 November 16th, 2020 and the record Kevin. Thanks. That was my job. We'll now be recorded. Tell Kevin to record. Okay. So I think I don't have the agenda before me, but I think we usually review the agenda. I got to close the door. So are there any changes or additions or deletions to the agenda? If anyone has. Okay, seeing none. The next thing I guess is, are there any comments or. Questions from the public. Dealing with items not on the agenda. Seeing none. And then we'll sit next to have announcements. David, do you have any announcements? No, we've got to behave because one of my students is sitting in on the meeting tonight. She's got an assignment for another class. And so Rachel, are you there? Yeah. Turn on your cameras. Everybody can meet you. You got a couple. Oh, Sam is there too. Hi, Sam. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My computer doesn't have access, but I can see. No matter what your video, Rachel. It didn't allow access. I would have to quit out. Okay. All right. If we have to make sure this meeting goes to midnight, right? Okay. So this is nothing. And so Jessica sent. Thank you. Are you another David? Some students. But she could be a student. No, I'm a resident in. Queen city park. Well, okay. So did you have a comment to make on an item that's not on the agenda? I was calling in because there were a few incidents. Just behind my house and Red Rocks park. Recently and a few neighbors had asked that I sit in and. And just share what happened and our concerns with sort of what's happening in the, in Red Rocks park after dark. Okay. So why don't you share those? I got an email that was very disturbing. And I think I suggested that you share with the council and potentially it could be a agenda item at a future meeting. Sure. So. I think the most recent incident was actually. We. It was actually addressed. So there was a group of. I think it was organized runners that. They gather at undisclosed locations and run as a group. And I think they, they tout themselves as drinkers as well. So they're playing. Scavenger hunts. They're young adults, I'm guessing, but scavenger hunts. After dark running and drinking. After dark. And when I looked out my back, I'm putting my kids to bed and reading them books. I look out in the backyard and into Red Rocks park. There's a path that butts our property goes down to the beach. And they were close to 20 flashlights. And they were pointing up into our backyards and. There were three dogs. There were three dogs that were concerned and you could just see that there are a lot of people in the woods. And there had been an incident earlier this fall that involved police. So immediately, you know, I'm thinking, Oh gosh, this is like a search squad of police. There's so many. Flashlights out there. And they were yelling to each other sort of like a call and they were yelling to each other. And they were yelling to each other. And they were whistling that they were blowing. And one of my neighbors called out and said, you know, you can't do this in the park after dark. And men and women were calling back saying, Oh, this is public property. We're running, you know, just getting very defensive and seemingly entitled to be out doing what they were doing. It ended up being harmless, but they were crashing through a neighbor's backyard and jumping over a chain link fence that runs alongside the road. And they were yelling to each other. And they were yelling to each other. Just alarming. I don't know. I just, I feel like. There was another incident earlier in the fall where the police were involved and there were people. Also on that path that goes down to the beach after dark. And I believe I overheard the conversation. Same thing. I'm putting my kids to bed and I look out and there's flashlights. And they had a lot of blood on them. And I believe it was two young males. There was alcohol involved. And one was wielding a machete and. Blood all over him. Just from what the police were saying back and forth to each other. And they, they escorted him out of the park. And thankfully someone had seen this going on and reported it. I believe it was probably a walker or a runner in the park. But those are just two incidents within the fall that kind of. Raise some flags around our neighborhood. And we were wondering about. Increased signage or. Lights the entrance to the park, making people more aware that. After sunset. People aren't supposed to be using the park. The group of runners was identified and addressed. I think I believe it was Holly who wrote to them and let them know that it was not okay to be. Running around in large groups at night shining flashlights into private property. And they haven't shown up again. They didn't know. I think it was probably a one-time incident that happened. But my neighbor was also concerned about the number of beach fires that are happening right now. And I think it was probably a one-time incident that happened. At the end sort of by where the, the intake is for the water department. They've been almost every night. People have been lighting fires, campfires down to the beach. And with the drought, it is in the, in the southerly winds. It does get a little bit scary to see that happening. I would hate to see. Forest fires started. It could happen pretty easily at this point. But it's like. Yeah. I mean, if you're at sunset, yeah. We've had some beautiful sunsets for sure. I can't really, you know, you can't blame them, but I do know that. I know. I'm not giving them an excuse. I'm just thinking about, I can understand people wanting to go down there. Then, and I guess it's just in general that it clearly the park has been there's been an increased usage of the park and thankfully for everyone to enjoy during this time. And I imagine with increased usage are going to have increased problems and concerns though. We were glad to sort of come around and figure out who that group was, they were leaving piles of flour to I guess to mark their scavenger hunt and somebody's dog got really sick from eating this undisclosed white powder and it was another separate Google group that went around and the fire department came and I just thought oh gosh all the resources that went into figuring out what happened that night. It's a little bit crazy to think that we had to call the fire department and all that to figure out what had happened, but I just wanted to share those things and see if there was. It sounds as if you and your neighbors knew know who to contact in terms of getting some response and I think it sounds like Holly responded and the police at some point. So that's good. And so I'm. I wanted the rest of the council to hear the stories as well. And we can, you know, speak with with Holly and Justin and Sean perhaps about, you know, checking on the park, perhaps at a more regular basis. Given these incidents and, and just the fact that more and more people know about these parks because they've been outside. They're in covid so I think you're using them more Kevin. Did you. I was on the line around the meeting and she's been. We've had these discussions with Holly and Holly might want to update a little bit. If she could Holly. Okay, great. Hi. This is a little out of ordinary. Helen, but I know there's important issue for a lot of people. So a holiday to weigh in here that would be good. So hi Jessica, actually nice to face to face. I know we've been emailing her in the same group. So Jessica basically went over. I hadn't been aware of the first machete incident. I don't know if that was isolated from this group or not. And the first thing I actually learned about this group of the park was, I believe, Wednesday. I talked with one of the firefighters who had been on the call to follow up on the unknown white substance which subsequently is flour. And then it was actually a resident from Queen City Park that had sent me a website for the group that they thought was probably down there. And so I did email that group. I also have looped in both the fire and police chief in terms of we're definitely seeing an increase of activity in the park that's, you know, not ideal. And certainly anything after dark, the park closes at dawn, if it went from dawn to dusk so closes at dusk. And campfires are never permitted unless you have a special permit that has to be signed off by the fire chief or somebody in his stead and coordinated through our department so I think there are a number of ordinances that are being broken right now so campfires or, you know, beach bonfires are one being in the park and active after dark is another. I think also people have shared concerns of the continued off leash dog issue, which is, you know, even more problematic now that we're, you know, next surge of the pandemic, as well as mask. Some things that we can't control so masking is not enforceable at this point through the police department, but our ordinances are. So I think we continue to try to be creative and how we address that the animal control officer allotments are pretty minimal and have a ton of time for the city and then, you know, specialized for Red Rocks. And it's a tricky place to patrol, you know, everything is hidden in there. And it requires more than just a drive through which most of our parks would require from officers on patrol so I think he has definitely said he's willing to put heads together with Kevin, Justin, and I and try to come up with some, you know, some action plans and some solutions potentially. I know Jessica and some had mentioned, you know, maybe a new sign with a light. You know, I would leave that up to the council the park does have a new signage in, but certainly nothing that's illuminated, and we don't have funding kind of set aside for that. So if that was, you know, an option that we wanted to explore, we'd need to kind of tease out what that would cost and would be located and kind of how long that process would take. So, you know, in conversations with folks but happy to have some clear direction as well. Okay. Yeah, that's great. And in forming those signs to just, I don't know if it's worthwhile to make people aware that there's a neighborhood right here. And they're, when they're walking on that path or literally in our pretty much in our backyards. So, I don't know if that would dissuade people or, or what but just to make people aware that their, their actions don't go unheard. Yeah. Okay. Thank you Holly. That sounds like, you know, a good plan to go forward and I walk there often. So, and I'm quiet, I don't disturb the neighbors. But I can appreciate how difficult it is to control that because it's beautiful paths in the woods. And you can't really see what's going on. You can't see the beach unless you're on the beach. But those are issues that we need to attend to. So thank you for bringing it up and I'm sure Holly will continue to be in contact Jessica when they come up with a plan and maybe part of the planning process can include some discussions with the, that neighborhood about how you can help and what would be some positive things or useful things to do to keep the city apprised of ordinance breakers and rule breakers and whatever. So, Tim, did you want to make a comment. Tim Barrett. Yeah, just a quick one. Thanks for bringing this up Jessica but there is also been some chatter in front porch forum about vandalism and Farrell Park so while Holly is here. I wanted to make her aware that if she hadn't seen that herself damaged this some signage and people putting dragging rocks out onto the bike path. And it's happened a couple of times I'm wondering if the police have any, any tricks up their sleeves to identify the culprits. Yeah, thanks Tim. I was made aware earlier this past week that there had been a weekend of kind of overturning benches and garbage cans, and some of that kind of some rocks in the pathway. Specifically, I think we're talking about the pathway kind of from the shaman ski park over to Farrell and then up the hill. That would be parallel to spirit to Swift Street. And so kind of thought okay maybe an isolated incident, maybe, you know, post Halloween related. It happened again this past weekend. So I've been in contact with our parks foreman. I said, you know, it's probably time for a police report so I did email today, Chief Burke just to let him know. So I'm not sure if they have any leads. I didn't hear of any kind of permanent vandalism. It was more overturning of some items and just kind of strewn across the rec path but we are following up on that I did know about it but but thanks for that reminder Tim and will continue to work with the police department to see what we can do to curb those things. We have removed some of the garbage cans from our pathways and parks because the winter season is coming and they're just not utilized that much so not not sure what kind of activities happening there but we'll continue to follow it. Great. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, any other comments from the public. We'll move on to the agenda. All right, we'll move on to announcements and David you were just sharing that some of your students are on board but have no other announcement. Tim Barrett has the pension. No, I mean, we're going to hear from Pat next. Okay. All right. Megan, do you have anything to report. I don't thank you, Helen. Okay. We're sorry to hear about the machete incident. I just. Yes. To know if that was an attack on someone who was in the park that just wasn't clear to me. Sorry, I am. Sorry, let me just do this again. I, I was just literally overhearing what was happening in in my backyard and I didn't follow up with the police to inquire. And I think it was what it was some strange thing where some was in a group of people. And they were just young men and it seems like, again, it wasn't an attack on the public but someone had seen what was happening that someone had had blood on them and potentially had a weapon. And they were also doing some call and responses very often. And when I looked out there to police, but it wasn't an attack. Police probably have some information. Do you have any more? No, I don't. The only thing I was going to say Helen is that I didn't get a call from the police that any crime that happened in the park and that's traditionally, you know, the appropriate. So I'm guessing it was kind of a live action role play or running a scavenger hunt that maybe was set up to look like something that it wasn't. I'm not sure. The first I had heard about it was, you know, this past week when we heard about all the flower and, and those nighttime activities. And I never heard about it from the police. So I assume that was a credible anything, but I can certainly follow up. I'm glad to have Holly's feedback. Thank you, Holly. That's important. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Kevin, the city manager's report. I don't have anything to report either. We've got my wife's cat screaming in the background here so. Sorry if you hear some weird noise in the background when I'm speaking. This is really funny, though, to my ears. Better. No, it sounds like you're in a, I don't know, in a tin can. I don't know what I'm saying. Well, pretty much. We'll figure it out. Okay. That's the. The passionary measures related to the based upon the governor's executive. And so we have, we shut down city hall to the public. And to Donna's office, the clerk's office. Where you can still go in to examine records, but. You have to have an appointment to do so. Again, going back to the words that we use back in the spring, abundance of caution. We want to make sure the public and the staff are safe. So. Also, the library is now closed again. To the public that is still open side service. And they will be that will be in this posture until such time as the governor lets us know that it's allowable to go back and open up. Meantime, our staff who can work from home and that's quite a bit of our work. We're not essential employees are working from home. So we have a schedule staff in the, in the city hall right now. Tom and I will be there every day. The rest of the folks will be working from home. Excuse me. This does not affect the police department or the fire department. They will be working from home. They will be working from home. They will be working from home. Those are all essential employees and they will continue in the regular. Schedule as they had throughout the earlier pandemic. And check colleagues in the weather. These everybody pretty much is doing this. Same same steps. A little variation in there, but pretty much the same thing. So. We're hoping this is not long duration. Any questions from the council or public about. About the. New measures. One thing I would say is. We've been through this before. So it was, it was pretty easy to make the decision on Thursday and have it be effective. For some people on Friday and for everybody else on Monday. Any questions from council. Or the public. I appreciate your abundance of caution. It's very disappointing for sure. But. I think that's what we need to do. For now. We have no way off. And we're not anticipating that. But we'll just see how. We move forward. Thank you. That's right. Yeah. Any questions from council or the public. Appreciate your abundance of caution. It's very disappointing for sure. But. I think that's what we need to do. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to item five, the consent agenda. We have four items approving disbursements. Approving minutes of one, two, three, four, five meetings. And consider and possibly approve a transportation. Alternative grant to support phase one of the. The city manager to negotiate and execute a 20 year lease. For dark fiber. With first light based on results of the competitive bid. So I would entertain a motion for approval. So moved. And a second. Second. And Emma. And Megan. Second. Are there any questions? Or discussion. Tim, I bet yours will be on item D. Well, it was going to be, but it's, you know, I have something before that. Was I asleep at some previous city council meeting and missed the. Agenda item where somebody talked about building a bike. Path along spear street on the, the direction that they're proposing here. I don't ever remember seeing that on any proposal. Like it came out of nowhere. So I'm just curious. I thought, you know, we had talked heavily about, you know, Dorset street from. From Sadie lane all the way to old cross road. And. I. I just was wondering where this came from. Correct me if I'm wrong. I have no record. I have no recollection of looking at this, this 3.5 mile section. Well, we have. Ashley Parker is with us. And we also have Bob. Brett. Was on the bike and ped committee. Correct. So. Ashley. Do you want to comment or would you want Bob? I think it probably must have been on their lists of. A whole bunch of different places, but. Okay. Because you don't live there. I don't know. Ashley, do you want to comment? Yes, I can. I can give you guys a little feedback. So this project. Has been on the bike. Ped committees priority list. For. For funding and for completion. We actually also just recently completed a scoping study, which went in front of the bike, ped committee for their review and included this project. This project is actually part of a larger. Scoping study also looks at the entire length of spear street. That goes. From the, where the end of that path is at the forestry building, all the way to the town line and a shelter in town line. So. This first phase is going to focus on a shared use path that will run from the. Where it ends at the forestry building to. The intersection of switch and spear. And with hope for in the future to complete something, maybe not a shared use path, but potentially a sidewalk with on road bike lanes. The rest of the way to Shelburne. So this is, yeah, this has been something that's been on their, their project list or priority list. The scoping study is actually. The bike, committee just provides some recommendations that staff were hoping to bring to the council. And so this grant is a piece of the puzzle to try to get some funding to make sure that it can get completed. And then. In the near term. In addition to all the places Ashley mentioned. This project is in the approved FY 21. Capital improvement plan. So it's not. Out of nowhere or left field or. Creation. It was, it's been in the CIP. For a couple of years and is included in the current fiscal year CIP as well. Thank you. And is it intended to have it built on the western side of the road? Yes. So you'd have to take down some of those old growth trees that are, you know, just on the uphill going south from. You know, the potash brook area. Potentially that hasn't been designed at all. So we don't really know what's going through that section. I mean, I'm not. I'm not against this, but I. I looked at the path and I don't want to make this a big discussion. I mean, I'll probably vote yes, but. To me, it, it. It doesn't seem like a high value ad section. I mean, if you made the road wider and gave it a true bike lane, I could see it, but. I don't know. I just, I'm kind of doubtful about how much use that section would actually get compared to other sections of bike path that already exist that provide. You know, around the block type perimeters. You know, because if you're, if you're at the, the, you know, the. The forest or research station, you can go all the way around, you know, through East woods and up to UVM and come back down and. If you're at the white barn, you have a nice big perimeter to go all the way through back to Overlick Park through. Feral park and, you know. Downish Manskey Park. So I just. I just question it a little bit. I. I just wanted to say that for the record. I. You know, just curious. Well, I walked. Well, I walk that section often and I think that is a. I think you'd be surprised at how many people are on the bike path. And yes, that, that, then it heads East to hook around the country club and stuff, but I think there'd be considerable interest in. Going up the hill and connecting with the other bike paths. It really opens up quite a bit more. But I appreciate not cutting down old growth trees. It's about the last thing we need to do. But. One of the big considerations. Tim, is that it, when we think about, you know, for the city. One of the big considerations. Tim is that it, when we did the survey of each quadrant of the city. The neighbors in that quadrant really wanted that connection up to city center. To the high school and to the university they. Can go right up from Feral street. And connect in basically five different directions. do now. And we've had many reports of very serious accidents to doctor, at least one doctor, I'm not sure if the other person is a doctor or a physician, where people have been hit by cars in that section. In the short term, I believe Justin's going to work on bike lanes and maybe widening the road a little bit. But in the, you know, this, this type of project takes four years to complete. So again, it's heavily a commuter path. I went to take pictures out of the blue one day of the area. And at least four bicyclists were coming through and this was around noon time. And they looked like they were heading back towards the hospital. So I do think it's a heavy commuter area. It really needs a bike lane. My only question is, does it really need, you know, a pedestrian rec path crash through the side of all the way through up to those woods? And, you know, potentially cutting down a lot of those, those trees and that really nice, you know, old growth area. But I'm not going to say any more. And I'll go ahead and vote for this. Thank you. Well, you've got quite a few years to weigh in because you looked at the time frame. It's, you know, not going to be done until 2025. I'm hoping I still can walk then. Bob has already expressed what I was going to say, Tim. There's, in usual times, I'm back and forth that way several times a day, most days. And it's got a whole lot more bicycle traffic than you might imagine. And so it's well taken about the bikes. But from my perspective, if we're going to go to the trouble of putting in a bike lane, it's much safer to finish the job and put in a complete rec path, quite honestly. And hopefully, if you're a serious bike commuter, you're not going to get on a bike path on the side, you're going to take that hill full speed 40 miles an hour downhill on the right of the road. Maybe. You're probably right. Well, I'm a pedestrian and I like being able to walk safely and not on the edge of Spear Street. Oh, it's not a good place to walk. No, it's not. And when you want to walk different places, you've got these sections where that you're stuck with walking on someone's front lawn or, you know, in the breakdown lane. Are there any other questions about the items on the consent agenda? You don't have any, Tim, on the dark light or dark fiber? Yeah. No, it's cool. It's cool. Yeah, it's cool. Megan, it's so dark. It's cool. Okay. Megan, do you have a question? No, no, I just wanted to say that I do recall this section being of concern with regard to safety, talking about the bike path. And I, you know, when I was reading about the cost, I too thought of what Kevin Doran said about simply, you know, doing something a lot less expensive. But I think, you know, it does serve a purpose. I think that it can be a danger, especially that intersection around Swift Street and Spear. I think that that's been carefully thought out. And so I just wanted to say that. Yeah, that's a tricky one. Okay. If there's no other comments or questions, I'll call the roll to approve the consent agenda. Dave Kaufman? Yes. Tim Barrett? Thomas Chittenden? Aye. Megan Emory? Aye. And the chair votes aye. And so that was unanimous. Tim did a thumbs up. Okay. Moving on to item six, discuss and possibly approve the common roots lease agreements for the Wheeler and Underwood property. We have Carol McClellan, has she joined us yet? I don't see her name, but she'll probably be coming. But Andrew, are you going to talk about this lease agreement? I had some comments or questions. Sure. I know Holly and Katie are also on. I don't know if they have any whoever wants to talk about it. I mean, maybe it maybe it should be Holly since the agreement is with the parks and rec department. Yeah, I know Katie's on as well. I guess what I would share is that the recreation and parks committee has been great. You know, we entertained this months ago. We had a public session on it. We have lots of comments from the public that we tried to infuse into the lease, as well as some comments from the dog park committee that we tried to include in the lease as well. And then we had a small working group after that meeting that kind of fine tuned some of the essential pieces that we wanted to get in there that included Katie, myself and Carol. And so what's in front of you now is the result of, you know, a couple different public meetings and then some fine tuning in our small work group. So from the recreation and parks committee standpoint and from my standpoint, I believe it's inclusive of all the public comments that we heard. And I think people are feeling good about that process. Okay. Go ahead. Yes. Yes. So I would just say Holly handed it off to me a couple of weeks ago and sort of did a standard legal review of the documents, basically did a side by side by side of the original underwood or sorry, the original wheeler lease. Some of the the initial drafts that were put before council several months ago. Some of the previous comments we got from a couple of residents, as well as the committee's sort of draft that was given to me, I corrected some, you know, formatting issues, internal inconsistencies and other things that just kind of find in a standard legal review. And other than that, it was pretty straightforward, made sure the insurance requirements were updated in identification language consistent with our other contracts. Okay, I just had a question just to, so it's clear in my mind because I was wondering about the 6040 split, but even long before, I mean, it'll be a while before the city realizes any income from this because as I understand it, the first five or six years, common roots will receive all of the income in order to pay off. I suspect it's a loan for building the, you know, pizza oven and the and the shelter. Is that right? Correct. There's a, as a appendix to one of the or an exhibit to one of the agreements, there's a sort of a cost overlay of the initial cost associated with developing the property. And I think that the total numbers are sort of on there. And it is my understanding that all of the 100% of the initial revenue will go to pay down that. And once that's paid down, there is that 6040 split. Okay. And the 6040 was arrived. I mean, why isn't it like 5050? I mean, it's our land, the city's land. We do a fair amount to support the property. Could they not generate enough income to keep themselves going? If it was 6040, I mean 5050. I'm just curious. I can't speak to that. I don't know, Holly, if that came up or I know, I don't know if it was Tom who had some initial discussions as well, but I can't speak to that. Tom may know more than I know about how that kind of split was originally put into kind of a draft form that came from, you know, a common roots request. And I think from the recreation and parks committee perspective, I think as long as we had some language in around some assurances of kind of a yearly income base, there didn't seem to be a concern about the 6040 split, really being that common roots would be the outlayer of all, you know, service, do marketing and to make sure that they vetted all of the appropriate folks and we're touring people and doing that component. And so certainly as a recreation and parks department, we don't have the capacity to be doing that for an event site. So I believe that she came to that knowing that they would have the capacity and that really it's more of a site fee for owning the land that was the 40 split. Okay. All right. So Tom Hubbard, do you want to add anything? Yeah, I was just going to add that was the proposal from common roots, Helen. I think it was because they were going to need to staff the events so that they had a little bit more in terms of the cost affiliated with paying people to actually be there, whether they were hosting it for themselves or for another group. So that was the proposal that was put forward by common roots. I know that Carol was going to join us tonight. I don't see her online. She's out of state. She's away. And I'm wondering if she's just having problems connecting, but her intent was certainly to be here. And I know she could have better answered that question. Well, no one else has a concern. Tim. I just want to get the reassurance from Andrew that the contract meets all of the city's requirements and satisfies our liability needs so that we're not put at some disadvantage. And it's 25 years for both the garden plot and for the homestead extension right total. Yeah. To answer the first part of that, I did update some of the indemnification language to be sure, specifically for the use of the to the outdoor kitchen that we are held harmless from use as well as to ensure that the insurance requirements that we require pursuant to the original lease agreement for a wheeler, that that's extended to this outdoor kitchen as well to the limits that we typically require. Do they have to show you proof of premium and insurance that they have purchased? Correct. Yep. And yeah, sort of standard language there. You know, like 30 day notice of discontinuance, all that type of assurance. Also something that I think it's important to note in both of these leases is we now have I would say pretty favorable sort of no cause termination clauses upon I think it's 120 days notice, which is actually gives the city of a very significant out if there are any issues. Okay. And the 6040 split is of the net profit, correct? Does it say net? I can't remember. Correct. Revenue is the word used. So revenue is net revenue, not gross. No, good question. Because the cost of the people would have already been, I don't mean a nitpick, I'm just trying to make sure that, you know, our stewardship is good. And we're not just giving away the farm or whatever. It is net revenue, net rental revenue in the agreement. Yeah, it says net. Yeah. And there is also to speak to one of Holly's earlier points, there is a minimum revenue amount that they're obligated to provide us annually of 10,000. Okay. That was a question. You paid off everything, correct? Correct. Correct. And require you to have 10 third party events annually. What if they don't? What if they don't attract? It's on the top of page five. So it's the same section that Helen's been discussing, number 10 there under third party rentals. My reading of that would be the city is still entitled to 10,000 no matter what, even if they have 10 events or if they're not able to get 10 events, that's the bottom line number that we're looking for from this. That has been vetted. I have same question that Tim asked earlier with regard to the cost of plowing and the cost of upkeep that the city is going to be providing. In other words, we will be whole, I guess, or with regard to, you know, all the costs that will be that will be generating in order to keep the property up that $10,000 is sufficient. And over 25 years. Yeah, do we break even with the plowing and I don't know. There's other stuff they do too. So I'll take a stab at that one, Helen. I think this is one of the reasons why administratively we were supporting this venture. Right now, the city's putting 100% into that. The only payment that's made by either the friends of the library group or common routes is for the actual utility costs for the house itself. So this was a way to begin recouping some of the costs that the city is putting not only into the house, but into the land up there. And the idea was this would give the city an additional revenue source to be able to do that either at Wheeler or at one of the other parks. And I think that's one of the recommendations that the Recreation Parks Committee had is that let's not tie ourselves just to Wheeler. There may be needs in other parks as well that that money might need to go to. So we expanded the opportunity for the revenue to be used elsewhere. So this is the first time that we will be recouping some of some of the costs for the use of land by having them operate and hold events for the kitchen. If there's anything, any upkeep to the house, I'm assuming that's the city's responsibility as well. It's not just the plowing and the lawn care. I mean, that's the question I had too. Yeah, I would, I think it's fair to say I think Holly would agree. Common Roots has put a significant investment into the house. I think the city's pleased with what Common Roots has done with the building itself. The city, again, is putting some cost into the roof. But in terms of the inside upkeep of the building and the improvements that have been made to the inside of the building, they've been significant by common roots into the tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah, yeah. But how much to go ahead, Kevin? We're going to have some very significant costs that we learn the next five to 10 years at some point that there's going to need to be replaced. The roof is going to need to be replaced in some other costs. And this will provide a revenue stream. So we don't have to hit the taxpayer on it. Sufficient enough. It's been vetted that it's sufficient enough because as Helen points out, and I didn't understand that from my read, this begins after the outdoor oven has been paid off? Yeah, and that's $70,000. So that's going to be, I don't know, maybe five years, four years. It depends. Depends what we can do next summer, I guess, in part. That's a lot of pizza. Well, it's other. It's not just the pizza, which I've been told is excellent, but yeah. I just want to make sure that we have enough going forward. I mean, for 25 years, this is going to be the contract in place. And I just want to make sure that this is enough to cover the unforeseen. If we're going to be having the public using these grounds, we have to maintain a level of upkeep to make sure that that public, not only the roof, but also the bricks and all these things that old buildings need to have renovated regularly, that we're not going to be setting ourselves up for any liability that the $10,000 per year and who knows when that will begin to flow into our coffers. I just want to make sure that we have enough to cover. That's the hope, Megan. And again, I think if we had the staff and resources through parks and recreation, Holly would have loved to have been able to do this herself. But we're needing to rely on an outside organization to do this, even though the city will have an opportunity to host events there as well with the kitchen. But again, it's our first chance to be able to get some of that revenue back. I don't think it will take as many years as we think to recoup some of those costs once the events actually start happening. But there will be a bit of a delay before the city starts seeing some of the revenue, hopefully before we need to replace the boiler, which is probably going to be the next largest expanse up at Wheeler. Okay, Tom, you had your hand up a moment ago, Tom Chittenden. I thought I saw somewhere in here that we do have the right to terminate the lease if we give six months notice. So there's ways that the 25 years might not happen if we're not happy. Is that true, Tom? That's correct. I think it's 120 days, Andrew. