 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You're welcome. Moving to agenda review any concerns questions about the order of the agenda this evening this brings us to public comment. Public comment is a time to for attendees if they wish to make a comment about anything not on tonight's agenda. If you want to address anything that's on the agenda please wait for that item to come up. I see a hand raised so why don't we Paul let's start the public comment. Okay, whenever you're ready. Thank you all very much. I know we'll talk about at 164 next Monday but just wanted to thank you for the guidance in petition language. Good discussion with folks talk to businesses downtown on Saturday spent a few hours had good response online so I'll look forward to speaking with you all next Monday and appreciate the time in the guidance so that was it I know you guys have a lot on your agenda and I'll look forward to seeing you all next Monday. Thank you Eli and for others who are watching he is referring to next Monday we will have our actual discussion and vote on town meeting day bell items which could include the discussion will include act 164 commercial cannabis potential opt-in for Winiski. Are there other folks who wish to make public comment you can chat us here in zoom or use the raised hand feature. If you're dialed in by phone it's star nine. Seeing no more public comment I will move on to our consent agenda we have our minutes from our January 11th meeting last week and the accounts payable warrant of January 15th payroll warrant for period December 27th to January 9th. Are there any questions or concerns on the consent agenda would someone like to make a motion to approve? Second. Motion by Amy second by Mike all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries consent agenda approved. Moving on to council reports can I start with you Hal. Sure. The only thing I have to report is that I just learned today that our charter change proposal has come out of ledge council so we have the rough draft. We will have the final draft later this week after they've had a chance to proof read it and make sure everything is lined up as we intended so I'll be sharing that with the leadership team and we will go forward. Thank you for the update. Jim. I have nothing to report at this time thank you. Thank you Mike. Sure I just want to give a big shout out to the Winiski public works guys for keeping the roads and sidewalks clear this weekend so thank you fellas. Thank you Amy. I attended the safe healthy connected people commission meeting last week and we received a great presentation from Tay Olson of the Winiski mutual aid group and I just wanted to take a minute to highlight some of the work that that group is doing for the community for those who may not be very familiar. So Winiski mutual aid is all volunteer run. They've got about eight folks in total and they're really taking a neighbor to neighbor approach for this mutual aid. Their mission is to bridge the gaps that established systems have left to ensure that everyone in Winiski has the resources that they need and they're doing lots of different things to serve the community. A big piece is food and meal distribution as well as grocery runs. They have also held and are holding another drive of many kinds including clothing, diapers, period products, garden veggies and they just announced one this week with Scout to get more personal care products donated to folks in need. They've also redistributed more than $10,000 of community contributions to neighbors to aid with food insecurity, rent and bill release and since June they have responded to 45 individual requests for assistance. In the future they're going to be launching something called PUMA which stands for pop-up mutual aid where they'll hold events in neighborhoods and bring resources to our neighbors to help further reduce barriers. And I also just wanted to highlight one immediate need in case anybody out there has a lead on something related to this. The group is looking for a physical space to be able to store more of these products that they are collecting and redistributing since it is very community driven and like I said all volunteer run people are running out of room at their individual homes to store these items so if anyone has a lead on space they would greatly appreciate it. And you can learn more on their website when you see mutual aids.org. Thank you Amy. Since our last meeting so last week the Finance Commission met and reviewed a reserve policy so that commission is going through a sort of a list of financial policies and helping our staff finalize those. There are a couple more on the list that they will be going through in the next few meetings and I also was able to bring them the update from our previous discussion about next steps from the master plan. They liked the idea of just a quick verbal update during each meeting from me as council liaison just to say some like high like key highlights of what I'm hearing from you from other commissions and any like big topics coming up at council so nothing too in depth. They were also supportive of the other items that we discussed around work planning for more collaboration and potential equity training so more to come on that in the future. The planning commission also met to discuss updates to our land use regulations around accessory dwelling units so there was a state mandated change that we needed to update our regulations to address. Had some lengthy discussion about making other changes potentially in our regulations and the conversation landed on just making the state mandated changes for now. That is it for me. I will pass it to city manager Jesse Baker for city updates. Thank you. So just a few updates from me tonight of course starting with our COVID update. So on our our Lady of Providence outbreak there have been no changes since my last update to the council last week so there's been no additional cases associated with that. So we're currently on track to wrap up that outbreak by February 1st assuming there are no additional cases which is great news and a huge testament to all the hard work that their staff has done to control that outbreak. For the weekend for last week the weekend in January 16th we had 19 new cases of COVID in Winooski. This is down from 48, 39 and 31 over the last month so it's stepping our rates are stepping down which again is a huge testament to all the residents in Winooski who are making the difference to isolating quarantine and we are very thankful to them. As you know we have testing daily at the O'Brien Community Center for the foreseeable future certainly through now the month of February. Starting next week we are going to make some changes to those testing hours to allow for more evening testing which is really when we're seeing a higher demand. We are not publicizing those until next until the end of this week so it's not to confuse people with what's happening this week and what's happening next week but we will see those expanding next week. So for this week just a reminder to folks 9 to 3 any day including Saturday and Sunday you can be tested at the O'Brien Community Center and there are daily walk-up spaces available and interpretation translation available on site. Our COVID morning team has shifted our focus to advocating for vaccinations located in Winooski, vaccination clinics in Winooski and are partnering with VDH as they roll