 instructions rather on exiting the building in case of an emergency. Thank you so for those who are here in person you can go out either door at the back and to the right area left and head outside. For those participating remotely thank you for being here. If you would like to make a content comment throughout the meeting please let me know in the chat and Helen will call on you otherwise we are not monitoring the chat for content. Thanks. All righty item three agenda review additions deletions or changes in order of agenda items. Are there any? Seeing none we'll move on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Is there anyone here to speak? Oh Rosanne. Okay thank you. I'm gonna try to keep this brief you know me I ramble a lot so I made notes. So I'm speaking yeah I'm speaking to you now because a time is running out for the ash trees. I'm once again the ash lady on my street. Last year I was told by Public Works that half of all of the ash trees on my street are going to be cut down before the end of the year and I think they're meeting the fiscal year which is only three weeks away. There are three ash trees in front of mine house. Two of the three have ribbons around them although some of the ribbons are disappearing and I have not taken the ribbons off but that means two of the three may be cut down before maybe you had the time to take this up. So I'm trying to urge you to hold off the cutting down of the trees at least on Four Sisters Road until you make your decision because once they're cut down obviously then there's no hope. But in the larger context I'm again asking the city to hear from true experts with ash trees and with methods to address the emerald ash borer. Since the time that the Public Works Department wrote their plan new tree bit methods have been tried and they are successfully saving tens of thousands of trees. In fact I just talked to the tree expert tonight and he said the price is dropping to like five bucks an inch which I can go into the details if you want. Anyway treating the trees buys you time even if you decide to cut them down you can start planting new trees now but also it buys you time if new technologies come out that are even even better than what they've got now. Right now it's like every three years. So moreover we've got climate change and with climate change we need every tree we have. Mature trees store so much more carbon than small trees and it takes it will take decades for the trees that we're planting now to have that power to store that kind of carbon and of course once you cut these mature trees down they release the carbon that they have been storing. I don't know if you've read the report the Associated Press report that was in the Burlington Free Press on Sunday that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have shot past the key milestones. It was measured just in the past week or so at 421 parts per million of carbon dioxide before the industrial age it was 280 parts per million and you know the whole 350 was the benchmark and we're blown past that. According to the report the world is putting in 10 billion metric tons of carbon in the air each year but much of it gets drawn down by oceans and plants and trees sequester a lot of the carbon. So and of course in addition to storing the carbon they reduce heat they filter out air pollution they suck up storm water they nurture wildlife they even improve people's mental and physical health and there are records that say they crime levels drop when there are lots of trees around. But just like that the fact that carbon dioxide levels are rising when they should be falling around the country. We should be planting trees but we are losing trees American cities are losing 36 million trees every year and unfortunately South Burlington is doing the same thing. So rather than using the proven and cheaper methods to treat our trees our city is cutting them down. It's also cheaper to cut them down. Treating them is way cheaper than cutting down replacing them. The estimates are you can get 20 years of treatment for the cost of cutting down our trees. So the current plan is to cut them all down. There were at 1.860 street ash trees. I think I read something on the city website that now we've cut down 200 of them. I'd say unnecessarily but we can save them. Other places are saving them. You inject it into the trunk. It does not affect other species and it has been shown to work in especially in Minnesota, another place. So again urging you, urging you to stop the axe, stop the saw from cutting the trees down. I know the NRCC is I think going to take this up to get more information. So just hold off till you get more information. If you then decide to cut them down okay but once you cut them down that's an irreversible action. You can't uncut them but if you don't cut them now you can always decide to cut them down in the future. So that's my urgent plea and time is running out. You got three weeks if the public works plan goes as planned. 15 of the trees on my street of the 30 ash trees will be gone in a few weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else? We had a number of people join us. I don't know if you're here for interviews or to speak from the public. Okay. Is there anyone else in TV land out there who wants to speak? Okay. We'll move on then to announcements and the city managers report. Tom any announcements? To come to mind Helen I saw you last week at the civic and community leader day at the Vermont National Guard. So that was good to see the operations that are happening out on the airfield. And also I don't necessarily think this was because of my current role as a city councilor but I have been asked and I have accepted to serve on I think you're aware of this Helen on the airport director hiring committee. So the mayor asked me and Karen Paul also followed up. That was about a week and a half ago when I get more details on what that process looks like I'll be happy to bring it forward to this group. Megan? Yeah. First of all I'm sorry I was a couple minutes late I was caught up speaking with Alana Blanchard and actually asking her question for a constituent with regard to the timing for the construction of the Williston streetscape. And she's hoping that it will be happening in 24-25. Her hope is that the Garden Street phase one will be done in 2023. It's currently started 2024. There's going to be the Williston streetscape and then 24-25. It's going to be Garden Street phase two. So just wanted to put that out there and I'll respond to constituents who were curious about that as well. Just some feedback that Williston Road is treacherous for drivers. And some also feedback with regard to treacherous for cyclists. There is a family in our community and the son who was in high school was struck by a car on Dorset Street last October currently in reeducation and therapy. And her concern is that we do not have enough lights. This occurred at a time of day when the lights were an issue, the lighting. This was on Dorset Street. Does she mean not stop lights but the overhead lights? Overhead lights. The light the streets. Exactly. And I believe that he was on the west side of Dorset and it's true that the biking infrastructure there just is not very, I don't think that it could be considered biking infrastructure. There's more on the east side. So I just wanted to pass that along. She said that she had already made an inquiry but hadn't heard back. So just a little nod to Jesse I think that if you could let me know if there's any feedback that I could give to her about what kind of infrastructure including lighting on Dorset that would be helpful. And of course people are concerned also about Swift Street but I know that there's going to be some continued attention to Swift Street and Spear Street as well. Yeah and that's that's about it. Okay thank you. Matt. Yes thank you just for quick things. One is a wonderful presentation just now. Learned from about Vermont Randolph artist Phil Godin-Schwager. Did I get that right John? In our beautiful clock. Yet another reason for anyone that hasn't that's watching this at home to visit City Hall and an artist to see that wonderful clock was also at the on-logic ribbon-cutting digging ceremony where we're going to build a computer factory for the future here in South Burlington and a Memorial Day event with with Megan at Veterans Park which was very nice event. And then the last thing just to shout out kudos to DPW who answered a constituents concern about Feral Park Latch Dog Park Latch not closing and it happened so good for them. Thank you. Tim. Sure thanks. So I was really it was unfortunate that I could not attend the Memorial Day ceremony at Veterans Park. I had to drive to Boston to fetch my son and his girlfriend for the weekend because their car was involved in an accident and was undriveable unfortunately. That would have been the first time that they could drive up without us having to do two round trips. But anyway I met with Nick Longo at the airport two weeks ago and had a really nice long talk on a Friday afternoon and it's funny that picture that was in the other paper was exactly where I was sitting with the big table with the glass and the diagram and and we did a lot of marking and looking at stuff and I was brought up to date on a lot of issues and learned things I didn't know before. I was really grateful for that that long interview with him and then he gave me a tour of the new terminal a 22 million dollar you know construction project that's progressing nicely so it's looking good. Yeah had a good conversation really impressed. Good thanks. Helen, could I? Yes I should have said this earlier perhaps but since I miss the additions deletions etc I would like to add under other business if this is an appropriate time I know I miss that. I would like us to discuss the ash trees because I think that there have been some developments that we should consider as a council with regard to the policy. I don't know if that's... Okay and we could discuss whether we put it on our next agenda and have some because as I understand it the Natural Resources Committee is getting some information on that so it's always helpful to listen to our committees of jurisdiction on different things and interests to hear what they have to do the research we can always do and will there be trees coming down between tonight and that Natural Resources Committee report? I don't know I didn't know there was that NRCC report coming. Yeah okay well I mean if we could just discuss it under other business I would appreciate it. Okay I did go to the air guard I stayed the whole time and it ran another hour was it was long but it was interesting and it was good to to meet everyone and you know you always learn a little bit more a little tidbit for people the helmets they wear which takes they don't really have a dashboard like they used to it's all on this screen in front of their head and the helmets are four hundred thousand dollars and it takes them three or four hours to get fitted because they have to be exactly fitted because any movement changes what they're looking at on the screen and it so it was just kind of interesting and it was it was kind of cute in a way because the two pilots you know they took off and then they were gone for an hour and a half and they came back and as we were leaving they were coming in and they just had such big grins on their face I mean they just love this flying and it was it was just kind of interesting to see adults that kind of joyous about their work however you feel about that work but you know not everyone comes from work and has this big grin and you know loving to talk about it so that was kind of interesting um I also had an airport condition meeting and a climate task force in fact we had no just two we had two climate task force and a city school leadership meeting that I will report on at the end of the of the meeting when it's on the schedule but so that has kept me busy all right city manager who's also been busy thank you I do have a number of updates tonight I think the council may be aware of some of these but also want community to be aware so on Friday afternoon Mayor Weinberger and I jointly announced that fire chief Steven Locke who currently serves as the fire chief in Burlington will be joining our team in South Burlington on July 11th he has almost 29 years of fire and EMS experience really entrenched in that service delivery system but also has served as an interim town manager and interim interim chief administrative officer and really brings that acumen and building budgets and using data to make decisions and staffing as well so super excited to welcome him to the team I do want to acknowledge that Chief Francis has been incredibly thoughtful as we plan for his next stage of his career as folks may know he's been in the fire service for 48 years coming up on 50 years of service he will maintain operational control through August 14th on August 15th Chief Locke will take over much like Kevin and I did for our transition period and Chief Francis will assume the role of fire marshal overseeing building inspection construction inspection and fire prevention and it's really in thanks to Chief Francis's leadership that we're able to do such a smooth transition into the years to come I want to give the council a quick update on the superintendent's search so as you know I'm on that hiring committee they've been working extraordinarily hard under the leadership of Dr. Boyer on the school board the committee will be interviewing candidates tomorrow night and Wednesday night we have four candidates we are interested in I don't know if three interviews scheduled and the fourth I think to be scheduled there is going to be a community forum on June 13th from six to eight to interview the the two finalists who come out of that process and just a reminder this is just for the interim superintendent position for the next year as the community does the full community involves search I want to give you a couple of updates on infrastructure projects we are cruising along with some big projects so we our teams have been working with Sun Common on the solar panels on the roof of this building that blew off during the storm they have re-engineered the holding system how they're attached to the roof and will be here towards the end of the month to take off all of the solar panels shore up the holding system and reattach them that will require scaffolding to be put up around the front of the building the building will remain open the entire time but it will look pretty aggressive from the front so we will do some more notification on that obviously it's all under warranty work on the muddy brook culvert project at Kimbell and Marshall the replacement of the culvert is fully substantially complete it's open the rec path is open it's a huge project coming to an end I mentioned this to some of you at the art event earlier at the library the wheeler dog park fence has been ordered with a expected date around the end of June and instill it in the folks will install it at that point so hopefully by early july that will be completed the samansky park tennis and basketball court renovations will begin at the end of june june 29th and go through the summer excuse me my internet just one time I don't want to lose the thing and then this is about the dorset street signal project not lighting so just want to be really clear on that we have been awaiting a permit from v-trans to allow that project to move forward to install the mast arms this year or next depending on materials so we've received verbal confirmation that we've received that permit and expect to bid out the project in late june early july that is later than I had previously told you because of this v trans permit requirement um a couple of updates on outreach to the community um you all previously worked with consensus the polling app they are back under the name of Penelope and we are working with them to again maintain a pilot status of that product in the community so you'll be seeing some um advertisement about that you'll hear more about this from Alana later on but the we are later on your agenda you'll consider the contract for the bike ped pedestrian bridge over 80 over interstate 89 assuming you all approve that contract on thursday june 16th will be the first workshop associated with a planning for that project from 530 to 830 here at city hall and virtually as well so much we'll be pushing that out widely through the networks but we'll have to get it onto your calendars as well um you've likely seen that the grand list has been lodged for the year um and change of appraisals or allocations have gone out the grievance period is from was from june 2nd through june 16th um and we will hear any grievances with after that date um we'll give you a quick heads up that the library hours with the with fy 23 budget um you may remember we increased some staffing hours in the library to result in increased hours of operation we are working to bring on those staff now and anticipate that once those staff are on board we will be able to extend those hours this summer so that's more hours on saturday and some later evening hours as well right um similarly with budget success uh the police department has the has acquired the first kind of tranche of body worn cameras and has trained the first set of officers to pilot lows get them used to them figure out the procedures and then we'll fully roll out to the rest of the team later in the fiscal year as you know the how affordable housing rfp is on the street um thank you for approving that scope of work um the respondents for that are due um at the end of july with committee then to review and bring you back proposals in september that was a lot i will leave it there thank you thank you um okay so moving on to the consent agenda we have three items disbursements a stormwater system improvement agreement with the burlington country club and accepting and approving for recording in the south burlington land records the warranty deed of easement from south burlington city center llc for a multi-use path i moved to approve the consent agenda is there a second second is there any discussion yes you have a question just um one small thing about item b which is the stormwater system improvement agreement there was no diagram and i really like to have diagrams maps of what is involved i was trying to imagine exactly 1700 feet south of the dale miller research facility on spear street i mean i think it's like where the road kind of flattens out you know where mr van turkovich is going to do his project i hope someday but i wasn't sure so i was trying to understand where that runoff water is coming from because it's a hill right and it goes down and flattens and then there's like a like the cornfield is depressed lower than spear street so i just wasn't sure so that's all i have to say so david wheeler i believe is on a call oh yeah i see his name david if you over there and can answer tim's question that would be great yes um can you all hear me i know my microphone on my laptop is not very good yes we can so the project location it's along spear street and it is south of the miller research farm there is um there's a little access road to the the other medium facility the um i forget the meaning of it like the bio research complex the maple yeah i believe that's the one so it's right right that location um currently it's just kind of a wooden corner that's part of the country club um so it's it's more or less on the country club property some golfers will be able to see it and then folks running along the bike path they will also be able to see the gravel islands and we're going to have some informational signage on the bike path side so will we have to cut down some trees for that yep there'll be chair removal and then like a hedge of trees to replace the trees we cut down okay all right thank you thank you david um any other questions so we ready okay we have a motion to approve in second so if you're ready for the vote all in favor of the consent agenda as presented signify by saying aye that's unanimous and approved we're four minutes ahead of time we can't start four minutes ahead of time can we you can start after the time but not before okay um i could make a general comment about the kimball avenue bridge if you'd like okay so i had the opportunity to ride my bicycle across the pedestrian bike lane and it's very nice you're pedaling back to work right yes i am yes like because i after august of last year i couldn't do that anymore right especially with all the construction on industrial lab which by the way industrial lab will be closed from 7 p.m to 6 a.m sunday through thursday starting june 13th for a couple weeks i think or less just so you know don't use industrial lab at night so i couldn't ride through that because it was a complete disaster area right you know it's very tight for bikes and there's jersey barriers and so but now i can resume so thank you thank you williston too yeah right that was it a wonderful example of joint work cooperation and collaboration and federal dollars right for a state maybe a state can i ask tim oh sorry good the the bike study that's happening down off of well near queen city park have you been meeting that that study is they had their final meeting and they're going to go forward with the plan that they have i guess they're gonna i don't know what step actually is next but they're they've done all their work and it looks