 being six o'clock so this evening we do have scheduled a what will be a very brief liquor control meeting so we're gonna convene that meeting and then we'll come back in if you're here for something to do a city council we'll be back and opening up that meeting ask that everybody please take a moment to sign in the back we appreciate that fine if you do it on your way out if you're already settled in there's also agenda back there in case you're curious about what's gonna be covered on during tonight's meeting so with that we're going to call the order the city of Winooski liquor control board meeting that was for six o'clock and ask that everybody please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Nicole Mace okay tonight we have two restaurant-only approvals for 2018 one for Doberty located at 106 East Allen Street and one from the Muna Asian kitchen also known as phone phone on at 212 Main Street just turn the stack and see if there has been any issues with either license holders or license violations okay any questions or concerns from the liquor control board any questions or concerns from the public in regards to these two restaurant licenses so seeing and hearing none I retain a motion for approval of restaurant-only licenses for Doberty and we'll say phone man kitchen so much motion by Christine second by Nicole any further discussion seeing and hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye and those opposed motion carries we also have on tonight's tonight and be which is approval of catering permits one for Champlain Mill Restaurant DBA Water Works for Jazz Festival on the 1st and 2nd of June these are one time we'll say although there are series catering permits and then also for the same entity Water Works for Jazz Festival again on June 7th 8th and 9th any questions or concerns from liquor control board in regards to the catering permits any questions or concerns from the public in regard to these two catering permits so seeing and hearing none I retain a motion for approval of the catering permits for Water Works as presented on tonight's Jenna second motion by Eric second by Hal any further discussion seeing and hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye those opposed motion carries that concludes tonight's business under the liquor control board we did entertain a motion for adjourn most of my Nicole sitting by Eric any further discussion seeing hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye and those opposed motion carries the liquor control board is hereby adjourned we are warned for 605 for our regular City Council meetings we're going to take a minute breather here on Monday April 2nd 2018 we'll call it order the regular scheduled City of Winooski City Council meeting I will ask that everybody again please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance led once again by Deputy Mayor Nicole Neiss pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right so first up tonight is agenda review this is an opportunity for us to review tonight's agenda and we actually do have a correction we should know Jesse if you want to so on the agenda listed on line Roman numeral six was for one of the consent agenda items so we're just omitting that and moving from five consent agenda to seven city updates and approving the Main Street loan agreements as part of the consent agenda so clear clear on that so there is a corrected one here available but so there will be three items for consideration like to send agenda any other items there concerns in regards to order questions I think we've got everything stacked to accommodate a lot of our guests to okay so seeing and hearing none from council move forward with agenda as presented first up tonight is public comment this is an opportunity for members of the public to address the council about any items that are not on tonight's agenda but that you would like to air out we will get to the agenda items and discuss those in order so appreciate you holding on those but if there's anything that folks want to bring up that is not on the regular business we'd be happy to hear that now feel free to interact during the meetings we loved raise hands and questions all right so seeing and hearing none we will move on to the consent agenda we have three items on tonight's agenda we have the city council and liquor control minutes for March 19th 2018 with the warrants ending in 3 30 2018 in the payroll for period 3 11 through 24 20 2018 and subsequent payouts for January and February and we also have the Main Street revitalization clean water state revolving loan fund loan agreement for preliminary engineering and drinking water loan agreement for preliminary engineering and so with that that's one that we've opened up a number of times so from a technical standpoint thought that it could fit in there for now it's of course contingent on other other items this evening as well questions or concerns from the council in regards to the consent agenda any questions or concerns from the public so seeing and hearing none I entertain a motion for approval of the consent agenda as presented motion by Eric second my Nicole any further discussion so you can hear none all those in favor please say aye aye those opposed motion carries city update great thank you just a few updates tonight I wanted to brief you on something leadership team has been working on starting in January of this year we've been focusing on some process improvements within the office so doing some quality improvement processes that are going to lead to some how-to's of how you work through systems within how the public works through our systems so those process improvements we're focusing on are the events and facilities reservation process hiring and onboarding staff the payroll process which right now Angela is the only one in the city who knows how to do so we're documenting that and the water allocation fees and invoicing process so those are four things that touch multiple people internally as well as the public so right now we have finished the flow charting of those processes are updating the forms in May and June will be beta testing those processes with people who don't interact with them and then rolling out some new how-to handouts for the public and for our internal stakeholders as well nothing you need to take action on but our teams putting a lot of work into it so I wanted to give them credit for doing it as you all know we lost our planning and zoning administrator last week so the position is now it's really critical position for the city so it's now posted through all of our regular posting channels John Audie has graciously agreed to become the interim zoning administrator for the permitting side of that work and then the master planning project management side of that work I'll be taking on with support from Heather and CCRPC and likely a consultant who will be coming back to you with more information about after we talk with the planning commission about it our hope right now is to keep the master plan process on track for wrapping that up in January other hiring updates Angel Lane our new assistant city clerk starts on April 16th we're very excited to have her very very excited to have her she comes with a wealth of customer service experience retired from FedEx as a customer service manager there and is looking to get back into the workforce and then a couple of community services updates there are a few community garden plots still available that season kicks off April 27th so if you're interested in a community garden plot call the city or go on to my rec we had a really successful adult dodgeball tournament a few two months ago so we are redoing that program I'm reissuing it on that will be April 26th was sold out last time around so we hope more people get engaged this time and then we have a newly developed when you ski trail crew that is convening so if people are interested in thinking about how they assist with trail maintenance and upkeep in the city encourage you to reach out to Alicia Finley our rec director or go to when you ski bt.org slash volunteer the first meeting of that group will be on Sunday April 15th thanks awesome thank you very much next up is council reports I think we've started this way last time so we'll swing back to go this way this time sure last week I met with a few of the volunteers with parents and youth for change who were involved with the transportation pilot project and they were brainstorming to figure out how to get more volunteers involved as monitors on the bus this is a service that runs from January and just completed last week and provided transportation for kids getting to when you ski middle high school in the elementary school so my suggestion was that they might consider meeting with ray coffee on the community service commission to explore some other possibilities for bringing in volunteers and also I suggested it might be prudent to survey the bus drivers and to really understand the need for the monitors which I think is the real pinch point for them finding more people to commit at 7 in the morning to ride the buses so I suggest that they be with Ray and they're underway to set that up but sounds like it was a great year for the pilot I went to a celebration event this past Saturday where a lot of the folks involved were really there celebrating a good year for that pilot so that's why thank you sure so maybe an hour after sitting here and telling all of you that our legislative efforts around regional transfer regional governance the airport were dead they very quickly lurched back to life and we had a hearing last week on the potential of some state involvement around governance structures at the International Airport so we continue to support those conversations and there's going to be a reconvening in the next week or so of transportation committee on the Senate side to consider some potential action it's probably late in the session for an actual bill to move forward but we think that the involvement in of itself is probably going to have some kind of positive inertia behind it so that's good we had a committee of the Housing Commission on Monday of last week and great meeting one of the recommendations we're talking about is also bringing on a liaison from the Planning Commission in addition to just me being a liaison to the Housing Commission to help ensure that that body stays abreast of all the work being done because they're doing a lot of strategic thinking and discussions right now so we're going to be really aggressive as some of those ideas start to formulate they've really taken this concept that's behind us on housing to ensure a mix of quality for the housing stuff that maintains the character of our neighborhoods and they're trying to put here's here's the actionable things that we can get to and here's the things that we can benchmark and it was a really exciting discussion I think really is the beginning of real movement on some of those hard numbers and items that council gave a lot of feedback on last time that group was here and then just following up that you know justin I've met with Mike O'Brien chair the Planning Commission to and in regards to making sure we're doing the best we can to keep the strategic plan on track and on float and we also just you'll see in the Regional Planning Commission's minutes that they're taking up the climate change pledge concept and we're going to look at if there's some basic ways the city can participate in that we've had previous conversations about the fact that we want to make sure that if we're doing something like that it's got some meaning behind it we're actually function doing something and we all know how much bandwidth we have I could be a full-time two or three people so more to come on that in the future that's all you got so and my role is administrative liaison that with Jesse last week we talked about a number of the issues that are on the agenda tonight and one that's not on the agenda which is the interrelation between the Education Funding Bill that has been approved by the House and the impact that that might have on TIF communities so the House approved a bill that would subside well that would lower the property taxes in most communities because it raises new revenue for education through an income tax surcharge so if the definition of TIF is not tended to in that transition it could mean a significant loss to communities that are TIF community so I there's not much I can do about that but I think I'm probably one of the few folks in the state that understands how it works so I'm happy to explain further although it's really not clear where that bill's going in the Senate Finance Committee is taking a lot of testimony it hasn't sent signals yet about where they want to go but that's certainly an issue that we need to be paying attention to just to follow up on that we have rallied and the league's done a good job pulling us an alert screen of the other folks and we are working on some kind of joint communication things are a little crazy right now with everybody in the legislators a thousand different issues hitting all these communities so we have had tremendous response to be really blunt but we will absolutely be filing formal on behalf of the city I'm concerned that they at least put in a whole harmless clause in that legislation because in the past we've had issues with the legislative changing tax rules and not understanding the implications to the very delicately balanced and carefully balanced TIF districts and throwing them out of whack so we're on thank you nothing to report me okay thank you all okay we'll move on to the regular item first up tonight we have consideration of miss Jessica bridge for the housing Commission more importantly will yes absolutely more so we can only allow the person who's on the agenda to come up not the extra okay so the recent election housing Commission lost a very valued member Christine lot so we have an opening on housing Commission and we have one applicant for the position that is Jessica fridge and she brings to the Commission experience as both a realtor and a landlord in Winooski and that hasn't been represented on the commission before so I think she brings a perspective that really assists us and also a wealth of resources to bring to the bear as well so we recommend that City Council appoint Jessica bridge to an alternate seat on the housing Commission for a two-year term and here's Jessica to answer any questions about her background or interest in commission hi miss bridge so it's probably it's funny because I don't think any of this group was around when you were president of the WCP downtown Luski group but came before the body a lot during that period so you're reengaging with with service what enthuses you to come back so my my profession makes some realistic broker I own a brokerage in downtown Burlington specifically residential but I have been a realtor for 12 years I have a deep love for the city of Winooski I you know as a realtor you get to see housing everywhere this is where I chose to purchase my first home which was a duplex and then I purchased another duplex here and I still think I probably under rent them because I have wonderful tenants and I think that Winooski is hard to shake once you're involved you just it kind of gets into your blood and and you know you need to come back so the time commitment is different for the housing commission and you know Winooski community partnership is much further along than it was in the good old days and and and so yeah I want to I wanted to get back involved but again this is I know he's sort of the star of the show I'm just a purpose we actually don't usually ask questions we just ask that so we could hang out yeah but I also you know what Winooski is trying to do in in being an affordable community is important it's important work and I do think that I have a good background of different diverse perspectives and again a really deep appreciation for what this community has been and is and where it's going um and so and I'd be happy to serve again so other questions for Jessica thanks for your interest yeah thanks for your support appreciate your time and expertise now that's the table that's awesome another high functioning commission any questions you could turn to the public commission selection process okay so singing and hearing none and it entertain a motion for appointment of Jessica bridge to the housing commission second motion minus pole second my howl any further discussion hearing and seeing none all those in favor please say aye all right those opposed motion carries thank you for your time appreciate it thank you well done mr. William okay item b discover jazz festival Winooski event permit application I'm going to invite Craig Mitchell as one of the event sponsors up so we have received an event application to hold discover jazz festival concerts in Rotary Park again this for the first time this year we've been doing kind of a gradual ramp up of discover jazz in Winooski so we had events last year you started for the first time the year prior your three yeah yeah so this is year three but this is the first time we'll have events in Rotary Park the proposed event will be free to the public and runs from June 1st through June 10th music in Rotary Park is proposed to run from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday the 1st of June Saturday the 2nd of June Thursday the 7th Friday the 8th and then during the day on Saturday the 9th additional jazz yoga in Rotary Park will be scheduled for Saturday the 2nd from 12 to 2 p.m. staff have reviewed the event application at the March 21st event review meeting and the conditions that were required by staff are included in your packet staff recommends approval for this event awesome and I have Craig Mitchell here to answer questions welcome Craig exciting very exciting thank you for having me yeah well we appreciate the professionalism and experience that you guys bring to the table in terms of having a great track history of running events and to say that obviously means a lot and it's been a good relationship so thanks for that anything else you want to add to the breakdown Heather gave um and the one thing I will say is that the reason behind the rotary choice is last year being the first year that I spread out jazz fest into all the venues in winewski my sponsors paid for all those events that happened there it still didn't feel like jazz fest people driving around people walking around there was no energy that is still the case this year where all the venues will get free advertising free entertainment and will be as involved as they were before except this year on top of that will be free shows in the park that are also paid for by sponsors so literally cost this cost everyone nothing to enjoy jazz fest this year and Burlington is sanctioning everything they from full-page ads to radio ads all of that so we're all we're part of discover jazz festival but we're different in the fact that we have our own sponsor chips and I'm doing something where I'm trying to make it as diverse as possible so some of the proposed ideas will be using the winewski jazz uh music high school jazz band as sort of a welcoming um and then a Cuban night a Jamaican night so to really embrace the the diversity that's here in winewski that's awesome it's great and people will learn that this side of the river is much cooler anyway so it's a little bit of a reason to even go back to the other side I love it thanks for your questions for Craig in the application how many people do you anticipate participating you know I would say the same number of folks that came to winewski Wednesday so in the rotary anywhere from three to five hundred maybe okay that's the goal at least hopefully would you say that winewski one day Wednesdays paved the way for this that was the idea that's that's where it came from and I had a group of people yeah a lot of folks that were on sort of a committee of folks that I worked with last year that that was their suggestion like how about we just try to focus on them on the rotary next year I mean being that it works so well with winewski Wednesday it's awesome to see this space activated and people use it that's really exciting other questions for Craig or Heather any questions or concerns from the public I'm interested in the definition of jazz yoga jazz yoga so that will be a live jazz guitarist someone with a headset and guiding people through the journey but they're playing jazz guitar and guiding through it last year I did it both at sxb and laughing river where I have jazz guitarists and horned players that would play softly while while yoga was happening and my goal is to have you know at noon a couple hundred people out there doing yoga how beautiful is that gonna be yeah yeah how flexible you are 10 years under my belt I can do it today great any other questions for Craig or for Heather okay so singing hearing none I entertain a motion for approval to discover jazz festival event permit second motion by Eric second by Christine any further discussion singing hearing none of those in favor please say aye aye and those opposed motion carries thank you welcome back thank you thanks for the work thank you appreciate it thank you all right next up is um Winooski Wednesday's event permit application a very somewhat similar conversation yeah I'm going to have Alicia Finley come up and join us so this was a very popular event last year and uh lisha is looking to pull this again this year we reviewed the uh Winooski I'm sorry Winooski Wednesdays are the concerts in Rotary Park held the first Wednesday of every month from