 You got 6 PM on Monday, February 6th. So I'll call to order this meeting of the Winnowsky River Control Board. Please join us in a pledge of allegiance led by Councillor Oakley. Pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic. Pledge of allegiance to the United States of America and to the republic. Pledge of allegiance to the republic. That is awkward to do. Yes. I'm going to make the next two. OK. Thank you. So we just have a one-fail in the discussion of approval of barter training LLC's second-class license tobacco license substitute endorsement. Jenny? Yes. We have a two-year share. Sure. Sure. So I was hoping that Mr. Chair would be here. But what happened last year is the council approved this liquor license. We sent it on to the state. But the state was unable to gain the documentation that they need to issue a license. So it's technically a new license. It's 357 Main Street. It was Shiva Ram. And the state sent everything back because they weren't able to approve the liquor license. But that liquor license was still in effect until this year. So this ad is still. So I never had an ad in this last year, but now they do. Yes. OK. And you have questions from the council? Are there any concerns from the fire department? Any? No. OK. I don't have any other questions. Any questions from members of the public? Would someone like to make a motion to approve that this second class license to have a license and substitute editions? So moved. Second. Motion to adjourn. Second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion to adjourn. Thank you. At the end of the roll, your control meeting agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Ororra. Second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any adjourned? Time to go home. It's not what it sounds like. It's not what it sounds like. Richard, I'll give you a minute to sit. Thank you. We just have to look at the control board. Got it. Perfect timing. You can start when you're ready, Mayor. OK. It is 6.03 on Monday, February 6th. I have a call to order the Meduski City Council meeting now. We first have an agenda review. Are there any concerns about the order tonight's agenda? OK, seeing none, we'll move on. Next up is public comment. So this is space for members of the public to make comment about topics now on this evening's agenda. If you are here for an item on the agenda, please wait for us to get to that. That item, we will have time for public comment each item. Is there anyone in the room wishing to make a public comment? Not at this time. Anyone on Zoom? You can use chat for the recent future. Being no comment, we'll move to our consent agenda. So we have corrected council minutes from January 3rd. Our minutes from January 23rd. The public hearing minutes from January 26th. May counts be a little more from February 1st and appeal a little more for January 8th to 21st. Are there any questions or comments about being considered, any consent agenda items? OK, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Brayden. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. This is really effective, having the green first or then you jump in. So, well done. I can hear everything. Council reports. Brayden, would you like to kick us off? Sure. I don't have any updates for the Infrastructure Commission since the last meeting. We did have the second hearing of Just Cause Eviction, public hearing on Saturday. We had about 30 folks in attendance, which was really wonderful considering the weather conditions for the weekend. And there's really great participation so from the community and residents as well as some others that are interested that are outside of our, they're not residents of Winooski. So I think there'll be potentially some updates to the fact sheet. But we anticipate seeing, having any more comments or thoughts come directly to City Councilor, to City staff from this point moving forward. So that's it. Thank you for the return. Jim. Yes, I attended the Airport Commission meeting last Wednesday and the Commission reviewed the audit which showed the annual audit, which showed no material findings, the airport and good financial health with an upgraded financial status. So it's good for our regional international airport. Today report that the second phase of noise mitigation, home renovations for noise mitigation, the 54 homes design phase went to homeowners for their approval. And when that is received, it'll go back to the airport to apply for FAA funds for implementation. So that's the, I get it, I believe that's the second phase and the third phase of application is coming up as well. And there's additional, so that's the next round of funding is being sought for design and that next round of houses based on the total noise impact. So good to see continuing progress on that effort at the airport. I was also fortunate to attend the Champlain Housing Trust annual meeting last, a week ago, Friday and accept an award on behalf of the city presented by CHT for their community award for the work that the City of Winnieski has done on affordable housing and provision and community supports around that in the city. It was a great night, lots of residents as well as board members and community members there, great to share in the kind of collective success of the Champlain Housing Trust and the work that they've done in Winnieski and beyond. I really want to thank the board and executive director Michael Monti for the recognition and the invitation to speak and also to fellow counselors, our former counselors, former city managers, current residents who are also Winnieski residents. It was great to have that group there and be able to accept on that behalf. We also had several housing commission members and people who've worked on equity work in the city in attendance, it was a good gathering. So I just want to extend that appreciation back out and thank the counselors here and the community for the work done to support that as well. Those are my two reports. Thank you. Thomas? Nothing super important to report really, just I found it comical at our last downtown Winnieski meeting, we were starting to talk about Winnieski Wednesdays, even though it was freezing outside. But that group is just gearing up to start the planning process for all of our summer events. So you'll be seeing them on their socials and their websites and you'll call for our volunteers and folks who want to be engaged on Winnieski Wednesdays. Thank you. Thank you Thomas, Sarah. How about a couple updates? The first one mentioned is the inclusion and belonging commission meeting would normally be held this week on the 9th because it overlaps with the joint school board and the council dinner and budget commission. We are discussing postponing the meeting until the 23rd. So members who are interested, commission members and members of the community can attend the budget meeting. As that feels very important to make sure everyone's informed on that. We have our upcoming think-healthy connected people of commission meeting on the 14th of that six p.m. will be over zoomed. We have a couple things on there including a budget review possibly from the troops and checking in on a survey that's going to go out to kind of get some of the need for our longings of community members in relation to events held by community service, events and clubs and stuff like that. And so update had our second in-person I believe in our fourth meeting overall since we last met. And I think the thing that I want to bring attention to council residents and staff and city residents is one of the things shared with us is the Office of Racial Equity and we did that language access report that's now available on our website and they're going to create some shorter versions too that can add some translated versions to be able to kind of spread that to a wider audience, the information down there that is focused on the state level and state government but there's a lot of information in there that can be useful and informational as we're thinking about how this policy can help in this work we need to put some of the regulations as well as make sure residents are able to be engaged in municipal definitions. Those are my updates. Great, thank you. Planning Commission is scheduled to meet Thursday, February 9th at 6.30 p.m. they're ready with meeting time. And that is also in conflict with the community or budget presentations however that commission is going to host a meeting as planned given they had to cancel their last one because of their appointment with the first public hearing and they want to keep the work moving forward. That joins the city school budget presentation with a free community mail supply by the partnership prevention. Food pick up starts at 5.30 Presentation starts at 6.00 at the O'Brien Community Center this Thursday. My update is, Friday I was able to join the Senate Economic Development Committee who was drafting a bill intended to address our housing crisis. That bill included quite a bit. A lot of suggestions to streamline or update regulations, funding to help municipalities update their regulations. The primary focus of the testimony I provided was to urge them to include incentives for provision of larger housing. As we've seen that prior to here and our zoning administrator is graciously helping to get some information from them to better understand where there's duplicate permitting process at the state level that we're managing locally to try to be strategic about what's scheduling is proposed. Should I see updates on that moving forward from our presentation? I'll try to help push those out as well. I see them doing them too on local channels. That's it for my council report. So, the Lincoln City of James. Yeah, so town meeting day is coming up. As a reminder, the election is on Tuesday, March 7th. Voting takes place at the Winooski Senior Center from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Early voting in absentee ballots will be available after February 17th at the City Clerk's Office at 27 West Allen Street. For all ballot and budget details, you may visit winooskivt.gov slash town meeting. As a reminder, all legal residents, regardless of your U.S. citizenship status, can vote on town meeting day. Translated about, do we know what's happening? It's not me. I think someone just muted. Am I still echoing? No, okay. Can, Christine, can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, you're good now. All right, thanks. So, translated ballots will be available in 11 languages. If you still need to register to vote, please visit winooskivt.gov slash vote for details or stop by the City Clerk's Office for information. If you have questions, call or email 802-655-6410 or clerk at winooskivt.gov. And be sure to join us for the upcoming budget presentations. The city and school budget community dinner, as the mayor just referred to, is Thursday, February 9th, 5.30 p.m. at the O'Brien Community Center. Town meeting TV budget presentation is Friday, February 10th at 5.25 p.m. You can watch the live stream on youtube.com slash town meeting TV are on Comcast Channel 1087. You can call in with your questions about the budget to 802-862-3966. That's live questions during the budget presentation live on town meeting TV. There's