 We do use this, the laptop, so I think we do just the forward, yeah, cool beans, all right, all right, yeah. Okay, team, it is 6.30, and you know what that means. All right, welcome, I'm going to call this meeting to order. So the first item of business is to review and approve the agenda. So I think we have one item to pull, which is the zoning fix. The zoning fix is correct. Which is item 7. Are there any other changes to the agenda? We'll consider the agenda approved without objection. And so the next item is general business and appearances, which is a time for anyone from the public to address the city council on any issue that is otherwise not on our agenda. And I'm going to take a privilege of going first, which is to say that I want to just take a minute and recognize this is our first regular council meeting since the passing of Nancy Sherman and Sergeant Jennings. And so I just want to recognize that they're a great service to the city of Montpelier. I'm very thankful for them. So that's, yes, for sure. All right, so if there is any member of the public who would like to address the council on any other item, otherwise not on our agenda. And this is true for other things when you come up to comment if you would say your name and where you're from and try to keep your comments to two minutes or less so we can keep the conversation going. Okay, we're going to keep going then. Okay, so the next item is consideration of the consent agenda. Do we have a motion regarding that? Okay, further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Opposed? Okay, so our first regular business item is the riverfront access presentation. So I'm going to invite all of those who are a part of that to come on up to the front table and move. And I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay. Which all might say your name. Please. Do you want us to say our names? Sure. Riccarda Erickson with the Vermont River Conservancy. Regina Leonard on the landscape architect with the Milona-McBroom. Your voices are not being picked up by the mic. So I'm going to ask you to go back so everybody can hear your names. Thank you. Riccarda Erickson with the Vermont River Conservancy. And I'm Regina Leonard with Milona-McBroom. Steve Libby with the Vermont River Conservancy. Roy Schiff with Milona-McBroom. Well, thank you for this opportunity to present to you this evening. We've introduced ourselves and I wanted to give you a little bit of history of kind of where we got, how we got to this point. Going back to the August 22nd City Council meeting, we came before you. You authorized us to do a conceptual design and feasibility study for the newly designated Confluence Park at the point where the North Branch River comes into the main stem of the Winooski River on the city-owned transit center property. And we then immediately put out an RFP and hired Milona-McBroom to do these conceptual designs and feasibility study with us. We also gathered an advisory committee of 17 people from diverse professions throughout Vermont. And we held three public meetings to get public input as to what was important to people when considering the design for this Confluence Park. We now have three design concepts and a feasibility study to present to you tonight. We are not asking you to choose which one of the three is your favorite. We're not going to be voting on that tonight, but they are meant to show you what is possible at this place. What is possible for a Confluence Park? And we would like to ask you for a commitment moving forward to authorize the Vermont River Conservancy to work with the Montpelier Parks Department and any other applicable city offices to further develop a design for the Confluence Park and to move ahead towards realizing this vision of a Confluence Park here. And we all know that a lot has changed since August 22nd in Vermont, I mean, sorry, in Montpelier, especially in this particular area. There's a lot of projects, new projects happening, new development. And I want to just briefly address that when we are referring to the Confluence Park tonight, we may refer to it as the Confluence Park West. And that is because it's on the west side of the North Branch River. Throughout the four months, an opportunity came to the table to look at the Moat Lot, which is on the east side of the North Branch River. And the city is now thinking about other opportunities moving ahead with that lot and VRC is happy to serve on a committee to look at different options. And internally, we refer to that lot, the Moat Lot, as Confluence Park East. It's not going to be part of the conceptual design tonight because we know it's very early on in that phase of thinking, and it's not necessarily on the table as a viable option at this point. But we do hold it in a broader vision of what could be. And so we will refer to that a little bit tonight, the Confluence Park East, but know that what we are presenting to you tonight, the conceptual designs are for the Confluence Park West. And I would like to, at this point, hand it over to Regina to continue the presentation. Great. I'm going to put my glasses on so you can see what I'm doing. Thank you for the opportunity to present these ideas to you tonight. And I just want to give you a little background, a little context, and I know Ricardo talked a little bit about the project and how it came to be. And what I want to talk to you about is just some of the considerations that we looked at as moving the concepts forward. Really the ultimate goal is to create a riverfront park for the community. And so some of the considerations are river access and accessibility. So trying to appeal to multiple users and users of all abilities to create new recreation opportunities, especially on the river, to think about flood resilience, to consider the context of the park to the downtown and to the city and to the city's history. And to think about this area as a public space and what it could be and how it could serve the community. And then finally, how to integrate the bike path. There's a lot of different ways to do it, and I'll walk you through some of those tonight. And then just the other piece of this is thinking about Confluence East on the other side. And I'll talk a little bit about that further on, but it's really looking at those opportunities to knit those together, those spaces. So all of those things that I just mentioned, those design considerations, were really project objectives that had been guided and then reinforced through community outreach. So all of these were really guided by the public input that came even prior to this project with the many sort of input sessions and community sessions that you've held with the Taylor Street lot and the Carr lot, but then also the Vermont River Conservancy and the public meetings that they conducted as part of this project. So they met three times and had an opportunity to hear some of the public input. And these are just some of the themes and you see that they really mirror some of the design considerations. River access, balance of uses, looking at recreational opportunities, a boat launch, thinking about the environmental components, white water opportunities, fishing, and then sitting areas, trees and vegetation, different levels from which to view the river and the landscape, shelters and picnic tables, year round usability, maybe opportunities for play. There was a lot of ideas. People wanted to incorporate history if possible, maybe pay some homage to the Native American ancestry on the site or in the city. And then think about views both of the river and back to the capital and general beautification opportunities for public art. So a lot of input and a lot of great ideas and things that we considered moving the concepts forward. I'm just going to give you a little bit of background on the site. There are some historic preservation considerations. This is in the Montpelier Historic District and so we have to be considerate of historic character in the context. There's potential archaeological resources on the site and including the retaining walls that are there that date back to the 19th century and there may be some underground archaeological resources that might come up in the future as this park has developed. And generally the treatment of historic landscapes kind of follows the Secretary of the Interior's standards. It's the National Park Service and they generally require review and approval at the state level, sometimes the local level as well. Safety and access considerations. Obviously you have a very steep site and you have shoreline access. If that's something that you want to achieve, you have to be consider that there's a 17 foot elevation change. You have a channelized slope with structures. And just for a point of reference, universal access if we were to try to get people all the way down to the river would require 240 linear feet of ramp. So that was one of the things we explored and we looked at the extent of universal access. And then how to integrate the bike path. The bike path goes through the west confluence site. Kind of breaks it in two. And so we looked at different ways to integrate the bike path. And then finally the railroad. You have a railroad right of way that borders one part of the property. And so managing public access points around that railroad is something to consider. And then there are the environmental considerations. This is in a special flood hazard area. The whole downtown in fact is in the 100 year flood plain. And so we have to think about flood resiliency opportunities for improving flood capacity perhaps. But also just looking at how things are constructed and the design proposal and making sure that it's resilient to flooding. Repairing vegetation. Because this is sort of a man made environment there's not a lot of high value vegetation out there now. But a project of this scope presents a great opportunity to improve the habitat and riparian vegetation in the area and along the river. And then finally site remediation. This is a site that has had known contamination. And so it's been cleaned up. And so any further impacts would need to go through a permitting process. So those are all some of the considerations. And then finally if you look down at the bottom of the screen we have the proposed. Let me see if I can do this. All right. I'm not good with the track mouse. I probably won't do this a lot because it'll drive everybody crazy. But we have the proposed west confluence site that you can see. And then the proposed east confluence site. And then all the green areas denote sort of public open spaces within the downtown or within walking distance of the downtown. And these are all connected by the proposed bike path and the central Vermont recreation pass and the cross Vermont trail. And so one of the reasons that I mentioned this is that this area as Ricardo mentioned is going through an incredible transformation. And so you have the transit center. You have the confluence or we're calling confluence west. You have and this is you know a maybe but you have other amenities that are in flux right now like the parking garage perhaps. You have confluence east and that parcel that's open for development or redevelopment. And then you have river restoration and access. And that's something that I'll talk a little bit about further on because we also have been looking at ways to restore the river. So these all open up opportunities to really capitalize on the full potential of this area to face the river. You have all this development happening and what a great opportunity to really have that development orient itself toward the river. So that you have connected public spaces and unified with a unified design language and great access to the river. So with that I'm just going to get into the conceptual design. I'm going to show you really three concepts and they all achieve something a little bit different. So I'm going to stay rather high level tonight but certainly if you have questions feel free to ask. So again the considerations as we approach this is river access, accessibility, recreational opportunities, flood storage and resiliency, context and history. What is the quality of the public space and then the integration of the shared use path. So the first concept we're calling this the performance park and really these are just themes so that you understand each of these achieve something a little bit better than some of the other concepts. What this concept does is it incorporates the bike path but it expands the space and envelops the bike path on either side. So it utilizes the existing sort of graded flat area to the absolute maximum. And what that does is that allows a larger public space so that then you can accommodate small concerts and community events. So you'll see that this concept features a performance pavilion with seating along the front so that you can sit there and eat your lunch on a nice summer day. Again it integrates the bike path without interruption and it creates a large accessible overlook. So I'm going to talk a lot about the overlooks and this area right here and all of the concepts is one of the spots for an overlook. And it's just a perfect spot it sits a little bit down it has this great view and it has the historic walls. And so this one has a large accessible overlook and it provides some access so there's accessibility to that large overlook and then the river access for fishing and a boat launch. It's a little bit steeper because we've maximized the space at the top of the site and I'll just show you a couple of section elevations. So if you look down at the image on the lower left of the screen you see the dash red line that shows you how we've cut the section and which way the arrows show which way we're facing just to help you orient. So this shows kind of a line with a section of the pavilion and then you can see the seating at the front of the pavilion and then a little bit of a path space. And a lot of the plantings kind of create opportunities for seating so we berm those up and we have stone seating and it provides a little bit of pedestrian scale. And then the bike path you can see how that's sort of integrated in the space and then a stabilized slope with plantings and seating opportunities and then a path and access down by the river. This one I'll just, I know this is going to get tiresome of looking at all of these. Yeah so if you look at your handouts and all of you if you want to download these at a later date you can just take a look at how these spaces are divided. Where are these going to be available? Are you going to send us all the materials? We'll send you the materials in fact I have a drive I can give you tonight. That would be great. Yeah so you can post them. So in this one it just gives you a sense of that multi-use plaza space. It cuts between it and then the tiered pathways down to the river's edge. So the next concept we call the riverine park it's pop. Oh did I skip one? Okay I'll go back to it. Sorry. The plan view for B. How I did that. Right there. There we go. So the next concept is what we call heritage park and the reason that we're calling this heritage park is that this is really one of the things that we heard from people is that they really wanted us to pay tribute to the Native American culture. And so this one is really crafted on sort of the concept of a medicine