 In that case, I will call the meeting to order at 6.30 p.m. I'll mention logistics very briefly. Anyone who's joining us remotely, please set your name to your full first name and last name and we have a record of who's participating in the meeting. We would ask everyone to raise their hand either virtually or physically if you need to be called on, if you'd like to be called on and you will be recognized to speak. We ask you to keep your comments to three minutes and Councillor Bate will assist us in tracking the time. And with that we'll move on to the next item which is to approve the agenda. The agenda, do we have any? One has his hand up. City clerk. Is there something to say? Yes. Okay. When we get to the consent agenda, we'll make sure we don't approve any minutes we don't have. Thank you. All right. Everybody have the agenda the way it is? Okay. We'll move on to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is not on tonight's agenda. We ask you to keep your comments to three minutes and we'll start with the anyone in the room who might want to address the council. Thomas Weiss district two. I'd actually like to address the council on item agenda item six the legislative agenda and I don't plan to do that now, but at the appropriate time I'd like to be called and allowed to be in the discussion. I'm going to scoop over to Steve Whitaker. I want to call some dysfunction to the council's attention. I made a request months ago for plans for the Elks Club. I was told there aren't any. I found that quite unbelievable. I checked with the seller of the property. He says he did deliver plans to the city and my request predated the flood. So basically the request got overlooked. But the fact that I'm told that there's no showers that were putting a shelter in a place without showers. That's unconscionable from everybody who's heard about it. That just makes no sense at all. And I'm told there used to be showers at the Elks Club for the golfers to shower after they finished golfing. But that hasn't apparently Bill tells me tonight those may have been removed. You know, so how do you justify and I put in writing years ago that we needed to preorder trailers with showers and toilets so that we would be prepared for such emergency as we now find ourselves in. So we got known lack of capacity. The bridge, you know, speaks to that among all the good Samaritan trailers. There's still people outside. We've got no warming spaces that the plan, the so-called plan, the public safety plan that's been referred to repeatedly in the press and CAX and the bridge is not available. It's not finished. How did we enter into an agreement and open a shelter without a public safety plan? And how do we do so without a place for folks to stay warm? I sent you an email just before the meeting tonight that normally the library is open till eight on Wednesdays. Next Wednesday is closing at four for the holiday. The shelter is going to bust people downtown at 7 30 in the morning with no place for them to stay warm. And we continue to let the transit center get away with not keeping the bathrooms open. We really need to forcibly renegotiate that lease and take over the central part of the transit center. They continue Green Mountain Transit should continue to have the glass cage and their break and private bathroom for drivers. But that's too valuable a space needed in this emergency. I'm also told by people that they're enforcing an unwritten 20 minute kick out. They're kicking people out of there in 20 minutes. When I went there with a power washer to clean the silt off the sidewalks, I was denied access to the water faucet. So we've got real dysfunction in our response. The silt is still on the handicap rap to the down street side of that building. Confluence parks got inches and inches of sand. And these are the only places for the folks that are less fortunate than y'all to hang out and use. So the trash is all going right into the river. And we're pretending that this is status quo or it is status quo. I appreciate your tight attention to time limits for items you've neglected for years. Anybody else in the room I don't see and anybody on online. I'm not seeing anyone trying to be recognized online. So next on the agenda we have the consent agenda. We're removing minutes because we don't have minutes to review. With that, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll take a motion. Okay. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay. Thank you. Now we'll move to item six on the agenda. Discussion and approval of our 2024 legislative agenda. Maybe someone from the legislative committee could kick us off. Do you want to leave this or do you want to leave that? Sure, I can. So we've got three quarters of the committee met. We've named out a few guests. And we basically worked off of last year's legislative agenda. Made some suggestions for what could drop off and what should be higher priority this year. Obviously we have much different circumstances. So we took some notes. I took a stab at drafting what we talked about. We did not get a chance to meet again to review this. So I, if members carry Lauren or Jack feel that this isn't, doesn't reflect exactly what we said. I'm happy to, that's fine. I think our biggest thing was to try to, in addition to keeping our list and making some changes in the list was really to call out the highest priorities, both in category and then what those categories meant so that we could really tell the legislative. These were the biggest things that we thought we needed help with this year. So with that I would let the council members sway in, if they wish. Does anyone on the committee have anything to add before we proceed to this question? No, I mean I think Phil's summary was good. I mean obviously we wanted to just put a real emphasis on the flood recovery. So both city needs and community member needs, whether that's individuals or businesses and just make that front and center. And obviously I think we'll have an important voice with the legislature on these issues and our ability to be up there and advocate for these things for the community is going to be really important. And then we're trying to just be consistent with the initial conversation around the strategic plan for the other big priorities. So a lot of carryover from previous years, but trying to really emphasize the things that seemed most timely. Anybody else? Any comments from members of the public? Mr. Weiss. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk. I've looked this over and I've got a concern with one of the items that's on the agenda and I'm going to ask that you remove it. And that's the agenda. Eliminate Act 250 regulation in designated downtowns or growth centers. It's toward the bottom of the first page of the legislative agenda. On the whole, at the top of the page, the city requests that policymakers do four things. And the item on eliminating Act 250 regulation fails to meet any of these four principles. It does not support legislation that grants cities and towns greater flexibility. It actually reduces flexibility in the options for zoning. A principle is to support legislation that provides funding to cities and towns. This does not provide any funding to cities and towns. Third principle is opposing legislation that removes authority from cities and towns. This does not remove any authority from cities and towns. And the fourth principle is to oppose legislation that creates unfunded mandates or directly or indirectly shifts costs to city and towns. And this definitely does add costs to cities and towns. And as it turns out, and this is limited to the growth center at the designated downtown district is entirely within the growth center. So I'll not say both of them. I'll just say growth center because it includes both of them. There are only 17 Act 250 permits in the combined downtowns and growth centers in all of the 53 years of Act 250. Six of them are in the, I'm sorry, six of them are in this century. The others were in the 1990s or in the 1900s. Permits were issued for all of the applications. None were denied. Act 250 in Montpelier requires 10 acre tracks for commercial, industrial, municipal, county and state projects. There are only four tracks in the growth center that exceed this area. Housing projects with some affordable housing according to the definitions in Act 250. Up to 74 total units are exempt already. And if there's no affordable housing in it, up to nine units are exempt. The benefits of Act 250. One body reviews all of the criteria impartially. What zoning doesn't cover as well as Act 250? I was not told that I had only three minutes. I request indulgence for another one minute. I think I did point out at the beginning that we asked the comments to be limited to three minutes, but go for another one minute. Thank you. One body reviews all criteria impartially. What zoning doesn't cover or other ordinances in the city as well or at all are headwaters. We have got to drainage areas less than 20 square miles within this area. Water conservation, streams, shorelines, water availability, capacity of the land to hold water, congestion, burden on educational, municipal or government services, endangered species, impact of growth, agricultural soils, energy conservation, effect on public investments and conformance with the regional plan. For all those reasons, I think it is a poor idea to eliminate Act 250 jurisdiction to the limited extent that it is there now from the designated areas and the growth centers. And I ask that you remove this item. Any other member of the public who wishes to address us on this agenda? Anybody in the room? Yeah, I would concur with Mr. Weiss's caution that the governor is going to come in with his own efforts to eviscerate Act 250 protection. Vermont is as nice as it is because of the decades of Act 250 has been in place and that we cannot afford to haphazardly while we're trying to create thousands and thousands of new housing units, we can't afford to remove the process by which we make sure that development is done well. So I'm not speaking only to the Act 250 downtown, but we've seen that abused with our garage fiasco cost us a lot. So we need to not forfeit a public participatory scrutinized process for development. I won't speak to the phase two public safety ask for finding funding because I don't have a copy of that. It wasn't included with the legislative agenda, but it is in there asking for and there's a statewide process going on that is much more thorough than what ever went on in central Vermont. So I don't think that's a real risk. I don't see anybody online seeking to be recognized. I want to make sure we give everyone wants to be heard a chance. All right, council members, what's your pleasure? Are we ready to proceed on this? Just one thought on the Act 250 provision. I mean, so I'm a big fan of Act 250 probably more than some of the people on council working for city government. I support the inclusion in this just knowing that there is a big effort. There's an ongoing report that's coming out soon that's really looking at what I think is a pretty balanced approach to encouraging development by removing Act 250 jurisdiction from places like downtown Montpelier while better protecting forests and kind of high priority habitat areas and looking more at, you know, are we applying Act 250 in places that are really, you know, critical resources that we want to make sure we're protecting while allowing us to, you know, build more housing in places like Montpelier. So to me, I think it's coming out with a balanced approach and I think this language is consistent with that. And, you know, I'm thinking of it in that holistic way, which is why I support it with kind of both components being important to me. But that's just context of why I support it, including it. I wonder if eliminate is the right word. I mean, is it, are we maybe amend Act 250 as it applies to downtowns and growth centers? It seems like more like what has actually in fact happened in the past and probably more likely to happen than a complete elimination. If I can have a little discussion with Sal and everybody, I also feel that Act 250 is great statewide. But when we spend so much time on some communities with zoning, with planning, then it becomes a conflict. And I don't think you can have just a little bit of Act 250. I think you either say the downtown growth areas are exempt or they're not. Once you put your foot in, it's the whole process. So I really support the way you've ordered it and because we have spent a lot of time on our zoning. And that goes back to giving communities more control, more flexibility in their governance. Maybe one of us has actually been through the Act 250 process a few times. There seem to be some misperceptions about what it does versus what you have to go through anyway. You know, things like water and sewer capacity reviews, storm water reviews, you know, fire, you know, public safety reviews. All those pieces happen without Act 250. When you have a project and you're subject to both Act 250 and local zoning, as Donna seemed to allude to, you're really bowing to two gods. You know, you almost go through, in some ways, a duplicative process with just slightly different metrics. So I'm not familiar with the benefits that this envisions, but I can understand how it would be a good tool for downtowns where we have the capacity, where we have public water and sewer, and we're trying to create housing and make it. I mean, the word we keep hearing is affordable. This is one more factor that increases costs. So in that sense, I would favor leaving this in. My thoughts are, yeah, I think this is, for one thing, I've heard that there's more appetite for taking a serious look at Act 250 and doing something about it in the legislature this year than there has been in previous years, and that's encouraging. I am not too worried about fine tuning the language because we're sitting here in November, the legislature won't even be here for two months, and then what comes out could bear very little resemblance to what any of us think we want tonight. So I think we're getting the key point, which is that we, as Tim says, we don't want duplicative processes. We don't want things that are so expensive and time-consuming that people can't do the development that I think we're all here in Montpelier agree that we need. So I think this has got to be done. I just want to thank the committee. You went to a lot of detail. And I assume under each heading, like under the FUD relief, it's not an order of priority? No. Good. Good. I really appreciate the detail you all spent to put this in print. It's awesome. We'll keep you busy. All right. Anything else, or are we ready for a vote? Okay. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion that we adopt the proposed 2024 legislative agenda. Seconded by Earl. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Signified by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. Before we go off that agenda item, would you like, normally we have our, we invite our delegation in for one of the December meetings. So our next one's in a month. Would you like me to invite them for the next meeting? Yeah. Okay. That's on the tentative agenda, but we hadn't actually talked about it. So make sure everyone was on board with that. Okay. Yeah. Yes. But I know the legislative drafting deadlines coming right up. So maybe email it to all of them like now. I will with the meeting invitation. Prevent. We're up to item seven. Continue our work on the 2024 strategic plan. Who's going to kick us off here? I'll kick you off, but Kelly's the real detail person on this as well as yourselves. So you are, we had a meeting in this room about a month ago where you outlined some key, your key priorities and some wording changes of things. So we tried to capture what you said, including almost any idea that was thrown in there. So it's, you know, some maybe at this point contradictory to one another. So you may want to just go through and see what stays or what doesn't decide what process you want to use for that. And then we, and we also included some of the staff things. And then at the end, what we've done is try to build out some of the specific staff work plans that some of these are things that would happen anyway, but just to be clear that these are things that would be supporting those initiatives that we would be doing. And, you know, I say all of this in the backdrop of also at our next meeting we'll be talking about the budget. And I think we're all aware that it's going to be pretty tight this year. So just because something is on this list, I think we will then look at it through the lens of the budget. But it doesn't mean we'll be doing it all, but we can certainly be trying to set a path. And it would be up to you to then set those priorities once you see the budget and what you decide actually goes in. Still, it's always helpful to have a statement in the Council's strategic plan as I've mentioned, because that really gives us a lot of guidance as staff about where your priorities are. And also as issues come up in the course of the year, we'll get into a quick evaluation. Is this important to the Council? Is this not important to the Council? Is this something we're seeking to pursue or not? Is this worth bringing forward or is this maybe not something we want to do just now? So we will always appreciate your work on this. It's very meaningful to us. So I have not, I don't know how you want to go through it. It's really your document at this point. We've tried to do as much staff work because we can. And we're here to help. And Kelly's really done the nitty-gritty. So there's a specific questions. A lot of the staff are here. Some are online. If you have specific questions as you go through about projects or departmental needs or anything like that, we're here to talk to you. All right. I guess I just learning this process and trying to figure it out. Thank you to the staff. You've obviously had a number of conversations and a lot of work to generate this piece. It's great to have your perspective and priorities too. What I've been trying to gauge with it is, it says summary of goals and priorities strategies, but it doesn't really prioritize anything in the format this is written in. For me, I'd really rather see, I think to be functional, three or four main goals that are specific goals, not statements of philosophy, that we should define as a council. And then with under those have prioritize strategies that are real steps that actually need to be taken to achieve the goal. This is roughly 70-something bullet items with no prioritization, which to me is like, we're not providing any guidance to the city in terms of how we think things need to happen. It won't prioritize or assist in the budget process in this format. So I guess my request would be initially, can we look at these six main goals and determine of those what the priorities are for us? And then kind of work from there. I think that's a fine way to start off because these six goals we have here are the six goals that came out of our last meeting. And so these are goals that I think we all had buy in on from all the members of the council. And what you're suggesting is that even these six goals are too much. What does anybody else think? And also, can we have some kind of general idea about the budget? I know we will discuss it later, but we need to, I think, combine our strategic goals with our strategies, with our budget. If our budget doesn't allow us to implement or create any strategy, then this will be only on the paper. So is there any way we can have some kind of idea about budget and how we can combine, integrate those two documents together? I think my response to that would be, we did provide a budget outline meeting or two ago about where we are at right now. We're still formulating the budget. We will be having our staff budget meetings the week after Thanksgiving. We'll have a lot more specific information. It is a little bit of a, which comes first because on one hand you want to know what your limits are. On the other hand, we want to know what we should be trying to include in the budget. But you'll be seeing an actual presented budget at your next meeting in December. So you can figure out, I mean, ultimately, that's what you were telling Tim yesterday. That's kind of your ultimate strategic plan because what you choose to fund is really your highest priorities. So I think, I don't know what else to add other than we do know we're going to be significantly over no tax increase and even significantly over sort of, I think CPI is now down to like 3.1%. So we're going to have to make big reductions just to hit any of those numbers and we will be sharing those with you what it takes to get to that and you'll be deciding what to add, subtract or do whatever. To Tim's point, I think any priority you want to provide to us is super helpful and maybe there are a lot of activities, some of which we would normally, which we would be doing is part of staff work, some which may or may not require funding. But maybe there's one major project you want to put in each category. Like this is, of all of these things, the most important thing in this category is X or something like that. I'm just suggesting, not saying that's the right thing to do. Lauren and then Pam. I mean one way we could think about it is the nice thing about having the list like this is we then get the continual kind of updates from the progress report that the staff put. I mean going down to like three priorities I think would miss a lot and it actually helps us having this kind of level of detail. I mean I'm wondering about, I mean we could keep something like this that's aligned with a number of priorities we identify but also like to me I think identifying like what is not going to happen if council doesn't prioritize it. What are the things that are not just already part of the work plan or part of like clear projects that are in the pipeline and they've been in the works for years and maybe their grants are already lined up or whatever. So I think maybe getting some clarity from staff of like if you all don't tell us to prioritize this it is not going to be included in the proposed budget that we bring forward like some clarity around some key things like that and then we could look at that list and say, okay are there things on there that we would say no we really need to bump that onto the list and prioritize it because it's such an important thing that will otherwise get missed. One way we could think about it. So my understanding is strategic plan is for like for five years, ten years. We are talking about one year which should be annual working plan or annual something like that because this is, we cannot say one year plan as a strategic plan. We can keep all other things on the document but we need to create other priorities for a year and that's why we need to, how can I, decrease the numbers, right? We cannot focus on everything here in a year because it's like physical year 24 and 25, right? So it is a one year plan and like I wanna, you know, I want city council and city work on creating more housing but in a year we cannot do this after the flood, right? We are still recovering from it. That's why maybe as Tim and, you know, Tim mentioned we should just like, okay, what is the most important one or two things in a year we can really succeed? Donna, I'm not sure who's first. Yeah, so I'm kind of agreeing with all of what other people are saying in a way. I think this document is odd to me because it is so long and detailed and yet it doesn't include everything that the city does. This is like all of these sort of extra special things that we wanna do this year and that's a lot of things but it doesn't include plow the streets when it snows and treat the water and, you know, all these things that we have to do. So I'm just a little unclear what the point of this is actually. So either it's a full work plan for everything that's gonna get done for the year or it's like the special things that council wants to make sure we prioritize that wouldn't get done otherwise. I think that was a good way to say that. And I do like the format that it's in. I do like the reports that we get and we can kind of track what's going on but I'm not sure what my conclusion there is. That's a great point and I guess I'll just try to respond to that which is to some extent, I think we start with a general assumption that we're gonna do the things that we have to do and so, you know, we're gonna plow roads and we're gonna answer police and fire calls and we're gonna offer basic services. So this really is saying this is the kind of stuff that helps push, you know, some are really big efforts, some are really small efforts but there are things that aren't necessarily just general business as usual but that might help accomplish a goal. You know, I'm just happy to open one. It doesn't really matter. We're talking about the communication tools. You know, we don't have to use the Zen City platform. We don't have to create budget videos. We don't have to do the surveys. Those are all good things to do and we'll probably do them assuming they're all in the budget but those aren't absolutely necessary for plowing roads and things but they are necessary for the Council's goal to continue expansion and communication. So to the extent that that is important then that creates these things that we might do. If the Council says, you know, we don't care about communicating and engaging. I'm not saying you would but, you know, we might say, okay, well those are things we don't have to do then. So that's an example. I think to the point, you know, maybe a simpler way of thinking about this is to say, you know, you can look at all of this and you know, when you're sitting here doing this next fall, you know, what are the two or three things you'd like to see either done or substantially moved down the road, not saying you wouldn't have us do the rest of this but what are the big things. And you know, to tell Palin's point, you're right, we won't get everything done in a year but you know, just using housing for example, we still might move, we might get things, you know, it might be adopting new zoning. It might be, you know, getting more studies done on Country Club Road to prepare once the, you know, FEMA trailers leave. So, you know, there are things we could be doing working with private developers, putting in a TIF district to help somebody. You know, there are things we could be doing even if we, the city aren't building housing. If that's still a priority, then having those on our list become, this is important. If you say, well, this year's all about flood recovery, which would also be a fair thing, you know, we're not going to worry about housing this year, then we might not put those at the front of the list. So it really is helpful to us. I don't, it doesn't seem like it, but you saying this is important makes a difference when we think about the budget. Are we going to put in X, Y, or Z in the budget if it's something that you've said is important, we'll start with it in there. You know, it may be, there may be other reasons why it doesn't end up there because of just the dollars but you know, you'll at least get the opportunity to say, hey, if we included everything that was here, we were suggesting it here, if you want to put stuff back, here's what it