maple street over here I've been a landlord for 40 years in four counties in the state I was in Berlin I had property in Burlington when they started their rental program in Burlington and I found it to be a disappointment and it appeared to me that it was more about money for the city than anything and that's kind of what I'm feeling about this program in Essex junction um because I've been here so long I think I've seen a lot of properties come up be built over the last few years we have a really great housing stock in Essex junction and love you Bridget but uh I I oppose this I think this is not good uh we have a housing crisis in the state we have an affordability crisis in the state and all we're doing is passing costs on to the people that can least afford it thank you thank you thank you I'm gonna do this I'm gonna say it because we're at eight o'clock we're an hour and a half in so can't stress enough I don't want to shorten the amount of time so if you agree with someone in front of you give me the highlights we are like I said we are keeping diligent track of everything everybody says um come on up sure Steve come on up thank you Steve you're just on Wilkinson Drive um I'm against the program I think it sounds like a great idea when I was on the board you know we were often advised by the manager to don't create a bureaucracy if you don't have to because things always grow over time beyond the original intent get complicated go into one of the points people made on statistics not only would it be great to see the statistics on how many problems have been noted in some period of time one year two years etc but how many of those problems that were brought up or identified didn't get resolved so if there were problems and they got resolved in a timely manner through the state process and all of that then again what's the need and you know you want to make a database decision and I mean it's great when we have public input and people suggest things and it's great that people you know commented way back when and and that's all great but at the end of the day it comes down to data and if there isn't a problem and if any problems that exist aren't getting addressed you know maybe that's when you've got to do something so anyway just echo the cost passing that everybody else said okay thank you thank you Jeff Goodrich thanks Raj thanks everyone uh Jeff Goodrich um I want to thank you for the opportunity to be heard I trust you are also listening and that you'll take the input that you've been provided today I also want to acknowledge the harm that's been caused by the people that hacked into the meeting that was unacceptable hateful speech that I'm sorry people had to hear thanks for saying that absolutely I agree with so many that have spoken before me I'm incredibly impressed by some of the former students Richard Smith and others who have spoke before me in opposition to this idea the home that I happen to own is on an acre of land that I purchased to create an opportunity for some space so others would not develop it I feel like the village city has changed a lot in the 30 years that I've been in this area I don't think it's heading in the direction that many of the people that spoke before me would like to see it go in I agree with much that has been spoken ahead of me but not all I do not agree with those that actually control the monopoly of rental properties in the area I have to wonder about potential impact fees as being a consideration if there is a need for money and then I would like to consider increasing impact fees if they exist or creating them if they don't exist already I think we also need to consider what's happening in Montpelier with the increase in property taxes that are coming this seems like a very tragic time to be considering increasing costs I am the newbie from some of the folks that spoke before me but I agree with the sentiments of those that have been here for some time I think we are trying to fix something that may not be broken thank you for the time thank you for listening thank you thank you anyone else anyone is there anybody in the hall is anybody in the hall want to speak you're not in the hall go back in the hall walk around come in the store Kevin Collins I've lived in Essex for 53 years manage a place for my folks I think it's kind of funny because I I think if you make it more complicated for the landlord ultimately you make it more complicated for the tenant and I I I can't imagine there's a lot of tenants out there that would be jumping at this to say yeah let's do it because I think ultimately you know you got the cost you've got you you do have salt to the earth tenants out there who are trying to rent places that are reasonable and I think if you make it more complicated for the landlord those costs are just going to ultimately go up and you're you're going to lose that housing for those people so that's just a comment I have and dead row to everything before me great those who are opposed thank you thank you just peeking online again trying to get better at that there's some open seats now if anyone wants to come in there's a few is there anyone else I'm not trying to say you have to but if you want to now's your chance we are very likely to have another public hearing on this so it's not your last opportunity um sir he just sir come on up hi there either microphone is fine just give us your name and yeah I'm John Juru okay and uh I'm uh totally against you know because it's just more regulation and increasing costs and a lot of these things are already covered these inspections type of things it's you know there's a state and there's you know there's a program that is that it was like in 1978 any older building older than that you have to register to the state it's inspected and so forth so and of course all the other things that you guys talked about you know others so it's already covered so this just makes it harder for the landlord because it's trying to do a good job is uh it's not easy because the laws are for the tenant and what do you do just like someone else said is that the tenant causes the problem see I've been renting for 50 years so I know a little bit and that's what I see okay so what do you do because the laws are in so if they damage the place what do you do it's hard to get out you you know because see a lot of people know the laws they don't pay they ruin the place and what do you do and so it's hard it's a hard business to be in to do it right now yes there's some maybe that that let it go but like like a lot of them said is it's already covered and this is a nice village okay I've been here I've been living here since 1970 in the village and so I'm totally against this because all it is is the freedom of the people that's being removed this is just because we're losing our freedom and this is one of the ways because you're putting pressure you're putting laws on people that we should not have so I am you know and all I'm going to add another thing to it I think it's totally totally wrong okay gotcha thank you all right I think we're going to uh all right this is going to be the last one we're going to move on just me I'm Bruce Wyshensky I own a place in Essex on Maple Street would you mind spelling your last name WIS HIN SKI thank you sir and I own a place in Burlington too and so I deal with the code enforcement over there and kind of piggybacking on the problem of like there's a solution here for a problem that isn't occurring I feel like a lot of the inspections that I go through they they tell me to fix some stuff and I fix it and then they come back three years later and they tell me a bunch of other stuff to fix and I fix it they're always there's always something that needs to be fixed but a lot of times it's the same thing that was just fixed or it's like the code has changed or they missed it the first time so it's it's it's a matter of the people that are doing the inspections have a hard like it's it's not consistent and they have several inspectors over there some people get this and some people don't get that it just seems like a big hassle and it seems like a lot of times they come there and if there's nothing wrong they just find something wrong just to make you come back and fix it like every single time so that gets frustrating so it seems like it may be just a big waste of time for people obviously there's some landlords maybe that don't fix stuff and there's problems but like everybody else has said in here there's ways for tenants to make those complaints and maybe if there was more of a system of following up on the complaints that are made like someone else just suggested that would be a better solution than saddling landlords with all these new expenses because just like the previous person said Vermont is a renter state it's not a landlord state at all and to be honest a lot of people that own rental units or you know that are doing renting in Vermont they could be one mortgage payment away from going into debt and if they can't get a certificate of occupancy over some stupid thing and they don't have a tenant in there you know that could be a huge problem for them and basically for the housing market so okay thank you okay um I think at this point I am going to if there's anybody else I'm going to close the so I'm a renter I'm not a landlord you've heard from a lot of landlords and I'm not going to say whether I'm forward or against it but what as the resident would you like me to go sit that chair if you want to say something yep you know what you have a microphone you can sit there okay thank you um I'm trying to make it as short as possible I didn't I still don't know if I'm poorer against this I see the pros to uh both sides um I would not thrilled with my rent going up but I understand that those costs would be passed on to me and I don't think it's just $120 a year registration fee um I think the landlords have to take their time in a consideration as to what it takes to enact that policy so on and so forth um I guess where one of my concerns comes in is is there's a complaint based system and I would also be very curious to know how many complaints have been made um within the city of Essex Junction I happen to be a very talented person and I can walk through my apartment I know what's wrong with it um and I can bring it to my landlord's attention um many people out there don't um so let's just say it was $120 that's $10 a month added to my rental and it's almost like an insurance where um I know that the building has been inspected by a professional um but I also see that I don't understand the $120 a month and being inspected every four years or every five years it does seem like there's a there's definitely a money problem and and we're kind of creating um so I think the red the the rental registry may be good especially for renters who who don't know that there is a problem that would need a professional to walk through with it and give them a little bit of security that the building that they're renting is is safe um but I I think the the number that's been applied to it and the process that's been applied to it I think there needs to be some refining um I think it's it's a good idea to help renters um but at the same time I think you're putting a lot of work on on the landlords and I believe that needs to to be looked at closer as well so just from a renter's point of view um I know that a lot of people out there that can't walk through their apartment say that's not right um I happen to be one of the lucky ones that does do have that talent but uh I know a lot of my siblings when I go visit my siblings house I end up making a lot of repairs on their house because they had no idea um remind me to have you over all right thank you that's that's can I can I clear up one thing that you said Harlan because you said 120 a month and what we're looking at no $10 a month to me 120 a year yeah okay the way you word it's not like you said 120 a month so I just wanted I might have no but it's that wasn't what it wasn't what I meant I knew it was going to be $10 but even at $10 a month that's a large insurance policy progressive is better okay so with that I'm going to close the public hearing and unless there's anything else but first I'll ask Regina if she has anything else that we need to be doing with that uh before we move close the public hearing portion of this nothing else uh just we'll give folks on zoom one second if they just don't know how to raise their hand you go to the reactions feature and there's a raise your hand function in there and I do have the comment from the that the person put in the chat because they didn't know how to raise their hand so we do have that documented thank you yeah I'm not seeing anything online so I will go ahead and close the public hearing and we will move on to agenda item 5a and I know this sounds weird but this will be a discussion and consideration of rental registry and inspection ordinance this is not the public hearing portion this is the business portion for the council so we have some options I think the do you want to do you have any introduction you want to do here with this Regina you know just give me an opportunity yeah I think the information that you've got in your memo is pretty clear and yeah just in terms of process procedure the opportunities in front of you are to if you so chose is to adopt this ordinance as it is in front of you make suggestions to change the ordinance and of course always there's the option to do nothing at this time you could table a conversation to another point in time if you've got questions that you would want staff to take the time to answer and provide back to you at a at a future meeting is there anything any of the counselors want to add at this point or talk about can I get some more clarity on the conversation regarding whether it should be in community development or in the fire department it seems a little late in the game that the fire department piece is being brought in so I'm trying to understand why they weren't at the table to begin with and why seeing that at the state level and at other municipalities that the fire department is managing that program in those places sure I can answer from my perspective so really the it really came from the concept that the um city council wanted to enhance the services around code enforcement more generally for the land development code so as a reminder in your current FY 24 budget there is a new full-time position that would do code enforcement work rental registry and health officer work um essentially starting January 1 and that budget has the lot fund paying for that first six months of that work um because the theory being that there would be um as this whole program is developed there would be a revenue source so that it's not a cost to the general fund directly um so the program has been established in that way um throughout the process staff has talked to a number of different uh departments and municipalities in terms of how this is done