 635. Okay, I'll call the meeting to order. Anyone who's just talked, mentioned a little bit about meeting logistics, if you're joining remotely, please change your name on your computer display to your first and last name. Anyone who wishes to speak, please state your name and where you live. We ask that you keep your comments or questions under two minutes. If you're speaking about a specific agenda item, please keep your comments germane to the topic at hand. Anyone who wishes to speak, can anyone hear me? How about now? Is it coming out now? Anything? Okay, great. Sorry about that, folks. Anyone who wishes to speak, must be called on by the mayor. Once you're called on, you may make a statement or ask a question, but if you have multiple comments or questions, please move them all together so as to avoid having a back and forth between members of the council and members of the public. And if he's working for you, Donna. Okay. And or whatever you may be interrupted. First item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. And we have a couple of changes. Item number seven, the public arts commission update is not ready to go forward tonight. So that's off the agenda. Also item number eight, the request from Heaton Woods. Someone's vital to discussion is not able to be here tonight. So we'll take that up at another time. And I think that's all of them, right? Okay. First next item is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public who wishes to address the council on any item, not on tonight's agenda. We have a total of 30 minutes and no more than three minutes per person. And I'll scan the people in the in the room to see if anyone wants to be wants to address the council. Looks like not. So we'll take comments from people online starting with Peter Kellman. I would just ask that something be done about the website. I guess it's in transition from some former way that agendas and meeting agenda is just to work to something else. But this is I brought this to the attention of Evelyn from last week, but it's it's broken. Thank you. Thanks, Peter. I think it is a work in progress and hopefully we'll get on top of that. Anybody else online? I am not seeing any hands raised. Okay, we can move next to the consent agenda. And there are some items that are we've asked that people have asked to remove from the consent agenda. The water system hydraulic analysis, do we want that off? Okay, and the country club road update and the amendment of the memorandum memorandum of understanding with the Mountaineers. Anything else that people need would like to remove from the consent agenda? Okay. Yes, please. The consent agenda moving D and J. And is it D and J? I'm saying. Okay. Okay. Those are showing up as different items, different letters and on mine, but fine. Well, I can, I can say them out loud. The water system, country club road and Mountaineers. Yes. Okay. Is there a second? All those in favor, any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Why don't we just take the others items up in order right now? The water system hydraulic analysis, and I see Kurt in the room. Hello. I'm Kurt Modica, director of public works. So yeah, we have two amendments on was on the consent agenda for tonight regarding the proposal here in the back. Okay, great. Okay. So amendment number one is related to more detailed analysis on the capacity at the fire hydrants within the water system. Something that we've always wanted is a quick reference for both DPW and the fire department. Long term goal would be to color coat the nozzle covers on the hydrants so that for quick reference, you kind of have a range. There's guidelines for through American Public Works Association for what colors you use for different flow ranges. And I think this is the right time to do that. And so that's amendment one. We put it in to the state back in February. There's a long lead time on the review for the state to approve that amendment. This amendment is 100% funded by the state. So it's a loan, but it's loan forgiveness through subsidy. So that's amendment number one. Amendment number two is related to the state of Vermont's comments on the draft report. They had pretty extensive requests as far as doing additional hydraulic analysis, looking at other alternatives than what the consultant provided in the report. So it's a high level of effort more than the original scope carried and the original contract. So this amendment, again, is 100% funded through the state. So no cost direct to the city and also has been reviewed and approved by the state. And we really need to advance it tonight in order to be able to be able to hold the public comment meeting on May 10th. We want the opportunity to be able to go through the consultant's response to the various comments from the state, and they can't start that work until we, you know, execute this amendment, allowing them to do the additional services. Any questions from members of the law? One question, are you thinking of inviting someone from DEC to join us at that meeting? It should be really helpful to be able to hear from them directly instead of trying to read between the lines. Yeah, absolutely. We already have invited them. I do plan to have someone here. Thank you. So thanks, Kurt, I appreciate the explanation. It didn't make sense to me when I looked at the amendment number one and saw that the signature was back in January and and it talked about putting a table into the report that was sent in February. So I didn't quite understand what was up with that. But it sounds like it took a while for that to be approved by the state. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Any other questions from Eric? I just like to make a motion that we authorize the city manager or does he need to execute amendments number one and two to the preliminary engineering report on the water system hydraulic analysis as well as the associated drinking water state revolving loan fund amendment. Oh, second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? OK, thank you. OK, next we have Country Club Road update. Are you on for this? OK. Sure. So we put this item on the agenda to brief counsel in advance of the next public engagement sessions, which will be starting on Saturday included in that memo are some of the costs of the infrastructure, which I know was of particular interest to the council. And so we wanted to get this in front of you. We will be bringing the results from the public engagement sessions forward in May at the May 24th meeting. So there will be an opportunity for more discussion. And so teaming it up there. Are there specific questions? Yes, you're right. Thanks, Kelly. I'm a little curious. The there are three. There's there's a brief update letter with some costs. And then there are three diagrams. Is that the extent of the presentation that's going to be made? Are there I mean, I really recall last time there was a fairly elaborate slideshow and yes. So there will be slides to accompany those three concepts. But those three concepts will really be the showcase of that presentation. OK. It's not clear to me where some of the. Some of the cost numbers come from and where they start and stop. So, for example, I noticed that the recreation and community area is not included. But I wonder where where does the infrastructure that the numbers apply to start and stop? In other words, is is anything accounted for from, say, route to up the hill through the rec. Community area to the housing area, just as an example. OK. So I can certainly make sure that we do touch base with the consultants to be sure to describe that as part of the public engagement. My understanding is that the infrastructure costs do cover basically everything with the exception of that area that that is the recreation area. But that being said, you know, it may warrant a little bit more information and clarification. Well, yeah, I think there's sort of scary numbers to a lot of people and they're going to need to know in some detail. I'm sure that some people at the meetings are going to want. Sure. Yeah, so around again. Yeah, so we met this morning, the internal team to review that table and those numbers to go into detail at the presentations. And so your question about the infrastructure in particular and sort of the meets and bounds of that, I think we can flesh out a little bit. I in terms of the numbers and where those calculations are derived from, for instance, like the tiff portion of that table. We have already flagged it to be discussed further. That's good to hear. And Bill Fraser has his hand up. I'd like to still muted there. Yeah, I don't need any attention here. I just wanted to weigh in that. We put this forward when we were preparing to do the public outreach portion that's coming up, Kelly, brief me on what the team was. And I think I may be somewhat there may have been some confusion on our end. Just be clear. I just the message I sent was we need to make sure the council has seen these numbers, has seen these layout before we go showing them to the public that, you know, we weren't really planning to have every piece of the presentation put together. But we also didn't want to have any surprises or any of you showing up to some of the some of the public sessions, not having seen the magnitude or those kind of things. So I'm not sure we couldn't we didn't necessarily need to even put on the consent agenda could have just been in the weekly memo as here's what's going on. We just want to make sure you had had a chance to see it was really informational before so that you had the advanced peak. And of course, when you get the advanced peak, the public can see advanced peak, but that there were no surprises for any of you if you showed up. So so we appreciate the questions now. And I think that will help the presentations even more. And that was one of the reasons we wanted you to have them was whether you brought them up at this meeting or privately to any of us so that we can do a better job, but mostly so you didn't get caught hearing stuff the first time at a public session. Thanks, Bill, and we do enjoy your vacation. Good to see you here. Wouldn't miss it for anything. Kerry. Oh, so I don't know if this is a question that you can answer, Kelly, but I just wanted to kind of put it out there as we're thinking about the future and next steps. And it's we have these different possible concept ideas in front of us. And I'm wondering if the consultants, if part of their scope of work is to be looking at how any of these might actually be implemented, whether it involves, you know, selling lots or partnering with a developer or doing it ourselves or or all of that. Yes. So I think that the master plan that will come forward in June will have some pretty clear recommendations on next steps. There definitely will be some conversations around which way you want to go. Is there some really big policy items there? So, yeah, for sure. Excuse me if I use my post-it notes, but this one for me. There's this. We are nowhere near ready to make decisions. You get on top. Sorry. And we're not muted on this team. Sorry. Oh, you should be. Yeah. Oh, you stay muted. Yeah. Got it. OK, so you haven't done any engineering or up front work on this site from what I've been told. I think the numbers that we got from Whitenburg in this recent memo are high level estimates. One might use the term spitballing, but it gives you the sense that they're giving you a ballpark of some things that are anticipating would be issues to have on the radar screen. And the up front due diligence that probably should have happened in the very beginning still hasn't happened. And that's what's going to drive this process. Good development is not driven by public hearings. Good development is driven by data and the facts of the site and the details of what it will handle. Access roads and water sewer lines and utilities. None of that's been done. So this schedule that indicates that it's going to have these three public sessions to look at these plans that are without this data, just a waste of time and ridiculous, in my opinion. And they're just uninformed. You know, I look at the option three. There aren't even enough units on that even attempt to pay for the road. You're going to try to get there. You don't need an MBA in real estate development to look at that and come up with it. So really, at best, you've got two options of the options shown. Initially, I think that the last piece that Stephanie showed is there were five pods of development, five different sections that look like they could parsley be parceled out. Now we're just down to three. I'm just really concerned with the numbers we're seeing that I think are exceedingly low, even though they're big numbers and that we've cut the scale to back before we even get out of the box. This is not going to work. I think we need a total stop on this for a minute. We need to invest in the engineering. I think the public hearings. I'm not sure what we're pulling people through. You know, they're going to give us their ideas, share their thoughts, which is nice, but it's it's not based on data or information. It's just based on what they think it would be whether they feel, but it's not market data. It's not types of housing the market needs. You just sense my frustration. I think we're really goofing this up. And I'd rather stop it now and get it right than keep spending money on it. We hired a prestigious and rather expensive consultant to help us with this process and that's still rolling. But the results that you're going to generate from the process just don't think it's a good investment without the engineering data to drive it. OK, thanks. Yeah. And I guess the last piece I would suggest, but I think people I talked to in the community feel it's a good. They're excited about the potential for the project, but everyone I talked to also, you just the word affordable. They're concerned that we can afford to do this and how it's going to affect their taxes and will it affect our ability to pay for our water and sewer and infrastructure issues that we also have before us. So it's really big picture is how do we get this to be a viable project? If it's not, we should have an exit strategy for it. Thanks, Bill. I just want to mention that maybe it is in the chart. Maybe I couldn't read it right. Is it the total cost? Because we talk about that this project might take longer than five years. So are we talking about this, you know, cost for five year cost, one year cost, two year cost? And if we have something estimated like. City or, you know, this project can be done in six years and this will be the cost. And this cost will affect each individual resident in month, three years, that much money yearly. It will be, I think, very good start for people to decide if they want this or not, because if we don't know as a residence how much we have to contribute through taxes or other things, I think it will be difficult to decide to say yes or no. Thank you. Thanks. We're getting all those questions down. So are we said no action is required on this item? So. But is it possible to take action? I mean, if we want to slow it down, maybe put the public hearings on hold. Is that a motion I would need to make? It is a motion you could make. You know, I'm concerned about taking an action like that without having it on the agenda and. OK. And giving people an opportunity to to prepare for it, giving. City staff an opportunity to be able to respond. So so that I understand. But I hear I totally hear what you're saying. I brought it up three times now and I'm trying to find a way to learn the ropes here to figure out how to take action and don't just sit and listen all the time. I'm really concerned that the track we're on is not the right track. I don't know how the rest of the council feels. But it would be nice to get a sense of that. And Bill Fraser. You know, I can appreciate the the comments that Council Member Heaney has made and certainly has raised them before. And, you know, here's here's where we run into these these areas when we transition from one sort of iteration of the council to the next. The prior group was very clear and very specific about wanting a public process, public engagement process. And this plan was laid out and approved by that council. So we've been following that. And I do think that a change from that would be would probably require a vote of the council to do so. But I'd also just make another suggestion. I know I've mentioned it privately to Tim and maybe to the mayor. But one thing we could do and obviously it would be up to the council to decide a to do it and who does it. But one idea might be to have a council rep to the project team. And right now, it's just our staff and and the consultants and, you know, he could certainly refuse. But I think, you know, Council Member Heaney would be a great person because then he could really vet some of those questions and work it that way and help. So maybe we could continue the process and also be be dealing the right direction. If the council does want to do that, Tim does want to do it. Fine. But just one thought. I think that's a great idea. Tim, is that something you're you have the capacity to do? Does it need to be appointed? So everyone agree that Tim should. Build this role for us. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for volunteering. I think your input will be valuable. Excuse me, Jack, can I make one more comment? Yeah, I understand where where Tim is coming from. I also recall that during the discussions when White and Burke were making their presentation to be selected to consult this design of public input, early public input was a way of foreshortening some of the planning time, as I recall. They they were they were thinking they would be able to cut it from 18 months or two years down to maybe half of that. And I guess I'm at this point, we're so far along in that process, I'm willing to take one more step. But I can't imagine how a master plan could be produced, which is what they're they're saying they will present to us sometime in June without doing the kind of thing that Tim's talking about. So it might be that. It would be worth scheduling that for a future meeting. Thanks, Lauren. Did you have your hand up? Yeah, I really appreciate the discussion and issues being raised, and especially Tim's willingness to work with the with the team. I mean, one thought is as we're doing this public process, if there's a way to make sure that the team is really building in clear, like here's the information that the next phase is going to gather. Here are decision points, like I I do agree that I don't want it to seem like, oh, you've got A, B and C, and that's your decision. And that's the end of the story or something. But more here's the key considerations. We need to make sure that the cost per unit is going to make sense for the project to go forward. And there's going to be more information and there's going to be more decision points once we get this additional information. So somehow just being really clear that, you know, we're presenting some ideas and a bunch of key information is like here are the things that we're going to be finding out in the next phase that will then influence the decisions from there. So that might already be part of what they're thinking, but just I think framing it in the right way of what we're really asking us people and where this fits in the bigger process could be helpful. Peter Kalman, Peter Kalman, Montpelier. I think Sal and Lauren have actually raised a point, Tim, that I think it's not I think everybody would agree that the engineering and the due diligence needs to happen. The purpose, as Bill Fraser said, of having a public engagement process was to make the whole process be more transparent, to invite the public in to hear what they what they feel about various things. It was not to and I think this is a sales point to get to a master plan through that process. And I think Sal's idea sounds good, that maybe we needed a little bit of a delay. I mean, maybe it's time for the public engagement process to wrap up this spring and then go next into the the engineering due diligence that will that you'll be a great member of the of the committee beyond. I don't think you need to get that by knocking the public engagement process. The public engagement process is psychologically important to this town. It's a matter of trust that this is not all being decided behind closed doors. Thanks. Thanks, Peter. Are we set to move forward? OK, next up, we have the item of the Mountaineers Memorandum of Understanding. Are you up for this? I think I'm sorry. Let's get a presentation from Kelly and then got it. So we put this on the agenda for you to take a look at. We met with leadership from the Mountaineers to discuss a couple of the terms just to sort of get this in place and ensure that it was ongoing rather than year over year and then also to address some of the operational pieces such as the restrooms and the pop house costs. And so we're bringing this to you so you can take a look at it. You get a red line version that shows those adjustments but as I understand it, there are questions. Yes, I had I had just had a question wondering if we could introduce the the notion of low noise fireworks at any displays that the Mountaineers decide to put on per some discussions we've had here from residents. So I do have the fire chief here to speak out a little bit based on the way that this MOU is structured that they would go forward for a permit and that would be in our ordinance. What you suggested would likely be a change to our ordinances. And Bob could speak a little bit more to the detail in the process. Right, yeah, I really think it needs to go. That route needs to be an ordinance change. We currently have signed two permits with the Mountaineers for two separate shows. Additionally, we signed permits with National Life for the do good fest. And I'm expecting a permit any day from Mopera Life for the July 3rd of that. So I think to put something on the Mountaineers MOU. That would that would be putting restrictions on them that we've not put on either the National Life do good fest or. You know, their permits or permit sent me a sign by myself and the police chief based on the city ordinance. And right now, the city ordinance does not require any noise limitations. OK, well, that's that's that seems like the the key element, really, if if the permitting because I was wondering what the how the permitting process would would