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that certainly gives us some surety. Thank you, Tom. Tim, were you wanting to go? Okay. All right. So are we ready? I'm sorry. I just wanted to say that the pizza oven structure is really beautiful. And I'm really impressed. And I haven't had any pizza there yet. And I'm sorry to say I hope it's soon. But it's a great outdoors venue that should generate a lot of interest. And there might be people that want to get married there because, oh my God, there's a view of Mansfield there that just blows your mind, right? Okay. Barb, service, did you want to say something? Yes. Yeah, I had several comments. The first is I want to thank Tom and Holly and Justin and Carol. We've had some good discussions about the fact that the dog park is going to be adjacent. The document now, I could only look at it on my laptop, but the document that I saw online that was attached to the lease did not clearly show, did not clearly delineate the dog park. So I would ask that a different map be attached to this before it's signed that shows really clearly where the dog park is going to be so that there are just no questions in 25 years when none of us are doing this anymore, that that would be really clear. We've had some good conversations. And I was really pleased to see the reference to both the dog park and the community gardens and veterans park in terms of not trying to do too many things at once and into Holly's capable hands. We commend commend the monitoring of our work with Carol to get all those things, all those things to work out. But I think it would be really helpful if we could attach a different map. And I know that Justin has one. And so it should be easy for him to to provide that. And I think that we've come to an agreement about where the dog park is going to be. And I was equally concerned about the community gardens and access to that. So I was glad to see it. I do have a comment about the about the rental revenue. I personally don't think that 60 40 is correct. If I were doing it, I would say 60 to the city and 40 to common roots. But I'm certainly always up for compromise. So I think 50 50 is okay. I have a concern that does common roots serve just South Burlington? Or does it serve a larger area in which in terms of of their programmatic services? And are we in fact providing access and welcoming our neighbors from other communities? But do we need to sort of figure out how that all fits in this in this scenario? But personally, I would I would be a lot happier. And I think the taxpayers might feel more comfortable if we had a 50 50 split, especially as you talk about boilers. And in 25 years, $10,000 is not going to be very much money at all. And that was my other concern in terms of whether or not that should be a number that's reviewed every X number of years, or it's got some sort of a formula built into it or something because it's it's not going to be very much at a point at which there will be more maintenance needs and other things that need to happen at that particular building. So for what it's worth. Okay, is it is the 10,000 a minimum? That's how I read it, that we would at least get $10,000. Correct. Or is that all we'll ever get. So if the, I mean, if it's 40% of the revenue and the revenue is 200,000, let's hope we get a little more than 10,000. Correct, Helen. It's written as a minimum. Okay. Helen, may I weigh in here? Yes, you may. I think we have to put this in the context of a little bit of history. While I came in seven and a half years ago as city manager, the National Gardening Association had just left. They were a tenant there, a commercial tenant building and left it in pretty not in great shape. And so it sat there for some number of years. Recall there was an old white house nearby. We tore that down about five years ago. And there was some expense associated with that. But the property itself was sitting there and deteriorating. And common roots came along and said, along with the kinds of library and said, you know, we would like to lease this from you and start to fix it back up again. And so most of the cost of doing that, as Tom alluded to earlier, has been common roots. So there, this is a private nonprofit organization, has sunk quite a bit of money into this property. As it relates, and so getting to about 6040, that would make is that the city has no risk here. Common roots is taking all the risk and all the events. We don't have to staff it. These are insured events. Common roots is insured. We of course are insured. And I think I personally think 6040 is pretty good for us. And I think if you look back at where we were with this building and where we are today, it's night and day difference. Tremendous improvements inside. And so since we haven't made a real risk and we're not doing any hosting or staffing or reviewing who's going to do this, I think 6040 is more than fair. Recognizing that without common roots, it would be zero. And we would have a badly deteriorated building. So I was involved in a 6040 discussion. And that's, and I thought that this was fair for the city. Okay. Any other comments or questions? Yes, Bob. Just don't forget the map. Oh, yes. Is that doable, Andrew, to attach a different, more correct map or more accurate map? Absolutely. I do think there is one that Justin produced at some point that we could, I think the motion would just have to include as amended. So do we need to vote on that? Oh, no, I'm sorry. So is that agreeable for people, for us to, someone make a motion to approve this lease with the understanding that the most accurate map depicting the dog park is attached? So moved. And is there a second to that? Tom Chittenden put his thumb up. He's the second? Okay. Is there any further discussion? Okay. We'll have a roll call of those in favor, or how they vote. Tom Chittenden. That's an aye. Tim Barrett? Aye. Dave Kaufman? Aye. Megan? Emery? Aye. And the chair votes aye. So with that additional map, so the lease agreements have been agreed to 5-0. Thank you for all your work, Holly and Justin and Tom Hubbard and Carol and Katie Langrock and whoever else was part of the conversation and Andrew, of course. Thank you. All right. Item seven is the annual update from Green Mountain Transit and John Moore, who is the, is he the acting general manager? Is that right, Tom? Is the official general manager, which is very great for the organization. I think I saw him on. Has he joined us? I don't see. I am. Can you folks hear me? Oh, yes. Oh, I see. Okay. I'm sorry. Yes. Good evening, everybody. Thanks for having us. I am John Moore. I am the general manager from Green Mountain Transit. I think I saw Charlie Baker on the call as well. He is the board representative from South Burlington and Tim Barrett is actually the alternate board member representing South Burlington. So I want to give a quick overview of our organization tonight. Talk about some specific South Burlington related information. Talk a little bit about some ongoing and upcoming projects that the agency is undertaking and then open it up to any questions you folks may have. So I do have a quick power point. Kevin, am I able to share my screen? John, I will make you a presenter. John, you are now a presenter, so you can share your screen. Okay. Can everybody see that? No. Can you see that now? There is a button at the bottom. Very good. Okay. Great. So just a quick overview of kind of who we are. Green Mountain Transit evolved from the Chittenden County Transportation Authority that was created back in 1973. We are still the only transit authority within the state of Vermont. In 2016, CCTA and the Green Mountain Transit Agency, which operated service down in the Montpelier area, became one organization renamed the Green Mountain Transit Authority. So overall, GMT provides service in six counties in northwest Vermont. We're directed by 13 member board of commissioners. And overall, we have about 180 employees, 160 buses, and close to 1,000 bus stops in that six county service area. So this is our mission. I won't read this, but everything that's kind of bolded, that's our goal. That's what we're trying to achieve and bring benefit to the community and really maximize the investment in public transit. So in terms of our financial breakdown, this is a graph of our urban revenues. So we kind of have two sides of our business. We have a rural side and an urban side, mostly defined by the Federal Transit Administration, how we get our federal funding. So overall, it's about a $21 million annual operating budget. Over 14 million of that is in the urban area, which is greater Burlington in Chittenden County. As you can see in FY20, which was kind of a strange year due to COVID and the influx in some federal funds, about 50% of our overall operating revenues came from the Federal Transit Administration, about 14% from the state, 22% from our local partners, which South Burlington is a member municipality of the authority. 12% of our revenue comes from passenger fares. That is artificially low because we have not charged fares since the start of the pandemic. So quarter four of FY20 was fare free. So usually we're closer to 15 to 17% of our revenue coming from our passenger fares. And then a few other miscellaneous revenue categories. So we operate multiple types of service. We operate the fixed route kind of traditional city bus service. We operate multiple commuter routes in and out of Burlington to some outlying areas. Multiple types of demand response services. The Americans with this Disabilities Act in Chittenden County, we contract with SSTA. You've probably seen the white vans running around. So they provide that service for us. There's an elders and disabled program, E&D, that the city contributes to. I'll talk about that here in a second. But that provides service for folks outside of that ADA area, but still need transportation needs. And then in our rural service areas, we also have a contract to provide the non-emergency medical transportation Medicaid funded services in Chittenden County that is provided by SSTA. We also provide weekly grocery shopping trips, seasonal mountain service that we're starting here in the coming weeks in Stowe and down in the Mad River Valley and also microtransit, which I'll talk a little bit more about here in a second. But a new service model that we're going to have a pilot project in Montpelier. So in terms of ridership, I used FY19 figures just because our ridership is skewed fairly heavily due to COVID. We're down about 50% right now from our normal levels. But as you can see, back in FY19, we provided about 2.86 million passenger rides. The vast majority of that is our fixed route service in the Burlington area, Chittenden County. But you can also see we provided urban ADA and urban E&D. And while the ridership numbers are much lower, it is important to note that those are some critical care type services to dialysis and cancer treatments and that sort. So very important services that we provide to those folks that need it. So in terms of some South Burlington specific information, we assess the city on an annual basis. And there's three parts to that assessment. The first part is our fixed route assessment. So in FY21, that was $307,000 is what the city paid into GMT. That was a 0% increase over FY20. Typically, there is a 3-4% increase. And so for FY22, our board will be approving our FY22 budget next month. And I would guess that the fixed route increase will be somewhere in that 3-4% range. Within that 307,000 is also a small capital match. We have a $50,000 capital match spread out across our communities. So that's built into the fixed route assessment. And that helps us keep our bus fleet up to date. In addition to the fixed route, there's also a ADA component. So the ADA laws basically say any fixed route service, there needs to be complimentary service within three quarters of a mile around that for folks with disabilities that for whatever reason cannot take the fixed route service. So that amount in FY21 for the city was $189,000. And this is somewhat of a convoluted formula how we get there. But just real quick, so folks understand this because this is a number that can fluctuate based on actual ridership by community. So essentially, our charter gives all of our member municipalities a 50% discount off their actual ADA costs. So in FY21, we had about a $1.34 million ADA budget across our entire urban service area. So we built 50% of that to our member municipalities, which was about 670,000. And then we allocate that based on actual ridership. So the previous fiscal year FY19, there were 12,500 rides by South Brown's residents on that ADA service, which represented about 29% of the total rides for that program. So we simply just apply that percentage to the billable expense. And that's how we come up with the annual assessment. So as part of our FY22 budgeting process, we're also developing our FY22 ADA program cost projection. It's a little bit more challenging than normal just due to the COVID impacts. But we do know that South Browinton did see an increase in the total program rides in FY20, which the FY22 assessment amount will be built on. So the rides went from 29% up to 32%. So there may be a marginal increase in the program there, but we'll have that all finalized next month. And then the other piece is the E&D contribution. This is that elders and disabled program. So the state provides 80% of the funding for this program. And the city matches the 20% for a weekly Hineford shopping special that we operate. That's free to the public and provided over 2,000 rides in FY20, which averaged about 20 passenger boardings per Tuesday is the day of the week it operates. And that route provides service to Pillsbury Manor, the Pines and Country Park. So those folks have a convenient and easy way to go to the grocery store. The bus waits for them and the driver will help load the groceries. So it's a very convenient and customer focused service that we operate. So in terms of some of the fixed route services that we operate, South Browinton gets some pretty high quality service. Three fixed routes that operate within the city of South Browinton. The red line to Williston, which is our second busiest route, over 450,000 boardings in FY19. Connecting downtown Browinton University of Vermont, the Medical Center, U-Mall out to Tafts Cloners in Williston, receives our highest service levels of seven days a week and some peak hour 20 minute service. We also operate the purple line. This was recently combined. It was a South Browinton circulator. It was combined with a College Street shuttle route. So a lower ridership, but with a new combination of service, it does provide direct service from the airport to downtown Browinton and the university area. Previous to this route combination, folks had a transfer at the University Mall. So this is a much more convenient service to have that one seat connection into downtown. And then we also operate our blue line to Shelburne Route on Shelburne Road from downtown Browinton out to Shelburne. The busiest stop does happen to be in South Browinton. That's the Feral Street stop serving the Shahs and Price Chopper grocery stores and the new, or the housing developments on Feral Street. And then we also operate multiple commuter routes through South Browinton, mostly on that Route 7 corridor that folks can get the bus and travel to Montpelier, Middlebury and Heinsberg. So in terms of initiatives that we currently have underway and are planning on starting here in the near future, number one is technology upgrades. We feel that to incentivize people to get on the bus, they need to have the information and we think technology can provide that. So we've recently, through the Vermont Agency of Transportation, VTRANS have implemented a new passenger bus tracking