 Okay, it is 7.15, so we're gonna come back from our break. Yeah, we're good. Timing was perfect. 6.30 on the dock. 6.20, actually. Oh, look at me. 10 minutes before I saw the clock. Yeah, I was a little late. Yeah, that's right. It's a record for work this week. Yeah, Mayor and the President were out. Okay, so we are back from our break and we are gonna start with some potential changes to the zoning. Yes, so I am Mike Miller. I'm the Planning Director for the city. And so we had a brief introduction to this two meetings ago on what are the zoning fixes. So in 2018 we went through and passed new zoning for the city and we realized soon after that we had a couple of small and some larger issues that had kind of come up. And so the staff assembled a repair list of about 100 changes that needed to go through, but there were two sections that were of particular interest that really impacted projects and a number of potential projects that could happen. And so we wanted to kind of expedite an interim change, an emergency zoning change that would just go through and address two issues, steep slopes, and landscaping and screening requirements. So what you have before you tonight for consideration, this is a public hearing, so we will take public comment, is to review the strikeout copy changes for section 3007 and 3203. And so these are designed to be interim changes and we will be soon after going through the full adoption process to include those two sets of changes with the other 80 or so sets of changes. So this only requires one hearing, so the council does have the option if they chose tonight to adopt the interim changes or we can have another public hearing. So that just to give you an idea of the process. Last time I kind of went through some of the more detailed pieces. I can give a general update to each of the two sections. It's up to you how much information you guys want me to go back over again. Section 3007 is steep slopes and the issue that came up here was we had no regulations impacting steep slopes before 2018. So we did not regulate steep slopes at all. In the 2018 rules that were added, there was a prohibition on development of 30% slopes, which seemed to make sense, except that as we started to use that rule, we noticed they come up in small amounts in a lot of places and it was impacting a number of projects that we felt were good projects, driveway curb cuts that couldn't be approved, fixing retaining walls that couldn't be approved. So we reviewed and went through and made a proposal that you have before you that the changes are kind of embedded into figure 3-08 and 3-09 where we revised some of the hearing thresholds and disturbance thresholds for who needs to get permits and when a hearing would be required, but most importantly for this, we removed the prohibition on development for 30% slopes and simply said that all development that affects 30% slopes will require hearing and all development that impacts 30% slopes would require an engineering plan. In that way, the purposes of the steep slopes section are to make sure that we're protecting public safety and property and we're minimizing the potential for erosion and we felt these two changes would maintain that. Any questions about these potential changes? Lauren. One question I had had was if there was a benefit to adding some indication in the, you know, maybe language and 1-14, just indicating that the goal is to avoid developing greater than 30% slopes just because this goes from a standard of prohibition which clearly was the policy goal to allowing it and there's no language that's indicating that we don't really want you to develop there but if it's unavoidable and otherwise a good project, you could get approval with a good engineering plan whereas this just says just do an engineering plan and there's no motivation to try to avoid developing steep slopes so I was wondering if you had thought or if there was an easy way to do that or that opens a whole can of worms that's not easily resolved. Well, I did think about that after our discussion and a couple other people have made that or a comment similar to that. So options to limit impact, I kind of came up with three, one of which is kind of a wait-and-see. We could pass these changes and evaluate. I already said there were no regulations before 2017. This 2018 is 100% prohibition and this is kind of bringing it back a little bit. We can see how that goes. The second option would be to cap the amount of development allowed on Figure 3-09. So if we were to, and these are just example numbers, if we had disturbance no more than 4,000 square feet requires a hearing, then we could say, but development can't be more than 12,000 square feet. So basically put an outside boundary on what could happen. So maybe it would be 12,000 square feet is the maximum disturbance at all for 15%, 9,000, 6,000, 3,000. I just multiplied each one of those by three. But you could, there's no, nothing behind that other than just adding some outside boundary. It could be larger, it could be smaller. That's another way of doing it. A third way that I thought of would be to add language as you proposed which might say something like where other viable locations exist that are less steep on a parcel the applicant should or shall utilize those locations first to the maximum extent feasible. So that could be some language we could insert. So those were the three kind of potential ways I saw maybe addressing those types of concerns that put a boundary. Do you have any further thoughts on that? I mean, do you have a preference? If not, that's fine. I mean, I would probably prefer the last just in terms of sending a signal that we want to avoid that when you can but you still have a process to go through if it's unavoidable and then you have the whole process to weigh is it a good project that should be approved? What do you think about that, Mike? I mean, if we, because I mean, I know these were, you know, the Planning Commission agreed to these changes. If we further modify them, I mean, one thought, well, I would love to, if that's a change to what's written here, then, you know, I'd love to hear from members of the Planning Commission see if you agree or think that's fine. And, you know, one possibility, actually one of the things that I could use actually a little bit of clarity on is were you hoping that we open a public hearing tonight on this? Yes, it was a foreign public hearing. A foreign public hearing. So when we have this public hearing, we could also be adopting these tonight as an interim zoning by-laws. And then what's the, can you explain again the process of like how we move from these being interim to fully adopted? So the Planning Commission has already started their warning process for the permanent adoption. Their first hearing will be April, so April 8th will be the Planning Commission's first public hearing where they'll take testimony on all the changes, most of which are relatively minor. Most are the bigger ones. And then they would, they could at that time move it forward assuming they don't need to make other changes, but they could then move that. When they're ready, they will make a motion to move it to City Council for your consideration. You guys have to have at least two public hearings. Those need 30 days' notice, so as we start adding these timelines out, it may be May or June. My hope is to have this all wrapped up by the end of June. And I recall that, you know, there's something about, there's this overlap time, you know, that there's a certain amount of time during which both sets of by-laws apply. And does that apply to the interim? It doesn't apply to the interim, it applies to the permanent adoption. Okay, great, thank you. So if we could go back for a second to Lauren. So what was it that, can you just reiterate what you had hoped the change might be? Well, I think the language that Mike proposed to add something in the language, I think somewhere in 1 to 14, indicating that, you know, to the extent that the project can avoid the steep slopes if feasible that you would, that the project would do so. And otherwise you would trigger this engineering plan and then it could go through the process. Fair enough, thoughts from the Planning Commission on that? I'm Kirby Keating up here, is it the Planning Commission? And this, as Mike mentioned, this is something we discussed. And we didn't have voting on it, but it was something we did discuss. So we've already thought about it. What comes to my mind is, so for the steeper slopes will be a hearing. And we want to make sure the DRB has something that it can apply, that's in kind of standard. Feasible seems pretty strict to me. So the Planning Commission may want to talk about, because a lot of things are feasible. So it still might be desirable to allow development that impacts us a little, that maybe doesn't need a feasible threshold, or maybe it could be done theoretically somewhere else. So it may be worth it for us to talk about a standard that can apply. But I do understand what you're getting at because we have the same thoughts. We'll actually, we'll be discussing later some other discussions we've had and some other suggestions we have concerning steep slopes, where this also is a factor where we want to make, we want to allow some more things with steep slopes. I'm just going to give you the heads up about that. Where this will also, it'll help that we have a standard for this, I think. So when that comes up, that'd be okay. Yes. So that would be the kind of thing that you would continue to discuss and come back to us later with some potentially different language. But not at this point. We would add a subdivision 15 that adds some kind of standard that DRB could apply to hearing. Does that make sense to you, Mike? Yeah, and I think you're right. There is the challenge with the way this is worded, because something could be a better project might be closer to the road on a steep slope that can be easily engineered and protected against erosion, but because they have farther back in their parcel a flatter spot that they could put the property with a longer driveway, it may not be as good of a project, but it would avoid that small impact on a steep slope. Fair enough. Does that satisfy you, Lauren? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Kirby. Any other comments or questions? Jack, and then I want to make sure... Actually, before you go, Jack, I want to make sure that I don't forget. I'm going to officially open the public hearing, so we'll take public comments in a minute. Yes. I just noticed a technical change that we should put in in section 2.203.7a. There's a point where the phrase day minimus appears, and it should be day minimis. So it should be IS rather than US. Okay. From the legal maxim day minimis non-courot lex. Okay. Which means the law does not concern itself with trifles. Can you say the number again? 3.203.7a. What's the letter that's after it? 3.203. Let me see. Got it. 3.203i. It's actually in there twice, but in the original it was misspelled as well. Okay. That's what I get. I'm just saying that's not a big deal. I will just make a note. That's an amenable change. Yeah. Friendly amendment there. Further questions? Any comments from the public? Hello. My name is Will Schambow. I live here in Montpelier. I'm a contractor and also a member of the Development Review Board. And as somebody who works daily interacting with the planning and zoning department and also on projects that range from flat fields to slopes, this I definitely encourage the adoption of these interim zoning changes. We've got multiple projects kind of on hold waiting, you know, whether it's first, it's one of them's a small addition, single family household, nothing dramatic. We're not talking condos here. Whereas a small portion of it just do the nature of the lot and the design, like a 50 square foot portion of this addition is tucking into a 30% slope. And the project that basically installed do that. And I've also spoken with civil engineers who said we can develop up to 50% slope with no problem. It's doable. So 30% is not very steep, ultimately. The difference between say 28% and 31% is most of us would probably not notice that. And so as I said, I think for practical purposes and just kind of furthering smart infill development, I encourage you to adopt these changes. Thank you. Anyone else? Yep. Hello, my name is Michael Howard. I'm from North Street. And I, too, would encourage you to adopt the proposed changes. The stated aim is to protect structures and erosion control that can easily be achieved by engineering plans. And I'm sure structural engineering and no-slope engineers. You can design on 100% slope, for sure. I'm not suggesting you guys want to do that. But keep in mind a 30% slope. It's actually 15 degrees. It's this. Right? It's not this. So I'm looking to do a sort of 700 square foot, two-car garage addition. And we're going to make the house, you know, $150,000 in the local economy, not a radical departure. It's an attachment to a house that's already there. And I'm probably going to have to do it. It seems a little excessive. And it seems that it's a can of Trenton, California. Because my opponents strongly recommend adoption. Further, I would say there's the way the way the regulation is written. The possibility of safety and runoff. But what I'm hearing here is some aesthetic concerns and not developing on steep slopes for reasons other than safety. Well, then that should be addressed as such. Not sort of tucked into a safety issue. So that's a good two cents. Thank you. Other comments? Okay. I'm going to close the public hearing. No one else has thoughts or comments. Did we want to go over the landscaping? I haven't personally received comments on the landscaping. I just went over the slope. Okay. Well, I'm going to keep the public comment period open then. Let's talk about landscaping. I don't have to necessarily have a big conversation here on the landscaping. You were provided strikeout copies in the clean version. The reason the strikeout copy pretty much is most of it. Most of everything in red. But the important things were with the landscaping is it was missing a lot of administrative rules. There were no discussions of how we're going to handle grandfathered properties. So existing properties, a lot of the rules that were proposed for 2018 seem as though our consultant were kind of using rules that were designed for new development in a green field as opposed to most of our projects which are redevelopment. So we really need to have a discussion and have rules that address what we do when something doesn't meet the existing rules. And those were the things that were missing. We needed some exemptions for certain applications, a change of use inside of a building. There were no exemptions. So those would have to go through a full site plan process. So this was a somewhat carefully rewritten new set of rules. We haven't seen a lot of comments from the folks that have reviewed it. I haven't had many comments. More people were more interested in the steep slopes than they were with the landscaping. But I can go into more details if you want. Questions from Council? No? Jeff. I remember the last time we talked about this. One topic that got people's attention was whether this would be applied and how it would be applied to vehicle sale lots. I just wanted to throw that open to ask if anyone has had any more thoughts about that, which I really haven't. I'm not advocating for any change myself. You haven't heard anything further about that? I haven't heard anything. That's a rule that isn't being proposed for changing in the zoning we have today, the ones that were passed in 2018. They also had an exemption for parking lot landscaping does not apply to automobile sales lots. Okay, fair enough. Enough for the comments? Questions? Okay, any comments from the public on the landscaping? Okay, seeing no. I'm going to close the public hearing on that as well. So, Mike, if I'm correct, I think we're probably at the point of potentially having a motion on the interim zoning bylaws. Yes. Would anybody... Indeed, would anybody like to make a motion? Donna. I can make the motion that we adopt the interim zoning amendment. The Planning Commission recommends for section 3007 and 3203. Second. For the comments. Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, motion carries. Thank you, Planning Commission for all your work and Mike. Sounds like this is going to be a much needed fix. Can I ask for a clarification on what was there the change added that... Lauren. Oh, no, I think that... That's being... Yes, so that's enough. We'll make it up on the permanent. Okay. Is it understanding that we're changing the misspelling there? Right, that's correct. Jack's amendment? Okay, we're going to assume that that's fine. Okay, no, I just wanted to make sure when I go back to the Planning Commission that's what their task is. Okay, super. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. That's got to be a record for the fastest so many can do it. Don't push it. We have another one. You know, some limited topics. That's fine. All right, so on to the audit report. Well, welcome. Let's you introduce yourselves. Good evening, everyone. My name is Todd Provencher. I'm the Finance Director of the City of Belphilia. This is Hedder Graves, a staff accountant in the side of the course of us. Senior accountant worth doctor and crew workhorse of this process. And Teresa Kajinsky, CPA from Plotty Hill, back here in town. We don't have any formal proposal process. Each of you received a digital version of the audit report. I have her copies as well. If anyone wants one, just let me know. I can hand one out to everybody so people don't use the other people here. So other than that, just keep it brief. I'll let Teresa keep it brief. Sure. She's really recording on us. I have an electronic copy or the paper copy going around. There's a loose paper. The governance letter of the audit. And this is something that is to address to the City Council from Father Gale, Shegale and Valley. I'm just going to go over a little bit of that and then talk about just a couple of highlights in the audit because this is a June 30, 2018 audit and almost April 1st. So these are old numbers. But still the audit needs to get done and there's certain, just some things that I wanted to go over. So one of the things that happens in the audit that we like to discuss is there are certain estimates that have to be done. And the ones that we feel that are sensitive are estimate of the useful life of the capital assets, all the assets that the City owns which is a lot and has. So we just like to say that that's just an estimate. We don't know how long you're actually going to last. The other estimate in there is the amount of doubtful accounts that you might not receive certainly receivables. Whether it's tax receivables, note receivables, there's a lot of notes in the community development fund that are 30-year notes that have been loaned to various patients and various people. So we just, you know, there's an allowance for those not being collected again that is an estimate. We didn't encounter any significant difficulties with the audit. We got through everything. We have a lot of help from the City and everything we asked for was provided to us. When you perform an audit, there's sometimes things that don't get booked because they're not material and these need to be addressed and so you guys understand what those are and there's two things that happen. One, a prior year receivable for the local app options tax was missed on June 30, 2017's audit. That was money that was received in probably September of... August September. Yeah, August September of 2017 that was actually for the previous year. And the other... And so instead of booking a prior period adjustment, it wasn't a material amount. I don't remember the exact amount of it but I think it was 50,000 yet. So that's not material to these numbers. And the other item that wasn't adjusted was laid back with something to do with depreciation on a capital asset and that's coming down to almost not having to even discuss that every year like we have been for four years. We proposed no audit adjustments. We worked with Ruth during this whole process and she... What did you say? I guess I was a little bit... Yeah, I guess you were so good at it. And a lot of things that kind of get discovered aren't really audit adjustments. It's usually stuff she's discovering while she's closing the books and we might still be here auditing so we didn't have any of those. So that's good. That's good. The other thing I wanted to just know is that we performed a single audit which is based on the City of Montpelier received more than $750,000 of federal dollars. And when that happens you're required to have an audit and it's called a single audit and there's certain compliance requirements that need to be done. And we had no findings. The major program was related to the Northfield Street project which the state monitors very heavily but there was no... We found no findings with that. The other part is the financial audit is an unqualified opinion meaning we did nothing was qualified that wasn't important with government that. So with that I can talk about all the numbers in here. These are... Like I said this is definitely historical. If you want I can go over some of them or you can ask me questions. One thing that I didn't want to know is the general fund unassigned fund balance was about $610,000. I think that's on track of where you guys want to be. And the other highlight is that the the water fund decreased its deficit during the year by about $200,000 which is in the right direction and so those two items came to my attention when I looked back to the audit today. Again you guys are budgeting for I don't know, $2,000 for me and you know and 19's almost done with it. So that's the big stuff that I have if there's anything at least at you. The audit report does represent a combination of a tremendous amount of work. I do have to thank Ruth again this year and I wasn't expecting to thank her because I was expecting she was going to try to sneak out but she stayed with us a little bit longer and we're hoping to get a little bit more out in some capacity but you know the fact that actually we're moving in the right direction and we didn't have any significant findings has major implications in terms of brand eligibility and other what we're working with outside entities federal agencies. So that is really good news and I want to thank Ruth and thank Teresa as well for her efforts through all of this. The bulk of the document is really the cure for insomnia. I have to commend I promote people. Government accounting standards focus on improving the functionality of financial statements for making it easier for readers to understand. I'm not quite sure I subscribe to that but it is a lot of information. I'd just like to thank our staff too and of course Father Gelsigalli in Valley but I think as Teresa will tell you this is I don't know how many years now in a row we've had unqualified audits and that's actually pretty rare for municipalities so it's you know we just kind of get used to hear it every year sounds like a term but actually we really have done a very good job there and had soft stuff all involved. Yeah it's really wonderful I'm grateful that we don't have to be dealing with anything different so it's really great so thank you so much and also point out I'm not saying you have to do this but the audit is really for the elected officials because it's an audit of management so if you wanted to you could go into Executive Session with Teresa without staff if you had any questions or any concerns that is your option and it's fully okay to do so. You want to check back your backdoor payments huh? I'll remember this next year. In that light you know it has anything to do with that. It would be in the letter anyway. If I had that conversation she would make that request. Super any further questions? Yes Donna I mean this late. Was there a reason? Is it because we didn't schedule you? No you know honestly kind of a series of combination of errors not errors that just scheduling stuff is so I had some things come up in my personal life through that some things come up in her personal life and it just and overlapped and by the time we had a final report prepared for Teresa that I think she had some things going on and they were starting their tax season as well. Every year it gets more complicated. Well I do know that but I do know what the original fieldwork date what happened is the there was a hold up with the Norfield Street and the allocation of the loan. That was a big thing so when we have to reschedule a whole week of time it's like a month out. We've got you scheduled now already right? You guys are going out to bid this year because you have the new tip right? Yes yes yes yes Yeah nobody's scheduled. We may choose but whoever it is it's just it helps to have it just a little more timely because we are we've been buried in 2019, 2020 and now we're really looking at I mean usually usually it's January. Yeah usually yes. And it's it's also it's just in my standard perspective it's a little bit difficult because the bulk of my time is consumed by the budget process during the auto process so we have we're building budget for the next year when we're trying to wrap up. Absolutely yep. Basically it's basically it's one person with and I've been trying to train Heather too which takes extra time you know because I'm retiring I don't know some people know that. You said that last year. I know I was supposed to be gone by now. We're glad you're still here. I mean basically it's a lot of work for one person which is me. You know and I've turned it I've been trying to train Heather as much as I can too for when I'm gone. Plus I had I've been having back issues and I don't know a little bit of health stuff in there you know just and one of the things that we're contemplating since we are going up to bed that's a we're required to go to bed every so many years is contemplating whether we do the financial statements in the house because that is a big chunk of work that falls back on the staff internally and whether it makes more sense to have the whatever audit firm it is actually prepared for the audit firm. Right now the bulk of the financial statement falls on the roof I do because I can Teresa is reviewing everything and taking and tying and checking it So if we spend more money you can get the Yeah We'll see what our big proposal is going on and that was an optional I hear the money I hear the money And with Tiff that's another element to the audit process for next year Yes Okay Well there's no action that we need to take We should move to accept the audit Oh okay Thank you Second Further discussion? All in favor please say aye Aye Opposed? All right Thank you so much for all of your work Okay Todd Hey Todd Okay You can have mine back You ready at all? Oh you don't want it at all Give it to Kara There we go No that's okay I just I know sometimes it might be useful for you to have hard copies to give out to people Yeah the PDFs are becoming more and more Okay Desirable because they're easy They'll just search through and find the information Yep Thanks Okay next up we have a tax stabilization request So with the Conner Brothers Welcome And as Fred comes up I thought I'd tee this off a little bit Those of you who remember we did Mr. Conner appeared before us last year for this project and was approved for tax stabilization with the option to come back once he could if he could secure the appropriate number of employees for the building that met our standard I know there are some people who have questions about tax stabilization policy and I'll just note that it's actually on our next agenda So this I would urge that I So I would say if we have policy issues about the policy itself just remind you know we will be going into that into great detail so if we could focus on the application of hand and I really I feel that it meets the standard and that that it meets the spirit that we it was approved last year with that provision to come back so I certainly recommend approval but have at it Fred would you like to explain sort of the developments since the last time you were here Sure Thank you Fred Could you could you just pull that mic just closer to you Thank you so much My brothers and I I'm pleased to report that we have secured Central Vermont Medical Center as a tenant for our new building at one home farm way as a combination of their epic healthcare IT infrastructure that's being done throughout the UVM health network as well as other administrative operations so we are in the hospital in support of this level four funding so we're pleased to be adding to the ground list and pleased to be bringing more jobs to the city Any questions or comments for Fred Ashley So I was looking at the revised application because I know you were here last year at some point last year don't remember when so I saw a range of $30,000 per year to $100,000 per year and I was curious what the numbers were in terms of how many jobs are going to pay on the low end and how many jobs are going to pay the 100,000 I don't have any of those numbers I just asked for a range and that's what I was given I would just highlight for everyone on the council that the salary of $30,000 after taxes is around $2,000 a month and I I am not aware of really realistically how somebody could afford to live in Montpelier on $2,000 a month I mean rent alone in this community is huge and so I I would like to see what that breakdown looks like understanding that you don't have that information I don't know how the rest of the council feels I know I've been solo on a number of these with my vote which is fine but tax stabilization is something that the city wants to do there is a way to do it and I don't know that not having the information about what those jobs are are pragmatically going to pay you know if it's one job that pays $100,000 a year well that's really nice for the person making a hundred grand but for the people who are making $30,000 a year and then you're going to be dealing with how do I access healthcare even though you might work for CVMC I have to pay for childcare I have to do all of these life things that $30,000 a year ain't going to cover in this area so Jack I agree the criterion is at least 25 new livable wage jobs and I don't think we have enough information to make that we're negotiating with CVH but I would be more comfortable voting to approve this and I if we can show well how many jobs what the breakdown is how many jobs really are paying what we would consider a livable wage I consider the request meddlesome you have a policy we meet it to the letter and we're back saying we've got good news we're adding to the grand list and we're delivering these jobs and that's what the policy says so I don't have the ability and I think it's a little bit of a privacy issue they're not going to obviously give you names they're probably not going to give you positions so I was asked for a range I don't know whether there's one at $30,000 one at $100000 or whether it's the median or something