wheel and so you have access on the north, south, east and west. If you look at the handouts you can have a little bit more of a description of them but the idea here is that it's this great opportunity for interpretation. And you have east, west, north and south. They're all representative of different seasons and there's a whole host of interpretive information that you learn a lot about culture. And there are spirit animals with each of these directions and so those would be featured as figurines in the garden space. So this great opportunity for public art and interpretation. So this features a central plaza. So the big idea in this is that in this scheme the bike path sort of gets integrated and absorbed by this really vibrant energetic public space. And they're seating along the middle, a raised planted area with a central element like a totem or something that's really exciting and visually exciting to look at. Seating along the edge. And then the overlook is accessed. It's flush with the plaza and it's accessed by a shelter. So just a small little shelter. So it has this niche little lawn space which would be really cool. And then this concept also provides two accessible overlooks and a fishing platform. So if you look, let me see if I can get us there. So we have this overlook and then we've got one at the top of the site right here and then a fishing platform here. So in this one you can see there's a lot of ramp but because we've structured the ramps with walls we're able to make the most out of the space, compress it and get people down to a fishing platform so people can fish in the river. And there's also access down via paths as well and stepping stones. And again on this one just to look through the site you can see the different levels. On this one again you're cutting through the plaza. And then the last concept is the riverine pockets part. I just want to double check. The first one that I got is concept C and I've got a second version that says concept C. Yeah, one of them has the river for context. The other one has the concept just a little bit bigger if you wanted to see some of the details. You should have A, B, and C. We've got two C's. I have two C's. I haven't seen anything. Yeah, I don't have an A. Well, it's basically what's up on the screen and it's the two versions of the same view. So then this final scheme is really the idea of creating a separate area for the bike path and creating more of a riverine experience. This is a more linear park and it is a sloped park. But it does feature two accessible overlooks and a fishing platform. It provides river access for fishing and a boat launch. And you can see that the bike path goes through and then the amenities for the bike path or the multi-use path are on the left-hand side. They're sort of on the north side of the trail. So you have an opportunity to put your bikes away if you want to go down and explore the park. This is a much more of a linear experience, but it's also much more private and the spaces are smaller, more of a niche experience. And that just has to do with the fact that we're putting a lot of programming in a really sloped small space. So I won't, because of the time, get into these, but you can take a look and see. And then finally, the other thing we looked at is we looked at sort of the breakdown of cost and what do these concepts represent in terms of potential budgets. And so what we did is we did cost breakdown. And you can see here that just for your purposes, we looked at earthwork and construction. That's about a quarter of the budget right there. Retaining walls and paths, another 20% or so. And then amenities, bike racks, seating, all the things that help to make the place the place is another quarter of the budget. And the rest kind of gets divided out between some of the features, design and permitting, stormwater, things like that. And then I'm not going to spend any time on this, but the other piece of this is if you're investing in river access and treating these wonderful places to get to the river, having a river that's clean and safe for swimming and fishing and exciting for boating opportunities, that's all part of the strategy as well. So we have been looking at that. And we do have, I think, a slide that addresses that. So I think that's it for us. And I just have, Ricardo, we'll wrap it up. I just want to do a two minute wrap up. So the confluence is a point where two or more rivers merge and become one. The water of one river is not lost at a confluence, as is the case with a north branch here whose water mingles with the Winooski and eventually flows into our Great Lake Champlain. And confluence is a word that could apply to our city as well. As the capital city and located in the center of the state, Montpelier is a merging point for the people of Vermont. So here, this picture is the confluence park this past November. Let's consider this the before picture. We have the opportunity now to define the after picture. Like the rivers that flow along its shores, imagine a place for people to come together from all walks of life, for the residents of the transit center in the French block to sit in their backyard, alongside a legislator on her lunch break, for a high school student to pause for a moment as he walks along the multi-use path on his way home from school, for a grandparent to sit with a grandchild on the river's edge for hair and otter or pilliated woodpeckers, for visitors staying at the hotel to stop and enjoy our riverside park before heading out to our shops and restaurants, an angler casting a line for a wild trout, a kayaker paddling waters that will take her to Waterbury. Through a public outreach, we have heard resounding support for the confluence park. You, this city council, has the opportunity to be a critical part of transforming our confluence park into an after picture that is vibrant with a diversity of people enjoying the many amenities and opportunities provided by a riverside park. The after picture could be that of a small parcel that created a huge transformation for our city, where the human landscape mimics the merging of rivers, a confluence that brings together people as one community. Thank you. It's very exciting. So, dear council and public, I know it's going to be very tempting to comment on these designs right now, but that is not the point. Right? So, I have thoughts that I want to share with you, but I'm going to save that for another time, because I think the point right now is, are we going to continue to support your process and open it up to councilors first, and then the public, and then we'll see if there's a motion. Any comments from city council? Yeah, go ahead. I'm sort of curious what kind of resources the city would be expected to bring to this. Yeah, so we... Resources? Resources, yes. And not just like money, but like people time and like what that would be. We envision a process moving forward that is collaborative, and it would be the Vermont River Conservancy working alongside the parks department and any other applicable city commissions or offices, and to define what that separation or shared resource is. So, I think that is to be determined. I think that what Vermont River Conservancy would bring to the table is our experience working on river restoration and public access, and also our ability to seek funding sources. So, that's the level of collaboration and resources that I think we know at this time, but we are open to what plan might develop. Yeah, good. I just... This is maybe... We're going to have a budget discussion later. I'm just... I support this, and I think I would love the city to be at the table. I'm just a little concerned about how we're spreading resources out on the parks side of things. And I also... I noticed you said city offices. Does that include other shareholders that are active in the area, like other organizations that are doing work? Like we have the sustainable Montpelier piece? Or is it like everyone who's involved in this city design and development that's invited? Or is it just... Yes, we're happy to collaborate. Trust Republic Land would be a great resource to collaborate with. Other comments? I definitely support the city getting involved and maybe we need Bill and the staff to give us feedback to estimate time and what they can handle. But I'm assuming they can say yes, we can, or yes, we can't any time you need something. And we'll just keep track of it, I guess, is how I feel as far as staff allotment. And both of you did such a great job of explaining what could be very confusing up there. So thank you. It was well done. I really appreciate your work. And in that direction, I just want to follow up and ask, again, where online the public might be able to find these images and when the next step is going to happen? Yeah, we'd be happy to share them if the city wants to put them up on the city website. We can put them on the Vermont River Conservancy website. We haven't put... This is the first unveiling of the concept, so they aren't currently available, but as soon as tomorrow morning, we can get them out. But next time, you're going to share this with us ahead of time, right? Yes. Yes, great. Okay. And then what exactly is the next step and when would that next meeting be, if it's a public meeting? To be determined, yeah, open, yeah. Okay. Comments from the public? Go ahead. At the comments that I should give. My name is Katie Michaels and I live in Montpelier and I'm on the Montpelier Conservation Commission and I just wanted to share on behalf of the commission how excited we are about this project and how excited we are for the possibility of increased public access and connection. I think connection almost more than access to the river and acknowledgement of this thing that flows through our city. So we're really excited to continue to be part of the advisory committee and support the project. And thanks to BRC for your leadership. Thank you. Anyone else? Hi, I'm Bob Hines. I live in Montpelier and I've spent a fair amount of time in the river in this area. And I think it's a great idea. But I think this part's got to be part of an overall plan for how you're going to use the river. People are talking about taking in a number of dams. There's, from what I understand, proposed river access at Caledonia Spirits. Actually, I don't exactly know what the status of that is. But you have a great opportunity to come up with a plan on how you're going to use the whole river through Montpelier. And there's a great river access right behind Montpelier High School which no one really knows about. But it's one of the best places to get in the river in that area. People using right below the dam on Pioneer Street. There's a big outcropping. People come down there on Sunday. If you could take out some of the dams, you'd have a great access all the way from Barrie, really, down to Middlesex. So I think you need to come up with a plan for what you're going to do with all of this and also things like the Wrightsville Dam is now under relicensing and do you want to get involved with that in terms of flows and maybe some bottom releases to warm the water up in the winter and cool it down in the summer? I mean, there's a lot you can do and this is just part of the whole plan, I think. Thank you. Thank you. That reminds me. Rosie Krueger, who is not here tonight, sent me an email and wanted to weigh in. We used this time to suggest to you all that there may be some possibility in tying some of these other access points together to Confluence Park and including the potential access point at Caledonia Spirits at Old Country Club Road, which I think maybe you know about as well as timber homes and maybe there's a water trail or some kind of theme in the signage or some other kind of tie-in. So anyway, I just want to put that out there. That's great. Other comments? Okay. So is there motion on the table? How do you want to state it? You could refer to, I think you got an email from Ricardo that might have some language. Jack, if you have it, you go ahead. I think I have it. I would move to continue the development of the Confluence River Park by authorizing the Vermont River Conservancy, Montpellier Parks Department, and other appropriate city offices to conduct more in-depth public process, refine plans and collaborate on a fundraising plan and skip a couple of things in there. Okay. Further discussion? Does that have all the points that I did find the agenda page and just brought up to study all the access issues and specific proposal to improve the newly approved Confluence Park area. Was that in there, Glenn? If it was, fine. I think the language you read was from Ricardo's email, right? Yes. Oh, okay. I was reading the one off the agenda. Yeah. Okay. So that should be fine, right? Yes. That's good. I think that you're referring to the background information of what we had done until now. Okay. Good. Okay. All right. Further discussion? All right. I'll in favor of you say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. So I'll just toss in, if this is going to continue to be a city project, which I think is exciting, certainly that staff would really like to be sure that some of our key folks are involved in your planning and the public works in particular has some needs in that area for access of certain things so we're not sure whatever it designs or some of these I think might work with what they need and some might not. And just we want to make it as successful as possible so if you could include our folks in at the front end, that would be great. Okay. Well, thank you so much for your work. It's very exciting. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to the second hearing of parking ordinance. So this is, we've made some changes the last time so I'm going to open up the public hearing at this point and start with council. Are there any comments for, any changes or anything on the parking ordinance as changed last time? My impression is that it is where we want it to be. Thank you. I think we can move through this pretty quickly. Fantastic. Would anybody like to, actually any comments from the public on the parking ordinance? I did already. Okay. I'm going to, unless anybody wants to comment on the parking ordinance, just making sure. Okay. Great. Great. We're going to close the public hearing on that. Is there a motion? I make a motion to approve all four ordinance as amended at the first hearing. Second. Wait at the first. You mean at the second hearing? What? Because this is really the third hearing on this. Second hearing. Yeah. Okay. And the second hearing. From the last meeting. Last meeting. Last time it was. As proposed. As proposed. Here we go. A little second. Does that sound okay? Yeah. Great. For the discussion. All right. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. The zoning fixes is off of our list. So now we are up to the investment policy. So I'm going to invite. Teres field up to the table here. So. He's the chair of our investment committee. Hi. I don't know if you want to say anything about this, but. Sure. I can say a few things. So we've been working on this for a while. We're seeking approval of an amendment to the city's investment policy. We've been for a while now we've been talking about adding environmental social government. We've had restrictions almost to the policy. It's been kind of wide open. We worked with the investment advisor that the committee works with to manage the portfolios that we managed for the city. And we came up with some language. I would call this kind of a first step. You know, we may go back and revisit this over time. You're going to keep in mind that we, you know, we manage several portfolios and most of them are fairly small. So it's real difficult to achieve the level of diversification that you want in a very small portfolio. So we've tried to, you know, stratify that in the language that we're putting in the policy in terms of, you know, how we're going to manage portfolios less than $300,000 and portfolios greater than $300,000. So language is in there and I could try to answer the questions that you might have. Well, I'm thrilled about this. I think it's great that we're taking these steps and it's taken us some time to get to this point. And yeah, any comments from council? I know. I know you. So Donna, do you have something? No, I've read so I could almost understand it so good for you. If I could take the liberty of adding a little bit of background here. So one possibility for an investment strategy given, you know, potential social responsibility restrictions is one possibility is you start from nothing and you say, what are you going to invest in and build up from zero? And the other way to do it is to start with, okay, if we're investing in more or less everything now, what are we going to take out of that that we, you know, don't want to be a part of? And it just, particularly because of the size of our accounts, it turned out to be easier to do the second to say, you know, we're invested in all of these things and so we're going to particularly not, as we can anyway, not invest in, you know, these certain types of things and so, and then the list is there. Okay, so that's just for context. That's how we arrived at this point. So I don't mean to, it's probably more detail than you really need. I have a separate motion, but I think it's best if we consider this first. Fair enough. Okay, great. Okay, so is there any public comment on this, on the investment policy and comments from council? Go ahead, Glen. Thank you. I almost could understand it too, so I appreciate that, like Donna. I would like to go in just a little bit closer to those tiers because I think I understand the intent. Accounts with total value under $300,000 are relatively, you can do what you want with them because they're not big enough. It's going to be very difficult to diversify at that level. Right, and then those accounts, over $300,000, that last long sentence, while the manager shall exclude direct investments in the industry sectors identified in order to gain exposure to certain asset classes and so on, it may be necessary to purchase shares of mutual funds under ETFs that do have some exposure. So can you just kind of expand on that a little bit so I understand, because I think I understand that you have some freedom even with those larger accounts, but what exactly is the difference, I think, is what I'm trying to say. Could you restate it? So in a larger fund greater than $300,000, more likely as it goes up in size, the investment advisor would have more flexibility to invest in individual securities. So that gives them the flexibility to say, okay, we're not going to invest in Smith and Browning or whatever. However, to still achieve the overall goal of that portfolio, there may be some value in adding a mutual fund or ETF, and when you get into those, you don't have a lot to say unless you buy a particular sector mutual fund that says, okay, this mutual fund only invests in solar energy. But if we're trying to achieve diversification, you might get a fund that has some shares in ExxonMobil. It's not our intent, but it is our intent to diversify and meet the goal of the particular portfolio. Did that help? Okay, great. Don. I thought of it as bundle services. Like when you go to get cable TV, you get a certain bundle and you're stuck with more things than you want, just to get a certain channel. Right, to some degree that's... Smaller mutuals are bundled and you can't separate them because they're so small. Right. The mutual funds, they have, you know, obviously certain directors, their objectives of that fund and if that fits into one of our overall portfolios, we like what that fund is doing, but it may still be investing in one or two companies or something like that. Don't fit what we're trying to do, but we don't feel that overall taints what we're trying to do. Ashley. So I was just looking, I've been kind of thinking about this for a bit and I was just looking at some other ESG policies from other entities and organizations. And one of the things that I am curious if we might be willing to explore is sort of having like a philosophy, like an investment philosophy as part of our policy. I always struggle, I think this came up when we were talking about charter changes as well. You know, I think that these are certainly fine starting points, I think for things that, you know, we don't want to invest in, but I think that there are other things too, you know, human rights violations that may, you know, that may be being committed by certain companies that are invested elsewhere or doing business elsewhere. You know, I think public health and public safety, for example, you know, if, depending on what the city stance is, you know, about certain drug manufacturers, for example, or, you know, something like that, it strikes me that maybe having a guiding philosophy as well as these are the things that we will absolutely, you know, not invest in, but also looking at sort of the, these other pieces as well because we can say, sure, a hard no on the production or manufacture of firearms and sale of firearms, but we're gonna be okay with, you know, deforestation in an unsustainable way in some other country because the return is good for us. I mean, I guess I don't really see that as savvy financial stewardship because it may benefit us, but it's kind of how I feel about coal use to generate electricity. That's great for those of us that don't have to live with the coal burning in our backyard. And so I guess, I think this is a good starting point, but I'm looking for maybe like a guiding philosophy that gets incorporated into this and finding a way to incorporate that into the ESG investment policy overall. Fair enough. One of the things that we had gone back and forth about for a while there was, it would, I don't want to speak for the committee, but I think it would probably be safe to say that the committee may not want to be the ones that come up with that philosophy because it is the council's philosophy and not the investment committee's philosophy. And they would, I think, not feel that it is their purview to do that. So, I mean, that's something that I think, you know, you or I or others on the council like we could potentially try to take a crack at that and then bring it to the committee and then, you know, vet that sort of, there would be a process around that, I think, but potentially, sure. Jack. Hi, got a couple of questions. Are most of the city's accounts invested in mutual funds or are they invested in individual stocks? Most of the portfolios I would say are invested in mutual funds because they are fairly small and we have one large, larger portfolio that does have individual securities. And have you looked at the various SR mutual funds that are out there, like Calvert or whatever, to see how they comport with the standards that are proposed here? We have not, the committee has not, that's something we would talk to the investment advisor about and we would, you know, we could ask them to do that and see how that fits in terms of the overall objective of that individual portfolio because we don't want to, what we don't want to do is go down a road where, yes, we may be complying, overly complying with this new aspect of the policy, but it may be to the judgment of the performance of the portfolio so we have to waive both of those. Well, yeah, that actually brings up another question in my mind, which is this is all these funds are funds owned by the people of Montpelier and we certainly have values that we want to uphold but we also have an obligation to the residents of the city of taking care of their money and getting a good return for them on what we have invested. And that's what the committee weighed a lot in these discussions in terms of, all right, how much of this can we do at the same time balance, you know, maintaining our producer responsibility of meeting the objective of that portfolio? Thanks. Sure. Further comments? Okay. Is there a motion? I move that we approve the proposed policy. Second. Further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. And Connor, go ahead. So I have a separate motion. I think it's somewhat along the lines of what Ashley was saying when I read the policy today. Checked a lot of boxes for me with the, you know, firearms, tobacco, fossil fuels. I think there were some things missing in my mind that I want to see us build deeper into. I appreciated the chair saying this was a first step, right? Because I think we have a bit more work to do. Looked into Portland, Oregon, who passed an extremely comprehensive divestment policy just a few weeks ago with a couple hundred people coming out and weighing in on it. And they talked about issues like, you know, do we want to support companies that are complicit with like a Trump border wall? Do we want to support private prisons? Do we want to support some of the atrocious actions that Israel has taken in the occupied territories? But a lot of these are quite subjective, right? The ones we're dealing with here are pretty straightforward. That's it. I think it warrants some time looking into some of these other issues. I'd be happy to take part in that. But I think just to send a motion to everybody looking, we're not done here. So I'd like to present this motion if I could read it. The city is committed to integrating environmental, social, and governance criteria into its investment considerations, including the considerations of environmental justice, labor rights, human rights, and good citizenship on the side of companies. The investment committee will consult with stakeholders and ESG experts to present the council with a plan for such integration. I don't feel the need to put a timeline on that right now. I hope we can have those conversations. But I think this motion is important just to say that we're not done. And there will be a second step in this. So I would appreciate this floor. I will second that. Donna. I'm just a little confused. Your motion is asking the committee to do it. The committee said they prefer the council do it. So I like the idea, but I still think it's the council's responsibility more than the committee. Would you accept an amendment? That's not what the amendment is. Instead of having the committee being referred to the committee, have the council do it. We can have a committee of the council. I consider it a friendly amendment. Is that okay? If we are going to continue to look into it, then it will be some subgroup of us. Bring us back some recommendations. We really shouldn't be telling you how to manage the money. Okay. Great. That's fine with me. I'm going to assume that there are some people who are up for doing that. You are. Ashley? I think there's also another committee that would be happy to probably participate in that. Oh, okay. Great. Super. I take it to mean the social and economic justice committee. Why, yes. Okay. Great. Fantastic. So, further conversation? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Great. So, thank you so much. Thank you. We just divested from fossil fuels. We're not making any new investments in fossil fuels. We're not divesting anything. No, we are. That's what that was. Avoid investing. Anyway, we can talk more about that. Okay. All right. So, moving on. Popular community funds and arts board, come on up. I'm the city manager. I'm telling us to be here at 7.15. That was pretty close. Seriously? Can I close this? Not my first meeting. You don't need to use the projector or anything. No. Okay. Great. Thank you for having us. So, we're the, we're three out of five or three fifths of the Montpelier community fund. Christine Backey. Ron Wilde. Michael Sherman. I'm the current chair of the community fund board. And so, we presented our recommendation to you and the materials for the council meeting and wanted to come this evening to have an opportunity to present those recommendations, create some context around those recommendations and answer any questions that you might have. Would it be acceptable, mayor, if I just briefly walk through the memo? Go for it. Yeah. Okay. So, we just wanted to, again, create some context because we're extremely cognizant of the fact that these recommendations present a larger number than you've seen in years past. And so, we want to talk about the reasons why. So, the recommendations for this year total $133,253, $250. And so, we wanted to talk a little bit about the context. Last year's Montpelier community fund grant making totaled $115,500. And then what we saw happen last year was that there were three non-profit ballot requests that went onto the ballot. So, there were three non-profits who had previously applied pretty regularly to the board that did not apply last year and applied to the ballot. And so, those three recommendations totaled $26,000. So, if you add our $115,500 that went out the door through this Montpelier community fund competitive grant making process, and then that $26,000 that went onto the ballot and was approved by our generous citizen members, citizens, that totaled $141,500. So, the context that we just wanted to point out for you is that those three non-profits who had applied, or who had petitioned to be on the ballot last year and had their ballot items approved came through the door of the Montpelier community fund this year. And so, there are grant recommendations for those three organizations in the total that we're presenting to you tonight, the $133,250, which is less than the $141,500 that the city spent in total on non-profit grants last year. Of course, we cannot control whether or not any non-profits choose to go on the ballot this year. Obviously, that is beyond anyone's scope here. But right now, that's our context for the number that we're presenting to you this year. I just wasn't sure. Did everyone that went on the ballot come to the community fund first? Or they didn't come at all? No. So, the last year. We'll talk about last year. Right. So, the policy that was created when the Montpelier community fund board was created was that you can't double down. Right. You can't. People have in the past. So, I just wondered if they came to you first and then went to the ballot. They just directly went to the ballot. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yes. It might do that one year and then the next year, but they can't come to the, the timeline doesn't allow it. They can't come to the application process and then change their mind and appeal to the ballot. I mean, the city's rules. I know the rules are stated, but people haven't always stayed in it. So, that's, I just wanted to make sure. I'm not aware of anyone who's done that. It was done at the next year when they haven't got enough this year. Right. It was also the case that two of those had missed the deadline for various reasons. There were changes going on in the organization and one of them, and I'm not sure what the second one was, but so that was, they came as petition because they were on, they had missed the deadline for applying to the board. Okay. The other one actually decided that they did not want to come to the board, but would go directly to the voters. Okay. Thank you. So, we can certainly talk at length in good desire about any of their recommendations or any of the trends that we observed and talked about in the memo, but I'm going to stop there and take any questions that the council might have. Go ahead, Ashley. I was just looking, so community connections is listed on here, but from what I understand, that they are no longer the contracted service provider. We don't know that. Right. Okay. Okay. I thought I got an email saying that. So, that was erroneous. Okay. So, they're going to be continuing to talk about that decision. Okay. But I guess, so, okay. Okay. So, they're going to continue to talk about it. That's fine. When will we know for sure whether or not the contract is awarded to them? Because what I don't, I mean, this is an organization that has served Montpelier youth for a while now, but if they don't have the contract and the money's already been allocated and dispersed, I mean, what? Yeah. So, if I can take a crack at responding to that. So, the funds are not dispersed until the summer? New fiscal year, right? Yeah, the new fiscal year. For the next fiscal year. Okay. After July 1. So, there's a good chunk of time between now and then, and I am in my copious amounts of volunteer time available, and also going to be serving on the school board committee that is looking at this issue. So, I'm going to be very well aware of whether or not the Community Connections contract is awarded, and we'll definitely be taking it upon myself to work with the city if we should need to take another look at that if Community Connections is no longer serving the city of Montpelier. If I can add, we do have a history of withholding funds. I'm sorry, Ron. I can't hear you. I'm sorry. There is a history of withholding funds or delaying funds if the scope of a project has changed, or if we learned that it can't be delivered as was intended, when was intended. Even though the funds go out at the beginning of the fiscal year, it's actually not the process at the fiscal year. There are contracts, there's memos, there's letters. So, it really ends up being more like August, sometimes even into September. So, there is an opportunity. Do you send wording to that when you award it? If there's any change, the money might not happen. I mean, I think they're worthy. Do we need to add a word? If there's a significant change in the project, then we ask that they... We actually don't send out the finance department. Finance and our office does it. They're actually contracts for service. Okay, so when Ron said we can't hold it, he meant the city. The city, we the city. We'd never see... And so when we make a motion, we don't have to make a special motion for that. It's already being done. Thank you. Jack. So the word... So on the same topic, so the award letter from the city or whatever, would be... Subject to them providing the services. Subject to them providing the services. Subject to them providing the services on them being the provider. That's described. Great. Good. Thanks. This is fun to read. And I am a little bit curious about whether you can speculate about why nonprofits go back and forth. Between ballot requests and fund applications. I heard that in a couple of cases it was just that they missed the deadline. Is there anything beyond that just sort of happenstance? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's certainly one significant example. Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice. And so they, in the memo that you received, you can see that they went to the ballot twice for $20,000. And I'm not involved in Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice myself, so I cannot claim to represent their thinking, however, I did have a very long phone call with them last night. So I do feel updated. And from their perspective, they look at their budget. They look at the number of visits to community members in each of their towns or their region. And then they do a division and they figure out per capita how much they believe each town that they serve should be allocating to them. And so that figure for the City of Montpelier is $20,000. So if we look at the amount that the Montpelier Community Fund Board has granted over our history, that would be a very significant portion of that total. So in the conversation that we had last night, we talked through that and talked through the fact that we understood and appreciated very much their very rational process for coming up with that figure and at the same time, the competitive grant-making process where they're in an application portfolio with 43 other applications and that this was a grant application and not an invoice to the City. And so they would have very productive calls, very positive, and they understand our position and understand that we're presenting grant-making portfolios as a whole to the City that represents the very diverse interests of taxpayers, basically, and therefore can't promise to fulfill every single request and fully fund every single request of every single applicant. So that particular example has sort of been the example that has loomed large, if you will, over the past several years. Thank you. Well, did you have... Sorry, one more question on a separate topic. It's also interesting to me that it is the Montpelier Community and Arts Fund and a bunch of the language references grants to individual artists. And I remember from previous years a couple of recurring grants to individual artists, but I don't think I see anything like that here in terms of you and applications. I'm kind of curious about that. Have you heard from individual artists and they say... We didn't see... Doesn't apply to me anymore? We noticed the same. By the time we see the applications, of course the deadline has arrived. So I don't... Yet, you're right in your observation. I don't know that we have any insight, other than it's a particular kind of thing and what people are working on and if it's the kind of thing that they feel they could bring to us. But I think it's important to say that when we start this whole process, we send out the word quite widely. Yeah. And it's generally known and the guidelines are known, so people who are interested in applying ought to be able to get access to that word and do our best to make sure that that word is out. And then... So this year just there were no artists, no individual artists who came to us, but we even send a reminder out before the deadline. So we correspond twice, and it's on the... We make an attempt. Absolutely, and I appreciate that. And as an individual artist, I remember seeing those. So I'm not... I don't want to imply that. And am I new for this year, in addition to submitting a digital application, they could also fill it out directly from the city's website. So we do what we can to... Make it easy for us. Make it easy-ish. Yeah. They still have to provide the information and make their case, but we try to make it. Thank you. Donna, then Jack. Okay, Jack and Donna, great. It's really a question for the manager rather than for you folks, and that is with the budget... Does the budget worksheet we have since... On the face of it, this looks like an increase. Does the budget worksheet we have show that it's the $133, but it includes the $26,000 that was budgeted or valid last year? So the budget right now shows the $133,250. We actually adjusted that at the last meeting because we'd had the lower amount, the $120,000. So we adjusted that by $8,000. We have the correct amount in, so that is the combination of everything. Last year, the budget had the $141,500 in the final approved version, but voters approved. So we've matched their recommendations. Okay, great. Thank you. Donna. I saw a mar how... And Ron's been on the committee from the beginning, I think, nearly, and then so has Michael. And you... I put so much work into this. It's so incredible. And people should go online and read these, the link that's on the agenda. I do have one question, because you provided these wonderful little synopsis of why you gave this or that. But there are about four, and one in particular, and I won't mention names, that didn't give you an annual report or didn't include a budget. I mean, it sounded like their application was really incomplete. And yet, you nearly funded them 100%. And I don't understand that. You know, honestly, it's hard for me to respond without talking about... So on one hand... Okay, okay. Well, anyway, I was really surprised. And we... It's sort of an up-down. We accept everything you give us or don't accept it. But that is one of my questions. If somebody hasn't given you their last year what they did and showing how they used the money, and then this year don't include enough narrative and budget, I don't know why you'd fund them. So I just put that out there as a question. Yeah, that's a very fair question. I mean, it's something that we very much pay attention to and had a lot of discussion about this meeting. You know, I think that they're... Given the extremely broad spectrum of nonprofits we're applying to us, you know, from individual artists, grassroots nonprofits, only large sophisticated nonprofits, you know, that have budgets in the tens of millions of dollars and many, many paid staff. You know, while we want to hold everyone to a high standard, at the same time, I think that it's fair to say we also take into account the capacity of the nonprofit to comply with those standards, if that makes sense. You know, and so look at, you know, is the... To what degree is this, you know, for instance, maybe a really small grassroots nonprofit. But your point is really well taken. And if you... I'll follow up on this. That's fine. And so my next question is, so when you respond to them and say, okay, you got this, but we didn't give you the full amount. We took out $500. You got the $4,000 instead or whatever. Do you say next year we need this done or you don't get any money? I mean, is there any consequences? I mean, when I heard no budget, no narrative and they got the money, I just, whoa. Right. And we can certainly talk to a greater degree about the applications and in fact, those applications, well, these applications aren't... I mean, if it's next year, it's continued. I don't know if this is the first year they were so poorly... so poor in their application or not. I don't have that information. Right, right, right. I think the... I would say that the committee as a whole, we definitely can't... I feel like it would probably be inappropriate for us to threaten or to project, right? And so I feel like we can only respond to what's in front of us and not create consequences around future actions. Well, but you do say, because you didn't do this, we didn't give you money. Yes, right. So there's some people who are penalized. We hope they read that and understand. Council has been very careful and thoughtful, I should say, in assembling the community fund board membership whose members are drawn from the community. And so we generally have some basis of experience or knowledge or insight for many of the applicants. Not all, but many. And so we have this discussion when we review the applications of, how can I say this? As Christine said, there are organizations that are multimillion-dollar organizations and they should know how to write an application and they should know how to read the guidelines. And there are others who are asking for a really small amount of money and they're delivering a really targeted service to a really targeted clientele. And we know that that service is being delivered and we are more hesitant to penalize these one-person, one-and-a-half-person non-profits. We'd rather send them a message you really need to do better or you're going to sort of force a hand, if you will. The bigger entities... I think that the other challenge that we struggle with is that some of these very small entities that Ron is describing, you know, where they might have one or two staff or no staff, right, they're entirely volunteer staff, are also organizations who've received funding for the City of Montpelier for decades, right, and they're these cherished community institutions. And so that, you know, it is a challenge to weigh the fact that we fully understand that these are institutions that are important to the community have been supported by the City of Montpelier for so many years and at the same time, you know, we completely concur with you and want to work to hold organizations to a higher standard. I think you certainly have done wonders, and so that's great. There's one additional point, and that is we have a kind of tricky situation in how we communicate with grantees, uh, applicants, because we can't... we're making a recommendation to the Council. The Council makes the final decision, I guess or no. And so it's difficult for us to say if you don't, you know, if you don't get us what we're asking for, we will not make the grant. We don't make the grant, we recommend the grant, okay? You make the grant, I mean, as far as... you have the inside scoop of if they're meeting your criteria. That's all. It's okay. You don't have to talk any more about it. If I may interject here, you know, the Council, I think last week or one of our budget meetings had raised issues about the timing of our scheduling, not any criticism of anything you're doing, just the funding, you know, like, for example, this came in higher than what we anticipated, so do we have to change our, you know, how do we coordinate all of that to make it work? And there was some talk that after we got through this cycle, maybe in the spring to have a conversation with you folks when there's no pending applications and just what could we do to make this work smoother, and it may be that maybe we could talk about these kind of topics then when we're not pending applications, and then if the Council wants to adopt a policy that says if you don't submit this, then you don't get it, or you get one shot at it, and, you know, it's prospective as opposed to reacting to what's... I mean, as it is now, we are asking people to submit a report of work in progress for funds they received in August or September in an application that they're submitting in October or November for us to appear before you in January for the item to appear on the ballot in March, so it is... To get funded almost a year later. Yeah, it is an awkward timeline that we're working with. Jack, and then Ashley, and then I would like to be moving forward. Okay. Well, I don't want to belabor the point, but following up on what Donna said, you could certainly let some of these organizations know that you're getting kind of some questioning looks from the council saying, you know, if you can't do a better job of documenting the need, the council might not be so receptive next year to funding this request. You don't have to be the heavy because, in fact, you're not... Right, if it would be