 So I would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, October 7th, 2019. And we'll begin with our Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency? In case of emergency tonight? Dave's just pointing out our diminutive fire extinguisher. In case of emergency, we'll use that. But in case of emergency tonight, if we need to leave the building, please proceed out this room from one of these two doors. Go out the building, proceed to the south around the building to the south and gather in the parking lot around the other building. If these doors are for some reason blocked, please go back out into the lobby and back out the main entrance that you came in and again gather at that parking lot beyond the building to the south. Tom Hubbard and I will make sure that the city or the building is cleared. Okay, thank you. Agenda review. So we have some changes. Item number seven, the update on the consolidated trash hauling study is not ready for tonight. So I would suggest that we move item 13 into that slot. The update on the status of the consensus app pilot project. And while they may not take half an hour unless people have tons of questions, we then will take up some other items, maybe financials and the committee assignments depending on the time available. So, are there any other additions or deletions that people wish to propose? Just the other business about. Oh, I'm sorry. And then under other business, we have some proposed dates for steering committees, which is a brief report, but we'll tell you. Okay, moving on, comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Anyone in the audience who wishes to make a statement? Seeing none, we'll move on to announcements and the city manager's report. So, Tim, would you like to begin any announcements? I spent an hour on Saturday and an hour and a half on Sunday painting the side of the food shelf with my lovely wife and the primary artist Jamie, I forgot her last name. It's most of the flowers in the garden, the graphics are established and filled in, but now it's going to be back painted with black. So, you started with black and you went to white and it's going to be black. So, it's going to be all these flowers things with a black background. An hour and a half to spray on. I know it. Good job, though. It was black. It was black. You know, that's the way things work. That's artist for you. Yeah. I attended the committee symposium like the other counselors did two weeks ago. I also attended the Wilson Road design meeting last week and a meeting with Justin and Kevin of some residents that live on Mary Street discussing the possible opening of the street. Thank you. David. Nothing to add at this time. Okay. Megan. We had a phone meeting on Wednesday, a working team preparing and organizing two forums, community forums on domestic violence. This has been declared domestic violence awareness month here in South Burlington. And we are having our first community forum this Thursday night over in Tuttle Middle School in the cafeteria begins at 5.30 with some supper. At 6 o'clock, we will start the event. We'll talk more later, but the second forum will be held on the 30th. Helen and I also met with the chair of the DRB, Matt Coda, on Friday after our event that Coralie planned with all the committees reporting to the council, which I thought was really effective as opposed to having them come before us and meetings. So I want to thank you for that Coralie. I felt that there needed to be some follow through I think Helen did too, but I'll let her speak to that. And so I reached out to Matt and we scheduled a meeting and I thought it was a good discussion on Friday and we'll talk more about issues that pertain to the DRB tonight. Great. Thank you. Tom. I'm going to that Thursday thing and I didn't know there was going to be supper, so you just made my week. Yes. We should maybe see if there can be coffee. I don't know. Not too late to put your order. I'm going to say, and hopefully the other paper covers it, December 8th, Ugly Sweater Run. I hope to see you all out running and registering. So it's a great event. Dog friendly. So bring your dogs. She moves it. Sunday, December 8th. It's down over here. Yes. So it's going to be out of the middle school. Oh. And which is great. And it's going to run down the brand new Market Street because Market Street will be open. So it's going to be the big Kennedy drive block. So you should see registration information soon. But I hope to see all your ugliest sweaters on December 8th. Can I jump in here and add something if you're done? We went up to Montreal on Saturday and saw they have, in their botanical gardens, they have a light. It's called the Garden and Light. And so they have a Chinese garden with the Chinese lanterns. They have a First Nation garden, and they lit the tree, and they have a Japanese garden. There were some really interesting ideas, and City Center Park is so beautiful. If we're going to be having events like the Ugly Sweater run there, I mean, there are things that could really be done with all of the trees and the paths. I just, it really struck my fancy. They used, for instance, LEDs, of course, but they lit disco balls. And the glitter on the trees, it was magnificent. It just looked like a magical wonderland. It was, and so there are just, there were really, you know, fantastic effects for very little, you know, energy usage. And it just was an incredible event. So I just wanted to pass that on. Maybe we should reroute to City Center Park, Dumas Park. I would. City Center Park. It's beautiful. Yeah, that's cool. All right. Well, I went to the committee symposium also, and I would echo Megan's thoughts. I thought it was very effective, really. I mean, it was quick, and we got a tiny bit behind. But I think what we heard and the conversations we had with the different committees was really very, very helpful. So thank you. And I understand they had some good training as well. So that's wonderful. Kevin and I met with the school leaders and discussed Market Street and what's happening with finishing Market Street and the entrance into the school. And I'm happy to report that both Elizabeth and David were very pleased with both the communication. And I guess they are attending the, is it weekly? Construction meetings. So I think that has helped. And they've been able to let parents and teachers and students know what to expect. So it seems like we're on a good footing there in terms of that transition. So that was very good news. And we also talked about our steering committees and under other business. Kevin, I will let you know what we sort of have planned and some dates. I also, and Megan was there as well, as was Tom. There was a meeting regarding the higher ground proposal, I guess, with Burton. And they had a meeting in a brewery downtown. Of course, I went to the wrong brewery, so I was late. I don't drink beer, so I didn't know where this brewery was. Why could you make a mistake like that? I had, in my mind, it was a different brewery, you know? But anyway, I got to the right one and try them all. And we listened and it was interesting to hear what Burton and higher ground have in their vision of what their proposal might look like. And I thought it was very good that the public were able to identify many of the issues of concern that they have in terms of the noise and the impact. There were a number of people from Red Rocks or Queen City Park, South Burlington residents who were there and advocating for various things. So I thought it was a good start for communication and we'll see what transpires. I mean, they're still working on their proposal for the conditional use. Did they say? Maybe end of October. End of October. It seemed sort of quick to me in terms of the numbers of issues that were raised that they were hoping to be able to address. And maybe if they just address it by saying too bad, it won't take them long to put it together. But I didn't get that sense that that's where they were coming from. I also had, there was a special airport committee meeting. I just joined by phone and it was really just some additional little expenditures and proposals for improving some of the aspects of the airport. Nothing really big. It was very quick. I was delighted to attend the installation of the UVM president. And Tom was showcased carrying that, what do they call that thing? A mace. A big heavy mace. He let everyone in and there's a really nice luncheon and speeches and then the installation and some other presenters. And I was very impressed and it was really, really very nice. Good job. Very nice job. I was impressed actually with the variety of people that, Garamelli, is that how you pronounce it? Garamella. Garamella. I'm assuming he asked different people to speak on his behalf and he had a poet and, I don't know, I can't remember the other people. There's such a variety of aspects of his life and his education and interests. Excuse me. It was really very, I thought it was very nice. Kevin and I also met with the library board. I don't know when. Last Friday. And we talked about where we are with the building and the mall. And so most of that was, I mean, can I share that? Kevin had met with Heather, the mall manager, about the need to extend the rent for another year, a little over a year. It looks like. And she seemed to think while it's not a final yes, she felt that she would know by now if there were other larger entities coming into the mall between now and then. And she felt that we could pretty much count on having that extension. But that won't be finalized until January. So it's not an absolute, but we were certainly encouraged that we didn't need to sweat out where we're going to move the library. I guess that's it. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Ellen. Just a reminder that the SBBA fall meeting is tomorrow morning at 730 at the double tree in the auditorium there in conference center. And you're all invited. We have our closing on the first parcel of the 180 Market Street project, which is the road parcel on Thursday. And so once we have the closing done, we can push forward with beginning construction. We want to try to get the road in before the asphalt plants close. And so we our contractors are going to be rushing to do that. Market Street still planned to be open on the 15th. And we're looking at we're looking at a potential groundbreaking for a ribbon cutting and joint ribbon cutting and Brown groundbreaking on the November 13th. December, no, the 13th of November. So it's very tentative right now. It would probably be late morning. We thought we would combine both the groundbreaking for the new building and the ribbon cutting at the same time and two major city initiatives. So stay tuned for that. Later we could have some disco balls gone. We could. We won't have trees yet. We'll have to wait. And that pesky wanting to get in when the when the press needs to get their stories out. I went to the VLC town meeting VLC town meeting on Thursday. It was excellent. There were two meetings in the afternoon about about first responders and mental health. And they were excellent. And Trevor was there. And the chief of new town during that horrible event was the lead speaker. And it was it was good. I want to thank him for coming to the Mary Street meeting. Last week we had four residents from Mary Street who came in to meet with us. To talk about the proposed opening of Mary Street shortly after the new year. We learned a great deal from them. Obviously there are great concerns there. We have a situation that is not. It's just one of those situations you get sometimes where there's no great alternative. We can continue to have traffic going through a parking lot. Actually two parking lots. Or we can have a proper road opened to handle the traffic. Either way people are going to try to get from Market Street to Williston Road. The question is of timing and what we can do to create some safety measures for the Mary Street neighborhood and traffic calming measures for that neighborhood. So at a minimum we have agreed to push the opening back until the spring. And then we are going to reevaluate. In the meantime I've asked our team to accelerate the construction schedule for Garden Street connection. As you might know Tim McKenzie is finishing Garden Street from Market Street to the end of his property to the north. And then we have that short segment to get through from there until to get to Midas Drive. And so I've asked the staff to accelerate that because any connection there is going to take some of the pressure off of Mary Street if and when it is open. But anyway it was a tough meeting. People were very concerned. Also I appreciate several of you. A couple of two or three of you came to the Williston Road streetscape meeting. The other also last week. Good meeting to talk about enhanced bike and pedestrian facilities. New street lights and new trees along there. I want to bring up the symposium as well. And for the sole purpose of recognizing Coralie for the work she did on that. And several of our other team members. Coralie who else was intimately involved in that? So I'd like to say Kathy Ann and Travis Ladd, Holly Baker. Paul was engaged with that as well. Ashley Parker. So that whole group, everybody worked together to make that happen. I thought I was not standing program. Paul's here to thank you both for all the work you did on that and the continuation of the committee leadership forums that you've been hosting. I thought it was excellent. And then lastly, did we talk about the NCP at the last city council meeting? No. I don't think we did. The final. The NCP, the noise. Of the technical advisory committee. Yeah. No, you didn't. Was held two weeks ago, roughly. And quoting Paul Conner, they got 95% of what the city council wanted in our letter to them. So in your letter to them. So Paul had a couple of issues that he raised at the meeting that they agreed to look at. And all in all, I think that the, the airport and their consultants were highly responsive to the letter that you sent. Regarding the proposed provisions of the NCP. Is that been improved yet by the FAA or that's just the request now? Yeah, now it goes to a public hearing later in October. Goes to the Burlington city council, I believe in November. Once they've approved it, then it goes to the FAA. Consultants are anticipating, and Nick, we're anticipating approval by the FAA, perhaps in May. We're hoping to get a copy of the final proposal prior to the Burlington city council voting on it just to, that's what we're trying for. We'll see if they can share it. Paul? They should be able to share it. Yeah. Yeah, Paul? Paul Conner, director of planning is on a two quick notes on that one. What they gave us was the technical paper that will sort of be translated into the plan. So we didn't see the plan yet. So it's not, it's not there yet, but it's the bones of it. And one of the other heartening things in the meeting was that the FAA representative was speaking about their timeline for review, and indicated that they were interested in trying to accelerate the review at their end in order to be done before May 1, which is the sort of, that's the schedule for when the next fiscal year's funds become available. And so trying to be done before that timeline so that the airport could apply for funds under the new program in the first year that it's eligible. So it was nice to get that from the FAA representative from there. So it has to do with sound proofing. It has to do with home value assurance, or I can't remember exact terms. The various different programs, the city council. What was the 5% that we didn't get, if you can recall? The match. I should look back at my notes, but I think that the wording of the way that they talked about sound barriers, we encouraged them to, though they had telegraphed before that they didn't find that that was a recommended action through the noise compatibility, we suggested that we asked them whether if other funds or other programs came to be, does anything in this plan preclude that from taking place. They said no, and we encouraged them to have some wording changes to be a little more clear that this funding source isn't recommended for that, but leave the door open for other things. There were a handful of other. And that was not included? Well, this was a feedback session, so this was the feedback that we provided them. I can share my notes with councillors if you like. They were relatively small. So the navigation agreement? None required, except where the FAA requires them. And in those cases, they concurred with the recommendations of the city council that if the noise were to increase, that it nullifies the navigation easements. Oh, really? Oh, good. And where they're not required by the FAA that they would not be recommended at all to be done. So, yeah, it was positive. Was there any language, I can't remember what it would be, recommended that the... The noise monitoring, I was going to get to that too. Yeah. There was some discussion of noise monitoring. And I think that that was one of the pieces that as feedback that they had included the flight tracking, and both we and Gnuski had provided feedback that perhaps the plan could include the possibility of noise monitoring. And they seemed receptive to the idea, not necessarily prioritizing funding as to what's the top priority, but enabling it as a possible funding source, which is what the principal objective of this plan would be. So they seemed receptive to that feedback. Good. Because, yeah, we talk about what to do with fees that we collect off the fuel sales at the airport. And I saw there's truly no way forward through the NCP process. I would really... I think it's something that lots of airports do and would be in our interest. And I can't, as you know, I contacted the school, the chair of the school board, but also David Young, the superintendent, because I think it's important for the school to be protected in some way. And one of the ways of protecting it is to have data that we can use in order to stay the case if we need to in the future. Good. One last thing. I have half of one thing. The Champlain Valley Conservation Partnership, which is the group of communities are hosting a weed warrior event coming up. This is the half I don't remember. One of the next weekends. At Shelburne Pond? It's on the Ewing property. It's going to start on the Ewing property. Did they finish that? I don't think everything is complete, but close. Is it Paul? Is the Ewing property transaction completed? There's two different parts to the Ewing. The transaction with the nature conservancy is complete, and that's been subsequently then turned over to UVM as was the plan originally. The second part that's Vermont Land Trust, as far as I know, is still in the working through various parts of it. But the partnership now, I think, is South Burlington, Williston, Shelburne, Heinsberg, St. George. And so the communities are getting together to host a massive weed warrior event. And I'll get the date out to... October 19th. October 19th. I'm a trained warrior. And you are trained. That's all I got. Except to recognize Ashley for all of her work. I'm really pulling the communities together and setting this regional partnership up with her colleagues in the other community. Number six, the Consent Agenda. I'd entertain a motion to approve the signed disbursements as presented. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Signify by saying aye. Aye. That passes. We'll move down to an update on the status of the Consensus app pilot project. Our new item seven. Dustin, is that impressive? Perfect. Yeah, it's quite impressive. A weed warrior? Go to the Shelburne Poland. Yes, and there should be... There are places where we'll get the information. If you go online to our website, there's a map to show where to park. You're going to park at Bread and Butter Farm or thereabouts. Okay, take it away. Perfect. Okay, well, thanks for having me. It was a beautiful drive down from Montreal. It was raining. Did you come? Yeah, on Saturday. Why did you come? Well, if you don't go back until tomorrow, it should be nice. It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow. It's supposed to be? Yes. I might stick around another day then. Yes. I love being down here. So just some quick updates. Here's some numbers for you that we pulled. You know, an idea of what's been going on in the last four months. We're going to start here with some high-level stuff, and I'll dig a little bit more into the process, what's been happening behind the scenes, to give you an idea of how product development and this pilot testing is going for us. So here's where we launched. June 3rd, that was the official announcement we had in this room. Corleys pushed out 21 individual polls since we've launched. Individual votes that have been cast, getting close to 5,000. Participants, just over 1,000 total sign-ups, verified people with IDs at 783. So getting close to 1,000. Initially, when we kicked this off, we were thinking 400 to 500 would be a statistical significant number to reach. So we've surpassed that as far as split between mobile devices of the citizens. iOS or Apple is 69%. Android users are 31%. Most of the issues we've been having is coming from the Android side, but that's pretty typical of product development. And then the most popular question has been about the indoor recreation facility. 563 people responded to that question. So that has been the most interesting one so far. So at a very, very high level, that's how we're progressing. Current tools right now, in case anybody isn't familiar with this, this is what it consists of, the mobile application that we encourage the citizens to use. That's the new design. I can dig into that a little bit more if anybody wants to see what the newer designs look like. We can chat. Maybe tomorrow. It's a lot more interesting. It's a lot more engaging. The current tools on the dashboard side on the right are on the left side there. That's another version that has rolled out at the end of last week, early this week. It's starting to look more and more like an actual dashboard that somebody might be able to go to market with. So it's been a busy summer of development. This is where we are. But to recap how we got to here, this was the slide that I showed Kevin in December of 2018 when we're here, beginning of December. And if you look at where we are now, we're somewhere between project active and pilot review. We're not quite done yet, I'd say, where we wanted to get to with the pilot project. We're getting close. And the pilot review is still a little ways away. I think that the feedback that Coralie's been giving us has been substantial. It's been very, very informative. Her talks with the League of Cities and Towns, the feedback that came out of that from some of the other towns and how they might use a product like this has been very enlightening. This may sound simple and uninteresting to some people, but to us this is fascinating. This, what's happening here, is fascinating. And how we could accelerate this or make this more efficient is something we spend a lot of time thinking about. So being able to have access to somebody that Coralie has been incredibly valuable for us. So there's things we haven't done yet. There's things we haven't built yet. There's pieces of the product that we want to push out that we think will add more value. So as far as ending the pilot, we thought we'd be in a place about now where we would say, you know, that's good enough. Let's regroup in a couple of months and see how things look. I would love to keep going. There's no point in stopping now if you'll allow us to continue operating. I mean, we're making or have made a fairly large investment in the development on our side. So if there's no objections, I'd like to keep this election going in a few months yet to see where we can get to. So that's basically where we said we were going to be by now. We're pretty close within a few weeks. You know, last year when we talked to Kevin, I think we've been making good progress and landed somewhere where we thought we would be about now. Give you some update on what it's been like on the back end without getting too technical. Building on top of the blockchain, as we originally intended, proved to be very, very difficult for us. From the time we launched, June, July, even into August, we were building an application directly on top of the blockchain. So that every action the person did or a user did on the applications spoke directly to the blockchain. This was incredibly difficult technically to do. And me and Coralie had some conversations about this. What we've done since then is we've put a middle layer between so that the application can talk to middle layer software and that updates the blockchain on a rolling schedule. We don't need to get too technical. You know, I can bring Oleg by and he can talk about this for hours if you want. If you want. But that has allowed us to accelerate application development. So the first three months of the project was a lot of bug fixing. It was a lot of painful problem solving around how to build applications that speak to blockchain. We made the decision to change the architecture slightly moving in a slightly different direction. That has accelerated app development as far as what the end user is seeing at actual application level, the mobile and the desktop applications. There's been more development there in the last three weeks than there was in the first month because the architecture changes we made in the beginning of September. So on the back and there's been a lot of work happening. That shows up very seldomly on the front end given the type of things we were doing. There wasn't a lot of changing. Moving forward, the updates will come rather rapidly. So we've made some good progress as far as the pilot's purpose of testing some of the technology we wanted to test. It did exactly what we wanted to. It broke some things we didn't think it was going to break and some things performed well. The secure voting performed well. So that piece of it, the actual thing it was supposed to do, it did well. But working with that thing that works well is incredibly difficult. So that's where we are now. As far as what we promised or what we said we were going to try to accomplish the blockchain, the data storage is there. Things that aren't there yet is any type of computation that's happening. We're not doing any data fusion. We're not pulling any. There's no modeling happening yet. There's no data coming in other than what the users are providing. This is something we want to get to. Realistically now we're months, if not quarters away from being able to bring those data given how much work we need to do on the product front and to really make this valuable for cities and towns. So just an update on where that was at. This was, again, another slide we presented earlier this year on what we hope to accomplish by the end of the pilot and that's where we are today. As far as future roadmap looking ahead to this time next year Q4, on the product side roll out the latest versions of the mobile and desktop applications again. That's happening now. They're beginning to roll out in phases. There was a new IOS and Android application that rolled out on Friday and on Monday. The new desktop has some new features that makes planning the polls and planning the feedback much easier. Just really quickly we've added some layers to the program now. You input what the project is you create the timeline and you nest the polls and the feedback within a project so that when somebody sees that poll they can see the associated information around it. Very similar to what your project pages look like right now on the site. Something we didn't know existed but we built something very similar on the platform. So now a user has a lot more context about what the actual poll is which I think is something that was certainly missing with the two sides of that. That's all part of this latest release. We want to begin on the business side this quarter. We want to begin commercial conversations with Vermont cities and towns. It would be great to bring them something and say this is what we're working on. Is this a value to you? Ultimately we want this to be a very much a profit business that evolves into something that is adding value. We want it to be a SaaS platform not too distant future being able to roll this out very rapidly into cities and towns in Vermont starting here and expanding out on a subscription model where cities can essentially opt into consensus. We work with them to onboard citizens and they're off to the races. For that to happen a lot needs to happen on the product side but on the business side that's the path we're marching down and there's a subsequent product line above that that has to match that step for that overall strategy to work. The product doesn't really the product roadmap there's a lot to the product roadmap there's a lot of individual lines to what we're building out on the product roadmap but it's refining the tools so that engagement increases. Building the hooks so that people can share things that are interested about and bring people back to the application. Why does somebody come back to consensus every day? Is that a realistic request? Is it realistic to have somebody spend five minutes a day on consensus I'd like to think four to five minutes might be realistic maybe that's completely out to lunch but that's what we're imagining if we can provide something that isn't engaging enough that somebody will spend five minutes to better understand a topic and then give feedback on that I think we've likely hit on something pretty powerful. So that's what the goal is the app and the latest version of the app you'll see begin to build those user loops those user feedback loops and ways to share stuff with their friends so that they can build the channels that people find consensus. That's the plan for the product for the next 12 months again increase engagement and build additional data input systems that's what product is going to be on the business side marching towards having a business that works that's profitable that makes money that adds value to cities and towns for the next 12 months we're not going to be we're not looking outside Vermont this is where we're going to be able to build out from so if we have some initial traction in the next three to six months there's definitely going to be there's definitely going to be a consensus full-time presence in Vermont in South Burlington I'd love it to be in South Burlington you've done an unbelievable favor I don't even think you understand how great this has been for us so to have a presence here would be a real dream for us it's a lot of cost to set up another to set up another office but it's what we're aiming to do if we can be there in the next three to six months we would have it means it's working and we'd be very happy with that so that's where we're at any questions or comments pretty clear I have to admit I haven't gone on I went on twice and then I haven't gone on again I feel like I need a reminder as a user there's an issue going around the city and there's some I haven't seen any reminders lately I just don't I did the other day because I got a new phone and I'm looking at all my so we should check your notifications Helen because as the stuff comes out it'll send you a notification so I get them and it says hey a new question I know what the question is it takes you right into consensus but you have to set that up in your notifications signed up for notifications and I didn't get them either engagement loops and we only pushed out the notifications the native built-in notifications that you can push out on Google devices Android devices and Apple devices within the last month or so that's a relatively new thing you need a new version for that the latest version we pushed out this week is the only version that will notify you that you need to update your version so again there's these huge milestones happening behind the scenes that I've been discussing with Coralie when do we want to push effort into driving people to the application again probably within the next month or so the next couple weeks we should do another push we spent considerable money pushing them there for this pilot project we're of the belief that we need to get this application a little bit better before we spend that money again we need to build in those we need to clean it up it was great for the pilot it tested a couple hypothesis it allows us to test the technical side of it to see if it was possible what we imagined but we need a better user experience this is not the user experience somebody would expect or demand from a product like this yet so until we get there I don't want to spend the effort or the time or any good will driving people to this application yet fair enough but when you get it ready I think part of it should be reminders particularly if we are really looking for and interested in the response in a quick way we've got to let people know questions that we discussed are out there and we want your input some of these I didn't see so I'll know now now I should get notices when there are new questions have you updated? you should download the new version of the app I'll do that another time they were asking me those questions I have to do that another time that new version will auto update if you have that setting auto update if not it will prompt you to update when you open it and there's a new update I did do auto update it just pushed out it just barely pushed out try downloading again so how would the notifications look when you have the new version like a standard like native notifications just like any other notification just branded does the app have to be launched in the background in order to get the notification if I did a forced stop on it would you still get the notification? I don't turn mine off I don't believe so I don't believe you get the notification if you do a listing of all your apps and you kill them one by one I don't know if it does a forced stop or if it just removes the problem I don't know I don't know what has to remain in memory for notifications to work for an app so I'm just curious about how long what seed of the app you have to have running in order to get that notification that's a good question it has a pretty simple answer but I don't know it I'll google it while I'm sitting here I just downloaded thank you any other questions? this pilot doesn't cost the city of South Burlington anything and it's just our time that we're expending on this that's right I love the idea of this but maybe the good will in the future what about statewide I mean not statewide town by town but the state government would they be interested in something like this? absolutely and when we look at our go to market plan we imagine laddering up to the state so when we think about it how does it make the most sense if South Burlington if onboarding South Burlington citizens then is the first step then logically the next step would be Burlington six or seven other major cities major cities and towns around this area once we had them then it's a logical next step to go talk to the state senators the state representatives that represent those people within those cities those people have already been onboarded into the application it's one application so then as they can communicate with those same people that you're communicating to with a different profile and then as you move out from there you can begin to see a path towards onboarding a state but that's how we imagine I can talk at length about that that's something we talk a lot about we move into a statewide role so imagine Tim you have your consensus app so you might today have a question from South Burlington but you might have one from one of the state senators and you might have something from the state ultimately if we have all of that onboard so you could be engaged at all levels or V-trans if they wanted to utilize it all the users of E-9 between 13 and 16 between 6 and 9am and vice versa brush out V-trans push out a huge survey saying how many lanes would you like to lose today right but you couldn't answer as you were driving because that would be illegal hands free so I do have a money question did we pay for the pilot program no okay we agree to provide staff support and answer all the things like letting people know on our website and all but we did not pay anything for it so how much time are you spending on this probably not as much as you guys ultimately would like but Kevin and I talk about what question needs to go out I will tell you that the platform is super easy I'm literally typing in the question doing a couple of settings it goes out I monitor it I give feedback to Dustin as to what I'm hearing from people when they reach out so it's not a ton of time I've done some thinking about how does it work I've presented consensus as part of community engagement discussion when I was in Denver a few weeks ago and then at BLCT's town fair last week in two sessions I brought it forward to the other towns and cities that were there and so shared what we had been doing and why it would be a good tool to having your toolkit to get to people because the old fashioned way of getting feedback of everybody showing up in a room is not necessarily the best way so we've got to use a bunch of different tools so it's minimal it's minimal we're grateful for every moment every moment one of the things that we did discuss is the access control lists how do you layer the access to the data if corally is ultimately the admin for the account everybody here should be able to see the data as it comes in everybody should be able to log in with their own credentials how the questions are being responded and how they're starting to add up it doesn't make sense for only one person on city council to have access to that information so how do you feel about where how do you feel about the pilot program just in a word or two being on the business side there has been moments of absolute joy absolute frustration the technical challenges the challenges that we faced coming into July and what we realized in July and going into August were substantial they were significant and we we worked a lot of hours in what I felt like it wasn't we weren't moving forward on that side because we were simply solving technical issues that had almost no impact on the actual pilot project that the citizens were seeing some of those problems needed to be solved they had to be solved I was hoping there would be less technical and more issues or we could push ahead and test more on the actual front end side the actual interfaces with the citizens and with with core lease side on the dashboard ultimately that's why I'd like to have more time because some of those technical problems were more than we imagined so it's been fantastic and pulling my hair it's been good it's all we need to do you guys have been great to work with that's great okay and no other questions thank you very much thank you and we'll get another update in a couple months yes that's what you're anticipating okay super so we have five minutes before the next can we get through a couple committee assignments alright so we have five minutes before the next item so we're going to go on to committee assignments 17 I'll just say for GMT you were pointing to me chair nothing really to report we have a board meeting next week we are looking at a budget shortfall for both this year so we are weighing about five different options and we'll be giving some direction to staff at the next meeting so we're going to door up some of our shortfalls okay do you have we just got an update on that they'll be here early November but our charging stations might not be here until late November so we just put solar panels on top it'll be okay we're really excited early November okay yes we are really whittling down at our last meeting September 25 I think we brought a list of 48 parcels down to 21 looking in the short term which was we were our goal was the top 10 or 20 so we're within striking range and that is going to be worked on again at the end of this month I will be out of town on the 23rd is the next meeting maybe October 1 last meeting my husband's birthday and I also wanted to bring a question forward to this council because as we look at you know this consortium of towns looking at Shelburne Pond and how we can conserve it we have a gem right here in south Burlington which is the great swamp and I'm just curious what can we do more in order to really enhance visibility not