affect. I know it's it's late in the season for even for this year, but. It sounds like the the permitting really is based strictly on the on the ordinance, the language and the ordinance. So any any change would apply to anyone who would. Right, I think if you want to make that change, you would have to be an ordinance change because we. Yes, you're absolutely correct. We issue the permit based on the ordinance. OK. Thank you. You are. And interesting, my question is. So this basically extends the agreement. Um, through 2036. Is that correct? So yes, it is my understanding that that was the term. Agreed to prior when we looked at this in 2015, but I would look to Arnie a little bit to see if that's correct. And I think the intent here is really just to rather than having to come back for the review year over year, we would be just extending it for the full term. I already from the recreation department that that is correct. The reason they wanted to go through 2036 initially was for the possibility of them being able to gain grants and stuff, because if it's a real short term lease, a lot of times it's very difficult to acquire grants. The other thing, if you look at that, there is a review every five years so we can make adjustments to the MOU if they need to be made. If things start to cost more and different things like that happen, we have that in there to review and adjust as needed. What would the grants that they're applying for be like for improvements to the facility to the facility? Yeah, they're trying to I mean, one of the things we're hoping for in the near future is trying to find an opportunity for a bathroom grant to try to renovate bathrooms down there. So that's one of the things that they're very interested in. And we're trying to find opportunities for that. And presumably any improvements like that would be available not just during Mountaineers games, but whenever it's being used by the public. That's correct. Yeah, any improvements, actually, that the Mountaineers do to the field as that becomes the property of the city. So interestingly, I was on the school board because back then the school board controlled the rec fields when this started. So it's been wonderful for mom failure. And it's great to see my concern with it is I think it's great that people just talk about it and understand I'm not trying to rock the boat. But it's the field isn't used by kids other than camps, the Mountaineers. That's right. It's pretty much for the Mountaineers. No, it's actually it's actually used by the Babe Ruth program. OK, they do a summer ball league. They also do a fall ball league and also the high school and middle school uses the field. The other groups that use it as a men's baseball group, the Montaigneer Montes, I believe they're called, and they're the over 35 league, I think. So they have they they use it on a lot of Sundays throughout the season. So there's actually quite a bit of use besides Mountaineers that use that field. I mean, just following the Elks conversation, it seems like if we're looking at potentially spending millions upon that hill to create more recreation fields and facilities, we've also got to keep this in our mix of resources that we have available. So that's mainly trepidation about tying it up to 2030 or 2036 versus if it was like a five year agreement or something, at least it would give us some flexibility if you do need more playing fields. And we find the numbers. If you look at the memory of understanding, there also is a termination of clause of something somewhere down the road comes up that we need this space for something else, then we can terminate the agreement. OK, so we just have to give enough lead time so it's not the middle of their season. Well, I think it said October, November, December before the season is what the contract says. Yes, they're not scared. There is an out. Yeah. Thanks. Anything else about this item? OK. Can we have a motion? I'll make a motion that we approve the contract with the Mountaineers. Any discussion? All those in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. OK, we've approved the Mountaineers MOU. We will continue to work on finding a date for City Council outing to to a game. Are you asking for feedback? I'm I didn't give it to you. So yeah, I was. So if you just just to get as many people available as possible, you didn't put out any dates. I didn't. OK. OK. OK. Next up, item six, Farmers Market Update. All right, you're on board of the Farmers Market as a representative of customers. I'm Kerry Peacore. I'm the market manager for Capital City Farmers Market. John, would you like to take it? We wanted to give you an update as to what's been going on at the market for the last year. It's been a really successful year for us and we're proud of it and pleased with what's happened and excited about the future. I think that it is both an economic and social engine in the city. I know as somebody who shopped at the market for 45 years now, I had concerns when we moved down the street away from downtown that it would upset things in the city. And we'll talk a little bit about that, but I don't think it has. So one point two million dollars put directly back into the hands of local central Vermont farmers. Nearly 55,000 customers came through our gates. We have really dedicated volunteers that take attendance for us every week, which we're very thankful for. So I mean, I think the numbers speak for themselves. The market is growing very quickly this year. We already have over 90 approved vendors. So throughout the season, we will probably support more than 100 local producers, which is pretty amazing. And we are open every week, every Saturday, May through October. From nine to one. So who's coming to the first? I don't see you all there as often as you can can be there. I know many of you do shop pretty regularly and we'd love to have you there. As often as you're able. One of the things I'm excited about as a customer and it's a unique position on the board that not only are their producers, farmers, but a customer representative. And I'm not shy, as you well know, those of you who know me. So I'm in their fight for the customer all the time. And the fact that we in the that the heat of summer will have 2,500 people come to the market on a Saturday really is amazing. We're all grateful that we don't have to mask and stand six feet apart anymore. And I hope we don't have to go back on that at all. It's become a really wonderful social occasion. We still do allow dogs, as long as they're on a short leash and behave themselves. We allow children under the same guidelines. So I'll watch it. But it's really delightful to watch people just interact with each other on a Saturday morning. One of the things I wanted to really get a handle on was how does being down past the tax building affect downtown area? Because I don't consider that to be downtown. And what we find is that a lot of people walk, which is great. And that we did a poll with a specific question of when you come to the market, you also shop elsewhere. And what we found was nearly 100 percent of the people do both at the same on a Saturday morning. So for me, that says we're being successful at being a part of the downtown. And the awesome thing is that it's become a destination market for Vermont. And so people come from Burlington. People come from all over Vermont just to come to the Montpelier market because the vibe that it has is so different and so unique from most of the other farmers markets in the state. So it's really become a destination market. And a lot of a lot of those out of towners or a lot of those people from other places in Vermont, when they come to the market, they also then migrate to other businesses downtown. So, yes, oh, and I want to say thank you so much to the Montpelier Police Department and Fire Department. They are huge supporters of ours, as well as state and BGS. So thank you very much. And our winter market finishes up this coming Saturday and we're very thankful to Bar Hill for hosting that. I don't ever want to have to have a winter market at 133 States Street again, if we can help it. The lettuce doesn't like it either. So Bar Hill has been a really wonderful supporter and partner in our winter markets. But as Kerry said, you know, the city has really stood behind us for the whole year, and we really appreciate it. Any questions? Mike, the question that occurs to me with the rate of growth, do you have enough room where you are and are you in danger of outgrowing your space? Yes. Yes. And yes, and we're not sure where we would go. It's become it's such a great space for us. And it has really helped us in the last two years. We moved there in 2021. I am a little bit concerned that we're going to outgrow it. The only problem is there's another parking lot there behind where we are, but we don't have access to it. I think if we could expand into that lot, we'd be a lot more comfortable. We just haven't gotten permission to do that. So that would be amazing if we could find a way to work that out. But yeah, I'm a little bit concerned if we keep growing at the rate that we are, that we're going to have to figure something out. For instance, already this year, we've had to cut back on the number of nonprofits that can table along the side, which is a really popular thing. And I think an addition to the market as well. But we just we have to give space to the vendors. And so we've had to cut back to two a week now. Yeah. So Kerry's working has a great relationship with BGS. And we're working on having access to that whole first quarter. And we don't have it yet. No. And the. We've struggled for a long time before I even joined the market, but to find a permanent home so that we never have to move again, we would love for it to be a one three three state. But it'd be really important. It can kill a market to have to move. And we've moved twice in the last three years. So to find a permanent home would be amazing. Up to that. It's very difficult to find a large enough space for us in downtown. But we're always working on it. We're always if anybody has any ideas or always. And I was going to ask, what can we do to help you get that additional space? Oh, do we know anybody in buildings? I love that. I would love to chat with anybody that would be willing to work with us on it. So is it a matter of BGS? Just not being willing to open up another parking lot? Yes, I I'm not going to speak poorly of them because Devin Devin, I have a wonderful relationship and I have never gotten a real clear answer. I don't think on the reasoning for it. I believe I honestly don't know. I don't know why we haven't been able to. Yeah, I believe I've seen some other correspondence about not BGS not allowing vendors of any kind on state property. So that it's that's not it. I mean, this is state where we are as a state over and we're actually allowed permitted to do our Thanksgiving Market on the State House lawn two years ago, which was amazing. But I'm not sure. So we have been told that we have to lead access to that lot because the commissioner might need to come in and out. But as to why we're not able to use those spaces. OK, we welcome any help in that regard, absolutely. Anything else? Well, we really appreciate your support. Yes, we're to see you market. Thanks for coming in. Thank you so much. And thank your volunteers for taking all this data. Gathering. OK, we're now up to item nine. East update. Good evening, Mayor and counselors, it's great to be with you. I'm Sarah Lipton. I'm the director of the Montpelier Senior Activity Center, and I'm accompanied by Galonda James, the Feast Chef Manager. And I'm Eugene, a program manager. So we're here to tell you a bit more about these. We're so grateful and delighted that the Montpelier Senior Activity Center has the great good fortune and honor of being able to run the premier meals on meals program for Montpelier. So we put together some slides for you and you can see some of our photos in there to sort of showcase, you know, who we've got with us, what we've got going on. Basically, Feast is really focused on providing the necessary nutrition, socialization and access to wellness for the older adults in our community. And we serve currently about 70, 65 to 70 clients each week. We just restarted the congregate meals in person. And just to give you some perspective, before the pandemic, we had twice a week, a congregate meal with about 100 people coming in to eat together for an hour to socialize, often singing birthday parties, you know, the whole thing. And this is really an important thing that happened before the pandemic and, of course, shifted with the pandemic. So we moved to curbside meals and we actually just had our last one yesterday because we weren't able to serve all the people, of course, during the pandemic, and now we're able to bring them back inside. So we're really, really pleased for that. We are also extremely proud to not only be Meals on Meals America member, which gives us access to things like grants and resources and other kinds of, I don't know, connections that happened. Sholanda was able to go to their conference last year. And besides bringing back COVID, also brought back a lot of really good information, but we're also really proud to be working inside the Community Services Department with the Parks Division on their Feast Farm. So do you want to talk about the farm? Love to. The farm was created in 2021 and it is a well organized, dynamic place. We just hired a farm manager who we're really excited about who brings a wealth of experience and education and working with people of all ages. And we are the only state capital with its own farm serving older adults as a focus. And of course, it's not limited to older adults. And I'm excited about intergenerational programming there. And it's a beautiful place. And we collaborate with the recreation department and the parks department on curating the space and stay tuned. We will be inviting you to a harvest dinner in September out there. But in the kitchen, in the kitchen on a daily basis, we have volunteers from all walks of life that come into our kitchen and help prepare the meals for our older adults. We have volunteers from our Community Justice Program. We have the Mount Pylir Senior High School that also comes and volunteers with us. And we just have general community members that are concerned with the well-being of our older adults in making sure that they get the nutritional value that they need for staying healthy, as well as serving a dignified meal to them and making sure that they are. Hecton and cared for. And once those meals are cooked up and packaged, they. Are delivered by an awesome group of volunteer drivers. We have about 30 drivers who come in every more than 30, plus all these substitutes, 50 something in between 30 and 45. And they are they have magical relationships and build relationships slowly. Some of our drivers have been driving for 30 years and really take care of the older adults and people with disabilities in our community through building rapport with them and checking on them, going above and beyond. And so we know that everybody who's on our list is getting a four times a week check in and we're proud of that. So we want to talk a little bit about why these. So as you're probably aware, and this is maybe some older data from I think the last census of 10 years ago or so, there are about 1600 older adults in Montpelier and our program serves beyond just Montpelier. We serve meals on wheels in Berlin, our meal, our congregate meals and our former curbside meals were open to anybody, anybody could come. That's a lot of older adults. And just looking at the data in our county. Twenty percent of older adults are over sixty five and seven percent of them live in poverty. That's just that's numbers I found from state documents. So our meals are not just necessary because some people can't cook, they're necessary because older adults deserve access to food. So in FY 23, this current year, we will have served we are serving over our contracted amount, but we're serving 20,000 meals. We're working to inch back down to our contracted amount. But part of the increase, can you still hear me? So OK, the sound keeps changing. Part of our challenge of the last couple of years with the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic was an increased need. One of the shifts that happened during the pandemic and now is shifted back is that the eligibility requirements changed during the pandemic. Basically, the doors opened wide. So anyone over the age of 60 who needed access to a meal for whatever reason was able to get one. And so that combined with the fact that you all allowed me to create a kitchen manager, chef position and hired Shalanda here, who started making really amazing meals. Our program grew a lot and it grew too much. And so we're in the process of shrinking it back down. And part of that that's helping us in that is also really painful from a human services standpoint is that the eligibility requirements just on April 1st have returned to pre-pandemic requirements of the necessity of an older adult who is homebound. So they can't necessarily get out. They can't actually cook a meal for themselves. They can't get to the grocery store. So they really need that meal. So we're working really hard with our staff and our volunteers to do reassessments of all of our clients. We have again, we have 65 to 70 clients right now. So it's quite of an undertaking. But we're working to really reassess who actually needs those meals and who can we sort of shift over and say, hey, come to your congregate meal or who can we start selling meals to? And so that's one of the things that we're working on. Is there anything else on the slide you want to talk about? Yeah, all right. All of you are invited warmly to come do a congregate meal. I believe tomorrow's menu. It's Thursdays from 12 to one is Shepherd's Pie. Chicken Popeyes. There we go. There we go. The other favorite. So just you've already met our people. We also have our time kitchen assistant, Robbie Plunkett. And again, we have an incredible array of intergenerational volunteers. So do you want to talk a little bit about our farm volunteers? More than you do? Yes, we have excuse me, sorry. We have people who come to the farm from the youth from the. The YCC Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, Montpeliers Youth Conservation Corps, thank you. As well as you 32 students, there are. It's it's a wide landscape of people who are drawn to the farm. And it's a what else can I say about. Jump in. We also last year and the year before we were able to run some camps out on the farm. So there were younger kids out there as well. And then in the kitchen, as Shalanda already said, we have a really incredibly diverse array of volunteers coming in, which includes not just the high school and middle school. We do have a middle school student, but also students from the new school and other sort of organizations that they come in with their attendants. So we have an incredibly diverse bunch of folks. And it's just it's a really vibrant and happy place to be. And we're super grateful. We had not only Audra Brown from the planning department, but we also had our new chief of police in there yesterday chopping up cabbages. So just want to shout out, we have an incredible amount of community support for this program. We certainly have our contract at the Central Vermont Council on aging to be able to provide those meals. And I'll give you a little more financial context in just a moment. The National Life Group has been a really their foundation has been a great supporter of Feast Over the Years, where waiting with bated breath on a grant that we just applied for. So hopefully that'll come through. AARP Vermont provided us with a grant last year to start our first Feast Farm Stand. And that will be happening again this summer, selling produce at a very low cost to anyone who needs access to really high quality produce, not to take away from the farmer's market at all. It's on Wednesday mornings and anyone can come by. So that's we're really happy to be having that. Hunger Mountain Co-op is currently doing a give change program for us right now. So they've raised, I don't know, about a thousand dollars just from people rounding up at the till, which is kind of mind blowing. And then recently we did our Big March for Meals campaign. This is an annual opportunity in March. The entire country celebrates national meals on Wheels Awareness Month. And so we do a Big March for Meals campaign and we did an astounding job this year. We raised over $17,000 from the community and from many of the sponsors that you see listed. And that included a really exciting silent auction with a lot of donations. So just to give a little financial context to our program, it is one of the programs at MSAC and the feast budget of MSAC represents only about seven or eight percent of our entire budget. But the feast budget itself is primarily, as you can see, that the largest chunk comes from our contract with the Central Vermont Council on Aging. We receive, it's pretty static, it hasn't changed for a few years, but we receive $3.80 for a meal served within our contract. And our contract is 14,500 meals. So as I mentioned, we're serving over that and we're working to make up the difference. And I'll mention, we've been redoing our meal cost analysis quite in depth. Our meals actually cost about $14.40. And that's a few figure in staff costs and all the different things that go into making a meal. So we're super grateful for that $3.80 from Central Vermont Council on Aging, but obviously it's not enough. So that's why we work with all of the other pieces that we have to work with, with fundraising grants, the donations that we seek, the sponsorships that we work with, the meal donations that come directly from recipients and fundraising events. So there's a lot in there. What's that? And yeah, community. Oh, yes, right. So we also, and I should have put them on the sponsor slide. Oh, no, I don't know what happened. OK, thanks. So thank you. Yeah, Shalanda just reminded me, we have another wonderful partner, which is the Community Harvest of Central Vermont. They are a gleaning, our local gleaning program, and we receive between five and 10,000 pounds of free produce from them. So that helps us keep our bottom line a little bit lower. As does the farm produce from our feast farm. So last year, I think we brought in about 5,000 pounds