 Being six o'clock on Monday, August the 6th, 2018, we'll follow the order. First, the Wunuski Liquor Control Board meeting. So the Wunuski City Council operates as both the city council and the liquor control board. So we're gonna have a quick liquor control board meeting first this evening, then we'll transition over into the regular city council meeting. Remind folks, we appreciate, if you could please, there's a sign-in sheet in the back and also an agenda in case you're curious as to what's gonna be covered tonight. We appreciate everybody taking time to sign-in this evening. So first up, we're gonna open the liquor control board meeting. We'll do so first by calling to order with a request that everybody please stand, Joyce, for the pleasure of allegiance, led by Deputy Mayor Nicole Mace. Congratulations to the flag of the United States and America since you've been calling for us to stand for my nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we have one item up for this evening's permitting on the liquor control board calendar. We have the approval of first-class liquor license and restaurant license for Eden Eid, a insider company located at 41 Main Street. So this is a liquor license and restaurant license for this space below the old 045 space, the second part of that. And we believe somebody from Eden Sider is here, if you'd like to hear from them, but we are excited to welcome them to Wadewski and look forward to your approval, we have no concerns. I don't know that we're gonna have a ton of questions for you, but this is an opportunity for you to introduce yourselves to the community if you like, if you guys wanna come up and talk a little bit about what you're doing. Yeah, great, yeah. There's a couple of seats right up here with a microphone. Welcome. Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. I was excited to see that pop into the window one day. All of a sudden. So my name's Elle Narlage. My husband Alvaro and I started Eden Eid and Sider Company in the Northeast Kingdom a little over 10 years ago. And we've grown sort of slowly and steadily. We're a very small boutique cider maker, not a big mass market cider maker. And, but we have a fairly national reputation, won a lot of awards and have distribution in about 15, 16 states at this point. And we decided we really needed to up our game in Vermont and come to where the people are because there just aren't that many in the kingdom. So our production facility will still be in Newport and we have a little retail shop and tasting more there, but we wanted to come to Chittenden County and Winooski, good friends, you know, Misery is one of our best customers and Mule Bar and just feels like the right kind of place for us and what we stand for. So we're super excited to be here and I'm great to meet all of you tonight. And this is Adam Gidoo, Adam joined us in June. He comes from New York City where he was retail director for Maurice Cheese and also head of their education programs. And as a former musical theater major has a great presentation style for how to plunge our ciders and cheeses and he bought cider for years and so forth. So we're super excited to have him, he's gonna be the GM and the day-to-day person on the ground running the operation. He's certainly putting it all together for us right now. Awesome, yeah. Any sneak preview for what people will find when they walk on the door? All kinds of stuff. We're gonna be doing, we slowly wanna expand, we'll have classes once, twice a week, sort of cider and cheese pairing, principles, basics. The whole idea is really education on true heritage cider, which is what Eden makes and sort of make that connection with other cultures across the world that have had these cider cultures established for hundreds of years. So Astorius and Normandy and New England and all of us and kind of spread that word. Awesome. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're finding a synergistic home. We're very, very excited and happy to welcome you. I know the entire community down there is as well and downtown's really quite close and I think business community too and I'm sure you'll find them to be really welcoming. And obviously the city's really happy to support you and anything we can do on it and making processes smooth and all that good stuff but we are really excited to see you land. Awesome. Thanks for all your help. And we're thinking soft opening somewhere around the weekend of the 16th, 17th, 18th of this month. Oh, wow, great. If all, we can get all this furniture. If all. Yeah. Finger strokes. So just if you happen to be, you know, walking by, maybe to see if the door's open, come on in. Yeah, I'll be there. So. The restaurant Adam is twice the time and twice the cost, right? In terms of anything you open, right? Pretty much. Yeah. A little better than that. That's great. Thank you all very much. Yeah, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks for giving us the time. We'll see if there's any questions from the public in regards to the permit application. Get ready to drink cider. Do we get to use? I'll be back. Any questions or concerns from council? Good. I'm going to entertain a motion for approval of the first class of the license, the restaurant license for Eden Ice Setter Company. Look at it at 41 Main Street. Second. Motion by Nicole, second by Hall. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, I'll also favor it. Please say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. And that concludes tonight's liquor control board agenda. I entertain a motion to adjourn. Thank you. So moved. Second. Motion by Nicole, second by Christine. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, I'll also favor it. Please say aye. And those opposed, motion carries. Being 6.05 on Monday, August the 6th, we'll now call to order the Onuski City Council meeting. Last, would everyone please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Deputy Mayor Nicole Mice. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, which stands one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, first up tonight is a gender review. This is an opportunity for council to make adjustments to the agenda content, or ordering, as it's presented this evening. Any questions or concerns in regards to tonight's agenda? So seeing and hearing none, we'll move forward as printed. First, next up, excuse me, is public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address council about anything that's not on tonight's agenda. As a reminder, you can see tonight's agenda in the back. We'll get to each of those issues, and you'll have opportunities to comment on those. But is it an opportunity to bring anything up that's not on tonight's agenda? Any items from once? Okay. So seeing and hearing none, we'll move on to our consent agenda this evening, which has two items. First up is the city council looking to control minutes from July 16th, 2018. We also have the warrants parable from 7-1 to 7-14, 2018, 7-15, and 7-28, 2018, and the warrants ending in 8-3 in the subsequent payouts from May and June. Any questions or concerns in regards to the Consigna from council? So seeing and hearing none, I arcane a motion for approval of the Consigna as a president. So moved. Second. Motion by Eric, second by Christine. Any further discussion? Seeing none, those are favorables to say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Okay, we have a couple of regular items coming up. But first we wanna do city update. You're on vacation, is that the update, right? A few quick updates. We, Public Works has executed the contract, shared contract with Burlington for the bridge repair project. And we'll be issuing a notice about that, public release about that either at the end of this week or beginning of next week. But I want to let you know that right now the work is scheduled to start August 27th. This is the work that we'd hoped to do over the summer, but the initial word of contractor pulled out as we had to refit it. It is expected that the work will take between two and three months. There will only ever be one lane closed on the bridge. So three lanes open at all times and that lane will only be closed between the hours of nine a.m. and three p.m. So during the rush hour cycles, all lanes will be, are expected to be open. So you'll see more about that in the next couple of weeks, but one to let you know that that was coming. Just a reminder to the public and to the council that the planning commission, members of whom are here tonight for the housing discussion, are well underway working on the master plans. So encourage people who are interested to come out to those meetings. Those are the second and fourth Thursday of the month here in this room at 6.30. Yes. And then finally, Saturday is our urban camp out. This is a new event for the city this year. Taking place in Cass Van Park, families are encouraged to come with a tent. It's $20 per tent with their families. We'll have s'mores and games and campfires and stories and whatnot for an overnight camp out in one of our urban parks. So we encourage you to come. And then Carol just wanted to report that we'll hear more about the primary and the pull bond vote in a few minutes, but voting is currently underway at City Hall. If people are interested or away on the 14th to date, we've handed out 122 absentee ballots for people early voting and 78 have been returned. So we're seeing a pretty good return rate on those. That's all I have. All right. Thank you very much. We'll move over to council reports. Mr. Down here. Eric and I presented at the committee services commission meeting and I went to the Winnowski Wednesday's event to answer questions about the pool. Not a large turnout, but definitely great questions and people are engaged in the issue. And I expect we'll hear some more tonight. Just you're gonna hear housing and planning commission. So I won't belabor those points today. I want to give a shout out on Saturday, Golden Scissors business on Main Street celebrated one year in business and talk about an inspirational Winnowski family. Three family members came here as refugees from Vietnam 26 years ago, now have a family comprised of over 35 people and built this really beautiful, amazing life and business in the community. And just want to give them a shout out most of me and her family. Great event, great acknowledgement and really an amazing American story done right here in Winnowski in a way that only Winnowski could do. So check them out if you need a haircut. What are you trying to say, sir? Me too. For me, it's getting more delicate too. I have to tell people, hey, it doesn't all go back as fast as it used to. Take it easy. After you, sir. So I guess my update is mainly, I met as liaison with the Downtown Winnowski Board. They're doing a lot of work right now to look at our strategic planning documents, the city's strategic vision statement, as well as the prioritization work that we did earlier this year to really look at how as a board they can align the work that they're doing to those priorities and what specific roles within those goals that we have, they are working towards. So I'm sure we'll all hear more from them as they're doing that work. I believe that in the future they'll likely come before us to talk about some of the work they're doing with that alignment. So at our last meeting, Betsy Nolan from the Women's International League with Peace and Freedom presented and made the case for why our city should take a stand to ban nuclear weapons. So I had a follow-up conversation with her and what I took away from that conversation was how important this measure is making a statement to our youth and our young people and our community about this issue. So I really feel that as a council we should consider signing off on that resolution and I'd be more than happy to be involved with that process. Great. We will follow up, pal. Okay, great. Thank you all very much. We'll now move on to tonight's regular agenda. First up tonight is a review of an event permit for a West Street block party. Good evening. Good evening. Staff has received an event permit application for the fifth annual West Street block party. This event includes a street closure on West Street between River and Elm Streets from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, August 19th. As part of the event, the Winooski Police Department will grill burgers for the community as they have in past years and this year may actually feature a band. It's been a great community building event in the past and we recommend approval of the event. Great. Yeah, this is really well reflected by everybody who lives in the neighborhood and I know it's been a big deal and I appreciate all staff's support to make it a successful event in the past and this year it sounds like too. It's a great way to get out in the community in a really positive way, so thank you all. And Dakota's husband is here too if you have any questions for him. Please do come up. Oh, I'm her father. Oh, father, I'm sorry. I was looking around and I didn't see Dakota but I didn't recognize you. She sent me your status. Thank you for being here. Thanks for all she does. Yeah. I know. That's amazing. It is. No, it's a great event and I'm really happy to go around with the kids and hand out flyers a few days beforehand. We always try and go back into the housing in the back there on whatever it's called there. Flats in the back there to get people to know and we've already talked to chicks so they know what's happening and Scout's gonna bring their ice cream soda at Sunday or their floats, so like that. So it's a great time for people to come together. Awesome, yeah. Have food, talk to neighbors, listen to music it sounds like. Yeah, between the fire department opening up the trucks for spray, water and hopefully the bouncy castle with the slide on it which I think our police got onto the year that was there in this whole entire uniform. Oh, no, that didn't sound good. Take the firearm up, that's off beforehand. That was a different day, that was a different day. After flipping burgers, they deserve a little fun time. It's a lot of fun. It's awesome. Thank you, thank you all for what you do to make it happen and this is, we support it but you guys really carry the water so thank you, really appreciate it. Well, it's just nice having anybody that's not in the flats, anybody's welcome. So it's food and fun and kids and hoops and everything. One thing to note is this is the first year that we're giving out small grants for block parties. That was one of the recommendations for the economic development strategic plan and so they will be receiving a grant for this. And other folks in other neighborhoods can have theirs too if they'd like I believe. Get it going, see the examples from the masters there. Any other questions, concerns from council? Any questions, concerns from the public? Great, so seeing and hearing none, I are attending a motion for approval of the event permit for the application for the West Street block party. So will. Motion by Nicole, second by Eric. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those favorably say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a great time. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah, I would like to. Next up we have a reserve request for communication infrastructure. So Angela is in a great memo for you outlining the request here. This was part of our cloud server priority that we came to you a couple of months ago to ask for appropriation. So part of that work was once we signed the contract was having our virtual IT professionals come in and look at our onsite needs. So what they found was our internet connection to the public works garage is not fast enough to support this technology. So we're requesting the use of reserves, up to $21,000 to bring that connectivity to the garage. The benefit this gets us, one is faster connection for the professionals who work at the garage and their ability to do their work and also connects them with our staff here at City Hall and gets us onto the same network so we can share documents and share reports and share our network, especially as we get into big public infrastructure grants. This is a high need that's spending a ton of time emailing back and forth documents and applications because we don't have that sharing network right now. I think again that this is a thread we've followed for a couple of years in terms of a need just in the number of email addresses, for example, the cities needed these technological, yeah and really having a sort of a pass of dragging our feet a little bit on some of these expenditures and appreciate the work that's gone into it. Give us to this point and appreciate the understanding that we needed to course correct here and go in a different direction. So I do appreciate that. And this is in one time cost, the actual cost for the ongoing service will be the same as it currently is as budgeted. This is the one-time connectivity cost. But it's lower than what was proposed going the other route, correct? In the initial build out of the budget implementation or not? This is a new cost that we did not anticipate as part of this. This is in addition to the cloud solution. We didn't know that the connection speed at the public works branch was inaccurate or not good enough until the IT folks did there. Their analysis. So you'll see also that the cost is actually $30,000 but the utility is splitting. We're paying for a third of it. Questions, concerns from council? I'm just asking Angela, the taking this money, this amount out of the reserves doesn't give any concern about that. Well, we have 350 left from FY17 that has not yet been assigned. And that's in addition to the 60 days cash on hand. Yes. In the future, can we throw that on these? It's at the bottom of the bin. Yeah, I know. We used to get... I missed it. No, no, no, it's okay. Because we used to be like a little, well, oh, we'll talk about it. I think there's a way we can do it in a way that's clear to keep it running to have a little bit of what's been spent to here today. Other questions, concerns? Any questions, concerns from the public? Okay, so seeing and hearing none, Erica and the motion for approval for a request for reserves for the communication infrastructure. Let's move. Second. Motion by Christine, second by Helen. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, those appear to please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, next up we have a public hearing that's scheduled for 615 for Myers-Pool Bond vote. That's us. So I'll just, if you don't mind, just preference this by saying this is the, because we have an upcoming bond vote during the August 14th primary, voting is now open, we are required to hold a public hearing per state statute. So this is that public hearing. And just tell me when you want me to click. Yeah, should we do it from here? If you want us to go over there. Later. Great, let's jump in. So the approach we're gonna take is to do the presentation that we've done in a couple of different settings, provide a little context and background for the vote, specifics about the proposal and what the funds are going to be used to build, if approved, and take questions. It's a pretty quick presentation. You have to do it nine times. We should do it nine times? Yes. We used a different version. Yeah, I think. Yeah, there you go, you're right, nine times. So I guess the first thing is just the logistical information. So this is a bond item that will be on the August 14th primary ballot. So that is this, not tomorrow, Tuesday, but this upcoming Tuesday after that. People can vote at the Winooski Senior Center, 123 Barlow Street. The polls are open, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. As long as you're in line by 7 p.m. At the line that I'm sure it'll be stretching out the door, you can make sure to cast your ballot. But then also, like has been said, you can come down into the clerk's office here at any point, get a ballot from Carol and vote. If you have an outstanding ballot, make sure to return it. It's probably getting pretty down to the wire to request a ballot, have it mailed out to you and then to mail it back and get it back in time. But as long as you've got the ballot back to Carol by 7 p.m. on election day, you're good. So a little bit of background about the Myers Memorial Pool, which is a valued community resource. It was built in 1972. And it served to provide the residents of Winooski with a state recreational space, swimming lessons, and for many, many years we hosted a swim team. Many folks in this room were involved with this swim team and many Winooski residents learned to swim through this resource in our community. It was closed in 2016 due to years of deferred maintenance. We had an engineering firm come in and take a look at the current facility and it was determined that it was unsafe. And so unfortunately, we had to close the pool and subsequently formed a committee of staff and community members to explore options for replacing the facility. That committee met for many, many months and designed a process for gathering community input on what a replacement pool could look like, what features community members prioritize, where it could be located, and the size of the replacement facility. And over 300 Winooski residents participated in the process. There was a big event up near Elandry Park. There were opportunities for people to vote with stickers down here at City Hall. So it was a pretty lengthy and robust process for gathering input around what a new pool could look like in the city. So as a result of that process, which like Nicole said, was really innovative and really sought to include a lot of community members. There were a number of features that would make up a potential pool rebuild that community members really felt were essential going into what the vision of what it could look like would be. The first was of course the competition pool, just because of that strong history here in Winooski of having a swim team, having an opportunity for youth here to participate in a sports program. So the competition pool was something that was really highly valued. Something that we'll talk a little bit more about down the road as well when it comes to discussing revenue for the pool, but it was an idea, including some sort of a slide feature, essentially an attraction that's fun and that can draw community member or draw non-Winooski patronage to the pool. People coming in from outside of Winooski, which if we're collecting pool use fees for the day or memberships from outside of Winooski, that certainly helps with revenue to offset the tax impact, as well as in addition to the competition pool, having a kiddie pool and a zero entry combination pool. And when we discuss the features, we'll go into it a little bit more, but essentially that zero entry pool is just something that goes from ground level and slopes down into the pool so that there isn't the need for people to use kind of the stairs or railings or anything along those lines. And that was highly valued by the community just because of inclusivity for people who might have mobility issues, still being able to access that pool and utilize that resource, as well as new swimmers can end up in the shallower end of the pool with a little bit more safety there. So after that community process where the community kind of put together what they most valued having in a pool, that same engineering firm, Weston and Samson, was selected to kind of do the preliminary engineering work. And there was in that process, they came back to the council, came back to the pool committee and came back to the community services commission multiple times with updates and presentations on kind of what preliminary engineering looks like, including these features. And then on March 19th, we actually received a final report of what that looked like. So once we received that report, we continued to have these discussions, continued to hear from community members and ultimately decided on June 18th to hold a Bonvo on the August primary election. So the key features visualized in terms of the preliminary engineering design that we received from the firm include a new community room, which would be a four season community room, which could be used for community events, including birthday parties, et cetera, updates to the locker rooms and pool house. So not a brand new facility there, but upgrades to the facility we currently have in place, including raising the roof and updating the locker rooms, et cetera. A new filter room, that's required because the existing facility really is not functional. So that is sort of the physical structures. There's also a proposed outdoor pavilion to provide some shade for patrons. The competition pool is on the left hand side and the zero entry pool with the slide is on the right side. It includes some spray features as well, which were also envisioned by the community. And then you can see the slide all the way to the right. Great. So one of the things, so now you kind of have a roadmap of what all those features look like. The vote that we took to move this to bond, there was a lot of discussion around exactly what we'd be putting on the ballot for people to vote on. And because of all the work that had, and the legwork that had gone into that community input process, the council did decide to move forward and bond for that full amount rather than a scaled back version of the pool. And this is what that actually looks like when we talk dollars. So when you all go to the polls to vote on the 14th, a yes vote will authorize the city to bond for $3.92 million for the purpose of planning, design and construction of improvement to the Myers Memorial Pool. So it authorizes us to move forward in doing so, but doesn't obligate us specifically to and also those number, if there were ways that's the full kind of cost of the project. And the yes vote authorizes us to bond up to that amount. If, which we'll talk about ways in which we might be able to, there are ways to lower what the final cost of that project would be. We don't need to continue to move forward in that full financial obligation for $3.92 million. But one of the things that we were, was really important to us was ensuring that as we move forward in the vote, we bond for that full amount, so that we're not in a position that we're underfunding a project and then unable to build it if some of those other sources don't come through. So that's what a yes vote does. And no vote just sends us back to the drawing table. So if the community decides that this specific iteration of moving forward with a pool rebuild is not what they want, then we all have to put our heads back together and figure out how we move forward with one is still standing infrastructure up there and what options might exist in regards to moving forward with a pool. So the tax impact of this proposed design, again, as Eric said, it's a $3.92 million up to that amount. If the project is funded solely by Winooski taxpayers, then the impact of the project could be up to an eight cent increase in property taxes, which is estimated to be a little over $185. About an annual increase on a $225,000 home. It's important to note that this tax increase includes both the debt service and on the construction costs and estimated operational and staffing costs to run the pool. And the estimates that were used to build this model really estimated revenue on the low end, fairly consistent to what we've seen historically with the Myers pool. As Eric referenced earlier, the hope is that with some of these features, we will draw and attract residents from outside the community and increase the revenue that is brought to the pool, which would offset the tax impact. The only other community in Chittenden County that has a pool is Essex and their pool is regularly pretty well attended. And I think as we're seeing issues with the beaches around town, we believe that the estimates around revenue are very conservative, but because we don't know what it will look like, we haven't set fees for summer passes or what it would cost residents and non-residents to visit the pool, we can't estimate anything other than historical revenue figures. So just bear in mind that that eight cents does include both operational and debt service costs. And because it takes a while to build a pool, the operating costs wouldn't be something that when you see tax payers see right away as well. So that's something to keep in mind. So like we mentioned, we are looking at a number of different ways to lower the tax burden for the project. And the first, like Nicole mentioned, is increased revenue. So the number that was used was budgeted really conservatively. We think it will bring in a lot higher amount. And when we were looking at similar communities in other places, I think we looked at Waterville, Maine, for instance, that has a pool and exists. And there are a lot of similarities between the two communities. The revenue that they were able to generate was much higher than what we're planning for, but of course we don't wanna kind of count our chickens before they hatch as well. So the number was very conservative. There is also an active committee that's focused on outside fundraising to help offset the cost of the build itself or to, you know, in whatever specific mechanism is they move forward with. But I do know that they are doing a lot of work to kind of bring in outside philanthropic dollars to help lower the tax impact. And I do know that there are a number of them here in the room tonight. So if you're all mixing and mingling after the public hearing and you wanna get involved and help support their efforts, I'm sure that they're still looking for people to be involved in that initiative. And then also we are looking as a council in the city, largely as kind of examining creative financing opportunities that might lower that tax impact as well. So I know one that has been tossed around is potentially looking at deferred principal payments. So for instance, for the first five years the city can only pay interest on the debt obligation and then slowly step up those payments to start actually paying into the principal. That way it's not a sudden hit tax impact that residents see and we can kind of phase it in over time. That's just one idea. We don't have a set path that we are definitely moving forward with one way or the other. Because obviously a lot of it depends on whether or not the bond passes. But we just want the community to know that we are looking at lots of ways and kind of opening every door we can to analyze how we might be able to lessen the tax impact for when you see residents while still moving forward with the pool. There's definitely agreement on the council that we need to be focused on minimizing the tax impact through a variety of, and I think it will happen through a variety of different mechanisms. So, we've missed most of these key upcoming dates. You're here tonight, which is the public hearing required by the state as Jesse said earlier. And another reminder that the voting on this project is going to be part of the August 14th primary vote at the senior center from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. I think we actually have another visual reminder. So, we can leave that slide up and take, and I'll hand it back to you in terms of running the public hearing. I think we'll turn back towards the public to see if there's any, any other councilors want to add anything or throw anything in there? Well, one of the things we did mention is just kind of from a personal perspective, the need that exists in the community for the pool. And my personal plea to residents to turn out and to support the project, I live over on Champlain Place behind the O'Brien Community Center. And during these hot summer days, if you go down and just spend some time in my neighborhood, you can see that there are a lot of kids that live in my section of the community that don't have summer camp opportunities, don't have places to go and providing a safe, healthy outdoor recreational space where community members can congregate, build great community relationships while participating in healthy recreational activities, I think is just so critical. So that's my personal plea. I won't divulge into it really deeply, but that's my hope. I want to add as well, you had mentioned that a no vote here would give us a signal that this proposal isn't in line with what the community, the full community wants. And, you know, Eric had stated that would put us back at the drawing table, but we have discussed previously that were that to happen, we could pretty easily based on the information that we already have put together a smaller proposal or kind of a different combination of things that are up there and bring that as soon as the November election. So it wouldn't throw the reopening of a pool completely off track, the August one doesn't pass. It might impact the timing. And as far as the timing goes, if this is approved, the timeframe that we've been, that we've been presented would have sort of a best case scenario pooled not being operational until the end of the summer in 2020, correct? It's hard to dig into the ground when it's frozen. Prior to serving on this council, I served on the community service commission and a lot of work has gone into this effort to bring this to you today. And I would say that their work really reflects the will of our community, that this is what the community wants to see. So that's why we're here. We're gonna open it up now for public comments, questions, clarifying items. You may have questions about this is your opportunity to learn as much as possible and ensure that you feel prepared when you go to the polls to be able to vote with the information you need to make a decision and about whether you think this is the right direction for the community and whether you feel that this is a project you wanna support. And it's a really good time to ask me budgetary questions you may have, how long an impact might be and anything. This is the open time. Cindy. I'm Cindy Boeber and I am part of the full committee. The original one and the current one. The reason why I say there's two different full committees is because the original full committee was given the task of finding out what the community wanted and going forward with deciding the pool that we felt. When that portion of the committee's work was completed it was asked if some of the members would stay on and they consider us to be a fundraising committee for the pool. We currently have between 10 and 15 active people on the committee. We need at least if not more than once a month. We do a lot of subcommittee works so we have different people working on different things. But I just wanna let you know that we are working extremely hard in trying to come up with some additional funds to lessen the tax burden for the citizens of Wojcicki. We have sent out a number of letters to foundations around Vermont. We have not gotten any feedback from them but they only went out a week ago. So it's helpful and we intend on following up a personal phone call some of the next couple of weeks. We also have a brochure that is almost completed and that brochure we intend on meeting with wanna quote some of the more heavy builders in and around Chittenden County who might be willing to support the pool as well. Hopefully by this week we'll have a new website that will be launched and we'll get the word out on the front porch forum, on the city web page, on the Facebook page. It will be a place where you can learn more about what's right now with the pool. There'll be updates on it and there'll also be a very large donate now to the public on it. So if anybody shows interest in supporting the pool even further, they can push the donate button and make any contributions that they really want to do. So that's kind of in a nutshell where we are right now but I just wanted to let everybody know that there is a committee out there and we are working extremely hard in trying to lessen the taxpayers burden for the pool. Thank you very much. Just as a contextual reminder too, this is the second time Moonewski voters have been asked to vote for a financial package of some sort, right? In the last six months, Moonewski four months in the community passed approval for potential bond issuance ranging from a four to 6% impact for a $23 million reconstruction of Main Street in May. So we're running that conversation concurrently and I think we're gonna have some updates what we had said to the public. Seems to have been forgotten in a couple places but what we had said is by the end of August, we were gonna bring back additional details about that project, right? That was stated in all the literature and the information available for folks and we're at the point where we'll be bringing much more clear numbers in terms of what that project impact looks like over time as well. And then I think from what you heard in this presentation too, there's still some decisions to be made in regards to how this financial package would still go together. It's a sort of very similar ask of taxpayers when you put forward a number of 3.92 million dollars and you say we want authority to bond the entire amount. There are different ways we can do that in terms of staging in the debt. So for example, you know what Eric started to mention is you could have a couple cents over a couple of years integrating the tax rate versus eight cents right off the bat. You could say, hey, this is what it costs. This is what should be put forward for taxpayers at the same time. So just want to point to folks that similar, I think Councillor Holson used that good example of yellow light when we were talking about the Main Street project. It's a very similar conversation