necessarily to bring people there because ideally it would be conserved as a natural area but in terms of signage in terms of educating the public and the development community I think that this is a really important natural area that we have on our maps but we don't talk about in the same way that we talk about Shelburne Pond or that we talk about Red Rocks and it deserves that kind of status but we had a great swamp it's in the southeast quadrant it's in the southeast quadrant it is just east of South Village that's right east of south north of the roof it connects south village so I just I really want us to think about this I'm not expecting action to privately owned I'm assuming it is whereas he's not here it's incrementally being encroached upon and I think that it needs some real attention we don't know I'm sorry multiple owners multiple owners we'll have Paul there yeah when Paul gets back that's interesting great Tim? have they met or anything? we had a two year meeting but I was ill and couldn't attend I was on September 25th okay and Dave you're not on any special not right now okay okay we've completed number 7 excellent so let's go back to item 8 Colonel David Smith from the Vermont Air National Guard if you would come forward please yeah just wondering if we'll be able to ask Colonel Smith questions and get some answers to and if he's saying that he has to leave pretty soon after he speaks would it be possible to have those questions before he speaks so he can answer them in the course of this presentation well how long are you planning to present? about 2 hours you're going to talk really fast so it's in the half an hour probably I don't know 10 10 or 15 minutes and so you can entertain questions from us and the public yeah from you through you would be great yeah for sure and the public we have a number of people here who are eager to ask questions okay well let's see what he has to say and what the council questions we can always have another forum of sorts so welcome thank you for well thanks for the invitation to be here tonight good evening ladies and gentlemen I'd like to thank the council for providing me this opportunity to update you on our ongoing F-35 mission I'm Colonel David Smith, commander of the 158th fighter wing I've been a member of the Vermont Air National Guard for over 31 years since growing up in the Northeast Kingdom and graduating from the University of Vermont you invited me here tonight to provide an update on our F-35 operations and I'm proud to do so as an organization that is embedded in and gains its strength from the community where we are based it's important that you have a familiarity with who we are and what our operations entail as you know since 1946 our airmen have been deeply rooted in our local communities and we have been a long standing neighbor here in South Burlington we take this partnership seriously and are committed to working together as we move forward I know the F-35 has brought concerns to some in this community and there are questions you have regarding our operations I hope I can answer your questions and allay some of those concerns tonight through the secretary of the Air Force strategic basing process the 158th fighter wing was selected as the first Air National Guard unit in the country to receive the F-35 back in December 2013 since that basing decision the airmen of the wing have worked extremely hard preparing for the F-35 arrival for this very moment this work has taken significant individual effort and support from families and from our communities and as we've done for over 70 years your Vermont Air National Guard performed extremely well and the airmen of this wing were ready for the F-35 arrival on September 19th and are ready to fully convert the 158th fighter wing to this new mission over the next nine months we will be receiving the remainder of our planes a total of 20 when we're operating at full capacity and during that time we'll get back to the business of flying which is what we do so well I cannot thank our airmen their families and the community enough for their support it's been incredible and what I'd like to do is provide some specifics on where we are today and I'll talk through a few topics I'd like to start with our facilities so we've had a dozen construction projects ongoing over at the base for the last couple of years and those projects total over a hundred million dollars four of those projects are fully complete another couple will be complete in the next few months and then we'll actually have construction ongoing until about November of 2020 and I think sometimes people think the base is going to be totally complete or was going to be totally complete by the time the airplanes get here facilities come online in parallel with as the airplanes come online or come to Vermont it's also important that the vast majority of those certainly the subcontractors were local contractors and I talked about the schedule has been prioritized so our main operations building is complete our four bay full mission simulator is complete and fully functional our main maintenance hangar is complete and our taxiways in our park and apron is complete as well with some other projects right behind so that's quick on facilities and about half of the hundred million dollars is specific to the F-35 and about half is what we would call current mission or was actually valid for the F-16 as well so it's about 50-50 roughly on the breakdown of the cost there let me move to talking about our airmen our greatest resource our wing is nearly a thousand strong so we have about a thousand members of the fighter wing about 60% of those members are what we call traditional guardsmen they're part time they work one week in a month with us and annual training sometimes throughout the course of the year excuse me did you say 70% about 60% of those are part time guardsmen yeah we roughly have about 400 full time positions total at the wing with different statuses about just over three years ago approximately 50 of those airmen went on active duty into the F-35 Enterprise to work on the F-35 at about a half a dozen bases across the country to gain that valuable experience that we need about two thirds of those are back in Vermont and assisting us as we train up the wing for the F-35 and those are mostly airmen from our maintenance organization some logisticians and then four pilots were part of that sort of three year initial cadre as well we currently have over 85 members at the fighter wing that are trained on the F-35 and we have right now what's called a field training team where that's where instructors come into Vermont that started a couple weeks ago and it'll go all the way out through into December and that's almost 200 more of our airmen primarily our traditional guardsmen our part time guardsmen who are taking part of that training right now that's happening at the base right now it's multiple shifts per day and that's where we're going to train the most of our traditional guardsmen over the next couple months we currently have eight pilots that are fully trained here in Vermont on the F-35 so they're fully qualified to fly the airplane and we have another six that are in F-35 training right now so we have a total of 14 of our pilots who are flying the airplane as we speak and over the next roughly a year we'll have the remaining of our pilots get to training and if you think about it we can't have them all up front so we have more pilots coming as we get more and more airplanes so we can meet the flying schedule for that regard and then we end up with roughly 30 pilots so we have about 30 pilots at the fighter wing out of the 1,000 members that we have let me talk about the F-35 arrival I think you all know that two weeks ago the first two F-35s landed here in Burlington and over the next nine months we're going to get 18 more so on average we'll see about two a month two every month some months it's three some months it's zero so it just depends but over the next nine months we'll get on average two a month to be up to by June of 2020 we'll have 20 airplanes on the base and let me talk about just for a second and there's been a little bit of confusion about hey I thought it was 18 airplanes how come it's 20 let me just hopefully I can clarify we're an 18 aircraft squadron just like the F-16 was with an 18 aircraft squadron you get some additional airplanes but the F-35 we have 20 and what those two additional airplanes are they're basically just a normal part of our normal maintenance procedures with inspections of things they just cycle into the normal flying schedule so 20 airplanes doesn't drive our training requirements or anything it's based on an 18 aircraft squadron that's a really important note so while we have 20 airplanes it's all built about around 18 aircraft I think that's I want to make sure people are aware of that yeah that piece of it let me talk about the flying schedule the flying schedule started last week we flew what we called a one turn one so we only have two airplanes one of those airplanes is being primarily used by maintenance for the training that I talked about earlier so we're flying a one turn one so we flew one airplane in the morning and one airplane in the afternoon we did that four times last week this week we'll continue the same thing and eventually the way the flying schedule will work is as we get more airplanes we'll slowly build out the flying schedule so we'll start flying two airplanes at a time then we'll start at flying four airplanes at a time and then we'll get up and build out the schedule so when we hit June of next summer so June of 2020 when we have the full complement of airplanes on base what you'll see as you'll see a flying schedule that is very reflective of what the F-16 was for 33 years you'll see very similar times you'll see very similar numbers it'll look very similar to what the F-16 was for three decades here in Vermont which is how many planes we'll get up to what's called an eight turn six we'll fly it in the morning and six in the afternoon and that's what we do with the F-16 and so they all they take off one after another is that how it works now? yeah no so what you would see we fly so then people ask me so fighter aircraft flying pairs like two or four like the fundamental foundation of flying and that's for mutual support and just executing our mission so actually your four ship four airplanes is sort of your baseline foundation so you'll see typically two airplanes take off if they take off they don't take off together so you may know what a formation take off is that's when you take off exactly together we don't do that anymore so typically what you'll see is you'll see one airplane take off and then 15 to 20 seconds later you'll see the second airplane take off if there's four airplanes you'll be the same spacing so an airplane 15 to 20 seconds later another 15 to 20 seconds later another later the fourth if we're flying eight airplanes they would typically be split by in four ships so four would take off there'd be a delay and then another four would go could be five minutes in between it could be 30 minutes in between really depends on what the mission is and what's going on that day for that and then the repeat with six planes in the afternoon typically yes that's correct so four to six so we fly four or six or eight depending on the day and what the missions are correct nope it's four days a week so we generally fly the base works what's called a 410 schedule we are our main operating hours if you will or Tuesday to Friday although we do have people on base 24-7 and we do have a footprint on base on Mondays as well but our flying schedule is Tuesday to Friday so you'll see morning Tuesday afternoon Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and then what you'll also see is you'll see us flying on our training weekends our training weekend is typically the first weekend of the month non-holiday and typically we fly on Saturdays only occasionally we'll fly on Sundays and if we do fly on Sundays it's afternoon so we limit our takeoffs to know no earlier than 8.30 in the mornings and no earlier than noon on Sundays unless there's extenuating circumstances which doesn't happen that frequently we do have night flying requirements with the F-35 like we did with the F-16 when we do night fly we try and do that in this time of year or November December January when the sun sets around 3.30 around here it seems like so we try and do that to minimize the impact so instead of taking off in the summertime at night when it's you got to take off at 9.30 or 10 o'clock we really try and drive our takeoff to November December January February in the dead of the winter when it's dark earlier when we do night fly we put out media advisory to let everybody know we are night flying so it's non-standard than our normal operations and we also put out media advisories if we're doing anything it's non-standard maybe there's some airplanes in town that we're training with anything that's abnormal outside of our normal flying schedule we put out a media advisory to inform the community what's going on for that piece of it as well so those are a few topics that I wanted to talk about I also want to talk about I know there's some topics that have come up that I wanted to address and let me talk about the nuclear mission we've said that before and I just want to be really clear we don't have a nuclear mission with the F-35 and we have no plan to have a nuclear mission with the F-35 when you look at the F-16 that airplane was nuclear capable and we flew that airplane for 33 years we didn't have a nuclear mission with the F-16 so I just want to be really clear we don't have a nuclear mission with the F-35 and there's no plan for one I'd like to talk about afterburner use a little bit I think there's a lot of concern about afterburner use so we've flown there's been four F-35s that took off out of Burlington on May 29th from Hill Air Force Base we do not plan and we flew, let me see if I get it right seven or eight lines last week so there's been about a dozen F-35s that's taken off out of Burlington 100% of those have been in what's called military power that's non-afterburner we do not plan to use afterburner at all in Burlington the planning from the environmental impact statement was 95% military power that's full power without afterburner and 5% afterburner the 5% is just frankly to catch all of these where we would have to use afterburner but we don't plan on it when you look at the configurations that we'll be training in the takeoff and landing data which is critical to aviation does not require and we don't plan to use it so I just wanted to make sure and what drives takeoff and landing data and what drives military power it's driven by regulations and it's actually pretty simple if your takeoff distance in military power so if your takeoff distance without afterburner if it doesn't, you don't have to ours does not so we don't plan to and there's no configurations that we project from the majority of our flying that will require it so I hope I can put people we do not plan to use afterburner we haven't yet and we don't plan to and I really hope that the number is even less than 5% but we're tracking it and we'll keep people informed that's afterburner use so the pilots don't need practice in taking afterburners? why is that? it's really it's your power setting you either put the throttle here or you put the throttle here if you put an afterburner you accelerate quicker and takeoff quicker but there's no specific training requirements takeoff power settings is a skill that you can start learning from day one in pilot training frankly it's kind of like driving your car whether you go full acceleration or not so it's not a training requirement to track to train to afterburner it's just an inherent skill that we have as aviators, as pilots and we use it if we need to and we don't if we don't and we don't plan to use it here just to follow up because I believe that you do train for you know combat we do and so when you are in a combat situation you do not use afterburner? it really would depend on the environment depends on where the base is depends on what the runway length is so it depends you might need it but you might not if you don't need it you wouldn't use it it really depends on the scenario and because these planes cannot fly to the Middle East for instance without being refueled so in theory I'm speaking we would not see the president send you from Vermont to Syria or anywhere else that there would be some field that you land in and there I'm just it seems just difficult for me to understand why there would not be a training in order for you to be ready for all of the various situations that might require afterburner takeoff once you are taking off in a combat situation overseas yeah there's not, it's like I said I don't know how I can be any more clear it's not a skill that's required to practice to you either use afterburner if you need it and you're either going to hit your takeoff speed quicker or it'll take longer so there's not and if the environment requires an afterburner takeoff we'll use it but if it doesn't we won't and there's no specific training requirements for it what's the environment conditions I mean like I said earlier it could be the base we're operating out of maybe it's a shorter runway length maybe it's a higher density altitude maybe it's a number of factors maybe it's the proximity of where you are in the environment where is the base how close is it to non-friendlies those kind of things so really there's so many factors but I can assure you that there is no training requirement for using an afterburner takeoff versus a military power takeoff there isn't it's just use whatever is required by regulation so increased weight of the aircraft though could require afterburner takeoff which is what occurred in 2008 with the F-16 increased air but like I said earlier there's no configurations that will be flying out of Burlington there's no we can't see any military power is going to be sufficient for how we're flying out of Burlington are the munitions when you carry munitions as well okay is there a way to tell when the jet takes off that you're using afterburners it's louder the observation tower depending on if you could see it sometimes if it's night you'll definitely see the afterburner plume you saw with the F-16 longer brighter plume during the day it's a little more difficult to see but you can depending on the environmental conditions it's louder so you'll be able to hear a difference too just like with the F-16 you can see it typically see the afterburner plume correct so on that question I would just ask since when you take off is when you're if afterburners are used they're going to be used I have many residents that have asked about sound walls and I see sound walls along interstates and I would just ask you do you have any advice for how South Burlington residents of that neighborhood as well as this council can advocate for dampening of sound noise on the ground I know we can't stop the noise from up in the air but do you have any thoughts or suggestions on sound walls berms and so on around the area yeah and that question to come up from a South Burlington resident directly to me and you know it's with my civil engineering team and started out as jet blast deflectors which if you recall on the north part of the tax way there used to be a large one there and it was really for jet blast not for noise so that's where the conversation started and I'm not really sure on what the efficacy of a jet blast deflector is for noise you know as far as sound walls there's not a lot of information from an Air Force perspective on the effectiveness of a sound wall and I know there's been some tests so I don't have a lot of data on and you know and if you look at one of the challenges from a base perspective is where you could put them because you know not only do we have our taxiways and our parking apron designed for the F-35 but it's also designed for other airplanes to be able to come in with larger wingspans so you know it's not like you can just position a sound wall or a jet blast deflector right next to the park ramp because it'll be in the way of of a larger aircraft that may come in to pick up people or equipment so it's tricky how you know how