 Oh, wow. Just forward. Yeah. There we go. Cool beats. All right. All right. Yeah. We've run the charts under review now. What do you think? Oh! That's true. That's true. Okay, team. It is 6.30. And you know what that means. All right. Welcome. I'm going to call this meeting to order. So the first item of business is to review and approve the agenda. So I think we have a one item to pull, which is the zoning fix. The zoning fix is correct. Item seven. Post-pull that until the next meeting. Are there any other changes to the agenda? Okay. So we'll consider the agenda approved without objection. And so the next item is general business and appearances, which is a time for anyone from the public to address the city council on any issue that is otherwise not on our agenda. And I'm going to take a privilege of going first. Which is to say that I want to just take a minute and recognize this is our first regular council meeting since the passing of Nancy Sherman and Sergeant Jennings. And so I just want to recognize that they're a great service to the City of Montpelier. I'm very thankful for them. So that's yes, for sure. All right, so there is any member of the public who would like to address the council on any other item otherwise not on our agenda. And this is true for other things when you come up to comment if you would say your name and where you're from and try to keep your comments to two minutes or less so we can keep the conversation going. Okay. We're going to keep going then. Okay, so the next item is consideration of the consent agenda. Motion regarding that. Okay. Further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Opposed? Okay, so our first regular business item is the riverfront access presentation. So I'm going to invite all of those who are part of that to come on up to the front table and I'm going to move and I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay. Mind saying your names. I will. You want us to say our names? Sure. Regina Lennard on the landscape architect with Milona McBroom. Your voices are not being picked up by the mic so I'm going to ask you to go back so everybody can hear your names. Thank you. Ricarda Erickson with the Vermont River Conservancy. And I'm Regina Lennard with Milona McBroom. Steve Libby with the Vermont River Conservancy. Roy Schiff with Milona McBroom. Well, thank you for this opportunity to present to you this evening. We've introduced ourselves and I wanted to give you a little bit of history of kind of where we got, how we got to this point and going back to the August 22nd City Council meeting we came before you and you authorized us to do a conceptual design and feasibility study for the newly designated Confluence Park at the point where the North Branch River comes into the main stem of the Winooski River on the city owned transit center property and we then immediately put out an RFP and hired Milona McBroom to do these conceptual designs and feasibility study with us. We also gathered an advisory committee of 17 people from diverse professions throughout Vermont and we held three public meetings to get public input as to what was important to people when considering the design for this Confluence Park. We now have three design concepts and a feasibility study to present to you tonight. We are not asking you to choose which one of the three is your favorite. We're not going to be voting on that tonight, but they are meant to show you what is possible at this place. What is possible for a Confluence Park and we would like to ask you for a commitment moving forward to authorize the Vermont River Conservancy to work with the Montpelier Parks Department and any other applicable city offices to further develop a design for the Confluence Park and to move ahead towards realizing this vision of a Confluence Park here. And we all know that a lot has changed since August 22nd in Vermont, I mean sorry in Montpelier, especially in this particular area. There's a lot of projects, new projects happening, new development and I want to just briefly address that when we are referring to the Confluence Park tonight we may refer to it as the Confluence Park West and that is because it's on the west side of the North Branch River. Throughout the four months an opportunity came to the table to look at the Moat Lot which is on the east side of the North Branch River and the city is now thinking about other opportunities moving ahead to that lot and VRC is happy to serve on a committee to look at different options and internally we refer to that lot, the Moat Lot as Confluence Park East. It's not going to be part of the conceptual design tonight because we know it's very early on in that phase of thinking and it's not necessarily on the table as a viable option at this point but when we but we do hold it in a broader of what could be and so we will refer to that a little bit tonight the Confluence Park East but know that what we are presenting to you tonight the conceptual designs are for the Confluence Park West and I would like to at this point hand it over to Regina to continue the presentation. Great, I'm going to put my glasses on so you can see what I'm doing. Thank you for the opportunity to present these ideas to you tonight and I just want to give you a little background a little context and I know Ricardo talked a little bit about the project and how it came to be and what I want to talk to you about is just some of the considerations that we looked at as moving the concepts forward really the ultimate goal is to create a riverfront park for the community and so some of the considerations are river access and accessibility so trying to appeal to multiple users and users of vulnerabilities to create new recreation opportunities especially on the river to think about flood resilience to consider the context of the park to the downtown and to the city and to the city's history and to think about this area as a public space and what it could be and how it could serve the community and then finally how to integrate the bike path there's a lot of different ways to do it and I'll walk you through some of those tonight and then just the other piece of this is thinking about Confluence East on the other side and I'll talk a little bit about that further on but it's really looking at those opportunities to knit those together those spaces so all of those things that I just mentioned those design considerations were really project objectives that have been guided and then reinforced through community outreach so all of these were really guided by the public input that came even prior to this project with the many sort of input sessions and community sessions that you've held with the Taylor Street lot and the Carr lot but then also the Vermont River Conservancy and the public meetings that they conducted as part of this project so they met three times and had an opportunity to hear some of the public input and these are just some of the themes and you see that they really mirror some of the design considerations river access balance of uses looking at recreational opportunities, a boat launch thinking about the environmental components white water opportunities fishing and then sitting areas trees and vegetation different levels from which to view the river and the landscape shelters and picnic tables year round usability maybe opportunities for play there was a lot of ideas people wanted to incorporate history if possible maybe pay some homage to the Native American ancestry on the site or in the city and then think about views both of the river and back to the capital and general beautification opportunities for public art so a lot of input and a lot of great ideas and things that we considered moving the concepts forward I'm just going to give you a little bit of background on the site there are some historic preservation this is in the Montpelier historic district and so we have to be considerate of historic character in the context there's potential archaeological resources on the site including the retaining walls that are there that date back to the 19th century and there may be some underground archaeological resources that might come up in the future as this park has developed and generally the treatment of historic landscapes kind of follows the territory of the interior standards it's the national park service and they generally require review and approval at the state level sometimes the local level as well safety and access considerations obviously you have a very steep site and you have shoreline access if that's something that you want to achieve you have to be consider that there's a 17 foot elevation change you have a channelized slope with structures and just for a point of reference universal access if we were to try to get people all the way down to the river would require 240 linear feet of ramp so that was one of the things we explored and we looked at the extent of universal access and then how to integrate the bike path the bike path goes through the west confluence site kind of breaks it in two and so we looked at different ways to integrate the bike path and then finally the railroad you have a railroad right of way that borders one part of the property and so managing public access points around that railroad is something to consider and then there are the environmental considerations this is in a special flood hazard area the whole downtown in fact is in the hundred year flood plain and so we have to think about flood resiliency opportunities for capacity perhaps but also just looking at how things are constructed and the design proposal and making sure that it's resilient to flooding riparian vegetation because this is sort of a man made environment there's not a lot of high value vegetation out there now but a project of this scope presents a great opportunity to improve the habitat and riparian vegetation in the area and along the river and then finally site remediation this is a site that has had known contamination and so it's been cleaned up and so any further impacts would need to go through a permitting process so those are all some of the considerations and then finally if you look down at the bottom of the screen we have the proposed let me see if I can do this I'm not good with the track mouse I won't do this a lot because it will drive everybody crazy but we have the proposed west confluence site that you can see and then the proposed east confluence site and then all the green areas denote sort of public open spaces within the downtown or within walking distance of the downtown and these are all connected by the proposed bike path and the central Vermont recreation pass and the cross Vermont trail so one of the reasons that I mentioned this is that this area as Ricardo mentioned is going through an incredible transformation and so you have the transit center or we're calling confluence west you have and this is a maybe but you have other amenities that are in flex right now like the parking garage perhaps you have confluence east and that parcel that's open for development or redevelopment and then you have river restoration and access and that's something that I'll talk a little bit about further on because we also have been looking at ways to restore the river so these all all open up opportunities to really capitalize on the full potential of this area to face the river you have all this development happening and what a great opportunity to really have that development orient itself toward the river you have connected public spaces and unified with a unified design language and great access to the river so with that I'm just going to get into the conceptual design I'm going to show you really three concepts and they all achieve something a little bit different so I'm going to stay rather high level tonight but certainly if you have questions feel free to ask so again the considerations as we approach this is river access accessibility recreational opportunities flood storage and resiliency context and history what is the quality of the public space and then the integration of the shared use path so the first concept we're calling this the performance park and really these are just themes so that you understand each of these achieve something a little bit better than some of the other concepts what this concept does is it incorporates the bike path but it expands the space envelopes the bike path on either side so it utilizes the existing sort of graded flat area to the absolute maximum and what that does is that allows a larger public space so that then you can accommodate small concerts and community events so you'll see that this features this concept features a performance pavilion with seating along the front so that you can sit there and eat your lunch on a nice summer day again it integrates the bike path without interruption and it creates a large accessible overlook so I'm going to talk a lot about the overlooks and this area right here in all of the concepts is one of the spots for an overlook and it's just a perfect spot it sits a little bit down it has this great view and it has the historic walls and so this one has a large accessible overlook and it provides some access so there's accessibility to that large overlook and then the river access for fishing it's a little bit steeper because we've maximized the space at the top of the site and I'll just show you a couple of section elevations so if you look down at the image on the lower left of the screen you see the dash red line that shows you how we've cut the section and which way the arrows show which way we're facing just to help you orient so this shows kind of a line of action of the pavilion and then you can see the seating at the front of the pavilion and then a little bit of a path space and a lot of the plantings kind of create opportunities for seating so we berm those up and we have stone seating and it provides a little bit of pedestrian scale and then the bike path you can see how that's sort of integrated in the space and then a stabilized slope of the plantings and seating opportunities and then a path and access down by the river this one I'll just I know this is going to get tiresome of looking at all of these yeah so if you look at your handouts and all of you if you want to download these at a later date you can just take a look at how these spaces are divided where are these going to be available they will send you the materials in fact I have a drive I can give you tonight so you can post them so in this one it just gives you a sense of that multi-use plaza space it cuts between it and then the tiered pathways down to the river's edge so the next concept we call the riverine park it's oh did I skip one? okay I'll go back to it sorry oh I did that so the next