 Okay, I'm going to call to order the City Council Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee at 408 and now we entertain a recording in progress. Sorry, I'm calling to order the Transportation Energy Energy and Utilities Committee at 408 and I entertain a motion on our agenda. I would move the adoption of the agenda. I would second that. Any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor? Aye. No agenda. The next item on that agenda is the adoption of the minutes from our meeting on the 9th of this month. I would move the adoption of those minutes as presented. I would second that. Seeing no discussion. All those in favor? Aye. Next we have a public forum. We have any members from the public who would like to speak? No, no, no, neither. Wow. So I'll open and close public forum and we're on to our deliberative agenda. And the first thing is a Main Street, Great Streets construction update. And I'm assuming Laura's not here. I'm not here for that. I don't know if she's been once. Well, I will just say that we added this to the agenda last week when it became apparent that the contractor had envisioned a different start sequencing for this project. And so we really wanted to come to you directly and talk about communications we are going to be having with the public. And I'll have Laura go in details of that. This is going to be a massive generational upgrade to 100 year old infrastructure under Main Street, but it's not going to come without some challenges. And we are going to be working with you all together to minimize those inch-packs. Laura, why don't you frame up a little bit about the sequencing of the work? Yeah, so in conversations with SC Ireland, they've always been clear that they want to start on the moving sewers bypass construction. So this will essentially take the existing or mainstream flow offline with a new large pipeline. Initially, their proposal when they presented it to us in their bid indicated that they would start at the intersection of Maple and Church. Conversations last week, they have requested to alter that and actually start in the intersection in the middle of Main Street as their first location, working on the sewer pipe that actually goes between the Main Street and the back of Fire Station 1. What this is, so starting the week of February 5th, this sewer dam hole, which is actually Maddie is showing the graphic of the area, the red line is the new sewer pipe that's to be installed. The location is a little on the southern side of Main Street, so it's kind of on the opposite side of the room where they eventually will continue work, which means that they have to do a 24-foot-need pull across Main Street and they've requested that they close that block to traffic while they're doing this work. It is a reasonable request based on the scale of the work and the size of the equipment that they have going on. We've looked at, even though the road is really wide through there, it would be difficult based on its location and the fact that they have to go immediately north of here to keep the road open. That road closure would be for about two weeks because they're anticipating the time that they think that work would take before they're able to open traffic up one way up the hill, so that is eastbound, that way, on the back. It'll be about another week as they continue to work on the fight going north before that they can clear two-way traffic. So somewhere between the third and fourth week, probably the fourth week, to be able to resume two-way traffic on Main Street. Our outreach, let me first go back to the sidewalk when the south side would remain open in its entirety the entire time. We do think that there's also going to be a lane that they're going to use for their construction, but also that emergency vehicle if needed to access on that block will be able to pass by. It's kind of our standard for construction sites, 14-foot path somewhere through there for emergency response. Pedestrian access entirely on the south side. The north side, you're going to have access to all the properties, but you won't be able to cross where that red line crosses towards the fire station. So there's going to be a lot of activity and literally a very large hole to dig 25 feet in the ground to set the new pipe. Sidewalk comes down across. On the north side, yeah, that north side sidewalk will be interrupted during the work. Until they get across. Crosswalk so that people who would be walking down there, the approach like that, because you've got the cut-through from the library, which some people may walk through there, not very many, but they're at night down. So would we... Yes, we'll take a look at what the library pattern is. My guess is we're going to direct them out to Union. We're going to try to direct pedestrians to cross the road at Union. Able-bodied people are going to do what Able-bodied people can do, but we will work on making sure that signage and accessible routes are maintained. When would the roads be closed? You said the... The week of February 5th is what the contractor has asked for. So we've already initiated email outreach to the all the property owners that are adjacent to this. Fire Department received a communication yesterday. The gas station, Perry Winkles, the property owner that is between the fire station and Memorial received communication yesterday, along with the Flynn and Cafe Hot, who has leased inside of the parking lot. And then the residences received store hangers today. We are preparing... Reading on the list is final draft of an outreach and it's going to go out to our entire outreach stakeholders list. Is there a reason why... So you have Perry Winkles, that's the first one. It looks like that... I think it's the Long Gray. Yes. And then... But there are a couple of other places like J-Skies. Yeah, they received their communication yesterday. We're going to be with them tomorrow morning. And meeting with them with Laura and Kara at 9am. And I just have a quick question. I'm sure that this has happened, but just want some clarity on it. Has there been communication with admins about... Like I'm sure that this would impact school drop-off and pickup and just general traffic from kids walking and then also cars and such. So what will that look like? Yep, they received their notification with today's batch of outreach. And we fully expect, and with our public outreach consultant, they're working on documents to help people with the detour routes. This will look like documents that the Sheldon Street Roundabout would have created when we had significant detours. We are offering support to the schools to create a graphic to assist with their parent pickup and drop-off. Hopefully they take us up on it. But it's required partnership there. We're going to support... So Perry Winkles is probably the most significantly impacted that their driveway will actually be entirely closed for two weeks. They do have access on King Street, but the 25-foot hole is on each side of the opening of their driveway. There's two minutes. So we're going to put up some signage to help people find the actual entrance to this business. We are working with the Flynn as they have numerous shows throughout the month of February that they can put a communication in their ticket holder information that goes out for the shows to the ticket holders. The detour would be detour people at Union and you split them. So Union is one way. But yes, the detour as you're coming into downtown as you will use Union to college to come around. Right. GMT receives a communication today. I apologize. They are on our list. They come from your advance. Okay. And then going out of town or directing people to the main street. So kind of splitting the volume of traffic. Obviously, people familiar with their transportation grade are going to do what they feel is comfortable to them. But those that are less informed will be directed to those rates. The lot by the fire department is not being closed. The lot by the fire department closes the week of February 5th as well because of the size of lights creation that's required to be able to do the work. So that entire quarter from Winooski to the construction is going to be taken out of circulation. But the road itself, Winooski Avenue, is not going to be closed. Winooski is going to remain open and the intersection at its entirety will remain open. It'll be local traffic only in the very closed section. So people will still be able to get to the gas station driveway. Winooski, people will still be able to actually get to J. Ski's driveway and parking via Union. We're actually also going to add head-in parking in front of the memorial to help replace some of the lost parking capacity while that block is closed. That's to help those people who do have blocked driveways and the circulation of that head-in as in like. No, not even to get pulled straight out like it's a parking lot and then go back out and go back out to Main Street. Very local, but in service of the tattoo place that's on the north side and J. Ski's. Imagine that people from Paramount Coast will probably be willing to park there, some of them. That will be interesting when you have people to sort of manage that lot when chaos occurs. Jensir Island is planning a flyer at each end in support of both the restroom questions that are going to come. How do I get here as well as the vehicles looking to get into this area, making sure they have a beautiful destination? And also maybe the way they park. As somebody who works a parking lot on weekends, the manual in some areas is very neat. I very helpful there. Yes, we did mention to some of the adjacent property owners that we told about this parking directing people of how this is going to look because we