application so they can go on their smartphone and passengers can see real-time location of buses and what the actual arrival times will be. We also have a new mobile ticketing app, so folks don't need to worry about having a dollar and 50 cents in spare change. They can actually pay with their credit card and use their phone as their proof of fair payment. Both of these products do help improve our on-time performance and with the technology upgrades, we have a brand new backend system where we can analyze actual runtime information and then with our printed schedules make sure that they're as accurate as possible. The other project we have ongoing right now is called Microtransit. This is something that we're rolling out in Montpelier in early January and it's essentially on-demand transit using app-based technology. You can think of it as Uber or lift type service utilizing public transit vehicles. So in Montpelier it will be replacing three routes that operate in the city. It will be the first project of this kind in the state of Vermont, but I think everyone kind of in transit in the state has a lot of excitement that this could also kind of find a solution for that first mile, last mile in low density applications such as Tilly Drive where there might not be enough demand now for a 40-foot bus to provide that service, but still a demand for transportation that this Microtransit may be able to efficiently provide. We're also working on a transit strategic plan. This will be our guiding document for the next 10 to 15 years. We'll be starting a public outreach process to make sure that we're meeting goals of the public so we're excited to start that process. The other real focus we've had over the last year so is making sure that we have a sustainable fleet replacement plan. One of our strongest cost pressures is our maintenance budget. We have a fleet that's older than it should be so what we want to do is get on a replacement schedule so we can reduce our average fleet of our age. It's much cheaper especially with federal funds to buy a bus than it is to maintain it. So we've had 17 new buses delivered since 2017. We have five more on order and our goal is to get on a schedule where we're ordering five to six buses a year to reduce those maintenance costs and increase the reliability of our service. With that fleet replacement plan we've also moved to some zero-emission buses. We have two in service in Burlington and we're in the process of procuring two additional electric buses for Montpelier. So we're excited with the potential of that fleet electrification. We think there could be some you know long-term cost savings in addition to the environmental benefits. We're also working on our public transit safety plan. This is really a cultural shift from the top down in our organization to make sure we're doing everything as safely as possible. This is a new federal transit administration requirement that we'll have in place in December. And then lastly just want to outline like everybody else you know spending a lot of time with our COVID response making sure that we're keeping our employees and our passengers as safe as possible. So we've installed hand sanitizers in all of our vehicles. We you know have face masks available for passengers as needed. We are operating zero fare right now as I mentioned. So on our larger buses all of our passengers can board through the rear door to try to create some social distancing for our drivers. But again doing everything we can to keep everybody safe while providing you know the transportation to those essential services. We have had times even during COVID where you know we run out of space on the bus. So we have scheduled additional backup buses to provide that backup capacity as needed. But safety is always number one in terms of you know making sure people can can rely on our services but do it safely. And that's my contact information there and with that I'm certainly happy to answer any questions. Okay I just have one quick question. I'm assuming that electric buses are more expensive. That's why you only have two and then new ones coming in on electric. Yeah so the upfront costs are about 40 percent more you know and it's really too early to tell in the technology you know life of these buses what the overall operating savings will be. But it is anticipated that over a 12 year life of a bus the actual cost of ownership will be less than a diesel bus. It's just that initial hurdle of that upfront capital cost right now is what we're trying to figure out. Okay well I hope you do figure it out because that's where I would really encourage you to go. Tim Barrett yes Tim. Yeah where are the electric buses running? What routes are they on? I haven't seen them yet. So they're running kind of all through our system but we try to maximize the usage actually on the red line which is North Avenue and then on the Williston route and then also on our blue line which is Essex and Shelvin roads. We have had some I guess maintenance issues with those buses. We've been a little bit hampered because we put those in revenue service in middle of February right before the pandemic hit. So we're a little bit behind the eight ball in terms of our maintenance training but we've had our vendor on site for the last couple weeks helping out. So they've increased the reliability but Tim you should be seeing those definitely in South Burlington. Does Burlington Electric give you a special rate to charge them at night? Yeah so we have an off-peak charging structure and Burlington Electric also provided some incentive funding. So we have some mileage targets that we're trying to hit and if we hit those we'll get some incentive funding from them that help with the actual purchase of the buses. And are they running as long as you expected them to on a full charge? Yeah when we've been able to have them in service we've been satisfied with the mileage range. Right now it's just been the overall reliability and keeping them on the road but yeah the range has been better than expected to be honest with you. Any other comments or questions? Okay Dave Shinin do you have a question because you have your picture. No? Okay all right so thank you John and congratulations I guess on this relatively new job right? Yeah thank you I'm very nice. And we hope you stick around a while. Okay thank you. We'll move on to item eight which is an update on the Wenuski Valley Park District and Nick Orner. Is he going to find his name? Yes okay and also I'm in the center. Yes and Dave Crawford and Lauren Chikoti as well excellent. Great all right well I apologize for running a little bit late but we have you on for I guess 20 minutes. Yes and we will drag it out too far. The advantage I have here is everyone on this on the council is aware of who we are so I won't have to go through our whole history again this year. Right. I do want to give you a quick update. It's been a challenging year for all of us but we're in much better shape than we might have thought when COVID hit and basically after the initial flurry of concern around frankly whether we should keep parks open. I don't know if you remember in the beginning even though I'm just quite sure what the impact of COVID was. We pretty much from the day the governor declared to stay at home order we've been inundated with people. Just parks just get absolutely slammed. I'm sure you guys had the same experience especially in wet blocks. So it became really clear to us that our number one priority was to be a good host and to make sure that the health and safety of our users was paramount. We made all the same moves that a lot of organizations made in terms of initially closing our offices. Now we're kind of split up and Warren is working from home. I'm working from home but I'm a mile from the office. I'm a little bit of a hybrid and our superintendent Tim Larnad and his assistant Remy Kretel are working out of the office and in the field. We were able to get funding through VHCB to help us get a consultant to get grants for our maintenance which is the Forest Preschool and the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. So they were able to get paycheck protection and assistance from the state. So it was a pretty painless transition. They're able to pay their staff and they did not have to lay anyone off. On our part we chose not to hire seasonals which meant a lot more work for Tim and Remy this year. We all pitched in but we're all still pitching in. But it's not a sustainable model but we were able to operate and keep the parts in great shape and mode and so forth and with a great reduced staff. We also made, we had made a decision pre-COVID to change our model a little bit. We have been pretty heavy in program delivery during the summer. We had a very successful camp but we found that the staffing costs and the wear and tear on the facility and the organization generally made us want to look at an outside vendor to come in and do that for us. Then COVID hit the child care crisis that demands on the preschool. So we made a choice to convert a space to expand the preschool. So what used to be my office is now the north classroom of the Forest Pre-School. We got a special permission to get zoning change. We retrofitted the space. We're able to get a couple of grants and have another grant pending to to pay for those changes and upgrades. It's meant to everything from accessibility to indoor air quality, air filtration, all that stuff. And along the way our normal priorities are still going forward. We're completing the conversion of Durway Co from the former Rivers Edge marina into a full park with my community foundation funding. We, Tim and Remy, we're still able to conduct some contracted work for the town of Williston and which brings in some pure revenue for our organization. And what's really exciting and growing is the Alno Bayoui is a partnership of the four main Abnaki tribes. They have banded together and are creating a Vermont indigenous heritage center co-located at the Ethan Allen Museum that we own and subcontract out to. So that is positioning us with the potential of bringing in a big chuck of change to renovate that facility. And along the way, our partners at the museum, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, the community gardeners, all have found ways to accommodate and still operate during COVID. It's meant having everything from bathrooms to distancing to scheduling has been challenging, but everyone stepped up to the plate. And I also think this new guidance that the governor put out is going to once again boost our usership in parts. We've been really slammed and we've been doing our best to make sure that people have a safe environment they come into. It's met signage and education and so forth. And in general, we found people to be really responsive and responsible in using our parks. We still have capital needs that we're looking for outside resources. We want to rebuild our wetlands walk at the homestead. We have renovations we'd like to do at the Ethan Allen Museum and at the Colchester Pond farmhouse and barn because those are both spaces that are leasable and could provide us income in the long term. So, and also along the way, we were able to expand Colchester Pond Park by 10 acres. We got a donation of return for a right-of-way for an access road, which long-term will assist us in creating a new north entrance for Colchester Pond. So, that was a great deal for us. And we're working with the town of Williston on the transfer of a 29-acre park that was donated to them a couple years ago. We got held up for a few months because of COVID, but we're jumping back into that and getting an easement for access and turning that into a park district asset. So, we're hoping that by the spring that would be completed and we'll have a new park in the system. There's also another property in Colchester that we're looking at on a bargain sale to expand the McCrae Farm Park. So, things are moving forward. We have found, early on, I've gotten in touch with all the town managers in South Brunsand along the conversation with Tom Harvard a few months ago, trying to get a handle on what the financial impacts were going to be on towns. I don't think it's as dire as anyone thought, but also there's unknowns. So, we always have that, you know, backline contingency that, you know, we are aware that the town, there are question marks in terms of how cash is going to flow from municipalities, which will have a lot to do with COVID and federal support and so forth. So, you know, we were very cognizant of that situation when we put together our FY22 budget request. And you'll note that we actually show an overall budget decrease, but we're asking for more money from the towns that may seem like a disconnect. However, the reasons for that are several. One is that because we got out of the programming business, you know, a major fully subscribed camp during the summer that brought in a lot of revenue, we've lost revenues on that side. But on the other hand, we're starting to recapture them with the renegotiation of our lease at Forest Preschool, and which is a major source for us. And we also think the museum is going to start bringing in more money next year with expansion of their programs. So the system will eventually work to the point that we think we're going to be able to increase our revenues even further, but we were able to really keep a very conservative budget for next year. The budget also assumes that we're going to have full seasonal workers. And if need be, if finances dictate, we can make the same decision we made this year. I hope not, because it did mean that we were not able to accomplish some of our smaller capital projects that we do on our own. But we've been able to obtain a couple of vehicles to replace our aging fleet. I've got them both used. We paid cash. We're carrying no debt. So I got to tell you, when this whole thing started back in March, I was highly concerned about where we're going to land and we're feeling pretty darn good going into the winter months in terms of where we are financially and operationally. And our general goal is to really focus on our mission in terms of acquiring, developing and maintaining high value conservation lands. And as you know, it's becoming more and more important with global warming and climate change and so forth. And I'm seeing on the horizon potential sources of funding and ways to, including for operations through carbon credits and so forth that we're studying. And I think we'll be coming down the pike over the next couple of years. I'm hoping I come back next year and so we found some ways to help fund our parts. So another change is that Lauren Cicoti goes on the call to become an operations manager. She was our programs director. And in reality, she's always done a lot of the business work. She took over payroll. So we're saving money by not hiring a bookkeeper. She has really jumped in with both feet in terms of being part of the nuts and bolts of the operation. Everything from planning capital acquisitions to negotiating contracts, doing legal work, the whole business. So her experience and skills have really made us a lot more efficient. And Tim Larnad continues to do great work as our as our park superintendent. He's by far the longest tenured. I think he's been around for 15 or 16 years now. So he is he's really keeping things going and Remy Kretol is his full-time assistant. We used to have Remy. He's our Swiss Army knife. He's been a camp counselor. He's he's helped us write grants. This year, I just pulled him aside. I said, you need to work with Tim. He's done without missing a beat. He's done a hundred percent maintenance and and and that kind of worked this summer. Everything we do is is to put us in a position where we don't drop the ball in terms of our goal to provide programming and education. But we work with outside organizations to help bring that into us and use it as a revenue generator and to find outside resources to complete our capital goals and to continue to keep a very conservative budget and to bring in outside side sources of revenue for operations. So that's the that's the quick and dirty and I secured you a long powerpoint this year. I can send you lots of cool pictures. We have them everywhere but we really wanted we in respect for the amount of your your packed agenda tonight and your knowledge of our organization. I wanted to keep it short and then build any questions or concerns you might have. Well all the materials that you sent were very helpful. So this is a wonderful way to organize it even in the future when we don't have a packed agenda. But to send them a material we read it and then this kind of higher level is really helpful. The high points are there any questions you did answer my why it's a reduced budget but an increased allocation. I get that. Are there any other questions anyone has? Okay well thank you very much and we appreciate your work and I hope that things are different but it's also just COVID really I think reinforced for everyone how important parks are and places to go to be where it's quiet and with nature and you can do it safely with your family and so thank you. You're welcome and it's created new networks and alliances that I could not have imagined before this happened. It's been a just an unintended positive that statewide and Holly can speak to this. The park directors and the small land trusts have all banded together. We have regular contact and I've learned a lot from a lot of other people so it's not all that great. Yes that's wonderful and thank you. We really appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you. Helen? Yes. Who is calling? Dave. Oh Dave. Yes. Hi. Okay. Yes I hear you. Two things. I want to express the thanks of the board that is the