June until October this has been reviewed by staff at the March 1st event review meeting I've given you the conditions that were required for this it will run very similarly to last year's event and I have Alicia here to answer any questions you might have about that awesome anything we learned last year that's going to be helpful this year um it went pretty smooth last year uh the crossing guards was really helpful and so we're definitely bringing that back um but we've figured out like the popular time so um yeah uh we're trying to get more of downtown participation the restaurants so um we're excited to see what that might look like I have a meeting coming up so yeah I'm excited to get to make it a little more Winooski oriented again nice yeah my jazz connection yeah we have a jazz connection um we're working with Craig again um so during the Jazz Fest week our first one um June 6th we have Sabo Yuma coming so that was they were really awesome last year yes we're excited for that again yeah we have everything we have uh all of our all of our bands book so we're ready to go right well we appreciate all the work that went into this last year as a kind of pilot and way to go and doing it well enough that we're back here again feeling good about seeing it and supporting it so that's awesome questions concerns from council any questions or concerns from the public I guess I have just one I mean I've seen it's not unusual for events like this to grow in popularity um I'm thinking of um summer veal uh down at the inner veal sort of started small and then quickly became so I'm just wondering what thoughts you have about the potential for crowds that outgrow that space is that I don't know how close we came to that at all last year or um last year we had roughly anywhere from and it's appended on the weather right um anywhere from 200 to 350 people um so my thoughts I would love to see something like that happen and of course that space wouldn't really be ideal right um but we never know what potential we have with other areas you know in the city cast event maybe one day um so there's definitely potential I think for things like that but um right now I think we're still trying to keep it kind of where it's at until we like really hone in on it and yeah I want to make it really make sure that's when you ski ran and so when you ski businesses and not trying to bring out people from everywhere right I think the space can fit yeah I think it's 750 or so at the moment so it would have to have some double yeah we're good right they can happen quickly we are actively um encouraging somebody to do a test run and cast event at some juncture just from the conversation standpoint that's something that would stop by here before it actually happened but we're encouraging that somebody try something in the hundreds um versus you know it's been talked about that place will hold a couple thousand right it'd be nice to see a couple hundred first to see how that goes definitely yeah other questions concerns from council any subsequent questions from the public so seeing and hearing none I entertain a motion for approval with the onuski winstays event permit application so moved second motion by house second by christine any further discussion seeing and hearing none all those in favor please say aye all right and those opposed motion carries thank you thanks for your work uh item d approval winuski with full classic right i'm going to call lew demassie the event sponsor uh staff was received an application to hold the second annual winuski with full classic on may 19th at casavante meadow as opposed to at lambry park where we had it last year staff reviewed the application at the february 21st event review meeting and once again as i mentioned in my previous event presentations we discussed the fact that the event will coincide with the winuski public safety day on winuski falls way but believe that the two will be mutually reinforcing with put traffic between the two serving to cross promote the events conditions that we've required or included in your packet and staff recommends approval for this event so here's our opportunity to test out something in the hundreds at casavante and lew demassie here is here to answer any questions awesome welcome back thank you yeah uh excited to do another world yeah i'd say this is kind of 1b if you will where we had to move it last year to landry i think we're going to keep it as small we had 16 teams last year i think we'll cut it at 24 this year which shouldn't be a problem but kind of a second first event if you will be in down there and i think it's the the event space is is perfect for it and i think it's as soon as the public is kind of educated on it i didn't know anything about it i think it could be a really cool event space in the future that's great and you guys have quite a bit of experience you pulled the one off last year obviously but yeah we run the run the the pot hockey classic the october festin on waterfront we're opening up another one in portland main and you know so this is a and a hundred percent of the proceeds from this event will go to the flying ryan foundation and will be a um i don't know long trail is going to be a big sponsor this year and i think they'll be part of the permit for the alcohol who already met with dlc they approved the site map and you know it'll be turnkey from the same event at landry it's great yeah it was last year i remember in your run-up it was awesome to see all the event experience again to see somebody with a little knowledge of that industry and that work uh to try a space that hasn't been used to time for events out is great for us that's that was our plan last year but yeah you know moving into landry actually turned into a mud pit and that was nice and dry down there but i think we're looking pretty good this year nice great well thanks again for re-engaging it's great thank you questions concerns from council for a lure for heather any questions or concerns from the public get your wiffle practice on ron i'll speak as chair of the community services commission we have responsibility to pay attention to cast event among the other perks so i i would ask how you would try to prevent or ameliorate any damage to the ecological system that's there which in some areas is kind of fragile sure yeah we um we're only going to allow access on the path into the park and then the entire area will be double fenced so people can't go in now and um for the alcohol reasons but that'll also keep people out of the woods okay good thank you sure that's a great general question that we're dealing with with that space as they use so great great question any other questions concerns from the public so sing and hearing none i would entertain motion for approval of the application for the wunuski with full classic event motion by eric second by the coal in your photo discussion sing and hearing none all those in favor please say aye and those opposed motion carries thank you yeah thank you thanks for bringing the event back all right item e capital reserve allocation motorcycle purchase so i am here to talk about this and angel is my backup the chief has been pulled away tonight so he will not be here for this discussion this is a pretty self-explanatory request as you may know in the capital improvement budget we have a vehicle reserve fund specifically for the replacement of police vehicles so this is a request to use 13 500 of those reserves to purchase the police department motorcycle that we've been leasing through a jag grant for the last three years so three years ago we got jag funding to to start up that motorcycle fleet program and put all the equipment on it we needed now that the lease is expiring we have the option to purchase it for a 13 five and we are requesting use of allocation to do that we found that it's incorrect that having an officer on a motorcycle is incredibly incredibly useful for traffic enforcement and for community policing and here's the chief so i think it's a worthwhile investment to continue in the police department fleet jesse was just telling us how you like to drive real fast up and down the street on the motorcycle probably why he's here on time sorry i'm just coming in at the tail end of the conversation no that's i mean i think that's great i'll turn i mean that it sounds like it's been an effective tool and when it's been beneficial from an urban standpoint could i mean that was the argument made when we first signed up for the lease was that it would give you some dexterity to get in and out of places that the cruisers don't normally fit and do some things with traffic control that give you some flexibility so it sounds like it's achieved those those goals it has it's been a really useful tool and one of the things i stressed during the budget process was that i'm trying to find alternative ways to keep people engaged and have some alternative ways to patrol that doesn't take from the patrol division so it also helps with that right i think it's also just important to know that it is that we find it to be a really effective community policing tool when office often officers don't like to be too far away from a vehicle when we only have two officers on board and want to back up each other across the city but an officer on a bike is you can have a conversation with someone on the street the way an officer and a explorer can't um so it helps in that to that extent as well plus kids love them that was my question don't ask for clarification on the connection between the motorcycle and community outreach so thank you other questions for chief heber jesse on this okay any questions concerns from the public so seeing in the hearing done i've entertained motion for approval of the allocation of the capital reserve for a police motor vehicle purchase that's for the motorcycle motion by eric second by hal any further discussion seeing and hearing none all those in favor please say aye and those opposed motion carries thank you thank you very much good job appreciate it right item f mean main street revitalization presentation on updated information so i'm going to ask john um our public works director and ryan to come up yep um and give you a little intro here and then turn it over to them you're going to have to turn that thing on too um so there are a number of agenda items here related to the main street revitalization project um we are here tonight to present um some follow-up information as requested you have to open the front thing too um follow-up information as requested the last meeting and outline the next steps if you so choose to move it forward tonight um so just to as a reminder from a big picture standpoint um a yes vote tonight um if you decide to move this project forward in its entirety um that would lead that would bring this question to the voters of whether we could move forward with applying for a financing package to do this project as you might remember from last week's meeting we will not be able to get the full commitment from our potential funding sources without a bond vote so this yes vote says to the community give us authority to stay at the table keep having these conversations explore this as an option and then give the council the authority in the summer when we bring you back that full financing model to decide whether to move the project forward or not so yes vote does not mean we're automatically doing the project it just enables us to put together a financing package for you the project in itself as you may remember is the full street reconstruction for the mile of main street from the railroad bridge up to exit 16 it's been designed in the community's vision that the community articulated as part of the form-based code process the Winnowski quarter study and the master planning process it would allow us to address some necessary and inevitable infrastructure needs that the city has in our water and wastewater system and do that in a way to leverage non-city dollars so state and federal funds that would subsidize any local dollars assigned and of course would also let us maximize the development potential of main street as outlined in your packet on the agenda all the agenda items the next steps if you so choose to move this forward you would need to approve a necessity and reimbursement bond resolution saying that it's necessary to move forward with this vote you'd need to approve the bond warning for a special meeting you would need to authorize us to apply for the grants and loans that we've thus far identified and authorize me to execute those grant and loan documents and also provide us any direction on revenue streams you'll hear from john that we've been able to identify some revenue streams that could offset the tax impact so we need your feedback on which of those you want to hear more about in the next couple of months in the last two weeks since our last meeting we've done a couple of things we've refined the cost estimate a bit we've looked at a scaled approach that's outlined in your memo to do it in different segments linearly we have modeled some funding potential so what are those different revenue streams and how could we offset the cost incurred we met with bond council our lawyers who guide us on bond votes met with the municipal bond bank and talked to the funders just as in a overall sense and then i'll turn it over to john to answer your specific questions about the information outlined in your memo this would be a 23 million dollar project bond vote we would endeavor to bring back a full financing model to you by the end of this summer and we believe we have pathways to the project that would get this done within about a two and a half percent increase to utility rates and property tax rates using new revenue streams and we you have a lot of information outlined in your memo so i'll turn it over to john to answer any questions and ryan to answer any questions you might have they've really done the yeoman's amount of the work here if you have any questions about the information as outlined yeah and so if it helps what i can do is kind of hit the highlights of the memo that was presented to you all if that that works okay so this is uh an updated cost assessment since the last time you all saw it on march 19th so the revised total cost is 22 million 300 uh previously it was 23 million 700 thousand uh the update was due to some additional information we received from gmp regarding utility connection costs so we've um we're coming back about 1.4 million dollars less than the last time you saw this um so as jesse mentioned we what we did was we looked at kind of a scale scaled or phased approach for potentially going at different sections of street so we looked at what what the cost would be if you went to spring street what the cost would be if you went to lefoutin and tygen and that's that would be a doable option to phase this project so uh respectively spring street the total cost would be roughly 3.5 million and that's mainly do the the reduced cost is mainly do this utility undergrounding that works already been done up to spring street it's well i shouldn't say done it's it's behind some of the properties so it's not required for that phase um if the project was implemented to lefoutin street uh this is sort of the i guess the retail section of the project um that cost would be around 8.3 million dollars total and then if it were to extend to tygen street the total cost would be close to the full amount of 19 million dollars um along with those options there are other phasing alternatives so you could progress just the water resources piece so if you want to stay just within the curb lines and kind of maximize the grant funding that's a potential phasing option so you could just do water sanitary to sanitary sewer and storm water pieces we didn't cost those out but it would be uh less than than these options shown uh alternatively we looked at potential value engineering options so one thing that that does jump out is we're currently cost estimating this um 1.4 million dollar silver cell system which is it's an underground tree root system it provides sort of a healthy tree root option it it looks like milk cartons basically it gives the roots ability to breathe and and provide some storm water retention ability too so um that would be something we could look at for value engineering and use a structural soil soil in lieu of that um there's some other projects that have used both that we would kind of use as a benchmark so those are kind of the scope options we've looked at and then we start getting into the modeling um I think what I'll do is I'll just skip right to the layouts for each fund um so as Jesse mentioned what we're looking at so this would be the water fund so the total water fund project is 2.1 million dollars and we've modeled it using an SRF loan which would be a minus three per site interest rate at 30 years so based on that um the annual debt service starting at the end of construction would be around $24,000 so modeling that against our revenues coming in um we we use the baseline of 2018 and revise these the water rates to meet that expense line so we're looking at potentially around a roughly around two and a half percent increase to make up this debt service amount along with that we're also looking at we're assuming a an allocation fee increase of $10,000 which is pretty conservative um we're using existing developments that have already occurred on Main Street so um I know I think one of the recent developments was around $8,000 and the other was $18,000 so we use kind of an average for those allocation fees um so and we're also using a potentially capital reserve funding to to buy down the project $150,000 which would still give us roughly just under half a million dollars in reserve fund the other thing to point out would be we're still looking at allocating funding for future capital expenses so water main replacements and our typical capital funding options so going to our sewer fund sewer fund total project cost would be around $6.25 million and that includes sanitary and stormwater costs so we're we modeled this using a USDA grant at 3.125 uh interest rate 30 years and it also includes a 30 grant option on that so that debt comes out to be around $146,000 so very similar to the water funds um our goal is to try to to maintain interest rate of less than right in that two percent range and we used a $250,000 of the capital reserve fund to help sort of buy down that project again we looked at we modeled out allocation fees based on historic developments $20,000 was our our amount for that yeah correct so along with looking at these rates as a gut check we also looked at surrounding communities to make sure that any potential rate increases were feasible for residents and so for example our sewer rate funding so right now our rate is $48.57 per thousand cubic feet and if you go out to 2028 we're looking at an increase of $59.10 so looking at other sewer rate users the the average rate for surrounding communities around $48.57 sorry $64.48 for other municipalities and some of those municipalities actually have a separate stormwater rate structure that go along with that so what we're looking at is we're pretty we're significantly lower than a lot of the existing users and that holds true for the water rate side as well so jumping to the general fund so general fund the total project cost zoom in works the total project cost for the general fund is approximately $15.2 million so that includes streetscape underground and utilities and some allocation from water and sewer for the roadway work we are looking at potentially using just a a bond of 3.8 percent bond to perform that work and based on the 3.8 percent 30-year bond the interest rate only annual debt would be around $443,000 the total principal interest rate would be around $157,000 so we looked at what potential offsets could be used to for that debt schedule so what we're looking at here is potentially a local options tax at $150,000 a grand list set aside so the projected grand list that would occur with the main street development if we could set aside a portion of that to help buy down the debt we looked at tip funding future debt service expiration which happens in 2025 and impact fees for utility undergrounding transportation and potentially duck bank franchise fees for those private utilities so using all those potential offsets we can get to a tax rate of approximately 2.2 percent above projected 2020 tax rate and then what we'd be looking to do is pay interest rate only until that TIF expiration occurs in 2025 so that's sort of a high level overview of the funding modeling for each each water sewer and general fund piece can you explain the local option tax please yes so in the Vermont municipalities have the option to implement local options tax you can do it for rooms meals and alcohol tax or sales tax we are recommending this 150,000 would be the one percent for rooms meals and alcohol tax sales tax doesn't have a huge impact here because we don't have a whole lot of retail we are the only community we are in a donut hole so all the surrounding communities around us have implemented this local options tax and we have not so we are not currently we would not be losing any strategic advantage to implement it here the 150,000 is based directly from our current receipts so currently if we had based on last year's last year's collection or rooms meals and alcohol receipts to the state if we had applied this one percent tax we would have collected about 157,000 based solely on the establishments that are currently here so that's what that's what it is we do have the right within