 Thank you. Okay. All right. So we are going to get this meeting started. So I'm going to call meeting to order. First thing is to review and approve the agenda. I do not have any changes to make to the agenda. Anyone else? Just note that we are adding the camping policy to the agenda you tabled it last weekend and due to it was our fault that it didn't get put on, but so you had specifically table it to this meeting. Yeah, you should add that on. Yeah, you know, I don't know where you want to put it on but Okay. I sure. I, because this is an add on, I would assume that we're not going to take any action on that. You can because you actually voted at the last meeting to table it to this meeting. So, in your own turn, right, wait till you're called on. Thank you. So, I would up to you. Yeah, that's fine. I mean, I think we can take it up and have a conversation about it. I would rather not have a vote on it tonight because of that, but that's that is all good any other changes to the agenda. Okay, so with without objection will consider the agenda approved of general business and appearances this is an opportunity for any member of the public to make a comment about any agenda. That was interesting. So, if you do have a comment that is pertinent to an agenda item, you can make that comment adjacent to that item. When we get there that will be fine let you know when it's time to do that. So, for this as with all public comment, if you would say your name where you live and try to keep your comment to about two minutes that would be excellent. I am the new director of the Montpelier senior activity center, and I live in Calis but Berlin I don't know where I live anyway, I am here to just let you know the very exciting news that the Montpelier senior activity center will be hiring a kitchen manager chef for our feast program which I've actually been running for the last year, you did receive a 40 page proposal from us. And so if you have any questions about that please be in touch. We're thrilled for this because it's going to allow the feast program, which is run by the city of Montpelier to really fully take it seat in Montpelier to provide really nutritious really necessary meals to our senior community. So if you have any questions let me know and come join us in October. Thank you. Thank you. All right anyone else. Steve Whitaker from Montpelier. Thank you for being with the continuity of the creative discourse and the populations that were commented on about feeling valued and feeling heard. I think that for me to bring issues of public works and public safety and homeless services etc to you and have them not acted on never even acknowledged in the minutes nor acted on years later for instance the water standing and freezing in the water is really irresponsible and unconscionable you really need to keep a running public facing log of all the issues that are raised in these public comment periods, as well as a date they were time stamped in when they were in the water. If you put them on a budget or notify the people if you're rescheduling it for council discussion, you need to make meaning behind engagement and not just tolerate two minutes of, you know, swept sweep under the rug. Vermont Housing Authority chronic mismanagement of records they claim to not have any records she's using a personal email address at together net. They have not filed any records retention schedules with the Secretary of State's office. That's a body that you appoint, and they have chronic pest problems bed bugs etc, and it's all being swept under the rug and not necessary records keeping being kept. The disheartened status of our public works that years of neglected maintenance and then now the penny pinching the money budget. You've you've disabled you've disheartened and discouraged our public works department where they don't see ever seeing light at the end of the tunnel to get this stuff caught up. You know they're just resigned that this is the way it's going to always be and it's that's just that's on you. It's really sad to see that staff just wait for retirement and not. Here's a key concept don't ever ask anybody to do a job that they can't be proud of and that's what you're doing to those underfunded departments. The lease with Green Mountain Transit. It refers on page one to schedule a which describes the property you've got problems with tenants in the building. They've paddle bean Mountain Transit has padlocked the outlets so that people cannot charge their phones tenants in the building are going out to the lamppost and unplugging someone's phone. It's really important today at the task force meeting and saying oh you're one of them you go back to bury and this is all happening because we mismanaged the lease and don't attach schedule a to the lease so that the city assistant city manager can't find it and we don't enforce the lease similarly with the bathrooms. There was no schedule a attached the document I referred to that still says draft on the front but is the executing copy. It's just bad management. It's bad management. I know I'm running out of time so I'm recommending that you disband the homelessness task force two years of ineffective not getting anything done other than that first meeting where we got the budget to open the overflow shelter. You take the two members or three members that are not invested in status quo organizations and attach them as a subcommittee to the housing task force. The housing task force does have a mission and housing homeless could be part of it and you need to get you need to break that inertia two years without accomplishing anything or presenting a plan to accomplish toilets showers designated camping phone charging and privacy of the records. Anyway, I'll pick some of this up next. That's a start. Record these items and break them apart consider even discussing this respect the fact that people are willing to put their time and energy into coming and conveying this information to you. Thank you Steven. And I know. So I feel like I, I've heard you there thank you for all of those and I know Bill is writing those all down. And I, you know, I think that you have some fair criticisms. I also think your criticism of the homelessness task force is unwarranted you continue to say that we have not accomplished that that group has not accomplished anything and I don't think that's accurate. I just want to be on the record is saying that. But all the other points. Thank you. All right, we're going to move on to the consent agenda. And I seem to have lost my agenda here. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda. There was a motion and there was a second. And without the minutes. Right. Right. Is that everybody's clear about that. Okay. Okay. So motion and second any further discussion. Okay, all in favor please say aye. Aye. All right. So we have an appointment to the community fund board. There's a vacancy. We have Shayna Casper who is applied and I don't see Shayna on the zoom. Okay. I move that we appoint Shayna Casper to the. Second it. Donna. Okay. Thank you, Donna. Okay. So. Any further discussion. Okay. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes. Thank you, Shayna. My goodness. Okay. And we have some other boards as well. And we're so grateful for your service. All right. The stormwater master plan. And utility discussion. I am very interested in hearing all about this. And so I assume I'm, do you want to say anything, Bill, or should we turn it over to Donna? city's strategic plan to be presented about now. So here we are. Great. And since you are here digitally, I assume you're going to be presenting, you're going to be sharing your screen with us here, is that accurate? Yes, we will. Yep. Okay, so I'm going to move. And Donna or Kurt, go ahead. I'll lead it off. I'm Donna Barlow Casey, Public Works Director for the city. And good evening to everybody. Tonight, Public Works is bringing three different presentations to city council. And each of our department's three engineers are going to take on one of these topics. So first up is Deputy Director Kurt Modica, who will be focusing on stormwater quality, a topic that I know has been of interest to many of you. And specifically, Kurt is going to be addressing the how and the what is required in order to generate environmental stewardship in this arena. Then following that, ZapLoget is going to engage with the PCI report, otherwise known as the Pavement Condition Index. And I want to note here that the PCI was accomplished not only as the result of Zach working on this, but working closely with two summer interns as they learned to inspect the city streets and handle equipment and document the results that you'll be hearing about this evening. And over the last week, we've had a chance to say goodbye to both of them. And it's clear to me that Zach did a wonderful job of managing them because they went from uncertainty to confidence. And I think that's what we always want to do with interns. Our final presentation is in Corey Lyne's hands. And that brings us to his reviewing and presenting on traffic calming recommendations. So with that, I'm going to stop talking and go back to listening and turn this over to Kurt to begin our department presentations. Great. Thank you, Donna. As Donna mentioned, I'm Cormatica, Deputy Director of Public Works. And I do have a PowerPoint presentation to sort of explain the topics of the evening here. So, Cameron, do I have the ability to share my screen? So tonight, as I mentioned, we'll be going through both the creation of a stormwater utility and what's involved with that, as well as the status of our stormwater master plan, the progress that we've made so far and what's upcoming in the queue for projects. And then just sort of a quick overview of what we'll be discussing. We'll go through what is included with stormwater infrastructure, what sort of regulatory requirements are associated with it. We'll talk about the stormwater utility and how that is made up, and then the steps to creating one, how there are different options for generating revenue to fund a stormwater utility. And then the next steps to if the city council decides to move forward with that, what our next steps would be. And then finally, the status of the stormwater master plan. Just some acknowledgments before we get going. There's some reference materials. None of us here in public works are experts on stormwater utility and how to build them or create them. So we had to reach out for some resources on that. One is the Vermont League of Cities and Towns has a document that we referenced. And also, the town of Colchester recently went through a feasibility study. And we had the opportunity to speak with Karen Adams, who manages that program, which is very helpful. And also Tom McCartle, he really pulled a lot of this information together for us as we were a little at our hands full with a number of construction projects this summer. So just a quick kind of overview of how stormwater, all the different components of stormwater, because there's quite a few of them. The big dollar one is the infrastructure. There's a lot of culverts in the city and many of those are metal and they're reaching the end of their design life. There's water quality, celestial treatment projects, rain gardens and detention ponds, things like that. There's the combined sewer overflows, which has an impact on the water quality of the rivers. And then there's permit compliance. And under permit compliance, there's quite a bit to talk about. There are some in place now are the MRGPs, their municipal roads general permit. And primarily that associated with stabilizing stormwater outfalls and erosion or roadside erosion issues with stormline ditches and things like that. And then the individual permits are water quality related. So when we reconstructed Norfield Street, we added the bike claim that added impervious surface and triggered a treatment requirement. And once those permits are issued, they are in place forever. There's annual requirements for inspection for maintenance. So anytime we add 5,000 or more square feet of impervious to a project that triggers that permit. And I don't know, it stays with the city indefinitely. And then a few upcoming stormwater related regulations as the three acre sites. And the city has four of those. Those are going, we are required to apply for coverage in 2023 for those projects. And then an erosion control related regulation that's coming next year is half acre of disturbed surface. So what we anticipate is going to be required for even reconstructing streets of 1,000 feet or more is that we're going to have to develop a stormwater erosion control plan for those projects, which we had not historically had to do. So it will take a little more time and financial investment to accomplish a reconstruction project of streets. And then there's also public outreach, just informing the public of where the water goes when it goes down the drain. There's been some stenciling in town from high school groups. And if we do a utility, there's going to be a lot of public outreach required to make it successful. And then finally, maintenance. We do street sweeping, we do catch basin cleaning, and then there's also structure maintenance. So anytime we do a paving project, we generally have to lower the structures and reset them to the finish grade. So for just a quick overview of how a stormwater utility operates, it acts like an enterprise fund. So that's just like the water sewer and district heat funds. And the fees are generally based on the impervious surface. So impervious surface is basically anything that water can't pass through. So that would be pavement, compacted gravel, buildings, anything like that is considered impervious. And right now, all of our funding for stormwater comes through the general fund, the CIP program, with the exception of a small component that is funded through the sewer benefit charge, which covers just some staff time for maintenance operations. And right now, the only mechanism public works is using to fund water quality projects is really through grants. Because we have such a great need in our infrastructure, our piping, and hard conveyance of stormwater that we really, we can't dedicate CIP funds generally to stormwater treatment projects. So we rely heavily on grants for that work. So this is really just kind of what's the benefits of stormwater, of a stormwater utility, why are we looking at this? It establishes a dedicated funding source to deal with aspects of stormwater. It kind of gets the community involved for general, you know, promoting water quality. Sorry, hey, sorry, Kurt, would you mind terribly moving where you have the visualization of who's on or minimum? No, it's okay, because for those of us who are in person, it was covering up some of the words. I think that should do it. If it does, if that doesn't work again, we'll just let you know. Yep, thank you. Okay. Oh, okay. Oh, is that on us? Yes. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, that's okay. Please continue. All right. And so the stormwater utility can create a user fee that allows us to develop a I guess say what you call a surplus or a reserve for bigger projects. It's equitable so that properties that impact stormwater quality in a higher degree pay a higher fee. And then it also offers an opportunity for incentive programs so we could provide credits for properties that implemented stormwater quality projects within their own property to reduce the impacts of the discharge of that water from the site. So to go through the process, what we feel is the first step is to conduct a feasibility study. This would need to be done through a consultant. And I guess in order to really define the framework of that feasibility study, we'd recommend creating a committee to be involved in helping generate that the RFP to solicit an engineering firm to do that work. There's going to be a great need, as I mentioned earlier, for public input. So we'd like to have public meetings get the impact from the public on how they feel or what they feel are the most important aspects of that should be included in the stormwater utility. And we just want to make sure that it addresses both the needs for infrastructure as well as the regulatory needs or requirements for the city and addresses city council goals for clean stormwater environmental stewardship. We're estimating cost of 15 to 25,000 for this feasibility study. There is an opportunity for 50% subsidy through a state funding program. I won't go into this too much, but there are a lot of different ways to structure how the fees would be set up for the utility. I'll just highlight item three there, which is a variable fee. It's based on what they call an ERU as an equivalent residential unit. It's often used for structuring water rates as well. So you have a base fee for, the Colchester did it for a one-tenth of an acre of impervious, and that would be your base fee. And then if you had twice that, you'd pay twice the fee or so on. So that's the most common method. All the utilities in Vermont use that method, and that's likely I would recommend moving forward. And just quickly, the difference between tax and fee, this would need to be adopted by ordinance. There'd have to be a clear relationship between the funds generated and what the services were provided from those funds, and then a voluntary provision to reduce the impact of the cost to the user. And then this is very similar, just noting it is just like an enterprise fund, so it'll be managed kind of with its own set of funding that would be allocated specific to stormwater projects. And then just briefly on the impacts, or how you could structure, first how you would structure the fee. Some places will put percentages to planning and design, and then construction. I'd recommend that we, we'd recommend that we do some portion to planning and design, probably a larger portion to infrastructure replacement, and then fund the staffing needed to perform the maintenance. And then look at developing a treatment goal of, you know, some percentage of the funding that revenue generated, and then public outrage. One important note to make is that it's likely going to require, this utility would require additional staffing, certainly in public works, if, if they're sort of moved forward, we likely need a full-time person to manage, implement and manage the program. And then just some examples of how the fees are set up in other towns in Vermont. You know, they range from 30 to $79 per ERU, or equivalent residential unit. And then they can be, you know, spaced on how much impervious, there's a lot of ways to do it, but this is just kind of an idea of what an average residential property might expect to pay annually. So as we know, the next steps, the first thing I'd like to do is set up a committee. I likely involve the Conservation Commission, being an important partner in developing this. We need to allocate funding to go towards the Feasibility Study and develop the RFP through the committee. We'd need to conduct a needs evaluation, so that's similar to how we did the water and sewer study state plans. We need to, it's the inventory, the total length of all of our assets and determine what it would cost to replace those on a 50-year lifecycle. We need to determine how much impervious area we have. That can be done with aerial imagery. UVM provides a service that could do that. We'd need to decide on a free structure, do a lot of public outreach, and then make a final determination on what the staff requirements would be. And then once we go to implementation, assuming council decides to move forward this, there'll be a public hearing through council on the decision on whether or not to actually move forward. And then if that decision is favorable or decides to move forward, we'd have to draft an ordinance and then go through the readings of that ordinance. So I'm going to stop there for a minute. The second part of the presentation is really about the status of the master plan. So I will stop sharing for a minute and we can talk about this if you'd like. First of all, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Wonderful. So I have a couple of questions, but I'll open it up to others first. Questions from the council at this point. Yeah, go ahead, Dan. Sure. One sort of overarching question. Would this utility district be city-wide or would this be for particular areas within the city? I think you could structure it either way. I would assume that you'd want to do it city-wide. That would be a recommendation. So basically every residential owner who had impervious surface, which would be like house driveway and such would be, if we went with that model, that would be the calculation and then assigned to each home owner, each landowner, basically in the city. Is that the way Colchester and Burlington do it? It is, yeah. Thanks. Jack. I got a couple of questions. First relates to the Greenmount Cemetery. And I think a lot of people watching might not realize that that's considered impervious surface. Could you explain that a little bit? Sure. So the impervious surface associated with the cemetery is primarily the gravel roads. So there's quite a few roads that go through the cemetery. It would also include the two buildings on the property also contribute to impervious, but I think the bulk of the of the surface areas contributed to the roadways. Thanks. The second question I think is somewhat related, which is that I would assume that the biggest owner of impervious surface in the city is the city of Montpelier because of the roads. Would that be also subject to the fee? Well, the city roads are regulated through the municipal roads general permit. So for the three acre site, it does not apply. The way other towns in Vermont have done the utility is by parcel. And so the roadways would be exempt, so not parcels for development. Okay, thanks. So I have a question for you, Kurt. What kind of voice, sorry, Donna, go ahead. No, no, I can follow you. That's fine. Okay. Kurt, for a feasibility study, what kind of information would you be hoping to gather from the feasibility study? Well, I mean, primarily would be what the fee structure would be. So there's a lot of information gathering required. We need to, you know, really kind of survey the whole city and look at the parcels, how much impervious there is, and how many parcels there are to distribute that fee, and then, you know, take the total needs of the items I mentioned, which is, you know, the infrastructure replacement, the maintenance, the public outreach, the planning and design work, and divide that up by the ERUs within the city. So one is to get the base data for developing the utility. Second is the how much the fee is going to be, how property is going to be impacted, and then, you know, probably some ordinance language, how we go about it. And then, yeah, I think that's primarily the main items that we've been looking for. You know, and then I think we need input from the council about, you know, what percentage of that revenue generated you'd want to go to water quality projects, because like I said earlier, we only fund water quality through grants now, so there's not a lot of them happening in the city. We do what we can when we get grants, but because there's so much infrastructure demand, we don't. One of the things that feels like this could be really important for us, you know, just in the face of climate change and having a significant increase in the prospect of stormwater, thinking about how we're funding our stormwater systems feels very timely. So I just wanted to make that comment. One other non-sequitur question. As far as you know, for the process, we do have the authority as a municipality to enact an ordinance like this. It would not take a charter change. I don't believe so. I have not consulted legal to confirm that. I mean, with so many other municipalities in Vermont, they would know. So and I know you're sort of pausing here. I know you're sort of pausing here to, because we also want to talk about the stormwater master plan, which I would love to rename if we could. I'm just going to put that out there. Just a stormwater plan, I think would probably be sufficient. But anyway, that's another topic. One of the things that you mentioned in there was the possibility of forming a committee. Do you want to talk more about that later? We could try to do that now, or if we're coming back to this topic. Anyway, I just wanted to get your thought on that. I think now's a good time to discuss that. The master plan update is relatively short. It's just kind of what we've done and what we're planning to do in the next year. So I'd welcome a discussion on the concept of creating a committee. Before we get into the stormwater plan, also comments from the public, both in present and. Did Donna have a. Oh, I'm sorry. Donna. Yeah. Sorry. That's okay. That's all right. So we'll go Donna and then we'll go to comments from people who are present. And then we'll see if there are comments from people virtually. Donna, go ahead. I have two questions. One, does the city already know how much every land owner has an impervious square footage? Or do you have to do that? No, that would need to be done through the feasibility study. And would the state parking lots also qualify? Yes. Okay. And then on your slides, you bring up that there's a possibility of a 50% loan subsidy. Now, I don't know what that means. That means it's still a payback. When you say loan subsidy, it is a loan. You have to pay it back, right? Well, no. So that's what the state calls it. It's a loan forgiveness. So it's essentially a grant. You have to go through the loan process and then they forgive up to 50% of it. So it's like a match. I mean, okay, great. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Public. Welcome. Yes. Oh, Jack, did you have another? Oh, Daniel. Yeah. Well, we can go ahead and then we'll go back to Dan. Hi, I'm Jim Tandos from Secretary of State, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here in my past role as city counselor in South Burlington. I was the chair of the council at the time. I remember going to one of my first annual National League of Cities meetings, and if there were like 300 or 400 booths on the floor, there might be one that talked about stormwater back in 1998. Two years later, 2000, there was probably 30. And after that, it just grew exponentially. South Burlington moved to a stormwater utility in, well, it actually went into effect in 2005, but we started it in 2000, took us five years to get there. We were the reason why UVM has that aerial system that they've developed. So they developed it to use for us. It worked beautifully. We have a fee that is about, I shouldn't say we, they have a fee that is about $7.20 a month, $86 a year. One of the things, and I think Kurt made mention of it, is you have to have the plan. So you can't just say, we're going to collect this money, we'll do it as we go. You got to have a plan in place. But what it also does, the fees that you collect allows you to use that money for matches against federal and state grants as well. I don't believe, Dan, you can probably tell us, but I don't believe that a charter change is necessary for this. This actually, South Burlington got the language changed in the statute to allow for this back around 2004, maybe 2003. But I just think so you need to know what you want to fix. You need to know what the approximate costs are. This is all in trying to get to your fee structure. You even have to include looking at any condo associations and any stormwater facilities that they have privately. What we did in South Burlington, because they were falling into disrepair, was the agreement we signed with them was they would bring it up to the standard that they had to have it at the time that they built their development. We would take it over at that point and we would maintain it as a city as part of the stormwater utility. One thing I got our urge and I think Kurt alluded to it. It's got to be a separate division within public works. You can't have people who are working for the stormwater utility who get pulled off to be doing road work for something else. They have to be dedicated just to that utility. You got to involve your planning commissions as well. For instance, it's all the buildings along Stonecutters Way. If you were to drive down and look across the river from Burlington, from Barry Montpelier Road, you'll see all these outfalls from the parking lots. Over time, those have got to go away. You can't continue to have those. But there's nothing in the planning commission right now that when the state college building was renovated that they had to bring it up to stormwater because of the size of the units. You got to get stuff into your planning commission statutes that are ordinances that allow them to be able to maintain or to to acquiesce that stormwater stuff. I think it's a great idea. I think it's something that you need to go forward with. Also, just understand the stormwater utility. You will be taking street sweeping from public works and moving it into the stormwater utility. You will take over the cleaning of the culverts and whatever from public works or from the roads, the street division, and put that into stormwater. You've got to isolate all these things. That means the funding has to go with it from those, what you have currently for funding because that helps you build up your fund as well. That's all I want to say. Thank you so much. Okay, go ahead, Connor. Jim, how long did it take to start the finish in South Burlington? Was the idea to actually implement it? We actually started when I became chair in 2000. We started the process at that time. We were the first stormwater utility in the state of Vermont. Now, Julie Beth Hines was the one that was our city planner at the time that she worked with them. She's moved out of state now, but she has given me, over the years, we've talked a lot about this. Just the other night, we were talking about what was going to be presented tonight. She said that the Aldrich Elliott Group did a really good job with St. Albans at the time that St. Albans put theirs in place. I think there are quality people out there to help you get there, but I think it's something that really needs to be addressed. I live on Chestnut Hill and we just had a culvert replaced up there. It's not totally complete, but the main part is fixed now. If you look at what's coming down Main Street, the reason why the pavement gets torn up is the water that goes down and catches one little crack that just starts ripping the pavement up. Those are all the things that have to be looked at. When a city prides itself on bike use, I would just say I challenge you to ride down Main Street on a bicycle and not pop a tire. This is also to your point. I'm imagining that it probably took Seth Burlington a little longer because you were the first. For places like Coolchester or Burlington or St. Albans, you don't happen to know how long they're processed. I don't want to say anything about Burlington tonight. Burlington just created a division and moved stuff over. Theirs was really a little bit different. They call it a utility, but I wouldn't necessarily classify it that way. We actually set up a separate Tom DiPietro from South Burlington has been there from the beginning. He's really a good person who knows his stuff and he would be someone to really talk to. We had Potash Brook that we're trying to deal with. Engelsby Brook, which is part of Burlington, part of South Burlington, all going into Lake Champlain. People up here, one of the things in public outreach that you're going to have to overcome is we don't affect Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain is affected by two thirds of Vermont, the watershed, and it starts up in Cabot. I don't have to tell Lauren this. There's a lot of storm water. We were accused of taxing the rain. People were saying, my water doesn't go into the lake. Mine stays right here on my property. No, it doesn't. It eventually gets there. It's just really a matter of doing the right thing. We were big enough that we had to have MS-4 compliance. Is that clear? No. MS-4 is for larger communities. Then you have another one. The larger and also those within the certain more contaminated areas. We were out while we have to deal with it. We're not quite as bad as we are. All in all, a stormwater utility is an excellent idea. I think there's about five or six in Vermont now. We were the first in South Burlington. Actually, I think South Burlington was the first in New England, but there's a lot more now that have developed over time. I can't say enough good things about it. I think he just got a committee volunteer. Steve Whitaker, I'd like to understand how this relates to the CSO. I heard one mention of CSO on one of the slides. I was shocked after a recent public records request to find out that we have no quantity values. We don't know how much human waste is going into the river with these big storms. We're not measuring it. Apparently, we don't have the technology to measure it. How is that going to get separated finally? When and how does that relate to this process of starting a stormwater utility? We can't keep dumping crap in the river. It seems an opportune time to address that once and for all and get off the pot date certain for when we're going to quit doing that and quit the sewer gas from coming up at main intersection. Thank you. One of the other things that occurs to me is that something I think might be compelling for a lot of folks in Montpelier is, well, maybe the connection to Lake Champlain may be more abstract than we would like. I think there is a lot of very immediately felt need for people's stormwater affecting their downhill neighbors or being affected by their uphill neighbors. I've certainly heard from a lot of folks who are having a really hard time managing the water on their land. One of the things, Kurt, that might be of interest is in the feasibility study, would it be at all possible to build in the opportunity for private property owners to have access to, maybe the city could provide some number of grants or subsidies or something to leverage private dollars for stormwater remediation on private land as well. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Is there any precedent for that that you know? I don't think so. I mean, first of all, yeah, it's a matter of getting an easement from the from the city to get an easement to do the work on their system. Once they've brought it up, you don't take it over until they've at least brought it up up to the time that they built because a lot of these stormwater sedimentation ponds and stuff, they deteriorate over years and you'll find trees growing out of them and whatever that stuff all has to be cleaned up. Well, once you take it over, then you the city can maintain those put them on a regular schedule for maintenance. And then as far as, I mean, in the old days when development happened, it was just put a pipe in the ground and get the water off off your property to the next guy's property. That's a different issue. Kurt alluded to it about some of the larger places like we had the university mall and the CLF had filed a lawsuit against university mall about stormwater, but did not know it's that's they had already built basically underground holding tanks in the parking lot to collect the stormwater and leak it out slowly. So it's, you know, with different businesses, some of the mall developers would get credits for stuff that they did on their own property. And some of them were spending a quarter of a million dollars to upgrade their stormwater facilities on their properties. So they would get a credit towards whatever the fee was for that large expanse of impervious surface. Great. Thank you. And I'll just follow up with that. We could structure the utility in a way to support private property. I would recommend that we do it through grant support. And we've done this in the past where we'd apply for grants on behalf of private properties. And then like Secretary Kondo said, get easements to actually construct the work and bid it and everything. So as opposed to funding actual hard infrastructure improvements on private property, I'd recommend, you know, we donate or allocate some planning or design funding to support those through grant opportunities as a way to do it. You can do whatever you want. That's just how I'd recommend it. I was just curious if that was even a possibility. I know Dan had a comment that you were hanging on to. And then let's go more than Jay. Well, I think I think my comments been largely answered, which was, you know, I was going to ask her how you foresaw this utility splitting its work between would most of these projects be on public property or would most of them be on private property or split between the two? But it sounds like it it I mean, it sounds like it just really depends. But I'm just wondering, you know, what you foresee based on your knowledge of the stormwater needs in Montpelier? Yeah, I would say, you know, the vast majority needs to go to public infrastructure. You know, like I mentioned that the pipes and the metal pipes in the city, we have a lot of them and they're all in very poor shape or majority of them. I think for the private work, you know, the goal will be to encourage people to do their own stormwater systems through credits on the fees. And that's the, you know, the better way to sort of accomplish the water quality goals on private property, where the city's not actually going in and doing that work. But, you know, there's a reduction in fee associated with them with private properties doing it. Thanks. Thank you, Lauren. Yeah, thanks. Just kind of on that point, one of the things that I've heard people talk about that can be a benefit of having the stormwater utility and kind of that bigger picture view is being able to try to think creatively of how could, you know, so for example, we've got the new half acre stormwater requirements, the three acre requirement coming online. So people are going to have new permit obligations they didn't have before. And are there ways to be looking how people could potentially collaborate on joint projects where we might be able to get more pollution reduction at a lower cost. So I think that's something that there, you know, it could be really interesting way to think about, you know, through the utility that people kind of buy into a project that is beneficial for the city because we'd have less overall pollution, but could also, you know, let them meet their obligations. So I've heard that as a potential opportunity that seems pretty interesting. You know, I've heard numerous presentations from Tom DPHR from South Burlington and people from St. Albans and others who are running these programs in other communities and are like proselytizing about it. So it's been, you know, mostly a very positive like this is great. So these are the people having to, you know, do all the work day to day. So if they're excited about it, that's a good sign. You know, there was a big clean water funding report a few years ago that Treasurer Pierce did looking at all the ways you can fund water. And she had landed on basically an equivalent of doing it through, you know, impervious surface fees as like the ideal way to be funding clean water. So I mean, I'm excited that we're looking at this. I think, you know, taking it to the next step makes a lot of sense and would just echo what the mayor mentioned, you know, with climate change, our needs are going to be evolving and, you know, being able to be nimble and responsive and addressing things that come our way with structures that are, you know, set up now with that kind of foresight, I think would be a great way to be headed. Thanks. So I'll just add real quick that I want to, you know, echo what Lauren and Anne and Anne what we're saying about the big picture here, but also bring up that, you know, Friends of the Winooski as a corollary to what we're talking about here, not the utility, but they have, they have set up a program where they're working with private landowners to help to do an analysis of their property if it's within a certain range of rivers and look at like plantings and landscaping that can help limit that runoff stormwater and otherwise that goes into the river. So, you know, obviously this would be something that would be in addition to what we're talking about in terms of utility, but somebody that we could partner with and when we're looking at big picture here, so. Well, what you're saying makes me think about the question is this, is stormwater management effectively a public good? You know, for if a private landowner does this, does that benefit the public? And I think the case is pretty clear that the answer is yes. So, which is, which is also saying like it's great that Friends of the Winooski and Friends of the Winooski, yeah, is doing that work. And they have been for a couple years. I mean, this was pre-pandemic because they've been, they've got an app, it like, like does an analysis of, you know, what, what, you know, of what your property looks like and, and, and all the vegetation and how that works. So it's, it's a pretty established process already. So. And we, our staff refers people to them when we're, you know, one of the things I think I heard you mentioned there is there's sort of two issues with stormwater. Obviously, the most critical one is the water quality, the river, the lake, and, and managing it from that perspective. But in Montpelier at the very least, we have also have issues with stormwater damage. And I think that's some of the things that sometimes we, because we have so many hillsides. So erosion, water coming off. And, you know, that's almost a completely different, I mean, up, you know, where Jim lives, we had, we had to do a number of work a few years back on private properties to put those, just because it was damaging, ultimately coming down and damaging the roads and other things. So, you know, there's sort of two purposes to deal with stormwater here. And I think some neighbors, that's their concern isn't as much, I mean, they're concerned about the water quality, for sure. But they're really worried that the water from their neighbors properties could come down and wash out their driveway or their lawn or whatever their basement. I don't want to hope you don't miss it. But I mentioned about the planning commission, they've got to be involved in this. So when a business comes in, if it's a business or housing development, whatever it is, they've got to meet stormwater standards. And sometimes they fall below the threshold, but the city could have its own thresholds. And, for instance, you know, I just, I think that there needs to be some vision along the Winooski River quarter and get that cleaned up. I think that, you know, if you drive down, like I said, you see all the outfalls coming off these parking lots. That's just water and salt and whatever going right straight into the river, which ends up in Lake Champlain. So, and builds the phosphorus. Can I just register the question? The question of how does this relate to, if any of our infeeding, I understand we process sewer for Berlin that probably contains stormwater also. I could be wrong about that. But if any of our feeding basin, catchment basin, beyond Montpelier City limits includes stormwater, do we get to assess our stormwater management fee on properties in other towns? Thank you. No, I don't think we would have the authority to do that through utility. Thank you. Any other comments? Just generally, we did, so Kurt did bring up the possibility of having a committee. Would you anticipate Kurt starting with the committee or starting with a feasibility study? No, I think you'd want the committee first to help develop the request for proposals for the study. You had, I should probably go back and look at the presentation, but you had suggested some other, like somebody from the Conservation Commission should probably be on there, which probably includes someone from the Planning Commission as well. I think that would be a good idea. We should reach out to them. I assume we need less, three or fewer city counselors, but is anybody interested in serving on such a committee? Yeah, okay. Can this come up like 14 months ago? I feel like this, talking about stormwater came up a long time ago, but I feel like I'm appreciative of the staff bringing it to this point where it's more actionable and not just sort of thinking about what's going on. Yeah, and I raise my hand then, I'm raising my hand again. Awesome, that's great. Lauren, if you don't want to, it's okay. I'm very interested. Okay. Yes, go ahead, Dan. Could I suggest that it may not be the worst thing in the world to reach out to the DRB to see if any member of that group would be interested, only because that's the other half of the Planning Commission action. Either Bill or Kurt or some staff member, can I assume that you will reach out to the Planning Commission and the DRB and the Conservation Commission? If that's your direction that you want those reps, then we will solicit volunteers in this community. Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. Unless, I mean, it's not just up to me and what other things folks think about that. Well, if you have, I was going to say, if you've got a Conservation Commission or Planning Commissioner, DRB person and two council members, that's five people, that's pretty. That's pretty. And Jim. Jim's going to chair it. I'm tempted to also volunteer, but I'm going to not. You're going to have a full plan. I'm going to be busy and I'm going to trust you. I do trust you all to do this good work. So, Bill. Right. Do we want to purposefully add any members of the public? I mean, obviously public is welcome. Yes. He's the public rep. Any other thoughts on or should we start with this? Yeah, go ahead, Lauren. I mean, the only thought would be maybe like someone from Friends of Winooski or, yeah, yeah, they probably have real expertise. That would be helpful. We can invite them to come. If you had those five plus our Friends of the Winooski plus one representative of the public sitting here tonight, you'd have seven. No pressure. Lots of pressure. One emotion. Sure. Yeah, I think we probably do need a motion. Donna, do you, are you, is that you wanting to make a motion? Yes. Okay, go ahead. Well, I mean, you sort of outlined it. I should have taken notes and that indeed that you said the Conservation Commission. Yep. Planning Commission. Yep. You have two city council members. Yeah. Friends of Winooski. Yeah. And one public that we're hoping will be Jim. And Development Review Board. Oh, Development Review Board. Yes. Yeah. And member of the public. And the Secretary of State. I don't know that I can put Jim's name in, but a member of the public and we can talk to him afterwards for arm twisting. Okay, there's a motion. And this is to, to constitute a stormwater utility exploration. Exploration. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I'll second. Okay. Motion to second. Any further discussion about this? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. And opposed. Okay. So that motion carries. We've created this committee and I soon will post for a member of the public. But also, I guess that group will have to figure out who's chairing it and I mean, maybe it's the staff person for now. Usually, usually when we have these things, the staff calls the first meeting and then get organized and someone would explain public meeting laws and all those sorts of things to the group. Okay. Great. Thank you. And thank you for your input. All right. So I realized that Kurt, you had a little bit more about the stormwater plan. Can I turn it back to you for that? Yes. Yep. Thank you, by the way. Oh, you're welcome. Okay. So so just a kind of a summary of documents that the city has created in support of the stormwater master plan. First was the stormwater master plan itself adopted in 2016. And then in 2018, the city came under the municipal roads general permit. So that's sort of in lieu of the MS4 that we're discussing earlier because we're populations under 10,000. And then in 2019, we did the roof train study through a grant, which is really related to stormwater. And then most recent plan was our long-term control plan, which is our plan to, you know, eliminate combined sewer overflows. And we just did our final submission on that this year. This is just sort of a visual of the breakdown of the different components of what goes into the funding of stormwater. So 15% is maintenance. That's our catch basin cleaning and our street sweeping. 30% is CSO funding. So that's stormwater and sewer separation projects. 10%, which we mentioned is only funded through grants. That's the green stormwater infrastructure. So that's stormwater treatment. 