Wenuski Valley Park District Board to the staff. We met at least two times maybe three with them to try to get this budget pulled together so there would be a sound budget for the future and for the present. The second thing is I want to express my thanks to the board for allowing me to serve on this Wenuski Valley Park District Board. It's a great opportunity to link with the Natural Resources and Conservation Commission and that we appreciate. Thank you. Okay. Well thank you. That's one already. So moving on. Thank you. Have a good evening. You too. To number nine which is briefing on the show on here. Matters related to the school resource officers, bias and other training at the police department. Oh there he is. Well welcome Chief Burke. Hi there. Good to see everybody. Good to see you. Thank you. So I understand you have a full agenda and respecting that I didn't prepare a slide deck because I wanted to get to your questions but what maybe what I'll do is take this apart and kind of in three pieces and we can start with school resource officers. I met with the school board last week on this topic and had a good discussion with them about our role in the schools. As many of you fully understand that the youth service division of the police department dates back nearly three decades and it's had some really talented folks assigned to that and I would say that it is served as really super strong underpinnings of the relationship between the police department and the citizens of South Burlington. But given all that's gone on in policing in our country I know that our perspectives, our lived experiences don't give adequate voice to those marginalized in our community and it is time to hear from those folks and I kind of gave that as an idea and a charge back to the school board. They didn't have a lot of input from constituents as of yet as to the school resource officer program in South Burlington and although we see tremendous value in it I also feel that this is a great time to listen to all of our neighbors and understand different perspectives on police officers in the school. Just for context right now because of a vacancy in the unit we have two officers assigned to the schools it's working out fine operationally because of the amount of downtime. I say downtime like the high school students aren't traversing the hallways they're not casually having lunch there's not a lot of opportunity socialize the police and establish those relationships in the current model and there doesn't appear to be a lot of curriculum time in the fifth grade or in the junior high when we usually do the dare program. So I think we're postured in a way that's sensible given what's going on with the pandemic it's it's working well for the school district and it's certainly working well for the police department. You know we're kind of a wait and see right now with the infection rate on what book and mortar school is going to look like in the next semester when we will have additional staff potentially available for assignment to the school we would typically have three folks as opposed to two assigned to the school resource officer program but that we're going to take a little bit of wait and see approach and see what's actually needed. Are there specific questions that the council has on the school resource officer program? Well I had just one sort of thought about as you look at your budget and the resources available and the workload and all of the other things that a police department does is this you know high enough on the list to continue in your opinion. Does it generate enough of the outcomes that you're seeking with the program to continue in full full speed ahead or you know it's not it's only two officers versus three so there's sort of some savings there I guess but it's just we're all we're looking at hard questions all across the budget so I guess that's my question to you is this the most important or you know one of the top priorities so that you would never want to cut it? I don't think it would be wise to do a you know a full cut of a school resource officer program again it's just it's an important way that we socialize the police force and community and you know almost it's really odd because what you don't want to see is a lot of measurable outcomes that we typically look at in policing because it's not a crime reduction model it is simply part you know the school resource officer serves as a member of a multidisciplinary team within the school serving the needs of that community and you know I looked at our data from 2018 to present in the times that we're actually called into you know use our either authorities police officers or to investigate things are crimes that need the attention of the police and the rest of the time the district is really sensible about taking alternative approaches to conduct within the schools that I'm comfortable with so I think aside from my assessment of it too I feel overwhelming support and expectation from the community to having our officers in the school as well so I know not a not a clear answer on that but I feel that we're in a decent spot but you know we can always evaluate okay Megan yeah just reading the other paper I have not attended a school board meeting but it appears that one of the school board members was reading the mission statement of school resource officers and said that it was outdated and I was curious to know if you knew more about that there weren't more details given in the other paper but that this was a statement that was written you know decades ago perhaps three decades ago which is the time frame that you've given to us I just like to know more about what that statement says what that mission is specifically for school resource officers it's certainly the what was cited was the job description that is last updated I think in 2009 it it's old but it's not on the high liability category of policy that that we've been working on I think I've mentioned before most of the policies of the police department had last been revised in 2009 2010 the last time the police department was accredited we've been working through those but of course there's been a lot from the legislature as well as the high liability policies that you have to look at every year that we've been working on so I think there was a couple of actually just use of terms in that description that we're taking a little out of context one being delinquency there was a bit of a recoil from that word and delinquency is a word used in criminal law where whereas an adult commits the crime of simple assault a juvenile commits the delinquent act of simple assault so it's not that officers are used in pursuit of these of delinquency as you think of kids misbehaving it's actually a criminal law reference but I do feel that there's plenty of room to modernize and and make that job description and relevant policy and bring that much more in line with today's practices thank you okay any oh tim barrett tim we can't hear you sorry good evening chief for thank you for coming tonight as I repeat myself again this issue is a very interesting one I think to a lot of people in lieu of what's happened over the last nine or ten months nationally and so I mean I asked this question in one of the previous council meetings and and I think that some of us were surprised to learn that that the city budget pays for those officers in the schools and that is correct right that is correct sir right and so and you are there at the request of the school board principally so this partnership definitely predates myself and you know I don't know if it was any want any single persons or boards request but it is a relationship that we have with the school district how the funding scenario came to be I'm completely unfamiliar with I really urge the school board in the city and especially you chief to work closely with the school board to do a complete top to bottom review of the need for SROs I just I feel like it's it's a it's a remnant from a past era that may not have the value that we think it has and unless somebody can show me some data that it really does have a value other than intangibles I have to wonder whether it's outdated and we just don't need it anymore and I know that people can have a lot of reactions to a statement like that saying but oh we need the protection of the police in the schools because of all the school shootings that we've seen over the last 10 years or you know this is how we socialize you know the school population with respect to police and my response to that is I think the school board needs to do a deep dive on the requirements for the SRO program determine whether they really want it or whether they actually need it and then the question is does the city want to in fact pay for it because we are paying for it so I encourage everybody involved to look very closely at this because I think it deserves more attention than it's gotten in the last few years okay thank you Tim Marcy Murray did you want to speak yes thank you Helen I just wanted to say that our youngest graduated four years ago but I think one key benefit of having these exceptional officers in the schools is that a lot of kids grow up just thinking oh I can trust these folks you know they're the people that go into the schools the officers at least in my kids experience are really such great people and so I think that does give a benefit in terms of you know being more willing to reach out to the police if you need help um and so just wanted to say that I I appreciate that I also appreciate uh the chief's openness to you know people of color supporting their needs things like that so thank you okay do you have any um comments um um Chief Burke in relationship to um Councillor Barrett's thinking I mean would you be amenable to that kind of deep dive and you know maybe there's some new aspects of SROs that people haven't thought about that could be utilized or in fact it's from another decade and you know we we do something different certainly I'm open to whatever the community would like ma'am and in that vein I just want to be crystal clear that I've never been an advocate that a school resource officer program serves any greater security need in the moment of crisis as opposed to the absence of one there's no data nationwide to suggest that some of these mass acts of violence only occur on campuses absent the police that's simply not true but what I what I do see going on in this policing crisis in America is police departments that don't have a close enough relationship with the communities they serve and then when we see a video from afar and folks have questions about police conduct in their own jurisdiction they fill that vacuum with all kinds of speculation as to what their police are up to and not that only a school resource officer program can fill that vacuum but I think it is those type of program you know program community based policing models that help on top of the good relationship based policing that we do in the field every day but again I'm open to whatever the needs of South Rowington are and I think a good deep dive on this at a tough fiscal time is only logical. Okay I just have to respond to that Helen I just have this weird opinion about this and I'm sure I mean I might not be right but we don't have the fire department going into the schools as a fire department you know resource officer we don't have public works going in as a public works resource officer and maybe maybe I'm off base with trying to make that comparison we don't have you know Kevin City Hall people going into the resource officers I mean I just don't understand what the model is I mean the kids go into school for education and they go in for you know they have guidance counselors they have teachers they have administration they have social workers the question in my mind is what is the value add to having a police officer in the school why does a kid need to have the socialization of a of the police in the school so that that's what really I don't understand and I haven't thought about this much until the last six months and so I that's why I want the school board to like think about what the requirement is for the school to actually have and then I'm sure the officers do a great job and they represent very well for the city I have no doubt about that but the question is what is the real value in the school for having them there and if there is no real value because the data doesn't show it other than a feel good situation then the school board needs to evaluate whether they actually need to be there and then maybe they don't need to be there and we'd redeploy those officers somewhere else well I guess I would just point out that what I think I just heard the chief say is that he feels there's a real value to the police department in having a better understanding of this portion I guess of our population did I misconstru what you said chief Burke? No I don't think so and again I you know I take Councillor Barrett's remarks very seriously and I think those are great questions but I would say that you know the fire department's not empowered the way the police are in terms of the work that we do in enforcing the law in a constitution and nor is public works nor is the city manager's office you know we also do bridge a lot of services wraparound services to kids that maybe have troubled homes you know if we're at a domestic violence call tonight at a home and there's some kids that are attached to that family maybe even if it's present you know via this the SRO we can get the school counselor wrapped in to those kids and you know could that be done in other ways probably would it be as efficient and as meaningful because of the relationships in the small knit nature of the community you know maybe not but again I think you know these are all good questions to to kind of vet but I would I just want to leave you with policing in terms of everything that's under your charge as the city council is a lot different than firefighting and public works and the manager's office okay Tom and then there's a couple other topics that the chief was going to speak about but Tom I think we're all saying the same thing I just want to make clear I don't think Councillor Barrett's saying is we would never want police in the schools ever I think he's just questioning the full time a dedicated FTE of a police position to be in the schools every day and it sounds like you're saying you're open to those discussions as well as we as we look at calibrating what the community is so the firefighters go in and do fire safety week we have the same thing so it's not like we don't we're not nobody's saying we don't want cops in schools what we're saying is how much do we need police officers in schools and in what form okay fair enough um Sean you also we're gonna give us an update or a little information about sort of the bias training and at the police department so if unless someone has another comment or thought about the SROs are we done with that okay thank you certainly so uh this year for fair and impartial policing training we did the state mandated training which I think I've remarked about before was a policy review and a slide deck on data collection and data quality it just that type of training is not educating our staff to the dynamics of implicit bias nor systemic racism and that was the primary driving factor that led us to partner with the Vermont State Police and bring in Dr. Aetan Neserato-Longo and a viewing of the documentary 13th we did that in July every employee at the police department in the month of July through the course of two screenings saw the documentary and then we had a facilitated discussion afterwards you know what's what's really fascinating about the documentary the 13th is that there's chapters upon chapters of history on systemic racism in our country in the intersect of the criminal justice system and you know as a 25 year cop until I saw that I didn't until I saw that documentary I didn't really have a good handle on that and I feel as though that we should be teaching cops you know this having events like this in basic training so you have a good understanding of why large segments of the community don't trust the police and you know our staff responded really well to that training walked away again more learned and what cops look for is evidence and historically when we've had cultural competency training a lot of it has been adversarial cops don't understand it because they're like I'm a good person I went through this rigorous hiring process a polygraph examination I was raised by good people I try to do the right thing every day now suddenly I'm being called a racist well until you understand the history and how systemic racism lives in our country it's very difficult to reconcile that and I feel as though that training in implicit bias in in racism in our country is very helpful in that regard what we've also done is a partner with Dr. Saguino at UVM we're doing a little deeper dive on our traffic stop data Dr. Saguino does some really fascinating work but because the the sample set is pretty small Dr. Saguino has to use about five years worth of data and although we're seeing improvements in some of our outcomes in terms of racial disparity again on the five-year average it doesn't really give you like when when did these increases or improvements start to happen what's happening today are outliers things that we can address here and now so we're starting to have her examine that data at the officer level and then that'll inform conversations that we can have in terms of staff so people can have again this information this education officers can have that information when they're formulating decisions that they're making in the field and I think that's going to be very very valuable lastly we had