is, if you want to cut something else, here's where you go. And then you can fine-tune those things. So I'm sorry if that was long and rambling and not helpful. Definitely helpful. It's true, we do this every year and I think because you have seen the regular reports come in, the tool that the city staff has attached to this has spent time reporting back to us does keep track of what is going on besides the basic chores of the services that we know. But over time we do this year, this council, because next year it changes every year, see, half of the table changes and so they can decide to pick that up or not. Housing being so important in the previous councils every year continued is what helped the council say yes, we have an opportunity to buy the country club property and went for it because we constantly say we have no land to control. Well, finally we have some land and more things to do with it than we possibly can do right now, but it's still sitting there as a potential for the future to go back to this housing and economic prosperity. So I see this as a, definitely it helps to prioritize. I see that it has a long-term commitment of each council's thread over time and so that to me is why I like it. I find the golds are much more wordy which is helpful in some ways, but I think if indeed at some point when the budget comes, we've made our golds, now we have to put our money on our mouth this and that may be something that we hold dear. Maybe we're not able to pay out that we really want to happen. Even something simple as a stipend, can't do that $50,000 set it aside. And likewise, there's some things in here that I think we already do when you get over to this tools. Some of those are already happening because we just listed everything. We didn't go back and help people understand that some of these things are already happening and maybe we can do that over time. I don't know. There are several here that we have to bump up to the top. Keep the post office. To me, that doesn't cost money, it costs some time, but boy, I really want our post office downtown. If we can put some staff time into working with some current empty buildings, then that would be really, really a good priority to me. Anyway, I find it a helpful tool and maybe there's ways we can make it more helpful for people who are used to a long five-year plan. It's interesting listening because it seems like staff is working really hard and this year with the flood beyond the limits for everyone, but also watching public works, watching different departments trying to incorporate new initiatives like the stormwater utility. And clearly, it just can't happen because we don't have the person power at this point with everything else happening. So there's a reality factor here and we're going into tighter times, not easier times. So it's an important initiative, but I think to Palin's point, maybe strategic planning, we need to have a way to prioritize things for this coming year and say we value stormwater utility, but we just know with what's on the table for our team that we've got to say that's two years out or three years out or choose some realistic point. And then there are other items on here that, as much as there's some, I'd love to move to the top two. There's others you go, okay, but like the snowmelt thing, I mean we really haven't talked about it. There's a lot of pieces in here that I think we could also say, no, not this year. And try to focus more. The stormwater we can't not do at state required. What we were trying to do was actually get a rate put out there so we can get money to pay for the things we have to do that's now coming out of sewer and water. So there's a difference between getting the rate set and doing the work. We have to do the work. Unfortunately, we don't have a rate set to help us better pay for the work. Kurt, you're online? Oh. Take a minute for you to be on mute. Hi. Hey everybody. I'm Kurt Modica, Director of Public Works. The stormwater utility, we did pause it. What we lost our engineer. So we reduced one of our staff members and put extra load on the remaining technical staff. We've since backfilled that position with an engineer with five years experience. And I do think that we will have the capacity in January to resume work on stormwater utility. We've already reached out to the consultant who's doing the work and set up a meeting for the first year. So I suggest not taking that off just because we have plans to resume it and it's important because we're having a hard time financially keeping up with stormwater pipe replacements. And this is really a great enterprise fund and dedicated fund to really fund the stormwater system as well as environmental improvements treatment with projects. So I just wanted to say that we'd like to keep that one on if we can and we do have plans to advance it. Thanks, sir. I think that's great because this is really what I was just saying was to create a set of strategies that make sense. It takes interaction between council and departments to say, well, what do you really have the capacity to do? So I think that's a valuable input, Lauren. Yeah, I mean I guess part of my reaction to this conversation like we do have a bunch of different departments, lots of staff. So I do think we can walk and chew gum. So I hate to be like, we only have three priorities as a council and really there's a bunch of things that I think we do want to happen. And so I think indicating it in this document is helpful. Like if there's stuff that people are seeing that we're like that just shouldn't be a priority, period. I think that would be an important conversation to have. But if it's like, yeah, this is pointed in the right direction and I think like to Tim's point and what a few other folks have said like, you know, maybe we do highlight in an intro a few projects as like examples of things that we think are really key priorities that we really, you know, by this time next year we want to be like these are going to be things that like hold us accountable community to making progress on these like so I think we could highlight some things but I do think like we just do a lot of different things as a city government and so I hate to just shrink this too much that we lose progress I mean a lot of these are just things that have been in the works for years they're kind of happening anyway and to like pull the rug out from under a bunch of them I mean the other thing that I'm wondering is I know part of our legislative agenda is asking for funding I mean I could see it also being like we identify things that, you know if we're in the worst case budget scenario that is what we're going to go in and plan assuming you know and if resources allow so you know like the storm water utility could be an example where if we hadn't filled that position it might be like well if we get some money from the state to help the lost revenue then we could start you know filling in positions or something like there might be ways that we we're not saying it's not a priority but you know as funding allows that there's priorities that we still want to keep on the list but we recognize that some stuff will have to be kind of back-burnered until we're able to pick it up knowing we're in tough times Jack well I think actually the storm water utility is a good example I mean infrastructure is a high priority for me and we're mandated to do a certain portion of it I think if we can come up with a structure that brings in revenue to help with that you know that's a good thing but I think we're also at sort of a unique moment in time I mean we we purchased the Oaks Club as a you know future investment and we've been you know pushing to get that where we needs to be to get development going up there but we've had a sort of a major disaster that kind of changed the landscape and and we're fortunate I think to have FEMA helping our effort up there it kind of gives us a breather for a period of time where we can focus on downtown which I think there's a lot we need to do down there a lot we can do down there not that we let Oaks Club go away but we we refocus our efforts keep things perking there but our focus returns to to downtown you know that we look through that lens at these categories how does it affect downtown first and get downtown to where we where we want it to be I mean we might even reconsider where we put the Rec Center I don't know that it's really been decided we decided we want to do something with the Rec Center but we haven't decided where to put it maybe now is the time to talk about that we definitely haven't decided but I mean every property owner downtown is rethinking their location now is a good time to approach some property owners who've been reluctant in the past to talk with us about developing carried so I like this idea of figuring out what at least a couple of broad focuses are that help to kind of guide us for the year I think part of what where I get hung up with this document is the incredible level of detail it goes into that are things like I look at some of these tasks and I have opinions about them but I'm not sure it's really appropriate this is staff work for me to tell you you should consider CIT training under the Dress Mental Health and Addiction Issues or not you know so I would rather we put more energy into like this first part that's the broad goals and the prioritize strategies and then I want to hear about the level of detail and I like getting the reports and everything but I don't think that we need to get into telling you exactly how to do all these things but I do but some of like these prioritize strategies I don't really remember us discussing this in that much detail at that meeting so I think it would be really useful for us to open to the idea of fewer than six goals but then to really look at these strategies that we have here and decide is this what we think is really most important for us and the way our legislative agenda is written it has these kind of broad overarching keep control and municipalities hands and things like that we could have kind of our this year we're going to be focusing on flood recovery and resilience and strengthening downtown and then everything else kind of flows from that and housing housing is going to be on the list I don't know anyway so I think I can help where you're at one is so the work at the back the detailed work is really intended to be so to your point about we should get in there is the council said we'd like to approve public health and one of them is address mental health and addiction issues so this is basically saying these are what we think we're going to do to meet that so it's not like you said these things are important and we're kind of saying here's how we think we would approach that so it's not just empty words it's not that you necessarily go through unless there's something you really don't want us to do you shouldn't necessarily get in there but we also want to make sure you're seeing what we're thinking so that you know secondly I think you're right you did not go through these anything that somebody mentioned got listed in here so you know I think you probably do want to maybe go through those then lastly what I want to say I was kind of writing that because things as we think about the year ahead there are some things that the council's going to need to wrestle with and discuss and decide we're going to put time on agendas for location of the rec center things like that you know policy discerning housing you know whatever there's other things that the staff can do and just give you reports like you say we want to do something we can say you know is this road how many roads got paved you'll have to decide how much money to put in but then you don't really have to necessarily have to have council discussions about paving you say which roads got done with the money we gave you and then and so that some of these are just you know philosophy they're important because they do help us for pursuing grants or whatever but things like embrace outdoor recreation art so we can say okay that's a policy of the council that we're going to do this and as opportunities present themselves will bring them to you because we know you're interested in this but doesn't mean you know we're going to be doing this every day and then lastly there are things I think maybe we should go through and say is this something the city can really make a difference I just pick it on one you expand broadband access right I mean that great really we have almost no say in that so you know I mean it would be an excellent goal to have but really what kind of time are we going to have to do and what club we're not we don't build broadband there's you know most of the city has broadband anyway there's this you know central Vermont broad whatever they're called fiber that's working on these things you know this is kind of like okay so I think some of that is really in our wheelhouse giving limited resources and limited time yeah so it's a great discussion thank you for all of you I'm really noticing new things about the plan so one thing we could add time frame to the strategies so in my day job I work strategic plan with organizations and leaders so what we do I'm happy to help I am not saying that you need my help but I'm happy to help we say okay from today in six months which strategy you can complete from six months to 12 months which one then when you have that time frame this document itself becomes more clear and it shows what are the things we should focus in a year just for your consideration one of the things that Bill said or that somebody said probably more than one person said as well one of the things on this list that are things like plowing the streets that we're