25% is the dark red. That's our hard infrastructure replacement costs. And then 20% is related to regulatory compliance. So that's our MRGP and our other individual permits. And just sort of a list of, you know, all the things we've got going on for various projects. But I'll just highlight some of the ones we did most recently. First, which is we did a project up on the top of Scribner Street to sort of slow the water coming off the hill up there and bring it into an under-train system and get it into the storm. So there's some treatment there. It's mostly collection. This year, the city was able to purchase a hydrocedar through a grant. That allows us to quickly stabilize projects after construction in order to promote growth and reduce erosion. We did a small stabilization project with our own staff on Norfield Street, where there's kind of a large culvert that crosses the road. We stabilized that with Stonefell. There's some significant erosion going on up there. And then the last project was the stump dump. We did some check dams and things to slow down the velocity of water leaving the site and minimize erosion at the site. And then what we have in the queue, the Hubbard Park frog pond that's going to get reconstructed through a grant. We're just waiting on active 50 approval, but we do anticipate constructing that this year. Forest Drive, that was awarded Green Stormwater Infrastructure Grant. We're planning to construct that next year. East State Street Reconstruction, we do anticipate some stormwater treatment associated with that as well as a major CSO reduction. We're still targeting construction next year for that project, probably mid to late summer. And then the other big CSO separation project is on State Street, sort of in front of the Capitol. We're trying to get that project out this year. It's becoming, it's grown and becoming more complicated than we had originally anticipated. So it may run into next construction season, but we're still, we're still moving forward as quickly as we, as we can to get that out to bed. And that is really it for master plan update. Great. Any further questions about the stormwater plan? Lauren, go ahead. Yeah, thanks. I was just curious. So with the federal dollars that have come in, more thinking about like the state level ones, not, not just our city, two million or whatever. But, you know, they dedicated, you know, something like 225 million or something to clean water projects. Obviously that's statewide and there's huge needs everywhere. But just curious like how you're thinking about what, what we could get queued up to try to get on that list for them. Or is there, are there things that we should be doing your, your lobbying team or whatever to, to try to get like, like how, how are you thinking about prioritizing that and being ready to take advantage of that? And are there things we should be doing or thinking about to take as much advantage as possible as the, from the federal money that's come in and maybe more infrastructure dollars on the way? Well, the big, the big one is East State Street. That's, that's probably going to be somewhere in the realm of a $7 million project. And we are looking to incorporate some detention work in the parking lot, sort of, you know, I'll cross some city hall that once in a year or I think it's, forgetting the hair shirt and it's the name of the street. And we'd like to really, you know, redesign parking lot to really promote storm water. So that's the big one. I mean, there is, you know, sort of a limit to, to how many projects we can get ready with our staffing that we currently have. I don't have a, you know, a long list of things that we are working on for storm water specific projects. But, you know, it is something that we need to be thinking about. I think the three acre sites that are under the municipalities regulatory requirements is the next really big one that we'll be looking at aside from East State. Any others? Donna, any questions? No. No, just thank you, Curt. Great job. Comment? Yep. I just, I want to raise the concern that, that we might be short changing ourselves with by being too frugal right now with, with staffing and planning, with this infrastructure money coming in much larger from not the already passed bill with the one that's passed the Senate. That could mean potentially tens of millions. And we, we need to be thinking about which of these projects we would put out to bid and have Du Bois or somebody do, do rather than maybe we could need to rethink under certain scenarios. Would it be, would it pay to use money now to enhance the preparation staff anticipating that we would not be doing as much construction internally as we're doing now, but put projects out to bid and manage more of the, have our team be managing more projects being done by contractors. So I just don't want to miss and by not being ready. I mean, as much as East State Street is horrible and horrendous. There are a lot of horrible and horrendous roads that need work. In just not to respond. First of all, Stephen, that's an excellent suggestion. Thank you. Just for your, not just for your comment before anybody, the East State Street project that Curt talked about isn't just fixing the road. There's, it's all the water and sewer underneath. It's the CSO management. It's the smell thing that you've raised a bunch of times. It's, it's so the reason it's seven or eight million, it isn't just let's repair the roads. The reason the road is so bad is because we needed the money to do what's under the road. So just to be clear. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for that clarification. I didn't check with the virtual folks, anyone online wish to add a comment. You can raise your hand in the reactions button or unmute and let us know that you would like to say something. Okay. All right. So we are going to move on then. And I don't know if I'm, am I turning this back over to Curt for the pavement condition index or is that? I believe that's a handoff to Zach. Oh, okay. To Zach. All right. Oh, there you are. Great. Super. Welcome. And so I'll turn it over to Zach. Thank you. Just give me one second to get my shared screen up. Can you all see my screen now? Yes. Yes. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Tonight I'm here to talk about it's not full screen. Sorry. One second. We can see the next slide. Click display settings at the very top. Are you guys, so you're seeing the presenter screen right now? Yeah, we can see the current slide and the next slide. Which I, I, it's not the worst thing in the world. If that were, it would be okay. Yeah, display settings should be able to click display settings and then choose your other screen. How's that? There we go. That's great. All right. Thank you. So tonight we're here to talk about our, our PCI update from 2021. We will go over, I'll first do an introduction and overview of what PCI is, some of the things that we look at. Then I will go over our internal DPW goals. We'll get into the different road classifications that we have in Montpelier, along with some of the, the graphs that were produced the summer. We'll look at future funding, and then we'll talk about issues closing and open it up to any conversation that you may have. So first of all, what is PCI? PCI is an acronym for pavement condition index. It's a numerical rating that is given to a street based on the severity and type of the distresses that are found. Zero being the worst PCI and a hundred being the best possible condition. You'll see that a PCI in the range of zero to 10 is considered failed and practically impossible. 11 to 25 is serious. Your very poor streets are 26 to 40. Your poor streets are in the range of 41 to 55, fair of 56 to 70, satisfactory 71 to 85 and good 86 to 100. Now I want to say that each street, whether they fall into the range of a failed street or a satisfactory street, each one of these has a different maintenance that goes along with it. So if you're doing a crack ceiling or a fog ceiling project, those would be streets that are in the good condition. You don't crack seal something that is in the very poor or poor category. Here are a whole bunch of different types of pavement distresses that are commonly found. The ones that are highlighted in yellow are the ones that are most prone in Montpelier. So at the very top left picture, you'll see a whole bunch of alligator cracking. And that's when the pavement gets to be in very small little segments of asphalt, usually anywhere between one and six inches that they develop like a little small block. Your L and T cracking is cracks that run along the pavement or transverse, the longitudinal and transverse cracks. And then the bottom left picture is block cracking, which is one of the more common issues that we see. Along with these three, we also have a good amount of good amount of running and model matching as well. This next slide shows you a typical decay curve of pavement. So as you see, once you pave a street in year zero or one, it stays at a hundred. And as it ages, it falls off. So the older street gets obviously the PCI deteriorates faster. The key with pavement management is doing the right preservation or road technique at the right time. So when you're, you know, the red line at the top is the upper limit. So you could have a street that is zero to four years of age that is still in practically perfect condition and other scenarios that same street that was just newly repaved at two years could be anywhere between an 80 and an 85. Normally, we start to see complaints from the public anywhere around a 60. If they're 60 to 65, we are taking calls from the public about their road condition and asking for something to be done. So here are some of the goals that were set a few while really when we started this, the whole PCI and back in 2015, when we bought paver and started doing this assessment using the new software program, the group set a goal for an average PCI above 70. We strive to keep 25% of our roads with a PCI of 40 or below. We try to consistently reduce the number of streets that are below a 40. Another goal of ours is to consistently maintain funding levels to accomplish these goals, which on an annual basis is no less than $600,000. Once we put all of our streets into the payment management program, we ran some different scenarios and we really need to be investing at a minimum of $600,000 on an annual basis to be improving our citywide PCI goal. And lastly is probably one of the hardest things for us to do is a strategic approach to how we replace and select our streets. For example, we were just talking about East State Street, you know that project is going to include new water and sewer and storm water and sidewalk improvements. So juggling the needs for water and sewer systems and sidewalks, along with matching that up with the right time for the payment, is a little bit tricky. Here you'll see the breakdown of the various road classifications. So our Class 1 roadways, which is State Street, Main Street, Memorial Drive, Berlin Street, they represent 23% of our roads. Our Class 2s, which are Gallison Hill, Town Hill, Terrace Street, are about 15%, and then our Class 3s, which is the majority of our streets, represents almost 50% of our total road network. The other 15 is access ramps, gravel roads, private drives, etc. This next graph shows you a little bit of history of our PCI from 2017, 2018, and then again in 2021. In 2017, we were doing fairly well. The state had just come through and did the first paving of all of Main Street and State Street. So we got a good bump as a whole city from the Class 1 paving projects that were done at that time. Also, in 2017, we had really started to invest quite a bit of money over the last few years. And so we were up to around a 68 for our Class 2s and 3s. And then in 2018, we took a significant jump. That was when they finished Norfield Street at the second end and ended up repaving all of, well really all of Norfield Street. And then our Class 2s and 3s at that time were around a 69, which resulted in a 72 for the city. And then today, where we're at, is a 65 for our Class 1s, a 65 with the whole city, and roughly a 62 with our Class 2s and 3s. This graph shows you where the majority of our streets are currently. So that poor condition that you see, which represents 43% of our roads today, is in that, is in the poor category with a PCI ranging of 41 to 55. Roads that are in that group are not quite yet roads that need to be reconstructed like East State Street. They still have a chance to be caught up. Those streets are typically streets that are milled or a process that is called clothing place recycling, where they mill off the top surface and they put it down at the same time, all at once. So they mill it off and then they put it down in the same motion. You'll see that we also, we have an okay number of good and satisfactory street, satisfactory streets. What we need to continue to do right now is to maintain what is in the good category, the satisfactory category, and really take a lot of the percentage that are in the poor category and bring them up to the top of the curve. Here you're going to see a graph that shows city birth state over the last, well, 10 years or so. So when I started in 2011, we had around a 55 PCI and the state had around a 65. You can see over time that in 2014, the state reached a PCI of 70 and we were up to a 62. In 2019, we hit our high, which was a 69 citywide PCI and a state PCI of a 68. And then COVID hit and we took a pretty sharp decline, which is down to a 60. And that was mostly because at that time, between 2019 and 2020, we were doing Clarendon Ave, we were doing Taylor Street, we were doing a lot of projects that were very costly. And so we had to finish those projects up so we weren't getting a lot of miles of road repaved during that timeframe. And then with COVID on top of it, we had a pretty sharp decrease. It's pretty typical for us if we do nothing to lose about five PCI points a year on an annual basis. The 62 represents the increase that we're going to get from doing Barry Street and Hover Street, which is scheduled for this fall. Next is a graph with the percentage of the roads that are falling below a 40 PCI. You'll see that the state has a lot of, in 2011, they had a high percentage. They have gotten their number down and so have we. But right now we're staying right around 13%. This next graph shows you the PCI that the city has versus the annual funding that we've spent in dollars. So like I said, in 2019, we spent a lot of money. We were doing a lot of roads that were very costly. Clarendon Ave, Taylor Street, we paved Barry Street and then Gallison Hill. Those were all reclaimed projects and streets that were the highest cost per dollar to replace. So in summary, I just want to go over a few things and then we can talk about where we're headed and how to get us back into a better PCI. First of all, since 2018, we have seen a rise in pavement prices. Some of that is due to the state revising their specifications for asphalt and the amount of liquid that is put into the mix. So what was initially three or four years ago at $71 to $5 a ton, we're now seeing prices around $85 to $90 a ton, sometimes higher. We had a sharp decrease in our PCI, which was partially related to COVID. Our major projects like East State Street are very costly. So while it is great to complete a project in a holistic approach and it is preferred, they cost a lot of money. We were just talking about East State Street being a $7 million project with a lot of that money also going towards the stormwater system, the roads and the sidewalks. One of the biggest things that I want to talk about tonight and really make a point is that we really need to, over the next five years or so, is we need to really continue focusing on our preservation. So continuing our crack ceiling program, which has been very successful, but on top of that, beginning new preservation techniques that Montpelier has never done, such as fog ceiling, which fog ceiling is a technique that what you do is you basically spray a very thin layer on the top of the pavement. That layer, the fog seal, it actually penetrates the asphalt about three eighths of an inch and helps to rejuvenate it and stops it from actually cracking. So when you do a fog seal project, you get about three years of life added to your network. So moving forward, next year is the first year that I am proposing a fog seal project. Some of the issues with fog seal is you need a lot of square yards of road to be able to do it. So for example, you need more than 20,000 