 started here okay welcome everyone I'm gonna call the meeting to order the first thing to do is to review and approve the agenda I think we have some adjustments to make so the first thing is that we have an addendum there's an executive session to talk about a property along the bike path and we're also gonna talk about the the pocket park as well that's also an executive session so just a note about that and Donna yes I wanted to move an item there's a group of individuals here to talk about State Street being closed for the farmers market three weekends in May and I'd like us to actually have a discussion about it and if it could possibly be early in the agenda since they came thinking they would be in the early part that would be good sure so we could call that well we could put it right after the consent agenda yes part of me want to call that item four and a half okay so any other adjustments to the schedule or to the agenda okay so no objection will consider that approved so the consent agenda so we're pulling there's a do you want to oh I'm sorry thank you skip general business so general business and appearances is a time for members of the public to come speak to the council on any matter that is not on our agenda for those here for the farmers market they just got put on the agenda so and we would also ask that in general this is gonna be true for the whole meeting if you would try to limit your comments to two minutes and we're gonna give some cards to help you know Donna what's the orange one for I mean one minute and this is two minutes okay so just right here to help you know yes all right so sir and if you would say your name and what street you can come to the table or you can go to microphone either way it's fine Marie Spino live on 6 Scribner Street lived here for 22 years just a few things and I'll talk as fast as I can 20 years ago I asked for a crosswalk across Pioneer and River Street and I was point-blank told that will give a very insincere and in just not comfortable feeling to give anybody security by putting a crosswalk there I couldn't walk my three-year-old children across the street and this week when I went by Jolly there was a woman with a carriage two young children trying to cross the street to get to Jolly I think this should be crosswalk there there is not one until we get all the way to the bridge you're hurting businesses on the cross the street second of all very discouraging to see people waiting for a bus standing out here in the winter when they've been told sometimes we've got to get off and bury we should have some place to go to we should have if it's temporary cut the bloom and wind and rain my Lord people the other thing I think we should review the pilot program I don't believe it's been looked at in probably 10 years and the other thing you know we want to be about bicycle friendly city and I agree with that however how many times have you seen an adult taking children on the sidewalk going in the wrong direction and not even knowing what the rules are I grew up in Barry we had to register our bike pay five dollars the police took an ID of your bicycle so in case of the stolen and you were handed a helmet and the rules and that should be done again thank you thank you for those comments I'm hearing you and gonna chew on all of those thoughts because I think that they're they're worth thinking about so appreciate that yes is there anything specific with the pilot program or something you and I could talk about certainly I just didn't know if there was something particular that you had I don't know when the last time it's been reviewed I brought it to our latest leaders before and they say don't look at it don't touch it we got a good deal we don't know and yes I will help us Cirillo on the wreckboard I was on the wreckboard 20 years ago and I'll come back I do have one other question for you actually you said the place where you would like a crosswalk you said it really fast and I didn't catch it right across the street from jolly that while the the old I don't I'm not jolly store you've got a youth clothing store there you've got buttons you've got children on the other side of the river that can't walk across that street without an adult thank you thank you okay so any other alright so the consent agenda I did not have time to read all the consent agenda items I would like to abstain from the consent agenda items unless it's needed okay so I was admitting that I had not had time to read all of the consent agenda items and so I would like to abstain from voting on them myself unless the vote is needed to move them forward thank you don't I guess we want to pull H okay and we've sort of effectively I guess we thought we had a nevermind awesome great any other things people want to pull okay I just want to make a comment too about the investment policy this is the addendum that's going to put the Montpelier Foundation funds in together with the city's investments and I had pulled that from a previous agenda in hopes that we would have further conversation about some socially responsible investing practices and so I just want you all to know that I'm comfortable with this moving forward adding in those funds for now and it's going to take a little more time to work out the socially responsible investing policy but but we're on it and we I hope to be back with some recommendations for you all in June just heads up for the timing on that okay is there a motion so all right we're all clear on what we're voting on I think so right we pulled one item all right all in favor please say aye aye opposed all right so item four and a half the State Street Farmers Market so Donna do you want to do you want to start with your your comments and then we can invite public up yes well several store owners have talked to me and unfortunately I didn't make the meeting that the business association had with farmers market group but I really wanted I got a sense that there hadn't been any many things had not been worked out well and so I really wanted people to be able to speak as to exchange ideas versus if you just made comments in the public they just stand there on their own so I would really like to share and see if we can't help make things work better for everybody so I'm listening to your comments and seeing what we can do with them any other comments from the council at this point all right so if you would like to any members of the public would like to go and comment on this that now's the time and say your name and let's figure out Karen Williams and Woodrow Mountain Toys what are the actually what the thoughts I had was that you said that the market was for three weekends we are under the assumption that it's for the entire summer that it would be every single Saturday I was going to jump in so the council approved a similar one closure I think what council members are referring to is apparently it's going to be tried a certain with a certain setup yeah but they have no parameters for that trial period they just will just see so there are no parameters in place yeah that was one of my questions what are the parameters that are involved in how they're going to make their decision one of the things they the configuration that they have shown us is what the tents facing the backs of the tents by the businesses so that the customers for farmers market would go down the street and I know that the fire marshal has approved for the tents to be set up on the yellow line back to back so therefore that the customers that are at farmers market would also be this the businesses on state street would be included in the market and it would be more more favorable to us and one other thing that I would like to address or to say is that I have supported state street closures because I know how viable and vibrant it makes a downtown but it also causes sales to go down for my business Saturdays are my busiest day when streets are closed I'm down to 15 to 30 percent for those days if we were closed every single Saturday from May to October it would be detrimental to my business thank you I'm Nancy Martel from corner of pinkies on state and I'm going to reiterate a lot of what Karen said is when we have street closures on Saturdays our business is down more than that ours is 50 percent down and to have that many closed during the summer that's our summer business that would just be horrible for us and if they have it the way that they're showing us now it also blocks us off completely we have no son we will see the backs of everything in order to to our shop you have to walk down one end of the street or to the other another concern and question is power I know that somebody said they need power and stuff where is that power coming from and who pays for that power I mean we we pay rent taxes our employees I'm Sarah Lasser I manage so long on State Street and again I'm definitely reiterating a lot of what has been said but I guess maybe the more these things are said the better so they'll be heard at some point I just checked our numbers for one of those Saturdays from last summer and we were down 25% and I have to run over here because I didn't want to be late but I'm assuming that the other days were pretty much in line with that because I remember it being way way way down it was super noticeable Saturday is also our busiest day of the week so to be down 25% or more for every Saturday for almost half of the year would be really rough for us I can't even imagine what that would do actually and again having the backs of everybody's tents to our stores nobody's going to come to our stores it directs all of the traffic away from us for our whole street and then when you leave the market you've left our street when it was in the lot when you left the market you came down our street and I think we hopefully all saw we saw extra business because of it definitely but last summer it was everybody was leaving the market and then going to probably back to their cars but they definitely weren't coming into the businesses people that were wandering in were like bored at their tents and just looking for something to do but they weren't they weren't shopping so I would love to see if there's any other options if it has been approved for it to be down the center of the street with the fronts facing our stores I think that would be no harm done to the farmers market people but definitely a huge benefit to us and it's kind of about the downtown as a whole so it seems like that would be helpful or in front of the State House might be better too or half on State Street half on Langdon Street was mentioned so just anything other than this is what I'm going for I'm Jess Turner I own Capitol Kitchen on State Street I'm a very nervous public speaker apologies things get weird up here I just I definitely want to just echo everything that my fellow business owners have said and also talk a little bit about the process of how this all sort of happened when the State Street was closed for the three-week kind of trial run last summer I was a fan and I loved it and I championed it to fellow business owners to other community members I kind of said hey this could be awesome look how vibrant downtown is however that was a very different setup that was down the center line vendors back-to-back looking into our stores and it wasn't until I read the first article in the Times Argus that I said oh that's not the configuration that's planned anymore the plan is now as we said lining the sidewalks vendors facing in their backs to our stores then I saw the map of what the layout was going to be and I couldn't believe how bad my position is pinkies position is we're in a box like there's no entry to us from what's the if the if the park lit happens for positive five which I've also been a champion of what that happens I'm blocked from the crosswalk by Woodbury Mountain Toys all the way down beyond Botanica like almost the whole block you cannot get to me unless you go all the way around and I just feel like my store front is a huge part of my business I feel like it's a big part of what I'm paying for for rent and I pay for rent 365 days a year just like everybody else here does who owns a business in town and I just feel like there's got to be a better solution I do feel like we're all in this together and we make the market better the market makes downtown better we're all working together toward the same goal which is a vibrant exciting awesome downtown so I'd love to explore other solutions as Sarah said that aren't this because it's pretty terrible from where we're sitting thank you well thank you anyone else this is Lauren Parker from my perspective is more about looking at farmers markets in other places I think everything that they've said is absolutely true and I support what they're talking about but also if you think about other farmers markets when they are feedbacks toward the businesses on the streets it just doesn't look nice it doesn't look open or friendly it looks closed and boxy and it's not at all welcoming to the community for the retail and restaurant owners so from that perspective just the visual on top of all the annoyances okay so at this point I guess I would pick on you Bill so what so we we approved as the street closures already at this point so what where I make I'm gonna sue jump in here so I you know obviously I think we all just want what's gonna work for everybody so yes this came to us last fall winter I think it had run through the various groups and that point the council approved the closure for the season not sure there was a specific layout and I as I understand it to jump in here at any time she's really been person on the ground so in fact like now would be a good time there's not a mine bill there was a discussion about the layout because I objected because they did change it and they said that was the layout they were going to use and we still approved a misunderstanding well it wasn't a misunderstanding the fire department prefers the layout along the edges with the backs to businesses because it lets their trucks through now having said that I talked to the fire chief and he is comfortable going back he's actually he is comfortable going back to last year's layout so in your approval of the initial layout you were actually under a misperception to some degree and the fire chief now says he he can live if he can get his fire trucks down the old layout as well yes Donna Bob chief bar chief sorry I called you for his name but I mean one of the suggestions was also to break it up there's nobody here from the farmers market was just I actually let them know there is talk about splitting this into two pieces yeah Langdon Street as well so that one row could be on State Street and one row of farmers vendors could be on Langdon it would sort of be a circular foot pattern the farmers market wasn't close to that necessarily because they could do some things like music and workshops they'd have more room it hasn't really been discussed by them and they haven't taken formal action hasn't been discussed by our staff or by Langdon that's correct it hasn't been verified so if we toss this at you and ask you to vet it thinking that you could make more room for your fire trucks if we only had one row and they would be facing some of the storefronts maybe not so centered but over you're thinking in Langdon Street also closing language yeah staff we need to discuss that I wouldn't be that on the fly close you got State Street and Langdon Street closed every I think 28 Saturdays I think that's what it is 28 consecutive Saturdays that's problematic and so I think we should hear from the police chief and the public works director also but it's probably it is problematic for me also there are and again those I prefer it here but I know the police department would not because that's very problematic because when you block State Street from the State House cars coming off the interstate you now have to stop them out at Memorial Drive you can't let them turn left on the Bailey Street get down the State Street and find the street close so you really have to stop traffic out as Bailey and Memorial keep traffic going that way so that's what we have to do for July 3rd because otherwise the traffic will turn left on the Bailey come down now they're at State Street have no place to go and likewise on State Street if it were spread out so it was further like from Julio is all the way down maybe not so thick but that help with as far as trucks or anything that would have to go through it would help fire truck fire vehicles it's not going to help traffic no no has to control traffic no it's going to be I believe one of the one of the concerns and one of the reasons it's been successful or anything's been successful at stretching State State Street is on street turn is still open I was saying Julio's traffic light just that that end right now the farmers market doesn't hasn't usually it allows a big space between Julio's and up across the bridge and then they start with the farmers market no went from the corner to Julio's basically state to Elm I mean main to Elm right and that's what we and I know that's what the police chief would prefer for the exact reasons of city managers talking about it gives Elm Street is a way traffic can come down and continue out where if it's up in front of the state house you have to stop it much so one hypothesis is that the farmers market was proposing this other alternative configuration to accommodate emergency vehicles but if we know that there was any other reason that they made this change to the layout ADA well mostly they were concerned also about liability they felt that they when they face the sidewalks there's a space that people have to step off the curb to get into their vendor tents and it's a they're concerned it's a liability issue so they were worried about that whereas if they back up against the sidewalk and people are coming in the front they don't have that issue they were also concerned about unloading the businesses did volunteer to help them with unloading last year's layout was a little bit complicated to get their their wears in so that was their concern so I guess I'm going to look at the counselors what you'd like to do I mean my inclination is to actually recommend that we go with the old layout but curious for other thoughts I'm not clear what saying we have I mean we've allowed this organization to close the street and I am trying to recall exactly what our motion was at that point because we may have made the motion that they could close it contingent on that configuration and if so we could take that back but I'm not sure I don't know what power we actually have here I could picture us like making a making a recommendation to them to say you know did you go one way the other but yeah I mean a street closure is at the at the discretion of the city council so presumably you could make a condition of the closure but I don't have in front of us the actual motion so we'll get it before the night's over but if there were conditions place then whether that requires we can see that sort of procedurally but presumably the council could when does when's the first so that's really I think it was January 24 I think I have the agenda right here yeah yes if I could say one more quick thing one of the frustrations that I'm having and that many of my fellow business owners are sharing with me there has been a representative of the farmers market the manager who has attended meetings molecular business association meetings with us since November and we've been quite straightforward about all of these concerns even before we saw the official map plan of it learning that they were going to be configured in this way we've really tried to be collaborative and shared these concerns in a very direct way but now we're starting to feel like it's like whoa whoa it's too late to do anything about it now but they it's been several months that we've voiced these these concerns so they've been quite aware of the issues that we've had with this from the beginning I just want to make that clear I attended last year's RV antique collection and they were on the sides and people didn't have any problems or issues stepping off the sidewalk to go look at these nice RVs I don't know if it helped or hurt your your businesses but I know it was great to walk down the main street look at things go around and then walk right into a business and it just seemed like I think that you know the fire could get through the middle they weren't really closing it all off and they left room for everyone both businesses pedestrians and the RVs I wasn't here last time when this is taken up but reading the email we got and listening to the people over here I think it's a really legitimate concern I think that I'd like to see some way that we could make this work for them I don't know whether that is to change the conditions at which the closure was granted but I would like to see us do something to make work I really don't I haven't heard what legal advice anyone might have gotten about liability but I don't know the sidewalks and the curbs are there seven days a week 365 days a year I don't think the liability picture is a concern I think it was actually accessibility difficult for handicap it was liability also liability apparently they have an issue with liability or someone got hurt at the farmer's market a few years ago so they've been through a court battle about this which made the very sensitive about and I can't really speak too much more I invited them to come here tonight but John just just for reference because you're wondering what the motion was the motion just referenced the proposal which was the attachment which was simply approved request to move farmers market to State Street for two for 2018 season the only addition was that it was contingent on discussions and approval with the relevant department heads so it was pretty broad well so what do you think Donna well I mean I'm not sure how to frame the motion but I would I would like to make a really strong suggestion if not condition that indeed one of the things was working with the stores they've been meeting but nothing has changed since they presented it they did a trial the trial had everybody in the center and that's what I expected them to move towards but they came wanting to change it and I'd like them to go back to that which was tried which did include the shops on the