out their age band implementation. So again the most important thing our neighbors can do is to not spend time with anyone outside of your immediate family to wear a mask when in the presence of others to socially distance and to wash your hands. Moving on from COVID I did want to let you know that we did receive one petition for an item to be placed on the ballot by the deadline today. The city clerks are verifying the voters on that list now. We are unsure whether the limit of required registered voters will be met and we received another one that you'll hear about next week after the deadline. Just a reminder to everyone that to be on the ballot to run for city council from error for school trustee this year you do not need a petition you just need to come in to the city clerk's office and sign a consent to be on the ballot form. Those are due by 5 p.m. next Monday night January 25th and just a reminder the seats up for reelection are the mayor and two two-term city counselors and then there are three school trustee positions open one for three years one for two years and one for one year so come on in and get your consensus. The equity director posting closed over the weekend we had 21 candidates we're pretty pleased with that turnout. Phoebe has had a number of stakeholder interviews over the last couple of weeks to talk with our community partners and really ensure that we are integrating community voices into that hiring process. We will start that interview process in the next couple of weeks with the goal of somebody being on board by April 1st. And then finally as you likely may know 355 Main Street the old Andy's auto will be redeveloped starting this spring. Nate Digest is redeveloping that property. Demolition will happen on that property in March but before then he has turned over the property donated the property to the new ski fire department to do onsite training. He has done that with his past properties. This is an incredible opportunity for our firefighters to get hands-on training and especially in times of covid when we can send people in for training and in their small groups and not have in-person training be unsafe for anybody. So a huge thanks to Nate for his generous donation to when you see his public safety. And that is all I have. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jesse. We'll move to our regular items starting with a FY 20 annual audit presentation with Angela. Thank you very much and Josh Quinn from IRHR Smith is here to present the council the 2020 audit report. The council approved IRHR Smith conducting our audit of 2020 in April of this year or last year actually. We did the preliminary field work and some of the full field work remotely but some onsite work was done the week of October 19th. Financial statements in draft form were submitted to IRHR Smith just before Thanksgiving and we received the final versions back on December 18th and have submitted those to all of the agencies required. So I'm going to turn it over to Josh to give their analysis and see if you guys have any questions. Great. Thank you, Ellen Jo. Hello. Sorry, I had some technical difficulties. My computer just blipped but I think I'm back. Nice to see you all. I apologize that we can't be there in person but I guess this is the world we live in right now. So as Angela said, we did our initial field work, our test work in the spring and then we were there in the fall doing our audit work where we looked at all of your FY 20 activity and all of your different various funds. We also did our TIF audit as well which is a requirement of the state to wrap your tip up your last few years of that as well as looking at anything and everything. What I usually do on these is I'll go through your financial statements. Do you all have a copy of those or a PDF version of them? All right, excellent. So I typically will just kind of hit the highlights. Please feel free to ask questions. Let me know if you want more detail and between Angela and I'm sure we can satisfy to your dying or to every extent you may wish to look at this 87-page document that we provided for you. So first one I'm going to jump to straight to statement C which is page 18. Excuse me, this is your balance sheet for your governmental fund. So this is your general fund is in the first column. You've got your TIF fund, your community development loan fund, your city capital reserve and then all of your other special revenue funds that are not major and there's a calculation of what we determined as major and how we determine those. So this is kind of where the meat and potatoes are. Your general fund, this is your balance sheet. So it goes over all of your assets, your liabilities and then gets down to the ever important number that everybody always wants to know what was our fund balance at the end of FY20. And so down under fund balances you had a non-spendable fund balance of $232,000 which is mostly made up of prepaid items. You've got a restricted figure of $6,000 and assigned fund balance of $698 and then an unassigned value which is kind of that money that you're able to distribute or assign to other resources or other uses of just about a million dollars which is great. So that's a total fund balance of about a $1.98. Sorry, mine's really small on my screen. And so as far as fund balances go we usually like to talk about you know 30, 60, 90 days worth of operating expenses and with your operating expenses in your general fund that can compute to about $600,000 for 30 days so at $1.9 for total fund balance you guys are right in that wheelhouse so financially that's great. I'm not going to get into the other funds unless you guys want me to. I'm going to skip right down to statement E which is page 20. This is your operating activity for the year so this is the actual revenues, your expenditures, there's some lines for other financing sources where you've got transfers in, transfers out just but amongst all your various funds and excess or a total net surplus or deficit depending on your operating activity and this year it was a net surplus of $256,000 so you started the year at $1.6 million in fund balance and with your net operating surplus of $256,000 that's how you get to your $1.9. So that's your general fund and that's your governmental fund now we're going to switch over to proprietary funds so this is your water and your sewer funds so these operate more like a business so the balance sheet looks a little bit different it actually lists all of your long-term assets as well as all of your long-term debt and instead of getting a fund balance at the end of this balance sheet you get a net position and so net position takes into account all of your your long-term assets and your long-term debt and you get an unrestricted net position at the end of this which is it's a little bit like fund balance but not exactly and I'll leave it off there and not bore you with the accounting details but anyway water and sewer funds both are in solid net positions as well we also talk similar to the fund balance where we talk about 30 60 90 days we talk similar net position and I think for your for your water fund where's my calculates for your water fund I think you're 30 60 90 let me pull this up we've got lots of screens open so yeah your 30 days of operating your water funds like like 10 grand so you're you're doing great in that one and then in your sewer fund you're more like 15 or 20 for your 