a very generous offer from a South Burlington resident who does a lot of racial equity work for the UVM school of medicine she has offered to conduct some racial equity workshops for us in calendar year 21 so we plan on having her in early January of 21 in order to bolster our fair and impartial policing training and education efforts I recently attended one of her seminars that she held for the Vermont Department of Health again a lot a lot of it is on history like how certain neighborhoods came to be you know through even mortgage lending how some people were afforded opportunities that BIPOC communities were not and from a police perspective it's very fascinating because especially in urban areas not not so much that we see in South Burlington but in pockets we do of why you know folks live in a certain neighborhood why crime may behave in a way that it does and then how the police maybe historically have overpoliced certain areas so again looking forward to that opportunity again it's more of an education to give officers the relevant context that they need to understand you know what is the watershed moment in policing in our country in terms of race and racial relations so it sounds like this training is ongoing I mean it's sort of you keep increasing or adding or making the conversation more rich yes ma'am so you know one thing that drove me nuts and I didn't really understand it Curtis Reed helped me understand a little bit a few years ago a little bit better you know cultural competency has this check-the-box feel and that's not doing the work you know I like Curtis uses the term cultural humility I use cultural fluency now but again this is evolving ever changing and when you look at the demographics of Chittenden County we have growing numbers of new Americans and every time that we welcome a new culture that's a new lived experience in terms of what their relationship was with government how maybe even they were treated here on top of our own history here in our country and I feel as though that it has to be an evolution and they're you know in in ATON says this too it's not it's not a sprint this is a marathon we just have to keep keep up the good work making sure that we're giving voice to our marginalized neighbors and you know from a police perspective we're we do this job to provide the best possible service that we can the citizens and this is an important part of it have there been changes that the legislature made that you've had to sort of retrofit into your training or consciousness not not sweeping changes recently so the last legislative efforts led to the fair and impartial policing training and model policy that we have in place now and again that those are those are easy metrics to satisfy we're going above and beyond that here in South Burlington and I feel as though that there'll be traction in that on that road on the state level and in fact we have Lieutenant Jager with South Burlington that serves on the fair and impartial police policy and education subcommittee of the Vermont criminal justice training council it's a multidisciplinary team a lot of stakeholders from around the state they began their work right around the time the pandemic started but they hopefully will formulate a curriculum that will be available statewide so you won't have individual police agencies out trying to figure this out on their own Megan thank you chief I heard you talk about fair and impartial policing and that is something that a group of residents have contacted me about and asking what our police are doing in order to you know execute that policy they brought to my attention that Winooski has a specific policy on fair and impartial policing you know with regard to not inquiring into immigration status if it is not germane to to the situation at hand and so I'd like to know more about what our police department is doing with regard to that sure I think I worked with that group actually that that spoke with you on this and they do like the Winooski model the Winooski model was very very similar obviously we're all bound by the tenants of the state policy the Winooski model was very similar to ours we did go through it with a fine tooth comb and what we found was an overreliance on what's called the slaving's caught clause in the policy which clearly states when we have to cooperate with the federal authorities and it was mentioned in the policy probably five or six in five or six different sections so after going through it with with those folks and with conferring with our city attorney's office we did publish a new policy that relies on the reference to that clause once and we also nuanced some of the language to bring it more in line with what I don't want to say with the Winooski policy because the Winooski policy might run afoul of the federal law might I don't know I'm not a lawyer but and but I feel as though we made some improvements there but again that that's another policy either on a local level or through legislation that's going to go through constant review and evolution as it should I will say that here in Chattanoon County we police organizations have had a fair and impartial policing policy in place that has really respected the the idea of not inquiring to immigration status it's just not in in our line of work and David Scheinman hello thank you chief Burke for the for that explanation I'm part of that committee the fair and impartial policing policy in South Burlington and we will be bringing a proposal to the city council and hope to be talking with you again further because you did reduce the number of references instances in which you include that one phrase uh that enables collaboration with ICE and with their deportation agencies and you reduced it from five or six to one but it's still one so it's in the document and we want to talk to you some more about that to see if we can get moved forward in a way that changes the position that South Burlington takes with respect to ICE so we'll be back to you certainly understood and you know just as a kind of a placeholder there I mean that is a federal law and in in policing and criminal justice there is a sense of maintaining the the rule of law and there is also some potential fiscal concerns with that because especially under the outgoing I guess it's the outgoing administration there were certainly some high hurdles to get over in terms of securing grant opportunities from the federal government if if your policy ran afoul of cooperating with the federal government to the minimum extent of the law and that's where our policy is right now it limits our our responsibility to the federal government to the minimal standards that we have to but very interested to hear about a new perspective on it and to carry that forward to the city attorney's office for further contemplation thank you thank you I have just one last question and maybe this is the wrong time to ask it but I'm just curious if you know the force gets this training and you work on having it become just the way you won polices and if you find someone who doesn't you know makes a mistake or doesn't follow the or shows the kind of bias that you thought you trained them out of sort of what's your follow-up how do you then I mean is there a yeah what's the next step I mean you're all kind of we all are sort of learning to move forward and kind of make this part of how we address others so would the question be what would we do if a officer or employee were were to conduct themselves in violation of policy yes yeah we would investigate that we would come to some level findings and then depending on the conduct could be a whole host of outcomes there could be a retraining component there could be a punitive component it all really depends on what is sustained to have been the violation in is the violation simply a one of policy or does it run afoul of one of our conduct rules which always enhances the punitive measures imposed okay so this training you've embodied in your your rules and regulations is that right so training curriculum doesn't live within policy we trained to our policy but it allows us our training curriculum to be more fluid to add to it so if we were just going to do the state bare minimum we would have reviewed our policy reviewed the slide deck on data quality check the box and move on but you know we we want to be in a better place as professionals and certainly as officers or all of our employees sworn or or non sworn serving citizens and I know how important that work is to our constituents and that's why we have this additional education now if someone were to just suddenly pop up on the radar as being explicitly biased in their enforcement that would certainly be caused for great concern because for investigation and to figure out what that employee needs and that's again a broad range of potential outcomes you know what I where I really feel the disservice has been historically with this type of training is again not giving the officers the education as to why we see racial disparity in outcomes where they're measured education housing criminal justice it's because there's racism in society and once cops understand that we are just functioning in a in an environment where bias and systemic racism is afoot it's easier to understand that I'm not sinister I'm part of a system that's a little broken I need to learn more about this so I the professional can start making different decisions when warranted yes you're not Larry but hi I forgot to change the name I'm Susan Schumka I'm using Larry Kupferman's computer so I was part of the original group that met with Chief Burke about the fair and impartial policing policy I first want to say how much I appreciate the training that you're you're seeking on implicit bias with people because you know you would mention to us that you didn't feel like the state training was preparing people to work well with the policy so I appreciate that work and just to clarify for others the we did have that discussion about the savings clause that had been referred to throughout the document and then there's a paragraph at the end with the savings clause saying that there was a level of required communication with immigration and that has been that that federal guideline has been challenged in courts across the country and by police departments across the country is something that that states are saying they were or municipalities are saying they won't do ended up in some courts with some preliminary decisions as far as I understand that saying that it's illegal for the administration to cut funding and what Winooski did was take this the specific reference to the savings clause out and saying a paragraph that nothing in this policy is meant to go against federal law so just leaving it more general and our concern was the more you mentioned that policy the savings clause in that but even having it in there could raise us the question about gee is this an exception and we're really feeling there isn't there should be exceptions other than as you know if there's actual criminal criminality involved it's not related to immigration status so that's what we'll be looking at more and hopefully with the change of administration that we're having the concern about that federal pressure on the federal threat about finances will be off the table and we can really more strongly in the strongest wording possible make it very very clear about the separation for for anybody who's on the living time and curve about it within the service so thanks thank you very much Susan okay are there any other any other comments chief Burke that you would like to make or or any other questions from the council look good okay thank you for it looks like we have you know continued or future conversations about the SROs to ponder and consider and and you and you're continuing your work on bias training and institutional racism and good for you yeah we appreciate that thank you okay thank you very much we'll move on to item 10 is receiving the proposed LDRs LDR 17-13a and LDR 17-13b and LDR 19-06 and LDR 20-18a from the planning commission and consider warning of public hearing on those three items so Paul Connor welcome Hi folks I should be pretty quick tonight we as Helen just read off there are four amendments that are proposed that were approved unanimously by the planning commission two of them relate to lot coverage along Shelburne road in a small portion of Williston road this addresses a question that was brought to you in the spring by Bill Shearer but is also looks a little more holistically at options that a number of property owners would be able to would be able to take advantage of it opens up some additional options for small open spaces in city center which we found has been a little bit of a challenge and it also moves us one step a little bit more digital than we have been by eliminating the need for paper copies of plans which we haven't received in about seven months anyway so happy to go through any of these tonight or to make a more thorough presentation at your hearing if you're willing to hold a hearing we've tentatively scheduled it for actually your next meeting December 7th because there's three weeks between regular meetings here we were able to put it on for that meeting if you're so inclined okay I just have a suggestion it was a lot of reading and I went through it and you know I'm lucky I sort of have Ted that I can say so what does this mean and sometimes he remembers and sometimes frankly he's like oh I don't know I probably should ask Paul but just in the the presentation it's a lot of information and I'm just I'm just concerned that the public doesn't always can't and I consider myself the public can't easily follow both the legalese language that's the red line stuff and then you have to kind of read through that and then you wait till the end and you you give very clear kind of readers digest this is what this means and I'm just wondering if when it's um presented to the public if you can have right next to the language that you're changing and crossing out your language it's not part of the draft but it's like this is what this means in um clear English so I um you know I don't print stuff off I got it on the screen so I'm going back and forth to try to find this stuff and it's it's very time consuming and and you know I don't work so I have the time but I think of the other four counselors and they all full-time jobs and so and then there's the public who may or may not listen in to any of the planning commission meetings you know they don't hire lawyers to keep it keep them up to date on exactly what is happening so I I'm just sort of asking for some maybe and maybe I'm the only one who needs this but an easier way to sort of track the changes and clearly understand what the language means like the pros and the cons or something just we can definitely work on that the the report that's at the end tries to capture some of that um but I your point is taken about making that more directly right next to it and um what we've done starting about two years ago was to break out each amendment into its own section so there's no reason that we can't have a you know staff summary at the beginning of it and say here's what this here's what this amendment is supposed to be doing um happy to happy to do that um and if you'd like uh we can even um put it in for you know the hearing in a couple weeks into your packet for that I would love it to be for the hearing so that we and the public can read that ahead of time because I know you'll answer all all our questions but um it's just good for me to read it and think about it and then ask questions that's just I work better that way um Megan and then Tom yeah thank you Helen for your comments and I would also like to know the you know what the urban overlay district looks like where it is um that was something that was missing for me um in addition to what Helen had to say I'm thinking I'm thinking I understand but I'm not sure unless I actually see it yeah sure we'll include a map um just for um the purpose of tonight I'll describe it as being the length of Shelbourne Road and the portion of Williston Road that is in and around the Gildon Kinney's that commercial section there but we can show a map and do that more um for yourself and for other others reading it that's good feedback thank you that'd be great Tom you I'm sorry Tom oh I'm sorry you have some more excuse me go ahead Megan well since he he gave us the the geographical location so this would allow commercial properties to use TDRs to expand that is correct so um properties that are in the commercial slash residential district yes there are some properties on there that have chosen to be residential and that's fine um but it would allow the these properties to get a little bit more lot coverage meaning more percentage of the lot has something other than greenery on it um by either a purchasing TDRs or B transforming a portion of the parcel into some kind of a uh active use space for either the tenants or their customers or the public as sort of a pocket park makes to turn something that might just be grass into something that's attractive and useful to to users of the property so those are two separate options okay Tom so I was just going to say to your point Helen um I really love the reports at the end because I can never understand the red line uh the version of the documents and I just I trust the process because we're going to warn this now for like a month out but I'm really counting on the public that all interested parties to really scrutinize this and the to inform us the counselors of where they see concerns but I just I love the reports at the end because it really does highlight the key things that I just can't extract from the red line and I'm not married to a planning commissioner