our charter to implement it it would need to go we would need to take further action if we were going to implement it for next year we likely would not implement it for FY19 we would implement it as part of the FY20 budget process from a general perspective that was wasn't passed by a large margin but it was passed by the voters previously in in a year where I think our budget got about maybe 53 to 54 percent approval rating so it was not a watershed year when it came to that um I was gonna say but the uh it was done in a way that there still needs to be another action taken it wasn't it wasn't done technically correct um what it was initially done the one percent the other thing that we we I know I actively sold to the business community was when we are having that discussion we were also implementing in the process of implementing paid parking and the discussion was to try to give the business community a chance to see that paid parking was not going to turn the music into a dose talent it's not and then have that conversation again about the lower percent of sales tax that reminds me of something else if we did this revitalization of Main Street would we also be extending the paid parking area that would be a conversation we would need to have um you know that from a parking theory perspective one of the reasons you have parking is to turn over parking so as we you know the the area that john mentioned that's the um commercial stretch of Main Street I think there could be an argument to be made there if there were restaurant more restaurants there more um establishments that didn't want people to come and park for the day but wanted those spaces to turn over there would be an argument to do that we have not assumed that in any of our modeling um so it would really be a decision of is that the right thing to do to ensure the vibrancy of the stretch of road um at a future time we're not counting on that revenue for this project could you also talk just because I think the um they're not really explained here kind of how the numbers arrived on impact fees for utility undergrounding and impact fees for transportation what those just generally are yeah sure um so the utility fees for undergrounding um what we what we'd be looking to do is that 6.5 million that's the current cost estimate for utility undergrounding is distribute that as development occurred along the street so what we try to do is limit that cost being distributed to taxpayers and limit to the folks that are actually um seeing the improvements and that may be able to hopefully get bought down if once if we can negotiate with those utility providers either through franchise or cost sharing um potentially get that number down to promote development and not not have to even put that that much cost on the developer the transportation impact fees uh that is similar to we looked at surrounding municipalities they also have a transportation impact fees and what that is is as you create as you do these capital improvements there's more stress on those those new infrastructure pieces so you know impacts to new payments we distribute that out as well and that would be to new projects so it is reliant on new construction and those were the estimates on those were built using our best estimates on what properties would go the undergrounding yes the transportation impact fees we basically took an average of other municipalities around here so those need some more work okay and i mean that's there it's two thousand dollars annually right now so it's a pretty small percentage of the you know that service offset sure i think it's an important point to make that we're not at the place in part where we can probably pick the revenue streams apart in extreme detail and get to this one thousand percent um acceptance because that's not possible right nor is it feasible for you guys to have done that work or would have been reasonable to have you do that work at this point in time i mean some of this is just math based off of tip projections etc but well and we were trying to respond to the request at the last meeting to put together some models of what this could look like and what options could be and give you a sense of what that menu is going to be so over if we decide to move this forward over the next four months we know the ones to really dig into to bring you ordinance changes or impact fee proposals or those kinds of things as you say this is this is not presented to you of this is how we're going to fund it we're trying to give you a model of how it could be funded can we can we put on a list somewhere um and i'm sorry this is somewhat random we haven't done a water wastewater capacity review for counseling a little while if we could do that in the coming meetings that would be great just to give everybody an idea of where we're at with that past councils have dealt with that a lot so yes um i have some questions about water and sewer rates so um my experience is been that the rates have not been increased over the last few years and i think it's reflected in some of these charts so the the rates for both water and sewer have been relatively stable for our rate payers in the community and what this modeling shows is an annual increase in the neighborhood of neighborhood of two percent for both water and sewer um so that's i'm reading that right yeah 2012 i think was the last time 2012 was the last time water and sewer rates and so what this modeling is showing we're moving from six years of flat rates to annual increases around two percent um and that is just to fund this project so i know we've also done some work on asset mapping um and so i'm wondering what other projects we can foresee um coming down the pipeline so to speak in terms of work to be done on our water and sewer infrastructure so that's question number one and question number two is i know that there are um wastewater and stormwater rules uh in i don't know what the status of those are but as a result of um i believe an attempt to clean up lake Champlain there's all sorts of new regulatory requirements for municipalities around wastewater and storm water so i'm wondering what potential impact those rules might have in terms of so big picture this is a two percent increase on annual basis just for this project what other infrastructure projects do we see in the next five to ten years um either because we have aging infrastructure that we've identified for our asset mapping system or because these new rules are coming down so i'll start and let them jump in so i want to be clear that while you're right these rate increases don't anticipate other significant projects one of the things we were very careful in doing with this modeling was not touching our current capital allocation or debt service so this anticipates full allocation out in future years to the amount we've been budgeting for capital for preventive maintenance and capital improvements as well as the it does not pull existing debt service into this model so it's not so we're not not we're not assuming we won't do any other projects we are assuming we will continue to do the preventive maintenance at the rate we've been doing and do this project does that make sense it's a good question whether that's enough or whether we'll be able to whether we'll need to come back with additional asks in addition the projections on here for revenue are solely based on the current consumption of water and as properties get developed we will have additional consumption that will also increase the revenues and that could be put towards the construction projects Angela you are welcome to just pull up a jar as you probably can guess her fingerprints are all over this anything else just that so one of the things as as i've been here only a few months that's going to be one of my main tasks is getting into the cip and pulling out that asset management data and sort of prioritizing what work needs to happen and and putting some real budget numbers to it so i mean i will say main three is you know that's 100 year old pipe so doing that work now is it's needed so it would be on the list anyway with lake shamplain the phosphorus limits they're coming up now so one of our utility manager is looking to try to address that kind of not the end of the pipe but more on our operations side at this point so we're looking at leaf layer pick up and trying to quantify how much phosphorus we're moving based on just our operations side and tried our goal is to not turn it into a large expensive capital project that our treatment plant with filtration and you know all the heavy expenses but deal with the upstream where the costs aren't as severe and just one last question thank you this modeling also has to make sure i'm reading this right way i'm looking at sewer fund reserves going from 1.7 million dollars in reserves to 658 thousand that's a pretty substantial decrease i i believe some of it is for the headworks project that we approved so 700 a thousand of that is for the project that we just approved but there's some other looks like 250 thousand dollars for this project so just again thinking long term is that the right level of reserves given some of the other infrastructure needs we may be looking at yeah and i angela and i have worked on this a bit so that a lot of that funding is funding that's been carried forward assuming there's a capital project but it hasn't been funded so it's just keeps carrying over carrying over so now we're actually looking at we've got a pretty healthy fund balance can we invest some of that money and get some return on it so that's something we're looking at is um what is a you know feasible reserve balance a comfortable reserve balance that we should have so i'm sure we'll have more discussions on on that piece but that i mean correct me if i'm wrong that's a pretty safe reserve number at this point right now that's a pretty high for capital reserves and a lot of the usage that you're seeing is um from john show coming on to the staff and addressing a lot of deferred capital maintenance down with the plan so he's only been here a few years he's he's really wrapping up on getting some of those things completed that have been uh pending and we're sitting in that reserve bank but i do think it's important to note that when we're for the sewer fund specifically when we're looking at a total operating budget around 1.2 million dollars annually and we have a reserve balance that will maintain over time of over 600 000 that's more than 50 percent of our budget set aside in our reserves which is significantly more than we carry in most funds so instead of letting it sit there is their way we buy down debt to defer interest costs later um that was our our concept here of kind of capital optimization how do we use that money we have now to buy down future interest costs yeah the only required reserve um approved by council on the fund balance policy is 45 days cash off uh given that the water and sewer infrastructure is pretty old and aged out any concern with running into any surprises in the project that could cause cost overrun and if so what kind of contingency are you looking at to offset that yeah so that's always a concern with underground projects so we are carrying a pretty healthy contingency on this project um i believe we have at least 10 percent on every single line plus our estimates i would say are conservative at this point because there are a lot of unknowns um we have identified funding for any potential contamination that may pop up as we uh go through with the project and our consultant vhb has done some pretty extensive underground sampling so we have identified sort of the typical unknowns of as far as like contamination concerns that's always a huge cost issue as you get into a project but um i think the current estimate i would say the current estimate is is pretty conservative in that regard okay questions for john wright and jesse on technical specs and i want to make sure you know it's kind of how this conversation because it's done for approval tonight this is a chance to kind of ask questions about the content that's been presented to us and then we're going to turn back towards some discussion um as we lead towards um opening decision want to make sure we get any of those kind of technical questions out you know i think the the path that's been laid out would be you know again this approval it authorized um staff to go forward with putting together a ballot initiative i think there's a really key factor here that the nobody needs to buy into the funding values that are presented here that's not the conversation you've had we just merely asked for what would a project um you know a potential package look like from a long-term perspective so i you know i think this is the the first crack at that where there hasn't really been a lot of input back saying well we think we should retain a little bit more for operational growth on the TIF side of things etc so i think that's a key conversation that's going to unfold should the next step be taken but it gives you an idea of what it might look like at least yeah please so the think the TIF um modeling um and forgive me if i don't have this exactly right but does this funding modeling a soon full buildout of the TIF is accomplished before um f y 25 no so currently um an important point to know and angel why don't you come sit with us so so a couple of important points to know on the TIF district the TIF is carrying in general terms the TIF is carrying three different types of debt we have a note the primary municipal TIF bond that we talk about is the TD bank note we then have a note to PCOR and a note to our cell or the a note to the Winnowski Community Development Corporation that's our to ourselves the one we have to expire by 2024 to successfully complete the TIF it's the TD bank note if nothing else happens for the life of the TIF we successfully pay off that note we can pay for it entirely right now solely by the property tax increment not by the pilot payments coming in not by the ground leases coming in solely with increment so that unless we have some devastating fire or something that really reduces our increment we are we will successfully wrap that up what this so the the 39 to 40 percent that you see projected here about the half million dollars set aside as you see at the on the general fund spreadsheet you see a reference schedule at the bottom those are all the different revenue streams coming out of the TIF district when it retires you'll see that balance in 2025 is about 1.2 million that's assuming that we are able to pay out the PCOR and the debt to ourselves having said that even if we are I did some rough back of the envelope calculations if we are able to if we're only able to pay off a portion of that PCOR note and the note to ourselves and fully pay off the TD debt there are still models that allow us to achieve this model achieve the continual pay down of that debt over five years so extend that debt to 2029 and still have 300 or 400 thousand dollars returning to the general fund at that 500 thousand dollar level to main street at the debt to PCOR in the city with an additional was still returning a new revenues to the general fund and again as we move forward if we decide to move this project forward and move forward in the next couple of months i think those are projections we would want to unpack as a team together and look at those models and that number is not net of expenses that's gross is that correct that is correct because the TIF is currently people you understand the TIF is currently handling handling expenses there are portions of people that are being paid for out of the TIF well but accounting time and things like that general fund transfer the only people who have a portion of their salary members is a detective from the police department okay but then i think the point the mayor is making is the note to us the cdc note is paying for humans that would have to come on to the general fund yes so just so i'm reading this right um this modeling projects half of you know 505 thousand dollars in change in revenue the 1.2 is that coming out of the 1.2 or that's 1.2 on top of no so so the one the below the blue line there that 1.2 is reference only we just wanted you to see all the different revenue streams coming out of the TIF district it's not solely our point is it's not solely property tax so when the TIF district expires we will continue to have those additional revenue streams that we can call upon so the total in 2025 if all goes well the total return to the taxpayers is 1.2 1.3 million and we're suggesting take half a million of that out and dedicate it to this project with this particular model this model could change so so but your statement earlier where even if we don't pay off the p-core note and uh note to ourselves we're looking at 300 thousand dollars right so if we decide um if there are so there are stacks of F's here yeah if we need if we see no new development in the TIF district which i don't believe is going to happen but if we were to see no new development in the TIF district and we were to negotiate with ourselves and p-core to stretch out those debt payments then that 1.2 that 1.2 million return would go these are rough estimates half a million to mainstream three or four hundred thousand to pay off that extended debt and then three or four hundred thousand back to the general fund thank you and and not to attach values to it but the when we say the p-core note so people understand what that means the p-core family in the course of the TIF being created in construction as a bailout on one of the buildings we were short on debt capacity and a personal loan was given to the city by the p-core family the family was very generous in terms of the repayment terms and have been so for the entirety of the loan and we have been successful in renegotiating it when needed and necessary the most recent renegotiation resulted in terms that we were trying to be pretty aggressive in getting it paid back you know that's a conversation that can always be had the second point is the cdc note again the community development corporation was an entity stood up to help with the financing and construction of the financial deal downtown when it folded it left the debt to the city and transferred to the city we are actually this body comprises the the functioning board of the community development court when it's a community development corporation and as such you can convene as that body at any point in time and do whatever you wish with the debt the city owns you can forgive it you can negotiate particular terms of repayment or whatever that may be the vision of that that money that repayment was that the city at one point in time or at the completion of the tiff would end up with a million dollars in the bank to help with economic development whatever it is that we want to do and in the wisdom of the people who put the tifty out from a financial perspective they put it in as or it was an opportunity seized upon that created a wind a potential windfall for the city you could argue that's maybe a luxury we've treated it like a luxury because we've tapped the repayment money for it for a couple years in a row to try to invest in economic development so just for a context perspective as we dive deeper in revenues there's a first little glimpse at that have I lied in any way Angela um what else before we talk about what people think of this i want to open it up at this point to see if the public's got questions and if there are other technical questions or those out you know just from a phasing model perspective I mean I you know appreciate I can think of lots of other pros and cons to put on this list but appreciate that but what was this a natural phasing or was this kind of a forced thinking on phasing and then just out of curiosity for actual construction would is this probably the something similar that we've seen in terms of the phasing from a construction standpoint or is it a strip one side do one side what's now I think I mean it's a quarter project so you could phasing it to like an determinist of an intersection that's they may even as construction if if the project does become a construction project you know well I was going to say they they may phase it in such a way but they probably wouldn't because you'd you'd go through and you'd mill the entire street and you'd you'd demo the sidewalks there may be some phasing but no there isn't it wasn't a forced thinking the project could be performed that way I mean obviously there's there's additional costs involved if if the plan is to complete that quarter because you're remobilizing contractors you know it's if you can utilize interest rates they're out there now that's more optimal there's economies of scale for a project like this right I mean the cost would be totally unpredictable from that standpoint there you know I mean as soon as as soon as you accepted one phase of it the other phase projections would be useless in terms of their dollar value yeah from an increase in cost perspective increase in debt the potential that there might be some of the programming around that's being utilized okay someone point that out that there wasn't like a that wasn't necessarily a natural thing where it's like this really makes sense it was an attempt to show this is a possibility if you wanted to limit or chunk it in some way okay and that's preferable to overdoing layers of the project as a whole right in other words I don't know how would you even go about doing that but if let's say we wanted to do as we've done maybe in the past sometimes which is just do surface work and obviously