different I know they pay very well as far as benefits go so yeah I know it's a very good employer but I do think that the criterion includes a determination that it's there are jobs at the livable wage and $30,000 I believe meets that requirement yeah I was just looking at it we check the minimum the livable wage at least as of 2018 was considered $1334 and I'm not saying that is it but that's what the state says is a livable wage what I got $13.34 I would just about $27,000 a year I I appreciate that's what the state says but as someone who's actually worked for minimum wage in Vermont when I first came here and the the national studies where they've broken down cost of living infrastructure needs transportation all of that it's I think from I'm clear it's around $22 an hour in terms of just being able to support a household here so I I just I know that's what the state says I have issues with livable wage because I'm pretty sure the people who are making that living that's what they call a livable wage probably aren't working for that I would respect the policy doesn't say that the employees are residents of the city they just says the jobs are located within the city but if they're getting Montpelier taxpayer money which in essence they are in terms of tax abatement I do think that's that's passing that on but we're in essence asking the Montpelier taxpayers to be funding infrastructure upgrades and developments and you know I think that people who are who are going to be taking these jobs should have the option to live in Montpelier if they want to and if they're not making enough to do that I don't think it's definitely not something I'm going to jump in and say it sounds like there are two issues that you're raising discussion next time about the policy one is do we want to have any thoughts on you know residency I don't know that we can do anything about that even so but then also like who's liveable wage do we go by and so that's that's something that we can discuss next time yeah so I was next to where I was going actually what our policy says is that it will result today at least a livable wage for a single person is calculated by the state of Vermont fiscal office throughout the life of the contract and the livable wage for a single person is 1334 which would be 27,000 so when we got the range we didn't ask any other questions because it met the standard in the policy and I think you're right if we want to change that standard in our policy for future applications I would add I'm not required to finish any additional information but we're talking about double the 25 number you ask us for a statement of 25 or more which is what we've given you we're talking about in the range of 50 jobs I just want to check over here before we go back Glen thank you I I want to say a few things and I'm going to try to say them in a reasonable order first I think about $30,000 a year and that's as part of a dual income family in Montpelier so I can't say that it's a perfect data point I think that jobs at $30,000 a year are a benefit to Montpelier it'd be great if they were more than that but I do think that it's a benefit second that said I really do sympathize with Ashley's point that we should try to do better and with Jack's point that it seems possible at least to at least just get a number of how many jobs at x salary versus how many jobs at another salary I agree with Jack that would make my decision easier and third I agree you've met all of the requirements that you've been asked for and I really do appreciate that I think that and correct me if I'm wrong about this but I think that the council regardless of whether the the requirements are met can choose to approve or not in any case that's not to say that I I think that that's at our discretion it's correct and the number of years is that also at our discretion yes that's up to Tim well I'm really excited this project is happening and I I'm grateful for all your contribution to increase the grand list and helping city thrive so I'm excited to approve this also to have a conversation about you know how how does this council want to frame a tax stabilization policy and let's make it something that we feel really good about and and would support over time so that's a future conversation and anyway so I would love to add that this is the fifth investment in the city that my brothers and I have made over the last 20 years and we just firmly believe that we're playing by the rules and I think if I jump across the other side of the table it's whether you want to be say that you're open for business or not we've got another job going on simultaneously right now on the Baird Montpelier Road that we're not seeking tax stabilization for which is a project of similar scale to this one and so we're out there doing what your council goals tell people to do so I'm asking for tonight because I believe I'm up against my one year deadline coincidentally yeah fair enough I'm asking you for your support we think we we think we do what your council goals tell folks to do encourage folks to do is there well any further discussion or yeah oh yeah sorry right Jack yeah I I don't think that the 1334 is a reasonable standard but I do think that it is what our policy our policy ties it to the state's standard and I I think since we're operating under the current policy I don't feel that I can say vote to disapprove it I do think as we examine the tax stabilization policy we should be looking for something more ambitious than that Lauren yeah I would just echo I'm excited to dig in on how we could potentially improve the criteria in the future and you know looking at this through the lens of what the current proposal is that's what I'll do for tonight but I'm really interested in that discussion and allow the issues raised by fellow councillors next time further questions comments I'll make a motion that we authorize or approve the tax stabilization award to Conor Brothers Montpelier Armory actually you're amending the one that you awarded last year excuse me to amend the April 2018 tax stabilization award to Conor Brothers at the Montpelier Armory LLC to level 4 tax stabilization benefit 50% it's the years that I have trouble with I'd say 50% for five years we already have 50% for seven I thought this was an increase from seven to ten okay okay I just thought it was three more years great okay 50% for ten years thank you for clarifying that is there a second okay further discussion I again I'm going to be that trope and I'm okay with it but residents don't get to come to us and ask for a tax abatement like this and I appreciate what you're doing I think what you're doing is important is that as a city Montpelier can support you in that endeavor I don't think that it's through tax policies that in essence abate half of the property taxes when residents here are struggling and you know when property taxes go up rent goes up and we all talk a whole good game about what it means to you know make a city where everyone can be and you know we've had residents come to the council when we were talking about a nuisance ordinance and we can't afford to fix our property you know they're still responsible for taxes on it and you know we struggled as a council to you know figure out a budget and the increase I think was more than I know what you said you were comfortable with Mayor Watson and so I'm just highlighting that we allocated funds to you know create new positions and to do all these things and that comes from the grand list and while I appreciate that percent you know residents aren't paying 50% of their taxes they are paying all of their taxes and I think that businesses need to pay their share and are there ways to do this that businesses and residents both pay their fair share absolutely I don't think this is it if I may and I don't mean to argue with the council member on a policy matter but just matter of information first of all you know single family house by state law also renovation we were actually talking with a renovation of commercial properties and I'd add that the three times it's been before the voters including residents it has actually received pretty large support by the voters so it's not something that residential voters in the community don't agree with so just toss that out there I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would that should continue to happen, so. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nain. So that was motion carries. And thank you very much. Thank you all, I appreciate your time. We'll go on to the next job of the city. Okay, awesome. Great. Okay. All right, so we're up to the responsible employer ordinance. So this was an item brought by Councillor Casey. Do you want to introduce this? Yeah, I would just give a brief introduction to it. I've invited a few guests to weigh in on this. So I don't know if right now Tim, Larry, and Daniel, if you want to maybe sit at the round table in the front there. Might have some other folks chime in. This is something I've been looking at since I got on the council. And I think it dovetails pretty well with our previous discussion. I was hardened when I got on this council to see that we treat people, I think, more than just numbers on a spreadsheet. You know, we've put in place a social responsibility committee to look at issues around workers' rights. And I think generally, if we look at our municipal employees, we do quite well by them. We have three unions in the city here. Negotiations are very respectful. But as you notice, we're also doing a lot of building in the city here and a lot of contracting. And as we look at this, I think it's important to keep in mind that there is a category of worker who is largely invisible, I think, not only in the state of Vermont, but around the country here. My brother is a plumber in New York City. He works on construction sites. And he often tells me about the routine abuse of the ban actors and some of these construction firms who bring people on board and treat them as less than humans. I would say, just in talks with city staff, I think we do a lot better as far as who we work with, who gets some of these construction contracts. But what we contend with every day is the lack of oversight both on the federal and the state level. We have a state government to try to merge the Agency of Commerce in the Department of Labor pretty recently, I think, which tells you something about the oversight that they have. I had somebody call up the Department of Labor recently to give a complaint about something happening with abuse. And they said, we're to understaff to even look at it here. As Montpelier, and as we spend tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars on some of these projects, I think we need to think about the human level again here. And who's working on some of these jobs? And as Ashley points out, and I always appreciate this, is the person carrying a pipe on one of these construction sites making enough to actually live in our city? And I think the answer is no in a lot of cases here. So going forward, I would like to talk about putting an ordinance into place that weeds out some of these bad actors on the front end. So we don't find ourselves well into a project and find cases of wage theft, misclassification, abuses as far as the Affordable Care Act and other standards at the state and federal level. And I think there are ways to do that. And a lot of cities have already implemented responsible contracting ordinances. I think it's about 250 at this point. Portland being one of the most recent ones. So I wanted to at least today start generating a bit of discussion around this issue. Again, keep in mind that we have some projects in the pipeline here. I'm not by any means an expert, but I did bring in some folks who I think could talk about this with a level of sophistication that I can't. So I've asked these folks to give about 15 or 20 minutes just talking about what the problem is now that they see in the state, some solutions that they'd like to see ways to address this. I actually do have some language I've been working on myself here that I could certainly bring to a future council meeting. But I think it's best to just talk about the concept of this before we get into the weeds to really look at what some of the problems are. And again, I'm a laborer, it's myself. But I have a family that moved over from Ireland recently, who are construction workers, working in the buildings trades there. And I've just been disgusted with some of the stories that I hear. So I'm happy to take any questions from the council, but I don't think there's anything I could answer that. I'll be outlined by the folks here. So with your permission. Sure, yes, yes. Turn it over to Larry, Danielle, and Tim here. Can you introduce yourself? Where you coming from? I'm Larry Mokwin. I'm a resident of Swan, Vermont. I brought a little testimony. Good evening, Mayor Watson and members of the council. My name is Larry Mokwin. I'm here tonight in support of the responsible employer ordinance you guys might put in place. I'm a lifelong resident of Vermont. I'm a member of Labor's Local 668, which covers Vermont and New Hampshire. I'm vice president of the Vermont Building Trades. And I'm also an organizer with the Laborers and a national union of North America and New England. I'm second generation laborer. I'll give you a little background on what it's like to be a union member in the construction industry in our state. I had a good childhood. It was only due to sacrifices my parents made for us, like me and my siblings. On Sunday, we'd have dinner every Sunday night. And then my father would pack his stuff. And either later that night or before we got up Monday, he would leave. And we wouldn't see him again till Friday night. Our mother did a good job. We all turned out pretty good. She held down the homestead during the week because he had to travel out of state to provide us a shot at the blue-collar middle class life that we all deserve and also still plan for his future. Hasn't been any different for me in the 17 years I've been doing this. I'm very proud to be a union laborer. I've worked here in Vermont some, but I've traveled more than my fair share to continue this dream that my father instilled in me. He's been a laborer for over 50 years now and is living a wonderful life. In his golden years, he lives in Florida now, but that's only due to the fringe benefits and retirement that he earned through being in this union. The employers that he and I worked for are the definition of responsible contractors. Many of them are small family-owned businesses. And the main reason that he earned a comfortable retirement and hopefully the reason I'll be able to retire someday. I believe like Montpelier as the capital of our state, you guys never really have been followers and you should lead the way with an ordinance like this to show that the city cares about the hard-working men and women that build the infrastructure here and make the city as vibrant as it is now. Construction workers deserve a shot at a human right of work hard and get a fair wage. And also make it livable. Employers who provide family-supporting wages and benefits and invest in workforce training and apprenticeships are actually gonna benefit your local economy. Passing this ordinance will level the playing field and ensure a minimum threshold for bidders to compete and it'll also limit irresponsible contractors who have the potential to cost the city precious dollars. It'll require the bidders and the subcontractors to demonstrate that they can and will comply with the bid documents and the specifications