 Okay. I'm going to call the meeting to order. I see that we have people here in the room and also council members participating by Zoom. So, I think one of the things we'll need to do is call on all the council members who are appearing remotely to introduce or identify themselves. I'll start. I'm Carrie Brown, District 3. I am feeling called District 2. I'll follow District 2. Warren Hurl, District 1. Great. Okay. You said that you may have limited connectivity, so no video. Yeah, hopefully to hold that back. Okay, cool. Okay. Start out by talking about meeting logistics, which are the same as always, which is that anyone who's participating remotely, we would ask you to change your name on display to your first and last name, so we can track who's here and who's speaking. We will have an opportunity for people to be heard on various items that are on the agenda by being recognized by the chair, and we would ask you to limit your comments to two minutes. We will also have an opportunity for public comment, but I think that's it for now. Next item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Are there any changes needed to the agenda? Donna? I would like to discuss the Council's retreat, and that can be at the end of the meeting, but just so it's not missed. I'll write it in under other business so we don't forget it. You also remind me if I start too, but I don't think I will. All right. I'll consider the agenda approved. Next item on the agenda is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the Council on any topic that is not on tonight's agenda. We will call on people in the room and on Zoom, and we would ask you to limit your comments to three minutes in length. Peter Kalman, I see you've got your hand raised, so why don't you go ahead? Thank you. Peter Kalman, I live at Mountain View Street on my pillar. I just want to say that I'm concerned about a number of matters related to the last City Council meeting on May 10th. First of all, on three separate occasions during that single meeting, I had my virtual hand raised and was waving wildly to be recognized and was not so recognized. One of those occasions was when the resolution proposed by the Homelessness Task Force passed without any discussion, despite the fact that I had my virtual hand raised and was waving my actual hand wishing to speak on that resolution. Nor is this the first time the Chair has failed to notice my hand being raised. He needs to have someone he checks with regularly who is monitoring the gallery view, especially before he closes discussion and a vote is taken. Secondly, technical problems continue to play City Council and other committee meetings. Councilmember Lauren Harrell was largely inaudible from the beginning of the last meeting until the break. Why did it take so long to recognize and to fix that by having her borrow her neighbors? There was total loss of sound for a while. I have no idea how long it took for you guys to all realize what was said. Over what was said during that time because we couldn't hear as a result of the technical issues and the mayor's failure to notice my hand being raised, the following sequence of events unfolded. I wasn't able to hear Lauren's motion to approve the consent agenda. So I couldn't tell whether or not the backman letter of agreement for a feasibility study on Barry Street Rec Center had been removed from the consent agenda. As I'd requested by email to the mayor, the city manager and the council and which I explained my concerns and the mayor emailed me that it would be removed. Then the mayor apparently wasn't seeing my virtual hand or me waving my hands to ask about that until the city manager indicated to him that I was doing so. I'd actually had my hand up for quite a while to make that request. Once recognized, the mayor stated that his understanding was that my request to remove this item from the consent agenda was no longer quote, a live request, which was not correct. And I don't know how he got that impression because in our email exchange, I made pretty clear that Chris Lumbers emailed response only underscored my concern that the wording of the letter of agreement that council is being asked to approve was inconsistent with the intent of the city council and in fact with the letter. During the discussion of the issue, I made opening comments reiterating my concerns about the wording of the letter that was actually before the council as being quite different from the city's intent and from the wording that Chris Lumbers email stated was in the original proposal, which neither the public nor the city council had seen. Following my statement, the city manager and Chris assured the council that staff and vendor were clear about the intent in the original background proposal, although Bill indicated that somewhere the building was misnumbered. Others made important comments, including the mayor who asked Chris to verify that dual use with rec was in fact the intent and Kerry Brown, who stated that she appreciated that clarification quote, so the public can really understand that intent. Again, I couldn't hear whatever Lauren said. Donna then made a motion to approve the letter. Jack checked that she meant the letter as written, which she did. Kerry second and Jack asked if there was any further discussion. Once again, he apparently wasn't seeing my virtual hand or me waving my hands. As a result, the city council approved the letter of intent that was inconsistent with the city's intent and using language and in my opinion is insensitive to underrepresented people. Had I given the opportunity to comment on this motion? Peter, your time has elapsed. I your point regarding not seeing people asking to be recognized is well taken and I will I'll try to do a better job myself and I'll ask members of the council and staff to again alert me if they see someone that I'm not recognizing and I apologize for not recognizing you at our last meeting. Is there anyone else in the online who would like to be, like to address the council? I don't see any other hands out up. Anybody in the room would like to address the council. Step right up, sir. My name is Clarence Wheeler. I'm the president of the United Motorcyclists of Vermont. Could you step, get closer to the? I'm the president of the United Motorcyclists of Vermont and I believe you have on the agenda our street closure. We do. We found out this evening that another organization has the statehouse lawn for that day. So we're not going to need the street closure for that day. That's too early. Are you going to reschedule it? We don't think so. We'll just find another place to end the parade instead of at the statehouse lawn because we usually do it the second weekend of August and I dropped the ball. I, for some reason, I just thought about the street closure. I forgot that we had to secure the statehouse lawn also. Sorry to hear that. A lot of people look forward to that event every year. We do have the weekend before, the weekend after, but there's going to be a fair on the 12th, so. Donna. You considered using the high school that I mean, you could go still down to Maine and state and then over to the high school for your file or we could all just stay on route to also, they have they have finished there before at the high school and members have already mentioned that on our chat. My wife works at a school and she said a lot has changed since the last time that that we've used the high school. But this is on a Saturday. It's not really like, well, we would like to work with you. So if there's something, if there's some way that you can find a way to have this rescheduled and you need to submit a request for another week. No, we're not going to change the date. Okay. I'm just wondering, you know, with the fare being there, do we want the street clothes? You know, there might be so much traffic already. And we're trying to bring, you know, four or 500 motorcycles down the, down the middle of it when someone already has, you know, we might still use the high school, but we'd probably stay on route two and then just take the right, I'm not sure what river, not sure what street that is, but Bailey Avenue, but yeah, we'll, we'll reach out to the high school and see if we could finish there. I think the messages were happy to have you in my peculiar and if we can work together next year, I'm going to, you know, I have a, I have a step-by-step list now. Okay. I just thought there was one form I had to do, but I had to do two online. So. Okay. Thanks for letting us know. Donna. But your request to me brings up something that maybe we need to check because our police and fire looked over your application and they okayed it. So it didn't seem like they felt there was any conflict or maybe they didn't know about the state house law. We wouldn't, we would only, we would assume that, you know, we don't have any issue, we don't have any necessarily contact. So, so it's okay with us to close the street and have them ride down the street. We've got that covered. The issue, so they've got to figure out what they do once they get there and if the state house law, so they're not saying there's a conflict in the street. It's the issue is. Well, we were thinking it might be a conflict as far as, you know, a fair going on. I want to see him on the street. I don't want to see him on room two. Okay. I mean. Thank you. We can't see you over there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would talk to the police department and see if there's really any conflict about it. Yeah. Well, Chief, do you have any thoughts about that being a conflict along if there's an event happening on the state house law? If you'd like. Nothing like putting you on the spot. Yeah, that's okay. That's why I'm here. I don't have any problem with the conflict at all. And oftentimes BGS can split the state house law and I just don't know how many people they have for that day or what that event is. But it's worth it looking to see if they can do half and half, which your group isn't at like a protester group that might have a conflict with somebody else. Right. So it makes it pretty easy to share. Right. All brains belong second annual brain contact. There you go. Okay. I might go to that and maybe make sure I'll get both. So my question would be, would it seem like we could go ahead and approve it and then you could sort out if there's a conflict, you can cancel. But meanwhile, if we approve it, then you can do it if you get it all right. Yeah. We could even contact these folks and see what they're saying. It would be a problem. Yeah, we don't have to take it off tonight. Well, we can approve it tonight and see what happens. Yeah. If you don't use it, you don't use it. Maybe we can work out together. Okay. Put it on your calendar. All right. Those things are deadly. And I see Carrie Brown and Sarah Alfauna with their hands up. Hi. Yeah. I appreciate the sensitivity to the idea of not wanting to drive 500 motorcycles past someone else's event. So if they could talk to the other folks and see if they're okay with it, that's great. But I imagine they might not be. It's pretty, they really take over the motorcycles. And so I just want to, I don't want anyone to think that the city council is saying, we think it's fine for them to share the space. I'm okay with approving the street closure in case they are okay with sharing the space. I just don't want that to be the message that comes from city council. Cause I think it's very likely that they, the people on the state house long will probably not appreciate the motorcycles going by. And that, that should be okay. And it sounds like these other folks have a great plan B in place. So that's why. Good point, Carrie. Sal. Yeah, basically I wanted to urge the same, the same concern that Carrie had. If the other group is all brains belong, is that? Yeah. Is that what I understand? I think certain members of that population would have a lot of trouble with 500 motorcycles going down the middle of the street. And so I would hope that we would consult with leadership at all brains belong and see if, you know, see if they think it can work. But otherwise I would look for alternative. Okay. There you have, anyone else? Okay, there we have it. Thanks for coming in. And we'll see what can be done. You're welcome. We're still on general business and appearances. Is there anyone else in the room who'd like to be heard? Okay. Onto the next item, which is the consent agenda. Is this someone who wanna make a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll make the motion that we approve the consent agenda. And it's second. Is there any discussion? Sal. I guess I'm uncomfortable with approving the motorcycle closure, frankly, without, you know, without a discussion from between all brains belong and the motorcycle group. I mean, things like that get lost in the shuffle sometimes. I just assume, pull it out. There's plenty of time, right? This event is August 12th. So we could put it on a future agenda. I see Donna shaking her head. That's my opinion. Donna. Sorry for the physical movement there, Sal. I feel they need to plan and I would like to approve it. The state house often has events going on and they're willing to talk to the other group, but there are independent. They're going by, they're not gonna be staying at the state house. That's part of their arrangement is to look to see if they can use the high school or another space. So I'd like to see us approve it and that they're gonna be working with our chief of police and negotiate with the group. I'd like them to move ahead. Okay, Sal. I would just reiterate that it's the going by that I think all brains belong is going to be concerned about not so much sharing the state house long. So I would like to remove it, the item from the consent agenda for a future meeting. So are you moving to amend Donna's motion to take out that item? I am. Is there a second? Second. I was gonna say, Mr. Mayor, it's interesting because typically any one council can remove a consent agenda. He just happened to raise it after the motion had been made. So I don't know if you wanna make a mayoral ruling on this or not. Yeah, I am. Right, exactly. Overriding the existence of the normal. Yeah. It's a questionable way. Right, I know, but our protocol is any one council can remove. I'm just talking about this one. I know. Nope, that's true. I get it. We do it differently. Yeah, is there, I think that given that there's been a motion moved and seconded and a motion moved and seconded, I think we should adhere to procedure and do that. So is there any more discussion on Sal's motion to remove this one item, Tim? Just a question, Jack, is it possible to take it off the consent agenda, move it to the main agenda? That's what he's proposed. That's the amendment that he's proposed. And then can we discuss it and possibly approve it on that with the conditions that people are seeking? Yes. We could, yeah. Okay. Any other comments by council? And Laura and I don't see you. You're not trying to be heard, are you? Okay. Okay. All those in favor of the motion to remove the toy run from the consent agenda indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, it's unanimous. So that comes off the consent agenda. So now we're onto the main motion, which is to approve the consent agenda. Elaine Ball, I see that you're here and you proposed the Pride Month resolution. Would you like to say a few words before we vote? Yes, thank you. I appreciate so much the adding us to the agenda for flying flags at City Hall and the Montpelier Senior Activity Center, as well as the resolution. And the one question that I had, I don't know if it would be appropriate to add to this agenda or just arrange at a later date, but the Montpelier Community, the Montpelier Senior Activity Center is going to sort of have a lunch time event on June 1st. It's a Thursday at 1130 as like a flag raising event. And I was wondering if the mayor or anyone from the city council would be available to do something like that earlier in the day or later in the day or sometime in that first week of June where the proclamation is read and people can come together to see the flag raised or recognize Pride Month in front of City Hall. Well, that sounds great. Why don't we communicate offline about making that happen? Okay, everybody ready to vote on the consent agenda now? With the one item removed? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we've adopted the consent agenda. Now we are on to the toy run item on the agenda. Sal, do you want to start this off or do you? Sure. Well, I think that the, I think we ought to get the approval of, it ought to require the approval of all brains belong. Since I think a mixed event could create a problem for one or the other. And it's really not so much the gathering at the State House, but it's the loud procession down the middle of the street that I think might create the problem. I don't know, that may be okay with it, but I think we ought to get their approval before we, as a condition of approving the application. Any carry? Yeah, so this all started because the organizer of the toy run said that they were withdrawing this request to close the street. And so I'm a little unclear where they are. And it's a little odd, I think, for someone to request that they, we don't want the street closed and city council to say, yep, we're closing in any way. So I would be more comfortable with just taking this off, not doing anything with it. And if they have a conversation with all brains belong and decide that it works for them, they can come back. I think there's plenty of time to plan between now and August if they come back in two weeks with a request to close the street. So I think that would be cleaner and it would allow, it would keep us out of the middle of trying to say, we think of what should happen with these different groups and just leave it up to them. And then if they work it out and they wanna come back to us and make the request again, then I'd be happy to approve it at that point. Donna. Well, there are a couple of items. One is the state house does their thing in scheduling and we do ours and we've never looked before at their schedule. The only reason we knew there was a conflict is the motorcycle group came to us tonight. Now, maybe it wasn't heard on the remote but they actually had a discussion here with the chief of police and saying that they were going to talk to the group, they were going to work with the chief of police but that they wanted and they're moving ahead. They left, they thought it was settled for better or worse. So I feel that we, I'm going to vote that we go ahead and allow them to close the street and that under good faith that they said their intention was to work with our chief of police, to work with that group and to act accordingly. So, and they're willing to modify and not be staying on State Street to find another place to end. So I like to sort of keep the state house and us with our responsibilities a little separate but I also think with this group, again, we wouldn't know about it if they hadn't come to us. So I'd like to respect that their efforts to be polite and that they offered to work with the group and respect that and approve the permit. Okay, Bill, maybe you can shed some light on this. This is, and let me tell you the question that I have. It seems weird in the time I've been on the council, I don't ever remember having conditioning or considering a street closing permit on whether the one possible user of the street would be causing discomfort or inconvenient to someone else who's going to be in the vicinity. And so it's always been in terms of like public safety and that kind of issue. I think that's correct, Mr. Mayor. I do know, on the other hand, we certainly have heard from people, we have created conditions for various events and closures about noise and those kinds of things when other people have expressed concerns and typically, I also can't recall an event where somebody had planned a street closure with the assumption that they were using the state house lawn and then had it not available basically had been pre-booked. And without getting too far down this thing, I think to council member Alfano's point, it's also the particular group that's using it. It's a group of folks that are not necessarily neurotypical and for whom loud noises might be more triggering than the average person. And I think the idea is just to be considerate and make sure. So adding a condition that everyone's okay with that so that we're not unintentionally inflicting trauma on somebody and it sounded like the motorcycle group was pretty respectful about that anyway. So I think you can handle it however you want, but I do think it's a legitimate issue as much as we love supporting the motorcycle group. There is a legitimate issue here. Anybody else on the council have any comments? I guess we don't have a motion yet. So I guess the first Donna. I'll make that motion. I'll make a motion that we approve the permit with the condition that as they've promised, they are going to be talking with our chief of police and they are going to be talking with the group that's there. And if there is a conflict, perhaps we can give them a different route. So they can still march, but maybe not way over in route two, but yet miss the state house lawn. Is there a second? Okay. It's motion and second. Is there any further discussion? Sal. So can we actually put this on the application? There's a space for other. I mean, it's reviewed by, you know, my people are alive and police and fire. There's an other section at the end. We can add this stipulation as a part of the review. I take it. Yeah. Okay. I think we should do that. Okay. I'm okay with that. Any other discussion in the council? Any comments from members of the public? Okay. You all know what the motion is. Is there a ready for a vote? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay. We'll have to have a roll call then. Bate. Yes. Brown? No. Alfaano? Yes. He? Yes. Hurl? Cohn? Sorry, Cohn? Yes. And Hurl? Yes. Okay. So the motion is passed. Thank you. All right. Next we have a series of appointments to various Montpellier boards and we can just take them all up and see if there's anyone here who wants to address. We have the Development Review Board, the Energy Advisory Committee, the Social and Economic Justice Advisory Committee, and the Homelessness Task Force. And is anyone in attendance in person who is seeking any of those appointments? Not anyone I've seen. Is there anyone online who is seeking one of those appointments? If so, please raise your hand. Ah, Paige. Paige Gertin. I'm applying for the Homelessness Task Force. Okay. And do you want to say anything more than that? Does anyone on the council have any questions for Paige? Anybody have any questions? Sal. I don't have any questions. I have my, I wanted my full support to Paige, who has done a lot of good work on the task force, particularly in these last few hectic weeks. Thank you for that, Paige. Thank you. I really agree. Any, is there any other person who's applied for any of the other positions? Okay. How do you want to proceed? Does someone want to make a motion to, we can do it item by item, but some could also move to appoint all the applicants at once. Carrie. Yeah, I move that we appoint all of the main applicants to the Development Review Board, the Energy Advisory Committee, Social and Economic Justice Advisory Committee, and the Homelessness Task Force. And is there a second? I'll second. Donna. Okay. Any further, any discussion? Jim. Thanking everyone for participating and helping make all these different initiatives work. Thank you. I totally agree. We have, we go back and back and back to members of the community, and we consistently get really committed and highly qualified applicants for these seats. With that, all those in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Next up we have Kasella and Leachate Treatment. Great. Thank you very much. My name is Sam Nicolai. I'm Vice President of Engineering with Kasella Waste. With me today is Jeremy Labby, who is our general manager at our Coventry landfill. We appreciate the opportunity to come before the council today. We have a short presentation. We'll try to keep it relatively brief, but certainly would encourage any questions that folks may have. Can I interrupt for a second? We do not have the shared screen on the Zoom. Thanks, Gary. You're still working on that apparently. I'm Sam Nicolai and Jeremy Labby. So we're here today primarily to give an update to the council on PFAS treatment, at Leachate from the landfill. So just stepping briefly backward, if I'm hoping that most people are familiar with PFAS, they are a class of compounds that starting in the 1940s, we as a society have used in a variety of commercial industrial uses. They're probably most famous in terms of Teflon or carpet stain protection for interstain protection. But the reality is they were compounds that were used in almost every aspect of our industrial society for the last 50 plus years. So on the screen there, you can see some references, everything from microwave popcorn bags to firefighting firm to make up various food packaging. We as a society have managed to use these compounds in almost everything over the last several decades. So all these compounds then are thrown away as people work through the various materials in their lives and both from a wastewater and a landfill standpoint, PFAS ends up coming down to the end of the line. And so the land floor receives various waste materials from homeowners, from residents, from commercial businesses that contain PFAS. Several years ago, we did an evaluation to understand what kind of PFAS was present at the landfill. That chart you see on the screen, the bottom left is measuring the PFAS that came into the landfill and the brown box on the right is measuring the PFAS that came out of the landfill. So landfill does a great job of keeping most of the PFAS in the landfill, but most is not all. And so there's a small amount that comes out and it comes out in the leachate. You can see on the right there, the sources of the PFAS, they're primarily furniture, textiles, incorporating kinds of materials that all of us have in our households and that we're all throwing away on a weekly and for the annual basis. So we have been working hard in concert with the DC and at the request of city council to do something about the PFAS. City council asked us to attempt to remove PFAS from the leachate and had a desire to do so. And you requested that to be done by July of this year. There is no state regulatory requirement for PFAS yet in surface water. So we don't have a regulatory requirement today, but both Cassella and I think the city council share the goal of removing PFAS. So we're here today to give you an update on that. We have been looking at a technology called Foam Fractionation, which didn't really exist at the time that we evaluated technologies back in 2018, 2019. It certainly wasn't applicable to landfill leachate. But over the last few years, it has been technology that has been advanced and showed a lot of promise. Essentially, PFAS likes to bubble. And if you bubble leachate over and over again, you can force the PFAS to come up into the foam. And if you bubble the foam, you can concentrate the foam and get the PFAS to stay in the foam and out of the leachate. Very simple concept. And there are a number of different technology systems that use it. It appears to be quite effective at doing what we want, which is removing PFAS from leachate and getting it into a very small quantity of foam that we can manage in a better way. So here's the status of our permitting. We have a free treatment permit that was issued in December of last year. That's the permit that allows leachate to come from the landfill to the city's wastewater plant. In that permit, there's a requirement to do a pilot study evaluating technology. We've submitted that pilot study earlier this year and it is currently in front of the agency natural resources for review. The second permit that we needed was to modify the landfills permit to allow us to do that technology on landfill site. We received that permit in March of this year. The third and final permit that we need is the Act 250 land use modification. That has been pending for several months. We now have a draft and we expect that final permit to be issued in the next month or two. Ultimately, that's up to Act 250's timeline, but we think we're very close and we'll see that within the next 60 days or so. Here's the results of the testing that we've done so far. This is on our actual leachate. It's not theoretical. This is our real leachate being treated. Those five compounds are the compounds that are regulated in Vermont for PFAS. Compounds number three and four, we get excellent removal. We're calling that 100% removal. We'll talk a bit about what 100% means. Compounds one and two, a little bit tougher, but with the proper system and tweaking, we get very high 90s, 200%. The fifth compound is the stubborn one. We've not quite gotten all the way to 100, but we get the vast majority of it removed, 85 to 95%. So when we say 100% removal, there is no zero in terms of analytical testing. There's only what we can see. And so these levels are at the parts per trillion level, really, really tiny amounts. So we're getting 100% removal down to the laboratory's ability to see the amounts. I hope that's clear for folks. There is no zero, there's only getting really, really small. Yes. Leachate that's being tested or is this after the new treatment program? These are the results of treating the currently chate and that's how much is remaining. So that's the current? Yep. Thanks. A little bit more on the laboratory reporting. Again, we're doing very, very small concentrations here. The drinking water levels are about level of 20 ppt, parts per trillion, very, very small. The reporting limits for the labs are range from a high of 50, the detection limits getting down to 10 to 20. So our ability to see is about the same level as what is required in drinking water. So I'm mixing here, right? Nobody drinks wastewater. So the drinking water levels don't apply to wastewater. But that's what we're trying to get to. We're trying to get clean up consistent with drinking water. At the end of the day, these bars represent the amount of PFOS that is in the plant here in Montpelier. And what are the units? These are mass, so these are grams per day. So a gram is a measure of weight about equal to a paperclip. So very, very small amounts. The blue represents the amount of PFOS that's coming in to the wastewater plant from sources in Montpelier and Berlin. PFOS is in everything. It's coming in from residential. It's coming in from commercial. It's coming in from industrial. This is not solely a landfill leachate issue. The green represents the PFOS that's coming to Montpelier from leachate. So the leachate represents about a third of the total PFOS loading coming into the plant. That makes sense to everybody. PFOS in leachate is highly concentrated, but the volume of leachate is much, much smaller than the overall amount of wastewater. So on the left, you have the pretreatment. On the right, you have post-treatment. We were able to get our green bar down to that very low lever where you can barely see it. You still have the blue because it's coming from the sources that are within the city. But hopefully, we would all recognize that this would be an extraordinary accomplishment and an improvement over current situation. These graphs basically show the same thing a little bit differently. You're seeing the existing grams on the left, the treatment, and then the post-treatment grams on the right, and the pie charts sort of show that distribution again between the landfill leachate side and the green and the city representation in the blue. So that was a lot to get to this slide. Where are we? We expect our Act 250 approval within the next two months. We're calling that second quarter of this year. We are set up to start construction of our treatment building in the third quarter of this year. Contractor are already selected, steel already on its way. The minute we get our Act 250 permit we'll be ready to move forward. We expect to start installation of our equipment this year and to have it complete by the fourth quarter of this year. As always, we're dependent on things like availability of materials, scheduled to get it all done, but we feel good about it. We've done everything we can to make sure that we're in the right place and installing this timely. We'll go into formal pilot testing in the start of next year, 2024. That's required in our permit. And we'll be doing pilot test reporting and permit modifications all the way into 2025. But I don't want to distract from the real goal, which is get PFAS out of leachate as quickly as we can. And when are we going to be doing that as soon as the equipment is in? We'll go through pilot testing in order to modify our permits in order for the state to come up with the appropriate levels in order for us to have the right permit conditions. But the minute the system is in we're going to be pulling PFAS out of leachate. So today, our request is to give you this update. City Council has tasked us with getting PFAS out of leachate by July of this year. We're not quite going to make it. Very close. We need one more permit. We need to construct the building and we need to install our equipment. So our request today is for City Council to extend us until the end of the year, in July until December. We will continue to bring the limited amount of leachate that we do, which is approximately one load a day. And the minute the equipment is installed, we'll be removing PFAS from leachate, which I think is the ultimate goal for both us and the city. I'll certainly stop there and see if there are any questions. And is that the end of the report? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. This is, I had a very impressive people in the council have any questions. Sorry with people in the room because I can see you. I appreciate the charts and the graphs and all the explanation. It's very helpful. Go ahead, Tim. I appreciate it as well. It's also one of these issues. It's the first time we've discussed it since I've been on the council. I'm new here. So I apologize that I don't have the history. And it is an issue that as a citizen, before I was elected, I followed in the news and I still, it's like, why are we accepting this here? No other wastewater treatment plant in the state is accepting this, 8,100 gallons a day. It's bad stuff. I mean, it's so bad. They closed the high school in Burlington because the window putty broke out and contaminated the soils. It's something that we all generate. So I acknowledge the responsibility, not just my plea, but everyone has. So I'm still struggling with even an extension of it. If there's any other way to contain it till there's a way to treat it. You know, it's going into the river. It flows north. It flows to Lake Champlain. That is a water source for thousands and thousands of people in Vermont. Whatever little money we're getting for treating it at our plant is nothing compared to what it will cost to mitigate down the road. I, if nothing I plan with, if we're having trouble getting permitting from the state, this isn't, oh my God, moment. Somebody's got to call the governor and we've got to work on an Act 250 expedited process for this, waiting months for treatment of this is, it's just not okay. To be clear, the potty issue are PCBs which are different than PFAS. But it's certainly a fair point of, things that have to be controlled and regulated. The plant process is tough. It's a compound that, a set of compounds that we society have been using and we're faced with the fact that every wastewater plant in the United States is PFAS in it. Whether it's coming from a rural, urban or suburban area is present there. So it's not a land for leachate problem. It's an industry problem. So we appreciate that the city has been a longtime partner of ours in terms of waste management. We've recognized that this is a problem that needs to be solved, that we have to come up with a solution. We're asking you guys to continue to be our partner with that and come up with that solution for the state of Vermont. The leachate being successfully treated as a critical component of protecting water quality. And Montpellier has been a key part of that solution, both for us and for the state of Vermont. So I totally understand your concern, right? These are your compounds that we need to deal with. But I'm happy to say both from our perspective and from your perspective, we're ahead of what the state's asking us to do. We're ahead of what most states are asking folks to do. We're about 90% of the way there. We're looking for this last period to kind of bring it home and install the treatment and be able to move forward. Donna. I just want to respond a little bit to Tim. I felt it was worth getting the investment of a pilot project because if they don't take it to us, they're gonna take it to New York and it ends up in the same place as far as the lake water. And I don't feel they're gonna be as responsible of dealing with it as we are. That we're already doing a better job. And so I see it as a, I mean, it's hoping July. I mean, I guess I could look at six months because I want us to be an example that this is stuff that we're responsible for and that we need to deal with and not just pass it, the buck, okay, it goes to New York. It's above us in Montpellier. I just feel we should be part of the solution. That's all. Before we get into the debate, Karen, I see you've got your hand up. Yes, I am in a similar situation as Tim of not having been part of this decision in the past. And so I don't know exactly what went into the naming of the date of July 1st as a deadline, but I assume that it was well sought out and had a good rationale for it. And so if we're gonna override that, if we're gonna extend that, then I need to really understand what it is that we're weighing exactly. So we have some revenue that comes from doing this, but I agree with Tim that it's nothing compared to what the costs might be to any kind of damage inflicted by this. So that doesn't feel very motivating to me. And I'm interested to hear Donna's take on us being partners and us being a model or a way to handle this. So I guess my question to our presenters is if we were to say no, we need to stick with the original deadline, but that we would be willing to take the leachate when again, once it has no PFAS in it, is that a workable solution for them? Do they have somewhere else to take it in the meantime? So the answer is yes, there is a potential solution. Montpelier takes a portion of the leachate today and a portion goes to Platsburg, New York. It's obviously not our desire to do that. We think working with the city as partner helps us in order to establish the right treatment because the goals that we're establishing here are in concert with the city and how we treat the leachate and the levels we get to it affect our permit with the city. But the answer to your question is, it is possible for us to take a pause. We would prefer not to. We would prefer simply to allow the deadline to be moved six months. We feel we're not asking an unreasonable amount of time. We're not asking to say, oh, we'll come back in four months or 36 months that were most of the way there and that keeping this momentum and keeping the concert with the city and Cassella together. But to be fair, to answer your question, yes, we have an alternative, which is to take it to New York. Any other questions, Sal? And we'll get to members of the public, but getting questions. I guess I just have two quick questions. One is, is it possible to store the leachate for six months until or less, depending on when the active 50 permit comes through? And the other question is, what do you do with the foam fractionate that's encapsulated the PFAS? What do you do with that when the process is complete? Good questions. So the first one, no, it is not possible to store. So we average about 30,000 gallons a day of leachate. We have enough storage on site to help manage that, but the storage is measured in weeks, not months. So while we have storage to help manage the ups and downs, we cannot store leachate for any particular length of time. It has to be treated and moved. Second question is, a short term plan for the foam is to mix it up Portland cement and make a block. And that block will be dropped into the landfill. The testing will show that the PFAS is bound up into the concrete and that the block will sit in the landfill, do no damage, do no harm, it'll be locked up. The landfill is a great job of locking up PFAS. That's in the loosened materials. It'll do a better job locking it up in concrete. The longer term plan is, we want to destroy it. The destruction technologies are a little bit behind the separation technologies as an industry. So we don't quite yet have commercial scale technologies to actually destroy the compounds. But we think that they're probably in the two to three year timeframe. A lot of smart minds working on this right now. And we think in about that timeframe there'll be enough technology where you'll take the foam, you'll put it essentially in a treatment system and you'll actually destroy the compounds. That'll be the ultimate goal. Oh boy, this, I've got questions too. This kind of reminds me of the waste from nuclear waste question. And we're dealing, you know, that we still haven't solved that problem and we've been generating it for many decades now. I'm glad you answered Sal's questions about what happens to the leachate or what happens to the PFAS molecules that are removed. One of my questions is, are you worried that, for one thing there's no federal standards yet, right? And those are being developed now? There are draft federal drinking water standards. And are they more stringent than what you're testing to, less stringent than what you're shooting to? That's a complicated answer. The federal standards are slightly different than the state standards. They aren't the same set of compounds and the numbers are slightly different, but they are reasonably similar. They are drinking water standards, not wastewater standards. So the wastewater standards are still to come. In this state and in this country, we don't regulate wastewater the same way we do