here and that there has not been that level of conversation discussion about the way that final amount might impact what you're gonna vote on in March, but you're seeing the full effect there. Just going on Cindy's comments around tax base and then from a flexibility standpoint what the council's talked about before is we have a couple months to really bring in and integrate any type of fundraising that could come in. This is a different type of project than like a Main Street with a lack of federal subsidy and additional sources of funds available to us at the same level. So what that means is for that fundraising to come in and have an impact of what we would present to the voters in March, we're gonna have to see some movement pretty quickly. I know there's several of us up here who have committed to trying to help get to that point where we get it to a place where it feels better from a tax standpoint. Yes, sir. Before we get going, I wanna give a shout out to Jessie. I've had a couple of interfaces with her over the last few months. You know who I am, I know who she is. I also know Eric as well. I had him come over to my home and they're both doing good jobs. So I wanna shout out to them before we get going. I have a little bit different perspective on what we're talking about here tonight. You see, I was service manager for Shevnell Pool Company for 17 years. And during that time, I was asked to go over on a couple of good occasions and look at your pool. The first thing I question is an entire new filtration building. Unless things have changed, what you had was a sand filtration system. I don't remember if it's three or four filters in there, but those is a hundred year old technology. And unless you hit it with a sledgehammer, those things will work forever. All you have to do is change the sand occasionally. Maybe you have to replace the gaskets and seals, but otherwise they're perfectly functional. There's no difference today if you bought one or if you bought 100 years ago, it's the same thing. In those times, I was asked to go over to take a look at it. I looked at the system. And there was some definite things over the years that needed to be done. Asked if they wanted us to put something together for the city, so we could go in and take care of this situation for them. Never heard of that from anybody. We were pretty well ignored. But I guarantee you back then that we're not standing anywhere as near four million dollars. Okay, and for the last three years, it's been just totally neglected. Put whatever term you want to it. Defer this, defer that it's neglected. Which didn't have to be. There was no reason for it. You could have deferred some place else to keep the cool up and running for the kids. The question I asked you now, what about the children that are here in this city in this terrible heat we've got this year? They have nothing. Did the city bothers have maybe offered some kind of discount or ticket? They could go over to the Essex cool system. So they have some place to cool off or was that deferred as well? It's like I say for all of these years that have been going on in the years that I was in a position to do something to help the city was ignored. So, talk to me. Sure. So in the past we have offered to subsidize and provide transportation to both the Essex pool, water camps on the lake and the YMCA pool and we had the YMCA actually create specific swim times and offered transportation there to kids. And this was all offered how? I mean, would you fly or did you email people? What did you do? All those things, yeah. And through all the city's channels and means of communication we certainly tried our best and did the best we could with it. I don't think anybody was blown away with attendance. I think the Essex pool piece especially was really underutilized. I can't remember the account but it wasn't a significant number of residents that took advantage of that. So the first year that we made the decision and let me just back up. So I'm wholly appreciative of especially your experience and totally defer to your knowledge about pool mechanics. When we made the decision to close the pool we did so with an asset that was over 30 years old. It had served a good long useful life. And if the community gets 30 years off of this new pool that's a reasonable expectation. We can't sit here as this body is presently comprised nor can anybody in city hall from staff perspective speak very intelligently to what decisions were made on maintenance and not keeping the past. We just can't, none of us were here. So certainly apologize on this he's behalf if at some point in time there wasn't a responsiveness to your specific concerns. But when we looked at the situation a few years ago the decision was whether or not we were offering a safe environment for recreation. And we felt that there was not the expertise on staff to make that call. Which is why we brought an engineer in to take a look and say what's wrong with the system? How much is it gonna cost to fix? Is it worth investment in the fixes? How long could they last? How long could they serve the community after that? The answers to all those types of questions were not good. And in addition to that when we talk about the pool house our insurance company had a pretty big issue with that structure and whether or not it was safe for anybody to injure in there from work perspective. So we did our best to do diligence to decide whether or not it was a safe facility to reopen and the decision from that feedback from those engineers reports. We tried to use professional opinions, it was not. And that it had served its useful life at that point in time. So what you're saying basically from the clarification we're talking about gutting and leveling that entire pool system. This is actually a total extraction of the concrete. Everything out would go from a superior level to a pool system total. Yes sir. But that's not true with the pool house. That structure will be modified rather than replaced because that is still an asset that can be used. Needs another measure, I think there's gotta be some concrete poured to rise things up so they're not so low. And from the same filter perspective you're right and we've heard the same thing that these things can be tanks. But we were down to, it's been a while since I did this presentation. There's a good little Joe Shaw in there, but yeah. One and a half out of four I think it was that were functioning, chemical dispenser issues. And the feedback we got is they don't make parts for this anymore. You're gonna have to get a special engineer. If anything goes wrong, there can be special engineering after that. And they were very unsure about its ability to continue. So I'm again, totally differential to your knowledge. I'm sure a lot more about it than we do. We tried to bring in professional opinions though and give us what they thought the best course of action was in terms of safety. That's how that decision was made. And I guess the other thing I'll add is what we've tried to do in this current budget is to ensure that we've got an adequate operational and upkeeping care budgeted in there for the future. And doing so in a professional manner that includes professionals that know what they're doing. Not relying on members of our public work staff who are amazing, wonderful people, but should not be expected to carry pull-up, keep expertise. And that hasn't always been the case in the city at times. We've just tried to whoever's good with wrenches, right? Regardless of the year of the technology, it still needs somebody to know what they're doing. Yes, sir. And I'm still sorry for your experience. Yes, sir. My name is Joseph. I have a version of it on my street. Thank you guys for the work that you do. I know you've been working hard on this and I'm happy to learn a couple of new things tonight that the operational cost was included in the bond and there is a four-season room that's gonna be available to use year-round. Personally, my feeling is it's a lot to take on, but my biggest concern is it's over 20 years, right? So just as far as infrastructure goes and everything that's gonna keep coming down the pipe, you know, where's the money best used? And I just ask you guys that you just take that and get to consideration moving forward because it could, as things come up and we need more stuff, it could have a compounding negative effect on us as taxpayers. Appreciate that. Thank you. And if you follow council conversations, you know, funding of capital improvements in the CIP budget, one is one we spend a lot of time on each budget year to talk about how we try to fill those gaps and keep up with what we're running into with aging infrastructure as every city is in the United States. It's definitely the top priority. Other questions? I saw some hands go up and down. Yes. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure correctly you asked for and received some reduced cost options, but can you talk about those and why you choose to go for those options? What would be missing in some? So we had three options that we looked at. One was recommendations from the engineer, sort of a value engineering approach. And I cannot remember, and Ray's not here, I can't remember the specifics of what was involved there, but it was essentially pieces to the facility that could be less expensively purchased and would still be functional and safe. The other was to eliminate some of the features and including the slides. Help me out here, folks, if there were other features that were not included other than the slides. I think there were two or three key features that were not included. Can you put it over a reason? Like they wrote and the slide and the shade structure and that those would be potentially fundraised so they could be added at a later point in time. And then the third was the full build out. We received a lot of public input at the meetings when council considered those options. The pool committee attended the Memorial Day Parade and handed out flyers with the three options and asked folks to communicate with council members about which of the three they supported. And so we all received multiple communications in support of the full build out in addition to the folks that came to the meetings and spoke in favor of the full package. And to Christine's point, part of our thinking was that if this full build out represents the community's vision, it ought to be put to a vote in August. If it's not ultimately supported, then we do have some time to offer a potentially scaled back approach in November and still not fully miss a construction cycle, although may miss opening in 2020. And I think in the value engineering model and I don't remember all the specifics and we remember the technical terms for what's used to build a pool, but there were some material changes that could be much, that were cheaper for the actual cost to build. But I think, I can't speak for the other folks sitting up here, but I think many of us would be in agreement with some of those specifically. I felt like the amount of cost saving did not justify the amount of additional years we could get out of the materials that were used with the current model that's proposed. And if this is an asset that instead of lasting us 25 years, which may only be five years beyond the debt expiration, but lasts us 40 years, 45 years, whatever it might be, that's absolutely something worth investing in. So I don't remember the specifics on what there were, but there were a number of material costs that could be scaled back for essentially cheaper components. But it was still, the difference in the tax rate was no greater than one cent. So it wasn't a substantial difference between one model or the other. So the second pool is a competition pool. Can you explain why that's necessary to have if we're just creating a pool for the community children? What is the purpose of the competition pool? Does that must be what's driving that? So I think we'll just go back to the pool's history in terms of its use as a competition pool. We hosted a swim team for many years. And I think part of the public input process, that tradition came out as one that folks want to continue in the community. And so that's why we ended up with a vision that has two pools. I think there's two pools. We'd spell a competition pool, but that's not going to be the only use of that pool. That pool will be open to the community to use all day long. The swim team will only use it in the morning and in the evening for practices and twice a week for swim meets. The rest of the time, that pool will be open to the community for the use. And I would just add that the team currently is practicing at 5 p.m. or 5 30. So it's after primary usage for the community and swim meets don't start until 6 p.m. So there's minimal impact to the general use when there are meets. Let's just kind of say I don't know about the swim team. Where is the swim team? I mean, are they high school students or college students? No, they range from five years old up until high school. We're around 50 swim team members this year. We just had our state competition down at the Valley Aquatic Center. And for the past three years, we've been practicing at the YMCA. So it's warm. There's not places to hang out with the teams. And that's one thing that we're missing because we don't have our own pool to go to. Our first couple of years, you had a picnic dinner on the grass with your other kids who weren't swimming and you just hang out with the other team members. But the kids, when we knew we were closing the pool, they had the option to join local teams and it was unanimous that they wanted to be a Winooski swim team and they've stuck with it ever since. I also thank you to respond to the end of your statement which was in regards to providing a sort of pool for the kids in the community. I think there's also a lot of really positive benefits to providing kids within that space and opportunity to be a part of kind of like a sports team. I think that encourages a lot of pro-social behaviors and there are a lot of really positive benefits that kids get out of that being, having those opportunities to be a part of a team. So I think that would be expanded with us. And in addition, I think when we're talking about getting community members in from outside Winooski, so people in the surrounding communities for patronage which will help with our revenue, having a competition pool essentially means a pool with lanes for people to be able to come and sit in laps et cetera will be a draw as well. That I don't think we'd get as much as if we're just the one individual pool. And the second benefit of having two pools is that they are on multi-track filtration systems. So if there happens to be a sanitary accident in one of the pools, it doesn't need to close down for the whole day because they're not on the same water system. I don't know all the specifics for that, but it can be a problem. Yes. I would add to that that the competition pool is like a regular pool. It's what we used to have. The secondary pool is a kiddie pool. I don't think the death gets beyond like three feet. So you can't actually swim in that. So there are two different uses entirely. If so, how much is that going to be? The answer is yes. There was a fee in the past as well. And I can't recall what that was. $3.00 today, $20.00 this evening. And I don't know what the projections were done off of. Do you guys know what the type of heads? $35.00 a year residential. Yeah, and I just don't know what the performance were run at from a fee perspective. I believe we kept the fees the same. Exactly the same, in fact. So we did roughly the same. So $35.00 type seasonal pass for $3.00 a day for one time use. There was a differentiation in the past fee structure, true between residents and non-residents. I think none of that's set in stone. Obviously, those are decisions we've got to make down the road of exactly what that fee structure looks like. To recap, if you haven't watched some of the previous discussions we've had around this, personally, I feel like it's really important built into that we do have a waiver process for families and children that don't have the financial opportunity to be able to afford that. Just because we want to make sure that this pool for my perspective, open and available to all our community members. So some sort of waiver process to make sure that kids who can't afford what that daily use or monthly pass might be can still go and utilize the pool. Another question, can you talk about fundraising ever that word or what? Besides donating, what kind of ideas do you have about fundraising, what kind of fundraising? I'll just say something quick and open up to these guys. This city as an entity does not formally fundraise. Our form of fundraising is taxes, that's right. I mean, from a functional standpoint and from a perspective, it's not appropriate for the city to engage in going and asking businesses and other entities for non-formal streams of income or money, right? You don't permit a business and then turn around and say, hey, by the way, you should kick into the pool. But as individuals, as politicians sitting up here, we all can make the decision whether to reach out to people or not and make asks. And that's something that several of us, I think, have committed to doing and trying to support and help. But then really the center of the fundraising has to be community-based, right? And that's the purpose of it. It can't be five people carrying the water on this, nor has it been, right? Those community members who care a lot about this have been engaged in it. I have been putting a lot of time and effort and energy into it. So I think it's a more appropriate question for them in terms of what types of activities they have planned and what types of asks that they're making. And just the other follow-up, I'll just say, we have done a pretty exhaustive search of where we can find pools of additional funds, be them grants and things like that. There are some small ones that aren't insignificant, but there are not ones that have tremendous impacts. I mean, the cap, I think I've seen is like $100,000, which is not a $3.9 million project. Still matters, but from a real reduction standpoint, it's gonna take something more substantial than the tax rate. Any other questions, concerns, comments? Is there any way you can write for those smaller grants and apply them towards the project, or is that like, or they have to be entirely separated? We have our head on a swivel when it comes to those types of things. So there's one, I mean, it's an acronym that starts with LW. No, it's LW, the Clean Water Grant offered through the state that we are looking to apply for. I think it's a $50,000 limit. So we are looking for all of those pieces. I think the point made earlier is this vote authorizes us to bond for up to that amount, but any amount we can bring in through grants