so I don't have that luxury either yeah but I'd still like them closer together so it's really it's right there um that would help me I mean just the reader's digest version um and then two and so as I was reading through this so that I understand some of them you have the other thing that got me confused was all the different Seq um acronyms I mean I sort of figured them out but there were like five of them and so it sounds like and I know it just is you know I used to be that way in health healthcare and it's really easy once you become facile with all the acronyms to just spin them out you know exactly what you're talking about but um so it sounds like you have expanded the use of TDRs to those overlay districts and and then you have made something smaller you you you can use less of them in the southeast quadrant no for this round of amendments the planning commission opted to leave the TDR program in the southeast quadrant exactly as it is okay but to create a new opportunity to for somebody to for the first time purchase them from the southeast quadrant and use them somewhere else in the city so that's my question right there okay so the southeast quadrant is still a receiving it's ascending and a receiving area unchanged from previously yeah okay tim yeah so what is the quantifiable measurement in the TDR as it applies to a lot coverage increases that would be in the receiving area i don't understand that um a TDR is equal to one dwelling unit in terms of when when you when you build so one house and in terms of the amount of land that you have to conserve it's 0.83 acres and that it has that awkward number because 0.83 acres is the inverse of the density throughout the southeast quadrant which was decided a long time ago to be 1.2 dwelling units per acre so today in order to move one house um receiving area you must conserve 0.83 acres the draft would translate that same metric into stating that for any amount of lot coverage that you increase up to 10 000 square feet of additional lot coverage you must conserve 0.83 acres so that's that's the translation there so approximately a quarter acre of additional lot coverage in the along shelter road can be purchased for conserving a tenths of an acre roughly rough numbers there and is that why you struck in the definition of the TDR the um the qualification is as being uh you know a housing unit measurement correct because once we it's still a housing unit in the southeast quadrant but elsewhere in the city it needs to be something else because it isn't the the thing being received isn't homes it's lot coverage and state law allows for lot coverage building blocks things like that so this is a little bit of a pilot program for um or future changes to the LDRs that um as we know the TDR committee had made a you know more substantial recommendations this is an opportunity to test it out to see what the market is interested in um and and we will certainly have additional amendments coming forward and not too distant future on this so so if you combine a TDR you could end up and the fact that there's no parking minimum now for commercial properties right they really could extend their lot coverage quite a bit right uh well the lot coverage can go up 10 percentage points um you're correct that there is no parking minimum um for non-essential uses right as uh and so conceivably but building coverage does not go up under this proposal it's only lot coverage lot coverage okay so the amount of building on your property doesn't actually go up so it's not likely tilting it that much in the direct in that direction okay tom are you done tim yeah thank you tom just so we're all clear this is actually relieving creating a relief valve so to speak because it's allowing some development that otherwise was bottled up in the sq to now be to the channel out to our our transportation districts or overlay districts so it's yeah i think that's a fair assessment and i might even describe it tom is saying it's a opening up an opportunity for those who have um who have not been able to sell them it's it's it's creating more of a market opportunity for those who are looking to sell them okay so um it sounds like we sort of went over most of them um already in some extent so and you're going to give us some maybe even more clear um description for a public hearing on december 7 so our only action i think is if we wish to set a public hearing on december 7 at a time certain like 7 30 or something 7 30 would be our recommendation if that's if that works for you all would someone like to make that motion we hold a public hearing on december 7 at 7 30 second second okay is there any further discussion on that okay all in favor thinking you can just do a thumbs up for this i have five thumbs up okay that was uh unanimous then thank you thanks everyone thank you okay um justin is back on tap for three items hello uh item 11 is kimble avenue the bridge update yeah so um i'll do the macro and then probably that thing that's of more interest to folks the micro um the overall project which is to replace the failed culvert of a couple years ago um it continues to be on track despite the state withdrawing one of the grants at least in this grant cycle hopefully they'll re-institute that source of funding and we can just reapply next year um for that revenue source we're on track to bid the project over the winter and then construct it in the spring summer um and just so folks that kind of don't remember what things were like before they had the joy of the temporary bridge we're just going to be putting a very large culvert down at the base of the muddy brook and just topping that with all sorts of soil and backfill and in in due time you'll just be riding over a normal road and you probably won't even realize what's well underneath you which would be the new box culvert we're going to be installing it's very similar in design and functionality to the culvert we put in on market street just prior to that large project happening a couple years ago except it's just bigger because the span is bigger and the muddy brook at this location is more active than tributary three of potash through city center so um and the we in this is a joint effort between south burlington and burlington i'm sorry south burlington and williston in which south burlington through our storm order division is running the project um and we are sharing all cost 50 50 with the town of williston williston has bonded for their full share of the project so even though they were anticipating the grant help offset um the need to pull the full bond they have all the money available to them through a bond they they they're public voted on a couple years ago so we're all set to go with the large project now how do we how do we survive without pulling our collective hair out for the next few months is probably of greater interest to people tonight as you all know we recently tried to repave the bridge um these bridges are akin to kind of an erector set they are owned by the state of vermont and they were deployed vastly um after hurricane irene the nature of the bridge is is one that um given its that's designed to be temporary it cannot hold more than an an inch thickness of asphalt and and again these are all just metal plates that kind of sit on and walk into each other so there's probably 30 different metal plates that comprise this whole bridge as opposed to a standard bridge that you'd see in the interstate that has one or two one two or maybe three large sections so that's 30 different periods of live loads that our vehicles are kind of rattling and with only an inch of pavement there's no practical way for that pavement to stay in place with any degree of success or longevity further compounding matters the state does not want us normally you've probably i'm sure you've seen driving around right before a road's about to be paved there's a thin black liquid um that's sprayed down on the road that's kind of that's called a tact coat or a binding coat and that helps the asphalt adhere to the surface it's being put on well in this case you don't want to put that on a bridge that's going to eventually be uh put taken apart and put back into the storage because i don't even know if you could remove that tact coat from the bridge but the state does not want their bridge kind of marred with this surface um the state and we've uh Williston myself and the state have been going around for a few weeks on this they don't they do not pave these bridges they're generally deployed in the more rural areas of Vermont where unpaved roads are kind of a norm um and they're and slower speeds are more prevalent um they don't pave them we paved it initially due to concern particularly with the bicycling community of even though they're these these bridges technically are quote skid resistant um it's one thing if you're in a car skid resistant is an entirely different thing if you're riding a bicycle on a wet metal bridge deck um coming from Williston into the bridge you have horizontal and vertical curvature and it's fair to say some pretty high speeds the good news is coming from South Burlington you're immediately um having just passed through a stop a four-way stop so there's not a lot of speed going on where we are collectively and i have a phone call with Williston tomorrow morning is we believe we're going to come forth with a recommendation perhaps at your December meeting um to remove the pavement leave the bridge deck as the travelable surface but in a way to mitigate the potential hazard of of high speed traffic we would be installing temporary stop signs on each side of the bridge at this point there's three options one continue to drive over what we have today and that's that's all well and good if you're going 15 or 20 beyond that it's not that great um two to do as i just um mentioned peeling off the asphalt putting up stop signs to eliminate to eliminate kind of speed as a hazard or three just close it and i consider three off the table um you know close it until it's fixed so you know for the next seven months you know that's that's that's not something any of us want to deal with nor does the state because they have the parallel facility on route two that would would have to now handle all this traffic so right now our our opinion is option two um after much consternation this is kind of the lesser of all evils the option two of peeling off the asphalt and putting up temporary stop signs on each side of the bridge is the proper way to go Williston their meeting schedule just happens to be Tuesdays instead of Mondays they're having this exact same discussion tomorrow after which we're going to regroup and as i mentioned hopefully come back to the council with a formal recommendation because we would need you to adopt a traffic regulation for the stop sign um at a December meeting so just a quick question for you the stop sign everybody's used to not stopping um how are you all of a sudden going to get people to start paying attention to a stop sign yeah so uh it's a good question so the existing stop sign just above it when we put that in people many people i don't think you're on the councils and david many people had the same question um so what you'd what you'd like to do with new traffic control devices is you want to draw attention to them there's a few ways of doing that you've probably all seen the little orange flags up at 45 degrees on top of each of the right hand corners of the stop sign octagon another way to do it is we have a blinking red light that's on top of the four-way stop at community in kimball um that light can be moved to the stop sign just up the street you know the new stop sign we would be installing to drop some questions that should do the job thanks we also have Williston us two variable message boards we would deploy one on each side of the bridge alerting folks of new traffic pattern ahead as a standard yeah i think that sounds very reasonable i mean i went over it this weekend and i slowed down and it wasn't a big deal i didn't even think it was that um cruddy i just drove slowly so okay item two is the dog park update yeah so um we plan on either later this week or early next week i'm finalizing a plan and well the plan is finalized but finalizing an application to submit the planning and zoning um in talking with us and i'm looking at the larry still on here like hupperman is the chair of the dog park committee larry and i were emailing today and we think it's best our next dog park committee meeting is december 1st at six o'clock at night so we thought it'd be best to bring that final plan to the committee to have them review edit or and or bless its its submission as a permit to the city okay i'm at which point which point well yeah um you know right now the plan as presented captures all of the comments that was made at our last meeting which was on the first tuesday in october so the plan is respectful of the committee's most recent round of input i'm sure though there'll probably be some minor tweaking um but if there is that won't slow us down at all and then at that point um we submit to planning and zoning and um the determination of whether it's an administrative or a drb review becomes their decision to make um right but all of that all of that puts us well on path to regardless of what our permitting path is with planning and zoning um the plan has been um i don't want to say all along but certainly since the pandemic um slowed things down to construct this in the spring great so so that's good we're well on track for that okay um the next site of 13 dorset street traffic signals update the barb did you want to say something barb service i just i just want i just wanted to say yay thank you very much i know this is a very long process it's been forever and larry and justin and holly and betty and kate and molly and i'm leaving out people but um thank you very much for your commitment to making this happen oh i agree thank you all okay and now the traffic signals on dorset street yes so we've been formally underway for quite some time you may have noticed actually i know one person on this call did because they sent me an email but you may have noticed we've had some field personnel out doing survey work and kind of identifying where new infrastructure is going to go um we're working with uh coincidentally a south burlington firm stan tech consulting is helping us put this package together we've already implemented a few of what i would kind of refer to and what kevin was urging me um understandably so some of the lower hanging fruit measures um we've made some changes at uh garden street or the healthy living intersection and i believe the last time i was on with the council there are some reference to the work we did at the intersection of williston and dorset to reduce the delay to essentially limit what a lot of people correctly thought was an unnecessarily long green time for westbound route two at that intersection um that was due to a faulty pedestrian call so every time it went around the cycle even if there wasn't a pedestrian there it thought there was a pedestrian so it activated that cycle which if you don't have a pedestrian it just adds to delay and those the last thing we need dislocation is just more unnecessary time added to people's weights um we also just installed at market street kind of the first um the best way to describe it is the first counter that's going to be start becoming um and we were looking at the dashboard today it's very pretty interesting stuff in our world we're starting to capture real-life counts and volumes that will we will eventually be able to use as an input to an algorithm that will be spitting it that can spit out kind of constantly updating um traffic control signal plans um as i'm sure you are aware um traffic controls you they can have time of day plans um but a large amount of them you essentially go out to the signal you program it and you just let it run um it will not change its operations until you go back out and reprogram it you know so it always requires kind of human human intervention um and oftentimes you need to have data to support the decisions you're making and you can be spending two to three thousand dollars just understanding what your volumes are and who's going where and that's just that's just at one intersection and we have six intersections in this corridor so by installing these cameras that can actually do the counting and the thinking for us um and again we have one out on market and i what i'll do through the city manager is i'll just send out a couple little snapshots of the data that's available um and once we start utilizing this data throughout the corridor um again back to our timing plans the signal can be adjusting on the fly we still have the ability to set whatever parameters we want but the signal can operate within those those parameters we set and it can can adjust on the fly to the real life conditions um and as an example if for some reason it loses data or it loses power or when the computer resets itself it has a senior moment and it's Tuesday at three what it will do is it will take the last six Tuesdays at three the last six sets of data it has for Tuesday at three o'clock and it will use that so even if it loses itself for a moment the data library we're going to be able to build will allow it to continue to think in relative real time so pretty good one of those from my senior moments so that's some of that's just some of the lower hanging fruit improvements we've been doing this season and as all along the plan is you know next construction season um to be doing you know kind of the major overhaul and what that means is for example at both ends of the project at Kennedy and Williston um a decent amount of our signal heads are supported by strain wires and what that