drinking water. So there will be different levels for wastewater than there are drinking water. But being ahead of the game, we're driving toward drinking water standards. And this gets me to the other question about, well, are you scared? Because it seems like more of these compounds are being discovered. And do we know that whatever new compounds are discovered are going to be amenable to the same kind of treatment that you're putting in place now? And then the second part of this, which I would guess would be a concern, is that what your standards are keyed to is what's detectable. And the way technology goes, we know that more and more testing equipment will be able to detect more at a finer level than is detectable now. So how do you deal with that when that happens, when you're not looking at parts per trillion, but parts per quadrillion or quintillion? There's no question that as a society, we are going to continue to understand better the compounds that are present in all of our wastewater. And there's no question that we will be able to see to lower and lower limits. That has been the trend for, as long as we've been monitoring in the last 50 years. Pretty much any pollutant, right? Correct. We feel strongly, and I think others do as well, that we have to draw the line in the sand somewhere. And here's where we're drawing the line and saying these are the compounds that we know about. We're gonna get them out. And in three years, if there's another compound that is identified, whether it's in wastewater or in leachate, then we're gonna have to develop to get that out too. But we have to draw the line somewhere and start coming out with a solution. And our goal is to remove as much mass as we possibly get. We're gonna get the compounds out that are regulated by Vermont and we're gonna get the compounds out that are regulated by EPA. And if we get better science and says that we've got to chase other compounds, then we gotta chase those compounds. But today, this is the best information we have and we think it's prudent to get this mass out as quickly as we can so that we feel good about us managing our waste and us managing our wastewater. Again, it's not a landfill leachate issue. It's a society issue. It's in the wastewater with or without the leachate. We're trying to come up with a solution for the landfill leachate, which makes that as small a contribution as we possibly can. Sal. Two questions, my questions come in pairs tonight. In the foam fractionation process, are there any other contaminants created and if so, what do you do with them? And if we extend this and you're successful and you have the established this process, is it scalable so that it would become available to say the Montpelier waste treatment plant? Or does the leachate, would we be trucking our leachate to you to remove the PFAS? Good questions. So first question. The foam fractionation does a pretty good job of targeting the PFAS and the PFAS only. So that we see the PFAS reduced by the percentages, but almost everything else stays pretty close, which is why we need to continue the partnership with the city because we need the city's wastewater treatment to reduce the rest of the compounds that are in the landfill leachate. So we're simply pretreating, knocking the PFAS down, and then continuing to do what we've done for decades, which is allow the city's wastewater plant to remove the rest of the compounds. There's no evidence of any other compounds increasing or new things forming. The foam process is a fairly straightforward process. You're just bubbling and PFAS likes the bubbles. Second question. This is a big question for society. Are wastewater plants going to have to treat PFAS regardless of the industries and whether or not landfills are involved? And I wish I knew the answer to that, and I don't. Society is going to struggle with that over the next so many years because it's a big problem for wastewater plants. The answer to your question is if you did, you would use a different technology. You're not going to use foam fractionation on municipal wastewater. You're going to have to use a different set of technology because the compounds are at different levels and you have different other compounds in wastewater than you do in landfill lead shape. So you would not use foam fractionation. You would never bring wastewater from the city to the landfill or anything of that nature. This would be landfill specific. Tim. They do. PFAS responds well to things like carbon treatment. That works well. So if you have a fairly clean stream of water with PFAS in it, you can get it out. Whether you're going to do that at the end of your wastewater plant or try to get at the beginning are some difficult questions to answer. Are there any other... Before we get to discussion, are there any other questions from members of the council? I see one member of the public who's had her hand up for extended period. I just wanted to offer a piece of information to respond to. I think the question that council member Brown asked about the rationale. So when the council met with Casella a couple of years ago and we talked about this problem and they described the process ahead, it was their estimation that they could complete this process around now. And so that's why this date was selected knowing that there was permitting issues. So the council chose to pick a hard date. There was even some talk about should it be longer? Should it be softer? And I think the council felt very strongly that if we set a hard deadline that will spur action. And I think, again, I don't want to speak for prior council members, I'll let them speak if it was my understanding that they said, you know, what we really want to see is evidence that real work is being done to address the issue. And I know that Casella's come back at least once and updated the council on progress to date. And the other thing the council asked for in addition to the date was that the goal be the drinking water standard, not a wastewater standard, and that is what they're doing. So essentially they asked them to say, look, treat it to a point where if it were in our drinking water system, it would meet the EPA standards for people to consume. So that was the rationale between the two requests of the council, obviously here we are, and it's up to you all to do what you feel like you need to do, but that's how we got to where we're at today. And part of my recollection was that we, I don't think anyone was sure that you would be even where you are now on July 1st of 2023, but why not, we want to put it a pretty aggressive standard on in the hopes that it would spur action. And I think it has done that. Let's take comments from the public page curtain. You've had your hand up. I just have a quick question. It kind of speaks to the societal aspect of this problem. When you showed the very first slide, I think it was that had a lot of food packaging on it. Are those sources of PFAS? They are and right now mostly were. Vermont now has a law in place that bans the use of PFAS in food packaging. It's one of the very few states that does. So we are dramatically improving as a society, but yes, up to essentially recently that has been true. Okay. But I would imagine if you buy a hamburger that comes in a paper that's wrapped in PFAS, something that has PFAS on it, some of that probably rubs off on the food and you're eating it. And so then that 98% of adults in the United States have detectable levels of PFAS in your blood because we've been using these compounds and eating these compounds and walking in these compounds for so long. The good news is they're on the decline because we've been forcing them out of our society and stop using them, but we're still gonna be dealing with the after effects for quite some time. Donna. One of the charts that was linked to our agenda had the food wrappings, had specific amounts. It wasn't in the presentation you gave, but for Paige and others, if they'd look at the attachment on the agenda. And my question was some of those is that, was that the level yesterday, today, a year ago? You said the paper has improved in Vermont, so if we won't let Burger King, like Burger King had one wrapping that was really high. Yeah, it was a consumer reports table. So I would estimate that is a few years old. Okay. But again, only some states have banned food packaging containing PFAS. Vermont is one of them, but it is not a universal ban across the US. Yeah, Tim. For like foundation for makeup, was way more than Burger King. Gortex, a lot of things we all know and love. It's just, it's really big. We have PFAS in our blood, not because of landfill each eight. We have it because we're sitting on couch cushions and walking on carpets and wearing jackets that contain this stuff, unfortunately. So council members, what, where are we? What's your pleasure? I'd like just to add Lauren had a weak connection. She knew that she might not. If she's not there, I don't see her, but she did send an email and saying that she didn't want it to be extended too far, but that she was still, I felt her email said she was still open to us working with them. So I'd like to see us do the six months extension. They're ahead. I mean, we knew the permitting was gonna be an issue. It was total guesswork, how long the permitting. We did have the state people come in and they talked to us and they had no more clue than the rest of us. So I feel it was a guess that Cassella has really moved forward on and I'd like us to do the six month extension. So that's a motion. That's a motion. Okay. And is there a second? I'll second. All right. Is there any discussion on the motion? Tim. So this is all predicated on an Act 250 permit. So the six months isn't gonna happen if you don't have a permit in two? That's correct. So I would amend the motion to say that if we don't have an Act 250 permit in hand in 60 days that we reconvene and consider the extension. I mean, you're talking, you just add up the numbers, 8,100 gallons a day in terms of what we're taking at our plan. And that's only a third roughly, not even a third of the total that's being produced in Coventry, right? Yeah, the numbers that we presented to you were the maximum. So once upon a time, 30,000 gallons did come to come up here. That's not true today. We're taking far less. But when you add it up, I can see why you can't store it. It's just way over a million gallons in a very short time. So I do think if we can do the 60 day review. So that's a motion or that or you're accepting that as a 60 day review. But I'd also like encourage us then to try to put some pressure on Act 250, that's possible. Yeah, do you know what the status of the Act 250 application is and what to expect? We've seen they've issued a draft, which typically means that they are close. There is a comment period, which closes at the end of the month. End of this month, like next week. The end of May. Okay. If we're interested as a partnership here, to encourage Act 250 to approve things in a timely manner would be greatly appreciated if the council were willing to do so. Okay. Sal. Is there, do you know enough about the draft of your application with what the two Act 250 issues are? And do you feel like they're resolvable in 60 days? Interestingly, Act 250 doesn't really have jurisdiction over wastewater plants. They don't really care about treatment. What they care about is how the land is being used. And so what they're really approving is the building. And so we believe that, yes, they will ultimately approve it and do so without significant conditions because we already have the permits that matter, which are the permits from wastewater and solid waste. Act 250 is a land use, not a treatment technology permit. So the answer is yes, we expect to. It's just a matter of timing. There has been some resistance from the Canadian groups to, well, to Coventry itself, but to this particular issue. Do you see that as affecting Act 250 permit process? There's no use to potential. The consistent message that I think the Canadian groups have is about not wanting to see a discharge within the watershed, which will then go into Lake Minformaegog. And that's not being proposed here. This is one of the valuable parts of the partnership is that allowing it to come to Montpellier and be properly treated. Having said that, and I stood before this council a year ago and said this, and I'll say it again, all water has to be protected. Whether it's Lake Minformaegog, Lake Champlain, the Connecticut River, the Winooski River, they all need to be protected. And so our goal is to do that, but certainly the Canadian groups have and may continue to advocate for their positions primarily about the watershed. Okay. Any other discussion by any, comments by any members of the council? Or are we ready for a vote? Can I just offer a very minor suggestion? Yep. You said 60 days. I just took a quick look at the calendar that would maybe instead of saying 60 days, just say to be reviewed at the July 26 meeting because I didn't count whether it was 59 days or 61 days or whatever, but that's two months from now, which would be approximately 60 days. So then it makes, you know, just to be clear and... Work for everybody. Okay. Are we ready for a vote? If so, all those in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? And the motion carries. Before we send you off, I'll, what do members of the council think about sending a letter to the Act 250 people saying, please get this acted on as quickly as possible because the impact on the environment is tremendous. Okay. We need... I support that. Okay. Absolutely. Great. Even a call if they've got people they know. Our staff have people we know. Okay. The motion to get at the record will send you out on behalf of mayor and council probably have... Okay, I can sign it. Yep. I have in the past, but we'll say it was as per this meeting. Okay, great. Thanks for coming in. I was just stopping up there last week, court in Newport, I should have stopped by. Yeah, I'll just say one of the... Couple of us have been here since the beginning, and not to downplay the importance of this issue because it's huge, the progress you all have made on this is really pretty astounding. I'm not even sure you thought you'd be here at this time. So, and we've appreciated your regular updates. So thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate the council support. We believe strongly that we've been moving in the right direction. We'll acknowledge that the council has helped move us along by setting that deadline and pushing us, but we think it's a good outcome and we look forward to being back here in July and sharing good news. Great. Thank you. Thanks. Next up, we have an update on the Water Resource Recovery Facility. I assume Kurt, you're up. Good evening, I'm Kurt Modica, Director of Public Works with me tonight. I've got Colin O'Brien with Brown and Caldwell, project manager for our wastewater project. And Chris, oh, sorry. Hello. Is that better? Also with me tonight is Chris Cox, Chief Operator of the Water Resource Recovery Facility with City Monplayer. So tonight we're going to talk about a next project at the wastewater plant, a little background for some of the new council members. From 2019 to 2021, we did a large upgrade at the Water Resource Recovery Facility, also known as the Wastewater Treatment Plant. That project was an organics to energy and aging infrastructure improvement project. So it gave us the ability to take in high-strength waste, such as fat soils in Greece and food waste, like dairy byproducts. It enhanced our digestion process, which is a process of bugs sort of breaking down this granite material, food waste material, and then gave us the ability to create methane that we use for heating buildings in the wintertime. So there's a lot of economic benefits to that project. We charge for the waste that's struck into the plant, and then we convert that to renewable energy and use it to offset operating costs. So this project, so that project was really a revenue generation type project, as well as energy efficiencies. This project that we're going to talk about tonight is sort of the next step in improving the plant. And it is not so much as a revenue generation project as it is a future cost avoidance project. So an issue facing the state and the nation, we talked a lot about PFAS with the last presentation in the liquid stream, so the liquids that run through the plant. But there's also the solid stream. So those get pulled out of the liquid as part of the process of the plant. And at the end, you're left with this solid material that you have to do something with. And it also has a PFAS in it. And so we're going to talk tonight about ways we're looking at managing that waste stream, some of the future cost implications with managing that. So historically, a lot of the solids from plants and from septic tanks, residential septic tanks have been spread on fields. But with the emerging PFAS issues, that's really all going away. So really the only alternative without doing sort of innovative projects is to bring that material to landfill, which we just heard a lot about the challenges that we're dealing with on that front. So that's just kind of the high level background where we were and where we're heading with this project. And tonight we're going to be asking to approve the design of this work, but I wanted to give a background of what the project really is all about for some of the new council members and just to kind of debrief existing. There are former council members to remind them why we're doing this and sort of where we're at with the project. So some of the discussion topics for tonight, the biosolids drying and thermal conditioning alternatives that we're looking at, some of the project benefits, other aspects of the project outside of biosolids drying and cost estimates and the financial funding alternatives. So starting with the biosolids, as I noted, the options are really getting limited because of the PFAS issue and the biosolids and how to manage it. There is a lot of municipalities in central Vermont have been working with a Canadian company to truck the biosolids to Canada and use it for like filling mines and things like that. That company, Canada, Quebec, where's taking a lot of this, has said by the end of this year, they're no longer going to accept that in Canada because of the PFAS issue again. So that means there's gonna be even more pressure on the landfill and there's only one landfill in Vermont and they do have a limited capacity. So just to kind of look at some of the alternatives for managing this waste stream, where we started was indirect hot water belt dryer. So that process would use the methane generated from the food waste that we take in and the previous project. Some of the pros about it is it's a proven technology. It's been around a long time. It has a relatively low maintenance requirements and you can run it without staff on site. So our plant only has four operators and we only run one day time shift. So we do not have staff to run 24 seven on site. The next alternative that we're looking at is gasification with a drum dryer. So in this case, the fuel source for the dryer is actually created from the burning of the solids. So the gasification component is a very high temperature sort of oven and that when the biosolids, once it gets going, is encompassed, then you can pull heat off of that combustion process and run the dryer. So they run in tandem. This has a higher level of maintenance and you also have to have staffing on site whenever it's running. So there's some challenges there. It is also a new technology, but this technology does have a significant reduction in PFOS levels. As opposed to the belt dryer, which really does not reduce PFOS levels at all. Additionally, for all of these options, you have a reduced volume of solids. So as you dry the solids, you take the water out. It's lighter and you have a less or lower disposal cost. And then the most recent technology we've been looking at is paralysis with a bio dryer. Again, this uses a fuel source from the solids with heat recovery that runs back to the dryer to dry the solids. This is a very low maintenance alternative and it does have the ability to run unstaffed. Again, very new technology. A lot of basically any of the technology dealing with the PFOS issue is gonna be a newer emerging technology. But this technology also does reduce the PFOS and reduce your total disposal needs for the solid stream. It also has the ability to create a renewable product. It's called BioChar, which has potential for even like a saleable material. So a small amount of revenue potential from the end product. So overview of the project components a little hard to see here, but there are actually three major components to this project, the largest one being the biosolds that I just reviewed. There's also odor control. So under the phase one upgrade, the food waste, we believe is the strongest contributor to odors at the plant. In particular, there's a what we call a blend tank where the trucked in waste streams are mixed before they go to the digesters. And we think that the large component of the odors we're experiencing or the public has been experiencing at the plant