in other places uh chris provided that information in terms of how it's done in other places in this presentation um the um yeah so that that's the direction that we've been on it's the direction that the planning commission has been on and and that's that's where we've been um chris do you have anything you want to add to that chris ewan uh so about the point about about other municipalities having the fire departments uh having this program under their fire departments that is mostly but not completely true there are a few municipalities that have that have it in a separate department or under their general enforcement uh the code enforcement branch so the municipalities that have uh the rental registry and inspection program under the fire department tend to all have full-time fire departments and i think that is that is uh one thing that was considered here uh in the past and when you say it's it's not always the case as chris that the entire department is full-time but there may already be a leadership structure of one one to few on that well i don't already i don't have the history behind whether they had a full-time fire department before if this if the rental registry program was what tipped it over the edge of like as it currently stands those uh tend to be the larger cities yeah and i'll just add i think the board when this was initially discussed was interested in having this um we had a situation where our long time essentially volunteer health officer retired um we also had a very strong push for many years uh that was pretty strongly renewed once we separated for ordinance enforcement and traditionally we've had a lot of complaints that aren't very well documented for some of the larger buildings and other rentals in the community we did not have much of a code enforcement that's not fair we did not have the code enforcement mechanism that we're intending to have so what we were trying to do figuring out with the structure we have and this i'm just speaking for myself and the council from the structure that we have the issues we're dealing with is there a way to start this up and cover that so it doesn't go to general fund because a lot of those issues are are overlapping and the state requires us to have a health officer it has proved exceedingly difficult to have someone available as much as is needed and it's remarkably they're remarkably busy i don't know how matt's been doing like from what caron in the past and our former health officer have shared um and those things often overlap so we're required to have that person on staff or available if not it falls to the chair of the governing body which was me or andrew prior and that's not tenable because you we have jobs and you can't get paid there are a lot of things that went into this and why it didn't go straight to the fire department and i think chief goborio is here and we might have an ask to find out more information about how that might work right under the fire department which i think is fair but we didn't want i mean i'll speak for myself only didn't want to contemplate at the time because i didn't think we were ready what would that pathway be do we start the community down that pathway of a full-time starting to add full-time employees to the fire department so that is a little bit of from my perspective as a board member of how this ended up in community development which really isn't that unusual um it does make sense in both areas um and as far as that you know there's a few things that were mentioned over time as far as the car goes you know we really do have to address our three community development employees having to go out to properties and do community development work and other city employees doing that work in unmarked private vehicles when they're going to do things like health inspections and things that require um sometimes touchy subjects um so the savings of the fire department in the car may not actually be real because we may still need to add something for staff and that's something we can all we can figure out on a later date um i think for tonight it'd be great to figure out do we want to hear from chief goborio who's with us i think on zoom and do we want to see what the fire department can come up with um for how it might work what does that look like um if they've expressed an interest which i think they have then what does it look like to be what does that program look like and then while they're doing that we can assimilate everything we've heard tonight and come back at a later date and and kind of go through it um so i don't know if chris if you're available to join us for a second for a few minutes to talk about this yes again i'm online now great thank you um so just wondering about your thoughts and and whether you think it's feasible to to get back to us with with you know sort of a vision for for how you think this might be able to operate or a version of this might be able to operate under fire um and and in your mind what kind of timeframe you would need to do that and what more information you'd require i guess first i should ask are you interested in in doing that research um yes i think as a department we would be interested again if this position were to come to fruition um is from our perspective uh the data that's gathered would certainly be a benefit to the fire department um going into uh some of these apartments and getting a better feel for how these buildings are laid out um you know we have that day or we have a database uh within our platform our our software platform in the fire department and uh again to me it would make sense that this position would be underneath the fire departments that you would have a full-time individual that would be enforcing and yet you know could also supplement and be available Monday through Friday normal business hours when that's probably our weakest time of the day okay and when i say when i say week i mean week in that you probably have the least amount of of individuals responding to fire calls during nap period sure um any questions for all this nothing for it okay i have a couple um the first thing i want to acknowledge is since i heard this a number of times in the public hearing about what the complaints look like i do recall there's an example of complaints that was in a previous packet i don't remember the exact date of said packet but we were given the list of of complaints that were coming through the health officer um and so that would be an example of some of the things that that we're seeing that we're hearing from as a city um i want to acknowledge the fact that i as a previous renter like my gut turns thinking about anything that would add to my rank back in that particular day it's not i was not i did not have the means to absorb additional costs um looking at where our budget is right now i was prepared to arrive in this discussion asking about whether or not if we were to really move this thing forward if we move this forward on a complaint-based level versus um the full time moving it to fire because i think we would end up seeing cost savings from the expenditure side um that would help but i do want to acknowledge that you know i've seen like public complaints about some of the well i hear from the landlords that are here and i appreciate there are so many good landlords and a majority of landlords are good landlords um as a matter of fact both both companies that i rented from was a couple who lives down the street from me right now and i've rented their mom's what was their mom's house and i rented a property in south burlington from a company right over here on railroad that was right here on railroad street um and they were both very good to me and my family but i see stories like i saw once a few months back and somebody was complaining about the elevator not working in one of these buildings for 60 days 65 if that is truly the case with a state system that's been in place and that did not help resolve that problem then i question whether or not the existing programs that's out there are doing what they're supposed to be doing now whether or not we need to be involved that is a valid question but it's one of the reasons why it's one of the things i think about when i think about whether or not we need a proactive process to try to get ahead of these kinds of problems and i see that the rental registry being a proactive process but again coming back to my one of my original thought which was concerning again our overall budget trying to figure out how to control the expenditures this year if we stepped it in with a on a complete basis that would lessen again lessen the the initial cost but i think based on what i heard based on some things that i would like to get more research from from the chief i would like to continue this conversation at a later date i do not want to make a columnist tonight yeah i don't think that's possible i don't think we're at a place where we can i mean just speaking for myself i don't think we're at a place where we can make that call tonight um let's see everybody that's on the screen um i think my impetus would be to to not make a motion tonight as presented and to ask i'm not sure how to the right framework to go with but to ask fire to kind of look over and help me out virginia a little bit look over what's been done and sort of what's proposed and see how the fire department envisions that scope and what what that looks like from a staffing and budgetary and process point of view what are the similarities what are the differences um i mean i you know our budget has to be warned february 14th so that feels like a big lift by then i don't know virginia if that's something if that date is a i guess the board would have to decide if we're one way or the other are we moving forward with it and then it wouldn't much matter yep so um so for right now i think um you can think about this in terms of the f y 25 proposed budget as a set as a separate thing and i'm saying that because it's as the program is proposed in the f y 25 budget um the program is cost neutral right so the expenses are in there and they're offset by the um annual rental fee um and if we don't do the program we don't have those expenses and we don't have that revenue which be so i i think it's okay from end if we do that program under environment perhaps the specifics and the details of that look differently but um i think we would still be looking at it as a um and i'm saying this as a cost neutral program and i'm saying that cost neutral to the general fund to the taxpayer fully understand what we've heard from everybody tonight this is not cost neutral to folks who are uh renters and landlords um so i think it would be okay if we took the right amount of time necessary to think through both um answers to the comments that you heard tonight from the public um as well as really giving the fire department some time to think through what this would look like if it were on their side under their department yes and that's great because i've got in addition to comments written down about a dozen questions that i've pulled out that i'm sure everybody else here does too that you know we might want to follow up on to kind of come back to so i think that's a great do now do we do you need more than that as an ask and regina do we need a motion for that or can we just make the request a motion um i i um what i would like to ask in terms of time frame is to give it's for you folks to give us some time to think through this and then get back to you and let you know when we can bring this back in front of you yeah i'd rather not put a date on it um so i agree so i agree um we expect this over a month or one side sorry we're not at that point yet i mean to be rude but we're not there yet um yeah raj amber does have her hand up out enough you see so you know what now i see it there was a chandelier in my way sorry amber no worries no worries um so i had just two comments um one i guess i'm i i'm still trying understand the budget piece of if we choose not to go forward with this program at all at all so not under fire not under community not under calm dev what is the implications of that from a budgetary standpoint due to the fact that we want to still make sure that code enforcement and health office is covered so and i i understand that's a something you've got a mull over i'm just throwing these out as things that i'd like to see addressed when we come back to talk to have this conversation the other thing is is that there were a number of comments about the number of inspections that happen the elevator inspections the fire inspections and what are we talking about in regards to inspections i think what we're talking about is the rental housing um the code that is about 15 pages long that is found on the website where this complaint procedure is and so it would be i think it's always helpful to kind of show to show to the public maybe a um cliff note version maybe of some sort of what we're talking about here um it is more involved obviously than the state's inspection of elevators and the state's inspection of fire extinguishers and stuff like that but what are we talking about i know what we're talking about but i i think that question was asked and so i'd like to see make sure that we're incorporating that when we come back to talk about this again thanks guys and and maybe to the point if we have material on this on the cd website to actually link to that code that were and the idea that this person would be a profession they claimed i don't have the full title in my but this wouldn't just be a city employee that was picked up to do this sort of it would be someone we envisioned being trained on that particular code to a to a level whether it's cd or fire so i guess we'll make that ask we'll let staff determine and let us know how much time you need for that um staff and staff chief gaborio and come back to us with what you come up with and we'll table this for now uh in the meantime we'll try to get some answers to these questions and find a time to come back as a group and talk about the feedback we've got um just can i just add one thing rash sorry absolutely um amber thank you for bringing up that point about um so yeah the program itself as contemplated right now in f y 25 budget is cost neutral but um if the council chose to not do this at all um we would need some direction in the f y 25 budget about what you want to do about code enforcement and health officer so um that does mean that by the 14th we will um have to have some kind of understanding of what is the base that you want to do on the code enforcement health officer side of things gotcha this is the so that's in one meeting yes one meeting marcus left at the right time does anybody want to talk about that right now or do we want to come back and talk about that on the 14th i'd like to think some more yeah me too i think the 14th is fine okay so maybe we can mull over ourselves in the meantime it might be helpful i mean i don't know regina if it's