of produce from the feast farm. And if you do the numbers, that does really help. To keep our costs low, as well as allowing us to provide locally sourced meals. I can pause it. Are there any questions about any of this so far? Yeah, yeah, I have a question while we're talking about the finances. When when I was on the board of the Housing Authority, you know, I have meals program over there to my recollection was that. We could we were allowed to have a suggested donation. Yes. For meal recipients. But nobody could be correct denied, even if they paid nothing. Or is that the same? That's correct. Yeah. And and the big difference with what they're doing and what we're doing is that we are preparing our meals to the older Americans Act standards. And so we do receive the funding through the Council on Aging. They are not doing that. And so they're not getting that funding. But that's probably because they didn't want to do as high quality of meals. But the the way that that works is we we definitely do not invoice for our meals. They if someone can't pay, they still get the meal. But we do request donations and they do come in. We do have some members who are really able to offer and some who really can't. And that's kind of by design that that's just part of the program. Yeah, thank you for that question. I had a related question. Yeah, because when you said twenty three thousand in your contract for fourteen twenty twenty thousand, not twenty twenty. Well, you said you were serving twenty three. OK, twenty thousand. Yeah, so twenty thousand. Yeah, it's still. Yeah, six thousand meals. And do they fall under the heading Jack was talking about that you can't turn people away or yep. So yes, and a couple of things about that. So we that that growth kind of happened very quickly. And the last year, the Council on Aging still had ARPA funds and they were able to reimburse us for our overages. So we received a check, I think, in November for seventeen thousand dollars that covered a lot of last year's overages. This year, we're working really hard to reduce our numbers because we are not getting a guarantee of that ARPA funding. And I think they used it all last year. So we won't get that. And that's why we've been working extra hard on the fundraising campaigns, searching and applying for many, many grants and also really working to reduce the number of meals that we're serving. Taking away the curbside meal helps us a little bit. It takes away meals from some folks who rely on them for that service, but we're inviting them in for the congregate meals. So it's it's a bit of a juggle balance. So that's a federal requirement of your program that you can't turn anybody away. Correct. So are you able to keep splitting the beans? We're working on it. I mean, at some point, it just amazes me that you're required to. Yeah, that can be a pretty big number. It's it's challenging. But again, we we do regularly, I think monthly when we send out a letter, we month to our recipients. We ask we say to anyone, everyone, you know, here's how many meals you've received. If you're able, please send in a donation. And a lot of people do. And we're working to sort of raise the awareness in the community of recipients about that. But it's definitely not something we can push. And there I mean, I've done a ton of these deliveries myself. I've been in these people's houses and they are. Really in need of these meals and lots more support than than we can offer. So it is a this is part of the trick of what we're doing is that it is a real deep and deeply needed community service that is underfunded and will probably always be underfunded. And so we work extra hard to make these sponsorship relationships. We're working to find sponsors for our farm stand this summer. And that will help bring in a little bit extra. We're working to and I'm about to show you what some of the things we're so how are we going to split those beans? But I saw another question over here. Yeah, thanks. Along the same lines. You mentioned that the eligibility requirements changed as of April 1st. Restricted people who are homebound. Do you have any sense of what the actual need is? Like how many homebound older adults there are who are going to need meals? And will you be able to meet that? And then is there any room in the future for a renegotiated contract with the Council on Aging? Or, you know, is that something that's set at the federal level? I sure hope there is. Yeah, so a few things. So we have now my head spinning with the two different questions you asked. What was the first question you asked? Well, it was about, do you have a sense of what the actual need is? Yes, thank you. Homebound. Yeah, so we have been kind of looking at that when we're doing these reassessments and getting the results back and the Council on Aging is helping us to navigate that and look through them and sort of really make sure this is a person who really needs that meal or not, for instance. So it's a hard question to answer because part of the challenge of what we provide is that there's a lot of stigma against asking for help. So I know for a fact, and I told you that number of 1600 older adults, I know for a fact there's a great many more people that probably need meals than will ever reach out and ask for them. So one of the factors of coming on to meals on wheels is you have to self-determine that you need and want them, not want, but you need them. And so that kind of takes away a portion of the population that probably would really benefit from receiving meals. And it in an inverse way helps us because we can't afford to serve them all anyway. So I think in this period of time that we're doing this reassessment, we're going to be seeing the amount of folks come off that we need to to be back down in our number range that we need to be in. I also think, as I'll tell you in a minute, we're going to get to and we're installing a new process so that we can begin to make some income off of a different type of meal so that we can ultimately, as we're able to grow again to serve as many as are needed. Your second question was if CVC away can ever renegotiate. We hope so. You know, they're certainly aware of the need in our community. There's, you know, we're in touch with them constantly and they see that, you know, they have case managers who work with a lot of our same clients. So they certainly see the need and they know that our program has grown and is growing. The challenge, of course, is that the federal funding just stays really static. So that's that is the challenge. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. So positioning for growth. We are looking at transitioning to a revenue model. We're looking at sort of two different ways to do this primarily. We have our chef here has been trained in producing medically tailored meals. Would you like to define what that means? So that means we're providing a nutritional meal that is specific to someone's health needs, such as someone who has low sodium or they are diabetic. They might have an allergy that we're making sure that we're pertaining to the guidelines that we were trained on so that they can be able to have that meal. So this is something that is being done around the country. In fact, our guide in this process is the nutrition coordinator or nutrition director at the Council on Aging. And she actually has a medically tailored meals business in Washington, D.C. They sell meals for $35 a meal. We probably can't do that here, but she does really well. And so she's helping us to figure this out. And the Lemoyle County meal program is doing this already. And they've contracted with their local hospital to sell. I think it's 100 meals a month. I think they're charging $11 a meal. And so it's bringing in a tiny little bit of income for them. And because of where we are and how much more population there is here and how many more services there are here in our region, we feel pretty sure that we can produce more than that and sell more than that. So we're working on our business plan right now to develop that and feel like that'll be a really helpful way to bring in. It's not going to be a huge lift for the kitchen. It's really just basically making more of some of the meals we already make, packaging it slightly differently and then offering it up for sale and doing some of the marketing. We're also looking at the idea of bringing some of our clients who currently receive meals but who are soon maybe going to be ineligible. We can start to sell them meals if they're able to pay for them. And if that's something that we can do with them. So they would no longer be a meals on meals recipient through that subsidized pathway, but we would actually have a fee for service. We also, of course, are doing special events. We're going to be cooking at Park of Palooza this summer. And we've got our Feast Farm stand, as I mentioned, and we might be thinking about doing a little bit of catering here and there. We're, of course, continuing to look for more sponsorship through Meals on Wheels America. There are corporate sponsorships that are available. So that's something we're investigating and due to the overwhelmingly positive support from the community in March. We feel like there might be some more local sponsors that would be interested in being engaged as well. And of course, the team is really working hard on grants always. So that's basically, you know, kind of how we're able to think, OK, we can keep going, you know, and we can actually bring this forward and continue. And that's basically it. I've got some, you know, pictures to show you. This was from our farm stand last year. We had Alec there playing the fiddle. Farm stands really, really sweet. It's going to be on Wednesday mornings from 9 to 10 30. And we'll have music and other engagement at those. A lot of good produce. You've got just an incredible amount of volunteers in the kitchen. If you ever want to come roll up your sleeves, it is actually a good time. And of course, the farm, you definitely don't want to miss going out there. It's out at the old two rivers farm spot behind Agway. It's a really beautiful they've done out there. We will not be doing chickens again, though. I don't know if you heard about the chickens. But we will be doing more harvest dinners and other big events. That went really well last year. Really good time getting a lot of people out there. A couple of years ago, you probably heard Senator Sanders was out there and he loved it. So we have guest chefs that come in at times to do the meals and congregate with all of our people. Any other questions? Anyone? Thanks a lot. Any other questions from members of the council? Palin. If you want to come out and volunteer, how can we contact you there? And like, oh, I am coming and getting like some appointment. I don't know how to. Yeah, I'm your point person. So people can stop by, talk to me, email me, call me. My area information is on the website. And then I will we do have a volunteer application and orientation. Yeah, thank you. Orientations every two weeks on Wednesday mornings, every two weeks from 11 to 12, and then we'll work with your schedule and see when do you want to come in? OK, I want to ask another question. So you said you have to cook your food based on specific criteria. Do you cook like international cuisine? Oh, great. Yes, I do try to offer a very wide variety of. Different meals, such as the chicken tiki masala that we offered went over very well. And then what else did we do? We just recently did a chickpea taco. So it's like we tried to involve, you know, very much. So meet the meat and potatoes that everyone likes. But we also like to do those international dishes as well. Maybe we can have a, I don't know, competition or something. Even like, send your international meal recipe. And then we can create like a special meal or Montpelier, something like that. It will be cool to make art on more international and global. I bet most of the people have their grandparents recipes somewhere from all around the world, right? It will be cool. Yeah, thank you. We also have Meatless Mondays. You have a special meal coming up, don't you? Quite a few, in fact. Well, but you sent an email. Yes, yes. So we have on on May 11th, we're going to do a Mother's Day brunch. And then May 25th, we're doing a veterans recognition luncheon. Yep. And that's really special in the past. We had over 100 people coming in, many counselors, the mayor and other leaders in the community would come to that. And of course, we haven't had it in person since the pandemic. So it's our first time in person again. Yeah. Well, thank you all very much. It's really an honor to be able to present to all of you. And I'm so proud to share my staff. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Next up, we have the East State Street construction. R.E.K. East State Street construction presentation. Where are you? Actually, is it am I missing something? Oh, no, Kate, you are up. I'm sorry. I have the wrong wrong version of this. Jack. Jack, you've been using the wrong. Yes, the agenda I'm seeing also has appointments to the DRB that was earlier in the agenda. Yeah. And I thought so, too. And I'm not seeing it on the agenda that I have money to buy. OK. Well, I suggest we do the DRB appointment now. Thank you. Because we because they got skipped, so we have two appointments to the Development Review Board and they are. Reappointments are at re applications of. John laser check and I reviewed the other one, too. And Kevin O'Connell and I don't see them here or online. I like to make a motion that we reappoint them. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Thank you so much for that reminder. OK, now. Hey, yes. Well, this is very, very odd. So I'm glad. Glad of the. So my name is Kate Stevenson. I'm a volunteer member of the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee. I'm not I'm no longer the chair, so I must have recycled this slide from previous year. And then here with Chris Lumbre, the facilities and sustainability coordinator for the city. So since I know we have a number of new newer counselors and we typically do this update once a year to a city council, I just wanted to give a little bit of history and context about the Energy Advisory Committee, get you all up to speed about what we've been working on. Then we're going to go into the presentation of the municipal energy information, the metrics that we've been collecting for the past fiscal year, and then I'm going to hand it over to Chris to talk about the some updates around district heat and take your questions. So that's the plan. So the city, as you hopefully know, the city has committed to a goal of net zero. And the way that we define that is eliminating fossil fuel use by converting to 100 percent renewable energy. So that's the what we're measuring. And the commitment is by 2030 that 100 percent of the municipal energy used for thermal, electric and transportation will be renewable or offset. And then by 2050 that we will eliminate fossil fuel use throughout the entire community, which includes homes and businesses as well as as municipal. But today's presentation is really going to be very focused on the municipal side of things. So within our committee, we have four different working groups, planning and policy, residential, transportation and municipal. Oops, wrong direction. OK, so some of the residential projects we've been working on include the window dressers, which is a volunteer thing we do in the fall to build interior storm window inserts. A couple of years ago, we did a weatherization campaign. We've worked to outreach to owners of multifamily buildings, rental properties, promoting modern wood heat, the button up campaign with Efficiency Vermont, and and we've done some different home tours. On the municipal side, we helped put together one megawatt municipal solar project. We've done retro commissioning of a number of the municipal buildings. We created a revolving loan fund to help fund some of the efficiency projects. We've done extensive energy audits of the municipal buildings and worked on the district heat and the wastewater plant project organics energy project to support that. On the policy side, working on the net zero resolution, which was first adapted in 2014 and then updated in 2018. In twenty twenty one, we completed a net zero action plan. We worked with the EIC as a consultant to help us really outline the details of what we need to do over the next seven years to hit those twenty thirty goals. We also last year approved the home energy disclosure ordinance, which is basically a time of sale ordinance asking anyone who's listing their property for sale to disclose its energy use. And we've been working with the planning department to contribute to the energy plan part of the city plan. And on the transportation side, we have definitely had less activity there. In the last few years, but we worked on the helping support the the rollout of my ride by GMT. We're now been working on looking at locations for more EV chargers around the city. And previously, we contributed to the car share pilot program. So again, this is just like a little bit of history that the community itself was started in twenty ten. Really, it was the district heat project that kind of got that going. And then we had some big moves, you know, in terms of our solar project and the district heat project coming online. And I think one of the most exciting things that's happened in the last couple of years, both as the phase one work at the wastewater treatment plant, which is which is a big win for our move to renewable energy and being able to bring Chris on board as a as a staff person to support our net zero efforts is huge. So we're excited and that has helped move many different projects along in the last six months. So let's just talk a little bit about FY 22. So this is the fiscal year that ended last June 30. So this, you know, it takes us a while to collect all the data. And this is just going back through like all the electric bills, all the oil, propane bills, looking at all the fuel used by the city's fleet. And I want to give a big shout out to Todd Provencher in the finance office, who was the one that did all the legwork finding all of the bills and collecting the bills. And so he and I, we've collaborated for a number of years now, pulling all this data together. And I get to put it into the fun graphs, but he he populated the spreadsheet this year, which I was very grateful for. So one of the big things that's different about this, those of you who were here for the presentation last year, this this chart was flipped. We were at forty three percent renewable. And this year we are at fifty seven percent renewable energy for the municipal energy use. And there are a couple of reasons why. But let me go to the next. I'll kind of show you some more fun graphs to try and tell that story a little bit. So when we again, we're looking at three different types of energy. The big blue part is thermal. And that also includes biogas produced and used at the wastewater treatment plant, which is a big chunk of that. And then the next is electric. And the smaller chunk is the fleet diesel and unleaded gas. And so we have been tracking this data since since fiscal year 11, 2011. And you can kind of see how these different bars have changed over time. And you might see a big jump in in FY 22 in the blue section. Really, the other two sections stayed pretty much flat. The bump in FY 22 really came from the biogas at the wastewater treatment plant. So two things. One is with the improvements that we've made at the plant. We're bringing in more waste. We are producing a lot more like orders of magnitude, more biogas. And we're using that to both heat the buildings and heat the digesters. And in the past, we have not had really good metering, tracking of the biogas. We now finally, as of like January, have some good data, but we don't have like a full year's worth of new metered data. So we're we still had to extrapolate a little bit and we don't know exactly how much is going to heating and how much is going through the flare. So when they have excess, they flare it. I think next year will be we'll have a much better sense of the percentages of how much is being used for heating and how much is going to the flare. But for now, I've kind of thrown it all in the thermal bucket and it looks like there's a lot more. We are using more thermal energy at the wastewater treatment facility than we were before. Good part is it's all renewable energy. So all the biogas is considered in that renewable bucket. So that's part of what our percentage renewable the other direction this year, although there were a couple other factors that went into that. So there's just kind of charts that those two sides of the coin, right? That we were 100 percent fossil fuel in 2011. And now we're up to 57 percent this year. And if you really want to get into like, how does that all break out? You know, so I separated out oil at the bottom and then you got propane and then you got diesel and then you got leaded. So the brownish ones are all the fossil fuel ones and the other colors are the renewable energy. And you see that pink on the top. That's the that spike is all biogas. And you see, you know, I think what is useful to show here is yeah, there is this kind of solid chunk at the bottom, which is number two heating fuel for thermal heating. And then the other thing that is a little harder to see in this graph is that we're seeing a real change in the electric sector, right? So Green Mountain Power is the utility that covers almost all of Montpelier. But, you know, they have switched from their fuel being or, you know, the electricity that we get being less renewable every year. It increases this past year with 78 percent renewable. They're on target to be 100 percent renewable by 2030, if not before. So we've seen a real shift in the grid electricity that changes this mix in addition to the solar that the city is producing through its solar project. And this is just we kind of look break down by department like which departments use the most energy. The blue is renewable. The orange is fossil fuel. So you see a lot of little ones. And then you see the big spike for the wastewater treatment plant. I did a version without where you took out the wastewater treatment plant just so you can see it a little bit better. But you see, you know, we are we are including the school, the schools in all of our data, because we're