30 days so that one's doing very well also one more page below that is your statement H and this is just like what we looked at for your general fund this is the actual operating revenues and your operating expenses to get down to your net activity and just net activity takes into account your depreciation so sometimes those numbers look a little bit different and so your net position as a whole had some changes that were negative numbers but a lot of that is your depreciation so that's all the money that you're spending paying off all that debt that you guys have infused into all of your capital assets in both your water and your sewer facilities not an unusual thing okay and next we're going to jump there's lots of notes to financial statements which talk about how you guys operate and all of the processes and procedures and policies that you have in place and how you handle your cash and collateralization and all those types of things we're going to skip most of that and we're going to jump down to your your debt schedule which is on page it starts on page 45 yeah 45 yep so it's page 45 and so it starts with your governmental activities so everything that's in your your governmental funds or your general fund and those are separated from all your business type activities which are your your water and your sewer funds and this shows the activity so it gives a description of what all of your your pieces of debt are what you started the year with what you paid off in the year then what you ended with and then there's just a tabulation of that at the end as well municipalities have a very large ability to take out I think it's the statutory limits that is I believe 10 approximately 10 percent of your grand list and that's a very large number so many people are always asking well how close we are we let it take out this much debt it's a very large number so there's there's no concern here from the amount of debt you guys have next I'm just going to jump down into your beyond all the notes and just get into your special revenue funds so that's going to start on page 73 um I'm sorry 72 excuse me you've only got a couple of those as far as special revenue funds so these are the justice center fund uh asset force asset forfeitures and your JAG fund and this is just like what we looked at earlier so it gives you your balance sheet the following pages and your revenues and expenses so you can see the activity that's actually flowing through those funds uh next on page 75 is your proprietary fund special schedule so this has your parking garage in it and your on-street meters as well similar shows you their balance sheet and then shows your net activity on the following page one of the last things that we do is a federal compliance audit when your expenditures call for it and so if you spend over $750,000 of federal funds then the you are required to receive a federal compliance audit so that's the last piece of redo where we look at all of your federal expenditures angela provides us with a schedule of all those awards and then we select some areas to sample and just basically make sure that the city is in compliance with all the various requirements that go along with spending federal dollars and there are many and there were many more this year with CRF funds and the pandemic you guys didn't have a ton of CRF expenditures as compared to a lot of the school districts that I deal with and so you didn't need any type of special compliance audit having to do with CRF funds which was a good thing so yeah so overall typically we write a management letter and with some you know suggestions for best practices or things that we found this year we didn't have any comments as far as best practices you know we only had a few last year for angela and she knocked those out of the park as I expected her to do I will say that that is a very rare thing that I don't have any comments and I would say you guys are very lucky to have angela with you and so I look up the questions or comments thank you josh hell I see your hand yes thank you mayor I just want to just share my appreciation for this amazing team that we have I'm on too many boards and when we go through this process I don't think I can remember an audit without some kind of recommendation so this is uh this is special so thank you all well said thanks are there other questions from council I'll just add on that in the few years that I've been a part of this process it seems we've always had pretty solid outcomes and it has been getting incrementally better so just echoing that we are in good hands here in monewski financially so thank you and thank you josh and um your firm for producing this audit for us absolutely as I say to Jesse whenever I come in I love coming to monewski because it's all right there and it's all in order and it's it's all right as you can see from yeah from my lack of comments so it's it's it's it's a nice uh sometimes that's definitely not always the case so uh it is very refreshing I'll call it if I can just paddle on my thanks to both josh to you and your your colleagues who are so good to work with but also just so many thanks to Angela all credit to her for keeping the city's financial health strong and putting good systems into place so all of the leadership team can assist her in that work so thank you thank you Angela we are very fortunate to have you you're a rockstar I will open it to public comment if any attendees from the public have questions feel free to chat or raise your hand all right so hearing no other questions or concerns we have this on for approval I would entertain a motion to approve the FY20 annual audit well moved second second motion by Mike second by Hal all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi Amy did you I didn't hear you hi thanks so motion carries and we will move to our next item thank you again for the presentation thank you it's a pleasure working with you guys thank you thank you Angela take care so next up we have our FY21 second quarter report from our treasurer um Alex should be coming over here Alex you're on mute there we go uh everyone can hear me now yes welcome thank you thank you mayor and city council I will also echo appreciation uh to Angela she makes my job much easier I have all these little questions what's this mean or why is that there and she gets back to me um the same day so she does a phenomenal job so you know thank you to her again and into the whole team at Winooski um you know it's a pleasure to present the second quarter of the 21 21 fiscal years Winooski's financials um you know in similar notion to what Josh presented you know the financials across the board are rather encouraging um you know the general funds revenue overall actually exceeds the original budget and you are also seeing a lot of commercially driven activity um is actually exceeding it um so that's a good sign that both as hopefully as covid uh fades out towards the end of the year hopefully um we should see continued growth um as we'll see returns on that um you also have a lot of enterprise funds which are drastically reducing their deficits or in some cases actually rotating um in a positive territory um you know I started to try I checked I tried to check to make sure that these um you know we saw we were seeing certainly drastic revisions in the revenue projections and you want to make sure that those are conservative and and supportable and in that case they