if it's helpful to just say can we have some numbers or do i need to like you know do we need something else if we were to say you know keep the status quo as we're at right now what's the budget look like um meaning part-time health officer code as it is and if we were to ramp up and say we need a full-time health officer and um uh i don't know a specific person for just code enforcement i'm just making it up honestly at this point because i don't know what the answer is but like here's the worst-case scenario here's the here's the current status of where we would be at and maybe there's a halfway in between there if we could get those potential numbers before the 14th would be helpful yeah i think we can definitely put some scenarios together for you in your work February 14th packet okay cool thank you okay um so we're not going to have any motions on that um all right where's the agenda sorry getting there budget i believe right 5b discussion of FY 25 general fund budget and public hearing warning getting there all right regina did you have an introduction for this yes i do um so in your packet um um you've got um the third budget proposed budget for FY 25 general fund budget um and you've got a narrative on uh page 18 of that pdf um we have uh you've got a summary at the top that talks about the changes that you asked for at your last meeting and what that puts us at for um budget versus our current year budget um as it is it's uh still a seven percent budget increase and seven point four percent tax rate increase for a hundred ninety a hundred and ninety dollars for a two hundred and eighty thousand dollar home um you see the changes that we made since the last time and really want to point out that uh we did identify some errors in the budget largely in the salary um payroll table uh sorry tab um and that has certainly resulted in um a reduction in the overall FY 25 budget of about fifty three thousand dollars um i want to point out that that is uh a big change to what the library budget was specifically um because of the library differential and how that was calculated in error so uh we very much apologize for that um and that is um you can see those changes on the top of page 19 um also at the last meeting the council asked about what it would look like for the brown L budget to be level funded um and what it would look like for two percent increase over FY 24 um we uh the council has that memo from um the library director we um will put that into this packet um so that you've got that also i wanted to make a note that we will also include the slides from curses presentation into this revised packet so that it is all online um those things came in after um the 48 hours before this meeting so i didn't want to revise the packet beforehand um also uh you the council asked for um what it would look like if there was an admin allocation from the ejrp program fund to the general fund at your last meeting we weren't sure if we were going to have a chance to be able to look at that and see um what that would look like what you have in your memo is um a suggestion of what that could look like um and uh from a staff perspective we are perfectly comfortable with doing that and so we can we can go ahead and make that change if you recommend that we do that this evening um um i think that is about it oh other than this memo does say in your reading file you have the very initial um preliminary enterprise budgets so these budgets are um not approved until later in the fiscal year the council does that approval um but we wanted to give it to you now just to see what that's starting to look like so you can see what essentially folks are going to be paying from a water utility bill in addition to what um you're looking at for uh tax rate increases um i think that is um it for me to start um i will say that uh both wendy is here just is here if you've got any further questions um for either than that either of them um thank you yeah um i guess we'll start with page one i'm wondering as presented these changes that regina pointed out in the first page of the narrative in the chart if the group is comfortable with those changes and wants to move forward with those i have a question about one of them specifically the clerk's office reducing the hours to 32 hours a week um i'd like to understand more about that particular impact i mean i know we all felt very fortunate when the clerk's office opened up here at two linkin so i was a little surprised to see that they would be reducing the hours but then again i don't know how many people are coming through the door at which hour so this may be an absolutely appropriate move but i was i just want to understand it better so the um idea there is that um the the city clerk would go down to 32 hours a week the assistant clerk would stay as 40 hours per week so um i think uh we are feeling like the office itself would still be open 40 hours a week so in terms of a service um perspective it would not um lower when you can come in and do any business from that perspective um we um think based on the amount of um folks coming in and uh working with us now that this is probably going to work great um you know i think folks are still real understanding that you can come to the city clerk's office as opposed to go to the town clerk's office for some uh for some services but um we think that again we're not saying that the clerk's office itself is going to be closed uh for less than 40 hours a week uh we are just going to have um one of the two full time staff there go down to 32 hours okay thank you okay so coming back to that sounds like everybody's okay with those changes so we'll incorporate those or do you have another question do you have a question i just want to again i know that we we had some concern at our last meeting when we were going through all these line by line by line and the feeling that the nickel and diming wasn't really making a big difference in the bottom line but in my opinion how else are we going to get there so in that spirit um community meal and event for ten thousand dollars i'm as much as i love it more than anything i'm just concerned about that wondering if there's other ways to do it do we move it to the summer and just do hot dogs at hamburgers at the park or do we like can we shave cost off of that or can we eliminate another ten thousand i mean i'm going to be honest i look at what the town's been able to do at the cinemas um and i like it and i think the community likes it i have no idea how much they're stunning i guess we could ask but i imagine it isn't free um we're getting free polling at cbe i'm pretty sure that the strategic planning building um usage uh for all of that has been donated by cbe um probably if we wanted to have the dinner again there next year that would probably be donated um so i totally understand um and it's fine if that's what the group wants to do i just don't want to the last thing i want to do is cut off an opportunity for community engagement but i had the occasion of meeting with the city councilor from montpelier last week who explained to me that they had removed 1.5 million dollars from their budget and they're still three million dollars in the hole because of flooding and so they're cutting positions they lost a fire truck to the fire that burned uh rk miles down like i feel like we're tap dancing around the edges here and i think we need to do more so on that note because i don't i want to make sure that you're okay without this is well i want to i want to do it i want to try to get through this particular section first like someone they'll keep a little order i have nothing else on this okay so what does a group want to do do we want to take that meal out or keep it um i would like to keep it because i think the community engagement is really important hopefully it won't be anything close to ten thousand dollars but i that's one of the most important things i think coming out of of the effort to create the city and the hope was that we were going to be more engaged in the community and i i think that we there's been some fallback from that and i think we need to push forward to engage the community more so and not without dying too deep or getting too ahead of the conversation but i would like to discuss all the departments i would like to discuss these things in more detail these things so or are we good with this i'll give you a quick summary in the fact that again and i'll go back to my conversation last the conversation we had last night this is not about this for me it was not about one department it was about all the departments the contributing factors at the time it looked like the library was asking for you know roughly 85 to 90 000 now it's 52 with the adjustment as we look at an increase of 770 000 and i totally i'm with you elaine and the fact that it feels like we have the nickel and diamond kind of bring this down but i'm not sure nickel and diming i i feel like the nickel and diming starts to get to a point where we're cutting the wrong things we're having the wrong strategic discussion about these departments as i shared with the council since our last meeting you know i kind of threw some numbers together to kind of ask the question for myself what right sizing a department might look like and comparing it to similar communities so i have questions about you know ejrp i have questions about um finance and information technology really not finance as much but i think the big thing for me as a counselor is the fact that what i feel like is that there are only a couple of departments that it's really clear for me on how to defend the fire department i can clearly and easily defend because of the fact that these volunteers have not been paid for mandatory training forever they should be that should be offset so i have no problem defending that particular piece of this particular budget um but i don't necessarily have that with each and every one of these departments ejrp being one of them the library being another again i want to emphasize i totally understand i'm not nitpicking those those little thing there was enough data out there for me to just go hmm is there a better or a cost efficient way to do this we just got that information today i have read it i am still digesting it so i need a little time in order to kind of absorb the feedback that i received but i would like to see more information specifically around um ejrp and the specific things if if we were to reduce that budget either level set it or even more because again if i think about the size of ejrp in comparison to other communities maybe there's more it can it can be adjusted i don't know but i want to be clear about how this money is being spent the focus of the programs because i don't want to i don't want to cut programs that impact the early childhood learn either the early education learning i don't want to cut the senior services um you know but i will be blunt and i said this the last time i look at a pool that costs us a lot of money to have open for two months out of the year but it's a great pool and tons of people have great stories about it and my neighbors and everything else so i would hate to do that but at the same time i can't ignore the seven percent increase on top of the fact that there is the community conversation out there about the school's potential increase and other increases that were just faced in our day-to-day lives so i struggle in the totality of our budget to find all the justifications that i can that i can argue so i would like to see some real specific feedback from our department about if nothing else if those departments that are increasing from last year to this year if we were to remove those increases what would we lose make me understand specifically what would we lose so that i can so that i can have that community so we i but i'm i speak for myself can have that community conversation and community debate and understand from my constituents what they're willing to pay for because right now i hear from most people they don't want to pay i'll address one small part of that i think it's helpful to remember that part of the nitpicking is coming from this is the only the second city budget that we've developed as a full city the first one is pretty good not that anybody work hard on it but we're still trying to get a handle on what this is so as we go through and it feels very much like we're nitpicking and we're asking difficult questions and they're painful we're really just trying to figure out what is right and i don't honestly think that we're going to have that answer for at least a year or two more and we're going to really kind of level out and it could be longer because they spent 10 or 12 years consolidating all these things and it's going to take a bit of time to unwind it and really understand what this is going to be so i'm not disagreeing with you at all i'm just saying you know to the to this idea that it feels like we're trimming around the edges and i think we are and i think we're just trying to figure it out because it's just the second one and all of that you know as we did tonight for the first couple hours we're also trying to do regular business and get things that done that people have been asking for and people are talking about and are getting impatient for so i just want to put that out there can i um just two things regina alluded earlier to the end of the packet where the enterprise budgets were forgive me if i'm getting this wrong or forgetting something that i've been told which is entirely likely i was expecting to also see the ejrp enterprise fund and there's nothing in the packet about that and um can you remind me when we're supposed to see that regina can you do you know i might have passed that one to jess okay hi jess that hey that'll be at the february 14th meeting okay thank you um my second point i wanted to make is noting the hour and the length of the conversation and that a lot of the people in the audience have been waiting patiently to speak to the library i wonder if we could take a break and let them do that um in just a minute yes okay um as far as the library appeal goes i was not after just receiving it today which is totally understandable not ready to really discuss it so from my point of view for the saturday meeting i was going to suggest that we just presented as presented saturday as presented to us from the actual f y 25 proposed budget not the scenarios we received i don't think any of us has had a chance to really dig into it and understand it so there's that um and i guess i want to get back to trying to move forward and understand if you're able to move forward at all because we do have to present something on saturday um or if you're not without those answers and then we'll have to decide what the group wants to do with that i'm i am okay with moving forward for the conversation on saturday so knowing too that saturday is part of the conversation changes can's input can still be received changes can still