that are in these documents. Wage theft, misclassification of workers' compensation and unemployment fraud is a real problem in the state. It cost the taxpayers millions and it was shown in a report just recently, February 15th of this year, the Vermont Legislative Committee released. There are responsive contractor proposals in many areas that have been useful at guarding against this type of fraud. Along with this ordinance, it'll also benefit women and minority workers who are often paid less by guaranteed they're paid by worker classification and not by gender or race. It also has potential to generate revenue back to the city and the state by making sure contractors are providing and paying the correct amount of unemployment insurance and workers' compensation insurance. And just so you know, this isn't a union versus non-union issue, the ordinance applies to all the bidders and it's an example of good policy to protect working families, the taxpayers here and the city. The ordinance doesn't give an advantage to union contractors, it only gives an advantage to responsible contractors. It asks that any contractor wish to benefit for public dollars played by the rules of fair and honest contracting. That's what I have to say and I'd like to introduce you to Dan and Tiffany Boyven. They live in Northfield, they're married, expecting their first child, both members of the laborers. And then Calvin Foster, he's a single father, used to live in Montpelier, had to move because he couldn't afford to live here. He lives in Colchester now and he's also a member of the local. Thank you. I'm gonna let Danielle go next because I'm more like Larry's father. Oh, good to know. Awesome. Good evening. My name's Danielle Ombardier. I am a licensed electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers, Local 300. I now also am the training director and an organizer for Local 300, which serves the state of Vermont. First, I wanna say thank you to Connor and for you all for listening to the discussion. I think it's an important discussion and for allowing us to speak here this evening. I'm happy to be speaking after this last topic, following the discussion of a livable wage and creating jobs and paying people enough to actually stay in Montpelier and live in Montpelier. I'm new to the building trades as well within the last few months. And when I first heard of this concept of responsible employer agreements, I was a little confused. Maybe I'm a little naive, but you see I've had the privilege of working in the IBEW, the Electricians Union, and I'm pretty new. I started at age 26, began my apprenticeship four months after I started. Pay raises followed the contract even for apprentices, health insurance, retirement benefits were provided and my working rights were protected through a collective bargaining agreement, our responsible contract. Working in the IBEW was my first experience in construction and it was fairly smooth. I became pregnant on the job, I didn't get pregnant on the job, but I still did. That may be the single best life. It's only 40 years of being in this job. That's just cut us. But I worked on the job until my due date and I was providing benefits during my maternity leave. This experience is not universal, especially for women, but I didn't have to worry that I was making 84 cents for every dollar that the man next to me was making doing the same job because of the way we were classified all the same. We made the same wage and it was a good one. My wage increased every year through the apprenticeship and when I first became licensed, I was able to buy a house in the community where I worked, I'm a Colchester resident, I grew up in Colchester, laughed and came back because it's Vermont and earning a livable, responsible wage is important. As we heard, if one can't afford to live in the community where they work, you tend to resent it. You can build it, but you can't enjoy it. You can come here to work every day, but you can't afford to bring your family here for dinner. And because I was working under a contract, one that required the contractor to act responsibly, I progressed through the apprenticeship flawlessly. There was no snafus with the contractor not registering me with the state, not recording my hours, not getting pay raises, not paying for my classes, and as apprenticeship director for the IBW Now, I meet with a lot of people who come in who face these obstacles with their current contractors. The responsible contractor language that I think Connor has a copy of, it requires contractors to employ registered apprentices and licensed individuals, ensuring that the people on the job are receiving adequate training and have adequate licensure and experience in their particular trade. Essentially, it shows a level of commitment to the craft, which in turn shows up in the quality of the work that's performed. We all want the state's capital to look good. Secondly, it prevents contractors from hiring people on the promise to register them as apprentices and then waste their time, keeping them back on their path to becoming a well-paid licensed individual. Before I worked in construction, I didn't really notice it. Buildings went up and I enjoyed using them. I didn't think about who built them, how they were built, but now I do. The built environment stands long after we're all gone and that's one of the reasons I've enjoyed working in the trade, leaving an imprint on the world. Montpelier has the opportunity to provide something valuable to its residents through this ordinance. The city can provide an example of what it looks like to take care of the construction workers who built the city with the city's money. Montpelier can provide its residents and local workers a better quality of life with this ordinance rather than line the pockets of business owners or CEOs. Unfortunately, it takes rules and contracts to make employers do the right thing and treat employees responsibly and fairly. But fortunately, you have the power to enforce this through a simple ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. I have some questions, but if- Is there one more speaker? Oh, I'm sorry, did you- Go ahead, when it's fresh in your mind. No, no, no. I'm happy to wait. You go ahead. My name's Tim LaBombard. I'm president of IBW Local 300 and the Vermont Construction and Building Trades. Unlike these two, I've not fairly new. I've got 32 years in the trade and it's sad to say and I hope it gets better by the time I get out that these problems are solved. It's not happening. I've held all the positions that Danielle currently holds through my career and it's sad that apprentices come in and or they come in and they think they're apprentices and we call the stage and before bow and how much, how many hours does Tommy have documented? Well, Tommy Hu and he has none. And I was told by my contractor that he was taking care of it. They don't educate them because it's cheaper. And that's one of the things with these ordinances you'll have that they have to have indenture. There's, the process is out there. People just abuse it and abuse them. The kids, they don't know any better. So it's not fair, but it happens too much. And our ordinance, which is our constructive bargaining agreement is our contractors would, well, as president, the local and everything, we police our own. It's human nature. They try to get away with things, but we're there. We have this ordinance, we have the contract, they have to follow if there's no gray areas, it's written. So we have to do it and we police them, which would happen here, you'd have documents to back what you're doing, there would be no guesswork. And right now we're speaking with Burlington to get it done. And as far as the livable wage goes, the $13 and something, it's, I don't know where they got that. We have the Vermont State prevailing wage rate, which we worked on as the building trades and everything from 1996, that I can remember was the first time we brought it up. We got it passed in 2016. It took effect in 2016 where they had the rates, which is for a journeyman, wireman electrician in Burlington, Chittenden County is $26 an hour plus 42 and a half percent benefits. So they added the benefits and they bumped it on. And that's what the Vermont State prevailing livable wage is for an electrician or it is. I mean, that's what you need. You know, if you're there, that gives you attention. It gives you health insurance and you're not going on social welfare, which nobody should have to. You should give somebody the chance to make their own living and take for granted. Do you know if that prevailing wage is tied to the Davis Bacon prevailing wage or is it separate for Vermont? It's totally separate and it's totally here and here. This is Davis Bacon. No, that's what I thought. Yeah, that's what's caring. Yeah, Vermont State prevailing wage now is, it supersedes and exceeds Davis Bacon in a lot of places now. The Davis Bacon's been stagnant. And as Vermont is, we have to get through which everybody knows that their green mountains are beautiful, but you've got to be able to pay to live here in that sort of trend when you go into New York and you make 40% more just across the way. That's all I've got. I think this is great and it's happening all over the nation with, they're different, I don't know, but it's all the same and it's fair to a contractor. Yeah. And it's to stop the cheaters. There's over 20 states that have these already. Draw the portrait on my congress side of over 250 cities and towns. Do you mean states that have adopted? No, the city's in states. Oh, okay, okay. There are 20 states representing 250 cities have some sort of either responsible employer, responsible contractor, responsible bidder, community benefit agreement. And I mean, our state really, if you look at it, is no different than any of those states in our overall thinking. It has a little bit of progressive, a little bit more for the people. Cool. I have questions, but I'm going to hold off. Questions from the council. I was just, there was a study that came out in 2018 and I just, it's called Out of Reach and it was published in 2018 and it focuses mostly on a housing wage but it's put out by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and in Vermont we are the 13th highest housing wage in the country with an average and Chittenden County is actually, they also had a differential, I want to say it was about a 22% differential but in general in Vermont it's $22.40 an hour to afford housing, which is 85 hours a week at our minimum wage. Other comments? Okay, so my questions, well, so first of all, mark me down as interested. I think this seems hugely important and in as far as we can make a dent towards this that seems like something, steps we should take. My questions are really around the logistics of it. It's one thing to put in an ordinance and say you have to do this. The other side of that is the enforcement and so could you speak about what the enforcement of this hat either looks like in other places or just what that entails? Most of the time enforcement is taken out of it because if you do it before the job starts you don't need to enforce anything because the employer is gonna be responsible and through the big documents and specifications if they follow them correctly then you guys will know that they're going to do it and the ones who don't follow the documents go in the garbage. Right, but how do you verify that they're actually, so they say I'm gonna pay you $25 an hour and then how do I actually know while the job's going on that they're really doing it. They said they would. And these big documents and a lot of them it'll say that they have to have a worker's log a sign in, sign out sheet. All stuff that can be presented back to the city on a weekly, a bi-weekly, a monthly basis. So you know that. And those are effective in your opinions that those work. I mean, it's the only way to do it. So there's no heat from the someone to say you sign this even though it's wrong? A responsible employer wouldn't think it would. No, I know that. I'm just trying to understand the questions I'm gonna get asked. Oh, right, but a responsible employer would have no problem following the rules because it's gonna be the least for everybody. Well, just sure that the issue though is with the people who aren't right. So I mean, because even just by having the ordinance you're probably gonna have an increase in people acting responsibly and that's good. But yeah, with some- Let me try to have, they're still gonna try. Right, exactly, they're still gonna try. And I just wanna- So that's part of what you do is make sure they're following the rules. Right. Make your possibility in Monty or that we're checking out. Right, and I just wanna make sure that we are being, just eyes open about, is there staff time on our part that it goes into checking those logs? And that's potentially fine, I don't know, but it's something that we should just be conscious of. That's all. Ashley. There's a, I'm actually, I did a little bit of research about this because I was curious and I'd seen it called Other Things and I wasn't sure if it was the same thing. Turns out it is. So the Indiana, Illinois, Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting actually has a whole bunch of information that answers a lot of these questions and it actually becomes part of the contracting process. So if they violate any of those provisions, they're actually in breach of contract which makes them liable for damages. And it also talks about, and I can email this to everybody, but there are a number of these coalitions in various parts of the country that seem to do this. And one of the things that they mention that caught my eye at least in this particular one, they actually have to provide sworn statements which opens them up to the Payne's Empowerment's Perjury, but it also requires that they provide a list of employees and that they be classified. And then we as the offeror of a contract are able to call Secretary of State and other relevant licensing agencies to in fact verify that they have done all of those things. And so while it would certainly be a little bit of heavy lifting up front, I think in the long term, the enforcement piece, there is an enforcement piece and would people breach the contract? Sure, lawyers wouldn't exist if people didn't breach contracts. So I'm a little bit grateful that sometimes people do. But I think the way that contracts are written can really alleviate a lot of that enforcement piece and then there are legal remedies that are clearly spelled out so that everybody is on notice what the potential penalties could or would be. Well, we do have just for, you know, when we do, regardless of whether they're fair enough, we do Davis Bacon jobs. We have, you know, it's pretty spelled out and there are worker surveys and you have to verify. So it's not like we've never done this sort of thing. I was just hoping it was maybe a little less burdensome than the Davis Bacon is and you got more money out of it. I believe it would be with the contract, like you're saying. And as a point of interest, currently at the state house you're working on, I believe it's S182, a bill to move enforcement of all licensing laws, misclassification and everything from the DOL to the AG's office. It's S108. That's what you want to look at. Which is, it just was read last Wednesday for the third time in the Senate. It's going to the House without any deals. And the Attorney General's welcoming it with open arms. And it's going to give them more staff to do these things. And they would be responsible for any of your projects also. I