considered them municipal buildings, even though they are controlled by the school district. But you see, you know, high school and the middle school really standing out, those those have a lot of fossil fuel use. Kind of third in line is is public works. And that's mostly from the public works fleet. And then water plant is really the next big, big item for us to tackle in terms of looking at fuel switching for the heating system. Just another way to look at it, you know, how does the cell split out? Again, you see oil. We don't have many buildings using propane. So that's a relatively smaller chunk of the pie. And if you're curious about how the fleet breaks out, we did adjust the fleet energy by department. And you see this two thirds public works, which makes sense. They own they control most of the fleet. That's all that's no plow than, you know, heavy equipment in addition to actual vehicles driving around town. And then behind that is police station. And then City Hall and fire department get combined in all of these graphs. And that's that's mainly because they're on the same heating system. They're both on district heat and when they're not metered separately. And so for the thermal side, we have to kind of lump them together. We lump them together for this chart, too. So just some overall trends. There wasn't anything when Todd and I went reviewed all of this. There was nothing that jumped out as being really notable other than by a cast. Like I said before, the electricity and the fleet energy were pretty flat. And solar production was down partly on our existing arrays, partly because it was just cloudier. But overall, the solar production increased because the school district added a new solar array in FY 21. So there was a new source of solar electricity coming into our our stats. And I just wanted to kind of bring us back and ground us in the net zero action plan. So it was completed last, I guess, 2021 now, where we looked at the kind of the path to net zero and the the projections that we came up with where that we felt like it was possible to get the city to at least 88 percent renewable by 2030 with the with the remaining 12 percent, which is mainly from vehicle fleet that we don't think that we can electrify in the next eight years, seven years. And so that last 12 percent would probably require some kind of offsets. And the top priorities in the plan are really the thermal fuel switching for the high school, the middle school, the water plant and the DPW garage and and office trying to get those off of fossil fuel. We're really not looking at doing any more electricity production projects. That's partly because, again, Green Mountain Power is on their own path to 100 percent renewable. And we have also maxed out what we're allowed to net meter. The state has caps on how much you can net meter. And we're already way beyond that. So so we're not looking at like, where could we put more solar panels? And this just shows kind of where we are in that 10 year trajectory to 2030. And I think we're I think we're on track. I think we're we're kind of where we hope that we would be, you know, with the projects that we already knew we had in the pipeline. So what are we working on now? And a lot of these, you know, I think a few questions will turn into Chris, but a lot of projects that he's been working on since he started in the fall. We're looking to upgrade the heating system at DPW in the equipment barn, which is where they park all the big trucks and replace, potentially replace the slab and the heating system at the same time. And either do that like with a pellet boiler is one of the options that we're looking at. Yeah, you may be aware that, you know, and that was it as a budget item that's in this year's budget was at least some funding to go towards that may not be enough to do the whole project. And it's not going to happen before the end of this fiscal year, that's for sure. But, you know, it's we're getting we're starting to get quotes back and things like that. We also had $50,000 in this year's fiscal fiscal year budget to look at more EV chargers. And so Chris has been looking at the locations, potentially some at DPW and some behind the fire station. And then just kind of looking at the overall EV options for fleet upgrades as different vehicles come up for replacement, which are appropriate for EV or plug-in hybrid or hybrid options. So I think there's there's more to do there, but we're starting the process. We're starting to kind of take paper into Dexter Keaton and look at new customers and he'll talk about that. Also, you know, there is a lot of funding coming out through the inflation reduction act, and that's going to trickle down through state programs. And I think that there is going to be money out there. So we want to have our projects as shovel ready as we can. And then we are planning to continue the window dresser's project. We're probably going to be doing that in the fall again. So going out and visiting homes where we we have a team that goes and measures the windows. And then we have we do a week long volunteer volunteer build where we we do it at the very auditorium and we'll go back there this year. But we'll basically take these pre-cut kits and assemble the windows and have a lot of volunteers come and do that. And it's a lot of fun. So that's the update. I'll take questions and then I'll hand it over to Chris and he can talk more about district heat. The report is as usual. Kate, who had one starting out? Helen. So when you show us the energy used by department slides, what is the reason like high school, you know, there are some departments they are still using a lot of fossil. Is it the system they are using? Is it the budget like it is too expensive for them? Or are there any other reasons that city can like help to switch? Or it is just by preference. Right. So so the reason is that both the middle school and the high school are on oil. The union elementary is on the district heat system. So there on, you know, if you look at their side, it's pretty much 100 percent renewable. So I think that the good news is that we have made a lot of progress in the last couple of years and starting to have more dialogue with the school district. They they kind of reinvigorated this facilities committee. And so we have a member of MEAC who is sitting on the facilities committee. And so more back and forth. They just passed a net zero resolution for the school district last week. So that's, you know, what we've kind of been nudging towards for many years since it's the city did their own resolution. So I think that's like the first step is that then on a policy level to say, this is what we're going to do and their resolution is, you know, slightly different than the city's. But basically it's directing the administration to look at how to plan for getting rid of the fossil fuel there. So I don't think they have a clear timeline or a clear plan. So is it same with the bus contractor, the bus services for schools? Because that one is only orange, right? They don't have any blue like it. So is there any contractor uses this or it's there? I mean, the school buses exist. The school bus contractor that Montpelier uses does not have any electric school buses. So yeah, they're all running on diesel. And, you know, because it's a subcontract, I think they have some limitations on what they can ask for. And, you know, it's not like, oh, just go get a quote from the electric school bus contractor in central Vermont. I mean, there there is another one right now. So yeah, it's something that they're going to have to look at. I don't know. I don't know the details of how they're going to plan to look at that. Yeah, I love all your data. And this is not the most friendly question. I'm sorry. But is there any way to equate some of your data into cost? Because I mean, we know we're doing this for the environment and our health. We need to do this. But I also have this thought about, well, what's the cost shift going on here? So that needs a whole other set of data to be compiled and composed. Yes. I mean, there's cost and there's also greenhouse gas emissions, which is another piece that we're tracking. Although it felt like, yeah, too much to try to put all into the same presentation. So we've just kind of stuck with like units of energy. But, you know, I have never had any visibility on the costs of what we're paying, you know, all of those bills that that that we're tracking. I'll look to Kelly for that. So it's something that that we, you know, I think we could consider. I think that. I think that the thing that we should take into account that's more important, you know, because certainly there are things that we've done that have saved cost over time. And I'm not even looking to say I'm just interested in the data. Really? Yeah. I think as we make decisions going forward, if we've made this commitment to be 100 percent renewable and we know that it might require some investment in offsets to hit that goal, then when we're like making a decision between the all electric vehicle and the hybrid vehicle and you say, well, you know, we just can't afford the all electric one, you know, we should also be considering not only the operating cost of that vehicle over its lifespan, but what offsets might we have to buy to to kind of cover the fuel that we're going to be purchasing for that fossil fuel vehicle? So that I don't think we've gotten that sophisticated in our analysis, you know, cost analysis when we're looking at some of these investments to be able to I don't get really deep into what what offsets cost. And it is a moving target to try to anticipate what what they're going to cost in 2030, but it's not an area of my expertise. But I think, yeah, starting to kind of like bring that analysis in when we're looking at the life cycle costs of these investments is going to be important. We'll enter budget to understand that even renewables are going to go up in costs, but it may not be the same as what we've experienced with fuels. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Both Chris, you and Chris. Kate, I have a question about the the disclosure ordinance. Is there anything I know this is a hard thing to say? Well, here's the data. But is there anything we can say about the product performance so far? Just came up and I think we don't have any data yet to report. I think we're going to try and figure out if we can come up with, you know, after we look at a whole a whole year of it being in effect. So July one is will be the one year anniversary of one that ordinance went into effect with the. It was like a year of no penalty and then it was a year of mandatory mandatory. Yeah, so I think we'd love to try to collect that and try to collect that and come back with more information. But I don't think, you know, Chris has had the chance to really get into the enforcement of it or or get into the weeds of how many people are actually disclosing. Yeah. And is it working? You know, what is it influencing behavior? I don't know. It's it's also a weird thing because it it came into effect while we were in a very distorted real estate market. Yeah, Tim, I do have experience because we try to help our clients comply. It's it is interesting. We have a lot of older myself included, you know, technologically challenged people in my player. And that seems to be a big issue with just doing it. I can't tell you how many people we've had to get a son or a daughter or even us to help them fill it out online because they just don't. And the other thing that's really awkward with it, if you're doing analysis or trying to make improvements is so you go through and you do this, your home energy profile and then. Like no one else has access to it. It's not available electronically. So the person who does it has to be printed off and provided to their real estate agent or their attorney or whoever's helping them with their transaction. It seems like if you're doing it online, it should be available electronically. It's not as a PDF, no one that I've worked with has found out how to do that. And there's quite a few people that have tried. Yeah, I mean, it's not easy. But yeah, and even if you have the PDF, you know, how do you attach it to the listing? Like there was a lot of conversation initially about dimension scanner, you know, how there's going to be a field where you can attach it and MLS, but like that has not happened. As far as I can tell, and you probably are more familiar with how that all works. But yeah, I think I think that there are a variety of challenges. Yeah, but that's probably the easiest one to fix, because it's I think, technologically, an in-house. And then after that, let's see how people do with it. But the properties I've seen it prepared on some, it seems like a meaningful estimation of what we know it really costs for those properties for energy and others you look at and go. It's fiction, because it's just an algorithm. Anybody learn. Thanks. First, Kate and Chris, thank you so much. You know, Chris will hear from you in a minute, but having Chris on board has been amazing to try to actually move the projects forward. So really grateful for the investment that the city made to do that. You know, as someone who works on climate change in my day job and spends a lot of time with the like. International reports saying we've got catastrophe coming if we don't act and that we've, you know, it's political will that is a thing stopping us. We have the technologies. So it's just really exciting to be able to in our community be thinking how, how do we in reality do our part and on the ground make it work for a community? And so I just like love Miax ability to like roll up sleeves and just be like, OK, this is how we switch our buildings and this is how we switch our fleet and like really just try to make it work. So I think it's just it's great. And we've got some great new people on Miax right now who just joined who have a lot of expertise and energy. So I think that's great, including Sal. So really optimistic and also just noting Kate mentioned it. But with the federal incentive programs that just came online, there really are huge opportunities. And so there's going to be opportunities for, I think, local governments like ours, but also a ton of opportunities for our community members. So I know one thing that we talked about also was how does Miax help our community members find out about what's going to be coming online for people that are a lot of tax incentives for installing a heat pump for all these various things. And so I think there's going to be just a ton of great chances for people to make their homes more efficient, more affordable and cleaner. So I think that will be great too. And hopefully we'll have a role in helping people find out how to do that and access all of that. So I think it's an exciting one more to body for just and maybe it's being a question for the findings. But as we look at the warrants that we review and we sign off on, one thing I've noticed as a new member is one of the items that appears regularly is a $10,000 payment for solar. So are we paying roughly 10,000 a month for some solar lease? I just curious as to how that equates to what we're saving. Kelly. So I can guess it is in there and I can get you to detail us on exactly what that goes towards for sure. Excellent. I can say that the I don't know why this is echoing not working. Once you do this, maybe maybe. Well, it was 14 points. Oh, I think I think we're good now. Oh, that's better. So just so you're the solar arrays that the city is in, it's part of a power purchase agreement. So it's a 20 something year agreement. I know you just talked to them, but so we have an agreement to purchase power from this 500 kilowatt array. One of them is in Montpelier. One of them is in Sharon. And so, yeah, we we buy the power from them at a discounted rate that's in this long term contract. Yeah, thanks. OK, but you moved to Gary. Sorry, I don't I don't need a whole answer to this right now, but I'm just noticing that there's the goal of net zero and municipal operations 2030 and then residential 2050. And I don't I I'm just scanning the plan and it seems to all be really focused on municipal. And I'm just wondering what the is there a plan for a plan or, you know, what steps will be there to work on the actual plan. And it was like, well, we we did get an allocation from city council. I think we spent $30,000 to get consulting support to put that together. And we made a strategic decision to focus to do a plan for the municipal and like really focus towards that 2030 goal with with a notion that we would have to come back and do another planning process for the larger 2050 goal. And yeah, I don't know when when that should start. I mean, it should be started as soon as we can. But haven't talked about that recently. Thanks. It's it's definitely a bigger nut to crack and we can get going. Yeah, Lauren, just on that. I mean, part of why I'm really interested in looking at how me can help support the community by education around like these incentives and things is because we do have that parallel goal and I I'm hoping through that work we're identifying like what are the barriers that our community members are finding to accessing them. So then we can be looking at, you know, are there city policies or city, you know, is it like layering some of their small incentive from the city would get people over the hump to be able to install things or something. So I'm hoping that we can do some learning through that. I mean, we'll need a more formal plan. But just the other thing to note to is the state has a 2050 net zero goal. So this is going to be happening also coming from the state level and there's state investments and state policies happening and all of that. So it's not like we're alone. So the municipal pieces are the things that absolutely won't happen unless we're doing the investments and making it happen. But I do think we do have a role in helping our community members also kind of figure out how to be part of this transition. Hey, any more questions or move to Chris? All right. Chris, you're on. Right. So district heat has quite a bit of capacity left in it and it's in order to make the most of this thing, we've got to get more people on it. And we're we're taking several steps to try and make that happen. Next slide. So district heat operates October 1st through May 1st. They're currently 18 buildings connected. And they're there's kind of kind of best guess. Guess best guesstimate is around. Fifty percent of the capacity is currently being used. Next slide. So we are trying to lower new or entice new customers. And we've recently provided a reasonably detailed rough estimate for a new customer, St. Augustine's Church at their request, and we're kind of awaiting their review and response to that to that. Then that would they'd be a really great addition. They're they're fairly close to existing lines behind City Hall here and they'd be a big user. So promising there. But we're waiting for their response. We're going to work with Miss Miss a whole slide here. Is there one previous to that? OK. OK. We have applied. Sorry, we have applied for Congressional Directed Spund Spunding of a million five to fifty thousand dollars. And that does require a hundred percent match of non federal funds in order to use that funding. And it's our intention that that we would use that to incentivize the connection costs for new users. So we would use that as fifty percent. And the users applied money would be the fifty percent match that's required next slide. Yes. Yeah. And we are working with our current customers to improve their usage of the system. And hopefully help them increase their efficiency, which would free up even more capacity for additional connections or other projects. Other projects. One one possibility is a snowmelter that would. So these are these are devices. They're they're used in a lot of big cities where they don't have snow storage. They don't have the ability to truck the snow. They they fuel fired devices that melt the snow and send it down the drain system kind of on site. They're portable trailer mounted things that use just a whole bunch of typically propane, but sometimes oil. We're we're kind of researching the idea of building sort of a centrally located one of these. It's in a fixed location. Obviously it can't be portable connected to district T. And we really need a partner for this. We we approach PGS. They're they're not currently willing to commit to partner on this. But we've got a couple, a couple large private users that we hope to maybe partner with. But nothing. Nothing real concrete on that front yet. So using the snowmelter is going to reduce our trucking, reduce our labor, shorten the time of snow removal. This is this primarily for snow removal operations downtown that happen at night because it happens at night. It should be it should kind of coincide with a low ebb in in usage. But it won't it won't affect building use of the of the district heat capacity. And once the snow is melted, then it can be sent to the treatment plan where the runoff can be treated. Oil, salt, all that type of stuff will be removed from it. And, you know, kind of looking to the future, CPW has led me to believe that some of this stuff may very well be mandated to state level that we that it's for its requirement. You know, all municipalities are going to have to start to treat there, which, you know, instead of dumping it on the riverbanks and letting it run in. Next slide, please. Yeah, OK. And this one I've already Yeah, very interesting. Thanks, Chris. Do you have questions from the council? I have a question. Am I right that? The people that if you're a building on district heat, that you're you're still paying more than you would if you were. Just eating it with the with the oil. Unfortunately, that's that's almost always the case. Yeah. You know, I was I was a huge supporter of the district heat plan, but when it was being considered, but it seems like that's probably the major hurdle, right? It is, it really is. And, you know, in improving the efficiencies, again, will free up capacity, but it's. They and it will kind of create equity across users. That their their bill will be more directly related to their usage kind of earlier in district heat. And a lot of this is kind of behind us. There's still room for some more more tweaking, but. There were some smaller users who really weren't using the system properly and it functioned very