or fundraising, we'll just either lower that amount that we bond for, or we'll be dedicated revenue to pay debt service that ultimately will also lower the tax rate. I think a lot of times two funders look for whether or not we're gonna move forward with the project and whether or not they'll help fund it. So if there's a $50,000 or $100,000 grant, we're not gonna be awarded that grant unless we have a yes vote on the bond that we're actually gonna be building a pool. Moving that, there used to be a lot more money on a federal level for these kinds of projects that is just not available anymore. That grant landscape has shifted really dramatically since the 80s to those funds just not being, they're just not there any longer. So if the bond is approved for up to the 3.92 million, and some of these other things come in, and how does the city look at when did they raise your property taxes on it would seem like it's a vote for that and then it would, and you talked about staggering it a little bit with some deferred interest and stuff like that, but is that part of the budget process that the city does? So they, so you have this up to almost $4 million, but if you don't need it all, then you would sell that in the bonds essentially here. And ultimately any impact on the tax rate from a, comes through the budget process, which is ultimately approved in March. So we all have work to do when it comes to what offsetting revenues can be raised for this project, what offsetting revenues are we able to access from the federal government for the Main Street project, and we're going to have some difficult discussions, I think in the lead up to finalizing a budget to present to voters in March, but it is not the final say, it's not the final endpoint of the discussion, Seth mentioned earlier, it's a yellow light to continue the conversation, to continue to try to solicit funds and identify offsetting grants, et cetera, and then ultimately work together to put a budget forward that reflects the votes that have been taken this fall, summer and fall. So basically it would be adjusted annually? Is that what you're saying? I think the bond payment, once we agree on a schedule, that's not adjusted in terms of once we borrow a specific amount, we don't necessarily determine what that amount looks like. That's been agreed to with the bond bank, but to the extent we have offsetting revenues come in through increased patronage, et cetera, we have control over operational cost side, the fees that get set, the fundraising that continues, that could be used to put into an account to then pay down, pay the bond payments, the debt service. So that's where we have, on an annual basis, or more to the extent there's fund balance that materializes in the given year, we could just have a discussion about assigning that to debt service payments for the pool. So it will be an annual discussion. I think my concern is that the bond is approved for almost $4 million. We don't really need $4 million, but that's what you were saying, that's what we committed to the debt ourselves for. So what happens, do you just pay the debt down quicker, or? You only take what you need. And what we will do is we will take enough. There's another community in Vermont that did not take enough and is really struggling right now to try to figure out what to do and how to move forward and go back to voters and asking for more money. So the decision here was to say, take enough to do the entire project, ensure that we have the authority to do that, and then back into what that final number looks like based off of other sources and the other type of thinking around creative finance stages that we may do. But if there's somebody at the city that's like designated to write good grants or to set somebody's job to try to get funding out in the federal level or state level or whatever. With most of those opportunities, it's subject matter experts that are necessary and needed so it becomes the department head working with the finance brains, Angela and Jesse from a management perspective. So there's not like a designated grant writer that's sitting at a desk, but we have, if it's an economic development or community development grant, Heather would work on that type of grant, probably tapping into Paul, our communications person, Angela, our financial person, and Jesse from a leadership perspective. So at a grant like this, you probably see somebody like Ray, for example, community services person, take a lead. I think back to your question, is it fixed? The whole amounts for these would be fixed, right? There's no change in these amounts unless we decide to stage in. There's opportunities where you can do interest only payments like Eric brought up, where you can do two cents, two cents, two cents and kind of step into it. But in the end, what we're saying is you're gonna get to that eight cents. You're gonna get to that eight cents and change if you go that route. And there's a cost to staging into. It's an incremental impact to the tax rate, but there's an expense to the deferring principle. You're making interest only payments, you're not paying down your principle, it's gonna cost more over time. So there's that question of whether you just buy the bullet and do it, or if you try to make an incremental step in. And we're talking about a 4.6, right? A four to six cents raise from a mainstream vote, and this is eight. So you're talking about somewhere in the range of, somewhere between 12 and 14% from a range perspective. Each year we've been running somewhere between a penny to two pennies, just a naturally accruing cost of running the city, meaning keeping things, all services the same. That's what we've been running the last couple of years. There's no promise as to that's gonna stay one to two cents, right? Health care costs shoot up one year, salt costs a lot more in one year, we have to adjust based on that. So that's gonna be that larger budget conversation down the road. I think it's important to note that why we're here in this place, not having pulled it from one to two cents and now we're asking for eight cents because we've been diverted for so long. And there's just nothing, like as a taxpayer, as a resident, we need to think about why it is eight cents now. Because for so long, people didn't want one cent or two cent, and now it's like, surprise, here it is, eight cents, you know? I just want to share, if you are looking for more of the cost information, it was in our May 21st meeting. In that packet on page 42, includes information on the rates, information on the three different proposals that we looked at, and what the cost is, the operating cost, the debt service per year at that time. So you can go online and see them. Yeah, you can access that on the city website. And that's the other option, right? This council could, you could get the full bond going in, we could get up to budget season, and not just out of a vote failing, but there could be a conversation about the whole, the components of the project. That's a possibility. But we're asking in this for the full amount. As it passes, then this, some, maybe, other on proposal would be on the November ballot, a scaled-down version? It's possible. It's possible. I just want to make the point that this could pass with the full amount and you could still have a conversation, come back up about a scaled-back version based off of trying to put forward a sustainable budget that we think people will support. So, nothing stops here. Well, that was kind of the same thing with the mainstream. Yes. I think so, but my experience has been once you, if you've got the money, you're gonna, it's not gonna, you're probably not gonna back off from that, you know, the grim, it's just, it's a hard ask, I think, on top of the mainstream in which, and I like the idea that really raising people's property deficit a lot between the two proposals, and one's passed, and so this is really, really realistically, if this passes, which, I'm still undecided, but if it passes, it's gonna be a lot, and I think people, when they're asked to look at, well, what would you like to have for a pool? Well, of course, you want to have this, and you want to have that, and you want to have this slide, and you want to have problems, and you want, you know, but they're not, they're saying what they want, visually, but not necessarily what they want to pay for, you know, when it comes down to it, so that's it. I think, though, too, that, sorry, that fiscal responsibility in regards to kind of being stewards of that tax impact is something I'll almost do take really seriously, and something we really, really are looking very deep at. Thank you. I was just gonna add that some of the conversations around those different features were about helping to draw baby revenue generating pieces, I think a lot of people have experienced them in the street pool, and they have a lot of features there, and so that was part of the conversation, and we also talked about, well, is that something you added later? It could be much more expensive if you added it later if you don't put the plumbing in initially, so there's different phase approaches for them as well. The majority of the cost, too, is in just the base elements as well. A lot of the additional features and some of our not big ticket cost items, I can't, and again, speaking just for myself, I think the potential for that increased revenue outweighs the potential savings we might have, not building them in, so hopefully they'll at least zero out if not act as a much greater draw. So I have to speak for myself on that front. The operational cost of this pool versus the old pool, this design, is, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, it's like $20,000 difference every year. That doesn't include the additional, like the cost of the debt service, and the previous pool was generating with the conservative estimates in this financial model, $10,000 a year, so we would be expecting these, to say that this is an offset, we would be expecting these features to bring us double revenue, essentially, to make that even. And it's prime or at its decline? That was averaged over several years, I believe. Okay, I think that's something to take into account because there was grass growing in the kiddie pool, like that was, you couldn't use that, it was really just an eyesore, and I think people continued to go to the pool because it was the only thing that we had in the town at the end, just that overall need to have that place to go and to cool down and to swim and teach lifelong lessons. So hopefully the overall improvements are in the support of that larger budget, but I think it's not really comparing apples to apples. We also just need to be clear that the pool will never generate revenue, any revenue it brings in will subsidize its own costs, like it's not going to be a revenue generator, even if we add nicer features to it. We're still gonna be paying for at least some portion of it through our taxes. I think I think this gentleman pointed out that public works or anybody with a wrench was fixing the pool. We need to think about how we're gonna maintain this in a way that it's gonna last long term. We're gonna put the money into it. We don't want people just with a wrench going in there and trying to fix them. And that's gonna, the operating house has been changed for the better. It's always easy to look back. I wanna be really clear. It's always easy to look back with our heads held high and forget very quickly about the financial situation the city went through for decades and extreme budget constraints and people were all doing the best that they could to get by. So I don't wanna make it sound like casting stones from a glass house when it comes to that, but you're right and we've tried to build into this budget adequate funds for ensuring that it's taken care of. Other questions, comments, concerns? I just think the other thing that you need to keep in mind that was mentioned earlier is the fact that the Main Street bond was up to 23 million and they announced tonight that they are going to have some announcements coming the end of August. Unfortunately, it's after our vote, but if they're gonna come back at the end of August and tell us that maybe 10 million of that will be covered, that'll be great, right? But unfortunately, the timing is not good. So keep that in mind too, because it sounded to me like it was gonna be pretty good news that they're gonna have to tell us at the end of August. So that's what I'm looking for. Anyway. I'll see. Hey, they're gonna pay us $3 billion. I just wanna share some thoughts. You know, this is really important conversation, the fiscal side of this equation, critically important, but I think equally important is the moral side. And as I reiterated at our last conversation about this, this is a priceless project. If it saves one life from our community, from a kid who falls into the river, who doesn't know how to swim, shame on us, we need a facility that can provide the safety around water. And all our kids should have this as an opportunity. So I think when you really think about it, it's a priceless project. It's the only reason why I've been for that reason. Any questions, comments, concerns, thoughts? Now you've gone through all the trouble and work to come here, please don't forget to vote, right? We don't have ballots available right now, but seriously to stop by anytime during business hours, we'll be now on the vote. And you can also vote in city hall ahead of time. Should just sort of choose. Conversation doesn't stop here, right? We're all available at www.wiscuvt.org, if you'd like to ask questions. Really encourage you as always to get information from primary resources and people in the city if you've got questions about budget stuff. Your neighbors probably know a lot about this, but never bad idea to run that assumption or idea through somebody connected with the city just to be sure that's our right assumption you're going with. Thank you all for coming. We really appreciate it. Thanks to Eric and Nicole for the great presentation and all your work, great? And with that, we'll close the public hearing and we will move back into the city's regular agenda for this evening. We're gonna do a two minute recess to allow folks to move around. So having completed our two minute recess, we'll now call back to the Lewinsky city council meeting and we'll pick up the regular agenda. Next up we have item C which is discussion of housing commission policy recommendations. Good evening. Thank you. Tonight I have with me two members of the housing commission. I have Robert Millar who is the housing commission chair and Jessica Bridge who is the newest member of the housing commission and will be presenting to you our latest recommendations. I'd also like to welcome the two planning commission members who are here, Pallas Soporin and I don't know your last name Lauren, Sampson. Thank you. So our last, the last time that we came with the recommendations was at the June 4th meeting of city council and I've included in the planning commission's packet what those recommendations were to kind of bring you up to speed with where we are. If you have any questions, we'd be happy to take those. So we've met twice since the last time that we've been here and we've used those meetings to really look at the priority policy and the priority strategy that we had identified as our last presentation to council. So I have laid that all out for you in a memo. It's surprising how long it takes to discuss a single item because these are pretty complicated issues. So that's all that we got through was talking about the affordable housing replacement ordinance and just beginning to talk about an affordable housing trust fund. So I've refreshed your memories in the memo on the housing commission purpose and the guiding principles that we're working under and I am going to turn it over to the housing commission members to give their recommendations. Hi. Hi. Is there, do you have any specific questions before we start? Because this memo is pretty thorough and happy to give you a blow by blow, but... I want to just quickly take a minute to thank Heather for all the work she does as our staff liaison to make our discussions really go very well. These memos, these point-by-point discussions, it's smoother than any council meeting. That's okay. Twice is productive. I think you've got statements here. I think the big thing would be if you want to share any philosophical underpinning that the group approached the problems and the potential solutions with. And if you want to highlight any of those kind of things, if you're right, there's words in front of us that tell you, tell us what direction you think is best. But if there's any specific philosophical highlights you guys want to start off with that you think helps support what these recommendations kind of arrived at, I think that would be, and you can do it one by one or if you just want to point out a couple of them or if there's none of them, anything in the words or what they are, then we can open it up to conversations. I think probably the best way to do that is to just note that we really focused on the guiding principles. I think that that was true. I am the newest member to the housing commission, but I think piggybacking on what Robert just said, I think the reason why we are able to move through what we do as quickly as we do is because we really try to rely on these because I think once you do get into the philosophical debate, everyone seems to go off on a tangent, myself included, and I feel like we've done a good job reeling it in. And I think that everything that we have decided, you can point to one of the guiding principles and see, okay, this obviously, there's a deep connection there. You know, we serve in an advisory capacity to the planning commission ultimately, and I don't think that any of us takes our role. I feel like we are aware of our place, right? And we know what's above our pay grade, and I feel like we have relied heavily on either the planning commission or will, and also city departments to guide us when necessary. And I would agree, we have access to a tremendous amount of data that Heather provides. And I think over and over again, we go back to that data as a reference point. So if that's helpful in answering your question, Neville, or request. I'd also like to add that I think primarily what we're dealing with with the affordable housing replacement ordinance is dealing with our principle to protect current residents from displacement. That's the primary purpose of what we're doing here in this particular case. Okay, so given what these items are, I think Heather, if you could just maybe just state what the decision was and do layman's turn to show folks watching at home and it kicks the conversation out. Then maybe as we go through each point, each of these bullets will stop and see if folks wanna ask