streets much more so I guess I'll test it out here in the waters I'll make a motion that we make it a condition that the farmers market make an arrangement that works better for the stores and works with them to do so for the first three weeks I do the first three weeks sure because I do like the idea of like checking in how's it going is this working yes with any can any arrangement and that's something we need to take into mind not make such a broad time period without testing that and that that's the other issue so I know that we approved this request to move it and I know that I know that there is a process by which the city council can revoke that not saying that that is what we're going to do here but what I guess bill what would that look like so if we're going to check in at three weeks and decide that you know if it's not if the layout isn't going to change to you know what what we suggest they don't think we can amend our original since we've already moved so what would that process be bill or John I think I think you would obviously have to have it not just an add-on agenda item it would be certainly yes the fireworks market by an interest in parties and have a full discussion and you certainly I think the first question the Karen raises what are the what are the parameters what are the criteria that are being looked at and I think you might want to we might want to think about what would be causes for us to like it and I don't mean that disrespectful it was that caused it to take away of permission that you've already granted or is it you know demonstrated loss of business to the businesses or is it you know just a whole how would we make that determination the other piece was that when they don't have a strong feeling with the other how we do it but when we did it we didn't get we didn't really talk about the layout but as I recall wasn't important to the market at least that it be for the season I think the council we've got construction in that lot this summer and so the idea was you know figure new marketing basis of your prior decisions procedurally I have to look into it but I think the worst-case scenarios you might have to proceed it with a vote to suspend the rules which would be a two-thirds majority but I'll check that you might not even need to do that okay and so I'm just I just so I am procedurally clear because I don't I don't want to sort of run into a situation where we think we've done the thing to cure the defect and then it turns out we've made another defect so it would be I realized so the farmers market start on the 5th which is not this Saturday but the coming Saturday would this mean that we would have to have a special meeting then to address this particular issue that's what I'm hearing if we need to have an agenda item and we need to bring everyone to the table well it depends what you want to do I think if you simply add if you're simply adding a condition sorry all I was saying was it would seem to me that if we were adding simply adding a condition about how it was setting up that that wouldn't necessarily require a special meeting now they may wish to they may ask for which would be there right and I think you know appropriate this was just added there was no publicity given that this was going to be discussed although the market was told that we were expecting people and it could come up so they were aware but I think if you're gonna actually have in there you know a discussion of taking back you know something stronger than that yes I think you definitely would not want it you'd want to have that beyond I'm sorry I'm trying to have frame my thoughts and you know it's not a production studio I'm sorry Dave the I think if you were to have a decision to revoke a permission or create grounds for revoking a position I would think you'd want to have a special meeting and invite people and do we want it and follow all proper process I think we're simply adding a condition about where tents go you could probably do that tonight because they could ask for a special meeting to reconsider it and maybe this maybe I'm just being overly cautious because being a lawyer like women's everything and then you're like overthinking everything but I what I'm what I'm afraid of is if we if we offer a direction a strong suggestion I mean I suppose there are a few different questions there one what if that's not taken and and then to like does does that trigger some sort of other thing that is an issue so my understanding is that the motion is not so they have to do it it's a condition yeah that's if they go back to the setup that was done in the trial in September I would love to be wrapping this up real soon just saying all right yes well I'm just wondering since the original motion that we approved was contingent on them working with department heads could we simply instruct the department heads to request that they direct that that in their deliberations they request that the market come up with something that's more satisfactory to the businesses that wouldn't be changing our original motion it would just be giving our department heads some more instruction if I can jump in strictly speaking I'm a relevant department head since I managed the what am I trying to say the vendors which who I always have to sort of step up and defend in situations like this so you know maybe that could be if they've already talked to everybody maybe the whole thing could be held up technically until I spoke to him and I can deliver that message I'd be comfortable with that I still think that the council ought to be clear on what they're asking for because you know we have gone through a process we have encouraged them to speak you know Seuss tried to broker meetings between the farmers market and downtown merchants and we've been very active trying to reach a conclusion and you know in all fairness I mean the chief is being very gracious but really in terms of purely a public safety response what they're proposing is preferable we can make work what's here so I think the department has done their job and said here's what we think works so we're happy to go back and be the bad guy or a good guy whoever depending who's mirror you're looking at but it would be great to have the council speak clearly if there's something that you want us to deliver I mean it seems to me that you know this he's the shortest distance between two points in a straight line if council wants to add a condition vote in that condition and it's done and I mean we'll still work with them my motion wasn't seconded was it John's speaking it needs to be dealt with as a second right away or it dies I was going to modify the language so that Bill was correct and Ashley's point to say that I I want to make the setup a condition of them using State Street and that they will come back in three weeks time and keep us abreast of how it's working both them and the store owners my motion is the condition of farmers market using closure for State Street is that they go back to the setup they used in the trial so that they're facing the stores and that replaces the other motion yes sir and then you just said and and that they come back to us in month three weeks three weeks as a follow-up of how it's working for them and the stores are three weeks from the start or after three three weekends after three weeks after three weeks after three weekends on David I think was next and then Dan or unless Dan maybe you were yeah go ahead Dan Groberg executive director upon failure life at the meeting between the NBA and the farmers market there was discussion of a four week trial due to the date of the next NBA meeting at the beginning of June so I think it's offering that perhaps you can start four weeks instead of three I'm willing to do that do you want it to be as an amendment John Jack friend Jack you're okay with that oh yeah that's fine I was thinking either last our second meeting in May or the first meeting in June either one would be fine but have it on the agenda now so that that's one effective nose that's without objection change yep David I was here for different reasons but my name is David Brownlee and my wife owns the alavita and I'm not here representing alavita but I just wanted the council to recognize that the State Street businesses are here year-round and the farmers market is here six months so I got to say thank you Rosie so I'm a little bit confused about this motion are we instructing them to change the setup for the the first four weeks of the market we're telling them they need to change their setup to what they had last September and then check in with us or to use the setup that they're proposing for four weeks and then check in with us at that point at that point we may instruct them to use a different setup if it's not working no it's directing them to use the setup they did during the trial which was facing the stores so the vendors have their backs to other vendors and are all facing the stores that was what was done in the trial and that's what I'm asking to be a condition of them using State Street and you want them to do that for the first four weeks of the market for first four weeks I if I could so what I heard was that that we could be wrong so I'm asking clarifying questions so what I understood was we were asking them to switch to that design with their backs to other vendors so they'd be facing businesses and that after four weeks of that they come back in and check so that was for the duration of the permit to shut down State Street they would come in and check in with everyone at four weeks and then the direction would still be to continue unless there were other direction from the city so are you saying you're you're your is your motion to say that's what I said go back over that's what I said okay that's my intention for the duration of the farmers market that's outdoors so State Street would be shut down with the condition that the vendors have their backs to each other facing the businesses on State Street for the for the duration of the farmers market for the summer interesting that's not what I had understood I thought the condition was just on the first four weeks I thought the check-in was at the four week mark to what's your intent what they I think the clarity from Ashley's important because they I would rather than be able to plan that that's what they're going to do unless they run into problems and they come back with us after four weeks and then we change it but if it isn't changed this this is the setup okay does that help clarify yeah and I guess I'd like to just talk about that for a second because I I'm really sympathetic to the businesses that have voiced their concerns but I also know that they're my understanding was that there were other businesses and maybe I'm wrong because I did not attend the meetings but there were other businesses that maybe felt differently and I also am really concerned about making this decision right now without checking in with the market so I would be more comfortable actually letting them proceed with the current design for the first week or two and then at a you know having a set check-in point because my understanding from the businesses was that you were really concerned that at this three week check-in point nothing would happen that you didn't feel like you've been heard this spring and so you were concerned that we have this check-in and it would just continue on even if it was problematic so I would I would prefer to give you some teeth to that check-in point and say at that point if it's really not working and let's let's make some criteria for what that is then we will give strong direction that it needs to change rather than changing it on a fly like this for something that's happening two weeks away because we have expressed our concerns about this every single month that they show up at the meeting and we would like them to go down the yellow line back to back facing the stores and every time they come back with the configuration of the tents facing the backs of the tents facing stores and all of their detritus you know degree which is what is it's not it's just not acceptable to us so it's not on the fly there were no other businesses on State Street that were that I'm not really sure who you were speaking of that are the different businesses but I mean I made I can you know I know that I spoke with Lotus Day Spa she said that please say that she is also against the configuration as you know it shows now so is and Aramed and willow on the Alameda cocoa bean the capital I think so it's I'm not really sure my I didn't speak with anyone directly that was my understanding from city staff so if that's not the case then we don't want to do that that's set up with tents and seeing the tents for three weeks and then come back I would much rather change configuration now and hopefully it would be in a positive manner and we can say like yes this does work you know as opposed to know it's yeah so again I'm concerned about making that change without having warned it and I I would rather give teeth to a check-in point and say that you know these are our metrics and if it's not working this is what we and I I hear you and I hear you that we haven't been helpful to you throughout this process in the spring and I apologize for that but I really am uncomfortable with us as a council having made a decision and then going back on it without any public notice at you know it's such a short date so that's maybe I'm in the minority that's my oh yes Donna I I would agree with that except it's Mother's Day and this is like Valentine's Day and what are the stores we're hearing from typical Mother's Day the kitchen flowers candy jewelry I mean so it just that's that's what to me makes it so pressing I mean Mother's Day Valentine's Day Christmas these are key times for our downtown stores so that's my concern well team I think we got him we got a boat move on one last thing and then we gotta you know once again who's to define the metrics and is it up to the store owners to report their negative sales from over what period of time etc who's gonna measure and define the metrics I think we're just gonna have to ask the farmers market to work with businesses to come up with with those metrics yes I'm concerned about that because it sounds like that's not working they should be here tonight they requested that we report actual sales figures to them and none of us who are super comfortable doing that saying we work with percentages happily they were giving the orange card if we move forward with Donna's motion Bill mentioned something about the farmers market potentially being able to call a special meeting if they could request they can't call so I want to just bring that out as a kind of failsafe or or check so that if we do this motion and the farmers market is furious and has very good reasons for why it's a bad move that is there next recourse is that correct yeah I just asked the chief real quick if we did go back to the original configuration for about four weeks there are there any pressing safety concerns on your end no we can make that work certainly the center aisle is preferred for us but we can make that work keeping in mind we worry about the vehicle the access and what soon I'll have to get together with them to make sure we had the proper and then keep in mind that we will only you know we would not put a vehicle down there unless there was an incident down there if there's something on the other side we'll go around so the only reason would be for that the other piece of it that we and we'll work with this and the police chief we're also concerned about safety of the folks that are down in there so we have to think about that also you know protecting the folks that are down so that's that's high on our list of priorities also if we're going to change it we need to change it soon we need to get together and start thinking about normally big access but how we're going to protect the people that are down in there okay yes Rosie so I appreciate Glenn's point and if we are willing as a group to if the market really strongly objects or if we're hearing you know some strong objections to this that we would consider calling a special meeting then I would be willing to support us fine with me and we're gonna try to make something work okay no further discussion right on favor to say hi hi posed okay thank you thanks all right your prediction right now I'm gonna guess that we're gonna be out at 9 30 okay okay okay thank you welcome thank you for waiting so this is the energy advisory committee and updates so I can't get into the computer because she means a password he sue he sue she's out talking we can introduce ourselves but the presentation part yeah so I'm Kate Stevenson I'm the chair of the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee and you guys want to introduce yourselves Jeff Fitzgerald I'm a member of the committee and I'm working on the municipal working group municipal projects working our reconry and I'm working on the energy planning and I'm Carl Johnson and I'm on the municipal group so our goal here today is really just to for the new members of council to introduce you to what we're doing on the energy committee give you a little bit of an update and kind of talk through where we are relative to the city's net zero goals and kind of where we're headed and how we would like your support in all of those efforts just press enter okay all right so just to get started so our and I guess they can't page through here but we'll just scroll so what does it mean for the city of Montpelier to be net zero at net zero community is one that produces all of its required energy for for transportation for electricity and for heating our homes and buildings through renewable energy sources and the goal of the advice energy advisory committee is basically to advise city council on any energy related matters we have sort of taken a broader view of that task and we do a lot of outreach in the in the city to residents and business owners and as my fellow members alluded to we have four different working groups within the committee one that's focused on municipal operations buildings and one that's focused on transportation looking at alternative transit options electric vehicles bike and pedestrian issues one that's focused on planning and looking at the master plan the zoning our own city energy plan and then we have a residential group really focused on homeowners and landlords so that's how we organize ourselves and just looking back at a couple of the projects that we've been focused on recently this is background images all the solar installations here in the city of Montpelier but in 2016 we were really involved with the one megawatt of a municipal solar array that's half here in Montpelier and half in Sharon and organizing that for the city and the school district we also put together a workshop for landlords so they could learn about weatherization options and how they could reduce energy use in rental apartments we were part of something called the Georgetown energy prize which was a national competition of 50 cities from around the country trying to reduce their energy use so we were competing in that and we're named a semi-finalist in 2016 we also did a series of home tours of about 15 different houses around the city so that people could see different energy efficiency things in action at a transportation festival on the statehouse lawn looking at electric vehicles and other alternative transportation options and we won energy committee of the year award so sorry about that last year we did a big weatherization campaign in the fall the button-up campaign which was part connected to efficiency Vermont we did the retro commissioning process at the police department and what that means is retro commissioning is something I'll talk a little bit about but it's basically going into existing buildings and looking at their heating and ventilation systems to just figure out how well they're working are their opportunities for improvements so it's really a way to go back into look at what we have and and what we can do to make them better so we did that at the police department we also did energy audits of six different municipal buildings at the end of last year and another series of home tours we worked a lot on the recommendations for the zoning update and we've been talking a lot with city staff on the ESG organics energy project which is still under discussion and I think you'll be hearing more about soon so when we look ahead at 2018 and what's on our agenda we're actively working on a draft of the city energy plan and that is in coordination with both the regional planning commission and part of the city's own master planning process so we've got a draft of that and we're still still working on it fine tuning fine tune we have three more retro commissioning projects lined up we're going to be looking at the water plant we're going to be looking at the district heat loop in the basement here of city hall and at the fire station so those are all projects that will be funded through efficiency Vermont so no cost to the city and our plan to start in the next month or two and it's basically bringing in some some outside engineers to spend a day really diving deep into how the systems are set up and giving us some recommendations we just finished up a big weatherization campaign called weather eyes Mount Pealier that you probably heard about we had about 150 homeowners from the city express interest in weatherizing their homes and we worked with four different contractors here in the area to set up free walkthroughs and so that homeowners could get a proposal for energy efficiency work on their property so we're in the process of falling up with all those people and it was a really successful first first crack at a campaign we're planning to do a campaign on modern wood heat this fall and really introducing people to the idea of super efficient pellet boilers and kind of automated wood heat and as I said we're still working on the ESG project and want to hear more about what they're up to so in the big picture we're trying to track how much energy the whole city of Montpelier is using and as you may have heard the cities cut or the whole this whole state's comprehensive energy plan calls for 90% renewables by 2050 that's the state's goal and so one of the tools that we use is called the community energy