differently than the systems that people are used to the fuel fired boilers, that type of thing. And it took the it took the people installing the control systems of while to kind of figure out how to how to tune this system for maximum efficiency because of that difference from fuel fired stuff. But there historically, there were some users whose bill was really out of scale with their actual usage. A lot of that's been taken care of, but there is still room for improvement. Thanks, Donna. And with that smooth out with more customers sharing the overarching cost, right, just like our water bills, more customers we have, the less we all pay individually. So what's it going to take to get more customers? We're we're kind of turning over the carrots. Bushes again, they the the money that we've applied for from Senator Sanders would be used to incentivize new connections. Oh, hopefully that that's enough to kind of tip the scales and get gets people off. Is it is it an incentive if if you've got a building that's at the end of useful life for their heating plant? So they're they're faced with, you know, putting twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars into a new furnace versus signing on with us. Is that one of the things that you're seeing? Oh, hopefully that that does kind of help tip the scales as well. You know, they've already got to make a substantial investment. Why not put that towards district heat when one big plus of district heat is that you don't have an in building heating plant that you have to maintain and service year after year after year. And that is, you know, on its way as soon as you put it in towards office lessons, Tim, we have one building. And as you know, Chris of the eighteen on the list, but it seems like. The cost piece is probably a big decision for people, but there are a number of buildings in town that are looking like they're going to have renovation projects. So hopefully if we could tie on new users in areas where lines already exist, I think that would be really helpful because the the network of distribution lines is pretty tight, isn't it? Well, no, yeah. And one other. One kind of stumbling block that the system faces is is the season of operation. Is it odds with the with the Vermont Department of Health Rental Housing Code? So rent rental buildings are required to be heated anytime. The temperature drops below 55 degrees outside. And, you know, prior to October 1st, that can happen. And after May 1st, it can happen. So there's if if it's a rental housing building, then they still need some some kind of provisions for the shoulder sequence. So that's that's a tricky piece as well. It is. Is there a map of the network, the distribution network? I haven't really looked for one. I thought there might be an easy way to get at it. There are maps, but I can't tell you. At the moment, OK, I'll catch up again. Yeah. Yeah. Just one thing to put out there, too. I think when we think about different ways to incentivize new users, I mean, the upfront costs of connection. I mean, we're we're talking 10s, hundreds of thousands of dollars for some of these buildings. And like if there was a way that we could help those customers finance that or amortize it over time and not have to pay it all up front. I mean, I think what Chris is talking about in terms of the the congressional appropriation that would allow us to subsidize part of it would be great if we can find outside funding to help just lower the cost. But if we could also have a have a financing mechanism or at least direct people to maybe it's outside financing or something that would help them figure out how to make that jump. That seems to me like something that we might be able to actually work. But if you get the million dollars from Sanders, that's roughly, if you say, 50,000 bucks, a hookup, you know, Paul Park, that's 20 buildings. That would be significant from Humphillier. Yeah, that would be. Very helpful for buildings that are on the on the system, for sure. It's buildings that are the pipes run right by it. Some of the users, some of the bigger users that we really like to get aren't on the lines. And the, you know, the the mains under the ground are pretty expensive to put in, at least using the system that was put in place when the system was built. We've started to look at, you know, different technologies, different piping, maybe even plastic piping instead of the welded steel piping, that type of stuff that could give some cost savings on the installations, but we're not we're not there with that that homework yet, to be honest with you. You know, the real upside of district heat is the the amount of fossil fuel that this thing's capable of offsetting. It's it's some of that first. Yeah, yeah. And it's a million years. Right. It's it's the. District heat alone could really get us to net zero. And I said in the sidewalk, you won't have to buy the melter. All right. So I was looking at our PR person here, Evelyn, and thinking maybe you need a cheerleaders squad going with you to visit these things, you know, somehow a big workshop, something to build up some energy and community awareness. And especially if we do have this money that we can offer, it just seems to be hard to do by yourself. That's anybody else. OK, thanks, Chris. I'll continue to be interested in how this goes. And now the next item is the State Street construction presentation, which is going to be long. So our next item is break. And it's right right on time. Right. We always shoot for eight thirty. And it's hard to be closer to eight thirty than we are right now. So 10 minutes. Go again. Our next item is item number. 10 or some other number. East State Street construction presentation. And is it a problem with me being being here? Well, we also have. Yeah. OK. I am a couple of course. Just make sure you guys in the back want the lights on back there. OK. All right. I'm a couple of course director with me tonight is Cori line project management director Cori handles. The bike and ped program for DPW. As well as transportation related items. Tonight we're going to talk about the East State Street reconstruction project. This project's been in development for some time. Originally started as a combined sewer overflow or a nation project for those counselors. Not familiar with that. The sewer system and the storm system in Montpelier were constructed as one one combined system initially when it was constructed over the years. The city has separated much of the storm out of the sewer lines. But there's still several streets, including East State Street, where the drainage still goes to the sewer system. And what happens is during having lanes, the pipes are not able to handle all the stormwater and sewage. So there are six remaining points where the combined flows over the river. So that's where this project started from there. It grew to a really full reconstruction to include the water utility, the sewer main, storm work. We also need to do some stormwater treatment as well as really the focus of tonight is the streetscape option. So by claims, additional sidewalks. A little background on the on the funding in twenty twenty two on the city voted a seven point two million dollar bond for the project. We were able to secure USDA loan and grant funding. USDA provided a three point five million dollar grant. We actually funded this project jointly with USDA for both the Water Resource Recovery Facility, also known as a wastewater treatment plant, as well as the State Street. So this three and a half million dollar grant is for both of those projects. We only get three and a half million, but we have the ability to split where that grant funding goes between the two projects. And we also received a state of the art grant for the CSA portion of the project of one point two million. And we're doing the design work in-house with WPW staff. And we utilize the the state revolving loan funds. Typically, we do this when we hire consultants out and then there's subsidies or loan forgiveness on the sewer side, the clean water side of up to 50 percent. So in this case, we're actually the city staff are actually getting some money reimbursed back from the state to conduct this design. And then there is one other potential grant of a pollution control grant of up to 200,000. That's not certain yet. They are planning to release the state's intended use plan next week. And hopefully we'll learn more on that. It's all based on the point ranking system for all the projects throughout the state of Vermont. So if if we get a grant amount, we'll it'll depend on where we rank on that scoring system. We're a bit about the project sequencing and the schedule. So we've decided that it's really best financially and construction wise, schedule wise to split this into two separate contracts. So two bid projects. The first private contract one is really focused on separating the stormwater out of the sewer system. The limits for that project will move from the main and east state intersection out to the Rialto Bridge, where we construct a new stormwater outfall. Most of East state and all of the state is actually separated in the nineties. The city did a project to separate the storm out of the sewer, but we're not able to. The separation project at the bottom of the street. So it's all separated until it gets to the main street intersection, then it combines back to the sewer system. So that's why the limits would pick up where that separation project ended and continue it out to the river. We're hoping to start construction in July and then it would run through right up to winter, hopefully November, but you know, potentially into December. The current estimate for that project is one point two million dollars, which aligns with our program. And the the other reason for splitting this out from the larger east state reconstruction project is that this work will be done through trenchless technologies, which is not open cut excavation. It would be a drill that runs the new pipe underground. There's a very deep proposed installation for the piping that's approximately 12 feet deep. And that's to get around the existing sewer mains and sewer and the water main in that intersection. It's very congested. So the cost to try to open excavate that traditional excavation would be really high. So it's a specialty type, specialty type work to do these these trenchless installations, which is another reason why we wanted to break this up. Contract two would be the fully state reconstruction project. So that would be from Main Street all the way up to College Street. That would be the following construction here planned to start in May. Again, through November, and it would actually be a two year project. So we would shut down. We haven't worked out the logistics of the sequencing of how that would be phased exactly. But we do anticipate that's the volume of work would require to two construction seasons. The estimated baseline cost for that project is six to seven point two million. And this will be constructed through typical techniques of open excavation rather than the trenchless drilling of utility lines. It would also include the streetscape work, sidewalks and potential bike lane and turn over to Corey. Now. So when we look at. What the state street should. What it should look like on the surface. We reference two different plans. The peculiar motion plan and the complete streets design report. Combine these two city plans, identify which transportation accommodations should be located on any street within the city, given their role within the entire network. At East, according to these two plans, East State Street should have obviously two vehicle lanes. You should accommodate parking, sidewalk on both sides and an uphill bike lane. Obviously, for those of you, I'm sure you all know, East State Street is very steep street. It pushes about 10 percent grade at some places. The uphill bike lane accommodates those traveling uphill who tend to take up more space when traveling up steep, steep slopes like that. Obviously, it's a very long linear project with split it up here. So if we could sort of get our bearings upper left corner, Main Street, as you move right, you're heading up the hill, up to Cedar, up to Hubbard, and then you go to the bottom left and continue to move uphill all the way to the top and at College Street. This is just pointing out the existing sidewalks that are on the street in blue here, and this would be the gaps identified in the master plan. And some pictures showing those encumbrances or steep grades, which need to be addressed to close those gaps. And those would be done with retaining walls to hold back those steep slopes and create the necessary room. This is showing the proposed sidewalks with retaining walls, and they range roughly from three to six feet. And the other option, is there anything else? This would show the sidewalk caps being remediated with the retaining walls, as well as the uphill bike lane on the south side of the street. With this option, all of the parking will be located on the north side of the street. Right now, it switches over right about right towards the bottom left of the screen. It switches from the north side over to the south side. This change in parking would actually net anywhere from five to ten spaces on the street total. Mostly, that's because of the large driveway list section between Bingham and as you go left there. You'll also notice the because of the wider envelope of the roadway, the proposed retaining walls increase, which is where you're going to see your price increase for this for this build. Did you do? There we go. So this is basically what it would look like. It said the uphill bike lane to travel into parking. So I'd walk on both sides. Street trees and decorative lighting would remain on the lower section. And we had a, I thought, a very constructive conversation with the Transportation Infrastructure Committee, which Councillor Alfano and Councillor Bate took part in. They were very much in favor of following the city's master plans and going with the uphill bike lane sidewalk gaps remediated. They did make the one recommendation of potential, potentially raising that uphill bike lane to the elevation of the sidewalk to create a vertical separation between the vehicles and the bicycles. This is, it'll be something new for this area, but it's a pretty standard design element. Bike lanes can be separated either horizontally or vertically. It doesn't have to be a learning curve. This is something new for this area. So signage markings, potentially a different material, separating the sidewalk and the bike lane would be necessary. And you may be thinking, I see a spelling error. You may be thinking, why not just create a shared use path? Well, the Agency of Transportation's shared use path design guidelines are pretty specific about not creating those facilities on steep inclines. Or if you are increasing around the eight, nine percent slope, it's done for a very short distance. And the reason for that is you could have a very high speed bicycles traveling down and then conflicting with pedestrians if they share that space. So that would be the reason to distinctively call out an uphill bike lane next to that walkway and try to that you can prohibit downhill users in that situation. And so next steps, impacts to driveway stairs, walkways, get into detail on the retaining walls, reach out to Green Mountain Power. There's going to be some utility pole relocations and make sure those can be accommodated, what impacts might there be to trees. Like we said, I think the street trees on the lower section are going to be in place unharmed, but up above there may be some some tree impacts. And I think Kurt mentioned earlier some stormwater elements to take into consideration cost. So alternative one, we're just keeping that's the baseline. That's putting back what's there now. Couple travel lanes, parking lane, same sidewalks that are there. The alternative two, just filling in the sidewalk gaps, keeping the two travel lanes with the parking. That is an increase of one point two million dollars to the project. Adding the uphill bike lane with the sidewalks. That would be an additional one point seven million to the project. That's one point seven on to the original alternative on to the baseline questions. All right, thank you. To to get oriented a little bit, do we need to make the decisions on what we're going to do with the streetscape tonight or is this more of an introduction to what we're doing? Ideally, we would get a preferred alternative selection from council tonight so we can advance design. We're hoping to bid out the contract one, you know, the next month. And then immediately move right into design of the second contract. So if possible, that would be great. If that's not if council is not ready to make that decision, we can come back and do that another time. OK, thanks, Lauren, you have to end up and Tim, you do too. I think OK, yeah, thanks. I just had two questions first. So besides just it's nicer to have continuous sidewalks. Was there specific safety or concerns with the, you know, having to cross the street have issues arisen that make it particularly important to provide the continuous sidewalks? And then my second question is if we expand the sidewalks, is there any kind of like ballpark of increased ongoing like the maintenance of the retaining walls and the new sidewalks? Like something that we should keep in mind of like what that looks like over the longer term in addition to the upfront costs? As far as the the sidewalk question. Basically, what it does is reduce the number of mid block crossings. If you look at the way out now, especially considering the crux of the school, if you had someone walking, you know, say from the arsenal neighborhood upper college street, they would have to cross three different times to get to the school. So that's the main idea is to reduce the number of hit block crossings. And then on the maintenance piece that is along the existing you know, an existing route of our sidewalk pile. So those projects where you extend linearly, you know, out to like a dead end or are more increased to operational costs, there will be some, you know, additional salt and staff time. But I, you know, I wouldn't anticipate that to be significant, you know, under, you know, less than 5,000 for sure. Yeah, the question about retaining walls and the ongoing sorry, retaining walls and ongoing maintenance of them. And I think our history is the clay soils. And what I'm going to tell you is we've got a lot of them already, especially that one above Hubbard Street on the right. When you're looking at Tim, I think you're not being heard. I'm not being heard. Does this help? It's also a classroom because I don't get the mic in here. Does this help? OK. It's river. So anyway, that turns the retaining walls. And the other piece would be. And, you know, Hundred East State Street, that section up to Bingham, where you've got the big bank that you're going to cut into and do a retaining wall. That bank is just clay. I know when my parents bought that house, it took over 10 years for the city to stabilize that bank and stop it from flowing into East State Street. It was pretty dubious. Having lived through that, I would not encourage touching that thing again if you don't have to. It was really bad. Yeah, I didn't address the retaining wall piece. I mean, it would all and the sidewalk itself replacement. These are these would be added assets for the city to maintain. So you would have, you know, the replacement cost that 1.2, 1.7, you know, escalated, you know, you should get 20 to 50 years, at least out of a retaining wall. But, you know, at some point, they're going to have to be replaced. And you're right, you know, that, you know, Tom McCartle, former director, Tom McCartle has warned us about that bank or where your where your property was. My understanding is there's some large boulders sort of placed in there to support that. And yeah, we'd likely anticipating some temporary sheeting in order to make that, you know, construct that retaining wall. You know, once it's in place properly designed, you know, it should it should hold and last, but eventually you will have to replace those assets. So that was something to keep in mind. I'm ready on the side, Donna. Corey, would you go back to the slide that has the amounts for all the three different choices? It won't. What's your financial? What's our financial risk limits? What do we now have in place? OK, so we have the seven point two million dollar bond. The project was bonded based on putting back the existing sidewalk limits. We are, but we do have the additional one point two million in the ARPA grant. So that's on top of the seven point two million dollar bond. And then as I mentioned, we also have a three point five million dollar USDA grant. But, you know, presumably some of that three point five would also would go to the wastewater plant project. So so at most, you know, you have four point seven of grant money. But some of that should be shouldn't really will need to go to the wastewater plant project. So I was trying to put those numbers with that. So what it seems like we have the seven point two and the one point two, but we don't have the one point seven. Well, like I said, the USDA grant could could cover that one point seven. Right. But if we make decisions, use it there, then you can't use it somewhere else, right? That's right. Or I mean, the other thing to keep in mind is if you if you, you know, don't do the extra scope, that's less debt service on the overall project. So, you know, the grant money would go to the existing project reducing how much the city has to borrow on that bond. OK. Just then the other piece of which we talked about near that wonderful site you had with the sidewalks. I'm just wondering if. Yes. OK. So up by the side of the street, the the upper side, the Bingham, Bingham side, if we didn't do that side and only put the additional sidewalk on the right side of the road with a uphill bike lane, is that any significant difference in cost to one less retaining wall? Yeah, we don't have that breakdown, but it would be, you know, several hundred thousand dollars, probably, you know, I don't know, I would guess somewhere between three and five hundred thousand less. Something like that. It's a pretty significant wall in that area. I'd like to do them all. I'm just trying to figure out how to afford it. Well, we do. Yeah, we do have there is enough grant