don't want to strike back. We're just going to have to go against the flow of what's there. Probably should be a little bit similar. Somebody actually stand there with their yellow vest and go here. Yep. My last question about this is about how long we think the closure will be. I mean, is there a fair amount of certainty about the three to four week timeframe or could it be longer? It's a pretty limited scope for what they need to do initially. The first structure, they think it's going to take them a week to dig it and set it and backfill. And then basically one crew turns into two crews. One goes east and does another structure similar depth. The other one goes north and starts setting the pipe until they really get proximate to the main and Waduski lot. Inside of that lot, because of where the sewer is going to go, we have to actually remove the western retaining wall that goes down to the back of the fire station. So that wall has to be downloaded to the entire, I don't know if you can zoom in more, Maddie. The amount of work space that this is going to take up is pretty sizable. The red line is drawn. It looks really close to the property line, but it's really like 15 or 20 feet in. So the first bay of parking to the air monitoring station is essentially going to be excavation. The second bay is going to be what they excavated. And the third bay is being held for firefighter staff parking outside there, both in what they're losing adjacent to their building because of the excavation, as well as the loss of being able to go down the background for the staff. Answers. Thanks. Weather? Weather? Weather. Yeah. You know, like... There is some of that. There are new built-in fudge for her as Sarah. I think it's fair to say that our press release is going to have a disclaimer for all timelines that they could be extended based on extenuating circumstances. So while there's some wiggle in there, certainly we're at the control of Mother Nature here. And work can be done in this, you know, whether or does it cease to be possible? They essentially just need to keep the material unfrozen. She can do with blankets and bringing in material that's not part of the top of the surface pile. As long as they are compacting it as unfrozen material, they are allowed to continue work. The other piece of the update is basically once we start allowing one-way traffic back on Main Street, that crew is gonna move to the intersection of Church and Maple and that intersection will be closed while they do that work, which is about a three-week timeframe. And then they will move north from there. The one thing that I was thinking about when you started talking about closing Main Street is, and the reason I asked about the certainty around how long it'll be closed is we had this Eclipse thing coming up in April, which they're, you know, based on projections could be 50,000 people coming to the city and we would certainly be Main Street for that. And I don't know about, if you're factoring the eclipse of that into any of the construction schedule. The eclipse has gone into every construction contract, so we have less of a holiday. There are a few ongoing ones that it doesn't appear, but we're letting people know as far as we can, including the contractor stuff, the potential challenges of that day. Great. Main Street will... It's a whole weekend, actually. Yeah. Main Street should not have active construction on it from this project at that specific time. They will be working in the main Amadooski lot. They'll be working on Church Street, but not on this street. It's the estimate. So the communication that I had in front of me was really to all the counselors, a little later today, so you'll receive the next truck. It's not great. Yeah, I mean, the only other thing would be to just keep us posted. I think that the eclipse is, it's a marker that's going to continue to make people be worried, right? As you know, in whatever other kind of like giant event, St. Patrick's Day. Another one of those fine days when Ireland tries to bring their trucks into town. Maybe they can just honk the trucks that they had. Yeah. Yeah. Point taken. I think one of the challenges we've had is some businesses see this as peak season for them, the Flynn and Jay Skis, other businesses see it as the off season. And so we were trying to work with businesses to avoid impact and yet their busy seasons are all over the past. So, Hannah, do you have anything else? Nope. Thank you though. Yeah. Well, thank you for that update. Thank you. Yeah. So we're going to go through that sort of whole phase. I'm sure you will do as well. Well, please. On the next item on our agenda is the GMT FY 25 of Assessment and Federal Resumption. Hey, everybody, how are you? Good to have you. Glad to be back. I'm going to talk to the committee about things that are happening with the GMT. And as usual, I think I have kind of a mixed bag of things that are going well, things that don't need to work. We'll see them, I'll tell you what you will think of those and respond. The things that I want to talk about is the assessment, our return to fares and the equity considerations that go into the fair system. Also understand that there may be some interest on the committee here about the state and non-federal match study that just was published. Happy to dive into there. So my thinking was that I would go over the assessment, then go into the fairs and then talk about the federal match studies that make sense to you all together. And Hannah, I'm sorry that I'm not looking at use and so I'm looking at the councilors in the room, so please don't be disturbed that I ignore you. I'm not offended, but thank you. Thank you. And there is a one-pager that you submitted that's in the documents that everybody has seen. Yes, thank you, Greg and Jacob. And so that just addressed specifically the equity concerns regarding the fairs because I thought that there would be some stats there that would be interesting to you all. Before we dive into those topics, I do want to just let you know that we've had some good news in terms of our ride overall ridership numbers for the first six months of our fiscal year, going July to December. We've had over a million rides and October was our highest ridership months since the pandemic. And so we're happy to see that the rebound that started earliest in our urban service continues and that ridership is riding over so we can continue to get to the numbers that we previously had. Jumping into the assessment, the overall assessment as it stands now is 1.9 million, it's up 4.1% over the previous year. When you look at that breakout, Burlington was very flat when it came to paratransit. That's the ADA service for folks who are unable to use the fixed route service and that can fluctuate immensely depending on the number of users in an area. And in Burlington, it was the paratransit rate only went up 0.3%. We've had one of our communities that went up 55% in one year. So I tell you that because one of the things that the board has done since I was last here is that we adopted a new paratransits assessment methodology that will use a running average to help make those peaks and valleys less drastic because we understand the negative budget impacts that are here. Looking at the fixed route assessment, that went up by 4%. And when you look at the ridership and you project it out over a year and then you look at the assessment, that the assessment comes to just under a dollar a ride. So just to give you an idea of what the contribution is for folks who are using the service. One of the things that I want to bring up is that over the past four years has been an overpayment that Burlington has made. One of the things that to challenge with putting together the GMT budget is that we put it out, we cracked our budget before we know whether we're going to be fair or free or not. And so what ended up happening in this is that we continue to assess you in Burlington for routes that traditionally had been fair pretty in the College Street Shuttle and we continue to assess those during the pandemic. And that means that there is a $336,000 overpayment that has happened over the past four years. I can tell you that what our plan is is to have that be removed from your assessment over time to bring you back to home. And I'm sorry that that was something that didn't fit. So it wasn't caught until somewhat recently. I'm not sure the Board of Commissioners will meet one more time to discuss fiscal year 25 budgets. And so I'm not sure if that will begin with fiscal year 25's assessment, in which case it would be a reduction there or if it will begin the following year. So I know that we had already sort of built our fiscal year 25 budget without having a return. And so that would require us to do some additional budgetary work, but that's your problem, that's ours. And so our plan is again, over time to make you hold that. And over what period of time? I would like it to be as soon as possible. I can tell you that really it's just gonna depend on how much it will impact our local match. There's been a proposal of having it over 10 years. I think that's too long. How long was it, how long was the period that it was assessed for? Four years. Four years, yeah. This is one counselor would say that if you went over a four-year period, you would be, it would be highly inept. Sooner would be, I think the most appropriate, when there are refunds, but... Understood. And certainly we're gonna put things in place so that we identify these earlier so that we can do an immediate return as opposed to this is the gap has grown and how do we do this without impacting our local matchability to draw down the funds? And so I'm happy to bring that message back to thank you. You can