dashboard and it helps us track overall energy use but as you know the city of Montpelier has set a goal of net zero by 2030 which is basically raising the bar and saying we're gonna do it 20 years faster and we're gonna go a hundred percent so one so we're you know we're looking both at the big picture of the whole city's energy use and then really diving deeper right now into the municipal energy use so the our committee started tracking municipal energy use about four years ago I think is when Scott started and this year was the first year that we kind of handed it from the committee to city staff so Todd Provencher the finance director has been has taken over tracking all of the energy use and I've been working with him really intensively over the last few months to try and pull all our numbers together and as you can imagine there's a lot of different pieces to this and a really big spreadsheet so we we're still kind of finalizing all of the data from 20 f from FY 17 and updating all of our numbers but this so I just want to throw I'm not going to get into the details and I think if you all have questions about some of the details of municipal energy use Todd would be happy to come back and really dive into more but just as an overview this gives you a sense of kind of when we look at all both thermal and electricity you know where where is our energy going and it you may not be able to see all the details here but the wastewater treatment plant is a big chunk and then the schools are another big chunk about a third of the total but the good news is we are making progress towards our net zero goal if we look at just overall fossil fuel use you can see in this the red line is propane and the green line is total oil we've seen a real reduction in oil as we brought the district heat online and a couple other projects so we are making good reductions in our fossil fuel use and we've also made some really good conversion to renewable energy sources when we look at our electricity portfolio so if you compare 2011 we had about 2% renewable energy produced here for municipal use and now we're up to about 37% with the addition of the the big one megawatt solar array with with this slide is it's 2% and 37% is the is the number also getting lower by means of conservation well we're getting there the other thing I wanted yeah I'll get to that but the other thing I wanted to say is this is not taking into account the fact that Green Mountain Powers portfolio is also about 55% renewable so we're trying to figure out how to incorporate that that piece of data in but this is just the city's own solar panels and what they're producing so this is getting to your next question so like how are we doing is that are we conserving are we just using less energy where our vehicle fleet and the use of diesel and unleaded fuel has stayed pretty constant over the past eight years that we've been tracking our thermal load has gone down a bit you can see and our electric load has gone down as well it doesn't look like a huge change but I think it was 14 percent reduction over the eight years but that's it it's a difficult question because there have been so many improvements efficiency improvements for instance at the wastewater treatment facility but while those improvements were made they also tripled the amount of septage that they're processing so the power requirements to generate that additional revenue for the city were exponentially greater even though they're unbelievably more efficient than they were 10 years ago so it's it's a good question but it's it's not one you can easily answer and there are I mean for the most part the portfolio has stayed the same but there are some changes if we compare FY 11 you know the senior center wasn't operating so we added a whole building which has pretty low energy use but you know there are some things that have changed over the time so this is just giving a sense of kind of how we've been able to increase the renewable portfolio so we brought in a small amount of wood pellets at the senior center we have the PV photovoltaic solar production we have wood biomass and that's all from district heat and then we have biogas that's being produced at the wastewater treatment facility and is used to heat the operations there so to heat the digesters in the winter and that's a that's one of things where we're working on how to how to better track that but but we're up to about you know about a 20% renewable renewably produced energy in the municipal portfolio so now cut so that's kind of looking backwards you know where we come from looking forwards what what does it mean to get to zero to net zero so when we're looking at electricity our target is 30% reduction so 30% from energy efficiency and then whatever is remaining to replace that with renewable electricity and so this the dotted line that's going across the bottom here that's the average annual production from the solar that we already have so it's basically showing that if we can reduce our usage by 30% we'll be pretty darn close to being able to be a hundred percent renewable on electricity so and then that kind of the division is between the blue is municipal and the oranges from the school district so we're we're definitely within striking range on electricity if we can see 30% efficiency reduction your Roxbury the change in the school district is that gonna make your numbers a little more difficult to track given that you've got another building yes I hadn't even thought about that one yeah yep that's that's a good point so when we look at thermal efficiency we're also targeting a 30% reduction in heating fuels and that means basically we still have to replace 77,000 gallons a year of heating oil we talked about how our use of fossil fuels has really gone down but there's still a big chunk right 77,000 gallons of oil and 17,000 gallons of propane a year so how we're gonna do that what are the options really we're looking at switching to renewable fuels and the three biggest users are the high school the middle school and the wastewater treatment plant I think we do have some great potential at the wastewater treatment plant to potentially produce more methane that could offset the rest of the oil but we should be looking at at some fuel switching for those two for all the schools but the two schools there and we also want to follow through on the energy audits that we just did and if we do a lot of them the measures that they recommend around efficiency and envelope and air tightness we have the potential to to see some improvements there on the thermal side but I think it's gonna be yeah more around fuel switching on the thermal and then transportation it's the real the gorilla in the room in a lot of cases you know our goal is to reduce vehicle miles traveled and when we're talking about replacement like currently we use about 20,000 gallons a year of unleaded fuel for city again municipal operations and about 31,000 gallons of diesel so what are the options there looking at electric vehicles on our light duty fleet looking at biofuels for our heavy trucks and equipment looking at electric vehicle charging stations to support those electric vehicles and just in more in general looking at how do we increase downtown housing to reduce commuting by car so a couple of the things that from the committee's perspective that we think that the council should consider in terms of your agenda we we really see a need for city staff support to reach this net zero goal right now you know we we don't have any staff representation on our committee and when we take on these projects like the energy audits or the retrocommissioning or the tracking there's not really a point person so we struggle with that a lot and and what we've seen is a number of cities that are similar to the size of Montpelier like Hartford Vermont recently hired a full-time energy coordinator Lebanon New Hampshire recently hired a full-time person South Burlington has someone within their planning department so we do see that that there's a real potential for additional savings if there was dedicated staff we have a really awesome very motivated group of volunteers but there's only so much that volunteers can do so other recommendations we we are still really encouraging pursuing the organics to energy project at the wastewater treatment plant and there's details to be worked out but we really want to try and see that work we want to follow up on the energy audit recommendations and really figure out how to work those projects into the capital improvement plan in the long term our short-term plan is to use our new revolving loan fund to fund a number of smaller projects this year about twenty thousand dollars worth of work but if we did all the projects that we recommended in the energy audits it's about four hundred thousand dollars worth of capital investment but they do it does have a return on investment for sure we'd like you to consider some policies around net requiring new new construction in the city to be net-zero it's for municipal buildings but eventually for for all new buildings there's no way we're going to meet this goal if we keep building inefficient buildings and to start thinking about the conversion of the vehicle fleet it's really the municipal transportation piece is not one that we've spent a lot of time on so far but it is something we need to be paying attention to so that's basically it happy to take any questions but I know time it's it's short this happy at all your meetings I just want to make two small points one is to really focus on because it's going to be coming before you in a big way the wastewater treatment facility and we have not checked in with staff recently enough for me to even say anything more than obviously we want to work with what what their feelings are and and we're dedicated to that but this is a huge project and it's going to be a huge responsibility for you folks to make the decision as to which way to go there's a huge opportunity here and you just need to look from an energy point of view how much it means to city operations it's a third of city operations in terms of power and the other thing I just wanted to say and I know time is short but retrocommissioning isn't just a term you know that the police station didn't know what the heck was going on with their power and we brought in this CX associates to look at what was going on and it didn't take very long for them to figure what was going on and it was a you know all he had to do was turn off a switch and the power drain that was going on that no one could figure out was figured out so there's real benefits to looking at these buildings in a comprehensive way especially when you have a problem like the police station was having but you know that that's where these things lead ultimately is to savings for the city and more efficient operations and also why it's really important that we're tracking because you know that issue is going on for two years before we kind of figured out what what was going on and we're able to fix the problem so thanks I was such like an accessible presentation even a knucklehead like myself can understand it so I really appreciate just the way it laid out and everything I worry about our partnership with the state on some of this stuff and you throughout the number the goal is 90% renewables by 2050 I'm wondering where that comes from is that like codified in statute is that the position of the administration is I feel like there's a lot of lip service when we're having like a moratorium on wind essentially you know and they're saying stuff like that so you know where does that number come from and it's comes from the comprehensive energy plan and I think it has been codified in statute at this point would you please come up to the to the microphone to speak just asking you to come on up and speak from up here you looked at geothermal and I'm disappointed that you use the solar panels when I heard a statistic that in the three weeks that those solar panels were shut down with the advent of pilgrim closing in Yankee nuclear those three weeks when they got no electricity to the grid more fossil fuel was burnt then three months of the rest of the year and I've got that statistic in writing so I buy that there's other sources I know wind isn't popular but geothermal is yes Rosie no I was just gonna say that we need to have everyone who makes comments come up to the mic because there's the orca doesn't pick up the comments when they're not at the mic thank you I certainly want to look at all the options thank you I'm excited of course to continue having these conversations moving forward so too quick comments one energy audits have been great and are working through them and are figuring out what needs to go into our funding plan for the buildings over the next year to try to be like we wanted to get all of it so that's a good great and you mentioned a lot of council's getting an update on me now we'll be back we'll be here all right well thank you all thank you okay so we're up to item six tax income and financing thanks for being here I'm gonna let you introduce yourself okay great good to see you all in some new faces tonight we are here to talk about Tiff my name is Stephanie Haley I'm with Whitenberg real estate investment advisors and here with my colleague Gale Henderson King also from Whitenberg and we're flanked by Peter so for the for the new councillors it's nice to see you and we are Whitenberg has been hired by the city to look into the tax and financing district to do a we have been hired by the city to we initially were hired to do due diligence to look into the feasibility of doing a tax increment financing district here and then we were authorized back in January to look into the actual creation of the district and to go forward present you with a Tiff district plan and if authorized from there to take it on to the state so we're back here today after several months of some work and to follow up on what we presented back in January and so we're gonna run you through a little bit of backstory and some some big picture stuff and we're gonna walk you through what is Tiff and then we're gonna drill down into the nuts and bolts of what we're proposing in this Tiff district plan we did send ahead the materials which included the narrative the map and some tables which I'm sure you've read cover to cover which is fine because there's you know nothing like good reading when you're tired and so we're gonna hopefully give you the update and the up the big picture view so that when you get the the revised materials you can do a deeper dive this is also a time that we want to present this for the public because there are a lot of components that are included in this and so we want to make sure everyone's up to speed and has all the information before we come back before you in a couple of weeks so we're starting with the why and a pretty good quote to kick us off is there are only two ways to influence human behavior you can manipulate it or you can inspire it very few people or companies can articulate the why they do what they do and that's Simon Sinek and so we thought we start we as in Whitenberg had come into this trying to understand why does the city want a tiff district and why did what are the economic development goals and outcomes that the city is interested in doing and so we like to start with that why because it really paints the picture of the vision what we get down into the the nitty gritty that we get into is tiff and tiff is pretty great grain granular for pretty gritty for lack of a better word so we wanted we like to keep thinking back to why are we doing any of this why do we need this tool the city had done lots of planning to get to this point years ago 2016 the city did an economic development strategic plan and it actually identified tiff as one of the tools to be used to help further some of the economic development goals and last year the city funded a lobbyist along with a lot of other municipalities around the state to get tax tax increment financing authorized again in the state house so the new districts were authorized last year and not failure was one of the big advocates for it so this is a continuation of that really the big takeaway from some of the strategic work that had been done that we understand is that Montpelier does not want to stagnate Montpelier wants vitality and to not be left behind amongst the other towns around it and it wants to be a thriving capital city so how can tiff get us there well we we go from from infrastructure and catalyzing private development of the idea being if you can fix and create opportunities how much more private development that you want could happen here so by investing in infrastructure improvements or fixing infrastructure problems how can you leverage into development projects like that have been talked about for years and years like savings past year like the capital Plaza like the pit getting those things really revitalized and into what you want and what your vision is for housing retail office space and overall vitality so that's the Montpelier picture I'm going to turn it over to gale to give some better some more description of what tiff can do and then what tiff is and then we'll get back into the details of what we're proposing here in the district plan so there's several tiff districts throughout the state of Vermont but one of the tiff districts that's really been fairly successful is st. Albans and like Montpelier st. Albans started off with creating a master plan and doing a series of studies and trying to figure out how they could revitalize their downtown and after doing those studies they decided to focus on one block in the core of their downtown bordering on to main street and Lake Street which is pretty big area the interior of this block has a had a large surface parking lot a lot of the buildings were run down or vacant and having a lot of brown field issues private business just on the outskirts of the city my land technologies wanted to expand they did not want to leave their current location but they needed additional space to expand into and one of the bordering properties was state owned the state office building so working with the state to sell their building to my land technologies the city worked to get the state to relocate that office building downtown into this core block area but in order to bring all those employees there they also needed to address the parking issue they had infrastructure issues and they also had brownfield issues so this project would need to have a parking garage to be able to help with the parking issues the parking needs for the new state office building as well as a future hotel and also for the neighboring businesses and and development in the area so that there could be additional part of it free up parking spaces in the downtown so this was a very complex projects to put together and involved a lot of different economic development tools tiff being one of the tools that was used here and this resulted in the new state office building on the left a four-story building with a new parts the city owned parking garage there in the middle photo that actually has a connection to the state office building and then the last part of the redevelopment for this block is the hotel that was constructed and finally opened the end of last year St. Albans never thought they would be able to attract a national chain hotel to their downtown but they were able to do that and has been successful so far so this was a great a great start for their tiff district and since then they've had other projects but what is tiff tax incremental financing is a tool that's used for incentivizing private development by being able to create public infrastructure that is needed for those projects that would not otherwise be able to work to get those projects to develop as I said tiff is is one of the tools in the toolbox so it's a way that a municipality can build public infrastructure that is needed for that private development and uses tax increment revenue for financing that so this little model that we have up here on the screen a municipality will create a tiff district in an area where they want to encourage private development and but private development is not happening because there's needed infrastructure required infrastructure in order for it to happen so the municipality will establish that tiff district then as projects come forward that need that private development and need that public private development projects come forward that need public infrastructure a municipality will work with those those project developers and determine what is needed how it'll benefit the development and encourage incentivize the development to happen the municipality will then take out a municipal bond for that public infrastructure that public infrastructure then is built by the city or in this case the city then once that public infrastructure is is in place for that development then the developments go forward and are constructed and then the increment of the taxes from that development are then put into the tiff fund which are used to repay the debt service on the municipal bond so what is what is the tax increment items I didn't really explain this so if a property is in a tiff district and today is assessed at a value of one million dollars when that property is redeveloped expanded and reassessed after it's developed that property then is worth say five million dollars that increment of four million dollars is what we're talking about the tiff funds that the tax revenues are based on that that increment value so the way tiff works is once the district is established all the properties within the district are assessed that their current their original taxable value of what their value is today and that value is set that that's the baseline for the district all the taxes that are collected for all the properties that exist in that district at the time it's created all go to where they go today to the all to the state tax state education fund and the municipality then any new development to that is done that increment that I just was referring to the value of that increment the the taxes from that development for the state the funds that go to the state education fund 30% of that will continue to go to the a minimum of 30% will continue to go to the state fund and up to 70% can be