mean, it's a violation of state law, so. Connor. Yeah, just a couple of quick points too. One, you would of course set a threshold on this for the cost of the project, right? So you're not running every $10,000 project, jumping through all these hoops. But some of the bigger ones, we're thinking like $200,000 plus. You know, it does make sense putting some staff time I think at the front end to make sure you do it right there. The other thing is that, and I want to echo Bill, I think we're doing a lot right now in Montpelier. But it makes sense to codify that in the ordinance then if you're doing it right. Because it's going to be turned over, you know. Let's make sure we keep doing it right. Great. So some of the next steps that seem apparent to me on this are just to check in with Tom McCartle. And you said you have some language that you're working on. And I think it might be good to have a comparison between what the language that you all have written so far compared with current practices just so we know what that change might look like. And, you know, just be conscious of the enforcement side and what that might take. I will just also put it out there too that this might be the kind of thing that the Social and Economic Justice Committee at least should be aware of. And I mean, they may not have time to do a full vetting of it, but I think it's worth touching base for them. Donna. Like the website that Ashley talked about, I'd love more information because we didn't get any language. So all we got was you were here you are and here's the title. And I had an idea what it was, but it really helpful to get more information as we work on the weeds and how they interface. Thank you. If you're uncomfortable with this, that's fine. Please don't answer. Or maybe we can talk privately. Just, are there some companies, contractors you'd recommend that we could talk to about, you know, the responsibility about how this has worked from their perspective and if it changed the cost into projects and those kind of things, so we can get that information. I can give you some contacts. Yeah, that'd be great. I'll work on that tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, obviously you don't want to out them without checking with them first, but it would just be helpful because we will hear from the contract and community, it'd be nice to have that. So you're looking for like a municipality or some sort or- Municipality, or even, you said, many of you talked about we work for contractors. So the way I understand it, the contractor hires the union to do the electrical work. So are there mass major contractors that you think are good employers that follow these things that we could talk with and say, if you've adopted these practices, did that change the price of your bids? Have you had trouble getting jobs because, you know, how hard is it to do? Because that's, you know, we're going to get asked about that too. How much more is this going to cost? The city of projects costs more and those kind of things. I'm trying to hook up with the AGC to get some from- Yeah, yeah, AGC works. So we're not being treated that? Yep, that's fine. I would probably trust them. Appreciate that. You know, it'd be good for their legit contractors. We have other guests in the audience if they would like to make a comment. I'd love to hear from you. I mean, I appreciate you giving the time, but I'd like to hear what you have to say. If you want. Yes. Obviously this is my first child and working union as a laborer, I would not have been able to do even that, the thought of having a kid without having these, the wages that we get. I get paid just the same amount as my husband as a, doing the same work. I, you know, go to work, you bust your bike and you make the same amount. Getting more work that into the area that'll, excuse me, I'm nervous. You're doing great. Getting more responsible contractors, high, you know, into the area with so beneficial to so many families. When I used to live in Oregon for the longest time and I was a union member, a nursing home out there. And I moved to Vermont and it was so different here that, you know, I didn't make a little wage. What, you know, I mean, more than what you guys are saying is as a little wage. It's not. The state is saying. Yeah. The state is saying is a little wage. It's not. It's not. So I moved into construction so that I could make a life family. So, need more of it. Thank you. Could you also say your name? I'm Tiffany Bowman. And where are you from? North York. Okay. Thank you. Hi. I'm Daniel Bowman. I'm Tiffany's husband. She was a nursing assistant for quite a few years when we moved back into Vermont from Oregon. She was continuing to do that same profession and she wasn't making a living. So I kind of convinced her to come to work with me. And she hasn't looked back and she's actually thriving. Sometimes she commands more respect and attention than I do on a job site. And I'm like a Swiss Army knife on a job site. She's awesome. So we just bought a house in Northfield last month. And I've spent a dream of mine since I was this big. I would have been able to do it without a union. I mean just the little wages and the kid on the way. We're not paying a lot in hospital bills because of our benefits. So that's a life saver all by itself. I can't imagine myself doing any other type of work. I mean there's a company called PC that works over in Burlington. I can't go over it for them. We don't make the same. We do the same job and I make more than they do. With benefits included. So, I mean you'd have to be an idiot to say no to that. I'm sorry, I'm with her. Wait, wait, you've got my role. Yeah. Okay. Lauren, you had something you wanted to say? Yeah, first of all, thank you all so much for coming tonight. Really appreciate the time and perspectives on this important issue and look forward to digging into it. I just wanted to note that I brought this up at the last social and economic justice meeting a week ago that this was coming up and we talked about we're trying to develop like a checklist of questions to go through as one initial step and thought that this would be a great policy to use as a way to kind of test out how we can really try to make sure that we're doing a really good policy all around. So, we look forward to engaging in this and using it. I'm happy to come to the next meeting. Fabulous, let's talk. Great, further comments. I did want to let you guys know I passed on that the document I was reading from to Bill. So, there's a lot of them that exist though and I have a couple more that I'll email out when I get home. Hopefully it'll be an early night. Yeah, right. Okay, well, thank you so much for taking the time to come speak to us. This is great. Thank you for fighting the good fight. And to be continued. Yeah, awesome. Okay, so how are we doing, team? Are you okay? Do you need a break? Keep going. Okay. All right, so next up is, yeah, so, yeah, for enough. So, have a heads up that there's a gentleman who would like to make a comment that missed the general business and appearances at the beginning. So, if you want to come talk to us now, now is okay. Interrupting our regularly scheduled program. My name is Tom Mulholland. I live in Lane shops on Mechanic Street, which is District 1. Before I say anything, they said pictures worth 1,000 words. So if these pictures could be passed around, I'd like to preface my remarks by saying that I think the city of Montpelier, given the severity of the winters we have, does a great job in taking the area of the streets and sidewalks. And I realize we don't have a super huge budget to contend with all unexpected events. That being said, even in championship games, whether it's Steph Curry or Bill Belichick or whoever, they can always point out to certain blunders. And that's why I'm here this evening, to point out a blunder. I've been living at the one Mechanic Street in the Lane shops, which my apartment, a bus right under the North Branch and also right on the pedestrian walkway. And I don't know why. By first winter, there wasn't any problem. This winter, all winter, it's been a nightmare, and you can see from those pictures. And I'd like to also say that because it's been from day one, it's been, you can see from the pictures, ice, ice, ice. And this particular spot, I don't know if you're familiar with the pedestrian walkway, arguably, it's one of the prettiest sites in the city. And it's heavily trafficked by pedestrians. Forget about the fact that it's a loading zone for that building. Kids going from and to school, from the Meadow neighborhood and whatnot, go back and forth. People walking their dogs, young lovers, old couples, mothers with their baby strollers, bicyclists. It's heavily trafficked. That it should look that way is a blunder. And the other thing is that building that I live there myself, I don't like to call myself a senior citizen or an old codger at night, I'm 70 years of age. Every person in that building is a senior citizen. And that door that goes into that, unlike the front door, it's a handicapped accessible thing. So if an ambulance had to come to that building, they'd go in that alleyway. They'd have a hell of a time getting that journey out and to get into that building. It's the ices there. There's not enough room to negotiate an ambulance. It's just absurd. I spoke with one of the, she's the assistant director over at Montchillier Housing Authority. And she said, she spoke with the plow person. The plow person said, oh, well, I come through here sometimes. There's someone parked here because it's a loading zone because old people who are getting out with a walker or they need help with their ghostries with their son or daughter or whatever. And there's a car parked there. So he says, well, it complicates the plowing thing. So I have to say that that is BS because, as I say, I live right next to that alleyway. And it's 6 o'clock in the morning, whether it's snowing or not, that guy, I hear that plow go back and forth. There's no one in that driveway. There's no one in that pedestrian way. So Lorna told me that a number of people had complained about it to her. And it didn't go any further. So I called the city garage. And I spoke with Eric down there. I guess he's a maintenance foreman for this stuff. And he said he would talk about it with Bill Tuttle. Well, I haven't heard anything. And nothing's been done. And so I thought the only way that I could see forward would be to come here. And hopefully there are other citizens in Montpelier viewing this or will view it. And the proverbial saying, the creakiest wheel gets greased first. So I'm just here hoping that this wheel will get greased. Thank you very much. Thank you. So Mr. Mulholland, I can follow up in your comments. I actually walked through there. I'm sorry? I walked through there with my wife and dogs this weekend and observed that. And I said, what's that? Because like you, I walked through there a lot. And I said, I don't remember this from the past. So I made a note. Our DPW director is on vacation this week. And he's due back Friday. And I have an actually note to ask him about that. So I will follow up. This actually is, Bill, this is actually looking good compared to the recent melt. But we're not out of the winter. That stuff's going to freeze. So anyway. I got it. So we're on it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Donna. Just living in that same neighborhood, the complication is that that part of Franklin Street does not belong to the city. The city does not plow that part. So they only part the other part, mechanic that comes to there. And it's been an extremely icy winter. But he's right. It really needs attention. Really needs attention. Thank you. Isn't the city's responsibility to keep that clear or not? I don't know. That's what we're going to check on. We're going to find out. It's not. We don't know. Well, we'll find out. I don't have a direct answer for you. It's a pedestrian walkway. Is it not? It's used that way. And it connects to the bridge that the city does have a snow plow that goes through. We have the boat. It's a joint connection. But this right outside that walkway. I don't have any answers one way or the other for you right now. But I'm going to get them. Because that was my question. Is that us or is that the housing people? Isn't it like, I mean, we can get into details and stuff and look into things. But it says about this council and mayor. The city council is the legislative body of the community responsible for Delville policies and ordinances that preserve and protect the health, safety, and welfare of all of our residents. And I think that takes precedence over and nitpicking about whose property it is. No, no, Tom, I just meant we need to work with them. We need to work on it. Absolutely. I wasn't trying to bypass it. But we need to work with them because some property is theirs and some is the city's. That's all. We need to work with them on it and get it resolved. You're right. We agree. We're agreeing with it. We're all on the same page here. No, but all I'm saying is it is plow. All I'm saying is do a good job. It's icy in water. It's a mess. Yeah. Thank you. We'll follow up. Thank you very much. OK. So on to the rental inspection program. So welcome back. Mike Miller. Thanks for taking some time to tell us or explain to us how rental inspection programs work. Well, I was just going to tee this one up as well. This was one of the last things on our to-do list from last year's goals and priorities was to have a conversation about this. And Mike worked in Barrie for a number of years before he came to us where they have such a program. So what I asked him to do was just to give you a conversation about what it looks like, what it may or may not include, what pros and cons were in Barrie, successes and problems, and then get a sense from the council whether this is something we wanted to continue looking at or not. And if so, maybe get together a working group of renters and landlords or housing task force and people that figure out how we want to proceed and all that. So with that said, I'll turn it over to Mike. OK. So I apologize that we were only able to kind of get on this. We had a number of big things going on last week that didn't let us get this out for you in advance. But I did leave for you guys to review just a quick summary of what rental inspection programs are. As Bill mentioned, from 2008 to 2014, I was the planning director in the city of Barrie. They are one of a few communities that have a rental inspection program. And the primary purpose for rental inspection programs is to protect the public health safety and welfare. But it's really looking primarily at making sure that we have safe sanitary and fit human habitation. So the goals of these programs is to maintain that piece. So there are some things that sometimes kind of get mixed into that discussion. When we're looking at minimum standards for habitability, we're usually looking at these minimum standards. And what I handed out includes a checklist from what Barrie has on theirs, which includes mostly in the left column of fire and life safety requirements. But in the right column are those minimum housing standards, which is what you have usually for a rental inspection program. We already do the inspections on the left through our building and fire code inspections if we get a complaint. But really the new ones would be ones for minimum housing would be some of the ones that are on the right where we would look at does every room have two working outlets? Only one is required if there's a light fixture. Do doors and windows have