concept is what we call heritage park and the reason that we're calling this heritage park is that one of the things that we heard from people is that they really wanted us to pay tribute to the Native American culture and so this one is really crafted on the concept of a medicine wheel and so you have access on the north south east and west if you look at the handouts you can have a little bit more of a description of them but the idea here is that it's this great opportunity for interpretation and you have east west north itself they're all representative of different seasons and there's a whole host of interpretive information that you learn a lot about culture and there are spirit animals with each of these directions and so those will be featured as figurines in the garden space so this great opportunity for public art and interpretation so this features a central plaza so the big idea in this is that in this scheme the bike path sort of gets integrated and absorbed by this really vibrant energetic public space and they're seating along the middle a raised planted area with a central element like a totem or something that's really exciting and visually exciting to look at seating along the edge and then the overlook is accessed it's flush with the plaza and it's accessed by a shelter so just a small little shelter so it has this niche little lawn space which would be really cool and then this concept also provides two accessible overlooks and a fishing platform so if you look let me see if I can get us there so we have this overlook and then we've got one at the top of the site right here and then a fishing platform here so in this one you can see there's a lot of ramp but because we've structured the ramps with walls we're able to make the most out of the space compress it and get people down to a fishing platform so people can fish in the river and there's also access down via paths as well and stepping stones and again on this one just to look through the site you can see the different levels on this one again you're cutting through the plaza and then the last alright the last concept is the riverine pockets part I just want to double check the first one that I got sorry the first one that I got is concept C and I've got a second version that says concept C yeah one of them has the river for context the other one has the concept just a little bit bigger if you wanted to see some of the details you should have A, B, and C I have two C's I have two C's yeah I don't have an A oh well it's basically what's up on the screen and it's the two versions of the same you so then this final scheme is really the idea of creating a separate area for the bike path and creating more of a riverine experience this is a more linear park and it is a sloped park but it does feature two accessible overlooks and a fishing platform it provides river access for fishing and a boat launch and you can see that the bike path goes through and then the amenities for the bike path or the multi-use path are on the left hand side it's sort of on the north side of the trail so you have an opportunity to put your bikes away if you want to go down and explore the park so this is a much more of a linear experience but it's also much more private and the spaces are smaller more of a niche experience and that just has to do with the fact that we're putting a lot of programming in a really sloped small space so I won't because of the time get into these but you can take a look and see and then finally the other thing we looked at the breakdown of cost what do these concepts represent in terms of potential budgets and so what we did is we did a cost breakdown and you can see here that just for your purposes we looked at earthwork and construction that's about a quarter of the budget right there retaining walls and paths another 20% or so and then amenities, bike racks, seating all the things that help to make place the place is another quarter of the budget and the rest kind of gets divided out between some of the features design and permitting storm water, things like that and then I'm not going to spend any time on this but the other piece of this is if you're investing in river access and treating these wonderful places to get to the river having a river that's clean and safe for swimming and fishing and reciting for boating opportunities that's all part of the strategy as well so we have been looking at that and we do have, I think a slide that addresses that so I think that's it for us and I just have, Ricardo will wrap it up I just want to do a two minute wrap up so the confluence is a point where two or more rivers merge and become one the water of one river is not lost at a confluence there's the case with a north branch here whose water mingles with the Winooski and eventually flows into our great lake Champlain and confluence is a word that could apply to our city as well as the capital city and located in the center of the state Montpelier is a merging point for the people of Vermont so here this picture is the confluence park this past November let's consider this the before picture we have the opportunity now to define the after picture like the rivers that flow along its shores imagine a place for people to come together from all walks of life for the residents of the transit center and the French block to sit in their backyard alongside a legislator on her lunch break for a high school student to pause for a moment as he walks along the multi-use path on his way home from school for a grandparent to sit with a grandchild on the river's edge looking for hair and otter or pilliated woodpeckers for visitors staying at the hotel to stop and enjoy our riverside park before heading out to our shops and restaurants an angler casting a line for a wild trout a kayaker paddling waters that will take her to Waterbury through a public outreach we have heard resounding support for the confluence park you this city council has the opportunity to be a critical part of transforming our confluence park into an after picture that is vibrant with a diversity of people enjoying the many amenities and opportunities provided by riverside park the after picture could be that of a small parcel that created a huge transformation for our city where the human landscape mimics the merging of rivers a confluence that brings together people as one community thank you it's very exciting so dear council and public I know it's going to be very tempting to comment on these designs right now but that is not the point right so I have thoughts that I want to share with you but I'm going to save that for another time because I think the point right now is are we going to continue to support your process and open it up to counselors first and then the public and then we'll see if there's a motion any comments from city council I guess I'm sort of curious what kind of resources the city would be expected to bring to the yeah so resources resources yes not just like money but like people time and like what about we envision a process moving forward that is collaborative would be the Vermont river conservancy working alongside the parks department and any other applicable city commissions or offices and to to define what that separation or shared resource is so I think that is to be determined I think that what Vermont river conservancy would bring to the table is our experience working on river restoration and public access and also our ability to seek funding sources so that's the level of collaboration and resources that I think we we know at this time but we are open to what plan might develop yeah good I just I this is maybe we're going to have a budget discussion later I'm just I support this and I think I would love the city to be at the table I'm just a little concerned about like how we're spreading resources out on the on the parks side of things and I also I noticed you said city offices does that include like other shareholders that are active in the area like other organizations that are doing work like we have the sustainable your piece or is it like everyone who's involved in this sort of city design and development that's invited or is it just yes we're happy to collaborate trust republic land would be a great resource to collaborate with other comments Donna well I definitely support the city getting involved and maybe we need bill and the staff to give us feedback to estimate time and what they can handle but I'm assuming they can say yes we can or yes we can't any time you need something and we'll just keep track of it I guess is how I feel as far as staff allotment and both of you did such a great job of explaining what could be very confusing up there so thank you it was well done I really appreciate your work and in that direction I just want to follow up and ask again where online the public might be able to find these images and when the next step is going to happen yeah we'd be happy to share them if the city wants to put them up on the web city website we can put them on the Vermont river conservancy website we haven't put this is the first unveiling of the concept so we they aren't currently available but as soon as tomorrow morning but next time you're going to share this with us ahead of time right yes great okay and sorry and then what exactly is the next step and when would that next meeting be if it's a public meeting to be determined okay comments from the public go ahead my name is Katie Michaels and I live in Montpelier and I'm on the Montpelier conservation commission and I just wanted to share on behalf of the commission how excited we are about this project and how excited we are for the possibility of increased public access and connection I think connection almost more than access to the river and acknowledgement of this thing that flows through our city so we're really excited to continue to be part of the advisory committee and support the project and thanks to BRC for your leadership thank you anyone else hi I'm Bob Hines I live in Montpelier and I've spent a fair amount of time in the river in this area and I think it's a great idea but I think this part's got to be part of an overall plan for how you're going to use the river people are talking about taking out a number of dams there's from what I understand proposed river access at Caledonia Spirits and actually I don't exactly know what the status of that is but there you have a great opportunity to come up with a plan on how you're going to use the whole river through Montpelier and there's a great river access right behind Montpelier High School which no one really knows about but it's one of the best places to get in the river in that area I mean you've got people using right below the dam on Pioneer Street there's a big outcropping people come down there and sunbathe I mean if you could take out some of the dams you have a great access all the way from Barry really down to Middlesex so I think you need to come up with a plan for what you're going to do with all of this and also things like the right swill dam is now under relicensing and do you want to get involved with that in terms of flows and maybe some bottom releases to water up in the winter and cool it down in the summer I mean there's a lot you can do and this is just part of the whole plan that reminds me Rosie Kruger who is not here tonight sent me an email and wanted to weigh in that we use this time to suggest to you all that there may be some possibility in tying to Confluence Park and including the site at or the access, potential access point at Caledonia Spirits at Old Country Club Road which I think maybe you know about as well as timber homes and maybe there's a water trail or some kind of theme in the signage or some other kind of tie-in so anyway I just want to put that out there other comments okay so is there motion on table how do you want to state that you could refer to I think you got an email from Ricardo that might have some language I think I have it I would move to continue the development of the Confluence River Park by authorizing the Vermont River Conservancy Montpellier Parks Department and other appropriate city offices to conduct a more in-depth public process refine plans and collaborate on a fundraising plan skip a couple of things in there but okay further discussion does that have all the points that I did find the agenda page and just brought up to study all the access issues and specific proposal to improve the newly approved Confluence Park area and if it was fine I think the language you read was from Ricardo's email right I was reading the one off the agenda so that should be fine right yes I think that you're referring to the background information of what we had until now okay good alright further discussion alright Alan Farrer please say aye aye opposed great so just toss in to continue to be a city project which I think is exciting certainly that staff would really like to make sure that some of our folks are involved in their planning and public works in particular have some needs in that area for access of certain things so we're sure whatever designs some of these I think might work with what they need and some might not and just we want to make it as successful as possible so if you can include our folks in at the front end well thank you so much for your work it's very exciting okay moving on to the second hearing of parking ordinance so this is we made some changes the last time so I'm going to open up the public hearing at this point and start with council are there any comments for any changes or anything on the parking ordinance as changed last time my impression is that it is where we want it to be I think we can move through this pretty quickly fantastic would anybody like to actually any comments from the public on the parking ordinance I did already okay I'm going to unless anybody wants to comment on the parking ordinance just making sure okay great great we're going to close the public hearing on that is there a motion I make a motion to approve all four ordinance as amended at the first hearing second wait at the first at the second hearing what because this is really the third hearing on the second hearing sorry yeah okay doing the second hearing from last from the last meeting last meeting or last time it was as proposed a little second does that sound okay great for the discussion all right all in favor please say aye opposed okay great thank you all right the zoning fixes is off of our list so now we are up to the investment policy so I'm going to invite Terrence field up to the table here so he's the chair of our investment committee I don't know if you want to say anything about this but sure I can say a few things so we've been working on this for a while we're seeking