used for the tiff district and for the municipal taxes a minimum of 85% must be used towards the tiff projects so once those public infrastructure projects are the bonds are taken out for those projects they have a 20-year period to repay the debt service on those bonds so the district will run for that period of time when those various bonds are held and at the end of the tiff district when everything is all paid for after those that that period of time all of the taxes from all the development in the district then will revert back to where it would normally go so 100% of the taxes would go for the state taxes would go to the state education fund and 100% would go to the town so you've effectively grown your grand list so jumping back to St. Albans for a minute creating a tiff district plan is just that it's a plan it's a vision it's the best estimate of what could happen within a tiff district based on what you know at that time as the as the projects come forward things often change and will go in different ways for St. Albans their original projections within their tiff district plan was they would have 33 million and public infrastructure that would be financed through tiff and a resulting 87 point I'm sorry 89.7 million dollar increment of private investment within their their district five years from when they started to today they've invested 16 million in tiff bonding for public infrastructure projects and the result has been 43 million dollars in increased private asset that private investment property values within the district so they've come a long way so far they've got a great start but again it changed it wasn't exactly how they planned it but it's it's working and it's moving forward so there's frequently asked questions that often come up for property owners within the district and outside of the district and one of them is does having a tiff district raise my taxes tiff district does not raise taxes the only way taxes can be raised is either you have improved your property and that the value of your property then is assessed higher or the municipality raises the tax rate and your value of your property the taxes you pay on that value goes up the other way is if you do a townwide reappraisal there could be a change but tiff districts will not change the value not raise your taxes at all another question is does having a tiff district take taxes away from the state education fund no it does not take taxes away from the education fund you're actually creating new revenue tax revenue by building infrastructure to get those development projects here without those infrastructure projects happening that development would not happen and therefore there would be no increase in the taxes for the state education fund or the municipality so what does this mean for Montpelier Stephanie will take it away so as you saw in your materials but for the general public we have spent some time then pulling together what what could be a good tiff district plan for the city and what's reasonable with what expectations we have today what we know about the the the projects and the barriers today again this is just a a menu of options but we started here with the district boundaries a little tough to see but what you're looking what you're looking for is the blue the blue is our tiff district thank you so the blue is is our tiff district and the yellow is the designated downtown the pink or red or purple is the growth center boundary the black is the town boundary so what we try to look at in this is we build the district to be fit within the criteria one thing about tiff is that it's authorized by the state under the program of economic progress council so once we get city approved once the city decides what it wants to do then it has to get state approval and some of the rules a lot of why you see the things presented the way they are is because there's a lot of rules and so one of them it has to do with the boundary and where you can put your district because the important part of the program is to really incentivize it in growth areas where they want to see development happen the statewide so they're incentivizing using a portion of the tiff of the proceeds of the projects that you would otherwise send to the state you get to keep to play down debt service so we have the blue district it is mostly within the designated downtown is entirely within the growth center and stephanie their maps have the tiff district and yellow so if you're looking at your map and wondering district is a yellow well there is that oh the one right in front of you yeah that does have yellow yeah the one in your packet I think was a different code yeah can I just ask you to repeat that last statement that the entire tiff district is within the growth center boundary because it looks to me from this map that we're looking at this is an old app that it bisects it here yes yeah it doesn't the growth center line actually follows the entire property line of savings pasture this isn't an old layer I suppose probably thought that it's I think it's right on this actually on this map but thank you for pointing that out because well because I want to update my materials for next time but they that was a question mark is did it go with the zoning line or did it go with the property line and the answer is it's a property line but it is within entirely within the growth center it's mostly within the designated downtown which was important to to meet certain state criteria so this one which is what you have in front of you it's pretty hard to read so I'm not expecting you to read it from where you're sitting I'm going to use my laser pointer but it is in front of you for the public I apologize so we have identified seven sorry six general buckets of infrastructure projects that are going to catalyze these eight private development projects the six are divided up in some ways you'll see in the materials some things are phased because they have to happen two different times you know you kind of do things like Ferry street you want to do in in phases but essentially we've identified eight different projects starting out here on the eastern side this is savings pasture savings has long been discussed as possible great possible housing site right inside of the growth center and the problem is the infrastructure along berry street is not sufficient to meet the demand and again what this goes back to is gale was talking about is that when there's such an infrastructure burden on these projects the market rates don't make it work to actually what what they can afford to charge for a house isn't going to pay for the infrastructure public infrastructure that's needed in the right of way to actually serve their project so it's incumbent on the city to upgrade that and then it takes it makes the project more feasible otherwise it would be done by now the project would already be done by now if it was a if it was a if it penciled out so there's infrastructure along berry street road infrastructure utility infrastructure that could happen that would catalyze housing at this site again I use the word could a lot I use the word would a lot but because we don't know but that's been long discussed and that's been the identified infrastructure issue next to it is the site of the Vermont College of Fine Arts and the front part of that has been identified as a possible housing site again they struggle with not just the infrastructure along berry street but also the intersection of berry and main street if you're putting a lot more cars through there to serve housing that needs to be upgraded down along the river there are a couple of granite sheds that have been uh you know I guess closing over the over the years along that area but now there've been targeted as possible sites for future housing and commercial space again they rely on that infrastructure along berry street to be upgraded and how much of the infrastructure you do at certain times is is completely dependent on that phasing um coming up the street a little bit at that intersection we have cited um capital cleaners capital cleaners is a great business a great you know piece of property but it's underdeveloped it's a one-story building on a site and one thing I should clarify and you've seen in the plan is that we do this in a tiered system tier one of the projects we are pretty sure would happen if you just put in the right infrastructure tier two projects are ones that have been talked about for a while I would um you know things that could happen if all these other projects came up and if there were other types of infrastructure available to them but there's nobody at the door ready to make the project happen tier three is like capital cleaners it's not that people have been talking about redeveloping it but if that intersection changes and is is making it more viable to do a multi-story building with capital cleaners on the first floor and upstairs residential or commercial that becomes a much but that could be 10 years out and we have to project it's a 10-year projection that you're doing so it's on the menu we should say and then you get into the core of downtown where um along state street um we have the the pit the long discussed pit which um is maybe prime for redevelopment if you could put parking in there and upstairs you could put retail or a residential and commercial um but they need upgrades to again the utilities and some of the and the transportation improvements there um in order to make that happen uh and then next to it would be the state and governor davis property which is calling it the state and governor davis just because that's the intersection but it's the old gas station and that's recently been purchased and is prime for redevelopment but again really relies on some additional infrastructure work with the access the utilities and they also need parking desperately need parking now i've left the i've gone you've noticed i've gone backward because oh christ church christ church is here as well that's affordable housing project that i know has been discussed publicly a lot and again they need parking in order to make that feasible especially housing always needs parking because they really have to be parked units and then we have capital plaza which has been long discussed as having um expansion potential but they keep running into the barrier of structured parking structured parking is around $28,000 space not including contingency cost so it's very costly and it adds quite a lot to the ticket that when you're already doing downtown development which is costly because of um infrastructure and you have to do different types of shipping materials in you don't have a big green space to do your staging and everything um adding that cost has become a big barrier which is why they haven't been able to proceed yet they have a contract they're hoping to go forward but they've been working closely with the city to look at different configurations of what they could contribute and what the city could contribute to do a garage that would be both public parking and private parking for their use but how else could it be leveraged to use for other private users for Christchurch for maybe incentivizing other developments in the area to provide them with parking that all of those expectations and all of those configurations are not set in stone by this plan by any means this plan is purely a just that a plan it is a a menu of options and it is doing the due diligence to set up the city for using this tool how you end up using the tool investing in that parking garage or not is up to you once you have the tool it's up to you but you have to put some expectations in writing and present that to the state and show that you've done the due diligence in order to get approval for the tool and then as negotiations proceed with all of these property owners to do a public private partnership then you have the plan in front of you and if it and if it meets with the intent of what you're trying to do you'll have authorization to use TIF so this is not binding I make that very clear because there's parallel paths of the city working entrepreneurially with different partners all over the city and this is is irrespective of that is really setting up the tool excuse me yeah you just that said something that I'm not sure I understood you said you then have authorization to use to do the TIF does that mean that even if we go forward with creating the TIF district that there's some state review of the individual TIF investments it's a great question it's and sadly there's no real clear bright line if you if if you follow exactly which it never happens that way exactly as we've projected here that you do this much investment you bond for this much you don't have to go back to the state at all it's just carte blanche if you vary a little bit within that and there's no real clear bright standard and bar of what that is you don't have to get approval but basically as you're doing projects you're communicating with the state consistently and it the big thing is to stay within intent so if you intend to do parking you've said that in your plan and then you do a parking structure you've pretty pretty you know and you meet within the location criteria nexus and all these other tests but you've proven that then you're pretty much authorized to go it's if you vary widely from what you've planned if you if you start to include a project that wasn't on this list for example then you go back for authorization and how much authorization if it requires a full board meeting or not is again subjective and that's to vexie but yeah but also i guess just to balance that answer when you go to the product so you get your tip approved and you go to the projects because they're in there as a maybe you're not obligated to do them right you look at each project once you have the tip and decide what you want to do and each gets reviewed and bonded yes yes and actually as an example in saint albin's um there were several that were on the list that they've done there's a few they haven't touched at all that they may not do at all and then there's one they just did that wasn't on the list they got they went back and got approval for that so or they it was actually more of a reporting even they just reported to the council that that's what they were doing so sorry it's not a more clear answer but also as projects as public superstructure projects are getting ready to move forward you're working with the private developer to make sure that they are going to do their project and you're ready to do that for the superstructure project you do have to go to a public vote so there is a vote for every time you take out the good point that's when it's binding um so the nuts that those are kind of the nuts and bolts of what we've we've included in the plan if everything happened exactly as we planned because that's always what happens uh we we could expect to see seven point eight million dollars of public infrastructure leveraging close to 66.5 million of private property value increase that's just the increase of value the new taxes on that again just go back to the tip 101 it's the taxes that would go from the 66.5 to pay down the debt service for that seven point eight million and then you've got a grand list that has grown by almost 70 million at the end of 20 years and all of that is going to come off and and feed your general fund um we do a lot of modeling so what i need to take a sidestep and say is the process and i'm jumping ahead in my own notes but because i'm warning you about what you're going to see in a couple weeks when we bring back the final version which is a lot of tables and that's what we've used as the model to go through this it's what the state gives you a template and you build it you build the model so we have to provide that as part of the tip district plan it's pretty overwhelming i think i gave you plenty of tables with a little cheat sheet um because it's pretty overwhelming but this is those this is where those numbers come from so let me go into um really quickly i hope everyone gets this reference i'm a little worried but um the really important part is that TIFF this this TIFF program the one that's currently authorized and the way we're building the district is not an if you build it they will come model you do not want to build infrastructure in a way that is speculative and hopeful that the private development will come as gail said you work closely public and private sector as as a team to create development agreements that really hold the private developer accountable so that you know you'll pay down that debt service using their TIFF revenue and the point of that is that the reason that's why we go through all these exercises of doing all the modeling we do sensitivity analyses well if this project didn't happen could they still pay the debt service because you don't want to get stuck on the hook for infrastructure you built and no private development came um essentially the other piece of the program the the real important part of the program is not to just be doing infrastructure for infrastructure's sake you're not doing deferred maintenance this is the tool is meant for economic development it is to help the council fulfill its economic development goals that the city has set forth and so when you have a district once you have the district the point is to work really closely with your private developers who are at the table who are willing to invest and treat them as a partner because you want you do not want to do anything speculatively you want to build it in lockstep knowing that they're going to invest and raise their property value and pay those increased taxes that are going to help pay down that debt service for that infrastructure piece meanwhile the rule insists that the public that the infrastructure remains public so it has a public benefit but the point is to incentivize economic development so i wanted to emphasize that can i ask um so you're saying you know this is not to to maintain current infrastructure and that made me think about how in your formulas how do you account for the new added maintenance that the city is going to have of the new infrastructure that we build is that taken into account or is we need to take that out of the increased general fund revenue that we're expecting yep it's it's an it is capital cost only okay so that's when we see oh we're going to have you know this much more in our general fund to do all these other great things with we really have to remember to yep take into consideration that we are also going to now be maintaining this other right and the hope is that um you've gotten um you know you're you're improving and and increasing you know your your sewer lines down barry street and that your your fund is actually eventually you were going to have to replace those anyway um the idea being you're going to increase them now you're going to invest in them now it's maybe as an accelerated timeline than you intended and it was all you're also going to expand them which will have other benefits as well but the idea is it's not only for deferred maintenance i guess so for city staff there were some things in there like i saw there was a traffic light suggested to be added at one intersection and that kind of thing it would be really helpful if you could give us some sort of ballpark numbers about if we were to build this infrastructure what that added ongoing maintenance for the new things not for the you know i understand we're hopeful that we can eliminate some other maintenance headaches but for those new things that would be useful going forward yeah and looking at something like the parking garage where you want to look at um that one's a big one when it comes to maintenance right is um is adding that maintenance cost in when you do the actual model so you see what the parking revenues will do usually the parking revenues or what you use to pay down that maintenance cost so that it doesn't impact your general fund your existing general fund um i will say this is a real technicality but i'll i'll throw it in there just to confuse you um you can actually retain less than a hundred you can use less than a hundred percent of your municipal increment to go into the tax increment financing district and some municipalities have chosen to do that you can um allocate less almost no less than 80 percent so you could have 20 go into your general fund of the increment and 80 go to the tiff the tiff fund um conceptually that's fine with these numbers it doesn't work because in your early years you don't have enough cash flow to pay your your debt service that way um the and so some municipalities though have enough because they're not front loading their district that they could use that 20 percent to be paying into the general fund and kind of offset some of that that being said you will see in the model if i don't know if it was one of the tables i showed you you actually have a huge amount of surplus in like year 10 or 11 so you can actually at that point ratchet it down to retain less than a hundred percent and a portion of that increment can start going to your general fund earlier is that way too much detail that's real nerdy no that that's actually helpful because i i think that this is making me realize that we may end up having taking a property tax hit in those early years and i i want to tease that out a little bit more yeah you might want to look at that with each individual project see what it will cost to to maintain that because you're not going to do all of them at the same time anyway so maybe picking which ones you do i will say you'll see in the cash flow projections that some of the early years have a negative cash flow we talked about that at the last meeting but that's done in every municipality you do interfund loaning you don't take that money from the general fund and eventually it gets repaid because you don't want too many of those years like by year six or seven it's back surplus and you've already repaid those so um i'm going to keep going real quick and we'll come back for more questions because i know there's there's plenty more but i want to get through this last few pieces which is process um this is a complicated process the the binders in the middle that you see are what go to that see there's a ton of of paperwork and things that we have to do to really educate the state because