 Hello. Welcome to this discussion with mayoral candidate Anne Watson for the City of Montpilier. Anne, thanks for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. This is great. So I'm Steve Pappas, editor of the Times Argus, and I'm here with Anne Watson, and we're going to talk about some of the issues facing the City of Montpilier. You were running uncontested as mayor. Yes. So let's begin by having you talk a little bit about yourself and how you came to Montpilier, and then we want to know why you want to run for mayor. Well, alright. Yeah. So I'm from Vermont. I grew up in Essex, and my family all still lives there. And yeah, I got a job here in Montpilier 13 years ago teaching at Montpilier High School. I have a degree in physics and minor in math, and my master is in education from UVM. So I got a job at Montpilier right after that, and I've been teaching here ever since, and I moved here back in 2012. So it's been a little while, and oh no wait, I'm sorry, 2008 is when I moved here, and I started on the council in 2012. So I've been on the council for five, oh gosh, six years now I suppose, and I've been the president of the council for the last three years, which means that I end up doing the job of the mayor during council meetings when he's otherwise unavailable. So that's sort of the broad view. I mean, I got into working on the council because I had been paying attention to the district heat project, and then when a seat became open, a colleague of mine called me and said, hey would you consider putting your name in for the appointment? And I put my name in and I got that appointment. And I've cared about energy for my view, that's a lens that I bring, and looking at how our policy decisions impact the environment is a huge priority for me. So as I look at running for mayor now, I am running for mayor, very likely to be elected. That's one of the driving forces for me as well, is to continue to look at how we are relating to our environment in terms of net zero energy, looking at our relationship with the river and our stormwater systems. So we flood almost every year. This is something that I think we can and should address, and a lot of people who are maybe not next to the river experience some issues with stormwater management getting into basements and the like. So we have a stormwater master plan and I'm looking forward to digging into that and getting some of those projects checked off the list. As well as one of the other things that I'm really interested in, and I know a lot of people in Montpelier are interested in, is just looking out for the vulnerable people in our community, whether that's economically or just otherwise people who are underserved and how are we doing in those realms and what can we be doing to create protections and make sure our systems are working well for them. So when you first came onto the council, it's nice that the colleague asked you, but you actually have to want to govern. So there has to be something there that called you, had you had inclinations in the past to want to serve in this capacity because it really is a challenging kind of experience because all of a sudden you're thrust into debates and you're thrust into having to be at the bottom of learning curves. Yes, for sure. So when I started I had been on the energy committee as well as it's lowly beginnings, but also the city's street lighting committee and just wanting to help give input in an area that I felt like I had something to contribute. So that was sort of dipping my toe in and then when someone called me to say, hey, how about you step up into this role? I felt ready to do that. But to be fair, I did have a lot of learning to do and for the last five years I feel like I'm still learning. There's more growth that I know I have to do about that, but I'm feeling really, at this point, I'm feeling really ready for this role, especially just in talking in front of cameras and with constituents, people coming to council meetings, that is a really, at first especially it can be a really different kind of experience and I've found that I've loved it, I've loved being able to contribute to decisions that we've made in the city and see projects happen and getting things done. Oh my gosh, that's so satisfying to see that, oh my gosh, that project is happening or this policy is actually making people's lives better. It's a wonderful thing to be a part of. So under Mayor Holler, a lot actually has been accomplished in the years that you've been on the council. He's been on longer than you've been on the council, but there have, for the last five years that you've been on, there's been a lot of transition. How does your vision complement what's already been taking place? Sure, so there are a number of projects that are still underway and I am excited to continue seeing those two completions. So one obvious one is the Taylor Street multimodal transit center that, I mean, we're on track right now to be starting construction in May, which is very exciting. I mean, this is a project that has been going on for decades or more, or at least 10 years I should say. And yeah, the fact that we are this close at this point is just, it's really wonderful. It's very exciting and in addition the bike path extension that's out past Granite Street is likely to come together in the next couple of years where we have an item on this town meeting days ballot that will be a bond that will allow us