specific questions about those instead of just doing a free-for-all for the whole document. Okay, some things. Can I jump in from a process perspective as well? So I think it's important to note as, we're a little off kilter here in reporting cycles and one of the reasons we want to have this meeting was to make sure the housing commission, the planning commission, the council are all comfortable with a general direction of where we're going through with some of these policy recommendations. I think what we wanna keep in mind about tonight is are we on the right, are the three policy bodies on the right track and on the same page about a direction? And then this recommendation would turn over to the planning commission to actually draft an ordinance that would come back to you for that ordinance approval process. So I think I just wanted to say that to say that this is theory behind these recommendations that after a lot of looking at the data and looking at other model ordinances and things like that but this isn't the only time the planning commission or the council will look at these recommendations. So I just wanted to remind people of that high level process as well. Okay, so I think first off, it's important to state what the intent of this ordinance is and I'm just gonna read that from what we've come up with. It's to provide housing to meet the needs of a diversity of social and income groups, particularly for those households of low and moderate income, to reduce the likelihood of displacement of current residents due to redevelopment of existing affordable housing units and to offset the loss of housing with new construction and to support retention of an adequate housing inventory in the city. Frequently housing replacement ordinances are just about number of units, not necessarily also about affordability. So we've kind of piggybacked two things into one here. It's not that it hasn't been done before, it most certainly has, but it can be one that's just about maintaining a number of units so there's an inventory and we're doing both of those things. So the housing commission went through a series of questions and took votes on which direction we felt we should go with this ordinance and so these are the recommendations we're making as the planning commission moves forward with drafting an ordinance. The commission recommends that it's a citywide replacement ordinance, not specific to any areas of the city. We recommend that the number of units lost that will trigger the ordinance replacement is three units. The reason for that is because we have a large number of duplex units in the city and it's a higher percentage than in the Inchitton County or the Metropolitan Statistical Area and I have those numbers. Oh, thank you. So in Winooski, 21% of our units are two family units as opposed to 7% in the MSA Metropolitan Statistical Area or 8% in Inchitton County. So it's higher than in most surrounding areas. And in addition to that, 45% of those are owner occupied. So that's one way that affordable home ownership is made available. People can use that rental unit to subsidize their mortgage. So we certainly don't want to be sacrificing affordable home ownership in order to maintain affordable rental units. So we think they're both equally important. So that's why we've set that threshold at three. So that would leave those duplex units alone. The commission proposes that the affordability threshold triggering the replacement requirement should be units that are affordable to households earning under 80% area median income and that's a household income of $51,302 per year. That will capture the broadest possible range of affordable units in the city. If we had set it at a lower income, it would be a narrower band that we would be preserving. The next is one of those things that we saw as maybe a little bit above the pay grade of the planning commission. We're recommending that there be a required duration for maintaining affordability that should be included in the ordinance, but that the planning commission should work together with some of our housing partners that are more familiar with what those affordability requirements are for different funding sources. Yeah, we didn't want to set some arbitrary number of years that doesn't make sense in terms of building affordable housing generally. The housing commission, no, it's fine, please do jump in. The housing commission recommends requiring unit comparability between lost units and required replacement units as pertains to a comparable number of bedrooms per unit and comparable or improved ADA accessibility in units classified as handicapped accessible units. And we talked about a bunch of other ways that they could be comparable and decided to be silent on those. It was a pretty long conversation. So those were the two that we felt rose to the top. What are some of the ways that were discussed that didn't make the list? Square footage was one of them. I am not recalling off the kitchen. Kitchen. Oh yeah. Yeah, that was the whole conversation. Number of bathrooms, complete kitchen. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, we spent a lot of time talking about what complete kitchen actually means. Apparently there's a definition that the mayor was already in our ordinance. Home is where the heart is. It's not complete until you know the kitchen's saying this. We didn't get quite that much into it, but pretty close. I'm so good at it, I'm so sorry. The housing commission recommends establishing tenant notification requirements in compliance with Vermont Tenant Handbook and under the termination of tenancy for cause requirements. Can you explain that a little deeper? Yeah, when there's a unit that's going to be demolished, there has to be advanced notice to a current tenant. So that sets, the Vermont Tenant Handbook sets a period of time, so I think it's 60 days, at least that they're required to give notice to the tenants who live there. So we discussed whether we should have a longer term or less or decided what was currently existing made sense. The commission recommends that the following exemptions should be incorporated into any further exemptions that might be established by the planning commission. An exemption for owner occupied multi-family properties. Units lost due to conversion of previously single family dwellings from a multi-unit building back to a single family home. Property that has been ordered demolished by the city, except where it is determined that the deterioration was caused by neglect or lack of maintenance. The commission recommends providing several options for meeting the replacement requirement as follows, and these are pretty common ones that are used in replacement ordinances. Replace on site, replace within city limits, or a fee in lieu of replacement to be paid into the affordable housing trust fund that we will discuss a little bit later. The housing commission recommends establishing a fee in lieu payment within the range of $25,000 to $50,000 per unbuilt required replacement unit. And that is a low threshold. $50,000 is what, we looked at some other comparisons. $50,000 is what Portland main uses, but Burlington had one that was $100,000 for their inclusionary zoning. But since that was recently evaluated as being too high and keeping people from taking that option, developers from taking that option, it was recommended by an outside consultant that they lower that. So we've gone with a low fee in lieu in hopes that we would encourage people to pay into the affordable housing trust fund. So in that evaluation of Burlington, people not taking that option, does that mean that people have been replacing onsite then? There are a couple, yeah, people have been replacing onsite, but it has also, there was some discussion of it actually causing less development of housing. It caused them to find ways around it by and large or to leave bad properties in the bad state to be blunt. Yes. So our hope is that we can have people pay into an affordable housing trust fund and then use that in strategic and targeted ways with our partners because we're not going to be getting low income housing tax credits every year, maybe every five years. And so if we have a good pot of money that we can use to leverage to bring in partners and use with tax credits, then we may be able to build better affordable housing. Questions about that one? There's just, there's a lot more there and there's a lot, that's probably the biggest. I think it's the biggest item on here and it's the most probably important one in terms of what the impact for this could really not be, both from a detrimental standpoint and from a positive impact standpoint. And I think we can go through all the rest of them before we open up the app. Okay. The housing commission recommends that the planning commission should establish an appeal structure for relief from ordinance requirements. I personally did a little analysis and there at least a dozen owner-occupied multi-unit properties comprised of three units or more that would trigger this ordinance. So there should be some kind of relief structure. Housing commission recommends that the planning commission should develop compliance, monitoring, structure, process and frequency, again in the evaluation of the city of Burlington's Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance. Insufficient monitoring was one of the big issues called out. The commission recommends that the ordinance specify that in the event that replacement units are not constructed after demolition, a fee in lieu consistent with the fee per unbuilt unit shall be assessed at time of sale. This is closing a loophole. So rather than creating a period of time in which that new construction has to be built, it just keeps the owner from selling the property without any replacement unit. And the housing commission recommends that stakeholder groups should be included in the development of the replacement ordinance. This also aligns with the Winooski Housing Needs Assessment Recommendation from 2016 and follows the evaluation of city of Burlington's Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance concerns about some of the areas that have caused decreased effectiveness of the policy. This would allow those to be discussed in advance so that we can kind of catch those areas by speaking with developers, property owners, et cetera, so that we can come up with a useful, effective policy. Yeah, I want to highlight that one because with all, you guys have done a tremendous amount of work and had really evolved conversations and we have a very capable housing commission with a lot of professional community perspectives on there that are really informed and really valuable. This has not been turned back towards either the affordable housing development community or the development community in general for feedback. And I think that that's a really important factor and one that is extremely, extremely critical because as somebody who works in affordable housing, I can tell you that about a half of my job is going into communities that have implemented well-meaning policies that are deterring us from being able to do our jobs and making it impossible for us to do our jobs or to do them well. And you're gonna hear that back very consistently from the affordable housing community that that is always gonna be a huge, huge concern and having the opportunity to hear back from those groups other than just having somebody on from BHFA on the commission as an alternate is I think a really important next step. I want to highlight that. And people who are building affordable housing and non-affordable housing, what's the impact from evaluation perspective that they've used to land to? I think that's an important perspective, just like that it was zoning. So, chairman of anything? And then you want to talk just briefly about the trust fund? Yeah, I will. So we had a series of questions that we were going to answer about the affordable housing trust fund recommendation, but we ran out of time at our meeting because it took us quite a while to get through that first piece. So we did take a vote and the housing commission recommends establishment of an affordable housing trust fund. So to be continued on that one. Oh, I'll also read you the intent. The intent of the affordable housing trust fund is to promote, create and retain affordable housing options for low and moderate income households through the distribution of grants or loans to organizations or projects that create, preserve, rehabilitate or replace long-term affordable housing units as well as by providing grants or loans to low to moderate income first-time home buyers. Happy to take questions. Awesome. Thank you all very much. Okay, I think we'll open it up to that conversation and concerns, things people want to go deeper on. The lost unit is being defined. So for example, if someone converts their apartment into like a pure Airbnb, I presume that would count as like a lost unit. So I'm just wondering if the commission has included like a definition. We haven't. We haven't, but it will need to be part of the ordinance that we'll have to. I mean, obviously the easiest sense is when it's demolished from development. But yes, that will absolutely have to be defined in the ordinance. There's no bottom to that wormhole of questions. And I know just even my participation with the group was just trying to actually ask them those questions as they're thinking about, quite frankly, coming, pulling together policy in a very quick manner. We're doing this very quickly. And I respect and appreciate the fact that people are feeling pressured to and to do that. But I think that that's a really important factor in this is that we're not gonna end up being able to get to each and every one of those questions. And especially like it's a technical implementation. Who's tracking the number of four blue units now? Who knows when this is supposed to be triggered? Those, that even very simple question we can't even answer right now. So it's, we're trying to get that framework in place. And then we're gonna have to work back through a lot of that from an operational standpoint. It's a great question. What an accessory, willing unit, how accessory to that end up being a great, that kind of thing. If someone were to remove an accident. Yeah, like someone finished up their garage, and it was a few less. Again, that's part of the definition I think, but you know, is it a rental unit? Then probably. And it's as a rental unit at the time of when the ordinance is enacted or in general. Definitions, that's all part of the definitions. Yeah. So you can get really far down that radical. I also think because of the definition of the accessory unit. I guess that sort of a prerequisite for that is that the property is owner occupied, right? So if you have, if you have a duplex, that's owner occupied, and you get permission to add a third unit as an accessory unit, it needs to remain owner occupied because once it's no longer owner occupied, it's not a triplex, it's a duplex with an accessory which is technically now under the current planning and zoning rules in violation. And quite frankly, I think it's fine to walk in with three. I think legally, you're gonna end up being forced to drop this on units of four or less because you're steady. If you can't legislate that somebody in an owner occupied unit has to choose, you can't limit who they choose to live with them in any way, shape, or form. It's the same reason why on a one to four unit property, there's no rules around fair housing, right? Because if I live there, I can pick my roommates, basically, or the people running for me even based off of whatever I want and the law protects that. And even doing income sensitivity, if there's no, I think we're probably running to legal challenges on that if we do four units or less. But, yeah. Council. Questions, thoughts, concerns, this is our chance to, it's been stated a couple of times that we wanna try to give proactive positive feedback towards this commission specifically on this work as it passes things to the planning commission. This is kind of that in-hand off period where there's a policy that I think everybody here voiced was the most important to them when this topic came up. I have a question about the compliance monitoring spelled out at number 11. Have you given any thought in terms of how you might do it differently than Burlington? But how might it be more effective? We haven't, you know, that's basically what we're asking the planning commission to do. But I would certainly say, look at the report, the evaluation of Burlington and part of the problem was they have, I believe they had one person at CEDO who was charged with monitoring and they felt that that was absolutely insufficient to be doing that in addition to that person's regular job. And it just, it wasn't happening. So they were afraid that there were a lot of units that were really slipping through the cracks. And to that point, I mean, it's just because there was a lot of time spent on this. When you have an out and out replacement ordinance, you're asking people who don't develop affordable housing to develop affordable housing. And a big issue there is they don't know how to do things like tenant certifications, the types of reviews and compliance on a regular basis to ensure that the units actually serve in the affordable community. They don't know how to do any of those compliance things. They're not set up to do that. So from a monitoring standpoint, not only do you need to do it from the municipal standpoint, but there's gotta be some kind of avenue created where there's an expectation that they do a certain set of things to do that. You know, some larger units will then contract with nonprofits to do that type of work to come in and do their certifications that do rental housing before rental housing on a regular basis. But that's a conversation to have with the affordable housing community as to how broadly those services are available. So I've had the benefit of absorbing the conversation in the last couple of meetings. And I know you haven't gotten here yet, but I am interested just for the benefit of the whole group and the groups thinking around a revolutionary zoning. And I'm particularly, if the replacement ordinance has enough off-ramps for folks, I think the establishment of a housing trust fund is a good idea. I question whether we wanna set the amount as low as it is because it could just be that that becomes the approach that's widely taken and that we could end up with pockets of the city that have affordable housing versus others that do not. And sort of maintaining or increasing segregation of housing types. So I'm just wondering, was that fully discussed and or has the commission thought about who's very zoning as another layer of this conversation? I couldn't tell from the group's conversation exactly where that piece fits in other than it's