good there are three proposals one of them stands out as being the best one so i i think they did a really good job and it'll work out who does that go who makes the final decision i don't remember i'm sorry yeah are you going to be reporting more on that under the committee reports or can i say that again are you gonna are you going to talk more about this under the committee report um i can i mean it's it's this it's the same they've had several meetings featuring the same exact plans each time it's either take the sidewalks out or put bike lanes on the side or put a double bike lane on one side but the bridge element is not part of the project and that's a really key part because the pedestrian walkway is basically it's a metal grid so your pets your dogs can't walk comfortably across that people complain about that and it's very narrow so in this round that that that is just not they can't do anything about that bridge at this point with the new amtrak line you know burling to new york city i mean that goes right over the tracks right and would there be any i'm sure you don't know the only factor that would positively impact a schedule for that bridge is the fact that they can't transport a you know how middlebury had the huge project in order to allow double stacked shipping containers on flatbed railroad cards right so that bridge cannot is not tall enough right so if but i don't know how many double stacks would come through on that line you know i don't know mostly it's it's not that kind of stuff so but it was important for middlebury so this that will probably be a factor at some point where they'll decide to raise that bridge and then we'll have the opportunity to have a real pedestrian pathway across that that gorge thank you that was my i was curious about that thank you okay four minutes one minute to go so maybe paul you can slowly walk to the table get settled turn on the speaker how's the baby baby is doing great he's just crossed a year and he's uh begun to express his own opinions of lots of things so wow but just just the beginning yeah that's just the beginning the baby was in the marathon too uh he was very close to the marathon did you run paul uh no my wife ran but uh part of it she ran a relay i i ate croissant watching it also a great way to participate that's right that's support that is real support you were a croissant guard is that what you were a croissant guard uh that's good did you run tim i tried to but they weren't accepting last minute substitutions for the relays because of their covid protocol okay all right well we have met the bewitching hour of seven o'clock so we need a motion to enter um i a public hearing for the official map amendment number om 22-01 i moved to open the public hearing for official map amendment om 22-01 okay all in favor all right so the public hearing is open do you want to just quickly for the public go over what this i mean it's pretty simple absolutely so uh the proposal here um as approved by the planning commission is to do some minor amendments to the city's official map the city's official map is uh a regulatory document that when the private sector comes in for subdivision or development needs to accommodate the facility that is um proposed um that is shown on the official map and if you could just give me one second here going to share my screen there we go uh so it um needs to be accommodated and so therefore it's important which properties are included because it is a regulatory document so in this case uh what is proposed to be done is the uh bike tread bridge that you were looking at later this evening for design services is planned at that bottom crossing of i-89 there and um the this would essentially serve as a placeholder for the time being of making sure that we've at least have a basic structure of where it would connect east and west so over to dorset street up to williston road uh over to quarry hill road and up to again williston road on the west side of the interstate you'll see that there are some lines in red already shown this would um as i said it's important to show which properties this is on so this would move it on to the private side in some cases we already have easements to do this um in the rest of the cases we have communicated with the affected property owners and the one that is shown sort of going through the staples plaza is already a planned roadway so it's it's not really changing anything there except to provide a signal to ourselves that if and when a roadway goes in we want to make sure that it has accommodations for bicycles in that roadway so that's what this is um it is as i described a little bit of a placeholder because we are planning this coming fiscal year to engage in a more robust design plan to look at exactly where it should be placed on each side um we have already communicated with the umal new ownership they're very excited to be a part of that that may mean that it gets located in a different location over time but this is really just making sure that it's on the map legally for now we did not receive any comments written leading up to this hearing we received one at the planning commission level that the planning commission made an adjustment of a labeling issue so that's what we got okay thank you is there um anyone in the public who wishes to comment on this um map change anyone no one in the public sitting in the auditorium is there anyone else is caller number one is that that's just when they're a caller the thing is green always okay so if there's okay well if there's no comments anyone on the council no just just to clarify just for people watching back home we need as you've explained well paul we need to put it on the map because if anyone wants to build something we need to make sure that we are commenting it but it doesn't necessarily mean exactly where it's going to go correct it's important to i know you said that but i'm just highlighting yep correct so that may not be the exact location but it is the affected properties in this case they're all very well aware of it in some cases it might be a roadway and a roadway may not go in the precise location but but it would be through that property and the the developer in that case as they're thinking about how to develop their property would make sure that they're accommodating this this is a win-win of a project that everybody's excited about and so accommodating a feature to connect you to the other side of the interstate is something that the that the property owners are excited about so excellent thank you okay great quick question yes on the map where it has planned road versus planned path yep the green dashed lines are planned road why are you calling those roads uh so the black line here is an existing planned roadway and the green next to it is a planned path to accompany that so similar to let's say the new garden street design where there's a street and a path next to it oh okay the black line is already on our official map that if ever the um the staples plaza has redeveloped that would be an opportunity we have seen fairly recently this little stub was built as part of the first phase of the quarry hill building so this is signaling a planned roadway already adopted now a planned path to accompany my apologies that's a black dash not a green dash so now i see correctly thank you it's an interesting exercise in color management especially when it looks slightly different between the screen and my monitor here so right okay there's no further comment um i would enter oh did you have a question oh i will just add that i i think that uvm's very excited about this um talked about at a faculty senate meeting and um they were very excited to and also to know that likely there will be housing going in at the umal site so it's this is real potential for i think important student access to campus um and from campus to potentially not only a shopping area but also housing so well thank you and this is bringing together slowly many many many pieces so uh you'll see in your um quarterly policy updates in a week or two that we have worked with the bike share folks where they're going to be adding four new stations into south burlington one of them will be in the quarry hill area so it's bringing all the pieces together of people being able to uh use an electric bike share in the same place that we're adding the facilities and the housing etc so yeah so yeah since we're talking about collaboration tonight this is a really nice piece that's that's really working with two communities and and several entities i think just uh it's it's a really it's a huge huge win for the region so i'm yeah yeah absolutely thank you i think it's a huge win for the new owners of the umal also i mean i think that's probably in part maybe why that it finally sold and they're really talking about some interesting changes there so that's all good all right so i would entertain a motion to come oh one more question question i just thought of something else looking at the exit 14 so um just to understand that keeping in mind the cc rpcs vision 89 study that they were doing recently and um the possible reconfiguration of exit 14 is the federal interstate highway right of way is that a hard and fast um easement that can't be moved by the feds i just want to understand because the clover leaf is a non-standard clover leaf as they said before it has different radii as you come off the interstate or enter and if they wanted to reconfigure that i mean is could that could be could we be encumbering them in some some way or do they have room to play within their own boundaries so what we're looking at on the official map here is outside of their boundaries um so that likely would not be a problem the designs that i have seen for at least the the north bound east exit would be to narrow up not to expand and if that were to happen at some point in the future the relocation of a recreation path to follow that is a minor expense compared with that so i think it would be consistent um and that can certainly be a question as we enter this next phase of the project which is to look at some um more specific designs here of making sure that we're not uh counterpurposed to anything about the future um i d nine envision a nine project thanks yeah good question okay so i would um entertain a motion to public hearing yes i was so moved second all in favor hi and then an adoption recommendation motion a move that we adopt the proposed amendment to the official map number zero or no it's om dash two two dash zero one as presented as presented okay is there a second second any discussion all in favor hi hi so it passes thank you paul thanks everyone yeah thank you yeah so i guess we did eight as well as seven so now we are a tiny bit ahead but only five minutes so with um we have lots of lots of people um this is always a group who has lots of questions so you don't seem to be able to i have one more announcement pardon me you have one more announcement so i said i went to boston to get my son and his daughter and his girlfriend to bring back right it was her first marathon she ran competitively at bu and in high school she was the number five female that crossed the line in boston no here oh here and never having run a marathon before wow she missed the five hundred dollar prize by one second oh wow simply because of difference between mat time and gun time and and their rules unfortunately but just want to a shout out to abby googly for doing a fantastic job at the marathon helped pay for the accident too bad no more announcements for me i'm sorry okay i'll make just a quick announcement that's great i followed congratulations yeah um alana also said that this bike bed bridge would be in 2025 so that's right around the corner too that's really right yeah so almost to the finish line i do want to share just with garden street williston road and the bike bed bridge we still need bond votes so they will only happen if we approve the bond vote next town meeting day very very true very very well hopefully we'll generate lots of support in the public with these uh isn't the williston road the toll i don't think the williston road streetscape is a bond vote is it it is a tiff bond vote it'll likely be one it'll likely be one final tiff bond vote together but that will be up to the council to decide as we get closer to tell me the finish roll up yes in our window for bond votes are is closing so we need this coming march for town meeting day 2023 yeah they have to pass that time or else the door is shut so that's the next regular scheduled or that is the last regular scheduled election on which we can approve the tiff bonds we could have a special election always have a special election before in august or november exactly yeah but tom since you won't be running for city council you could campaign for this bond vote i'll be knocking on doors for it it'll be give you something to do okay let's move on to interviews and applicants and i just would note i guess there's an order somewhere right but i did want to identify for the council and get your council we have um a couple committees where we could all the people who have applied will will hear tonight and that's the common area for dogs so we could make a decision tonight which i would encourage us while it's fresh in our minds because we will have heard from everyone um energy and public art well energy i thought emily holt guzzlin can't make it tonight so we can't do the energy we're one short there and then what's the other one public art public art so those are two just fyi we'll hear everyone in the order but um we can make those decisions tonight and that will give us a a leg up and we still need some more applications we're short a charter member economic development member pension and two for recreation and parks so as we go through this um you know some some of the committees have many more applicants than there are openings so we might be able to convince someone to think about it a different committee but those are the openings okay um so where is the order see you can do in whatever order you would oh okay um you could just go down from the top you could focus on common area for dogs and public art first well why don't we go down from the top and start with john simpson who is an incumbent and he's interested in the affordable housing committee to continue is he on the line he is online okay we see your and uh am i move muted no we can hear you now um hello john there we are we all know you quite well we can make this probably fairly brief so um and as you describe yourself you're seasoned um tell us why we need your seasoning well i had thought of applying uh personal term limits and not reapplying it's been 10 years i've been on the the regular committee and then all of the predecessors since 2012 so uh it's been a while but it's been quite rewarding and fun and i think i have made a good contribution but my colleagues on the committee several of them suggested that i shouldn't resign i should continue and and then with the ARPA funds and your very generous uh designation of a million dollars to to affordable housing and uh things like the mall and there's just a lot happening and you know i think affordable housing has come to the fore uh in the whole region and then the whole nation really and i think everybody in the city understands the need and uh and we've made some good decisions about where and now it's time to uh do what we can to where we have to change zoning to do that where we have to do some more things to incentivize private developers we should but i think the the challenges are there and i'm up for it i'm uh excited and uh have the energy and prepared to uh to serve okay any questions that are you clearly know the time commitment all right well we i would i would just since he's seasoned can i maybe um john what would you see as uh you know the the needs of the committee since you are uh you and sandi are incumbents that we're going to be talking to tonight i'd just like to hear your views well i think we do need some uh you know new blog different voices we have had different voices uh manel is uh moving on to a brighter career and in the world and uh and i think i hope you will replace her with somebody with a perspective that we don't ordinarily have uh and i think the uh what i bring is the experience uh and also not only in this job but in uh regional planning and state planning and housing planning and all kinds of stuff for 50 years and so uh i think i can continue to make a good contribution but i do think that you know some turn over and some uh some new voices are good as long as uh everybody is you know understands the limits and is prepared to to work together and so far we've been very successful in that regard as a committee thank you just a follow-up are there any particular um skill sets that you think um are lacking um on the affordable housing committee or would be helpful i mean because you're right the the challenges ahead and the decisions are many and there and some of them are new yeah i think you know we we have uh Patrick O'Brien as a developer that's great uh somebody perhaps uh from uh banking and finance but uh i think really it's just the knowledge of you know some of the ways to incentivize because you know the government isn't going to build housing that's that's really off the table what government does is create some tools and create an environment and i think our role as a city is to apply the tools as much as we have the ability but also to work on creating the environment so somebody with a experience with planning uh not necessarily to uh encroach on the planning commission but somebody who would be able to communicate well with them and understand their how they work and because pretty much anything we do other than what you approved directly has to go through the planning commission and so and i'm understanding how how things work and not getting frustrated when you know things don't happen right away it is a is a uh you know a talent or a skill that somebody needs to have to work in this kind of environment things don't happen overnight on the other hand working or in an orderly and constructive way eventually gets a good product okay thank you thank you for your many years of service you're welcome next up is tom gets oh i'm sorry excuse me i'm working off the wrong sheet i highlighted them on my sheet um norocinical oh would yet you can come there or you can stand behind the podium just make sure that the light on the um speaker is bright green because that means it's on so welcome and what what particular skills and interests would you bring to the committee oh that was i i think in contrast to being involved in banking or development i have lived in this city for 16 years i've owned a home sometimes barely in this city and provide affordable housing and so i have a sense of who's looking for housing what that's like for them the factors that they might consider i also um work in psychiatry i work i have a degree in social work so i have a sense of when we talk about affordable housing who needs it and what kind of what does economic diversity look like if we're putting a house or an apartment that's designated for a disabled person who might live in it so i think that's why i feel like i have a perspective that could be useful okay and particular skills the social work or um you know other than sort of being able to i mean i don't know how much social work would translate but um i can obviously read a map and i'm not obviously read a map and read regulations and i've lived here long enough and walked around and seen what's got you know been here and left and things changing over i mean right i don't have the skill set of a planner but um oh i was just thinking more of um in terms of you know it's a fairly large committee and you have to work as a group oh yes dynamic i mean those are as much you know yeah i'm successive of committee is having um the knowledge yes you're right i think i can communicate pretty well i um in my day job i uh work in adult psychiatry i lead groups i communicate for a living you know in terms of building rapport and communicating things to people and um getting along um and i know that um this is not a committee without some controversy sometimes um well the issues are tough yeah yeah and i you know generally reading the minutes and reading some of the other decisions and what's gone into them and the players um there's a lot that goes into it other questions that people have you're aware of the time commitment and well i wanted to hear what i know that there's a monthly meeting what's how much of a time commitment is in between the meetings and i assume there's subcommittees i've seen the reports back on you know on the minutes things being reported back and so can somebody speak a little bit more about that i guess well i know the meetings last two hours yes that i know right i believe that it's i don't know exactly i mean they seem to work a lot um they have as you said subcommittee so um i don't know what the time commitment is other than the is it monthly meetings or this monthly what i i stopped the committee i can oh yeah great thank you so yes two hours two hour meeting once a month and then um at times they have subcommittee so if you are on a subcommittee i would say another two hours of a meeting a month and maybe an hour to prepare and then probably an hour to prepare for the meeting so right five to six hours a month yeah that's right i wasn't sure if you're going to say