approval of an amendment to the city's investment policy we've been for a while now we've been talking about adding environmental social government restrictions almost to the policy because it's been kind of wide open we worked with the investment advisor that the committee works with to manage the portfolios that we managed for the city and we came up with some language I would call this kind of a first step you know we may go back and revisit this over time you're going to keep in mind that we managed several portfolios most of them are fairly small so it's real difficult to achieve the level of diversification that you want in a very small portfolio so we've tried to you know stratify that in the language that we're putting in the policy in terms of you know how we're going to manage portfolios less than $300,000 and portfolios greater than $300,000 so a language is in there and I could try to answer the questions that you might have well I'm thrilled about this I think it's great that we're taking these steps and it's taking us some time to get to this point and yeah any comments from council I know I know you so Donna do you have something go ahead you had to I've read so I could almost understand it so good for you um I could take the liberty of adding a little bit of background here so one possibility for an investment strategy given you know potential social responsibility restrictions is one possible is you start from nothing and you say what are you going to invest in and build up from zero and the other way to do it is to start with okay if we're investing in more or less everything now what are we going to take out of that that we don't want to be a part of and it just particularly because of the size of our accounts it turned out to be easier to do the second to say you know we're invested in all of these things and so we're going to particularly not as we can anyway not invest in these certain types of things and then the list is there okay so that's just for context that's how we arrived at this point sorry I don't mean to it's probably more detail than you really need I have a separate motion but I think it's best if we consider this first and fair enough okay great okay so is there any public comment on this on the investment policy and comments from council go ahead Glen thank you I almost could understand it too so I appreciate that like Donna I would like to go in just a little bit closer to those tiers because I think I understand the intent accounts with total value under 300,000 are relatively you can do what you want with them because they're not big enough it's going to be very difficult to diversify that level and then those accounts over 300,000 that last long sentence while the manager shall exclude direct investments in the industry sectors identified in order to gain exposure to certain asset classes and so on it may be necessary to purchase shares of mutual funds under ETFs that do have some exposure so can you just kind of expand on that a little bit so I understand because I think I understand that you have some freedom even with those larger accounts but what exactly is the difference I think is what I'm trying to say could you restate it so in a larger fund greater than 300,000 dollars more likely as it goes up in size the investment advisor would have more flexibility to invest in individual securities so that gives them the flexibility to say okay we're not going to invest in Smith and Browning or whatever however to still achieve the overall goal of that portfolio there may be some value in adding a mutual fund under an ETF and when you get into those you don't have a lot of say in terms of unless you buy a particular sector mutual fund it says okay we're only going to this mutual fund only invests in solar energy but if we're trying to achieve diversification you might get a fund that has some shares in ExxonMobil it's not our intent but there's our intent to diversify and meet the goal of the particular portfolio did that help okay great don I thought of it as bundle services like when you go to get cable TV you get a certain bundle and you're stuck with more things than you want just to get a certain channel small or mutuals are bundled and you can't separate them because they're so small the mutual funds they have obviously certain directors their objectives of that fund and if that fits into one of our overall portfolios we like what that fund is doing but it may still be investing in one or two companies or something like that don't fit what we're trying to do but we don't feel that overall taints what we're trying to do Ashley so I was just looking I've been kind of thinking about this for a bit and I was just looking at some other ESG policies from other entities and organizations and one of the things that I am curious if we might be willing to explore is sort of having a philosophy like an investment philosophy as part of our policy so I think this came up when we were talking about charter changes as well I think that there these are certainly fine starting points I think for things that we don't want to invest in but I think that there are other things too human rights violations that may be being committed by certain companies that are invested elsewhere or doing business elsewhere I think public health and public safety for example depending on what the city stands is about certain drug manufacturers for example or something like that it strikes me that maybe having a guiding philosophy as well as these are the things that we will absolutely not invest in but also looking at sort of these other pieces as well because we can say sure a hard no on the production or manufacture of firearms and sale of firearms but we're going to be okay with deforestation in an unsustainable way in some other country because the return is good for us I guess I don't really see that as savvy financial stewardship because it may benefit us but it's kind of how I feel about coal use to generate electricity that's great for those of us that don't have to live with the coal burning in our backyard and so I guess I think this is a good starting point but I'm looking for maybe like a guiding philosophy that gets incorporated into this and finding a way to incorporate that into the ESG investment policy overall Fair enough one of the things that we had gone back and forth about while there was it would I don't want to speak for the committee but I think it would probably be safe to say that the committee may not want to be the ones that come up with that philosophy because it is the council's philosophy and not the investment committee's philosophy and they would I think not feel that it is their purview to do that so I mean that's something that I think you or I or others on the council like we could potentially try to take a crack at that and then bring it to the committee and then vet that sort of there would be a process around that I think but potentially, sure Jack I got a couple of questions are most of the city's accounts invested in mutual funds or are they invested in individual stocks most of the portfolio I would say are invested in mutual funds because they are fairly small and they have one larger portfolio that does have individual securities and have you looked at the various SR mutual funds that are out there like Calvert or whatever to see how they comport with the standards that are proposed here that the committee has not that's something we would talk to the investment advisor about and we would ask them to do that and see how that fits in terms of the overall objective of that individual portfolio because what we don't want to do is go down a road where yes we may be complying overly complying with this new aspect of the policy but it may be to the judgment of the performance of the portfolio so we have to weigh both of those well yeah that actually brings in my mind which is this is all these funds are funds owned by the people of Montpelier and we certainly have values that we want to uphold but we also have an obligation to the residents of the city of taking care of their money and getting a good return for them on what we have invested and that's what the committee weighed a lot in terms of all right how much of this can we do and at the same time balance maintaining our producer responsibility of meeting the objective of that portfolio further comments okay is there a motion I move that we approve the proposed policy further discussion all in favor please say aye opposed great and Connor go ahead so I have a separate motion I think it's somewhat along the lines of what Ashley was saying when I read the policy today checked a lot of boxes for me with the firearms tobacco fossil fuels I think there were some things missing in my mind that I wanted to see a still deeper into I appreciated the chair saying this was a first step right because I think we have a bit more work to do looked into Portland Oregon who passed an extremely comprehensive divestment policy just a few weeks ago with a couple hundred people coming out and weighing in on it and they talked about issues like do we want to support companies that are complicit with like a Trump border wall do we want to support private prisons do we want to support some of the atrocious actions that Israel has taken in the occupied territories but a lot of these are quite subjective right the ones we're dealing with here are pretty straightforward that's it I think it warrants some time looking into some of these other issues I'd be happy to take part in that but I think just to send a motion to everybody looking we're not done here I'd like to present this motion if I could read it the city is committed to integrating environmental, social and governance criteria into its investment considerations including the considerations of environmental justice labor rights, human rights and good citizenship on the side of companies the investment committee will consult with stakeholders and ESG experts to present the council with a plan for such integration I don't feel the need to put a timeline on that right now I hope we can have those conversations but I think this motion is important just to say that we're not done and there will be a second step in this so we'd appreciate this support second that I'm just a little confused your motion is asking the committee to do it the committee said they prefer the council do it so I like the idea but I still think it's the council's responsibility more than the committee would you accept an amendment? that's not what the amendment is that instead of having the committee being referred to the committee have the council do it we can have a committee of the council I consider it a friendly amendment okay okay is that okay with that okay so if we are going to continue to look into it then it'll be some subgroup of us that sounds probably bring us back some recommendations we really shouldn't be telling you how to manage the money great that's fine with me I'm going to assume that there are some people who are up for doing that you are Ashley? I think there's also another committee that would be happy to probably participate in that okay great super I take it to mean the social and economic justice committee fantastic alright so further conversation all in favor please say aye okay great thank you so much we just divested from fossil fuels we're not making any new investments in fossil fuels we're not divesting anything no we are that's what that was avoid investing anyway we can talk more about that alright so moving on the Montpelier community fund and arts board come on up the city manager that was pretty close can I close this not my first meeting you don't need to use the projector or anything thank you for having us so we're the we're three out of five members of the Montpelier community fund Christine Zaki Ron Wilde Michael Sherman I'm the current chair of the community fund board and so we presented our recommendation to you and the materials for the council meeting and wanted to come this evening to have an opportunity to present those recommendations create some context around those recommendations and answer any questions that you might have would it be acceptable mayor if I just briefly walk through the memo so we just wanted to again create some context because we're extremely cognizant of the fact that these recommendations present a larger number than you've seen in years past and so we want to talk about the reasons why so the recommendations for this year total $133,250 and so we wanted to talk a little bit about the context last year's Montpelier community fund grant making totaled $115,500 and then what we saw happen last year was that there were three nonprofit ballot requests that went onto the ballot so there were three nonprofits who had previously applied pretty regularly to the board that did not apply last year and applied to the ballot and so those three recommendations totaled $26,000 so if you add our $115,500 that went out the door through this Montpelier community fund competitive grant making process and then that $26,000 that went onto the ballot and was approved by our generous citizen members, citizens so $141,500 so the context that we just wanted to point out for you is that those three nonprofits who had applied who had petitioned to be on the ballot last year and had their ballot items approved came through the door of the Montpelier community fund this year and so there are grant recommendations for those three organizations in the total that we're presenting to you tonight the $133,250 which is less than the $141,500 that the city spent in total on nonprofit grants last year of course we cannot control whether or not any nonprofits choose to go on the ballot this year obviously that is beyond anyone's scope here but right now that's our context for the number that we're presenting to you this year I just wasn't sure everyone that went on the ballot come to the community fund first or they didn't come at all no so last year right so the the policy that was created when the Montpelier community fund board was created was that you can't double down people have in the past so I just wondered if they came to you first and then went to the ballot they just directly went to the ballot yes thank you clear they might do that one year and then the next year but they can't come to the the timeline doesn't allow it they can't come to the application process and then change their mind and appeal to the ballot I mean the city's rules for I know the rules are stated but people haven't always stayed in it so that's I just want to make sure I'm not aware of anyone who's done that who's done it the next year when they haven't got it enough this year it was also the case that two of those