helpful if we had a policy. Yes. That's something like that. Right. You know, and overall, I think we would absolutely welcome conversation with the council around guidance for the funds. You know, the guidelines, our guidance from the council has been very loose. And so we would be more than happy to partake in a conversation like that because we're certainly interested in making these funds as impactful as possible. Great. Ashley. I guess I would propose, I reviewed all of them as well, and it concerns me that, you know, incomplete filings, I am familiar with almost every organization on there, but I also feel like, you know, we just have the investment policy presentation where we acknowledge that we are the city's fiduciary. And so I think that the council really needs to have, like, a firm policy on what expectations are about applications because, you know, like when I have to submit something for work, like if I were in private practice, I would have to provide an accurate accounting of the work done for the fee paid. And it just strikes me that, you know, I know that these organizations serve an important purpose, but we're also spending, you know, resident's money on these organizations, and I think people are entitled to know what their tax dollars are doing. So I don't know what the mechanism by which the council would work on a policy so that we can be the ones saying, you don't meet criteria, you don't qualify for funding through this program, and you can apply to be on the ballot, but... Again, I'd suggest we work that through with the community fund board, and just sort of from a historical perspective. It's coming from a place where these were voted by voters with no background as to what was going, no vetting whatsoever. So, you know, it's an evolving process. So let's take that up, you know, and sometimes spring or summer. You're great. Jack. I move that we approve the proposed grant awards from the Mudbillier Community and Arts Fund. I'll second for the discussion. I guess maybe just a procedural question. So, I mean, by definition, if it's approved at the level that's requested, we have to add that in to the... Budget. Overall budget. It's in. Even at the new... Yes. But, yes, you are committing that tonight or at your next meeting, you won't reduce this line in the budget. Okay, there was a motion and a second. Further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Okay. Thank you very much. My questions were anti-criticism of you, but you've done such a great job. It's really amazing. Thank you. I'm glad you're asking questions. Okay. How are you doing, team? Do you need a break? Are you feeling okay? Keep moving forward? Let's take a five-minute break. Okay. Yeah. That's the question. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Okay. One second. Yeah. We're all here. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. It was great. Thank you. Okay. And now what was the last one? Okay. And I'll take you up on your out there for this one. Oh, that's perfect. Okay. How are we doing? We're still working on Vermont. Yeah, so I've taken on an addition to that. Working on a couple other things. I started doing our RERC program, which you're familiar with in the past. So now it's like entirely focused on pellet, boiler systems, and then what's do-take-off, sort of. I'll be doing that. And also working on some indoor air quality stuff that we're trying to develop a flow program. So like you can call a customer support and borrow a kilowatt meter. Yeah. We're trying to put something together so you can call us up and go and interview this monitor. Yeah. Sort of part of our focus, you know, on helping home. So yeah, so that's making me busy. It's been really fun. I have two of them running in my house right now. Different, you know, systems that you can buy, indoor air quality systems. So that's kind of like keeping an eye on them, seeing what my cooking is awful. But it's awful for your indoor air quality. Because I think up until now it really was. Do you cook with gas? With protein. With protein. But just, I mean, just frying, sauteing, beans, whatever. So I know it's really familiar with, like, systems that you would see from our, you know, work with for mods, you know, that's what we're doing. Hey, team, we're going to get started back up here. So if you're having fabulous conversations in the back, please feel free to continue them out in the hall. I think they might have heard me. Okay, great. All right, so we're going to come back from our brief break. And moving on to our next agenda item, which is the energy efficiency charter change language. So I just want to recognize from the last time that we had this conversation. I was in the roles of champion and expert and trying to moderate the meeting, and that was maybe not ideal. And so for this meeting or this portion of it, I've invited a couple of folks here to be a part of our discussion. So I'm going to let them introduce themselves, but I will at least not be playing the role of expert in this situation. So go ahead if you tell us who you are and who you represent, et cetera. And there's those little things on the microphone. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Okay. My name is Richard Faizie. I am a principal of energy efficiency consulting for an energy futures group in Heinsberg. And I've been working on building energy labeling for decades. I can say more than that. That's great. I'm Phoebe Howe. I'm here with efficiency Vermont. I have background in the three years that I've been there in promoting zero energy affordable housing, primarily focused on new construction. But I'm really excited to be delving a little bit into the multifamily existing buildings realm with a project that I'll be doing here in Montpelier throughout the year. And I'll say a little bit more about that maybe after the initial discussion that you'll be getting into about the charter language. Great. So they're here if we have questions about the logistics of things. I have one comment to bring to the... Just get help yourself. I know. Well, so there's one edit which is in the language that was provided with the memo. It says enact ordinances enforcing minimum efficiency standards. It should say minimum energy efficiency standards and disclosure requirements, et cetera. The one online does not. Where's yours? What are you looking at? I can find off the agenda and copy it. The language is right there in the cover sheet. Yeah. It says enforcing minimum efficiency standards. It should say enforcing minimum energy efficiency standards. The last statement. The last sentence in there has... Yeah. The last part has energy. But in the beginning. So it's simple tweak. Okay. Any comments from the council? Questions? Connor. I just say this. It achieves what I asked for anyways last time as far as making it broader. I think you get too far into the weeds on this stuff. Subject also had some interpretation. So it's a pretty clean cut to bring from the legislature. I think voters will look at this on a ballot and have some sense of what it means. So I'm at a place where I can support it. And I want to also thank Ashley for providing basically the base of this language. That legal education was worth something. Yeah. It's very helpful. Yeah. Any other comments? Would anyone like to make a motion? I would move that we adopt the language for the proposed charter change that is contained in the supporting document section of the cover sheet on the agenda with the addition of the word energy before efficiency and after minimum in the first line. Second. Further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Well, that was easy. My goodness. Thank you. We should ask you something. Maybe. Maybe. I said what do you think would be the objection to this? What should we expect people to not understand? I think that there would probably not be an objection to this per se. But once it were considered and implemented, I think that those who own buildings that people, the sellers perceive as being less than desirable may question why they want to make the energy performance of their buildings known. So there's some resistance by sellers and that has been the case in the past of buildings that are not for up to standard. And if I might add, the whole objective here is to make energy visible and so that the marketplace can work and so that there are built-in market incentives to improve the efficiency of buildings and to reward those who have invested and made their properties more efficient. Yeah, fair enough. And Phoebe, did you want to tell us about your connection with that program with Efficiency Vermont? Sure. So I'll just take a minute. Yeah, to talk about, like I mentioned, I'm going to be diving into working with multi-family property owners here in Montpelier. And I should add that's private. So that's not groups like Down Street. That is a private property owner. So typically multi-family rental owners are some of the hardest folks to reach when you're looking to advocate for energy efficiency just because oftentimes, as we know, tenants are paying for their heat and electricity and so there's less of an incentive for that property owner to be investing in energy efficiency in their building. That being said, there are a lot of other amazing benefits of energy efficiency for everybody and specifically in the case of a multi-family property owner looking at just lowering overall operational costs of their building, reducing maintenance, improving tenant health comfort, financial situation thereby improving their tenant retention. And so that's something that we're really building into our messaging as we're engaging with multi-family property owners is it is about cash flow. It's also about some of these additional benefits. So knowing that this has traditionally been a difficult group to reach at sort of Ann's request, the suggestion we're excited to be really proactive in Montpelier with that group. So I will be conducting outreach to all those private multi-family rental property owners offering free energy walk-through and sort of a concierge service as we've been talking about it, helping them throughout the process. So at the very least everybody who I'll be reaching out to will be able to access free LED bulbs and water-saving devices in addition to that walk throughout their property. And if they choose to proceed with appliance rebates, heating cooling system, incentives, cash incentives for deeper retrofit air-ceiling insulation work, I'll be there helping them access financing, contractor networks, all that good stuff. So I'm really excited. I'll be conducting that outreach later this month and then visiting with folks and helping them with their projects for the rest of the year. Do you work with condominium associations? That's a good question. Leave me your card. So that's outside that specific focus of what I'm describing, but one thing that we want to make sure as we embark on this specific project in Montpelier everybody understands is that we are 100% here for whether it's the condo or the single-family homeowner. The proactive piece of my outreach is, you know, going to be focused on those property owners, but would love to talk to you about your condo association and what we do. Many years ago, it's good to see here, many years ago when Efficiency Vermont was first created, I served for about 10 or 15 years on the Consumer Advisory Board of Efficiency Vermont. And one of the things that I was looking at trying to have us do was have an automatic tie-in with the electric companies so that when someone would get a disconnect notice, they would be informed of the availability of demand-side management services as part of the disconnect notice. Is there... And I don't think it ever happened while I was there. Is there anything like that with the electric companies where they refer people if they're facing disconnection? So can you explain further? So if somebody is about to get disconnected for non-payment, you're suggesting that they be informed of options available to them to help reduce their electric costs? Exactly, especially with low-income tenants and other low-income customers, if they're having trouble paying their bills, helping them reduce their bills is one way to address that problem. Yeah, so there is not anything specifically that I'm personally aware of. However, that one opportunity that I could pursue in my discussions with landlords would be as far as they understand their tenants' financial situation, we could refer their tenants to Green Mountain Power's Energy Assistance Program, which reduces their electric bills by 25%. So that could be a piece to work into this if I'm able to talk to tenants directly. Okay, thanks. Great. Well, thank you so much for both, for being here. Great, thank you for your support. Yeah, for sure. Okay. All right, we are making good time, team. All right, on to the budget. You had to be on that? Okay. Okay. And based on the suggestions that we make here, are you or somebody else going to have a running track of excellence? So because it's a public hearing, I was going to do a quick overview of where we're at now for the public. Actually, before I forget, I have one question following up on the previous item, which is, do we have this motion that passed this language, but we need to file language with the motion should be to file that language with the city. Do you think we could just quickly have a separate motion to that effect, team? File the charter change as passed. Okay, thank you, team. And set and I know this was in that motion that the council member just made and set the public hearing for the January 24th. Oh, absolutely, he was right there. How did you say that? Okay. And the second is okay with that? I forget who seconded. It was Connor. Connor, are you okay with that? Okay. Okay, thank you for the discussion. All right, all in favor, please say aye. All right. Opposed? Great, thank you. Just wanted to make sure I dotted the I across the T on that one. Okay, so on to the budget. Do you how are you doing there, Bill? I'm doing great. Just a second. Do you want us to wait for you or shall we start? Just about ready. So my plan was to just do for the public and for you a quick overview of where we're at after your last meeting and then have us have our discussion and I'll put the spreadsheet back up with the running total and then we'll get there. I don't know if we need it off. What do you think? Sure. Off? Not off. Not off? Oh, not off. So on. No, the contrast is too bright. Got it. Okay, so this is at the last meeting council has held a workshop. They adopted a preliminary budget. So tonight is the first of two public hearings on those preliminary budget. Council can make changes tonight and we'll be moving on to 24. But based on last week this is a quick overview of where we're at. The FY20 budget our goals going into or to implement the strategic plan continue our capital and equipment funding plan and deliver responsible services. Won't go into detail but we did have a strategic planning work this spring laying out several areas of our strategic outcomes and where I will review the budget at least initially based on those areas. The first is community prosperity and the budget doesn't continue to include $100,000 for the non-filial development corporation. Maintains our planning and zoning staff to implement the new