effective something like that would be I don't have a lot of great information for your question there I know they can be effective I'm not sure how effective they would be in our circumstance I really don't So none of the military bases probably have them because they're usually out in the middle of nowhere I've never I don't recall ever seeing it military bases in my 31 31 year career and around the world I don't ever recall seeing sound walls I've seen jet blast deflectors which is just that to deflect blast so it doesn't knock things over or if there's other airplanes nearby but to your point it's not true that bases are just in non-populated areas anymore so I think you said that they're all they're not if you look at guard units most all those are in cities big military bases they're in large residential areas now the population is different so but no I've never seen any that I can recall specific like sound walls and I also don't really know frankly what they would look like I've seen some natural sort of screen and walls for sound but and I've seen jet blast deflectors which do just that and I don't think a jet blast deflectors really that effective from what I've seen read briefly designed for that Is this a plane that will serve our national defense or offense? Both. Can you explain how it will serve our defense? Sure it can serve our defense just like you know from Homeland Security just like the F-16 did it can defend this country like any other fighter has really better so sure it absolutely can defend the homeland. I'm not sure what your question is if need be we base it right here and defend the homeland. Well usually this kind of aircraft is for offensive missions and so the question I had since with the F-16s you also would go abroad and you would fly of course abroad and serve in various arenas abroad would there ever be a situation where you could, when you say you don't have a nuclear mission when you are based abroad that you would in fact carry the small tactical nuclear weapons? I mean that's a hypothetical quit not that I could foresee but I mean I can't predict the future so no I mean let me just be clear we don't have a nuclear mission so we're not given a mission so we don't have a nuclear mission it's just like with the F-16 we had specific missions we weren't given other missions we did our mission so we don't have a nuclear mission with the F-35 and so I wouldn't expect that we would have a nuclear mission because we don't have that mission and then back to your overseas when you are when you are in a situation when we go overseas we execute the mission that we train for that's what we do I mean we're all about readiness and being ready to execute our federal mission to the mission sets that are given to us by design in our operational capability statements this is like we are it's laid right out for us you have to be proficient and ready on these specific things and the nuclear mission is not one of them so we wouldn't be given a nuclear mission if we don't train to it so it's like we would expect with the F-16 and like to back up a little bit when you think about defense of the homeland that's a top priority for the national defense and when you look at F-16s currently today F-16s defend the homeland F-22s defend the homeland F-15s defend the homeland and the F-35 can defend the homeland just like they did and we can also the F-35 is also very capable offensively as well so both both the offense and defense how can it protect us against land based ballistic missiles I mean those are the things that could reach us I don't think that's jet similar to the F-35s could reach us from one of our enemy country I don't want to get into that classified information obviously but I will just say the F-35 is extremely capable it's a very capable airplane we have 14 of our pilots flying it some for over three years it's really really capable it's really good it's really good at what it's designed to do I was just looking through the administrative record there's a group of citizens here can I finish my statement or do we not? of course, sure so EIS so the environmental impact statement to address a couple things there we've received some emails demanding that we do a supplemental EIS and what I read was that was based on the afterburner use and I just want to be clear there's no requirement for us to do a supplemental EIS because nothing has changed from the initial environmental impact statement I talked about afterburner use earlier and there's nothing that's driving us to do a supplemental EIS on that piece of it I also want to let you know we continue to work with the airport airport noise compatibility program for years and we will continue to do so there'll be another noise study when we have our full complement of airplanes that's outlined and required of us we'll do that I want everyone to know we're operating so we've been operating the F-35 here now for a week not much yet but for a week and we're operating consistent with EIS so when you look at how that was laid out we're operating consistent with that document and it's also important to know that the EIS branches out into what's called a mitigation and management plan and the record of decisions in there we have specific requirements that were responsible to track and we are we'll track afterburner use we'll track number of operations and then we'll validate that the EIS the assumptions that went into the EIS were valid and that started and that'll be ongoing it's going to be an ongoing process for that and I'd just like to end to close by saying I want to thank you for this opportunity to provide an update on our current operations the F-35 is here and we've begun getting back to the mission we do so well and that's flying and maintaining airplanes and I can assure you that we take our responsibility seriously that we'll safely and professionally fly the F-35 like we did the F-16 for 33 years in the F-4 before that and that we're committed to diligently working to minimize and mitigate our impact on our communities I'm proud to represent the men and women of our fighter wing and so proud of the work they are doing both at the base and close to home in our communities so thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight thank you other questions if I could just follow up group of citizens requested through a freedom of information act administrative record of emails that went back and forth and Caputo appears in this administrative record but I'm looking specifically and I won't go through all of them but with regard to the use of afterburners not use of afterburners I see here on November 4, 2013 there are two Air Force personnel who are discussing and one of them Baradale is writing to Penland I don't know who they are okay so Baradale writes takeoffs are a safety of flight concern and the norm for even twin engine fighters a quicker access less runway used for takeoff and therefore more length to abort or pull back down on the runway bottom line the acceleration and additional options afforded a single engine aircraft drive the takeoff which we have a single engine aircraft with the F-35 am I right on that yep you're right so the acceleration additional options afforded a single engine aircraft drive the takeoff to the more appropriate afterburner go and that is what is being executed by the services currently at Eglin and Eglin does have a longer runway than our runway I believe that our runway is the shortest runway of all those that were considered so I'm just I would like to hear your response to what's the question well the question is please respond to these Air Force what's that man or woman's qualification what's their background that I don't have but they come from the Pentagon I believe and so I think they're pretty pretty expert on the situation and what they were saying there are various things talking about how Lieutenant Colonel Caputo was kind of gaming the system this is Germanos who we met back in 2010 he wrote developing the procedures now which is what you've done and then not implementing them until the F-30 arrives is gaming the system and so there's some there was a lot of concern that the use of the modeling software that was chosen the Carnes 3 versus the Carnes 2 that I don't need to go into detail but I would like you to respond to these concerns Germanos saying that there was a gaming of the system and that in fact afterburner use would be required given the length of our runway afterburner use is not required based on the length of our runway and we've had 100% of our takeoffs not using afterburner so that's the fact with respect to gaming the system that's just simply not true when you look at the preparations that go into the environmental impact statement and the basing decision it's really important that the assumptions are as accurately determined to reflect the location that the airplane is going to be flying at and that's what was done and I think if you look at it it was valid using afterburner here there's no requirement to do so and you know you can't compare an F-35 to an F-16 it's a different airplane and you can't compare Burlington, Vermont to Eglin Air Force Base or Hill Air Force Base or Nellis Air Force Base or Luke Air Force Base or Edwards Air Force Base that are flying F-35 it's apples and oranges there may be different procedures for those bases with different conditions whether it's density altitude maybe that base wants to use afterburner for their noise mitigation maybe there's less people there's a number of things so it's not a fair assumption I don't think for people at the Pentagon and I don't even know what their you know expertise is I don't know if that individual is a rated officer that's even flown an airplane that's ever used afterburner we didn't game the system as best we could accurately determined as best we could almost 10 years ago to start that it was reflective of how we were going to operate the airplane here as we just shown it is we're not using afterburner even though you should be happy about that I am I just want to see it to believe it there's another from the airport you can see it it's Jonathan Nelson and he was he's saying well he's saying with munitions though that it's not the standard way we fly in using military power when we take off with musicians that kind of change it says assuming the plane can depart with munitions at less than military power that kind of change will not decrease the total size of the noise contour but it may shift noise somewhere else any other changes mean so I just I just raise these things because that's my job so I wanted to have you respond to that I'm trying to make we're not planning to use afterburner and you can watch the airplanes take off and we're not and when you look at the training that we're going to be operating that we're going to be conducting here with the configurations it doesn't require it very very rarely would we need to use afterburner and we don't plan to other bases may not need to and do just based on their conditions it's that's their decision but our decision is we're not going to use it and it's not required the regulation doesn't demand it doesn't require it and we don't plan to so the assumptions were valid and we've already validated them I have two other questions but I'm willing to have one in between in terms of the hours that you fly is there any flexibility to work with Chamberlain school to select times in the morning in the afternoon where it might work better for their educational programming such as well I mean I don't know what their programming is if they knew that the planes were always going to take off you know during recess time because it's recesses at ten let's say then perhaps that could drive when you take off so you don't have flyovers when all the kids are outside at recess they're inside you know is that a possibility or is it just you get your orders and we're going to take off at nine fifteen because that's what we're told to do no we've worked with the community for years and when you look at to frankly to fit two flying periods into a day there's only so much that you can slip or slide we don't want to take off too early just because we don't want to you know people are sleeping so I mean it's it really depends what they're asking you know where our takeoff times are by design so we can get two flying periods in in a day you know in a normal day so certainly see what they're asking for I'm not sure what they're asking for and I don't know what they need either but maybe that would be some good consensus questions in terms of you know potentially the neighborhood wouldn't mind a seven thirty a.m. take off because most people are up and getting ready for work that's not I mean that's yeah that's a little early to you know yeah we're not going to play and we're not going to be taken off at seven thirty in the mornings that's a little I don't think I may be great for Chample in school I don't think it's great for some of the other parts of the community I don't know it seems pretty early to me but I mean well I don't know I mean that could be a question we ask what's your poison pick your poison when do you want to hear this stuff when do you want your lives some interrupted by it even though it's a short period of time yeah we were just we were closely with the airport on the noise committee there and that's an active group and I haven't heard that come up but Tom just to ask you ever allow school children to come out to the base and check out the planes and go with you yeah it's trickier with the f-35 honestly then you have 16 just based on the technology and the sensitivity but yeah we do we love it we love doing tours the counselors do we do yep we do a lot of them there's a lot of interest in what we do and and I encourage I encourage you all to come out and see not only flying we have almost a hundred career fields on the base so yeah we were a flying wing but we have tremendous opportunity and tremendous work being done by a lot of really talented and really professional men and women Reagan you have two more yeah I know that we our question whether or not we could alert the schools and just not just Chamberlain but there are many preschools also in the area and home care that is provided in the neighborhoods and I was following up on a suggestion that I received in a discussion so I don't take credit for it but if we can't know the time of takeoffs could we have a three hour window or three hours ahead of time could you alert the superintendent or the principal of the school trusted people who of course you know do not have a direct line to any of our enemies but people who would say we need to get the kids inside right now especially what few you know you're saying we want to hold back on using afterburner as much as possible there might be times when you say we're going to have to use afterburner today could you give people first notice we're going to use afterburner today something to because these children's ears are very delicate I know from my own experience with my own daughter with the F-16s we got caught under the flight path and she melted under the ground I mean she was in agony I just these are little little people with little ear canals and I think that if there is some way to maintain security but protect the most vulnerable members of our community I would really like us to explore that so just following up on Helen yeah I'm I'm not sure what I've seen some other thoughts on sirens and you know and publishing schedules and the thing about publishing schedules is one the you mentioned the operational security piece we take really seriously but also things change to right I mean we may have a takeoff scheduled for this time and we slip in an hour because the people we were flying with had weather or there's weather in the airspace or so you be constantly having to try and you know update people hey we're not going to take off at 10 it's going to be 11 certainly if like I said earlier if there's a time where we we predict or we're expecting something that's abnormal whether that's after you know like we're planning on more airplanes for an exercise or something we let people know so we do that but all I'll say is if you know you're going to see our takeoff times really consistent if you look out if you watch they're going to be pretty close every day and from a community perspective they're going to be like the F-16 where I think people will get to know when our takeoff times are and they're really consistent and we'll let people know when we night fly and that'll be a shift in takeoff time but I'm not sure what the the method would be to inform of or direction you fly because what caught us off guard in fact well the direction is it's not our choice so the direction is strictly driven by what the winds are you always take off with a headwind so we take off on the active runway whatever the airlines are landing on that's where we take off unless there's something odd but you just wherever the windsock is and tower controls that the takeoff direction so we know you normally take off northwest it's actually about 50-50 it is, it's actually about 50-50 if you look at the numbers over time because it was in Williston where we were so it was an unusual thing to have it really is about 50-50 whether we take off on runway 15 or runway 33 to the north it's about a 50-50 mix the last question I have is you talking about you know the dollars and I just wanted to note that there are dollars to insulate homes over 2600 homes potentially against noise that the FAA says cannot be mitigated so I just looking at cost benefit and also the loss of homes for our workforce this is a very economics can be debated in other words but the big question I have here is with regard to mechanics are all repairs going to be done by our V-Tang mechanics or is there going to be outsourcing to Lockheed Martin or some other just like the F-16 was and other fighters are the majority of the work on our airplane is our mechanics when you look at how the maintenance organization changed there were some career fields that went away and some new ones that came in so flying the F-35 out of Burlington is in a lot of ways not unlike what we did with the F-16 there's a pilot still in the cockpit and there's a maintenance professional with a wrench fixing the airplane and launching and recovering the airplane certainly some inspections and maintenance there's what's called depot level maintenance which is out in different places the F-16s used to go out to the Hill Air Force Base in Utah occasionally for depot level maintenance our maintenance professionals didn't do that so it's similar with the F-35 our maintenance team will maintain the airplane but there are some things that it'll go off to more depot level and component repairs just like the F-16 was so it's very similar yeah we still have our maintenance group is essentially the same size it's a little bit smaller overall the wing is the same size and maintenance modified a little bit with new career fields we have crew chiefs on the flight line specialists and fixing the airplane just like the F-16 so that's not true there's no maintenance happening that's simply not true it's very similar to what the F-16 was no airplane has all their maintenance stuff goes to different locations yeah can we open it up to a couple questions I don't want statements I want if there's a question that hasn't been asked or pursued from the audience would you be willing to field a few yeah if they want to ask you the question then I'll see if I okay the gal over there I have a question about afterburner and a comparison between Hill Air Force Base and Vermont oh sure, Chelsea Clark and just wondering what the comparison is between why Hill Air Force Base has to fly with afterburner and why Vermont doesn't is that something you could answer or use this afterburner yeah I mean it's like I said before I mean it really depends on the airfield Hill Air Force Base has a really high density altitude so yeah it's a mile high and that makes a huge difference when you look at factors that drive an afterburner takeoff temperature is one of them and it all kind of plays into your pressure altitude but your density altitude whether you're at Colorado or Salt Lake City so I would say I've never flown out of the F-35 I've flown in F-16 out of Hill Air Force Base