had missed the deadline for various reasons there were changes going on in the organization in one of them and I'm not sure what the second one was so that was they came as petition because they were on they had missed the deadline for applying to the board the other one actually decided that they did not want to go directly to the boarders thank you so we can certainly talk at length if you desire about any of the recommendations or any of the trends that we observed and talked about in the memo but I'm going to stop there and take any questions that the council might have go ahead Ashley I was just looking so community connections is listed on here but from what I understand there are no longer the contracted service provided we don't know that I thought I got an email saying so that was so they're going to be continuing to talk about that decision okay but I guess so okay so they're going to continue to talk about it that's fine when will we know for sure whether or not the contract is awarded to them because what I don't that has served Montpelier youth for a while now but if they don't have the contract and the money is already been allocated and dispersed I mean what yeah so if I can take a crack at responding to that so the funds are not dispersed until the summer? yeah the next fiscal year after July 1 so there's a good chunk of time between now and then and I am in my copious amounts of volunteer time available and also going to be serving on the school board committee that is looking at this issue so I'm going to be very well aware of whether or not the community connections contract is awarded and we'll definitely be taking it upon myself to work with the city if we should need to take another look at that if community connections are longer serving the city of Montpelier if I can add we do have a history of withholding funds I'm sorry there is a history of withholding funds or delaying funds if the scope of a project has changed or if we learn that it can't be delivered as was intended when was intended even though the funds go out at the beginning of the fiscal year there's contracts, there's memos so it really ends up being more like August sometimes even into September so there is an opportunity do you send wording to that when you award it if there's any change the money might not happen I think they're worthy do we need to add word if there's a significant change in the project then we ask we actually don't send out the finance department does finance and our office does they're actually contracts for service that when Ron said we can't hold the city we'd never see when we make a motion we don't have to make a special motion for that it's already being done thank you on the same topic so the award letter from the city or whatever would be subject to them providing the services for the project great thanks this is fun to read and I am a little bit curious about whether you can speculate about why nonprofits go back and forth between ballot requests and fund applications I heard that in a couple cases it was just that they missed the deadline is there anything beyond that just sort of happenstance there's certainly one significant example central Vermont home health and hospice and so they in the memo that you received you can see that they went to the ballot twice for $20,000 and I'm not involved in central Vermont home health and hospice myself so I cannot claim to represent their thinking however I did have a very long phone call with them last night so I do feel updated and from their perspective they look at their budget they look at the number of visits to community members in each other towns in their region and then they do a division and they figure out per capita how much they believe each town that they serve should be allocating to them and so that figure for the city of Montpellier is $20,000 so if we look at the amount that the Montpellier Community Fund Board has granted over our history that would be a very significant portion of that total so in the conversation that we had last night we talked through that and talked through the fact that we understood and appreciated very much their very rational process for coming up with that figure and at the same time this is a competitive grant making process where they're in an application portfolio with 43 other applications and that this was a grant application and not an invoice to the city and so you know they would be very productive calls very positive and they you know they understand our position and understand that we're presenting a grant making portfolio as a whole to the city that represents a very diverse interests of you know taxpayers basically you know and therefore can't promise to fulfill every single request and fully fund every single request of every single applicant so that you know particular example has sort of been you know that's that's been the example that has loomed large if you will for the past several years thank you well did you have one more question in a separate topic it's also interesting to me that it is the Montpelier Community and Arts Fund and a bunch of the language references grants to individual artists and I remember from previous years a couple recurring grants to individual artists but I don't think I see anything like that here in terms of you and applications I'm kind of curious about that have you heard from individual artists and they say doesn't it bite me anymore we noticed the same by the time we see the applications of course the deadline has arrived so I don't yet you're right in your observation I don't know that we have any insight other than it's a particular kind of thing and what people are working on and if it's the kind of thing that they feel they could bring to us but I think it's important to say that when we start this whole process we send out the word quite widely and it's generally known and the guidelines are known so people who are interested in applying ought to be able to get access to that word and we do our best to make sure that that word is out and then this year just the new artists who came to us we even send a reminder out before the deadline so we correspond twice so we make an attempt absolutely and I appreciate that and as an individual artist I remember seeing those so I don't want to imply that and I might add new for this year in addition to submitting a digital application they could also fill it out directly from the city's website so we do what we can to make it easy for us they still have to provide the information and make their case thank you Donna then Jack it's really a question for the manager rather than for you folks and that is does the budget worksheet we have on the face of it this looks like an increase does the budget worksheet we have show that it's the 133 but it includes the $26,000 that was your ballot last year so the budget right now shows the 133 $250 we actually adjusted that at the last meeting because we'd had a lower amount the $120 so we adjusted that by $8,000 we have the correct amount in so that is the combination of everything last year the budget had the $140, $150 in the final approved version but voters approved so we've got we've matched their recommendation okay great thank you I saw a mar how and Ron's been on the committee from the beginning I think on nearly and then so has Michael and you I put so much work into this it's so incredible and people should go online and read these the link that's on the agenda I do have one question because you provided these wonderful little synopses of why you gave this or that but there are about four and one in particular and I won't mention names I didn't give you an annual report or didn't include a budget I mean like it sound like their application was really incomplete and yet you nearly funded them 100% and I don't understand that you know honestly it's hard for me to respond without talking about so on one hand okay okay well anyway I was really surprised and we it's sort of an up down we accept everything you give us or don't accept it but that is one of my questions if somebody hasn't given you their last year what they did and showing how they used the money and then this year don't include enough narrative and budget I don't know why you'd fund them so I just put that out there as a question yeah that's a very fair question I mean it's something that we very much pay attention to and had a lot of discussion about this meeting you know I think that they're given the extremely broad spectrum of nonprofits who are applying to us you know from individual artists, grassroots nonprofits to extremely large sophisticated nonprofits you know that have budgets in the tens of millions of dollars and many many paid staff you know while we want to hold everyone to a high standard at the same time I think that it's fair to say we also take into account the capacity of the nonprofits to comply with those standards if that makes sense you know and so look at you know is that to what degree is this you know for instance maybe a really small grassroots nonprofit but your point is really well taken and if you I understand you would like this to point out please do my next question is so when you respond to them and say okay you got this but we didn't give you the full amount we took out 500 you got the 4000 instead or whatever do you say next year we need this done or you don't get any money I mean is there any consequences when I when I heard no budget no narrative and they got the money I just whoa right and we can certainly talk to a greater degree about the applications and in fact those applications well these applications aren't what benefits next year it's continued I don't know if this is the first year they were so poorly so poor in their application or not I don't have that information I think the I would say that the committee is a whole we definitely can't I feel like it would probably be inappropriate for us to threaten or to project right and so I feel like we can only respond to what's in front of us and not create consequences around like future actions well but you do say because you didn't do this we didn't give you money right yes right so there's some people who are penalized we hope they read that and understand council has been very careful and thoughtful I should say in assembling community fund board membership whose members are drawn from the community and so we generally have some basis of experience or knowledge or insight for many of the applicants not all but many and so we have this discussion when we review the applications of how can I say this as Christine said there are organizations that are multi-million dollar organizations and they should know how to write an application and they should know how to read the guidelines and there are others who are asking for a really small amount of money delivering a really targeted service to a really targeted clientele and we know that that service is being delivered and we are more hesitant to penalize these one person one and a half person non-profits we'd rather send them a message you really need to do better or you're going to sort of force a hand if you will the bigger entities I think that the other challenge that we struggle with is that some of these very small entities that Ron is describing where they might have one or two staff or no staff they're entirely volunteer staff are also organizations who've received funding for the city of Montpelier for decades and they're these cherished community institutions it is a challenge to weigh the fact that we fully understand that these are institutions that are important to the community have been supported by the city of Montpelier for so many years and at the same time you know we completely concur with you and want to work to hold organizations to a higher standard I think you certainly have done wonders and so that's great there's one additional point and that is we have a kind of tricky situation in how we communicate with grantees applicants because we can't we're making a recommendation to the council the council makes the final decision yes or no so it's difficult for us to say if you don't get us what we're asking for we will not make the grant we don't make the grant we recommend the grant you make the grant as far as you have the inside scoop of if they're meeting your criteria that's all it's okay if I may interject here you know the council I think last week or one of our budget meetings had raised issues about the timing of our scheduling not any criticism of anything you're doing just the funding like for example this came in higher than what we anticipated so do we have to change our you know how do we coordinate all of that to make it work and there was some talk that after we got through this cycle maybe in the spring to have a conversation with you folks when there's no pending applications and just what could we do to make this work smoother and it may be that maybe we could talk about these kind of topics then we don't have pending applications and then if the council wants to adopt a policy that says if you don't submit this then you don't get or you get one shot at it and you know it's prospective as opposed to reacting to what's I mean as it is now we are asking people to submit a report of work in progress for funds they received in August or September in an application that they're submitting in October or November for us to appear before you in January for the item to appear on the ballot in March so it is a to get funded almost a year later it is an awkward timeline that we're working with Jack and then Ashley and then I would like to be moving forward okay well I don't want to belabor the point but following up on what Donna said you could certainly let some of these organizations know that they're that you're getting kind of some questioning looks from the council saying you know if you can't do a better job of documenting the need the council might not be so receptive in the next year to to grant funding this request you don't have to be the heavy because in fact you're not right if it would be helpful if we had a policy yes right and overall I think we would absolutely welcome conversation with the council around guidance for the funds the guidelines our guidance from the council has been very loose and so we would be more than happy to partake in a conversation like that because we're certainly interested in making these funds as impactful as possible great Ashley I would propose I reviewed all of them as well and it concerns me that in complete filings I am familiar with almost every organization on there but I also feel like we just have the investment policy presentation where we acknowledge that we are the city's fiduciary and so I think that the