also a city and school virtual budget presentation on Wednesday, February 22nd at 6 p.m. via Zoom. And the annual town meeting day budget presentation is on Monday, March 6th, 6 p.m. at the Winooski School District Performing Arts Center. Again, visit winooskivt.gov slash town meeting for all ballot, budget, and meeting information. Speaking of the ballot, if you missed the January 26th or February 4th public hearings just cause eviction, that is going to be on the ballot as proposed by voters. You can visit winooskivt.gov slash just cause for information sheets in various languages, a recording of the meeting from the 26th hearing and minutes for both that hearing and the February 4th hearing. I would like to take a moment and thank the Winooski Fire Department and many neighboring agencies for their efforts during the significant fire on Main Street last week and the many calls that they responded to this weekend. Related to that, I also wanna thank everyone in the community who helped share all of the important information from our state and regional partners regarding extreme winter weather event that happened on Saturday. Emergency preparedness is always important and having that plan is important too. And lastly, if you've just about had it with winter weather, season passes for adults, families, youth, and seniors officially went on sale for the 2023 Myers Memorial Pool season. Visit winooskivt.gov slash pool to get yours today and check back for the full schedule of recreation programs. We'll move into our regular night in San Juan. First out by the day on first session of the rule is a finance commission appointment. All right, so the mayor, the finance commission chair and our own conclusion of belonging liaison to the finance commission, interviewed James Bessender for the finance commission last month. He seems to be a great candidate and brings a lot of strategic and long-term planning to the rule. We are recommending his appointment for the unexpired full seat that was previously held by Sheldon Goodwin who resigned when she left the city. Thanks, Angela. Is James in city hall for a chance? I do not believe so. Okay. All right, you have his information in the packet. He was probably the best study. I've seen him come to a commission interview before like he did just how working in the movie is interested in this role. There's all the headway out there. Are there any questions, concerns? Would someone like to make a motion to approve the appointment of James Bessender to the finance commission? Summon. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Thomas. All those favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion here, please. Thank you. I don't make any further discussion approval. We have two safe holding committed to people in mission appointments. Okay, yes. And one of our appointees is here with us of the Anarchractics. I think Paul's going to bring it over. But a similar annuals update, Laura, Mary Hesman, our chair, and John and I interviewed two candidates who have been able to see the Anarchractics and are recommending both of them full positions. Mary's wishing to have been in a full position is on maternity right now. So we are recommending to move forward for the remainder of this year to an alternate position. And because Hannah is here on Zoom and Amanda sends her regrets, she had another commitment to make this shape not change, but is very excited to join us. It's actually a hot room. So yeah, I don't know if you have questions for Hannah or if you'd like to, how about? Yeah, would you like to just do a quick introduction? Sure, can you all hear me? Yeah, welcome. Great, hi. Yeah, so I did my interview with some of the commission members and also Fire Chief John, I think he was named as, last week. And I became interested in this commission because of both my work as a social worker and just my time spent trying to communicate with you, so excited to be a part. Well, thank you for your interest. I read your application. You look very well-seated. Ray Aurora said it on the internet as well. Any questions from the council? Would someone like to make a motion to approve these appointments? So moved. Second? Motion by Rhyn, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. How are you, Peter? Thank you. Thank you. Well, I'm great, we are on to item C, this is on for discussion while I bring out the chances. We have the new general manager with us. We do. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Welcome. Thank you so much. Can you hear me? Yes. Excellent, great. So my name is Clayton Clark and tomorrow will be my fourth week anniversary in the new role at GMT. I'm excited that as a former Winooski resident that Winooski is the first municipality that I'm here talking to, so glad to be here. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about our fiscal year 24 budget and I'm happy to report that for Winooski, the assessment was a decrease of 3.8% from last year. I understand that last year there was a bump up because of higher than anticipated paratransit costs and that with that going down some, that even though there was a slight increase in fixed rate or fixed route routes that your overall assessment went down a little bit. The things that I wanna bring up about the budget is that there's two items that got a lot of interest from the public. One was making permanent some service reductions that have been in place for almost three years. And so in March and April of 2020, when the pandemic started, there were two routes that went through Winooski that ended up having fewer routes or fewer visits during the day that those were cut before our pandemic operations and the budget made them permanent. And so the budget didn't make a reduction in current service but made permanent the reduction from essentially three years ago. So that's one item I just wanted to make sure that folks were aware of and that we received a comment on. The other item was the potential that we would be returning back to offering fares. And so people may recall that again at about the time that we made the service reductions, we also stopped collecting fares as an infection control method so that we would have riders entering through the back of the bus, the doors that are on the back of the bus so that they would have limited contact with drivers. And so that was a major sort of philosophical change about how public transit should be funded that was made very quickly for infection control procedures. And now we're in a situation where we need to have figure out whether that should be permanent. In order for that to be permanent, there would need to be a sort of change in philosophy with the state of Vermont and a real look at how we're funded, how the municipalities fund things because we would have to identify fair replacement. We've been able to be fair free because of the COVID relief funds. And so just like everybody in lots of local and state governments, GMT has received significant COVID relief funds. Those are coming to an end, hence our need to re-contemplate fares. I can tell you that although our budget considers restarting fares on July 1st that there is a debate at the state house of whether they should provide additional support for us so that they could continue so that we can continue to operate fair free. And I also know that since getting some of our fare boxes out of the mothballs or out of the mothball storage that we've discovered that some of them are no longer supported by the manufacturer and we are probably gonna have a hard time collecting fares on July 1st. So I think that there's still a lot up in the air about whether we will restart but I suspect that that will be pushed back. And so it's a very fluid situation at the moment. I wanted to, as best I can, considering that I've been here for four weeks, give you all the opportunity to ask questions about GMT. I definitely wanna thank Elaine for making the arrangements here but also in your packets providing a really great sort of summary of how our municipalities work with GMT and that you all have representation on our board. In fact, behind me is my boss, Austin Davis, who is Winooski's commissioner and is the president of our board of commissioners. And so with that, is there anything that I can do to help you understand our operations? Well, thanks for coming in, Clayton. If you can take the case yourself. It's great to be able to meet you in this new role. Thank you. Do you wanna recognize that you are new and still in a wording level? Would it have not come to us today with a bunch of solutions or changes? Yes. And also thank Austin. I think he's been doing a good job keeping us out of things and I'm just certain that he'll keep us in the loop of how things progress in the state house with funding. We've been engaged in those discussions too. The one thing that I would wanna share is just that there is strong interest in our community of expanded more frequent service. I know you're not at a point to get into the weeds on that but I just wanna make that known that when we think about alternative funding structures working with the state on that, to the extent we can increase service would be very helpful to residents. Absolutely. I can tell you that one of the things that probably worries me a little bit more than money is staffing. And that I can tell you that even if we, there's been a lot of talk of a trillion dollar coin being printed or made to solve our budgetary problems. And so if GMT got ahold of one of those we still would have a problem with increasing service simply because of our inability to attract CDL drivers. And so one of the things that when you see one of our blue buses going around town there's about a one in three chance that the driver of that bus is on overtime. And frequently that overtime is forced overtime. And so it's not really sustainable in my view long-term to continue operating that way. And so to me the biggest barrier for increasing service is probably gonna be staffing that. I'll start. So considering that challenge, is there a plan of action or any strategy for how to address the workforce challenges? So I can tell you that the CDL shortage is across Vermont and across the country. We even will train somebody who, so any council member that would like to become a bus driver, we will train you to get your CDL and we'll pay for all of that. We'll actually pay you while you're training. So we are doing things that we haven't done in the past to attract talent. And I can tell you my previous job was in healthcare and I've been surprised at the similarities between trying to fill nursing positions and driver positions. Is it really is that there's just not enough people in the state that have that specific licensure to go around? So Brent, that's an answer that no, I don't have anything very, there's no magic bullet, but we're thinking about it a lot. Yeah, that is surprising to me because I've seen your compensation packages and they're quite good. So I assumed you would not have problems finding people to work. The common, the benefits that we offer are outstanding. And so definitely when you consider that our union drivers pay nothing for their health insurance for them and their families, that is a benefit itself that's