tell them that if there were things like shortages on assessments or on taxes, that there'd be penalties and interest. So perhaps if we're not gonna assess you penalties and interest, we should get back a little quicker. I will let them know that your offer and that's a great deal. I am offering you a really good deal. Maybe even two years from now. I'll slide down to that. Okay, we'll wave the penalties and interest. Okay, we have a motion in a second for four years with zero interest. Zero interest. Let's see if panic can get us over to the open line. Okay, the... We should have made it two, but... I appreciate your flexibility. Thank you. So that's where the assessment is. And one of the things that I'm really happy about is that when I was here before, I talked to you about our overtime rate being so high and that has come down some because we have had success with recruiting. I think I had told you before about eliminating the starting rate so that we were able to do a better job of bringing in new drivers without actually really significantly increasing our costs because it only applies to folks who were first here. And so what I'm just saying is that I'm pleased that even with an overtime rate of 30%, we're able to keep the assessment growth just to the 4%. So let's talk about fares. So, oh, before you do that, okay. So you had the adjustment for an overpayment. Is that line item now removed from the budget? So is that how to... So I think that that's what the Board of Commissioners at GMT will be deciding is that it will apply to 25. Well, I'm not talking about the refund. I'm sort of talking about, so, okay, we paid over. So like now in the payments now... Oh, yes, yes. How is that? I shouldn't be clear that for fiscal year 25 I'll be asking for that not to be included, which will reduce the overall 336 number because that included in fiscal year 25. So yes, that I will be asking you to make. Because it doesn't make sense whether you continue to collect it over a debt and what it has on the violence. That would be fundamentally wrong. And yes, I agree. So that plays into the next topic because it is about our policy and what Burlington wants moving forward whether we want fair, free service or not. Correct. And so one of the things that you heard me say before and I'll reiterate is that the Board of Commissioners, the GMT Board of Commissioners made a priority of service preservation over fair, free service. I'm sort of carrying that through. One of the things that we would like not to do is to have a fair, free route as we've had in the past. One of the reasons why we're comfortable with that is because we believe that the new fair system is much more economically equitable to folks and I'm gonna kind of walk through that. The other thing that I did wanna bring up is that I think that I've mentioned to you all before is that the decision to return to fairs was largely made at the state level with the state transportation bill. And that did set a 10% revenue target for us. And so that target is something that when we put our fair system back into place, we couldn't sort of just hand out discounts as much as we would like it because we wouldn't be able to meet the target. And so, but with that in mind, what we know is that based on using our existing discounts for riders who are between six and 17, 60 and over and who have a self-identified disability, we know about half of our riders qualify for those discounts. And so those folks would have a fair of $1 and there would be caps that would keep them at the two and the 25 which we've heard me talk about before. Really what makes the system far more equitable is the accessibility of those caps because when you look at our most cost-effective way to use public transit before, people had to buy that monthly pass. They had to work over $50 or $40 depending on the time to get that. And as a result, only 17% of the rides that we provided were to somebody who was using a monthly pass. So most people were not getting any type of discount for usage. They may have the discount because of their age or because of having a disability, but there would be no cap to what they would spend. And so without that cap, we know that, 83% of our rides did not come about from a pass, a monthly pass. And so somebody who was a workday rider, and I'm defining that as just somebody who Monday through Friday goes to work, it's 22 days on average each month. And so those folks who weren't discounted would pay $66 a month. And those who weren't discounted would pay $33. And again, under the new system, it'd be capped at 15, 25. And if our past usage is consistent, which I know is a very big F because the role has changed significantly since 2020. But based on what we think we know about our riders, we think that there's a very good chance that half of our riders will get to the cap during that month. So half of our riders will have that price protection. And so that's why we're going from essentially having 17% of rides be price protected, probably from folks who can afford the price protections. Now we'll have price protections for half of the folks and they don't have to even think about it. We also really like the fact that they don't have to worry about the risk. Hey, I think I'm going to use transit a lot this month. They don't have to make that guessing game. And they don't have to worry about losing the piece of paper and then that value is completely gone. And lastly, what also really helps equity is the ability to travel out of the region where previously they were going to be sort of stuck in urban local. And now they'll be able to get out to Montpelier, to St. Albans, to Heinz, the proud Heinz presentation part of that book, to Jeffersonville, the commuter lines, they're going to be able to get those where before there was a premium for those longer distance routes. So that's sort of the equity of the system itself. Why I think it's going to be much better for our riders. And I do want to bring up, because this is something that we're going to be talking to the legislature about, is that I really feel strongly that what is hurting our growth in ridership and also making our ridership less equitable, is just the public safety problem that we're all managing here in Burlington. We know that we have heard from riders who are physically vulnerable, especially from older riders that they don't feel comfortable using the service. And that applies to both the internal, our employees. We've had some female employees, we had a bus driver quit because she just said, no, I no longer feel safe being out here, driving in the community. And as well as the X-Trail. One of the things that sort of has surprised me is that in the past six months, we received more daily email contacts from people asking us to return to fair service than asking us to continue having our fairs be free. I never expected that. And I'm sure that come March 6th, there will be plenty of people, more people, but one of the things that is almost always identified, there was one person who I wanted to frame his because he had this impassioned fairs are part of the keeping the economic viability of public transit. And just like, whoa, if everybody was like him, that'd be amazing. But everybody, but that awesome fellow was really focused on the physical security that they feel that it is not safe for them. And we had one of our riders who provided input and her statement is from her perception, our buses have become mobile day stations. And she's just not sure that she can continue to use the service, even though she's been using it for 20 years and has been happy not to have to have a car. One of the things that has really been a challenging at the downtown transit center is that I know how important the access to public restrooms are for equity for folks who are on house. But the unfortunate reality is that that means that those bathrooms are frequently used as a place to safely use drugs. And that then will lead to conflict that leads to medical events that are happening at the transit center. That again, people don't really want to be around. One of the things that really shocked me having lived in Vermont for 20 some odd years and believing that we were in this beautiful, a liberal paradise that I love was the amount of racial disharmony that occurs at the transit center. We have our transit center supervisor. It's a new American. He is somewhat regularly referred to his face as the N-word. We have people who are using racial slurs, yelling and screaming. And the thing that's a challenge is that these aren't necessarily writers. These are people that are adjacent to the transit center. When they need to, when their addiction is on them, they use their public restroom and then come off. And so it creates a situation where we've had really negative encounters between students from Burlington High School and the unhoused population that's there. And we've also seen what appears to be the targeting. We had a black writer who was just sitting on the phone, minding his own business, and people ran on the platform, sprayed him in the base with bear spray or ran away. We don't know what the cause of that was, but it appears to be a targeted attack and just has really surprised me at what is happening there. And so coming from somebody who has worked in human services and has about the most progressive views of the people that I work with, one of the things that I also get concerned about is if we were gonna have fair free service on just one or two routes, that that may concentrate sort of the negative behaviors on those, but that's just speculation. I don't know if that's actually what would be the case, but it would be something that I'd be worried about. So I'm sorry to kind of take