means is every time you know not every time but you know the wind's always kind of blowing in Dorsey Street so your signal pole your signal head's kind of doing this and eventually after the 50,000th time it does that some wire or nut somewhere back in the chain and it gets loose and it causes a problem that takes us forever to troubleshoot because there's four miles of wire you know so this is just a way of saying by putting in kind of um mast arms that you're used to seeing at more intersections you know nice big steel metal mast arms um we're going to reduce the a bit we're going to reduce the likelihood that we'll have kind of ongoing and regular mechanical equipment failures due to wind so just a bunch of the stuff we're doing it's not too dissimilar to what the state's doing on route seven right now and what they've done recently on route 15 and sx uh route two two a in in Williston um it's same same type of project and we have those folks uh working with us as well from the state great any questions or comments I just want to say that the work that this the state did on on two a was amazing I mean it took really three years they had to relocate all the utilities um widen the road put in those mast arms for James bound drive I mean it was a huge undertaking and I'm sure it wasn't cheap but traffic flows really well there now and it's much safer for for people wanting to turn at that intersection and there's a lot of uh use of the crossing signal there now even though it's Williston I know but I've just just giving a little bit of credit to the state for all the work they did there great thank you okay thank you Justin thanks for having me good night good night item 14 the position posting for city manager Tom Hubbard did you develop a um position posting or not were we just gonna like discuss it and say yes go post it yeah I the um I've not rewritten one Helen I the one I sent to you was the one that was used last time see I didn't get that that's why I was wondering um I don't think I did anyway I'll resend it and I'll include all the council uh in that's about a full one page posting and I'll make sure that I copy all the council on that but um I think just looking to see if there are any specific ideas that you wanted included uh into the posting and your thoughts as to where you might want to have this posted okay should we um have that um brief discussion on the next meeting the one is the next on the seventh seventh is that okay with everyone because we want to get it posted and um I've talked about with Kevin setting up a small um public group who would get receive the um applications and um identify sort of the top ones for the council to review and interview interview okay does that sound good all right Marcy did you want to comment yes yes I was just curious whether it will have something in there about having a strong energy um advocate given the economic and health and safety uh issues related to climate change well we could add that we can discuss that I'm seeing it so I don't know that's always possible you know that's why I was curious in there have you said to Tom we we should probably have walk on water too but we probably can't I know at one point Tom Chitenden at a previous meeting had suggested that on the committee that looks at these um applications perhaps someone from a long uh term of someone with a long term committee assignment to be on it and I was just curious that that were were still the case and if so whether someone from energy committee could uh participate in that um you know for the energy piece you know in addition to obviously the general management and analytical skills that the person would have yes I um yes Kevin and I've talked about having some um different perspectives from the public right thank you so that would be my intention thank you um okay item 15 audio visual bid for 180 market street so is Alana hi good evening um so if I uh I can keep this brief um but we do uh I think per the memo um we did put uh the audio visual equipment for the building out to bid uh we received four um bids and we over the past few days we've been looking at them and analyzing them and so I have recommendation and if uh I can share my screen I can put it up for you okay hold on a second let me let me do this okay actually pretty brave but um I don't know okay so um so I just wanted to make a very brief recommendation um find my mouse okay here we go uh so essentially um we had four bids the lowest bidder was red thread um fuzz buzz was uh just behind them uh there's uh just about um $5,000 difference audio visual corporation was behind them with about $10,000 and then AVISBL was behind them um so we went through and we looked at the pricing we also looked at the qualifications um it's a fairly technical job uh so we wanted to make sure that everyone had the appropriate certifications um and we also asked follow-up questions where there are areas that weren't clear or we wanted more to more information before we made a decision um we also called references um and then we also and we discussed the team's needs um so following that um our recommendation is to go with buzz buzz and there's three main reasons um they're highly recommended by references they're very local uh so they're a South Burlington company um and the equipment that they'll be installing has a high level of programming and integration so there's integration within each room um and then some integration across the whole building and then we would expect some future um adjustments and annual preventative maintenance there's also there's generally upgrades um so it's nice to have technical on-call folks nearby who can help in case an upgrade creates problems which from time to time those of us who have computers know that that happens um and then in addition their response was extremely detailed uh it was clear that they had a very strong technical understanding of our project and our needs and they also paid a lot of attention to our conditions and special requirements and and um and then as part of their um as part of their proposal they recommended potential cost savings um so there was um a fair amount of variation in how people responded in terms of pricing going back so when we look at these prices buzz buzz and red thread are very close but they're definitely red thread is less expensive um there are about one and a half to three and a half percent less expensive depending on how you look at it we think that um in the long run um that because buzz buzz is closer um and we know that there they pay a lot of attention to detail we think that it it is um a worthwhile investment for the city but I want to throw that out there just so that you're aware um that there is that financial difference between the two okay questions yes tom do you have your your your thing went on but I can't see your hand I was just going to ask what we need to vote on is there a motion but uh I support buzz buzz yeah I think we we possibly want to vote on this tim barrett do you have a question just a quick question I mean is there any any employee of fuzz buzz that's related to anybody in the city I I don't know um I did go online and look at their LinkedIn and made sure they had employees because they very much you know I think most of the people that they contract with are not local so I you know wanted to make sure that they did have some local references and those are the ones that we call that I wanted to make sure that they had local employees which they do so okay yeah quick question I hope I'm just curious because I've never heard of them how big a company are they so they have 16 employees okay where they also have an office in California and an office in Florida interesting where are they located here they're located behind the airport hi um um they're located on commerce I think it's commerce to have behind the airport yeah I know right what I'm just curious um any of the references you might be able to share I'm just curious yeah sure um so they so locally um they did work for uh the serenac hotel um they also did work for um we work um hang on let me just pull it up um dealer policy which is different from dealer.com it's an insurance company that's a national company okay um sorry I just want to find the reference page uh dealer policy which is in Williston um we work collaboration offices uh the Hilton there's it's the Rodel group multiple Hilton rent and properties so I talked to someone who um handled the serenac lake renovation yeah and then they also do a lot of federal work so a lot of DOD type jobs okay so like space type work um and uh control room scenario room type projects but they also do auditoriums more for corporate than for theatrical okay sounds I mean if you're comfortable with them it sounds like you've checked them out great I'll make a motion that we go with first buzz second the second okay we've got a motion that's been made and seconded to um um accept the bid from fuzz buzz for the audio visual needs um of 180 market street is there any further discussion okay all in favor let's do a roll call um Dave Kaufman comes up Megan Henry hi Tom Chinden hi Tim Barrett hi and chair really votes yay so it's a five two zero um unanimous vote thank you Alana thank you they have their name that's for sure all right moving on to almost the final um item is the October financials with Tom Hubbard yeah thanks Helen I think I can be fairly brief here I gave you a quarterly report the last meeting we've now jumped from 25 percent through the fiscal year to a third through the fiscal year um we're currently at 25.5 percent in our expenses and 31 percent in our revenue which is about where we plan to be uh we're we're still looking to protect that margin of under expending our expenses and trying to come as close as we can with our revenue projections at this point as of today still have not received the allotment due to us probably this week from the state on the local options taxes so kind of anxiously awaiting that so that I can put this in better context for you and once I do receive that I'll be happy to share out a memo to you just to let you know where we're where we came in just to update you on that but essentially not much more to report at this point on uh on the financials but happy to respond to any questions are there any questions I mean it sounds like it's following the plan we'll see what happens I'm curious about ambulance it does seem like they have really reduced their expenses at 10 percent here yeah I know it looks amazing there an explanation for it which which uh what's the line item Megan ambulance ambulance let me just take a quick look here so under ambulance um they've only spent 12 percent on their medical supplies uh to date um on the disposables and again I think that's part of the coordination with the uvm medical center in terms of the bulk purchasing the medical equipment replacement that has not been done yet that's still on hold so it's only showing a 17 percent at this point um I think those are probably the major the major parts of their uh even their fuel even their fuel is down now I have to say yeah yeah yeah there's really not much to to to talk about um right now of course we still are living within the budget freeze so um managers are being respectful of that and only continue to purchase what we absolutely need to keep the operations going we've just begun our cip discussions and we'll have an overview presentation for that uh for council on december 7th okay any other questions or comments oh you do thank you tom thank you so um item 17 reports on committees does anybody's committee besides pension have no you're having that soon tim you haven't had it yet okay no no you had the meeting but pat blizek was going to present to us soon okay all right I just okay and and the airport as of today the pension value is is up a little bit probably right right yeah get a few more vaccination um or vaccines that um have 90 plus uh you know that's right yeah irrational difference yeah we'll be doing well okay is there any other business I actually have one item I meant to um say something at the beginning of the meeting and I forgot um and that is you know I've had phone calls and um or phone call and an email from um mr donahue regarding the um discussion offline discussion the feels that the council had um inappropriately about the other paper and the newsletter and I just want to it's clear to me uh at least he told me I was the one who had done the reply all uh and I want to apologize I understand that that um is a violation of the public or the um public meeting law and I apologize and we talked about training and I assured him that we have all been trained but perhaps um maybe it's what I need to do is we have a module online so I would encourage everyone to go through that um I think it's 90 minutes or something Jim Barlow created it for us we probably should remind all the committees that are meeting again that haven't been in quite a few months and many of them have new members that they should also um listen to the module online and um I can just assure the public that I will I mean I think that's the only time I've done it I will try very hard not to push that reply all key by mistake um I think mistakes happen I I don't believe we did any huge policy decisions during our um email conversation um and I think I just want to lay this to rest and just accept responsibility for um you know making that mistake and violating um open meeting law um I think it's a small violation but it is one and I will try very hard not to do that again and I just urge everyone else I think we're all aware of what is the appropriate protocol and I would encourage you to just I think it's online the and I can have I can send you the link I'll find it and send you the link for that um training and it's probably something that's good to do on a regular basis so that's all I wanted to say thank you Helen I mean where I work we have to renew our business conduct guidelines annually as well as a bunch of other corporate policy reviews annually there's about six of them that you have to go through and they can take anywhere from 15 to minutes to you know 45 minutes to complete watching videos reviewing stuff then taking a quiz at the end so an annual review of city council conduct guidelines is not a bad idea and we can all benefit from it okay well we have the module created so we should do that so I will um ask each of you to do that and Kevin if you'll remind the committees and the committee chairs um and send that link out I think that would be um smart to do can we hit reply all if we get that email from you and just you know sorry sorry sorry sorry slip slip at the tug sorry yep is there any other business just that you've done a really good job Helen you did it you you're excellent at this online stuff I agree I mean it was a completely egregious violation that you committed but other than that you're doing a great job yeah well I mean our whole all our conversations forever have been about transparency and ironically I think the newsletter um enhances the transparency of what's going on in city government in a way that we've never had before so it it sort of all worked out well and it worked out well and I think the other paper has you know gotten thicker and has more articles that um the public wants to read and I'm reading it again I think you know they're back to performing um a little closer to the way they they used to report on our city so the combination of the two I think is keeping our public um very well informed and they put back the crossword puzzle well and the council's quarter who wants to do the next one it's due the first week in um December I'll do the one after I can't do the next one because it's due January term well you know I don't know if you can do January because if you run for re-election that's in March so you can't do January you do December Dave so you can get something in there before it yeah you can do either December or March oh boy it's going to be tough to do for December December what I don't do it in March who we got three other um Tom you know I in 600 words 600 words what do you want me to say you can talk about whatever you want I'll do December if you guys will give me input as to I'll tell you what I'm looking for you can give me some some phrases and I'll put it together how's that we each give you 120 words it's you know all right you sound like my students just put it together okay so okay who's going to do January I'll do January okay what am I going to write about give me an idea wait and see what I write about the budget maybe you'll be able to write about the budget and then February it's going to be Tom or Megan because neither Dave nor I so Tom okay well you're going to be busy because you'll be able to do a legislative corner and a counselor's corner and you'll be also I'm just going to talk about a pool and both ice skating rink at that point right that's right yeah okay if there's no other business oh bar sorry um it's it's almost Thanksgiving and you were talking about transparency and I just want to say thank you um for the fact that all of you are transparent um I sent Kevin a note saying I understand about common roots now um and I appreciate that but I just want to thank all of you for that and uh I'll see you from wherever I am from the next few months but thank you for all of your hard work thank you very much all right so adjourn motion to adjourn so moved second okay all in favor thumbs up oh good we're just about on time Thanksgiving everybody whatever you do wherever you go however you you know right with your family yeah all right stay wear your mask keep your distance right don't go inside with people you don't know all right stay healthy yes I wish you all the happiest yep you too okay though all right bye