would not make sense to do that and then come back a few years later and dig that up to do the other portions of pieces about you know that's probably obvious to everybody but bear staying allowed yeah we tried to sort of think through if we could piece it out and one thing I mentioned we could do maybe the the water sewer work but if you do the side street the sidewalk work and the utility work you're you're going to get into the street at some point and start tearing up new pavement so now so it doesn't really make sense lend itself yet yeah is it possible that just the utilities would run all the way and maybe the streetscaping only goes to a certain phase yeah I mean you could do it all car like that but you would run into some coordination issues like we're saying potentially I don't think I'll just turn over to the public see if there's any questions okay so seeing you know we want to open it up this won't be the last time for public comment on this item before we take a vote but want to open it up because there's been a lot of technical information a lot of financial information flying around so want to see if folks have any questions they want to ask to add into that conversation or if you have something you'd like to say that's okay to who doesn't necessarily need to be a question yes as a property over there for this guy taking a lot of cost versus benefits and it seems to be that long-reaching benefits should accrue especially when you look at the lessening of the need for servicing of the underground facility that's installed so looking out 50 years that should represent the savings to the city overall yeah there there would be some operation savings you know if there's a water main break obviously there's a cost savings there or sewer cleaning maintenance there's there's savings there so they're in roadway work you know filling potholes those kind of operation costs putting a number on that's a little more difficult if we knew when water mains would break that would that would be very helpful but we don't unfortunately but yes they're they're definitely would be some savings but with with new infrastructure water mains and sewer mains that's less likely to occur except under really harsh winter conditions where the freeze goes down really deep correct yeah yeah okay yeah ron's question does bear an interesting side question which is we say a lot today they don't build it like you used to is there an estimated economic useful life term on water piping today that's i mean this might be as much of an asset degradation from a discounting perspective but so some of the so for example if you take the water pipe that's currently in the ground there's a mix of cast iron ductal iron one thing that for this project we are estimating a ductal iron pipe which has a significant life span say a hundred years so we're basically using instead of say a less well PVC pipe or a plastic pipe we are we are looking to use a ductal iron pipe that has that longer value than maybe something that's not as super great yeah okay great thank you other questions okay so things is where we turn back to the blinds say what do you guys want to do you know i think this is the opportunity for council to express you know thoughts concerns and i would just add in addition to saying yeah i really want to go for it and see us do it or no i really think this is a bad idea i think it's really important to continue to give staff feedback as to the items that you want to see addressed in the future but what we do have before us today is is language to put forward on a bond vote that again due to funding reasons and necessities would need to occur in may so you have before you you have before you that bond warning language so before we move on the language i want to open up this item and we've got the we've got the project on kind of as an approval but i think actually we'll just take the bond vote as the approval item on this and treat this like it's a discussion item because that's really probably the way it should have you should have done it so i'm gonna open it up to thoughts concerns and and i think indications hopefully of what direction folks went ahead as we move forward let's have a question about the timeline and maybe there's an obvious reason for this that i'm just totally missing but looking all the way down what was the thought around a september 17th vote for the possibility of a local options tax i think the thought was to do that after you had made the decision to go forward or not go forward that we didn't want to bring that to you for consideration and action until we knew whether there was a financing model that could work i think if we decide to if we if you all and the city decide to move forward with a local options tax and bring that back to the voters we need to be very specific about how we're using those dollars so to just bring my recommendation will be to just bring that back to the voters sometime before you've had this go no go conversation doesn't directly tie that revenue stream to something and we wouldn't be able to have that discussion or be in that position and properly warn it for the august primary but is there a reason why we couldn't do the november general um there is no you could absolutely do that in november or on town meeting day um as i was saying earlier i don't anticipate that we would implement that tax in fy 19 we would do it for fy 20 so we absolutely could put that on a future ballot okay it's a really good point when i actually can catch in the scheduling piece because that would obviously would make a lot more sense people are going to get fatigued and be asked to come vote in special elections for items to spend money um i have another question about the streetscaping piece um something that i've thought about is so one of the features of that is like having the bump outs um i think there's some aesthetic to that but also like um sort of slowing traffic flow maybe um my concern would be if we find ourselves in like 15 years traffic flow has escalated so much on that corridor that we want now we want a third lane um are we going to be in a position where we have to spend a bunch of money to tear out what we had just put in you know i'm going to keep that one over to our traffic consultant vhb because i know she's been living with this project for a very long time can you guys introduce yourselves too we should have done that in the beginning i'm sorry the trans projections and also um some local productions we looked at the regional planning commission follow-up corridor to see what they expected to happen in the area and so we looked out 20 years for our traffic projections there weren't huge changes um the intersections were where we focused on because that's where you'll see the congestion and um there wasn't any meaningful change from now until then in severe degradation and traffic flow or anything so we anticipated that along the corridor especially between those intersections you won't notice much of the change great thank you it's time to say we know we're not the the current concept doesn't have a lot of traditional like well else it's um the lane of couple strategic locations but the the primary corridor is is essentially board fee all the way down location then don't tell them to our plow drivers though right it's really expensive and almost impossible to do yes um so this is a challenging process for me partly because we're asking the community to vote on a bond before we have the financing figured out and so it it's a little cart before the horse but i think even bigger picture for me is the question of affordability in this community and what this what impact this project could have on the relative affordability um and there's a lot of unknowns right and i really appreciate all the hard work that's gone into moving this project from concept to bond potential bond vote in a pretty short time frame with new staff coming on board and also appreciate the fact that there are funding opportunities that may or may not go away in the future in that in order to take advantage of them we need to follow these rules that we might not like so i want to say that i'm not going to vote in favor of this tonight um but that should not be any say anything about the work that you've all done to get us to this point um my main concern is um the the scope and magnitude of this project um along that corridor um when most of the parcels are owned by just a couple developers to me increases the likelihood that we will see rapid development of the corridor in conjunction with the construction it makes sense that developers would say we're going to seize this time when the streets totally torn up to redevelop these parcels um and again i believe that was part of the vision for this gateway and the community's vision but i'm not sure that some of the ripple effects were well understood and i don't believe they're well understood enough today in order for me to support moving forward on this timeline i think um the housing commission um has done some good work in terms of um understanding the landscape that we're in in terms of the housing mix um but has not completed its work on targets um and um what our um zoning and you know goals should be with respect to to ensuring the balance of housing um so my fear is that we will not have concluded the work we need to conclude on housing in order to put some guard rails along the development and subsequently we will have higher rent um replacing you know and i don't know enough about what the rents are in the corridor but i do know that some of the new units um go for uh more than i've ever paid um in winewski and so um again i um we don't now have a planning and zoning administrator so the notion that we can fast track that work um in order to even get it done before the august vote seems um unlikely so given the concerns i have about um the cost of the project and what that's going to do to property tax rates water rates sewer rates for residents in addition to the the um likelihood of development occurring in a way that makes um those properties less affordable um in the absence of our work on putting those guard rails in place i can't support the the vote at this time but thank you for all the work that you've done thank you i think that you raise really relevant concern there and not to put it on the spot but heather do you happen to know what the makeup is along the main street corridor well i mean i i know that the new units that have come in are affordable to people between 80 and 120 percent area median income and i've checked them since and they remain affordable to people at that rate i don't know what would come in the future i can't say off the top of my head um what all the pricing is for the housing that's there now and i think there are um several complex issues that are involved in that what i will say is development of war housing period will help to create an affordable community because we are in a housing crisis so um not having enough housing for the demand increases the cost of housing so that you know thank you at a high level that that's kind of how it's functioned so i don't know if 80 to 120 percent means anything to people watching but $1,700 a month for two bedroom apartment might mean something that that's pretty that is just a figure sure and i i really appreciate it too and i think a lot of that were thoughtful things that we need to be really cognizant of and i think the planning strain is really important we've spent a lot of time over the last six months especially really extolling the virtues of affordable housing and mnuski and i think it's really important that we recognize why we have affordable housing and mnuski and what that narrative is because it it seems to me it's gone more and more towards mnuski was really smart and thoughtful and planned ahead and brought in a bunch of affordable housing that's not what happened our city had pretty much total financial collapse our downtown rotted out it became a city that lost thousands of people and only had 7 000 people to begin with and there was a flight out of the community that's what initially created mnuski being a really affordable place there are a lot of beautiful outcomes from that we became a place that was ripe for a lot of diverse settlement we became a place where people who were starting in the country knew could find affordable housing but it wasn't because of a bunch of politician set and made smart policies that's giving people too much credit and i think excuse the narrative so i i guess from my perspective and it that sounds a little harsh but i think from a real perspective that's what happened and we're climbing from a price range right now and i think that that's absolutely accurate and there's a lot of work to be done around making sure that we do put some bumpers in that bully on and continue to support the stock of affordable housing that we have but i don't think a future policy is saying let's keep something that's not in good shape and not working depressed in order to keep things affordable that that to me from a municipal management standpoint the way i look at governance for communities kind of a risky proposition it keeps us in a cycle of having really minimal investment opportunities on only the assets that we currently have so i guess that part from a narrative standpoint something this whole body's going to have to figure out how what our thoughts are on it i don't know it just it feels to me like the conversation's gone there a few times like we're going to make we're going to make policies that are suddenly going to pump the brakes or cause and that's that's just not reality and if there are such tight constraints restrictions and policies put in place there will be nothing built here and i will also add that the infrastructure in a project like this supports the independent developer supports the non-profit developer supports the person who wants to rebuild their single family home the same the scale is different but the infrastructure serves serves anybody who uses it so i guess those are just a few of the points i guess i kind of took you know different approach to i don't think i was selling a narrative that we are we got where we are because of good policy my point is i believe it's our obligation moving forward when we're seeing the scope of development that that lies ahead to put some guardrails in and we haven't done that and i agree that that's that's been the handed focus the housing commission and that there are absolutely steps that need to be taken i think that i think this is not going to i think it'll it's going to cause development that's part of the point of it quite frankly and redevelopment and good land use that's part of why we're doing it but i i do think that there's time for us on the housing commission side still to have a pretty thoughtful conversation the body is moving forward from a policy perspective so i guess i still see a window to do that in conjunction with this personally seth i'm wondering if in your professional life you've seen what some of the impact that infrastructure improvements might have on communities and affordable housing or subsidized housing organizations being able to continue to build the most recent numbers are affordable housing units have reached in vermont or depending on where you're at somewhere somewhere around 285 to 300 thousand dollars per unit to develop in terms of the costs associated with the infrastructure necessary to support that that's been the number one escalator from a financial perspective and a lot of that has to do with the limitation in joining funding opportunities with federal programs that are no longer active and just to be disclosed i'm going to be recusing later because you guys are going to consider actual usda funding which i work for usda and housing programs director so i step aside for those conversations we're a federal entity but we rely on other federal funders at times to to to help with those processes so infrastructure is the thing that when we have conversations on the state perspective coordinating that investment together with housing and commercial development has been really key because it significantly lowers the barrier of entry for the affordable housing developers to and if we wanted to have you know and end up the conversation about that you know a great person to invite would be housing vermont who spends a lot of time trying to pencil out these projects where they're getting hit with waste water and water fees and to that point what we did with the strand project was go try to get cdbg funding and we were successful in getting two hundred and fifty thousand dollars locked up in infrastructure improvement funding unfortunately that's not looking like it's gonna get the use we'd hope for but all the applications available from the the public data i would probably say 85 percent of those projects were housing related going to the state for nonprofit housing development and saying we can't pay for these infrastructure costs we need these couple hundred thousand dollars to make that work that was a really long answer i'm sorry i support this project going forward and i see the support as a yellow light not a green light i think it's going to be critical in the next few months to come in with the the real numbers that can give us the confidence that this can be something supported by the by the community you know i i believe if not now then when because i think we're at a point with our infrastructure that it's long overdue to be brought into the 21st century and if we're going to have a an inviting gateway into our city i think this is the project to do it so i also am in support of moving this forward um i feel the same way about like the utility situation i would also like to see our downtown extend from just the rotary um you know moving it up main street to a degree having some development there having some new housing having some more tax base would be helpful i worry about our tax rate which is already i think third highest in the state climbing even higher you know depending on funding but i think also having these phased options is really helpful because the vision i have like i don't see the downtown extending all the way up main um you know you get up near the highway i don't know how that will like that that will ever look the same as you do like in the in the core of when you ski um and so i think having this option to at least address the the necessary utilities like the water and sewer um and then maybe when it comes to like streetscaping and utilities think about where that benefit is versus maybe concerns about developing the entire corridor and um you know pushing out affordable housing or something i think having the option to find some middle point there that we have that option makes it easier for me to say like yes let's move forward in this process questions concerns yeah i guess speaking to um or questioning about some of the issues that Nicole brought up which i share a lot of similar anxiety i don't know um Heather if you have any sort of update of where the housing commission is at right now i'm looking at targets and starting to move into politics we had initially come up with targets there were actual target percentages of new development we didn't bring them forward we brought forward general goals but so there are targets to be brought forward we've moved into um in our most recent meeting we started to define um general principles that guide our decision making and those principles were taken primarily from the strategic vision also from direct counsel directives that we've had in the past mostly through the strategic planning process last year so we've come up with a series of principles and i'm refining that the commission has decided is following pretty much directly what's up there so it's a mix it's affordable it's you know all of that and then they've also added that they want to be data driven that's one of their key guiding principles um so we're going to continue on that path and we've started looking at single family homes but in a very targeted and directed way which is specific things that we can influence you know because there are sort of things within the market that we can't influence and we are looking at that through the lens of the windows housing needs assessment and some of the things that were recommended there so that's where we are at this junction so starting down the road at looking at policies yes that's right to move towards those goals thank you sir put you on spot any questions or thoughts i'll just i mean i share the housing thoughts but you know i think um it's really hard this community took the biggest risk that any communities and especially from a size perspective um i think has ever taken in the state of vermont um in the redevelopment of the downtown um just a massive i won't say roll the dice because it was done very thoughtfully um but it took a lot of courage and it took a took a lot of foresight thought and really careful execution um and it's i don't know what else to say other than it's worked um and it's i think that that success is playing out in something that we've we've truly benefited from as a generation of leaders um was all that hard work that was done um and when that idea came about the hope was it would become again this this economic heart uh for the town where there had been so many disappointments with urban renewal um that you know hadn't taken hadn't taken root um and the hope was that it would provide you know an engine for us um and this is exactly having the type of interest we've had on main street interest there is exactly the byproduct that