the ferris into the safety issue, but it is something that we're gonna be talking with the legislature about. We're hoping that our next grant application with B-Trans is going to include additional funds to help us with security enhancements. We are not looking for traditional law enforcement, security enhancements. One of the things that I'm really proud of is that we're partnering with Pathways Vermont to have training to staff on de-escalation because I think that a lot of the de-escalation training that is available through the transit industry is making an assumption that the person that your de-escalating is not having overdose medical is not having a sort of psychotic break. And there's different approaches that you wanna take to there. And the thing that I really love about their approach is that they refer to it as a relationship-based approach because that person uses our service and we can't respond to them in such a way that is kind of poison their use of that service future. And so I'm hoping that that will really be effective. Anything about fares? I know that I've lasted you all in the past about the new system. Oh, there's one really cool thing about the new system that I want to let you know that's ongoing. We, Diva, the same Medicaid agency has a program that provides free bus transportation for Medicaid recipients who have been verified to not have access to a vehicle. Prior to the pandemic, it was estimated that there was about 120 folks that met that category in the Burlington area. Diva thinks that that may be close to 500 now. One of the things that is really positive is that CMS has loosened the guidelines on that program. And what they realized is that by only paying for a person's ride to a medical appointment, they're actually spending more money in verification than it would be just to buy a person a monthly pass. And so we're working with Diva and the people that are on Medicaid who are the verified lack of a vehicle in their household looks very much likely that they will be able to get free service, free transit service. So that's something that, to their medical provider, like out to Tilly Lane Plus, they'll be able to use it, they'll be just on monthly pass. So we think that's gonna be a huge equity improvement. And the new system will help us, is one of the things that we'll have to be able to do is that even though the verification requirements are less, we still have to show that they used our system within the month. And so it will be a very easy report for us to be able to get out of the new system where previously you'd have no idea what they used their pass. Before you leave, Ferris, I think the policy question for us all to grapple with is currently the Burlington and our assessment pays for part of route 11 of former Call of Streets shuttle to be fair and free. And there was a council resolution in 2021 regarding North Gwinnieski Avenue to make the city look fair and free. So what staff is recommending, I certainly, I fall on the preserving service side of things in lieu of a fair and free service because our financials are so tight, but we've had other direction from the council. So should there be a desire to adjust the fair and free designation on the Call of Streets shuttle route 11 and not implement fair and free service on the city loop because the new fair system is equitable, I think that would be something that this committee should recommend to the full board. If that's not your direction, then we should have that conversation as it will impact our assessment, FY25. So the original Call of Streets shuttle idea really was for us getting university students up and down the hill, it's a big hill, it also was the medical center, we were looking to really keep the waterfront vital. So there are a number of different public policies that are integrated with that. And for me, the key is to be analyzing the effectiveness of that with the eye to increasing usership. And so it may be that we haven't done that analysis in which case I probably would be, I would want to see the numbers for College Street to really understand who is being affected and how much and then the outcome of how people are going to, because if all that all people are doing is going up and down, which is important from, say, the waterfront, I think it's really important to say that the waterfront, the library, right? And they don't have to, it's about a half a mile, okay. But it's a long steep half a mile for a lot of people. Then, I mean, that will tell us something different than the numbers if you go all the way up to Hill as well. So before I would be willing to make that, I would really like to be able to see those numbers and also see how we can encourage increase ridership from the populations that are there consistent with doing this part of transportation demand management, which I don't know that we're doing a great job as a city. And in a way, it's sort of a settler, but different look at the city because we're looking at Newsy Avenue, just parking for Newsy Avenue. So what's the transportation demands there? We've had one study goes up to Furnill, City Loop, I think it does go and goes up there. Those are folks that probably are undercard, right? And need to get places. And then the last piece of my thinking on this, just as if, we're looking at this as a dollar ride, but a dollar to go from the waterfront to the library is a lot more money than a dollar that would go take you from Burlington to Windows, right? So the equities that are involved in the buck riding, even if we're gonna cap it, it's just, I just sort of raise that in terms of the way we're looking at the service in this relationship to the fee and I, there's some value to people not having to walk up the hill. So that might mitigate some of that, but you know what I mean with that? One of the things that's gonna be very helpful to us is that we'll have a better granularity when it comes to how the service is used, but we're also gonna be able to have that granularity as far as, hey, we know this route has 70% of its riders, our discount riders, instead of the normal in 50-50, and that will help us, I think, in making the decisions as well, because we're gonna just have a better understanding of what each of those riders, the population should be able to do. Do want to let you know that we are restarting the same unlimited access program for students at the University of Vermont, so that they'll continue as they have in the past to have the university paid for them, their rides. And it's really kind of, I love it when the economics work so that you have a financial incentive to do the right thing. And the way the FDA, Federal Transportation Administration, treats fares is not entirely as a peer-reliable match. It's not as valuable as a peer-reliable match, but the money that we generate from the unlimited user access agreement with University of Vermont is totally treated as a total match. So when we find other payers that pay for people's rides, it improves our financial position. And that's gonna be a huge incentive for us to continue finding employers, schools, development groups, developers. Yes, to pay for there, because that will make our money go much farther. Hannah, did you want to get in with any questions? I don't think so. I'm still thinking about it right now. Okay, I have a question about, there's no action on our agenda on this, but you were just suggesting that you need direction from us. So I think, yeah, I think it's kind of, I need you to start thinking about it now and get directions like Gene just offered about what information you need. And then frankly, I think a decision needs to be made one way or another, what happens if what 25? So in what timeframe does that decision be made? I would hope that by next month, I mean, we need to set the assessment for Burlington while ADA is passed years. The fare free is real time. So if we don't charge a fare on the shuttle, we'll be paying what they've assigned to us. If we decide it is gonna pay a fare, then actually our assessment goes down in FY 25. And so we need to understand that so they can fill the city down appropriately. February 15th is when we're statutorily required to have the budget done. Got it. So do we need to make that decision now? Or do we need to? Do we make it? Or do we at least, we're not making it, we're making it, we're making it for a recommendation. Right, and then you would bring that. But you're not looking for it before the 15th. I would just say that if we wanted to make like major decisions about making a round fare for you or not, that in order for us to include it in our budget, we would have to have it by that. You know, we do things outside the budgets like a long time. That's what we're trying to adjust to before. Just letting you know that that's the constraint that we have. Okay. Can I just ask a question? And I apologize if you already referenced this, but just thinking about the fare free model, what's the data on, have you experienced that when a route is fare free, more folks utilize the bus service? Or like, how has ridership varied when a route is fare free versus when it's not, if that makes sense? So the reality is, is that we don't have real world data here in Burlington, because what drove the fare free, of course, was the world-like pandemic that influenced public transit was used. What I can tell you is, is that during our fare free time, we have never gotten to our peak fare service that we had during fares. And so I'm not sure that we have the information that in today's world that fare free service will get us back to those amounts. We may not see it ever get back to that, although that's obviously not the direction that we want to move in. The, should you set something