just going to do no matter what and I'm almost I think we're pretty close to there on the second bullet encourage residents engagement I think we're at the point where we all recognize that's just the job of the city so I don't know if we need that in there as a strategy at all you want a thumbs up thumbs down yeah take it out take it out we nod to it and our values and like so it is still reflected I guess my question would be to like city staff is having it here putting some emphasis in terms of like the tools that we're going to use and things like would this undermine our ability to do it if we're just saying we're taking it for granted or is it are there things that are coming up decisions or investments in communications tools for example where taking it off you might act differently if we removed it I don't think you would undermine anything I think because it's been a priority we've actively sought to expand our capacity and do extra things you know bringing on the position going using the Zen City platform we now have the in addition of the bridge page we have the page in the Times Argus and you know taking the DPW and all these things and you know to the extent that they're institutionalized but some of that has become institutionalized because you said this is a top priority for us and we really want to have this and so we put resources into it so you know I mean if you say we're going to take it off the top priority list but it's really a top priority okay but there are power in the words go ahead Lauren so I mean I'm wondering about like there's it feels like there's a lot of things reflected including that that are kind of like continue the emphasis like maintain that I wonder if like it wouldn't be on this front page but we could still nod to in the strategic plan of like the city has you know invested in building out engagement and communication tools and we plan to continue that emphasis but it doesn't need to be like when we I just wonder if there's like a different structure that could be which and I also think there's like a number of other things that might be able to fit in that category if it's things that we're not doing differently but are just things that we just still want to continue doing one of the things that Lauren said earlier Donna said I'm sorry was that part of the value of this is we get these reports we get based on this document we get these reports from the city on what progress they're making on each one of these things here and I don't think it needs to be in this strategy document in order for it to be part of the reports that we get from them they can still be selling us the report is what they're working out and what they're going to work out is going to continue to be a lot of stuff that we're not saying we're not doing top level council time I guess that's the balance we're trying to thread here because to some extent you're saying here's what we want to spend council time on and I think that's really important and city resources and there's other things we want to do and that you want to hear about but you don't necessarily need council time to do it but it's still important to say it's important I'm going to try to tell you what your priority should be I just think that it is a fine line to some extent the things that you want to talk about and make decisions about and discuss those are the kind of things how do we want to spend your 120 hours your 3 hours every 2 weeks what do you want to be using your time for but not all of this needs to be stuff you use your time for you just say this is important and we give you your importance but it's still important that was not articulate what so ever I'm sorry about that so rambling is it appropriate to actually suggest 4 top priorities are you willing to entertain that kind of I'm happy to I was looking at number 1 it's not my number 1 but of my 4 advance the economy to improve community prosperity create more housing rebuild and plan for the future maintain and build and maintain sustainable infrastructure to me those 4 stand out and maybe we could do that for all of us what is our top 4 and see where we get and then we can start prioritizing within that agreement I don't think we need to create like a oh, we need to create a time frame for each strategy then it will show us and if as a city councilor if I have a right to request from city staff to create a time frame for each strategy it's like 0 to 6 months right 0 to 8 months 0 6 to 12 months 12 to 16 months then we will have all these goals goals are we can keep the goals we need to prioritize the strategies because they are the actions it will require money right it will require manpower it will require time so there should be this chart should be redesigned with the time frame for each strategy and it is again like very general 0 to 6 months 6 months to 9 months whatever I don't know how city staff you know how much time or how much vision they have time frame so if again if I have a right to request this I would you like to because really when you look at this even this page it will change a lot so obviously you have the right to request anything I don't think we are going to be able to come up with time frames necessarily tonight I think but if you can say what's most important to you if we can walk out of here tonight with the council thing this is what's most important to us this is where we want to spend our time we can put we can tweak the document time frames and anything else you would like us you know more or less what we really want to know is what do you want us in addition to the stuff we have to do or are going to do what are your top priority things that you want us going sort of extra on and you know again that the 6 of what you came up with when we met with Paul and then the strategies were just the list of things people said with no waiting at all so maybe one with those and just saying is this on the list or off the list and do you want to prioritize those within is there something that should be added and then we can go through and say here's some of the things we might do to advance those and then like you said if you want to shrink your list or do anything you want that's really up to you so I just want to I'm just trying to get really clear that this is like a list of extra stuff that we want to do on top of the regular business of burning the city so maybe we need a different name for it or I don't know because strategic plan does not capture that at all and when you talk about how do we want to spend our time and I heard kind of an implication that we don't want to spend our time talking about the regular day to day stuff like the streets getting plowed but we do actually like if staff decided we want to save some money and so we're not going to plow every other week and instead we're going to build a fancy new website because we have something on our that's not okay and it's not that we don't trust you or I don't trust you I know that you're going to run the city and you're going to do things that you need to do but this is part of our job is making sure that all the resources we have that we we're going to have to prioritize and we're not going to start from creating more housing we're going to start with plowing the roads no and so I'm still kind of stuck on what we do with this I think I can help you with that so when we do the budget the budget is going to presume either we will the numbers are going to work presumably the budget is going to be we're going to plow the roads the way we've been doing it the current level of road plowing service is what it is if it's going to be different than that because we're cutting funds then part of the budget process would be to say in order to meet a certain tax rate or whatever we're only going to plow the roads differently then you all would have a conversation about that decision as part of the budget as a policy decision and then in the course of the year it's our job, my job if we were going to change that yes I know it's operational but when something that's a major policy change we bring to you and say hey we're thinking of doing this just so you know we're only going to plow the other roads I exaggerate but I mean you need to know that but I'm sorry to interrupt you but we might decide we might just decide that the streets are not getting plowed often enough or something like some regular day to day thing we think needs more attention and more resources and that should be part of our budget conversation and it's not reflected in here anywhere so where do we think ideally we would say these are our priorities including the very basic day to day stuff and then we build a budget that gets as close to that as we can so what we're doing now is we've got these assumptions about what the baseline is we're not talking about that at all and then we're talking about what extra stuff we might put on top of that and it just feels like it should all be more integrated we have to get very basic about what our priorities are and how we're going to pay for everything and then we say this is what we want and need and then maybe we don't have enough money to do it all and so then we start to rejigger from there but we start from this is everything that we would like to have happen we could certainly do the budget that way but it's actually an interesting idea is to say here's what it takes to do the services period and leave everything else out and then put all the rest and then figure out what goes back in that way I mean that's certainly one way to look at it and it's interesting we've had this conversation for long time about basic services and at some point the council said we know we're going to do those we just want to talk about the policy priorities so there's no right or wrong way but that's how we ended up where we were was at some point we said let's just assume we're going to do what we normally do this is where we want to drive future policy and it may be that given we're in a time of retrenchment so to speak what does it cost to do the basics and then take it from there maybe there are things on the table that weren't on the table before they were assumed Lauren I kind of feel like this might go in that direction but maybe not because one way I'm trying to think of how we're maybe like recategorizing so one way we could think about it is I feel like in this list there's been kind of probably more the strategies than the goals but there's a list of like new and I think kind of urgent top things that especially coming out of the floods if you're looking at flood response and resilience initiatives and our downtown it's like we have this urgent need at this moment then there is in my mind like continue initiatives that are ongoing that we want to continue and a lot of them there is the budget and that is certainly the most important thing but there's also like our housing committee are looking at policies that actually don't cost the city anything and so I don't want to be like let's pull a rug out and be like let's not do that anymore and so I think there's other ways we could be looking at priorities beyond the budget knowing we're in tough times so I could see a list of things that are like continue to encourage resident engagement continue to look for housing solutions kind of it puts it in a different tier but also shows that we still you know want to continue trying to make progress on it and then maybe there's like as capacity allows category of like if we're doing great on all these things or an opportunity arises because there's some grant or something then this would be something that we would like to do but we also anticipate we might not get to it this year and that's okay so it's one way that we I don't know if that's a helpful framework and then following up on that obviously one of our highest priorities is going to be we need to rebuild from the flood but we also have our net zero energy policies and stormwater and these are all things if we're not if we're going to try to rebuild from the flood without doing anything to protect us from the next flood we're being kind of stupid so there's so much here because I think and we still haven't talked about building maintain sustainable infrastructure water lines and all those pieces where it seems like things started out in March and those are large items too that I think need to be priorities that probably my number one priority to go and then work from there it's just there's so much here it's almost like a wish list to some degree because things are just in here later in the year do they take on a life of their own or take on some importance because they were mentioned in this because they're just all these somewhat disjointed items that we really haven't discussed so I'm not really comfortable with a list that's like this and if we went through all my comments on it we'd be here until 2 in the morning and I'm sure everyone else has comments too so it's like oh my god how do we attack this 2 in the morning Tim I appreciate that no way we quit at midnight no matter what so I'm hearing a lot of different approaches from the council on what we should go and everyone has a I think most people have this document as it's structured isn't really working for them necessarily most people I'm hearing that some like it just fine those who don't like it though have a whole bunch of different reasons why and how it should be and what we should do instead we could stay by default we could do what? we might stay by default placing it at such a diverse because there's not a critical mass to move in any given direction that's not a great way to make policy so where do we go we have Tim I think you're right looking at all these pages of a million different items is hard to it's