worth quite a bit. You mentioned the legislature is possibly considering helping your current fee model. Is that how far along in there kind of processes that is it in committee or is it just talks? Sure, so there was a bill that was introduced H101 and that bill provided some very broad changes to how Vermont does transportation. But when it came to public transit or in GMT specifically, what it contemplated was a $1.2 million appropriation to help continue zero fare. Unfortunately, to do zero fare through the entire fiscal year 24 would take about $2 million, so it doesn't fit the full amount. We were in a similar situation last year where the state provided some additional funds for zero fare and then we used COVID relief funds to make the difference, but we just aren't in a position now where we can use relief funds again to carry us through another year. Those are all my questions. Are there any more questions from Council? We've got one more. I have another question. So I think recently that GMT has expanded their service area to other counties. So that happened about a decade ago and but it's still in government terms very new. Right, good to capture that. So do those other service areas outside of Chittenden County have representation on the board? So they do not have representation on the board and frankly that's something that I don't quite understand yet as far as how that will work. I know that the statute was amended to allow them representation, but I'm not aware of any choosing to do so. I can tell you that it's a very different, the way we receive funding from them is different than the way we receive funding from you in our urban areas. And one of the things that may be confusing, it certainly is confusing me, is that there's a very separate distinction in the federal government between urban operations and rural operations. And so that's why you're gonna see that some of the opportunities that rural areas have and urban areas have and vice versa, aren't necessarily gonna be applying in both locations. And what you're finding also in the rural areas is a real emphasis on looking at on-demand transportation because with the lower population density, having fixed route just is not a good model for getting people to different places. And so you see more on-demand transport in those locations. Recently I was talking with some residents about service within Winooski, within and around Winooski and what would be feasible and what would the cost even be to have a shuttle within the city? That I really don't know yet. I can tell you that we have approached the operations within Winooski, Burlington, Essex, Williston area with a fixed route model that's based on 40-foot buses. And perhaps our labor scarcity at CDL is gonna force us to have to change that at some point in time, in which case I think that you may see a very different model. But at this point, I really can't speculate. Thank you. Those are my questions. Probably isn't so much a question, but I think something, I've got all the answers. I hope you remind us, we've talked or advocate with our counterparts in the state. Because I believe the Winooski School has never been able to kind of buy in student-athlete fair for students. Similarly, CCB hasn't done that. So offering that free fair is, I think, if we're able to continue that, it's really important that this our residents, particularly students that live in the city, especially if you do it that way after school deans and stuff like that, if that's a transit. So I want to know that as well. And I can tell you that in our past practice is to provide discounted fairs for folks based on age, but of course a discounted fair is not fair-free. And we do have a. Thanks for, thanks for coming to the Department of Reconciliation today. I have a question about the procedure for municipalities to request both cost estimates and increases in service. It seems like GMT doesn't really have enough planning staff to accommodate these kinds of requests. Just moving forward, would it be helpful to work with a regional planning commission to get some of these sort of cost estimates of increased service moving forward? It just doesn't seem like we've been able to get responses from GMT. Well, I'm sorry that there's been difficulty in getting responses as your experience. I do know that we are very much working with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and that we'll be having some additional planning work done with them through their processes this year. And when you look at our membership of our Board of Commissioners, most of the folks that are on the commission are actually part of their regional planning commission. And so they're very much is their participation in what we do. I can tell you, Michael, one of the things that I've just observed is that GMT is extremely lean. When it comes to administrative staff, we've always placed a prioritization, I think, on our driving capacity and our mechanic capacity, which I think totally makes sense because that's where literally the rubber meets the road. But I think that it does mean that we have had challenges with capacity at planning. And so I'm sorry that that's what you've experienced, but it's certainly something that I'll be looking at is to figure out how we can leverage what we have for expanded planning options. Thanks for that. And I didn't mean it in an accusatory way. I hope, you know. And Michael, do you have my contact information? Because it's, I would love to talk with you. It sounds like you are familiar with working with us. And so I'm at Clark, C-C-L-A-R-K at ride GMT.com. Okay, thanks for that. And I do wanna highlight, you know, I just wanna give our counselors also a... Oh, okay. Sorry. I see the yellow around your box, Michael, but we didn't hear you. I can try again. It's a, can you hear me now? Christine, could you speak to see if... Can you, yeah, can you guys not hear us? Is something wrong with the speakers? I'm not sure what it is. I'm just gonna sort of talk, let me know if it... Well, Michael, do you wanna wait a minute? I don't think the folks in the room can hear those if we don't have us on Zoom yet. Yeah, I think it's chambers only, because I can hear both of you just now. Yeah, we're just gonna keep making the noise so that they can hear you now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. If it comes back on. We can hear you now. Yeah, so sorry we missed what you said before, Michael. Yeah, so, yeah, I didn't mean to be in the variety, I just wanted to, you know, hopefully give staff and counselors, you know, next steps if they're interested in expanding service maybe, you know, maybe GMT isn't the right avenue to, you know, maybe, maybe we need to be adding things to the CCRNC work plan to get things throughout the study, for health assessments, and whatnot. Thanks for that, Michael. And Mayor Lott, thank you for sending out my email address in the chat. Sure. Elaine? Yes, thanks, Mayor. So, I think it might have been Austin who told me once upon a time that you have a pretty decent informal process for onboarding new Americans. And given our population is so, you know, significantly new American compared to other Vermont communities and if you're looking for drivers thinking about whether there's an opportunity to be more deliberate about recruiting from those communities and what that might look like. Well, I can tell you that part of the diversity that is GMT is that a significant portion of our drivers are new Americans. And at this point, I don't actually know what we've done to recruit into that population. And I don't know if Austin wants to try to weigh in, but I'm happy to get back to you all so that we can distribute it to the council what those are. That hasn't been actively on fire this past four weeks and so I haven't learned about it yet. Yes, I understand that. Well, yeah, we'd be happy to push out that recruitment information if it's available. Absolutely. I do think, you know, one of the things that excites me about the new role is that the person who had been the general manager for three years as interim general manager is John Moore, and he is staying and he is essentially going to be continuing his role of making sure that the internal GMT operations are working well. And I'm going to be able to be much more externally focused than he has been able to be. And certainly making partnerships with all of the communities in our area, including new Americans is something that's going to be high on my list. Because first off, these are communities that we want to serve for our services and also communities that can support us with coming to work for us. Are there questions or comments? Thank you so much. And I will go get my critique from Austin now and you all have a good rest of your meeting. Thank you. That was perfect. Okay, we're going to go on from prior years now that this is a routine item that comes every year. So part of the TIFF legislation requires that we break before you our report to the Vermont Economic Progress Council of the previous year's performance. So all of the information contained in this report is primarily for fiscal year 2022, which has been audited. We have received our grade upon procedures audit from R.H.R. Smith. It's pretty straightforward. We also outline our goals and how we've achieved those, which for the most part are affordable housing and commercial growth within the district. The assessor of Ted Nelson has signed off on the valuation of the district with my counter signature. And this would just be requesting authorization for a lane to sign on behalf of the council. Thank you, Angela. Are there any questions from the council? Any questions from members of the board? I just want to, on the final document, I think in the series that was there on page eight. So just kind of wanted to emphasize the last two sentences, basically say during the fiscal year 2024 budget process, the council has opted to bridge to the expiration of the TIFF using ARPA dollars and integrate it into the operating budget. The community services grant funded position other than the circulation assistant and the records clerk support regional dispatch. And it ends with an all likelihood this will use the remaining portions of future TIFF funds as currently predicted. So just kind of wanted to draw attention to that again since it might get lost in the context of all of the content that was provided. So I'm hearing no concerns. Would someone like to make a motion to approve this item authorizing the city manager to sign off on this report? Is that moved? Second. Motion by Jim, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion curious, thank you. Let's move on to item E. On for discussion approval, make sure your finalization, USDA, and forgot about conveying thought resolutions. Great, thank you. So, pretty exciting news. We're getting very close to getting the nature project out to bed. I was hoping to say we had all the right away these kinds of hands tonight, but we're missing one, and it's just a back and forth language. So we're, we expect to have that this week. And so I outlined some of the updates on the project in the memo. So we're getting close enough that we have to sort of button up some of these items for finance folks