and I would say to the question it's really it's probably driven by their takeoff and landing data based on the density altitude but bases can be always a little different how they operate it's not it's not apples and apples thanks please identify yourself my name is Loretta Merrill hi nice to meet you thank you for your messages I would like to shake hands so it's going to be airfield so if I'm correct you're saying that a noise wall is not going to happen what can you suggest for mitigating ground noise I've been told that it seems to be true that the warm up period is somewhere like 20 to 30 minutes it is by the time we start and takeoff it's about 20 to 30 minutes what can be done sound walls my team looked at and there's just not a lot of information in the Air Force how effective is it and then how would you get something like that on an installation where you have other requirements for bigger wingspans and those kind of things we work to minimize our ground time there is a specific amount of time it just takes to get started and get all your checks done and takeoff one of the things that's different with this airplane that I think will help is with the F-16 we would start either in our flow through parking spots in front of us, if you see those the ones that say Green Mountain, we would start there and then taxi out and we would taxi to one end of the runway and we would wait down there and that's called an independent runway the F-35 is different, it doesn't need that so we're going to use that much less so we'll use that some but not as much so right there the sound would be more confined to the base and not on the ends which might be closer to potentially closer to popular airs if you look at the north end so that may help a little bit but I don't have a great solution on ground noise and I know the Air Force would have the same thing I've got to believe that it's probably louder in the South Bronson communities on the airport side or the airline traffic that's starting over there versus an F-35 that's a mile away operating on the other side I don't know what the sound measure it would show but I think it's got to be it would have to be like a collective airport because I think you'd probably have more ground noise from your you know, Delta and American airplanes running in the more that kind of thing so I don't have a great we have kind of a great solution on the Air Force side and I've never done it it's something because thank you Miguel Way in the back Hi, my name is Dan Warren and I have two questions I have a lot of questions what is around the flight schedule you said you've been flying in the same flight scheduled for 13 years and I can remember I've lived in I've worked in the industry and lived on the flight back and I know that there have been eight sorties and four to six every after the four or five years you've been flying in the same flight schedule and second of all at one point during the process somebody in the art guard said because there's going to be fewer planes it's actually going to be fewer sorties and now there's more so why did somebody say that and now we're actually going to see more sorties than we did with the F-16s so that's my first question I think to your point when I was talking about schedule I was referring more to the flight schedule but when you look at what will fly with the F-35 it is reflective of what we flew in the F-16 for the last four or five years not for the last 33 years because it was like Tuesday mornings like I said I was referring to the schedule I flew the F-16 for 25 years and we took off in the morning and we took off in the afternoon for 25 years that's what I was referring to when we had the alert mission we flew some fewer local sorties so collectively we flew an 8 turns 6 for the F-16 for a number of years and that's what will fly with the F-35 what about the one statement did somebody from the air guard did say there would be fewer sorties I'm not sure that they say fewer sorties if you look at the environmental impact statement it's actually refers to the number of operations the number of operations from the F-35 went down from a little over 8,000 in the F-16 about 135 so a sortie is a flight an operation is a take-off and a landing or an approach so you add them all up so a take-off is one operation a landing is one operation and typically we take off and we land so typically we get two operations per sortie occasionally we'll do what's called a low approach where for a training requirement we'll have to do a pattern of operations, not sorties but operations for the F-35 has come down from the F-16 so I'm not sure who said that but maybe they were confused on sorties and operations because there's a difference it's not a operations are not a sortie and an operation is not necessarily two times a sortie it's actually two and occasionally we'll do a low approach and it'll I don't understand why you're going to have fewer with the same number of flights yeah because we deliberately work to not do low approaches here in Berlton, we use our out we were what's called T-D-Y, we're on temporary duty occasionally for a number of weeks during the year where we're not flying here we really strive to do a lot of our training requirements at Wheeler SAC Armier field over in New York State but that's right here, one of our training areas we do approach to the classroom from time to time so we're really trying to minimize and truly make that gear so when you look at my point earlier before you look at the EIS it wasn't about gaming the system it was about accurately projecting and defining what the assumptions are for the EIS and it's our responsibility to validate that new reporting and so I want to say because you want to be in the neighborhood with you because there's a lot of concerns about supplemental EIS with the airport you said are doing that just in response to that there's no, I mean if a supplemental EIS is required we'll do one for what reason it could be because there's no reason to do that let's not let's not get into the argument please I understand that but we have two people three people speaking there's no requirement to do one if there is we'll do one and the initial EIS we're already validating them and that's our job and we're held accountable to that and we will if it drives a supplemental EIS we'll do one but nothing drives one so just to do one because it's not required okay thank you one last question yes please state your name I had you I was in your class you were? he had longer hair than actually I didn't many airports do real-time noise monitoring at various points and we are mostly here talking not about the peak noise but the average noise and I wonder if the National Guard does real-time noise monitoring on the Burlington airport we don't neither does the airport the only actual noise monitoring that I've ever experienced is the Chambrill and South Burlington School District did a noise study at Chambrill where they actually physically measured noise they measured it in the classroom they measured it out in the playground and what they found was it was very reflective of the EIS so when you looked at that noise school board and then compared that with the EIS that's based on modeling it was very accurate very reflective and so to me the modeling is really accurate but to your point no we don't and there's no requirement to one quick one that one was quick that was trying to be quick what would happen if an F-35 crashed off the airport grounds what kind of agreements do you have with fire departments with the emergency services in other words who would come if there was an F-35 crash and fire we do a lot of mutual aid agreements with the community I mean I think you know our fire department serves the airport so our fire department would respond but also the local first responders would respond and we actually train and then occurs with them so like any airplane whether it was an F-35 that crashed or a civilian airplane that crashed the local responders would respond if it's an F-35 we would as well and most likely based on our mutual aid our team our fire department which we pay for the military pays for would respond most likely to a civilian just based on our mutual aid agreement so we would all respond and talking to local fire departments it sounded like they weren't prepared to deal with the toxic fires that would happen if an F-35 crashed with any airplane any civilian airplane or have composite material so it's not specific to an F-35 any civilian airplane that flies now has a tremendous amount of composite material so it's all I can say is our team trains with our local first responders they have for years and they have with the F-35 as well and our team is fully qualified to do so we appreciate when you respond in South Burlington first response here in South Burlington for an hour well I want to thank you very much Colonel Smith for your time and your willingness to take some questions and I know this can always seem a little uncomfortable but I think people are interested in one information and I appreciate your willingness to share what you have I appreciate the invitation I really do and it can be a little but it's really important that as neighbors that you understand what we do and what our operation is and it's our responsibility to give you the most information we can and I would envision this in the future just another update on how we're doing how things are going and I said we're tracking afterburner use, we're tracking our operations and it's our responsibility and I look forward to doing this in the future again thank you thank you very much okay item 9 sorry we are a little late but so item 9 we may want to have a brief deliberative private deliberative session off in another room for item 9 item 10 is ready to go but Paul has some additional information about item 9 so we might want to go someplace else to do that okay we have a deliberative motion today so do we make a motion to go into deliberative session not required but if you'd like to for as soon as minutes I would appreciate a motion to go into a deliberative session to discuss interim zoning application IZ 19-03 so moved all in favor so I would like to call back into order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday October 7th 2019 and we have in deliberative session the council agreed to approve application IZ 19-03 and IZ 19-04 unanimously so those are approved and what I would also like to point out or note that regarding the IZ 19-03 which is the spear street road development the council received a letter from an abutter with new information but we closed the meeting or the hearing so we couldn't use that information to affect our decision on this but we would recommend that those issues be raised when the applications before the DRB and then they can be taken care of it was just they came too late so we couldn't use them so we we don't have to vote we already did or do we vote again in public? No so we're just announcing that we've approved these two okay thank you so that's 9 and 10 so now we're moving on to item 11 so we still have Paul and this is a continued review and possible action to adopt proposed amendment to the land development regulations and specifically we approved all of them with the exception of the parking requirements for all uses citywide accept multi-family housing accessory dwelling units for which parking requirements are to be reduced so what is do you want to so where you are just as a reminder for yourselves and for the audience is that you held a public hearing on September 16th as council really said the other amendments were adopted these once you decided to take no action on either way so that you could continue discussion this evening public hearing follow the last meeting this evening your choices could be if you would like to adopt the amendments if you choose to further your discussion you can continue to do that tonight and on other nights if at some point you decide that you would like to make any changes to it then at that point that will trigger the warning of a new public hearing whatever the amendments are and the consistency of the amendments with the comprehensive plan so those are your procedural steps okay what is your pleasure well I'll just say I emailed some folks and flew a flag of compromise if you want to call it that maybe use some reduced parking minimums and a greater waiver for the DRB I think that was received pretty well by the DRB but not received well by the planning commission so I know there's been a lot of angst over this and I know there have been comments made where the DRB and the planning commission each have their own rules and one's legislative and one's quasi-judicial and really I've heard people say that the DRB should follow has for regulations that we actually you know pass and that's the proper process I just want to say to remind people that I visited the state house a few years ago and Helen Held was there and I can't remember the reason I think it was the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps or something like that but I got to sit on a legislative session where Peg Florey was demanding that the house pass the mandatory minimums for certain types of assault and there was a lot of discussion especially by the assistant DA's around the state where it would tie their hands and their ability to actually get convictions because they do a lot of work with the victims in order to get plea deals and not force the victims to have to testify and so this would upend all of that so that analogy is simply to say that the people that prosecute or work in some quasi-judicial mode on these types of issues do have the opportunity to provide comment to the legislative body that creates the rules right so in that case I would be really comfortable if we could move to a middle ground and just give the DRB a greater waiver percentage and go ahead and reduce those commercial minimums if you'd like to at this point in time I'm not in favor of actually limiting the minimums all together I just think it's either premature or unnecessary and we create some discord between those two bodies and it's not really necessary to have that so I think we could either forge a compromise if the Planning Commission was willing to or if not and you want to push it through with three to two that might be what happens tonight I don't know but I'm just voicing my concern that it's an opportunity to listen to both sides I also did some questioning and after talking with the chair of the DRB, Matt Kodai asked him about the ride development because I go out there every week for my daughter's violin lesson and there is in that development which is behind the counseling clinic and the happy tales and there might be another commercial building there there is the rice circle which makes a circle and then there's on street parking which is used every time I go past it and so I put a question out through Kevin to Paul and his response was I think very enlightening Matt couldn't answer the question which is why I went through Kevin to ask Paul that the current land development regulations in and help me Paul the southeast quadrant limited commercial village commercial is actually designed in order to create a buffer between the residential and the commercial that there is you know there is some kind of transition and since that is the area that is currently non-developed and where we would see the minimum parking standards come into play perhaps the most I found that really compelling that there are already in the village limited commercial districts in the southeast quadrant that there is a buffer already written into our land development regulations that does not have anything to do with our minimum parking requirements and there was no waiver there was no quid pro quo it's just there are land development regulations and that really put my mind at ease because looking at city center looking at Kimball Ave looking at the Kmart Plaza and down off of Route 7 we have seas of parking everywhere and all I saw as a potential area where there could be some concern with regard to encroachment you know businesses saying that they you know oh we'll just park on the street very pleased to read that there are actually measures or stipulations in our land development regulations to create that transition and that buffer between the commercial properties and the residential properties. I also want to bring to our attention something that we all know but just to remind this body of and the public of that we look at form-based codes in city center and there are parking requirements there and as we know we are as a city going to be doing one of the solutions that I saw in Massachusetts being used which is you rent parking spaces and that's what we're doing for our community building our municipal community building we are going to be renting parking spaces across the street in building that has been renovated from commercial to residential which requires much less parking and now we have parking spaces that are at our disposal through an agreement and so I think that even in our city center we're already seeing solutions that we have been putting into practice that our solutions that the reduction or the elimination of many parking requirements lead to and I don't see any other area in the city that really concerns me and I really thought about where in the city could this create an issue and I really would like to have that beyond the fact that there are people saying you know this is something that the big bad developer is going to take advantage of that as a candidate I have never made developers into the bad guy and I do not again here I find that to be a very facile argument and I really find it to be not compelling as an argument developers of course need to have review and I think that in the end though they are looking to sell their buildings and I think that any developer working within the land development regulations in the village limited commercial where we have our biggest space of undeveloped land that these regulations would have the biggest impact on that regulations already already have you know written into them buffers and protections so that in addition to the fact that I really various reasons I think that this planning document is looking into the future looking into future where we have to take action now in order to get less asphalt on our open space think about using that land more creatively thinking about how we are going to look in the future what the land developments do with regard to creating that buffer but also the minimum parking requirements that are before us and the other issue and that I really, really wish to bring to everyone's attention is that this is this is my train of thought here and I'm sorry it's the end of a long day it will come back to me I'm sorry anyway it will come back to me I apologize but I really think that oh I came back to me waivers this is my pet peeve it has been for years and and it is something that I address on Friday with Helen and Matt the chair of the DRB I am not comfortable with the waivers that we regularly as a city give I would like to know more about them I would like for our planning commission to work to come up with creative solutions like the parking buffer for the village limited commercial in the southeast quadrant where waivers do not have to come into play and case in point I have two houses in my neighborhood one where the DRB after the fact after it was built oh we'll just waiver it and neighbors are very unhappy about it and another building where the DRB said no we're not going to waiver it and I would compliment that our current DRB members for holding firm on our land development regulations and these are carefully thought out regulations these are regulations that I have tested I've read up on the the elimination of of limited parking and what I see is it's simply you know it's a it's a hot cold test it has nothing to do necessarily with actually proven data that this fails I see nothing out there suggesting that we should move forward or not and I think that that's not a good enough argument to convince me either so there we go thank you so I'm right where I was last time and I would just say as I said from the beginning and I hope I communicated I support a reduction in parking minimums I just don't