be made so i'm fine with that okay and i look forward to hearing the feedback i'm sorry that i won't be able to be in attendance since i already had a business trip planned well in advance not a problem but i look forward to hearing the feedback um raja can i make just one note do yes um just um on some of the things marcus that you were describing on the ejrp program on the ejrp side um just just want to be clear and i know this is hard to understand and particularly because you don't have the enter the um ejrp program funds in front of you yet but a lot of those are in the program fund they're not in the general fund so it doesn't those those things um even if we were to cut those expenses of those programs it's not going to change the um general fund tax rate understood i i think and i and i i can't speak for a land i'm i'm reading between the lines but i think we might be aligned on this i think for me it would really be of great benefit if to understand because we're talking about the tax impact of these departments on our community and in talking about that tax impact we have to talk about the strategy or the direction of these particular departments and i i think doing that with only a portion of the information not including the enterprise then i'm not really taking in the whole department to have a realistic conversation about what the department is doing how they're applying it i'll speak of a different department like i'll take a step back and talk about wastewater storm water i support the fact that we that what we're doing with that particular department right now because i believe we need to stand up this utility with that i hope that a future date we can talk about the rate structure because i think that there's an opportunity where something like that can be paid for by its use versus coming out of the general fund so i think if we take the opportunity to talk about rate structure that would be great in the same context we can have that conversation around something like eJRP about what are we doing what are the services that we're providing that we're getting paid understanding that whole framework but this is just a limited small scope so i totally understand Regina what you're saying i just want to make sure that i fully understand this so that again when i go to the community and i'm having these conversations that i can either defend it or i can or i can acknowledge what we're what direction we've given so i that's that's where i'm at at the moment i will say to that point the middle of page two where regina described the group getting together to talk about the admin allocation for eJRP and coming up with 37 000 to put back into the general fund is i think it's pretty much what you're speaking to yeah they identified areas of those activities that are outside that are i'm going to use the term business where they receive funds in to cover them yep and applied those against the general admin portion of the eJRP budget so if it took a portion of someone who's an admin person at eJRP they paid that back so the fee based program eJRP paid back the general fund portion of eJRP which is the base of eJRP which is the you know general staff and the the place in the park yep not the park it's cool um and can i just clarify you'll probably explain it better yeah so um so uh and then when i explained it wrong Jess can correct me so what's what's going on there in what we've got on page two of that section page 19 in the packet um is the uh admin the overall organizations admin so the expenses you have for me the expenses you have for uh Jess and the finance department and uh those those that's the admin adjustment that were that we're talking about as opposed to more specifically looking just at eJRP and the program fund offsetting the eJRP admin folks that we will that portion we will look at more further um but that's not what you've got right here you have eJRP program fund admin allocation to cover admin costs of the organization as a whole um and more specifically some costs associated with the park street school moving it over to the program fund for park street school as opposed to being in the general fund but yes point taken in the whole larger context of um it is uh would be helpful to have all of these things in front of you and a tolain suggestion realizing it's 853 is there anyone here um with the short bedtime who's lucky enough to to leave um that short bedtime is there anyone here that wants to speak to the library specifically i think kids with jammies should speak first yes kids with jammies that we've i hope they didn't leave they were adorable oh we waited all that time they tried it out yeah great jam to the fire truck really the fire truck light up the sure come on up um we've moved the table let me take a second though because on that particular note just remind people that again you can always email us and give us your feedback that way it's always appreciated so um you know anybody who's not able to make a meeting like this please email us share your thoughts it's very okay for folks that just one secretary for folks at home this is we're not we will take more comment later we're just trying to give folks an opportunity to speak so they can this is basically response i view what i'm saying as response again i'm Dorothy burgandall i live on taff street and i'm a long time trustee of the brownout library first i'd like to thank regina for the apology she made earlier in the meeting my main question is um i know that the memo that our library director wrote didn't come through until this morning so it's again lack of information lack of time but would you like me to summarize the answers to the questions you have last time which was what would level funding look like what would a two percent increase look like and then our director has a third suggestion if if they can be very specific to the actual items in those scenarios then absolutely yes well i think i can keep it specific okay i will refuse to refer you to page eight of the memo level funding means that the library hours would then change to 10 a.m to 6 p.m five days a week no saturday period we would lose out on various things like the ability to have evening programs like the vermont humanities council it's called snapshot now it was first wednesday and some other evening programs that happened during the year train hop that would work out okay no it wouldn't work out okay but it would work out a two percent increase would have the library open from 10 o'clock in the morning until 6 p.m monday through friday and four hours 10 to two on saturday except for the two months when we are never open on saturday anyway again it would mainly affect the customers by not having evening programs and anybody who actually wants to come to the library after work before and after dinner but other than that now the library director does suggest that if we left it at a three percent increase instead of level funding or two percent we would be able to keep the current library hours and then as a trustee i would like to assure you that we would very carefully look beginning much earlier in the year than we have been in the past because we've gotten into a pattern of doing the budget and we would like to actually meet with you as a group and discuss with more than two weeks to figure out what we're doing how we should approach the library programs and activities and availability i would also suggest that on saturday we're going to have a table i want people who come to saturday's meeting indicate on some kind of chart we put together when they would like to have the library open so that we can get a feel for what the public wants the city public wants and i also think that in response to somebody at the last meeting i would like to point out that the library i summarize the library activity in three categories you have someone who comes to library doesn't have any library card they can come in the building they can sit in the chairs they can take something off the shelf and read it and put it back hopefully in the right place they can read the newspapers the magazines they can use the bathroom and they can use the public computers but they can't hog them someone who comes to the library with the card from outside of our library district but in the home card can do all of that and can take out an item that is physically in the building and circulates the brand of library patrons can put holds on circulating items can request interlibrary loans can download all the electronic stuff that home card people don't get so we are not giving everything to everybody mm-hmm and that about summarizes what i'd like to say can i ask you a question is is wendy here is she wendy are you with us i am here hi somewhere i'm trying to recognize that you're with us do you i mean this is yours do you want to say anything or or add anything to this um yeah i we it it was a lot a big ask to get that memo together and try to re-examine things and what ultimately was 10 days or 12 days excuse me um all staff were involved lots of feedback lots of calculations and recalculations um the level funding and 2 increase would really impact our just all all staffing across the board because of what we need to have in the library to keep it safe this community has changed over time and we do need to have proper backup and and be able to provide services to the regular users as well as there's just a lot more people who need more at this point computer help reference services so staff has more demands on it than ever and the three percent increase that was proposed just kind of puts us over the tipping point of what we need to keep the staffing to be safe and open to the public um i guess that is the bigger issue is that we we have a big building it's three stories people are in all parts of it at all times um the door count does not reflect how long people are in the library there are a lot of people who spend hours people um generally adults there's also families that spend a lot of hours in the library um so it it's a significant service that we offer the community and we really keep it a safe open place for everyone regardless of what they are in the library for and yet we will we have reduced several of the digital services in these budgets which will impact staff providing information but we also have staff trained to seek information and other databases provided through the state but we um the library is really minimally staffed at this point we were able to retain what we had asked for i had previously asked to not say we needed 10 extra hours when we realized that the budget had not been it was just inflated and we didn't understand why at that time um so the ask is not there anymore we had that money in the budget and we weren't aware of it and um we can staff what we need to with those proposals to make sure that we can be staff can be safe and the public can be safe in the building and we can provide professional services to the community thank you um you don't need me anymore to well i don't you don't have to run away i do have a question um and you know again i don't these questions aren't shouldn't i don't want anybody to take these questions like i'm asking if because this is what i intend these are just questions so that's it they're just honest questions in situations where there are um the remind humanities is every two to three months actually right now they are they're online only and it's every week but originally it was eight months a year one week one night a month that's why it was called first wednesday only some months we didn't do first wednesday because of well then that changes my question i guess because i was going to ask with some of these events um but a lot of them in the list are very regular so that's not they're predictable gonna work because they're friday dungeons and dragons and stuff it's not like once a month yeah but any in the in a situation where it is a monthly thing um the cold board room rents out when the cold board room runs out is there staff that stays or do they do the renters to people borrowing the room you know just they have access to the room and then they leave when they're done or just do we stop that they just honestly don't know don't staff when people um reserve the room we do not staff that we do staff library programs um at this point we do um just to ensure we um people can assume that like there are staff there to direct them if they needed it also to maintain um safety because we are trained in what those um how to if there was anybody bringing the public together um yeah and sometimes not be always but on the other hand before covid we had upwards of a hundred people come to first wednesday which would not fit in the covert room right and also we needed these screens and all this sort of stuff okay good to know yeah in that case we absolutely um it's not safe to have no staff um or a few staff because we do need to keep the people when we have um programs in the main reading room which we will be having coming up um it takes a lot more staff to make sure that we can open and close and keep people out of areas that are not currently open to the public uh also before covid we were open through nine o'clock some nights and wednesday was one of those nights and the program would start at seven so they'd be out by the time of closing now we are only open until eight so it's a toss-up whether first wednesday when it runs live in the brown l will be finished at eight yeah so yeah it's not because um the media factory who does the filming is live streaming the for mount humanities programs and it takes them a solid hour to pack up after the programs so staff are remaining for that as well and that's something we're still adjusting to because having them do the live streaming and professional filming where they just would send us more of a just a regular camera person without all of the equipment is a new um for mount humanities councils investing and paying professional staffing for the media factory to be able to have quality products that they can programs that they can keep on their website for everybody to enjoy so the hybrid hybrid has changed um how the dynamic of some of our programs that we are still trying to anticipate what that means and we also there's some licensing that you can't make it hybrid if it's depending on the content and some of this discussion may wait maybe better waiting until saturday when we can spend more time talking about how these things work because you know we're getting late no and that's why i think you know that's why i think we were and i appreciate the overview um but i think we're we're gonna need more time can i can i ask to clarify the question oh yeah so you said that um the budget was adjusted so that the 10 additional hours were taken out can you just quickly explain the 40 it's because it's about 40 000 dollars worth of increases in salaries and insurance or insurance obviously flows with the with the salaries but what is the increase year over year