is from that tank. But to do a holistic approach, we're looking at odor treatment for where the trucked waste stream is discharged, which is called the headworks from the blend tank that I just described. That would be one odor control unit. And then in the dewatering building where we first sort of squeeze the water out of the solids before it would go to a dryer, there would be a second odor control unit in that location. And then potentially even the third one that's not actually noted on this map is where the ammonia treatment is being evaluated as potential for a third location. The third primary component of this project is the secondary clarifier. So the circular tanks on the bottom left. That's the only major piece of infrastructure that was not upgraded in the last project. So, and it's really critical to the operations of the plant. So that's sort of the third piece. And then we can get into the ammonia treatment on a little bit more on another slide. So move on from here. Just a little overview back to the solids piece. Well, really all the three major components. So as I noted, the solids drying or gasification or paralysis, whichever option is ultimately selected allows for a stabilized and reduced solids disposal costs with lower trucking and emission. So there's a financial and an environmental benefit. And again, there's a potential for an actually creating a renewable product from something that is currently all land-filled. Again, the potential for PFAS reduction in the solid stream. This is separate from the liquid stream that the slides that Cassell showed. But again, it's still an issue that needs to be dealt with. The project would resolve our, we actually have a permit violation from the air quality division. So we're under a permit requirement to resolve the odor issue at the plant. That project would accomplish that. And then as I noted, the secondary clarifiers which are on the bottom right there would be rehabilitated as part of the project. A little bit on the ammonia treatment that I noted. So as we were working through the scope of this final design contract, Department of Environmental Conservation, let us know that we are going to have a ammonia limit on our discharge from the plant. We currently do not have any ammonia limits in our permit. So we thought it would be, it makes sense to at least start on some improvements to reduce the ammonia levels at the plant. So we have added in the scope to sort of take the water that comes out of the solids when they are sort of squeezed or dewatered and do some preliminary treatment on that waste stream, that liquid stream to help reduce those ammonia levels. So we'll be adding a pump in the watering building to bring it over to a tank that would be refurbished in order to do some high level treatment. We're not gonna do a whole evaluation at this point to ensure we're gonna hit all our target limits, but we feel confident that with this level of treatment and some additional chemical addition options that we feel, we think we can hit those levels and there is quite a bit of time for the permit to comply with what the new limits will be. So they said likely the state would be asking us to meet those limits in five years, but there's a potential for even longer if we absolutely need to. And then also I want to talk a little bit about energy efficiency components. So in the dewatering building where the initial sort of taking water out of the solid stream, there is a lot of air moving in and out of that building. And that is due to the combustible nature of the gases that are generated. So essentially we're heating up the building and then we're blowing all that hot air back out in the winter time. And by connecting some of the equipment that's associated with dewatering to odor control and piping it out of the building rather than having it open to the building, that reduces the level of gases and therefore allows us to reduce the number of air exchanges in the building. So we won't have to, we'll still have to move air in and out, but not as frequently. I think it's something like 12 times an hour to three or something like that. Yeah. We're also looking at extending the hot water loop. That's the building, the buildings at the plant all except the chemical building are all on a singular hot water loop for heating. The chemical building is the only building not connected so we're planning to extend the loop to connect that. We're also looking at a larger evaluation to see if there's an opportunity to connect the heating loop from both the DPW facility, the garage to the plant, even potentially with adding the pellet boiler at the garage to allow each of the facilities to sort of supplement each other's heating needs. But that is really just at this point in the contract is only an evaluation to see how much heat is available from these changes, excess heat that might be able to go to the garage. And we're not actually designing that full system. It's more of an evaluation of the ability to meet those heating demands. And then we're also going to look at how much methane capacity we'll have for heating and what we can recover out in addition from the thermal drying equipment to add to that heating loop. Project schedule, so this may change a little bit. I just had a conversation with a state funding agency and if we actually finalize everything with this contract July or first or after, there's an opportunity for another $100,000 subsidy. So that's likely I'm gonna bump the kickoff meeting back a little bit. But this is high level schedule, so subject to change. But we were hoping in May to have the project kickoff meeting. Maybe that's July now, 30% in September. So that's when we are hopefully to have some initial evaluations done on the heating loop and things like that. In October, we hope to have the equipment RFP issued. So on this project, we hope to bid the equipment purchase outside of the construction contract. And that's for a number of reasons, two primary reasons. One is the costs are going up very quickly with inflation and lead times are long on this equipment and specialty equipment is essentially manufactured to spec. And then in February 23, we'd do a 60% design workshop. July of 24 would be 90%. And then in September, we'd complete the project bid documents and issue the contract to December of 24. And then we're looking at April of 2026 to have the project completed. I'm gonna turn it over to Colin to talk about costs. Good evening, everybody. Colin O'Brien with Brown and Caldwell. Again, thank you, Kurt for the introductions and starting on that. So because there is some, we haven't talked about this project maybe in a little while in new council members. We wanted to go through the project finances as well. So that first level in this table was a level four AACE cost estimate which is like engineering standard required by Vermont DEC for us to be produced with our PER, preliminary engineering report. So you'll see there's a range in there. Again, that's pretty standard for cost estimates at this level of project development. Final design and engineering construction services are estimated fees except for the final design. That's the one that Kurt has put in the memo in front of the council. We use the FED allowance, which is Vermont DEC sanctioned calculation for how engineering fees are to be estimated. So all of our fees associated with this when we did the first round of planning work, this design work, and the engineering construction services will all be in compliance with that which allows us to get the additional funding for other avenues for this project. The next couple of slides. Let me just change that here. What we'd elected to do is the last time we came and presented to council was 2021, 2022. And this is when we had came and presented and say, well, we have these options in front of us. This is what we expect the project finances to look like at project midterm. So we're talking a project with a target of the cost savings or cost reductions associated with it similar to the phase one exercise but versus revenue were offsetting costs. In 2021, 2022, this is the picture that was painted of, okay, when we look at what our biosolids disposal costs going to potentially be in 10 years, we estimated the city has a great deal with the partnership that they have for the leachate acceptance that that biosolids goes to that same landfill at a fee that is much more reduced than what other entities in Vermont, in New England, in the region pay. So that is very much so already advantageous in these projects at that time, we're still cost savings. So we take a snapshot to say present and just show really with what we have seen in the last of a very small amount of time, right? 12 to 18 months from when that table was last developed just on what the trend for biosolids disposal cost is going. So you'll see all the options as far as their annualized cost as well from a capital investment increased, right? With inflation, additional cost of services, we did account for that for all options, but the real gap between status quo, which is what we are currently doing at the plant, we're just dewatering and disposing of it in the landfill aside from all of the environmental benefits of doing these advanced thermal processes for biosolids management, that cost offset continues to grow in that gap. And unfortunately it appears with all of the strains that are being put on biosolids management concerns with PFAS and not only just the water, the wastewater, the biosolids as well, those prices continue to go up. So some of the opportunities we have to offset these project costs. We do have a grant loan package from USDA. So it's a low interest loan. The total grant amount is three and about three and a half million. And that's spread between both this project and the E-State Street Project, really with the city's flexibility to allocate whatever percentage they want to the various projects. We have the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund design subsidies. So that's that 100,000 I mentioned earlier. There's an opportunity, we don't have the grant, but there's an opportunity for a Pollution Control Grant. So that's a fund specifically really for solids management issued by the state. So that's money specifically dedicated by the state legislature to these types of projects. And I think being that we're dealing with emerging contaminants as part of this project, I think there's a very good chance the city could get some pretty significant grant money through that program. At first, the silver amount has agreed to pay for 50% of the heating evaluation. So roughly $12,000 that they have just sent the agreement just actually today. And then in the short term, the city would do short term bond financing and then we would get reimbursed to the USDA program. And so that's sort of that wrap it up. The recommended action is to approve the draft engineering contract Brown-Caldwell for final design of the Water Resource Recovery Facility Biosales Trying, Clarifier, Upgrade and Auto Control Project with minor revisions as may be required by the funding agencies. They have not approved the contract yet. And authorized city managers doesn't need to execute the contract in related documents. Okay, thank you. Members of the council have any questions? And Linda, we will get to you. I'll get the council members first. And if nobody else is raising their hands, I'll start out with the, oh yeah, why don't we take that out? Thanks. So just to state the obvious, it's a lot of money. And so one question is, is there a possible and possible do nothing option? And would that be a responsible option for us to pursue? I would say the only component of the project that we could cut out is the biosolids component. We have to do the auto control because it's a permit requirement and we have to do the secondary clarifiers because it's critical to the operations of the plant. So that do nothing alternative could ultimately cost the city more than the biosolids project itself based on projected disposal costs. So it is an alternative, but in the long run, it may not be the best financial option for us. And it also means that we wouldn't be addressing the PFAS component that's in the solids. And is part of what you're asking us to do today is to make the decision of which biosolids project we need to do or is that yet to be designed? All right, so as part of the USDA funding requirements, you have to competitively select equipment. So the plan is to develop a selection matrix like sort of a point system based on various criteria for the alternatives and to have the equipment vendors submit and then we would rank them based on that matrix that the consultant will develop. So now we're not asking for the process to be selected. That would come out through the engineering evaluation in conjunction with funding agency approval. And just to add to Kurt's point there to all of these technologies and the different options that we've talked about, my team and the city staff have been to these facilities to get, we felt that if we were gonna put this forward in this way, it should be, we should have hands-on experience, we should be talking with people that are operating this equipment because as we've heard in other presentations today, this is stuff that is cutting edge as far as the environmental industry is concerned. And I would say that that has been a critical component of how we've done the structure that Kurt was just talking about. We've talked about this pre-procurement with DEC with USDA and it's a very creative approach to this project as well and it allows us to have more flexibility with what the proposals that we receive and review and the scoring matrix and the different categories that we will associate them. So that it's a very cost and non-cost factor-based decision. Just one other thing that Colin and I had discussed is we could come back to council at the various percent design completion points. We talked about a 30 and 60, 90% review and there's an opportunity if the council decides, they don't wanna move forward with a biosolid component, we could stop and give you updates at those points in the design work and you could have a discussion review on that. And I know, do all the, would all the project have to be engineered, designed and constructed essentially at the same time? Is there a way to stage it, for instance, to get the, to accelerate the deployment of the odor reduction component of it? Because I know that that's been a sore spot for neighbors. I think how we envision the project being delivered right now is that everything will be advanced to that 30% design and we'll have those proposals in hand for the advanced biosolids processing and we can make that decision. Moving forward from that point, if the city were to choose to pause on the biosolids, not procure that equipment, we'd obviously have to coordinate that with the regulatory and funding agencies based on how we've qualified the project, but it would be an option to proceed after having those discussions with the agencies with just those improvements. I understand, I'm not saying that I don't think we should do the biosolids part of it, I'm just exploring. I got the question though, was not, could we proceed with one or the other, is there any way to accelerate the part about odor control? Yes. At that same component, we could work, our intent is once we get to 30% to talk about other alternatives with pre-procurement as far as the odor control, understanding, I understand the question now. Understanding how important odor control is with this project. Okay, thanks. Donna. I don't know that I can call this phase two, phase three, you've come back so many times, but this has always been in the vision that we were going to have to deal with. And so I see that this is a progression and I would hope that you'd be coming back to us again and again, but I've seen every step we've taken is to get here and to get here sooner because the cost only goes up, we know we need to do this. So I would hope the council would give a green light to keep going. Any other members of the council in the room who have questions at this point? Any members of council online who have questions? If not, we'll go to members of the public and Linda Berger, I see your hand up as expected. Thank you. Yes, I'm from district one, I'm downwind from the plant. So I'm pretty interested in this. Kurt's been very patient with me. I've appreciated it. We started experiencing really bad odors from the plant. I was emailing Chris Cox way back in 2018 when this most current upgrade of the plant was done, organics and energy was the priority over odor. Odor wasn't even considered in the construction. So it's been a while that we've been on the back burner in terms of air quality. I have a couple of questions, two questions. What is and will be in place to monitor carbon dioxide, methane and other biogas emissions from the plant? So as part of this project, we will have to get an air quality permit from DEC and there will be testing requirements associated with that. I don't believe it's gonna be continuous monitoring but it will be initial testing to establish that we're meeting the air quality permit conditions. Is that fair? That's fair. And in addition to that, as part of the preliminary engineering report that was conducted, there was actual physical odor sampling conducted at the plant to identify the types of odors that are being experienced so that the technology that's implemented fully addresses those low odors. The plant currently as life safety hazards has methane detection in some of the occupied spaces and when these new types of technology for odor control are put online, we do have startup commissioning testing that they all had to have to adhere to. And as Kurt indicated, through these upgrades, the plant will needing to be put together an air quality management plan for approval by Vermont DEC which will stipulate how those will be needed to be monitored from a timing perspective whether that's quarterly, annually, bi-annually, whatever the termination is on that. My second question is you indicated that DEC is going to limit ammonia levels. My understanding is that high organic waste contributes to ammonia levels and it also degrades the digestion at the plant and it also negatively impacts the infrastructure as my understanding, high ammonia levels. So are you adjusting amounts of high organic waste? Are you accepting? And if so, what's the impact on revenue of that? I'll speak to the revenue piece. I'm not familiar with some of the other impacts that you noted, but so we have never really hit capacity of the organic waste. It is a competitive market and it's very up and down. So it seems like most places clean their grease traps kind of all at the same time. So we might get a bunch of, or that soils and grease kind of all at once and then it'll drop way off. So we don't have plans to change organic waste. I don't know that that significantly contributes to ammonia or not, but I'll leave that part to Colin to answer. Ammonia contributions to the plant are not likely the origin of the high strength waste. When the high strength waste is brought to the facility, it's sampled based on what is in it. So that the plant can evaluate what they're taking. Ammonia loading can be found in other types of waste, but I guess when we're talking about the types of, this makes sense, the types of high strength waste, where we talked about dairy products, some of these brewery waste, it's very variable to the individual product, the industry that it's coming from. So I guess Linda to answer that more directly, some of those waste can be more potent, but others are nearly have no impact compared to the normal wastewater streams that they're seeing at the plant. As far as the corrosivity or the increased to the infrastructure, when that high strength waste is priced, because all those folks come to the plant, they pay a tipping fee to dispose of at the waste. The associated cost impacts with having to treat that waste are part of that cost and part of that consideration when staff makes their rates. Thank you. Thanks, Sandra. Sam. Yeah, thanks. I thought I heard when you were talking about the pyrolysis, the gasification and the pyrolysis, you were saying that the biosolids provide the fuel, but you also said the biosolids contain PFAS. Are we burning biosolids and releasing PFAS into the air or did I misunderstand? No, great question. So as part of to make the biosolids issue even more complicated when we add thermal technologies, you're exactly right, there is combustion going on. Thankfully, these technologies, and as they're being introduced into the wastewater field, have what's called best available technology for a mission controls device. These are thermal oxidizers, these are chemical scrubbers that physically process the air that is emitted from these stacks. Recently in our experience, similar to earlier presentation today, the PFAS limits in emissions for wastewater treatment plants and air quality management permits does not exist at the moment. So we are going off of data that we are working with, with industry organizations that our firm is working with, that these entities that have full scale commercial applications of these facilities that have sampled those emissions to confirm there is no detectable PFAS in the emissions. So to get back to the origin of the question, there are control devices that are going to be fully intended to be implemented as part of this project to manage that just as we are doing with the combustion process associated with processing the biosolids as well as in the air. Well, I was just in contrast, having just heard from Kasella, who's been casing the PFAS in foam and concrete and burying it for 10,000 years. And we're using scrubbers. So I, you know, it just seems to me, we ought to make sure that our technologies are at least as good as well. We should set a standard for the PFAS removal or mitigation that is consistent throughout. And I don't know if that's, if there's a way of testing that or measuring that or if it's part of the design study, but it seems to me it should be. Yes, agreed and great point there. One component that I left out, the PFAS as it goes through those chemical scrubbers, it drops out into the liquid. The liquid is then treated through carbon. And as Kasella noted, PFAS is very absorbent by carbon. So that would be a disposed material. As far as the advancement of the air control devices, that is fully planned to be a part of the project and whatever is selected for the technology. And we feel that those technologies are existing, being implemented and viable. Thank you. It's like we will be in the PFAS removal business at some point, which I think we need to be. Okay, anything else from council or from members of the public? If not, I would be prepared to entertain a motion to approve the contract. Very simply that I make a motion to approve the contract. Yes, I think that's good enough for the clerk. And if it's good enough for the clerk, it's good enough for me. Yeah, and is there a second? Okay, any further discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, the motion carries and we've approved the contract as requested by the Department of Public Works. And I'm looking at the time at, it is 825. We'll take a 10 minute break. All right, we'll call the meeting back to order and before we go to Country Club Road, we have some business to take care of from the previous item. I thought there was a way that Public Works needed this motion that I just made as far as approving the contract a little more specific. So I would like to make a motion that expands that. And it says that I make a motion to approve the final design contract with Brown and Caldwell for the project with revisions as needed based on the funding agency comments and authorize the city manager or his designate to execute contract and associated documents. And is there a second to that motion? Okay, any discussion? The point of this is just to make explicit all the points that were set forth in the presentation. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Anyone opposed? All right, thank you. All right, now we are up to item number 11 or number 12, Country Club Road update. Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you. Did you wanna say anything? And welcome, Josh. This is Josh. Well, he works for us. Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie, does it work here? You think I did. Good evening, everybody. Stephanie Clark with Whitenberg Real Estate Advisors consulting to the city, working with the master planning team, Josh Jerome, Evelyn Prim, and Kelly Murphy on this project. And Dave Saladino is remote on Zoom. He's our consultant from VHB and he'll be popping in if we can technologically make sure that works well to review a little bit. But my purpose tonight is to go through the update fairly quickly because there was a lot of information in your packets and actually most of you were at attendance or had been in touch about the process during the last month. So we'll go through the update and then really leave time for some good questions. I didn't know if the lights, if anyone needed to turn lights down for that. Let's see if I know how to do this. Okay. So just to recap, this is the phase one of the master planning process for the Country Club Road property that was acquired last spring. The community input began more in earnest in the fall when the consultant team was brought on and we did a lot of community conversations at the time and do diligence on the site. In the winter, we then had an opportunities and constraints plan that we were able to show with different test sketches for the community to respond to and give us some feedback on. We did surveys, we did workshops, we did stakeholder meetings. And finally, it brings us to spring when we did, we met with you back in March and then opened up a series of meetings and different outreach efforts to look at the concept plans. So three different concept plans, kind of schematic, high level visions for the site that will be associated and brought into the actionable master plan, which is where we find ourselves today. So this is just a quick recap of where we were for the last few months, but you see that today at May 24th, we're here to discuss a decision from the city council on a direction for the visionary plan, concept plan that gets incorporated into our actionable master plan document that is the summation of this phase and that will be presented in June. So in the spring, we had several meetings. We did three different site meetings, three different meetings in public. We did increased messaging throughout the community and through all types of outreach that we put in a memo to the council in your packet. So if you had any questions about that, it's in the packet, but we did see a way, we created a feedback loop where we were talking with different constituents and consulting with different folks about how to increase our messaging and our outreach with every single iteration because we met with people in the fall, the winter and the spring. And we had really solid engagement this past month, especially for the seasonality, which has to be taken into account when you talk about public process in Vermont. So we did our meetings in the fall, the winter and the spring and the spring saw fewer attendees overall, but still a lot of substantive feedback. And we had a lot of feedback and questions that are informing how we write the actionable master plan. We also got questions from council that we incorporated into our frequently asked questions that helped educate a lot of folks and people that were asking similar questions from the community. But where we got to through that phase and through all this past nine months that we've been doing this is to really hone in on these goals. These are the goals for the site and that this is where the community has landed on what is the desired impact of the site. So addressing the high housing need by providing a mix of housing product with affordable and workforce housing and market rate units. So a whole mix. Addressing the need for the indoor and outdoor recreational opportunities, including a facility or a building, as well as fields, courts and other uses. Balancing all of that with the list of things that I won't read off the screen but a whole bunch of other types of integrated uses that people wanna see on the site. And to do that, while minimizing impact on climate and minimizing impact to taxpayers. So that's the goal, that's the vision, that's the impact that people wanna make with the site that the community wants to make with the site. So we had three concepts that were released in the spring to the community and then these were put out in a survey to everybody to ask which concept people supported the most. So for these concepts, I'm gonna turn it over to Dave in just a moment to walk us through the three concepts a little bit more in specifics but kind of in general, these are the ones you saw in April. We did submit this same packet of concept plans in April but they have all a similar road network and similar depiction of trails, not exact locations but ideas of trails, the U32 trail, possible connections to the north or the west showing how that could would be necessary to have a secondary access but where that would be is to be determined. They all three show a recreation zone, a recreation and community zone which is a part of the parcel that's being held for that those uses but going to be planned and programmed in a separate parallel process. And at least 80% in all three plans has been designated natural area. Again, to reflect the feedback we got from the community and council over the last nine months. They differ between the three in product mix and variation on layout and but again, I think the fact that there isn't a wide variety of plans at this stage is a real testimony to the strength of the process and the consensus building that had been done very intentionally and very mindfully over the last series of months with this process. I wanna make a very important point here and we kept emphasizing this throughout all the public sessions but keep in mind that this is not a final land plan. It is not a final design and this is not to be viewed in isolation from the document that's coming out in June that has the data and recommendations for how to achieve this vision. This is really a visionary document that is a roadmap more than anything. So I'd like to ask Dave to hop in and talk about the plans. I'm gonna try to give him remote control. You can click Dave and maybe folks can see you but maybe they can't, at least they can hear you. Is that, can you see my mouse and hear me? Yes, yes and yes. Okay, thank you Steph and thank you city council. I know many of you have seen these plans and Stephanie did a great introduction. So just we'll go through some high level differences between the three concepts and really the largest difference between the three is the density and number of housing units across the three. And so as we start here on concept day this is the most dense as the most number of units just under 300 units. So 292 total shown here. Just for anyone who's seen this for the first time just to orient you kind of to the bottom towards the right is the country club road intersection with route two and kind of see route two crossing the minuscule river there at the bottom right and then heading north is the 131 acre parcel. So as you come off of country club road you can see the big green blob area that's reserved for future discussions around community and recreational uses there. So that 12 acres has been reserved for future use. And then passing through that area you can see the road network is consistent in each of the three concepts. In this concept day we have kind of that first cluster of red buildings there which are multi families of five story buildings. First story would be parking four stories of residential above 196 units total in that cluster of red buildings. We see a community gardens there in the center of the cluster of buildings. And so then heading north from there we see the orange buildings. Excuse me Dave can I jump in here and suggest if you have the ability to do that to sort of use your cursor to show people where on the map everything is. I know it's tiny on my screen but that'd be helpful. Thanks. Yeah that is a good suggestion. Thank you. So here this is that first cluster of the red buildings here. So just under 200 units here five story buildings. The idea is really to kind of step back with density as you head further into the into the site. So we start off with five story buildings here and then we have two to three story townhouses here in the orange. And so those would be anything from duplexes triplexes quadplexes really building off of whatever the market demand is at the time. As we've laid it out here there's 96 total units of the townhouses that are labeled as townhouses here. So all in total we have 292 units total. So just under 300 housing residential units in this concept day. Before moving on to the other two concepts just to highlight a couple of things that Stephanie mentioned. You can see here this purple line here. This is the proposed U32 trail that kind of sneaks through the northern side of the lot here and through the gullies to the west. We are showing kind of conceptually dry road extensions off to the north and west. And these are very high level concepts. If there is an interest in connecting to the west over to the city and pasture or to points to the north those would be likely kind of alignment orientations for those roadways. As Stephanie also mentioned 80% of the parcels and all 80% of the entire parcel is reserved for natural uses. And so you can see those kind of the western area most of the southern portion of the site and then the eastern portion are all reserved or are not contemplated for use. And then finally just one thing to note here that the green circles on here are existing trees mature trees on the site. When this moves forward when this gets into further design it will certainly be much more landscaping streetscape amenities and other features on the site. What we're just showing here are the existing trees on the site. We wanna make sure that we're preserving and acknowledging the fact that there are a lots of mature trees on the site. We made sure to lay out the site to avoid impacting those existing trees. So that is concept A so 292 total units. And then if we move here down to concept B it's essentially the same. So coming in from the south we've got 196 units of five story residential here. We still have that cluster of townhouses here you can see my mouse and then here in this location the big change here in concept B is to reflect some single family homes. So we do have a series of single family homes here at the end of the roadway. This is really responding to some comments that we received after the win around a public outreach that there was some level of interest in seeing a concept with single family homes. So essentially everything else remains the same in this concept B. And then concept C as we're stepping down in density in total number of units this is the least dense of the three this is 184 total units. And so two big changes here from the first two concepts. First off in this initial cluster that you come to we have the darker red or the brownish kind of C shaped building. That is a five story building like the other. So four stories of residential one story parking below. But then these other two are smaller three story buildings here. So providing a little bit less height and density right at the entryway. So this brings in a total of 132 units. And then we carry through the townhouses back here as shown on the previous sketches. So all in total we have 184 units on this concept. This obviously without this cluster of housing here leaves more open space for things like a sledding hill or some more recreational passive recreational uses or other uses of that kind of north east quadrant of this site. Thank you Dave. So we will have time obviously at the end for questions we're gonna hold questions for now and keep moving through the presentation. And this next section we're getting into is the cost and the finance side of things. We had promoted the video that we recorded regard going through this in a lot more depth. And so if hopefully we're gonna go really high level with this summary because there was a lot more information available for the last month and a half for both the public and the council. So, but if you have more questions after we can definitely get to them. So essentially the city infrastructure cost the way we look at this is what the city would need to incur to support these development concepts. And we're looking at the city's cost for infrastructure not individual units or driveways or the actual plantings for the residential units. But these are also order of magnitude only estimates. This is early phase, this is phase one. We are just doing this to show a general spectrum across the different scenarios, the three concepts with a lot more knowing there's a lot more due diligence in store and these have also been done pretty conservatively using today's dollars and looking at different assumptions. So just to summarize this slide, this shows the three scenarios, A, B, and C, the three concepts and it shows just the buckets of costs onsite, offsite and what we're calling sunk costs. The onsite is road connections, water sewer lines, the possible connection to a budding property for a road and the roundabout that would be needed in concepts A and B only would not be necessary in concept C. What we're calling offsite costs is the pump station that would need to be upgraded offsite and the water sewer to upgrade those lines to get to the intersection with country club road. And then sunk costs is really the purchase price of the site as well as due diligence costs that we would be associating with this development. And you can see that for offsite costs and sunk costs those three remain the same for all three scenarios because for this level of density and development whether you're talking about A with 292 units or C with 184 units, you'd have those same costs. So you can see that our high level estimates are saying about 18.8 million for both A and B because they have remarkably similar infrastructure demand regardless of the difference in unit count and concept C is lower at 15.3 million. So what we wanna highlight with those costs this is the important piece which is that as you're contemplating which concept you wanna support concept A and B are comparable gross cost. Concept C is less costly overall but because it has lowest density you can see in that next bullet the gross cost per unit goes up with concept C. And again, this is unit from the city's perspective. This is not how to build a residential unit but this is the infrastructure cost. So, and as we said the community and recreation zone is not yet known at this phase. So this is isolating just the infrastructure to support housing. So we were tasked with looking at funding and financing because as the city needs to contemplate both the community constituents who participated but also city council, it's important to think about how would we make this work? How could this possibly be funded before you make any kind of decision to point the direction for our next steps in the due diligence. And essentially this is a very high level recap if we have more questions we can get into it but the city has already invested a million dollars in the site. We went through a quick exercise of what kind of grants we might be able to obtain. Pretty much they would apply to any of the three scenarios. So we estimate a conservative assumption of 1.5 million. So that number in the green is what we would need to find funding for. So the municipal bond, you know, instead of trying to say that that needs to be funded by the taxpayer, how could you finance that and fund that? So the 16.3 for concepts A and B or 12.8 for concept C is really the nut we were trying to crack. So we did an assessment. I'm not going to go through what is TIF tonight. We've done that a lot at these meetings. But if you have more questions, especially members of the public, this is all available on the website. If the city were to do a municipal only TIF, which is retaining increment that the city grand, that would otherwise go to the city grand list from the parcels, the properties on this site, you could conceivably close that gap considerably under scenarios A, B, and C. And you can see that line is about 2.9 million to about 5.7 million. So you bring down the debt quite a bit that would end up being needed to be funded by taxpayers using just a municipal only TIF, which is within the city's control. If you add in water sewer fees, which is also something the city could choose to do, independent of any other agency, you actually would have a surplus under concept A and under concepts B and C, you close that gap considerably again. But if you were to be able to get a state designated TIF district, which is not a guarantee by any means, there's a whole process. It's a bigger concept for a bigger part of the community. But if there was nexus there, you could actually see that there would be a surplus generated by those units to fund possibly the recreation part of the site as well and would also, but also fund the entirety of that housing infrastructure. So again, the takeaways here is that the city would continue to seek grants, of course, to continue to bring down that number. But even so, with the assumptions we've made, you can see the different ways that bringing down the overall debt could be achievable using these different tools, municipal only, water sewer fees or a state TIF district. I just wanna be clear that a state TIF district is a much bigger process and you would have to absolutely show the nexus of the infrastructure being built for the recreation community zone, incentivizing and catalyzing the private development to be able to use that surplus, but there is a scenario and that should be looked at comprehensively. That's part of the plan is to run those two parallel processes and merge them soon. But that's an important takeaway. Again, much more due diligence is needed. We're gonna get clearer in the next phases on design, engineering, permitting implications and