before we can get out to bed. You can get a notice to proceed from those agencies. So, in your packet, there are a bundle of plan resolutions. So, through and over in the USDA, so USDAs are planning to partner on this project. Before we can get the project out to bed, this is one of the nine items that they require before they can sign off. So, they're not asking me to spend any money tonight, but this is one of the checklist items that they require. So, the three bonds are for the different categories of funding work. So, the water work, the sewer work, and the general fund scope of work, which is under their community facilities program. So, the one really great news with the USDA funding is we locked in the interest rate back in 2018, I think it was. So, we locked in a 2.125 interest rates. In terms of a little bit different for water, sewer fund, water fund is four-year bonds and the sewer fund is a third-year bond seen through the general fund. So, we have a really good interest rate on these loans. And, yeah, ultimately, we expect to have the easement, like I said, this week, and then we've got some work to do with our legal folks to get all the paperwork executed, title certificates, but we want to be out to bed by next month and see what we get for a price on this project. So, the other bond resolution that we locked into this packet is for the bond bank. So, this one will need more, actually a proposal that you'll see next week. We just want to have the financing set before we bring the proposal to you all. So, this will be for the remaining professional consultant work. So, this will be all the scope that they need for the construction. All things prepared. So, the bid document is reviewing any contract issues and a lot of it is for the construction and inspection work over the expected three-year cycle of the project. So, this bond, our bond council of this, at Alfred Collins, this is for the general fund scope of that proposal that you'll see at the next meeting. And then we're working with our other financial partners, other U.S.D.A. or a state revolving law to cover the water resources piece of that proposal. So, a lot of agencies we're working with to kind of meet this financing all work, all coming together for the project. So, I'll leave it at that if you have any questions. I don't know what you're saying. Pauline? Yes, thanks. I just wanted to comment and acknowledge the team's effort, especially John and the city engineer, Ryan Lambert, for all of their efforts to get us to this point. It's been a, you can tell from the brief memo that it's just there's a lot of work behind behind this project in terms of coordination of funding sources and just, of course, on the construction and design pieces too. And just as a reminder, John was an acting city manager throughout some of this. So, Ryan was really carrying the water for some time and John's finally been able to jump back in with me being here. So, just wanted to take him an opportunity to thank the staff for keeping this going. Thanks, Elaine. I think the complexity just of what John was sharing around these documents and these different funding agencies is what a sliver of how big the scope of work is to do this mainstream project. Questions from council? Public comments? Mayor Brin. I was trying. That'll be the first one to ask questions, but it just kind of ends up that way. So, obviously we saw quite a few headlines recently where the state auditor reviewed project documents for the city of Burlington and some of the missed opportunities they had there. And just looking for assurances that we've dotted our eyes and crossed our T's so we don't hear or find ourselves in a similar situation. So, my only reference of the TIF findings and TIF audit that was recently been in the papers. I'm just saying some of this project before we go out to visit or do anything, we've already done this for the most part. We've had to get approval from USDA. They reviewed all our documents to date. We've had to get approval from the state of SREF folks. And we've had to get approval from the VTRANS grant folks. So, that is actually some of the reason why this project has taken so long is that we have to get sign-off sort of on each and every step. And it's gotten to the point too where we've had to have calls and meetings with USDA folks and VTRANS folks on the same call to make sure that contracts are being separated correctly, documents are being been out correctly. So, that is one of the major sort of behind the scene tasks is making sure that when you get the project you have your contracts set up right so we're not missing any sort of grant reimbursements. So, that is something that is probably taking the most time. But this, I said this to only another folks, design works really easy. It's like all this other financial contract work to make sure that there's no risk when we're trying to get reimbursements because it is such a costly project. We wanna make sure that we're not gonna, leave anything on the table because we didn't put some clause in the contract or something. It's really, I mean that's really wonderful to hear that the agencies are willing to collaborate the different levels of government are really very, I mean a longer process, yes, but just ensuring that we're able to ensure that the payments are more likely gonna move through smoothly. So that's reassuring to hear. And it is a follow up question. I think I saw a note in the documents here that there's some additional delay with reviewing, with getting EPA approval. I'm just was looking for a little bit more depth to what that was related to. Sure, yep, so as we, the good thing with grants is we do receive or might help from the project, but sometimes it does impact on the administrative side. So for that issue, we have to go through this environmental process called the NEPA process to make sure that the project isn't negatively impacting any sort of environmental components of the project. It's for preservation or more resources, things like that. So in this particular case, we had to go through a pretty extensive NEPA process for the USDA funding. And then as we received some of the B-trans grants, we used the EPA's guidelines for that NEPA process through USDA. The B-trans required us to go through the federal highway NEPA process, which tacked on some additional schedule time. So we have brought that up so we sort of some higher ups in both agencies to work on that because a lot of it was pretty redundant. So we just want to make sure other projects see multiple funding facets that it should be streamlined. It's sort of checking the same environmental boxes. So yeah, that was the issue on that particular NEPA process. Yeah, that's really unfortunate to hear. I do think it is worth noting the redundancy there for feedback for their own improvements on these large products and just how significant that impacts a small city like ours. Thank you. Any questions for members of the public? Hearing no concerns, I would entertain a motion to approve these four water resolutions. So moved. Second. Motion by Jen and second by Thomas. All those are favoritly to say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thanks, John. I'm asked for a discussion approval of resolution for the FY24 water rates. Waste water is next to all tide into the budget very approved. Anything you care to add? Yeah, I can cover that. Just, I can give the overview quick. So it is for the water rates, that is the same water rate we presented back in January when we did our budget. So it's $52.02 per housing cubic foot. As mentioned, that is an increase over the last year by about $8.04 over that point to meet your rate. But that is primarily due to operational increase costs, specifically the increase of the same portion in water districts for buying more water, which that's about 52% over all water budget. So that comes in at like $507, so that's primarily when our increase is. And if we did the proofing race, we would essentially be asking if your rate is that the budget is already done for these funds. Yeah, this is for a balanced budget. So our water budgets are on a mere 1.8 or FY23. And that pays for existing capital costs that we already have. So we're doing capital for FY24 proposed. Any questions from Council? Well, that's a question. I just want to highlight something that we talked about when we were, maybe the last budget day or the one before that, but just to confirm these rates, although increase, they're not going to give you the money that we had talked about in a stretch budget for all of the water projects that you see that the city's going to need in the upcoming years. Yeah, correct. That we'll have to figure out, we'll be reviewing potential grants. We're trying to find some support those weeks. I don't know. Main Street will be a significant water project as well. So that will be, that will take a chunk out of the water and replace the water, but correct. That's not for a stretch budget. Okay, thank you, Joe. Any questions for others in the homework? Yeah, we have one. Can you come up here to the front end? You can state your name and where you live. Hi, James Messer there. I'm from Winooski, live in West Center Street. I'm just curious. What is the rolling five-year average of the most recent increases so far? Is it expected to be continuous on the current rate or slower in terms of increases in the next five years, three years? Self-hand, our intent is to keep it at a two or three percent once we get to a sustainable budget. So one of the issues that we've had to increase the budget, the water fund budget, the answer to the budget is we were sort of subsidizing that budget with our fund balance. So that is obviously not sustainable. So we're luckily in a place now where we're actually, we're a balanced budget, we're paying for our capital needs, we're paying for the operational costs. We will need an increase to start saving for some of the larger water vapor placements, but we don't have, you know, the intent there will be to do, you know, high increases like this year. And hopefully we don't see the inflation like we see this year. That's one of the bigger, that's one of the big issues too, that we're seeing our operations side. Jebette. I have the historical context. So four prior fiscal years, the average increase was about 3.3 percent. If you include a five-year average with this 18.6 percent, it's 6.3 percent per year. Understood. Any idea what the portion is attributed to inflation versus just nominal increase in operating expenses? But I can send that to you. Just kidding. I mean, yeah, it's, like I said, a lot of it for this year would be the, this seemed to be the increase, which I mean is actually probably most inflation too. So, I mean, I would, I suspect you could almost chalk up all of this budget increase to inflation this year. Because last year, I believe it was the first year we actually caught up with having not to pay, we weren't subsidizing from our reserve fund last year. So the majority of this year would be CWD, which is like also inflation on the internet. Yeah, the increase from year over year is about 116,000, of which E5-9 is from the CWD rate. So almost 75 percent of our increases due to the increased water costs that we have on our shoulders to pay out for every gallon of water people use in town. Gotcha. Understood. Thank you, appreciate it. Thanks, Dan. Hey, you're welcome and FYI, the council appointed you, a prettier appointment to the five-year station. I heard, sorry, I was a little bit late today. I had a meeting that ran over, but thank you guys so much. Appreciate it. No worries. Thank you. Thank you for your questions. Are there any other public comment? No. Resolution for the M.24 water raise. So moved. Second. Motion by Britain's second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. John, you want to do the quick wastewater cover and then we'll vote on that too. Sure. So this is the same grant that you all saw having to generate $83.63.46 per 1,000 cubic feet. So this is also an increase from FY23, $6 a woman since the school covered the sewer fund budget which is 1.27 million this year. One of the increases that were seen in FY24, we actually have some of those capital for FY24. So we've been folding back some of those capital costs to try to get catch up with this budget as well. So we have three capital projects, small pickup truck replacement, and then two projects that are at least what we're trying to plan. They were recently identified as priority in our recent DEC three-year email evaluation. So that is a new roof where admin building that houses all our controls for the wastewater plant. So that's not ideal. You want to have a good roof there and one of the controls and also our chlorine contact tank. So both are much needed projects. Thanks John. Any questions? Any public questions? No. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the FY24 wastewater rate resolution? So moved. So moved. Motion by Jim, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. All right, thank you. Item H for discussion approval of the memorandum of understanding between the city of Miduski and the Miduski Incorporated School District for FY23 to 24. Yeah. So reading from my cover sheet here, the Miduski City and School District have had an agreement as documented in a memorandum of understanding since at least FY2009 to 10 to share resources where it makes sense. The goal of the MOU is to provide the community with the highest level of service in the most economical manner. The big change this year is the city no longer commits to providing snow plowing and salting services to the school. In recent years, city staffing has been insufficient to provide the timely services needed by both the school and the general traveling public which is on city roads and sidewalks. And the city has had to contract out snow plowing of roads in order to meet its commitment to the school. So not necessarily economical. Even this year with our road and sidewalk plows staffed fully, the city is staffed enough to plow city roads and sidewalks timely, not also the school. The school district was notified of this proposed change in November per agreement and has agreed to it. The new paragraph seven helps formalize the arrangement regarding city use of Winooski School District's multilingual liaisons. And going forward, given that the content of the MOU is largely operational, I'm recommending that council delegate execution of it to the city manager in the future unless of course there are significant changes proposed by the city manager or WSD that would affect budgets. I think so, A. On the snow plowing item, can we pass along the contract information that we use to help them secure? Yeah, I believe we've done so actually. True. Great. Questions from council? I guess the one. Can you follow? Go ahead. Sorry. No, I didn't raise my hand, sorry. The one piece I do see the benefit of treating this as an operational document. I think this is the one time that we, well one of two times we as a council interact with the school district in a way. So I guess one question, I don't know, the answer necessary, I'm just curious what other people's thoughts are for like the benefit of reviewing this on an annual basis is kind of refreshing our commitment and our understanding of what our current modes of interaction of the school. Granted, this is not all of them. We do a lot of other things with the school, but this is some of the, this is really our only formalized arrangement with them. So I guess I wanted to put that question into the council and have us think about that before we just treat this as an operational document going forward. There could certainly be other types of touch points. Yeah, I think this document, okay, it has been an impetus to have a joint meeting, but the content of it is not very informative to how our political body should interact. So I've talked to the current school board president about, first of all, we're absolutely going to continue to have an annual meeting and keep that tradition going. But it would suggest that I had asked about doing a bi-animal, increasing it to twice. I think there's appetite for that once they get settled with their new superintendent search in place. And it's something I can add to, maybe something we add to the council orientation, just to like set that understanding that we will be engaging with this group annually and then we can come to it as a bi-animal once we get to that point. I, go ahead, I'll go ahead, I'll go ahead. I'm just going to go out with Jim, that I can kind of say from the farthest one, I know that I feel I'd like to know if we touch, I think we can touch on all of this, I'd like to confirm, because I think it is going to be discussion not this fiscal year, but probably in the coming fiscal years, specifically around the SRO. So that would be the one thing here that I do definitely think that should go, or council should have some say in that, and I get my assumptions will get that through the budget process, but it's going to confirm that. Yeah, that's a good point actually next year, that has been proposed as you know by the superintendent. And so that would be a significant change that you would then see the whole thing because that would be triggering a significant budget change. I would assume that that would be a change, significant amount of reason to such a council. Perfect, thank you. Ben? I agree with councilor Duncan, I do personally see value in at least, even if it's an already confirmed document where the city manager has moved forward with it. It's just a nice reminder of the structure and agreement that's in place. So I'm fine if it's not for discussion approval for council, but I think it is beneficial to bring it back to council, especially anticipating new counselors and turnover that happens. To really just share this, not just that orientation, but on at least an annual basis. Would it make sense to have it in consent agenda to be in consent agenda then? In consent agenda? Yeah, I think that's fine. The only other way I could imagine kind of integrating this relationship and it's adding it to our schedule is that we have one as like another meeting as our prioritization meeting and maybe we tag a joint school board meeting, school board city council meeting as one of those other meetings that we hold are kind of a co-located meeting. But. Yeah, so we put that as the strategic prioritization like TBD, to council schedule, we have with us their TBD, or the joint meeting. Since we need some time to look at it, do you agree with it? Yeah. I agree. I think that set of changes would make sense to me. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the MOU between the school and city for FY2324, as well as delegate future approval to the city manager for the rules that don't contain significant changes while including the approved item in a consent agenda for council? Some moves. Could, nevermind. Could I, no, no. Could I just make a friendly addendum? Yes. To make it, the significance around budget specifically just so that if there isn't a budget impact, you wouldn't necessarily expect to see it if that's your understanding or what you would like to do. Okay, let me re-transit. And delegate future approval to the same manager for renewals that don't contain budgetarily significant changes moving this item to consent agenda. I guess I would just say if there is a big change, even if it's not budgetary, would you just let us know? Yes, I mean, you would see it in the consent agenda. If that's... Since I changed the language, can someone make the... I guess I'm just sorry. I'm going back to, before we go to the motion. So if the MOU changes to the school, the city won't request multilingual liaison services from the school. That won't have a budget impact, right? I think it would, because we paid for the services. Well, we have a line for interpretation, but we don't necessarily commit that to the multilingual language program at the school district. But, and if the school were to say, you're not allowed to request that, we put in the MOU, that wouldn't get reviewed by council because it wouldn't have a budget impact. I mean, I would fully expect you to say, look, they took this out. It's not a budgetary impact, but it's a regular item in the agenda because it's a significant change in and of itself to meet out these significant change. So I guess I don't know if we need to formalize that or if we want to just have that be an understanding that that'll get pulled out. And just worry with a cassette agenda without a cover sheet to explain what changed and the potential significance of that change that some of those could, like some of that history could get lost if it's just a consent item that doesn't get the same level of review. Well, yeah, I would actually include a cover sheet for if to show any changes for this or even to say that there weren't any significant changes. All right, so I'll make the motion that you worded, I'll second that. Motion by Jim, second by Thomas, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay, the motion carries and the blame, Angel, Jenny, whoever's here may be seated in the chair. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I know I'm for discussion for the F-24 Fund Budgets and Capital Plans. So yes, all Winooski voters approve the general fund budget which you approved a couple weeks ago. A council alone though approves all the other fund budgets. We're gonna come back to you next time for the community development fund just because it's a little administratively complicated. So tonight we're asking you to approve the budgets for the fiscal year 2023, 2024 funds for water, wastewater, parking, community services programs, the tax increment finance districts and the rental registry as presented. All right, Thomas, it's your first ever round. I don't know why we do it this way, but like essentially we already did all the work of deciding the budget is we take it to the general fund and then we always follow up with the approved those rates that support the budget we already said we approved and then we approved these separate funds. Angela, did you want to add some context? So what you voted on last time was specifically just the amount to be raised by the general fund. When Jesse Baker started as city manager we actually changed our budget process to present you all of the budgets at the same time. Historically all of these other funds had previously been presented in the spring around the April-May time frame. So these do need to be approved separately but they do not need to be approved by voters and we just have the added extra step because at your next meeting you will be meeting as the board of trustees for the Woodie Street Community Development Corporation to accept funds from the TIP district, donate it back to the city for community development and then you can approve the community development budget. So other than that, well actually this is true for all the other funds. So all the other funds technically have their own budget. That's why it's approved separately but most of them are user fee supported. So I don't know that in statute it actually specifies that that's why the boards for water, wastewater, et cetera are the ones approving everything and not the voters but that's the distinction of why they're handled separately. But it makes sense to me that we look at it and we're all together and see a big picture before we vote on what we put the voters. Right. Any questions? I guess just revisiting some of the previous conversations we had around the rental registry and that as part of the fee ordinance review that might be coming up later this spring. Right, so because you wouldn't, it's an ill-advised to adopt a budget before you've changed the fees officially because who knows technically what might happen through that process. That would be the chance to revisit that and just a reminder to anyone else. There was a, Bryn had brought up that you might be able to increase that and close the gap on the rental registry. So, but again, we didn't budget that way because it hasn't been approved by council. Any other questions? All right, do I hear no concern do I have a motion to approve the FY24 from budgets and capital plans as presented? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. We're curious, thank you. Thank you. Okay, my turn. We are onto item J for discussion. So this is next steps on equity focus for the city council. So the last time we took this up at a previous meeting we were discussing steps for us to take as a council and have to move forward bringing equity into our council processes. I outlined in this memo the next steps that we talked about and so wanted to discuss today the reformalizing what our next steps are gonna be to bring this back to the next meeting for actually looking. So there were several items we talked about, operationalizing our engagement procedure, adopting a policy assessment tool with an equity focus, creating a shared language for equity and commitment to ongoing learning. Here, I don't really touch on those last two or on the shared language and ongoing learning. I feel that some of you should be addressing after 10 meeting day when the council is in place. So the three actual things that I've put on for discussion today are operationalizing that engagement procedure, selecting an assessment tool which I have a few examples attached. And then also talking about how to engage our inclusion in the Law and Commission. Like we should have applied that group on this memo and these considerations for tonight but unfortunately I didn't think clearly about that until two days ago. So to split it, I wanted to first talk about operationalizing engagement but I'll just pause for questions or clarity or anything. I guess we'll talk about this when we get to the tool possibly, but are you thinking we have a little slide on what it's meant or is this to... Just discussion. Okay. Yeah. We can start there actually, we can go ahead and go ahead. So I have in the memo, those are received, we're reaching out to CCRC. I'm just skipping right now on the preparation condition. Mary on that, excuse me coming to our meetings. She has some options. And then I missed this unfortunately in the memo. It's attached now to the agenda separately. There's also a tool that former chancellor and representative Hal Colston shared with us that they were using in the state legislature. So there's multiple examples here of how this could be approached. I think some of them are a little more complex than we're ready for but it shows where we could go in the future. But I'll stop there and see what folks' thoughts are about the different options here. Laura, do you want to start and share with some of your thoughts? Sure. Could I come with you? Mm-hmm. I think so, right? Give me two seconds in the middle, I got you covered. Go ahead. Because I'm working through them all and ground up some of the questions that I've really put out to me for the context. And kind of what I feel we might do at some point in time I feel I'm not capturing everything but I started just to kind of think about it in our context. And it was brought up specifically for policy review but I think there might be some benefit where this has been, I think, violent in the first part of the office had an additional budgetary review and it was about language here to kind of think about what is the role of this. So just kind of laying out some ideas, I think, yes, for city council, it might be something that for staff, I don't want to put work on staff. That's not our place but kind of having that as a potential idea. And then grab a couple of the key questions for kind of thinking about it. I feel like we want to change the language and I specifically was thinking we'd like to include language access so they didn't really see that in any of the others. But I wanted to pull out questions specifically thinking about the planning outreach, clarifying the purpose. And I think one of them had a constant adverse impact but I just think it had a constant impact in general because some of them talk about is there something that will greatly benefit for all of us to have a adverse effect. So actually kind of bringing those thoughts up and then including some culture, your own improvement, putting in even a little audit process before it goes to a final vote. And then, yes, it's a notice here of how we have consistent language. There's something here that's like meaning to me, like what does mean for me. We want to define that for ourselves. Thinking about, I think, some of them are focused on race, some of them are more general and I think we probably want to move towards more general but then we need to include a specific question about race given kind of the historical political-social construct of some of the races in the United States and then a bit of a newsy context thinking about language access and how that can be added. Kind of went through that really great spot. Those are just going through the things that I was thinking about. It doesn't necessarily, some of them went through like these are step-by-step how you go through a process. I didn't know if that was necessarily like as I understand if we're ready for that. So I just was like here's some questions that really stood out to me and I added a tweak to them a little bit thinking about our language content test and how that might benefit. Thanks for doing that Aurora. I'm looking at it. I think there's a lot of alignment between this and the state legislature version. Yeah, I've got some of them. I changed like legislation. I put in a proposal which was used by one of the others if we wanted to think about it first with moving on to the policy. Again, I might be going on to change some of the language but yeah, thinking about, I think the intentional and unintentional impact is probably the biggest goal with this to elevate and have questions thinking about it. I know like whether you want to respond to sharing or if there's something that stood out to you when you were reviewing these different tools that were shared. I think the goal of today is to figure out what to bring back to look at so we can just have some discussion about what we think the goal of the tool is and what things we like and we want to make sure are captured. Yeah, and I just appreciate the time that you put into this council or heard. I mean I always like to defer to experts and this is the realm that you work in and it's really cool. I really appreciate you putting time into a document that you could show to us tonight. I don't really know that I have the expertise to add much more to it to be truthful. I'll second Councilor Renner and say that I also think it's a beneficial idea to review all the tools that are out there and to kind of pull elements that we think are strongest and that we think catered to Winooski's needs the most. So I really like your approach to do that. I would be interested in getting more input from Inclusion Belonging Commission and an additional, especially as well as some of our other commissioners give them the opportunity to weigh in before really bringing this back for discussion approval. So I know we do have time and this is just kind of an introduction but I would hope that that is built into the process. I guess, is this a, would this be a toolkit that we would be looking to serve both Council and staff? Just for Council. Elaine, you can determine how to how it might inform the staff purchase but whatever we're voting out is what we're committed to. Right, and I will say that if we know what lens you're using, we will certainly be reviewing on our end. And I'm sure other work besides, but yeah, at a minimum. I was just going to say, I also want to echo the appreciation for kind of trying to take the various pieces and pull into something that's like a starting point for Wendyski, which is great. And I, in reading through the various examples, I gravitated towards the the State, the State of Vermont Equity Impact Assessment Tool and the Burlington's Tool which is an adaptation of the fifth example in the memo. Because it does give like specific questions that you can ask of a given policy so I imagine this is being used when there's like our fee ordinance is up for review or when we're looking at our Chapter 9 and Chapter 5 housing and Chapter 3 housing chapter items and we're like looking through those and I think this, the level of detail that is required in going into assessing a given change like it seemed helpful to frame some discussions and one thing I did like about I think both of these, the State of Vermont, the Burlington Tool is that it doesn't require every question to be framed from a racial or ethnic diversity equity perspective but also, so it can be around equity on anything whether it's over age or access, physical ability and then there are specific questions that dive into the racial equity because that's something I think we need to consider explicitly aside from other equity considerations like I think that needs to be a bulk and we can look at it from all lenses but I think we always need to consider racial equity in our community so I think that was something that stood out to me is that it was a tool that was explicitly doing both instead of trying to put everything into one bucket and then assess it I'm not even saying this right but like it explicitly calls out racial equity as a specific area that we have to look at on its own and then equity more broadly which for our community is important because we have a large number of seniors we have people with physical disabilities we have folks who have economic different in different economic classes so I think that's something I'd like