locks? Do they have smokes and COs? Do you have running potable water? Do you have hot water? Do you have flushing toilets and proper wastewater connections? Doors that close, roofs that don't leak? So it doesn't look at things like quality of unit finishes or the price or the availability and proximity of parking. Mike, I interrupt you. You were talking about things on the left versus the right. And so I went to, I went here. Okay, this is the page I should be looking at. Yeah, that's just a checklist that Barrie has for the left and the right. So when you say the left, I mean, there's a P column and an F column, and then there's literally like the big left, that's past failed. So big left column versus right. This versus this. Okay, and so, I mean, are the things underneath miscellaneous that are continued over in the right? Yeah, there's a couple of things that roll over under miscellaneous, but with a minimum housing in the right-hand side. Okay, that's what's included, that would be included in a rental inspection. Yes. But the things on the left, generally, are things that are already done if you get complaints. Yes. Okay, sorry. Thank you for letting me interrupt. Carry on. That's fine, I wanna be clear. So usually what we're looking at are things that really are related to very specific health safety and welfare. If we were interested in going in that direction, they're expensive and they're administratively heavy to kind of run these types of programs. In Barry, we weren't having a lot of success. We had one person that was working on it when I started and handled the electrical inspections and most of the housing inspections. Over time, we migrated that to the fire department because they had additional staff who could work on it. And they also had the training in the fire inspections as well. So they were kind of making a slightly different process. So they actually had three people working on it. But it can be, depending on how you set it up, it can be expensive. And there are some pros and cons, which I put in a table on the next, on page two. And really one of the issues it just comes down to is the cost of being able to run these types of programs. You know, if it's $150,000 a year, if you want the program to pay for itself and you wanna have an inspection once every six years, it'd be about $600 a year per unit. Divide by 12 months, you're adding $50 per unit to the cost of that unit if you want. If you're not gonna subsidize it with general fund dollars. And it just, I mean, it may, those are just rough numbers just to start thinking about it, it's not cheap, it's not easy. But if we have a big problem with the safety, then it's something that we should definitely consider. So the pros of a rental inspection program is it does assure the housing is safe and sanitary. And certainly that is a goal the city would wanna have. It does preserve existing housing stock. And it gives an accurate inventory of the rental housing stock. Some of the cons are that, you know, it does result in rent increases or couldn't result in rent increases. There is an administrative requirement. There's certainly a lot more work. It seems like it might not be, but it takes quite a bit of time if you need to send out, say 1500 or a thousand invoices every year and then collect those invoices and catalog them and who's paid and then send out delinquency notices and collect delinquent incomes and then pursue penalties and fines. There's a certain amount of stuff that we had to deal with and bury that really ate up a lot more time. We spent a lot of time doing things that have nothing to do with helping the units get better. Can I ask you another question? I'm sorry, I changed your up. The $150,000 cost per year, that's what would pay for a full-time inspector and an assistant, is that right? And I based that on, which was kind of in that second box, which was our current building inspecting department is $90,000 and that pays for Chris. And he's separate, so I figured one inspector plus an assistant who can handle all the administrative paperwork and scheduling. There's a lot of scheduling, unlike building inspections, you don't have to make a 48-hour appointment. Every inspection, you have to contact the landlord, you have to contact the tenant, you gotta get 48 hours notice to the tenant. You gotta make sure you can be able to get in and get access. So usually you have an administrative person who is handling making all those appointments. So the... So it was a second inspector and a half-time admin? Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense to me. I guess just based on the number of apartment units that we have, I just like $600, that math doesn't make sense to me. So I don't know where... Yeah, I just wanna flag that as like, wait a minute. Because I mean, we have something like 1,400 apartment units. Yeah, 1,500 units. 1,500 units. That's $600 per unit. That's way more than $150,000. Yes. That's $900,000. Yeah. So it's an off by a zero? It's $600 times 1,500 is $900,000. So he gives plenty of money to run the program. Yes. Okay. Well, more than we need. So I may have divided one number wrong in there. So it'd be about $100 a year. $100 a year, okay. Okay. So like $12 per month? Yeah, eight. Or less, I'm sorry. Yeah, that math I didn't do just right just now, but... Right, okay, so... Okay, good for catching my math. Yeah, well, it gives you $600 per year. That feels like a lot, but if it's $100 a year, and I mean... Yeah, and I've seen numbers in other communities that are in the hundreds of dollars per unit. I don't know what Winooski's was, and I have to see what theirs, but a couple of them have them. But... Okay, thank you. Just wanted to... Yes, thank you. Sorry, carry on. Catching that. Yep. Even when I double check it, I still get it wrong. And so the last point on those, the last two cons is one, is it doesn't have a significant impact on quality. I mean, while it is affecting health and safety, whether that two bedroom unit, that's not in very good shape, but is safe is $600 or $1,200. This wouldn't affect that. And the last is that you have to consider even under state law, which is attached as well on the next page, you have to take into account the potential results of condemnation and eviction of tenants, and that would be the city's responsibility. So, I did have the unfortunate experience of having to evict people for lack of housing standards. And to take somebody who's clearly not in good financial conditions and make them homeless, was not something I enjoyed doing. And it is something that every one of you would have to be willing to understand and accept that that is a potential consequence. It didn't happen often, it only happened once, but it did happen and it does happen. And the threats of shutting somebody down are only good if we're willing to actually stand behind our threats that say, if you don't meet these standards, we will close your building down. So, and that was all. I just wanted to put some pros and cons and get some stuff on the table, give you a little bit of information. The legislative housing codes are here. And as I said, the checklist from very city was here and I'll just take some questions and see. Okay, Ashley. I have a bunch of questions. Oh, good. So, how many apartments are there in Montpelier that have been reported for, I mean, major deficiencies, like no heat, no running water, a door that doesn't shut or lock, running potable water? I mean, these are fundamental basics to me. So, do we have a huge problem with that in Montpelier? When we asked our building inspector what he gets, he gets about one complaint on average a month for conditions and it doesn't always mean that there is a problem. Check. And many times they come back to somebody who's getting evicted, who's trying to forestall a process. I think when we were talking with Bill this afternoon, we knew of one or two over, it was time before I was here of units that. When the city actually got involved and took them to court. The city actually ordered that. Yeah, so that's kind of, at least that's been my experience, is like when there is an issue, I as a tenant have had to call the city because a budding landlord didn't empty the dumpster one of those weeks where it was over 100 degrees for like every day and it smelled horrendous, but you know, so I guess this is not something that I find super exciting for a myriad of reasons. Mostly because my pillar is a small town. People are gonna hear if there are lots of units that are not even meeting these, like these are to me like basic habitability standards. I think we have mechanisms by which to deal with those already. I have rented since I was 17. I moved out on my own at 17. And to me, the things that have really become clear. I've had some amazing landlords here in Montpelier. I've had some pretty unresponsive landlords here. And everywhere else that I've lived, you know, it's kind of been the same deal. One of the things that has really stood out to me as critical are upfront moving costs. This is hugely significant when you are talking about someone moving from one place to another, I picked up my entire life in Boston. I moved to Burlington because I wanted to find a place that was like kind of similar to where I had been for the last 10 years. I had to come up with like $3,000. And I literally moved to Vermont with $3 in my checking account. And Burlington had, you know, had a cap on what they could in terms of money upfront, what they could take. And Barry also has a cap on that. And I have talked to lots of folks in Barry about what that actually translates to, which is a degree of mobility that a lot of us would not be able to experience otherwise. Because when you're moving into an apartment that you might be able to, you know, afford your monthly rental payments at $1,500 a month, that's just throwing a number out, you know. But then you have to come up with three months rent. First last, security, you know, that's $4,500 a month. I don't think any of my friends have like 4,500 bucks just chilling around to move, you know. And then you're doing the security deposit jockey. You've got to wait to get it from your old apartment, which if you're moving states away can be forever. And then if you don't get it back, then you're land, you're, you know, it's a disaster. So one of the things I think is really security deposits or not even security deposits is moving upfront costs. What kind of cash money needs to be put down to move in? And one of the things that I think is something that we kind of need to talk about here in Montpelier is is there an appetite to talk about what it's going to take for people to be able to move here? Because, you know, if the ask is, you're going to come up with $6,000 first last full security, that's going to cut a lot of people out. You know, if there is an appetite to explore that, I think that's one way that we could start to, you know, get better, I mean, basic minimum things aside, which I think most units in Montpelier, and I've seen a bunch of them at this point, you know, moving, I used to move like every, more frequently than once a year, you know, I haven't run into this. I think the other piece is in terms of moving out, you know, what kinds of things are landlords obligated to do? And there are minimums, you know, by state statute, but in terms of, you know, providing accountings and when those accountings need to be provided, if those accountings aren't provided, what are your remedies that are very clearly codified so that renders know like, hey, this is what you have to do, you didn't do this, here's what I'm gonna do in response to get what is legally mine, you know, when you're dealing as, I mean, as a renter myself and almost all of my friends here in town are renters as well, you know, that's a significant battle. If you are working full-time and you've got all these other life responsibilities and now you've got to try to like figure out how you're gonna get money back from an apartment that's just being withheld and you don't know why or you kind of get this nebulous like, oh, we took $800 because there was a scratch on the wood floor, I mean, you know, as a renter I'm entitled to documentation about that, but I also know that because I do other stuff and so I happen to have that knowledge but there are a lot of people who don't and I think that making sure that people know what their options are as renters and what their legal rights and remedies are is critical, you know, to making sure that we, you know, don't end up in situations where tenants are being exploited. The other piece that I'm really interested in and I don't believe, I know that there are federal laws about this but anti-retaliation protections for tenants, you know, I'm not here but in other places that I've lived I actually have had to call a city inspector because, you know, plumbing wasn't functional for long periods of time and the answer, you know, that I got as a tenant was, oh, well, we're working on it. I'm not really sure what that means because I don't get to work on paying you my rent, I have to pay you my rent. And so I really, I think that this is important stuff but I'm wondering if there are other ways in which this can be subsumed but if the goal is to make meaningful strides in terms of, you know, the rental property options and the pool and expanding, you know, renter accessibility in Montpelier, I think those are very concrete, tangible things that realize significant benefits, you know, when you're talking about, you know, being mindful of every person who wants to move here in terms of economic ability, in terms of, you know, liquid assets and all of those kinds of things. And, you know, I would hope that if a tenant calls and raises something like, you know, I haven't had water running water for three weeks but my rent is current, I think the city would step in at that point, I mean, yeah. So it just, it seems like this is a jumping off point but I'm not sold that this is a way to, I mean, if it's only looking at bare minimums, I think, you know, most of our units meet that but there are other things that are way more important. Jack. I do have a few thoughts having spent a big part of my career representing low income tenants in substandard housing. I think it's important, I think it might be worth people looking at the actual regulations which there's a state regulation called the Rental Housing Health Code which is on the health department webpage. And if you Google for Rental Housing Health Code, you'll find it. And it's about 10 pages, it's pretty extensive. I don't, it requires a lot of things that, I think many of the apartments for tenants that I've represented haven't complied with including one thing that's always been a big one to me is exterior walls, doors and windows being reasonably weather tight and lots, especially in a place here like this where we have old housing, a lot of the apartments that I see are not reasonably weather tight and I think that's a big deal and it's something that causes increased costs for the tenants. I was part of the study looking into the possibility of inspection program back in 2004. One of the big concerns that I've always had about a program that is purely inspection on complaint is that it does give rise to, one it gives rise to retaliation. Retaliatory eviction is prohibited under Vermont law not federal law but under Vermont law but it's, the protection isn't great and it depends on being able to defend yourself in court and prevail on that. And so I think that many tenants are reluctant to complain because they know that landlords are likely to retaliate by evicting