support an elimination of them I just think that's jumping in when we should wade our way into it for all the reasons I articulated previously that the parking that the parking was a problem with Timber Lane that they had to readdress because neighbor people were parking during business hours in front of the neighbors near them it was causing a lot of conflict and first responding vehicles couldn't get through there and it's also happening now I had met residents of Brookwood contacting me about the new office building there and they've got cars all parked along their streets and now they're asking for resident parking only signs I support reducing parking minimums I just don't support eliminating them and I haven't seen any evidence in the previous materials that show that this is a common thing that has been done across the rest of the country so I think as if it does pass 3-2 I still think this would be a big mistake to just jump off and do this I think we need to listen to the DRB and we need to ask the planning commission to work with the DRB to find some middle ground solution that's where I am okay do you want to make a comment is the wording still the same as you saw it the last time council gave no direction to change anything from the last time so it's the same as you had did either the planning commission or the DRB have any recommendations for changing any of the wording I believe DRB members talked and I think the two of the members are here if you wanted to get their individual feedback as a board I don't believe they took any formal action but members actual wording what? actual wording I think that might be a better question to ask directly of them whether they have general comments or actual wording good evening Matt Coda from Development Review Board and Winesap Lane Winesap first from the DRB so yes we have actually Frank being the primary author drafted language that we believe is a compromise that allows us to waive more than the 25% that we currently do and to reduce the minimum requirements no one's pro and pervious pavement here we don't want more pavement than needed but we do want to make sure that a developer doesn't have to be bad a developer may make a mistake and we want to make sure we have seven people that can view the the project can make sure that if parking isn't planned or is improperly planned that there's another set of eyes on it and if we don't require any minimum at all they don't even have to talk to us about it we have no power no leverage at all we're here to fix problems when the developer has something that the joining party doesn't like interested party doesn't like we're here to make sure that it works for the city but we'll have no power if you take away our minimums this is what bothers me is that there's going to be massive redevelopment over the next 20 years along Williston Road and along Shelburne Road there are a lot of old structures that are going to get purchased and raised and something new is going to be rebuilt and each of those individual redevelopments is going to be reviewed by these gentlemen or their successors and I want to make sure that they have the right tools to be able to make corrections when there are boundaries with residential areas that could be negatively affected if they don't have the proper authority to you know to change the amount of parking if necessary if you go to no minimums then they won't have any power at all every one of these redevelopments and any new developments is individually evaluated you know from the work that planning is owning does and it stands on its own merits from the application by the developer and it has its own idiosyncrasies and I think that they have the ability to understand what those are relative to the surrounding areas and I don't want them to lose the ability to make recommendations or say to developers when they make bad choices because sometimes bad choices happen well I would just respond that there are seas of parking on Williston Road and on Shelburne Road I'm not talking about the parking that's there now I'm talking about the parking of the future we have the same goal in mind we want less impervious pavement less impervious services we want a better transportation model for the state we want fewer cars on the road we want better mass transit which is more effective in urban and suburban environments in rural environments and we're going to get there but you've got some older developments and some newer developments that are coming that are going to test the minimums and might have negative consequences so the difference is let's say you have application X and you had no minimums and the developer wanted to put in 20 parking spots and let's say you had the alternative they had to put in they had to put in 40 but they asked for a waiver to get down to 20 it's the same result you're still going to have 20 whatever it is because the developer is going to want whatever they perceive is what their client wants to have for parking because that's half the time like we heard before the developers if they're redeveloping a property they usually have a client that's going to bring the business they've got their own requirements for how many parking spaces they need per thousand square feet so I think that letting them retain some of the ability to have that number flexible up or down is a small price to pay you're still going to get to where you want to go well you know I think that the examples that have been brought forward we all received an email from John Dinklage healthy living is just waiting for that city center development to occur so the trader Joe's healthy living is a PUD with shared parking people can very well park at healthy living it always has tons of parking up back and they can walk over to Pier 1 and Trader Joe's I don't have any issues I never did when we were looking at the PUD about shared parking that was fine I totally agree any complaints that you hear about Trader Joe's not having enough parking you can't park a Trader Joe's then please go over and park at healthy living it's not a problem so I don't even think that's an issue that we have to talk about it's not relevant to the discussion we're talking about future developments where they need some leeway to be able to make those decisions that the DRB is supposed to make well let's just talk about that hypothetical which I have not yet seen an example of I like it when people park on the road now I'm not in favor of people parking you know to go take and be gone for two weeks and park out on Maryland that makes no sense to me so no parking signs there but I like people parking on my road because it slows down the cars but those people that live on your street no not all of them they're people that come in and they stay a week with my neighbors they're not necessarily people but they're people that are in the residential homes on your street but I think that I chose to live in an area where I am close to the communities all right so I don't have to take my car so I can walk to the bus stop so I can walk to the grocery store I can bike ride to drop a letter off at the post office bike ride in January no but I can walk to the post office in January because we have handy handy little sidewalk plows that I never saw until I came to Vermont that allow me to get there I want to go off topic on this are you going to stop using your car entirely in the state of Vermont in the next 10 years? that would be lovely I would love to do that but we can always go back to the drawing board I'm trying to get to the bottom we're trying to find out what is required here we're trying to find out if no parking minimums is any better than giving these people the ability to wave parking down to a number that's it's going to be the same as what they're going to get with no parking so then why do they need the way if they're going to get to the right number if they're going to get to the right number if butters rights in these situations every application is different that's why they get to review them my point is that our regulations just like in the southeast quadrant with the village like commercial our regulations have already prepared for those buffers and that's what our planning commission is now currently working on with the PUDs they are looking at those buffers and I am very impressed by how that Rye Circle operates and that's why I asked about it and if that is the future of South Burlington it is nothing that we should feel bad about I think it's something that we should encourage and just feeling a little queasy because someone doesn't have power is not enough to convince me there were no parking minimums on that Rye development right the developers looked at that they have a building that has counseling they have parking the next commercial building has parking the next commercial building there is a major street in back of them with parking on both sides I bike through there all the time once in a while there are one or two cars on that street and it's the same cars every time I don't know whose cars they are it could be the counselors in the counselor building but the point is that there were parking minimums and I don't know if they had to wave anything I don't remember what we did but the point is that there was one parking space waved fine, one, whatever it was but the point was that that development seems to work it's working pretty well now DRB had a chance to weigh on it and they made a decision but it was our land development regulations the DRB and I asked was there any waiver no except for this one parking space was there any quid pro quo no it was a good plan because of our land development regulations and I have confidence that our planning commission is going to do the same thing when they come out with their PUDs then you should be willing to give them the chance to make the decision then but I think you're going to end up with the same number I don't like waivers number one they wave all the time you have deliverers coming in 16 spots I have to have 20 or I have to have 30 I can't wave them down far enough at 25% just expand the number reduce the minimums you'll get to the same spot I don't see that they have the same kind of thinking and discussion that the planning commission has so I do not want to see they are the ones where the rubber hits the road they look at every application relative to the butters and those are singular situations that only those seven people can adjudicate that's what they're there for is to adjudicate I understand but as you know nothing is perfect Tim as you know you've lived long enough to know that there are constantly things that the DRB might not have seen or that the planning commission has to go back to the drawing board but the one that we talk about for the drawing board with regard to what happened next to 180 I think is the architects okay so I'll just leave it at that I don't think that everything comes down to lack of foresight on the planning commission's part that said if there is a situation where we have to go back to the drawing board we can do that and that is something that we discussed with Matt let's go to the compromise first and if that works for five years then we'll go to no minimums then I don't understand why I don't see the need other than they're not ready you have seven examples of people that see a need no eight and nine but they've not provided any data that is convincing to me okay I got a question did you have suggested wording yes where is it I didn't see it I sent it to you I sent it to everybody you all should have it on your email I can tell you what it says it can't be very long so go ahead and it's not long what I wrote to you first of all there was a cover email that said this is it right here that's how much space it takes up is it alright do you mind if you read it you don't have to read it he can describe it paraphrase well I'll tell you but I also want to talk about what the new criteria are because they're very specific and they address the issue of waivers that are ill-considered or don't have enough parameters around them to be well considered what this does is give us the authority what my draft does is give us the authority to reduce parking down to zero if need be but on an expanded set of criteria for waivers I'll tell you what they are right now the only things we're supposed to consider are unique physical conditions and the availability of shared parking it's not enough to relate it all the time development review board from time to time has made arbitrary decisions I don't disagree with that observation I've for a long time been a proponent of more sculpted criteria that address the full range of issues here's what I think they are and I'm open to further discussion with the planning commission about that or with you with the exercise of what's supposed to be a wise discretion as listed here are unique physical features of the lot the desirability of limiting the creation of impermeable surface the availability of shared parking for the development either existing or demonstrated by the applicant to become available upon completion the adequacy of public transportation service development either existing or demonstrated by the applicant to become available upon completion what I I'll come back if you want me to the impact of the waiver on public infrastructure such as without limitation publicly operated structured parking F the physical and economic feasibility of the structured parking for the site G the impact of the waiver or the joining at or nearby properties and H the impact of the waiver on a joining at or nearby on street parking now that is a body an expanded body of actual considerations factors the developers on notice come in prepared to talk about this stuff come in with your deal with Chittenden County transportation authority that says I put in 150 new apartments here and here's the guy from CCTA or whatever whatever that's called telling me what the new bus schedule is going to be to service my development upon completion we don't have anything like that now that addresses the of what you should be governmentally concerned with which is not just a desperate lunch into some fantasy future where people will magically figure out how to get downtown in February that kind of characterization I find disrespectful when we study the land development regulations at right at the right of element but I'd like to finish I apologize you have a body of practical considerations I've got as a government to take into a town and it's not into account and it's not just the elimination of of the potential elimination of parking the elimination of minimums of what happens if public transportation being high on the list the encouragement of developers to come in with a full body plan to address the entire list anyway you have the list you all have it on your email I don't know who has printed it out I'm sorry it was a week ago you just described what's in your recommendation right pardon you just described what's in your I did so I'm curious as to what the planning commission thinks of that can we switch places is that allowed do you want to borrow I have it so three of us are here this evening but I'd like to say that we can only speak on our previous conversations as a body we did not specifically review and vote on any kind of response to this what he just described I think a few things are I mean we've already discussed it so a lot of the things that he suggested are things that we have discussed as part of all the deliberations before we submitted to you our recommendation I guess just for clarification he talked about multifamily housing this recommendation we put in front of you does not apply to multifamily housing we felt like that was one thing that we really wanted to keep that number the way it was so there isn't a change to that type of it's a reduction but not an elimination reduction but not an elimination so it's not a reduction or elimination of the minimum and I think a big point I wanted to make is that we know change is hard and this is obviously a difficult discussion that people have been having but just because this idea isn't common it doesn't mean that it's bad I don't know that we need to necessarily wait till everybody else is doing something to do it there's lots of research and evidence to show that it is a good idea also it's not like we've had parking minimums in place forever ours and a lot of the communities surrounding us have only been having these regulations in place for about the last 30 years there's an awful lot of our development that was done before that period before minimum parking requirements were part of our regulations so we're kind of going back to that situation there are we I think you were emailed an article by a professor of planning Donald Shoup and there were a few things in there that I thought were really kind of excuse me is that the one you yes it had a lot of really great points in it and I think I just wanted to make a couple of those points so what we've done with our previous development our zoning has been for a long time is we've separated our land uses people live separate from where we work so that's created a need to travel we've lowered our densities and really spread stuff out so there's distances between the things we're trying to get to and we've had lots we've required a lot of free parking that's paid for by landowners all those things are really in place to support cars so when we look back at our comprehensive plan which we did huge amounts of outreach for there's four main over our shingles and the second one of the four is walkability so if we're going to continue to have all of our regulations really focus on cars we're not going to get to that point of walkability which is what we heard loud and clear from the citizens one of the other things that we saw in that article that I thought was really interesting is that it said specifically despite all the harm off street parking requirements cause there's almost an established religion in city planning the idea that we've talked about this it's been parking the number of parking spots has been such a huge part of our discussion and such a huge part of laying out sites I'm a civil engineer like I've done site design and one of the first things you do is you look up your parking minimum amount of parking space I just don't know that that's what we want to do with our land do we really want our land and our land development to be based on the number of parking spaces we've been hearing from the community we want natural resources we want affordable housing we want more jobs those are things that are not directly tied to the number of parking spaces it just doesn't make sense to me that our policy going forward should continue to be the number of parking spaces when there's so many other things we're really trying to do with our land you know letting the market decide you have experts who are creating a destination that want to attract people there and people drive I don't think they're going to just be shooting themselves in the foot having no parking so I think those are some big points I also think that you know the DRB's or Frank's language that he proposed you know it gets back to assuming that there's a right number so if you're assuming that that number out of the book is somehow some kind of right number and then you have to somehow prove through subjective means that you should be allowed to reduce it it all comes back to the development Ruby board having to pick pick and choose what they think the right number is and you know I feel like even though there's some criteria that's listed all of those things really are very subjective you know does it mean that you aren't allowed to get a waiver if there's a residential street nearby because you're afraid the parking might spill over under that residential street like how do you somehow get to a number that is acceptable like it creates a lot of uncertainty like how could someone possibly come forward with a proposal that would get approved if there's no idea like what I don't use the word whim but like what the DRB is going to somehow come up with as that right number you know which is a big reason why I think waivers are something that we've been trying to get away from like trying to make our land development regulations predictable like what people are really