on on those salaries and i would like some more clarity on the safety issue because and i've heard your testimony before i know the problems that occasionally crop up my understanding is about one or two a month of serious issues um but i i want to understand because i also saw comments from sheila one of the trustees saying that it wasn't a safety issue that it's about just having four people to be present on all those floors so i i just want to be clear about the strategy here that's being there are the reasoning behind um these increases thank you our full-time staff are getting pulled in a lot more at desk interactions just because of the level of what people are asking for um is also just managing certain personalities who visit the library um the safety issues um to ideally in just a any sort of interaction that is going to be enforcing any sort of rules we need two staff to respond one to interact with patrons another to back up in case there's any issues um when there's an elevated um situation we need to have an additional staff member that will call um the police or um generally that would be a police situation and not outreach and um if and we've we've been in that would leave one person at the desk to manage the library while the dispatch usually keeps staff on the phone when we have to call the police so everybody is engaged in a situation that is not normal library services um and because of staff full-time staff being pulled in more to just general library operations when they normally would get other desk work done it's making it very hard for staff to keep up with what we are expected with interlibrary loans and reports ordering materials leading materials um and managing the general day-to-day operations of a public library thank you the other thing I do want to add is I did receive a number of responses as we all probably did but I received a number of responses this week supporting the library it's great to see the community coming out and supporting the library um one of the things again I did read your letter earlier Wendy um I just want to acknowledge the fact that I was I was a little disappointed to see what those potential outcomes would look like because one of the things that I strongly heard and I heard this before this conversation with this budget I heard this campaigning I heard this in the over the last year is one of the things while they while people support the library they miss not being able to go to the library on Saturdays during the summer so when I look at or think about how the library gives services this community as I indicated earlier I would love to feel like if we were talking about this the budget weight the way we are and the numbers that we're looking at I'd love to be able to tell them that we're increasing our services at the library that we're giving them something else also in return for this increase so um I look forward to continuing this conversation I look forward to continuing to get feedback from the community and we'll come out of Saturday's conversation thank you sure I can respond that there is a cost to being open in Saturdays in the summer that is not reflected in our budget so that would require a budget increase as well as our attendance generally reduces in the summer because people are enjoying Vermont and don't want to be as indoors as at least when this nice weather hits or it gets more quiet in the library and people are not spending as much time at Brownell and we also have those shifts to support the summer reading program which is a very dynamic part of the Brownell library and we do not have the staffing to spread out during the summer at this point thank you very much I don't I don't think we have any other council questions for the two of you but we appreciate it we're I think the idea is we're going to digest this more and more discussion on Saturday and and see if we come back to this how we come back to this Steve yeah Steve coming up thank you thanks for letting me speak for budget tonight I can't on Saturday since I'm moderating the meeting and need to be neutral in that meeting that'd be strange yes um anyway I have a variety of comments and some to library and some in general and I wanted to say you know I appreciated Marcus's comment in the front porch forum to have people come and talk and you know that the numbers were scary or whatever I also um you know ultimately you know it's not like the state budget where whatever you guys agree on is the answer the voters get to weigh in at the end um one difference in recent years of course is you know we're not at the floor people can't make the adjustments in the meeting like we used to be able to do so hopefully in these community conversations we have Saturday and etc you can take some of that in into account so that when people vote up or down they're voting on hopefully you know the best possible I also want to encourage you to um you know just because a number is larger I mean people live here for a reason because of the services and the different things I mean we've touched on a lot in the conversation tonight be at the library the parks storm water whatever so sometimes um you know you got to put it to the vote and see what people want right and you know if it turns out based on hearing the public hearing that you know people don't want cuts or level funded areas or things like that then put it to the vote and if people don't want it they'll vote against it you know so like the point being that you don't have to try and refine this right to the to a nickel because people will let you know if you're wrong at the end of the day right because it'll pass or not so anyway so there's that going on um you know when I was on the board we the library was always easy to look at because it was a big number right it was one of the bigger departments so it was always like oh geez you know because whenever you're going to look for anything and you talk about nickel and diamond you always try and look at well what are the bigger numbers because that's where we can save money so um just you know what was interesting is whenever anybody questioned it there was always a lot of community support and we ended up never really changing it that much because the community wanted it there's never a problem with asking the question of course because that's healthy public discourse anyway um one thing that I've learned you know um my daughter works at the library now and I've learned a lot more about the library um and all the great services they do and it's well beyond books and you know I've taken advantage of some of that myself as well and I think it's just such a especially the Brown Alice just such a gem in the community and so I just wanted to get it out there um that I'm in support and again I'll weigh all the numbers when I go in the voting booth but I don't want to I don't want to see it gutted that's for certainly or level funded or something like that and it sounds like you know the staff is really doing the best they can with different proposals so you can you know you know come up with it all so anyway that's just some feedback from when I was in your chair but at least I knew that people could add you know 50 000 or whatever the whatever they needed to add on the floor we can't do that anymore but people can at least vote up or down on how they feel so I appreciate all the work you're doing it sounds like you're really going through it and I know it's going to take a couple years to to deal with this I know when I looked through all the budget charts I was confused and I've spent years looking at these and I think a lot of that is because of the transition where it used to be much more straightforward you had the same you know departments every year now we've got all this churn that we've kind of got to get through and I think there you know there could be some things and and you know let the voters decide but don't try and arbitrarily you know go too low you know if if that's the feedback you hear at meetings like Saturday if you get it if you hear then then go with that thank you thanks Steve you're welcome Cooper online hi thank you um I wish I was in person I'm sorry it's not I meant to be um because the Brownow library for our family we were exiting a very traumatic relationship as many of you know our lives were incomplete upheaval we were food insecure we were money insecure it was nuts and I worked in Burlington at the Y and all of my work as an assistant aquatic instructor and as the head coach at the Y took place exactly when my children got out of school and getting to safety was a difficult thing our home wasn't somewhere to go to when I was not there and the Brownow was it was a ref not just a refuse but refuse but refuse sorry but so impactful that my youngest ended up majoring in poetry and investing in college for someone majoring in poetry is a solid thing you know and with all the support and passion and care that my children and in particular my youngest received at Brownow and our school libraries and that was beyond impactful and when I think about equity when I think about economics and I think about single parents I think about people who are just working and working and working if you know that your child is at the library and it's open for the hours you need it is a startlingly comforting situation to know that your child at least has that kind of access or that anyone would have that kind of access thank you for your time thank you any I don't see anybody else online I don't see anybody else with their hand up in the room so let's continue yes sorry come on up sorry just remind us your name I'm Karen Hergashimer I just want to thank you for your time today and share with you guys how important the library is to my family it's a community center it's not just a place we go and check out books we go and we feel safe there we feel included we feel part of a community and it's the only public space that I can say that about in Essex Junction for my family and learning about the budget and hearing these discussions is is terrifying for my children because they can't imagine not having a place that they can go to that feels safe so I just wanted to share that and how special a place it is for me and people I talk to and and what what a what a binding part of our community it is and how important it is to the fabric today and in the future thank you thanks thank you just hope we put some of these comments on the Brano website there's a fantastic things to hear about a community resource so I appreciate people taking time to share them we've heard a lot of it online I will keep everyone on but I think it's even more powerful in person when you can see the expressions and I just think staff and trustees should be very proud of the resource they built and continue to operate and it's amazing to hear these things it's it's truly wonderful so thank you um I think you've spoken no I'm kidding we're gonna talk you know giving people the time now because it's getting late and we're probably opened up again when we're talking about the budget so it's really up to you okay okay it's a threat Chris yeah it's a threat I'm all kidding aside if anybody there's anybody else who wants to say anything okay so let's move it doesn't look like it so let's move on and and see where we can get with this so we can get to Saturday and and I don't mean that in a joking way it sounds like we're okay with the chart on page one I'd like to get past that and incorporate those changes for Saturday is that agreeable agree sounds like it okay um be the minority on that one okay it does not the final time we're doing anything with us yep the admin allocation change described on page two yep of the narrative that further reduces the the rate a bit are we comfortable with that thanks great Amber you're good yes um are there and you know we're we already talked about um needing time to get to ponder the report we received this morning yep so are there any other specific changes that we as a group would like to see for the presentation on Saturday at this point or are we comfortable hearing what people come back and what we talk about at that event to bring back on the 14th I'm fine Amber looks good I'm gonna take Amber's expression I mean she's good I am happy moving forward with what changes you just asked for and the budget as it currently is great um whatever that motion needs to be I make it working for I don't know but there was a motion there I think there is a motion getting it getting there yeah um there were many right there was a few or is it just the one just the one I see oh I see yes please and and before you do that yes Regina do you have anything else to add to this conversation this or Jess sorry to I do not have anything to add other than um your your agenda says warning of public hearing that should have been struck apologies for that you don't need to warn a public hearing you've already did that in December we're speaking with those dates so Saturday's event already was warned as a public hearing and then the 28th of February will be the second one thank you yeah Jess you're you're happy or at least I just want to make one clarification that the items in the chart or the table on page 18 are already incorporated into the file that you have tonight thank you for that I just want to make sure that everybody was okay so now would be a good time sure before we make a motion to move on good evening Richard Smith still resident of the junction talking as a resident of the junction just clarify so I one it is great to hear some of the voices in the community come in and speak strongly for something I think we too often and and I all met right now I'm taking my master's program in public public administration so one of the things they point out is often your loudest voices are the ones that feel most impacted and know about what's going on our community is very good about not always knowing about what's going on if I multiple times I would just say I volunteer for an organization that they believe is full time they just don't understand what's going on in their community and and I I have concerns when when you save 520 hours that saves $52,000 we pay in the librarians $1,000 an hour so when we when we put stuff out that says that's what saves that there must have been other things that were saved as well or we're paying librarians very well I'm going to become a librarian of no as well when we talk about merging the city we talked about how we'd get rid of duplicate systems and I would be interested as a resident to see if we've gotten rid of duplicate systems or if certain organizations and departments are still using systems that they're comfortable with instead of moving over to the systems the organization I volunteer with the fire department we got rid of systems and moved over to the city systems to get rid of those duplicate costs and to focus on that and those are areas that we don't normally ask those questions of but I think as a city resident I'm interested