five to six hours a week or something like that yeah yeah no it seems from the me and the meetings are now in the evening as opposed to a day time which i wouldn't have been able to do so um i think that a lot of you know the answer comes from you i think that's kind of the the basic right the basic plan if you have an interest or you have perhaps access to to information or to an expert you might you know volunteer yourself to the committee and take on additional work it depends really also to go above that basic commitment on you right and that's that's true of any of our volunteers including us here at this table so i just wanted to share that with you too so we do have members of the committee who have done reports outside of the committees you know kind of purview but within their purview but certainly not within their charge right and so i just wanted to that's not a requirement but i think that that's true there's this isn't a job right yeah it's what you make of it right right well and i think too i was thinking about like other things that come up and just that part about um any decision about what happens like to the the million dollar front funding right there's a lot of stakeholders in that and that's going to be needed to be communicated in a variety of ways to the community and input is going to be needed from the community and if we're going to be talking about equity and inclusion at all how are we going to facilitate that um i did note that your second choice is the common area for dog committee yes um tell us you know i mean there's a lot of competition for affordable housing that appears there's three slots two incumbents and and um and we don't always have incumbents continue forever but we tend to um so to have a second choice might be good although that has a lot of but tell us your interest in the common area for dogs committee my interest in great my interest in the common area for dogs is um comes from being a dog owner um in 2018 we got our first dog um which was a great experience he's now with my daughter at college and so we learned a lot about dog parks we learned a lot about training a dog and um but i also so i raised my children in this area and all through their childhood taking them on you know walks and woods and different places there was always dogs running oops running up to us right unwanted you know and then once i had a dog i learned really firsthand how to you know teach a dog to be on a leash teach a dog what to do and and we got to use obviously the dog park here which was fantastic and um you know so the dog park is is as much for the dogs as the owners right we meet people we you know socialize the dogs socialize it's really important um but i do see a role for the common area for dogs um in terms of education and some enforcement of the rules in this city if you look at front porch forums i would say at least twice a month and in my neighborhood we've got dogs now in the samansky park running loose quite a bit we've got letters being written to the front porch forum about please lease your dogs i have a new rescue and so there's a quite a bit of um ongoing issues of safety with people not leashing their dogs and just also i think what's also been important too is if we have all our have people's dogs running around any of the habitat that degrades the habitat it's you know it has an impact on small animals especially at red rocks you know all these dogs running into the woods you know obviously they're defecating there and that ends up in the lake so i do feel like it's my interest is part wanting to support having more dog parks and i know in the reading the minutes i know that there's they're looking at you know as they develop neighborhoods including dog parks so there's like a neighborhood dog park but i also do have an interest in how we can educate the community on um taking responsibility for teaching your dog how to be on a leash and taking responsibility for keeping that animal which is a wonderful thing to have a dog but it's it's requires some effort and responsibility because there's small children there's disabled people there's people who do not want to interact with dogs and it's not fair to them we have humans that want to use the park and it um it impacts them on an emotional level and a psychological level okay any other questions that anyone has yes tom just a quick one there's only two slots on the application form but we do have openings on rec and parks and from what you were just describing i think your perspective might be also useful there would that be something you'd be open to as well if um if these slots weren't available for your appointment will i get to talk about leashing dogs at parks okay because if you shut that down i don't think i would want to do it you'd have to talk about some other things i will i will but i'm but i'm really clear about what my concern is um i didn't i had knee surgery this past fall and i decided not when i could finally walk without crutches i mean i decided not to go walking in red walks we had i thought uh if i go walking or red walks who knows what's going to come running up to me and i wasn't stable on my feet okay good question council chittenden yeah okay thank you nora all right thank you thank you very much okay let's see next um so that completes because emily holt glaslin couldn't make it tonight so we'll move down to bike and pet and let is there someone else i'm sorry who may have put affordable housing as a second choice can't remember was there anyone yes but she can't make it tonight yeah she had a family emergency so okay but what we understand is this is your first choice nor are the affordable housing they're equal okay okay well thank you very much for applying and we appreciate the public volunteering because it's all it can be a lot of work but it does make the community so i appreciate it okay bicycle and pedestrian committee um we have dana liben she's on the line i think i'm here okay all right so why don't you tell us about your history with bike and pet and why you would like to continue so i think the the last time i interviewed i said i had been on the committee for 12 years so i think that was three years ago and so that means i am really a long-standing member of the bike and pedestrian committee um and uh right currently i'm serving as their representative to the climate task force um which i assume means that to remain on that i need to stay on the bike and pet committee um that that might be a question but i'm you know i'm i'm very very interested in the climate task force and and because bike and pet issues and transportation issues in general are such a very large proportion of the work of the climate task force um i i see the bike and pet committee is being really fulfilling a lot of the climate issues that south barlington is is able to um to deal with right now and you know and we keep we keep moving along every year you know a little bit more infrastructure would be great if that could happen faster and i think that the i-89 bridge is going to be amazing it's going to just jump it's going to jump south barlington so far ahead uh in terms of accommodating uh crossing the interstate on you know bicycle and pedestrian access you know to and from to and from the university to to everything in in downtown south new downtown south barlington so um so i've been on the committee for a long time um so there i i have that i mean there's a huge change in how the committee is operating now um and i think it's really good that we're getting very really outstanding leadership from staff from city staff um you know great interaction you know really people understanding the the budgets um you know um just you know bob has been amazing you know just being willing you sort of have to have an account being to be willing to to dive into all of those those issues um as he is um i've been doing some surveying of um uh fogline fogline improvements and just happened to bump into chase and spencer in burlington a few days ago um and if he was on a lunch break i was using my relatively new e-bike you know to to run errands in burlington um so it was kind of kind of fun to to to pop into you know to bump into him and so the first question came to mind it's like how much does burlington spend on on striping for bike and pedestrians do you really want to know sure he said they spend a hundred forty thousand dollars a year oh wow yeah we spend what 25 thousand is that right 35 i think it's 35 35 something like that's in that yeah now granted they have a lot more on-road bike lanes um because they've got some streets like pine street that you know are very wide and can accommodate bike lanes we tend to not have as wide streets so you know we couldn't we wouldn't need that much money and no matter what but um what we do need is some wider streets and that's just not something that we can do as a bike path committee that has to be you know that's that's long-term road development and road construction and planning and and things like that but that's that's kind of where south burlington stands right now we're a suburban community and we've got a suburban set of roads and thank goodness they've had the foresight to start putting in off-road bike paths which enables so many more people to um you know to get around both for commuting and transportation and recreation um on bicycles and as i tell people i said it's it's probably the the most widely used city facilities but on in addition to the roads i mean the roads obviously get a lot of use but um off off outside of the roads i think our our rec path facilities are get a tremendous amount of use and they're starting to show their age and uh you know so we we do need to make sure that that that they're in a condition that encourages people to use them as opposed to you know it's like knocks your teeth out when you when you go over tree roots and stuff like that so we do have to keep it top of mind keeping those um making them pleasant to use as well as uh just safe and accommodating for everybody thank you are there questions for Donna i just want to say that they're i think a committee that has done a lot of of good and of course um we're still doing the penny for paths so we have more good to come but i i think that since norah's still here in the audience it's just these are um this is an example of someone who works with a group to to really you know not just you know kind of ho hum let the status quo remain but really push for improvements and and i just want to thank you Donna for for being part of that because i think it's an important uh and needed infrastructure piece uh that even in uh snowy vermont uh when this ice melts and even before the ice melts you have people out there eager to get on their bikes and so we we have to we have to think about it and plan for it and and your committee has done both of those things so i want to thank you it was a great job on the climate task force adds a lot of value both from the pedestrian and bicycle viewpoint and just her career all right oh could i just say one thing since don is a lighting specialist there's concern about lighting for night you know kind of dusk or you know when the night falls for the bikers the cyclists is a better word i guess i just wanted to put that in your in your head donna that or ask you does your committee consider lighting for for cyclist safety it's it's definitely come up more recently um particularly on kennedy drive um because we we now have we have rec paths that can easily accommodate commuters um you know well into the fall season when it gets dark um and i know now that i have an e-bike that has lights on it it's not quite enough you know it's like riding along dorset street where there's not continuous lighting but there is lighting i find it fairly comfortable riding on the separated um separated um path but as soon as i turn down swift street um you know i'm kind of holding my breath a little bit even though i have i have a headlight but um i'm just i'm just really worried is somebody going to be able to see me if i'm riding on the road and i have a light on the back but it's it's kind of you know it's it's a matter of both seeing and being seen um and and so uh i think knowing where you're going is probably the most critical and i would hope that some kind of reflective paint uh may be a solution because actually trying to light the pathways with some kind of you know stanchion based lighting would be probably unrealistic in most cases it can happen in some parts but it's just not realistic to do that on kennedy drive however it it might be possible you know maybe solar light solar poles solar lighting but it's expensive but it would be a solution there so but we have to increase our striping line if we're going to do the reflective paint no is that i would assume it would be a lot it would be more expensive or you could do discs that would be perhaps you know embedded in a little more permanent you know some some reflective some kind of reflective thing just so you know where the edge of the path is all right the lights are great but it's it's not by itself enough okay well thank you very much for your long service your thoughts and for your interest in continuing appreciate it thanks not thanks Joel king or clue clue excuse me why did i say king oh welcome you when you address us you can take your mask off it would make it clear hello everybody hi it's the light on on the yep okay great so Joel um tell us you know what skills and interests would you bring to the bike and pet committee um yeah i'm interested in joining the bike and pet committee um i have a bachelor's degree in urban planning and was a planner for a few years i retired from planning because of vision loss just i have a low vision so and it gets worse over time and planning is very visual you have to look at a lot of maps and everything but i definitely still want to participate in you know the city planning if i can and i i don't drive a car i rely on walking and biking so it is very personal to me and i want to make sure that south burlington continues their you know development patterns patterns to include the bike paths and crosswalks and things like that yeah i'm also i also work as a voc rehab counselor with the blind community so i think it's important to bring you know someone with a connection to um you know people who are visually impaired to include them in in the you know the city planning process and everything too okay are you familiar with when the committee meets and the time commitment um not really no okay well i think they meet once a month what i can't remember what day and anyways probably about a two-hour meeting i'm guessing most of them seem to be once a month and then if there's second Wednesdays in the month at 5 30 5 30 on the second Wednesday of the month okay yeah sounds great and then there's always prep and stuff to read but yeah okay tom just with the background in urban planning and your lived experience i think you're perfect for this role might might i ask what your current take on south burlington streets are there's spots or areas that we could have been doing better or are there areas that you've been been happy with from your personal experience yeah um you know to be honest i really appreciate the the wide side paths that include you know the for bicycles and pedestrians that's something kind of unique that a lot of other communities don't have i think it increases access so that's definitely awesome i have a daughter and take her to daycare um and you know i can't driver so it's important that we can either walk or stroll or um bike to daycare um and uh in most spots we can at least walk there so that's great which roads are you thinking about joel oh um mostly door sit street um kennedy drive um i mean all the way out to the industrial park those all have the bike paths and i think that's all great and with the new bike path over the bridge on kimble avenue i think that's great to improve access out to williston in that area too great thank you any other questions or comments okay well i very much appreciate or we all do i'm speaking for the council and your interest and your application and um thank you for being willing to commit time yeah thanks for having me sounds like this tom said you have a new perspective which you know i hadn't really thought about before in terms of this committee so those things are always helpful great thank you um shawn super see here or online okay says he was going to be here in person but all right we'll so that complete spike in head let's move down to um the common area for dogs so we have lisa zenke jankowski who's an incumbent welcome good evening let your face here so tell us why you want to continue on the common area for dogs um i'm not a dog owner i have a lot of dog friends um the only reason i don't have a dog is because the hours that i work it wouldn't be fair to a dog but um i do meet up with a lot of dogs as i keep an eye on red rocks park and i'm the natural resources committee rep on the common area for dogs committee but i used to also help them out with a few events that they would have for dogs and so uh betty was very happy to have me join the committee um because i actually do show up like when we were going to have an event at feral park for dogs on a valentine's day and had a big snowstorm the night before um we were supposed to have an event this past halloween and that got rained out um so people say what'd you do on your birthday i was running around barefoot pulling signs off the fence so betty wouldn't have to get her feet all wet um so yeah i i mean i love dogs i i just i love animals but um i i i bring a different perspective to the committee too and i make them think about a few other things um that they might not think about but they also make me think about other things as well which i is good well like the shape of a dog park which was a big discussion not having corners where smaller dogs might get cornered by larger dogs um we were talking about the new entrance for the new park on at uh at the veterans park at at dorset and um one of the comments that had been brought up was the size of the gate area and then there was like a corner that had kind of evolved in there and i said we'll just enlarge the opening so i think between the dog owners and not being a dog owner just the different perspectives and the way we look at things and makes we make each other think about it the committee has a requirement the common area for dogs for a representative from natural resources and recreation and parks so you um your term is also up in natural resources so if you're if you continue on that committee you will automatically continue on the okay and i'll still be involved with dogs because i oversee i have a key to the gate at red rocks and i oversee the park for the city and help out keeping an eye on things and i'm the city liaison thinking about other people who are not we need two openings but or there are two openings but does that include her seat as liaison liaison from the voting liaison yeah from the natural resources committee i i that's what i don't understand from this she would need to be appointed to both she needs to be appointed to both okay gotcha and we think the new owners at the university mall that might be a great opportunity for a new dog park on top of that roof a dog park with a view well for the people who are living there right well for sure i mean that okay any other questions for lisa well that's a new idea i hadn't heard that no i have neither you need high walls right i high fences yeah so they don't jump yeah exactly don't jump fight oh yeah i think that's really much of an issue at the parks with the dogs jumping over the fence they might try to get underneath it yeah okay thank you very much lisa yeah thanks lisa um oh should we hear about natural resources while she's up here sure you can go home if you want so you're also interested in continuing um the natural resources committee so how long have you been on well i was originally on the red rocks advisory committee because that's where i grew up that's where i live i kind of took over my dad's spot and he actually had been on the natural resources committee as well and then they kind of pushed us into the natural resources but i do have a biology degree um i work at gardener supply i've been involved with a lot of environmental issues i grew up in the city so i get involved in a lot of things um i've seen a lot of changes um in case you didn't know jesse i'm also the neighborhood witch in my neighborhood i am a scorpio i'm not afraid to speak my mind and i do quite freely just ask mr. o'brien but we're working on a lot of interesting things right now with the natural resources committee and we're having to redo the open space plan and i do the minutes and stuff that is a little bit more time commitment between doing minutes and we do have work groups and we have our two hour meeting each month but that still works with your work yes life yeah and does anyone else have any other committees any other questions all right well again thank you again thank you all right let's see moving right along here um robin burgeson hi there robin welcome hello so tell us you know why you're interested in the dog committee absolutely um well i've lived in south burlington for 20 years um and i've had dogs all 20 years so i've used utilized every dog park walkway park i used to bring my dog here on market street when there were couches back here and it was blocked off um so i think