are um you also have a lot of times you have large amounts of loan proceeds in there um which can certainly distort um the financials if the corresponding expenses aren't incurred in the same period but that was also taken care of um so I I do believe that these drastic swings are are supportable and I think that um through the third and fourth quarter we will see at least similar results um going into the end of the fiscal year um you know so though although despite that we you know this is the fourth quarter now that we have that the city has gone through um you know part of the global pandemic we're actually still seeing cash reserves um at a fair level just as Josh had mentioned um and as such the city ministry still remains in reasonable financial health and sort of the the likelihood of there being costs associated um with having fewer reserves is is fairly low um if the city has any other questions happy to answer them um but I know the audit report was probably fairly extensive and probably answered a lot of a lot of questions. Thank you Alex um yeah I would just say I didn't see anything surprising in this report which is good news um what we've been monitoring is happening. Are there any questions from council for about this treasurer's report? Any questions from members of the public? All right well thank you again for putting this together and for the the public overview here Alex. Thank you mayor and city council and and finance staff and as well as uh josh and this firm. Welcome to item C town meeting day outreach and voting with Carol. Hello. Welcome Carol. So I'll turn this off and then Carol you can jump in. So Carol and I put together um this memo just it has had an update since we wrote it in that age 48 was signed into law by the governor um that gives municipalities more options around town meeting. So the upshot of this agenda item is that you do have more flexibility now within state statute given the pandemic um to make changes to how town meeting day operates. Carol and I are recommending that we um stay as consistent as possible with past town meeting day efforts i.e. not change the date um not change many of our processes for consistency for residents. We also recommend that instead of mailing ballots to every household every voter in the city that we may mail a postcard to every household in the city a much bigger list communicating the items that we outline here. The goal of that is twofold one is to get information out to those who may not already be registered to vote in Manuski giving them information about how to register but also making it clear that non-citizens cannot vote yet on town meeting day. And then also giving clear instructions on how you request absentee ballots. The second reason for this is if we solely mail ballots to each household there's a very narrow window if we don't change town meeting day which we strongly urge you not to do. Um there is a very narrow window uh when we will have the ballots to send out and then they need to be returned as opposed to postcards that we can get out much faster and people can start paying attention to that process. So that is our recommendation Carol do you want to add what did I forget there? Anything um we our office is really hoping for the support of mailing out postcards to all households. Like Jesse said it would um it would be very time consuming to send out ballots to every registered voter whereas if we sent out a postcard then it would be the responsibility of the person who would like to vote can request it when we can mail it out immediately. And it will also be less costly if we were to do postcards. Thank you. I personally like this proposal for the reasons outlined uh getting information out to more than just folks who are already registered you know reinforcing the messaging around the chart the non-citizen voting always voting not being in place um yeah and just making it clear to folks the various options that they have whether they want to absentee or not. Are there questions concerns from other counselors? Hal? Uh thank you mayor um the question I have um are these costs um to be considered um special election costs that could be covered through through the state? I think we have two million dollars that we have identified through um the covert relief funds so can we get reimbursed for these costs? So no um go ahead Jesse. No you go Carol. No we can't it's um if we were to mail out the ballots to every voter yeah then we could get covered cost but since we are just mailing out the postcards no. Okay thanks. You're welcome. And just another sentence about that we do budget this every for town for every town meeting day not necessarily the postcard part but that we are going to send out a number of absentee ballots that's part of what we build into the budget um so we do believe we have money within the budget to implement this. Thanks I um I don't really have a question I guess just so much as a comment on how the there is a difference in access that we create by making this decision and the savings are really on time and not in money um so I totally appreciate the challenge of having to stuff that many ballots and get them out and back in that time um but it also if we did actually do that would save us the cost of having to ship out absentee ballots upon request since if we did a full up mailing everybody would get their ballots. We have a lower barrier to participation in a weird year and not a lot of people participate in town meeting day as compared to November election. I'm not necessarily advocating for that change but I do want to acknowledge that um we're we're actually choosing to spend more money to save time and reach fewer people um to me this I recognize it also comes with like the people impact on our staff which is a lot um so I'm not again I'm not advocating for this change but I didn't want to just note that it feels a little bit challenging to me to take the choice of lower of creating more barriers rather than fewer. Any other questions comments? I think I I feel similar to Jim um and you know I'm fine with the proposal also I just had I had noticed that as well and um I saw that our voter turnout typically for that election is pretty small I think you said we had about 900 people who voted in the last election so it just made me wonder would we get more participation if we were to mail um mail ballots home to everyone um a question I had was if capacity to do the mailing is a problem would there be money and would we have time to potentially hire a temporary election worker if that was the direction we wanted to go? Jesse or Carol? All right um so we could do that we could hire somebody for a data come in and stuff envelopes to me the timeline issue is more that the ballots won't be printed until 20 days before the election so then they'll have to be stuffed and mailed out which will happen either way um so it gives voters about a you know three to six day window that they'll have a ballot to be able to return it as opposed to a postcard that we can get out you know a week or two after you approve the budget and then as soon as the ballots are available we can send those out to people and it can they can have them for more days we could hire somebody to come in for a data stuff envelopes um it it would probably be a wash in that we wouldn't send out that postcard so we could use those funds to hire somebody to come in for that day um and then