complex. I had brought a map that was just a hand-drawn map that showed where all of our subsidized housing units are in the city. And they're actually pretty clumped right now. They tend to be along Main Street very much in a pocket here, here. So there's more to be done in terms of evenly distributing that throughout the city. So it's something that we started to just touch on. I think that if we are to go forward looking at inclusionary zoning, it will be based on looking at mapping and looking at areas that are currently excluding. And I would say that there are some areas within our city that the zoning itself is exclusionary. So, yeah, I think that's how we would approach it if our direction is to move forward. Does that answer your question? I think the other part of your question in terms of the fee and loop being lower, to a certain degree, that is a little intentional because we need a way to grow the housing trust fund, which we see as a potentially far more effective tool to grow the affordable housing than just hoping people replace it on site because of this ordinance. If we have actual funds in a housing trust fund that we can leverage with nonprofit partners to actually build new affordable housing in the city, that's probably in the long term going to be more effective than... And another effective tool, not necessarily more effective than this, hopefully this is effective as well. Right. Might help us to meet our goals. Might help us to meet our goals. Affordable housing only developments. So to meet, how it links to inclusionary zoning is that you're not exclusively locating people. Yeah, it also provides us with money for example, the East Allen project that's coming in, that's a true mixed income development. That would give us money to be able to help to subsidize a project like that. So out of 39 units, I think it's 17 units, our low income and then there are four that are for those at risk of homelessness. So having that affordable housing trust fund can allow us to pick and choose and ensure that we are helping those sorts of developments to happen. And I think the reason that we recommended a range was because we recognize it needs to sting enough, but also not too much. And I think that that's probably where we would rely on our partners at the city and elsewhere to help decide what that sweet spot is for Wyniewski. Because it's definitely, if $100,000 is too much in Burlington, it's definitely gonna be too much for Wyniewski, but 25,000 may very well be a threshold that's way too low. So just to be really blunt too, is every dollar on there has a dollar for dollar impact on the value of the property and not the supposed value, the appraised value of the property, it lowers the net present value from a calculation from rent perspective and it's actual tangible value. So what people find is if there's just a straight line with a massive number placed on the buyout under the trust fund is that it devalues those properties. And quite frankly, again, keeps them suppressed and depressed because they continuously lose value. There's a lack of equity for the person to be able to do even affordable things with it, regardless of what their intentions are. So I think I've got a few kind of questions or thoughts prefaceing it all with just thanking you all so much for your work. I think this is probably, I mean, this is one of the most important decision points that we have right now moving forward. Unless Wyniewski continues to develop. I definitely agree with a lot of the concerns that Nicole raised and I think, so my concern with, I have one very specific concern of a fee in lieu of replacement and that it doesn't, I'm not concerned if let's say three units are being replaced, right? I'm okay with a payment into a housing trust fund that goes towards developing affordable housing somewhere else in the city. I think when we start to see if seven, eight, 10 above units are being replaced and then let's say a very large development is going in, that's where I start to get more concerned with the issues Nicole mentioned in regards to kind of segregating out our city by economic opportunity. And so I think, I don't know if it's something you talked about, but if there might be a unit threshold at the other end where it would trigger needing that replacement to be on site, if let's say if it was 10 plus units that were being replaced. We can certainly discuss that, we haven't discussed that. What type of units do we all think that we're talking about here? Just to be really clear, do you all think that we're talking about privately held affordable housing, meaning NOAAs, affordable housing units that don't have subsidies on them and that private individuals are leasing from? If that's what we were considering is NOAAs. Yeah. That's what we currently have a lot of. Right. And so what people will do is they'll do one of two things. If they have no out, they will slowly raise rents to drive people out. And this isn't presupposed in the boogeyman column, this is what people do, is they raise rents to the point where it's not affordably long to drive people out, because they're looking to bankrupt the property. That jumps for anyway and run it down as low as they can before they can reconstruct it. So this again is just another case of saying it is so well-meaning to try to make it such a definitive thing to save replacement. But it's from a one-size-fits-all perspective, it does not work. And it's not, this is not presupposed. This is in any community you go into that it's been applied with a roof on it or without some kind of financial out. The beautiful thing that we have this opportunity for in our community is that we are at a scale that if you actually use our nimble size to plug in affordable housing where it makes the most sense. And the other beautiful thing that's happening right now is that all those financing mechanisms that are available are incentivizing mixed income development. They're pushing those nonprofit developers to find different AMI arrangers within the same projects but still create this real net benefit of enough affordable housing units to justify the expenditures. So we have that ability to, it's not whether or not we're creating affordable housing or not, it's about how we're doing it. And I think the conversation that I heard at that level and the conversation that all the data research and information that was presented to that group and talked about indicated is that if you can put money into the hands of the public body, being the city in this case, to then work with those nonprofit developers to actually do targeted affordable housing development, it ends up being more successful. And we end up with a much higher success rate of creating affordable housing opportunities. Yeah, I mean, I think that speaks to me and kind of that last point number 13 of making sure that those stakeholders that are participating in the design of this replacement ordinance include affordable housing advocates. You know, because I and I'd be really interested to hear directly from them and the issues that they've observed with the Burlington ordinance. I do agree and wanted to get stakeholder opinion of developers as well, but I don't want just the stakeholder opinion of developers in that. I think that that's super critical. And also like to Nicole's point, I would be really interested in, you know, I don't, I just threw that out there of like, you know, at a certain threshold that triggers on site replacement. I don't know if that's the answer. And I'm not a housing policy expert. So that's where I would really look to that stakeholder group. But that might also be the IZ discussion that would address that. Yeah, exactly ordinance. Yeah. And you know, so if you're just looking at let's say 10 units are replaced and they're going to put in a 40 unit development, we have IZ that says 25% of units at a certain level need to be affordable housing. Well, then bam, it's right on site because that'd be 10. And those numbers are not accurate. 25% is probably a lot. I don't know. But I do really like the coupling and wanting to make sure that I'm echoing what Nicole's saying and moving forward and looking at inclusionary zoning. I do appreciate, and I know that this was prioritized as the number one because we said, please prioritize replacement. So I understand why we haven't talked a lot about IZ at this juncture. That's just kind of where I'm coming from before I'd like to see us continue to move. So I had similar thoughts. Like the biggest question that I have reading this was the seeming prioritization of affordable housing trust over actual replacement, which we have clearly discussed here. So I just wanted to provide this feedback that I appreciated the consideration here for like owner occupied, having the threshold, having the remediation option, as well as the effort to avoid the polling. Like I'm glad that those things are included here, especially where there is, like with Villaloo there is an out anyway. This isn't super helpful, but when we were just talking about having affordable housing in certain pockets, when I'm wondering it, so if it's gonna be easier for us to create affordable housing in multi-unit developments, aren't we gonna end up with all of that affordable housing on the gateways anyway? Like I feel like we don't have a way to encourage it in our very single family. We have the possibility of changing zoning there if we decided to. Those are the areas that have exclusionary zoning. I see. So, that makes sense. That's a possibility. I mean, obviously that's a long-wing conversation. I do like the city-wide focus. I appreciate that, so thank you. And it was discussed that it might actually encourage development in multiple areas of the city and not just, I mean, that's exactly right. It might not just keep it core to Maine and how that can be a very positive thing. Yeah, good. Actually, the places, you know, we've heard concerns that we don't wanna be pushing all the subsidized housing to the outskirts, but it's actually all very centralized. It's all in a core in the center of the city with a few exceptions, right? Well, I guess, I mean, will that, yeah. I think just in general, it being clustered everywhere. I don't know the way I use pushing it to the outskirts. You're not the only person who said that. It clustered somewhere. Yeah. And that's a different discussion in a 1.4 square mile town than it is in a town with distinctive neighborhoods that are much more clearly defined in development areas that are much more clearly defined. I'm just gonna say that we are, you know, the state-wide housing conference is coming up, May 14th, or excuse me, November 14th, and it has a municipal focus and the whole point of the focus is exactly detailing this conversation, which is that there is a decline in state and federal resources available for the development and creation of affordable housing and municipalities have to be more involved and more hands-on in that process than ever before. So I think to me, the dollars are a big deal. I think just to go back to the numbers, though, I don't want the emergency valve to be so accessible that it's being utilized in every single instance, or even half of them, if it's that easily, you know, and I think that that general concept is, by and large, what's prompted some of the issues we've had now in affordable housing development under form-based code and none of the developers utilizing kind of that choice between affordable housing or environmental standards and why we're not seeing any developers going with the affordable option route. So I think, you know, I don't know if there's a balance to find where what's the right that we're not completely stifling development entirely, but that also it's not so easy that everyone's like, yeah, okay, throw some money in the pot. Well, and I think that we did discuss a point of reevaluation of how are these, once these recommendations become policy, it's going to need to be reviewed because while we are this tiny little microcosm of a community, these are huge ideas, and once they're applied to this community, some of them are gonna work really well and then others are not. And I think that none of us is under the false impression that this is all the right information. So there has to be a point for reevaluation. And I think we talked about that being the planning commission's call to ultimately what that reeval date was. And I think also like just to take, because I did this too often, like we're down in the weeds on the specific policy, but to like take it back out into the human focus of what's the goal. When we saw it, we're going through Main Street, the, you know, that whole planning process, and we're looking at what potential streetscapes would look like, and it's this amazing, fun, vibrant, lively street. Like I really want to ensure that all of our community members from a variety of different economic brackets are living on that vibrant, amazing representation of what could be a really cool gateway in our city. And so I do worry that if we just make it a buyout, then we might not end up with clustering because we might be more specific in how we're putting this housing trust money into development, but we lose the opportunity to have this wonderful mixed income neighborhood in our city along this really vibrant Austin Street. And I wholeheartedly appreciate that and live and breathe that. The reality is though that the financial tools, affordable housing is hard. It's really difficult. It's really difficult because the numbers don't work. This isn't, and like that perspective of it is bucolic and is totally right from a philosophical perspective. There's also just, there's numbers and trying to underwrite development. And the fact remains that these projects all take a lot of subsidy. Like we all take a lot of subsidy, cost a lot of money to make them work at the rents that are affordable. So as much as we can also create tools, I would just challenge us not to think in the conventional fashion of if something's missing, if something's taken or changed, can it not be recreated in a different way and format in the community? Can we not play a key role in that? And to me that's what it's about. It's functionally creating opportunities to do that kind of integrated housing work while also not creating an impossible environment to do also what is good work as well on providing a range of housing. And that's really, really important because you're also talking about pushing affordable housing on the people who have no idea what they're doing with it. And forcing them to create housing that they don't know how to manage and they don't know how to deal with and it can create a very explosive environment if people don't understand how to do that. It's a well-meaning concept and idea but there's a reason why affordable housing developers do affordable housing development and then manage those units. It's a very specific type of work, it just is. So I would just challenge us to open our minds when we talk to that development community and hear what their concerns about it are and hear what kind of forecasts they can give us in terms of the types of resources that are available to create those units. Because when you start telling a project what their rents have to look like any number of units it changes the project and it changes the financials on it drastically. These units don't cash flow. That's not the purpose of them. And I understand that we all like to think of this big fat rich developer that's making all these monies off of multifamily development and the reality is the margins are never that large and a project by one or two units rents being different can go or not go. And so to me I just feel really strongly that we have to have open minds about what type of financial tools we can bring to the table to try to accomplish the same vision versus concreting ourselves in the same. The only way we achieve that vision that you described is by doing it this way. So within that I guess my question would be what are the levers you can put in place to incentivize people to use those tools? Because we have on one end how we're collecting those tools. So we're getting this fee in lieu. How do we incentivize developers to then utilize those tools to be building affordable housing and especially to be building mixed income housing including affordable housing. So we get the resource. How do we deploy the resource? So the best example is the project that just happened up here which is done off of tax credit equity, right? So there are 9% tax credits done on the sales and I don't know what the actual basis of the project is, you know, tens of millions of dollars but there's a certain percentage of that project that is coming back in free equity from the federal government because of the low income housing tax credit program. We're gonna get as Heather said maybe one of those every three years, maybe five years, maybe something like that. So to expect that that level of development can only occur once every three to five years if there's affordable housing on a piece of property is not realistic. It's also not the pace that we as a community probably wanna try to push along and encourage. So if you build up and if you can get the point where you can replace that as a funding source where we're not totally reliant on that federal resource low income housing tax credit specifically, then it gives us a lot more flexibility to step into potential deals and bridge those gaps, those funding gaps. The fact is we have affordable housing right now. So I think the big question is to what extent are we redeveloping properties where that are currently affordable? That's the balance that is trying to be struck here. And then so I think it's not, you know, affordable housing is a goal that we're never gonna be able to achieve. We know based on the data we have affordable housing. The question is, are we gonna lose it? Or are we gonna lose it in certain parts of the city? That's the number we're trying to crack. And I feel like the answer is we're going to try not to. But I also think that the reality is is that we will lose some in certain parts of the city and it will be relocated to other parts of the city and it may remain clustered to a degree. But I feel like this is a step in the right direction. At 13 steps so far in the right direction. And I feel as though, not to say, hey, the planning commission has a big job on their hands, but they do and we all do. And this is going to need to be, I think a very continued conversation. And I think maybe the evaluation period might need to be shorter than we would want. Because I think this is gonna need to be revisited again fairly soon, especially at the pace that some of the people are wanting to develop. I know certain things are still moving forward and certain things have stalled, but yeah, work in progress. So I do think we need to have a conversation about managing