they don't well in most counties most municipalities they don't know your city well they their headquarters are here but you assuming they don't yeah exactly so um so you know you're educating them about what but there's a story to tell here and that's why we we wrote the tiff district plan the way we did what's the truth about the growth in the capital because there is maybe a miss no a misconception that there's surplus you guys are one of the thriving cities in the state but there's also an increased demand on infrastructure here so there's a story to tell that we need to make sure it's very clear so the tiff district plan you have in front of you tonight in very draft form um is actually the nut at the the heart of the vebsi application then we build that that application around it with all the other forms and materials that they need and we submit that to the state and they do a series of hearings around that to to review your application we have submitted the letter of intent following our last meeting so the state knows we're intending to apply by the end of may uh should this council choose to proceed and so we would assume we'd have hearings over the course of the summer and the reason we did that and timed it that way is so that you would have authorization if you so chose to go forward with any develop infrastructure project to make it to the november ballot so that would be an option um the draft you have in front of you is a very draft form we understand there's probably a lot of edits and we've made continued to make edits since we sent it to you on friday but the point is we we do it in this way so that you have chance for input not just you council but you public and any concerned or interested stakeholder who wants to have input on what this plan means or has any questions so we are going to leave this in draft state until monday april 30th um we have um i forgot this slide here there's a website a web page on the web city website for tiff and a contact information will be on there so we have ample opportunity for people to to submit any input they have but before monday and then we're going to revise the plan with all of that input we're going to take that into consideration and re you know rework what we need to or rerun the numbers if we have to and the hope is to submit then a new fresh final version of the tiff district plan back to you by um in time for your may night meeting and on that need at that meeting should you choose to proceed you are actually authorizing and starting creating your tiff district there's it's by your vote that actually creates the district you can't use the tool until you get state approval but you've started the district and you start the clock so um there's a specific resolution that's prepared by the state that would be put in front of you presented in front of you if you choose to go that way today so that's the next step that we take and after that it's a whirlwind to get to the state application um i think you know i i guess i i'll go to the q and a slide for my own question my question to the council and to the public would be what have we missed is there anything we've missed we've gotten input we've working closely with the core team which has included a couple of counselors and um partners the mbc has been a big partner in get it helping us gather data and gather assumptions um and then you know we talked with a lot of stakeholders local property owners business owners developers and tried to get as much input as we can because we've been working at this since last july um but we're always happy to take these any input now and then you know after we put together the final plan there's still opportunity for input because the council can then choose to do projects as they wish with the tool after it's been authorized how about i'm going to stop talking and open it up to questions looks like there's no burning questions asking questions along the way jack i have a question people who know me know i'm a very optimistic person so i'm trying to kind of curb my enthusiasm and and ask you to talk about what could go wrong what's what's the possible um that's a great question sure there's definitely risk here so um it's not a high risk but it is there is risk and the the main point to remember is that as a partner in any endeavor like this it is taking risk on to be entrepreneurial to see through your vision so there is some risk and the the main one being when you go to bond for a vote or go to the vote for a bond you're you're taking on debt and you have to pay it no matter what you have to pay the debt should the projects not proceed as planned should they fail after five ten years and go out of business and the property loses value if there's a fire and the property loses value you're still on the hook for that debt service that is a risk there's a lot of wording in the vote that goes to the voters that says that that you you know so voters are aware that that's one of the risks that being said there's been a lot of things in the program that have been built in to help protect that which is why you do not do a district on one property you don't do one project district you do a whole district because the hope is that even if one doesn't perform as well as you'd hoped other things have been catalyzed other projects and properties have increased in value you see some natural that natural increase somebody in five years was already going to redevelop their property in five years that still goes to help pay and permit pay debt service so there's some barriers for and it's a 20-year period so it gives a little bit of a longer runway um this is going to your next question that i know you have have any tiff districts failed in the state of vermont no they have not um not yet we haven't actually seen any finish there's not a closed any districts yet there is one one district in colchester that actually folded and just said we're not going to use the tool they turned it back in which you don't really do but they just never used it and just ended it but none of it finished for us to see if they have failed nationally if you google tips that fail one of the best examples is a walmart example that and i'm not even saying where it is or when it was and there's probably several of them but you know it wanted to come they wanted the town wanted it to come so badly to an interchange that they offered to run all the utilities out to the interchange and they thought as soon as that builds all this other development will build around it it will help pay down that infrastructure debt they built it it didn't come now they're on the hook for water and sewer to nowhere those are failures that's why the program and there's been some studies done about why vermont's program is better than a lot of other a lot of other states around the country because it builds in all these protections to make sure that you've worked on this in tandem with your property owners as best you can but you're a partner you're basically a partner in the development um and a little bit more in that direction back to gale's slide i think about um frequently asked questions tiff does not raise your taxes i understood that uh as it stands if tiff succeeds and for 20 years it will not raise taxes am i correct that if tiff fails after 20 years then taxes would have to go up in order to pay back the debt that was not successfully paid off does that if you if the municipality took out bonds for infrastructure and for whatever reasons the developments did not happen or did not happen as planned and there's not enough revenue coming in then the municipality would have to look at how to repay that and in that scenario they may have to raise taxes but right itself yes does not raise taxes having the tool i would say yeah and when we say if tiff fails it's a little bit of a misnomer because it doesn't the tool doesn't fail a project might not suffice or the tiff fund may not may not cancel out yes josey so you had a recommendation that we do bonding over 30 years and that was because of cash flow yeah beginning yeah that makes me nervous because the time period for the tip is only 20 years can you talk a little bit more about that yeah thank you for bringing that up because um it is weird so the tiff district life of a tiff district is actually as long as you still have debt when you finish paying your last debt that's when the district ends you can only retain taxes for 20 years so you can stockpile squirrel away your your revenue for 20 years and then still have debt service but the point is with that model where it shows cash flow you just use from that pot to keep paying for those 10 more years realistically that's the way the model's built and it's so stupid of course you're going to pay it in a balloon payment at year 20 if you have the money of your account of course you're going to pay it all at one point at one time but you can use a tool that's longer and intentionally longer because it will reduce your your your annual debt service in those early years problem is what it does with debt it gives you you're paying more interest over the life of the loan so if there's any way to avoid that you want to try and the way you could do that and i put that in the thing is to do a sinking fund instead so if you borrow a little more then you need for the for the actual infrastructure you put that into a sinking fund to cover your debt service in those early years you can do that which they didn't say oh that's super helpful because then you don't go into a 30-year bond and pay a bunch of interest you don't need to pay a lot of work around so uh we don't need to approve anything tonight this is just an opportunity for us to gather information and to sort of take the temperature how are we feeling about this and so any any other questions or concerns yeah dan thank you yeah Dan robert mom fill your life i sent a letter of support to mayor watson and i hope that was shared with the whole council um downtown's really at an inflection point and there's a lot of excitement um and i think that we can really use this as a tool to catalyze a lot of development that we've been talking about for years and years and years long before i came to my failure but we're talking about having the ability to do some some major uh progress towards our goals in terms of affordable housing in terms of economic development in terms of downtown parking that's been talked about for what four decades um and i i really think that um that that we have this opportunity to just have another tool in the tool belt there'll be plenty of opportunities for public comment there'll be review of every project there'll be votes on the bonds um i think it's really important that council uh moves forward and just gives themselves this tool that can catalyze change any other thoughts i just want to add that um i don't know the right protocol but if there are any granular questions as this goes forward we want to make sure you're as comfortable with with the material and the the plan itself as you can be um when the state comes to review this they want to know that it has the full understanding of the municipal body that's approved it and so if there are any grand more specific technical questions like rosie had so i filed them through you i suppose and then i'm happy to answer any of those types of things there we go i meant yeah for them but yeah so um because my hope is that we'll be able to provide you with the final plan and come back for approval in two weeks great all right well thank you thank you very much i'm looking forward to this and i think this is going to be a great tool for us so thanks is your presentation going to be on the website sure good yeah yeah can be now okay so the Scribner street right of way it's something we have received uh some emails about oh yes Donna i'm sorry it's look at the two-hour mark can we have a fresh order like a five minute break yeah please thank you upwards as i was leaving the house i told them all right so i guess i'll i'll uh call us back to order here um all right so if uh Maggie and if you'd like to come on up i'd love to just get a really brief description of um situation and then and then and and tom if you want to come as well um sit here or just yeah well you can do either you could stand there or stand wherever you prefer yep it's Mike's in either place well if Tom's coming out maybe we should all yeah there you are yeah you see that's the idea i don't understand how these lights work just i i am Maggie Neal i live on Scribner street up at the top number eight there used to be a number ten long time ago but i am at the top at this point um it's a very small parcel of land it's a wild land less than a quarter of an acre that has been very dear to me for 23 years it's a tough hill street to climb in the winter time but it's been worth it to have this land and i've been protected on this small acreage by a vast acreage of 14 acres around me owned by number nine and it's been wonderful to have all this wild land so close to Montpelier so i could be an artist and work for the arts in the community for the 23 years been pleased to be part of Montpelier so in the last year things changed on the hill and it became very unsettling uh there was a waterway that came down the hill from an upper spring and it was disturbed and moved um we didn't understand why this was happening so we talked to the number nine neighbor and he said well it's my land and he said oh when i bought this piece of property i thought that my eight rods were all along the whole length of Scribner street that's what the deed said at least Scribner street when i spoke with Tom it seemed there was no definite designation of where Scribner street ended so there's a real question of do i live on Scribner street or or what at this point it has really changed i would like to appeal to this council to set a designation of how long Scribner street is i would like to see it be 340 feet from river street which would include my front yard and my driveway as part of the easement of Scribner street rather than belonging to a private individual what can i say there's so many questions i just i don't i'm not one who wants to live with anxiety and i have felt great anxiousness in this situation and it's it's affecting my life it's affecting my health so it seems like little peanuts compared to what we were just talking about you know these big money and this tax and you know whoa uh all i want is to know that the street in front of my house is a public city street and that i have the access to my property that i've had for 23 years and that i'd like to give to my son without any entanglements so i probably could say a whole lot more but i know there's going to be a little red card that comes up in the sense he didn't tell me the time well i feel like we've talked so long tonight or others have so tom would you mind explaining the process from here or or bill sure so um the agenda template explains um the recommended action and provides background information provided a memorandum and some attachments um everybody received that have an opportunity to review it um so unfortunately um in this situation our the city's lack of of proper records or the town of berlands if it were annexed and it became a street for that has really resulted in this anxiety and uncertainty which is unfortunate um as i said in our memo it's important for all property owners including the city to know their boundaries and um and most of our streets and roads in fact that's one of the jobs i first took um when i started here many years ago was to survey right of way so much to my dismay there was no official record of of a right of way for scripner street and nothing in our files and then we hired a surveyor to search it further um Maggie's friend also did quite a bit of research um i spoke with an attorney Paul Gillies who has a lot of background in this um and unfortunately we're at this step where a lack of official action um is exists in this case and we must correct that in state statute provides the the action to be taken which is described in Paul Gillies step by step procedures um that the meeting tonight is to to give a general overview of of the situation and where it stands and why this is necessary um and then to under the action is to set the date to begin that actual process um the legal process under the title of 19 vsa 33 um subsection 33 um just briefly under that section um in the in the statute survey of existing highways the for the purpose of this that the the word survey means the survey of an existing highway where nor no previous survey has been properly recorded or the record of a previous survey has not been preserved or the terminations in this case the boundaries of a previous survey cannot be determined that's the conclusion that we've come to a re-survey is to produce a previous survey of our surveys we can assume that one was done we just cannot locate it for whatever reason um whatever the outcome whatever this is either a survey or a re-survey the procedure is the same to um looking at Paul Gilley's recommendations i asked him to prepare a step-by-step procedure um so that's what the statute says and what has to be done um then how do we do it all um so there are notice provisions um i did under for this uh particular hearing and briefing um which was duly warned i sent a letter to all the known property owners um so that's that's this process it wasn't a required piece you've done the warning but the rest of it is laid out in statute and so we have a 30 day advanced notice to the hearing that i have we have to notify the owners lenders utilities and those with easements um we have to have to set the date of a site visit the council must physically go to the street um and view it there is a hearing and the hearing is um we will take testimony you'll question me speak with the property owners any evidence that they wish to present to support the case um that it is in fact a public street and um or any evidence that may be available to help us the city council determine what its true length is um maggie mentioned a length of 340 feet that is the crux of the matter what is the length there are highway maps for um under this under the state requirement for certificates of highway mileage which we still do annually every february um indicates 340 feet the surveyor indicates that that her entire frontage is along the street which is 396 feet so um so in the in the background information in the memorandum that is the the information that we need to know is to complete the research the surveyor that i hired um did a review of the records both here in motelier and in berlin um had previously surveyed maggie's property so it was it made sense to use that surveyor to move forward and then um and did uh from that found that her description actually describes a border with Scribner on on the westerly side and so what needs to happen next is to complete the research of the entire street and all of the properties to see if we can find additional evidence to support that um there's no question about and i do have a typo i wanted to point out in the background says the city council is asked to consider historic evidence of acceptance by the city through continuous and uninterrupted care and maintenance not interrupted so there has never been a period where where the care and maintenance of the street has has not occurred so our my suggestion is to allow us sufficient time to provide the notifications which has to be set by certified mail that we suggest june 13th for that meeting a regular council meeting this is going to be a time-consuming process because that is that is the prescribed method that we have to follow there is a part in the statute that i think is important is additional action notice of the completion of the survey shall be sent to all known about landowners by certified mail not less than 30 days before the survey results are filed with the appropriate town clerk together with notice of statutory rights or appeal so that tells me that should at least get the survey scheduled now or this is going to take even longer so really what city council will be doing and as paul points out the survey does not have to be available at the hearing i think it makes sense to do that because you cannot take deliberative action until you have that survey and the results of her finding or his findings if that surveyor is booked out too far this could be the fall before we get this result and we really don't want to cause any more anxiety and concern about this so so if i could add that you can order me to issue those notices and to retain the services of a licensed registered land surveyor to begin that survey process would you like a motion certainly and any questions and the other property owner is here if you'd like to speak mark just listening okay actually i just i have a couple of questions so first what what i'm hearing but i want to ask the question is that it doesn't sound like there's a dispute whether or not it is a city street the question is how long is that city street and is it 300 and 310 feet 316 feet 340 something feet or 396 feet that's really that's the ultimate issue here is how long the city portion of the street the boundary includes the width and the length okay so we believe it to be let me check that i think it's a two rods 33 but i'm that all needs to be okay and so so the the question is not whether it is a city street it is how long that city street is okay um and then my other question for you i saw i think it's um the designation between a class three and a class four i assume that comes after the determination is made as to how long the street is i think it's the last page like last full paragraph yep okay so um that's a great question um so there are improved portions of a street um and that is actually the eligible portion of the street that's eligible for state aid and what we see today in the current certificate of mileage is what i believe to be the improved portion of the street there is a section um and certainly bruce sargent could speak to this further it i can't say whether it was ever improved beyond this i believe it was actually laid out as a right of way beyond the improved paid portion um but there's no way of knowing whether that ever existed um it's possible there were other properties accessed up there um so we have not been maintaining that in an un-maintained street