get reimbursed if we were going in that direction then we could get all of our mailing costs reimbursed as um counselor Colston said through the state if we were mailing them out to household um it is I do want to reflect while we are giving you a recommendation it is totally within your prerogative to decide how you want to handle the ballots so I would just add in I think there is I wouldn't say that mailing a ballot to every household is more necessarily more accessible unless we were doing both of these options because if we go that route then we're only reaching people that are already registered we're not sending communication to unregistered voters um I also think with a postcard we're able to communicate more freely right like what is going to be on there if we are just talking about mailing ballots we that's just mailing a ballot I don't think we typically would be able to I don't know I could be wrong um that we can include additional information about what's on there or about the the non-citizen voting so to me it's not that one choice is better than the other I think there's a give and take either way Jim and I would say I didn't see that I guess I was an advocating either or in this case I would think it is a both approach because again we don't we somewhat save money by not mailing out absentee ballots on demand we can still do a postcard and a mailer or mailed ballots which allow us to reach non-registered voters and explain the non-citizen voting status and still put ballots in every box and I I just worry about people again having that period of time in which they have to request an absentee ballot or decide to go vote in person or um on town meeting day as opposed to just knowing that they'll get their ballot without any further action having some resources to understand the issues that they'll see on it once it shows up and um and then just putting it back and sending it back well I think that's a question for us um we could have this postcard mailed we could also hire somebody to help staff stuff ballots um I think to Jesse's point if there's a delay because it sounds to me like there is a a small delay between when the ballots are ready if people have prerequested being able to send them out right away versus waiting for them to be ready and then mailing to every household maybe not maybe I'm misinterpreting that well the difference is on so on that day and Carol you may have the day at the top of your mind but the day we get the ballots back either we're stuffing 5 000 ballots which takes you know two or three days and then putting them in the mail or the 500 requests we've come we've that have come in for absentee ballots we're stuffing those 500 on that day and getting them out so it's you know three additional days that they're in people's hands if they want absentees and request them early I do want to just make one um very small point because I think it could cause some confusion down the road so we're talking about two for a postcard and ballots to be mailed out are two different mailing lists so postcards would go to every address in Winooski um like the school newsletter goes every mailbox if we mailed out ballots directly to people they would only go to the current registered voters in Winooski so in a household of you know four voting members they're going to get one postcard and four ballots and that ballot includes mailed outposts which are mailed backpostage those want to clarify that and just to be clear did did were you saying earlier that if we wanted to do both and hire a temp worker to help stuff ballots the additional cost of the ballot piece could be reimbursable the postcard is not so my understanding and Carol jump in is that if you vote to require us to mail a ballot to each house each registered voter then that cost of postage basically is reimbursable by the state sorry Carol that is correct yes the postage not the labor right and not the postcard right but it's really just more that you worry we wouldn't have enough time for the voter to receive the ballot fill it out and turn it around back in the mail if we went that route I worry about that and I quite frankly I worry about the clerk's office only dealing with ballots in February like they're the the amount of work it takes to mail out 5 000 ballots and then manage them being returned is an enormous amount of work they very clearly did it on on election day they they can do it and they have the systems in place but there there's really no other city clerk work that will happen during that month something else that I'm thinking about is um you know there was some confusion with folks who received the ballot and then came to vote in person or you know did a separate absentee request I don't know how big of an issue that was um it was you know the the whole point of receiving the ballot was to vote at home and then either drop it off here or you can drop it off at the um uh the senior center we had people come in who said they received their ballot but decided that they wanted to come and vote so they had to sign an affidavit stating that they didn't vote twice or anything like that and that was a little difficult but hey carol can I ask one other question sorry christine go ahead in in h 48 or how maybe you know this if the if the council votes to mail a ballot to each household do we also have to actually hold a town meeting day voting in person voting opportunity or is it all done by mail no I would say that we still have to open because people you can same day register to register and vote at the same time so we would have to be open from seven to seven okay thank you I would think people like to go vote in person anyway it's tradition for them Jim um I was wondering if I could ask sorry I was just looking at the site to try and look exactly what our absentee voting process is um so right now since you have to vote 20 days before the election if you're absentee or you have to request an absentee ballot from the clerks does that involve a phone call a letter a web form how do people request an absentee ballot is there any changes under age 40 that affect that process so what happens is the ballots are going to be available 20 days before the election once you guys approve the warning and stuff I then develop the ballot and then which will be on the 26 and then it takes a few days for them to draw draw up the ballot and then that following week probably the eighth we won't get our until our that's when we'll receive the ballots so what people can do is they can request it by phone they can email us um and go from there we could probably set up a web form too that's that's pretty sure because Paul could set up a web form too that would kick you an email Carol absolutely how are folks feeling about this recommendation do you mean the original proposal or original proposal or in adding on ballots ballot mailing I'm in favor of the original proposal thanks Mike Jim this is funny if we would might see if any members of the public court attendance have did I not ask that yet um yes if there's anyone in attendance please use the chat raise hand feature star nine on your phone if you wish to make a comment or ask a question not saying any public comment Jim so I'm I'll say if there was a strong sentiment to go for an all absentee mailing I would hardly support it but I I'm given that we're all kind of I still feel on the fence I think I would probably defer to the recommendation