to complete that work. So assuming that goes through, gosh, you know, we've got all the property and all the easements that we need, so it's just a matter of getting out there and doing it. So I'm excited to see those happen. In part, I feel like I have really lucked out in that there have been these really wonderful longstanding projects that seem to be coming together right as I'm about to step forward. And I want to make sure that when it does finally happen, if I am the mayor at that point, that we gather all the mayors who have been a part of this process so that they get to be a part of it as well. Do you have a specific project that you would like to bring to the table as mayor? So one of the things that I am really interested in is access to the rivers. So we have, I mean, we're a city of many rivers and I think that the dialogue in town has really been that that's something that we could be taking more advantage of. And that's also something that I think if we can get a few things in place, it has the potential to also be an economic driver for us. I mean, if we have a space, I mean, we have a confluence of rivers with the North Branch meeting, the Winooski. I mean, looking at Mozula as a model, their confluence of rivers is a huge economic driver for them and I think that that's a potential project that I would really like to look into. So that we're sort of at the beginning edge of that one and I'm sure, you know, even if all the lights are green for that, it will still take years, but that's okay and let's start having that conversation. Yeah. And the city's had some interesting conversations on zoning and you kind of now have your ducks in a row as far as that concerned and planning as well. Economic development still kind, it's still one of those things that the city still is kind of juggling. I mean, you're limited by, geographically, you can't really, you can't get any bigger. Got a limited space. Got a limited space, but you definitely are looking to expand Grand List and make some adjustments. For sure. What do you envision needs to happen in the city of Montpelier to improve economic development at this point? Sure. So I think you have a couple of different things. You know, thinking about the economic development strategic plan that the city did not that long ago, we, one of the recommendations from that document was more housing, which is, that to me is pretty close to the top of the list, if not the top of the list. We absolutely need more housing in general and more specifically affordable housing. So I'm really excited that I think our zoning has opened up some space for, or I hope it will make it easier for development projects to come to Montpelier and get done. So we'll see how that works. And if it doesn't work, that's worth noting. I mean, I want to be, this is a little bit of an aside, but one of the other things that I'm really interested in doing is intentionally collecting more data about the city and making that available to people on the website. So right now, if we were to, you know, ask ourselves like, well, how are we doing in terms of housing starts? I mean, that's something that I could ask city staff and they would tell me, but I think it would be really useful if that kind of data was available, so that anyone in Montpelier could access the website and get a picture of how the city's doing. What are the community indicators that we want to use to measure our health? When one of them or probably several factors would have to do with economic development and if we're not tracking that, then we don't know. So you're talking like a dashboard? I guess I'm talking like a dashboard, yeah. So that's sort of, that's almost step zero that we would need to do just in terms of things to address economic development is keep track of some factors. But the other thing too, so things that we would be keeping track of, one would be housing and jobs. One of the other things from the Economic Development Strategic Plan was a specific suggestion about building a hotel and right now we have that prospect in downtown and I'm actually very excited about the possibility of having another hotel downtown. You know, one of the things I'm also very excited about or had been excited about, continue to be I suppose, is the net zero design competition that happened and which really rethought the land use, especially downtown. And particularly with that as a really lovely vision of what Montpelier could look like, that's also going to be economic development for us. I mean if we're rethinking where cars go, if we need a parking garage and how we can be using our parking lot space differently for more businesses, especially since we have a limited amount of space in Montpelier, the more that we can be densifying our downtown, I think that's going to be good for us. And I know development can be really hard sometimes, the prospect of the landscape changing is tough and I want to preserve a space that's sacred. I'm thinking of the same pasture. I think where we've landed with that isn't a good place where we're going to get some development, hopefully along Berry Street. I think people are into that and then I'd love to see us preserve the upper part. So yeah, we do still have room for growth and I'm looking forward to making that happen. Yeah, so that section of Berry Street and then the area behind Granite Street too. Yes. I mean that's very exciting that that's kind of on the books. Right, sure. Like the Stonecutters Way extension. Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what can happen back there. So constituents for years now have and Mayor Holler heard it and members of the council have heard Montpelier's affordability is an issue. How do you, when constituents come to you, what do you say to that? I say absolutely. And usually people have some kind of story to go along with. But they bring it up because they're looking for some kind of relief too. Right, for sure. So one of the things that we did learn from the Economic Development Plan was that this is a part of our, where we fit in the economic structure of Central Vermont, right, that we are expensive but we're high quality as well. And while I do, I hear people and this is one of the reasons why I want to see how we can be growing our grand list and come up with a long term vision for where we want Montpelier's tax rate to be, if we were going to be funding all of the city services at the appropriate levels so that in the long run we didn't have to, we weren't underfunding something. I'm thinking of the roads. I mean we've spent the last four or five years or so adding increasing amounts of money to our road and sidewalk infrastructure. And I think that's really important because if we're going to maintain those assets at an appropriate level, then we need our tax rate to honestly be higher, well I should say we need to be putting more money into those assets than we are right now. So divide that out by the grand list and that's your tax rate. So we need to figure out I don't think we actually even really know right now what that steady state budget is for the whole city. Particularly because one of the other assets that we have not been funding appropriately has been our buildings. We just recently got a facilities manager at a quarter time position which I'm thrilled that that exists at all because prior to that projects were sort of haphazard or they were left to department heads whose expertise is not HVAC. So that was problematic. And anyway so once we know how much money should we be putting into all of our assets to our water and sewer infrastructure how many miles of piping do we need to be replacing every year then we can figure that out. But in the meanwhile let's get a hotel that's also going to bring in a substantial amount of mules rooms and alcohol, local options tax. That's going to be a big chunk of change. Let's build more housing. Let's figure out where to put cars so that we can free up parking lots and again build up our grand list. Is it time to renegotiate pilot money? So that's a tough one because I mean as far as the state goes I mean they have one of the most generous algorithms of any state. So just for people to know how that works any state capital or I should say the state entity ends up paying the city that it is in some payment in lieu of taxes and our algorithm is on the generous side relative to other states. So we're certainly grateful for that. One of the things that I am really interested in doing is having more frequent and collaborative conversations with the state. There's never any lack of things to talk about between the city and the state and I know John was able to do that perhaps fluidly because his job kept him at the state house often. But I mean I'm at the high school I'm very close to the state house but not actually there so I could picture having some kind of regular check-ins with BGS or with VTRANS or whoever the right entities are but I'd like to open that conversation which I think just having open lines of communications just better for everybody. So you've alluded to some of the challenges and there's parkings always a challenge in Montpelier. I know just trying to park today. You have to do the circling like a chicken hawk. What are some of the other challenges that constituents bring to you on a regular basis? Well so it might seem like a small issue but when I'm out talking to people they often bring up challenges of walking or feeling safe relative to cars on the road. But I think there's some other bigger issues that Montpelier is facing and one of the big issues is the opioid crisis. This is not unique to Montpelier but it's something that in our community it is affecting people's lives and I'm interested in continuing to work with Chief Fakos as to how we can be treating this really as a public health issue and getting people the support and the services they need. These are tough times. They're stressful times but one of the things that I'm sort of... I've left your question a little bit but you can come back to it. But one of the things that I really want to do as mayor is just help remind people it's all about relationships and building community and how we can live well with each other even in stressful times. Coming back to your question though about other things that people raise people do talk about the river for sure. People talk about affordable housing trying to think of anything else. Nothing else is coming to mind right now but if something comes up later I will jump back in with that. So challenges for you though what do you see as the biggest challenges facing the city right now? I'm sure opioids is top of that list. Yes, for sure and thinking about how we can effectively tackle that. One of the tough things is that we're not keeping a lot of data right now or it's not... I guess I should say we do have some data. It's