zoning master plan and implements our TIF district. In the areas of environmental stewardship we had $5,000 for the non-filial energy advisory committee currently has a new tax position and a new tree management position. Funds stormwater projects in the capital plan includes funding for the GMT circulator bus and one time funding from energy planning grant. In the inclusive, equitable and welcoming community area we've just talked about the community fund in fact we just approved it and there's increased funding there we also have new funding for the arts synergy proposed funding. The Feast program for at the senior center has continued. There's increased funding for Montpelier live and continued funding for our community enhancements. Under our sustainable infrastructure we've continued our capital improvement plan and equipment funding with an increase as we've been doing in several years, the last several years the water and sewer infrastructure plan has been followed we've included the facilities and slash energy director to be in October and have funding in our capital plan for complete speeds work. Finally we have our thoughtfully built actually don't think it's finally built Next we have our thoughtfully built environment area where we included our funding for the downtown improvement district and several downtown projects and a lot of our efforts this year is to complete work of projects that are underway. And finally our goal for more housing we've increased our trust fund by $50,000 and again implementing our TIF which we hope will spawn even more housing projects. In our public health and safety area we've added a new police officer, we've anticipated public events and their costs we've continued funding our flood gauges, we've continued our paramedic program continued funding for project safe catch and again as I just mentioned we've increased funding which goes to public health and safety organizations. In our responsible and responsive government area we've continued our communications efforts, our employee wellness service levels all maintained we've included our bridge article this year we implemented our new Invisio dashboard which is tracking our strategic plan process and available live at any time and we are pursuing our own access software which we hope to roll out this year so citizens can advise us and we can track requests of work. We've tentatively set aside reserve funds for citizen survey, strategic planning and energy plan which of course will be subject to the availability of those funds and what our fund balance ends up with that is a tentative point. So budget changes from last year basically taking all those things I've just said and rolling them right up into one quick list we've increased the CIP funding by $25,000 added a new police officer position a new tree position, a new parks position and three quarters of a facilities director which is intended to be a full time position to start a quarter of the way into the year increased the housing trust fund added funding for the new arts synergy program increased my career alive increased the community fund considered $2,000 for childcare funding for meetings and again the one time funding for energy strategic planning survey so those are changes from last year's budget taking a look at and I'll zip through these charts pretty quickly but here's a chart of where our funding come from again about two thirds of this comes from property taxes taking a look at how our funding is for different services is split up again you can see our core services of police fire public works and the capital plan are really the bulk of our both of our areas we're about 55% personnel which is always a struggle for us since we have such a people orienting business and then quickly if we look at our various services and this will show up these charts will all be in the annual report people will see them more clearly then they're showing up in the sliding but we get to see sort of how much an average person is paying in their property bill for each individual service someone asked me actually last week if that backed out revenues that were assignable to specific agencies and it does so for example the ambulance revenue has been backed out on the fire budget and whereas general revenues have been pro-rated across that's policy wonk stuff that I'm happy to be talking about that more people want to know so overall what does that mean means the property tax rate would go by 4.3 cents or 3.9% with an average tax bill of 98 dollars the district heat rates were already approved the water and sewer plan is estimated water and sewer rates excuse me are estimated 3.5% as per plan with no changes for the sewer benefit or CSO benefit process wise again tonight is our first public hearing Thursday January 24th would be the second and final public hearing when the council would take a final vote to adopt a budget to put on the ballot and then the voting is on Tuesday March 5 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. with early voting usually starting around mid-February that's all I've got on that I'll be answering any questions about that before we get into detail if you were to public have any questions I'm going to officially open the public hearing on this now I know that maybe one or two people who had some changes that they were hoping to make and so what I would propose for how we go about that process is that we if someone would like to make a change to what was approved last time that we take them sort of one bit at a time and so if you have a proposal about X then we might vote on that and then if you have something else then we'll take up the next thing separately does that sound okay team or would you prefer to do it all together I think it makes more sense to do them separately but that was just me what do you think Bill whatever you say Mayor I think it's easier to do it one at a time but okay so anyone would like to I mean I would like to advocate that we not have the the additional parks position I will say for myself I think in light of Jeff's retiring I think it makes some sense to wait on if we do need to have some additional staff for the parks that we wait until Jeff is retired and then whoever is new can be a part of that hiring process I'll say that for my part just to kick us off yes was that a complete removal or from back to part time instead of full time I would propose that we completely remove it but that's just me I'm actually inclined to agree with the Mayor I've been thinking a lot about what a budget increase I think we even got it down to what 3.8% 3.9% the budget is at 3.8% the tax increases at 3.9% yeah and I I know that we need the position but I also know that you know this increase plus whatever the school budget increase is is going to be significant for a number of people and I don't make this decision lightly but I feel it's incumbent to be mindful that tax increases translate to increases in rents for renters and I think there are a lot of folks who rent in the city that just can't absorb that and I know how important that position is and I hope that there we can find ways to work through this until maybe we can make that a budget priority for next year assuming we're elected I would certainly make that a priority but I just I don't think that it's something that we can fund other thoughts Don without the aspect of Jeff retiring and taking the work of two full-time people the ash borer is not going to be taken care of by the one person and so to me when we talk about confluence park public art other things they're based on a healthy park and tree line in the city and we can't do that without the right park people so at least a part time person I would assume that if the tree person is overwhelmed that sort of like this year when we you know in between our budget cycle had a stopgap where like you know we have to have something in place by the time the adult you know bugs are going to emerge in March and that doesn't work with our budget cycle my gosh emerald ash borer if you would not please just work with our funding cycle that we could do that again right so that's that would be my plan there if it turns out to be overwhelmed but sorry to disagree already overwhelmed I just don't like to make a budget that plans to use our reserve other thoughts Glenn so I was talking with councillor Kruger a little bit over the weekend Rosie and I I think have very different instincts about many of our decisions at the same time I feel like I have come over to the mayor's current point of view on this I think that we may want to add another parks position in the future but I don't think that we have to now as it is we will have two full-time parks people plus one full-time tree management position which is one more person than we have had if I'm correct and I think that we can afford to put this off at least a little bit yeah I think I'd be reluctant to do it but as I talk to people and they're seeing the right hike it would be my lowest priority I'm sort of all or nothing on this we spoke last time I think if we do a part time one they're going to be overwhelmed if we can wait a little bit I would definitely commit doing it right after supporting the future budget here do you want to weigh Jack? I'm kind of agnostic about this I'm still undecided I the two things I have in mind are one just hearing what Connor just said which is that if we hire a half-time parks person that person will immediately be overwhelmed which suggests to me that if we off Borsciori if we don't add anyone to the parks department then the people who are there in the parks department will certainly be overwhelmed but I'm curious if Jeff I think is still here if either Donna or Jeff could talk a little bit about what this new person would be doing well I think Jeff as he's walking up for me when I look at what Jeff and Alex do now as two people really and Jeff's been very clear on all his time sheets if you've ever been around just how much time he puts in so that when he retires one of his concerns was the new people aren't going to do that and so to replace just the sheer time that Jeff's doing now before the emerald ash board it's equivalent to two people you have a new person coming in who's going to take time to get up to par so it seems to me we don't want to understaff it now when we have this other crisis coming in first I want to clarify we don't have to pull back to three quarters is it three quarters or eighty percent thanks so in part I'd like to move the parks out of survival mode and opportunistic mode and crisis mode into a place that we can actually move forward on some of the visions the park commission has that Alex and I have had and that the council has had was serving new neighborhoods that takes a certain amount of letting whoever is leading the park at the time having time to connect with landowners work with the fundraiser that we now have the community services and to try to implement that in a way that wouldn't it's not so expensive for the city for the city and the recent proposal for stone all metals is a good example that if you do that the market value would be very onerous in my mind for the city to get that property but if someone has time to really work with an organization like trust republic lands work with landowners, work on donations work on creative things something like that can be done for a much more affordable price that's not going to happen if you have two eighty percent people so I'd like to be a part of the modern integration creating new opportunities as my wish Connor are the eighty percent positions receiving healthcare right now and other benefits? yes because while they're full time just one day a week has been a lot of tree work so there are two people doing parks and trees and so two full time people and so we would go to three or four people doing that same park and trees work I think we I'll refrain from commenting further comments would anyone like to make a motion regarding this particular position? I would move that we subtract the full time parks position from the budget second further discussion? all in favor please say aye aye nay and so the mayor votes aye to make a fourth and so we'll take that out where did that leave us? three point three six any other items that people would like to discuss? Glenn this is my fault last time I did not realize that we had left the arts funding at 20,000 I understood that we had cut it in half from 50,000 to 25 and that's where I thought we were so I would love to just at least get it back to half of their funding request at 25,000 because I was annoyed at that actually feel really bad about this too I have been thinking sort of about the ways that we can still fund all of the things that we want to do while also being mindful of what that translation could look like for residents and I was thinking actually reducing that by another 5,000 for now and then I love all of the ideas and I had heard some proposal bounce around about removing it completely which I would vociferously oppose and you know this is like a super uncomfortable position to be in but I suppose this is what we signed up for and so I would propose that we reduce the 20,000 to 15,000 not because I don't feel the work is important but because I feel that in order for us to be mindful of everyone in the community I would rather do something that's not as large right now and again I think with the development of Concoman's Park and all of the potential space that we have upcoming to make big decisions about I would rather have those decisions in place now and then fund the arts once we sort of know how much space we're working with to add new and exciting art to you. I think that we have an opportunity now to put as much weight behind this new public art plan as we can I am somewhat dubious that there will be such friendly council at all points going forward to this kind of proposal and I think that for instance even with the Concoman's Park I believe we saw a chart earlier from the River Conservancy folks I'm sorry that from Ricardo pointing out how much of the budget might go toward art installations there and I don't remember what the number was but it was not low and I think that for instance correct me if I'm wrong here but I think that this city money could potentially be applied to that so when we imagine the Concoman's Park I think we can imagine budget art in the Concoman's Park or at least somewhat open and well supported art in that kind of park I think that this is the time to fund it as well as we can manage I'd love to argue for the full request for 50,000 but I feel like there is no appetite for that 25 feels less I hesitate to say insulting but 25 feels palatable to me where less than that starts to feel like picking little bits off anyone else like to weigh in on this I would just like to keep it at the 20 anyone else Jack Connor Solomon would either of you like to make a motion to the effect of what you are I'll happily make a motion to push it back up to 25 but is there a second I'm glad I made the motion thank you there's a second any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye opposed nay okay well the motion is not passed sorry any other items that you would like to raise actually I have a couple of questions so the 100,000 for Montpelier Development Corporation what what does that do like what is the 100,000 what is