i would really bring something to the committee in that way i also understand during the pandemic a lot of people got dogs and i've been out and about walking other dogs so um i'm a little nervous i've never talked on a microphone um yeah so i'm just i'm just noticing some things i feel like south burlington is becoming very walkable um i walk every day i'm walking through kennedy dorset market street coming in to use a restroom here sometimes with a dog it's an extra long walk um and i'd love to help you know marry the two the public and the dogs because people love their dogs and love to take their dog's places again you know understanding that not everyone is a dog lover but i do believe that we need to do a little better and where people can take their dogs here um i've seen some great dog parks come and go um here in south burlington and i'm noticing that i'm starting to go outside of south burlington to find these dog areas and and kind of questioning well why don't we have that you know i don't want to leave south burlington i like to keep it in the block um yeah and i have experience with therapy dog vermont um two of my dogs used to go to the hospital uh to visit kids so you know seeing what animals can do for the community as well so okay are there are you familiar with the um or able to deal with the time commitment for the committee yes okay any other questions tom so similar to the other one we have four applicants for the common area of dogs but only two positions but we do have openings also on recon parks when it's that intersects dog issues as well is that something else you'd also be interested in i don't have your application in the the file either so i don't know if you had a second item no i didn't um i didn't really consider that but i i think they're closely related for sure um because it is it's all you know with our truck stop things and happening and these dog pass um i think we can all get along that there's a way we can all get along okay so is that potentially a yes potentially yes you would you would wouldn't mind potentially but definitely more about the dogs is the dogs is your yes for sure um i guess yeah for sure all right thank you thank you all right well thank you for coming forth this is your we've never been on a committee before is that right good for you so um let's see we heard from norah uh les stutzman is he stutzman is he online or yes i'm online great well welcome and tell us your interest in being on the dog park or common areas for dogs well sure well i've never been on any committee before in south burlington or any city committee okay so um i just uh but i am a dog owner i've been a dog owner almost all my life uh we uh my husband and i have over the last 30 some years have had three different we do uh labrador retrievers and uh we train them as therapy because he was he's a retired psychologist and now he's a hospice chaplain so we train them both as as emotional assistance dogs that we have so we're very acute acute and understanding that how a dog has to be trained and has to be leashed and um just in terms of performance and taking care of dogs and whatnot and uh uh we um uh i use uh very little of the dog parks at this time because the area that we live in in south burlington around the golf course allows us to use the perimeter of the golf course for a lot of what we do for walking but i just thought that i'd like to you know kind of put my head in in the in the ring for working with dogs and dog parks because i think it's important having lived in montreal for uh a dozen years before we retired back into the u.s and chose vermont as our retirement community i understand in a very urban area the complexity of having dogs and what you need to do so that's more or less a spiel on why i'm interested in this type of committee i'd be curious to know what they do in montreal can we ask them what do they do in montreal less well montreal um is one of the one of the beauties of montreal is that it has a huge number of very very small parks and some very big parks like park la fontaine and and whatnot and there are sections of the park that are open for dogs most most of the times those are are leash but then you'll have enclosed areas where the dogs can be off leash so it's just very um critical that the owner knows how to control the dog particularly in those type of in density intensive environments and how is that enforced less excuse me how is that enforced uh you haven't you haven't had an experience with the um montreal police fortunately no only boulder very good and enforcing those just as well as they are about parking meters so they're there in the parks yeah they are they are in the parks you're retired so the time commitment is not of concern well i'm i'm uh there's no such thing as being fully retired well you have your dog who's woofin in the back supporting you yes i may uh i'm i am retired i'm a clinical microbiologist by profession and have worked for companies uh in um in both u.s canada and the nevelins for uh marketing selling of a medical device uh in that and i spent uh since we retired i've spent three years teaching microbiology at the community college but now i'm doing a substitute teaching both at south burlington and cbu oh cool and uh good for you mostly in the sciences and languages yes oh the languages too good yeah that's great so welcome to vermont yeah are there any other questions that people have yeah is there something more that you need to tell us that we need to know about you no i don't think so i i think you know i uh happened to come with you know it was just kind of happen chance i do read the other paper that comes out every week i enjoy that and i saw the um uh the advertisement looking for people to serve on there and i just felt like i'd like to do something uh for uh not only vermont at south burlington because we uh we really are enjoying living in vermont that's about looks like you're giving back to a certain extent that's great okay thank you very much for your interest and um the process for i have forgotten to mention this um we'll have to go through all of the oh so tonight we can make a decision on so we will let you know in okay the next day or two okay so i don't have i can kind of like hang up after this right you can you can oh that's excellent nothing that nothing against enjoying what i've experienced so far just but uh i like to go i have my supper all righty thank you very much okay thank you folks have a good evening you too goodbye okay now we'll skip down to the energy committee keith epstein he's not in the audience to see in the oh yeah hello this is keith hi keith welcome you're an incumbent you're our famous keith epstein from the energy committee so tell us why you want to keep on trekking with that uh well it's a great group of people really passionate dedicated to improving the city uh i think we've made a lot of progress in helping south burlington become more clean and green according to the comprehensive plan and i think we still have a lot of work to do you know the climate action task force is really exciting that that's happening but as soon as the plan is written i hope to see a climate action plan implementation task force similarly comprised of um diverse members of the community okay you know the time commitment and you give above and beyond has been my experience with your work um the georgetown project and you know it you're right that your committee is pretty fabulous and um and you certainly contribute a lot to that does anyone have any other questions other than i guess oh tim do you go ahead sorry sure hi keith it's meghan i was just hello i was curious to know if um the climate action task force work if you've been following along and you can see where the energy committee could really kind of take off you know take the baton and and carry it on from there do you do you see some things that some projects that might be forming for your committee uh so i haven't been paying too close attention to the day-to-day of what the task force is doing but one area i think that could be improved is with public outreach making sure that as many people as possible know that we're working on a climate action plan and giving people the opportunity to give input you know the more input we have from all over the community the better the resulting plan will be and i think the implementation will be easier as well uh if people are given the opportunity to give input thank you i've i've heard that too thank you tim yeah i just i appreciate the the uh the energy committee's presence on social media and look forward to that expanding as much as possible as different social media ebb and flow based upon popularity and you know just changes over time and people leave one platform and go to another it's going to be really uh useful to um maximize the communication to the community that way so but i appreciate what you've done so far yeah i just want to comment my husband um his office is in williston so they get the um willis i'm yes the williston observer i think it's called and the last issue had a fabulous it was kind of like an insert but it was about eight pages about what their climate task force and their energy committee was doing and talking about and thinking about in williston and um so i looked at the public public because i thought well maybe it's the same people who own um the other paper and they could take this whole thing and just put it in all the newspapers and they don't it's privately owned it's it's another um group but i i it's that kind of that's one example of really important outreach i think because it it was very informative talked about state plan and what they were doing and what the energy committee was doing and it really brought people up up to date and i i you know i think um i've got to call the other paper and suggest that maybe they get a reporter working on this and and you're probably just pay the person who wrote it for williston and just printed in our newspaper because it was terrific or you could make a press release you could prepare a press release maybe yeah yeah but anyway so i i appreciate your um and agree with your sensitivity and um observation that the public outreach piece is going to be as important as the plan probably more important and and following up on that uh you know the article you mentioned in the williston observer i know lou brazee the energy projects manager for the city has been doing a lot of really good work uh making the city's buildings and wastewater treatment facility and all other other aspects of the city more energy efficient um and i think we could do a better job in making sure everybody knows about that good work that the city is doing i i think the same is true with our school department you know we need to know what they're doing or the public needs to know and then you can identify areas for improvement yeah and i think that good gets good and and you know just like how tim you were saying last time that if you get an electric mower your neighbors notice and they say huh maybe i should get an electric mower so it's just that kind of you know snowball effect right that this is what we're working on this is what's been implemented and here's potentially you know how this comes down to the homeowner level i mean i there's a lot that i have seen a lot on front porch forum how to cool your house without you know using the air conditioner i i've seen some you know some posts that have been helpful but i i i think you're right too no i got the the e-mower i told my friend at work and he got one he loves his and it's it's just it starts to spread out after a while you know i just took my old old one to the dump after draining the gas and the oil and pushed it into the metal you know uh the scrap metal bin at patch and road it was a great feeling just goodbye yeah great okay well thank you keith i'm i'm pleased that you're interested in continuing yeah thank you and if you all have any ideas about things that you think the energy committee should be working on uh please let us know okay thank you okay well next here from ethan goldman i believe he shares the um climate task force so you also share the energy committee correct i've actually handed off chair of energy committee to tim oh okay well tell us why you want to continue um well this is what i care about i'm i do energy clean energy work for my job and for my free time and i'm really excited about all the opportunities that south rillington is tackling to um you know achieve climate goals by creating this climate action plan and a lot of great ideas coming out of the energy committee right now about you know how we can use our time to really motivate folks in the community to get involved and join together with the city and work on some of the initiatives that we have going on so uh it's just really exciting to see that progress okay certainly understand the time commitment um questions i think he's doing a fabulous job thank you ethan okay for caring on i know that it's it's you you you make it more than the basic and you you've served this the city and this residence quite well i think continuity sometimes really helps so thank you for your time and interest great absolutely it's my pleasure okay next we have amad abdel fatah or fatah welcome yes yes can you hear me yes we can thank you so yeah i'm happy yeah go ahead no no you you talk you're interested in the energy committee tell us why yeah yeah i'm interested in the energy committee if i give you a background very quick you will understand we are in new orleans still we are relocating to south berlington in june 28th so this is very uncommon somebody want to be active in the city even before coming to the city that's weird a little bit yeah but the issue here is i like to enter to the top from a problem we couldn't find the house for a three month and the house we could find is available on august 15 even though we are flying on june 28th so we don't know where we're gonna stay so you have big problem with housing a lot of people coming and and looking at this problem i would like to turn it into an opportunity because this is the way how i think how i work i am the synergy guy you can consider me starting from the energy committee how to connect housing problem with energy we can think about the green buildings for example the senate passed in november the biggest climate change expenditure in the history of united state 555 billion and one of the themes of the expenditure is buildings to get emission from buildings so thinking about the green buildings one way is they're gonna focus on incentives by the way not punishment so why not we expand the green building opportunities for people so we solved the housing problem and we solved the climate change problem so this is a good introductory point about how i think i am the synergy guy i have a phd in interdisciplinary so you can understand where i'm coming from and how i think interdisciplinary environmental science and engineering and i worked in climate change for the last like 15 years climate change policy making in developing countries in jordan and right now i'm managing a project remotely a regional project in jordan lippin in egypt in a climate change adaptation but i can contribute a lot in mitigation because as you know energy is mitigation so i'm interested because i want to bring the international perspective because united state is a developing country but that doesn't mean we look at the lesson learned from developing developed or developing countries for example i can contribute to the energy efficiency i do research on thermal installation for example the rights of people in sustainable buildings energy efficiency in buildings because communities they are not aware of all the options so i would like to contribute from this perspective i'm also a climate giant guys climate change so i can do this energy between the energy and the climate task force also i'm from a research background i'm interested in water food energy in excess this is big science since you don't have like water committee and agriculture or sustainable agriculture committee but you have energy i can connect these together because you cannot just think solo sector you have to think multi-sector which they call it the they they consider it the nexus i have skills in multi-criteria decision analysis i can do nice exercises involving the community as keith said the importance of public outreach i want to learn from the experience of ethane for example in the clean energy so i think i am very enthusiastic and have a lot of passion to contribute to the city where i will be living for long time thank you okay so yeah i mean we're for the un he's consulted for the un i mean okay yeah are there i'm curious what brings you to south burlington amad is this megan md yeah my wife yeah thank you my wife got a position at uvm as a faculty she will be teaching anatomy as an assistant professor she's an md very smart she's she graduated from tulien university she got a position there so i'm coming with her you know thank you uh-huh other questions i mean you certainly seem to have some work experience in this area yes and yeah okay yeah yeah i do i do have a lot of experience and i like to connect things together i like to think in an innovative way putting things together linking you know i said for example waters a sustainable uh agriculture because you have good agriculture uh let's say practices in terms of sustainability so i'm trying from the energy committee to see what is the linkages where is this energy to come up with some projects some ideas as i said one of them to solve for example the housing problem maybe we can think about applying to those you know federally grants uh to expand the green building domain in the in the city that's just one example i don't want to talk a lot i want to learn i want to learn first from the city because this is a new environment for us then i will see where i will contribute and put my experience are you a grant writer amad yeah i'm good in a grant i'm writing right now he a big grant it's like that gonna connect the north globe with the south the globe because they don't communicate it's gonna be like south globe north globe dialogue with regard to climate change where where research communities academic communities exchange ideas projects ideas lesson learns i'm i'm writing a huge grant on this will be submitted to the adaptation fund and i contributed to the grant that i'm now doing a remote project management position with united nation from home i i was a core writer to that grant and we won like 13 millions from the adaptation fund so yeah i have good deep experience in the grant writing yes i'm i'm curious have you ever had experience in this sort of local government committee volunteer committee i'm sure you've been on lots of committees at the universities but yeah actually i worked closely with the community with the with the government i was the person and when i say i i i don't mean talking about myself a lot no i was the the one who initiated the idea but i built a team to work together i was the guy who initiated uh enacting a climate change policy for one of the middle east country jordan where i came from so i i worked with the government to enact the policy it was the first of the middle east and i worked with them to develop their commitment which is political to the international community climate change community you know their kiyoto protocol the barris agreement so i worked closely with ministers with government and with the municipal councils right now my project is deeply working with municipalities at jordan and lebanon we are helping them to adapt to climate change so this is where i where i work actually close with the with the government like this is in support you know i am a link between the government and the communities i'm good on policy drafting so that's yeah one particular area i'm familiar with i've been in actually not just a member of committee i used to form committee like the national committee for climate change in jordan which is like a committee putting all stakeholders together as an advisory committee to the ministry of environment in jordan so yes that's a particular area i can contribute also too great are there any other questions by council members no all right well i this is a little unusual to have someone applying for a committee um and planning to move here just before the committee you know you would be appointed but um we'll you know we've never done it before but i guess we can you're going to own a home or rent a home in south brolington yeah i already got one in 108 uh how do you say that catkin uh circle i think it's a nice area yeah okay great yeah and and one important point i will be like a kind of linkage with other uh let's say a member of the community which is the arab muslim community they are growing by the way and i have no idea if you have some census some statistics uh you know the afghan uh people they came with the american troops and yeah they are suffering they cannot find houses i understood they are disputed with some american families we are a family of six coming you know all at once so you can imagine if the community is growing from ethnically let's say perspectives the city need to pay attention to that to see what's the concern of those you know communities or ethnical backgrounds so that to be a good city because diversity uh produce good systems right i just have a quick question for dr abdel fatah how many languages do