to see did we get rid of duplicate systems or did some departments decide to hold on to ones that they're most comfortable with instead of looking at saving the cost for the taxpayer and though it may only be $6,000 when we start doing those 6,000 across 13 different departments we start actually coming out with some real savings and last meeting that everybody kept asking like what saves 1% on 11 million dollars it's $110,000 so if you saved six across 13 you saved 1% for your residents at that point and those are the things I think as a city resident I'm most concerned about is those conversations are happening and that's where we can save probably the small amounts but across multiple departments and I think when I talk what actually I don't think when I talk to you that's what I want you to ask those questions and that's where I think we need to dive into is where can we save those 6,000 across multiple departments because people held on to what they were comfortable with instead of learning the new systems that are available I will respond and say subscription services or the bugaboo of my my personal bugaboo and yet that is where we're going and then you can see them add up well so it is I think for this board it's been a focus of like trying to really I think staff to just just again this is the second budget but a lot of that nitpicking has gone on yet and I'm sure there's probably going to be more opportunity but fun things like trying to extend out because we're at IT subscribe-based service right now extend out accounts to other people that actually costs us more so we're working on that definitely hear you um and again that's where the the nickel and diming sometimes feels silly but it does that up yeah and we're really just like we talked about we're really just trying to find out what the actual is going to be after so yeah I totally hear you yeah I mean I think we've all had that moment where we realized that like both of us are paying for the dual membership to like planet fitness and you're like why are we doing that and I feel the city if we look across their departments is doing that in areas okay maybe not plant fitness but thank you thank you is there any comment to that from from Regina or Jess um I just want to make one comment just to um clarify that we definitely are not paying library staff a thousand dollars I do appreciate you clarifying that um um you want to are we ready for that motion I believe we are I will move that the city council approve the preliminary budget with any amendments second any further comment hearing none all those in favor say aye aye aye that was amber uh motion passes um so it looks like that portion is done um moving back up to the agenda five c discussion and consideration of neighborhood development area expansion Jess if you're dropping off thank you for joining us okay so Chris is still with us yes yeah so I think most of the information that's uh you need for this is in the packet but in summary uh the planning commission uh has been looking at this for a while um and the uh we're we're looking uh we put together a draft uh application uh to the states to extend the neighborhood development area this is a state designated area which uh would carry some some benefits mostly for uh home owners and uh landowners who want to develop but also for some uh some city programs we may be able to uh you'll extend some benefits to the city as well if if it's necessary in the future uh but yeah maybe I'll just answer whatever questions uh city council has about it um amber marcus any questions I'm good no questions from me yeah I don't I think the information included in the packet made it pretty clear for me I think we've touched on this in the past um to be clear this seems to extend just want to make sure I'm clear extends from what one might consider the downtown city core down pearl street to the jug hand just before the jug handle at west street extension down park street almost to the bridge or at the bridge up main i can't that's right uh main to about can't even read that don't even educational drive just beyond the town office out um two way towards colchester to about the turnoff um as you go into the asics high school complex and a little bit of brown maple short way up maple um right so these boundaries were uh designed to mimic the uh the design review overlay district because the the intention of that district was that there was going to be development happening in in those area anyway those areas anyway uh this state um the uh says that municipalities can extend by default the designation up to a quarter mile radius uh of the uh the village center designation which we already have so that's what this buffer shows but we also know that pearl street is incredibly important in terms of a transit corridor which is set for growth um and that's that's why it extends the application extends west as well it's and it goes just to the rail tracks can i can i ask why not down to susie wilson why not down to the border along the further stretch of 15 pearl street um we're already stretching what what the state says they be allowed to give us and also one of the requirements is walkability and and there's a sidewalk on one side of the street there but in terms of transit access which is which was my my main argument for going down pearl street at all right now there's only transit access in one direction hopefully that can be fixed in the future but uh at this point it doesn't i i just didn't believe that uh there'll be any chance we get it okay hammer anything from you i can't see you but um and elaine marcus already said he was good do you have any questions about this i don't i'm glad we're doing this okay yeah me too great um so i move that the city council authorize the application for the expansion of the neighborhood development area boundaries through the vermont department of housing and community development designation program second uh great i have motion in a second without just go to comment would you mind i will take my motion thank you is there anyone present or anyone online that has any comments they'd like to make on this program or this business item this evening going back to zoom so i can see if you're not seeing any hands up in the room i do not see any hands up online give it another couple seconds for anyone online that wants to make a comment seeing none marcus would you please make that motion again i move that the city council authorize the application for the expansion of the neighborhood development area boundaries through the vermont department of housing and community development designation program second great motion is second without further discussion all those in favor say aye aye as opposed nay motion passes five zero thank you thanks chris um moving on to five d discussion of two link and renovation plan update harlan is here hello hello um how would you like me to go about this obviously there's a memo in there um and i've laid out some details in there would you like me to just highlight that and then kind of go from there just the highlights would be sure so um obviously everybody's been looking for some answers and and trying to understand what we've been spending all this time on um so it's been going on for a while but there was a lot of things that we had to discover and find out the people that we had to bring forward to bring this forward so our initial steps we started this back in march of 2022 and started bringing on we secured an architect and developed some initial floor plans and went over several designs there where we got staff involved and said okay this is a floor plan that we've laid out and staff was like yeah how do i get from point a to point b because this is what my job so we did a lot of changing around with a lot of staff input january through april of 23 we continued the floor plans to bring up and um bring on engineering teams and then april 23 through july of 23 we've developed some IRFPs for construction managers developed draft contracts uh did a lot of exploratory demolition not very many people look up when you're walking around but you'll see where we got some patches in the ceilings throughout the building where we ripped the ceilings open to find out how this building was put back to get or put together years ago um and then in the the budgeting process originally when the architects came on they gave us a an an initial guess as to what they thought the project overall would would be and then there were some out of pocket costs um that we were going to be facing out of pocket costs or um moving in moving out the garbage that we're going to throw out that may be lying in the building to get out of the way for construction insurance policies that we're going to have to carry on the construction project itself those types of items are not built into the actual construction costs that the construction manager is going to be giving to us so when i'm talking about out of pocket costs those are the things over and above just doing the construction project itself um so obviously you can see the original one came in with all the engineering fees and the rest of it at about 3.1 million dollars probably another half a half a million dollars potentially in out of pocket costs when we brought the construction manager on board after we went through that bid process and the construction manager was was able to take the initial documents that we had designed at that point and they made a lot of assumptions as well but they came back with a 2.9 so our architect wasn't too far off on on the original numbers when they were making the guess they came back 2.9 out of pocket um they brought up some other concerns with us and we felt like our out of pocket costs were looking a little bit different than what we had originally projected so the overall cost didn't change a whole lot so we went back to the drawing board to work within the parameters that we've been given by the city council um on the budget and we started removing some stuff out of the project um and in the process of removing some of this stuff out of the project our construction manager came back with another review of if we were to take these things out of the project where they felt the project could get down to we got down to 2.4 we're we're still our out of pocket costs we've got a basic idea on some of them but there's some stuff that we just don't know so that's why you're seeing a three hundred thousand dollar range there um we are working in the process of trying to really pin those down at the moment so that we can narrow that number and really give you a substantial number but that's another step in the process um so we're currently working on the design to see if the project can be reduced further um because we have approximately two point five million dollars for the project including out of pocket expenses and we want to be prepared with a solid contingency amount contingency amounts that we have to hold so we've got a two by two hole cut the ceiling and within that two by two hole they can probably see 10 square feet of how the structure is put together um when in reality we're probably trying to assume that whatever we can see in that 10 square feet is 100 square feet so the contingency is when we rip the roof out and we go in and start taking a look at that stuff if we start finding cracked support beams and so on and so forth that would not be part of what we considered was going to be the normal renovation we're going to need some money to cover those costs so that's the contingency that we're trying to hold um so that kind of brings that piece of it together our next steps are we're going to bring the construction drawings to 50 percent we're probably somewhere around 17 or 20 percent right now getting them to 50 percent really gets into some details how many um zones heating zones air conditioning zones how many uh how many elevators we're really going to get in some more detail from the engineers to bring back to the construction manager who will again reevaluate the project with input from our engineers and and how we want to build the function um to bring back a second price to us while we're working on that piece um internally we're going to be searching out our out of pocket costs and trying to bring that number into a more realistic piece to bring to you so we're going to get the second cost cost estimate of the project from the construction manager once we get that 50 percent level which is predicted to happen the 50 percent level should be February 15th so hopefully sometimes shortly after that just before March we may have our second number um our second swing from the construction manager and then uh develop a proposed construction schedule um i'm going to continue through the memo we're going to try to identify all the out of pocket costs um and develop a transition plan to run the municipality during the construction so our current thought process because we're working within certain parameters uh within the budget obviously we still have a municipality we have to run um and the senior center because of where all the parking is going to take place the senior center would not be you wouldn't be able to get the senior bus in to drop the people off there to come in up to rides um i have a photo of one of the events for one of the senior centers and this center parking lot this center parking lot is going to be completely used by construction trailers and vehicles that have to be close enough to the building to perform certain works on it as as they're doing the building and then because that area is filled that's the main entrance to the teen center so there was some questions out there earlier about whether or not the the senior center could be used for senior services and if the scenes or the teen center could try to operate out of the upper area and the question is not because of the safety factors that go into it not enough room to get them in there so in that purpose it was like okay we're going to have these two big open spaces and we need to find a place to run the municipality and one of the problems i'm sure you know when the town moved over to an outside building is people went to go pay their taxes and they couldn't find out where their municipality was it was very difficult so we're taking a look at it and we don't know that we can a hundred percent fit in there but we believe that we can because a lot of our staff as we know COVID has taught us a lot of services or a lot of things can be done from home you don't always have to be in the office so we're hoping a lot of the municipal staff will be able to work from home i've identified at least four key figures that would be here every day and we believe that we can run that area out of the senior center and then the large open space up above could be used as storage for the items that we need to move out of the construction area and put into storage for a certain amount of time now whether all of that square footage works for everything