 Then we will get started the I'm going to call the order of the board of finance for Monday, December 4, 2023. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda. Welcome motion to adopt it or amend it. Councilor on the agenda. Thank you as our second to adopt the agenda second from President Paul discussion. Seeing none we'll vote all those in favor. The agenda. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Motion carries. The next item is the public forum. And first look here in the room. Seeing anyone here for the public forum. However, online it does appear that our councilor Sharon Booker is with us and has her hand raised. Yes, there you go. Go ahead. Hi, good evening. Thank you. I'm the loyal attendee here. Yes, you are. It's a media agenda. And I wanted to just speak in support of obviously free money. The grant that is on the consent agenda for the south end innovation project. I applaud all the partners CEDO and planning and DPW. I think that this is wonderful with Champlain and then the private sector. I'm really excited about having a cohesive proposal brought forward. I think this is good. I think it's going to be vibrant with mixed use. Hopefully a lot of innovation and space for what is there now, what the south end is known for, not just housing. But I also hope that once this comes forward, this plan, I'm hoping the public will have a chance to weigh in on that also. So I'm just speaking to that. The second thing is that I know I'm a broken record, but the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I spent a fair amount of time downtown shopping and actually visiting with some of the, there was a new store that had opened and other stores. And I felt that I didn't know about the increased security, but I had asked about whether they felt they needed some and they certainly do. So I'm glad that there's some increased security for downtown, not only for the businesses, but for the public. I think this is definitely a great measure that's been taken. But I want to advocate again for the fact that the business is, our downtown is so fragile. That I know your money is tight. But I really feel that you need more than just two days of a couple of hours of free parking. There are so many barriers that people look at when they think about going to Burlington. And that's one of them. And so I'm still going to harp on that. It's a few weeks of free parking. I know that DPW is in the red. Catherine was very nice and explained that to me. I get it. But I think we'll, the whole city will be more harmed if we don't do more to support the businesses. So I have to say that. And then the last thing is that when you. Your item regarding on the, on the action agenda regarding BED and the increase to have funding from 5 million to 10 million. I think that it's really important that that charter change be explained so people can understand that slink. To Moody's and cash on hand. The public needs to understand the rationale. For increases, even though that money is going to be paid back by revenue. I, I just feel like that's a really important piece. To make clear so that that gets support. And thank you so much for listening to my comments. Great. Thank you, Sharon. I am not seeing that. I am not seeing anyone else on line. To speak. And so I will close the public forum. At five 41 PM. And we will move to the consent agenda. Which has a number of items on it tonight. Welcome. What's your discussion regarding the consent agenda? Yeah. I will move to. Not the consent agenda and take the action. Great. Thank you. Councilor Barlow. Do we have a second second by councillor. Any discussion of the consent agenda. None. We will go to all those in favor. Adopting the consent agenda. Please say aye. Aye. I don't need a post. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. That brings us to the deliberative agenda for approval. Section four for approval and recommendation to the city council. We have 10 items in this section of the agenda tonight. Before we have a presentation regarding our expenditures. And the. So let's get into it. The first one is March is a March 5th, 2024 annual city meeting. Charter change. This was the one. I'm sure it was just referring to a moment ago and we. Showing you can be assured. We do plan to explain this to the public tonight is the beginning of the explanation for a vote that will. Possibly happen in March and. Welcome. Darren. Maybe could. This is the first time we're talking about it. First to the beginning of the process. And I would. Kick it off first. Thank you, mayor. Thanks to the board. We're excited to bring this forward. This is one of those rare instances where we can potentially do some good. For our customers without asking for additional revenue from our customers. And so the idea here is to take our charter authority. For our line of credit. Which we haven't done yet. But I think we can. And so the idea here is to take our charter authority. For our line of credit. Which we haven't used. During my entire time at the D. Which is five million set back in 2007. And move it to 10 million to better reflect our current budget needs our current. You know, rate of inflation. And by doing so improve our Moody's credit rating metrics that. Former councilor butcher referenced during public comment and public comment. I think that's a great pressure. So I'm going to turn to Emily for a little more detailed explanation. We'd be glad to answer your questions. As well. Thanks, Darren. So I'm Emily Stevens Wheelock. CFO of BED. As indicated in the memo. And as Darren just said. The line of credit established in city charter. We believe was set around 2007. I'm actually not quite sure about that. But that's the best I can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I