could be two things can be a class four um which the town is under no obligation to maintain improve um under that designation you don't receive state aid for it um there are minimal obligations which is to address drainage primarily under statute you may have heard about that but a number of cases related to the town's lack of diligence in maintaining drainage um there is another option and that is trail status i don't think that's appropriate in this case i think it is the primary or a future access i think you can always reclassify it as a trail leader so the recommendation would be to again subject to the outcome of the survey is to classify that and the acceptance is a class three and then the remainder is class four and so does that mean and i'm not saying that these are the numbers but it would be whatever number this legislative body finds to be the length of the street so so for example the paved portion let's just say that that's what we agree not just hypothetically but so let's say we say fine it's the 300 and the the paved portion is 310 feet and then there's another 70 feet behind that and so what that what that ask in that paragraph says is that the paved portion would be a class three road and then the rest of the 86 feet would be class four okay yep all still right of way all still city property but just a class three versus a class four okay and we if we called it a class three and and then and submitted a new mileage certificate we actually have to approve it to class three standards and the standards that we adopted okay okay i think that was all that jumped out to me immediately but you have another chance rest assured i will have questions yes i know i'm six scripted on mags neighbor when she got her surveying done i was surprised that the line i assumed where my line was it moved uh i'm concerned about my title sandwich thank you this will be a survey of the the street right of way research on the adjoining properties will occur because that needs to take place it's all looked at together under the research but it's not a survey of your of your actual property so you need from us probably a motion directing you to begin this process to do the survey set the date for the hearing to take consider the official action and i think the thinking was we do the site visit right before the regular council right what time do you want to start well you normally meet now it's seven so between the site visit i don't think it will take too long it's really a viewing here's the beginning here's the end here's mags property here's the neighbor's property here's goes six thirty i'm thinking you'll be up there maybe 20 minutes six fifteen six fifteen p.m okay do you have a motion although i can work because i don't think i need to hear an official motion to order the survey just to understand that that i will begin that that makes sense so i would so i think the motion would be then i would move that we commence the surveying process and that we set this for a hearing on is it June 9th was that June 13th i'll second the site visit at six with yes hearing during the meeting and that will be the the morning notice that i sent out any other comments uh great um all in favor if you say aye aye opposed great thank you very much thanks all right so the tax stabilization application well for it's coming up i'll just do a quick introduction of general we tax stabilization we do have voters have approved tax stabilization in the city for a maximum of 50 percent of the municipal taxes this is not school taxes for up to 10 years the council in 2003 adopted a policy which i've attached uh which gave different levels of approval based on if you met certain criteria um i think for most of you you haven't the only one you may have done was the caledonia spirits which was tied in with the development agreement this was actually more common word the developers so it comes to us with a project and says i'm requesting this and here's my story and we take a look at their criteria we weigh it against the policy and present to you you have you're supposed to hold two hearings or meetings to discuss it i think the theory is you get the information if you have more you want more information have questions then you can direct them to the staff or to the applicant and then we'd come back at the next meeting to try to adjust that this is fred connor from connor brothers last evening i'm fred connor and i'm here to represent the applicant which is a company that's owned by myself and my three brothers steve mike and john we uh are approaching our 30th year and has connor contracting and have been doing redevelopment work in the city for about 20 years and i wanted to just touch on a couple of projects and circle back to this application i had gotten word that the mark play a whole center which was previously located on state street across from the uh state house uh was being dislocated because the state wanted to buy the building they were in uh so we uh got in touch with the uh 150 the owners of 156 main street which is the former masonic center at the roundabout and struck a deal with them with the masoness to build a new facility over at uh across from across the road from the civic center a central vermont memorial civic center and then redevelop that property for the uh the central vermont medical center as the as the montpellier health center um so that's a project that we went into uh with a tenant in hand we had another project which is this property where we had a tenant in hand which was cavett cramley uh the applicant purchased from the city of montpellier that property which had been put out for uh votes for both police and fire uh buildings prior and then that was rejected by the by the voters they wanted to see those uses k downtown uh so the city then went out for proposals and we uh won that bid and brought cavett cramley to town with 50 starting with 50 employees and going up somewhere in the 75 range um so again that's another story where we had a tenant in hand um moving over to stonecutter's way uh and working with very strong support by the city we acquired the property next to uh the halemont co-op and we developed that property on spec and it is now the home of the office of the state chance office of the chancellor of the from our state colleges as well as the nature nature conservancy um so we've done uh about a handful of project redevelopment projects that have substantially increased the uh grand list and created uh upwards of a couple hundred jobs moving back to the application that's before you uh we've been successful in releasing the existing facilities to uh cascade technical services which is an environmental drilling and testing and testing company and also CAD cut which is an aerospace company that also has operations locally in middle six so i'm here before you tonight uh to request a tax stabilization agreement for this new building that we have building on the back half of the former cavett creamery uh site uh we have it's roughly a 15 000 square foot building so we'll be roughly doubling the assessed value of that property uh and we are in current discussions with uh i said in my application one one prospect of actually two prospects that are looking seriously at it and i would like to go to those meetings next week and tell them that the city council has weighed in and has supported the maximum allowed by your regulations which is a half half off for 10 years on the municipal taxes in order to do that we would be requesting the saint we would be making the same request that we did at stonecutters way which is to have a one-year deferral of the benefits accruing to our company in order for us to demonstrate the the jobs so we did that at stonecutters way i think the minimum is 25 and there's roughly uh 50 to 60 people at that location and we would like to have the opportunity to demonstrate we know we demonstrate level three benefits we'd like to have the opportunity to show that we benefit that we can demonstrate that we meet level four requirements for the for the employment and again this is a a twin just don't cut his way we're uh we want to take it on a specular basis and then get the building filled so be glad to try to answer any questions rosy um so my biggest concern um would be that uh business that was currently downtown would move out of downtown to this location and i would not want to poach jobs from the downtown area even if in the course of that you added you know 25 jobs 25 jobs out there is not as good to the downtown businesses as having the rest of those jobs downtown and so i would be much more comfortable supporting this if we had some assurance from you that it you know the tenants that you were looking at were not uh locations that companies that were currently located within the downtown area i would be glad to uh accept your concern as a as a condition of the approval uh so i i have um a couple of um questions um so and actually one is about the um the the levels um so one of the things that i that i'm interested in i i don't i'm i'm i'm just want you to know i'm planning on supporting this and um want to see this go forward um one of the questions that i that i have is about um again the kinds of jobs that we um bring into Montpelier and i know you know you're you're a lot of reference you know bringing quality jobs from Montpelier and one of my definitions of quality is um is a livable wage and so i know that you know that you as a developer are different than um whatever the tenant um whoever the tenant would be so don't necessarily um i'm not sure that i we can require anything in terms of livable wage of the tenant but um for for the future i mean one of the things that i might want to see about um uh thinking about for the criteria for this list is uh are are these uh livable wage so the policy actually calls for that oh it does okay for uh to get the top level uh it has to reading it right here so the project will result in a net increase of 25 full time equivalent jobs which pay at least a livable wage for a single person in this calculate so that is okay so it's quiet so they have to make that representation okay that we they provide the annual report the building owner provides a report but the information is provided by the tenant so that's a condition i assume it's the condition of the lease if they're passing on savings okay great thank you i'm sorry i'm i'm i'm maybe a little confused and maybe i read this differently i mean it says i thought it said the project doesn't currently meet that and that's why it's a third level right oh i think so the so the the issue and i think that's what mr connor's proposing here is that they don't have a tenant so they can't make a representation that they have these jobs so he's asking for the approval for the top level but deferred for a year to give them a chance to certify that they reached that and that's what i think is correct that that's what it is on a lot of time but the way it was handled last time is we actually reapplied or we came back in to see the council and said here's the new tenant we'd like you to welcome and here's with his with their job situation we actually had to come back in to get to get those those level four benefits i think the way i drafted the proposal here was that you could award the level three benefits because it think it qualifies for those defer it and provide them the option of coming back to seek to upgrade it to level four and i i guess sorry yes go ahead really raise my hand i apologize um so one of the questions we just heard about how Montpelier is working towards being net zero and you know and in hopefully our lifetime um and so i'm curious how this construction project has factored any of that in i mean as a city if you know we're in essence being asked to expend funds and it's not really an expenditure it's just a not generating the revenue which means that there's no i mean we're in essence losing money because we're we're allowing for the abatement for that period um what sort of like what sort of information can you provide to the council about the environmental impact of this construction and how that meets with our net zero goals we find the state energy code have to execute a very strict adherence to those codes building envelope and mechanical systems and lighting so we uh and and we're uh rewarded by efficiency from our for some of that but most of it is to uh for bragging rights to the to the tenant to be able to show them when a lease renewal comes up that they they're they're not building that is very cheap on energy relative to other other structures and we've had tenants tell us that that this is you know it's half of what it was where we were on a square foot basis and and that's how you that's how you keep in touch with us to make sure that you have a very high efficiency equipment and a very good building envelope what are you playing on heating it with uh fuel oil this will be propane propane isn't a side not not well i can't wait i have comment about the policy of this so i'm going to do this application yes glenn in in that direction uh for net zero efficiency is great uh and production is also usually part of it because the building is always going to be using some energy have you considered uh any kind of solar or other energy generation uh as part of this construction we have the roof has been then set up with a strength to be able to hold a solar system but we have not gone forward with that so it has the potential yes is this something that you would do with or without the tax stabilization from the city can we even ask that question but the the decision to do the job which involved a lot of engineering and site permitting etc was made knowing that you have this tax stabilization policy uh so and as i try to point out the application our our our tenants pay the taxes whether it's monthly a health center it's the you know where it's the hospital or whether it's the state of ramon or the nature conservancy they the tenants pay the taxes so what we're able to do with your incentive is win tenants and if i could bring you one of these a month i'm sure you'd be glad to see me and i haven't been able to be back in about five years or please to have the opportunity to be back your questions you still have so you made the building so it could hold solar but you wouldn't do that your tenant would do that the tenants pay the electric so be it would be up to the tenant if they wanted to execute that project because i would encourage you to put it up there so they would use it and benefit from it it's also a sales tool right it could be we definitely have to work on this criteria so i i i mean if we're going to change the rules i certainly don't want to you know um burden but with that right now so but yes so if i understand right the motion would be to approve connor's brother's application for levels three table we don't even need to do that don't even need that okay this is your first of two meetings you'd actually make the decision at the next meeting this is your chance if you want more information to come back okay um you don't great rosy i don't think we officially open this is a hearing oh well so open it right now hearing we're opening first your party thank you that's good so i i guess i will say one of my concerns is and i i said that's the last time tax stabilization came up and this is a different project and i i'm treating this as a different project because i think that having more you know office space or you know light industrial space i mean that's a it's a different request than the than the last tax stabilization request we were presented with was but i guess i'm concerned because i don't i don't see a tenant list i don't even we don't even you know i i know that people have talked to you about it and i guess for me what i am looking for is to see like who those employers are you know are those the kinds of businesses that montpelier would want to be investing in because this would be an investment of city dollars through you know through the non through the abatement period and you know i i agree that they're not in town developments but that's not to say that having employers out of town you know who are who are generating business for this area is not something that we should be investing in i just would like to know more about those potential employers and i know that you know you guys have done great work here in town with the businesses that are here i'm just concerned that we don't sort of know anything about any of those prospective businesses that would be getting taxpayer money and you know as a as a resident here who doesn't own a home because of whatever economic circumstances are at play you know i think that asking our people to spend their taxpayer dollars on something that we're not quite sure about it is concerning to me at least in this regard because i want to make sure that the jobs that we are attracting to montpelier do pay an actual living wage and not you know the 13 something an hour that the state says is what it costs because anyone who lives here knows that that's it costs way more than that to be here and so i realize it kind of puts you in a bit of a predicament because these have just been you know potential people but if you had anything at all that you could bring back to us you know about even inquiries for the type of industry or anything like that that might assuage some of my concerns about that it's just you know i don't want to be spending people's money or you know abating taxes for businesses that are sort of hypothetical at this point because you know the the facility obviously isn't built yet but um i just i think in order for that to to be a vote that i could vote in favor of i would need to know more about those prospective employers i think your point um ties into consulate bates point about what we're asking for we're asking for level three and we're saying we have to come back and demonstrate to your satisfaction that we have the caliber of a company and and the employee pay pay scale that that you're looking for and i guess so and maybe this is a question for the city i mean so the the half would be the level four and then it's a it's a lesser percentage from there right there's well there's a table of what range of sort of combination of either less time with the same trying to find the actual policy to help you through that there's each level has a range of awards that can be made so okay you can see that the different ranges that could that qualify so it could be a lower percentage for a longer period of time or a higher percentage for a shorter period of time i'd suggested that one half of the six years which is kind of right from a half from five to seven years or a third for eight to ten years um yeah while we're asking questions of the city uh on that question of living wage jobs what number is are we using to determine the state it's there's there's a it's indexed to okay but it is actually you said it is the state numbers i think it's like 13 25 digested the policy multiple times yet if someone if an applicant satisfies the criteria is the applicant entitled to the debate or is this purely discretionary it's discretionary the goal is to have the guidelines of the criteria expectations i would just i agree that i think this policy could use some work but i also don't want to you know change the expectations for an applicant midstream so i agree there's a lot of things i would like to see in this policy going forward and we've i think we've all had some conversations about that so i would encourage the staff to move forward with helping us with that my family has been residents for 20 years and so i'm not i'm pretty knowledgeable about all the operations of the city and the fact that we have a high tax bill that goes along with it but i can assure you the tenants when they're looking at that who are non-residents you know that it is it is part of the criteria that they certainly focus on okay well i think we should move on so let's uh we'll close the close the first assuming that no one else has comments the public you have to have a second one right i think this would probably be the time if anyone had concerns or reservations about proving that suddenly what would be in fairness to the i was just going technically whether you close the public you know whether you continue it to another close it to another date certain then you have another one you have a second public one right yeah we've just set the second one and then right next meeting so i assume we need a motion just at the second public hearing i don't know if you have to the policy just says there will be two we set this one without a motion okay well let's assume that we'll have a second public hearing on this on may 9th very good thank you all for your time thank you thank you and what is that next meeting on may 9th do we need to actually thank you all no i don't think so hopefully not so well while this is on i you know i did want to note and it sounds like some of you have reached a similar conclusion that you know this policy was written in 2003 and reflected values at that time and uh it was something that i had actually passed on to the development corporation last year when joe came on and said you know it would be nice for you folks to weigh in since if it's supposed to be attractive for development it's nice to get that perspective but also for a chance for the council to put its values so whether it's wage rates or types of you know jobs or what environmental things that you know at the time certainly you know protecting housing was a big feeling that would continue so i think that would be something we certainly ought to look at the other thing and it we danced around this and with every application we require it they have to have permits in here in order to qualify but then we also say you wouldn't have done this project without this well to get permits you have to hire engineers to go through you know so it's every applicant is sort of caught in this position of trying to demonstrate a but for after having already invested in going forward and i think and i guess i'll say it on camera i think the council at the time just didn't want to do this and so tried to set up a bar you could meet and so i think that's just it's a that's a tension point every time we look at this i think either we say that's it and do this before you get the permits or you know