that could increase costs. So these numbers should not be things that we're getting wedded to. They are order of magnitude and that, but that could also open up possible funding sources too. This also does not assume any developer contribution. So as a partnership evolves with a developer that could open up other funding opportunities and we also don't know what the recreational programming could provide in terms of financing. What we wanna highlight again tonight for council is that this is a vote tonight is not really even a vote on any kind of capital spend. There's no bonding costs at this point in phase one. It is not a vote on spending. It is really a focus on the vision for what this site could be so that the phase two and beyond can go forward with due diligence and next steps. So when we went to the public back in the last few months, we talked with, we asked for a vote after we had lots of public education in these meetings. When we asked for survey results, people to participate in the survey and the majority, I would say, its first choice is 48% compared to the concepts B and C which had 21 and 31% support respectively. So concept A was the preferred choice from our survey and then part of our task as the consultant team was to make a recommendation as well. And we would agree that concept A is the better option for pursuing at this point and that is because it does achieve your highest ROI, your return on investment. It shows the highest density with still a very low footprint. You're talking less than 20% of the entire site having impervious. It also hits all those goals we talked about and maximizes your site efficiency balancing the two recreation and housing uses. So where we're going with this, again, I wanna broaden our view out of the individual land map that you saw that Dave walked us through and focus on what this document is gonna provide you in the next month which is this actionable master plan. It has a lot of components and these are only some of them but we're talking about recommendations for going forward to the city that that's what this whole process has been about is to hone in on what are those next steps based on the vision that the community has set forward. So we have a plan, a vision document graphically that kind of gives us a bit of a target and that is not a final design plan because that's gonna evolve with developers being involved, development partners being involved but there's a lot of other steps and you can see some of them listed here. The document will also include all the findings from this past year and the due diligence that was done on the site so that there's a solid foundation for the city to continue pursuing this site development of a scale on a scale this large. So I wanna focus just on the recap before I turn back over to you for your discussion of what we're asking for tonight which is again the goals here, these are the goals I won't reread them but these are the goals that the community has set forward that we think are gonna be front and center top of the document and then a plan that goes with it we're recommending concept A but that's for you to decide tonight and that it's really the two together that form this overall actionable master plan. So the ask tonight is for the council to review and think about and do you endorse the goals that have been set forward and then which concept plan should be incorporated and what I wanna just make it very clear this is not a binding decision by any means because this is intended to evolve and it's not a final design and there's no commitment to debt at this point or commitment to any spending actually at this stage but rather it directs our team to finish our work here in phase one which is to finish the master plan finish the document that has the recommendations. The number one recommendation you'll see is going to be following the adoption of any acceptance of this master plan the city council and city management are going to need to go through the steps and choose which ones to prioritize and tackle because there's four or five pages of recommendations in terms of the next steps that have to be done before this could ever be achieved so how do you triage that and so we in order to do our work and finish our work we need one of the plans as a vision to be heading toward and that finishes my piece here and happy to answer questions. Thanks Stephanie. So I've got a couple of questions I'm sure other members do also. You have the slide you showed us with the picture of the actionable master plan which had a bunch of boxes with little items on it and the idea is that the actionable master plan will address each one of those items. Good question. Yes, sort of. So those are a sample of the things that we're recommending in the recommendation section of the master plan and each one will have an explanation of what that is and what needs to be looked at. For example, we met with representatives from the Abnaki community during our due diligence in the public outreach process and determined that it didn't make sense it was not appropriate to locate actual Abnaki spaces on the site today but rather we want the city we would encourage the city to form a working group with city stakeholders and community representatives to actually put together intentional mindful processes around putting locating sites within the actual this site but also around the city beyond just this one site. So we'll explain that in a paragraph or two within the document and that's what those represent. Or for instance, there is a box about zoning. You're not going to say you're not going to write the zoning ordinance for that area but it'll say here's what you need to do with zoning in order to accomplish in order to put what you want to put on this site. Yeah, yeah, and align it as a step, yeah. And we've got numbers and is part of the process that as we select one of these options that will enable you to get to more concrete numbers. Not in this phase. So the numbers that you saw depending on which concept are just going to be inserted in the document as they are to represent the estimates we determined during phase one and then there will be many of the steps lead to more concrete and sharpening the pencil on a lot of that which inevitably is going to happen. And just to talk about how you get to these cost estimates for instance, we don't know exactly what the layout is going to be but you have a figure for as drawn on the map how many linear feet of road. And so from that you can get an estimate of paving and that kind of thing. Yeah, those sources came from VHB and their team and they created the linear, they did, they sketched out the linear feet for those numbers. We actually went a different route with the water sewer numbers using DPW numbers to try to get something more specific to Montpelier because you have local data there, recent local data. So yeah, different data sources pulled it together but to give specific numbers to those weren't arbitrarily chosen, they were done based on linear footage and we have a model that ran to produce those numbers. And different designs change it a bit, yeah. And you know, 2023 costs versus this isn't going to be built for several years. So those numbers are going to go up with inflation inevitably. Okay, that's it for me for right now. Who wants to go next? Pelin. Thank you, Stefanie, very nice presentation. And now it is more clear for me because we have numbers in the plan and the presentation. And every single time we talk about cost, it's raising, right? It's getting higher and higher. So it really concerns me and I will not ask any questions to you because as far as I understood public decided and they wanna go with the concept A which really helps me to decide what to do about project but I will make a general comment. One thing is very concerning me that we are trying to find financial resources to our other issues like infrastructure, our roads like shelter for unhoused people. We are just calculating, oh, can we find that much money? And oh, we cannot do this because our budget is not allowing us. Then we are trying to commit our city and taxpayers a project that it will be more expensive every year. So it's a general comment. I just wanna share with the city council and public. So thank you. Can I respond in one way which is I totally hear that, Pellin. And I think one of the things that we've seen in our work in other communities who similarly are struggling to find the right resources for the right uses and needs of their communities is that this ultimately comes back to the taxpayers for their review. If there was a bond vote that was going to create a general obligation bond that would be paid for with taxes, it would have to come to the voters. Any bond would have to come back to the voters and show the revenue stream. And so that will be the time at which the community can make a decision and the city council will make a decision. But as we showed in those financing ideas, those are specific to economic development that those are the only kinds of resources. This is the only kind of project those resources could be used for is the infrastructure. So in that way, it's utilizing a resource that would otherwise go untapped. And so it could be a way to do a project. And I'm not saying it's a guarantee. So in that scenario where it doesn't close the gap entirely, then you have definitely the decision you're talking about. But if you could, you're using a tool to self-fit fund this particular infrastructure project which inevitably grows your grand list and that grand list helps now to defy costs elsewhere in the city. So just a point on process, but I hear your point completely and it's not unique to this community either. A lot of communities have that same issue. Thank you. Thanks, Sal. Thanks. Stephanie, I appreciate your efforts to clarify the conceptual nature of what people have been looking at. I think there's some confusion in the community just to what the drawings are all about and what constitutes a master plan. The way I've been thinking- We just lost you, Sal. We just went on mute. Sorry. Must have been, the way I did- And again. There, don't touch anything. My cursor right on the mic. Oh, oh no. And again. Oh, that's so frustrating. How's that? Good. Yep. I've been thinking about it as we're really deciding on the number of units, roughly, and the level of funding but we're also, I mean, you've got a list of goals there and one of the worries that I have for this entire project, I don't see the word affordability among the goals at all. It used to be sort of the watchword for this project and it appears to have disappeared. It also means different things to different people and what I worry about is that by the time we're done with this, we're just going to create more of what we've got, which is to say prices that only a small segment of the population can afford. And I just, I wonder if we can explore other alternatives. I mean, it seems to me that one of the advantages the city has for you. Sorry, Sal, you muted again. Sorry, one of the advantages I think the city has with this property is that we own it and we control it. And I think we ought to hang on to that for as long as we can. If we simply, I mean, we were going to need partners, but if we simply leave it to developers, I just think they're going to do what they've always done. I also wonder as a sort of a secondary question is, will there be any indication of, I mean, if we've got almost 300 units here, is there any evaluation of how this will affect the population of school children in the community and how fast that might happen and what the consequences of are that at our for the school infrastructure. And I'll stop now because apparently my microphone doesn't want to go up for it. Thank you. I can respond to one element of that. And then Josh could probably respond to more about the schools. But yeah, I think one of the things you hit upon, and it is in the document and it was in the memo about affordability. That's absolutely one of the key goals about what the product mix needs to include. Affordable units, workforce units and possibly market rate units because there was such strong support for an integration of different product type and integration of people that would live there, different people that want to downsize, people who have no children who want to live in a single place, but then people who want children who are gonna live with a community garden and a rec center right next door. So really serving a lot of different populations. And so that's absolutely part of the mix, but I think your point is well taken and we have it again baked into the plan, which is about strategic development partners. And that's where the city plays such a critical role. This is a public private partnership. Like this cannot be, it's not a simple sale of a property off without any kind of discussion or partnership or agreement because this would be the RFP going out to a community to specific developers that you're interested in partnering with who can help you achieve those particular goals you're trying to work toward and may bring creative and innovative resources to the table to help different costs and achieve these goals in different ways. And so I think that piece is what's really different about this project than just the city acquiring a piece of property and selling it off to the highest bidder. It's more of a partnership because you're in control being the ones who are investing in the infrastructure to achieve the goals you're looking for. So that would be, that's the hope, that's the recommendation we're making. And then the question about schools, I think, Josh. Yeah, the school district is not at all concerned about over getting too many kids in the school system. They have a declining population as it is right now. And because of a lack of housing, they've had challenges getting educators hired and moved to Vermont. So they encourage plenty of housing to be developed in the community. Great, thanks. I hadn't heard anything on that, so I appreciate that. I think there are other questions too, but just what you were saying, Stephanie, just raised a question in my mind. If you could talk a little bit about what we do with the master plan once we get it. Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. It's kind of a question to you. I mean, we put in the plan, the first recommendation is for after adoption of the document, which is kind of where our work ends, the city council and city management have to create a way to prioritize and triage basically the list of recommendations and how to tackle those next steps. What are the most important, what are the most critical rezoning, for example, that takes a long time. So how do you get that started sooner than later because then the growth center designation needs to be extended before you could ever even consider having a TIF district. So there's a sequencing there. Starting conversations with those strategic development partners is another important one. Early on, fostering relationships with the types of developers or development organizations or groups that could be the developers of these parcels is gonna take time to foster those. So that's a step that needs to happen following June 28th among you all. And our work ends there, that's where our scope ends. We could pop in and facilitate in some way, but that's up to you guys. Yeah. Thanks. Tim. One question on your presentation, just I don't really understand under the hypothetical financing mechanisms and there's the middle one, which is using uni-only TIF and water sewer fees. So how did the water sewer fees play into that? Yeah, you can use water sewer fees to pay for water sewer infrastructure only. And so if you use the water sewer fees from the site development itself and use that as a financing stream, you could fund the water sewer lines on the site itself. But then you use those first, new fees. Yes, just new. Yeah, yeah, that's right though. All right, so yeah, thanks. I think, so my understanding from our conversations has been that we keep using the term actionable master plan because it's a planning term and it's the term people use, but this is not the master plan. It's just a progress plan. It's based on all the feedback that's been garnered through this process, which has been, I think, a nice process. I don't think this project's gonna look anything like this when it's done. I really hope it doesn't. I don't like this plan. I think it really is just one plan with three versions and I think there are ways to get the community values into a plan that once we get the numbers, once the engineering's done, I think that's really gonna guide us. And I think till we have that to approve anything, it's just not, it's folly. This piece, I think personally, because we haven't really had a chance to express it, I would like to see more density upfront. I think there's way too much street on this, which is gonna result in a lot more development cost. And it's a real 70s, 80s looking subdivision layout in some ways. It just doesn't grab me. I really like to see a lot more density down and I also think we need to see more pods or phases where development can happen and we can bring partners in kind of in more of a Montpelier scale. The really large chunks, if you're looking at one like big developer to show up, that's nothing we've seen here in the past. So maybe it can happen, but it never has before. And so maybe we need smaller phases that we could bring developers in that we know that can do what we want them to do. So I think it needs, it's a step along the way. But I don't think people should come out of this tonight feeling the city council indoors. This is a master plan that's gonna happen just this way. No, it's not a final design at all. And to that end, I think one of the things that the city council in particular, but especially city councilors with vested interests and connections are gonna be critical for is the seeking out of development partners that are creative, who've done things in other parts of the country, who are or other parts of the state, other parts of the region, country might be aspirational. Sorry, but people who've done things we really like that could bring some innovation. And so multiple times within the document itself we talk about how important it is that this not be inflexible, that this be completely, as long as it's achieving the goals that don't get tied to 292 units. Because if someone can come back with 500 units but done in a way that builds it into the landscape and still achieves those other goals, that needs to be considered. And so there's a lot of room for that consideration in the plan that would be adopted because it's based on the framework of the rules, not the framework of a drawing. So to your point, I do agree. Do you have another question or comment at this point? I mean, I thought then it would be just because we don't know till we get further into this and have some data so you can go to the state and find out what they're gonna want from us. But like if that second access road ends up being something that has to happen, if you break however many units the state decides, that could well double, if not more than double the cost of this project. Blow it out of the water or force us back to a very small project. So I think we just have to be wary that there's some really big factors here that are still gonna affect the direction this thing takes. Donna. And I totally agree, Tim, that this is just again a path. And I felt that we needed, the public myself needed at least a concept A to have something to go from. But I don't see the placement of the buildings, but I do see that attitude of townhouses and larger buildings that are more apartment-like, whether it's a condo or a co-op or whatever, and that the more we can do that, the more whatever the economy is five years from now or whenever it gets built, it will be better than if it were single houses spread all over the fields. And so I like that the fact that we go back to those goals that she provided us, these are our goals. And one of the actionable plans within this plan, I hate master plan, I hate the word master, but of the actionable plan is to talk to developers, try to find some creative partners. And maybe likewise, we have landowners on the other side, outside of Montpelier, who might want some advantage of that road as well as utilities. So I think it gives us some real clear places to go. So it's not a dream that's unattainable, but it has a lot of moving parts that aren't decided, but they are a little better defined than when we started. That's where I'm at. Kerry. Yeah. I'm also, Hmm. I, what I'm concerned about is that we say, oh, we like this one. And the message that the public gets is that this is the plan that's happening. And I understand that it's not set in stone and it's not an actual plan, but because we're being asked to approve finer and finer refinements of the ideas really does seem like we're being asked to kind of narrow down into an actual plan. And I also agree with what Tim is saying that there's a whole lot we don't know. I don't feel like I could, I don't want to send the message that option A is what we think is the best and that's what it's gonna