money to make up the difference between the USDA grant and the ARPA grant without having to go back and rebond and still have sufficient funds to complete the wastewater project. We have to put it out to bid and we don't know those. That's true. We're in a hole. That's true. If we get the bids coming really high, then, you know, that would definitely have to be reconsidered. You're right. And the Infrastructure Committee left Corey with the if we have to cut back, we really wanted at least one side to go all the way up as a shared use. So if bids became high, I think we have to talk about what's our fallback. Well, we're talking about the dollars. Um, I thought I understood this this afternoon from the emails. And now maybe I don't understand it again. We have three different figures, seven point two million for the base plan, one point two million to add the sidewalks and then one point seven million. And that one point seven is or is not on top of the one point two. It's it's not on top of the one point. It's on top of the seven point two million. OK, thank you. I had a bunch of questions about the CSO. It seems like we're we've gotten ahead of our target on eliminating CSO sites. Is that right? And which is good, obviously. Yeah, well, no, I think we're so the city has what's called a long term control plan with the state reviewed and approved. And it sort of is the map to the projects we have to do in order to be in compliance with our discharge permit. You know, I think State Street was actually planned to be last year. And we're doing that this year. That's another CSO project right in front of the Capitol. And and I believe this project is was slated for this year. So that's on on track. Great. And this and so then after this is done, there will be five remaining sites left or or four because this because the State Street is also going this year. There's no be still six remaining structures that can overflow. And really, we need to wait and see what the impacts are from the separation projects before we know we're able to abandon those. The next projects will be increasing the capacity in the in the trunk line along the bike path to make sure we get as much much of the flows to the plant as we can. Have we ever done the benchless a trenchless project in Montpellier before? Yeah, yes, we have. We've done several. Yeah, cool. And it works fine. But we shouldn't be worried about embarking on that. I'm only think it's the best approach. There's always risk in any project, but what do you think? It's it's definitely the best approach for this particular scenario. And this CSO work is going to address the the issue of the odor at the bottom of the State Street, right? We haven't worked out the details of those exact catch basins. There's two right at the bottom that would be resolved under this project. But certainly after the second contract, it definitely would be. Yes. Great. And the other questions over here, I just wanted to clarify that the you said the 1.2 million are grant was for the CSO on State Street, not East State Street, is that right? So those funds wouldn't be applied to produce the 7.2, is that correct? No, that is for this this project, the State Street project. That one point we also got a separate our program for State Street and 675,000. OK. Any other questions? Just yes, Kerry. Or just thoughts on. On the whole system, the whole idea, just one other thing. Sure. I noticed the sidewalk on the north side opposite West Street in the green is right up again, right up against all those houses. I assume we have the right of way to all of that. And there will be some some program to. Acclimate the homeowners to the project, shall we say? Yeah, so the right of way back in the day, East State Street was originally laid out to basically be an extension of the class one State Street. So we actually have a lot more right of way than what you typically have in the class. In fact, in that area, I believe the right of way goes right up to the houses. But yes, once we know the the homeowners know that, do you think? Or it's probably not. I don't know when the last time that the house was turned over. I can tell you, though, it was just subdivided probably four or five years ago. And the boundary survey used showed the right of way right up to the right up to the house. So I don't know if the current. But anyway, once we get to the. If we get into the details of the actual impacts, yes, there'll be, yeah, there'll be an outreach to the impact of properties. Sure. So thanks for this detailed breakdown and all the maps and everything. I my big concern about the site just as a user, a pedestrian and a driver about the sidewalks on East State Street is the crossing problem. I think that sidewalks on both sides of the street are always great. You know, if we could have that, that's great. But I'm interested in Donna's idea if it's possible to just forgo that section by Bingham Street and just keep the one sidewalk running all the way on the other side of the street running straight through. And if that would be a significant enough savings that, you know, we would actually notice that in the in the bottom line, I would like to know about that. I'm not interested in just reproducing what's currently there. I think we need to fill in the sidewalk gaps in some way. I think that as long as we're doing this construction, the idea of the bike lane sounds great. We won't have more people using bikes if we don't build the infrastructure for it. So it seems like an opportunity to do that. But I am also interested if there's ways we can shave a little off here and there. Yeah, yeah, I'm wondering if could we could we put that retaining? I mean, I hadn't heard Tim's story about the mud till tonight. And I'm a little worried about it. And I'll bet our bidders are going to be worried about it too. I wonder if there's a way to put that into the contract request as an alternate so that they can break out the cost of that, because I'll bet there's going to be a lot of contingency money for that retaining wall, because Tim's not the only one who knows that mud story in the among the people who are going to be bidding on this project. It's my guess, we certainly could bid it as an alternate. The only risk to doing that is that sometimes contractors will, you know, inflate the cost on the alternate work. So you would end up potentially paying more if you did select that alternate potentially. That's the only risk to doing it. But we certainly could bid it that way if that's councils. A lot of times what we'll do is you know, negotiate if say the prices came in higher than the city could support, we can reduce scope items out of the contract as well. So we got to Grat Road to kind of get closer to budget. So there are some options there. But I think the best approach would be to kind of bid what we really intend to build, if we can. And then make a decision from there based on what the bids come in at. So if I made a motion for the 7.2 and the 1.7 that covers by Glane, Sidewalks and the retaining walls. Yes, based on current estimates. And then if the numbers come in higher, then we may have to do some adjustments. Yeah, that's right. Is that right? Yes. That's my motion. I would like to make the motion that we do. We authorize the 1.2 million. It's not so much that it's 1.7. No, you're the whole the whole package is the whole package. Option C, right? C. OK, I don't have it up here. Three. Sorry. I'll be there. I mean, there's also the possibility higher to getting construction prices for the project. There may be some unforeseen circumstances that we run into during design, which then the accommodations become just the cost of the accommodations become disproportionate to the to the purpose. If I might revisit it, right? So you may, you know, I may not have to go to bed to be able to realize. You know, this is kind of getting out. Yes, I'd like to start with the right intention. We did the Montpellier motion. We've done the complete streets. Let's let's do it. So there's a motion. There's not a second yet. Second. OK, anyone else have any, Tim, look like you're about to get as the motion stands. I'll vote no, because I really do like the idea that you can take a sidewalk up one side, which means the bike lane and I really can't support. The sidewalks filling in on the left side and the north side, knowing what I know. Lauren. Yeah, I'm I seconded and I'm going to support this motion. I just echo the sentiment of people that I think that priority of having one side continuous and ideally it being side where we could do the uphill bike lane seems like a high priority. And then if we learn that, you know, there's the ability to do the retaining while stay within this budget and all that, then I think being able to do both sides seems great to me, but I just echo the priority of really getting that one continuous if that's what's going to take to stay within budget. Anybody else boy, this is as soon as I saw this, I thought it would be great to eliminate the crossing. You know, there are so many places people have to cross and I know and we all know people do not just cross at crosswalks. And that just makes it that much more hazardous. And so I would love to see us be able to do sidewalks on both sides if that's a feasible option. Any other discussion? And so, well, I I don't I don't have enough confidence in this. This pillow clay. I mean, it just sounds like a, you know, an Albatross that's going to be around everybody's neck, you know, right from the start. I mean, I I like the idea. I walk that route a lot and I hate having to cross the street twice, you know, to get where I'm going. So a continuous sidewalk with a bike lane all the way up on the south side appeals to me and I just as soon avoid the headache of the retaining wall, frankly. So I don't know if we can, unless we can break out the cost of that. I mean, we could certainly use the money somewhere else. I'd prefer to to see a scale back version. OK. Any other discussion? Are we ready to vote? I throw on some more confusion. Yeah, always, we're always open for more confusion. And again, we haven't looked into specifically that option of just the one side, but we could run into a situation where the total you know, the total envelope of the street, even without the north sidewalk around Bingham Street, the need for a retaining wall in order to increase the width of the road in order to accommodate the bike lane. And we haven't dug into that kind of detail, but that could end up very well be the case. So we may not if you want the bike, like you may not be able to get away from the retaining walls. That we would get into that if if we're looking at the full build out build out, we would obviously get into that with design, with further design, if we're looking at this entire full build up. Like that point, because we would get into more information as we go. And so if the goal is to go and try, we'll find out whether it's feasible or not. And that's what I would prefer. And what do you expect the timeline would be to have done the design work and be able to come up back and tell us we can do this thing. We can't do that thing without. Going over what we thought we're going to spend. Our best estimate would be early next winter. We'd have enough data and, you know, there'd be some additional soil bearings that we're going to need to look at the clay soils and stability of them. And, you know, it's construction season. So our staff is somewhat limited on how much time we can spend on design right now. So yeah, I would say probably sometime in January. Okay. Thanks. We also in our conversation with the transportation. Infrastructure committee said to them, you know, we would give them periodic updates. If we start running into problems, they would be updated as well. As well as the council. As well as the council, they would probably get more frequent updates as far as minor things that might come up so that they can prepare any recommendations for you. Yeah. So it sounds like we'll have another opportunity to review. The final design prior to it's going to be. Yeah. That's what you're saying. And that would be. When. Sometimes that's. Yes, that's correct. Okay. Are we. Laura. And. Just some understanding, right? Are you anticipating that even if we. Vote this down and did a revised version that just was looking at bike lane. On one side, you're going to have to do the same. Coring and stuff potentially to assess retaining wall. Like, are we saving? Would you do a different analysis? That would somehow save the city time and money. If we right now decided to do the slightly paired back version, or is it going to essentially be the same analysis? So by authorizing the full thing now. Tentatively. We're, we'll get the full picture. Yeah, there will be additional, you know, subcontractor costs and a fair amount of additional staff time to look and evaluate these retaining wall areas. So it would, you know, that's kind of what we're looking for is a directive on. The design. Interest by the council. So if, if there's not interest in, you know, expending the extra money on the additional retaining walls, up on one side on the north side, you know, it would be helpful to know that now it would save us some, you know, some effort on all the design work. And cost for, you know, some subcontractors who are boring work and things like that. Can I ask another? So. Can we, can we take the, we were talking about dimension, the dimensions may not allow. Existing with the road may not allow for a sidewalk and a bike lane on the south side at this 100th state street. Hill of clay. And the roadway was parking. And sidewalks without, and no sidewalk just parking without a retaining wall. You're saying you may, you may discover that. Yeah, it's possible to accommodate. To accommodate the. The bike lane on the south side. Yeah. So can you just cover that before you. Spend. Any, any money. Trying to figure out what you need to build the retaining wall. Yeah. The alignment of where everything would line up would be the next step. And then we would. Understand the full. Against that. Yeah. Big retaining wall that exists already on the south side. Yeah, there might be some room for some. Some horizontal curvature within the road to be able to. You know, maybe avoid those retaining walls. If we were just, if we weren't putting the sidewalk there. So we may find that out. Fairly enough to save the exploration costs. Okay. I am confused now. Are we, what are we voting for? The motion. Is to approve the going forward with design work. For all of the options. Sidewalk. The basic project. Sidewalk on both sides and the. By path. Okay. So we are not voting any of the alternatives. We are saying that they should go and work all of them. Right. Alternative three is what is what that is. Yeah. That's on the slide we have in front of us right now. Are we. Yes, Karen. So I'm going to vote for that. But I, I think you've probably heard that. It would be great if you could explore the idea of scaling back a little bit. But I want you to have the options that you didn't present that as an alternative. And it wasn't something that you prepared. I don't want us to. I wouldn't be comfortable directing you to do that right now. But so I'll vote yes on this. So you have kind of that full option, but knowing that we're going to revisit this and that there's a strong interest expressed on the council for. Possibly a scaled back version. Without that retaining wall and extra sidewalk. Or maybe that's just me. That's just me. I couldn't speak for myself. I was just asking the same thing. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Are we ready to vote? If so, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. So was that. And all those opposed. No. No. I just have it. It's. We got four, right? Okay. Okay. Don't move. I was just asking the same thing. So thank you. All right. Are we ready to vote? If so, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Because you're still on deck. That's one. All right. My name is Zach. I'm here tonight to talk about our payment management program. I called this. This presentation building a better network. Tonight we're going to talk about an overall background of the program, our management strategies. And I will give you a high level overview of our network. And then we will briefly talk about the next steps. So first we'll start off with some definitions. PCI. Also known as payment condition index. It's a numerical rating from zero to a hundred that represents the overall condition of your, your payment. It's based on the different types of distresses. That are observed when an inspection is completed. Your class. One town highways. Are those that are extension of the state highway system? They generally carry a route. Number that is associated with them such as route two or to 302. Your class two town highways are like your east state street, your town, her roads. They generally connect. your town roads. They generally connect from community to community and they have a high volume of traffic but not as much as your class ones. And your class threes are the ones that are not designated as your ones or twos and are generally have a lower volume of traffic. And are at all points in time during the year can be accessed by a standard vehicle. Here is a breakdown of our different classifications and the mileage that is associated with them. So our class ones are roughly 10 and a half miles. Our class two is eight. Our class threes are 33 miles. Our class fours are 0.8 and the other associated roads are 3.6. So that you all are aware of city funds go towards class twos, threes and fours. Class ones are the responsibility of the state of Vermont for maintenance and repaving. Sorry for repaving. DPW still performs the maintenance such as snow clearing or if we do pothole patching that is our responsibility on a class one highway. Next I prepared this video that just has an overview of pavement management strategies that I would like to play for you all. You know what I don't have? Audio. That's my favorite. Close. What was that? You might have to choose a share audio option on the video square. That's a share your screen. Share sound. I didn't even know that was what you were doing. Thank you. Because I'm not sure we would have got this. No. Is it not working because we all have our speakers sitting on? Let's see. Well would you like me to provide a general commentary of what they are talking about and we'll just start from the beginning and I'll do my best and then we can go back. I can send you guys a link because I think it's a really important video when you're starting to talk about pavement management. So here they're talking about roads and that over the lifespan of a road you'll see that you have different distresses that come up over the lifespan of a road. Over time people that are making decisions should understand that when you get into a full reconstruction project that is very costly. So in order to better leverage your network it's better to preserve your roads that are in good conditions to avoid the really costly repairs that are unavoidable if you need to do the full reconstructions and pay the maximum cost per dollar. Here is a graph that shows the deterioration over the lifespan of the roads and as you see the road is cracking. So in order to make informed decisions and we should we invest in the asset initially and the upfront cost and instead of having to every you know so a road will deteriorate and we would have to pay the maximum cost every 10 or 15 years if we maintain those roads we can we leverage our dollars are leveraged better. In a nutshell that's kind of what that video was supposed to do. It was much better done than I just did it and it just goes on to talk about that there's significant environmental savings by reusing products whether that's through cold planing or cold in place recycling. So there's a lot of potential in the future when you're doing preservation techniques. So I will send this link around so that everybody can look at it on their own time. Okay so next I'm going to talk about the different treatments options and their applicable uses. So first of all is a crack seal. For those that don't know what a crack seal is it's an exact yeah it looks like the online version hasn't caught up with the I don't know if there's something with the sharing. How's that? Do we catch up now? Okay so crack sealing is a process of where you place an adhesive sealant over a crack and it prevents water from getting into the road base. Your fog sealing which is something that was new this past year was the first time that Montpelier has ever done a fog sealing project. It's asphaltic spray that gets applied over the whole road surface and there's really two main things that it does. It keeps the stones at the top of the surface so that the plows as they go over it they're not wearing the top surface off and then it also allows to give that the flexibility back in your roadway. So over time the liquids get burned out and the road becomes more brittle and so when that when that when it starts to get brittle it allows for more cracks and then the water gets into the cracks gets underneath the road and then you start to see this advanced cycle of deterioration. An overlay is when you place a thin layer of pavement over an existing surface. Your mills and fills are when you shave off the top layer of pavement and then you it's usually done with either one or two courses of an overlay. So you take off an inch or two and then you put back an inch or two of pavement. A cold in place recycle is what we did last year on Main Street where they set up a milling machine and the milling is in front of the paver. All of the material gets recycled that all of the material that was on the road gets recycled back into the process. So typically when we do a mill and fill project all of those millings have to then be transported and stored somewhere and then they get recycled at a pavement plant. Last year when we did the cold in place recycling all of that material was reused and repurposed on site and that's where those eco savings come in. There's not any truck that trucks that are hauling all that material off site. It's all reused and then a cold in place recycling project. There's actually two more components after that surface is recycled. It's then sprayed with a sealant in order to kind of lock everything in and then it's overlaid with an an overlay course of asphalt. A reclamation is a process of it's basically a rototiller