another thing might be to set a couple of key criteria that have to be meet is barrier of entry these things you can get in the queue and then after that i think there's a lot of things just yeah so let's put it on the list of things we'll talk about maybe in our strategic plan that's right yeah okay awesome we are up to the public works presentation there and they're still awake and alert to energize thank you her as fast as you want to you know just hopefully we've gotten out a lot of our questions on the tours i'd allocate it in an hour we'll try not to make this too painful and it was late those checking the red sox scores and everybody's mind is um so good evening uh i'm tom mccartle to my rights kurt modica assistant director and city engineer zack blodgett it's our staff engineer and quarry line project manager and so decided we would bring um i would bring my uh support group so this is a really a team effort in our office in and throughout our department um first slide is just a breakdown we have within the within the department we have five divisions and then we're kind of off to the side city hall employees so total is 36 and a half employees so i won't bore you with all of this but uh the support group that i turned to is a professional association called american public works association and uh they're a non-profit national organization tremendous support for public works professionals interacting training um so public works for the combination of physical assets management practices policies personnel government sustained structures services essential to the welfare and acceptable quality of life for citizens and believe we are highly we know we are a highly regulated professional at least a dozen laws to comply with for just just the environment alone regulations grow across the economy every year so we'll speak more about that as we move along so under under the public works we are um only three pillars of sustainable infrastructure what we are all about um we are try to be good stewards of of the of our infrastructure and the environment we are tasked with managing many multiple assets and we have to develop and prepare and use the financial planning to take take care of all those assets so it's kind of a picture graph of all the various things that we take care of uh street signs traffic signals um everything really you walk out the door this building um everything you look at step on um drink uh everything the roads is somehow related to public works management and maintenance um producing about a million gallons of drinking water um we treat about two million gallons of wastewater um so annual uh daily figures and uh maintaining the city stormwater systems we operate a district heat system um extensive fleet of vehicles that you all saw during the tours um and i'm really grateful we were able to do that and take a look at all that before you hear me and this group talks so we know what it is we're talking about and uh what it takes to manage all these assets um we also had some facility maintenance responsibilities this building as well as our own facilities and our group um we are administrative and engineering and we provide oversight of all our divisions we do permitting project management staff committees um we manage and oversee engineering studies we develop operating project budgets minister accounts receivables payable department payroll and then some so it keeps us busy um and so how do we make it all happen is is responsible for operation maintenance we have fleet management to take care of and um the way we do all this is we assemble highly competent dedicated knowledgeable and credentialed staff um both Kurt and Zach are professional engineers and we have licensed operators and um treatment facilities and and licensed mechanics so um it does take professionals um beyond the the labor um it's it's a top to bottom performance um we have IT skills and uh you saw quite a bit about the SCADA system that we use um we are involved in in civil several aspects of uh engineering um civil uh geotechnical water resource transportation engineering not much in structural um so there are fields of engineering we do have to go outside of staff for but mentioned we've managed projects grants studies support construction projects um so our operations first and maintenance it's primarily our primary function is is operating and maintaining our facilities and infrastructure we have seasonal obligations in winter um summer is obviously construction season for us and we do an awful lot of maintenance and then we have a lot of year-round operations um that take place we'll do design work we have fleet work CSO monitoring and uh traffic signals as a year-round operation and we also something that maybe some people don't know as we participate in the dig safe system which is a great program we mark field mark our utilities to protect them for excavation um administrative and engineering we are we are here to support the council and management goals we we provide development support homeowner projects um issue permits those that we administer and regulate we provide site plan review we support monthly or live the recreation parking cemeteries facilities mapping and budgeting and this we believe this is really important to know maybe a lot of people don't know but um and bob chief gallons just left but we also believe we are um always there as as the APWA motto says we are always there we are first responders and the last responders um emergency response includes floods winds snow ice storms water main breaks um anything that breaks were there to fix it this is gallison hill in 2011 we were there for um and had a temporary road built and we were there long after the the emergency event is taking place there's a lot of paperwork this was particularly um this particular event was a federal highway um under the ER program emergency response program so as you imagine there's a lot of paperwork a lot of uh a lot of design development and we had the road back um at a temporary road within a couple weeks in the in the project uh new culvert installed by uh that winter so um so we take that very seriously that we are always there 24 7 one way or another with there is a way to contact us um go through this briefly because we touched on a lot of it already but um you know stewardship is really the definition of supervising or taking care of um and again it's assets um that touch our everyday life um our project management is from conception through completion that is when we believe it's projects work the best it's if we get involved in at the ground level and are able to see it through to completion um the project development and project delivery um provide the engineering services much of that is done in house uh now um although we do it always will have to use outside consultants um there are permits and regulatory compliance um a good example is northfield street project where we have both a construction permit obligations and operational permits under stormwater so there's a lot of but evaluation has to be done daily for for erosion prevention and sediment control um master planning and studies is really necessary to define projects to obtain funding support for grants and it's a something that some people say you do an awful lot of studies protect a lot of planning um and that is true and but it is the very absolutely necessary first step in doing anything to really define what you need to do what you're going to what you hope to accomplish um and then that leads to um engaging the public early and often and throughout the project to completion is uh is a valuable um and necessary part of what we do and uh it's time consuming but if we don't engage early and often um we're not as likely to succeed in what we're trying to accomplish um move on to that one you guys want to jump in um and by the way if you want to um ask questions any point go ahead you're not saving to the end it might keep you awake as well so project development timeline is uh something that's difficult for a lot of people to understand what it takes to develop a project and there's a lot of different things but um that can influence and affect project delivery and completion but the first thing you do through those studies and and evaluations is to define the project and you know what is the problem why why do we need to do it um what are we hoping to accomplish and what we don't have here is oh yes um is it is it a desired improvement or is it enhancement or is it a maintenance project um again we talked about the feasibility studies preliminary engineering um we have to identify the project constraints right-of-way environmental uh those are two of the the big often time consumers time drainers um you never know what that's going to lead you particularly on the right-of-way side of things and it's always best to look at your alternatives one alternative that should be in every evaluation is to do nothing and so you can compare the selected alternative to just leaving it the way it is and not investing at all um there's cost benefit what are the maintenance demands I think is a lot of it frequently overlooked it's only new for the day you turn the key over after that it requires maintenance and an ongoing maintenance commitment so what is the level of maintenance that we're obligating ourselves to do um the shared use path is is one such obligation where it's it's another mile and a half of of uh path and and we'll be maintaining that asset for a long long time so think about that materials access all of those things need to go into your consideration in developing your project um final design getting to the and securing your final permits you're bidding it that's the fun part bidding the project uh finally after all of that planning and then you're scheduling we are Vermont we have seasonal limitations um we have um that's a decide whether or not we're going to inspect the project ensure specifications contract documents are followed um or if we're going to use somebody outside to do it um give you an example of um you know three to seven years is not uncommon for project development longer if right away environmental permits are required the coming street bridge which will start this fall did have a right-of-way snag um just trying to secure that because these projects do have significant impacts on on people's properties so that is why the right-of-way is so difficult to resolve but that coming street was begun in 2012 we'll start construction in 2018 and finish in 2019 so that's pretty typical these guys somehow managed to put together the northfield street project um from deception design to completion next year in three years so that was driven mainly by trying to coordinate with the state paving project um and uh so we didn't have right-of-way we moved through the environmental piece and uh worked pretty quickly um so what drives or influences our decisions and how we move forward we again we have the regulatory things we have to consider order the policies the goals the asset management piece um and our master plan recommendations we have a few master plans out there now for say bike and pet or water sewer streets um environmental influences can drive decision making um and that might mean we do something now or differently um and certainly public opinion what are the what's the desire of the community what is the preference of the community and under the regulatory worlds um an example there is we have a water main master the water system master plan change change in regulations and serving fire hydrants no longer allow six-inch water mains everything has to be an eight-inch so that drives a decision that may be a still functional water main but but we have to allow that to to drive our decision and get approval from the state on when we're going to to make those changes um CSO clean water act americans with disabilities act safety improvements all of those pieces in the regulatory world will impact our our our influence our decisions on when we do it and how we do that certainly policy goals here particularly at city council level the steady state infrastructure our desire to reach 70 psi for roadways public opinion um certainly comes into play on on things that they deal with every day roads sidewalks um and you know the service expectations we have under the public opinion side of things even construction materials and aesthetics are things that that are important to people what are we what are we building this sidewalk that is an asphalt or concrete walkability um bike friendly again all factors we have to consider making these changes or improvements um you know every street we pave today is under the americans with disabilities act considered a substantial alteration and so we have to bring everything into compliance with with our standards so we are going to touch on asset management in the later slide but asset management is really what drives our master plan recommendations we use asset management to really identify where our systems are and what the cost is and then we then use that to make long-term massive plans so there are ideal times when we should maintain or replace this life cycle all of those aspects within asset management another influence that we should be paying attention to such as resurfacing streets or or applying a preventative maintenance treatment before they get beyond um that and require more more money and more effort so that's an asset management strategy again influencing our decisions i think this is uh um in fact put this slide together and it's really i can find it on my sheet um it's very telling of of you know just the breakout of of where these funds are coming and how they're if you look at capital improvement on your far left um compared to the amount of grants we have currently outstanding and active um it's uh it's small but it's still a significant amount of money in the capital improvement plan um over a million dollars is invested in in um and how that um in maintaining our infrastructure and but that also is used to leverage grant money and match so within that grant fund is is five million dollars on the bike path and four for taylor so there's significant dollars that are leveraged from through the grant grant programs and we have currently um and this is a little sad because we don't sometimes have to count them um 17 active grants one way or the other right now a lot several of storm water couple of shared use paths um actually a third of those have have come out since since the clean water act was approved tom can you um spend a second talking about what how does the staff time work on grants do you guys actively go after a grant or do you have a project and you say okay how are we going to fund this what are the relevant grants and then i assume you spend time writing them and i'm just curious how that all works or if you see a grant announcement come out and you say what can we apply that to i yeah so um you know no grants no grant is created equals they all have different requirements and application side of things um i talked earlier about planning studies master plans um some of the storm water things came from the storm water master plan there were recommendations within those within that plan to address chronic problems i see the clean water act as a great for the clean water world but having dealt with a lot of disastrous flooding events this helps also to build resiliency so we go after these grants um for for that side of things so driven guided by the master plan personal experience or professional experience and and dealing with some of these issues for a long time um few of these grants we received uh gain assistance from um the friends of linouski great partnership with that uh group the conservation commission is getting involved in that so there'll be recommendations there um and and helping actually with the grant application and a couple of them are doing that do we have the bike and pet master plan and a few grants related to that do we have our higher grant writers or do we do all that in-house unless we have a partner well yeah we haven't we haven't had to really we did we do that complex we did get some help with the roof drain grant okay that's right too rarely we do any department can help okay um a couple of the v-trans grants are really quite straightforward they come out every year they're very competitive the class two town highway and the structures grants are pretty straightforward they streamline the state on those handles the environmental side of things so that's the new stormwater stuff uh some of the new uh grants that they put out are much easier than some of the bigger ones like the erp which core industry project um so some of the smaller stormwater grants they've kind of designed so that it's much easier easier to apply for an application they're encouraging this pushing them we could we get emails and plus uh so this last application around there was 350 applications that they had to review and we did not get approved we've got a few outstanding so I wasn't terribly disappointed the planning department also grants that will manage so they apply some persistence thanks one of the grants that we applied for that we weren't successful in getting was a college streets grant for stormwater management because we're we're paving that street this year we thought it would make a good match for that so we did get some grants for northfield street stormwater which was a nice match because we're doing that project and we had to deal with with some additional impervious area that we were developing corey's got a couple on the transportation alternatives program and and uh heard a lot of saw a lot of talk this this uh the winter about berry streets in that quarter study that's taking place so going to speak to that corey and that whole well just in terms of the grants the transportation grants they're pretty straightforward did you get closer to my corey well just touched on the revolving loan funds that's so late for northfield street those are state administered loan funds at low interest so um there really is a the city still has to bond for those but we just sort of broke it out because it is a lower interest than what we can get on the on the open market but right now northfield streets are only current project that's utilizing those those funds but it is out there for both water and sewer that's right it's for utility improvement so yeah clean water or drinking water under the cip for f y 19 we'll talk about that in the next slides so it's a little more than a million dollars but we also had under the under the bonds um that was approved that were approved in march um a little more than a million each for water and sewer and one for the uh bike pad here but also Taylor Street included in that yeah it was two one point and then the other bond was directed really to be water sewer we also tap into other operating funds um to help support projects so and but just the overall package this is this is how it's all paid for other than grants we do want you guys to notice that the sewer operating budget is by far the biggest operating budget in the city just over four million dollars it's a pretty big part of our our money just as they were talking about earlier with the the energy presentation yeah a lot of that has to do with the the septic and leachate receiving that it's pretty significant revenue source for the city which we're looking to build on with the project we'll talk about next time may night be talking about that on that beyond your agenda um so the importance of assets and we have tracked assets we have managed assets and so it's really identifying what we're responsible for um where is it how old is it what has to be done to it and how often how much will it cost when do we need to do it how important is the asset and is it a priority um we prefer that our approach to this is um plan predicted and consistent um and not you know reactive um we have uh been working on improving our developing and integrating asset management tool to help us with that and zack um has i don't know if he's gonna just develop his own software or what but he's he's pretty skilled at this um working with the um our existing sri gis mapping and using manager plus so if we had time tonight show you what he's done it's it's pretty pretty neat um clicking on your asset you can jump right to the next one on that um so of all these these are the just the statistics of what we take care of but within um so some of the asset management program for example sidewalks really consist of you know it's 24 25 miles but within that there's 500 assets um and water like four on four thousand assets within that so they're water vows or fire hydrants or gates um pump stations so that really doesn't tell the full story of of what you're what we're actually managing um in i think um one that maybe people aren't that aware of is we have both for street lighting we have both the an inventory of leased lights but we monthly are also owns uh several lights in the downtown and on the bike path around about all our city-owned lights um so on to the next one so our projects on the cip plan upcoming projects for the season um continue to work on northfield street this is phase two um we have in the bond a uh a slope stabilization project complete on uh review um quite a bit of work in that that particular neighborhood and at the end of state street the paving program for this year includes uh liberty street sure would drive and college and legue um college is from woodrow to believe um so all these are are within that million plus of the of the cip plan the paving mark is crack ceiling then we have the Taylor street project some funding from that and from that from the bond um we just got word on the um on the shared use path um Winooski east is um from granite straight out to gallison hill that our act 250 permit is finally coming through which allows to get our core of engineer permit and finally we'll get authorization to go to bit so great news big milestone finally ready to go with that this summer what's the pedestrian path i know you've been saying shared use but we still end up with bike path on a lot of places that was my bad oh shame on you but you have pedestrian path at pool yes so that is actually something that we worked on with the rec department the rec department um they needed to regrade their driveway but it's