up? We have studied the potential impact of returning to fares and the estimate was the 16% reduction. And like one of the things that I've noticed on my ride is that, and I think, Jean, you sort of alluded to this in some of your other comments. I remember being on the Pine Street and somebody jumped on the bus and they literally got off two stops. I mean, it was like 200 yards, sure. And so like that person probably in the future, if there was a fare, we'd just say, I don't know, walk that. And so I think that a lot of those decreases probably would be sort of similar situations where people are gonna have the threshold or the convenience will be raised up just a little bit because of that. I think depending on the number of times that you jump on for that 200s and that may be a reason to have a card. Yes. From my own perspective, I am open for one, for this year and only this year, not like, okay, said it and forget it. Looking at a return to fares, if, and really only if we have a capacity and a commitment to look at the, excuse me, the TDM, look at TDM to see about the maximization of ridership so that we are working with Pat Ma and you have UVM there, but we are looking like Manuski Avenue, the city, well, the food shelter is right there. Pathways is right there. There are all these players, the Mascoma Bank has got a branch there because they got a commitment to doing public banking. We've got all around the place. So the idea of us actively trying to get cards in people's hands, trying to see if people are eligible and not just making it, well, it's out there somewhere in the ether, but actually pushing discount things, doing an evaluation of other income groups and employers really sort of looking at this in a way like we were talking with Bird in terms of the commuting aspect of it and getting to the medical center so that we can start to build it. And if we did that, if we got a commitment to do that, which includes, it's just not on you, it's on Katm, it's on our planning department, then it would be worth having people have those cards so we can get the data and we can start to make these choices because we could always decide that we're gonna change the fee structure to accommodate lower-wage working people, which is something that I want. The person making 20 bucks an hour these days is not making a lot of money. They are a poor working person and if they can help them get to work, get to the doctor, get to the grocery store, that would be really helpful. I totally agree. One of the things that it's a double-edged sword when somebody sets a 10% revenue goal because now I'm like, oh, I don't have to generate more than 6%. So if we find that usage goes up and the data says that we can make adjustments or offer more discounts, I'm happy to follow that path. Any other questions? Yeah, and so kind of like along those, the lines that Jean just referenced, just thinking about other communities in Burlington, New Vermonters and such that New American communities, how is this information relayed to them? Is there translation services? Thinking about the card structure, will it be offered in other languages? Because I know even for me, someone that has so much information just readily available and it is very simple for me to have access to this. Thinking about what that will look like for someone that English is not a first language. Is there any idea of how these change it if there are changes, how it will be communicated to them? Absolutely, I'm glad that you asked. As we speak, we are publishing up. We had a contractor provide us with informational videos that are in the most popular languages that are in the Burlington area with our Title VI program were required to track the languages that are used in our service zone. And so I can't remember the exact number of languages that were translated, but we're going to have these one minute videos that will be first, like we're going to return to fair service and this is what fairs are. And just like the concept, then we're here's how you create your account and then here's how you get on the bus and use it. And so those will be available to folks. We are partnering with the organizations that serve those communities by sending them information and really what you're going to see is that this February is going to be our sort of media blitz time where we try to get ready. The system will be live either this week or next week with us will be able to start creating people's accounts. And so the hope is that by the time March 6th rolls around the vast majority of riders have already created their account. We know that about 90% of our riders use smart phones. And so to be able to create an account will be as simple as downloading the Duncan app. And then for those folks who want to use a card because they prefer not to use their phone or because they don't have a phone or because they want to be a cash based rider, they'll be able to use the smart cards and we will have people at the center available to create the accounts for them. Awesome. Thank you. I want to wrap this up. I'm really concerned about the security situation we describe, especially the downtown transit center. We can do all we want with fare structures and everything to incentivize riders. But people aren't feeling safe. They're not going to use the service. Totally agree. And I know we have the school, at least for another two years, it's going to be just down the street there. Yes. So we really need to make sure that gets addressed if you need advocacy in your state outreach. I'm certain the council and the administration would be willing to help you with that. But one of the things you mentioned was around how you want to improve the security situation there. Is there, there isn't like, it's basically on the deep downtown transit center staff right now to manage the security situation. Yes. Is there any interest in having a security presence, even if it were private security, try to, it would help deter and... We have been unable to find a security provider that has the capacity. We have reached out to channels departments. We've reached out to the Burlington police, of course, everyone knows their capacity. We reached out to chocolate thunder. And the reality is that they just don't have the capacity for a daily security support. Well, it seems like that would be helpful to your situation. Even if it wasn't a long-term strategy, it would be. I agree more. Okay, I agree. Good. And go ahead, Helen. I just have a quick, sorry, a quick question on that. When an incident happens on a bus, like what does the driver call the police? Like if it's in Burlington, do they call BPD? How is that handled? So when there is an incident, the first call goes to the supervisor. We have supervisors on staff, just about all the time that we... I don't mean on staff. I'm working in the area just about all the times that we have buses running. They kind of come out and be the first responder to that. They'll make the assessment of whether they need to include law enforcement there. If it's an obvious law enforcement situation, then the driver potentially could call 911 themselves, but it usually goes through with the supervisor. In most cases, it's able to be de-escalated and resolved there. And then what happens is that we make a determination about whether or not the individual should be able to continue to use the service. And then we do an incident right up. Our supervisor group meets on a bi-weekly basis to review the incidents, to watch generally there's videos because all of our buses in the transit center have good security cameras systems. And then we make an evaluation of whether that person is safe to continue using the service. It's not a punitive, no trespass. It's entirely based on whether the individual would be a... reasonably be a threat to police or the riders. And if necessary, then we'll end up no trespassing the individual. I can tell you the enforcement of that no trespass is extremely difficult because we are not law enforcement. We'll have people who will continue to attempt to use the service and we have to use our soft skills to sort of de-escalate those situations. But the thing that scares our staff, we just look at the past week, the individual involved in the arm standoff yesterday is a frequent GMT rider that we've had the no trespass. The person that burned down several buildings in Manuski this past week is a person who is a GMT rider that we frequently no trespass. And we're a part of the Church Street Marketplace community security group. We are all sort of, we know the same people that they do and the unfortunate reality is that that small subset of the population is really making it less viable for the whole. Thanks. Any other questions with the committee? Seeing none. I think one of the things that we need to nail down is the idea of a recommendation or an action on part of this committee by February 15. Anybody have ideas about how we... Usually I'm kind of sick for having more meetings than anybody else cares to have. So I would be willing to do that if there was a deadline. Otherwise I just hope that we can do it at their next meeting. I guess my thought is to not try to get it done before the 15th and then the impact, the financial impact of the Costry Shuttle we pay about 57,000 in foregone fairs. I don't know, Clay, to you and Nick, would it be possible for Burlington to make that decision a little later? We do a mid-year budget adjustment. We absolutely do. Yeah. We put an action on our February schedule. The 27th. I'm going to have to do that by remote, by the way, because I'm taking care of babies. Just to make sure that we're clear is that at that point in time we're going to be able to tell you what our past not-so-great data