hard for any legislative body to say well this is the whole thing we're going to do and Bill's right this is most of that isn't placed before a legislative body it's it's the departments to deal with if I can weigh in again on this because I hear what Tim's saying the reality is a lot of this is what we do in the course of a year because we do have a lot of different departments it doesn't mean the council spends a lot of time on it but it isn't this is work that gets done we do a lot of things in a year that I think a lot of people think we are we have a lot on our plates and again I think the specifics were really intended to be helpful to just show you the examples of the things we would be doing to advance your strategies and if they're confusing I think really having you focus on what your priority goals are and what your priority strategies are for accomplishing those goals and we can come back to you as part of the budget and say here's how we propose to do these or not depending on the finances or maybe we start with here's the basics and in order to accomplish goals here's some of the additional things that would need to be added or changed or whatever and I think that might be an interesting way to do the budget defer change so I think you don't necessarily have to go through some of the things that certainly the council wants to do but even talk about rebuilding from the flood I think we all agree that's really important maybe we should have a little bit of a conversation about what's the city government's actual role in that because we're not funding everyone's recovery we're advocating from the state to do certain things we've got our own rebuilding of things the city's got to do of city facilities that it's got to rebuild we've got a commission that's working on a bunch of recommendations and one of the things that we put in under support how those consider recommendations from the commission for recovery and resilience so presumably they're going to be coming to us with various points of time and say you should adopt this kind of zoning or you should adopt this kind of thing and then if it's building owners have to do something and then the city can consider do we want to provide financial assistance those then become policy decisions at those time for a future budget so while absolutely rebuilding from the flood is important maybe we should define what it is the city government is going to do for it it's a good example because it's in a way it's a sort of characteristic of a lot of the things that we want to do if we want to deal with housing it's resilient we'll focus on that if we're going to deal with downtown we're going to do with it in a way that rebuilds with an eye toward a future flood so it sort of narrows down I mean I've narrowed down these six to three people paving in pizza you've got you've got the unhoused and the can't find a house so the people part you've got the infrastructure, the paving and the water system which is rearing its ugly head again paving in pipes and you've got downtown and that's it seems to me that's where the focus needs to start and then we can go through with a lens to that is that people focused is it infrastructure focused we just can't do at the moment or it's in the background and we can put it through the lens of what are we going to continue doing and what's new but I mean if I have to choose between people and paving I mean that's a legitimate choice that has to be made when Bill and I were at our meeting the other day one of the things we talked about and we've never really done this was maybe like and it doesn't help us tonight but over the course of the year like take a meeting and spent a dedicated hour to each one of these major goals and talk about what does this really mean how would we get there what work would be involved obviously that doesn't get us through tonight doesn't get us a complete budget because the budgets in the rear view mirror by the time we get through all those meetings Donna. What a wonderful idea and actually if we brought in everybody we know as experts in the community to add their bit I mean the one thing I feel we have less control over is the pizza economic development is ever elusive for the city and so we can do certain things but we have severe limits whereas the people in paving to me they're very concrete but even then particularly with the people we need experts to come in and help us investors people in housing etc I like that idea sooner the better so just question for our slogan well it's the PPP if we have we're getting the PPP right does the people include the services to people and you mentioned people in terms of housing and the unhoused but does that mean the basic services that we provide to the people in the residents because that is what I'm thinking about right here in the first goal the basic needs part and then also housing and the unhoused are all about peace I think it's hard to talk about meeting people basic needs people place pizza and pipes parking parking paving, pipes works, police and parks all the keys police we got to work on recreation pickleball pickleball we're playing were you raising your hand just a minute ago no Cullen should be one of the PPs that's why I'm here right that's why I'm here right and you know some of this just means going after money somebody else's money the state's money or the fed's money because we can't do it ourselves but we have decisions to make about the unhoused the existing rec center we've had studies done we haven't really decided what we want to do with that but there are options that help solve these problems one way or another that are still up in the air and this budget year is the year when I think we need to we need to get off the dime on some of those yay or nay so maybe that's we got a document that you worked on a little bit and it seems to be not helping us move forward right now maybe you know you could just talk about what are the key things that you'd like to address this year that the council would address key decisions you'd like to make you know and then sort of people paving pizza those kinds of things and major things you'd like to see accomplished and let us figure out how to put it together instead of feeling constricted by what's written in front of you I know you had a little bit of an open conversation saying these were our top priorities and they helped lay that out but like if the rec center that's a decision about a rec center that's an important goal or strategy about something that would fall under here somewhere having a permanent having a permanent shelter maybe an important goal and I think probably we have that in there but I mean those the kind of things you just these are key things we want to do supporting that commission supporting a shelter or a post office yeah I'm serious I'll let you know sooner the better it's too late now no people if we listen to what people want the post office keeping the post office is definitely something that people want it's so little amazing yeah we have very little control over it but we can certainly advocate for it and already have you got through the commission and met with the legislative and dubbing the congressional deliberation about it but that is not something that would cost us money but it certainly is an important and also an economic development opportunity a couple years ago wouldn't even have been a conversation we could break the ice with but now it could be an opportunity for money yeah we don't have Paul Castello here with his flip chart that we wanted a month ago but that's what we're looking at are there can we come up with big things that we want to do or what we want to focus on in the coming year well I think we need to decide what to do with the existing center building we have money that's sitting in an account that can be used to do something with that building we have a plan that helps us solve a couple of problems one being public restrooms and showers which was mentioned again tonight we could decide to proceed with phase one of that and do the work on that one corner of the basement that with exterior ramp put in public restrooms and showers in that building and make the repairs that we need that would allow us to go to phase two we could also I think we probably need an accessible entrance of some kind not an elevator but maybe a temporary lift that goes into the stage but we need to look at that project and say we've been told that the building can be saved do we want to save it and if we do for what and even if we decided to build a new rec center tomorrow it would be a couple of years before so we've got to use that building as a rec center for some period of time and we ought to get it and using it in that way and applying some of the funding that we have is only going to make that situation better or we decided to do nothing and redistribute that money but it seems like we have a nice building that we can do something with it's a place to start with there anyway and that's really two topics because one is what do we do with the building and two is how do we provide services for people who need it yeah yeah kills a couple of birds anyone else want to argue for something I think our goals are the top six because we've talked about it in and of themselves it's just getting some priority to them and under them like the rec center could fall under improve public health or it could fall under build maintain sustainable infrastructure yeah in fact that's what that provide community resources activities that's what I think it's really we can just find a way to so maybe again we kind of go back and say these are the in each category this is kind of the one or two things we really want to talk about this year things like on housing policy I think the short term policy that we talked about last week is something that we should pursue with all deliberate speed and worthwhile policy and the longer we wait the harder it will be the more it will be grandfathered in although in fairness on that one the housing committee and Kerry you've been to probably a few more meetings than I but it because that committee is really focused on the short term rentals and now they're talking a little bit about the the grant programs the housing trust fund but really the focus of that committee is on creating more new housing and I think if that's an important function that the council envisions for that committee we should share that with them and try to help them focus on broadening the topic to that because that's just not what you're talking about yeah and we heard Rebecca last week talk about how she conceived the business kind of like what Palin's been talking about what can we do in the immediate term for a longer term a real long term goal and so and it's a passionate issue for her so she's the general chair yeah but I don't know if the housing committee as a whole has a vision of doing it the way she's talking about doing it well just I mean Jack you were on that housing committee and during the time I've been on the council they've done several big projects and it helped that we finally gave them some money so they could match grants but I thought they were much more active in some of the projects that have come out through Down Street but they haven't since they reformed they did before did they not the housing committee by design is not the same as what was the housing task force and but but they have a charge they have council representation on it and not having been to their meetings in some time there used to be a bigger vision Tim help them council to verify that would be good so policy for housing committee would be a priority to have on a council agenda simple thing to cover but it's that's a policy issue about housing so priorities I would name include I do think the rebuilding I mean I would love us to be thinking like how are we rebuilding the most resilient capital in the country like how do we have some vision around it and I do think that's like that includes being net zero that includes like really leaning into the commission like they're going to be spending a lot of time on this so I think it's naming as a priority that we want to partner with them to do a lot of the legwork to bring ideas to us that we could pursue and that might be city projects or might be more state or kind of regional things so to me that's like naming that as something that we want to be working towards then I think like having a permanent shelter by this time next year would be a clear goal that we should just be figuring out I think yeah I would I think that the housing policy is paired with whatever progress we can make on the Elks property as one of the housing projects that we can control more what's happening there and then I think the roads water system like the upgrades to our infrastructure that are critical or like has to be a big focus so so I know I think it's payment pipes and the people of the on-house and housing there's this one initiative under what's it under create more housing that says look at the pit as part of economic development I mean I've mentioned this before but I look at that big but now is this sort of unique moment in time the feds are saying what do we want to do with our building your insurance folks probably I think but the state is saying what do we you know what are we doing it's a big huge expensive project but boy would it transform the downtown and it would attract I mean sometimes you just have to be ridiculously large and innovative with what you come up with to attract the kind of resources that it would take to develop there but it could be you know it could be phased in but it just seems to me if we don't at least pursue it now and meet with the people who've been an