for people that are gardeners. You take the existing asphalt you kill it and you create a new sub base material. You add chemicals to strengthen it and to make it tight again and then that surface is then overlaid with two lifts generally depending on the road design anywhere from two to one and a half inches. We generally are applying about a three and a half to four inch four inches of new asphalt on top of a reclaimed street and then your reconstructions are your most costly treatments and that's when you have a roadway that's in an extremely poor condition and you're rebuilding the whole sub base you're digging it down and those projects are generally we try to align those with utility work that is occurring. So East State Street is an example of a reconstruction project. We're going to do water, sewer, stormwater, bike lanes and all of that a road would be reconstructed and stabilized with geogrid and then paved. Here are some typical price ranges for the various treatments that we just discussed. So everything is represented in square yards so that's length of the street times the width and then converted into a square yard formula or square yard unit price. So your crack ceiling is anywhere from 50 cents to 75 cents. Your fog ceiling is $1.25 to $1.75. Your overlays are 9 to 12. Your mill and fills are 17 to 23. Your cold and place recycling is 25 to 35. Your reconstruction only. The reason why I put this in there is because it's applicable for what we actually do. So there's some streets that we don't get into like having to put in the geogrid and it's like a we kind of meet them in the middle. So we use DPW crews to remove that asphalt and then to dress it up with a little bit of new material and then pave it only. So it's kind of like a it's not a full reconstruction. It's only like a partial reconstruction. Your reclaims are again when you're rototelling the roadway and they run from $35 to $40 per square yard and your full reconstructions are anywhere from 50 to $75 per square yard. And these are prices, price ranges that Montpelier has specifically experienced over the years of managing the payment network. Here's a graphical image that I like to show because it shows all of the different, you know, severities of your road. So on your A represents a newly paved street where it's in good condition. And then as you move towards the F, you're into your failed or your very serious, really poor conditioned streets. What that translates into treatments, right? So you're between your A and your B's, those are your fog sealing, your crack sealing. Those are really good times to do those treatments. When you get towards a B to a C, you're more moving from that satisfactory to fair level and you're looking at milling off the top surface. You could potentially do an overlay if the if the street is still in a good enough condition. Then when you move into your between C and D, you're more likely to be into your cold and place recycling, your reclamation, or potentially your, your reconstructs. And then once you get to an F, you're, you're at pretty much the highest cost per dollar for the roadway, which is one of them. It's a really big reason why roads that are in the worst condition really stay there because economically, you don't ever, you're never able to get ahead. If you only were to ever address the very worst street first, you can't get ahead with your, with leveraging your dollars. So moving forward, it's best to have a network, a total network improvement approach. So I'm going to read this little excerpt because I really like what it represents. Amazing things happen when a road network is viewed holistically rather than a series of one offs, more durable roads, lower expenses, higher degrees of sustainability, better driver safety, et cetera. It's a matter of just making sound decisions, guided by an aligned approach, and they can be achieved in three steps that happen in a cycle. First, you assess your pavement condition. For those of that, for those of you who don't know, what we do with our PCI is we conduct a manual inspection every three years. So the first one that I did was completed in 2015, and then again in 2018, and then in 2021. With that data, you then optimize your treatment plan, and then you have to measure your progress, which is best done annually, if you can. The hard thing is that when you're only doing an inspection every three years to measure that progress and to report back on what the actual PCI is, it's kind of a moving target. You're reporting back and you haven't done an inspection, so you're extrapolating the deterioration and providing what the improvement was. Ideally, you'd be doing an inspection every year. The inspection takes about three weeks of staff time in two people plus an analysis time. So that three weeks is sending people around and they go around to every road, they measure the width, they measure with the tape, they measure all the distresses, they calculate what they are, and then they plug that into the computer system and then that calculates a PCI for that. Okay, so the next three slides, I'm going to walk you through. This is a tool that I use when looking at different roads and different scenarios. So this tool, what you do is you plug in the upper left of your network miles, you apply your average width to your roadway, and then in this scenario, I plugged in the budget that we used last year. That was actual dollars that were allocated towards payment management last year. What you'll see is that you didn't spend any money in this scenario. This isn't what we actually did last year. This is a hypothetical scenario if we only spent all of the same money that we had towards a worse first scenario. So you'll see zero dollars were used towards preservation, zero towards rehabilitation, and all that money was going towards reconstruction. You were able to resurface one lane mile that basically credited you 34 miles worth of lane mile years, and you can see that you're only addressing 3% of your road network, and you've actually lost eight years and lane mile years of life for the road. This next option is a conventional approach. Given the same budget, same network miles, same width, you'll see that your reconstruction is down to zero. You were able to address 7% of your road network, but your net loss in lane mile years is actually greater than it was on the previous slide. This balanced network approach is what we actually did last year. We were able to address 16% of our roads. We gained four lane mile years to our network, and we had a wide range of all of the techniques. We did cold and place recycling, we did milling, we did full duct reclamation, and we did fog seal and crack seal. So this is where we need to be. We need to have a balanced approach in order to really leverage our dollars in the best way possible, moving forward in the future. This is a summary by treatment type, so you can see the money that we spent on the various treatments and what that totaled out for last year. So we spent 56,000 in fog and crack sealing, our milling and filling projects were 250,000, our cold and place recycling 510, and our reclaims were 225. So what does this mean for the future paving funding needs for us? We're looking at about anywhere between 875,000 to a million dollars in need annually. This year we have put forward 118,000 towards paving. We have a lot of competing needs. Capital plan has a lot of different things that are competing for the same amount of funds, so we always do our best to leverage what we have, but ideally we would be at a target of more than 875,000 and closer to the million dollars moving forward. This graph shows you applies a 2% escalation after year FY25. Here's the breakdown that aligns with the funding for what I just showed you and how we would intend to use that money. If there was more money in the capital plan, things which it would be each one of these years would be more of a balanced approach that I was just talking about. We would have a little bit more reconstructs, a little bit more mills, more preservation. It would look a little bit differently. These are the priorities that for public works, but it's not nearly so black and white as just saying, well, we don't do this this year, we're going to do it next year. We are trying to align with other utility needs. We're trying to align with sidewalk stuff that needs to be improved and stormwater and water and sewer, so it's not nearly as one dimensional as just saying, yep, we're going to pay this street and it's the next one that's up. Our summary and next steps in the last few years, really since really COVID hit, we've seen drastic increases in costs around 15 to 20%. We need to continue to strive for a balanced network approach utilizing all treatments, but the right treatment at the right time for the roadway. These major projects like East State Street are very costly, so preserving our assets is very advantageous for us. And then like I just said in the previous slide, we have a ton of competing demands, whether it's equipment or buildings or energy. There's a lot of places that are pulling the same pool of money, so that's just something that we need to consider moving forward. The last four things that I'm going to talk about are key things that are happening right now that are beneficial and play a role in all of this. The main one is that this year, Route 2 and Route 302, that's a state paving project where they're going to improve about 10% of our entire road network. It's one of the reasons why the funding in this year was a little bit lower. We're doing a lot of other really big projects that require quite a bit of staff time, but also because the state is going to be taking 10% of our road network and making it to a 100 condition index again, which will for a lot of, I mean, our biggest complaints are along Memorial Drive. I mean, that's where we're getting tons of complaints about mufflers, pop tires, just the overall road condition. The other thing that I am extremely excited about is with the help of the planning department, we received a municipal planning grant this year, and that is to conduct a LIDAR inspection. This will be the first time that we're using LIDAR to analyze our road network, which will provide us with a lot more data having a person go out and having to physically measure all of these things. It takes around three weeks. With this type of technology, they will drive the road. We will get a report back. We will have the ability to put that on an online data portal so that people can see, they can put up their pictures, they can see the distresses. It also allows us to have a more strategic approach in the stop-gap measures, which are the interim measures for wheel-riding. So you can understand that, well, maybe the roadway is in pretty decent condition, and we should be only doing a three-foot pavement patch along the area where there's a rut. So you will be able to take that data and make more informed decisions moving forward. Some of the other things that we just need to consider is trying to, if it continues to be a council priority to achieve a 70 PCI, then we will need to increase the funding to align with that in order to be able to achieve that goal. And then the other thing is we need to annually measure the progress in which we're doing. And I would recommend considering either doing annual or biannual lidar inspections and getting out of the manual inspections moving forward. I think that will provide better data. We will be able to use that to leverage and make better decisions about how to maintain our road network in a more efficient manner moving forward. So with that, are there any questions? I'm sure there are a lot of questions. A real short one. Sorry, I thought you were looking at me. I thought you were raising your hand, so I said I said you were. This is a lidar inspection tag. I don't know. I mean, they drive the road at a fairly quick pace, so I would think that it's like a day. And so you've got a grant, and is that doing all the roads? Yeah, it'll do all 50 miles of roads. So times have changed a little bit. When we wrote the grant, the estimates that were given for the grant, we thought we would only be able to do roads, and there was a little bit of extra money there, so we decided that we were going to look at tree assessments as well. And now the technology is moving quickly, and when I talked to a vendor recently, it looks like we might be able to get sidewalk assessments, trees, and a roadway condition as part of the whole package and signage. It's like an a la carte option that you can get. They would drive the road, they take all the points at the same time, and then they take it back to the office, they analyze it, and then they package it up for you. It's extremely beneficial for us. It's something that we need to do. We need to be able to understand all of our assets and the conditions and where they are and how to manage all of them together. Great. Great. Thanks for doing this. So a couple of thoughts that I have. I think this is great information. I think it's maybe counterintuitive, but that's probably good to shake us out of what we think that may not be right. But a couple of thoughts I have are one, the role that the size of the road or the number of people in the road has on decisions of maintenance and placement. And maybe this is related. I think probably every one of us hears from somebody in their district that says, my street is the worst street in the city, and it's terrible, and I broke my axle or whatever. Does this approach that you're talking about using mean that some of those worst streets just never get fixed? Obviously, I can see if you're doing the worst first problem means that you're always only doing the worst street because you take the worst street, the next year some other street is the worst street, you do that, you never have good streets or everything is just constantly going downhill. But does this run the risk of like saying, well, if you're on the worst street, that's just the way it's going to be. So a lot of successful programs transition to setting goals. So if they have just say 15% of their streets are in the very serious or poor category, their targets are to annually improve that number. So this year might be 15, but in the next five years, when we look back, maybe we're now at 10. So that number is always constantly moving down, which is why it's really important to measure your progress to see how effective your plan is actually working. So that's one thing that I would suggest is developing some kind of guidelines and targets about what you would actually like to achieve. Because just achieving a 70 PCI, it's good, and it can be done, but it can also that doesn't mean that you're going to have happy constituents either at the end of that. I mean, you can get there and get a 70 PCI and have a section of your roads that are all zero, right? So I think you need to have a balanced approach. I can provide, this was meant to be really high level overview presentation. I can get more into the weeds about where we're at, how many sections of roads are in a current condition. My recommendation though would be to wait until the LiDAR inspection is done and then analyze that data and say, okay, today we have this many segments of roadway that are in these category groupings and then make some strategic goals that would align with what you would like to see, right? And what you see kind of everywhere else that is kind of is moving towards us is they just make a target, right? That they want to have, they want to achieve a 70 PCI. Maybe that's one of their goals. They want to reduce their number of roads that are in a very serious or poor condition. Maybe that's another one of their goals. And then maybe a long-term goal would be to let nothing drop below a 50 PCI. Once you can start, once you get there and get everything in a better condition, you keep them on the highest level. Some of the most successful programs are putting all of their money towards preservation. They've gotten their roads in good condition and they spend, they are able to actually resurface or preserve like 70 to 80% of their network every single year. We're a little ways away from that. Is the LiDAR grant, I must have missed this, is the LiDAR grant a grant for them to come in and do the inspection or does it give us the LiDAR machine so we can do it whatever we want? So the company can actually give us the equipment to do it. I don't recommend that. I mean, we're just barely getting into the LiDAR. I mean, given that it's also a grant fund, I would much rather pay for someone to come in, drive them. They are doing this day in and day out, give us the analytics on that. And it's a pretty affordable program. It wasn't this way three or five years ago. It was when it was kind of on the cutting edge, it was way more expensive. And we weren't really looking at it because the cost was so, you're looking at like a $20,000 annual cost just to get, just to drive the streets. And now it's much more cost effective. So I would recommend having a consultant do the analytics. We could do it, but especially not in year one. I would think, let's see how it works. Let's understand it. And then moving forward, if it's something that we think would be beneficial, great. If not, but we have enough work. So I'm not thinking that would be a great use. You guys are doing other things too. Thank you for the presentation. Are there any grants for the burst streets? Yeah, so there are grants, but like for the state of Vermont, the grants are all class two town highway grants, right? And they don't, the way that they fund grants is not, they don't actually look at the road condition. They look at the community, the last time that they received funding and the overall applicant pool. So they're not, they're not factoring in how they award the money based on the overall condition. And that's the only paving grant that I know of is the class two town highway grant that is offered for the state. So, and that would be like your town Hill Road, your main street. Yeah, so as a city, we have to fix all the roads, right? And as the capital of state, having very bad condition on our streets, it's not good. And I have been emailed and also sell to about North Street. And I walked there, but today for the first time, I drove all the way up driving. It's really, really bad. Yeah. And that street, I bet other cities are like that. As Jack, Mr. Mayor mentioned, most of the people are saying same thing, right? But North Street, according to this plan, they will not get any kind of work. I don't know what like six years, seven years, because as far as I understood, you have to redo the street, not only paving or just constructing, but you have to redo it again because it's so bad. So yeah, what's the plan? North Street is one and a lot of these streets are kind of, they fall into the same category, just like East State Street. The road is in very poor condition. And they also have other assets that are in dire need of repair as well. North Street needs a new water main that needs sewer work and needs the road to be fully rebuilt. And that's why you don't just pave over the road today is to make kind of the complaint go away. Because if I were to just pave that and make it black, then within two to three years, all of those issues are going to raise back to the top. And you're going to be getting a different complaint. It's going to be, well, why did you put all this money towards the road? And it's, you know, you didn't do the utility work, you didn't do all the other things that should be done with it, right? And so that is an example. And that was, I'm sure we're talking, I talked to someone that had probably reached out to you. And we had a long conversation kind of about that and why it was delayed, but it's delayed and kind of intentionally because we're trying to align all the funding. And so as part of the, in the water system hydraulic analysis, that was identified as one of the high priority streets that need to be repaired. So when we go through and we're selecting these streets, the three of us are sitting together and we're going, okay, here's a road. It needs to be paved. Here's a water main project. It needs to be paved. Okay, Corey's interjecting about the sidewalks and we're trying to make sure that, okay, here's the amount of money that we have. Here's where we're going. And does it all make sense when you start putting all of the picture together? North Street is, I mean, there's a section of North Street between below Hillhead that is very bad. It's an understatement. So one of the things this year that we're going to be doing is we're going to be taking out and digging out the worst section of the roadway and making it passable because it's getting to the point where it's borderline impassable. Yeah, thank you. I'm sure you are doing great job. And I know you are doing great job, but I just want to make sure that if we have some kind of plan to fix the burst roads as all I was just trying to learn. So as far as I understood, there's no plan for those specific streets because this project talks about something else. And yeah, just should we figure out something or because of the infrastructure at the budget, it will be always like that. It won't always be like that if you don't focus always on the worst first. It's a really hard concept because the worst first, it doesn't, you don't really leverage your dollars well. The hard thing, the hard thing is that we're also not funded really where we need to be to hit these targets. So we're providing plans that are, we're starting with a baseline that's not really enough to get us there, which makes making these decisions even harder. Right? Like if you need a million dollars and you only have just for example, 500,000, how do you, what do you do with that? And you know, on the professional side, it's, well, you maintain what you have, you leverage all of your dollars to the maximum extent, feasible. And that's the economics behind it. But there is a reality of you get to these points where streets are just so bad. And so I think one of the things that we're talking about internally is trying to focus on providing a little bit more inner maintenance on the really bad ones as a measure to get us to, okay, we can't do it today. We obviously can't do them all today either. But maybe we are able to make it better until we can do the right method at the right time. Yeah. Thank you. That's what I thought. Thanks. How cooperative is this, is