be. I feel a lot more comfortable with, to me, the big distinction is one of these has single-family homes and the others don't. That's the thing that's really jumping out at me. And so it would be, I think it would be helpful if the city council orders say we would prefer to see development that does not involve single-family homes or that does. But other than that kind of locking into this is how it's gonna look, this is the way the roads are gonna go and all of that. I mean, I do understand that you're not proposing that it definitely be this way, but because the drawings keep showing up looking like this then that is what it seems like we're saying we want. So I'm just, so I'm feeling kind of uncomfortable with saying, yes, this is what we want. I would be more comfortable with kind of sticking with what the basic goals are and or some other representation of this that doesn't seem like it's kind of putting the cart before the horse in a way. Yeah, Carrie, I hear you. And I think one of the tensions we've been struggling with on this is, I mean, Tim's word of progress report is kind of a better one because it talks about it being this, I mean, nomenclature is hard, right? I mean, it's just hard for folks to, everyone's got a different interpretation, different definitions of these. But we have been talking about this as phase one with the implication that there's going to be many phases of this. So many phases of the work, many phases of the iterations of this work. And so, you know, this is coming out of phase one. Yes, it's a progress kind of a point in time. But to counselor Bates point, without a visual, without a, we got a lot of feedback from the community in the fall. I don't have anything to respond to. I don't know what I'm, I don't want to talk about this without anything to respond to. So, you know, you have this tension of how do you represent what the goals could look like in the abstract and more definitively, and this is the tension I'm very sensitive to, which is the very specific tactical piece that we need to, one of the early steps needs to be going to talk about permitting. What's feasible here? What are the implications? What are the costs? What are the steps that we would be facing in a, if this were the plan, because the city's obligation is to clear some of those hurdles because without it, a developer's not, I don't want to, I don't want to touch this thing without knowing a little bit more about what the agency's and what Act 250 might say. And you can't go to them without showing them what the impact could look like. Again, what the city would do is kind of take this a few more steps, get some clearance, initial clearance on a preliminary plan with the full understanding that a developer would come in, fine tune it and revise that just like you see a private developer, a private landowner might do that and do a concept plan for their site and then individual homeowners come back and make further refinements and come back and amend their permits to show the exact design of their house. So you really want to get some due diligence under your belt here and do the work because that's the point of the economic development, that's the added value you can add for getting the type of developer to the table that you want, but you can't really do that without a plan to respond to. So again, I think when I say nomenclature, something that could be very valuable from this conversation, from this group and it could be something that follow, I don't know, protocol or process, but disclaimers on this paper are really helpful. That could be, you know, we keep saying concept plan, we keep saying, you know, hypothetical throughout the document and things, but maybe there is a stronger footnote or bold note somewhere on the plan that really differentiates it. To be fair, this plan is gonna be one page out of like 30 of this document and not gonna be the focal point, but so far people respond to pictures. So that has been part of the community conversation. It's just a really high, fine balance that we find ourselves in. Bill. So I'm trying to listen to the concerns and have followed the process and understand kind of how we got to where we are. I'm trying to think if I can help frame where we might be that, you know, place that people couldn't rally around. So it's my understanding, and anyone correct me, that the reason that the housing portion is clustered where it is in part because of the natural, you know, it can't really be anywhere else, right? I mean, logistically. I mean, it could be closer to the front, but it can't be, so, okay, that helps. So it sounds like then we have, well, I'm gonna state this as though we have agreement on these things and then that could be the discussion. It sounds like there's general agreement between the community and the group here that we want the highest reasonable density that we can get for the site. That seems to be a goal. That I think there might be agreement that the recreation area is where it is and it is the size that it is. And that the housing would be roughly in the area that's laid out and that's because of the physical attributes of the site and that we would want to see a financing plan that covered the infrastructure costs using TF for grants or whatever is out there so that if the city were to create the infrastructure, we'd want to not necessarily do that. And then, and so, these plans that are drawn could be illustrative. So we've got the goals that I think we all agree on. So we've got the goals. We've got a general area for housing, general area for rec, we've got a financing goal and then illustrative of those goals might be concepts like this, but these aren't the final concepts is if that makes any sense. And then if people don't agree with where the housing is or that we should have rec land or maybe it's the city ought to invest taxpayer money in this to try to buy down housing costs. And those are all policy decisions. But from, so I'm just throwing that out there. It's maybe a way to help figure out something we can get behind that isn't locked in or no one's concerned that it's over. You know, over specific, but also, I think it can't continue to be vague either. So you're suggesting. I'm saying like, yes, we support high density housing in this general area. We support rec, you know, and we get a sense of what that might look like, but something's changed. We support some sort of rec or public facility here. All these other goals are important to us. And if all possible, we want to have a self financing infrastructure cost. And then you get your plan which says here's how you get all those things. Here's to all the things you need to do. We've heard from your public that gave you your parameters. Here's the steps now that you got to do. You got to do your permitting. You got to do your partnership. You got to do your zoning. You've got to do your detail cost estimates. You've got to do all these things to get to those goals. Are you suggesting though that in that case you would incorporate all three as just illustrations? I'm gonna just stop right there. Okay, I wasn't sure if that was the idea. Go ahead, Tim. I think my take is general concept. Okay, but I still think, I look at like the rec zone and the leg that goes back down toward route two. I'm still not willing to give up the potential for some housing before you get to the building. I know you don't like it because do you think people have to drive by Durek thing and Donna Bay said, okay. But if you knew that there was a $750 million price tag tied to that if you brought a developer in that would offset the cost to get up that hill then we should designate it for housing and not for rec. But that's a decision you'll make in the process of the actionables. People understand we have that flexibility. That's really what I want because, and then the next step is let's get the engineers in. I mean, they're working for us, I guess, through Whitenburg. We need to get, the rest of this is just hot air till we get some of those numbers and what's really gonna happen. And Bill, I thought you made a good point. The one question that I have and is whether we think the community agreement is really the highest density or the highest number of units with the goal being, having a target of around 300 maybe more rather than what the density would be. Keeping the idea or the target of around 300 units and because open space is important to people be looking at in the ballpark of 80% open space. But if you get that specific that, I guess I'm still open to more density if we get somebody created that shows us that we can have higher density and still have those other goals. I agree. So I'd rather not stick with numbers. I see the public saying note a single housing for sure as I did and maybe so I'm biased on that one. But I just see them looking for the density and that they're gonna be sharing the outside. And I think where that might factor in is in the design and writing of the RFP itself that you'll have that decision point to specify or not specify the number of units that's the target for a developer to bring forward and rather focus. So at that time, you'll have more information from the permitting, from the financing and the, I'm sorry, not the financing engineering and the number, the cost associated with those things. So you'll have more information by the time it gets to that point. So I wouldn't put the specificity into the goals of the master plan at this point. The numbers will be reflected in the, this is the concept that had a general support and that will be in the findings but rather stick with the goals that are more broad and let the RFP kind of get more specific if you want to at that time, which you'll have another conversation and process around. That's probably a year out at a minimum. And to be clear, I'm thinking 300 or more. I'd of course like to see it be more. So, people wanna live in Montpelier. Yeah. Yeah. And so since you're asking us for something like some direction, I didn't know if you're hearing enough about what you, what you want to do the next step. Do you think you're hearing enough? Well, there's the question and I do think if someone had a motion, I recognize we have not had any comment from the public yet and I wanna open that up to comment from the public. So why don't we do that? And then maybe some members of the council think they have the framework of emotion in mind. Diane Sherman, you're up first. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Yes, thank you. So my name's Diane Sherman. I'm the chair of the housing committee. And the housing committee met actually yesterday to talk about the three concepts before you. And the members didn't have the benefit of hearing this conversation. So I'm going to keep my comment short and also sort of explain a little bit about their position. What we talked about was urging you all to go forward with concept A if you are considering amendment concepts but for reasons that would also support if you choose not to vote on the concepts generally supporting the idea of proposing going forward with the goals or proposal that would focus on more physically connected dense affordable housing such as apartment buildings and townhouses and leave single family homes for other parts of the city. We believe that's important because it's harder to develop tends to be harder to develop large scale apartment buildings in Montpelier and in established neighborhoods. And also the city's housing stock is already predominantly single family homes by adding more units as many as possible which is one of the other major reasons we support concept A among those before you it will it should help reduce cost pressure on the housing market throughout the city. We also liked that the data provided by Whitenberg shows that concept A is actually the best for the city's finances as well as taxpayers. And so just to summarize and go back to this point I think where the housing committee would love to see you go is to promote the goals and approach that would create the most units and in a dense area obviously there were also in support of sustainable approaches to that and would like to see the plan at the end of the day include reliable public transportation to this area and also wouldn't believe having more dense housing will actually create the kind of need and demand for public transportation that would support transportation to that area that is public would also urge you to really do focus on apartment buildings and townhouses and other ways to keep units hopefully more affordable. And the housing committee largely assumes and desires that a large portion of the housing built there will be affordable to households of low and moderate income. Thank you. Thanks Diane. Any other members of the public I'm not seeing any hands raised on Zoom so I see Richard Brock as his hand up why don't you come on up? Where would you like me Mr. Mayor? How about right up here at the microphone? If you'd rather sit down you could do that but those seats are taken. So you can make the pregnant lady move, give up her seat. I think I know most of you. My most important goal for tonight has just been met. You know we're here. I wanted to make sure of that and I attempted to send you all a letter and my computer skills are such that I thought it might be important to be here and make sure that you received it. And I also wanted to be available if anybody has any questions. It's been a privilege actually to work on this interesting, exciting and very large project but we're such a small atom of concern in this project that I didn't want to be overlooked. And so going forward, I now know that the council knows we're here and knows what we'd like and I also think it's important that we all understand that if we were to be granted access that's your decision. It's not a decision of developers somewhere or your wonderful staff and both Ms. Clark and Mr. Jerome have indicated general support for our concept but they can't grant it to us, I believe unless I misunderstand the situation granting it would be the prerogative of this council. So at the moment we own the land so we decide what happens, right? And so this is a capitalist economy. Are there any questions? Let me just clarify and I got your email and I had a chance to take a quick look at it but not in great detail. My understanding is that you're an abutting property owner and you might want to develop your land and having access to the infrastructure that's being developed on this land would be beneficial to you, is that a fair statement? Exactly. And what's on the other side of your land? What's on the other side? I don't understand the question, could you rephrase that? From this property that we get to your land is... Oh, above it. Yeah. The Hackelmore Road Development. Oh, okay. And so are you landlocked now? No, we have an easement for access. It's about 1133 feet long and it washed out completely in Irene and it's right in the backyard of some people whose lives I don't want to disturb and this would be a better access if the council were disposed to give it. Gotcha. And so you're at easement would eventually get people out to downhill road. Oh, yes. We can get there any time we want and we do from time to time. Gotcha. Any members, the other members of the council have questions. All right, thanks for coming. Well, before I go. Yeah. My wife who's a member of this, the ownership of this property is somewhat complicated. There's some trust and, but we're all related. You know, we all have Thanksgiving together. Which makes it more complicated. And so she wanted to point out, I think that I'm just the one with the willingness to stand up and open my mouth. And thank you very much. You can come on up and speak too. Come on up. Okay. Thank you for your time. And by the way, I've enjoyed working with Ms. Clark and Mr. Jerome. I think they're doing a great job for you. Good night. Thanks. All right. Is there any other member of the public? Yeah. Any other member of the public online who hasn't been recognized yet who wants to be? If not, I heard someone mentioned the possibility of emotion. Is there emotion? Tim? To move the completion of phase one of the country club road process, that we endorse the goals as stated in the Whitenberg report on pages five and six to move forward with the project. And that, you know me, I'd like to encourage that we also do the RFP process or get the engineering work going. So at the next meeting, the follow-up plan is going to be presented. At June 26th meeting or whatever the day? June 14th, actually. Okay. June 28th, sorry. Two meetings from now. Sorry. Okay. Is there a second? So that's when that would be done. I'll second it, but I just want to verify that what Tim has worded in the motion will get you to what you need to do for the June meeting. I don't know. Okay. I think it would be helpful to have some more specificity to do a friendly amendment to specify which drawing would be most consistent with your intentions around the goal to be illustrative only. So just insert that. Well, Tim doesn't like any of the drawings. I know. Tim doesn't like option A, but it's the best one of the three. So maybe go with the concepts. Illustrational. Yeah. Illustrative only and with appropriate disclaimers. Now we have to go to our clerk. What do you need, John? I don't have that much budget. I think I can cobble that together. That's impressive. I have the notes, but I think I'll probably return to the tape for the specific wording, but I've got it. Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion among the council? You ready for a vote? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. The motion carries. Thank you. Thanks so much, Stephanie. You will not see me on June 28th. You will see Dave Saladino and Josh. And I will see you all if you ever choose to hire us again. So you'll see me after that. Well, since this wraps up your participation before the council, I just want to say it's been great. You've done great work right along and other members of the public who I've talked to made that same observation. I'm glad to hear it. And good luck. Thank you. For weeks. I'll have another Vermonter to add to our population base. That's all. Thanks so much. This is where you're on your way out the door. Okay. If we connected Mr. Brock's property, they developed it with those properties counting the TIFF. Hire me in September. We are up to item number 13. Chapter 11 ordinance changes change. First reading. Chief, come on up. Those are a couple of tough acts to follow again. Hello. Thanks for having me again. First reading for an ordinance change, kind of to recap from the last meeting, we were looking based on some police review committee recommendations to look at some of our existing ordinances and either change the penalties or abolish them. So what we did was made some recommendations to change some penalties. I got with the police review committee. They liked the revisions that we had. And we created a policy and also a standard operating procedure for how we would handle public drinking and also other chapter 11 violations. So our goal was to decriminalize those violations and turn them into civil tickets, which are prosecutable by us. And I think the wording has been shared with all of you folks. So if you had any specific questions for me, I'd be happy to answer those. Anybody? Anyone on online? I, one question I had, and I'm looking at the public up intoxication and intoxication consumption policy is that the policy statement says, while intoxication and substance abuse are illnesses, and do we really think that intoxication standing by itself is an illness? I realize that policy is not what we're reviewing today, but I thought that was an interesting question. Sure, I think there was some definitions involved with that. If you want some different wording, I'm happy to entertain that. That's for sure. We don't have to do that tonight. Well, it's not part of the ordinance, right? Yeah. Carrie. Yes. Okay, so I'm looking at the memo about this. And I see that there's a proposal to add section one nine, which is the outlines the procedures and what happens if someone violates these. That's all nice and clear to me. The part that I'm wondering about is above that memo, the suggestion is to remove completely or remove from police penalties. These other sections are a few advertising and smoking within city parks. And so I just want to kind of clarify what we're having a first reading on right now, because that part is unclear to me, whether we're talking about removing them completely or leaving them in there and just having them not be subject to the penalties that are specified later on below. Thank you. First off, I open the public hearing. Thank you, clerk. I always used to do it a lot. So Councillor Brown, thanks for the question. It started out was we were initially addressing the public drinking ordinance, and then we decided to have a more broad discussion with the rest of chapter 11, because a lot of those kind of made sense to turn them into civil penalties dealt with by a municipal ticket. A couple of the things we talked at last meeting were that we didn't really want the police to deal with the curfew advertising and smoking in city parks. So I