to see we can adapt this to use for any policy and think about any of those components of equity but we also dive into racial peace and it does, I mean these are a lot like I don't think that we want a 20 or is this a 26 question assessment tool is a lot for every item but if we're doing it only for certain bigger picture of things like ordinance changes budget, policies and priorities, it's not that many places in that structured and considered reflection would be really helpful I think to produce and to read how others produce it. Yeah, so first the when I do agree like we should start with ordinance or regulatory change or budget and strategy and priority like not trying to do this in every discussion like we're not, we can't do that yet for your comments about the different types of equity and racial equity or racial justice would that be addressed you know or are you saying like we need to flesh out the identities or whatever that we're focused on I feel like that's where that could be addressed Yeah, and I think I did highlight the language which would state use for FIPOC or you need to plus disability and migrant communities and so I think having that general language and maybe question that a bit more kind of on our complex just making sure it's the right language to use but I did keep one of the questions as is 90% of it from Burlington which is does this item program follow up your practice online permission of ensuring racial equity if not in what ways that would perpetuate racial inequity and I think yeah having at least more or two questions but specifically have us think about that I think another one that might be helpful to pull out is and this was I didn't come up in identifying stakeholders is specifically thinking about accessibility around not just language but accessibility just to access the form to make sure they're screen readers and if the media is on interpretation for the best there so I think that would be the two different areas might benefit from pulling out but otherwise really thinking about how these different communities have both different needs but also making sure we're considering one of them can we use the official protected classes list um which I don't have in front of me I know quite a bit but I think like that would explain to you include like seniors um need to work at Burlington we'll probably use them not include a statement of including a proclamation with that yeah yeah let's start with that list I wonder if this would be helpful if I can share I'm sorry I was only able to really get this together today I would like to share that ahead of time but maybe if I share the list that I came up with and then folks can make sure that if they're running out of questions it's up to you that I met um or if there are any that I include that you think aren't beneficial would that be a good thing to start I think starting with the lining with that list from the proposition we already supported that you know what I'll share that out and then if anyone thinks of an identity that's missing that they would want to see included um could directly share that with them or not just one person for email um like getting this input tonight and I'm surprised that you just worked on it it's very good job would it make sense for you to do a revision and then bring that to the IME commission before it comes back to council yeah I think that's possible about that I wanted to clarify were you offering to put back up the list of questions that you had drafted crosswalking those with what other councillors had wanted to see or were we talking about the list of protected classes I did also I wonder um the first part of that do you have a thought that might be helpful too I don't know if it would be useful in this meeting or if I send something out after the meeting um I get individually if you see a question that you wanted in there that I could include and then I can kind of compile that and bring that to inclusion and belonging or I don't know if we want to compile it bring it back to council would do it any time I think this one is fine yeah that will work for me at least when is the next IMB meeting it's 20 we're aiming to have it on the 23rd um I'll definitely talk with them about this we really want to look at the equity audit but I feel like this might fit in with that discussion really well all confirming with the chair and staff liaison just so we would produce we would produce a recommendation from council at the next meeting and then you would take that to the IMB meeting because our next meeting is on the 21st we're out this draft we can have that on the next agenda and then provide some official feedback that doesn't give the commission much time to look at it in advance because we would miss the warning date for it yeah would this be out of line Eileen to share the draft version with them and then add on the council approach guidance from the 21st no whatever is available by whatever date and then whatever is newly available by whatever date we can do the track changes so that it's easier for them to review the changes also I mentioned I haven't looked at the statement in a bit but the BLCT equity committee came up with a relatively expansive list of protected classes so if you wanted to refer to that as well I'll post it in the chat sorry I'm noting the next steps oh thanks for that Eileen in the chat and then I hope for this for my next steps we're going to distribute this draft to the council we will review it at our 221 meeting to provide official recommendation we're also going to distribute it to the Ecclusion and Belong Commission we'll have time to digest it after the 221 meeting our official recommendations can be track changed into that and that update sharing with commissioners then we'll come back to the city council which means it won't make it into our official orientation that we have during our organization meeting right after town meeting but surely there after we can incorporate it in and maybe get some input from our new council member so let's talk about operationalizing our community engagement procedure um I basically I'm trying to capture in there what I think we discussed so there's a couple of questions do I do we identify one member of council to kind of take lead on checking in and keeping us on track do we pivot to quarterly projects similar to house staff brings us the different strategic vision area updates um I think those are the two key operational pieces should those updates also include is there value in us trying to us also documenting for different community events and informal things we do and then the last one is just kind of a note to remind us of what Jim brought up about realistic expectations I think it'd be fantastic for councils to identify a lead to keep council on top of outreach I feel like you can say that from the position that that won't be me but in all seriousness I think it's you know I think for this engagement procedure to work it doesn't have to be a driving person but it can be a person who at least is making sure to check in periodically so it doesn't get lost and this topic spurred me to think about where we were with Winnieski Housing Authority building meetings which we'd hope to do on a quarterly the three times a year basis and that's now so I think even just being reminded to do that is not something that I would have want to try and do it and organize again I just hadn't at the time had gotten away from me and a lot of time has passed since our last one so I think having that person who can just remind us where we are in the schedule would be really helpful and you know it can be short updates and be like this is what we've been able to do and this is what we hope to do next and it doesn't have to be a job it could just be a helpful role to fill within council yeah I think even if it's maybe more so than a role but like just the depository of events and outreach opportunities that exist because I think like I'm happy to go to stuff and take time off of work we're able but what I don't necessarily always have the time to do is to search out events that exist for me to go to um that's personal but yeah like I definitely would love to be out more and to be doing more more events and meeting with more community but I just don't personally have the time to find out what those events are to get to them always and maybe that is what this person whatever whoever this counsellor sweet designate might be able to dedicate time to doing yeah I think how we discuss this before when we put this together was like you're assigned a couple of different touch points reach out to them from time to time and this approach would be having one person look at that spreadsheet and be like hey can we talk to the next community or have we heard from them or it is a follow up item and then reminding us not going to be me too anyone on the council could be doing this we'll sort that out later um I wanted to check if that felt like it was something that would improve because the idea and the time is getting away from me too and I'm not following up like I wanted to in the first place yeah I definitely see the value of that but what I said that was knowing that I could not be that person especially we wanted to commission yeah I think this would actually I was going to say I think we would talk about it at the same time as we do these on assignments I do think that the like where are we doing this engagement is something we're having that open discussion on last time it's just that the kind of counselor led like if you're finding that space to go to, to meet with people where they're already convening at the end of like a PTO meeting and making a point to get to one of those every six months and the setup of that is hard but the ongoing repetition of that becomes a little bit easier and I wonder so I think like if we if it does get if it's a fairly narrow focus on trying to build up that repertoire of people who you can convene with and places where you're convening where people are already convening like that becomes a lot easier the next time around like again I'll use my personal example of the Ministry of Housing Authority buildings I now know who I would reach out to I can understand like roughly how many people are going to show up and we have the flyer already made for doing that session so the next time around seems like I'll have to go through a few less steps than I did the last time so the benefit like taking a spreadsheet plus a person to just check in on like it's been three months it's been six months these people should this this group of these folks should be coming back up and your name is next to that Thomas you know I'm putting together a report with council what should I say it might help us stay on track and so I think we can keep it somewhat circumspect and not have to be like a broader net of events that we can all try and get to and that's a second I think that's a useful direction to but it's kind of two separate the parallel initiatives I think I need to do some more thinking about the corner of the update process too and how to make that little lift as well who's you know providing those for the meeting agendas I think this is something I want to bring back when we do liaison assignments so