that project was intended to to create um and i do think we've been really thoughtful and deliberate about reaching out and getting a community sense of what they want those corridors to look like i think we have to recognize that we are spending a significant amount of our capital um and our capital um improvement capacity and one thing i've been really happy and pleased with this body about over the years i've been involved is we've done we've taken those steps and movements in a group way and believed in what we were going after um and understood that we probably sacrificed some of the things that we individually thought in our brain we could also do with that money um and this is the highest calling of that sacrifice because um it's it's a heavy not just for the community um but for us from a future management perspective and we need to be honest about that and it means that our redevelopment of the other corridors is going to have to look very different um we can't come back and do this again next year and and have that done on allen street or malice bay we have slightly different situations there but regardless that's that's a fact um that remains um it's not going to it's not going to be we're not going to have 100 clarity on everything walking into this we're not there's going to be risk involved and there's got to be a little risk tolerance with it and that's really hard to do with other people's money in a community but to me that's what we're putting these positions to do and the decisions that we're being asked to make so um you know i think i think that this is a transformational project i think it it it does something for the community in city that it's really hard to weigh just how beneficial it could be um in the long run so i've appreciated all the thoughts i do think that there's still obviously just lists and lists and lists of questions and i appreciate the uh the metaphor of it being a yellow light versus a green light and that makes a lot of sense that there's still a lot of items to iron out and put forward but this feels like a positive step so i do yeah i do feel like in moving forward without knowing what the complete funding package looks like you know we we have the opportunity if it comes in at such a radically different level than what we're looking at to be able to react differently and but this allows us to put in front of the community and have people weigh on if it is something that is important to them and that they want to see move forward i do support moving this project forward but i think that for me this really puts the fire under ensuring accountability that we have to get those guardrails up so that we are developing in a responsible way um i have a lot of anxiety about it and it makes me really nervous to do so but i also think that that's it's the point we need to continue to move that train forward as fast as we can before it runs away from us and to that point i would also say that if should the vote be positive on the bond piece you know i think you brought up a really important part is you know i think instantly on the next the next step for us is the communication to the community and that's something that's going to need to be directed very very quickly in terms of saying you're voting on this this number doesn't mean anything to people what's the potential impact and that that be relate to them in a very conservative manner that also recognizes we might not even at that point have that those pieces all perfectly percentage out that's not the way these votes work it's not it's not the way it works here it's not the way it works anywhere so and then you're right and then even then if it's a positive vote have to potentially walk it back if it comes back this is going to be 20 cents on the tax and there's nothing we can do but that i do think it's difficult if the community approves the bond vote and uh and the projections are what they are for this council to say sorry we're not going to do it it's challenging i mean it's it's just the process is if you're to say that we will have the community approve it and then reserve judgment about whether to go forward is challenging to me i'm not a big fan of it either but i mean i think that that would only be the case if the projections that were used for the approval by the voters came and the reality came in so different but it really it just did not meet what the voter intent was when people approved it i think that's the only time i feel comfortable if it's a small portion off i don't think that that's the reason we don't have the housing stuff done yeah you know what i mean could i recommend that if there's a an authorization typically on something like this i'd work in close consultation with city manager on developing messaging could i recommend that council if there is a vote um also put forward an additional person to work on that please because i think we need to have a messaging um how to relay to people about the financial pieces and make sure there's another set of eyes on that with me um to ensure that we're comfortable with the numbers that are being outlaid to the public because waiting in for another round of meetings to happen um if that's going to be something we need to jump on and be nice to have another set of eyes on that are you looking for a volunteer are you a solution looking for a problem awesome so just along those lines if you do decide to move forward we did suggest a communication schedule with me now in that date um that will start um next week with the planning mission public works mission a community dinner and obviously public hearing required so great we have started to do some thinking around that but certainly the messaging that takes place at those events is a different thing i think it's in it's a couple sets of eyes to look at the financial thresholds to understand what the especially what the general fund tax implication rates could be um i'm going to be honest people probably aren't i mean there are plenty that will be but from oh what's coming out of the you know the reserve on the wastewater water side probably not as much interest that tax rate one especially um i think being really up front about what the potential range the council might be considering um is important messaging that's the financial promise saying 23 million dollars doesn't mean anything to anybody that would be my thought on that i guess for both staff and council what are people's comfortabilities or thoughts on you know i know for our housing commission we have this work plan or timeline that's aligned with our strategic vision statement um would what are people's thoughts on maybe looking at what a work plan and timeline for the work the housing commission needs to do in advance of increased development on mainstream being aligned with this project timeline um that makes sense to me setting a goal for i i don't know if this is still true but i think one of the pending next steps was to actually provide some policy recommendations to planning yeah and we have a list of policy recommendations it's an awkward time with the planning commission right now with a new commission coming on and the municipal plan going on but certainly that is on the radar and i think we need to come up with a work plan for the planning commission absolutely but just to be clear the planning commission and the housing commission are your policy farms so to the extent that you want to direct them to look at things within the next four months that that's why they're there they're there to do that work for you so i think if that was of interest to you to set very you know we want you to explore x y and z policies or we want to hear five policies or whatever there's there's definitely room to have that conversation and that would be a good agenda item for next time okay and yeah that would make me feel more comfortable that's a possibility and i'll put some thought into it i think it'd be good to know have like a current state of class of housing and what the new development going in is actually and it's for me more useful to hear i mean i think the income brackets are are helpful but that's not necessarily well understood by by folks so what's the actual cost in terms of monthly rent exercise unit so that was provided as part of the presentation so not for main street i think it was citywide the new units if i may i'm sorry the new units on main street were included in that and were broken out by what the costs were i've gone back and checked to see if the costs are aligned with what i had originally shown you they are the ones that have been permitted at the point that we gave the presentation but we can certainly continue to definitely will continue to monitor that information about what they're planning on charging and what what what they're actually charging yeah i went back and reviewed no i mean and what the parcels that have not been developed what the cost is for housing in those units because i'm interested in one of the things we spoke about was replacement yeah so what what are the existing units what's the difference the market is pushing for seventeen hundred dollars a month if you're building something new but currently it's i don't know i mean i don't know it'd be good to see that important to know any other questions concerns thoughts from council questions concerns thoughts from the public everybody thinks it's a good idea bad idea i just had shanking on both so that's okay so uh with that um we will consider that the conclusion of the item f excuse me um yeah of item f and we'll take up item g which is the necessity and reimbursement resolution for bond vote given the discussion was online with that and are there specific concerns in regards to this document so if i can just give a quick summary of this document so this is a statutory requirement that you pass a resolution deeming that there is a necessity to do this project as outlined in the resolution in advance of scheduling a bond vote there are two important aspects of this resolution one that the project is necessary and two it includes a reimbursement clause which says that we're allowed to bond up to the twenty three million dollar threshold and we anticipate spending up to two million dollars in advance of taking out that bond that we can then reimburse ourselves for um when we take out that bond so that's very necessary in order to um move the project forward through engineering and bidding before we actually start construction this resolution was drafted by our bond council our lawyer um it is not something that we arbitrarily came up shoot i had a couple just sentences i wanted to tweak oh going a little not going to law school was the best call ever i'm just teasing uh other questions comments concerns from council any questions concerns uh comments from the public so seeing and hearing none i would entertain a motion for approval of the necessity and reimbursement resolution for bond vote so moved second motion by christine second by hal any further discussion hearing seeing none all those in favor please say i i i those opposed no motion stands so that's completion of that i will move on to item h was the approval of the warning of a special meeting in public caring so that now that you found uh the need to have a bond vote this is to actually set the meeting date for a special um city-wide meeting to conduct that bond vote um we are recommending that be held on may eighth carol and i um did a fair amount of calendaring around when would be a good time for that given the window within which we need to hold the um bond vote um keeping it on a tuesday our elections have historically always been on tuesday so we don't want to get off that pattern for people um and not doing it the week that taxes are also do therefore really burdening our staff so we recommend may eighth and present to you um a warning for the special meeting on may eighth and the public hearing required in advance of that on may seventh which you have a regular council meeting that night so we recommend holding that public hearing um at that regular meeting okay um and so with that uh any questions concerns on this item from council any questions concerns from the public so seeing and hearing none i entertain a motion for the warning of the special meeting and public hearing so moved second motion by christine second by howling for the discussion seeing and hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye aye and those opposed no motion carries item i uh state revolving fund drinking water grant application um so now before you is a series of four um different um two state applications for loans and subsidies and two for the federal government so the first two are um from the state revolving loan fund the first one the mayor just called on was the drinking water grant application this is um our internal process per our policy where we say to you give us permission to apply for um outside funding opportunities before we actually go forward and do it especially in a case like this which is a new um a new endeavor not something that you have already budgeted for through the regular budget process so a yes vote approves this internal funding application proposal and lets us move forward um i would request that for each of the next four votes you also consider as part of that authorizing me to sign all of the loan or grant application um documents there will be a lot of them so instead of bringing them back to you each time authorizing me to sign them would be very administratively helpful you want details on these specific ones no no no i think um let's just take the drinking water um one first and if someone makes a motion please just indicate authorizing the city manager to do to sign on behalf of the city um if you want to come back the next meeting even if there's going to be more and more of those associated with it i guess we would need to see the funding stream anyway so that doesn't matter okay so we can just one off each of those just if you could remember to put that into your motion we'd appreciate it any questions concerns from council from the specific one and again we're just looking at first at the um the state revolving fund drinking water grant application free money is always good any questions or concerns from the public so seeing and hearing that i entertain a motion for approval of the state revolving fund drinking water grant application authorizing the city manager to sign on the city's behalf so motion by house like by eric any further discussion seeing and hearing none those of favor please say aye and those opposed motion carries item j or yes item j is um state revolving fund clean water grant application can we anything else you could any questions concerns from council any questions or concerns from the public so seeing and hearing none i entertain a motion for approval on the um state revolving fund clean water grant application second motion by eric second by hal any further discussion seeing and hearing none those of favor please say aye and those opposed motion carries on the item k and item l i'm going to recuse i'm a employee at usda role development working in the housing division um and cannot be part of any requests to the usda versus the usda state department back culture of the funds return it over the gavel now belongs to that community that's good um so item k usda community facilities grant application anything we need to know about this so there are two these two applications are to the federal government usda role development the community facilities is for would be to fund the um work not associated with the underground utility so the well not associated with the municipal underground utility so the bearing of the um telecom and power lines and all this the streetscape improvement work okay any questions any questions or comments from the public okay we'll take a motion to approve the usda community facilities grant application authorizing jesse baker to sign on our behalf so move second motion by hal second by christine all those in favor say aye aye opposed okay motion carries item l usda water and environmental program um so this is uh out of the same office it's a different funding source which is really meant to um subsidize and incentivize the water and wastewater utility work thank you any questions questions from the public comments i will entertain a motion to approve the usda water and environmental program grant application authorizing jesse baker to sign on our behalf so moved second motion by eric second by christine all those in favor please say aye all right opposed motion carries item m mr. mayor let's take a two-minute recess thank you all very much we're going to call back to one of the musky city council meeting and pick up on our agenda we will pick up with item m which is um discussion in our approval mires pool update and following follow-up information so as everyone remembers from last time presentation on the details mark from weston and samson had joined me last meeting to go over the preliminary engineering support some really good questions and asks for me all for some follow-up data so here i am with that data so things that were requested that we've brought back tonight were some usership data so that's been presented to you in a memo back to summer 2011 which was as far back as i had it cost modeling for various fundraising levels so what we have done here is include some spreadsheets that show fundraising levels equating to 250,000 500,000 750,000 and a million dollars and they're included in the packet for comparison a pretty detailed memo that mark from weston and samson worked with me to produce around value engineering options so i think that again gives a nice sort of menu of the different potential pieces that could or could not kind of be scaled back and then the the sort of recommended approach there if we were to do value engineering in the project also as requested a sort of minimum replacement model so and i've used the the term in quote here bare bones just because that's what was referred to in mark's memo so that we could be talking the same language across those two memos and then a little bit of detail here about sort of plans for subsequent community outreach around the project but i think that's an area that dependent on the flavor of the conversation tonight we can talk further about so i'm hopeful the memo is fairly straightforward one thing i do want to note for you all in your packet and i have the larger versions here is that i did include for those various financial models just a seven-year projection we've modeled that out to 20 years but it was going to be like tiny tiny print so i have those here if there are questions or people want to see that data out further but i think it gives everybody a pretty safe comparison between the different approaches so i'm going to pause there and ask if there are additional questions or comments on what was shared so i had um i can't remember which memo it said but um it's i one of these memos said that um if we move to a bare bones um the projections around revenue coming in because people are excited about a new facility um would be you know lower although it seems to be in the front the modeling you've done um we're not assuming any real increase in revenue due to a nicer facility right so i'm challenged i guess by on the one hand if we move to a bare bones pool we won't see this increased revenue but we don't have models that show what that increased revenue might look like and how that might translate in terms of overall impact and um when the gentleman was here last month he indicated that a comparable community with a comparable pool was bringing in quite a bit of revenue a year so um and so i just want to check in about why we're modeling such low revenue coming yeah yeah no that's a really good question and i think in retrospect probably based on that conversation maybe something we should have updated you know i think again the number that mark had shared um based on the community in main that we were sort of comparing to similar sized demographic um was basically they were covering their operating costs so if i'm remembering correctly i think it was right around $80,000 annually that they were bringing in for revenue that's with sort of a more built out pool right i think it's fair to say and and i think the approach i would take certainly is if we were to build sort of that bare bones model which is essentially a replacement more or less of what's there now i i think it would be wise for us to model that off of the usage data that we've seen to date which is what that number um number here is right so so yes i think there is a discrepancy there on the annual operating side figure probably $75,000 i think to make the math easy a number that you could add or subtract based on the scaling of that facility but it's a good question i would like to chime in on that i so that the other facility that was referred to was located in waterville main yes and i looked that town up it has double the population that we do um and i that it makes it difficult for me to think that it also seems to be more early located it makes it difficult for me to make a correlation there that are nicer newer facility would pull in new revenue the way that that one did i think fair and i think all of these are best comparisons right word we're there isn't another wanouski anywhere in the world um so i think we're making our best guess here when it comes to these projections is there one more wanouski wisconsin oh yeah mission zero yeah okay with all due respect and deference to wanouski wisconsin it was a settler from wanouski that went there i opened it up