council really needs to have a firm policy on what expectations are about applications because like when I have to submit something for work that if I were in private practice I would have to provide an accurate accounting of the work done for the fee paid and it just strikes me that I know that these organizations serve an important purpose but we're also spending residence money on these organizations and I think people are entitled to know what their tax dollars are doing so I don't know what the mechanism by which the council would work on a policy so that we can be the one saying you don't meet criteria you don't qualify for funding through this program and you can apply to be on the ballot but I'd suggest we work that through with the community fund board and just from a historical perspective it's coming from a place where these were voted by voters with no background as to what was going no vetting whatsoever so it's an evolving process so let's take that up you know and sometimes spring or summer we agree Jack I move that we approve the proposed grant awards from the my community and arts fund I'll second for the discussion I guess maybe just a procedural question so I mean by definition if it's approved at the level that's requested we have to add that in to the overall budget even at the new yes but yes you are committing that tonight or at your next meeting you won't reduce this line in the budget okay there was a motion and a second for the discussion all in favor please say aye opposed nay thank you very much my questions were any criticism of you you've done such a great job it's really amazing I'm glad you're asking questions okay how are you doing team do you need a break are you feeling okay keep moving forward let's take let's take a five minute break alright so we're going to come back from our brief break and moving on to our next agenda item which is the energy efficiency charter change language so I just want to recognize from the last time that we had this conversation I was in the roles of champion and expert and trying to moderate the meeting and that was maybe not ideal and so for this meeting or this portion of it I've invited a couple of folks here to be part of our discussion so I'm going to let them introduce themselves but I will at least not be playing the role of expert in this situation so go ahead if you tell us who you are and who you represent et cetera and there's those little things on the microphone can you hear me okay my name is Richard Faizie I am a principal of energy consulting firm energy futures group in Heinzburg and I've been working on building energy labeling for decades I can say more than that but maybe that's enough I'm Phoebe Howe I'm here with Efficiency Vermont I have background in the three years that I've been there in promoting zero energy affordable housing primarily focused on new construction but I'm really excited to be delving a little bit into the multi-family existing buildings realm with a project that I'll be doing here in Montpelier throughout the year and I'll say a little bit more about that maybe after the initial discussion that you'll be getting into about the charter language great so they're here if we have questions about the logistics of things I have one comment to bring to the I know well so there's one edit which is in the language that was provided with the memo it says an act ordinance is enforcing minimum efficiency standards it should say minimum energy efficiency standards and disclosure requirements etc the one online does not where's yours what are you looking at yeah it says enforcing minimum efficiency standards it should say enforcing minimum energy efficiency standards the last sentence in there yeah the last part has energy but in the beginning simple tweak any comments from the council for questions Conor it achieves what I asked for last time as far as making it broader I think you get too far into the weeds on this stuff subject to those sorts of interpretations so it's pretty clean cut to bring to the legislator I think voters will look at this on a ballot and have some sense of what it means so I'm at a place where I can support it and I want to also thank Ashley for providing basically the base of this language that legal education was worth something it's very helpful yeah any other comments would anyone like to make a motion I would move that we adopt the language for the proposed charter change that is contained in the supporting document section of the cover sheet on the agenda with the addition of the word energy before efficiency and after minimum in the first line second further discussion on favor please say aye pose well that was easy my goodness thank you what do you think would be the objection to this what should we expect people to not understand I think that there would probably not be an objection to this per se but once once it were considered and implemented I think that those who own buildings that people the sellers perceive as being less than desirable may question why they want to make the energy performance of their buildings known so there's some resistance by sellers and that has been the case in the past of buildings that are not sort of up to standard if I might add the whole objective here is to make energy visible and so that the marketplace can work and so that there are built-in market incentives to improve the efficiency of buildings and to reward those who have invested and made their properties more efficient fair enough and Phoebe did you want to tell us about your connection with that program with Efficiency Vermont sure, so I'll just take a minute to talk about like I mentioned I'm going to be diving into working with multi-family property owners here in Montpelier and I should add that's private so that's not groups like Down Street that is a private property owner so typically multi-family rental owners are some of the hardest folks to reach when you're looking to advocate for energy efficiency just because oftentimes as we know tenants are paying for their heat and electricity and so there's less of an incentive for that property owner to be investing in energy efficiency in their building that being said there are a lot of other amazing benefits of energy efficiency for everybody and specifically in the case of a multi-family property owner looking at just lowering overall operational costs of their building reducing maintenance of their tenant health comfort financial situation thereby improving their tenant retention and so that's something that we're really building into our messaging as we're engaging with multi-family property owners is it is about cash flow it's also about some of these additional benefits so knowing that this has traditionally been a difficult group to reach at sort of Ann's request and suggestion we're excited to have a non-pelier with that group so I will be conducting outreach to all those private multi-family rental property owners offering free energy walkthrough and sort of a concierge service as we've been talking about it helping them throughout the process so at the very least everybody who I'll be reaching out to will be able to access free LED bulbs and water saving devices in addition to that walk throughout their property and if they choose to proceed with appliance rebates heating cooling system incentives cash incentives for deeper retrofit air sealing insulation work I'll be there helping them access financing contractor networks all that good stuff so I'm really excited I'll be conducting that outreach later this month and then visiting with folks and helping them with their projects for the rest of the year and many of them associations that's a good question leave me your card so that's outside that specific focus of what I'm describing but one thing that we want to make sure as we embark on this specific project in Montpelier everybody understands is that we are 100% here for whether it's the condo or the single family homeowner the proactive piece of my outreach is going to be focused on those property owners but would love to talk to you about your condo association yeah many years ago it's good to see here many years ago when efficiency Vermont was first created I served for about 10 or 15 years on the consumer advisory board of efficiency Vermont and one of the things that I was looking at trying to have us do was have an automatic tie-in with the electric companies so that when someone would get a disconnect notice they would be informed of the availability of demand side management services as part of the disconnect notice is there and I don't think it ever happened while I was there, is there anything like that with the electric companies where they refer people if they're facing disconnection so can you explain further so if somebody is about to get disconnected for non-payment you're suggesting that they be informed of options available to them to help reduce their electric costs exactly, especially with low income tenants and other low income customers if they're having trouble paying their bills helping them reduce their bills one way to address that problem yeah so there is not anything specifically that I'm personally aware of however, that one opportunity that I could pursue in my discussions with landlords would be as far as they understand their tenants financial situation we could refer their tenants to Green Mountain Powers Energy Assistance Program which reduces their electric bills by 25% it could be a piece to work into this if I'm able to talk the tenants directly okay, thanks great thank you so much for both being here for your support alright, we are making good time team alright, on to the budget you had to be on that okay and based on the suggestions that we make here are you or somebody else going to have a running track of so because it's a public hearing I was going to do a quick overview of where we're at now for the public actually, before I forget I have one question following up on the previous item which is do we we had this motion that passed this language but we need to file language with the motion should be to file that language with the city clerk do you think we could just quickly have a separate motion to that effect team we file the charter change of language as passed okay, thank you team and set and I know this was in that motion that councilman rebate just made and set the public hearing for the January 24th absolutely, it was right there and the second is okay with that I forget who seconded Connor are you okay with that okay thank you for the discussion all in favor please say aye great thank you just wanted to make sure I dotted the i across the t on that one okay, so on to the budget do you how are you doing there Bill I'm doing great do you want us to wait for you or shall we start my plan was to just do for the public and for you a quick overview of where we're at after your last meeting and then have us have our discussion and I'll put the spreadsheet back up with the running total and then we'll get there I don't know if we need it off what do you think sure not off so on got it okay, so this is at the last meeting council has held a workshop they adopted a preliminary budget so tonight is the first of two public hearings on those preliminary budget council can make changes tonight and again the following meeting on the 24th but based on last week this is a quick overview of where we're at the FY20 budget we're going into or to implement the strategic plan continue our capital and equipment funding plan and deliver responsible services I won't go into detail but we did have a strategic planning work this spring laying out several areas for strategic outcomes and while I will go through the budget at least initially based on those areas first is community prosperity and the budget it doesn't continue to include $5,000 for the Montpelier Development Corporation maintains our planning and zoning staff to implement the new zoning and master plan and implements our TIF district in the areas of environmental stewardship we had $5,000 for the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee currently has a new parks position and a new tree management position funds stormwater projects in the capital plan includes funding for the GMT circulator bus from energy planning grant in the inclusive equitable and welcoming community area we've just talked about the community fund in fact we just approved it there's increased funding there we also have new funding for the arts synergy proposed funding the feast program for needing people at the senior center has continued there's increased funding for Montpelier alive and continued funding for our community enhancements under our sustainable infrastructure we've continued our capital improvement plan and equipment funding with an increase as we've been doing in several years the last several years the water and sewer infrastructure plan is being followed we've included the facilities and slash energy director to be getting in October and have funding in our capital plan for complete streets work finally we have our thoughtfully built I don't know if I actually don't think it's finally but we have our next we have our thoughtfully built environment area where we included our funding for the downtown improvement district and several downtown projects and a lot of our efforts this year is to complete work of projects that are underway and finally our goal for more housing we've increased the housing trust fund by $50,000 and again implementing our TIF which we hope will spawn even more housing projects in our public health and safety area we've added a new police officer we anticipated public events and their costs we've continued funding our flood gauges we've continued expansion of our paramedic program continued funding for project state catch and again as I just mentioned we've increased funding for the community fund some of which goes to public health and safety organizations in our responsible and responsive government area we've continued our communications efforts our employee wellness our service levels all maintained we've included our bridge article this year we implemented our new Invisio dashboard with our which is tracking our strategic plan process and available live at any time and we are pursuing our own access material software which we hope to roll out this year so citizens can advise us and we can track requests of work we've tentatively set aside reserve funds for a citizen survey strategic planning and energy plan this of course would be subject to the availability of those funds and what our fund balance ends up with that is our tentative point so budget changes from last year basically taking all those things I just said in rolling them