we still have to work that detail out but that's our initial plan right now we have talked with the fire department and we knew that we were going to affect the fire department that parking that's along the end of the building here at the end which is airmarked for the fire department we will create signs have signs made that turn that into temporary business only municipal business only if you're coming to pay your taxes or whatever the case may be it'll be temporary parking in those spaces and you'll be able to walk from there not into the construction site right around the corner and come into the door of the senior center and not be in the the dangerous zone of construction equipment moving around trucks load and unloading um so we've talked with the fire department and they believe that during those times from seven to five p.m. we are not going to hamper their operation by using only those we are definitely hoping to set up that office so that that area can be kept an eye on and make sure that we don't have anybody row parking there and leaving their vehicles for a long time um so we've been in touch with the fire department uh at the moment the plan is we should not interfere much with the traffic that would come up in front of brownout library and the back library staff members that are going to work here will be asked to utilize other parking lots depending on the timing um there is the summer street school parking lot which is right across school street here we've got the public parking garage um in behind fire burden and obviously along the sides so our staff will also not utilize the back parking lot so that we're trying not to interfere with um the library's use uh the people there are some offices in the white building over on the other side that need parking so we realize that we're we're putting a lot of stuff and so we're going to accommodate that as much as possible we spoke to the construction company about this particular plan and asked them about the amount of traffic that they're going to bring in and they will make it a point that the contractors that are coming to work here onsite that don't need their vehicle onsite will also utilize out of area parking and not the back parking lot to try to make sure that we're not entering the library so we're trying we're doing our due diligence to make sure that we operate as smoothly as possible without interfering too much um i just want to go through this real quickly we've also talked to the contractors as far as maintaining water electricity and there are going to be some interruptions there are going to be a day or two that we might have to close the municipal office to make certain connections um within the the project and we hope to get enough notice in advance ahead of time to notify everybody so we don't believe it's going to be a hundred percent flawless but we believe dollar wise it is in our best interest confusion wise it is in our best interest if we move the municipal office to another area we know we are going to get some people that are going to drive here they're going to look for it they're going to ask the construction company they're going to walk into the construction zone and ask the construction company and the construction company is going to be like i don't know where they went where literally now somebody walking by is going to be able to point over to the door and say yep right through that door um so we're hoping to keep the confusion down for the community by trying to stay within the same footprint of where we are now for them to come in and get receive the services that they need from the municipal office i think i've touched on enough that i'm not sure if you want to ask any questions about that i did at about three o'clock this afternoon receive a couple of schedule proposals which are just preliminary and they hinge on a lot of things but i can kind of go through the two options that they threw out there very quickly and then we can have a discussion after that or we can talk about the things i've already said i don't have any questions about what you presented so far okay um so the construction manager i asked them to bring me to get me a schedule because we knew that we needed to get an answer to people as to when this was going to start um you've asked me a lot of times like first quarter what's going on so we could start as early as May but it becomes more expensive and it becomes longer we would be looking at we still would not complete the project until February of 25 and the reason behind that is lead times on equipment so we're going to go through the whole process eventually we're going to come to you you're going to improve the funding and the scheduling um or or the project itself once we get it into a package that's acceptable and at that point that's when all the wheels start to turn an elevator how long out is an elevator lead May June July August September so it's about it's about six months lead time on an elevator from the time you order from the time they're even going to bring it in yeah so it doesn't make sense for me to start in May get a bunch of work done on the building and then stop working for a couple of months wait for the elevator to show up and the switch gear is for the electrical piece and then come back in and start doing it again that shuts us down completely for a much longer period of time so according to the schedules we're looking at a start date of August of this coming year is when the actual construction will start and because the logistics that I talked about where we need to move out here and we need to get the senior center set up and rearrange it so that we can run a municipal office out of it and we need to get things in storage for the senior center if this schedule so if the 50% construction runs don't get done by February 15th that's going to change the schedule and it just kind of keeps pushing everything down so we have talked to that team and are pushing them very hard to be completed with that um I was heading in a certain direction with that I lost my train thought thank you for talking about when when folks would have to start moving correct so for the seniors we would be looking at um June 1st that we would stop using the senior center as um anything other than supporting the renovation and then the team center would need to be vacated by the end of June which is just about the time that they slow down um because school's out and they're they're busy as well school is in session so they would be slowing down their programming at that point anyways um so and again to be clear the senior center is itself will be relocated and through EJRP they will relocate it somewhere else so I just want to make sure that it's also that we're clear about this that correct and that's a that's a better discussion to have with um with Brad and Mark as to the to the exact layout I have been around when some of those conversations and there are a lot of spaces throughout the city that we have that we can utilize to maintain the same programs that seniors are doing um I'm not worried about that detail right now I just want to make sure that nobody grabs a clip of that and goes see they're shutting us down in June so just yeah that has been the narrative yeah yeah and they will be back right they will definitely be back and and it's very possible that within the changes to try to get the municipality in there and and make everything work out of those spaces um we're hoping that that they'll come back and and be very happy with this on so great thank you okay so we bottom line is and Regina just looks like we'll know more on February 15th we should know more yes I would I would say by February 15th we will definitely know more and really start to be able to lock some of those in and and again with construction everybody's planning that none of those beams are going to be cracked so everything is always tentative as to the delivery of equipment and what we what we find when we open it up and but if everything goes the way that we plan and these guys have been doing this type of work for years and years so they you know they've got a good feel for it it should be about a seven to an eight month project and we should be moving back in and even after they complete we still have to move back in so even though we're looking at a about a mid-February finish date we're probably not looking until an end of March in 25 for everybody to move back into the other areas and and and be back to the operation that we're running now so it probably works out to be about a nine month nine to ten month shutdown of some of the stuff. Regina do you have anything to add to this that you wanted to jump in with? I don't think so I was going to clarify that senior center bit so thank you Marcus thanks Harlan I think you did a great job and it is great to finally have these somewhat schedule like Harlan said it's still subject to a lot of different things but to have some sense of rough start time is helpful. Then Raj I just want to say Christina just turned on her camera she didn't there's not a raised raised hand so you might not see that but if you're open to it I think she'd like to make a comment. Yeah but just one sec Alain you wanted to say something? I just wanted to um I'm thinking about the August primary and the November general election and how the clerk's office is going to manage not being in their space and just putting in a plug to make sure that you're connecting with the clerk's office on a regular basis. We have been in conversations with the clerk's office and there's a lot more conversations um community development Terry they have a lot of files downstairs and I don't know how many of those they need and I'm not sure I can get all those file and cabinets into that space um so there's still a lot of detail we have to work out that's why I say this is what we are thinking and we are hoping but we're not 100 positive that's the next phase now that we have the engineers and the architects working and they've got a deadline to work with that now shoots me off into another direction of what fits where and and how do we actually make this work I've done some logistics on on the back side as to the mechanical pieces and water and electricity and and IT to supply all of the computers and the workstations um that we're going to need to get in there to continue to run the municipality now it's it's the details. Terry how many of these file folders do you have to have access to on a regular basis Susan what do you need to make sure that you can take care of the primaries and everything else that's going to happen throughout that process what will happen to the vault uh the vault uh glad you asked that question we actually talked to the construction company I've talked with Susan as to how often she needs to get to it we are there is a fire rated filing cabinet that is crazy heavy HR has one we are probably going to purchase another one and we're going to put it in there the stuff that she needs to get to on a regular basis she tells me she can work out of that filing cabinet and we have made arrangements with the construction company that we will give them heads up to let them know that we need to get into the vault for a particular reason Susan's probably going to have to have a hard hat an orange vest and some silto shoes but we are going to make arrangements for her to be able to access the vault she believes that it could be once twice a week having the filing cabinet in place but that was a conversation that we had with her to make sure that we could we knew the vault was going to be there but it's going to be in the midst of a lot of construction so the construction company is is very happy to work with us to make sure that we can still have access to that when we need it. Amber, Marcus, anything? Yeah so on the construction plan so it sounds like you know basically take everything out of here it's going to be work and so everything's going to move over there in this particular space or I don't really think how it phrases so are you are you planning that all construction will happen at the same time versus talking about let's say starting with the clerk's end of the building and working your way this way so that say the clerk could open before the construction. Pardon me or something of that nature that could also a phased approach that might also help get us from point A to point yeah it won't be a phased approach it'll be the demolition guys are going to come in and demolish everything that they need to demolish the sheetrock guys are going to work from one end to the other to get all the sheetrock up same thing with the electricians I mean electricity starts at your panel and then it has to branch out and to to bring the electrician in and have him run that section yeah and hook it into a panel and then have the sheet rocker go in and do that and try to continue to use this section here and then come in and try to demolish that section it would be a year and a half to a two-year project and you could probably add 30 or 40 percent to the cost the other question that I'll ask then is in regards to the project itself can from from memory I'm struggling to remember so what has come off the plan and do you anticipate that whatever came off the plan in order to get from the 2.9 down to 2.4 right sure what came off that plan and then are we going to be coming back to that at a later date or is it really something that we can live with that it's something we're going to live with it's some convenience pieces so originally we were going to bring the building to a three-phase power one of the benefits of three-phase power is that you're distributing the amperage over three legs things run cooler it's a little more energy efficient and things run faster so we're going to go to three-phase power which meant we were going to need to upgrade the generator to a three-phase generator we were still going to so the fire department is still connected and we're still going to continue to supply them with single phase there was some talk at some point that whatever we did here had to match there because it was connected and that's not actually the case and then all of our HVA systems would be three phase and you know so there's there's some very minimal cost savings over the real long run going to a three phase system but there's a lot of upfront costs we have since then and we were going to move the generator off from this area because we were looking at potentially a nice very nice three bay entrance area where they were going to sink be some benches and patios out there and make it more aesthetically pleasing to enter into the building so we're going to move the generator to one of the islands in the back parking lot and we're going to refeed that that's all been changed keeping the same generator sticking with single phase our elevator is now instead of going from floor one to floor two in three seconds it's probably going to take seven seconds because single single phase elevators