and there's a restaurant yeah i'm sorry no i think christine to to your point i think one of the things mark and i talked about and looking at waterville is that the community the core community is bigger yes but because it is more rural in nature it doesn't have the ability to draw from the surrounding areas in the same way that we feel like we probably would so figuring coal chester you know probably some from burlington some from asex you know we have a bigger general population base that we could draw from and in that case it felt like a fairly safe bet you know the other argument you could go down as well it's rural there's not a lot else going on this is kind of the one place to go fair enough but again i think there's so many of those questions that you could bring up of why other communities are not exactly the same so again i think these models are are that they're models i also think and when rea and angela i've been talking about these models and in past conversations we've had about um the community services fees and thrive you know we're we're having this conversation regularly about do we want to how to what degree we want to subsidize programs and to what degree we want to ensure that our municipal assets are open and accessible to all so i think we deferred on these models to um to for the better word low balling the revenue projections because we've we've historically held that value of um while wanting to collect some revenue wanting to make sure that our assets were as open and accessible as all so if you want you know as we move forward with these conversations if the council wants to provide us a different level of guidance or you know direct us to provide a tiered payment system and model out what that could look like we're happy to do that but we've been trying to be pretty conservative on our revenue projections for user rates it feels like historically when you look at the rates that we charge they're extremely low yeah especially our daily rates and and visits and visits to the pool declined i think as the quality of the experience um um declined can anybody say off the top of their head what the impact the tax rate would be if operating expenses were covered by revenue angel i want to break it out between operating expenses versus debt service reduce it by 110,000 a high point rate so it'd be two cents less yeah it's about right five or six cents but the revenues only currently projected to touch about 10 of peak operating yeah yeah between i think between them one and two pennies would be the impact on the total so when i looked at the the modeling in here and thanks for breaking everything out uh i think what i saw is that if we went from like the full-out project down to the bare bones it was about almost 40 reduction in cost which i feel is kind of significant in the pool is actually the thing that i've heard the most about from like community members but the message that i always am asked is when is the pool going to reopen like i've never actually heard anyone express that they're looking for an increase or like an advanced facility um for me personally i think based on that i feel like this this breakout of the you know the pieces you are that are listed individually should be i would like to see like all of those tied to the fundraising so all those value-engineered pieces above the bare bones level yeah above the actual just reopening the pool so i think we kind of discussed that sort of and that that's city comes in and i bear a price that's the bare minimum and then the adjustments are made based off of available funding does that make sense and then somebody can put their name on a slide with a fat check right yeah i wonder if that's been considered either like adding some maybe this is completely distasteful but like advertisement to the facility you know how they have like banners or whatever at baseball parks yeah yeah no we've definitely talked at points i think both about giving people an opportunity to put their name on various pieces of the facility but also different priorities and possibilities with local businesses and things like that so yeah that's all been part of the conversation to date with the pool committee okay i think there are some exceptions i i like the concept with some exceptions that i wouldn't want to see if we're moving forward with a pool going down to the bare bones pool only include the bare bones model only includes the competition pool so there isn't that separate pool for other community members so i think that's one piece that i would want to see included yeah i i would have a hard time removing the family pool option just because we do have there is at least now an option for it's not just a competitive swimming space but there's i yeah i see value in that you know more than some of the other features yeah i agree yeah and just since this is another one of the larger ticket items but community room sort of gathering space would stay in that sort of i had a question about that too like do we see this as a revenue generator are we seeing our existing community space rented out yes so i think what we are seeing is that there are definitely times as we during the busy seasons at the O'Brien center in particular that space is is limited and i think especially if some of these um fit up projects down there go forward child care in particular that's going to take another rental space off the board potentially so i think there is i think there's a market for that space i also think it's proximity to both the pool and the park make it a pretty desirable space for birthday parties you know camp groups whatever so i don't think we'd struggle to put that into play and that's why we really looked at it as a year-round facility i think it's also a nice way to kind of add some vibrancy to that park throughout the course of the year versus just during the summer months so that makes sense yeah i don't know if i answered yeah yeah it does yeah right do you know if the development committee has done any kind of feasibility work to figure out what is possible to raise um i do not to be honest with you i know they have plans to meet with a professional fundraiser who has been out of state and i believe is returning if not this week next i think is what they said but i don't know that they've done that level of work i think the number that we had thrown around very early on in the process as a group was you know more or less splitting the difference of the cost i think we all did that knowing full well that that was a really frankly aspirational reach um and that was so that was you know half of that 4.4 million dollar initial projection so you know it's challenging to answer the question here of what that feasibility could be on a project like this i think again it's that's work i'd want to do with a professional in that fundraising field um they were going to do we will not be doing but yeah if it were me no thank you yes yes if i may counsel might recall from last week that the pool committee indicated they'd set a target of a million dollars for their fundraising effort as to feasibility i don't know if they have done any clear study on that the fundraiser that ray refers to has met with the committee about six months ago and they did discuss that sort of thing at that time i don't think they came to any current conclusions something that was i guess what we heard was uh i guess the value engineering scares me and it scares me from a longevity of facility perspective and it scares me from uh the reason the pools closed in part now is because of sanitation issues and our discomfort with keeping up having one sand filter oh my goodness i did too much about this one sand filter being able to do the work right um the loss of the uv light the loss of some of the wrapping around some of the other pieces those parts scared me more than slides yes and that i guess that part was i don't know made me a little a little true so i do one or two with i don't know i mean i i i've appreciated that approach kind of of saying at some point the city could draw a line and say this is what we're comfortable with putting forward and bridge a gap um and it gives people a number to reach for i would also just want to see some kind of prioritization around that discussion um that maybe it was collaborative and i hate to say that because you don't want to steal from somebody the ability to say i really want to fund this um but i don't know and maybe that's maybe that wouldn't work i'm just expressing some frustration at losing some of those items that have would elongate the life of the pool make it a safer facility in the long run predictably too i agree i think it's tough though too because a lot of those items that i would view as a necessity are some of the bigger ticket items too would you have the bigger financial impact because i think like we heard from um the consultant last time around that the material used like the mirtha pool whatever that material is i've never heard of it um the difference between that and concrete pool is like pretty significant in regards to the lifespan of the pool so even though it's you know that's one of the bigger ticket items it's going to stretch a lot longer down the road and what we're actually investing in yeah and that specific item i think will there is a return on investment there that will pay for itself you know the difference in costs up front over the 20 year life of that first 20 years you know the bond life of that pool would be caught back because there's not concrete work it's a it's basically a stainless steel that's laminated with PVC again things i know more about than i thought i would that's built off site and then they sort of erect or set the thing together here and then sort of fuse all the bits together um so it's a metal pool versus a concrete pool so there's actually big bleeds previously was we were losing a ton of water right i mean there was a lot we think we were oh no we know we were um the previous pool was concrete with a liner over it and when leaks had happened the chemicals had started to erode the concrete behind it and created some structural issues and the other nice thing about the mertha system is that there's less um structural concrete needed because it's a lighter structure so that's another savings up front but yeah but still 200 extra 200,000 more up front you save that over time but that's the the trade off so but the recommendations of for deductions here don't include the mertha system right so it's the item selected will provide cost savings but not substantially change the look of the facility take away from programming or add significant future maintenance costs so that's how i would i would be comfortable sticking with the recommendations that the engineers have stated would not add significant i mean what i don't know what significant means but i think yeah i think that i think to your point nicole maybe if i think the savings over time between the two systems is not hundreds of thousands of dollars it's probably more in the order of tens of thousands of dollars um i'm i'm also comfortable with that deduction list but on that note about cost versus maintenance i think a slide and sprinkler features are maintenance nightmares like down the line i also wonder if that increases like liability insurance related to supporting this facility we've we've put so in terms of the maintenance elements i am in no way equipped to say what the maintenance liability for a slide or a spray feature would be i'm happy to ask mark that question i mean i think i think if it were a significant concern it would have been captured there is in the information from last meeting kind of a spelled out equipment and capital budget over the 20-year life of the pool and that included all the equipment all the bits and parts that are going in so that's the pumps for the the spray features the slides all those things so those costs were baked into that operating budget over the 20-year life um i don't remember offhand concrete versus you know whatever goes on the slide what those costs were but you know suffice it to say it's baked into the the projection here um and then the second question sorry liability so we have talked a little bit about that it's been a while but early on in the process about especially in the context of diving boards we talked about that so i think those were removed and are pretty routinely being removed from facilities because of increased liability um from what i recall of our conversation with weston and samson the other features are not the ones included here are not highly different in the liability so i would just flag that also as we discussed before adding the slide also increased our staffing obligation across fields ct what are they coming do we give them a diagram of this and say what's it going to cost to ensure just like curiosity yeah exactly and you know honestly pools are actually pretty typical municipal insurance coverage yeah items it's not usually unusual for the lcp to insure pools so we would be put into the pool with the rest of the communities in the state that that's right i have to just want to clarify too that the the the deductions list that i think everybody's point to where it's you won't lose any structural thing results in about it roughly 10 cost reduction if to remove all those things gets us to the larger the right yeah just for the public's benefit i want to well and what maybe the numbers are in here so i apologize if they are but what's the difference if we're looking at actual you know the dollars and cents for an average home between those two so when i did it what we saw in in the actually in this document was that it was going to be about 143 dollars per home at the bare bones rate it was down to i think 113 14 yeah so yeah so from the full the full project as presented to the bare bones that difference ends up being about right around 70 bucks um annually to the average um home and so with the recommended value engineering or whatever yeah so that number because i don't have this feeling like it's really substantial the skimmed down version versus the the bare bones yeah i didn't yeah yep so that number cuts off about we'll say for comparatives about 250 000 so if you look at that fundraising number in here where is it the 250 000 fund raising level 173 so about 10 bucks a year to the average home yeah i think if we if it is going to be something that's moves forward let's i'm fine with just doing it right for a ten dollar difference and you know one of the items in that list to speak to sets point is a uv disinfection system and if we want a lot of people to be using the pool i feel like i want that to be a very sanitary pool yeah i would advocate for some middle ground um of reducing some of the more luxury features that we're looking at here like the slide yes well so what you could request is for sorry to drive you guys nuts but what you could request for if you want to use your model of chunking out financing is say add back in um health safety and longevity items and what's that number look like and because this is not this list is not done between they just looked for where they could save money they did not look for what is um functional versus i don't want to say luxury item but an added entertainment value i guess yeah that's what i'm thinking yeah so the added value in the actual like longevity totally see that versus like not luxury items um i like that's what i feel should be tied to the fundraising versus what we're asking all of the taxpayers to fund the fun stuff yeah for me it's a slide in the community room where it's like you could have folks say this community room is the so-and-so's community room for the nicole mace move oil slide don't say move oil by the time i could have poured it check that off 30 years from now maybe with a long cross-breed slide yeah sorry sorry guys no but i think that i also think those are easier to fundraise around mm-hmm a specific um yeah feature i just thought of somebody's plaque on the uv uv yeah the disinfectant system a local cleaning company perhaps um are there other tech or questions about this information i just i want to turn the process a little bit in timelines and what we're dealing with there but i don't want to cut this conversation off if there's more interest in talking about that list or the numbers yes sure um i'm actually not sure who to address this question to but was it said that the projected peak revenue of this facility would only cover about 10 percent of the total operating costs currently the well i'm sorry nope nope so if um based on the model we had seen from sort of again i'll use air quotes a comparable pool in Maine um their annual re operating revenue was about 80 000 annually our projected operating costs annually not included debt service capital um was right around that same number right around 80 000 to start so theoretically it would be about a one-to-one in a fully utilized pool to revenue to expenses operating expenses and then there'd be additional debt service and capital costs on top of that so yep but that's not what we have in our in our financial modeling our financial models assume only 10 percent of operating as a conservative yeah because we've we had really low operating revenue when the pool was open a number of years ago so we were modeling off that more conservative number just to play it safe any questions comments concerns this point yes sir i'd like to just remind the council or suggest to the council perhaps that if you look at a reduced scheme for the pool such as removing the slide it might not then be possible to put the slide back in at a later time because there has to be some foundational work done and once the pool is in the ground and the deck is finished you really can't dig up any of that deck to put in the sliding game what you might want to think about is not removing the slide but reducing the complexity of the slide the slide that's proposed is is quite complex a simpler slide would reduce the cost by some amount i don't know how much the other thing i'd like to say about the slide in particular and the evidence is anecdotal but it's expected to be a revenue producer because it is expected that it will attract people from outside the community in addition to our own community users thank you run we do have a lot of pictures of slide yeah a lot of different angles i know try to keep your packet fun it's my job other questions comments concerns and i'll just say too that certainly i would feel strongly as we've represented that body throughout that there will be i don't think this body is expressed any interesting getting into taking our pencils out and specifically engineering things that we will leave that to conversations and consultation for staff with the engineers and and with those vested community interested parties so you know we'll try not to make decisions like that where we take a public process apart and suddenly start taking authorship now removing stuff that's part of our job um okay can we go back to trailing through uh progress funding timelines and kind of walk through i think maybe what i i just think i mean the ultimate question is i mean i'm hearing some some ideas about coalescence around perhaps what is a base amount and then having a fundraising level is that a widely accepted concept that people would like to explore and additionally i think it's really hard for us to assume a number that right outside consultants weigh in on that one okay so i think that that's that critical piece of information i think expressing that to them that that's a conversation that's being had would be a feasibility fundraising feasibility number yeah i'm sorry yeah i think getting an understanding what they think their own capacity is and you know unfortunately i don't i'm just not a professional field i've operated in the rest of you but it's you know i think i think that's something that we'd have to be really thoughtful about in terms of how we set our number on hand in another one but well i think we've also talked about some blunders that have happened in other locations as well so i think my big point of concern is that even if we're told the number that people feel very confident about and we were a bond for a number based on what we're told and it comes in under then we all of a sudden don't have the money that we need to actually build the pool right um that's a big concern of mine so i don't well that's why it's i think it's important to figure out which pieces of this could be directly tied to fundraising and so i guess within that too um yeah i don't know if there are if we could get info from other municipalities that have done similar projects where there was private fundraising around and how they kind of picked and arrived or you know what how they landed on the numbers they decided to be an actual bond vote but that really depends on your local capacity and how many other campaigns are going on and all these factors so it's kind of hard to compare apples and apples yeah i guess i'm i'm with christine and saying that we can pair it down and say these are the things if they want to be in it then that's the fund rate private fundraising but this is going to be the cost of the pool assuming no fundraising for the pool we want to build and that's what's going to be on the bond vote yeah yeah like that yeah i'd like to recommend that when this comes back we have analysis of the community service department sort of strategy thinking about service provision over the next few years can you say a little more about that yep sure i think similar to spending a lot of money on one infrastructure project we need to understand