obstacle in the past one more time we won't get that opportunity the situation has the flood has changed the climate that I think there's more opportunity for conversation I don't have personal experience with it but from what I can gather there's a lot that can be done down there if we can break through that sort of blockade of property owners who just don't want to get off the dime for one reason or another okay Laura I keep doing this that's okay you're looking at me but along with that is also getting the state to reduce its paving footprint and as well as some other partnerships with the state so at one point we had a city state commission maybe we need to revitalize some of that to have a discussion with the properties they own so the paved properties and some of the buildings that are going to be empty and you could I mean you could do you could preserve all the parking you can build a multi-level you can even go down a level and create a I mean imagine how much water that would hold a subterranean parking lot and you pump it out when it's all over but you could go at least two levels maybe three and you could put everything on top including community center you know whatever you wanted housing it's been designed post office I know the it hasn't gone very far yet but the recovery resilience commission is also talking about that because you know the idea that you could then reclaim some of the state parking lots is on the river side and that kind of thing so you know I think there's a whole different thought as opposed to just we've got to keep all our surface parking because you know the state got significant damage from this too so they're looking at ways to protect and I think that you know the business and state property owners in that area are probably you know they're rethinking that seems like they've been willing to sit down lately so anyway it's something that I think we have to at least give one more try to it's a unique moment here yeah so I'm thinking about prioritizing these and I'm hearing a lot of things that are about the health of downtown peace what you were just talking about Sal and so I mean for me there's something there's rebuilding after the flood for resilience and I love the idea of we're going to be this model of you know increasingly in state capital with a focus on downtown on really supporting the health of downtown that and because that can cover things like development that cover things like working with the state can cover the post office and and then the other thing is meeting the needs of unhoused people so that could be we build a permanent shelter you know whatever specific that might be and then the other one is infrastructure you know making the upgrades and the improvements for infrastructure that we need so those would kind of be my is that three I think it's three yeah three so listen to what you were saying and also taking a look at our list and I think maybe you know so I look at the one about the first goal and if we talked about support health of downtown I just wrote pit and post office those are the main things I'm not trying to keep these all pee it just has the same problem yeah it is you're right and then you know taking well I took out broadband just because I don't think there's anything we can do with that and now taking your point about at least for now stuff that we might do anyway like community meals those kind of things that those are important but for now those aren't your key priorities then the second one I just left the community engagement alone because we've said that was important you can talk about that later create more housing so those three are basically develop policy to reflect housing policy so that might be direction of the committee and you're going to have some zoning amendments coming up I mean those are policy decisions that you would have and then anything else whether you want to choose to do a TEF there's any number of things that could come up those are policy decisions actively partner in housing projects that's really the other school that's us doing a project and moving that along and then support private housing development of proposals so that's you know someone wants to build on savings pastoral we work with them to help doesn't we do anyway but it's an important statement we are here to help with that moving on to the flood resilience I'm going to recommend a lot of things and when we talk about a resilient downtown again I'm not I'm all for it I think it sounds like I'm against it but I'm not but we have to remember what can we do so Tim owns a lot of private buildings you know we can't tell him to elevate his buildings or to do these things we can say that that's a goal for the future and that anything new is going to be built on the code and those kinds of things there are things we can say as far as internal systems and all those kinds of things and the state can say so I think we have to be you know when we talk about resilience there's a whole lot of private historic buildings that so the question is how do we make them resilient what can we do to encourage or require where's our role with private owners you know whether it's basements what can we do with that you know like I said we can rebuild city stuff we can say anything new and it's true the stuff that's new that's built to code didn't really flood city center didn't the buildings behind us did you know those all because they were built properly modern I don't want to say properly then we talked about net zero energy policy I mean I think that's something we would do on environmental improvement projects we could take that off if we want going to infrastructure I mean address major infrastructure needs every one of these that's important that would include the water plan we've got to finalize that includes you know the capital budget paving and emerging infrastructure needs that stormwater basically so that's a good one Bill just interrupt but just kind of as I went through it initially so many of these that have like abbreviations I'm not sure the average taxpayer can look at it know what we're talking about some of these can say what is the WRFF the Water Resource Recovery Center Facility that's the sewer plant wastewater plant but yes you're right and that's a good reminder for us to not use short here and then you mentioned provide resources for unhoused individuals that's permanent shelter is what you've all said and then again these other things I think are things we would do anyway provide community resources for healthy activities make a decision about rec center so I mean kind of what you've all said is just in this list just said differently and we could say that maybe more plainly and keep in mind that when you say permanent shelter that includes services as far as the package I think it's not that's a decision that needs to be made you're saying that your goal is to make a decision about this obviously you know where what it's going to cost how it's going to get funded who's going to provide it you know and maybe you know the decision could be we can't afford it but you're not going to you're going to make an active decision about this this door before we do this next year yep so yeah that all sounds pretty good to me but I would prefer if we took off the encourage resident engagement goal and just say you know we've put a lot of energy into that we've made a lot of improvements we want to continue that it's not like we don't want to do this anymore but I think we can move that into the category of business as usual it's like plowing yeah I think so yes standard business practices sort of a big fall in public speaking I'm getting a sense that people are pretty happy with this at this point we're improved we're really closer I don't want to force people to agree to something they don't want to agree to not that I could but yeah the idea I don't remember who threw it out of I mean it sounds like categories that we've identified do capture things that all of us have named as big priorities for the year like I'm just wondering about that like idea of digging into putting on our upcoming agendas where we could take a little more time to be like okay let's talk about like what else is going into bullet you know our first goal and like okay we named um you know some of the downtown stuff the pit and whatever like what else is on there what is the city doing anyway and just like understand kind of the spectrum of what are kind of like these council initiatives what's the city staff doing that I think would get at some of this we've talked about that are like city services that are ongoing would it be good to just be like part of this is all the things we do for the downtown that like let's get I don't know that that could be a way to understand it so if we really believe that this is important what are we already doing what do we need to do and how are we going to do it yeah and maybe as felon suggests we have a timeline as part of it you know we know create more housing the timeline is out of ways it's not it's not one year but we have to have that as a priority now to do the things we need to so that in the coming years we will have to actually that's not true when you look at what's going on right now projects happening that we're not doing but we could encourage them and help them yep and they're not even being discussed but I mean they're happening and one thing I probably should have mentioned at the very beginning and I apologize for not again just kind of maybe assuming people know this but this might help just click when you said this about palin's point which is what we usually do after after you finally approve whatever you approve however it looks and we take these lists and then you know how in the weekly memo it has upcoming agenda items and right now they kind of end at town meeting time what happens will the next maybe not this Friday but in a couple weeks you'll see those filled out over the next nine months with these items because what you're really doing is setting your council agendas for the next year and so we will start scheduling out and we will talk with our staff and say when do you think you'll be ready to report on this and what we'll now do is add a goal either at every meeting or once a month or something like that that we can think about how to fill that out and realistically I think I know hopefully we'll all be back but you know it probably wouldn't start until after town meeting because you know we're just going to be needy in budget I think for the most part between now and February February is usually we could start it maybe in February but up until then it's pretty you know December and January are pretty much all budget and if there's charter changes I don't think we're not proposing any bonds but who knows somebody else might be so you know so I think all of that just kind of takes over and to try to but the veterans know that if you try to put other substantive stuff it's just it doesn't serve anything well Tim, one thing you just said about other housing projects going on reminded me that I was on the housing task force for many years and for some of those years part of the agenda every month was that the the representative from the playing zoning office would have a report on what housing has been developed what projects are in the pipeline where things are going and I think that that would be a valuable thing for the housing committee to have it as a regular part of your activity because you know sometimes the question would be well as a housing task force do we want to come out in public and say we support this development we even go to DRB or go to ZBA at the time and say we want this project to happen and you know having a committee of the city say that probably has some value so as you members of the housing committee that's something you could be thinking about I'm thinking also on public safety you know police and pyro right pyro techniques as we build more housing and then get into unhoused shelters and so on you know we've got to make sure that the police departments and fire departments keep up with resources and training and all that stuff because we have that much more to deal with and there's a lot in this list and I don't understand it all but it's something that we need to sit through over the issue they could go through a lot of that and talk about what they're doing so if people are generally happy with this as an approach one thing we could do is tell Bill okay we pare down the list of priorities or list of goals come back with another set of fleshed out language and let us decide on that is that the direction you guys would like to go are we there yet? a short survey then I have numbers here then I can just like all of us can say that this is the most important goal for me then the city staff can have where to start so surveying the public we're surveying council city council members so I can just list the most important goals for me for example I said Bill then maintain first right then the advanced economy second and the improved public health third so I can just put this on the survey we can all do if everybody agrees then city staff can have a data on their hand which goal we want to start first so if everybody is saying that Bill then maintains sustainable infrastructure is the most important thing then they can start working on that one am I clear? well I think you're being clear okay thank you my thought about that is that we're leads right back to what Lauren was saying and Donna I too think that the city does a whole bunch of different things and telling the department of public works to develop the plan for fixing the water system doesn't conflict with telling the fire department the police department to start