right up into one quick list we've increased the CIP funding by 25,000 dollars added a new police officer position a new tree position a new parks position three quarters of a facilities director which is intended to be a full time position to start three quarter of the way into the year increased the housing trust fund added funding for the new art synergy program increased my pillar alive increased the community fund considered two thousand dollars for child care funding for meetings and again the one time funding for I just mentioned for energy strategic planning community survey so those are changes from last year's budget taking a look at and I'll zip through these charts pretty quickly but here's a chart of where our funding come from again about two-thirds of this comes from property taxes taking a look at how our funding is for different services is split up again you can see our core services of police fire public works capital plan are really the bulk of our areas we're about 55 percent personnel which is always a struggle for us since we have such a people orienting business and then quickly if we look at our various services and this will show these charts will all be in the annual report people will see them more clearly then they're showing up in the sliding but we get to see sort of how much an average person is paying in their property bill for each individual service someone asked me actually last week if that backed out revenues that were signable to specific agencies and it does so for example the ambulance revenue has been backed out of the fire budget whereas general revenues have been pro-rated across that's policy wonk stuff but I'm happy to talk about that more people want to know so overall what does that mean it means the property tax rate would go by 4.3 cents or 3.9 percent with an average tax bill of 98 dollars the district heat rates were already approved the water and sewer plan is estimated water and sewer rates are estimated to go up to 3.5 percent as per plan with no changes for the sewer benefit or CSO benefit process wise again tonight is our first public hearing Thursday January 24th would be the second and final public hearing when the council would take a final vote to adopt a budget to put on the ballot and then the voting is on Tuesday March 5 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. with early voting usually starting around mid-February any questions about that before we get into detail with you or the public have any questions okay I'm gonna officially open the public hearing on this now I know that there's maybe one or two people who had some changes that they were hoping to make and so what I would propose for how we go about that process is that we if someone would like to make a change to what was approved last time that we take them sort of one bit at a time and so if you have a proposal about X then we might vote on that and then if you have something else then we'll take up the next thing separately. Does that sound okay team? Or would you prefer to do it all together? I think it makes more sense to do them separately but that's just me. What do you think Bill? Whatever you say mayor He's becoming diplomatic I think it's easier to do it one at a time but that's just me. Okay so anyone would like to I would like to advocate that we not have the additional parks position I will say for myself I think in light of Jeff's retiring I think it makes some sense to wait on if we do need to have some additional staff for the parks that we wait until Jeff is retired and then whoever is new can be a part of that hiring process. I'll just say that for my part yes. Was that a complete removal or from back to part time instead of full time? I would propose that we completely remove it but that's just me. I don't agree. I'm actually inclined to agree with the mayor. I've been thinking a lot about what a budget increase I think we even got it down to what 3.8 percent? 3.9. The budget is at 3.8 percent the tax increases at 3.9 percent. Yeah and I know that we need the position but I also know that this increase plus whatever the school budget increase is is going to be significant for a number of people and I don't make this decision lightly but I feel it's incumbent to be mindful that tax increases translate to increases in rents for renters and I think there are a lot of folks who rent in the city that just can't absorb that and I know how important that position is and I hope that there we can find ways to work through this until maybe we can make that a budget priority for next year assuming I'm re-elected I would certainly make that a priority but I just I don't think that it's something that we can Other thoughts? Don Even without the aspect of Jeff retiring and taking the work of two full-time people the ash borer is not going to be taking care of by the one person and so to me when we talk about Confluence Park public art other things they're based on a healthy park and tree line in the city and we can't do that without the right park people so at least a part-time person I would assume that if the tree person is overwhelmed that sort of like this year when we you know in between our budget cycle had a stopgap we were like you know we have to have something in place by the time the adult you know bugs are going to emerge in March work with our budget cycle my gosh emerald ash borer if you would not please just work with our funding cycle that we could do that again right so that's that would be my plan there if it turns out to be overwhelmed but sorry to disagree already overwhelmed I just don't like to make a budget that plans to use our reserve Other thoughts? Glenn so I was talking with Councillor Krueger a little bit over the weekend Rosie and I I think have very different instincts about many of our decisions at the same time I feel like I have come over to the mayor's current point of view on this I think that we may want to add another parks position in the future but I don't think that we have to now as it is we will have two full-time parks people plus one full-time tree management position which is one more person than we have had if I'm correct and I think that we can afford to put this off at least a little bit yeah I think I'd be reluctant to do it but as I talk to people and they're seeing the rate hike it would be my lowest priority I'm sort of all or nothing on this we spoke last time I think if we do a part-time one they're going to be overwhelmed and if we can wait a little bit I would definitely commit to doing it right after taking some time and supporting the future budget here do you want to weigh in Jack? I'm kind of agnostic about this I'm still undecided the two things I have in mind are one just hearing what what Connor just said which is that if we hire a half-time parks person that person will immediately be overwhelmed which suggests to me that if we if we don't add anyone to the parks department then the people who are there in the parks department will certainly be overwhelmed I'm curious if Jeff I think is still here if either Donna or Jeff could talk a little bit about what this new person would be doing well I think Jeff as he's walking up for me when I look at what Jeff and Alex do now as two people really and Jeff's been very clear on all his time sheets and if you've ever been around it's just how much time he puts in so that when he retires one of his concerns was the new people aren't going to do that and so to replace just the sheer time that Jeff's doing now before the emerald ash board it's equivalent to two people you have a new person coming in to get up to power so it seems to me we don't want to understaff it now when we have this other crisis coming in thanks first I want to clarify we don't have two full time park people we have two three quarters is it three quarters or 80% so in part I'd like to move the parks out of survival mode and opportunistic mode forward on some of the visions the park commission has that Alex and I have had and that the council has had with serving new neighborhoods that takes a certain amount of letting whoever is leading the park at the time having time to connect with landowners work with the fundraiser that we now have in community services and to try to implement that in a way that wouldn't it's not so expensive for the city the recent proposal for stone old metals is a good example of that if you do that at fair market value it would be very onerous in my mind for the city to get that property but if someone has time to really work with an organization like trust republic lands work with landowners, work on donations work on creative things something like that could be done for a much more affordable price that's not going to happen if you have to 80% I'd like to survive a moment creating new opportunities Conor are the 80% positions receiving health care right now and other benefits yes because while they're full time just one day a week has been allotted to tree work so there are two people doing parks and trees and so two full time people and so you really go to three or four people doing that same parks I think we I'll refrain from commenting sorry further comments would anyone like to make a motion regarding this particular position I would move that we subtract the full time parks position from the budget second further discussion all in favor please say aye aye and so the mayor votes aye to make a fourth and so we'll take that out where does that leave us 3.36 any other items that people would like to discuss Glen this is my fault last time I did not realize that we had left the arts funding at 20,000 I understood that we had cut it in half from 50,000 to 25 and that's where I thought we were so I would love to just at least get it back to half of their funding request at 25,000 because I was annoyed at that Ashley I feel really bad about this too I I have been thinking sort of about the ways that we can still fund all of the things that we want to do while also being mindful of what that translation could look like for residents and I was thinking actually reducing that by another 5,000 for now and then I love all of the ideas and I had heard some proposals bounce around about removing it completely which I would vociferously oppose and you know this is like a super uncomfortable position to be in but I suppose this is what we signed up for and so I would propose that we reduce the 20,000 to 15,000 not because I don't feel the work is important but because I feel that in order for us to be mindful of everyone in the community I would rather do something that's not as large right now and again I think with the development of Confluence Park and you know all of the potential space that we have upcoming to make big decisions about I would rather have those decisions in place now and then fund the arts once we sort of know how much space we're working with to add new and exciting art to yeah go ahead Glen I think that we have an opportunity now to put as much weight behind this new public art plan as we can I am somewhat dubious that this will that there will be such friendly council at all points going forward to this kind of proposal and I think that for instance even with the Confluence Park I believe we saw a chart earlier from the River Conservancy folks I'm sorry the from Ricardo pointing out how much of the budget might go toward art installations there and I don't remember what the number was but it was not low and I think that for instance correct me if I'm wrong here but I think that this city money could potentially be applied to that so when we imagine the Confluence Park I think we can imagine budget art in the Confluence Park or at least somewhat open and well supported art in that kind of park I think that this is the time to fund it as well as we can manage I'd love to argue for the full request for 50,000 but I feel like there is no appetite for that 25 feels less I hesitate to say insulting but 25 feels palatable to me where less than that starts to feel like picking little bits off anyone else like to weigh in on this go ahead Donna I would just like to keep it at the 20 anyone else Jack Connor would either of you like to make a motion to the effect of what you are no I'll happily make a motion to push it back up to 25 but is there a second okay so I'm glad I made this there's a second any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye opposed okay so the motion is not passed sorry any other items that you would like to raise Ashley I have a couple of questions so the 100,000 for Montpelier Development Corporation what what does that do like what is the 100,000 like what is the like is there a carry forward is there is it all gone is it like how does that so we just had them in reviewed their activities and what they're doing so this is the five-year plan that we had with them they keep their corporations so the money goes to them and they retain it so we do get a financial statement I'm sorry I don't have it here sure we can get it and they use that for obviously for their staff and their office expenses and those sorts of things and that stuff and whatever they use to you know I'm not knowledgeable enough about their budget to tell you exactly what they do so I can get before the next meeting we can probably get financial statements from them I'm sure as I would like to see the financial statements before like I just I'm struggling because I think things like public art are really important and I think development is important but I also want to be mindful that like there has to be a bit of a give and a take and I don't want to spend everything focusing on the future and sort of forgetting about what that translates to like right now well maybe this is something that we can find more information about and have for the next time this is why we have multiple hearings sound all right yes okay anything else anybody would like to raise or otherwise at 3.36 yes it's just shifting we spoke last time about maybe moving some of these items over to the Montpelier a live budget for them to manage one that goes to mind like right off the top of my head is the legislator welcome reception I think they'd be a good group to evaluate whether that's good bang for our buck as far as economic development anyways hey Dan did you hear that and I just mentioned that one but if there's other ones maybe we think we should throw in there so just for some context this might be a conversation that like as long as we're not talking about changing the amount then this might be the kind of thing that we could take up later that's not okay Dan great okay but let's you know let's take that up for some other time okay further comments any comments from the public yeah go ahead I'm Liz Ginch I live in