could find. And so. The line of credit was initially established, I think, for working capital. BED in the past has tapped it for working capital. We have not done so. However, as Darren said, since 2013. And I can confirm that. So. And, you know, sales revenues, very rep revenues, very. You know, out of the question that we might need to use it in the future for working capital. Certainly not our intent, but it is a possibility. What we use the line nowadays mostly for is to bolster our days cash on hand metric, which is the major liquidity metric that movies looks at as part of our scorecard as an electric utility. And as long as the line of credit is undrawn, the full amount counts toward our days cash on hand. And what's happened is that in 2007. Our operating expense budget was about $22 million less than it is now. And so to, to come up with a number of days cash on hand, you essentially take your operating expenses and you divide them by the amount of liquid cash you have. And that's the number of days. So as your. Operating expenses grow. Each dollar of cash covers less and less. So we need about now we need about $14 million based on our 24 operating expense budget to come up with 90 days cash. So you can see how 5 million is such a less, you know, percentage right of that total $14 million need. Without the increase in the line of credit, what we're increasingly going to find ourselves needing to do is to raise rates to kind of maintain that level of cash that we need to have a 90 day average across, across three years. And that's what we're hoping to avoid needing to do. Probably 10 million is a little less. Sorry, more than we need to kind of be comfortable, but given that this requires a charter change, which is a pretty big deal with the ballot and the voter approval. We, you know, rather kind of try to raise it less frequently and have some future proofing in the amount and not needing to come back, you know, for a little while. So I'm happy to take any questions. So this would give you a charter 30 to have a 10 million dollar line of credit, but you know, if it is more than you needed, like in a given year, like you said, right? So you don't have to put an instrument place for that phone number. That's right. Yeah. Our line renews every two years. And you see court of finance and council approval to renew the line when the loan agreement expires. So it's up for renewal in the sprint of 2024. So we would be coming to you with the actual amount we'd be seeking tomorrow. Most likely we'd come and ask for the 10, but to your point, there could be a reasonable discussion about whether it's at least the appropriate amount. We can have modest unused line fee. So if that was somehow significantly higher at 10, we might consider that, for example. And also the rate we got, right? We haven't used the line for 10 years. And when you say the change of finances, you really just mean that it's a larger budget, not that you're proceeding, having to dip into it a lot more often. That's right. Our forecast, our five year forecast doesn't anticipate using it. So it's there for, if we needed it, there are some utilities that use it quite frequently. And that's part of their operating expenditure and cash flow for us. It hasn't been, but the 90 day cash on hand is the A rating target for Moody's. We always thought to meet or exceed it. We've been able to maintain the A rating for a significant period of time. We're hopeful to continue doing so. So this will be something they would view, I believe is favorable towards that. Great. Floor is open for further questions or a motion. President. I'm happy to, I'm happy to make the motion is recommended on civic clerk. Great. Thank you. Is there a second for motion? Second. Thank you. Councilor Jang discussion. Seeing none. We will go to vote. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Right. Aye. Any opposed. Motion carries unanimously. And then. So just to confirm this would be. We would warn in this for a public hearing at next week's council meeting starting the charter change process. So that's right. We're planning that it would come on the 11. Council. But I don't think it would be. No, it would. Yes. And then the. I think last the last night to do that. Sorry. Yeah. I think the last night to start the process for this year. So. So I'll be the plan with this. We'll be hearing about it more as it goes forward. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to item number two reclassification, the titling of a position. Parks and waterfront. Welcome, Cindy. See this one up for us. Sure. So we. In fact, it's taken us a bit to get there. So we requested a reclassification of our land storage position. To put them into more of a manager role. That concerted conservation team as that's grown more complex. The beginning more staffed for it. So it's just taking us a while to get here to this point. So that's where. We're familiar with the work of the conservation team. That's. The work of the conservation team. The work of the conservation team. The work of the conservation team. The work of the conservation team and Cajal. And they maintain a white path. 1. 27 path, the natural surface trails, community gardens. And have representation for us. The open space committee for the conservation board. Among many things. Very good. Thank you, Cindy. Is there. Are there any questions. I'm happy to make the motion is recommended. I'm sort of clerk. Great. Thank you. Second. Second by council far low. Scussion. We'll go vote. All those are fairly emotional. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up is a request to execute a contract with the studio. I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it. Renzen. Oh yeah. For the sign and construction like he asked to see all park. This was one of the. Five community projects that came out of the community infrastructure. A grant that was. Using our performance. It was funded by that. By the council. What about. That's six months ago. So let's go. So this is. I think one of the first, not the first to come forward since that action. Welcome. So you're having here. Are you. You're leading the way right. Great. Yeah. I think it's, it's important for the council to just have this background for the public that this was. One of the projects that you all approved as part of the community infrastructure grants. This is to pay for this is a seat council approval or the finance approval first. For the contract to do the design bill, which results in essentially a design that it's 30, 30% sort of complete design at that point, which is pretty far along and. And construction as well. So it basically is approval of both the design and the design. So that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea for the chaos. Great. Thank you. Laura's open for. Questions. No, it's good. Yeah, I, I. I remember we approved this. The projects that we wanted. I'm just wondering, given the conditions in the park, if we understand more about what that design looks like, I mean, even someone with the, with the winter market, some, some of those. Those shelters are used as shelter at night. There's a lot and it was secret fix this morning. There was a giant pile of belongings sort of scattered on the corner and I would hate to invest a lot of money. In the park and just have, have it go sort of misused or used for purposes other than it's intended. So without understanding what the design is, I'm curious. So I appreciate the question. So we have, when we posted the RFP for the design, it needs to have certain elements in it. For example, there is an anti graffiti coding that needs to be part of it. There are safety and security elements to it. That have been included in the design. For the protection of staff that's in it. In addition, I'm happy to report that we also posted an RFP for the operator and we got a very strong applicant. Who is very aware of city hall park and some of its current challenges, but is excited to move forward and provided that this chaos comes through, that they would be willing to operate in it as well. We had thought of designs where all the windows and openings can be fully secured in the evening, that if there's any overhang staff comes in through the back and doesn't have to walk through individuals that they might, may or may not want to be engaging with. So that was definitely, I appreciate the question because it is an investment in our park, but we actually feel that it, it will be a positive element within the park and can add as a draw and it will also be there. You know, we have a lot of children's activities there. It would be nice for people to be able to get a beverage and things like that. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like the thinking is, you know, I think you maybe just forgetting on the council, maybe even after the, I can't remember if you really round for all the debates, but the, the plan always envision the kiosk in this location. And that was one of the strong messages from the public and from the kind of thinking as what would improve, you know, because we've struggled with conditions in the park for a long time, right? This is not, we're having some particular intensity right now, but it's not a new challenge. I mean, I think the positive activity into the park has always been central goal of the, the redesign and redevelopment, having food and drink in the park has always been one of the ways we believed that we could really generate additional positive activity. We'll be right in a part of the park that we sometimes have struggled to have positive activity in recent years. So I think it's going to have a positive impact on that. And if you in the packet, there's a lot of materials, but if you behind the contract, you can see detailed renderings of what, of what the, what the, what the kiosk will look like. And you can kind of get a sense how it's been designed a way that can be very easy to clean. If possibly attractive, very easy to clean. If it does experience, you know, it's not built in such a way that it should have that, you know, it's not built in such a way that it is closed. It should attract the encampments and, you know, it's thought as they give it to these issues as this has been designed. And I agree with car statement. I think there's one thing very positive will be real. Certainly won't solve everything we're falling, but as part of the overall efforts that we're having to keep the downtown and welcoming positive places will be in addition to that. And it's just that it's a great question. Yeah. I think that's great to hear from the writer that's responded as well. Any further questions or are we ready for a motion to present Paul? Thanks. I just have one question and that is. I haven't read all 120 pages of the contract. But just, but have read a fair amount of it and just wanted to verify that you had said. The contract signing and kickoff says October 17th. So between October 17th and now, am I missing something that I'm just not understanding? What went on in between October and now? Between October and now, there was a refinement of the design. So I believe that's probably a typo that we didn't, they had submitted an original design in October that for some of the reasons that Councillor Barrow mentioned, we asked for some refinements of it and now we have the final one. So I think that's probably where the confusion comes from. That was them preparing for their response to the RFP and then a process the last couple of months of refinement of their response. Okay. But that spring construction schedule is still. It's still that is obviously construction, you never quite know how it's going to go, but the plan is still to have that in place for next season. Okay. All right. I'm happy to make the motion as recommended on board docs. Great. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Great. Thank you, Councillor Neghi. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to the vote. All those in favour of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. So thank you, Brian and Cara. Also, I don't think she's online, but Samantha Dunn really serves a lot of credit for working very hard to make this possible and bring it towards us. Bring it forward. I think she's away this week just like this. That's right. She would be here. Okay. I have now lost myself in the detail of the contract package. See if I can pull myself out of it. So next is 4.4, the ARPA funding, dedicated to housing and homelessness. Go ahead. So we are ready to go. Essentially, what we're asking tonight is for specific allocation of funds, which were previously set aside for housing and homelessness. So it's really, this is not an additional amount. It's a commitment of funds, which basically is five million of the ARPA dollars were essentially dedicated for housing and homelessness. And this puts a, it's just a finer point on that so that we have the ability to address our budget needs for the, for the homelessness efforts, we've bumped that number from 2,975,000 to 3,050,000. So it's a slight increase there. And it's a million dollars that it would go to what is called post-departments, which is the site that people notice, the former VFW on South bonus avenue. And the remaining 950,000 would be set aside for Champlain Housing Trust and Ever North as they look to develop another phase of Cambrian Rise, which would be a big, so affordable rental and home ownership. Any questions? So thank you, friend. The floor is open for a correctional term. That's far out. Yes, I know, I know of Champlain Housing Trust, but the post-departments is that, is that a, what can you tell us about that? What is that? Yeah, what is that? It's a 38 apartments of the site that is the VFW today. Or I should say it's the former VFW, so it's a vacant building. It'll be the winter shelter in a few days. And then it comes down in the spring and a new building will be developed there, which will have space for the VFW, the Community Justice Center, and apartments above with a sizable chunk targeted and dedicated to households exiting homelessness. And is that a nonprofit? Yeah, Champlain Housing Trust. So they weren't close to apartments. It's really just a, it's a nod to the VFW post. Got it. A Howard plan. So that's what the work is. So this is Champlain Housing? It is. Yes, it is. And it should have mentioned that veterans will have, let's just say preferential, there'll be some preferential treatment for some, I think it's 10 of the units will be set aside for preference for veterans. Councilor McGee is, does this end up the same? Literally. Councilor McGee. Thank you. I've just noticed the bullet on page two here about the special assistant to end homelessness position and anticipated funding gap. Is that in FY26? We're estimating right now it would occur actually in FY25, if everything continues along the trajectory that it's on. Okay. I'm happy to make the motion. Great. I made it on civic clerk. Excellent. Thank you. Councilor McGee, do we have a second? Second by President Paul. Excellent. And great. So from my perspective, we talked about 5 million of ARPA going to housing for some time. And this is sort of a significant, we averaged 3 million of that. It's been heavily deployed or it's the process being deployed through the various aggressive actions we've taken on homelessness over the last couple of years. But this commits us to these two very exciting additional projects that have been in the work for some time and are getting close to being ready for certainly the post-project recovery spring and hopefully the initial work at Canberra and Rise, not far behind that. So this is an important step for us to be able to go. Move forward with our partners to see those major projects. Careful. That's exciting for the city to be able to be a partner at this level. Okay. If there's no further comments, we'll go to vote. All those. Yes, there is further discussion. Okay. Sorry, I didn't see your hand. No problem. So Director Pine, I was just wondering about the CJC office. It seemed that you said it would be housed there once it's developed. Yes. Will it be on a rental basis or it's as part of the agreement? It will be, there will be an annual rent that will be part of that project. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. We're ready to go now. Good. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you both. And this brings us to item number five, authorization to execute contracts with on-call water resources, sewer collection system, filming and cleaning contractors. Welcome, Megan, so not for us. Megan Moyer, DPU patient director for water resources. This is very similar to the catch basin cleaning contract that we have worked with you on in the past, as well as the on-call excavation contract. When and where we can't get access to city personnel, we do still have needs and those include getting into pipes as quickly as possible to follow closed caption television, but basically video of the pipe and where they figure out what's going on. So like when a sinkhole appears in the middle of the street in the old days, you might have just filled it in and not worried about what was causing it, but our methodology now, especially if there is infrastructure in the area, is to go ahead and get a camera and make sure there's not a hole in the pipe, because then we're just going to be chasing our tail. And so while we do have a video truck, which is largely run by our technical staff, we are seeking to be able to act more promptly by using these two contractors that has needed for these types of frequencies. Pretty cool videos. If anybody wants to see them, let me know. Yeah. Thank you. And are we ready for a motion? Councilor Brown, I'll make the motion. That's recommended. Excellent. Thank you. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor McHeaney. Thank you. And any further discussion? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Megan, for being here and for this. And I notice as part of the list, I haven't seen much for the new North End. And I remember also last year, I have seen a strong presence in the old North End about these type of services for the sewage. And I was just wondering, can you explain to us why? Why? I think you might be referring to our actual sewer relining contract. So the work which we are doing largely throughout the city, and I believe we still have some, Martin may be able to speak to it in the new North End as well. That's the process that does involve filming, but we're filming, we're cleaning, and then we're putting a new pipe on the inside. Is that what you're probably talking about? Is that what is ongoing? Okay, okay. When you see the truck set up and they're there for a while and there's usually some, what looks like steam that's going off into the air, that's what that process is. And I know we definitely have some stormwater outfalls that we're doing in the new North End. And that project is extending until... It's sort of the middle of next year. The middle of next year. So we're not done. And we have more to do. So we certainly will be coming back as part of our proposal about the sort of next level of wastewater investment because there's plenty of pipes that need love and attention. Thank you so much. Okay. We have a motion on the floor. So any further discussion of the motion? Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. That brings us to item number six, I believe, which is the request for approval of a contract for the long-term climate resilient evaluation of the North Plant sewer siphon. You want to take this one too? Yes. And I'm here with my engineering manager, Martin. Maybe take a deeper dive, but we've all been on this journey that we've been on since July of this year in which the sewer siphon broke. Stout reacted very quickly to fix it or to put in a temporary bypass system which prevented hundreds of thousands of millions over the course of the year of sewage going into the river in October. I can't remember what was the date when we completed the... The most recent... So most recently, we were able to affect a band-aid and repair the pipe that is in the river on the bottom of the river. And that was... I think it was the beginning of November. Beginning of November. So essentially, things are kind of put back more or less the way they were. We've been broadcasting to you all that Burlingtonians and the lake deserve a more modern climate resilient approach. And so this is the hiring of an engineer to look at those evaluations and figure out what our next path forward is and then to hopefully continue working with FEMA to secure funds. They keep broadcasting that this long-term repair seems like it's going to be eligible for FEMA funds. There's a couple of other funding sources we could also look at, but we're proceeding as if this is all going to be a beautiful project at the end where we're protecting our infrastructure and protecting water quality. So yeah, we have actively meeting with FEMA every other week and this project is on their list and we'll be continuing to engage with them and since it's in their system as an eligible project. So we just want to make sure as we come up with alternatives, we continue to present them to FEMA so that they're part of the process and that's our plan. Looking at the alternatives really in our mind, it's a new pump station that would be permanent buried to North Plant or a new double syphon system which would be to modern standards. And we believe that it's probably more cost effective to have a pump station. If Mark is telling us, that's probably where things are going to head but we need to make sure that that makes sense. That's what we're going to look at this project. And that won't be, I think what we've done back at the envelope calculations, that's $13, $15 million to do something like that. So having supporting funding is going to be critical for that. I think interestingly these all are, we've been keeping track and submitting all of our resource, invoices to FEMA until the federal government actually authorizes the pot of money. We're not drawing any money and so those are costs that we're having to carry until such time, literally a person that's coming to fruition. But good that this was a female eligible because otherwise we would be hurting a lot. She think a new pump station like that would be like a $13, $15 million. When I did that rough back at the envelope calculations that's what it came. But FEMA would be a partner for substantial part of it. This, you know, ideally because of the, if we hit that, we've hit the 90% threshold. It's a question of whether Congress authorizes us to get that amount of money. And then because of the planning efforts that Burlington has done, the state should then cover half of the remaining costs. So then we're only looking at a 5% cost share, which would be pretty nice. And it would take care of both the first crossing, the second