staff on how to make this operationally work and still be responding and responsible to all the other work that we have going on in the city so I happily support the um the recommendation from staff and I guess just with the request that the postcards make it really clear and easy for people to get those ballots with minimal additional action so that it's really simple for folks to get started on the process of registering or requesting their absentee ballot and I know I'm seeing what you all put together before so I fully trust that that will happen but I'm happy to to see that go forward under this recommendation if others are thanks Jim I feel similar to Jim I really appreciate you Carol and Jesse just talking talking through all of that with us I think if we had more time in between when the ballots came out and when our town meeting day was scheduled then I might feel differently but I think the original proposal is probably fine any other comments would someone like to move to approve the town meeting day outreach and voting recommendations so second ha ha gotcha motion by Mike second by Hal all those in favor please say aye aye aye motion carries I think that's the first um simultaneous on on both motions um thank you Carol thank you moving to item D this is on for approval Burlington airport memorandum of understanding which I will introduce um so for two years I have been working with the mayor of Burlington and the council chair of south Burlington on this agreement tri-city agreement um focused at committing all three of our cities to working collaboratively into the future um in support of our shared goals related to the airport so noise mitigation retaining homes um and just general airport operations this this um agreement was actually started by my predecessor mayor when mayor Leonard was in place and we actually last march were very close to bringing this to our councils for signature then were was like right before the shutdown and sort of got sidetracked in the meantime so we're bringing it back um the south Burlington council has already approved this Burlington is either taking it up tonight or next Monday I'm not sure which um but basically there's there's some key commitments in here in this agreement so this formalizes a collaborative relationship across our cities um something that I think is important you know that the noise mitigation activity and and just generally like airport operations impacting your community is going to go on far into the future and so having a structure in place that will support cross community collaboration beyond my term beyond you know leadership across the cities um this also commits us to being more communicative and transparent so Burlington and airport leadership will provide us with regular updates on the noise compatibility progress and other airport operations that commitment for regular updates I think is important in the past you know we've had to just ask for that information as needed it would be nice to receive it proactively um there's a commitment to Burlington to apply for FAA funding every year so the whole noise mitigation program is via the airport in the FAA it's on Burlington we can't ask them to you know we can't apply for funding right so this is getting them to say we will continue to do this for the homes in your community um and then also for the three of us to work together on securing the 10% match funding local match funding from other sources that are not our taxpayers dollars um and I think an important addition to that is Burlington agreeing to explore use of airport revenues if we don't secure local match funding so at the moment you know we have Vermont gas has thankfully um come on to partner with the noise mitigation program they're going to contribute that 10% match and do some of their weatherization work but this will keep but we you know that's only for the the initial like rollout of the program we need to keep seeking more of that match funding to keep this going and then the final commitment in there was for Burlington to pursue a charter change for Wendyski to have a seat on the airport commission um and that is moving forward it will be on Burlington's Town Meeting Day ballot so there's been a lot of back and forth across our communities over the last two years to get this into place I think it is in really good shape and and really gets us an improved relationship going forward um you know as I said South Burlington has already agreed to this and I feel good about where Burlington is out with it so I am recommending that we sign this agreement but I'm here to answer questions of council and the public see if there's anything in here that concerns you that would give you pause for signing on uh Mike yeah I have a question um do you have a sense of how the Burlington City counselors have a sense of how the voting putting the Wendyski on the commission for a voting share is do you have a sense of what that's looking like I think they unanimously supported it so one counselor Karen Paul sponsored it as an item and I believe they unanimously voted to move it forward to the to the ballot so I feel good about where city leadership is across our three communities that we want to move forward towards the shared goal of you know retaining housing and improving quality and addressing some of the operational impacts and for this I I think this is a great idea a great thing that we should vote on but I'm also wondering if we should wait until we get that seat to vote on something like this so we have that actual voice in the commission what are your thoughts on that I think this document is like good faith saying that we want to continue being collaborative and transparent um the seat decision is really sitting with Burlington voters and then actually the legislature because it's a charter change requirement um so I think that that it's gotten to this point is it it's enough for me to feel like we're able to move forward with this Amy you had your hand up earlier I did but my question was very similar to Mike so okay thank you are there any other questions or concerns on this um I will say that the the process of coming to the negotiating that has happened between Mayor Weinberger and Chair really and I like getting the document to this point there was some back and forth on some of the pieces in here and I think along the way both parties in my experience um really showed good faith that they do want to be collaborative and gave a little in some of the items that are included in here so I think that's in a lot better position than it was when we first started discussions are there questions from members of the public if there are no more comments from council I would entertain a motion to approve signing on to this agreement so moved so moved second motion motion by Jim second by Hal all those in favor please say aye bye bye motion carries thank you I'll bring you an update next meeting um we are on to item E our FY 22 final budget discussion great so this um so on December 7th I presented to you our overall budget proposal from the leadership team that's available at wunuskiuvt.gov black slash fy 22 if folks are interested in looking at it um since then the department heads have come in and given given you presentations on each service area and are here tonight to answer any additional questions there was one request for additional information about the thrive program and stars so that