Montpelier and I also work at Downstreet Housing and Community Development and I just first want to say thank you everyone for doing what you're doing is I really appreciate it but I wanted to talk from Downstreet that we support the current $110,000 for the housing trust fund in the city budget and some of us are aware that the new French block apartments on Main Street are now open the lights were on last week people are moving in on the 15th so thank you and it was a great celebration but what we wanted to emphasize tonight was that the $175,000 that the housing trust fund contributed to the French block is one of the ten funding sources the very highly competitive federal and state funding sources that we received there are many projects across the state that are like the French block on Main Streets who don't get funded so the commitment from this city and this housing trust fund really matters when we apply for funding beyond the critical dollars that we receive from the trust fund those who review our applications can see that the local community is truly invested that plays a huge role in this highly competitive funding environment and we did we we leveraged millions more in part because of this in 18 new units but more importantly in addition to developing housing units the trust fund also provides the deferred loan for first time home buyers in purchasing in the city and a recent home buyer Carol Montgomery asked us to just share a brief letter of thanks so I'm going to do that right now I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Montpelier housing trust fund for the grant given to me in July allowing me to be a first time home buyer of the above property Montpelier moving to Vermont to be with my family as a big step financially but one I was hoping to afford given the right circumstances Patty Dupuis and Cheryl Moyer of Down Street patiently led me through the many steps necessary to qualify for the down payment grant as well as another that afforded from the Montpelier housing trust fund these monies made it possible for me to go forward without the entirety of both of these interest free loans the purchase would not have been possible in my desire to go back to the community I'm currently serving as a volunteer for the tree board Lost Nation Theater and the Sunday evening dinner program at the Bethany church many friends and family have visited since my moving here and I'll have commented on how obvious it is to them that I've truly adopted Montpelier as my home thank you for your generosity great thank you any further comments Dan Groberg executive director of Montpelier live on the resident of Liberty street in Montpelier I'd like to encourage the council to reconsider Montpelier lives full request for an additional $10,000 in funding for next fiscal year this has been a really exciting year for Montpelier live Montpelier live is directly responsible for bringing two major conferences to Montpelier in June the New England foundation for the arts creative communities exchange as well as the state of Vermont's downtown and historic preservation conference each of which will bring 300 people to Montpelier over a three day period they're back to back in early June related to the French black the French black leveraged over $200,000 in downtown tax credits that are only available for that project Montpelier is a designated downtown Montpelier live being the organization that allows Montpelier to be one of those designated downtowns we bring a lot of value to Montpelier both things that are very visible and things that are less visible I've heard Councilwoman Day for instance talk about the administrative fee in the DID as an alternative option and the challenge with that would be that you're sort of robbing a computer to pay Paul in that option where there are many worthy projects that are supported through the DID budget where we'd be taking money away essentially from the work that we're actually doing in the community through the DID budget where we'd be taking administrative fee out of that so while that's one great option I think a better option would be for the increased funding that would actually allow us to do both the work and support the administrative cost of actually doing that work so I encourage the Council to reconsider that and consider our follow-up request Thank you I just want to put out that I would support adding that $5,000 back in I don't know if anybody else would but I oh, okay would anybody like to make a motion to that effect I'll move to restore the $5,000 to Montpelier live for a total of $10,000 Thank you for your discussion Yeah, what does that do? 3.42 I'm so thankful for this Great We're definitely keeping this for next year Maybe not the word more and I don't know about this Would anybody else like to weigh on that? No Okay I guess I would propose then that we take it out of the MDC I just appreciate that it's only $5,000 but that it's also like even 3.4 makes me really uncomfortable and I understand that both are really important functions but if you're pricing everybody out then who's like If that's being seriously considered I would withdraw my request for the additional funds I think that would be very short-sighted to remove any funding from the MDC their startup in startup mode they have not yet been able to leverage any additional funds and the city funding is critical to what they do so I would caution the council not to make that choice Jack I know that we're likely to have some more discussion of the Montpelier Development Corporation next hearing we had a presentation from them very recently and it's this is one of those things, this is a type of endeavor that's very hard to really see well what's it doing, how do we evaluate it and so it's it's just the very nature of it but the also the nature of it is that investing the money over a number of years can bring about some some production some increased growth and vitality and revenues to the city in future years that wouldn't happen unless we've been putting that money in for years and so I'd be concerned about cutting the development corporation at this point because I think as the manager mentioned the council adopted a five-year plan the there was staffing turnover just within the past year and so it feels like they're just getting a running start and I hate to undermine that we did have a motion and a second okay any further discussion on this okay all in favor please say aye opposed okay so that passes and so we're at 3.42 alright any further things folks would like to discuss yes and then Glenn did you have was that a hand I have Dan Dickerson from the parks commission I'm told that I think I missed the boat on this but I do want to take a few moments to just recognize someone that's spent countless hours of his life above and beyond the normal 40 hour work week to maintain our parks to come to parks commission meetings to come to city council meetings to lead volunteer groups to take volunteer groups on trips and that's Jeff Beyer within a matter of months he as far as I know he's going to be retired from the city and I do not want to create the expectation of our next parks director that that should be the standard and so given the fact that when we lose him we lose close to a full time staff person above the parks director position we're losing a lot and getting an additional position whether it's this coming year or next year or the year after hopefully it's not that far out is is vital to our parks department not only maintaining the existing park infrastructure that we have but maintaining Confluence Park maintaining new trails at North Branch potentially maintaining trails at Morse Farm which is a huge opportunity for the city given although it's not clear there's a lot of potential out there and with the two staff people we've had you know we've sort of just tread water for a long time and I just want to say that having that position is really really important to the parks commission to the parks department to the city I apologize that I didn't get this message to you sooner I did send a letter I apologize for not getting that to you sooner but I at least want to take the opportunity to stand in front of you and just sort of try to expound how important this position is so thank you thank you Glen yeah I see that letter now just now thank you guys but I wasn't going to talk about that I did want to just come back briefly to the potential funding set aside for the citizen survey bill happens to have it selected on there right now by random as I understand it that's oh yeah as I understand it that $5,000 that now is not in there was to be set aside for future so $5,000 a year for three years or something to pay for the next survey and thinking it over that feels like it really is worthwhile and something that we should at least consider more explicitly because I think that it's something that would pay back and more and it's a again relatively small yearly set aside so I don't know if anyone else has any thoughts about it but I thought I would bring it back to our attention this was a long standing thing from Alan Weiss many years ago wasn't he a champion of the survey? he was in 2009 we did the national citizen survey and it was in my opinion very helpful and valuable information including demographic things and at that time we thought we would do it every couple years funding being what it was we kept putting it off and it struck me that we're not coming up to 2019 and it's been 10 years so it was time to do it again and so I was proposing to do that out of one time money this year so we can get it done but then say hey maybe we set we can do it every three years but we can look at that we can do 7500 next year I appreciate the support for it I think it's really important communities that use this tool the best use it regularly and then use it to benchmark themselves and track their performance every 10 years is interesting every 2 or 3 years is really measuring what we're doing but we also have numbers to hit so I mean I would just say that as someone who loves data and especially considering the community indicators that we are hoping to keep track of and there were a lot of requests from the last time we were talking about the community indicators of for data that doesn't really exist right now and there might be some opportunity with the survey to to get some of those critical pieces of information that that is otherwise not being tracked so anyway I just want to put that out there as that opportunity I would be down for adding this but see if anybody else is what email is it like to weigh in yes Donna I just don't want to keep adding all these small things because we are going to need more parks personnel and we're going to have to face that and we may have other things we need so I think it's misleading because we have 55,000 out and suddenly we've been adding these little things that we're going to get ourselves in a worse bind than if we just had stayed with the 55 fair enough other thoughts would anyone like to make a motion regarding this item sure I move that we put $5,000 in for a citizen survey once a year is there second okay further discussion comments no okay all in favor please say aye opposed no and I would not make a fourth so that one fails and moving on how are you doing team are you doing okay unless you want to be done any other items any comments from the public I'm just going to make my statement again I just did some rough math and I realize that there's not a direct correlation between how much rent increases and how much property taxes increase but it translates to a relatively significant number when you're talking about folks who are really trying to just sort of get by in this city and I understand that we have priorities and difficult decisions to make but I really I am struggling to accept a 3.42 increase and in addition to the school budget increase that we're waiting to hear definitively I think which is next two weeks you know I don't know we will get their numbers obviously because it has to go on the ballot now that they're a separate school district I don't know if they'll be coming in to present to us like they used to can we invite them I feel like this is sort of the way that people like get this information we'll all be in the annual report together we usually put it all together it would be really helpful we always have that for the last budget we have to anyway because we still have to put it on the ballot so okay further thoughts team Jack I'm pretty happy where we are I'm not thinking of anything that I would ask to either have or no subtract okay further comments okay so any comments from the public I'm going to close the public hearing and I'll make a motion to advance the budget as we've amended it tonight and set the next public hearing for January 24th second further discussion all in favor please say aye opposed okay thank you team alright so on to council reports what do you want in particular like to start go ahead Jack I'll start last Thursday night we had the open house and celebration for the new apartments at the French block and for anyone who didn't who missed it or wasn't able to be there it was a great event we got a chance to see the new apartments the work that Down Street did to renovate that building and the blight in my pillar for 80 years was was incredible and I heard a lot of people there who were wandering around during the apartments who were clearly not people who were candidates for affordable housing middle class people who were saying that they could picture living in a place like that right in the center of town and I hope that there are other people who own property downtown who see the response that this housing has gotten and think about putting putting their business their property to similar use in town we can still use more housing right in the center of the city whether it's affordable rentals as we saw last week or market rate rentals or even condominium ownership for quite affluent people in the city those all could be good uses for this kind of good furniture and quality of life you know and thank you pass everyone to start I'll be at baguitos tomorrow morning at 830 and I'll just say it's been going really well there A couple of weeks ago, former counselor Jim Sheridan sat down with me and we talked for a while. Mostly he talked and I listened and I'm afraid I may not have done everything that he suggested I might do, but I really appreciated the conversation. I really look forward to continuing it into the new year, so feel free to show up anytime 8.30 to 9.30 every Thursday at Baguitos. A couple of things first. Big props to Sheila and John Odom for all the work they're doing on the charter change advocacy there. There