the ripple effect or potential capacity that we have to invest further from an operation standpoint an infrastructure standpoint in the other community services yeah i just there's lots of conversations taking place that we don't hear about so i just want to point out that there's anything else that's kind of been in the hopper that's been a big topic at the community service commission standpoint that having those come forward now from a value perspective would be very helpful um so you know if the if we're going to have this vote and then six months later also have a proposal to open up a new portion of the department that requires two staff and this is why we think that's a really great idea i'm not asking for competing ideas to come out of nowhere i just it would be nice to hear what kind of strategic thinking or conversations have been going on from a expenditure potential standpoint sure we have an issue with that that's not a conversation we've explored at all in this process um we've kind of gone forward saying we've had a pool we're going to figure out how to replace it and it's something that we've gotten a lot of feedback from community members on i think that conversation warrants at least being surfaced other items people want back are we setting a timeline for when this is happening so i think the from a funding perspective you guys want to go ahead no no go ahead from a funding timeline perspective um you know we've got moved to a bond vote there's a couple natural opportunities that to be thought of any thinking so far behind the way that might stack up especially given the previous conversation we had this evening so the an option for you i think we talked about this briefly at our last meeting is um with your pass vote on main street that go no go decision will be coming back to you in august is our current one that we expect to get those funding packages wrapped up um that leaves on august primary date for potential bond vote if you wanted to marry up those two go no go decisions um there's obviously also an opportunity at the November election that would give if the if the council spent the next two or three months kind of coming to agreement with the fundraising committee about what those base rates were going to be in projections that would give a couple of more months to the fundraising committee to raise some of those funds in advance of a bond vote in november um and then of course there's always a time meeting day vote in march which would give more months for fundraising um i think the question becomes do you want to see demonstration of fundraising before you put it to bond or after um i think um i think what we understood from mark is with uh august vote um we could go through um engineering and bidding to start construction sometime during the following summer if we may wait beyond that we would be into the summer of 2021 i think it's totally reasonable to be able to move forward on august i do too i think that's a decent approach and i think you could yeah figure out talking to people about the political summer times of independence there's certainly a political advantage from a conversational standpoint you know i think with christine's idea too we don't need to wait to see fundraising coming in because of the way we're structuring that so we don't need to give additional months for the committee to do that and if the fundraising committee exceeds the features and raises revenue that could be you know we're bonding up to an amount we're not obligated to spend everything we i think that we can talk about i i want a little pressure put on them though i don't you know i'm from a just a logistic standpoint i think we need to make it clear that there's going to be some stuff locked off if there's not money because when people see a bond vote pass it's kind of like do we really need to do anything now um and the answer in the expectation is yes absolutely that's yeah so you want a slide goodbye we're sitting in a full of that meaning um yeah so i guess i would feel comfortable is um or would ask that we set that we would want to do so in august yeah and then the timeline for the other pieces we talked about tonight we'll just have to pan out between that one then do you guys anything else from us tonight on that set of direction move forward with i think we're coming i think there are some items that would be good to hear back on like next meeting if possible so we can't come back to you next meeting with this um brain's going to be out of town for a little while um so i think the soonest we could come back to you on some of these projections is may 7th um and i think at that time we should also we will also come back to you with a assuming an august ballot vote backing out from that deadline um necessity resolution votes etc etc etc yep so good thank you all thank you thanks for all the work in time and really i mean we don't say this is probably enough great job in following up and addressing the questions that were asked thanks for asking in a thoughtful way thank you thanks for all that time and work we appreciate it okay um item and approval fund loan fund balance okay loan fund balance allocation cloud exchange server solution so this is a conversation that has gone it's going back to last summer when we when you allocated fy 16 fund balance and we talked about the need to update some of our technology solutions so um since then we have done some work with um our existing it vendor and our leadership team to really identify the goals we were looking for um and put a recommendation into place so just for context or history we have two pretty outdated systems we have a server here at city hall that serves only non-public safety city hall files public safety because of their security requirements has a completely separate system um so we have one server here that's very aging that's aging and that we need to either replace or find another solution for and then as you all know we use the free gmail business accounts so we have two challenges in front of us one we need to do something with that server two we have maxed out our email accounts so we are making staffing decisions based on who needs email and who doesn't which is in modern day and age not a great way great way to function so with our it vendor we have identified a cloud solution so we would undo the onsite servers we would move all of our data storage to a cloud solution um this presents a huge opportunities actually for staff right now for example john rousher and ryan can't share files ryan sits at public works and john is here so they're emailing back and forth documents as opposed being able to work off the same documents um it also would allow us to be at our computers anywhere where we have internet access so if we were at a partner's office or it was a snow day and we were working from home we could function just as if we were in city hall so it solves that problem simquestor it vendor also hosts an exchange server in the cloud so we could move to an email exchange server and have unlimited emails as long as we are paying the user amount a month so we think this solution meets all of those leadership goals what we're asking for tonight is approval to use 28,849 of fy 17 fund balance to fund the one-time migration costs of migrating all of our data that's currently on the server to the cloud and migrating everything we currently have either in google docs or in our email account to the either our server or our email solution in the cloud we have budgeted into the fy 19 budget um the annual maintenance costs associated with this solution you will see in the memo presented that we are proposing a migrated solution in the future so what we have budgeted for fy 19 and are proposing now covers everybody who currently is on our system for fy 20 we're recommending using moving basically bringing in all of our part-time firefighters and then in fy 21 bringing in all of our public safety officers police and dispatch um assuming dispatch is still with us so that would be an increase in future years but we can cover current costs with what is budgeted so the 28,000 29,000 is really those one-time migration costs and if you decide to allocate those dollars tonight we'll still have a 367 thousand dollar balance in our fy 17 fund balance account um that we can decide over the next months how to use right this is one that um we've actually been talking about for about eight years um now in terms of something that's been sorely needed so um it's been a running conversation for a while and we've actually declined spending the money a couple times because of some tight budgets um fund balance is left over money from the previous year right we haven't had that discussion really other than here and so it's an opportunity a little lot of cases to spend on one-time expense things that doesn't build structural debt deficit into the budget for the next year so that's what jessie took care to address the ongoing operational expense i have a historic question so i'm all about moving to the cloud you should absolutely do that this migration fee looks fine to me were there competitive bids though against some quests because the monthly cost there seems high to me um we bid this service um go i'm looking for antelosh who's not here but this service in 2015 or 16 for some quest um and because we have the existing contract with them we look to them for us uh the the cloud solution as we rebid their work annually we will now then be rebidding a cloud solution okay does that make sense yeah it does other questions concerns comments helps you guys do your job is better makes us more in operation and gives you some expanded flexibility let's email addresses for staff yeah that makes sense is that needed today any questions from council any questions or concerns from the public so i will note just one final paragraph here um so if we move forward tonight we think we can some quests indicated they can do this before the end of the year we will have about a 36 hour window where they do the final um testing over a weekend so we will be down for a weekend any comments questions from council seeing here you now entertain a motion for approval of the allocation of fund balance for the cloud exchange service solution presented this evening so okay motion by eric second by the colonny for the discussion seeing here none all those in favor please say aye and those opposed motion carries thank you all discussion local emergency operations plan hi chief two minutes or so this is um i'm going to maybe steal john's thunder here um so we come to you every year for the approval of this it's required that you approve our local emergency operations plan what you have before you is a state required template there's actually this is the extended template that we think has more brings more assets with it there is a four page template we could have provided that would have been simpler but not given us the depth we need to really manage emergencies so it's on as a discussion item happy to answer questions about it once it's approved and submitted to the state we also do intend to do a series of tabletop exercises with our staff to make sure everyone's kind of trained up in how we manage emergency situations very well are there any changes this year over last year but i'm the form the format is much different last year was a five page document and this longer version allows us to create a workflow just more detail more detail operationally speaking are there changes i think the communications piece is a big change with firing a communications coordinator he's put into place some very prescribed processes to issue nixels press releases emergency notifications etc and so john took those policies and embedded them in this so lots of pieces floating out on the call i guess to kind of answer you know the changes are we're taking a lot of pieces and putting it into one workflow the only specific one that i had is i'm assuming we've added the translation services especially that's an issue that you know we've had discussions about previously against best practices for our region available resources yes and those have been developed with our partners at alv and vrp as well direct communication now just add in to is what you'll see every year is there's a larger regional hazard mitigation disaster response plan that we're also part of it's very comprehensive for the county because it's very rare that we're the only ones responding to any kind of emergency yeah so that's a five-year plan in the all hazard this is our local one that's annual yeah so this will as counselors change as staff changes this will constantly it's a live document any questions for john in regards to what you read it was really good reading right it means you did a great job and i think it's really clear thank you any questions comments concerns from the public okay so seeing and hearing none um thank you very much appreciate all your work on it i think that's important thing and of course again people rarely get excited about had our emergency response plans and things like that until they really need them to work and function so thank you for all your work there just make sure life's a lot easier i think i mean i think it's great that you move to a greater level of detail so that it's a actually useful tool for staff i agree thank you thanks thank you thank you all right up next is city council liaison assignments no we've all been waiting for more stuff to do um so as we've kind of described and talked through with this body a number of times each um year li liaisons are selected for are volunteered for most cases for um commissions and i'll say strategic vision areas is really the way we're trying to start really thinking about things um so we've got the community service commission public safety public works um available in terms of counselors planning commission um is mayor by charter um and then by default i've been at housing um i'm gonna recommend given the interest from this group here that that we think about having another counselor come to that um because i think it would be really helpful to see what those are um the thing i would warn against is it gets a little uncomfortable if there's more than um two counselors or me and a counselor in a room um it doesn't violate open meeting laws it's a real misnomer just because we're all at the same meeting if we're not directly engaged in policy but it becomes difficult to separate um and not ideal um so i would recommend that if somebody's really interested in that they express that this evening too um so i was the housing commission meet uh the mondays that we don't uh last monday of the month the last monday of the month yes fourth monday oh good fourth monday of the month good point you could have a you could have a five on that that's why i missed that one and then there's the administration liaison did you say that i i did not get there yet i was seeing though i missed that going on the next page you're right yes absolutely and then we've also beyond that we've got um the downtown onuski um by charter has a city council member liaison and the coalition for safe and peaceful community which is actually now uh as we heard from their update the partnership for change also in their charter partnership partnership for prevention i'm sorry about that what yeah what a fault um and uh mayor's coalition rpc we're going to have a conversation about the alternate out the rpc and we're not going to do that tonight um that's a common attraction so i'm gonna open it up and see if folks have had time to think about what their areas are you know what we've said in the past is it's really good for people to move around from time to time um and i don't know if existing well you've you've moved um want to speak to the value of that or anything either of you want to add from your experiences uh yeah so well before i became a counselor i was on the community services commission um and then i did two years i think um public safety and then one year uh as leads on to administration and um definitely find it to be um very useful in terms of better understanding the work of the department and the the um perspectives of community members on um specific issues within that department um i'm not sure how i feel about every year changing because i do think there's a learning curve associated with taking on a new department and some commissions i think do more than others um so uh just in terms of the meat of the engine have more active periods of time active periods um they all do the same so um so i just i think it's it is a useful um role that we played as a service liaison to those commissions and um i don't know that it necessarily has to be an area of interest um but uh that helps too and the only thing we try to clarify in this um what we're going to let's all do this the same way sit at the table feel free to engage in conversation discussion you're not voting um and just try to be respectful of the fact that this is their opportunity to help shape policy it's not our job to come in with the policy and say here's what we want you to here's the outcome we want you to reach um now make sure you get there um that's something that process works and the one exception to that will be i am still not going to sit with the planning commission because they have a different state authority so just add to that i do you know as leadership team was talking about these commissions and the new council and appointments i think one of the things that would be helpful for us moving forward is that the staff liaison each commission has a staff member appointed and the council liaison do work hand in hand in and ensuring that the policy extension arms the commissions are doing the work the council wants to see and that are not not necessarily are bringing back a specific policy but are bringing back recommendations and data for you all that you believe your body wants to see i think sometimes we as staff feel put in the position of having to um be your spokespeople and it would be which is fine and our job is to implement your vision but it would be helpful as the if the council liaisons can can help take that help carry that mantle of what the council is looking for from the commissions it's a good point it's a delicate balance delicate balance yeah i i think that that we could be more intentional on what the process by which we send things to commission um i think it would be helpful for us to think about that when we do our retreat i think we've made some improvements on that in the last year at the recommendation of the group last year i thought that was a really good feedback i think we've tried to be but have leaps and bounds yet to go so it's a really good point of things for our retreat all right so let's open it up who's interested in what well let's put on the table i i just uh haven't been elected came off of the community service commission so it just seems natural that i would continue as i've only been on for us in two years to be the liaison for that going once going twice i think i mean i think your voice is a really valuable asset there and i would agree that having not spent a ton of you know a long this is on there that you've got to start at being really effective and that makes a lot of sense raise cheering in the background we're gonna do staff is going to start you would have cheered with any one of these amazing people so then i would so the hard part few is uh nicole switched last year in your one-year into administration you came on last year um your one year into public safety um how do you feel about infrastructure and public works christine i'm actually interested in this that's our new communications person for the main street revitalization that's great i would like to go to housing commission i think i probably should given my interest um and that's uh monday's are workable for me for my scheduling that's always been a challenge also there's six thirty years aren't they are they six thirties or six there's six until eight yeah okay sorry generally doable i'd be interested in adding on being the liaison to downtown wedeski if nobody else is especially interested in it thank you very much any of anybody else clamoring for that one okay eric can have it so we'll have that conversation um doesn't have to be um this way in a lot of cases in the past the person who because of the focuses of what was formerly the wedeski college for a safe peaceful community is now the partnership for prevention there has tended to be a crossover with community services and a lot of cases the person who did that liaisonship would also be their board liaison makes sense is it with you are you comfortable with that i believe that they meet once a month or once every other month even it might be once every other month now it's it's actually an organized board though with um okay yeah which i wasn't in this case in the past i have to admit that the fourth monday this one time on vacation it's April vacation week so would i be contacted by them we'll take care of that okay good yeah yeah we'll take care of that that's great and then we'll come back to everybody um there is one item on here i want to point out that we've had some strategic conversations about number one i'm going to bring back regional planning commission alternate we need to grow another some folks on our planning commission and i think we've got a couple people who have expressed some interest in that so we've just got to work through that with i haven't talked to staff a lot about that we are having conversations on the green mountain transit board piece that board position has been a real for some odd reason the