whatever input you all have to share today I think I can bring back at that point good thoughts on the next steps that we have here and are you all okay with us revisiting the shared language and learning commitments in a future date thank you for some quick work there let's move to item K so in the summer meeting as we are moving towards time meeting day and in my eyes entering a new year of council work that's how I feel about it as we approach that timing and reflecting I feel like the budget discussions will be challenging this year not just because of the position we were in but because we didn't have last year when we did strategic prioritization process which we have done in will be for some years I think that because of where we were at with city manager hiring and staff capacity that there wasn't a real opportunity or space to further members of the council to have much input on that you know we kind of had an existing list of must do's and not much room to not much room on there so I wanted to outline like this is typically how we go about the process to make sure that we are taking some time and being strategic we can't do everything we don't have the money or staff capacity to address every issue every will and so we followed this process in the past to really align on what are the highest priorities so that we stay focused on that throughout the year I wanted to outline what we have done in the past to hear like what might be changed or how might we make this better so this starts with the orientation that happens for new council after town meeting day you might recall that we used a lot of time in strategy and priority session last year kind of deep diving into departments and operations staff is proposing to do that in advance this year like starting after orientation so we don't use you know we have more time for the actual prioritization discussion we also should be having an engagement plan and equity assessment tool based on the last item we then lean on our conditions to gauge progress for its master plan goals they share recommendations those aren't like binding recommendations but they share the informer thinking about you know what have we been doing well where we're missing what might be focused on I think there's an opportunity there to do another convening of commission chairs I'm not exactly sure what that looks like especially now that we have the inclusion of belonging commission which is an insight into a single strategic area of the plan I think this year I would only be accountable to inviting input in advance from council are there any priorities on your mind areas that we have been looking at so that we can have that parking model items available to us in the priorities discussion if there's things we want to move in and out so I think the outcome of this process is that like we we all feel bought into what priorities are and where we're aligned so that when something new pops up we either stay focused on what we said with priorities or if this thing really is urgently to deal with it then we're also aligned on like what are we pausing on for now so questions about process ideas for improvement concerns I don't have any concerns I think it's a great idea to start some of this conversation with the council in March yeah it does at least the last two that I've been on council it does feel like those retreats are there's a lot of work that goes into it so I would only worry or have I guess my only concern there would be how how this these changes in timing would play into staff staff capacity if it would actually be beneficial or if it would put more strain so I guess that's one question that I want to put out there I think on the council side of things it would feel beneficial to hear thoughts before we kind of get to day of day of the retreat so that I can have some frame of reference for suggestions that the various councillors will present as well as the commissions I think they often are reactive and it might be nice to offer some proactive opportunities for input as well so I do see some benefits to the change and also want to think about staff ability and how that would play into it yeah I appreciate that so we did discuss it at the leadership team level I'm trying to think through if I gave them adequate time to push back it just but the actually the debrief we had right after last year was like we kind of overloaded council and it wasn't as beneficial as the intent was so I think generally spacing it out you know we can be flexible about which department goes when to help with that workload I think in general it's actually probably a better approach but thank you I think there's an opportunity then to in those sort of department operations of the views to preview what you're thinking are going to be the upcoming priorities not to say that that's what they are we're committed to start giving a lot of time to digest that and so also where I think ensuring that the condition recommendations come to council more than one meeting before and whatever and the process for inviting council input for new ideas also gives time for us to see all of those in advance and think about them or maybe that's another agenda I'm thinking about and I do want to mention that given that we're in our first meeting in February this might be this might even take another year before we can kind of tease out the timeline a little bit more so it can be I don't know more I've lined up a little bit better because even starting now it still feels a little constrained to be ready for May considering like for example the infrastructure commission we may not meet this month or other commissions may not meet most of them won't be meeting in March so the next kind of opportunity for conversation would be April which then compresses the time for council things to come back to council before they are ready for the retreat so just kind of thinking about the how things are compressed and whether or not we just live with it or not there's some more ideal timing that we can kind of build in I appreciate your continued improvement I don't have an answer it's mainly the thing well it's something that I think we should consider the budget if it's approved by voters is setting a bit of policy direction already for 20 and so like I'm just looking back at our policies and priorities policy priorities strategies from last year and like many of these things are things that have been budgeted some of this stuff has been budgeted in and we really shouldn't just take a left turn and say this is a light green we're going to drop it off the list as something gets hard like in some ways the budget is already kind of a commitment to do some of those things so maybe one way to kind of separate out these items is to identify like these are things the budget is already kind of forcing us to focus on and so shifting these would really be like a more substantial change than adding something new or dropping one new idea in favor of another new idea so I wonder if you could kind of shorten that list or start that conversation earlier like here's what we see as coming as staff priorities already based on the budget and that would reduce this list maybe somewhat and make it a little bit easier to like think about how much more can you add and how is that done that's a really good point Jim and on top of that other things that we are like legally committed to continue and making that clear to us to know like this thing really can't be dropped or you know in theory we could change something but if we have a budget that is a certain kind so we should be eating we do have someone still in the audience oh great is there any public comment and questions no but I wanted to give the opportunity thank you we haven't had anyone I was in for a while and it sort of fell out from my radar sorry about that if you have other thoughts and ideas you want to share with me things reach out I also just thought it was important to kind of share this overview so that we all know like what does this look like how have we gotten to where we are today in addition to that there is always room for improvement and I do see the benefit and I think sometimes or at least the two commissions I am all there sometimes like what council wants to do so it would feel like again to help better lack communication too like what do they see that we need to work on and also how can we better help with giving them plans to continue that's another good point Marora in theory trying out a strategy and priority session we should be able to set those goals for each commission I don't think we got there actually in most years I don't think we've really gotten there I think we're getting better at it but we still haven't gotten there being very clear of helping commissions know this is what you should be working on or where they have been so that's that's a comment I want to think about alongside like if we convene chairs again how do we make this more effective yeah so I think maybe especially if they probably think the people again and Christians belonging is supposed to be a little bit more outside of the traditional structures and I think they're kind of getting in that group but even just an update on like the things council is going to be about we might try we might want your opinion on so just make sure they're on your radar kind of be that way yeah see we had commission work acquired as a column in the last round and I don't think that was easy to translate into a work plan because it could mean like this will come to you for some feedback or you're going to be driving all the policy discussion the policy formulation on this topic that could be nice if the commission work plans were largely written out of that policies and priorities session or at least the first six items or whatever for each commission and they can certainly add but I think that would be helpful to show or signify like this is something we want to get commission leadership on yeah seeing we made a step a step towards improvement but it wasn't quite there there should be a look at that I think one thing that may is again just kind of thinking in the moment our items you know as we have recurring commission updates and reviews of where we are with each of the work plan items and wondering about the things that were behind on for each of those areas and whether or not those should be elevated to have more focus since they're behind is their catch up that needs to happen and it may be case dependent or is it something that can be re-evaluated as a need I guess and following up on what that was like because we've been hearing a desire for money commission to do more focus on historic preservation we see prioritized that so explain to them why, when we might bring it back what a discussion would look like to pivot on that and I know there's other topics like that certainly something that the equity assessment tool will be very beneficial for anything else on this item as I said before I welcome your comments on both thoughts not the last time we'll talk about our process that is the end of this evening's agenda turn the motion to adjourn so moved second motion by Jen, second by Bryn all those in favor please say aye aye bye motion here is thank you all enjoy your evening it's so early