are slower but we're only a two-story building it'll it'll traverse three stories so that was something that we did uh there was in our lobby we were going to do some more period type design of the age of this building which was a vaulted ceiling with slap boards like it would have been done back then that's gone we're now going to a two by two industrial tile there was and we haven't given up on this it's taken a little more bandwidth to try to figure it out and we've had some great help from the chitin county planning commission trying to help us out in vltc the systems that we were going to put in we're going to incorporate a heat pump to incorporate a heat pump into a conventional system because the heat pump will not cover the all the temperature swings within the state of roman to incorporate a heat pump into that system as a large dollar amount you can reduce the cost of those systems still heat near condition the building and the long run it costs us more money there are some plans out there that this is some of the things that i am now going to concentrate on making sure that we can fit everything in the piece of the puzzle i got to take a look at these programs and see if they will give us enough money for heat pump to put those back in but to get down to that 2.4 we got down to there um the av system that we were talking about for three i'm just gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you guys take us off one okay sorry my sleep warning just went off sure that's good i'm good i apologize apple is sending me home no that's fine um no disrespect met that's fine that's um we've got uh christina who really wants to comment from sxchips so amber lane you don't have anything else no sorry i don't i know it was rude but we're getting into some serious weeds i'm good um so christina thank you for joining us thank you so for those of you who don't know i'm the director of sxchips we're in the space upstairs at two linkin we serve over 140 kids each week in our free after school program we have lots of evening programming for the community parent support groups lots of good things um since i started my position over two years ago i've been shown blueprints and ben told that that's what's going to happen we're happy that we're finally approaching that um there definitely has been a lack of clarity i'm glad to hear the timeline tonight our two main spaces are not being touched by this project we will return with indoor outdoor carpeting that looks to be 15 plus years old holes in the walls holes in the ceiling um paint and um walls that are crumbling and i think that's that's sad for our families in sx junction we do serve the whole sx westford school district foundry but it's primarily sx junction families that we're serving so we're being asked to move and nothing will be touched and to hear that actually our space could be used for city offices when these families are relying on what we're providing at no cost to them is startling um so i would can you know really like to know if there's any consideration in the city offices being moved to the meeting room at the library or someplace else in close proximity uh and really still put a plug since the construction isn't touching what we call our big room and very little is happening in our game room to really consider trying to allow us to continue serving the families of sx junction um roginia would you like to take that or harlan i think the offices were intended to go into the senior center space not the chip space right on the second floor um the large room was described as being used for some storage during the and the reason for being asked to move is there's just no access to the building that's safe and accessible um i'm not even thrilled about the staff being here but i don't know where else we go um i don't know if there's anything else to add to answer that i mean i'm i'm happy to if roginia doesn't doesn't have anything to to head in that direction i'm happy to explain a little bit more about them but harlan um so the the big room that she's talking about which is directly over the senior center and we've discussed this in some of the conversations that we've had with her that she'll be able to utilize that space as storage for some for stuff that she's going to need to move out of the team center as well the other area needs to be sealed off um and that's why it's safe to put staff in over at the senior center and the upper area is also going to be sealed off because of the amount of work that's going to be created in this area and the office areas to change over the offices um the amount of dust and so on and so forth there's no way of keeping it out of the other room that she's referring to um that's not going to be utilized and that there's not going to be a lot of work the room is not going to change a lot but there's a lot of work within that area that's going to create an environment that you just can't put people into and so these three brick buildings because this brick building is actually three buildings are going to be sealed off so that air cannot transfer between the two because of the dust and the atmosphere that's going to be within these areas so unfortunately I haven't been able to have this conversation with Christina I don't believe she's brought that one particular area and I could have explained at that point that those areas are just not going to be habitable by anybody um and then the larger area again the only access to it is to go up through and then well they do have the fire exit on the other side where I was concerned right off the top of my head I was concerned about exit strategy if there was the vent of a problem going on but that upstairs area during the construction process really is only good for storage we won't be putting any people up there but we would be storing anything that she is not able to utilize within that time for the teen center so all of their office space so on and so forth we are however working on within the plans a lot of detail but there there are a lot of improvements being made to the other sections of these teen center offices um and a break room art room type areas we've made a lot of improvements and some door changes and some security some security issues that she's brought up that we've addressed with her and change the plan several times in order to accommodate those spaces but there's just no way you can have anybody in that other big room during construction or is there may I just say one other thing sure we also run the little free food pantry and the box for that is in front between the bus stop and brown now we distribute over 700 items of food a month we do an annual back to school drive an annual warm coat drive without a place on site to store that food it's not going to be able to be circulated at the five corners we don't know where we're going to be with the after school program we can ask but we already have an established clientele that are coming to the food pantry if the senior center is able to be used for city offices I hope that we would be able to use it as storage for the food pantry so we could maintain filling that during the period of construction I as I said I don't even know I can fit the municipality in there yet so that that's definitely something we will take a look at I think there may be some other possibilities within this compound depending on what that what how much cubic feet that storage would you stay connected on that going forward and keep that absolutely absolutely trying to find a space for that yep it's my good opportunity for partnership or discussion with the library that's one of the pieces of the compound that I was thinking off top of my head I was thinking that's a possibility um the fire department's not man full time all the time so that that would be a little more difficult to get in and out of so um but we will we will definitely keep that conversation open and and try to find that space as I'm trying to find space for everything else as well yeah I appreciate that uh is there anyone else that'd like to comment on this particular business item there's no action that needs to be taken by the board no action not seeing anyone in the room not seeing anyone line not seeing anyone in line christine thanks for joining us um coming back to the agenda beavers beavers third time's a try sorry about this uh we have had this on the consent agenda you approved it the motion in order for beavers to accept this ask the motion needs to be read in its entirety into the minutes I'm ready here I go I move that the city council approve adding the addition of the beavers DC plan to the city retirement benefit package effective July 1st 2024 current beavers eligible employees will be given a one time irrevocable option to switch to the beavers DC plan on July 1st 2024 all beavers eligible employees hired after that date of this vote will be enrolled in the respective db group and a notice of employment will be sent to beavers a second the motion in a second any discussion not hearing any all those in favor say hi hi hi hi pose nay motion passes cool we'll be very happy we do not forget to read the motion exactly as written and highlighted in you um we also have five f um corrections to the minutes from the gen uh January 10th meeting Marcus you had one so noting the fact that the reference to the appointment of Michael sorry I don't want Michael and John to the bike walk advisory committee um it shows two votes one for five zero one for four one I seem to remember this was the four one so I think that this this first mention of a vote of five zero is incorrect and should be omitted well we had to vote to get out of executive session as well so I think the four one is the vote for the appointments oh no that was after I think they're respective um do we have notes from that uh yeah I can get I can get that look back and get back for a bike walk and then the there was another committee yes and that's not but we didn't do anything on that that's right right um if you can handle that Virginia that'd be great that is starts on line 71 and my addition was to add who is a person that is also here tonight um Chief Gaborio as an attendee to that meeting um and that meeting had several people speaking from the audience that were not picked up on mic um so I was trying to be very careful tonight and we'll be going forward to ask anyone that's speaking to get in front of a microphone because we forget we can hear people in the room didn't really pick up what you were saying but I wanted to correct the minutes to say you were here and on line 83 when we were talking about the Vermont alert um Chief Gaborio mentioned or asked that he be included on that fire was included in the memo but I wanted to specifically add to line where my notes said 83 um that fire department chief Chris Gaborio will be will have access to the program or something there about because we did discuss that access being provided to the EJFD um we ended with it being in the you know fire was included in the list we talked about it he was here so I want to make sure we noted that yep so those two changes so I move to accept those minutes with the changes just just I'll second uh any discussion no hearing none all those in favor say hi hi motion passes um consent agenda I'll move we approve the consent agenda second please I will make the comment that we are approving um a renewal for a cannabis license and an approval of a new cannabis license and just express frustration at the lack of a better word silliness that we're even considering these considering there's apparently nothing we can ask about in this process so um a little odd um but that's what we're doing and yeah so without any other discussion all those in favor approve the consent agenda say hi hi hi motion passes reading file council member and manager comments who wants to go first I have some just plain ones you go ahead should Regina go Regina would you like to go um sorry lane you go ahead because I have to try to find these I know um two things I wanted to point out the article um item c about the innovative work that's happening at our wastewater treatment facility and that Chelsea Chelsea Mandigo is one of the authors of that paper and it's just really impressive what our wastewater treatment facility is doing in terms of mitigating phosphorus and I really just want to honor Chelsea for that I it's amazing work that we're doing and um the other comment I wanted to make is unfortunately I cannot be here on Saturday for the community meeting I am deeply disappointed I have to work and I cannot get out of it so I will not be able to be there on Saturday I'm very sorry to miss it and I really hope that it's being recorded yes okay sure uh so I'm I'm with you and I wish I could be there on Saturday um same thing I gotta work we're gonna be out of town but that being said I do want to make sure and bring up and identify to the public that next week Monday and Tuesday there will be a number of focus groups on six pillars for as extension um there will be conversations this weekend at the community meal and uh more discuss more information will be gathered at that time for our strategic planning process I want to encourage our residents to go to our website look at the strategic plan and look at these six pillars and see if there's an opportunity if there's a chance you can participate um I will say we do have people sign up for these right now but I feel like the numbers are low and I and I fear that coming out of this process they're gonna be the numbers are gonna be so small that it's gonna feel like we had three people deciding the direction of this community so I really would like our residents to pay attention to this and sign up I will just say these out loud quickly there's six pillars housing and density public services and facilities economic development transportation and connectivity environment and community engagement all of them super important based on the conversations I've had with constituents so please come out and participate and be a part of the strategic planning process you can see how earlier we had this conversation about rental registry doesn't matter if you were on one side or the other that came out of the discussions from residents and the strategic then the you know comprehensive plan process before this will garner other projects and the direction for the city moving forward so please I would like people to sign up I encourage our committee members to sign up residents please thank you thank you Regina um so um that was awesome because he said what's on my notes here to say for the manager report I will only add that we also have um uh we're calling it a coffee chat I'm gonna call it a budget chat because it's virtual and it's at 6 p.m but the next one is on February 6th great so we'll be taking questions um on the budget then as well awesome all right well if there's nothing else I'll take a motion to adjourn so moved so great all those in favor say aye aye we are adjourned