planning for how to serve expanded housing when we get there yeah I'm not saying anything against that I agree with that my just because we discuss right oh we need to have at least three priorities for this year that's what I was saying so which one those three yeah that's all I was saying yeah I agree what you just mentioned just the ranking right that's all my suggestion is we take what Bill brings back to us and do that okay yeah it's just a suggestion so we're thinking to people just to add on that I really like the reports we're hitting and within the reports with our previous goals the staff says we've we're 30% done with this we're 40% done with this on their reports in fact we all might want to go back and look at those now and make more sense I would hope we'll still get that more expanded task list than beyond whatever our top four or five four or three priorities are if you're interested in prioritizing the goals and there's nothing wrong with doing that at all we could send something out I think maybe that's what you were saying you know just where everybody just gives us a ranking and we tabulate them and send them back out and say here's what you said and then we load on it obviously if you just have each of you rank them and send them in sure let's do that then we'll get a set because you know if everyone says this is our number one item then we're talking about budget you know at least we've said so we can do that I think we can that should be pretty easy just taking these five items and saying rank them one through five everybody and we'll score them and because we said we will discuss each goal in our meetings so it will tell us where to start that's all so the other question I have we've talked about this a couple times but I want to make sure we have clarity about this because we have a month normally we present you a budget with everything you know it's a recommended budget within a certain financial parameter and you all didn't really set one so we make one up and provide it and you know list what's in and what's out would you prefer and we kind of say here's the recommended budget would you prefer that we give you a budget or maybe we work this it becomes a work in progress and we say here's what it takes here's the budget to do the basics and then you know the things you've identified these are what it might take to fund for that so that you can see it and use it like building blocks as opposed to us that way you're prioritizing what goes in and what goes out so that I like the idea of knowing what it takes to cover the basic services and then and then you have some discretionary and then you can ask about those and what's in there and then say here's what you know because that you know that might push your ledger in the middle of tolerance right there so then you have to make decisions about you know if we want more what does that look like so I don't know you know we can do it I can do it I can do it meeting they can do it anyway you want well it's just a sort on the budget right it would be a it would be a big difference and I'm not sure a bad one it would be a big difference in the way we've done the budget typically the city council's gotten a very complete budget on December 13 here here's the city manager's recommended budget and it would have everything in it you know how much we recommend it for capital and funding and how much we recommend it for this and staffing and we probably still will have to do that but and then just kind of said here's what we didn't put in and here's what's included and here's what's not included and the council says okay we like this or we want to add this you know what I'm saying is rather than getting a full it would you like us to just to give you something that says here's what it costs to run the services here's what it costs to paw the roads into the police calls into the fire calls do what we do run the senior center all that stuff and then here's your priorities here's the projects and things and costs for that and what do you want to add you know what and then you would stop you would we would simply give you and then the council might give us some direction and we'd go back and kind of do it that way more iteratively more collaboratively as opposed to you reacting to what we give you I mean it doesn't matter you know there's good and bad we'll do whatever you want I just wanted I want the next time we see you we're going to be handing you some form of a budget so I want to make sure we're all in agreement about how that looks so last meeting you mentioned we will have like a budget with without tax increase right budget with funding so are we still getting that or now we will go and change it you just explained what we were planning to do we weren't going to do multiple budgets I think we were going to probably give you a budget and then say here's to get to no tax increase this is how much more you'd have to cut from it so you'd have a dollar number and or to and maybe that's what we still would do I don't I mean I guess I want to know how you'd like it presented but what I heard today there was some conversation about we're interested in doing what it sort of costs to do local government 101 right what do we do that the basics what are the basics and then whatever we wanted to put in for these priorities and to me the basics include the capital plan we would just say here's you know this was with the fully funded capital but then but you know there's because there's a lot of other stuff in there there's you know the community fund there's the housing trust fund economic development there's the microtransit bus there's you know there's stuff that's in there that has just always been in there and you know we could say here's the basics and here's everything else and how does everything how do you want everything back Lauren I'm wondering about I mean I like the idea of seeing the basics but it also seems like it's potentially subjective like what you would consider like and or there's a lot of projects that are in the works that like it would just be ridiculous to just not finish because we're like so like that might not be a core it might not be plowing the roads but it might be like we're working towards our state stormwater requirements and so that's like a you know like but it's is a stormwater utility required but this is a way that we've decided to do it and we're halfway through the process whatever so I guess but maybe like being more itemized in it than we have been in recent years I mean I think it's all been there but the way we could walk through it in more detail than we've done to be able to see because this council might be like what a previous council took for a given as like that is an essential service that we could have it would spark potential discussion on things that there might be a different opinion of this council. And you know so to that that's a fair point and I guess my commitment to you would be basics would be basically do what we're doing like the no additional staff know you know these kind of this is this is kind of what our services look like and you know obviously that includes salt and sand and gas for the vehicles and all the things that you know the maintenance and those kinds of things running you know buildings and all that stuff but this is what it takes to run the senior center and the rec center and this kind of stuff and then and then there's these projects that are underway and these are cost that we have for those and then here's the debt service because we can't get out of that you know I mean there's certain things we have commitments for and we kind of say here's the basic services here's our here's our commitments and then here's everything here's the universe of what else is out there you know like the last few pennies that you want to fight over just out of curiosity what would you estimate those other being 15 percent 10 percent I don't I wouldn't get Kelly might have a better idea than me it's not very much no that's what 5 percent I mean it's like I know that's the thing and if you you know I mean that's why but then if you want you know depending what else we want to put in for this I agree that's that's the I mean that's the thing with budgeting right is that we have we have these things that we are sort of are committed to doing they cost cost go up and I say committed and I mean committed in a way that there's a public expectation that we're going to provide this service that our commit our actual legal commitments are probably much less than that but the you know the things that we do that people have come to expect and then and then there's the debt you know whatever leases debts whatever contracts that we have that we have to honor and then there's this other stuff that is part of you know the community and then there's these priorities and so when you take all the things that were kind of on the hook for more I mean that's a lot and so I mean all kidding aside you really are fighting over the last few nickels and dimes of what you want to do but those are the things that make difference in the community they make a difference in the tax rate and but it might just be interesting to build it that way instead of saying here's so I think one of the things that's happened in the past is you know we well I don't know I mean we had ended up making lots of cuts to services and the council hasn't really gone into that a lot it's just been like well here's our budget this is what we think we can do we might list the things we cut and then the council said well here's the other stuff and I'm not criticizing that that's been the way we've presented it so we've asked for that it's not that you did anything wrong so maybe we could spend more time on the basics and understanding what happens if you reduce these things because there are impacts to those I mean on the other hand I don't know if anybody you know if we want to return to the day of having every department and spend an hour and a half with the council and ask you know that's that's a long process too but I've done that but on the other hand those videos that the department has did last year I thought were very valuable yeah those are those are happening right yeah yeah they look so enthusiastic about it you don't like camera time it's almost time we're going to do graphics this year right doing those shots and AI and we're better at it this year because we've learned we've learned from last year but we won't do models in two days right so if I understand it almost sounds as though you're talking about a basic package and then what could possibly be added to it as opposed to the whole budget and what do we have to cut out to get to where we want to get we're not I mean I whatever you want I just thought I heard that but if I did maybe I'm mistaken I don't know I don't know what people want I think you're taking me back to Jimmy Carter and well zero base budgeting that's not quite what I was trying to do good that's an old term huh so Lauren I it has been really valuable from my perspective to I feel like part of the exercise that the staff has gone through in terms of prioritization gives a real lens of like what feels feasible what's in the works like so I feel like that has built in kind of a reality check to the wishes and dreams of council in a way that's been helpful and informative and so like I would hope to that we wouldn't lose out on that which is I think have a budget been presented it's been like here's what we've heard from council priorities here's this like work of course covering the basic services and our debt obligations and all of that and here's our best estimate at how we could reasonably within a reasonable tax rate meet these and then if you guys want to do these other things then that is like an add-on and so I guess I don't know if that this different approach would kind of miss out on that feedback from staff which I think is really valuable so I would just not want to lose that and I think you go through a pretty intense process of prioritizing and cutting things to make it work before it gets to us and you're probably going to there's going to be a lot more of that this year than there has been other years and so I'm just I suspect that if you come up with sort of that here's the city government 101 that even that might not work out for us and so so I don't want to lose the benefit of your and all your department heads ability to make those decisions before it gets to us sure and part of that process to be clear is like Lauren said is trying to fit in right the council's goals and priorities and some of these other community things that we you know if you haven't explicitly said we've sort of intuited work you know for lack of a better word untouchable like we're not you know we're not going to cut these because they've always been there so we work around them and I think that's kind of where we need maybe some reality check but maybe we'll just do the budget like we normally do and maybe lay it out a little different for me it's a it's sort of the way the information is presented sliced and diced a couple of different ways it would help me to know what you know what we're legally obligated to do what essential services are what discretionary services are and what blue sky stuff because I mean well I don't want to have to do is go through the couple hundred pages of budget to say what you know what was that last year what is it I mean I would like to know what's taken out and what you know as long as I have summaries of that I'm okay with getting a whole budget as long as I have a you know a way to figure it out we'll do it the way we've always done it with some different analysis okay that's fine I just wanted to make sure we had