them. So I wanna push back a little when you say, well, a lot of the complaints, a lot of the times tenants complain is because they're being evicted. I think that for one thing, maybe if an eviction is already in process, they know, well, I don't have anything to lose, I might as well complain. And two, saying that they're complaining because they've gotten a termination notice has no bearing on whether there's merit to their complaints. Yeah, we always do investigate. I mean, it has nothing, our interest in investigating doesn't have anything to do with it. It's just when we do get them and we go through and realize there isn't much here and we ask the landlord, you know, because we've got to contact both. That's usually when we find out that it's not, you know, it's not surprising that this person has filed a complaint because we filed paperwork with them last week for failure, you know, they haven't paid rent in so many months and we gave them the notice of eviction. And so we're not surprised to see this, but. It's definitely, you know, I'm just following up on that because we were talking about that in terms of what data we had. And, you know, we only have the complaints. So of the complaints, of the relatively few complaints we have, none of them have been particularly serious, but we don't know the unreported complaints. Exactly. And that's another thing that I was going to say. The fact that we have a system that inspects only on complaint means that we don't have a sense of the general quality of housing. We don't know, in Montpelier, we don't know how many of the rental units we have do not comply with the rental housing health code and having a systematic way of inspecting all the apartments or all the rental units on some regular basis is a way to address that and to provide enforcement, even if the tenants are not complaining. And so I'm not saying we definitely have to do this. I think when we were working on this in 2004, it was received pretty well by the council right up to the point of budgeting. And financial, the budget is always an issue, but a lot of work was done to put that together that I think it might be worth looking at again to see whether we really want to pursue it. So I think this is not something that we should reject out of hand. Glen, thank you. Yeah, I think I'm more or less with you, Jack, on this. I am scared off by a couple of things. For example, the enforcement and shutting down a building and making, excuse me, making those tenants homeless. That is something that I would dearly love to avoid for sure. I'm curious, and maybe I'm not understanding it the way you mean it, but one question I have is about the con no significant impact on quality because I guess it depends on what we're talking about in terms of the word quality, but when I look at the minimum housing checklist for Barry, there are at least some things that feel to me like they are points of quality that would be worth inspecting. Regardless, for example, maybe a third of the way down minimum housing are all painted surfaces free of deteriorated paint. That feels like something that I would bet many apartments would not pass, and I think it would be important. Similarly, walls sound and free from hazardous defects and so on, a lot of that kind of basic wall ceiling window. I bet that, I don't know, but I would suspect that many apartments do not pass some of those basic things. And I don't know if you have a response to that, but. Yeah, the sense for when I put that together to go and mention about housing quality was more the fact of with respect to an apartment with 1970s shag carpeting and kitchen cabinets without doors on them and an old refrigerator that maybe is a little too small and makes funny noises but it works. Those are the types of things where the rental inspection will go in is to make sure that you've got the GFCI protection on your outlets and you've got, it's more health and safety when you go out, there are improvements and it isn't improvement in quality, but. Yeah. And there may be some that are cosmetic that will make an improvement in quality, repainting those walls that may have the dings in the holes. Yeah, and specifically on that, around here, I think if there's chipped and deteriorated paint, I wouldn't have my toddler there because chances are there's lead paint somewhere under there and I did some kind of low grade remediation on an apartment that my brother is in in Boston when he had his kids because they'll eat that paint. Oh yeah. Just because I think it is important and I think it speaks to Ashley's kind of getting this out that understand it as a former life as a property manager. One of the requirements about the state health department to speak to Glenn is that every year, every landlord is required on every unit to certify what's called essential maintenance practices that there are areas of lead paint. So certain things, window wells need to be installed. All of these basic things they are required to submit that to the department of health. If they don't do that, they can suffer a pretty significant fine. So I just want to put that out there just so that anybody listening at home and their landlord has to do that. So well, can I ask about that? Yeah, exactly, that's my question. Who checks on that? Well, so what happens is you are required, the landlord is required to submit that paperwork to the department of health every year. It's a self-certification. If they come and check and you haven't done it or you haven't submitted your paperwork, then the fines begin. But they're not all checked, right? It's random. So staff check them. Right, check. When we put the law in, we had a housing task force meeting the other night and we talked about this in just for a couple of minutes. When we got the law passed for lead paint, what we thought was that we were gonna establish this requirement for EMPs, essential maintenance practices. We were gonna establish liability and then the insurance companies were gonna make the landlords do it because they wouldn't wanna be on tap for having to pay damages. And it turns out we were just totally wrong. That they don't do anything. And for the most part, the state doesn't do anything to enforce it. So I think that it's not enforced. And I'm sure that we could find apartments in Montpelier with deteriorated paint now and we'd find landlords who are not conducting the essential maintenance practices. Ashley? Oh, Donna, yeah. Is there a way to do what I would say a long term, maybe two years and do a total scope of the whole city, whether it's a VISTA or a project for some college student that we could actually get the city done and then we have a baseline and then move forward with that to see how much we feel we have to follow up. It's like an assessment. I think we had talked, Kevin and Bill and Sue and I, and we kicked around some possibilities of how we could do a survey or what other way we would do to kind of get a baseline. Are we talking, if we've got 1500 units, what's our problem? How big is our pool of problems? Is it just 30 or 40 bad units or is it 500 or 600 bad units? From our evaluations, we haven't been getting a lot from the complaints, but... People don't even know who to complain to or if they can without getting ramifications from it, let alone. Yeah, so yeah, and we didn't know. That's why we were kind of putting this out. This was on your strategic plan that we were gonna have this conversation and kind of see where we would go from here. Is there support to continue doing homework on this or is there something that we put aside and focus on? Do we have a way of knowing and having contact with renters, I mean, mailing lists? Do we sort of know which buildings they're in and then could go through the voters list to find them? How do we get in contact with renters? Can I ask a foundational question? Maybe this is stupid. What problem are we trying to solve with this? That's what I was talking about in assessment. Right, well, I'm curious. Are we trying to solve inadequate housing in sufficient numbers of units? Like what or is it the quality of the, I wanna understand what this ties into. Jack? I have an answer that I don't think that people should be forced to live in substandard housing and that's what the law of the state of Vermont is. And in a place like Montpelier with essentially a 0% vacancy rate, people don't really have a choice of where they're gonna live. Now, I don't think we have a basis to know whether there are a lot of people in this situation or just a few people in this situation. And I think it's worth giving some thought to figuring out how we find that out and what the scope of the problem is. And so what I would suggest we do is ask the city staff and the housing task force to spend some more time reviewing what we've done before and talking about it and rather than just saying, well, we put it on our list last year, but we're not gonna bother with it. Other thoughts, Tom? Well, and to start with where you're at, but then also, I guess, to assess, we know we have the older housing stock so that we also want to have renters, landlords doing the investment for energy efficiency. And so along those lines, we don't know how old their appliances are. We just so much information we don't know. So I just see an assessment would be helpful to us and other policies as well as immediately for the renters. Just for whatever anecdotal use this is, I actually put it to some of my students knowing that this was coming up, not that I'm gonna base, and my decisions are based on students telling me necessarily, but we were talking about housing and I said, we're considering the possibility of a rental inspection program. It happened to be that this particular group of students were a lot of children of renters and they unanimously were like, you definitely need a rental inspection program and they each had a story to go along with it, which I thought was fascinating actually. So where I'm at is that it feels like there's, it's worth investigating further. I'm not necessarily convinced that like this is, I think having an evaluation or having some kind of something to, just understand sort of what the needs are. And I think that actually gets to Ashley's point as well. Having a more holistic picture of what the barriers and needs are. I mean, to be fair, this is maybe something that we've been exploring, but if there is- We haven't looked at this. I mean, this came up, as Mike said, from you folks last year, it wasn't a staff proposal. And it was basically the goal was to have a conversation about whether we should do this. And it was just one of the last things on the list. So that's, we're kicking this off now. And obviously we've got a goal session coming up too at the time to think about it. But it seemed to me that certainly some assessment of the need is important. Maybe, we did talk about doing a community survey in general, and I think we could put in, we have some questions we could have. First of all, the data differences between homeowners and renters. And we could ask if you're a renter, have you had issues? Because they're all anonymous. Or maybe we could do some other forms of outreach to the renter community to try to give, anonymous survey just get a sense of people, you know, are you generally satisfied with letting those responses, the condition, do you have life safety issues? Or I mean, this, like, sorry to interrupt. I mean, this list is very interesting because, I mean, many of my friends are renters as well. And you know, as I think about some of the houses that I, you know, of my friends that I've been in, I wonder like, I don't know that they would all pass. Even all the stuff on the left. So, yes. Well, when used to do door-to-door campaigning, I mean, I was amazed at some of the places people live. Stairwells, getting to them, just that experience along because I haven't been a renter in Montpellier for a long time, but I started out as a renter and saw many nasty places that still exist. So I just feel that there is out there a lot of insufficient apartments. We do also have, just so people are aware, we do have one other means that we check on these things. And again, it's random or not random, but it's not systematic. But our police and fire, when they do go, or ambulance, when they go into apartments for other calls, if they spot something that looks odd, they do report it. So that's, you know, sometimes initiates our review. But again, that's only places that happen to get those calls and not any kind of random or regular systematic. So there is one other way of us seeing an apartment without necessarily being generated by a resident complaint. Sure. Connor, and then, did you have some? OK. Slightly off topic, but while we're endearing ourselves to landlords tonight, I do have any municipalities in Vermont who have either rent control or rent stabilization programs. And I'm not saying I support this necessarily, but I'm interested in it, with 40% of our residents paying renters. My understanding is that Burlington is the only one that I know of that has a form of rent control. I'd like to learn a little more about that before the council goal session, or as part of it if possible. I'm just going to push back on that a little bit, but not only in that, probably not as part of it. I don't want to, I mean. Like what I don't know could fill a book about it. It's incredibly complicated. So if somebody from Burlington ministered a program, I'd like a few ministers with the 10,000 foot fee of it. It would certainly be something else that would require a charter change, because I don't think it's enabled under state law. I mean, would a rental inspection program require a charter change? No, that would come out of the statute that's attached. Yes, right. OK. Why don't you Google it and let us all know? You recent. Let us know what you find. We passed charters left and right. How do we can chat? So Laura Gephardt, executive director of the Montpelier Development Corporation. And I just wanted to add on to the value of taking an assessment, because right now we're talking on anecdotes, which are important. But it's hard to have a full view of what the problem is. So I would definitely encourage that. And I'd be happy on behalf of MDC to partner on any sort of assessment that's done. And then I just want to provide the other perspective from the perspective of the landlord. You know, full disclosure, I'm a renter and I've been a renter for my adult life. So I get that perspective. But I also interact quite a bit with landlords. And from the communities I worked with in Pennsylvania, there was numerous municipalities that had rental inspections. So just considering the impact that may have, and even deterring people from wanting to have rental apartments, especially as we're considering the accessory dwelling units. When we have such a low vacancy rate, just consider how that may deter people from adding rental units to our market. So I think that's just another important nugget. I think quality of our rental units is incredibly important. But just to think about the other implications of how rental inspections, if that's what is needed, how that's rolled out, and what are the implications of that, there's a lot of layers to be considered. Jack. No city in Vermont has rent control. Burlington. Burlington has provision requiring a 90-day notice, which is longer than other places have. We do have a rent review for a lot rents in trailer parks. It's not actually rent control, but it is an opportunity to challenge rent increases. And I spent years working to be at that past, but no other rental housing is subject