the carry forward is it all gone how does that so we just had them in and reviewed their activities and what they are doing so this is what we had with them their corporation so the money goes to them and they retain it so we do get a financial statement I'm sorry I don't have it here I'm sure we can get it and they use that for obviously for their staff and their office expenses and those sorts of things whatever they use to I'm not knowledgeable enough about their budget to tell you exactly what they use I can get before the next meeting do you have any financial statements from them I'm sure I would like to see the financial statements before I just I'm struggling because I think things like public art are really important and I think development is important but I also want to be mindful that there has to be a bit of a give and a take and I don't want to spend everything focusing on the future and sort of forgetting about what that translates to like right now this is something that we can find more information about and have for the next time this is why we have multiple hearings sound all right anything else anybody would like to raise or otherwise at 3.36 yes it's just shifting we spoke last time about maybe moving some of these items over to the Montpelier a live budget for them to manage one that goes to mind like right off the top of my head is the legislator I think they'd be a good group to evaluate whether that's a good thing for our buck as far as economic development they're here anyways hey Dan did you hear that I just mentioned that one but if there's other ones maybe we think we should throw in there so just for some context this might be a conversation that like as long as we're not talking about changing the amount then this might be the kind of thing that we could take up later that's okay Dan does that sound does that sound okay Dan okay but let's you know let's take that up at some other time okay further comments any comments from the public yeah go ahead Liz Gench I live in Montpelier and I also work at Down Street Housing and Community Development and I just first want to say thank you everyone for doing what you're doing is I really appreciate it from Down Street that we support the current $110,000 for the Housing Trust Fund in the City Budget most of us are aware that the new French Block Apartments on Main Street are now open the lights were on last week people are moving in on the 15th so thank you and it was a great celebration but what we wanted to emphasize tonight was that the $175,000 that the Housing Trust Fund contributed to the French Block is one of the 10 funding sources the very highly competitive federal and state funding sources that we received there are many projects as we know across the state that are like the French Block on Main Streets who don't get funded so the commitment from this city and this Housing Trust Fund really matters when we apply for funding beyond the critical dollars that we receive from the Trust Fund those who review our applications can see that the local community has contributed that plays a huge role in this highly competitive funding environment and we did we leveraged millions more in part because of this in 18 new units but more importantly in addition to developing housing units the Trust Fund also provides the deferred loan for first time home buyers in purchasing in the city and a recent home buyer Carol Montgomery asked us to make a letter of thanks so I'm going to do that right now I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Montpelier Housing Trust Fund for the grant given to me in July allowing me to be a first time home buyer of the above property Montpelier moving to Vermont to be with my family as a big step financially but one I was hoping to afford given the right circumstances Patty Dupuis and Cheryl Moyer of Down Street patiently led me through the steps necessary to qualify for the down payment grant as well as another that afford from the Montpelier Housing Trust Fund together these monies made it possible for me to go forward without the entirety of both of these interest free loans the purchase would not have been possible in my desire to go back to the community I'm currently serving as a volunteer for the Tree Board, Lost Nation Theater and the Sunday evening dinner program at the Bethany Church where my family have visited since my moving here and I'll have commented on how obvious it is to them that I have truly adopted Montpelier as my home. Thank you for your generosity. Great, thank you. Any further comments? Dan Groberg, Executive Director of Montpelier Live, I'm a resident of Liberty Street in Montpelier I'd like to encourage the council to reconsider Montpelier Live's full request for an additional $10,000 in funding for next fiscal year this has been a really exciting year for Montpelier Live Montpelier Live is directly responsible for bringing two major conferences to Montpelier in June the New England Foundation for the Arts Creative Communities Exchange as well as the State of Vermont's Downtown and Historic Preservation Conference each of which will bring 300 people to Montpelier over a three day period they're back to back in early June related to the French Black the French Black leveraged over $200,000 in downtown tax credits that are only available for that project because Montpelier is a designated downtown Montpelier Live being the organization that allows Montpelier to be one of those designated downtown we bring a lot of value to Montpelier both things that are very visible and things that are less visible I've heard Councilwoman for instance talk about the administrative fee in the DID as an alternative option and the challenge with that would be that you're sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul in that option where there are many worthy projects that are supported through the DID budget where we'd be taking money away essentially from the work that we're actually doing in the community through the DID budget where we'd take an administrative fee out of that so while that's one great option I think a better option would be for the increased funding that would actually allow us to do both the work and support the administrative cost of actually doing that work so I encourage the Council to reconsider that and consider our follow-up request Thank you I just want to put out that I would support adding that $5,000 back in I don't know if anybody else would but okay would anybody like to make a motion to that effect I'll move to restore the $5,000 for a total of $10,000 thank you for the discussion yeah what does that do 3.42 I'm so thankful for this great we're definitely keeping this for next year maybe not the board I don't know would anybody else like to weigh on that I guess I would propose then that we take it out of the MDC I just I appreciate that it's only $5,000 but that it's also like even 3.4 makes me really uncomfortable and I understand that both are really important functions but if you're pricing everybody out then who's I mean like if that's being seriously considered I would withdraw my request for the additional funds I think that would be very short-sighted to remove any funding from the MDC their startup in startup mode they have not yet been able to leverage any additional funds and the city funding is critical to what they do so I would caution the council not to make that choice Jack I feel that we're likely to have some more discussion of the Montpelier Development Corporation at our next hearing we had presentation from them very recently and it's this is one of those things a type of endeavor that's very hard to really see what's it doing how do we evaluate it and so it's it's just the very nature of it but the also the nature of it is that investing the money over a number of years can bring about some some production some increased growth and vitality and revenues to the city in future years that wouldn't happen unless we've been putting those years that money in for years and so I'd be concerned about cutting the development corporation at this point because I think as the manager mentioned the council adopted a five-year plan there was staffing turnover just within the past year and so it feels like they're just getting a running start and I hate to undermine that we did have a motion and a second okay any further discussion on this okay all in favor please say aye opposed okay so that passes and so we're at 3.42 all right any further things folks would like to discuss and then Glenn did you have was that a hand? I am Dan Dickerson from the parks commission I'm told that I think I missed the boat on this but I do want to take a few moments to just recognize someone that's spent countless hours of his life above and beyond the normal 40 hour work week to maintain our parks to come to parks commission meetings to come to city council meetings to take volunteer groups on trips and that's Jeff Byer within a matter of months he, as far as I know he's going to be retired from the city and I do not want to create the expectation of our next parks director that that should be the standard and so given the fact that when we lose him we lose close to time staff person above the parks director position we're losing a lot and getting an additional position whether it's this coming year or next year or the year after hopefully it's not that far out is vital to to our parks department not only maintaining the existing park infrastructure that we have but maintaining Confluence Park maintaining new trails at North Branch potentially maintaining trails which is a huge opportunity for the city given although it's an East Montpelier there's a lot of potential out there and with the two staff people we've had we've sort of just tread water for a long time and I just want to say that having that position is really really important to the parks commission to the parks department to the city I apologize that I didn't get this message to you sooner and I did send a letter I apologize for not getting that to you sooner but I at least want to take the opportunity to stand in front of you and just sort of try to expound how important this position is so thank you Thank you Ahlin Yeah I see that letter now just now Thank you but I wasn't going to talk about that I did want to just come back briefly to the potential funding set aside for the citizen survey Bill happens to have it selected on there right now by random and as I understand it that's oh no as I understand it that $5,000 that now is not in there was to be set aside for future so $5,000 a year for three years or something to pay for the next survey and thinking it over that feels like it really is worthwhile and something that we should at least consider more explicitly because I think that it's something that would go back and more and it's a again relatively small yearly set aside so I don't know if anyone else has any thoughts about it but I thought I would bring it back to our attention This was a long standing thing from Alan Weiss many years ago wasn't he a champion of this survey? In 2009 we did the national citizen survey in my opinion it was very helpful and valuable got us a lot of good information including demographic things and at that time we thought we thought we would do it every couple years and funding me what it was we kept putting it off and it struck me that we're not coming up to 2019 and it's been 10 years so it was time to do it again and so I was proposing to do that out of one time money this year and get it done but then say hey maybe we set someone aside we can do it every three years but we can look at that we can do $7500 next year I appreciate the support for it I think it's really important communities that use this tool the best use it regularly and then use it to benchmark themselves and track their performance every 10 years is interesting every two or three years is really you know we also have numbers to hit I mean I would just say that as someone who loves data and especially considering the community indicators that we are hoping to keep track of and there were a lot of requests from the last time we were talking about the community indicators of for data that doesn't really exist right now and there might be some opportunity with the survey to to get some of those critical pieces of information that that is otherwise not being tracked so anyway I just want to put that out there as that opportunity I would be down for adding this but see if anybody else is what are emails like to weigh in yes Donna I just don't want to keep adding all these small things because we are going to need more parks personnel and we're going to have to face that with all the other things we need so I think it's misleading because we took 55,000 out and suddenly we've been adding these little things that we're going to get ourselves in a worse fine than if we just had stayed with the 55000 fair enough other thoughts would anyone like to make a motion regarding this item sure I move that we put $5,000 in for a citizen survey is there a second second further discussion any other comments no okay all in favor please say aye opposed no and I would not make a fourth so that one fails and moving on how you doing team you doing okay unless you want to be done any other items or any comments from the public I'm just going to make my statement again I just did some rough math and I realize that there's not a direct correlation between like how much rent increases and how much property taxes increase but it translates to a relatively significant number when you're talking about folks who are really trying to just sort of get by in this city and I understand that we have priorities and difficult decisions to make but I really I am struggling to accept a 3.4 to increase in addition to the school budget increase that we're waiting to hear you know definitively I think which is next oh I don't know what that is you know I don't know well we will get their numbers obviously because it has to go on the ballot now that they're a separate school district I don't know if they'll be coming in to present to us like they used to we have a conversation to have with them can we invite them? I feel like this is sort of the way that people like get this information they will all be in the annual report together and if they put it all together I'll communicate with them it would be really helpful I bet we have to anyway because we still have to put it on the ballot yeah okay further thoughts team Jack I'm pretty happy where we are I'm not thinking of anything that I would ask to either have or subtract comments okay so any comments from the public okay I'm gonna close the public hearing and I'll make a motion to advance the budget as we've amended it tonight and set the next public hearing for January 24th great further discussion all in favor please say aye opposed? nay okay and alright so on to council reports what do you in particular like to start go ahead Jack I'll start last Thursday night we had the open house and celebration for the new apartments at the French block and for anyone who didn't who missed it or wasn't able to be there it was a great event we got a chance to see the new apartments the work that Down Street did to renovate that building that's been a blight in my period for 80 years was was incredible and I heard a lot of people there who were wandering