often in the annual report I think we could be doing a better job of holding that up and telling the stories that are there. So one of the difficulties is that we don't have a great mirror for ourselves right now in terms of data. When we say how are we doing well we can talk about anecdotes and how people are feeling and that's fine but I want to wrap that around some numbers. Maybe this is like the science background that I come from. Data speaks volumes right? So again that seems like step zero to me. But besides that we have a constant struggle of finances and making good choices with our money. This is really the role of the council is to figure out how to best spend our money. I'm looking forward to thinking about ways to support homeowners and developing more housing. So one of the things that I'm particularly interested in and I haven't gotten a great solution to this yet but one of the things that I've been thinking quite a bit about in terms of our net zero energy goal one of the things that I would love to figure out a solution for is thinking about the renting population in Montpelier. Montpelier, 40% of our dwelling units are rentals. You have a very low rental rate. We have effectively a zero vacancy rate. So there's not necessarily, we have a lot of really great landlords here who I think do want to do the right thing and take care of their properties or their energy efficiency and even in addition maybe have some renewable sources but that's just not the case for everyone. So thinking about how disenfranchised renters are in terms of their energy profile and that they may be the most economically vulnerable people in our community and they may get stuck paying the highest prices for their energy as they're paying for propane often in rental units and that's the highest, the most expensive form of fossil fuels or I suppose kerosene is a little more but that's another story. But anyway, just thinking about how we can think about energy justice for people in the renting community because those, so 30% of our mortgage homeowners and renters in Montpelier are paying more than 30% of their income towards housing and energy costs are a part of that. So as times are tough, we want to make sure that we can be helping support people's transition to either renewable energy or energy efficiency because that's going to help save them more money even in the long run. So that's one of the things that I think a lot about. Yeah, don't have a solution yet. But also just in terms of other things facing the city. I mean, we have a TIF proposal that's coming down the pipe and I'm really interested to see what works out for that. I mean, if it were up to me, I would make it as large as, the district as large as possible and they work very well in other communities for sure. Yeah, it has. So that's something that's on the horizon that we're going to need to have conversations about soon. I mean, it may be, I'm trying to remember the timeline for TIF and I don't think we're going to be pretty sure it will not be done by the time March rolls around. So it'll be the new council that has to deal with that. Yeah, and also coming up on the horizon is the new city plan, our old plan. We did re-adopt with the intent that we would do a deeper dive into that over the next year. So that's also going to be a part of our upcoming process. But yeah, you know, just in terms of challenges, opioids, housing, affordability along with housing. And then, I mean, I do hear quite a bit about parking. And too, you know, I think, I'm thinking about our downtown businesses and that they are interested in getting people off the highway stopping here and how do we keep people coming to visit. So that's something that I want to make sure that we address as well. I mean, gosh, the women's march was huge. That was amazing. And it seems like the amount of process and demonstrations we have is increasing, which, you know, it's going to be a challenge for our police force because we're still grateful, you know, that a lot of protests do go through the process of filling out paperwork, but that doesn't always necessarily happen. So anyway, those are a few things on the list. Anyway, I'm sure I could go on. Yeah, well, that's great. So we only have about a minute left. Oh, okay. Which also, you know, it's great that you have so many things to talk about. Yes. That's one thing you love about Montpelier. Oh, gosh. I love the sense of community here. I love that people know each other. And I think that comes from having a walkable community and people who are very participatory in their community. We really don't have, well, there are a few communities we can use some people on, but we often have lots of people applying for the same position at the city council. I just think that speaks so well of our community that we want to be engaged in, yeah, participating here. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for taking the time. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And so this has been a conversation with Ann Watson, who is running for mayor of the city of Montpelier, uncontested, but you can still vote for her on March 6th and sooner. So we would encourage you to do so because democracy is a very important part, if not the most important thing that we do as citizens. So thank you to Worker Media for this opportunity to sit down with Ann and thank you for taking the time. Yes, Lynn. Thank you for inviting me.