going to get should be pretty clear and if you could potentially waive 100% I mean there's so much there's no predictability about what you're going to get an approval for and you might put an awful lot of effort into trying to prove all these things with with no specific outcome that you're going to get we've been asked by both the DRB and the city council almost yearly to reduce waivers to create more predictability of both for the public and for the applicant and you know this is one way that we came up you know we're proposing to reduce one of the waivers and I think that might be it did you have some other things I mean we had a lot of discussion not specific but in general I mean aspiration of this community has asked the council the planning commission to make South Wellington less car centric and the other thing is that the drive for mixed development which means residential and commercial the more successful we are with that the less you will require public transit or cars to get to work because you can walk and in the end this is a balance between risk and rewards and I think the rewards for doing this cutting down on traffic cutting down on pollution cutting down on impervious surfaces the rewards are outweigh the risks that the DRB has raised after I almost laughed when you said if you were a developer you look at the development and then the first thing you look at is what because as an engineer you look at how many parking places you require and then what do you say after that in my mind I was saying how many am I going to ask to be waived that was the next I did a small development this is what we want to build this is what's required how big a waiver can we get which is a really good point I guess the first thing every developer likely says actually it's not it's generally for most developers now there are some at the top and some at the bottom but if you take developers what's their primary job to generate rent to generate revenue the longer it takes them to do that the less money they make they're going to take the path of least resistance not only do developers typically hire a civil engineer up front what they don't do is hire a land planner to actually figure out how to make them work better for everybody there are a few developers that do but most of them don't they're problematic in the business I find it interesting are you done? yeah I find it interesting whether it's intentional or not there's this wedge that seems to be being driven between the DRB and the Planning Commission and that's not the way that volunteer boards and commissions should actually be working I also find it interesting and maybe it's due to the professional makeup of the DRB that this has become somewhat of a litigation that all of a sudden we now have seven development experts that are dictating exactly what should and shouldn't be done two years of effort went into this recommendation by the Planning Commission we are not experts in anything there was a lot of research that was done there was a lot of discussion that happened and jointly we came to this place you're going to provide waivers to a body that has no expertise in something that they're supposed to provide waivers for and I will respectfully disagree Tim they're not going to end up at the same place it won't happen because they're going to have the discretion to tell the developer that he's wrong or she's wrong without knowing anything about their business because they feel like there should be more parking is that really the way that we want to run growth and have a sustainable community here in South Burlington there was a reason that these two bodies are separate they should remain separate if they want to make recommendations we hold all of our meetings in the public for the public they should participate the topics are warned it should not wait until we get to a recommendation period for them to decide that they are not happy with the recommendations being made after two years worth of work and then throwing out language that is inflammatory about how fast or how inefficient or how inaccurate or how lazy the process was that should not be tolerated by the city council or the community it is just not acceptable so what I think is we've had a really healthy discussion and that it's gone on for a couple of weeks and I think I think I'd like to make things fair and perhaps more simplified going forward because I don't like things getting too complicated and right now this is sounding like it's getting too complicated and you all have done a tremendous amount of work on this and from my perspective I think that's where we should be and that's where we should go I don't think I think your point is whoever made the point is these committees should work together and we can have lengthy discussions we can have we can have disagreements but we're all in the end after the same end goals and so it's not the case here we all should have the same end goals I will certainly agree with that but at this point I'm I'm good you've done a nice job Tom we'll have a comment from you and then I'm ready to vote I think you opened up the conversation by saying that you're not speaking for the whole planning commission and the whole planning commission has not considered this very formal DRB feedback and I think the process has worked out supposed to you've worked this to this point and you've collected community feedback and it's not just the DRB that's speaking up I think since there is no hurry I've not been presented with any time pressure on this and the last time we considered parking considerations and the other regulations regarding when I forgot what the name of it was but we had eight public hearings on it what I would just ask I think we all want to do this right we all want to get to the right place we want to get to a better place I think it makes a lot of sense have the planning commission just consider what the DRB has put forward and if you come together and we still stand by what we did I think that is a very fair next step and it makes sense for a lot of different reasons so I would again discourage this council from acting tonight because there's no time pressure on us doing so and with all this feedback time helps get everybody on the same page there is a time factor though they spent two years on this they've addressed all of the concerns and argued and debated within the commission, planning commission all of those issues we have given them an incredible amount of work so to say well two years isn't quite enough so spend another month or two and put off some other things that do have a time crunch like IZ I think is not this is not important to me doesn't make any sense to me that important to wait I'm going to go ahead so Tom just one thing specifically the planning commission did consider increasing the waiver authority of the DRB as one of our options and we decided that was not the way we wanted to go specifically so that was a response the five criteria sound very reasonable and I love the GMTP so why not go through it we did consider I just wanted to be clear that was not just me talking that was like one of our options that was not put forward so I like to go ahead and move that we adopt the proposed amendment to the land development regulations to eliminate minimum parking requirements for all uses citywide except multi-family housing and accessory dwelling units for which parking requirements are to be reduced that's LDR19-01 Tom I'll second yes we have a chance for a member of the public to speak yeah you asked me we're about an hour and a half behind schedule you have a written statement correct it's been modified as I've been listening to the conversation can you can I give you two minutes and can you that would be fine we have a motion moved and seconded so I would like then to have a vote move on thank you for the record my name is David Crawford I want to make clear that I'm not here representing any of the committees that I have the privilege of serving on I would also say that the I am chair of the NRC and those members are aware that I'm making a statement personally what are the concerns I find great identity with a goal that's being presented by the planning commission it's a good goal I'm just it just seems like it's not the right time to 100% adopt it the proposal to eliminate the parking requirements for the commercial developments doesn't have to be you can make it waiver go down to 0 if Frank's whatever they are 6 or 5 conditions are put on that we're talking about if we say where is this going to be needed infill that's really where I see it happening I got to speak to the goal I'm trying to improve personally so I can ride my I ride my bicycle more that's great but I don't live very far from city hall and I come here go by it a couple of times a day when I come here almost every couple of times a week I can't ride my bicycle here I'm too old I can't do it it's a worthwhile goal for me but I can't make it and there's a lot of people in that situation now very simply let the waiver go down to 100% under the criteria that Frank has put forward that can be a very simple motion and it works if it doesn't work speaking as a taxpayer somebody's going to have to pay for the infiltration and all the rest and that's going to be us taxpayers we're going to have to fix the thing with more parking let it try to work that's my statement thank you I just want to say Dave is one of three members of the public who have contacted me and an opposition to this whereas members of our energy committee are totally in favor of this other members of the natural resources committee are in favor of this there are members of the community in favor of this that I have talked to and three does not rise to the level of me having to put a hold on this elimination of minimum parking requirements does not eliminate parking you will still be able to drive to city hall David I agree but when pointing out that there's a group of us out there that agree with a goal that the planning commission is putting forward the question is can we really take and put that goal into effect now for all of places where infiltration is going to happen where all this judgment should happen you've got a citizens group a quasi-judiciary bodily that you delegate to to weigh with the criteria that you have them on them and Frank enlarged on that the development review board is begging for it it seems to me to be logical to say we can take a little step toward that direction I think we could debate this for the rest of the evening we have a motion on the table that's been made and seconded are you ready for the vote I'd like to say one more thing so I just would say at the last meeting it was a said challenge the DRB to come up with some additional language more time will get us to a better place even if it's the same place I just think everybody will feel better about it I just don't see why it has to happen tonight so I would encourage some more time let the planning commission look at what the DRB said that's the right way to do it and that's all I'm going to say Tom, I think that's all well and good but I recall that I said two weeks ago that if in two weeks nothing had changed and we were looking at the same language that I was going to support it and there have been discussions about what could have changed but nothing's changed and I'm good for it they proposed the changes the planning commission hasn't considered it I would disagree with that characterization I think they have considered all of those items and came up with this they have not considered it as an alternative package from Frank but all of the items as I understand it, particularly the waivers were debated and determined by the planning commission that that was not the way they wanted to go about suggesting changes I'm changing your vote to ask for more time for people to consider things so are we ready for the vote? okay, all in favor signify by saying aye those opposed? okay, so the motion passes three to two thank you very much Charlie Baker, you're up next well we took one at 8.30 so I think we've already had a break well we had a break at 8.30 so are you okay Sue since we had a break earlier yeah, okay okay good evening thank you glad to be here in such a momentous night I hope we're not cranky for you no, no, no no, that's a very difficult topic and glad to see the city trying to address it so Charlie Baker I'm the Executive Director of the Chinne County Regional Planning Commission here to give an annual report to the city this is really a customer service call for us the city is one of our valued members and really to get any feedback on how we're doing in terms of providing service to the city and anything we can do better or any feedback you want to give me is welcome the report I believe you had in your packet I'm going to just run through that real quickly I know you've already been here a long time so the first page is really background on the Regional Planning Commission who's on our board just a little bit about our budget about how we leverage your dues to bring in federal and state funds and then who your representatives are Chris Shaw sends his apologies he is ill tonight or he would be here tonight and he's not only on the board now but he's also a member of our Executive Committee so Chris is doing extra meetings and extra input into our processes and thank you for all the appointees and Megan as an alternate and all your staff that serves on our committees they all contribute a lot of value to those groups on the second page and on the third page and going out of the fourth page I think you guys may be the winners for the longest list of things that we're doing with the municipality I'm not going to read each one of those I think you're probably hearing about them in different venues from different groups of your Planning Commission and other committees that are working on this on these different projects but we've been trying to help you with like and pedestrian issues and parking issues recreation path intersection turning movements interim zoning traffic overlay district so a variety of things and just data also traffic counts and other things and so the other reason I come in the fall is just to give you a heads up that around Thanksgiving time we send out a request for FY21 projects those are due late half of January so if you're thinking about things that we can help the city with in FY21 I'm sure Justin and Paul do not seem to have any lack of topics that they are so probably you guys as well but we're happy to help and it's been a good partnership with the city on the bottom of the fourth page on to the fifth page is a number of projects that are in our transportation improvement program which mirrors the state's capital program and I'm not going to review any of those but you can see we try to have what the budget is and at least the schedule right now as you know things that are in the state you know capital program that are out a couple years you know sometimes move a little bit things that are closer are much more certain on the bottom of page 5 are the things that we're working on in this fiscal year with you including that traffic overlay district impact fees that I hope we're finalizing this fiscal year Queen City Park Road Sidewalk and a multi-use path connecting Wilson and South Burlington and then the last few pages are things that we do without regard to any specific municipality implementing and tracking our regional plan our ECOS plan, legislative form building homes together campaign energy planning, emergency management clean water, stormwater issues transportation elderly and disabled transit a whole variety of things and the 89 study of this summer is probably the single biggest thing on our plate in the next year or two and of course South Burlington this is really I think a follow up to the CERC or the not CERC or the CERC alternatives as it turned into but the CERC was intended to take traffic around Chittenden County and avoid the congestion at exit 14 right CERC is obviously not happening in the way it was attended we have a lot of alternative projects that are happening in those communities from Colchester Essex, Williston however that still left the issue at exit 14 and so the 89 study is really picking up that final piece of what do we do in terms of the regional transportation system to deal with what happens at exit 14 and any solutions in our long range transportation plan what we found was that and again this is some modeling which I'm a little low to bring up but as we look into the future and with a much more reasonable population growth rate but still some pretty typical trend data in terms of car ownership and things like that I mean if that changes dramatically in the future but we're still looking at really having a problem at exit 14 going into the future and trying to figure out what to do which may include some interchange improvement in South Burlington when we did some modeling and interchange either north or south of exit 14 had kind of the same benefit to the network it took enough traffic off of 14 so that 14 functioned and distributed traffic so anyway that's a long introduction to that project we ended up including 12B just because that one was a little bit more fleshed out we looked at that a little bit more deeply but that was just a straw man so we'll definitely be looking at 12B a full 13 or a 14N in this 89 study if there's a better solution that comes up we'll look at that too but those are the three things 13 you're looking at some version of it we will look at so so anyway that's just heads up the consultants kind of do background work in this half of the calendar year in 2020 we'll get to more substantive conversations and I expect we'll end up in front of whichever bodies you tell us to talk to in the city certainly city council but probably your planning commission I don't know what other committees might want to have that conversation with and certainly we'll be having public forums as well to get just broader public input on that because it's a big deal to either not do or do and then which thing to do we're also looking at just maintenance issues for the interstate it's over 50 years old now and so just the bridges and structures and even and this hadn't really occurred to me but even just the pavement base you know the v-trans engineers like ultimately you got to go down and actually replace the base of the pavement so of the interstate the whole interstate everything I guess right so north they did go down there's well there's places that was a culvert I think you probably saw that was not that wasn't well yeah that's kind of a maintenance thing but so anyway and I think this is a little bit interesting because we're not just looking at capacity issues or safety issues but also just the asset management maintenance issues v-trans wanted to make sure we looked at those kinds of things too so if they have to replace a bridge like that that may give opportunities to put in bike paths or sidewalks where they don't exist now because it wasn't designed with those features so as an example so anyway it's you know there's still the sustainability layer over I think we have the same shared goals as the city as you were just talking about just making our community more sustainable and livable so just sorry that's a heads up I didn't mean to go into a big tangent there but it's a it is a big project with with south brolington as the epicenter of that conversation so I know now I open up a can of worms anything on my report or we can talk about any of these projects traffic lights but now we don't waste our time yeah that was us I mean that was started with planning work that we did and it was our initial conceptual plan that came up with the DDI as a solution there was your your initial plan the website is great by the way yeah so some of the initial modeling where you saw like kind of model traffic cars with stuff that we did initially and I think v-trans is now had the opportunity to refine some of that make it look a little nicer then so I posted that plan with the video on my facebook page and got replies from people around the country that I know who said oh we have one of those works well I drove through like excellent anything to get the Costco gas pumps open earlier would be really nice thank you please I drove through one a