is for those routes. And so we won't actually have the better data to look at. I think that by the summer we're going to start to have some clarity on our decision because we'll have a couple of months with students and in some months without students. And I think that that will be a good picture of us. Could you provide it with the if we were to go away from fair free on that? Could you provide us with a look at this year's assessment what the increases are, but then break that up and tell what savings we would be having for the city? Yes. And so I know that it would be the 1.928 million minus 57. And then the question would be knowing our four-year commitment, whether we are able to get the first sort of return into 25 or if we're not able to do that until 26. So we should be able to do that. And did we do the no fair on the city loop or it's still the whole system's fair free. So we haven't been able to have an assessment on that. Got it. The only route is the one on the street show. That's the only part of the assessment. But to be clear by March 6th there will be a fair on the city loop as well as everything other than the college street show such that if we make a decision to go fair free on the city loop that wouldn't start until July 1. Right. Great. Thank you. And thank you. And our bear is on college will it start until July 1? Correct. We didn't we didn't cover the non-total match study but we did cover the non-total match study. The reader's digest is is that fiscal year 26 GOT run out of its focus relief funds. We have a projected one and a half to $2 million deficit fiscal year 26. We have a projected $3 million deficit fiscal year 27. And certainly we have a projected one and a half to $2 million deficit fiscal year 27. So in a legislative report I read that there is discussion at the state level for a sustainable funding plan. It would be very helpful to get the details of that to be able for us to understand how we can intervene. I think that it did not I don't know how much it dealt to get that but I think it did help. Are you or Anna are you going either to the legislative launch tomorrow? Anna are you going? If I will make sure someone brings that up at the legislative launch that the city councilors are having as the legislative. Thank you. I don't want to take more of your time but if that asked that the Vermont Public Transit Association makes is acted upon that would resolve about half of our funding problem and so we're probably going to ask the legislature to go beyond what APTA is doing so that we're fully resolved or come up with other recommendations to resolve. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll close that item and the next is the solar ordinance and rooftop regulations part two. So the seventh stage for this one we had we had all of these to come up. I thought I was leaving some room for you to that's fine. I was making it easier for us to do that. We had Andrew Chelnick from South Burlington he shared with us some of the South Burlington requirements for rooftop solar and I looked at the meeting minutes yesterday and Bill had said he was going to go do some homework and come back to us in October. Things got in the way here you are in January to give us a follow-up on that. And if I could just add something that was lingering from prior to that was the whole question of how we regulate the installation of rooftop solar homes and its relationship with the state fire code and all of that. So that's why. So my intent I think I at least want to wrap it to our staff the DPI general plan was for me to give a three minute overview and then let them share any thoughts and ask questions because I think what's most likely to come out of this is your questions from the committee council members would be relevant to bring back for example, Burlington Electric staff because they do have quite a bit of this with Chris Burns' team and also playing in zoning but rather than bring everybody all at once I thought we'd start with this sort of informational piece and get some of the components about the fire code taken care of because I think it's generally low hanging crew. So the solar ready piece for me meant I looked at it from a couple of different components which is the building code and then the location of buildings and their place and the placement of the rooms would never be in zoning as far as the building code my general sense is and that's why both Brad Biggie is here one of the he's the senior building official and Kim has the second building official or junior building official if you will that works for me at the department for the inspections the trades the vision generally speaking there are some conversations about rooftops whether they were safe because they might need to be a structural evaluation to see if they would handle the rooftop load generally the building code yeah Brad's been Brad, do you want to say something Brad? Yeah I don't have a camera going here can you hear me? Yeah I can hear you can you hear me? Yeah we can hear you but I don't show as a Yeah you are listed as a panelist so if you wouldn't mind holding off for a couple minutes we'll ask for comments I'll give my summary and then either staff can speak and have counselors ask questions yeah we're good we don't have a video back in Florida so the structural piece Kim can speak about the zoning piece would really be some of the some of the sections that the South Burlington Planning Commission member the person who spoke from South Burlington about their zoning permit was really referenced to aligning the buildings on the street where they would be put foundationally and then how the rooftops would be aligned those types of things are not part of what the trades team looks at they'd really be in the the zoning ordinance and we would bring in the Planning Commission for consideration of that and make a title the third piece would be once there's a design in place one of the things I think you specifically heard about and then another part of the city property owners when they get a permit to do solar they want to do the whole rooftop and Chairman Brown you're the ones who are reviewing those permits but it comes back to the fire code and the Vermont building code that we are under the division of the fire safety the state of Vermont regulates what we can do for that but we are a local expert Matt who can tell you what the fire department does for venting there are some updates in the current code rewrites that he can speak to specifically if there are questions about that and respectfully from that time I might I'll deal with my own staff they're upset about staying late but if we can talk about that piece afterwards first that we Matt could potentially get out here earliest but then the last piece really is about because they are a key piece on when a project is being proposed and developed they meet with us in the planning stage and the all of the team members from the permitting process from all the different departments are here and you need what the people before they come before the different either the DRB or through the Decide Advisory Board submit permits to think about what the considerations are going to be we're going to electric is the lead on meeting them in advance to talk about what their building code requirements are going to be for energy for weather stations or the meeting the residential and commercial building efficiency standards the zoning team loops back around because my team on the zoning side when we were doing a suit of occupancy when we close out from it we're confirming that those documents have been filed appropriately they're on file of the third treasure's office that property owner and contractor have certified that they met those requirements in the commercial building efficiency standards and the residential building efficiency standards so there's a number of different considerations in that if I if I can interject real quick go ahead if a building has a solar install has certificate of public good or a net metering number they're exempt from zoning so it comes down to meeting the fire code with setbacks centerline accesses so on and so forth so if you're going to have a new building the requirements for the structural loads are in the IBC so they're already there for new construction when we issue permits for solar on existing structures the installers provide structural analysis by a structural engineer that it can it can support that load that additional load of the panels so I'm looking at chapter 16 of the IBC and that's the photovoltaic chapter and it specifically outlines the requirements for structural load well just to guide this, thank you Brad to guide this I guess I think I was the only last thing I was going to say is that at the default council version when I both left somewhat out loud when there was a conversation about the regulatory piece of what happens in South America is all self-certification and I just wanted to reassure all of the counselors that Burlington you probably already know this we wouldn't have had the back reputation you had in the past if we didn't do all of the inspections that we do we check and double check things Brad and Kim, there are site inspections and in a lot of cases repeated site inspections because it's not self-certification based only in Burlington I was on these projects to see that things are done that way and it's not just saying anything bad about South Burlington but I think council Bergman and I felt the same way if there isn't someone going out there are almost certainly going to be people who are going to take advantage of just sign off on form so having someone go out is incredibly valuable in my book and I trust our team pretty clearly if I could just say