is provided for you tonight um and generally this is just your opportunity to have your own conversation about the budget any any changes you would like to see made um on next monday night the 25th you are required to um approve a budget including the amount to be raised by property taxes to put on the town meeting day ballot thank you jesse um so counselors I will just acknowledge that through these budget presentations I haven't heard a lot of questions I haven't heard uh much um you know any outright disagreement with what's been presented um I think that's likely indicative of good communication between us and staff and then bringing us a budget that reflects you know what we've shared is values so there may not be a lot of discussion to be had but now is the time for any final questions concerns thoughts if there's something that you would want to see changed I think the the quiet is a good sign um let me turn that to the public and see if there are any members of the public with questions about the budget uh it is linked in the agenda if you haven't been following um our meetings thus far so just as a brief very broad stroke uh we are proposing I think it's 1.84 percent increase so below the cost of living while retaining all of the current city's services that are being provided to the community no big new ads all right no public comment I'll give it another moment if counselors there's anything else that you need you want to hear before we are ready to vote on this next Monday Jim I'll just jump in to say something but just to say thanks to the city staff and department heads and the council for the discussion I do feel like the questions and conversation that's been had over the past month has been really has made me feel very good about our city both in house being run and in the effort that we're all putting in and I should say we that you are all putting in as fellow counselors in the mayor for doing this so I'm I feel like it's odd to have crickets during this final discussion but I like you said I think it's because the work done today has been good and I want to thank the staff for making it work to keep the increase below cost of living while not having to make hard cuts um and I know that that's certainly something that could be done and I'm glad that you found a way to make it possible to do this this way so thank you well said Jim all right I will move us to our next item then um on to F this is on for approval Chittenden County regional planning annual work plan application requests and welcome John you may so you may remember this funding program from previous years uh Chittenden County regional planning group uh annually solicits for the federally funded grant program for transportation water quality planning related projects so this year um what we're proposing is to submit a grant for the uh proposed traffic calming policy for the city so this um I'm sure you've um heard through neighbors you know a lot of our community members were at home looking out the window and getting a firsthand view of the traffic that goes by their house unfortunately with the COVID impact and we saw an increase in requests to look at ways to potentially um reduce perceived traffic speeding so um typically how this is done is with through a traffic calming policy so that basically it creates a framework for how we would evaluate and potentially put in um mitigation measures physical mitigation measures so these would be things like speed humps and um looking at changing traffic flow those type of um you know traffic um permanent traffic features so in chatting with the ccrpc folks they recommended to look at submitting for this um annual grant funding um and they reached out to a couple consultants to to come up with a budget um and one of the sort of benefits of using this type of funding is you know besides the 80 percent funding mechanism um it gives us a little bit more robust public outreach instead of you know us trying to do it with some in-house support from rpc staff for example um it also kind of limits and sets us on a schedule for completing the task because it's federally funded um so we're we're sort of constricted by you know a time frame to to wrap up the policy so you know similar to the traffic impact fee which is also a upwp project so uh the total request uh is a $50,000 grant uh the city would be responsible for 20% of that that's the $10,000 match requirement um so would that um open it up to any questions so i just want to say i'm excited about the prospect of having this policy it's clearly something we need um but it did beyond like the need for some traffic calming we also need you know a rational way to tell folks when and how like how we're addressing their requests you know i get some folks their street is obviously the most important to them um and to be able to say like this is why we're responding to this to the need that you've surfaced in a certain way i think adds some equity and transparency to the system that will help people um as decisions are made um questions from council mike i do now this traffic calming study is this going to be for the all roads in wintersky or just the main arteries yep so it'd be citywide citywide yep um well thanks for pursuing this option i like the the certainty timeline and additional resources we get out of the upwp process um i guess my only question and i i apologize if i missed this but um we'll go through a public process we're also going through a period of change in the development landscape so i'm wondering just kind of if you have any musings or thoughts on how this process can accommodate how this policy can be future ready for a much more dense developed landscape along main street potentially along east allen and that that might put a higher burden and change some of the quantitative reasoning for doing traffic calming or not depending on like number of trips i guess i'm just curious how is this the right time to do a traffic calming policy public process when the public hasn't really experienced more than a handful of developments when we anticipate many more um i'm not opposed to doing it now i think like others have said this is something that we needed before today but um just wondering how that how you envision that public process meshing with our current development pace yeah it's it's a good point jim because it's um it is kind of a transformative time with east allen sort of single development along east allen obviously main street getting redeveloped next couple years the so the way that traffic calming policy sort of works or the way the way i've seen it work with other municipalities and sort of expect it to work is it would it would basically set up some thresholds and criteria to evaluate so um you know it would look at traffic on the ground and say okay if if the traffic is speeding above the 80th percentile speed limit then you do something so and that something would be laid out as well speed humps or what have you so it's it's sort of agnostic to um the development on the corridor because it's looking purely at uh the traffic volume and traffic speeds and we could reevaluate those traffic volumes and speeds um at different time periods and look at um you know different potential methods so and i will say some of the methods may be somewhat um semi-permanent so you know tested out if it doesn't work um you know is we could try something else that's also sort of inexpensive um