transportation entity in the state thinks it's a good idea to hold their meetings all over different locations and i'm voicing frustration publicly that i voice to them um at 10 a.m. in the morning um in the middle of people's work day so we have had a rotating cast of people volunteer and not be able to keep up with that because they have jobs and responsibilities um so and because of some of the operational nature of it we've had a discussion about appointing a staff member potentially for that and when everybody knows that could be a proposal that comes up i think it's fair if you want to say hey try to find a staff member who's also a resident that would be a good you know thing um from a user perspective to have and then have the alternate be a resident who we are keeping in in check and having that so if there is no concern with that we'll probably keep pursuing that conversation generally but there's some interviews coming up anybody have an issue with that it's an important board and one that we suffer when there's not a perspective on there questions concerns comments from the public so did i did i miss it that nicole you you're gonna stay with me and do the housing so she is but from a formal perspective because it's a planning commission commission i stay on so she's got like i don't know an informal secondary liaison or alternate to the housing commission about that and then we're gonna we're gonna bring on a planning commission alternate too so we'll have all kinds of alternates and liaisons that will be a well-guided group questions concerns comments or somebody would take the mayor's coalition and sound okay okay so we actually have uh a well it's it's on as a discussion uh if we could just put that listing formally into the consent engine next time that'd be great thank you so i will do that but in the meantime since there are meetings next week we will inform kind of the new liaisons before the appointment we'll do intros for you to calci and and everyone and brian and then we'll do intros to kate and everybody for you for for those subgroups okay awesome thank you all it's a great opportunity hope you enjoy if you've got questions the other thing that i usually ask is if you're not able to make a meeting it's important for our perspective to be there if you could please let me know um i'll generally try to sweep in so i've covered a couple in the last few months for example where counselors couldn't make it okay so i'll i'll pop in and nothing better to do okay uh item q city council f 35 potential action and consideration of a resolution um so i put together this document and shared with you the link to the past statements by the city council so um this is an item that we've talked about quite a bit so i think i'm just going to step right aside and see if there's a sense we've got you know a resolution that was passed in berlington it's going to be up for consideration on the 16th what we've had some residents express interest in seeing us do is putting forward a supportive resolution to that um and i think what i tried to put in here and one of the i guess it's option number two is what it's now being called out in the world um is there are some three points that you we could write up very easily um i would need a lot of guidance from you on putting the other language on that to bring a resolution back next monday that could be supportive of that um so you know what this document outlines is we could do nothing um we've said a lot about the issue and just rest on that um we could um form a request that brilliant south berlin another interest committee to submit a joint resolution there for us you know we could make that um i would want your consent to do it before really diving into those conversations because then it's going to be a negotiational language that you won't see until it gets churned out um and then the the other option is the supportive resolution um and i guess the fourth option that i thought i put on here but i apparently probably did at some point is um you know you could go you could go head in and reopen the whole issue and have research and study and legal work done and use bandwidth that we don't really have right now on staff so that's an option though um that you could consider so thoughts concerns i'd like to submit a supporting resolution along with berlington okay what do you think of those content points is there anything you would change or feel like needs to be so that would be the bullet two would that be the yeah i i support that thank you yeah i think we've said it well in the past and we can say it again with the content you've outlined i don't think anything i don't feel like my position has changed based on our previous discussions so the previous resolutions we passed i i think the only thing that's missing in the study bullet points is wouldn't we be making a statement to the effect of like you know berlington before this resolution with this language like we support that also we support they guard here's our past statements etc yeah i think it would be uh it i mean it'd be me too it'd be um berlington's asking you for something that we've actually previously asked you for yeah so as a community we were taking this opportunity to point back and say we've also asked you for that so we hope that you will consider a given there the the land you know just to be blunt south berlington's talking about the same thing tonight um and i i venture a guest will probably move something similar um you know we'll see but um yeah so it'll reference those yeah okay mm-hmm yeah thank you and um i think the concern is that the berlington resolution language is a little bit tempered so they didn't use the exact language that was on the ballot they request an alternate mission but they're not requesting a cancellation of the basing so what we would be hoping for from when you see would be a little bit just clear resolution that is really clear that we want to cancel the basing and we request instead um low level equipment um i know one of our group members has created his own resolution that i think we will work you tomorrow within our group and maybe pass along to some history or review and what you've created is quite long and just kind of reviews a lot of the concerns in the data and the history of what this council has already put forward um so it might be handy and i'll be laid out there for you or you might not want to just come up with your own language but i think just a really clear statement saying we don't think this is good for our community and we're really concerned about the health and safety effects of the planes and uh thank you thank you and i think there's uh just a couple items on it the resolution that was submitted you know with all due respect to the author has some um what i would say challenging to substanti items in there that we want to um that i i know i would trying to put it into a draft form on the timeline that Ron might be challenging but um we will ensure that everybody's had an opportunity to see that um in that language and be sure that it's shared i'd asked him to share i'm assuming it's Jimmy you're talking about but it it's and you know i'd asked him to go ahead and share that with the full council too as they have it i'll check with them to see if they haven't that they do have to see it yeah okay in the crux of our previous resolutions that we'd be pointing to the the final statements the their force have been we're requesting that the airport be removed from this round of basing um and our questions and concerns have not been addressed or answered substantially um so if we're doing the revert back to those items they say a number of other things and raise individual concerns but those are really the central their force so that would that would be what that language would would probably look like thank you thanks for your time and obviously on this show yeah i just have one question about because i think you have like that you would send a resolution to the airport and then but the third bullet point there is reiterated the congressional delegation and responsibility to ensure as many tools as possible are available in the so in the last resolution we passed we actually um singled them out and said um you have been supportive of this initiative and as such um we entrust that you've also signed yourself up for the responsibility of pursuing any kind of offsetting any impact offsetting measures that are available be that through the f a a or other means um and that was important because we didn't want to just limit the scope to saying well go to the f a a that there that there be a commitment there to take concrete steps which to my knowledge we have not we have not heard from them um so that's that's what was the previous kind of tone around that was yeah i just yeah because i think a whole other tactic would be an additional resolution to the congressional delegation i'm sure you've been mm-hmm that's what you talked about yeah i'm not necessarily regarding yeah thank you other questions or concerns so i'm hearing marching orders to come back with a resolution that hits those bullet points and reflects that okay that's you bet all right next up this evening we have um discussion of resolution opposing inclusion of citizenship question of the 2020 census um this was actually a resolution with language submitted by councilor clevy so i'm going to turn it over to him yeah i think the resolution is pretty self-explanatory and so i think what i'll do is rather than just belabor and drawn on like i usually do i'll just do what seth does when he has resolution and read it and then if folks have questions we can dive in that work please so whereas the u.s constitution requires the census every 10 years to count each and every persons in the country regardless of age race gender ethnicity or citizenship status whereas the vital data collected by the census is used to determine important functions of our democracy such as the drawing of legislative districts congressional seat assignments and electoral college makeup in addition to how federal funding allocation decisions are made and how local and state government makes important policy determinations whereas accurate population data is crucial in ensuring that these important decisions are made appropriately whereas when uski is the most diverse community in vermont home to many new american and immigrant community members whereas commerce secretary wilbur ross announced that he is directing the census bureau to ask all respondents to the 2020 census to report their citizenship status whereas a heightened fear caused by recent increases in civil immigration enforcement and deportation activities has created an environment of distrust and a decline in participation or interaction with government services for many whereas inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 census is likely to severely depress participation leading to inaccurate total population counts whereas when uski is the recipient of federal and state funding determined by population data and inaccurate population counts could have significant harmful impacts to when uski residents through potential threats to future funding whereas when uski and state of vermont policymakers and government employees are reliant on accurate population counts and census data to inform local and state policy decisions that have significant impacts on the lives of community members therefore be it resolved that the when uski city council requests that one commerce secretary wilbur ross and the commerce department modify their position and direct the census bureau not to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census two congress passed legislation to override the commerce department's decision to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census using its basic authority under the constitution three the president and administration officials commit publicly to uphold the census acts basic privacy and confidentiality protections including instructing federal agencies not to request from the census bureau or use personal information collected by the census bureau for their own operations questions concerns comments from council so who would this be submitted to i any folks named in the action items and i don't know the proper channels we can figure that out potas at us dot so i'll come what i'll say too is is and i'm not speaking out of school in regards to the specific the specific resolution in the past in a lot of cases we have not taken up resolutions like this um under practice it's a newly comprised body and i think it's important for people to have an opportunity to kind of figure that out as a group in a body i think this is an important issue personally um so it's it's i'm not reflecting on the issue in any way shape or form but just in case that was a road that you're interested in going down i think there's going to be time and space for that conversation especially when we get to the strategic body about what kinds of statements you guys want to see come forward on what issues and what i think that's something that we've got to figure out and fill out because i knew where the last council stood on it that wasn't confusing this is a new body and it's a new day and we want to be respectful and responsible about what various interests are especially in the beginning and then we'll all kind of hit a groove hopefully that makes sense yeah i mean i i my general bias is not to make political statements and um so some of this feels political by like calling out specific individuals and government actors um so but you know we've also got the zep 35 stuff that we've done and we've directed that to the air force so i guess we don't have a but that's not been tied to a specific administration that's been tied to multiple administrations have been working towards this this formal standing in a process that unfolded right that we're making continuous conversations on where the community has weighed in pretty i would argue that is clearly in terms of the the the direct impact on the community and its interest in making statements so um i guess i would not want to i understand and share your feelings about the developments um with respect to the census and the potential impact that that could have on the community um and at the same time i'm reluctant to get into a pattern of every time something outrageous happens in washington we pass a resolution i i definitely agree with that i do i don't feel like this is as grounded in making a political statement as it is a functional need and how negative of an impact when it comes to potential federal funding this would have on our community and so i guess to me it you know specific individuals have taken specific action and so that's why those specific individuals are called out but i don't i don't have any interest in nor do i think this body should make statements for the purpose of making them unless they have a significant impact on our community members which i feel really strongly that this does and a very harmful one too so what and i'm i apologize i'm not trying to shorten but let's have that sort of larger conversation about that temperature thing i think i i would like that to be on of our strategy session a little bit for at least uh a small portion of that time there's a lot of functional stuff on there let's have let's have an emotional chat too sounds too late to smile at us um specific to this resolution and content questions comments concerns i like the clarity of it and i think it's on point given our demographics and the severity that it will rain down on our community if it's carried forth and there's a number of other communities pushing back and i'd like to join that i was at one of the things that isn't in there but well i think what is so important it's not just about federal funding but like we are reliant on this data to do this role effectively like we were just talking about housing goals and so much of our data is built on census data so for us to be able to do that work in an intelligent and direct way i see all the value in that and worry about that too but for me i i question the actual um outcome that we could get out of this like will this actually do any good for us um and i also feel like it leans towards this political statement that maybe could alienate some of our community even towards no real end like we're is are we getting value out of putting this out there is what i question what political statements being made i feel like this has a anti-conservative slant to it i would disagree like i think that adding that question to the census is going to reduce participation and very critical data but i don't see the value in putting this out there if we're not going to get like doing these i guess this is back to like the broader strategy or the broader discussion like it feels to me like there's not making this effort doesn't get us anything so i also disagree there and i think to one of the points how is making there are a lot of communities that are standing up and i think our municipalities play an incredibly important role in shaping policy directions from the local level to the state level to the national level and our voice is really really important um in advocating for our interests as a community and so and so i you know it's we might be small it might not have a lot of individual impact but to lend our voice to a larger conversation that is going on i do think has value i've got a long opinion about the efficacy of things like this and i'm happy to share it i think that's a different strategy conversation i'd like to have kind of down the road a little bit and and try to wrap this specific resolution up and i'm again i'm not trying to just quell conversation if there's additional conversation debate on it that would just be my recommendation this evening because i think that's a really large sort of what do we want our body to work on what do we want our voice to be and what do we want to focus our time and energy on conversation and that's part of the strategy that's what we do strategy for so my preference would be to eliminate references to individuals and the president and just have a statement about the importance of a objective census process that does not include questions such as this one that are seemed to be designed to reduce so i think a lot of the whereases are are great i would i just want to deep personalize it a little bit and be more focused on the value that this data provides to the community and the importance that our residents feel safe completing i guess then that i would feel like we're further reducing efficacy because if we're not calling for a specific action then it's just a bunch of pretty words a lot of our resolutions are that okay so so recommendation has been made for amendment to generalize therefore statement is there interest in drafting something out like that on the original one or would you like to see action on it as presented well would people feel more comfortable so item three of the therefore's really it's asking for a public affirmation it's against the law for any federal department to use personal information collected by the census or even have access to it they can only have access to the aggregate depersonalized data so really in essence it's already against the law for item three to happen and if so if people are uncomfortable with item three i think items one and two are the important part in ensuring that the census question is not asked so i'd be fine with accepting a friendly amendment to strip out item three and move forward with the resolution with the items one and two is therefore counter offer you want to see generalized language is that what you're looking for that removes any request for that's just a point of view but i think it's the same as asking our congressional delegation regards to sound mitigation but you know they're the people with the power to make a specific decision point as our i understand i understand the the point is is this is why we don't and have not in the past taken up things like this is because it's asking it's asking all of us to adopt very specific language and makes it very challenging so again i want to go back is there a motion uh well i'll tell you what here's what we're going to do we're going to go one more round any comments questions concerns from council on the resolution any comments questions concerns from the public so seeing and hearing none i entertain a motion on the uh resolution i'm sorry oh it's on this discussion it's not even on it's okay so then i'll ask are there any final points of recommendation to the author for changes to be made for to come back for approval i'm here in generalized language so it sounds like that might be a path okay all right anything else okay we'll now move on to executive session we have on the agenda tonight executive session pursuant to one vsa 313 1b labor relation agreements with employees and specifically the fraternal order of the piece or f.o.p this is in regards to contract negotiations that conduct in public would put the city at a strategic disadvantage and is also a personnel matter and not fitting for public consumption as well council will not take any action in executive session it'll be discussion only and that concludes tonight's business the council's body will reconvene only to adjourn tonight's meeting thank you very much what's that oh could i i would entertain a motion to enter an executive session bringing with us jessie baker anybody else jessie motion by nicole second by christine for the discussion seeing here none all those in favor please say aye and those opposed motion carries