took those off of police penalties. I don't think you want us issuing tickets for those violations. You're welcome to keep those on the books and we can have conversations with people, but I don't have a lot of interest in issuing tickets to people past nine o'clock. I have a question on the table. I'm here first for everybody's whether we'd actually be removing those entire ordinance provisions or just the penalty provision. Is that right? And that would be up to you folks if you're prerogative. I don't have a lot of interest in enforcing those, and if you want to remove them, I would support that. So if I could follow up. Yeah, keep going, Carrie. So this is really a procedural question I'm trying to get clear on. Do we need a motion to make a change to the ordinance and then we have first reading and second reading and public hearings on it? Well, so normally what you'd do is you'd have the public hearing on a proposal and I get you where you're at, but we're not actually saying, we're kind of giving you even the word instead of here's a proposal to have a public hearing. So I think the cleanest thing was after we discussed the concept is make a motion of what you want to approve to move to second reading for that final version. So first reading is usually where we flush these things out and then it does go to a second reading and that should be, it can still be amended at second reading too, but the idea is that that's really more of a public hearing. This is what the council after first reading thinks it wants to do. Gotcha. Yeah, go ahead, Carrie. Okay, and then in that case I would be in favor of removing the parts of the ordinance about curfew and advertising and whatever the other one was smoking. So that's what I would like to see go to the second reading is that we eliminate those as well as adding in the clarified enforcement procedures. So is that your motion? Sure. Okay. So I restate it. Does that work for the clerk? Would you please restate it? You probably want to close this. Yeah, sorry. Before you have the motion. Thank you. In that case, I will see if there's any member of the public who wishes to be heard. And please raise your hand on Zoom if you do. We'll get there. Okay, after the game. Okay, not seeing any hands raised for any requests by memory of the public to be heard. I will close the public hearing. And then Councillor Brown, would you restate your motion please? I move that we remove the specified sections from the ordinance that are in the memo and that we add a new section 1-9 as written in the memo. Is there a second? Okay. Seconded by Councillor Haney. Any further discussion by members of the council? If not, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Anyone opposed? All right. And then at the next meeting, the drafted ordinance with these things will be on for a second reading. Once you adopt those, then they become effective however many days, 10 days or whatever it is. All right, great. Thanks, Chief. Thank you. What? Do we have to make a motion to set the second hearing? No. Okay. We only have in the past, but we know when it's gonna be, so. All right, next up. If you'd like to make a motion, why don't you love it, so I'm asking you. Next up. It's not as clear as others. I don't want it when there's lack of clarity. It's clarity. We're pretty clear tonight. I just rolled it. Next up, we're up to item number 14. Night paving. Welcome, Corey. I don't know what happened. Somebody has to be last, right? Oh. What was you ought to put on the beginning? Yes, so Corey Line with Public Works. Good to see everyone again. This is a waiver for the couple different paving projects. One is the Agency of Transportation, route two, route 302 project. Specifically, this work will occur on route two from Bailey Avenue, including Bailey Avenue, out to the Berlin town line out by Galson Hill, as well as route 302 from the roundabout out to the wayside town line. The work specifically for nighttime will include the milling and removal of the existing asphalt and the placement of the new asphalt. The milling is scheduled to occur at the end of June. It'll last approximately two to three weeks. And the final pavement is scheduled to occur at the end of August and will last a couple of weeks on that end. So important to note on this one, ever since the early planning stages for this project, it was anticipated that this work would happen at night, mostly because the last time this project happened, it started, it got a couple of days in. They realized that the impacts were not sustainable during the day. So they had to go through the process of changing to night work after the project had started, using a change order process, added a lot of time, a lot of cost. In order to get ahead of it, it was planned that this work would occur at night. The second project is the State Street Paving. This is associated with the utility work that is currently happening out there now. Once that utility work is done, it'll be patched in asphalt. But later on afterwards, we wanna come in and do one curb-to-curb paving, no seams, make it look nice. That is gonna take both processes. The whole thing will take a couple of nights. It'll probably be on continuous nights. There might be one in between, one night in between, but that one will go pretty quick. I feel like there was something else I wanted to mention. But I don't think there's, okay. Donna. So the one on State Street, is that also the one that the Capitol Plaza was asking for some, making sure that the noisier stuff was done earlier? So from what I understand, I wasn't part of that meeting, but from what I understand, that was specifically for some of the subsurface utility work. And this is for the painting, but yeah, same project, different activities, same project. Thank you. Okay. The reason we had special meetings was anticipated that work would be done before this meeting, as it turned out, I don't think it has been better because of other problems, but... I believe it may be occurring right now. Oh, maybe it's occurring right now. I don't know for sure about that. Yeah, I'd heard it might be tonight, so maybe we could all go over and watch after the meeting. All right, any, yeah. Oh, oh, sorry. The, we did state that we sent out notices per the ordinance, I believe it's every, it's a 200 feet, maybe 250 from the project area. So we sent out those notices. We said we would report any comments that we received. We did not receive any comments. All right, any comments from the public? Mark Seltzer or Kate Bolter. Hi there. We are residents on the Route 2 corridor, River Street and Pioneer Street area. And we're wondering just what the notification plan would be for neighbors so that we can kind of plan around closing windows and protecting ourselves from the sound and dust that might be involved with the project. So the notification, obviously the city's outlets will all send something out when there's a hard day of when it's gonna start and as it proceeds through. The other thing that'll happen is the portable message boards in the area will be switched over to indicate what that date is when it will start. Corey, just to follow up on behalf of the questioner, this is gonna roll down the street, right? So there's a start and finish date, but I think one question might be when we know we're approaching certain neighborhoods, will we be able to provide people information or is there like, would that be on the city's website or like, where could people go if they know it's coming up to them in the next couple of nights? Yeah, I think that could be managed through the city's. There's a project website on the city's, the project page on the city's website. And I know we've been getting out notices on the social media outlets. So I think that can be managed as it proceeds. We're doing this. Can people call the DPW office too, if they really do? Okay. And presumably this is also going out in the DPW newsletter, which I recognize not, everyone's gonna sign up for it, but if you wanna pay attention to what your city government is doing, DPW and city manager newspapers or newsletters are excellent source of information. Do you have another question or? This is a Mark, a quick question. I know on the State Street project when we were driving by a couple of nights ago, we heard loud pumps and loud generators that were running through the project. Is that expected to happen for this or is it just gonna be vehicles milling and doing that? Or will there be any excessive noises from generators pumps or anything of that sort? So all of that static work, stationary work, we don't expect any pumps at all in this project, but things like adjusting the manholes and the valves that could result in some jackhammering, that is all expected to be done during the day. This is continuously moving, milling, hauling away, and then paving later on. All right, thanks. Any other member of the public who wishes to be heard? All right. Chair would entertain a motion to approve this request. I move that we approve the waiver to the ordinance. And is there a second? Second. All right, moved by Bate, seconded by Brown. Any discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And anyone opposed? All right, we've adopted the waiver. Thanks, Corey. Thank you. Now we're up to other business, and under other business, we have a discussion of a city council retreat. As you put on the agenda, because I would like us to discuss a retreat that's off-site, that we really have a chance to learn a little more about one another and how we make decisions and function much more than city matter directly, more about us as individuals. And so I bounce around some ideas of other places we might meet. One that came up, I think that Jack mentioned, was one of the shelters in the park. I think it's a great idea. I think we should do it. I think that we've been working together for a couple of months now, getting some non-tasked, directed time. It's a great idea. It would of course still have to be open to the public, but I don't know how many members of the public are interested in watching us sit around and eat pizza. Right, but it's really about, I mean, the public can certainly attend, and you have your public comment period, but it's really about the council speaking. It's not about a lot of public participation. Exactly. Yeah, I believe Mary was looking at finding a date for it, and that's always the biggest challenge, is when I tossed out next week, but you're away. I'm away for two weeks. And then, I don't know, but the first week and then week in June, maybe that's. That's next week. Well, I meant next week, but it was actually be May 31st, this next Wednesday. June 7th, you know, our next council meeting is the 14th, our regular meeting. Well, is everybody in agreement we should do this? Why don't we just say, yeah, have Mary. I think we already had a head nod that we were gonna do it. Okay, yeah. So, we'll find a date first and then a place. Oh, you're going the 7th too, right? I'll be back the 11th. I'm going until the 11th. All right, so probably after the 11th. I will be gone from the 14th until early July. I'll be gone for like three weeks. Can we have it after summer? Because everybody is having vacation. I won't be here between June 6th and 15th. Then I have a location last two weeks of June. Then we are planning to go to Turkey for the first time after COVID July. So it is really kind of busy. So is it possible if we can do it like kind of in September or yeah, May? We may have no choice that I don't think we'll be able to get it in during May. So maybe Mary can. We can do it in Martha's Vineyard or Turkey. You're welcome down here. Yeah, if you let me go, Turkey, I will bring some food for you. Can we meet in Istanbul or something? Could we all go? No, I'm not. Let's go together. Then we can have our retreat there. Great. Let's rely on city staff to come up with the timing. It'll probably involve communication with council members to see when they're available. All right. Next up, the city council reports. Starting down on with the councilor Bate. I want to see all you people back next meeting. It's really bare around here. You're missed. I just want to mention that the infrastructure committee talked about a bike loan program that has been going on and they're looking for people who are interested being part of it. They got several e-bikes and some regular bikes given to them and they'd like to recreate it this summer, but they do need volunteers to do it. So if you're interested, contact me, both council members and citizens. And that's all you've got? Yep. Carrie? No report tonight. Sal? I just want to say that I appreciate the work that the city managers of Montpelier Bay and Berlin are doing to try and help us meet the motel exit emergency. I know progress is difficult and slow, but I'm still hopeful that we'll come up with something. So, but thanks for that effort. Really appreciate it. What are you doing? Thanks, Sal. Tim? Palin? It's not from our city, but I just read that Burlington approved a new U.S. citizen building, which we already did. So I think it's a great development. Now we must keep Burlington Montpelier have approved and it shows that we are becoming more inclusive state. So it's a good news. Thank you. And it looks like we don't have Lauren. Anymore? Mayor's report, I don't have much except to observe that I think that people are, I think we've done a lot of work. If you look at what our agendas have been like lately, there's been a lot of very information heavy stuff that we've dealt with. I thought the discussion of the water system a couple of meetings ago was an excellent discussion. The discussions tonight were excellent discussions. So thumbs up, especially for the new people who have been trying to catch up for it with all this stuff that the rest of us have been had in our minds for a long time. It's a lot of work. City Clerk's report. I just need to mention that we did not have a critical mass of live city council folk here to sign all the things that needed to be signed. So I will be putting that over, I guess I'll just leave it over in the manager's office and all right, just hang on to it. I'll have it at the clerk's office. Why can't I have it in my office? So if folks could get a chance to come on by and sign these, that would be great. We need one more at least. One more would give us majorities on things of the council, so we'd be good. Even just one of you can make it. You can make a mask and come in. Great. If you happen to be a city council member who is in Montpelier and just not feeling well, missing the meeting and your initials are sal, alfano, you can just put your mask on and come down and sign. All right, and city managers report. Just a couple of things. We started, so the reappraisal is still in full swing. We are in the midst of the first round of grievance hearings. It's been a city, not grievance, because it would be informal meetings. They seem to be going pretty well. You know, it's been a full schedule, but we have not knock wood. We've not had the same kind of sort of, negative is the right word, or vocal reaction that we've had. People seem to be going through the process and asking the right questions and making their points, but it seems to be going relatively smoothly. I asked, it is interesting though, as you know, talking about housing, the average single family home in Montpelier as of this, I mean, it will change slightly when they're done, but right now it's $418,000 now, up from $220,000 or whatever it was, and the average condo is about $280,000. Condo, am I mean, just two weeks ago? Yeah, yeah, so it's... It's a threat. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, I mean, it's just, you know, we're in a new time. Secondly, on the other end of that spectrum, we had another meeting of our homelessness coalition tonight. We don't really have an official name for it, but it is the three cities and the nonprofit providers and now the state. You know, we're a week out from the first group coming out. I think this group has really worked hard at coming up with some sort of specific plans about what, who's gonna be weird doing what on June 1st and 2nd, as far as whether it's just providing rides and those kind of things. We've got a list. We've submitted a list of the state of issues to be funded. I think we're optimistic that many things. So, one of the good things, so the problem we have is unique in that there's actually a lot of money available to address it. There's about $10 million right now in the budget for short-term. There's about 26, short-term solutions. There's about 26 million in the state budget for what they call medium term type fixes and over $100 million for sort of housing development, affordable housing programs for a longer term. The problem is right now there's no housing and no specific place and no shelter capacity and not a lot of people to staff these things. So, it's kind of the opposite of where we normally are. We have people who are already willing and able but no money. This is just kind of a backward situation. But there are some good suggestions being made but I do think that the whole reality is there will be no place for a lot of people to go next week and then next month other than camp in places that maybe they should or shouldn't be. But we are looking at that. We are. Good Samaritan is looking at a couple of options for sheltering, expanding some sheltering capacity. They're handling those negotiations but they say that looks promising. And I think mostly we've really, you know, we've got a sense of what could work including some infrastructure that might be, even though it might be short term money, it could have longer term benefit. You know, bathrooms for example, something that might be able to be funded. So, you know, maybe we could put some funds toward a public bathroom under the short term money. And the good news is a lot of the things we thought that we might have to fund may well be eligible, is likely to be eligible under this money. So, you know, we thought we might have to put money in a retrofit some place to be a shelter. And this is something actually the state might cover. So, that's good. But it's not good for the folks that are gonna be out of a home next week. Is there any time limit on funds that are available as to when they have to be? Well, technically it's, you know, the next fiscal year for the state. So, you know, I don't know if they can commit them and use them and we actually talked about, and so there is a state representative here. We talked to the key funding person yesterday. She couldn't make it to the meeting today, but so the guy was there, was gonna take some questions back. One of the questions was, for example, can you say there was a, we needed to lease a place for shelter. You know, could we sort of prepay a three year lease type thing? You know, maybe get a better deal if someone takes the money up front now, but at a lower monthly rate over a period of time. And that would lock a place down for shelter for three years while we sorted out the other options, you know, more permanent options. So they were gonna check on all that. You know, the general feedback we got from the state is, be as creative as you can. Give us your list. They've put out, the states put out a request for ideas due by June 1. Our group had already sent ours in before they released the, and they told us that we had already met the requirement before they even sent it out. So we felt good about that. So, you know, it's been a great working group. It's really a bunch of committed people. We'll be meeting again next Wednesday for two basic purpose to prioritize our funding requests and to, you know, basically night before the storm, see what last minute planning is in place. And then we'll decide after that whether we need to keep meeting weekly or what, you know, it's been very large turnouts of these meeting, much more than we ever expected. And so, do we try to shrink it down to a working group or something? But, so one more big group meeting and Barry's outreach worker, Paul Pooley Outworks is kind of their embedded social worker where there's their police department, I guess. She's volunteered to sort of be the coordinator for this next week of all the agencies. So there's a single person for those groups to work with. So, and Kelly was involved in the meeting as well. We had Chief Gowans, Chief Nordenson. Can you use that money to actually buy a place and turn it into a shelter? Potentially. Not just directly housing. I mean, you know, it's one of those things, right? So, yes. And there's a statewide's worth of requests that will be coming in. And, you know, $10 million is a lot of money, but it's not, you know, it's not. Yeah, it's a huge need. It's not infinite. So, I think the question's gonna be, you know, one of the priorities, one of the biggest banks for the buck. So, you know, one hand, we're trying to find things that will help people immediately, but also if we can do that and set ourselves up for a longer term solution. That's where that's at. So a lot going on. Thanks, Bill. Your leadership on this effort has been one of the things that's really made this work. And at 10.17, we will be adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you.