from my focus it's on the I'll call them for lack of a better word the beforehand standards the codes themselves and just to be really clear to start with I would like us to be harmonious with those standards and understand where we are and where we aren't with South Burlington because in our building code is sort of older there and the fire code is in another place and the zoning code is there so that's sort of what I'm looking for I'm not really looking at the enforcement piece I'm not really looking so much at the administrative piece and how people are going in terms of just what the regulatory framework is and to understand the differences between what the city of Burlington has in place and why and I would add to that with a goal of trying to see where there's opportunity to maximize solar installations in that sense it sounds like the best way for me to proceed is to view the joint memo with Chris Burns or Dan Springer but probably Chris because he's the one who is directly engaged with the folks on this side of the Burlington department both pre-project and throughout the project Chris and his team are working on that specifically he would definitely be in a better place to talk about what South Burlington is doing compared to what his team is getting done and I could do that in advance of another meeting that you could take the report under consideration and then ask questions at another meeting but I do think it's worth talking about I had heard repeatedly about why can't we have more of the roof cover covered with panels here and if that's a worthy conversation it's certainly worth Matt's time to at least spend a few minutes talking about Burlington and that fire department. Absolutely. When I was first talking to two guys it was you Matt that came and Jen and it was Jen we talked about somebody came and I don't know if it was you it was a couple of years ago and we talked about the restrictions but there was an update too I think it was NEPA or was that the right? NFBA and it hasn't gone through and we were waiting on that because we were following what was going on with the state so looking for updates on that maybe you could practice sharing. There hasn't been any updates we're still under the 2015 code they haven't adopted the 2021 code yet the codes that they follow in South Burlington and across the state are the same exact codes we follow in Burlington so if South Burlington has something different above and beyond it's because they initiated it to an ordinance like Burlington we have an ordinance that swimming pools have to have fences and self-closing gates and self-clashing self-classing latching gates there's no different rules I mean the difference is South Burlington I believe is a hybrid between the state and South Burlington itself the city of Burlington is not a hybrid we have full authority in the city of Burlington to enforce the Vermont Fire and Building Code now at the moment we can be more stringent than the state we can't be less stringent than the state but I know there's a push from the state right now to take some of that away so that we can't supersede their rules their focus really is on keeping housing costs low and obviously ours should be as well to make sure that we're not anything that we do doesn't make housing more unaffordable but I think one of the considerations for Matt was there was a conversation about whether we could adopt that portion of the code for rooftops because it's in waiting with the state and the answer the answer was we could only adopt it in its totality and not just the very for adding additional panels we would have had to adopt the entire regulatory scheme of the update and I don't think we were ready there is that their assessment? Yeah I agree down to them basically in FTA 1 it's chapter 11 we'd have to adopt that chapter and not go back and forth but to say where the new code is actually a little more restrictive like the current code is only three pages long expanded out to five pages so it becomes a little more restrictive on where part of the access is located and how we achieve that but it does change a little bit on how a roof coverage is completed or used in terms of the percentage as to where what your holdbacks are like Ridsline, E-plates, stuff like that so there are minor changes in there I think a lot of changes will come down to how everything is labeled you know they always add more labels because of stuff so They're going to go from the three foot setbacks to a percentage of the roof covered Yeah I think there's a 33% coverage and then there's a 60% coverage depending on what you're doing and also just so you're aware right now I don't have anything to do with the permitting process for these that's under the building inspectors and electrical inspectors but what they will do is when they have a building they're very good at understanding fire department access they have all that training but when there's a kind of a question of how would you deal with this do you consider this good access then they defer to me and then I can say yeah we can deal with that we need to because of the ladder truck ladder can't reach the roof we need to be able to get a ground ladder here and we aren't able to get a ground ladder here because of how fencing works or something like that or overhead overhead obstruction wires, trees and also thinking long term there's no fence there now what the next owner may put a fence or restrict access like the back of the house for that so that's also what we take into consideration a lot of what people want to do is cover from the eave to the roof peak and then gable and gable and every square inch they can and the issue there is we have to have safe access up to the peak of the roof and then if solar is only on one side of the roof we're okay with diminishing the 36 inch cold back they have right now as long as the other side of the roof is clear and that we can get to it so because we need to be able to walk along the peak line be able to hook ladders over the peak line so we need a circuit so you still need enough of setback to get a ladder hook or the ridge right and it's and then also if we're on a roof because we need to bend it it's not something we do every fires this option we have to be able to have we're looking to create a minimum of like three feet by six feet of a barrier to cut open a hole so that the heat gas come out so because what that does it lifts all the heat out of the house you know the floor that we're searching at work so unfortunately almost every house is different you know as soon as you throw a normal house it changes every you know because the code does refer to when you have a valley how close you can be to the valley and you know how close you can be to a dorm or like you can't put solar panels right in front of the window if it's meant to be an egress window for fire safety because you have to be able to come out of the window and step on to the solar panels so it's a little simpler on single family homes commercial buildings gets more difficult that's very different but you know the code does specifically say single family residential homes will follow these criteria for it so it's yeah because once on a on a big building once you exceed 150 feet you go from a four foot setback to a six foot setback I just want to be clear that the codes and standards the fire code the sprinkler code the life safety code they're all in place because stuff happened in the past and people either got hurt or got killed that's why the codes are what they are today and next time it comes around it's going to be thicker than it was the last cycle because different stuff happened it's just the nature of the life safety fire code lifestyle I spent a long time in this world as long as as you guys have done and for me the first step I think is a comprehensive comparison of the south burlington code structure and you might, yes kill I just, I think that maybe the south burlington single families don't get permits yes I'm not in terms of I want to understand what the regulatory system that they've got what the codes are that they have what they've got with their zoning ordinance if you look at our zoning ordinance there is nothing related to this in that I just went through you're talking zoning yeah yeah but Brad you've got to look at it all and the more that we segment stuff the more chaotic it is the less that we're going to be able to we're regulated by the division of fire safety you're going to just bring the worst out of me okay what we'll do is finish your thought so I would really like to have a multi department group look at what south burlington has done all of its codes what they've adopted and look at what we've got and put them together so we can match them and understand what the difference is they are a different city they are differently dense although they are changing and that's fine and fair I'm not making a judgment as to what they have is better or worse what I'm making a judgment is is that I don't know what the lay of the land is and I want to get that harmony for you to see what we do we need to make changes in the way that we are doing things or not they adopt the state's code in here the building department that's right but they do use their zoning law like a building code and that is standard in the state of her law we are very uncommon but the fact is that there are building codes in zoning ordinances so it's not so so different that we cannot look at them and that has the division of fire safety in law that's a point of order that's a point of order the chair needs to recognize speakers before they speak there's all sorts of municipal agreements that everybody has got with the state because that's part of the delegation requirement I