have been regular meetings with Roberta who you've seen a couple of times here. They've put together a really good game plan. Committee assignments were released today for the House, so we all have to be really nice to representative Sarah Copeland-Honsis who's the new chair of government operations and I think the new makeup is more favorable than the previous makeup of the committee to hopefully get some of these charter changes through. Along those lines, I don't know who sets the agenda for the legislative welcome reception, but I do believe if we're hosting this and investing in this, we should devote some time for a couple minutes for folks to talk about, both the bag ban and the non-US citizen voting change there. You know, they're going to enjoy themselves if they have to be subjected to listening to us too for a bit. So I'd make the point of that. And then I sent around just the RFP for the child care for the city of Pittsburgh, which I think gives some good indications and might be just a seed of development, a policy for us with our $2,000 that we're hopefully working with for child care, but Tiffany Seminoe who works for the mayor's office in Pittsburgh said she'd be more than happy to be hands on on this and help us develop an approach that fits Montpelier. So that's it for me. Thanks. Actually, have you been to one of the welcome back legislators? I've gone for years. Both as a council member and as when I was in public transportation and they're never quiet. I think it may be. I think it's true. We need to really assess what is that event? What is it worth? But I do want to go back to Jack's comment about the French block and was just wonderful and really kudos for the housing. All those who involved in it and that they kept some of the really quirky, unique features of the building archways. Just it was wonderful. But I'll tell you, everybody was looking at the kitchen cabinets. I mean, I got in more conversations with people. Oh, I want that many cabinets at my house because it was such a wonderful use of space. It really was delightful. Thank you. I don't have anything to add. So I'm going to pass just a couple of things. Also, congratulations for French block. Really fabulous moment for the city and for those things. And there's one who looks out the window at the building. It's nice to see some activity. I just want to comment quickly about the recent appeal of the DRV decisions on the parking garage. Did speak with our attorneys today. We are advised to limit our comments because we are an active litigation. So anything that you have, please refer to the mayor or me through that. And so we'll probably have more of a statement at some point. But I would say that we need to think about this to the extent that it delays or creates problems for our project because we have a lot of other projects that are somewhat dependent on it. This discussion of what they call confluence east was solely due to the fact that we were going to have more parking. And some of the other discussions about bike lanes and those kind of things were due to the fact that we're going to have more parking. And so I think we need to be thinking about the timing of all those things is a ripple effect of these types of projects that may or may not have been what this group of people intended when they move forward. Okay. All right. So was there, Ashley, did you want to say something? I see two representatives from the social and economic justice committee here. I think we were supposed to be on the agenda tonight, but I dropped the ball and didn't get the information to bill that I was supposed to. And so I wasn't sure if either of you wanted to address the council just briefly or if there was anything that you wanted to. I apologize that it's out of turn. And Bill did mention to me that they were here and I and then and then we'll be done. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Hi, I'm Julia Shapitz, one of the co-chairs of the committee. I'm still Michael Sherman. So I have we have not come before you. You may have noticed to present a charge. And I think that that is an important piece of what the work that we are needing to do and struggling with at the moment. I have over the last couple of weeks I've met with, I've met with five of the seven current members individually to talk about that and what that might look like. And I have a draft here that I'd be happy to, I don't know if it was the appropriate time to share it. Oh, I didn't keep a copy for my time. You can send one back. Oh, look at that. Thank you. It strikes me as I as I listened tonight that every single issue that you discussed tonight and probably ever discuss has implications for social and economic justice. And I think that is a piece of the struggle. It's a piece of why we've been having a hard time getting going on this. And one of the things that's that's being that's cleared me both in my background and working with groups of people as well as with this particular group that that having a clear purpose is going to be part of what propels us forward into action. And so I think we're needing some guidance from the city council, but this is our start. I think clarity and specificity about what we do will be really key. So I would love your comments. Do you have anything you want to add to what I said? I think we just are struggling because we we didn't really get a sense from the beginning of what the council was asking of us. And you know the word advisory in the in the title is is kind of vague, although advise you about what. And I think for some of us the question is are we are we there to receive specific requests from you or are we supposed to take a more proactive role in going out and sort of looking at questions of social and economic justice, which I will say is a bottomless well. And that and that is a problem because and even the two requests that we think we have throw us into an area of expertise that that few of us have. And so we there's any request is going to require us to do research or and or bring in people who know more about it than any of us or most of us on that committee. And so this is a real this is a real important question. What is it? What is your expectation of how what we're going to be doing so that we at least have some sense of boundaries. So my sense right now and happy to be wrong about this, but I would love to take this and digest it and talk about it again on the either the 24th or the next meeting, depending on when we have time, the 24th is already less public. It was really full. But it but this might either we can fit it in or it's soon thereafter. How do you feel about that team? Yeah, I would say trying to think what our next meeting in February it's February. It's like no, it's January 15. Oh, yeah. So we wouldn't be meeting before then anyway. Right. And so in February, it's the third. Tuesday. So we'd be meeting the second Wednesday. So we'd be meeting on the 13th of February. So that would be in advance of that. I think that makes I think that would. Thank you, Todd. Oh, yes. Look at that. Oh, let's get up to date. We're like woefully behind. It's like being home. Oh, that one's going. We're still not in February. We don't even get to February. I mean, to be fair, I think I think that's the fifth. Our February meeting is still before the next committee meeting in February. Yeah, except for the January. So that would mean that we really would not be able to, we wouldn't know whether we're supposed to go forward, for example, on the ordinance that you're talking about on the living little wage. By your next meeting? Because we were told that you wanted something from us in March. Right. But we could work with that. I don't think that that was an intentional goal, but some of these are dragging. That's okay. Our first meeting in February is the 13th, and then the second is the 27th. I'm sorry. I just want to make sure I'm understanding. Are you saying that for your January meeting, which is between now and the 24th, you may still be in the same situation of not knowing what to do, and that's the problem? I think that's true, but I also think we have this now, which is more than we've had. And I think there are things that can happen. I mean, I think there are things that... Yeah. I mean, I would trust you all to figure that out between... Well, let me rephrase. I think either continuing to work on that ordinance or operating under this, these guidelines would be fine until then. Does that seem... I don't know if that would be helpful. I mean, in my personal view, I think it's more helpful that there be a thoughtful process around what our purpose is. I think the fact that you all take the time to talk about it is more important than you deciding something right now. And if in the interim, if it makes more sense for you to cancel your January meeting and just pick up again in February, then that could happen, too. I mean, up to you. Whatever you... That's scheduling your meetings. Is there anything that... I mean, is there anything that... I guess, I don't know what my question is. Is there anything that any of you would like us to know about? I'm struggling. I'm so new to working within city government. I would love guidance on how should we be working with the city manager's office, how should we be working with each of you, individually as councillors? What specific kinds of... Any just like thoughts that you have now about how we can be helpful to you? So I would... Unless, Donnie, you go ahead. I have to say, but go ahead. Okay. I would say usually for other committees, we often have council rep. And so usually it's, you know, you go through the council rep to either communicate about issues that might be relevant or questions that are in result that you could use some advice about or, you know, in terms of direction, are we going in the right direction? That usually is relayed through your city councillor. That is also to say that there's nothing preventing you from, you know, talking with the rest of us, obviously. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. And we have had managers of staff attending your meetings. She probably won't be there this week this month. But yeah. So try to support that as much as we can. It certainly happened to talk about any of that. Donnie. I think also one of your issues is... Donnie, it's back into your mic. It comes back to the council, and that is we haven't really talked about it. It seems to me three years ago when none of these people were like half... Only Ann and I were here. We're the remains of three years ago. And we talked about it. And even when we did the Black Lives Matter resolution, in my mind, one of the kickoffs was really having awareness workshops for the council, for the committee, for the community. So we could start really generating a mindset before we try to start implementing policies. And I may be the only one there, but I see we haven't had our conversation with this council. So you're a good reminder that we have to do our work in order to help you do your work. Thank you. So thank you for coming and going to all the meetings and doing what you have done. The conversations there are good. Glenn. I'm new too. I still feel new anyway, as Donna pointed out just now. And I don't know if it would be helpful, but it was interesting, Michael, to think about the word advisory, advisory committee. And it might make sense to talk with my partner, Kate, of the Energy Advisory Committee, and how she has, and that committee has structured itself to kind of, in the way that you were describing earlier, is the committee there to answer specific questions that the council asks, or is the committee there to explore new policies? And I think that Kate would say both and in these specific ways over the last few years. So you might sit down with her and get some structure. That's not my to-do list, actually. Thank you. There are different models. For example, there is the Vermont Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. And they have always taken on independent studies based on, I guess, issues that arise. And then there are advisory committees where you get a very specific charge. We're looking at this issue. What should we be thinking about? What are the things that you see that we may not be seeing? And those are different models. And it would be helpful to know which, if either of those models, you had in mind. And if you're going to say both, well, then all right. We would then have to be prepared. But that's asking a lot of people who don't necessarily have expertise in some of these issues. And I think that's just from having watched whether it was the Energy Committee, or the Housing Task Force, and others over the years that have taken on certain topics. I don't think there's anything wrong either with saying that's over our heads. Thanks, but this is the opinion, the collective opinion of the people on this board, but we don't have the expertise to delve into this any further, or we would need more support to really give you any good advice. As you say, there's a never-ending well of these topics that we could talk about. And there are lots of ways to get at it, too. Right. And I listen, I mean, I'm not a voting member here, but I'm listening when this was formed. And I think there was a sense that there might be certain things that the council would refer and say, hey, we'd like your weigh-in on this before we approve it. There was also a sense that there would be some community engagement that you might initiate and say, we'd like to do these workshops, we'd like to do these whatever forms, or however you set that up. And that there might be things that you see. For example, just, you know, we're going about our mayor. The city council and city staff have a zillion things going on. And so there could be an opportunity for somebody, whoa, have you thought about, you know, I see that you're just barreling along with scooters or, you know, just using it as a for instance, but you know, have you given any thought to that impact on this community by doing that? And, you know, time out, or at least as you, you know, so I think all of that could be really helpful and just maybe your agendas are sort of, you know, what's our project, what's our forum, what's our, is there anything we want to weigh in on that thing? Or split up work amongst individual members and come to get out? What do I know? Well, you know. So the one further thing I would say is, could you send this to us electronically? Yes. That would be great. Yeah. What's the best? Do I send it to you? Should I send it to you? Send it to you. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. With that, we are going to, without objection, adjourn. You made it before 9.30? Yeah.