around during the the apartments who were clearly not people who were candidates for affordable housing affordable housing middle class people who were saying that they could picture living in a place like that right in the center of town and I hope that there are other people who own property downtown who see the response that this housing has gotten and think about putting putting their their property to similar use in town we can still use more housing right in the center of the city whether it's affordable rentals as we saw last week or market rate rentals or even condominium ownership for capital and people in the city those all could be good uses for buildings in downtown Montpelier thank you pass, whoever wants to start I'll be at baguillos tomorrow morning at 8.30 and I'll just say it's been going really well there sometimes no one shows up and I get to check my email which is great other times a single person shows up and we have a long conversation a couple of weeks ago former counselor Jim Sheridan sat down with me and we talked for a while mostly he talked and I listened and I'm afraid I may not have done everything that he suggested I might do but I really appreciated the conversation I really look forward to continuing it into the new year so anytime 8.30 to 9.30 every Thursday at baguillos couple things first big props to Sheila and John Odom for all the work they're doing on the charter change advocacy there regular meetings with Roberta who you've seen a couple of times here they're putting together a really good game plan committee assignments were released today for the house so we all have to be really nice to representative Sarah Copeland Hansis who's the new chair of government operations and I think the new make-up is more favorable than the previous make-up of the committee to hopefully get some of these charter changes through along those lines I don't know who sets the agenda for the legislative welcome reception but I do believe if we're hosting this and investing in this we should devote some time for a couple minutes for folks to talk about both the bag band and the non-us citizen voting change there they're going to enjoy themselves they'll be subjected to listening to us too for a bit so I'd make the point of that and then I sent around just the RFP for the child care for the city of Pittsburgh which I think gives some good indications and might be just a seed of development a policy for us with our $2,000 that we're hopefully working with for child care but Tiffany Siminoe who works for the mayor's office in Pittsburgh said she'd be more than happy to be hanged on on this and help us develop an approach that fits Montpelier so that's it for me actually have you been to one of the welcome back legislators? I've gone for years both as a council member and as when I was in public transportation and they're never quiet I think it may be I think it's true we need to really assess what is that event, what is it worth but I do want to go back to Jack's comment about the French block and it was just wonderful and really kudos for the housing all those who involved in it that they kept some of the really quirky unique features of the building archways just it was wonderful but I'll tell you everybody was looking at the kitchen cabinets I mean I got in more conversations with people oh I want that many cabinets in my house because it was such a wonderful use of space it really was delightful thank you I don't have anything to add so I'm going to pass just a couple things also congratulations for French block really fabulous moment for the city and for those things and there's one who looks out the window at the building it's nice to see some activity I just want to comment quickly about the recent appeal of the DRV decisions on the parking garage did speak with our attorneys today we are advised to limit our comments because we are an active litigation so anything that you have please refer to the mayor or me through that and so we'll probably have more of a statement at some point but I would say that we need to think about this to the extent that it delays or creates problems for our project because we have a lot of other projects that are somewhat dependent on it this discussion of what they call confluence east was solely due to the fact that we were going to have more parking and some of the other discussions about bike lanes and those kind of things were due to the fact that we were going to have more parking and so I think we need to be thinking about the timing of all of those things there's a ripple effect of these types of projects that may or may not have been what this group of people intended when they move forward but that's okay alright so was there Ashley did you want to say something I see two representatives from the social and economic justice committee here I think we were supposed to be on the agenda tonight but I dropped the ball and didn't get the information to bill that I was supposed to and so I wasn't sure if either of you wanted to address the council just briefly or if there was anything that you wanted to I apologize it was out of turn and bill did mention to me that they were here and I great and then we'll be done yes thank you hi I'm Julia Sheffitz one of the co-chairs of the committee I'm still Michael Sherman so we have not come before you you may have noticed to present a charge and I think that that is an important piece of what the work that we are needing to do and struggling with at the moment I have over the last couple of weeks I've met with I've met with five of the seven current members individually to talk about that and what that might look like and I have a draft here that I'd be happy to I don't know if now is the appropriate time to share it oh I didn't keep a copy from it oh look at that thank you it strikes me as I as I listened tonight that every single issue that you discussed tonight and probably ever discuss has implications for social and economic justice and I think that is a piece of the struggle I think that's a piece of why we've been having a hard time getting going on this and one of the things that's cleared me both in my background and working with groups of people as well as with this particular group that that having a clear purpose is going to be part of what propels us forward into action and so I think we're needing some guidance from the city council but this is our start I think clarity and specificity about what we do will be really key so I would love your comments I think we just are struggling because we didn't really get a sense from the beginning of what the council was asking of us and you know the word advisory in the title is kind of vague although advise you about what and I think for some of us the question is are we there to receive specific requests from you or are we supposed to take a more proactive role in going out and sort of looking at questions of social and economic justice which I will say is bottomless well and that is a problem and even the two requests that we think we have throw us into an area of expertise that few of us have and so if any request is going to require us to do research and or bring in people who know more about it than any of us or most of us on that committee this is a real important question what is your expectation of how we are going to be doing so that we at least have some sense of boundaries? So my sense right now I am happy to be wrong about this but I would love to take this and digest it and talk about it again on the either the 24th or the next meeting depending on when we have time the 24th is already last I looked it was really full but this may either we can fit it in or it's soon thereafter how do you feel about that team? Yeah I would say trying to think what our next meeting in February is it's February it's like no it's January 15th oh yeah so so we wouldn't be meeting right and so in February it's the the third Tuesday so we'd be meeting the second Wednesday so we'd be meeting on the 13th of February so that would be in advance of that I think that would work oh thank you Todd oh yes look at that we're like woefully behind it's like being home uh oh uh oh we're still not in February we don't even get to February you're down there I mean to be fair I think I think that's the our February meeting is still before the next committee meeting in February so that would mean that that we really would not be able to we wouldn't know whether we're supposed to go forward for example on the ordinance that you're talking about on the living for the low wage by your next meeting because we were told that you wanted something from us in March right but we could work with that that was an intentional goal but some of these are dragging that's okay our first meeting in February is the 13th and then the second is the 27th um I'm sorry I just want to make sure I'm understanding are you saying that for your January meeting is between now and the 24th you may still be in the same situation of not knowing what to do and that's the problem I think that's true but I also think we have this now which is more than we've had and I think there are I think there are things that can happen I mean I think there are things that that yeah I mean I would trust you all to figure that out between well let me rephrase I think either continuing to work on that ordinance or operating under this these guidelines would be fine until then does that seem I don't know if that would be helpful I mean in my personal view I think it's more helpful that there be a thoughtful process around what our purpose is so I think the fact that that you all took the time to talk about it is more important than you deciding something right now and if in the the interim if it makes more sense for you to cancel your January meeting and just pick up again in February then you know that could happen too I mean up to you whatever you scheduling your meetings is there anything that I mean is there anything that I guess I don't know what my question is is there anything that any of you would like us to know about I'm struggling I'm so new to working within city government I would love guidance on how should we be working with the city manager's office how should we be working with each of you individually as counselors what specific kinds any just like thoughts that you have now about how we can be helpful to you so I would unless Donna you go ahead okay I would say usually for other committees we often have council rep and so usually you know you would go through the council rep to either communicate about issues that might be relevant or questions that are in result that you could use some advice about or you know in terms of direction are we going in the right direction that usually is relayed through your City Councilor that is also to say that there's nothing preventing you from you know talking with the rest of us obviously and trying to get to anything else and we have had managers of staff attending your meetings this week but yeah so try to support that as much as we can and certainly happen to talk about any of that Donna I think also one of your issues comes back to the council and that is we haven't really talked about it seems to me three years ago when none of these people were like half when only Ann and I were here were the remains of three years ago and we talked about it and even when we did the black lives matter resolution in my mind one of the kickoffs was really having awareness workshops for the council for the committee for the community so we could start really generating a mindset before we try to start implementing policies so and I may be the only one there but see we haven't had our conversation with this council so you're a good reminder that we have to do our work in order to help you do your work so thank you for coming and going to all the meetings and doing what you have done the conversations there are good good I'm new too I still feel new anyway as Donna pointed out just now and I don't know if it would be helpful but it was interesting Michael to think about the word advisory advisory committee and it might make sense to talk with my partner Kate of the energy advisory committee and how she has and that committee has structured itself to kind of in the way that you were describing earlier is the committee there to answer specific questions that the council asks or is the committee there to explore new policies and I think that Kate would say both and in these specific ways over the last few years so you might sit down with her and get some structure list actually there are different models for example there is the Vermont advisory committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and they have always taken on independent studies based on I guess issues that arise and then there are advisory committees where you get a very specific charge we're looking at this issue what should we be thinking about what are the things that you see that we may not be seeing and those are different models and it would be helpful to know which if either of those models you had in mind and if you're going to say both well then alright we would then have to be prepared but it's a big that's asking a lot of people you don't necessarily have expertise in some of these issues and I think that's you know just from having watched whether it was the energy committee or the housing task force and others over the years that have taken on certain topics I don't think there's anything wrong either with saying that's over our head you know thanks but this is the opinion, the collective opinion of the people on this board but we don't have the expertise to delve into this any further or we would need more support to really give you any good advice as you say there's a never ending well of these topics that we could talk about and there are lots of ways to get at it too and I listen I mean I'm not a voting member here but I'm listening when this was formed and I think there was a sense that there might be certain things that the council would refer and say hey we'd like your way in on this before we approve it there was also a sense that there would be some community engagement that you might initiate and say you know we'd like to do these workshops we'd like to do these whatever forums or you know however you set that up and that there might be things that you see you know for example just you know we're going about our mayor, the city council and the city staff have a zillion things going on and so there could be an opportunity for someone whoa have you thought about you know I see that you're just barreling along with scooters or you know just using it as a for instance but you know have you given any thought to that impact on this community by doing that and you know time out or at least as you so I think all of that could be really helpful and just maybe your agendas are sort of you know what's our project, what's our forum, what's our is there anything we want to weigh in on that thing or split up work amongst individual members and come together so okay so the one further thing I would say is could you send this to us electronically? that would be great what's the best way do I send it to you should I send it to you okay great thank you thank you yeah no problem and with that we are going to without objection adjourn we made it before 9.30 yeah no alright