negotiated three of them from the city of Burlington in the state so don't tell me about it I'm going to back off I'm not going to get done I'm done here well hold that thought I'm going to let Brad get in then I had a question go ahead Brad so I just wanted to say that South Burlington is like I said earlier it's a hybrid because the division of fire safety is involved so and DPI all together is more of a streamline process because if there was no DPI if there was no building officials in the city of Burlington the division of fire safety wouldn't care about zoning whatsoever they'd just say alright here's your permit if you need municipal permits you're on your own but we work in concert on that and other towns don't have the same level of authority that Burlington does they let us enforce the this fire and building safety code 100% Matt am I speaking wrong on this I was just looking at what the you know their quick MOU breakdown is I think the only thing the state looks at is where we have the same agreement as South Burlington yeah we have the same Delegation Act authorized by state statute negotiated 300 right but us in South Burlington are the only two cities that have the same level of authority of building codes and fire codes yeah so did you want to get out I just want to say I think for simplicity purposes I do think we can do better at the next meeting by giving a written we've got a little better understanding of what would be helpful to get something written for prior to that priority including our team at Burlington Lector because we've got a great team and I think putting something together so you have an apples to apples comparison is a better way to go about this so yes that's exactly what I thought that we can have a shorter discussion when we come back at it because all of those other facts can be laid out on page and so what I would what I would say is from my point of view I hear us we're comparing South Burlington but is South Burlington necessarily the thing we want to look at maybe it is but I would say what we're really looking for if I'm reading and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this team is we want to see where we can maximize our opportunity if South Burlington has more has a ways that they can get more rooftop so we don't have them let us understand why that is right and then see if there's opportunity there there may be reasons we can't you would articulate these in a written document or maybe there are ways we can and these are areas we could focus on either enhancing our coordinate structure some way or getting other agreements I'm not going to pretend to know what agreements need to be gotten for it but certainly the goal is how can we do more rooftop solar or and what are the obstacles to be able to do so those obstacles will potentially come back to some of our team here in the meantime the comparison can happen first and what the recommendations that Chris is incredibly articulate and beyond anything that I could ever explain with residential and commercial building efficiency standards and probably already have some of those recommendations in mind it's willing to put them on paper if not we can have them come and at least suggest some things but we will already have a team review of it so that we have a better place to tell you what the potential rooftops are I mean that would be great I mean the NFPA studies stuff all the time the academy is down there to do all that stuff so they are looking at codes the IBC is in the same property maintenance code everybody is looking at how we're doing stuff so I to go to your second point another maybe it's the second step would be to look at other codes that are out that are being talked about out there that are being analyzed and then giving us a sense for what a future regulatory system could look like but that's sort of afterwards that's based on I don't know of any city that is not adopting national codes so you've got cities in the west very different climates, very different topography all of that stuff is understood but people are doing things all around the country to maximize getting power and fuel from non burning sources and that's what we need to be doing trying to understand that but we have right here in our own backyard another city that has done this stuff and we should at least understand what they're doing and how it compares to us and we're all I know we're all on the same page this is great we don't need to change anything I'm not trying to change something just to change something do you want to get in? I've been I apologize it's been many months since we had the first part of this conversation now we've got this the next step would be are you going to champion that sort of process Bill? I will and I can report back to you so that you can give updates and then we can find the date for the next meeting because I can't speak for what Chris Burns and his team's availability is it's like ours it's somewhat tight but we'll do the best we can but nothing else I'll at least give you an update about what the anticipated timeline is and make sure that this team hasn't changed anything but I agree with council Burtman I think we may be in a position where we find we're in pretty good shape already so that's where my initial reaction was I would be cautious only because I didn't get a chance to really speak that meeting was wrapping up in September so this was a much better opportunity to understand what would be helpful to that I apologize that I didn't ask I'm not sure if it would have been appropriate to ask these things in an email form to the two members but I'm glad we had it in this format I mean, if you could ask Megan a lot of this is about something and we're they're looking at a neighborhood code and how is it that this fits with that Exactly, but if you will Megan's like nature doesn't know the energy side like Chris does which is why we're fortunate to have such a great team we'll have all the team members involved in the next document and then we'll go out and have a smaller meeting because it may just be Chris and myself that come back next time or maybe if you come back to me I'll invite everybody that wants to participate but maybe have a much more direct conversation next time, go ahead They're just going to say in reading through their solar ready ordinance they're talking about new neighborhoods and angles of streets and houses I was in a meeting with members from City Hall and they're talking about building affordable housing and reducing construction costs in the city and they're talking about taking large one-year lots to the new north and building multiple buildings on them but nothing ever came up necessarily about solar and how those buildings are placed on the lot so I think that's an important connection because they're going to take a square lot and just dumping square buildings down however they best fit in solar ready angles so I think it's a it's another committee to actually this is exactly what I want if we can do that then we will do something that we don't do very well in this and have never done well which is actually talk to each other and coordinate to come I've been on three separate committees on how to reduce construction costs let's settle with interest that's why having Megan be part of this is very, very important that's good Fred, do you want to get in again for anything before we wrap? No, I think I'm all good I just want to check out other virtual numbers because that'll get lost in the Zoom meetings okay well thank you for coming and thank you for bearing with us and learning about GMG challenges while you wait but we look forward to hearing more about this and just let me know what the timeline looks like and figure out how to loop it back into this committee excellent great good job great say hi for me sure, thanks for coming thanks Brad yeah and I'll be talking to Chief Francis I'll be talking to Chief Francis tomorrow I can put a bug in his ear he's a really tough person thank you good for having me thanks thank you thank you alright, thank you which moves us on to our directors report thank you to give them the hour I'll be sure tomorrow staff is going to the parks arts culture committee because we like you can't avoid more meetings and we will be talking about the proposed upgrade to the main wastewater treatment plant and working on what the impacts may be to Perkins Pier of that work so I know we've had the opportunity to talk about the needed renovation to main wastewater this is our next step in working with other council committees just for your information is that your update? next are councilor items do any councilors have items they would like to speak about okay I have a couple of constituent issues that I'll talk to you about that's fine the meeting now that I'm here for a long time and our next meeting is scheduled for February 27 is that work? that's our normal meeting time for Tuesday it works for me but I have to be online because we're taking care of babies that's fine I'm going to check really quickly you said what February 27th 7th are we good with a room Matty? I believe so but I will check right now that will be our last meeting as a as the currently panel committee would we be able to meet up for again I have a work meeting at 5.30 I can maybe shift things around but earlier is better I can deal sure it might have babies running around babies running around is fine we may have to look for a different room but I can figure that out we can always you know for sure whatever is available it can be needed for staff we're open to traveling or even going down a DT or something okay and with that and with no further business I will adjourn us at 5.50 bye guys thank you bye Hannah the recording stopped