crossing, and that weird section that goes across half of the cove. So that is indeed why it's certainly my preference. But you never know what you're gonna find when we start crunching the numbers and looking at all the different permitting and things that we have to do. So. Okay. Are we ready for a motion or any questions? We just had one question. Go ahead. So for this study, the city's worst case is around 20,000 dollars. Worst case? Worst case under currents would be eligible for 12 and a half percent of that, no option. Yeah. But ideally hopefully it'll only be 5%. We're ready for a motion. Welcome on. I'll make the motion as recommended on. Okay. Thank you. Councilor Barlow has made a motion. Do we have a second? Second by Councilor Jang. And Councilor is leading the way here. It's key infrastructure. Do we, thank you for the discussion. A little vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. And that brings us, we got our ways to go here with these. The next three items are essentially the same item, but broken down into three separate resolutions. So I don't know how you do that magic of us. Sounds like maybe they could be done as one motion. Fair way. Thank you. Yeah. I believe that they could probably all be made with one motion. Okay. I want to get up a little more first. Yes. We have many, many, many, many storm water outfalls. My six foot, I took over. We thought, Steve, which told me we only had a hundred, but now we're like up to 160. So one of the benefits consequences of, you know, all the sewer separation we did and whatnot was they had to grab storm water and get it to go places that wasn't the combined sewer. And so a lot of these types were put in that timeframe. And then there's also some historical ones. And Kate Komarowski, our engineer is online, in case we get into any technical questions. But basically we've been picking them off as quickly as we can. They are large intense projects. Some of the ones that we had originally intended to pick up are being addressed through other means or completely failed before we could get to them. If you all recall the North Ave Outfall, which we had gotten to in advance, we could have spent like 25 grand to reline it, but instead it completely failed and we ended up spending like $300,000. And so this body of work is intended for us to try to stay ahead of those types of situations. And so we have three different groupings of outfalls. There's the first and within the first grouping is and the groupings are based on sort of our last in-house assessment. The first grouping includes the outfall that is off of Riverside and is very close to 505 Riverside building where the Kismeo kitchen used to be or is. And that's one that we really want to get in and try to take care of. And then the next one, there's another outfall further down on Riverside and then also one I believe on the beltline that we believe are high priority. And then separately, we want to make sure we then look at the remainder of the outfalls and kind of build our new list. And then if there's any high priority, high risk ones on that list also advance some number of those towards design. We want to try to get to the place where we're in sort of a little bit more of a shovel ready and pluck it off the shelf as we have money. Cause right now we're kind of like, you know, doing building the ship as we go. So if I missed anything, Kate. Yes. So they're broken out into three largely so that those two high priority ones can advance sort of on their own schedule. If we did all as one big project then we would be delayed, I think in acting and constructing on the first two. So a little up in the air about whether or not we will have remaining money within the Clean Water Resiliency Plan, the 2018 bond in order to be able to do these. It all depends on how much our initial phase of wastewater investments costs and comes back as. So I'm kind of holding money in reserve to make sure we can do that. But certainly if there are funds available we would be prioritizing the 505 Riverside and we'll be building our plan for voter requests in November of 2024 to certainly make sure that we take care of any of these no outfall issues. Great. Thank you, Meg. It's very good to see this work come forward. Other questions? Go ahead, Councillor Jenner. It's to make the motion to approve and recommend to the city council. Item number 4.7, 4.8 and 4.9 as indicated on Civic 20. Perfect. I thought you would clap. Thank you. Was that a second there, Councillor Regan? Yeah. Yes, okay. Any further discussion? Good, Councillor Rodger. Just one question. You're not sure how much money will be available to do to get to maybe the priority threes? You hope there's enough to get to the priority ones? I think there's a chance. I have like a placeholder for that priority one. I think it's unlikely for the priority two that we're going to have enough money, but the state, we recently got noticed that we had gotten a grant for projects that we did two or three years ago. So sometimes money magically appears not usually in my life, but sometimes. And so I'm building my list to try to, try to, and I can't promise that that would be up. And the additional body you referenced in potentially November 24th, we covered the lower priority. Yes, we would be looking at, I'm making sure that that next, if there's 10 or 15 alcohols, it may not ask for that, but at least it would cover the sort of time period that we're envisioning that next dose of money to cover. Thank you. They're really challenging because of climate change. Like once something starts to go and then you get more and more intense rainstorms, it just unravels so much quicker than I think it did in the past. So it's a challenge. Okay. That's like, I'm