you speak yeah just arabic and english okay thank you hello hello all right well i very much appreciate your a desire to really get here and be immediately become part of the community so thank you for applying yeah thank you for giving me this opportunity to be active member of the community great well so our process will be one of the other applicants couldn't make it tonight so the next time we interview will be um june 20th and then we will make a decision on on this committee um then so it'll be shortly before you arrive okay okay thank you so much thank you thank you very much okay next we have carrie mclaughlin she oh here great yeah i'm pretty sure you go that guy pardon me i'm pretty sure you should go with that guy oh we've there's a lot of spots so you know i'm just kidding you you seem pretty qualified yourself so carry it don't i yeah you have 20 year career in renewable energy industry tell us about you yeah thanks yeah i um i'm an engineer uh by education but um i have been working in renewable energy pretty much since i started in like 2003 um with a short break in manufacturing when i worked for curate but uh but yeah it's a huge passion of mine i've really um and i think what what i really care about is finding like the the right technology for the applications and not necessarily like pushing everybody in a single box and then creating that technology or creating the accessibility around the technology i think that's what's really challenging and you know in terms of how we um how we incorporate it into our neighborhoods and um and individual households so so yeah while i work in um you know the solar industry i i'm not married to the technology necessarily and i love to find the right application i think accessibility is is really key as well as the outreach like keith was was you know talking about and you know not shaming but rather saying oh i want a quiet mower too right there there there's just so many pieces yeah to to make this kind of a smooth and inclusive and an accessible um process yeah right and it's so much about um it's so much about consumption too you know like how we consume and in what we do with our electricity and education around that and it's just it's uh it's not just about generation so right um it's just the whole system is yeah need of right support i've heard good things about the Montpelier energy uh was it a committee yeah yeah it was so i was i worked with them when i lived there back in 2011-2012 um and that was right around like when net zero mine peeler was starting and i was working with the energy action network um and it was um and district heat that's when we were like really pushing district heat so it was really uh it was a really cool time to be a part of that and what i loved about that is you know we would have these energy fairs and just bring everybody in the community in and be able to talk about it and and educate people and do fun things with the kids and so um yeah it was they were they were a great group i tried to hold on you know when i moved up to south burlington but i couldn't i stayed at the part of the committee for a little while after that but didn't really make sense for much longer because don't you do um car share or ride share with linked to the housing and i mean i remember going to a climate forum and Montpelier was kind of like a gleaming example of really forward thinking design in terms of urban design and how yeah yeah i think that was in 2014 so yeah it was past my time but yeah that's when we were the transportation piece was something that we were really struggling with when i was there because it's Vermont and it's hilly so you have ice and you have hills and you have so it's just like how do you make it how do you make transportation accessible um without assuming that everybody can ride a bike everywhere you know and um so okay tim do you have a question i just have a quick question it's carrie yeah so um you've lived here 10 years is that what you said yeah i lived here um i moved here first in 2001 lived here for a few years then moved to montpelier for yeah so when you look around the city today is there something that stands out to you as as a really significant opportunity that like just jumps out at you that there's something that we can is there something that just grabs you that you go oh we should be doing x or look at that over there that could be a prime place for why is it just something that not really no i mean no i have read like the some of the reports and the presentation that the energy committee did um you know and i think that the the plan that they've put together is is pretty comprehensive and so i don't think that there's anything outside of that that that really is like a smoking gun or anything and did you say what you did in renewable energy um i am the director of engineering it's uncommon so it's uncommon okay yeah so sorry about this yeah we're gonna be great you're being very very responsive yeah that's that's my team okay any other questions for carrie yeah well i think that's why people like this committee because the people who apply for all have these incredible um life life and job experiences that add to the uh the group working um and you certainly do as well so i really appreciate you wanting to put your ore in here as well yeah thank you for applying um franz van boden is he here or online yeah there you are so franz can we hear you it doesn't look like you're connected we can see you this audio is tricky so he's working on it it went up a while you sometimes is he calling on his phone yeah that's what i had to do once where is lidge way in south prongton in in where so it's one of the new oh okay yeah it's the ledge they had to blow away yeah okay how about now okay welcome okay yeah so franz tell us um you know why you want to be on the energy committee join this yeah elite group of energy gurus sure or yeah so um recently moved to south rillington uh this past week um i have a lot of newbies here yeah yeah um so not not quite as impressive as amad but i did apply before living here so just note that on my application um but yeah no i'm just really excited about south rillington and just the community and and strong sense of you know climate action that i've seen on your climate action plan um i went to uvm uh and graduated in 2013 and since then have worked in the renewable energy industry um as a project manager and engineer um actually working for the contractor um that's uncommon employed back in the day installing solar panels on on vermont residential roofs in in the mid-sevuary so you can imagine that's that's a tough place to start but um was it a sunny day at least that's right it was at least zero degrees instead of like negative um but yeah since then i've gone on and worked at you know contractors and independent power producers um and right now i'm working at a at a company called clearway energy group um which is a large developer um that develops uh energy storage solar and wind across the us um on utility scale um sized platforms and so i'm a i'm an engineer for them uh working in the development engineering space and so the skills that i would like to bring to um this committee is helping folks look at potential sites for renewable energy projects um looking at capex and connecting with contractors and looking at technical designs um if that is an area of expertise that's needed uh otherwise totally um involved and just want to be a part of what you folks are doing honestly because it's it's pretty awesome so that's that's my my brief pitch okay how how do how did you learn about this position i mean it's not a position this well it is a volunteer position this opportunity yeah yeah um i think so my wife and i one of the reasons why we moved back to vermont um from massachusetts we were seeking kind of a sense of community and so in doing that we just went on to the south burlington website to identify you know different areas for us to contribute with the community to be a part of um what what everyone's trying to accomplish and one of our big kind of personal beliefs and goals is to support the transition to kind of a grid electrification and and tackle this climate change problem that's that's paramount wonderful that's very impressive start at uvm and environmental studies you who any other questions you have amazingly qualified candidates that's all we have all these great teams does he know that south burlington has the highest per capita mega solar production in the country is that right in the country maybe he could correct me if i'm wrong but i read that burlington they say that burlington is but but it's not it's us it's not really because they don't have that much we're the ones that have the three megawatt plus farms you know and 19 thousand people or 20 000 people so right yeah you've got the land yeah yeah i was just walking around um that array over at veterans memorial park with my dog this afternoon actually and i just that's not a dog park that's that's a joke that's an inside joke yeah yeah that's a small one that's a small yeah plus we have the landfill right yeah plus we're talking about maybe putting more up at the uh the wastewater tram yeah then the top of the garage at the airport right yeah oh great yeah yeah so i mean my experience hands the full the full gamut of like greenfield development and you know acres of the farm field versus uh commercial rooftop and like you're mentioning top of parking garages and figuring out how to retrofit those structures to to deal with the loads of of pv so yeah it's awesome i'm i'm all about what you folks are doing and hope hope i can help i think the president today delayed for two years instituting tariffs again i guess on some solar panels right that could help with pricing yeah yeah well good thank you well it's always nice to have uv uvm grads come back here a lot do because yeah you're not a native hormona right you you came to uvm and didn't want to leave in some ways that's right would he know a former city councilor named dav kaufman perhaps would he i don't know did you know dav kaufman he's in the well he's in yeah he was a professor the rumenstein school yeah yeah i've heard the name i don't think i actually had him but i i know the name well yeah okay well he's a former councilmember you've also had alan strong work on a committee for the city if you remember alan strong professor strong no okay i don't no okay well great well i appreciate your interest and have you moved here yet yeah that's right you were walking your dog so you are here okay yeah we we've moved and we are in so that's a big deal super beautiful weather so far well welcome looks like you're enjoying it you're nice and tan all right yeah well thank you very much funds thank you all right next is robert mater or rob mater is he open did you open the richman area i did not oh okay i just had a student who's you know their last name was mater and it's a little unusual yeah it's actually it's pronounced meter or meter they pronounced it mater so okay so rob tell us why you're geared up to help us with energy sure um so i am a recent uh resident of south burlington i've been here since february of 2021 previously i lived in georgia vermont and we relocated here my daughter is in the high school and we would have been commuting from georgia down here so um ended up making a a switch um and if i'm odd is still on i'll help you move in because i live a couple doors down for where it sounds like you're yeah you'll be able to carpool we can carpool together um so um but yeah we're over there on catkin drive as well and um my interest really has stemmed from my purchase of an old vermont farmhouse up in georgia is what got me going on it and just all the problems that you end up having uh with trying to survive winters in you know in a draft yield farmhouse um i was on the georgia conservation community for 16 years and um as part of like a more reservoir uh rural uh community i saw you know the impact that um this can really have on you know moderate or even lower income families and certainly as we move into and at least for the near future with higher fuel prices and stuff you know and then heading also into the winter um while i i feel like i i don't know the community super well at this time my previous experiences definitely would lend itself uh for me to believe that it's not going to be easy time for you know certainly some families and i don't specifically know if the energy committee has you know if they're looking at this from a economic perspective in terms of helping families but i know for many it can be a significant portion of their income during the winter you know that transportation so there's a couple areas there that i feel like i'm concerned with i have um um a background i was uh did actually insulation work if you will for home performance with energy star so i was that guy that crawled around in the attics with a you know was buzzing around you covered in a tyvek suit and 110 degrees i've done all that i've blown an insulation to you know older homes um and i feel like i've seen a lot of the challenges there it's from that angle that i feel like that's probably a lot of the perspective that i bring is kind of the boots on the ground knowing some of the challenges that those families may face the housing um just the housing stock i think in remont obviously has been it's it's fairly old south burlington it's probably no exception i do feel like we have a pretty good mix of new construction and probably a ton of 1950s construction um and i think there's you know certainly a lot of while you know with a lot of technology it's there's a lot of excitement around technology certainly solar we did solar in georgia it was great we had solar thermal uh that was great but i think also just the investments in kind of the foundational pieces of housing um is something that's not very glamorous and often overlooked but can make a huge difference because you can certainly apply the technology but if you're blown it out the you know the back door because you don't have any insulation you're not really gaining a lot other than spending money on on shiny toys so that's at least my kind of upbringing in that area and uh something i feel like i can bring as a you know a perspective to the to the committee great questions i think that's that's really important point to make is that you know there's a lot of emphasis on you know renewable energy right but you can have all the renewable energy you want but if you let it just leak out all of your bad windows and uncocked walls and uninsulated walls and bad foundations right because you said but you're speaking foundations a different way but i took it a different way um it's it's just a giant waste right so i mean the energy efficiency starts at home it starts with plugging all the air leaks in your home especially with those older homes and what's really amazing is that even with the newer homes you find contractors sometimes cutting corners um you know not really adhering to like the active 50 energy stretch codes that they're supposed to you know i mean i went to comrades down in burlington and the contractors were you know they were convention about having to hire somebody to do a blower door test before and after you know and it was just as i thought it was despicable but i mean i know things have probably got a little bit better because you know people learn to do things after a while but so i i see your perspective i think it's really important you know yeah no i think it is an interesting perspective that would be helpful in the conversation yeah yeah you know how do you really get it done what what how do you do it in the homes um and kerry was getting to that too yeah assumption yeah working on consumption yeah it's really an education piece i feel like you know we benefit a lot from efficiency vermont and their outreach and and efforts and but it's really trying to get to the ground level for a lot of people i think which is important in our community um that's often uh you know you don't think really about your neighbor's house about how they're hitting their house or if they're struggling with bills necessarily to do that um right but it's kind of a silent topic i think for a lot of people no i think the economic perspective is a really important one well you're all giving me hope yeah yeah any other questions for us okay again well thank you very much for um applying in your interest and um in this and certainly your experience uh sounds like it could be really helpful in the conversations thanks for having me you're welcome okay that does it for energy we're now moving on to the library board and we're going to hear from one person erin buzzby i'm sorry yeah so hi yeah she'll come the time here hey erin hi hi how are you well we're all good um so plug in through here uh tell us what your interest or why you are interested in the um library board we have a brand new library that might be part of it what's that oh sorry there's a little delay i am interested in the library because i see them as vital community resources which provide way more than just books i've always been an avid utilizer of the library and since moving to south rowington a year ago my daughters and i have frequented the library pretty much weekly and it's always been just a safe place to bring kids when it's hot when it's cold when it's raining i love that there's games and more than that i i really appreciate that it's an access point for internet access which a lot of people can't necessarily have in their home i love that recently there was an outreach program to new bilingual families and how to connect families who may be refugees to greater networks in our community i'm also a teacher at south rowington high school so i care deeply about just intellectual proprietary and having having a resource for intellectualism in our community and so i'm i'm excited to be a part of it and i've always in every community i've lived in i've always been on like my neighborhood community when i lived in baltimore as a teacher i've always thought out community sorry as a teacher i've always thought out committee worth to just enhance different aspects of um whatever institution i'm a part of that sounds good yeah you're um aware of the time commitment for the library board yes i actually had a call with marjorie to talk a little bit more about it and so i enjoyed chatting with her and i think i have a clear open-eyed understanding of what i'm volunteering for okay you don't miss the library at the high school no they're still there is a library they're not the the public aspect yeah uh actually i know i think it's a great idea that it's in a different place okay are there questions what what do you teach her i teach math so what specific skill set i mean when you work in a group or a team you know the library board um what kind of um i don't know interpersonal um relations and um how you act on a board and and work with people how what kind of role do you play as a teacher you're on a gazillion committees right uh well i think it's important anytime you're a new member of a community or a new member of a board to really do a lot more listening than anything else to figure out where you can contribute but also to get a sense for how things are going without your opinions so thinking about what you can learn and then after you have a good sense of how things after you have a good sense for a community i think it's really important to have an active voice and to share your experience and you know i've spent my entire career working with people so i would like to think i'm good at it i mean i mean the wrong field otherwise but you know i can i can have difficult conversations i can speak respectfully i can disagree i've worked uh in independent school so i've certainly done some fundraising aspects of having you know i've i've done some asks for money and i think it's all part of work in a non-profit good yeah other questions or thoughts is there something more you want to tell us or that we didn't ask that we should have or do you have questions of us maybe no i don't have any i don't have any questions i talked like i said i talked to marjorie a lot about the specifics of what the um what the board does and yeah so i would be excited to contribute and if i don't get it i'll just try again in the future okay we do have some other openings city charter economic development pension rick and park rick and park you can probably talk me into it i don't i don't know too much about the other the other thing and what led you to apply erin i have always i well i guess i i know for a fact that good communities well i worked i worked with a woman once who used to always say that community is never accidental and it really stuck with me that if you want your community to be a certain way you have to be willing to participate actively in that community and i love i mean i've always loved libraries i've always loved librarians and the service that they play in a community and i think if you want to have a gorgeous library like we have that is a resource for all different people in the community then you have to be willing to participate in making it accessible and everything delightful that you want it to be do you see any possible things or activities that could be you know a collaboration between the high school and the library oh yeah i think about that all the time like you know peer tutoring like right now the high school kids don't really do too much with the middle