really use this pedestrian walkway that's the one that goes around the front you it's kind of it's wide enough because it's it also needs to be a fire lane yeah because truck student yeah we started it um last year was going to be a simple paving job and we found some it's it's not just for paving so we put it off and we'll just excavate it and replace it and do it right so um others others uh stormwater work um a biggie that we're kind of excited about i'm sure the school isn't anybody on main street is happy to see we'll be replacing that water main on main street finally so that has uh been notorious for breaks broke on us again this this winter so finally get that taken care of and also the work is all done on the calisthenia spirits project the water main replacement we talked about that a little bit the old water main on berry street that's the first piece the river crossing was done back in the 70s now we're up to up to the roadway and covered a lot of this uh just some some active projects that are going on the actual grants the design work that's working uh that we're working on in our office i won't go through the mall you have the list but if you have any questions about those so we have a very full play um we've a lot made a lot of commitments we've applying for these grants are our deadline there are things we have to there's quite a bit of reporting that we have to do potentially another project we talked to you on on the ninth about the wastewater project shared use paths to what's the wanouski east and what's the second shared use path it's wanouski west so that's the connection through the one cali law from two separate projects yep east and west side of town somebody came up with that the planning office years ago so so other other parts of this um you know we do have new demands that come up and we have to have some capacity to take those on um we do have some you know we talked about the asset management when things should be replaced um we have some things that are that are problematic that we have to move and bump up in front of other things um so some some recent changes that we've built and tried to work into our um management and with the existing resources that we have is the the heat district heat system the complete streets law um and gory and the and the transportation committees have been working on that um i see the climate extremes and their stormwater resilience that is really a thing that we have to be prepared for and i talked about the the use of the queen water funds and and really developing some resilience uh where our we are a flashy town as far as flooding goes it's one of the major it's very flashy in a lot of ways but in stormwater world um it's uh they're flash floods so we're very hilly uh steep terrain and it comes down these these stream channels quickly and very erosive um and so causes a lot of problems so it's not i don't worry so much about the main river although that's a bigger threat in the winter springtime i from our perspective the the stream channels that are flashy um the biggest problem so we have the the clean water act um and we have the municipal roads general permit that will have to be um covered by this summer i still haven't seen the permit come through yet but that's coming quickly um i think we're in really good shape with a lot of help from the regional planning commission on that um the net zero is a policy that's that's ongoing um and now you've heard about tiff tonight and the economic development support that a lot of infrastructure development that that we need to consider and to work into our our operational so we have some some impacts to our service deliveries some decisions that are made that that benefit the community but they do affect how we operate what we have to do um one of those major ones is the the winter event the decision to have an event-based parking band rather than full-time that we're managing it but it has changed how we go about our business it really limits us sometimes um just to clear snow banks off the street we have to somehow get those cars off the street so we're still not fully um keyed in on how to do it well and it has been a major change for how we operate we understand the importance of it and the need for it still haven't fully adapted to doing it right and doing it well with cars parked on the street we have um diversified our staff from um simply operation and maintenance to doing a lot more construction it's a really a financial necessity a lot of things that that we could do ourselves it's very expensive to have a contractor do so we do a lot of project support or we'll do smaller projects on our own again we can design get to the order supply permits and can build erison avenue was one such project and a lot of the work in the review drive will be done by dbw so rolling that in but also being mindful of the maintenance obligations that we can't lose track of we got a little bit out of ourselves last year um so trying to find that right fit in that balance being construction um is is a commitment um it's a necessity to make the master plan work really financially um we have the equipment we have the staff we have the engineering the project management people to do it so so working at it questions correct yes we're going to throw the questions uh rosey yes um so not tonight um but at some point and it could just be a written update i would be really interested um we had our on our goals last year to get done the um the low cost height impact recommendations from the stormwater um and i would love to know where we are on some of those but again not tonight low cost high impact that that big the low hanging group on that that i've read that whole plan and the conservation commission we just met with them the other night they're looking at that as well so they're taking on some of that about half of the stuff in that master plan is private property so they're encouraging property owners friends of the news who's going to do a lot of public outreach that's what they do and they really educate the public on that side of things so actually along those lines unless you had something you wanted to add to that i'm just going to say three of the active grants that we have now are projects that were identified as the low hanging group water and any group on that so on on that no i mean one of the things i was interested in is uh in the email that you sent us i mean you got the the pdf of um the projects over time that that you all are working on this massive spreadsheet of yeah that thing right and you know i appreciate that it's broken down but in the different sections but one of the things that um i i would find useful and i think this maybe gets that rosie's point is you know from master plans like the storm water or from the mont peeler in motion plan there are projects that are identified in in those documents and where do they i mean probably wants those projects to be fit into here somehow even if it's just as a aspirational you know because you know i mean that's a that's a choice that a council would make to fund an additional project or not and recognizing that that's an increase but um you know if if that really is something that we have as our master plan it seems to me that we ought to be laying that out in in the in this context right because this is when i when i see this giant spreadsheet this looks to me like the list of all the things that you know more or less dpw is going to tackle um is that is that a fair assessment it changes it evolves but sure this is this particular spreadsheet is is the actual working document on how to fund each of these projects and where the money is coming from the old spreadsheet that's we still use is the there's a seven-year plan this is a five-year plan is really the identifying what that project is trying to come up with a dollar amount an estimate and but it's a placeholder so that it that it and so i hear what you're saying that's that's that's what it's for that's what a plan is for and and how you're going to finance it is corey we were talking tonight about you know we really don't have some dollars i got a lot of questions about what is this stormwater master plan on our cost i have no idea same with the bike head i don't know but start to break it out into some sort of yeah logical dollar increments and then put them out there but realize that that the most the most accurate set of figures is in the first column everything else is sure a lot of a lot of so one hypothesis is that the Montpelier in motion plan should have its own section here another possibility is that those really should be divided up into the sections that they belong in terms of sidewalks or transportation i'm not sure there's anyway what is what funds it so Montpelier motion right has a different funding mechanism than sidewalks so sidewalks are generated through specifically the cip sidewalk but you wouldn't fund something that was proposed through the Montpelier motion plan from the sidewalk fund like if it was a new site okay okay just it's not just bikes it's i guess what i'm saying is i would love to see that start to be built into this this graph somewhere either called out as its own section or integrated into the rest of it if it's a sidewalk and it's under sidewalks and and maybe even you know tagged with something like this is a part of the Montpelier in motion plan or if it's from the stormwater master plan i mean i does it belong under stormwater probably but again it could be as simple as putting SWMC next to it yeah done that there is a budget quarry does for the MTIC transportation infrastructure group yeah so part of my hope you know in you know talking through our strategic plan is thinking about how we are tracking those other documents and just to see where we are with those things and even if we're not getting them done that's obviously not the goal but even if even if we're not getting them done just having a tracking mechanism so that we know where we are with them i think would be helpful so a lot of the on the transportation side specifically the Montpelier motion it can be difficult to put it in a spreadsheet like this because a lot of it is dependent on grand dollars sure and not knowing if you're going to get those grand dollars it's hard to put it in a spreadsheet like this or what the actual cost yeah it's in the plan as as part of these larger projects as we go pay the street we look ahead and say well there's a grant for this can we do this when we pay the street so so it's in there but it's you're right it's not a call now but but complete streets like the ADA like code compliance it's an alteration and we actually have to do recording now say that we considered that other modes of transportation so we when we pave college street we will fill out the review and that's because we've done the analysis we have the master plan that guides us another thing to think about is projects are frequently linked and we have to keep those connections clear to us a water main project should follow it's a critical path sort of thing water main project should follow the paving not go before it and if you're doing this sidewalk you want to do the sidewalk to screen a curving before you pay this so we put them in different categories but we can never this one should follow this one or should go with this one so but I hear what you're saying if we had those separate categories but then cross-link yeah that makes sense to me and I also want to respect that some of these projects that are in these plans are really difficult to enumerate right like how how much are they going to cost we don't really know and some of them but I guess I would assume that some of them we do you know where we there there's a range or there's easier to guess and then anyway just anything anything to help us track would be useful because one of my fears is that if it doesn't show up on here then it doesn't get dollars and it doesn't get done which I I hear you that like you know you're doing the ADA thing and like complete streets and anyway but but particularly like with this storm water so like if I can't see it I don't I don't know I want to be able to see it and know that it happens yeah it was uh Tom always impressed on the tours like your staff they're like Swiss army knives you know they could do anything um but and I like seeing in the presentation that by like diversifying their duties it looks like you might be reducing your reliance on contracting and I guess the question is is there any thought to actually increasing your staff as a cost savings measure to sort of further that just for the next budget you saw the nods right the increase really has been um within engineering project management so we added a staff person uh this year in the budget um we'll start July 1 who's an engineering recent graduate um so he's a good field person under Northfield Street under project inspection that that one project of three million was a 4.2 over 300,000 dollars in project inspection services being done by Zach and Ryan so we had and we brought in a retired guy to help us too so from that side of things um we're always going to need contractors bigger contractors that specify our um specialized in heavy construction so so I think we'd be at a limit um you know it's we lease an excavator we really doesn't make any sense at all and have it sit in the barn so um but I hear what you're saying I appreciate that I think we're we're kind of moving towards more of that um oh just an example of a of a paving contractor adjusting the elevation for paving because you've true up the surface you level it all out you have to take care of all the hardware in the street the prices we get for some of that work okay we can do it ourselves for a while less than that and we do and we try to do that so that's something we can do we're going to add it um but it's a coordination piece we get their schedule that we're going to jump so there's a lot of that I do want to also just say that there's uh Berlin New Hampshire um they have recently moved to HDPE and they're doing as HDPE is a type of water main um but they are doing in-house construction as well and they do hire out temporary staff seasonal only for the summer just to get projects done um that is something that you would consider maybe in the future I would certainly could do it um you know we don't have profit margin story about this stuff like that we have we have staffs that take care of them when we do that we're not paying for for that side of the equation all right thank you thank you for sticking with it well and likewise we do a lot of work very grateful all right so um moving on to council reports we have a pool now we do have a oh yes Donna do you want to Donna you pulled it I did I pulled the committee uh term time timing of terms and the staff recommendations are a couple are on the 15th of the month one is on the first one is on the 27th and I either felt like we should do like everybody the first of the month and then make sure that the month before it expires we're advertising instead of people's terms expire but they're still serving because we're late in advertising and maybe the committee of committees wants to talk about this I don't know but it just seemed people should start the first of the month then everybody is doing May new on all the committees I would suggest we're referring this to the committee okay I'm fine with that I don't have strong opinions other people so uh gosh what is our formal action there are we just um we took we yeah it was gonna say we pulled it we pulled it off the consent agenda then okay so we'll just bring it up for a future meeting that's fine and all right so now I think we're at council reports so I forget where we started last time I think we started over there so we need to start Rosie I will pass well I went to emergency management training regional planning commission and it was wonderful it was three hours Sue was there and I was asking Bill to get you everyone this booklet and this little hand and it's really worth reading the slides this is the whole slides to get an idea of what an incident command station is what the flow of responsibility it was very impressive when you get those emails try to grab a couple of those workshops they're really worth it the other thing we may have a special council meeting but I am going to be gone I fly out on Thursday actually tomorrow morning yes I knew it was the late meeting and come back on Tuesday Tuesday night so I would hope if you end up with a special meeting for the farmers market I'll say again what I always say in council reports I'll be at open hands cafe tomorrow 8 30 to 9 30 to talk about anything that anyone would like to talk about last week was a great conversation we talked about transportation and trees among other things and Lynn Wild of the tree board handed me something to show everyone in council reports photos like this one are going to be up in the Kellogg Hubbard library for Tree City which is a month-long exploration of monthly trees this one is my favorite tree in the city it's the Ginkgo on Barry Street and it is incredible so I keep an eye out for that display and other Tree City actions for the month and yes see you tomorrow at open hands cafe Christchurch Parish Hall 8 30 to 9 30 every Thursday great so I just wanted to mention that Greenup Day again is Saturday May 5th I'm excited for that and then there's going to be a bioblitz in I believe it's in July with the North Branch Nature Center so keep your eyes open for those things they're going to be great and besides that I have nothing further to report yeah that the meeting discussing the potential of non-citizen voting in municipal elections was bumped to May 1st which is Tuesday so I just would note that we're going to have Dan Richards in there to talk about some of the you know the the implications in the context of Vermont and also going to be Skyping in a fellow named Doug Chapin he's got a really long thing of the program for excellence in an election administration at the Humphrey School for Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota so he'll be there just dropping by John will that be on arca I don't know the other one was going to be I haven't actually brought that up with with this one I'm almost of mixed feelings about it because orca goes to so many communities and it would be nice to keep the discussion here in our community I would just love if there was a recording I won't be able to see a recording well maybe you can talk to those folks and see what happens and that'll be here yep next Tuesday so I'm jumping back in so one of the things I just wanted to check in with you all about I mean I know we're going to have a lot of time in our strategic planning session to talk about directions that we want to go but one of the things that I think might have some traction is the possibility of a plastic bag ban in Montpelier and so I just wanted to check in with you all is that something that you're remotely interested in yes okay and straws okay and straws great can I just shout out to Bev Allen who brought this up before the council some work was very serious on it about I want to say 10 years ago and a lot of folks I love on that council but they didn't even give her the time of day so it's great to great to hear that it's going to be at least taken seriously oh yeah okay cool I just wanted to take the time to turn that thank you um Red Sox 4 Blue Jays 3 final Bruins 7 Maple Leafs 4 Bruins 1 game 7 more importantly I I only have one item before we go into executive session we are members of EC fiber which is a community internet service sort of based down at the upper valley we've been members since the inception I think we've understood that it was unlikely we were going to be served by them if at any time soon if ever given the fact that we're not even contiguous with them plus we already have a lot of service and they're trying to reach the underserved areas and as you know we reached recently joined the center for the internet so two part question one the question keeps coming up whether we should remain a member and I think that's probably a conversation that we shouldn't have right now but I think we don't have it but I got a call from the chair of the board today basically our terms are our representative terms are expiring at the end of the month and their bylaws say they have to be appointed before May 1st so our current rep is John Block who has not been attending he's been ill our alternative is Rob Chapman who attends sometimes think he's recently moved out of the city but this guy recommended he said just appoint Rob as your rep and then if you want to advertise and replace him but at least you had a rep in time for the person and check with him and see if he wants to do it and then we can take that up or have a conversation whether we even want to stay here but if we were going to appoint him we would have to do it or somebody else so unless anyone here is interested in being the easy fiber rep I know you suggest that we don't talk about whether or not we should keep some in there but I I'm just as inclined to let that term expire well the question is well that's I'm not sure why we need to stay in either and maybe we are just going to do this but I would think we ought to at least maybe not we don't need to have a full discussion whether we stay members anybody opposed to just letting that lapse there's no I did speak with a long conversation with the chair today and I said you know I said is it going to hurt you if we pull out he said no I said we were helpful when it started but they've got critical mass and they're going and you know our folks haven't been that active so it sounds like they could take it or leave it whether we stay I'm not sure what we're getting out of I think the one thing you may get out of it would be whatever we can learn from them whatever cvi can learn from them how to do it but that's really up to them to do so fine let's tell them we're going to initiate separating a lawyer we'll talk to them okay all right and then we do have two items in executive session which hopefully will be fast so I move that we enter into executive discussions how fast well not that fast to discuss the two matters yeah and they're really the it's the real estate statue I copy so I keep the court beautiful I'm just going to put in accordance with statue great uh all in favor of 2ci