expectations and the reality that has just said that the planning commission still has a lot of work to do on this. And the planning commission has a huge amount of work to do in the next several months around the master plan. It has a very full schedule through November before the master plan gets to you all. So I put that before you. I don't have any great solutions to that. You know, I think the options are, we let the master plan schedule continue as it is with them bringing you a draft in December. And then focus on this. We ask them to pause at some point and take this up, which would leave us in the position of having an expired master plan and it has some implications. We ask them to do more, which is a lot to ask of volunteers who are already doing a lot. But in a city that we have, we're moving really quickly here on a lot of fronts with very few people. And I feel the need to manage expectations a little on that front. You mentioned implications of an expired master plan. What are those? Eric, to put you on the spot. Absolutely. So there are several implications and I'll be able to hand up here. It's a one page that I hand out from the state of Vermont. They look at the planning and all of the past. This kind of outlines the various tools that you could use with a master plan. The probably the biggest implication, quite frankly, is that if you have an expired master plan, you cannot change them. So if we're talking about some sort of replacement zoning regulation or inclusionary zoning, if a master plan expires we cannot adopt any of these zoning based on the master plan. So that's probably in the context of this conversation, one of the biggest implications. There's some other implications as far as capital budgeting or having a voice in the activity process and also some state grants that are offered that we would not be eligible for. If we did not have a master plan, that probably the zoning is gonna be the biggest color. Nice to meet you, by the way, Mary. Oh yeah, good, good. Nice to meet you. Thanks. So I guess that option of putting a pause on the master plan to work on a replacement policy is not an option because it doesn't allow us to do that. We would have to phase it so you would have a clock on how quickly you wanted to look at a zoning change. So we'd have to phase it so we adopted a new zoning ordinance for this before the plan expired to then pick the plan up and be frozen on other plans we want to see for whatever period of time that reworked. It feels like to me there's more on the next steps. There's more still groundwork to be done with that level of feedback to the point where it's ready for that final recommendation at this point anyway. I don't know if that's true because I feel like we talked a lot about the details and numbers and mainly number eight and number nine. But overall I think this is absolutely the right direction primarily in getting the stakeholder group together and actually that to me is the next step here. We get the stakeholder group together and have the planning commission start to work on policy. And this is the first time, I'm saying this too. To me, I think that they can have a conversation with the planning commission about this policy and that that should move forward. And I don't think that that derails the entire planning process. I think having them spend a portion of one meeting be it a half a meeting, whatever it is to give some feedback on the direction of where this policy is at least gives a sense of how work can move forward in a productive fashion. I think the other thing to do would be to bring back next time a report on how many permits you have active, how many active conversations we have going for development so that we understand the urgency of this issue and how many projects that could functionally impact. I wasn't suggesting that you need to make a decision tonight about what to do with the planning commission. I was just throwing a flag that at some point soon we were going to have to have that conversation and I wanted to manage expectations well. I wasn't putting this in front of you to say make a decision tonight about what direction to give. I think the next step is for it to go. It's receive feedback from the planning commission city council. I think we need to make some time that schedule and if it's scheduling an extra meeting or an extra hour on one of their meetings then let's figure that out and do my feedback on that. Was it tonight the plan to be here to do that to sort of check that box or we had originally talked about this being joint meeting of all three but we couldn't get forms for either. Summer time. I would just say I wouldn't want to see the master planning project and have like a hold on other zoning issues to speed this up or we don't have like a tangible deadline anywhere we want it done. Not an incredibly informed idea of how long it would take to turn this into an actual ordinance. I mean what we've really discussed before is having something in place before there's like shovels on the ground and Main Street and that's something that we're not, I'm not sure what the timeline is on there but it's certainly not before next summer. So if master plan is ready to roll in November that sort of leaves several months to make this like the next topic to address. I think for me my concern isn't the shovel and the dirt it's that the attractiveness of buying up properties and planning to redevelop them because they know the project will come. So I think we'll, who knows it could not happen but there is the possibility that redevelopment plans could be put in motion while before reconstruction begins because the development community knows that it's gonna be a much more attractive area. So I guess that's, I definitely hear you that ultimately like by the time shovels are on the ground for Main Street that's the ultimate deadline but I do still feel a little bit more urgency. Well I think that's next step for Heather to bring us that information of what is active is important in informing that. And I just want to clarify too. I just, I don't think we're asking for all that heavy of a lift from the paying commission at this point in time. I think it's a reasonable ask in the course of the work that's being done quite frankly to give feedback on these points. Not to pass in ordinance at this point in time. I think we're trying to develop a suite of solutions, right? That's the idea and the concept here. And if we can get that feedback and bring in feedback too from the various stakeholder meetings and run that as the housing commission's the point on that that feels like something that can stay on track. So then when in your mind timeline lies what we get to a point where we are getting a policy recommendation and voting on whether or not to pass it? Getting actual ordinance language. Yes. So we've got on here. First of all, there's never been like this magic date in the sky. There's never been. Yeah, I guess just generally. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't thought through exactly when that would go. I think it's important to do it right and do it completely more than it is to say we're going to benchmark this date and say that hello, high water, we're going to have some policy to present whether put forward a good policy. I think our measurement and guidance right now is to see if progress is being made. I consider this progress. And I think that it would continue to progress if you take the planning commission step and also work on that stakeholder step. That's my reflection on what measures progress on this. You're looking to pass an ordinance as soon as humanly possible. That's, I'm just swiveling back and forth. I'm going to continue to oppose the Main Street Project until we have something on the books. That's just how I feel about it. I've been clear about that from the beginning. Okay, so that, and to me, that's not gonna work close to a motivation to hurry and make mistakes when it comes to making policy. So I appreciate that sentiment. I'm not suggesting we make mistakes. I'm suggesting it be a prioritized activity. And I think that my concern is just like you said, there is a lot going on. And if we don't have an idea when we want to be somewhere, there's the possibility it'll get put off and not happen. I think the point has been to measure progress and see it go forward. I don't think anybody was saying stop. And I think we said there's a path forward of the planning commission to still review this issue and pass it back with feedback to the housing commission. I think your demand for some magic date where there's going to be an ordinance prepared isn't reasonable right now. And isn't it someplace where we can probably give an intelligible answer to? I think I demanded a magic date. I think an idea of roughly when we'll be there is pretty reasonable. So I feel like Heather was given fairly clear directives for what you need to provide. So I think the question that needs to be answered is when can we reasonably expect feedback from the planning commission? And I don't, I mean, yes, I agree. And I, you know, without the planning commission here in quorum, without them having the ability to think about that strategically with other priorities with their master plan schedule and their play, I don't think we've been given an answer to that tonight. Although both of these smart young ladies are reasonable. So maybe I should shut up. I just wanted to make you guys aware kind of where we are right now. We've had only two meetings so far. So we just started two meetings, so really getting into the meat of all of our factors for this plan. And we've seen a really dramatic increase in our workload over the past couple of weeks. Because now between each meeting, we are doing an extensive review of each chapter providing all of the notes. And the bulk on our agenda has been really digging deep into what we want to present. We have a very defined timeline to get this done. So I'm just gonna state from our perspective, at least my perspective as a member of the planning commission, being having been on the commission for a year and a half, I'm working a lot harder than I've worked at all during that period. And I just want to, again, it's your decision to decide what the priority should be. But I just want to let you know that I paid for this to get us not to be able to really talk about it and give them the agenda and knowing how other things are. We get into the meetings and everything except that, we only have a little time for it because there's just so much to do. I don't know if Lauren has a perspective on that too. My question was gonna be if it was possible to create a housing subdivision of the planning commission. So I think there's six of us. So if we had- That's a better time. I mean, I understand, but if two of us, for example, took the task of reviewing the document that you have and coming up with at least our initial thoughts, so that there was some movement on the planning commission's board, but the rest of the commission could continue their work on the master plan. So say if two of the six of us spent two meetings engaging with the document and reviewing it and reflecting on it and that way Master Hammer didn't have to stop, but we can at least have a dialogue about the work that you guys have done and move the project forward to some degree. I just think that it's important enough for us all to be involved in that conversation in a serious way because this is gonna be such a big city priority and I think just knowing other planning commissioners that we all want to be active and I just don't know right now unless we changed our priorities with what we're already doing, whether we have the capacity. But I wonder if similarly to individual planning commission members taking on individual chapters of the plan or does each of you review every single chapter? We all review every chapter, and then there it can be a little more of how the work's right now, but basically every week we're seeing like a first round for one chapter and then we're seeing the previous revisions from the round that we did before, so there's really two chapters actually that we're going through every week, which is a pretty aggressive cycle because like for like next Thursday's meeting we read a whole chapter and then we reread the previous one and then we're talking about actually both at any given meeting and at least the process that we've decided to adopt, we all are putting feedback onto all the chapters, although some of us are like the liaisons to different commissions, so we're a little bit more focused, but those meetings were all still reading and tapping and providing a lot of feedback. Well I guess just to Lauren's point, because obviously there's some homework that goes into a reading list, but two, like Lauren was saying, two of the planning commission members could do some of that background, really, Devin, and then come and present to the full planning commission because I don't think their vision would be that those two would then say, okay, now we're going to make our executive decision as the two liaisons to this. But the question is like when even? With the current agenda, we're running almost most of our meetings until the end, like do we squeeze even a conversation with that in five minutes, because I think just like you guys had questions tonight about this, I think that probably all of us are gonna have questions too, and Lauren, I want to sit down and talk about it, have a real conversation, and I don't know, I'm like more about what's on the agenda, but like that just seemed the past couple of weeks. Yeah, I mean the schedule that's been laid out right now basically through October November for the planning commission is fairly packed with the master plan update in order to get the draft plan completed so that we can follow the statutory process of how public hearings are going to you alter your public hearings and for ultimately a final adoption. We haven't yet as a planning commission either gotten into the housing section, so some of these discussions may come up in that context. However, I don't know how much depth we'll be able to get into with the questions that have been put forth in this document in that context. So it would need to be, I think, a break in some of the discussion at the planning commission level on the master plan to do this work and how that's gonna impact the schedule. I don't know that right now, quite frankly, so that might need to be evaluated to see how having the conversation, even for one meeting, will impact our schedule to get the draft, the draft master plan completed on time. Yeah, I guess I, yeah. I mean, would, or even half of a meeting because this has been- I would challenge you guys to go back and find a couple of hours and see if you can figure that out. That would be my challenge there. Because I just feel strongly that if you do, it can be done. And I think it just needs to be compartmentalized correctly. It can't be an entire opening of the issue. You're trying to get one very specific set of policy recommendations reviewed by an entity and get feedback on. And the reality will also come to the point is, if these guys want to put the pedal of the metal on this, then planning commission doesn't weigh in, right? And then it moves on. And then we end up asking you to pass a policy that you didn't have time to review. And that's too bad. And I also just want to say this is an unfortunate result of not any of your work. So there's some frustration being exuded up here. And it's over a couple of years of not fast enough progress on this issue due to a number of factors and involves that did not get carried as quickly as they should have. So we're to the point now where, you know, this has obviously been a big priority to this group to try to make sure that we're prepared to, you know, back the projects we're doing with good policy too. So by no means is any frustration you hear being reflected towards you guys or even the current staff. It's the reality of a couple of years of something not moving as fast as we all would have hoped. So. So I wanna ask, like they're able to move forward with the stakeholder information. We also want them, they're next looking at affordable housing trust funding. We also want them to look at inclusionary zoning. Is it not viable to have the housing commission move forward with those pieces of work and bring all of that to planning when they finish the master plan and then have like really focused time on housing specifically from planning commission. The feedback that I've taken from here is that people wanna see at least incremental progress towards those from a policy standpoint, you're correct. We're not gonna pay money. It doesn't make sense to pay money to do one ordinance change at a time and to have that process go through for one ordinance change at a time. So even if this is done within that period of, let's say we pick, it's gonna be done by November the 14th and decision is gonna be made. It would not be wise or efficient or cost effective to go through the process of updating that one ordinance just to also then be talking about 15 other ordinances. Well, and I also think that the work that housing commission is doing on these other pieces informs each other, right? Like this is multiple pieces of policy coming into one ordinance. For me personally, I don't see a harm in having a delay on the planning commission weighing in at this stage when they could weigh in on the bigger picture later on. I don't think that's a shared view here. Yeah. That is what I would say. Well, I don't know. I mean, whatever the path is, I just want to get it done. We're talking about two very different approaches and paths, so I appreciate that. But what I've been hearing is we want it done now. We want it done quickly. We want it done before the Main Street vote and saying, okay, let's take it and park it, keep working on it from the commission standpoint until the work's done on the master plan and then come back to the housing issues and the planning commission is a vastly different timeline. So what we don't want to do is what's happened a few times whereas we've said to staff here, please go and do it at this pace and rate and then a month from now have frustration there that it's not going at the pace of this. So right now we're trying to move it at the pace that I think everybody last prescribed and gave to the commission and council. What we're hearing back right now is that given where the compressed schedule, which again is nobody's fault here, some things happen outside of power that where the planning commission is not where we thought it would be in terms of the master plan. So the capacity is a little thinner there than we had expected from a timeline standpoint. Great, I miss the component. I like the one where we do this before Main Street. Okay, I think it's on us as your staff to take this conversation and go back