and then you know if we're seeing some kind of influx of additional traffic speed or volume uh it could be changed the later date as well so i think that's one thing we'll have to focus on is you know making sure we're flexible with the traffic calming policy especially around the corridors um and i think we'll also have to you know engage with the commission so planning commission would be uh a commission that we would solicit feedback from on the traffic calming policy along with you know the miscible infrastructure commission so so we have sort of their what they're envisioning for uh future development thanks for elaborating john are there any other comments would someone like to move to approve this application request so moved thank you motion by mic second by jim all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi motion carries thank you item g are 2020-21 policy priorities and strategies recovery plan report out number five this is our regularly regular monthly report to you on our recovery plan that as we discussed last time we will continue until we um reconvene our strategies retreat hopefully in the spring new text is in red new updates i think you've actually heard me talk about many of them either during the budget or um in our weekly meetings this month um the only one i wanted to call attention to i think i brought this up last time but just um to set some expectations for next meeting we will be bringing you the rfp for the city why reappraisal um not again you don't for our policy you don't necessarily need to approve it but because it will be such a big deal in our community for many probably at least two different cycles um we want to make sure that you are bought in before we go out to the market to purchase this so i want to call your attention to that and then you can expect to see that on your agenda next week um and i'm having to answer any other questions as our the rest of leadership team about anything else that's indicated here thank you i did wonder if anyone could elaborate on the so excitingly grant received for economic recovery with downtown winewski um curious if you have any details on what that entails what that supports sorry which what are you asking about um the economic recovery the municipal planning grant for our covet economic recovery with downtown winewski that wasn't changed um we actually applied for that grant as the municipal planning grant and we changed what we were applying for so that is the grant that we won for doing an equity audit of the city okay intended to apply for economic recovery but then we shifted gears um and ended up getting it for something different okay that makes sense thank you um amy go ahead to ask about the tax delinquency rate it looks like it more than doubled from quarter one to quarter two although the number is very small at 1.5 percent just curious if we had any insight about what may have caused that shift and if we're worried about quarter three so the delinquency hasn't increased to quarter two that's uh the quarter one installment only has a 0.6 delinquency and the quarter two installment only has a one and a half percent delinquency that number will go down as notices go out to people reminding them that they've missed an installment um when the first quarter installment was uh just passed we saw a similar one percent delinquency at that time i did notice our utility delinquencies the it doesn't look like folks a lot of folks have accessed the state funding for arrearages for that so whenever that program is renewed by the state hint hint how um i think we could it seems like we could stand to do some more pushing out and communicating about that that is available to folks i have confidence that that once federal funding comes back to the state that that will be refunded um and that program will come back but i i can't say that for sure we did receive an inquiry today asking about our arrearage balances specifically to determine the amount of funding that they will be recommending oh great restart the program if any um one of the issues that we had with the people who submitted requests was that the state only allowed um assistance for balances that were over 60 days old a lot of people's new balances or if they had older balances that were pre-covid were ineligible for assistance so we had seven total people applying that made up the nearly $1,100 that was received their total balances far surpassed that and were well over four thousand dollars yeah so i have done some advocacy with legislators about that that the six like waiting until someone's 60 days behind is not the most helpful approach for folks there um other questions or comments about this update anything surprising in here i did not personally see anything that surprised or concerned me um questions from the public all right this is on only for discussion so no votes necessary which brings us to the end of our regular items and to um an executive session so we have an executive session pursuant to one vsa section 313 um the negotiation of real estate purchase or lease options relates 17 Abinacki way so i am looking for a motion to find that premature general public knowledge regarding these real estate negotiations would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage because the city's risk disclosing its negotiation strategy if it discusses it in public seeking a motion motion by mike second by hell all those in favor please say aye motion carries so i would entertain a second motion um that we enter into executive session to discuss these real estate negotiations under the provision of title one section 313 a1a of the remote statutes and i would like to invite city manager jessie baker and heather careington as well so move second motion by mike second by jim all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries so we will move to another zoom line yeah so just for technology clarity here um i have sent you a separate zoom invitation so you need to leave this meeting go into that zoom meeting um and then we will return to this meeting at the end of our session to adjourn the meeting we do not anticipate making any other votes tonight other than adjournment um and carol you can paul will stay in this room carol you can feel free to enjoy the rest of your evening i can record the adjournment vote is everyone good where's the other work where's the new zoom id yeah yeah it's in uh email i sent you on friday i can resend it right now if you would like yeah all right come in at you right now thank you all right thank you hey paul that worked out very well thank you for your work to think that happened we saw better last time paul how does practice today to make sure we could do it smoothly that's one of my key teachings when i do trainings at work in our various technologies about zoom is you have to practice anything new well like i said san francis school it's all zoom and they haven't done that all year so it was allowed change it too there's a number of questions that they update as as things progress i mean they went from you know a regular user base to everybody in the world pretty much overnight so all right so we are at the end of our agenda i would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second motion by mike second by how all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries and meeting adjourned thank you all and see you next week good night good night everyone good night