to rent control. And of course, if you have a rental agreement that fixes the rent, the landlord is stuck with the rent at that during the period of term. There's federally subsidized housing of various kinds, but no generally applicable rent control. Ashley, go ahead. I was in one other policy matter I lived in other places in Mass that they would actually cap the percentage that your rent could increase from term to term. So if you had a year lease, they were capped at raising your rent by no more than x percentage if you renewed that lease. So if you wanted to stay on for a second year and the landlord was willing to have you, they couldn't raise the rent. I've lived in places where it's gone from $1,000 to $1350 in the matter of a month. And nothing has changed, but it's just going to cost you $350 more to live there. But some municipalities will cap the percentage increase that a landlord can charge if you renew. So I think there's a significant I mean, so I think it's worth looking at it. There's a significant debate in the housing and economic community whether rent control is good policy because it tends to reduce investment in properties because people aren't taking the money in. It creates even higher, I mean, lower vacancy rates because people that have a rent control department don't leave them. And so I think there's definitely a pro and con. Certainly the people that are in them benefit, but to the extent that it becomes if a landlord can't afford to keep up because the rent isn't going up, then not. I think it's worth, it's a forked on a few economics classes on that. So what I feel like I'm hearing is that there is some interest in some level of looking at either the quality of apartments, even the things that are on the left hand column or other issues, or even barriers that renters face. So I guess one proposal, and I'm open to other suggestions if people have them, but I guess I'm coming back to Jack's suggestion about, and Donna's suggestion, too, about having some kind of an assessment and or working with the housing task force because that seems like a natural place or a group to collaborate with this. And I mean, it sounds to me like it merits further discussion, at least. So I don't know if we can, or if we should, especially if anything further than that. Any other ideas or thoughts on that as far as next steps go? Yeah, Ellen Lauren. I mean, I would just echo a lot of what I've heard from Donna and Ashley and Jack and others of just, I think it's a great idea to have the housing task force look into it. Like I think getting data seems like a great first step before we don't want to solve a problem that we don't have or make sure that we're solving the right problems and have the right program to do it. So data seems like a great step, but it seems like if we're going to go through that effort, making sure that if there's other policies and things that we're thinking about that we're getting the data at the same time. So it's not like, oh, we also want to do this energy efficiency thing, and we missed the bow on getting a bunch of data that we could have gotten. So just doing some thinking around, like what's coming down the pike that we could ask the right questions of whatever data collection exercise we go through. Well, that makes me think about Bill, the community survey that we're planning to do. So if we can keep some of that in mind, I mean, what's the timeline on that survey? We haven't started yet, but it technically starts with, I mean, July, the July 1 budget. Right, right. Wouldn't be before then. But that seems fair. It's within the scope of the coming year. I don't know that we need any motion about that. I'll take it back to the task force. Does that seem amenable to folks? Further conversation? OK, I guess Donna. Jack, I believe at one time there was a rental and landlord rights. And I believe it's a brochure I saw that the state put out. And maybe we could all educate ourselves and also make sure that that's more available. Maybe we can make a link on our website or something. There's some ways to be proactive. It's already there. We have the right section on that. It was actually one of your priorities. Last year, yeah? Yes, it was done. So we can send you the link. Great. All right, further discussion? To be continued. Thank you so much. This is very helpful, actually. OK. I've actually been on the other side of one of these cases. This is a long time ago, but I litigated a case up at October Lane where the city was condemning a unit. And I was representing the tenants to try to keep them in the building. But it was very tough to be in a position where the city says we've determined that the foundation is unfit. And this section of the building is actually likely to collapse if we don't get this vacated so the work can be done. Well, the only case that we've had in my time that went to court, one of your colleagues was there representing the tenants for the same reasons. And it was like, do you want them to live in squalor? But their argument was they got to live somewhere. And so it was an interesting case. OK, moving on then. OK, so we have some appointments to make. And none of them could be here for the Tree Board appointments nor the Conservation Commission. And so with the first one, there were two applicants for one seat. So it's very likely that we will go into. I move we go into executive session pursuant to one VSA, section 313A3, to consider the appointment of a public officer. I'll second. Ashley, do we do it for both? I mean, I know it's. But if we take them both up at the same time. The second one only has one, right? Right, yeah. Is that a minimal? We'll do both of them in the second session. OK, so we will be coming out of this executive session, even though it's our last item, to vote. And oh, we haven't gotten in yet. OK, so all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK, so we will be back shortly. The Tree Board and Stephen Seats to the Conservation Commission. I think these are both people who are able to provide great service to the city. Stephen Seats has spent many years in service, especially in the field of conservation. And Sean White, with her work with the project manager at Friends of the Winooski River and her obvious knowledge and devotion to the subject, is going to be a great addition to the Tree Board. Second. Was that a second? No. OK, OK. I thought it was a motion. I was like, I was with us. Yes, I started out with, I moved, too. OK, for the discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK, congratulations to Stephen and Sean. All right, so we have no other business, so we're going to move on to council reports. Let's start with Lauren, and we'll go around this way, if you don't mind. Or do you want to go, would you like to go last again? I forgot we do this. We'll give you some time. You can pass. Let's start with Donna, and we'll go this way. You can, in the middle, in the end, we're very flexible. Yes, as Connor mentioned, micro transit has been meeting, and we are going to be putting out a white paper, probably by the mid-April, so that's going to be circulated. And right now, the talk is, if to make GMT a partnership in that, and that they would be taking the capital shuttle, the circulator route, and funding, and potentially Montpellier Hospital Hill, and put them together into a micro transit route that would be on an app, as well as call-in, mostly app-related, so you could get a ride within 10 minutes. And so they're going to do some simulation with some software on their ideas, but that's where it's moving forward. But I also want to go back. Any questions about micro transit? You have to see me and Colin after side the meeting, because we're going to get out here by 10. I do have one question about this, though. Is the, would it be the same hours, or would it be? Oh, no, none of that. No, I can't get into that kind of detail at all yet. OK, that's fine. They're just taking the resources, putting three vehicles on it, and trying to work from there. So I just have one really quick question, which is, you said they've compiled data about commuters and parking, and if I could get that data, that would be really helpful, because that's one of the things I was asked for. And it's like this incredible, Ken Jones has it from the state. He's the one who provided it. Perfect. So, yes, yes. I know it in the paper. I don't have the gross data, but you can get it from Ken. Ken Jones has it. Yeah, it's really good. And just one other thing is just that the park commission and the park staff are thrilled to have this new truck coming. The old one not only was just having a lot of aging issues, it never quite fit their needs. And if they had a crew, they always had to bring another vehicle. Whereas the new truck is laid out to carry more people. It must be a double cab front. And that's really important, because they rarely go out one at a time. So anyway, they've been talking about the parks commission and are thrilled. Thank you. All right. I was going to try to throw something together tonight. And John might weigh in on this, but I spoke to a couple of members of House government operations. It sounds like it was a pretty good testimony today on the non-US citizen voting issue. But the second point, I think, at the committee is just the safety of the list there. Not wanting people to be necessarily identified as non-US citizens, and maybe opening up an exemption in the Public Records Act to put that in there. But what they might want from this council at some point is a resolution or some sort of statement, just saying that we would be committed to, and this would be parallel language to, the voter checklist on a state level, not handing it over to a foreign or federal entity. That's a law right now. So if we maybe have a resolution on that in the future, it could be helpful. Is that a resolution to follow the law? Yeah, I'm sorry. He said it was a law. Well, for the statewide voter checklist, it is a law. It would be a bit different than I know you're bustling my child's car. You're a really good chance. It's Connor. Connor, it's like a whole lot. Yeah. It's a big one. It's funny. All right. Just checking to make sure you two are done. For the moment, I don't have much to talk about this week. I'm pleased that the chunk of the Winooski that we're on seems to have iced out, that's great. It was a good thing to see on Sunday night, Monday morning. I went on Monday afternoon to another way down on Barry Street and talked with them once again. It's great there. And that seems like a really good group of people to keep in touch with, to keep in the loop on city matters. I'm going to keep going once a month. They have a Monday meeting, 2 o'clock to 3 o'clock. And I'll be there every last Monday of the month. They invited any other council members to come along, too, if you ever want to show up. It's, again, 2 to 3 Monday afternoons. And I'll be there on the last Monday. And that grew out of my Thursday mornings at Baguitos. And I'll be back there again tomorrow morning, 8.30 to 9.30 as usual. So see you there. Thank you. Yeah, I think I've talked enough tonight. I'm passing, too. And I have gone to the Social and Economic Justice Committee, as I said. And there's some good progress being made on a strategic plan. I'm happy to announce it's some tangible next step. So I look forward to updating you as that plays out. But it was a very positive meeting. And I think the idea of taking some of these policy ideas and trying to run it through and see how can this committee be effective at giving a lens to all of our policies is exciting. And I went to the Montpiler Energy Advisory Committee as well. And they're just cranking on all cylinders for lots and lots of projects. But until there's one that's kind of actionable at the moment, I'll spare you. So thanks for your good morning. I'm going to highlight one of those projects. I wasn't at the last meeting. I wasn't able to go, so I was glad you were able to be there. But one of the things that has come up as a possibility, and I just want to flag it for you all, is the rec building. As we know, I see some changes sometime in the next year too, as we'll see. But that's not connected to district heat. It's a standalone oil burner. For now, that's what's heating the building. And one of the possibilities that we could look into is switching that heating system over to biodiesel. So there may be some possibility that we may need to change a little bit of the infrastructure to make that transition happen. But it's relatively minimal. Anyway, so just want to just put it on your radar. It's something that we may talk about or may come to us over the next year. So we'll see. And I think that is actually all the, oh, actually there was one other update that I wanted to add, which is that the public, the City Hall Art Committee is meeting tomorrow at 3.30. And it's meeting here? Yeah. And right, so we'll be talking about the art in this room and perhaps out in the hallway as well. And just so you know, I think the general, well, actually, I shouldn't really, I don't really know necessarily, but something that has come up is wanting some color in here. That seems fair. So anyway, just putting that out there. We're not colorful enough. Yeah. We can't all look good. I tried to take the advice I was given. Yes. The other piece of the arts committee is that the Public Art Commission has been invited to join us, looking more at the whole building. So some of them may come. Great. John. I have enough. You want to speak into your mic? Nothing. OK. I just have one thing also related to MIAC. The chair of the committee, Ms. Stevenson, had advised me that there's actually a vote on the International Building Code coming up. And various officials have the right to vote up to four votes. A mobiliar would be one of them. And so she had suggested that we registered the deadlines Friday. So we had a meeting today with our staff. And we recommend so it can be elected officials or staff officials. And we had recommended that it be our building inspector, our fire chief was the assistant building inspector, the planning director, and me. But that we asked the MIAC for advice. There were some issues, specific issues they have concerns on so that they flag for us. But then the people not counting myself the other through a more knowledgeable would be able to vote on the other aspects of the code. That said, if anybody wants to take one of those seats, it's certainly over that. But we have to register by Friday. So I said I'd run it up the flagpole tonight. That was our plan. I did let her know that was my plan. And she didn't object to it. But some others here may have better information than I do. So I'm going to go. I trust your judgment. Yes. Well, I'm grateful that you'll be taking input from MIAC and others. Yeah. Yeah. That was there. Certainly, we weren't even aware it was happening. So thanks to them for pointing it out. Do we need to move that efficiently? You don't have to, but you could, I suppose. I just want to make sure that there's. Sure. Why don't you move it? Yeah. Not designate those four of us. I second her motion. Did you move that? I made that motion. And Donna has seconded it. OK. I'm sure you get the time right there. There you go. Because we're coming up on the mayor's deadline. That's right. Let's see if we can vote fast. Further discussion. On behalf of the SAI? All right. Opposed? OK. That came up under other business? Yes. Well. Yes. Whatever. Yeah, that's fair. OK. Great. So I think that is everything. So without objection, I will adjourn the meeting. All right. That's 58. Done. There you go.