and look at some of the data that you've asked for the where we currently are in development in the city and come back to you with some options of timelines and schedules and processes, perhaps checking in with the chairs of the two commissions to see how to put together a schedule that they also feel comfortable with. In the meantime, nothing will stop and I, nothing will stop will keep going on these deliverables of trying to be more realistic and articulate about man-changed expectations. Okay. Thank you guys for all of your work. Thanks, I really, really appreciate it. Thank you guys for all of your work. I really, really appreciate it. Any other questions or comments from the public? Questions or comments from Councilor? Yeah, so sitting and hearing them, I move on to item D. Item D is discussion established on the Charter Change Committee consideration. I think what I'll just start off with and try to keep this concise is the city updated our charter three years ago in the course of updating our charter. There were several items that came up that had deeper social and political weeks than the Charter Change Committee at that time was interested in taking on. So the Charter Change Committee at that point in time. Said we are going to stay very focused on any technical operational issues that the charter has. The city is not required by statute to have a Charter Change Committee. The Charter is obviously a flagship founding document, one that tells us how we do what we do in the city and what powers we all have and don't have. But in changing it, it's a pretty obviously serious thing. It goes before the legislator. It involves the vote of the public and extensive legal research. And in time when it comes to going back and forth with the legislator potentially and also maybe even our own attorneys. So basically what we said is there's a parking of a couple of issues that the committee said we don't want to deal with those. Council should come up with an alternative timeframe for dealing with those. There's been some expressed interest in picking some of those issues back up. So we wanted to bring back this concept of a charter change process and potential of establishing some kind of committee. So I think I'll open it up now to discussion about items people have thought about in terms of interest or thoughts people have had in terms of charter changes. Given I didn't just come up with this out of the air. Yeah, since I am new to this discussion, I would love to hear what are these items in this parking lot. So I can talk about something I know I'm really interested in, but I also do want to hear about what some of the other items in the parking lot were based on the previous discussion. So we'll just make them up. Yeah, I remember a couple. So I know, so I have a strong interest and I know I'm not the only one in the community that has a strong interest in moving forward with non-citizen voting and municipal elections here in Winooski. I think that from a value standpoint, it is absolutely unjust and unreasonable to ask community members to pay taxes, to own homes here, to volunteer on our commissions, to send their kids to our schools, and then to have zero ability to take part in the decision-making process for how their tax dollars are being spent on their kids' education. And that's just one for instance. So I'm really interested in moving it forward. There are a number of municipalities around the country that have non-citizen voting in municipal elections strangely in Maryland. I think there's like a whole cluster of communities. San Francisco has a school board and a school budget elections. There's a long history of non-citizen voting in this country to begin with. And a base point, I mean the founding of our country was built on a principle of no taxation without representation. So I have a strong interest in opening it up and ensuring that we are giving opportunities for every single one of our community members that has a vested interest in their quality of life here, the ability to weigh in and be a part of that process. I'm also interested in this issue as well. And I think that, I agree with everything that Eric just shared. And I know being on this council for the last five months, I know we've talked several times about how important it is to engage more of our citizens in particular, our new American citizens in the life of this city. And I think voting is a fundamental role in participating in the life of the city. And I think it's something we should seriously consider moving forward on. Some of the other items that had popped up were the number of counselors, the years of terms, the at-large status of representation. And I think that there's at least one more that I'm missing that was kind of big. So there were a few of those kind of issues that were kind of overarching. And you know, the committee went in to do some changes. You know, I think a change like that warrants obviously a big conversation. It's gonna be something a lot of people need to weigh in on. There's probably operational impacts and items that need to be weighed in upon too. So that's the other piece of it is what, if there's a decision to pursue some of those changes, what mechanism by which we consider those changes and make that decision? Historically, the communities put together charter committee of council and citizens. With that being said, that a composition of that type said these are really political issues that you should make decisions about political people. I think, can I respond to that? So I don't know as a commission would necessarily, for a laser focused issue like this, that also has a lot of really complex nuances. I don't know as a charter commission would make the most sense for the single issue. And I think part of my thinking there is that it's not just, you know, establishing a charter commission is like a search and find process for opening up the charter and seeing what are the components in here we'd wanna change. When we, if there's a specific policy direction from us and a path that we wanna move forward in, I feel like that's also a difficult charge to give a commission to say, we're gonna establish this commission and here's what exactly we want you to do, especially when it would require a lot of very specific policy expertise in how to do that, which could also end up warping and moving in a direction that as the policy body, we might have had a different idea of the direction we wanted to go in. And I think too, I mean, if we're looking at a single issue rather than a host of issues like this, it's not a lot different than this. I do think it's incredibly important that we do this with an immense amount of community input, have it be a really participatory process, solicit community input and use that to craft our policy decision moving forward. And I don't think that would be dissimilar from the same way that we might have moved forward, let's say the Main Street project. But I don't know as the commission would necessarily be the right way to do this, so I do think it should be treated a little bit separately. I also think a commission formed around a specific topic like this would take a lot more staff time than if we were to set it up as a robust public input gathering process because there's staffing up a commission, getting people onto that commission, having that commission meet, and then still having that commission do all of that public input. And just to be clear though, there is then that demand on staff, it's the outreach, the technical work on the legal side of things, the implementation and conversation about what it looks like on that level. And then there's gonna be a lot of back and forth with the legislator, which there's some things that you know, the politicals can handle and some they can't. It's gonna require some of the staff time which does. This committee is the last to speak to staff too. So those are the demands as seen. I just, I don't wanna say philosophically, I agree with the concept and the idea of it. I think the question is capacity and timing. These are my big, big kind of flags and questions right now in process. And we're gonna open up the process conversation and see what people thought of that too. Yeah, so the desire here is really around one issue, not an entire charter review. And I also philosophically, like I totally agree with that too, that idea. But given like the conversation we just had about capacity, we also just had Main Street and are still in the midst of the pool and all of this outreach. I feel like bringing this up right now is like too soon for staff capacity and for even just like trying to get community input, having like another massive change right away. For me, I feel like we should wait like two months or something to start this. Can I jump in there? So I think that there are some timing considerations that make me feel a little bit differently and that do put a little bit more pressure on, which I totally agree with that. Like right now capacity is a big concern. Because this needs to go before the legislature, the next opportunity, unless we were to hold a special election to ensure that this would hit the legislature during their 2019 session. The only opportunity we have is the November general election. If we were to wait, let's say until town meeting day, then it wouldn't even likely get to the legislature until their 2020 session. I also have concerns with it being in their 2020 session because that's an election year during a presidential election, but we're likely gonna have a fairly hotly contested governor's race. And when that happens, the legislation, the session gets hyper political and it's very possible that this could get completely put on the back burner and neglected entirely as a result or could become a political beat stick and utilize in a way that would be very challenging to actually, very detrimental to our ability to get it passed. And I think also within that too, that would mean, let's say they take it up in 2020, even if we're successful in that much more challenging political environment, it would mean that it wouldn't be until the 2020 town meeting day that people who were impacted by this change would be able to start voting. And considering we just did Main Street, we just did a pool, we're gonna go into a huge budget vote in March. I'm really concerned with the human impact of feeling like I wish this had been done so much longer ago because decisions are being made that are really big and impact these community members and they already don't have the ability to weigh in on it. So I feel very stressed with kicking the can farther down the road and the impact that has on people actually being able to start utilizing this right that I feel like they should have access to. And then within that too, the other kind of timing consideration is that it looks very certain, fairly certain. I mean, you can't say for sure, but it looks incredibly likely that Montpelier is gonna move forward and doing the same thing on the November general election ballot as well. Burlington and to give a little historical context, Burlington tried to do this in 2013. They never got it to the legislature. They failed at the ballot. That said, I feel confident that we can get it passed on the ballot here in Wenewski. I think we have an amazing community that will embrace some, a lot of the things that we have already talked about and our biggest hurdle is gonna be in the legislature. And if we're able to do this hand in hand with another community, especially Montpelier, that gives us so much more political weight than if we're going it alone. So I guess that's kind of my pitch for, you know, I get the timing is challenging but I do feel like it's important to move forward on November. And I was able to look at what some of the key dates we need to observe would be and put together kind of what I'd envision a potential timeline could look like. Because there are also, there are like logistical, logistical, if you're gonna do a charter change, you have to have two public hearings, one of which must be at least 30 days out from the election that you're going to have which must be worn 10 days before that. So there are some specific logistical constraints that we'd have to keep our prize of. But I do think we have three months at the moment right now, so there is time. So, and I just, I wanna time this out because a couple of things I think asking people to react to this, seeing it right away is gonna be challenging number one. So just backing it up, what I wanted to hear tonight was I wanted the issue to be put on the tables so people could think about it. Number two, to hear that there's some urgency behind some of the ideas and reasoning behind that urgency and hear back from council as to whether you wanna see a timeline of potential and you wanna see a response basically from staff as to what sort of concerns, timelines and resources we would be talking about in terms of the expenditure in here. We don't wanna go through that exercise if it's gonna be DOA, right, for the bottom. So that's what I was really looking forward to do tonight and not approve a schedule. Just here, do you wanna, do you want us to bring back something more evolved on this topic to bring back? Or do people feel like hate right now? Capacity has reached, I don't see how this is possible. Or do we wanna come back and have a more thoughtful second conversation about this? And to provide some context, this was like my own personal brainstorming for myself and it wasn't, I wasn't coming here saying this is the time that we should have because there's also flexibility within that. It could take a lot of different shapes from that. It was just, we had to bring it up. I bet with all the experience and knowledge sitting over there on the other side of the table too that there's probably pitfalls and things that we are not thinking of in terms of the timing of doing, executing something like this with all professional due respect due. But I think those are, there's probably a lot that we need to talk through and think about too. Yeah, I mean that was my first thought is I'd wanna hear more and specifically from staff what this would mean if it's feasible. I agree that it's an important issue to tend to. I feel like I only get one real urgency card to play for meaning and I've played five. I've been making more urgency cards in my life. I definitely would like to hear from staff reaction to the proposal and sort of what it means in terms of overall capacity and timeline. And I'm hearing philosophical interest at least in the concept and issue itself. Yeah. Okay, I think that's enough for us to move forward on this. Is everybody good? Okay. So you want us to come back on the 20th? We'll talk. Yeah. That feels really wiggly. What's that? That feels really wiggly. I don't understand what word you talk word with. I think we're gonna bring back a schedule. This is the proposed timeline. I mean, you've put forward a proposal. I think we need to test that against the feasibility scale over there and then have them actually put thought into what the repercussions from a functional standpoint look like with the implications of taking these steps look like give you a real. So I'm sorry to be the process down on this meeting. So if you want us to do a full, having you and I had one conversation about this, if you want us to do a full assessment of what this concept will require from a resource perspective, not the charter approval, but the actual process of implementing non-citizen voting. I don't think we can do that in the next two weeks, given that we have a holiday in the next two weeks and a primary in the next two weeks. I mean, that's. Sorry. I think that's a lot to ask. But I think knowing what we need to do from a functional standpoint of getting an extra change of item on the ballot. Yes. Absolutely. I mean, I think, yeah, because it's kind of two different components is, one, giving the community the opportunity to vote on it and what that process looks like, but then two, how implementation of that if it were the past looks. But if I just got a timeline at the next meeting, I wouldn't want to vote approval disapproval. I'm moving forward. With that information on it. It would be a timeline for gathering public input and when we would need to make decisions on if we want to put this on the November ballot. It wouldn't be, here's a timeline and there will definitely be a question on the ballot. So if we say, yes, this timeline is feasible, then there's more time for Jesse to come back if this is what it would actually take. Right, because we don't have actual language. Like, what does that mean? We have a concept that we could, but we also don't have community input on exactly what the execution of that concept looks like. But because there are specific points within a timeline that we would need to meet, we didn't know what that timeline looks like so we can start doing that, I think, from my perspective. I believe we can bring forward a more thoughtful, full out proposal. The intent tonight was to gauge whether the council wanted to hear back what a schedule might look like and a general sketching of that. I think even if you've got time for a 15 minute conversation just to give some feedback as to what that looks like, I think we'll get enough information to be able to have a more informed, intelligent conversation about whether to consider it or not. And if there's still not a great sense at that point in time, given what time we have to put together what we can do, then we can make that call and say, you know what, I don't feel comfortable with this and that's a reason to not move forward. That make sense? Yeah. Make sense? Questions, comments from the public? Great, so seeing and hearing none. We have one item on for tonight as an executive session. I think it's gonna take us about a minute and a half. Great. So, so I'm gonna say that today. I curse it. Actually I'm gonna say that. So tonight's, let me get this open so I can read it correctly. So that concludes tonight's regular-stated business. Council now has an item warned as executive session discussion on employee and employment issue for the purpose of discussing candidates for the treasurer position and the selection process. Council has passed several resolutions describing the process that it's undergoing. There are some technical questions we're gonna ask of the group to get feedback on. There's no action to take an executive session. Executive session will be only for discussion purposes. No action will be taken except to adjourn for the rest of the evening. So this concludes tonight's regular meeting. So with that, I would entertain a motion to enter an executive session, bringing Jesse Baker with council. And, yeah. So. So motion by Christine Sink of my House, any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, I'll defer to say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. And aye.