this state when they do a big paving project like what they're going to do with route two in coordinating with our, with the needs of DPW? Do they communicate well or do they just drop the schedule on you? Do you want to add to that Corey? I mean, I think that they do a good job communicating our needs. I mean, we just, we're out of a meeting the other day talking about corporate cup and what the city needs in order to make that a successful event. So Corey is the one that's dealing with the state. But we have these project meetings. I think they do a pretty good job working with us to meet our needs, whether it's time of day restrictions. So we don't end up digging up a lot of their brand new paving to put in water lines afterwards or? I'm not going to say that it doesn't. Do they coordinate that way? I mean, we, we try to write. But if we don't have all the funding to align at the same time, like the state, the state programs are pretty consistent. They're coming in every 12 or 15 years on a cycle. So when we Northfield Street was an example that the state was coming in and redoing that roadway, and we actually requested them to hold off for a year and we did the utility work and they were able to get us in within that cycle. But if we had, if we weren't able to commit, they basically were in a timeline that they said, you can do it now, or if you're not able to do it, then you're going to miss, you're going to have to wait until we're ready to come back because they're when they're doing their systems, right? They're looking at trying to leverage their dollars just as we are. So having, you know, projects that are all over the place doesn't really align with them either. So it's good to know they have some. Yeah, they've been, they've been good to work with. And if you know well in advance on both sides, which they're trying to be more transparent about where they're headed and what they're doing on their end, it allows us to adjust and make accommodations accordingly as well. Do they use the system like this? Yes, they, they moved to LiDAR about five years ago. Lauren, you had your hand up. Thanks. Really glad we're talking about this. I hear about roads more than anything else from constituents, pretty much every day. One question I do get regularly that I would love your thoughts on is like, why don't we just do a big bond and go in and really get the roads in good shape and then get into this maintenance schedule? And just curious your thoughts, like you have a proposal to, you know, modestly increase year over year for like long-term increased sustained funding? Like, are there, is there a benefit to some kind of bump in the short term to get ahead of it and then get into more of a maintenance schedule? Or is it like, no, it's better because of the way roads work to slowly increase and just sustain? That's a great question. So roads, when we talk about life span of a road, right? It's 12, 15 years. You're, I mean, to get a road out 20 years without preserving it is a real long shot. So when you are looking at, or considering bonding for that, you're going to be paying off your bond after the time that the road needs to be repaired again, right? So it really doesn't make any sense to say, okay, we have $5 million in unfunded or backlog need. We're going to bond for all of that and we're going to get it all done and then we're going to move to preservation because it's the lifespan of the road, right? So it's, roads are not something that you want to bond for. If you're going to bond for something, you want to bond for your retaining walls, your sidewalks, things that have a life expectancy that far exceeds the bond term. That's why most people don't end up bonding for road work. Now, with that being said, there's an overall bonding capacity, right? And so whenever you're dealing with money, we only have a certain pool of money in the capital and that includes the debt service payments for not just road bonds, but for any bond that is related to the capital fund. So you don't necessarily need to always bond for something, but making sure that you have a goal of where you need to go and that you can hit there and not, you have enough money to achieve all of the things that you want to do on a more global picture. Does that make sense? Yes. And I have actually explained that to constituents kind of like that. That's good. I'm glad. I wasn't totally at base. But I guess more if we're just thinking about like within the budget and that bonding, I mean, is there like in your ideal world would, would like just a budgeted bump to, I mean, it sounds like the long-term savings, if we could really make progress on the roads and get into more of a maintenance cycle, it sounds like there's good potential there too. Like what do you think we would save more money over the long term if we did some short-term bigger road investments or is not really because I mean, yes, but it, it's, it were deferred enough that it's going to, it's going to be a pretty happy lift. I mean, you're going to be looking at like substantially increasing that funding for like sustain for like five years. And then it goes back to the competing needs, right? And we have equipment, we have buildings, we have all of these things that are fighting over the same pot of money. And that's why it gets really hard to, you know, to, I mean, to shuffle all of the money around to get what you need done. You know, and I think as you look at the funding levels of what we need and versus what is kind of actually, you know, what we think it might be realistic to hold kind of the steady state of the tax base and not like astronomically raised rates, like that's just kind of where we're at. So there's not a great solution. Other than we just need to look at everything holistically, prioritize what is most important to you all and where you need to spend, where you would like to spend your resources, time and resources. So thinking about that, can, can this tool analyze that over, no, instead of just doing an annual plan or maybe it does all, it already does. Can it do a five-year plan and test increased investment for three years or for five years and sort of show, show us what the effect would be in the, in the years after that. So the data that this program would provide would help us to set up to run some of this analysis. The program would not actually do all of that. It would give you calculated, it would help on just the pavement side. I know that Kelly and I have talked about like longer term budgeting programs that would do exactly what you're talking about and being able to take all of these different funding groups and plug in all of your money available and to kind of shuffle all of these scenarios, right? If we want to put in this much money, this is, it flows through and kind of spits out, okay, this is where you need to be spending on equipment or buildings but it, you have to put in all of your need in order for it to come back out the way that you're, what I think you're trying to, to get it to do. It's data in, data out. So the more data that you have to put into the system, the more you can harness the analytic side on the backup. But just for road treatment, you could get some idea of along this. Yeah, so we do have a program and it's called PaverTM and it goes, we, when we put in a road, I can show you the K-curve of the road. I can actually develop different funding mechanisms and programs with it. The hard thing is it's a computer and it runs like equations, right? So to get them to do like the worst first scenario, like the computer doesn't really want to ever tell you to do the worst first, it's because of the economics behind it. So you would have to kind of massage it and manipulate it so that you're telling it that you want to put X amount of funding towards these lower, the roads that are in really bad condition. And like you, you have to break out the different funding groups in order to get the program to kind of simulate what you're would like, what we'd like. Yeah, so a lot of manual process. It's very, very, very manual, which is why I'm excited to go to the LiDAR and to kind of see how, what that data looks like and how we can utilize that better. We're also, we're working on integrating an asset management system, which will help to tie in, which is budgeting cost on all of our roads. So the LiDAR, the information that we get from the LiDAR will go into our asset management system and then we'll be able to leverage the information that's put into that system as well. Like tracking, you know, amount of time staff spent on patching potholes on a certain street. When we move into the new system, we're going to be, we're going to specify like, okay, we did a pothole, but it was on this asset. Right now, the way that our program works, when they do pothole patching, it's a generic overarching, right. So like when I, when you say how much money do we spend on pothole patching, I'm not going to be able to say we spent 1000 on State Street, 5000 on North Street. When we move into this new system, we would be able to provide that type of data to you, because staff will be reporting on the work that they're doing on each of their sub assets. I understand when we don't want to bond and do all the streets, but you had some numbers up there, what you said was needed. And I'm interested, if you had a million dollars a year and you could reasonably do assortment of streets in connection with your utilities and grants, would you be able to spend it? A million dollars? Do the work? Yeah, I mean, we did a million dollars last year. We did one just over a million dollars last year and we resurfaced four and a half miles. Last year was the, since I've been doing this for 10 years, was the most miles of road that we have ever preserved, maintained, reconstructed in any single year. When I started this pro, working with this program, most of Montpellier's roads were so bad that everything was in the Miller Fill Reconstruct or Reclaim. There was no option to really crack seal because everything was beyond that level. Thank you for reminding us. That's why we started the steady state. Yes, exactly. That is why. Yes. So what would be the ideal annual amount to better catch up? I'd say a million dollars. Another million dollars? Yeah, one, we needed an FY 25. We would need a million dollars and we would be making very significant headway on our overall PCI and improving our entire network. That was one part of, at least for me, why I supported the sales tax. I thought we'd get a half a million out of that. Okay, thank you. Remember that at budget time, guys. Anybody else have anything before we wrap this up? This has been great. Now, every single time we get these really great data heavy presentations that really help us understand way more than we did before. So thank you. Bill's raising his hand. Oh, Bill. Thanks. Well, Zach, great job, John. A couple of things I just want to add that didn't get mentioned, but I think are relevant. The question about the bond, I mean, certainly the answer that Zach gave and that Lauren that you've been giving is correct, but there's a little bit more to it than that. And some of that has to do with the volume of work that is taking, remember, our road work season is relatively short here in Vermont. It's not like other places where they can do it almost year round. And there's only so many contractors to go around and only so much of our staff. So even if we had five or 10 million at one shot, I think we'd still be limited in how much we could do over the first two years. We wouldn't necessarily be able to do it all in that quick time. So I think there's just a capacity issue there. Secondly, the question about grants, I think, is really important because Zach mentioned the state aid for highway grants. Now, there's the class two that you can apply for. And he's right. They cycle around every community. It basically just goes around. So you wait, you turn every 10 or 12 years, and that's the system. But the other thing that I think people should be aware of, every year the state provides general highway aid to municipalities. And it's on a per mile basis. So first of all, until I think last year or the sometime in the last couple years, it hadn't increased in over 15 years. So as costs were rising for towns and cities, the state aid was essentially going down as a percentage because it was just a flat fund. But secondly, you know, we in Montpelier have like 42 miles of road. There are many, many communities that are physically larger than us that are 80, 90 miles per road. And they pay everybody on, you know, so much per mile of your town roads. But almost all of our roads are paved. And in most of those other communities, very few roads are paved. So one of the things that we see when people, and so first of all, let me say our roads are in bad shape and we need to invest more in them. No question. However, what we also see sometimes in our neighboring towns is well paved roads. And then when we go on their gravel roads, we're not thinking about that. We're like, well, it's a gravel road. Of course, it's not as good as a paved road. But that's the condition of those roads. You know, it's been driving around in mud season knows those roads are in far worse shape than ours are. So, you know, you got East Montpelier, some of these places, they have, you know, a couple miles of road that they that they bond for, you know, fix every so often, they keep them in pretty good shape, because that's, you know, all they have. But again, it's this per mile basis. It's not per mile of paved road per mile of gravel road. It's just per mile of road. And so communities like us, like Berry City, like, you know, places that are more more compact and all pavement don't do as well by the state's formula. And, you know, we don't get any special exception for being the state's capital. We hear that a lot. Well, you're the capital city, your roads should be great. Yep. But we're not getting any special. I mean, other than I guess our pilot payments, but in terms of general impact on roads, we're not seeing anything special. So enough ranting. I'll leave it to the experts. Okay. Okay. Thanks, guys. Thank you. This is great. All right. We are up to city council reports starting. You're in there. No report tonight. I only thought it's just their future for consent agenda, because it seems like the last couple of times, maybe some of the key items that just as we see them coming, country club road and the water line issue, the big issues that we just don't put them on consent agenda, just keep them out front. Because I think people in the community want to see what's going on. Thanks. Thank you. Just a couple of quick things. One, I've gotten feedback from several people about the Berry Street, in particular the crosswalk between the Berry, the rec center, and the senior center. A couple of people who have stories of just about getting hit there. I don't know if that has been considered under any of the, whichever, transportation infrastructure or for one of the lighted crosswalks. And I can't remember. I know we've talked about that whole area a lot in the past, but just just putting that idea out there because it's come up from a number of constituents that they've had issues in between the senior center and kids going to the rec center. Seems like it could be a good place for that kind of crosswalk. And the other thing that I've heard from a couple of constituents about my ride, some just feedback for especially some elder members of our community that are continuing to struggle with using it. And I wasn't quite sure who at this point, is it the transportation infrastructure committee or like, is anyone, who do I provide feedback to? Is it the state now? Can I, I don't know if Donna might have an answer. Yeah, yeah. The oversight committee no longer meets because the pallet project finished. Okay. So you can call them direct. So it's now just the state GM. Okay. GMT. Okay. So there's no one within the community. That's okay. I can pass that along. And my last question was just, I don't know, Kelly, if you know when we're going to be taking back up the homelessness report, if that's the next meeting, I'm just feeling a lot of urgency with the money running out, wanting to be making decisions and moving forward. So, you know, we know when we'll be. So if I can. So as one of the things that I wanted to kind of put as part of the city manager's report for tonight is that we are working on evaluating the rec center per conversation last week. We have approached three firms, we did do a site visit this past Friday. And so those reports will be coming. And we certainly can provide a status update. I hesitate to give a track timeline because it's dependent on getting that information back from the firms. However, you know, I think looking into either the meeting in the 10th or the 24th, I know that the homelessness task force also is working on a resolution to put forward to come to council with as soon as the 10th, so that then we can really get the legislative delegation and some representation from the state here to discuss the issue. Great. Okay, I've got a couple of items for my report one. I just received a notice. Montpelier has again been named by the Arbor Day Foundation as a tree city USA. And to qualify for that, we need it's too bad I didn't say this while John was here, but to qualify for this, we have four requirements at maintaining a tree board or department and John forces on a tree board. We just reappointed him last time having a tree care ordinance, dedicating an annual community forestry budget of at least $2 per capita and hosting an Arbor Day observance and proclamation. So yeah, yes. Second, I will mention that in the this week, I went into the House Environment and Energy Committee to testify about what the city is looking for in s 100, which is the big housing bill that's going on and arguing in favor of some modest changes to Act 250 to enable us to have projects have the threshold go from 10 to 25 units to be able to be judged just by the city and not go through Act 250. It's it's been kind of an uphill battle with all this stuff. And it seems like every year, the idea about Act 250 as well, we're going to do something about that next year. And so I'm not sure what's going to happen. But we've been working on that and and trying to work on the project based TIF and it's it's been slow going this year. And then the last thing is Greenup Day, May 6. It's coming right up. We've got support from the Department of Public Works and and Chief Gowens just emailed to let us know that the fire department will also be there to make a sharps container available. So May 6, which is a week from Saturday or Sunday. And that's all I've got. Quirk's report. Dogs, dogs, dogs, everybody please, we have not bounced back from dog licensing since before the pandemic. It's we're really low. So I'm getting out an insert with all the water bills going out, which is maybe a slightly scary edge to it. They're coming for your dog. It's funny because we're so many new pandemic pups. Really? Yeah, well, I'm expecting my budget. My intake here is going to go way up. I think this this could I could generate hundreds. It could be flooded. I don't know. I haven't never done anything like this. So hopefully it will really work out. So I never talked about dogs, right? Also, I did find out that there is such a thing as municipal clerks week. It's next week. Oh, hey, hey, hey, okay, you're gonna be flowers on the cake. Is there is there a special day within municipal clerks week? Well, we may be able to generate it. And that's what that's it for you. That's that's all I know. No need city manager. So I mentioned sort of the items that I was going to mention as part of the homelessness task force also evaluating the rec center. The other thing that I do want to know, even though with our discussion earlier, we are slated at this point to move ahead with the next phase of engagement for country clip road. The first of those engagements is going to be the Saturday, April 29 on site starting at 10 a.m. So and then we've got a bunch of information posted on the website. I wanted to mention that. And then Bill, I don't know if you wanted to take it away from zoom land. Sure. Yeah, greetings from grade or Chicago. Cubs one last night. It was freezing cold. But we have great seats. You know, as far as the homeless thing goes, we're meeting Monday when I get back with, again, the second time with Barry in Berlin, just to make sure we're, you know, communicating and, you know, cooperating is how we're approaching all this. One of the things is that we keep getting different numbers and actually, I guess, lower numbers each about what the impact might actually be as they're finding, you know, more and more people are identified where they might go and those kinds of things. So we don't know. I mean, obviously, we're preparing for a large influx of people, but it may or may not be the case. So, you know, I think there's this, you know, we'd rather be over prepared and underwhelmed than the other way around. But we also don't want to get people in a panic if there's no need to be. So we're going to be talking about that a lot on Monday. And again, whether or not we visit as maybe even the three communities should get together and make some sort of public statement about how this is being done. And, you know, again, I think the frustrating is there is no, there is no long-term plan from the state about what to do about this, how to transition people to more permanent housing. And I know there are some other plans on the books. Appreciate this conversation tonight. It was great. All of the items. And we'll keep talking. You know, I think that, like to respond quickly to Tim's comment about the consent agenda, you know, I think as we all work together with this new group, it's really helpful to get the feedback that we get about what is or isn't, you know, and even the country club routine was really just meant to be informative. The water pipe thing tonight was really just meant to be approving the contract so we can have the big discussion at the next meeting, which would probably be the centerpiece of our discussion. So, you know, we'll figure out what makes it work and begin to reassure anything. Just everybody, just because something's on the consent agenda, it can easily be pulled off for discussion. It's just there for convenience, not because it has to be. So I guess I'm done. Thanks. Okay. Great. It is now 1032 and we are adjourned.