clear clear expectations before we left the room now it is 8 30 typically time for our break all we have is council reports and other business council reports mayors report and the photo do you all want to take a break or do you want to just keep power through for the last 10 minutes it's never just how okay go ahead we'll take the break and the photo and then we'll finish yeah we can do that we talked about doing the photo during the break so it's a good time to do that doesn't mean we can't do another photo at least we're all here and we can get it now yep okay 10 to 15 minutes break call the meeting back to order and we were only 10 minutes well done other business not aware of any other business council reports starting out at that end tonight great I think the only thing I would share is that I have I brought back to the commission we haven't met but just shared the feedback that we got at the council meeting and there is definitely we have another meeting tomorrow night and so it will be on the agenda to continue discussing engagement with council public engagement with the process and all of that so just wanted to convey the feedback I will be bringing it back and there is definitely a lot of interest in hearing more great a couple things I think Donna asked me to elaborate a little on an earlier comment so housing projects that I know of happening in Montpelier now in the building on Langdon street A-20 Langdon the upper floors are being created into I believe 20 apartments so that's the equivalent of the French block when you think about it it's a significant project it's being done by a group called Accord Development but Lucky Boardman, Gablege and there's a group of folks working on that it's exciting and it will bring some great housing in and the other one is the project that's been in the workshop on Isabelle's circle I think is still trying to work through those are single family lots I believe and then the other kind of random thought I've had talking with Bill one thing that I think is interesting is we really are one community in terms of the city and the schools but we really don't seem to connect since this whole Roxbury Montpelier school district just thinking maybe if there's a way for us as a city council to connect with the school board as both our budget processes begin might make sense to get a sense of what the pressures are out there on both sides I'm just reading what's going on in the schools just in the paper it sounds like the state has some changes in their education funding formula that have been in the works for a while those are going to start to hit this next year it sounds like they're substantial enough that they're going to face them over five years so anyway it sounds like there's some pieces coming that we should know about to be sensitive to on our side too and vice versa they should know what our pressures are and what we're seeing coming so if there's a chance to do that it might be a good what are the obstacles here no obstacles we can invite them at any time once upon a time we did we used to do actually joint we would have a joint meeting at the very beginning of the budget process where you know I presented the council's budget and the superintendent presented the school budget the same night and everyone listened to both presentations and then at the very end of the process the last public hearing we would all be together so like if residents wanted to come to public hearings they could do that at some point the school actually didn't want to keep doing that so then for a while the school just the superintendent and the school chair would come to the last public hearing and then ever since they split into districts they've really stopped that and you know we've had the pandemic with all these things I think you know at the very least probably the mayor and I could get together with the superintendent and the chair and talk it over but ideally maybe we could go to their meeting and they could come to ours if not the full board at least just representatives of the school district so we could get a sense of what's going on maybe we could invite them to the next meeting when the legislative delegation is there they may have representing our budget anyway so some of them might come at least offer their thoughts for their legislative priorities sounds great I have nothing at the moment okay so I'm going to take my 15 minutes no well it's been a busy week of my committees just and you may have all read about it but I just want to make sure everyone realizes that the park was expanded by 54.9 acres all 100% funded elsewhere and the big ones came from the community forest program and the Vermont housing and conservation board and just kudos again to our staff just so so creative it's really impressive and likewise they're doing more trail development but I wanted to mention last night John Piller historical preservation committee and I always didn't have that preservation in the middle so it took me a while to google them I had to hunt for them but they reviewed and many of you may not know this but we did this main Berry street study and it came out with a traffic light and it came out with trying to connect the shared use paths coming across behind the hotel and shawls how do we get that to the connection that's over there by Sarducci's with the railroad crossing and the way it did it because the shared use path comes all the way up to Sarducci's sidewalk and then you just get dumped so when the study did it they made a connection between Berry street on the opposite side of the shared use path on main so that we'd have a shared use path going right down Berry street if you're going down on the right hand side so that we'd go around the recta building and then connect to the shared use path and what we didn't know was that the Vermont Agency of Transportation decided that the Vermont Historical Preservation Committee of Montpellier was the authority to make sure that it didn't disrupt any historical buildings on Berry street and especially around parking parking spaces so they had that meeting last night and they voted that it was not there was no negative impact they all wanted to vote that it was beneficial but they aren't allowed to they only can vote that it's not and because it increased the pedestrians they felt it was really a positive thing and so that was approved last night Corey was there speaking very well as always and for the meeting and the State Judith Ettrich a woman from the State Department for the Agency of Transportation so that was really good and the other one is sort of a long term thing that I'd like for some point for us to talk about engagement and we mention it as goals and I just get bewildered as to when have we had enough engagement if there's been many studies done does that make this public opinion if we've had many public meetings is that the public opinion is it two phone calls is 26 emails too much what is the engagement and when is the decision done because I guess I've been on the council finishing up my 10th year here and it always amazes me how times we redo it and I just would like us to discuss that at least among ourselves to have some idea if there's enough and I was so appreciative in this narrative that we are going to develop further accountability and transparency like it took into account that we're doing stuff already and I feel like we're doing a lot of engagement so that's one of my issues and likewise we get emails do we share all our emails not everybody sends them to everybody should we share them so I'd like to and what's the weight of an email someone coming to a meeting I'd just like to balance that out sometimes I feel like the public gets a lot more time at our meetings than we do to keep it a reasonable meeting when they have so many other avenues to talk this is really our business meeting and I guess I'm a real supporter of Robert's Rules of Order that it's all about balancing the group need to have a business meeting and the public to talk and just really have us talk about it and come to some assembly of standard more than just a three minute presentation so please think about that and we'll have it on the agenda sometime thanks I don't have that much to talk about I should say one of the things we do is report on boards and committees that we're on the one board that I'm on Ex-officio is the Wood Art Gallery Board and we had a board retreat at the beginning of this month to develop a mission statement and do some planning for the coming year and I think good things are happening we have a new executive director in general but things are looking good for the Wood Art Gallery and I may get the details wrong but I think in commemoration of Thomas Waterman Woods 200th anniversary there is going to be a series of events starting with Art Walk on December 1st so to a couple of Fridays from now and so there's going to be some kind of event that there will be speakers and I encourage everyone to get out there and do it because the Wood Art Gallery is really less visible to people than it used to be and I hear people from the board saying that members of the community say does that still exist people were used to being at the college for so long and it's not there now but you know my granddaughter takes classes there and you go there and you see the presentations of the kids and there's a lot of enthusiasm going there and there's all the art and so it's still a vital part of the community so hopefully this 200th anniversary will be springboard for that and that's what I've got City Clerks Report to report we have one does he want to make another okay so you need to be unmuted and then we can go and then you can go while you're being unmuted I'll just say once again that I know that this is a clunky thing to have to deal with the unmuting people but unless we come up with a better way of doing the unmuting from really hateful and disruptive interruptions I think that's what we're going to be stuck with for the time being but we've got to do it because I don't think our public needs to be subjected to that well I have no report alright I have to roll up Tim we're just wondering if there's a way the technology of all this if we can get to a place where at least the city council and staff maybe can be unmuted we're trying to do that we talked to the county about that last time city managers before I've just got a few things number one talking about engagement we do have the budget survey is out available on the city's website we've had a lot of publicity about that we've urged a lot of residents to take the survey it asks them to prioritize our services it asks them would you want to raise taxes cut the budget if you want to cut where would you like to cut it's simple doesn't take very long to do it's easy to use and it's the use of our Zen City technology so we will have those results next week or next meeting when we present when we bring in the budget is it easy to find do we need it very easy so you go to the website right in the middle there's a community portal anything that's on that is our web city it's got all our projects so if you go there then you get a bunch of different projects and one of them is listed is the budget you go into the budget and then the survey you just scroll down but there's Evelyn's really putting together those do you want to talk about that it's also a one click away in the news flash down on the bottom of the oh wonderful I'll tell people that's right so there's also a survey primarily for members of the popular senior activity community as they're working on their assessment as well strategic planning just for clarity's sake in case there was some confusion so what Donna was talking about the bike path extension for the newer members if you're not clear the plan is to extend the bike path where it comes across the street by you know that open field so downberry street to the rec center because there's a place to go through and connect to the bike center and take out the parking on that side of the side the buddy's the road so there would be no parking from there to the rec center and that's approved a couple years ago and we upped it I think last summer just as people change they don't know and then one of these days it's going to happen and parking's going to go out and so I want to make sure everybody understands that you know until we actually do it there's still time to change that but once we do it we do it so actually we can still do it so there's that at the last meeting you talked about short term rental the short term rental ordinance talked to the mayor about scheduling it and I know there is some urgency but we also felt that probably we should put that on in February after the budget because it deserved so unless you really want to do it sooner it doesn't require a vote of the public it's a council vote it was just trying to do that with what could be a very difficult budget year might be a lot so we have there's usually two meetings in February the budget deadlines fast town meetings coming and that's usually a good time for the council to wrap up that group to wrap up pending business and that would be a good time to do that but if people feel differently that's why I wanted to mention it now um I think I told you I've signed the FEMA lease we don't have it back as soon as we do we'll make a more formal public announcement that's good and we won't see anybody till after Thanksgiving so everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and whatever you're doing and that's all I have great thanks everybody good work very interesting meeting tonight I truly didn't know what the discussion was going to be never do we never do and it came out in a good place I think and we can adjourn at 8.56 yet