not seeing any further questions. We have motion on the top floor. So if there are no more hands, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. All right, thank you, Jayvon. Yeah. Okay. Last couple items of the night here. Number 10, the last one for action is authorization for contract matrix consulting group or city of Burlington operational efficiency study and approval for a budget amendment to affect the contract. Catherine, that's for working hard on this. You want to say a little bit about it, Catherine? I would love to. As you may recall from our first FY25 budget update in September, we talked about several ways that we were going to move forward with addressing a budget shortfall. I will be coming back to you on the 18th. Our next meeting was a comprehensive update. There's been a lot of progress, but first up is based on the results of that meeting, we have moved forward with an RFP process for both the operational efficiency study as well as the user fee study with this one tonight being a little bit ahead of the other one. To remind you, we put out an RFP for an operational efficiency study for seven general fund departments. They are for the most part, our largest share of the general fund budget excluding public safety because we've already had a study of the police department and there's a separate study currently going on for fire. I worked with a group of representatives from across the city to review the proposals that we got and matrix consulting came in as the clear winner. Both, they were competitive on cost and their personnel were also quite impressive because they were some of the only, they were the only group that proposed consultants that actually had local government experience. So that really stood out. They are also available to start within two weeks and meet our timeline, which will allow us to have their inputs before we finalize the FY25 budget. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Great. Go ahead and answer me. Thank you. Thanks Catherine for the presentation. I just vaguely recall the clerk treasurer's office having an assessment at some point or can you remind me what that was and if I'm mistaken? You are not mistaken. Yes, the clerk treasurer's office did have an assessment. That's something that I kind of fought for shortly after becoming CAO. And so that has happened. Clifton, Larson, Allen completed that and they did a really great job and we enacted a lot of what they recommended. And if you have other questions, I'm happy to answer them. Will Matrix be looking at different components of the CT's office or will it kind of, is it a more comprehensive analysis taking in to account other considerations that the previous firm didn't look at or... That's a great question. I think it will be a different look because when we first had the CT office analyzed there were a lot of sort of deep questions we were looking at, such as should we centralize all the accounting or decentralize it? And we've sort of answered some of those questions now and now it's really more, do we have a staff of the appropriate size to do the work that we've been charged with? Okay, all right, thank you. I'm happy to make the motion if there are any additional questions. I'll second. Great, thank you, Councilor Green. President Powell, any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Catherine, for your work on this, setting up this going forward. All right, it brings us to the last end of the night. I wish it were vanish. What's that? You can. Or would you like me to? Yeah, because I don't have a link for this. Yeah, excellent. It's just going to take a little bit. Hi, I'm here this evening to give you an update on our ARPA commitments and the expenditures. I attached a brief few slides, which we'll have up on the screen shortly. Should I dive in? No, I'm sorry, I'm having a problem. No, no, that's fine, I should just check with you beforehand. When we look at all the approvals and resolutions around the 27 million ARPA dollars, American Rescue Plan Act, for clarity, that the city received, we can divide them into seven main categories, revenue replacement, wages and operations, homelessness and housing, direct to constituent support, if you can go to the next. Brian, yeah, I'm sorry. Very good. Capital and community infrastructure, health response and economic and business support. The first three revenue replacement wages and operations and housing and homelessness were the bulk of the funds spent. But I just wanted to give everyone a chance to sort of look at the subcategories so you really understand, again, these are just highlights. A lot of these projects are very detailed and have multiple parts to them. We're just trying to give you an overview. And on the next page, you can see it broken down more. Again, I will highlight, if you look at the pie chart, the top three colors there are wages and operations, homelessness and revenue replacement. I will say that the intention of the legislation, as written is and at the time, was to keep municipalities in business, to keep them involved and to keep their operations going and also to increase services to constituents. So you'll see the largest portion went to revenue replacement, the 32%. Not all of that has been fully moved over and committed yet, but it is earmarked, so to speak, for that. And that was really the true intent of the legislation. Wages and operations went for things like CSLs, emergency overdose calls, because we had such an increase in those. Our equity and REIB expenditures during the time, police retention and recruitment, and our RRC operations so that we could better communicate with our constituent base. Some of the larger chunks for the revenue replacement were the traffic fund, as most of you know, and general fund lost revenue. As you know, we lost our sales tax and our gross receipts taxes during those times. Direct to consumer, I think is also important. That was BED arrearages, grants to nonprofits, property tax lag relief. The capital and community infrastructure is a lot of the water projects and water is outlined specifically in the ARPA legislation. And we did use it for there and then some of the infrastructure projects that you recently approved, health response, I think goes without saying, and economic and business supports were grants to micro-businesses and open streets activations to allow businesses to spill out into the streets and pay for excess staffing related to those. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Just for clarity, all of the ARPA funds have been committed thus far. So commitment and encumbrance funds needed as for the legislation to be completed by the end of 2024, and expenditures need to occur by the end of 2026. And we are on track to fulfill that obligation, meaning I do not expect that the city will need to return any of these funds. Councilor McGee. Thanks, Mayor, and thank you, Kara, for the presentation. I think I just have more of a comment or request going forward. I know there are a number of things on the list, particularly around wages that, you know, we created some new positions with these funds and now that they are fully committed, we're gonna have to find general fund sources for those. So if we could get at least a brief update ahead of the budget season on what that might look like going forward, what we're gonna have to replace with the general fund, I think that would be helpful. And I'm just grateful for all the work that's been done to get that funding out the door to support the community. It is interesting to see it presented in the bar graph format there and have a couple of the bars, particularly related to direct support for businesses and residents be a little bit smaller than I think some of us would have liked to see, but I know that in the moment of us making those decisions, the revenue replacement was equally important for constituent services. So I think if we prepare a sort of a final presentation of how our funds were allocated and spent kind of trying to draw direct connections to how they went to support, provide direct support to folks, I think would be important. I agree. And if I may, I would also say that a lot of the health response was also, could be considered direct to consumer and a lot of those we distributed HEPA filters, we distributed masks, things like that. But yes. Yeah, think about like a lot of the reason, some of the revenue that we lost was voluntary revenue that we stopped charging various fees and taxes for extended periods of time. You could. Way, way, good chunk of that. HEPA's simultaneous with all this, of course, the federal government was sending out massive. Correct, correct. I mean, you suggest that we didn't do enough. I just, in communicating how the money was allocated, if we could just at a future date be a little more nuanced and communicate to the public exactly. That's helpful for you. I think that makes sense. And just to add to that, things like revenue replacement when constituents might see that, they might not understand that without revenue replacement, for instance, we might have had to raise taxes more. And so that could also be seen indirectly as a benefit to that. So just helping to make some of those connections could be helpful. So this was really meant as an overview for this audience, but it is important to get it out. So yeah. Yeah, thanks. Good feedback. Thank you. Great, any further questions or thought, reactions to the presentation? Yes. Go ahead. Kelce, Jack. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Kara, for the presentation. I think it's clear. It's comprehensive. And it seemed that all these resources have always been allocated, basically, right? And I know that, for example, to support the local businesses, $50,000 was identified as part of ARPA to match the donation that Council President secured from a private foundation. And I mean, overall, and also if you look at the traffic fund, in one point, things started to come back up to normal. So basically what we may have allocated, we did not use it all. And maybe in some of these also, there were, you know, contingencies, right? And I was just wondering on a snapshot, basically, in terms of number, what's the wiggle room left over that we have currently, you know, from ARPA, right? Let's go to clarify, all the ARPA is committed, but yes, you are correct. A lot of these commitments do have contingency lines. So the 50,000 that was used to match the grant from the Palmer Lowe Foundation was taken 30% from a contingency line. I can't remember which one, 30% from a contingency line and 20% from some of my ARPA funds that are in the business support budget. So the only wiggle room we may or may not have would be related to revenue replacement, which there is a portion that has been set aside through the fiscal year 23 budget resolution that has not all been taken in, although I would imagine as we start to look into the fiscal year 25, sorry, 25, as we start to look into there, we will probably be using that. So wiggle room, I would say is minimal to none at this point. We might have a few tens of thousands left in contingency lines. Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Okay, I'm not seeing any further hands. I don't think there's any action on this. So if there's no further questions, I'm going to close this item and that completes our warned agenda. And thus at 6.30, 8 p.m., if there's no objection, the board of finance is adjourned. See you all next week.