few months ago yeah in another state and without even really realizing it you know it was like so seamless you follow the traffic lane you do what you're supposed to do right keep the yellow on the left and the right the white on the right the DDI means diverging diamond interchange for those people that don't know right so it's the redesign for the interchange underneath the overpass it exits 16 right yeah it really is really designed to get rid of the reducing numbers of left turners to make it right left turn free flow so that because it's really left turns at intersections that kill time make everybody wait and frankly we'll also make it a lot safer and you get pedestrian bike access yeah that was amazing could I know I know this is south brillington focus but the one way bridge down to central avenue the queen city park road do you have any plans for any renovations there no I think that was something that both cities asked us to look at this we're looking at it right now in terms of for sidewalk scoping but I think that is a bridge I don't know what the actual ownership is it may be jointly owned between the two cities you know which I think is just make it historically a challenge in terms of when it's or how it's going to get replaced but I don't know it's been a long time I think since we've looked at what to do with that bridge yeah did you want to ask about bluetooth I would waste time glad to see it yeah I think we're trying to get more data collected and get things more connectivity with the traffic signals I think you guys in the city for moving ahead with all the traffic signal improvements that you're going to be doing at 14 and dorset street or it's going to be a big improvement in our region the traffic system but I thought the money for that was held up it got released oh good that took a little juggling what's that you're helping with that project we did do some help I don't know I think probably Justin has most of it now but I think we tried to help with some conversation with v-trans I think last budget cycle in the legislature we've gotten in and so it was a little getting it into the budget was a little bit of a little hurdle but we got over it so thank you I thought your report was it was great it really I was impressed with how much you are doing for south burlington us with yourselves for how much you're doing so but it was good to read I appreciate it thank you for seeing your report here at wilson road dorset street under section lane assignment evaluation that's I haven't heard about that lately so we'll pick that back up and see where that is great thank you thank you and I'm sorry you had to wait so long by the way charlie hosts a monthly meeting of city managers which is very useful for all of us to get together so thank you for doing that and a lot of good things and a lot of credit to Kevin you know things like the community outreach program you know came out of a conversation one day at lunch you know two years ago so kind of for moving things forward okay item 14 authorization to city manager to execute a contract amendment for a guaranteed maximum price for 180 market street with angle birth construction a lot of just left the wrong she's left you're up for the next two items good evening and welcome for the record a lot of blanchard project director I'm here tonight to both give you an update on the budget for 180 market street and to ask you to consider a resolution to approve a guaranteed maximum price for the project this project is being lined up for construction anticipated to start at the end of the month beginning of next month and over a year ago the city contracted with angle birth construction incorporated to undertake this project as construction manager at risk so what that means is that they work with us as the estimator on the project for the pre-construction phase and then provide the city with a guaranteed maximum price and then during construction they hold the price to that amount so if there's a change order we would pay above that where it's at the owner's instigation but if a subcontractor has cost overages then they would absorb that into their side of the ledger and if the less money is spent then that can be returned to the city so that's how construction management at risk contracts work and that's the model that has been the direction that a lot of public projects have been moving in so at this point at a guaranteed maximum price the construction architecture and city team has been working together for over a year in an ongoing value engineering process all throughout the design so from schematic when this was originally presented to the council for a vote and carried up through an estimate at the 50% and then an estimate at the 100% and then most recently the project was re-bid so throughout that process the team has been working to reduce costs there have been some challenges throughout that process so there was a significant redesign in stormwater and also a delay which has moved the schedule back considerably and moved us into more of a winter-winter summer-winter spring type of construction so I can go through this piece by piece I can cut to the chase I know you have a lot of it was very clear your memo I don't know that I need her to go through it I don't need you to it was really clear Alana it didn't look like there were any so I'll just say now I'm going to abstain because I support the library and I don't want to vote against it because I still don't support the city hall and this isn't what the price increase in the value engineering it's not what the voters voted for so I'm going to abstain to be consistent with my previous vote but I don't want to say I'm against the library because I really want a library in South Burlington and I'm excited about that part of the project but do we need a motion to do this? is that what we need? to approve the resolution I make a motion to approve whatever we need to approve second any further discussion or comments why? because I didn't vote for this in the first place and I just don't see the need for the city hall I haven't been convinced of it and so this raises the price of the project I'm not sold but I love the library I'm really supportive of the library okay we're ready for the vote all in favor signify by saying aye all opposed abstain so the vote passes 3 1 with 1 abstention all ready Alana you're up again this is authorizing the expenditure for geothermal drilling so a while ago in May I believe the city council authorized the city to issue a notice to proceed for geothermal testing and drilling for 180 market street at that time Engelberth began supervising the project and doing coordination for the project the geothermal bills are starting to come in and the question was asked who's going to pay for this and everyone recommended well the city should pay these bills because they're going to advance at the GMP and that has a little bit of cost savings for the project but normally expenditure of this size would go through the city would go through a bidding process for it in this case we have a high confidence in the because there had been competitive quotes early on in the process and because there are so few companies that do this type of drilling in Vermont and in the surrounding area we have a high degree of confidence in the pricing and that it was competitive and also because of the availability and the need to have it constructed at the same time in coordination with market street we're comfortable with it but normally we wanted to make you know and aware of it because of the size of the billing is above and would go to bid for a project how much is it? it'll be approximately $250,000 so this I support because it's clean energy and it's got to be put in and it's the right time to put it in so even if it's not for a city hall it's still good to have it so it is for city hall though it's only good for city hall we'll keep the heat down I'll make a motion that we authorize the expenditure of funds for geothermal drilling hopefully there no PFOAs in that one I just made that motion okay so we have a motion to approve the second? second any further discussion? nope Tom actually stated it quite well all those in favor? signify by saying aye aye, post? so four to one thank you Alana thank you for all your work you got so many balls in the air I don't know how you keep track of them you're caught up Helen I know so item 16 discussion and possible action to a public hearing on November 4th 2019 at when we say 7 p.m. to consider extending the time period during which the interim bylaws are in effect remind me where we are this will be the second extension if you recall the first extension only took us through November I think right? and then and we were told at the time that the planning commission said they would not be ready until at the earliest January so we knew at the get go that they were needing more time but we could only extend it in three month increments so this is just a discussion for us to have a possible hearing about extending it we don't have to decide tonight that's not what this is about to support another hearing but I don't support any more than that one extension and that's it one more extension and that's it one more after this we'll have this discussion and then if there's a vote to have one more you know extension I will support that but I won't support any more extensions after that well we don't have to make a decision right that takes us to a year that takes us to over no just exactly a year we have the last extension brought us to a year nine months to a year this next extension will take us to a three months oh I was three months off just provide a quick update so on November 13th 2018 the city council adopted the interim bylaws which were in effect for a nine month time period on August 9th do you so that last that first set would have or that first nine month time period would have ended on August 13th on August 9th the council voted to extend the interim bylaws for the three month time period after August 13th so ending November 13th and then November the proposal is just so that to keep that option open that you warn a hearing for November 4th so that the council can consider extending the interim bylaws from November 13th until February 13th 2020 I move that we warn a public hearing on November 4th at 7pm at 7pm to consider setting the time period in which the interim bylaws are 7.30 at 7.30pm second yes it is any further discussion all in favor? aye five in favor okay well we voted enough time but I'm not going to vote to extend it huh sure you want to okay it is okay number 18 financials July and August yeah thanks Helen so we finally get something for you to look at for fiscal year 20 so we get July and August that you've received we should have September hopefully for the next meeting we're also having department managers right up there narratives for that one will be through the first quarter so we'll have those coming to you soon they'll have a little more detail that you can read in terms of a narrative but just roughly the fund right now expenditures are about 15% straight line accounting method we're 16 and 2 thirds percent way through the budget just to give you an idea of percentages revenues we're just over 27% and majority that has taxes we've already had one of our third collections for the year so that number is obviously going to be higher on the expense side some of the major items to date out some of our contributions to like ccrpc and county court cctv gmt's paid in thirds some of those major payments have been made that's that accounts for some of the major expenditures to date our paving right now we're 523 thousand out of our 625 that we have that does not include the additional 253 that was appropriated so Justin is is looking to add that to the contract that he has to see if they can get a little bit more work in this fall this fall and if not that will be first thing next spring I know he's going to come to you during the winter this time so that we can be on the June cycle for payment so really as soon as the plants open we're in we've had first court of payments for our insurance on property workers comp liability insurance those are major payments vehicle purchases those typically get done as soon as we go into the next fiscal year replacement of DPW trucks replacement of police cruisers so those couple of things have major items in the expense column and then I mentioned the paving on the on the revenue side we've received about 12% of the local options tax to date that was a split between one fiscal year and the other we have three full payments that we'll be receiving during the course of the year and what was it that you heard Kevin on our on target store that they had exceeded they're well ahead of what their expectations target target said that well that's what I understand is a local options revenue ahead of ahead of what it was a year ago the 12% is yeah just like 12% is 30% of that's just my household alone well you've been asking for a target for a long time and yet my wife still drives to Platsburg oh yeah it's a big target she likes taking the ferry likes to take the family I can't remember but she likes a big target she doesn't like the small target she likes a big target I wouldn't know well she has she's aimed high all her life right all I gotta say is this local target has the best coffee shop because it has these huge south facing windows you get a ton of sun exposure if you go on there on a nice day it's really nice it is a nice spot vital records in the clerk's office I agree with you good coffee vital records in the past you were required to go to the town that you were born in to get a copy you can now go to any city clerk's office and get that record Donna has been swamped and maybe it's just people seeing there's easy parking here rather than going to some neighboring communities or you can bike here for birth certificates for any vital records for birth certificates for anything like that so you used to have to go to the exact town and now you can get them at any city clerk's office in the state that was passed by the state last year so Donna has already exceeded her revenue for this year as of September if you don't see yet but we took a peek at that today so she's substantially going to be increased in her vital records revenue columns we're confident that the security measures are equivalent to what they were before I mean I don't want to go off of that she can answer that planning and zoning fees already at 25% ambulance billing is just over 20 highway state aides come in at 35% already and the Sobu night out already made $4,000 we got some other events completely covered all their costs made it in the black food truck revenue and sales percentage of sales that's the only revenue they get from the food trucks right from the founders and farmers the beer and wine concession oh there you go and sponsors nice really cool and the idea is to take that revenue and do additional events and there's an brew boo so brew so brew this one's so boo so boo is the halloween one and so brew is brewery so boo it's a distiller so brew is better come on I think so brew is going to be in the winter so anyway we've come a ways from the council understanding to initially sponsor those ourselves to get it going and it would eventually pay for itself in a couple of years we've done that so could I start? well we were very lucky we had all good all good weather I mean all it does is a few nights of weather Thursday was the night Thursday was the night sure let's stick with it and the enterprise funds are they're all doing fine I'm happy to respond to any questions that you have and we'll have more detail in the September remind me what we were doing to try and keep 100% of our local options taxes didn't we that would be a charter change and the legislature agreeing it's just highly unlikely because Burlington gets all that right? yeah so we have to do we have legislation in on that? we have legislation in on that and this is the second half of biennium so I'm not sure it's gonna okay alright well thank you Tom good work okay item 19 council appointment to the board of directors of the Champlain Housing Trust that says we're appointing Kevin no Kevin's gonna tell us who we're my understanding is that the Champlain Housing Trust Board has a nominating committee and they nominate somebody and then it's up to us or to you excuse me pardon me to appoint so you can say no you don't want to appoint that person I suppose but this is the person who they have nominated and it happens to be Helen Head seemingly they have vetted her and talked with her and I think she's a phenomenal choice second okay we had a motion in the second any discussion all in favor okay other business proposed dates for the steering committee so I can preface that we talked about a lot of things when we meet with Elizabeth and David but one was to utilize our steering committee one of the steering committee meetings as a poor for the council into the bowels of the school so that we better understand why they need I don't want to go into anybody's bowels come on school bowels are much nicer although so that's one of the meetings that we decided made sense sooner rather than later so we can understand some of their passion about the need for building a new school just for informational purposes not the 22nd sorry to jump in and I'm out of town on the 23rd and 24th and boy the 22nd is going to be tough I've got a field trip that won't get back till nine o'clock on the 22nd I'm out on the 22nd we can do it after that week that would be better for me I could make the 22nd work if we need it to I cannot can you can you put you on Skype on your phone no just walk around with us on the phone not really on this trip that won't work well the following week on the 30th we have the domestic violence dinner right free that Monday Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday Thursday's Halloween not Thursday we could go into the bowels early yeah it could be a good Halloween themed visit that would be that actually moving to it but no I also said Thursday isn't good for me counter with the 28th the 29th or the well we don't want to do Halloween the 28th or the 29th for the I love early mornings too if you guys want to do like a 637 a.m. type thing huh go to it just putting it out there I don't know if you guys are worried people not if you want minutes why don't we need minutes for this walkthrough but I'll use that as an argument the 29th is what the CCRPC accessory dwelling and you're going to it I was thinking of going to it I'm not committed well I did say it would go but that means I don't get good pizza they always order great pizza for that what time is it I think it's 6 to 8 we'll have food at this but that's alright I can change it I don't have to do it okay food at the steering committee well let's see if while you walk through the bowels I'm sorry that was anyone have you ever heard that term before after 10 o'clock we're getting punchy and then the second okay and then the second 2 hour meeting we thought that we could work it in so that we could meet with our legislators rather than those breakfasts that none of them well I should say none of them come to a limited number come to we'll be on a plane to Vegas on November 12 so that whole week is shot for me there's a waste of time so the fifth that's fine with me conference does the fifth work David on task okay so why don't we say yes to the fifth you have a meeting the fourth and then this must be Tuesday yeah Tuesday the fifth what time are you thinking I got class till 6 it's usually at 7 it's usually 7 this will be 2 hours so 7 to 9 it won't be late Tom will get to bed early okay and then we're going back on the 28th we're going to propose the 28th or the 29th of October for the walkthrough do we know what time approximately is it afternoon early morning probably after school right or should we be no yeah any preference well I've got class both after noon between 3 and 6 so after 6 after 6 or or it's 7 30 in the morning not 6 30 they don't start classes till 8 30 check out after 6 and see what happens okay good so that's it any other business that's good motion to adjourn I might add it's early early then on the good job Helen putting bowels in my calendar here I've got signatures all in favor bye