school kids but there could be read aloud there could be peer tutoring that there's all kinds of opportunities for introducing interested families with new immigrant families like the brief thing that i just witnessed and i really don't know too much about it but opening up the library as a place for where adolescents feel like they can go i think is hugely important like i like i said i've been there once a week pretty much all year and i think i've seen one of my students one time and you know i wonder is it underutilization am i just going at a different time but it is a really incredible resource that i don't think adolescents are necessarily using optimally i mean that could be because the high school has its own library so there's a lot of reasons i am certainly not it's it's a it's a wondering i wonder what we could do to use that space more collaboratively yeah and i very much like your vision of bringing in the diversity and the library being a center of culture but also education and and partnership right and working together i think that's really important yeah hey erin this is tim barrett can i ask you which schools do you teach at i just teach at south brilington high school the high school okay no thank you grade nine all righty well thank you very much erin thank you good night bye okay natural resources committee jean sebastian is she gonna call us by is online yeah and we heard from lisa so hi there and we'll we'll interview you for the public art committee at the same time i mean like yeah yeah sounds good okay okay so natural resources committee you've been there for a couple years you went through some transitions that were challenging what is the right maybe looking like now in your opinion well i think it's it's uh it's looking good we have a lot of action and plans the open space being one of them maybe the most the most resource consuming one but we're looking in we're working with the climate action committee and looking into canopy also see how we can preserve there is a a little bit of a controversy that you heard i think about the ash tree and so we are part of that we're gathering information trying to to be in our advisory function to the city council as effective as we can we have a good group i think a very good group in the committee currently and i'd be so happy to be part of this for the foreseeable future and yeah that's that's okay maybe yeah a lot of a lot of initiative a lot of passion a lot of the knowledge a lot of skills committees i think pretty strong right now great are there questions and you're the you serve as the chair correct yes i'm the chair for now yep all right well i haven't heard about any uprisings so yeah but uh that's a sign usually so all right is there anything else we should know um well i mean this for me that natural resources conservation committee is more and more key to this in my opinion of course to the city uh one of the many committees that you know we all pull in the same direction i think global warming i think is is uh is key to that we talked also about affordable housing that is not our commission but you know all those things interact and uh collaboration between the committee and uh pulling the same direction to to reach a better south bulletin is really uh essential and i see that i see that good so having a liaison to the affordable housing is good right yeah yeah okay all right great well thank oh and then yes your other committee is public art yes and yes you're interested in that as well continuing yes i'm interested in public art committee there is a lot of very qualified people that are interesting too um i think maybe we could benefit we have a lot of plans a lot of things are coming not only um in the past we've been you know doing our fqs and you know selection committee or uh right now we're trying to expend something a little more um whatever a little more established that could be creating maybe a uh a strong term not a reserve but creating uh be prepared for the expansion of the city and what could be put in and create also more outreach i mean the gallery downstairs where you just by where you are is is a good example of that and the plaque that we just inaugurated two hours ago is another good example but having a broader broader impact and there's a lot of project where where city art will be coming being important coming up so i think broadening uh expanding our membership would be good okay great questions anyone yes what should be the design for the pedestrian bridge to make it a public art gateway for uh you know northern vermont i like that tim yeah thank you tim uh well uh or is that just too much steel well it's you know you can make you can turn steel into pretty things uh make a clear example that comes to mind you're walking across the bifle tower isn't steel i don't think right is it iron what is it uh i i don't know i don't know if it's steel or iron i think it's iron i know they paint it quite often and actually it seemed to be one color but actually not one color it's paint different colors to balance the fact that the the sky is lighter than the ground there's a lot of fun stuff at the bifle tower but um i don't know if it's steel well that would be that would be interesting tim you always say yeah but uh we will the committee i mean we we we are very organized i think and we can really um tackle this kind of of uh of questions um i think when we uh selected or recommended it's because the city because the city council council selected but we're recommended art uh the process the selection process the review process and when when the art was selected how we worked with the artist to to put our vision with his horror vision and and um it was really good and every time when we talk with the artist after the fact like the the geese's or or the clock uh it's really a good a very rich and uh i think the result is there uh interaction so i trust that future project uh we're going to see the same synergy and and collaboration cool yeah all right well thank you and and oh and in this one no uprising either so it's uh it's good we work together very well all right why would it be with a welcome to south berlington over the interstate that would be so so our budget is right okay okay thank you very much yeah thank you thank you very much that's okay okay thank you are fine well we actually are going to hear from um two more two more people one is um john colacchi he's applied for the public art committee so why don't you come up and um retiring from the the house but still interested thankfully to um contribute to our community that's an extra four months a year yeah i know so we're going to work you to the bone but my old house had if i could say tomorrow the governor signing two housing bills s 210 and s 226 for 45 million dollars but in that there's a million dollars dedicated to work with one community to work in an integrated way to expand housing opportunities and it originally the ass was five million went down to one so the deal was that it would begin to work with one so jessey i might suggest that tom and i and you get on a zoom call with josh handford to just make sure that south of berlin can understand what that million dollars might be used for because as i understand it our city has already gotten the federal dedication for another million dollars so it may be that we could integrate our efforts um with the state dollars in a different way but it's only one community that's going to get this and not a determined community it's not determined no good we'll send you an email tomorrow okay so and tim your question uh i was at the walker art center and we uh commissioned c r margione to create a bridge that was an incredible bridge and then we commissioned a poet to do a piece on the bridge as well so i think i am interested in the public art commission i come from the art world i ran the urbana center for the arts in san francisco i ran the walker art center i worked at the walker art center and the flin center here and i'm a filmmaker i had a book come out this year i i worked as we opened with the public art commission and invited todd lockwood to do our opening exhibition here and then the watercolor show was something i had my hand in two so i have worked with the commission when i applied online there was actually listed there was an open seat on the commission so when i came here today i thought that john had already was reapplying so there wasn't really an open seat so i offered to say withdraw because it's not like it's a competition here and so i would love to serve in that commission and if not formally i would also love to just as i have been involved with the the group i i know the group pretty well well we probably don't need to quiz you on your art experience and what you would bring to this it seems to me an extra person on the art the public art committee would do no harm um and and i think john would be a great um addition so and performance art why is public art necessarily graphic or a sculpture i mean i would since you're in a performance um kind of tradition there's just so much to do and interactive i mean i would think you would bring a vision that would really expand almost the you know what i want to say the the focus or the you know just broaden it yeah well you know i i i've made prints i've made films i was a performer and so it's it's all kind of merged yeah great yeah well we're lucky to have you and i unless you have questions for us um we'll have to discuss expanding the committee and what we need to do for that if that's what the council would like well i think um i think there's six members now and i would be the seventh oh there we go you just expanded it see and i think seven's a lucky number two wonderful candidates but just think of how much more they can do yep you know i'm i think we're hardly in a position to turn down the public who have who want to you know volunteer their time within reason i mean we don't want committees of 20 but seven isn't no seven's like a nice number some people think we should be seven so unless you want to be on the charter committee you could work on that tom that's what you could do you've got a whole bunch of new time no i just offered to work with jesse and tom about exactly that's my other thing no more for me that's it all right anyway all right well thank you very much thank you and i understand rick dulcim um thought he was scheduled for tonight and you aren't however we have 10 additional people scheduled for the 20th or 10 more than we had tonight so um i would suggest that even though we don't have your um your application we still you're interested in why don't you come up so we'll interview you since you've sat through all of this is that why you're here tonight or were you here for something else no i thought it was uh for all committee uh i applied for the development review board or planning planning i didn't realize it was put off until well we didn't have time to interview yeah i can understand it was interesting uh sitting through everything and uh actually i'm just i got a kick out of listening to all the energy people and uh i was heartened to see that nobody mentioned anything about wind turbines because you know i don't like them personally uh everybody was pretty hot on the solar panels which you know they they'll last about 20 years to and then you have to buy new ones so all the energy that takes to build them in the first place you know that's true it takes 20 years you know so it's it's a net zero gain and nobody mentioned nuclear which is where we should be going they're making micro nuclear power plants now but in any case uh that's not what i was applying for development review board was uh was an interest of mine okay basically because i of what you know i came to this committee you know a few weeks ago and uh in my own situation in in a new purchase of property on dorset street uh is what got me interested in the way the city government works with the committees and the city council and then the committees and and commissions and all that sort of thing so that's why i put in an application so i can come back in a couple weeks i you know it's i'm retired you asked if you have a time commitment i'm retired i got plenty of time other than except i don't have a electric mower tim because i've got about five or seven acres i need a mower and it takes me eight to ten hours so i'm not going to do that with electric mower so they do it's like buying a car it won't last long enough for me so unfortunately so anyway um so um but you're here tonight and that will you know to come back in two weeks um so there's a personal interest or what you're your personal situation got you interested in how government works and and now you're interested in in um volunteering so what um like so your background and what skills would you bring to the drb and and or the planning commission uh well volunteer work that i've done well first of all i you know it's been about 32 years in the military 32 years in the airline business both as a pilot they overlapped because i'm not 90 years old but i was in the in the mesh choose i was active duty mesh choose its guard and then the american airlines i retired a few years ago moved up here in 2018 to south point and then had the opportunity to buy property on dorset street which is what i did um that's you know as far as volunteering i when i lived in saratoga new york i ran the uh the whole soccer rec soccer program for about 10 12 years and i've always been involved in the sports angle of volunteer work i've always been interested in real estate more of as a as an investor not as a developer i want to stress that i'm not a developer but the uh my interaction with the city opened my eyes as to you know how things work or at least how they may work with the development of the city's properties and and also the planning it takes to to run the city make things appropriate for what the citizens want the city to look like and so that was my interest yeah it was a personal interest at first but you know i went you know i just you know obviously i just wanted to see what the operation is like from this side and forming forming rules and regulations for for people to develop how they want to live so we're not developed you know in my case one side is the policy the rule maker the planning commission the drb carries out those rules or applies them do you think you're better at um doing the policy development or following the rules i mean military is a lot of rules yeah i i've grown up from forever following rules i can do that in my sleep but i'm also a planner too i i've in the my year force time i had a lot of times when i worked in plans development which but that's military not real estate but you know i understand the planning actions what it takes to create a plan development review board um maybe i don't understand exactly what they do you know you you just said they do what the planning commission tells them well they implement the land regulation rules and apply them quasi-judicial as opposed to yeah we have two former members who are we yeah we don't remember much of it he remembers more he wants to forget it is that what you were saying have you have you been to either a meeting of either the planning commission or the drb yes i've been to uh both a um and again it was a personal thing because uh we were my son and i were in the process of of uh working on my uh bought 1505 Dorset Street 44 acres and we were going to develop it we've since changed our mind because i really like all that nice vacant land but i still want to put a house there uh so we the engineer we were working with told us about what was going on with the ldr so we went to the meetings and it was we were just too late to the game to make any uh so you went to planning commission meetings and then did you ever have an application in front of the drb um we went to paul counter from a legal standpoint it was not a good decision uh to wait from a citizen standpoint if you will it it sounded like a reasonable request from paul to wait until the new ldr came out uh it didn't work in my favor to wait but that's all hindsight so but you you never had to go to a drb meeting because you never had an application in front of them right i went to them just to see what it was all about it was like yeah because i yeah i didn't understand what was going on i didn't i didn't know what i was getting myself into um you know with i'm not a developer so i've never done anything like that and uh i've learned a lot but uh you know that figure i could learn a lot more i can only mow so much and i want to do something else getting back involved in uh in something in the city work seems like it's a noble idea to do that share really yeah uh rick so i see we don't have your application in our bundle tonight but i do see on the spreadsheet before me right next to your name it says fl resident are you a florida resident are you only up here part time um i live six months in florida okay and six months in a day and six months minus a day here when i put in my application the lady at the resident and i pay a lot of money to be a resident to uh salve burlington and she said well you know how to you're not a legal resident i said well a resident is where you live so yes i'm a resident of south burlington and like i said i got the tax bills to prove it uh i'm a voting resident in florida however that's going to change probably in the next few weeks because my i'm selling the house in florida and that's going away so then i'll be a tax taxpayer to vermont state starting next year and uh so so there she was you know i i said that i'm a resident in both places and i'm not the only one in the world that does that but she said that she would refer it to the city council to determine whether or not i'm eligible it's up to you whether or not i'm eligible okay it's not i know apply next year when i am eligible i mean you know as far as a voting i'll be voting next year in vermont so we did have quite a back and forth with mr dulstrom and staff of the city attorney about how we define residency and it's not well defined anywhere in our in our documents about committee appointments so to your to his point that was the column's determination was that it's up to you all how you want to define it yeah because the the paperwork says are are you a resident which i am you know i looked up in the dictionary after she questioned me i went oh a resident is where you reside it doesn't have anything the the tax implication is simply an irs thing and it and it doesn't have anything to do with residency except for the irs and where you pay your taxes to the state so you haven't paid any taxes to either state right i pay a lot of a lot more insurance and property taxes in florida than i do but no income state income tax either no income tax in florida right and so you don't you don't pay income so you haven't paid any income tax in either state i was just making a comment that's all true pay a lot in property i'm not gonna do that if we want our taxes right all right okay any other questions or comments okay thank you very much i'll be back in a couple weeks when you have my application and and uh it's it's becoming you know been to a few of these committee meetings now and it's not too bad okay especially about moan with electric moors all right thank you thank you okay let's take a five-minute break sounds good and come back and renew review and approve a declaration of inclusion and i just want to alert people dian bugby sent us an email about that you saw okay oh i didn't see that yeah when i was looking for a email about what uh applications that i didn't have i looked okay okay yeah oh okay their constructs national origin is a geographic boundary that we drew on with lines on a map somewhere i i think if we acknowledge that racism exists then i i don't think i don't personally take offense to say that we want to regardless of race have these objectives so i i think the language is solid and i i really applaud the work that the staff did put into this happy to word Smith it maybe come up with some other languages we're under no time pressure to take this on so maybe we could think of some changes send them to the city manager and then bring this back to the next meeting it might be worth you know passing it along to high school and middle school teachers i mean we just really close it's really close yeah you know but i i just i found the math teacher from the high school to to really be getting at something that we are getting at right and and and i think that well i was just unaware of that so i have to think about it yeah thanks yeah and it and it's not just in my college class that's also you know in my day to day you know i we live in a diverse community and and so when i hear somebody you know say to me well i'm of a different race and i say no you're not we're all the same race and to have them like this visual relief come over their expression and say thank you to me that well we'll be happy to bring it back and again just want to thank jennifer and martha matured and mark lions who are on the call and helped with this okay thank you there were one species i guess that's what we are right species the human species the words oh my yeah all right so we'll move on to 11 receive a presentation on the chitenden solid waste districts f y 23 budget and sarah Reeves says hi there sarah oh and we have paul jabler who was our our wrapped hey sarah fabulous wrap who keeps like the energizer bunny keeps on going to meetings and he never looks a day older yeah exactly you are too kind no you don't well i'm going to steal a little of sarah's thunder and then sarah can uh fill the holes and correct things so uh our budget uh as presented here uh again i always like to come up with the first major point is there is no uh assessment on our member municipalities that's something we've always done since the first few years of the district so um our i'll highlight a few other things and again sarah will go through them um our solid waste management fee will not change that's the fee we charge the tax we put on per ton on on trash uh about every track all trash that goes all our trash at this point goes to the coventry landfill at this point so anyway that's the tax that's not going to change um our fees at the drop off centers are not going to change there's the per bag fee you'll be the same thing um we are uh increasing the tip fee that we charge haulers that um drop off compostable uh you know food waste at our organics diversion facility um that's necessary we're really close uh that's a facility that we you know we took over from interval compost a long time ago and did a lot of hard work staffed a lot of hard work and we are close to breaking even on that now and um so this will get us there we think or at least very very close to it so we won't have to subsidize that anymore hopefully so um i will mention um one major thing i want to just highlight um is our next major project and we're very excited about at least i am is a new materials recovery facility that's the facility where all your blue bin recyclables go and get sorted um currently that facility on um avenue sea i believe it is in williston it's 25 ish years old or so it's really showing us age i was more than that i should know i've been there that long but um anyway uh showing us age you know and we don't get the quality of material out of there that we that now the uh uh the processors like to see um newer facilities have um things like what's called optical sorting uh other things where it it recognizable with automation it recognizes the material and picks it so you can you can get a little higher quality uh less contamination and load so it allow allow us to get more value for that so we um the board voted um uh just a few months ago to uh to proceed with um that project uh which would include a bond vote in november i think we're anticipating about a 22 million dollar bond vote although we may get some money from other sources like uh american rescue plan i believe uh or other things um so uh we're working through that they're excited about that um that'll be located in um on our land in williston off a redmond road so that's our big project certainly um i mean there are other things going on too but um that is uh the thing that i'm most excited about right now um i think that we need to do that to move forward uh so sarah let me turn it over to you and you can fill in the gaps and great thank you paul um jesse would be possible for me to share my screening yes give me one second sorry about that no no worries so as paul mentioned um you we have several streams of of revenue not any of which is um is getting any money from our member talents we do not do any assessment and so i was you know we always like to mention that um because we generally get that question is to say how much do you do we pay you when we say another thing we do this as a as a member district i like to start with the bottom line start with the end and um our we're anticipating revenue just over 14 million dollars um when we subtract out some of the cost of goods sold which are essentially things like the buckets that our local color paint goes in we are left with revenue of just over 13 million eight hundred fifty nine thousand we are budgeting expenses at just over 13 million eight hundred eight thousand dollars and this is a very very slim margin and i'll explain what i think we've got some wiggle room as we go down a little bit then we do the transfers to and from reserves and we get down to zero just like every other municipality and as a reminder we are an municipality charted in 1987 paul mentioned our solid waste management fee and i want to highlight the the times that that is based on and and and that's where that the revenues generated from is is the times that is disposed at coventry this number is actually significantly down from just three years ago four years ago we were seeing a very large uptick in um tons being generated within the county because of the high economic activity so it hit everything slowed down as we know stopped and then you know definitely stopped and then we started building back up and we're seeing some of the tons coming back up but we saw a significant drop in residentially generated waste and and that is about hanging even so the increase is in commercial activity construction demolition rate so that's where we're seeing a very we're anticipating a very small increase there very very moderate all did mention our materials recovery facility the existing facility is we're looking at budgeting quite significantly higher on the expenses our contract with our murph operator kasella expires this month we actually just extended it for three months to continue the contract negotiations and we have budgeted a fairly significant increase in that contract price so that's where we're seeing our our expenses are quite high on the current murph also just the charges that we are charged by haulers to move our materials to market to the landfill um you know and and where it needs to go those prices have increased by about 10 to 12 percent so we're seeing those expenses high on the revenue from material sales the sale of the blue bin recycling that's where I think we have some wiggle room we always budget this number very conservatively because we don't control those markets but we do think that there's some room there we're budgeting $80 a ton as the revenue from the sale of the blue bin materials I think we'll probably actually be in the $95 to $100 average revenue sale price so that's where I think we've got some again room in that revenue line so I don't think we'll be as tight as as I'm budgeting but again I like to be very very conservative on those numbers and yeah Paul mentioned the again divergence facility we had two great years where we made some money we broke even the blue bin last year I mean basically both we made money the past two years the main reason that we are looking at subsidizing again is because we lost about a third of our tons inbound and that tonnage was you're attaching that $60 fee revenue those tons went to Cassella's deep packaging facility so they basically took all of the tons that they collect on their routes and the ones that they even the ones they used to bring to us for composting were diverted to DPAC so we're we're taking some of those tons back we've got some of those tons back but we did not recapture all of them but the good news is we're only about 25 percent below where we feel is our sweet spot in being able to manage and demand tons that we want to manage so when it gets about to five and six thousand tons that is where as Paul said we think we'll be right on that you know the break even every year or make a little bit of revenue so we're probably another year and a half maybe maybe two years away from that but even so we're really in great shape our compost sales are starting to kind of right size to pre-covid levels but we're actually just sold out of our our compost products this year so our sale we've had a sales number so I think we'll do well there about again budgeting conservatively. Interesting it is COVID impacted the compost? Absolutely so COVID it was really interesting I'll go back here. A lot of people when they're staying home they built gardens if they didn't have already if they had them they expanded them because there was a lot of concern over food security and just being more self sustainable so we and every other compost producer in the country sold through everything we had we luckily went into it with some inventory so we were able to again see that very positive number you see on the chart and it had a direct impact so we're still seeing now those newer gardens are in maintenance mode we're not seeing as many new gardens being built but where we're seeing some of the rebounding is in some of the those landscaping projects that had been put on hold during COVID those are starting to come back as well but the initial boom was all residents building gardens and honestly we love to see that right you know we want to get this material back into the soil it's wonderful material and we love to encourage gardening so I'm just trying to understand so instead of putting the compost at your your facility they just put it back into the soil is that the. So what Cassella is doing they have a they build a new a new facility a new operation where they can take packaged food that needs to be de-packaged because it's not suitable for sale so say like a batch of Ben and Jerry's ice cream that has been put into the packages but for some reason does not pass a quality test for Ben and Jerry's so that entire run needs to be destroyed so before July 1, 2020 they could send it to the landfill now they have to take that ice cream out of the packaging and then divert that ice cream away from the landfill so that's what that facility is. Oh yes okay because of the law oh I thought it was people okay I got it. So there's definitely a need for that that just is one example that there's a large need for that but it happened though was some of the food scraps that had been diverted that were not packaged also went into that facility will amendment that we do but it was it was a little basic there for us for a few months but we are now rebounding and again you know we're we're getting to the spot where we we want to be which is the good news. As Paul mentioned our drop-off centers we are not increasing the fee there this year we are looking at these structures for the drop-off centers because it does have a heavy subsidy you'll see this is the third and actually it's really the fifth year in a row that we are subsidizing this facility and that may be okay and you know that's something for our board to really dig into and and understand the pricing structure we also need to you know make sure that it's very clear what we what we charge for what we don't charge for and why there are some items that we can't charge for because it's it's part of our stewardship law where you know the manufacturers pay for the cost so we don't charge the consumer we are reimbursed from the manufacturers and there are other items that we haven't traditionally charged for at all like clean wood so we'll be taking a look at all of that structure and there may be changes in fiscal 24 but for right now all of the pricing is staying the same remaining the same at our drop-off centers. I did talk about this subsidy and again subsidies aren't necessarily a bad thing so the looking at the environmental depot for example is the most heavily subsidized of our operations for a good reason and our board over you know the years of its existence has said that we want to make sure that people are able to bring their household hazardous waste to us at no charge residents that is to be able to make sure that they don't put it down the train they don't put it in their trash that it is managed properly we do make some revenue from businesses small amounts of business HHW we take but we are really committed to making sure that that there's no fee attached to residential material coming through the depot. I believe we just got a grant right for the when you did so that's great that'll help us a bit in the coming year exactly we did we get a small grant each year from the agency of natural resources to help offset some of those costs it does not come close to to covering it we we buy in large far and away manage the most HHW in the entire state of any of the districts so but again we are committed to making sure that that is done properly this is our busy slide so i'm actually going to point you to the very last bullet we have made a change to our community cleanup fund this year and South Burlington has $7,500 in your fund and normally what happens is each year we will provide an allotment into the fund based on population of the community and you can build up five years worth of that money and our auditor said you actually need to budget as if all of your communities were going to spend all of those dollars all in one year so that is what we have done and the intention going forward is just to continue to fund at that highest level each year you won't be able to carry it over anymore but you'll always have your your big slug of money available to use so you will be able to compound it but each year you'll have $7,500 so what that means is that you can start to think bigger right about different projects and you can do them annually if you want to it's not a matching grant it's just $7,500 for you to use for different community cleanup projects and you just work through paul and you know we can help you brainstorm or take a look at some of the other things you might have going on in the community that might benefit from some solid waste retention as well and know that you have this this money available for you I think Jesse we you know exchanged a few emails about potential you know containers you know certain areas certainly when you get something let me know oh good exactly another very heavy capital investment year coming up for us we are going to be completing the build out of the compost facility in the first quarter of the fiscal year we're also hoping to build a new administrative building we currently occupy a raised ranch and we are busting at the seams and we're also looking to make some investments in the Milton Drop-off Center we're looking at each each year every other year to be doing some major investments in our drop-off centers and Milton needs quite a bit of attention so that one is up first and then doing some site preparation for the market that paul talked about and a new compost cleaner so this is a big drawdown in our capital budget but only if a new market is not approved and that really is the hope of all of that so a new facility would be built again on redmond road and willis 10 the physical plant the physical size would double and that's critical because where we are now we simply cannot even entertain the thought of taking in any more material or trying to sort any products or trying to even look at the packaging that's out there we just can't sort it we're sorting all of our containers by hand and we need to join the 21st century Vermont really deserves a modern facility and again we will not be assessing our members for that debt service we have those multiple streams of revenue we have been having a total to fall we have been approved for a grant from a non-profit agency we are going to be applying for a zero interest means alone we are looking towards the federal government they have significant amount of money available for solid waste infrastructure that grant is still a little little iffy but we will be applying for it and then for bonding so the board approved a $22 million limit on a bond solicitation to the voters it will not be that high so that is also a good news and that's correct so we have the tip fee we have the sale of recycling and then if we need to get into the solid waste management fee we can do that Sarah tom has a question actually I'm here so I want to preface the question Sarah by saying I fully support the new MRF it's exactly what we need but I want to clarify you make clear in the packet that we receive the same bullet point that you just showed which said that you will not assess member of municipalities for this but I want to understand that it is going to be a multi-year loan and if the financial outlook changes in two to four years you're really saying that you have no plans this coming budgetary year maybe the year after to directly assess municipalities but we are underwriting this debt and if things change the outlook changes over the five ten twenty year horizon we will as one community as part of the municipality will be paying for that debt is that correct that is correct and that is you know we are required by our charter to seek permission from our member towns to enter into a long-term indebtedness and it is a general obligation so the good news is though as it gets paid down then the per capita amount decreases and we would be looking at a 25 year bond we could stretch it to 30 years but most likely 25 would would be the length of time but you know we're doing our cash flow and we're looking at you know all of the expenses and again this is you know the the tons haven't really changed much they've rolled actually that's not true they've grown quite a bit over the past 30 years but as far as you know the steady stream it's not a brand new business and so that's that's the good news is that we know what is in the stream right now and then we're building a flexibility for the future so that we can can take out more material and you know be able to keep our material out of the landfill and find new markets and and be able to jump into new markets as they develop and that's really critical we can't do that right now we have zero opportunity to access new markets and there there are growing markets such as propoly propoly for example we just can't grab that market right now but with new technology we could and so we want to be able to have that flexibility for the future but bottom line yes and that will be explained to the voters is that should something happen and everything collapse there'll be bigger problems going on in the world but yes it would be the general obligation of the member towns in in the district to pay that debt sir I think if you look at the history I mean certainly we've had some very lean times in the markets and all but we've managed to to make ends meet and not have to assess member towns with that I mean for instance when China did their national sword and stopped taking material that certainly through the markets in turmoil that we we managed our way through that you know and I can't see the legislature changing recycling laws to all of a sudden no longer do it if they were to do that then probably things would just drop out and we'd be in trouble but I don't see that happening so you know it's going to be required by the state you know by law so I think we're in in pretty safe territory there Matt do you have a question a quick follow-up on that if I can go ahead it's quick follow-up so just to be clear and then my other hat that I've worn I know that CSWD was adamantly against the bottle bill which actually would have stripped some of the revenue streams that we you collect in the after market and that does have a factor as you look at the 10 20 30 year horizon that if that bottle bill goes forward as is it could actually take revenues away from CSWD which would put the burden back on to the voters but I'll leave it there yeah but that brings up a good point that I've made before was that that if anything they should repeal the entire bottle bill and let CSWD reprocess all of the bottles and cans but they've said in the past that they don't have the capacity for that so so my question is is may I ask a question it's getting late I know I you can Matt has a question too you want to go first go ahead general so I'm looking at the diversion graphic and I'm just amazed that there's 51,789 tons of trash that was sent to the Coventry that could have been recovered if the customers had done the right thing is that is that the way to phrase that so when I look at this so that that's an astounding number I'm not blaming anyone other than the customers right but but that that brings up the question of how do you engage people to understand compliance and what it means and the second part is that does anybody have a system model that understands the amount of co2 that's created and just the collection of garbage and then the transport to Coventry does anybody has anybody started to put a model together to understand what the haulers spend in co2 and what you spend in co2 I'm just I'm really curious about that but I don't want to go off into a four-hour discussion about that tonight no that's a good question you know very good questions so for next time maybe you know oh and I definitely want to offer that for me to come back and and talk specifically about this and that's one thing I did not mention is that there will be a series of public forums available throughout the summer into the fall but I would I am more than happy I would love to come back and talk about these things um engaging the public you know with with the new facility that is the prime opportunity to really drive home what goes in the blue bin and what should not go in the blue bin and that is critical as well but there'll be just more opportunities we will take more types of material and that's the really exciting part and you're right I mean Coventry is 50 60 miles from where we are the less the weekend haul up there the better and that's what we want to do we want to keep everything as local as possible we are also focusing on you know when we sort the material how how you know can we shrink the universe of where we're setting this our finished products and keep them as local as possible as well so we really are focusing on the northeast um and making sure that the finished product materials get to you know have a home here I think we have one of the highest diversion rates in the country and when I say we we county okay so yeah it's discouraging to see that but then you have to put it in perspective too and the board's always been very supportive of uh outreach and communications and I think we have an excellent staff that does a great job with that so um but anyway we do our diversion question it was just a it was just a clarification Sarah to the other side thank you for the presentation it was uh you say double capacity the mirf are you talking through technology we're not talking about can you explain that how you double the capacity so the current mirf was actually designed for 25,000 tons of recycling a year and we're now accepting about 48,000 tons so we have have overloaded our current facility a new facility would be able to expand up to 70,000 tons still on one shift but all through technology and actually you know one thing that will not happen is we do not anticipate meeting any fewer people right now we are understaffed so the goal is to keep people who are currently working there move them into the new facility but then the jobs will be much better more quality control much less physically taxing so the size of the building will double and that is what is critical for us to be able to accept more material we just we physically don't have the room to accept any more material than we have right now so it's a combination of new technology and also expanding the size of the mirf the physical size of the mirf and better better quality working conditions apparently absolutely okay any other comments or questions well i thank you for coming in and sharing this with us yeah thank you thank you sir thank you thank you Paul thank you thank you both okay item 12 award the preliminary engineering contract for the east west crossing the bike and pedestrian bridge over i-89 so we're going to approve it do you need to present no we'll give you two minutes make it really it's very important yes it is it's part of the process i i'm actually i'm happy to make it very short and sweet i will say that i spent the weekend at my reunion for college and so i was like really excited because i've been staying up until 11 o'clock so i thought i'd be really well prepared for this meeting but i find myself i'm really actually happy to cut it a bit short i know i wanted to recognize that peter pochopp is on and he's from v-trans and so he's the municipal assistance service representative who's managing this project for us within v-trans and so i just wanted to recognize him if you've had a moment to read the memo really excited very privileged to be here this project the east west crossing pedestrian bicycle bridge over i-89 has received a 9.7 million dollar grant from the federal government it's a really exciting and unique and very competitive grant as you know we've applied four times and so we did receive it and um and it's also a grant that is constantly in flux but through every administration so we don't have a contract for it but we do have direction from fhwa that has been working with us since we received the grant and has worked with v-trans in order to ensure that we have an advanced contract through v-trans and so that as this project moves forward we're able to contract with v-trans and to get reimbursed as bills come in on the project so i just want to compliment you on the number of acronyms this was stellar i i actually spelled out some of them and did not make them into the acronyms that i had to learn when i first got this thank you um so i i think you know one of the important things that it's it's good to just underline there's two things and then i will be quiet one is that um is that we asked for an 80-20 match and we received less than that so um just under 70 so we're actually just above 30 in terms of the match that we need to give our tiff will only match 30 so we have about a half a million dollar gap um we're going to make up part of it with staffing um and so staffing as a match but that will not make up all of that um so we will be seeking other sources for that match um and then another important thing is that this project has a very tight timeline so we are working um in order to to develop a concept for the you guys to consider in november um and so and everyone's been very good about working with us VTRANS has been working within their administration to make sure that all the different departments are aware of this project how unique it is from a funding and regulatory perspective and have even achieved NEPA clearance which is pretty um pretty amazing for a project at this stage so when we look at our chart we're sort of like both back here because we don't have a concept and up there because we do have NEPA clearance um and that means we can do things like simultaneously go after right-of-way clearance so we get to double up parts of the timeline um and in putting together um the concept with the community over the summer and into the fall that will enable us to bring um to put together a cost estimate and bring a proposal um for a district question um for a tau meeting ballot for your consideration um that would come in november um and that is our last um opportunity for a regularly scheduled meeting to bring a question to the voters and there's actually four um potential projects that could go on that and they'll last for remaining projects that we're working on so garden street uh phase two this project um and the city center park connection and the wilson road streetscape so just wanted to put that out there so you're aware of that so um that'll be a good one won't it yes hence why alana's working so hard right now at pulmonary engineering and getting getting things teed up so we have really good numbers to go she's doing a huge amount of heavy lifting at the moment so that concludes my presentation you have questions you might get to bed by 10 30 alana i have a quick question what what's the difference between the r a i z and the r a i s e uh so they're the same thing um and so the um the the federal grant management program requires um a code uh so like pedestrian bicycle is i think it's bp or something and so they couldn't fit r a i s e in so it's r a i c here you go huh okay make your motion counselor so we need a motion for the resolution first correct is that the only thing we have to move yeah so i would entertain a motion um to support the resolution awarding a contact contract for preliminary and engineering for the east west crossing raise but with a z pedestrian bicycle bridge project so moved second is there any discussion all in favor signify by saying i i thank you raise it up yeah you know this will be the quickest first meeting dollar grant we just make sure it's higher than the truck tops that's the important thing i i heard we have to make it higher than the other bridge yeah oh so uh if i may um and jesse may have announced this already um but uh for anyone listening or watching tomorrow or next week um the since this contract is now approved officially they're the first um community workshop on this project will be on june 16th we'll have an open house at 5 30 and the senior center and we'll start the workshop in this room at 6 30 on thursday june 16th wow and there's also there will be an online option so thank you can we make it artistic the bridge is there anything yes all right uh there is uh so the public art committee um made a decision to recommend that we request an artist be included within the project team and so this project team um brought in an artist with them and the artist that they brought is actually the same artist so you guys are familiar with the artist uh that did um the art for the stormwater pond the geese for the what for the stormwater pond and so they will participate in all of the design um the geese i'm sorry sorry yes all of the the silicon bronze geese essentially known as ducks in my lexicon but officially gooses we're talking to him please refer to them as gooses that's the copyrighted name um but but um but he will be attending all of the workshops um to learn from the public and think about how to incorporate art in the project thinking something crystal you know something what crystal though like draped like a huge structure that's draped in the beautiful fabrics you know uh huh please please have it all stained glass shimmering absolutely mountainous steel anyway we'll see we'll work on it yes get your wife on it thank you very much okay moving on to item 13 um review and approve potentially the final survey for public outreach on the use of the ARPA funds and Jesse has included that in our packet um so following the conversation at the last meeting we have simplified this rearranged it um it's here for I can walk through it but it's pretty selfless I have a comment on it just in the interest of time yeah just jumping right to it and I'm sorry if you dug into this at the last meeting I watched most of the some of it um I have had experiences with anonymous surveys where if we get at the end of this 600 responses and 500 of them are all saying the same thing without any name attributed to it saying that for example support local businesses is absolutely paramount I just think we'll have less credibility for the results now by no means am I saying we should require a name a first name a last name in an email address but I think this would actually be a much stronger result set if there was an optional field to ask for first name last name email and if somebody does not want to choose it you can even put optional there um but if we have 500 of 600 responses all saying for one thing and none of them have names attributed to it I will discount whatever it informs us on that perspective so that's one my one piece of advice okay yeah I tend to agree with it I mean this I don't know I mean this is money I mean why not have that option to have a name in there makes sense to me you don't have to put it in okay is everyone agreeable to that if it's optional what will that mean how will we interpret those who fill it in and those who don't less likely for foul play less likely for foul play so manipulating the results but if it's optional what well I mean at least the results could say that you know of the 2,500 we receive um 10 percent were anonymous and the rest were attributed to an individual and that would you know potentially make the outcome sturdy or I don't know I don't think it causes any harm it could be some good the only the only thing I have you know a concern over is we're trying we just pass this inclusion or we're going to we're we're taking it back for thought is sometimes people don't like putting their names in no it's it's they don't want to be exposed because they feel that they are not accepted in our community to be quite honest and I hesitate with that I because they might not fill it out um well that question's asked at the very end right and it's optional right but if we don't take the you know those who are anonymous as seriously as those who have put their name in well I don't know if we're we're saying we wouldn't take the anonymous ones not seriously suspected of foul play or things like this I I don't know well I don't know to me it's sort of like when I was in the legislature you get postcards yeah that somebody you know printed out and you know you get 800 postcards to say exactly the same thing and it's kind like okay someone had a big budget and could get a bunch of people to fill them out I mean you know I never went and made sure that every name on them was a Vermont resident so it it really does happen when it's high stakes I don't know if this is high stakes I don't either but what are the technologies we're going to be using is there going to be like an online version of this that people can fill out on the web but there could also be paper that's like in the other paper they could clip it out and mail it back in or so we hadn't planned for that option what we had planned for was it was it's an online survey monkey yeah um and that we would push it out through all of our networks and then also yeah at all of the summer events that we will be tabling at we'll have iPads there where people can fill it out okay like at the table the piece of paper at the table no online so if it's online whatever provider you use for that function does it give you the flexibility or the information about the uniqueness of the ip address that sent it like the fact if somebody sits here and goes go go go go go go go and you get 50 with the same address it's questionable but if you get a couple because somebody shared their computer that's okay you know so we will when we export the data we will have ip addresses oh you will okay so we will be able to look at that the challenge with that is always you know if 50 people fill it out at so boot night out on our ipad right it's the same ip address or in the library or whatever but then you have the timestamp for that yeah but we can also look at it i mean maybe this will we can look at it when we do the analysis we could look at those who came in all to get like from one ip address and figure out if how similar or different they are and then if it's looking like it's the exact same survey filled out you know two-minute timestamped parts from the same ip address that's one thing if it's you know 50 from the same ip address two minutes apart and they're all over the place that's clearly different i don't think russian bots are going to be on this there is one other benefit to just optionally ask for it is uh sometimes people put comments in there and you really want to follow up with them and so if you make it very clear and bold optional name optional email that's just we can't follow up with them if they don't have it i don't see harm in adding it i think it'd be a better survey with stronger results in the end if it was there it does also give us the option if they fill out email addresses to follow up with them and say you know would you like to apply you know would you like to sign up for city news would you like to email i don't have an issue with it but they might put in a fake email address i mean that's what people people really want their privacy to be maintained it's very especially with dealing with government it'd be nice to know what neighborhood they live in yeah you know so like if it was a street we asked that question in this you do okay so i mean email address is good what area do you you know your home in sort of i mean it isn't yeah just to make it a requirement okay well i would i would support adding the optional personal information yeah doesn't that looks great or if you'd like follow up or something if you'd like yeah if you'd like follow if you'd like someone from the city to follow up with you yeah that makes sense yeah good so i would entertain a motion for approval of the final survey with that additional language for optional name and email address i guess is what we're asking right yeah second okay any further discussion i just want to thank everybody yeah andrew and the staff who yeah it's it's there's a huge improvement so i really appreciate yeah thank you thank you much more so all my favor hi hi okay you all made it stronger so thank you for that where is andrew andrew is somewhere between here and the international porter he was traveling last week and got stuck oh no no not i don't think badly they were due back today but i he thought he was going to walk into the meeting and you can't come from out of the country to the u.s with a positive you have to have a negative covid test to get back in the country oh yeah yeah no i think that's fine he i think it's more just air travel but you can fly to canada without a negative and then you can drive across okay i know people to do this all right so the next item is 14 appoint council liaisons to committees so this is um following up on the bylaw as you adopted we had a conversation at the last meeting about this but senator or a counselor trending wasn't here um so i just added in this final column of what you discussed not saying that these are the decisions but just trying to in my mind kind of track your discussion if you want to approve slates of two or three committees each tonight that would be great but if you don't want to do this tonight there's no hurry you can also it would be great if this was done at the next meeting so when we have the orientation in July you know who you're yeah poor tom only got half of one my wife thanks you all this is perfect i think that you need we need to rethink this we had you in every single one but you weren't here at that time yeah that's right is anyone regretting the ones that they no i like mine yeah i like mine too i like mine too and tom you're who is it you or matt who is going to be doing this i think it has to be you okay because then at least everyone but you has three yeah you're stretched okay yeah i give me one of the other biker pet or recon park which one do you want i want to flip for it thomas quick take back part two three all right i'll take back that okay and then you have the dog commentary for dogs yeah well i feel like i'm part of that community yeah right you've been sliding the long look we've got the biggest dog in the dog park i know okay that's great so we'll approve this with or just agree to it does that need a big vote you do need to vote okay all in favor with this list with tom as the sole recreation and parks liaison and and the rest stand hi hi hi okay great i don't know if it was seconded but i'll second it if you know if you need one sue all right okay um item 15 consider entering executive session for the person purposes of discussing labor relations agreements with the police department fire department and city hall public works employees right so i move that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the council's discussions regarding the negotiation of labor agreements with city employees would clearly place the public body at a substantial disadvantage second all in favor hi i also now move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing the negotiation of labor agreements with city employees inviting jesse baker andrew bulldoch and colin mcneil into this session with the council second all in favor all right so we will be coming back into open session right all right thank you good good evening everyone we're not making any more changes i'm not making any changes i would just recommend that in addition to the approval of the agreements that were negotiated someone on your behalf to sign the contracts once i'm madam chair or or miss baker manager simon so may i do that all in one fell swoop yep so i'd just like to make that friendly amendment that we authorize our city manager jesse baker to sign those just approved collective bargaining agreements between the city and the south brellington police officers association between the city and the south brellington career firefighters association between the city and the south brellington city hall and public works employees association second ready for the vote all in favor signify by saying hi hi hi okay thank you very much our reports from counselors on command recommendations for all of the different pathways and we're hopefully going to get the final numbers for south brellington in terms of goals the actual goals so that's going along really well the airport commission um implements are growing back to pre-covid numbers people are astonished and happy and um in fact they were nick and i can't remember who else went with him are out um meeting with six or seven additional airlines so things are pretty solid there um we signed a have or recommended a $53,000 art contract with the bca um to redo remember the the trees kind of that they had in the all the wood that looked like trees when you went through the tsa well they're doing a new one because there's going to be a new hallway to the the consolidated um it's called a a forest revitalized and it sounds kind of nice um let's see oh the landscaping gateway master estimate was low and we um we had anticipated or consultants that anticipated each house was going to cost about $50,000 $10,000 so they'll continue working on more money comes in from the from the f a a to support it um what's all that involved in that again is that h back or doors and windows or both all of those doors windows h and there's also work from on gas systems and i think vermont um will work on your house is that per house 110,000 yes that seems like an awfully high number have you bought a window lately i mean what all of that stuff certainly was not in that range yeah well this is a whole house of windows i actually lose a little bit of area inside the house not much but if they add another layer to the wall on the inside then wow you know that's that's going to be so it's new drywall and all of that stuff probably something like that yeah okay i didn't realize it was new walls okay um two commissioners will be included in the airport search for director and um that you i don't know yet okay i don't know um and the terminal integration hopefully or the Dayton um you know to think about the um we're already 150 plus school uh students over so we qualify for the estimated fees the the demographer i guess or he's a consultant he's an engineer for rsg yeah he's like he's an engineer for rsg fee williston was saying in city care select board um when you when you continue cost associated with this continued growth so please think about it from the school board