square yards to make it economical for anyone to even come and bid it. So that would mean all of College Street and all of Liberty Street, the good sections of those two would have to be done together in order to get a good, even to get someone to even give you a price for it. The price for like a fog seal project is around like $1.50 a square yard, where if you're doing a reclaim project, you're at $25 a square yard. One of the other things is that there is a competing CIP demand. So we have lots of CIP related projects and they all kind of compete with each other. So when selecting what projects to do, it just impacts the ability to put money just towards solely paving. And then with approximately 40 miles of Class IIs and IIIs, we need, at a minimum, we need to pave at least two miles per year. By doing more preservation techniques like fog seal, crack sealing, your micro seals, micro surfacing, you are able to do more, more mileage for less. The only kind of caveat is that in order to do those projects to preserve your pavement, they're done on streets that have not already fallen off the curb. So one of the questions that you all might receive from the public is why is the city going back and doing College Street? They just did that three years ago. Well, for College, for example, if we do nothing like we milled that street, and if we do nothing, then in 12 years, we're going to have to mill it again. But if we crack seal it next year, we get plus two years. And then we do a fog seal next year or the year after, then you get another three years. So you don't have to pave, you're not on a 12 year cycle, you've extended that 12 year cycle out to 17 years now. So it's a really good technique, and it's a way to leverage dollars. It is tricky here, though, because we have so many streets that are in poor condition. So it is really a balance. And one of the things that I have taken away from some of the webinars that I've attended is that good payment management systems have a little bit of everything. They really improve, they're injecting more improvement into their network than just like two miles, right? So we could put in $600,000 and we could mill streets and we could hit our two mile marker. However, if we're doing a good job with it, we're putting in more money to milling, little bit of reclaim, overlays, micro-surfacing, fog seals, crack seals, and improving anywhere between four and five miles on an annual basis. That's really how we'll get ahead in the future. With that said, I will open it up to questions. Great. Any questions from the council? Is that good, Connor? Yeah. Thanks so much, Jack. That was great. What have we said like, okay, in the next year or two, we want to see like a real and immediate difference in the roads in Montcullier? I know it's all people write about it's probably three times any other emails I get are roads, roads, roads, right? How much of it money is money and how much of it is staffing? Like if we gave you all the money you wanted to do this, do we have enough staff? Like I look at last year, we have people feel the way for Taylor Street, you know, other projects. So could you just talk about the balance service? Yeah. So road projects are easier to staff, right? So you can do way more mileage than, you know, like a street reconstruction project. Like East state is going to be way harder for staffing than it would be to pave, you know, 10 miles of road. The big issue is something like First Avenue where we had scheduled that to be done this year. And then over the winter, we had four or five water leaks. We hadn't had that many water leaks in a long time on that specific street. So then we deferred that street because with four water leaks in a year, it just doesn't make sense to do that street. So the hardest thing is juggling all of the other needs underneath it and not just simply paving it, making sure that we're choosing the right street and not, you know, not setting ourselves up for failure. You know, stone cutters, we repaved recently and we've had, you know, two leaks and you can see where those pavement patches have really kind of degraded the condition of the road. I will say that we could manage quite a bit in terms of paving, but I'm not, I would have to take a really close look to make sure that we're not paving roads and kind of setting ourselves up for like long-term failure. So that would, we would just need to kind of bet that out and make sure that whatever we were funding and how much we're putting into it, that we weren't choosing a road that like First Avenue or say East State Street, that we knew we had a water project coming right behind it or a sidewalk project or whatever it may be. Jack, go ahead. Thanks. I have a couple of questions. Great presentation. The first one is kind of a big overall question, which is you mentioned the internal goal of $600,000 a year invested in repaving or maintenance. Should that really be higher, especially given that we're seeing higher costs? So $600,000 is really like the bare minimum that I need on an annual basis to make sure that I'm getting at least two miles done. Yes, the number probably should be higher, but again, I just want to make sure that we're not kind of getting too far ahead of ourselves with the utility question as well. I think next year I was proposing somewhere around like a $650,000 street paving budget and that with the streets that I've selected so far, I have around four to five miles of improved road into the network. So as long as we're consistent and we're selecting the right stuff and keep preserving and trying to eliminate the bad stuff as we can and be strategic about it, I think anywhere between that $650,000 and $750,000 range, once you kind of get above $750,000, that's a lot and it's a lot of different types of projects. And my biggest concern would be keeping up with the sidewalks, the stormwater, and the other components with it. Great. Thank you. That leads right into my next question because you mentioned sidewalks. I gather that the PCI rating is done on a visual inspection of the roads. Is the condition of the sidewalks and the edges of the roads, either bike paths or the edges of the roads or bicycles walk or ride generally a component of that rating? So bike lanes on the road, yes, they would be. We're going basically curb line to curb line when we're doing our pavement assessments. Sidewalks are not. They're not evaluated on the same scale. I will say that one of the things that we had our interns do is we kind of took a stab at developing a five-year list and then we send the interns out and we said, please look and just give us a general sense of the severity of the sidewalks of the streets that are on this list. So one of the areas that we were looking at were Tramont, Tracy, First Avenue, Ridge Street, West Street. West Street curve is perfect. It looks really good with maybe just a few panels to be replaced. You turn the corner onto Ridge and the curb is wavy. It's kind of, it's all misaligned. So through this process, I had them go out and look at the streets that were kind of on the horizon and start to outline how much additional funding we would need because Corey is really the one that works with our sidewalk component. So getting him a list of the streets that I'm thinking about paving for the next couple of years gives him, like getting him that list now gives him some time to have a strategic approach about, okay, well, we need to do this sidewalk section. Is that contracted services? Is that DPW? Typically granite and concrete is contracted services. If it's asphalt curbing and asphalt sidewalk, that is DPW. So each one varies a little bit. And then the other thing that we need to just be cognizant of is there's only so much that DPW guys can do in a year without something else falling off, right? So if we want them to be in the street sweeper every day and cleaning catch basins and making repairs to the storm lines, we can't give them too many linear feet of sidewalks because those take one, a lot of people, but to also a lot of resources and time. And if I'll look to that with the, with the sidewalk issues, is that, is there also an interaction with trees? Historically, we haven't, leaned too much on the tree, are you talking the tree board or just street trees? Is that being caused by roots of street trees or is it other issues? Mostly not roots, not roots that are causing heaving, not like in a lot of other cities, but there are a lot of trees that have limbs that overhang the sidewalk. So we are having to request, you know, John Snell and our parks and trees folks to go out and to maintain those and kind of cut them back. But I would say for the most part, the sidewalk failures that I see and that we have are not because the tree is overgrown and the roots are actually causing it to fail. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I sometimes talk to the city arborist about the tree, street tree maintenance and overhanging limbs. Thanks. Corey, I see you got your hand up. Go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to add with on the sidewalk component, it's not just the rehabilitating of the existing sidewalks, we're also trying to follow the Montpelier motion plan for sidewalk gap remediation with these projects. And, you know, we come to find out that there's a reason why sidewalks don't exist where they don't exist. It's not a simple, okay, go put some concrete there, there's slope stability, you know, new retaining walls. So, and I know this has been frustrating for Zach and frustrating for us to be able to incorporate those into it. And it's just as difficult to incorporate as it is the utilities. Yeah, thanks Corey. Yeah, thank you. Dan, go ahead. Sure. Going back to Zach, you know, looking at this PCI study, I wonder on the other side, what's causing the, you know, what are the greatest contributors to the degradation of the asphalt? I mean, I imagine, I picture the snow plows, but I also presume that there might be either stormwater or drainage issues that are contributing. Is there a sense as to as to what impacts there are? And I have a follow up to that. Yeah, so a lot of, once you really get into the weeds of like what the distresses are on a specific street, those are indicators of subsurface conditions. So go over to the Meadow neighborhood and it's all block cracking and surface related. Go up East State Street and you see swelling in heaves. That's water. That is water that is in the subbase that is causing, you know, freeze-doss cyclists to actually push up and make the road kind of out of shape. Same with North Street. If you've ever, if you've gone up North Street recently, it's completely out of shape. It's bumpy. Your coffee spills. If you have a coffee and you're trying to drive the road, those are subsurface issues. So those projects are roads that we don't just want to mill the surface off and put back unless we don't really have any other option. You know, something like North Street needs a water main. So while it's in terrible condition, you know, we really, we're trying to align that work so that we're not putting a whole bunch of money into a road that needs, you know, it, North Street needs to be reconstructed at, you know, and reconstructions are the most costly of the different techniques. But it doesn't make sense to reconstruct it in addition with the utilities that are for beneath it. So some of these that are in the really bad category kind of stay there, but there's reasons why they're, they're in that low and kind of, you know, very poor condition. But to answer the question, the different distresses tell us indicators of, you know, some of the other issues that we're seeing. And yes, there is a lot of drainage issues to go along with them. Well, that follows up. I guess I have two follow-up questions. And first is the, we were talking earlier about the stormwater utility. I mean, do you see that as being applicable here, where it encourages this type of stormwater maintenance and either limiting the road, that limiting the water that gets into the roads before it gets into the roads or possibly providing drainage support for the roads? Oh, absolutely. I am a huge supporter of the stormwater utility. I think it will only help us and help us kind of get out of this failing infrastructure, you know, poor PCI, poor stormwater system. I think that there, if we had a utility, I don't know how many times I've told Kurt, like, I just wish that we had a way to fund this because a rain garden would go perfect here in this scenario, if we had mechanisms to pay for it. And you know, there's just areas that, you know, when you're on the downhill of a slope, when the water's running off, it may make sense to have a public-private partnership and to put in a rain garden and actually allow the water to get off the road, stop, you know, containing it along the curb line, allow it to get off in the grasses, and do what rain gardens are designed to do, which is help the filter and to treat and act as a natural buffer to things, so. Well, I appreciate that. And then the other question that I had as follow-up to you, which your previous statement reminded me of is the sub-base of these roads. And my understanding was that East State Street and North Street are two examples of roads that the, you know, the sub-base really needs to be reconstructed. How many other roads, and maybe it's sort of a general percentage, but how many roads in Montpelier have that same sort of, we ultimately need to replace the sub-base of these roads? And well, I'll let you answer that one first. I'd have to look a little bit closer at some of the data to make sure that I was answering that correctly, but a lot of, you know, a lot of our streets with water mains, you know, I would say it's probably 15 to 20%, but that's just kind of a rough guess based on driving it, knowing the roads where we're at, you know, the ones that are really bumpy, the ones that have a lot of heaves, you know, those are going to take sub-base and areas like East State Street, Marvin Street, Bingham Street, all of those roads are very prone to their clay. They're all clay road bases. So all of those streets, when we, ideally, if we had the money and we could, when we go to reconstruct it, we put in a geogrid and that geogrid would help to this actually disperse the load of the traffic and kind of help save the road. So I would guess 15 to 20%, but I would really kind of need to go back and make sure that I was comfortable with that number. Sure, and it actually gets to my, hopefully my final question, unless you cause me to ask another one, but this is all good information. When you do the sub-base and you put that, the geofabric down, how long does that sub-base repair last? Is that something that's, you know, like once you do East State Street, is that done for a generation or done for two generations or we'll see in 20 years kind of thing? I mean, is it, you know, is this something where we're sort of getting the technology in place to catch up to our 19th century roads or is it an ongoing project? Yes, we are getting the right technologies in place to really preserve our roads for a long time. However, I will say that the best management practice would be if we did East State Street to come in two years later and do a fog seal and then follow that up with a crack seal project. And then two years after that, think about your microsurfacing because at the time, you can extend a street that is designed to be 20 years in life. And by doing those $1.50 a square yard versus the, you know, it's almost going to be $50 a square yard to rebuild East State Street and do it the right way. So after it's done, we really have to focus in preserving it. You know, Northfield Street is a great example. We designed it for something like 18 million equivalent single axle loads. The state came, when they did their project, they were only going to, they designed it for 5 million like equivalent vehicle loads. So we put in a much better system and that's really why when you look at Northfield Street in comparison to like going out Elm Street towards the pool, you see a huge difference in the pavement condition. That is, you know, fully reconstructed a really, a street that is in great condition versus kind of just going through the process and going through that typical, we're just going to mill off the surface and repave it every 10 to 12 years. Great. Thank you. Donna, I see you've got your hand up. Yeah, go ahead. Yes, thank you. I'll take it down. You educate us so well. All of you professionals at DPW. And I'm looking at this as if I were part of the CIP committee. Because that's when you used to sit down and give us a street inventory and tell us if someone of a row needed more utility work or could be repaved or all those terms of different levels of treatment and the committee as a whole would try to look at our dollars and spread it around. Is that still happening? So the last couple of years, it's kind of, I mean, things that it hasn't happened. I believe the intent is for this fall to really get that back going and to have some meetings and to look at, you know, the five-year plan and the funding levels and what that means with other projects to go over the different various reclaim projects, crack ceiling, bog seals and kind of outline. But you're maintaining the street inventory so that you can look at the streets and know which state they're in and what services they need, what techniques that you shared with us. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So if we have that, do we also have the fact that I was under the understanding of the ones that had major burst of utilities underground, water bursts like Hubbard Street, that that was a failure we didn't expect, but that it turned out the piping didn't live up to its expectation of life, life expectation, its functionality got eroded sooner than it should have. Yeah, there is some of that. East HV is a good example that there's a section on East State that was recently redone and where while we're also redoing other sections that are in much worse condition, there's, you know, a 500 foot section between Cedar, I believe it's Cedar and Hubbard, that we didn't plan to have to replace. Right. So is there an inventory of other sections like that or is that the only one that we use that particular vulnerable piping on? So to answer that specific question, there's not necessarily an inventory. It's kind of, it's based on, you know, experiences with leaks and the type of failure that we're seeing. So on East State Street, we saw a very specific failure and then that caused us to question, why does this keep happening? And it was because of the soil was corrosive. So our inventory, we do keep track of our leaks by street. So we update a map that shows us, so when I take my PCI and I upload it and I look at our water leak map, I can overlay the water leaks and see, oh, in the last three years, the Colonial Drive has had 10 leaks. So I don't know if we should be paving that or should we slow it down. Right when we did Northfield Street, Colonial Drive had four leaks, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then it slowed down. So sometimes it's hard to kind of get a gauge on that because if you asked me two years ago, I would have said Colonial Drive needs to be on our water replacement list just because during that 12-month span, we had so many water leaks. But since that time, it's kind of calmed down. So there's just so many variables that go to it. We try to keep all of our records. They're not, they're in different places, but having them available so that we can bring all of our different data sets together so that we're making the decisions between me, Corey and Kurt, kind of all of our heads together in saying, okay, does this make sense? Corey, do you have any issues? Kurt, do you have any issues? Are we good to go? Is this the right technique for that street based on everything else that we're seeing? Yes. And we need this information before the council, before the public, I think annually because people do not understand the roads and why the choices are made. So I really appreciate this. And just one more, back to if we weren't looking at our current budget, but you look at your staffing and the current need, how much would you put out to bid for a vendor to do? I don't need an answer now, but I guess I'd like you to be thinking about that. And particularly for the CIP committee is really trying to think about that staffing and what could be done by vendors and what needs to be done in-house. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Jay, go ahead. Yeah, I'll just, thanks, Don. I appreciate that segue because I was having very similar thoughts and in terms of how we approach this from a budget perspective. And Zach, I really appreciate all the info as much as I'd like to say, hey, if we just gave you a blank check, what number would you need to write on it to fix all the roads? But it doesn't work that way. I mean, these roads are all, you know, works in progress, right? There's so many different circumstances that it's just like you're describing that influence the condition of them. But what I'm wondering is if we were to, as we move forward with our strategic planning and budgeting for next year, if we were starting everything I'm hearing, and I greatly appreciate that you are getting, you know, everything out of every dollar that we're sending or spending as a city to improve the roads as best we can. But everything you're doing is, you know, in a lot of ways is reactionary. It's just sort of like, hey, we're just sort of like, this is our path of least resistance. We're just trying to do the best of what we can. And even with that, you know, we still have 25% of our roads that, you know, rank at a 40 or lower, right? So if we're to think about approaching this budget, how do we look at, you know, whether it's outsourcing or staffing within DPW and looking to you all to make that decision. But how do we look ahead to decide like, how can we start to get ahead of this a little bit where we could be a little more proactive in our decisions and not just be dealing with this sort of worst case scenario all the time? So I apologize that it's a bit of an obtuse question and not necessarily something I expect you to answer now. But as we move into, you know, strategic planning and our next budget, I think it's something that we really ought to look at. Is there a possibility that you all can have the resources you need to be a little more proactive and not just reactive? And how can, you know, how can we make that work? You know, I've heard from folks who are, you know, working, planning for and, you know, travel for the state who have talked about maybe doing a bond or, you know, some sort of like larger investment. I'm not asking, again, not to say, hey, this is what we want to have happen, but be thinking about how, you know, that larger picture, how we could be moving forward. Absolutely. Other thoughts or comments? I'll get ahead. Thank you. Thank you all, all you guys for a good presentation. You know, this is an issue I complain about a lot. But it sounds like we need not only a pavement condition index, we need a sidewalk condition index. The road that came down from Ridge Street that got, had to be fully rebuilt a year ago, two years ago, the rail and sidewalk condition there, that rail is not suitable for hanging onto. So both guardrails and handrails condition index, drainage condition index, where the cars drive by on Elm and even main, where everybody gets splashed if you're on the sidewalk, because the water that doesn't drain into the storm drains. And how about a multi-use path condition, an MUPCI. So I got PCI, SCI, CCI, RCI, DCI and MUPCI, because you got big one-inch open cracks on the multi-use path between Taylor and the bridge or the infamous Gertin shelter. Those need to be sealed before this winter or they're going to heat. But I have spoken to Donna, Public Works Commissioner, whatever her name is, about how about part of this is public engagement and information. And that's what I keep hearing for the public to know why and how much it's going to be deserving of investment on an annual vote of a budget. The GIS made publicly visible where folks can attach a photo of a failure that most aggravates them. I watched three people damage their cars by pulling up to the library because those curves are way out of spec for heights and scratched my own bumper cover dramatically. And that's just not okay to be shifting these costs to the public of our lack of maintenance. So if the public can see the GIS and see when complaints came in, maybe they might have a photo attached, and then when they're scheduled or estimated for a resolution and maybe a budgetary, you could even have a registered user citizen, you know, Montelier citizens could upvote or downvote things and it is a way to prioritize. This is a way to actually build support for when it does come up for a budget. People know why it's worth an extra five or ten million dollars to get this stuff caught up. So that's my two cents, but I applaud the fact that you're beginning to make this visible to the common taxpayer. Thank you. It's actually something that I've been thinking about as someone who loves data. Is this data, is the PCI data otherwise published on the website at any regular interval? Certainly could be. We have the capabilities too. I mean, I can, it's the same way that we created a alternate side winter parking map last year and embedded it on in the website. We could have a PCI map. It's, we have lots of data and a lot of it could be provided. The only kind of caveat is that it takes a little bit more effort to lock things down so that they can't be edited and make them view only. There's a couple more steps along the process for those things to occur. But if there was something specifically that you guys wanted to see up there, we could certainly have that. And you know, we've been trying to like this year, one of the things that the interns did was assess all of our guardrails and got a condition assessment of it because we have guardrails all over the city that are falling down, that are in, so we're, we're working to get a handle on all of that, on all that stuff that that Steven was just talking about. But it takes time, it takes staff and, you know, it's, it doesn't just happen overnight. I also noticed that there were, well actually before I leave that idea, that's, that's the kind of thing too, like when there is, I mean, so I think we're all aware that recently there were a lot of comments in front of our forum on the condition of the roads. And, you know, I feel comfortable responding because I feel like I know the history of sort of where we've been and all the money that we've put into them. But, you know, like that's the kind of data that like, without bothering any staff, if I knew that there was a place I could go on the website to just like check in like, oh, how are we doing? Right, like, do these complaints match up to, to the data? Or if I can see that like, oh, you know, our, our state streets are, are, you know, still doing pretty well, but the city roads, you know, they, they can use a little more, or, you know, anyway, that on the one hand, like, having that information readily available on a website means I don't have to bother somebody about it. But I realize that's also potentially more work. But I, you know, I don't know if that would be useful to anybody else, but I, I would find it, I find it useful, but again, like, maybe only updated like, recognizing that the graphs that you gave us were like, you know, by year, right, so update it like once a year, you know, so that we can, we can sort of see the curve of where we've been and sort of where we're going. That'd be good. So that's, that's one thought, which, but that also leads me into this other idea. I mean, I hear you talking about interns. And there was one graph in the presentation where we had data for 2017, 2018, and then 2021. And I was, you know, fair enough, we didn't take, there was another graph though, where we did have data for 2019 and 2020. So I don't know, you know, why there might have been a gap in the data. I mean, there's understandably any number of reasons why that could be. But my question is really getting at, like, in order to continue to, to have this data, it seems like a great role for an intern. Do we anticipate having interns in DPW going on into the future? Whose role was that in the past? Something like that. So to talk just about the data gap, we did PCI inspections. We do them every three years. We did them in 2018, and they were scheduled again in 2021. In 2017, I didn't have as much on my plate. I kind of got a little bit ambitious. I wanted to put that data in there. I ended up doing another, you know, kind of input into the system when I, you know, wasn't scheduled to do it. And then in 2019 and 2020, that stuff is extrapolated between the years based on the best known information we have. A full network inventory wasn't completed in 2019 and 2020. But it's just kind of taking what was where we were at, adding, you know, a little bit of data fairly easily to it and getting, you know, a best number that we have with the resources that we have. As far as interns, I would certainly like to have interns in the future. They're great for us. They really get a lot of stuff done. You know, one of the things that is an intern project that I would like to see is a stormwater condition assessment. Going through and looking at every single pipe and documenting the material, the size, what's failing, where we're at. So that's kind of the next big hurdle that interns would be doing for us. So does that mean that we wouldn't be taking PCI data again until 2024? That is what that means. However, gathering PCI data is very cumbersome. It took two people more than two weeks to get it. And then it probably took another two weeks with me and one of them to analyze it, kind of massage it, get it to where we wanted, take the state data because class ones are different than twos and threes. So all of the class one information is actually taken from the state website and brought into the system. It's not like they didn't go out and assess those. So there's, it just, it takes a lot. And there are companies that will go out and drive the roads and give you do an electronic assessment. In the upcoming budgets, I would like to include that so that we can maybe do it on an annual basis and have them driven and get, because that's why the state provided you with that real PCI on an annual basis, because every year they drive the road and every year they get an update and then they can link that to that information. The way that we do it, it's much cheaper for the city. However, it is a lot of resource time. Okay. Thank you. That's really good to know. And I want to recognize, so I assume we're kind of done with this topic, unless there's first, is there any other comments from council? Okay, go ahead. In the context of the broadband build out, a pole light, our pole inventory technology was demonstrated and used here. And you can, this is probably what you're referring to, you can drive the roads and it, it creates a, what's called a point cloud and it measures the exact location of every flaw of every sidewalk crack and sidewalk tilt and it grabs the trees, it grabs the historic buildings with the architectural detail, which could be used in economic development. So to, to do that, to get your road condition and your sidewalk condition and your curb conditions, there is a data management challenge. It's a lot of data to process, but I also want to, as much as I applaud interns having opportunities, I think that if we really value data and we really value the proper planning that goes into these multimillion dollar ongoing investments, these deserve to be paid union scale with benefits people. This, let's not go cheap on interns and have an excuse for not doing it because we couldn't get an intern. This is, this is the core information function that makes it possible for them to get a lot done. Thank you. Thank you again, Zach. This is really very informative, very helpful. I, I'll, I get inordinately just like really like enthusiastic about about PCI. I think it's great and I really appreciate the, the update. Any other final thoughts here, team? All right. I want to recognize that it is 839. We are beyond our 830 break. I apologize. So let's assume that it's roughly 840. Let's meet back here 850. So we're going to take a 10 minute break and we'll pick up then with the traffic calming presentation. All right. Thank you. Excellent. All right. So we are ready to jump back in with the traffic calming presentation, which I think is Corey. Yep, that's me. Okay. Go ahead. Unlike my, unlike my colleagues, I don't have a fancy presentation for this one. That is okay. We don't need the lights out. No, no lights. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Corey Lyon with Public Works. I also staffed the Montpellier Transportation Infrastructure Committee. I've been working with them on this plan I don't see any of the members logged in here. I don't know if there's any in person. Don and Jack are also a part of that committee. So if I miss anything here, feel free to to add it. I just wanted to hit on a few high notes. See where that takes us starting with the purpose of this document, which is to basically guide both residents and staff on how to treat these traffic calming requests. We receive concerns about speeding through neighborhoods. I know the police department do they have a what's called a speed feedback sign that they will deploy. It's very good for short-term impacts. Traffic calming has proven to be more of a long-term impact item. Besides guiding residents and staff, this document also identifies some of the traffic calming features and what their advantages and disadvantages are. It also identifies some of the things to be mindful of when implementing and designing these these type of projects like ADA requirements and also stormwater aspects, which we're all professionals on now, thanks to Kurt. The last time the council looked at something like this, it was probably about 10 years ago, maybe 10 to 15 years ago, and really considered implementing a plan like this. Obviously, since that time traffic calming has evolved considerably, you can do a simple search right now and find all kinds of plans. Every community that has taken this up has their plans published. Some of these plans, they have very large changes between them. Some of them are just subtle differences, but what you can basically do is separate them into two different categories, and that's a master plan approach where every street is considered upfront, what measures to put in, and then there's a case-by-case study, which is what you have here. Someone has a concern they can request that it get looked at, and then there's a process for that. This was one of the first conversations that the committee had was what avenue to pursue, and really that conversation revolved around what the available funding was at the time. The plan was to use some of the alternative transportation funds, which were an offset from the parking funds, and there was no guarantee that that funding was going to continue. Very well could, and I know there's been talk recently of incorporating the projects that would be within that alternative transportation fund into the capital plan, so the future of that fund I think is a little in question. But anyways, they wanted to use some of that funding to implement these projects, and without the assurance that it was going to continue, it was more of a decision to look at the problems we know exist, that the data shows us, and put that funding towards correcting them or improving them. Another thing about these master plans, some communities will identify them as neighborhood enhancement plans, where the data that you collect, the speeds that are out there, don't really play a role on if you're going to do something or not. You're basically going to do something regardless of what the existing speeds are on that street. I want to start with the procedure. This was the most discussed topic at the committee level. The first thing that anybody who develops these plans or even teaches classes on traffic calming, the first thing they're going to stress is neighborhood involvement and neighborhood approval. There are a lot of case studies out there where neighborhood involvement and neighborhood approval were not taken into consideration. Things were installed, and then shortly after were taken out because of that. I don't think we want to be putting ourselves in that situation, so that is one thing that the committee and staff want to stress was coming up with a plan that focused on neighborhood involvement. Another thing at the end of the approval process, or the end of the total process, you'll see it's council approval. You guys have the final say on whether this happens or not. Individual projects happen or not. Obviously, you need to be comfortable with are the steps providing that neighborhood involvement and neighborhood approval. I'll go over some of the specifics a little later. Basically, the process starts like this. A person can come to us with a request. We would then go collect data on that street. RPC would help us with that. They have some equipment that would be collect speed, collect volume. We would then send out a support survey. This is an initial survey, which basically just says, are you interested in pursuing this any further? This is what we found. This is the information. This is the data that we found. Here's how many accidents. Here's what the speed is. Are you interested in going down this road? Then there's a neighborhood meeting where the process is discussed. Also, it gives us a chance to hear from residents on what their observed problems are and what the potential solutions could be. We would then go to a design phase. Then that design would be up for approval at the neighborhood level. Then obviously, it goes to the City Council. Some of the differences that I wanted to bring up. We had a local engineering firm look at this plan and provide comments. They developed these plans all over the nation. They gave us some feedback. Also, there's some differences between what you might typically see in another community and what this plan provides. First of all, this puts a lot of the responsibility on staff. Typically, requesters would come in with an application and attach to that application is an initial petition. The committee thought this way, putting it on staff with a mailer or something like that would help those who may not be able to circulate a petition. Maybe there's a physical barrier. There's a language barrier. This is a little more inclusive way to do it. Another thing you might see in other communities is a phase where temporary traffic calming measures may be put out so that the neighborhood has a chance to experience it firsthand. This plan doesn't include that, but other communities have done that. They've also done only temporary features I've seen where they can take them up in the winter, put them down in the spring. It's another way to go about it. One of the things also on this plan, you'll see with the thresholds, basically, it sets an 85th percentile speed that's five miles per hour over. The posted speed would be the threshold to proceeding with traffic calming. That's a pretty low number. Other communities have set that at about seven miles per hour. That number is a lot lower than what you see in other communities. That was also something that was brought up by the consultant. What else? Some communities incorporate a scoring. This is set up as first come, first serve. Meaning we get the request, we process them, and that's how they are implemented. Other communities will score them. If there's higher speeds, streets may bump up a list of the list and go in front of other streets that may have put the request in before them. Those are the main differences that you're going to see. The other thing, I know there's been a lot of talk about staffing and funding tonight. A decent budget number per street is what, from other communities that I've received, is about $10,000 to $15,000 per street. It's so dependent on the type of street and the individual circumstances, but that's a good budget number in staffing. If we proceed with this plan, the way I foresee it is we would almost establish a queue. We would receive requests, RBC would collect data, and then we would establish a queue of streets. Really, I can foresee maybe doing a full project, full procedure implementation, maybe one street a year. That may vary year to year, but just thinking back over the last couple of years, where does this fit in at current staffing levels? One street a year, I think, is a pretty good commitment, a pretty accurate commitment at this time. Let's end it there. Just a question, what do you feel is the demand for, because obviously, I really appreciate that it involves discussion with the neighbors and involving the neighborhood in these decisions. There's really not an appetite or demand on every street, but are you getting the sense that there's a waiting list of streets that would really like this? How deep is that waiting list? I think you'll have some streets up front, maybe a handful of streets that will want to put an initial request in. It's hard to identify a specific number. Okay, that's all right. I was just curious if you knew at the top of your head. Donna, go ahead. I just want to add and thank Corey. He's edited and re-edited this 20-some page document. The flow that he gave you is on the first appendix page, just like in the middle of the attachment that came with our packet. You've done such a good job, Corey. Just to add that this started when we did complete streets and the city council said we want to have more on this and sort of assigned the Montpellier Transportation Infrastructure Committee to not only look at the policy, but to decide how people would apply. That's why you see an application in that whole process. Again, I think it has to be tried out. We've tried to think of things, but I think it has to be something that's going to be used and edited and changed as needed. But the important thing is that when people have frustrations with heavy traffic or inappropriate traffic in their neighborhood, they and DPW have a place to go. We do have the traffic coming in our complete streets, but it also came up in the Main Street and Barrie study about traffic coming. I think there's an interest to have it as one of our tools. But I don't think we'll have an overwhelming application. The also it came up at complete streets, but this really was initiated within Montpellier Motion as well. It was a recommendation that we establish a traffic coming plan in that. Yeah, that was also kind of my sense was that it might not be overwhelming, but it's really important that we have it in place because I know that there are some streets that that are that are interested. Connor, go ahead. Yeah, kind of along the same lines is the thought that you would sort of like cut off the applications after you got to a certain number. I mean, I could see it being a bit frustrating if you had like between five and 10, right? And you went through the whole process of neighborhood engagement, but generally did one street a year and had a bit of a backlog there. So would you actually go through that process or would you just say we're not taking any more applications? No, no, I don't think we would do that. We would take on as many applications that came in, but you're right, there may there may become a pretty lengthy queue. And if we're only doing one street a year, it could take a while. Just one more. And just how have you thought about distributing the survey? Like one thing that comes to mind is we have the can network there. And this might actually be a pretty good thing for them to canvass and knock on doors and make sure everybody fills these out. So maybe something worth tapping into. Yeah, definitely. I think the initial thought was a mailer. But the can can definitely we can we can utilize them as well. Thanks, Jack. I see you got your hand up. Thanks. Thanks, Corey. Got a couple of comments. And I am someone who was at many of those meetings from when I was on the Montpelier Transportation Infrastructure Committee. And now, since I wasn't reappointed at the beginning of this year, I've had some distance from it. And I think you did a great job with the presentation. One of the things that strikes me even more than I was thinking when I was on the committee was that this is two points. One is this an awfully complicated process. And I think that there probably is a demand, but there might also be a way to streamline the process to gauge the demand and interest in the neighborhood without going through as much as we have here in this in this prospectus. And the other thing relates to that very question that Connor was just raising about about the level of demand. And I don't think we know what the level of demand is, but we might wind up deciding that we want to it's not just going to be sort of an afterthought or a little slice of the alternative transportation fund that might be budgeted, keeping in mind that budgets are always a question of choosing one thing over another thing. And if there's people show us that there's a lot of demand for this, then the result might be well, okay, well, if there's a lot of demand for this, then maybe we decide we're going to tax ourselves to meet that demand or take away from something else. Of course, this something else is what we just heard about, which is all the roads maintenance that we've been talking about. So what seems at first like a simple question is certainly not simple at all. But I think it is worth proceeding to develop the policy with this as like a starting point. Yeah, along those lines, Jack, we may find out that we may start down this path and find out that maybe the master plan approaches suits us better. If the funding is there, if the consistent funding is there to do it. Like I said, with the speed limit threshold set so low, you may end up doing every street anyways. And it's a lot easier on staff to implement a master plan than it is a case by case plan like this. But I think it's a good starting spot and maybe we'll just find out where we go if we need to revise anything. On that speed where one of the triggers seems to be that 15% of the vehicles are going five miles or over the speed limit. Where is that thinking coming from? Why is that the trigger given that I think it would probably be like you say a wide number of streets would trigger that particular calming and be a particular triggering method. Yeah, a lot of the aspects of this, like I said, every community has their plan published and those speeds that were set by basically every other community was between that five and seven, again, five being low, seven being average. I've done 85th percentile speed is, I wouldn't say I've done a deep dive on it. It was more like a deep cannonball on it. It was developed in the 60s. You think about what's changed since then as far as our personal vehicles, our neighborhoods development, just transportation in general. And you wonder, is there another point of information that better suits this? And really, nothing has come along that's widely used to replace this 85th percentile. It wouldn't surprise me in the next 10 years if something does. I've heard rumblings in the industry that people are maybe starting to get away from it, but there just hasn't been anything that has come along to replace it. So this is an industry set standard? It is, yeah. So let me ask another question about when you choose the traffic calming devices. And I read through this and I wasn't necessarily clear on who chooses between a speed bump or bump outs or other types of devices for traffic calming. So there's a toolbox that we would use that basically engineering standards will show a bump out will work better in this type of environment, greater the road, etc. Speed bump will work better here. So we plan to use those tools to kind of select what goes where. Is that the appendix F? The appendix F is advantages and disadvantages. I have to look a little closer at that. I don't think that goes into the details. I think we'll probably use the VTrans. I think VTrans has the toolbox that kind of specifically it's a little more detailed than what's in the last appendix. So it's ultimately your office that would make these decisions about what devices to be used. Right. And then that gets circulated amongst the neighborhood. And is there any, you've identified on the map that's included the difference between some of these side streets and arterial streets, would there be, how exactly would that be formalized? Like I happen to live on the corner of Main Street and I know that, you know, cars go fast on Main Street as they're gearing up for the hill. If my neighborhood wanted that to be, you know, a traffic calming, I mean, we actually have the bump out. So we have it, but that may be the best example. But if there is an arterial street, which you want to calming, is there a sense that, well, traffic has to move? I mean, I know, for example, like Berlin Street, we've had a lot of discussion about changing that. You know, what, what different types of consideration go into an arterial street versus a side street? So I remember the, I think the main reason why we distinguished between those classes of streets was at one point, we had considered putting in an extra step for them, those arterial streets. And I think it was at the council level. So there would be a council, a city council meeting prior to the neighborhood meeting, because it does impact more of the general public. And it was basically just an attempt to get out to the general public that there's been a traffic calming quest here and we're pursuing that. So again, it was kind of like a more of a public process when it was an arterial. But I think that's actually edited out now. So everything follows the same process. The other thing about the arterials is you need to be more mindful of emergency services and potentially public transit vehicles. So it could, it could impact the type of features that are used depending on the classification of street. Okay. So that would, that would be more on your side when you're designing the solutions, recognizing that, you know, say somebody on State Street wanted a traffic calming device that you'd have to take into account that it, it did serve these emergency vehicles, a large number of the general public and had high volume in traffic, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's another, it's another tool for us to use to, to select these devices. Okay. Thank you. Any other thoughts, questions? I also, back to the funding, sorry, but the temporary potential temporary traffic calming measures, it did a little research. And if that was something that we were interested in, it looked like maybe somewhere between five and 10,000 would give us a good inventory of either, you know, rubber speed bumps or rubber curbing and planters and things like that. Great. Did you have a comment? A question? Oh, sorry, let's have Stephen go in the door. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. What I'm hearing more complaints from is the, the noise level that basically the folks that have straight type thermophilers tend to create more of an impact or a demand for this calming. And I don't really know how, how or if enforcement of noise, vehicle noise emissions could alleviate some of the need for physical calming solutions. I know it's not well articulated, but I think you get the point. We've got quite a few hot rodders around and they hot rod in offer two and hours. Question. I don't know. Donna. Oh, thank you. Cory, I guess I assumed you could, again, the neighborhood is involved. The staffing does a lot applying their expertise and industry standards. But if there is more than one tool that you say applies with your industry standard, then seems to me that discussion with the neighborhood would sort out what they were more interested in. Is that not true? Yeah, I think the name, you know, one of the main purposes of the neighborhood meeting is to hear from the residents on what actually is being observed, what problems are being observed by them. We can then take that information and apply industry standards based on that, based on that information. Right. And so I was thinking we could, if the neighborhood and the staff decided, oh, let's try this temporary. Do we need something else in this policy to make that happen or make that an option? I thought it was, but you're right. It's not stated in here. It's not stated. No. Right now there's no, there's no place for temporary installment. If we want it, we could, we would have to revise it. Okay. Or we could insert a section about that as an option. Correct. Yeah. It would probably be after, so we would go through the design phase. Then we would install the temporary measures and then we would put out the final approval service. Okay. Because that was one thing that came up a lot in the main and Barry Street study, was people wanting to try things out that they recommended. If, I mean, I guess I'd like to see that in here, whether it's a, I can make a motion that we approve this with that added or we wait until we make that addition. But I think it'd be good to have the option of a temporary setup. Yeah. I think it would just strengthen the, you know, the fact that people experience it. And it's going to be hard for people to support or not support something looking at it on paper. I mean, you definitely, you definitely want to feel it out on the road. Like I said, some communities just put in temporary devices and then they take them out in the fall for, for plowing purposes. Donna, is that you wanting to make a motion? Yes, that we approve the neighborhood traffic calming program as the council's policy with the addition of the option to do a temporary installation of the final recommendation. Second, there's motion in the second for the discussion on this. Jack, this is kind of a procedural question. And that is how do we in general treat ideas like this where we're not exactly creating an ordinance, but we are. Considering adopting a policy that would have brought effects throughout the city. Is that something that we would ordinarily do with public hearings, the way we do an ordinance or something else? Go ahead, Donna. Well, I mean, this traffic calming was one of the options within the complete streets adopted by the council, just as adopted policy for DPW to follow. And this is a refinement of that traffic calming policy that the staff, that the council directed this committee to come up with. So to me, it's, it's the same as adopting the policy for complete streets. It sort of goes, goes with that. But Bill, it would have the expertise of whether we need more than just a policy for DPW to follow. You know, I think honestly, it's, it's up to the council's preference on something like that. There's no, you know, you are the policy setting elected policy setting body for the community. It's within your purview to do this. If you feel you'd like more public input before you make that decision, I think it's your prerogative to do that. It's really up to you. There's not a requirement to do it. I'll just speak for myself and say at this point, it seems like, you know, if, if the demand for this were broader, then maybe we should, you know, have a hearing or make it an ordinance. But as it is, there's so much public process that's built into it, which I appreciate that seems like I would be comfortable starting with this and, and then see how it works and tweaking it from there. Yeah, go ahead, Dan. I guess I'd only offer that this is not, if we think about ordinances as something that exercises certain police powers. This is not under that purview. It's not a public health purview either. It's under our power to regulate the streets and roads, which is given under title 19. And so, I mean, at least for example, like street painting policy, we adopted a policy rather than an ordinance that incorporated public feedback into it in the public process. But I mean, we ultimately adopted it as a policy rather than as any type of sort of ordinance that might give people either property interests or due process interests in such a proceeding. I mean, I think that's something we could ultimately read. Well, you could ultimately visit down the road. But I don't, I mean, I think it's within our power as a city council to to effectuate this through a policy or program, as opposed to a formal ordinance that would carry some sort of structure of law, because ultimately the end of the day, I think it vests total discretion in the city council, which is if somebody wants to put up a speed bump on the middle of Main Street, and we don't think it's a good idea, we can say no as the policy board as a decision maker. And, you know, it's not as if they would then be able to take a right of appeal other than, you know, sort of a general mandamus type issue. It's not a particular standard or structure that we're giving people any type of interest in. I think it's really just a matter of trying to make these public arteries or roads that serve these neighborhoods calm. Any other thoughts on this? More and go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I guess just on this point, I mean, I'm comfortable moving forward tonight. I think both extensive public engagement that's built into it, gives me comfort that, you know, we'll be able to, you know, have a lot of people involved and it gives like multiple paths for action and a lot of opportunity for input along the way. I mean, I'm also very interested in assuming we will invite Corey back for an update. It feels a little bit like we're trying something out and then we'll adjust the course as needed. You know, is this too cumbersome a process? Are there ways to streamline it? So, you know, at that point, so it would give us another chance to have a, you know, a council conversation about how it's going, you know, does it need any tweaks, you know, and then at that point, you know, maybe we feel like it needs more process or, but I think as a starting place and getting it going and trying it out seems good to me. Thanks for all the work that went into it. Yeah. Any other thoughts on this? Well, there's been a motion and a second. Any further discussion, comments, folks would like to make? Okay. All right. All in favor, please say aye. And oppose. All right. And thank you again, Corey, for your work. I know this and the work of the group, I mean, I know it's been a long process to get to this point. So, and really appreciate, yeah, that you've made it to this point and given us such a great presentation. Thank you. Yeah, they worked hard on it. It's going to get it passed. Yeah, please pass along our gratitude. Okay. All right, we are up to the ARPA funding updates. Bill? We can do that. I do, you know, look at the screen. I'm thinking there might be some people that want to talk about the camping. Oh. Although, see, Dan Dickerson has gone. There were a couple folks that, so maybe it's, maybe we should just go with ARPA. So you may recall that a couple meetings ago at that point, we were talking about approximately $385,000 in funding and you all committed 330,000 of it to road projects so that we could get going with our summer paving and held 50,000 aside to talk further about what to do. And that was originally what was scheduled for tonight. Since then, as you know, from Friday, we've learned that we will be receiving the county money as well. So we approximately 1.1 million per year for two years. And so, you know, the original plan that we have laid out in the council had, I think, I don't know if you formally voted that certainly expressed the approvals of, or at least the support for, was to try to restore funding for those type, those projects that had actually been in the budget and had been cut out due to COVID. That was roughly 1.4 to 1.5 million dollars, leaving the remaining six or $700,000 to be determined. And there obviously could be items that Steven was talking during the break about radio infrastructure that could be, obviously we've talked about homeless issues, we've talked about housing, you know, all those other things that could be qualifying events. So, you know, some direction on what you want to do with that. And then I guess the other question is, you know, do you put it all, you know, how do you want to divide it up? So, because we prepared this agenda item thinking it was only for you to talk about the 50,000, you know, the money didn't come until late Friday night. Well, we heard about it. So we didn't have a formal plan to put forward. So we're having to come back with that if you'd like or, you know, get some more general guidance from you. But I don't think we need to vote tonight unless you are planning to commit to certain, you know, infrastructure funding that they could then go forward and try to, and I'm not urging you to do that. But if that were where you wanted to go, then that would give DPW the tools to move forward with the bids and projects and those kinds of things. Other thoughts or opinions? Yeah, good guy. I would just make the point I think the 50,000 is as important as ever just to put aside right now the next couple months are going to be pretty pivotal, especially with some of the conversations we're having at the homelessness task force today. I mean, one option is we may have this trailer coming up with showers, washing facilities, and it might need some immediate staffing, which could result in beefing up that good Sam contract a little bit, maybe giving Don some support there on the street outreach to make sure we have those open and staffed. You know, other things like we really want to get some proposals in front of Commissioner Brown and take him up on his offer. And I think some of that might entail, you know, some development on our end of coming up with some ideas here. I know Rick D'Angeloz said that I maybe it would be a good idea if the city did an analysis of all the spaces in the city that would be appropriate for a number of different projects we would put in. I mean, I myself don't feel like I have a great handle on that. And I think we should consider the state land as well, you know, if they're going to partner with us and some of this stuff. So that's it. I could rattle off a few more things, but I'd really advocate for keeping the 50k set aside for the next couple months. So that's we're not we are not here to advocate at all that you not set aside 50k. What what I think happened was that you set it aside and not yet made a determination of what it was going to be used for. So you just agreed to set it aside and then said you would talk about its use because there wasn't unanimity of opinion amongst the council about what to use it for. And of course, with additional funds, you could actually expand the amount of money you want to set aside if you so chose. So those are all options that you have. Yeah, Lauren, go ahead. So I mean, I think given that we've got strategic planning in two weeks, I think, you know, it makes sense thinking of the the money that we've talked about the, you know, 700,000 or whatever the amount is that it's not just meeting what the voters approved and the projects that we're planning to do that got put on hold. I mean, I I think having a bigger conversation that like looks at our our strategic priorities and needs as a community and what we can be doing with that, you know, for I guess my question and maybe it's to bill is knowing that however much money has actually come into our hands, like what would you need from us, you know, not eating into that pot of money, like I think that's a really important piece, but like to be able to move forward with projects. Is it a general sense of the spreadsheet? Well, that was that was the list of things. So yes, go forth with this and well, so conversation soon about the we can, I think, you know, we can come up with, I was actually just making a note to make sure we have a complete list, which you already have of the delayed projects and list of other potential projects in the loop in in, you know, that are sort of on the table and then or funding needs and then whatever else is comes up with that strategic planning. I don't think that's a bad way to go personally. You've you we what we've we've actually only received the 385,000. We do have that in hand. You've already voted to appropriate 330,000 of that to road projects or to infrastructure projects. So that's already being planned for you set 50,000 aside. So, you know, I think the question would just be, you know, I'm making this up. I'm not recommending do we want to take 200,000 more and put it in different structure right now and then save the discussion for the what the rest or something like that. Just, you know, that it's really, like I said, we're not fully here with the recommendation because we didn't know we'd be in such a good position financially, which is not something we normally say. Thinking about moving forward, I I'm getting the sense that nobody wants to take out that 50,000 right now. And that's where I'm at as well. I think that serves its own conversation. But in the meanwhile, so, Bill, you're you're suggesting that at a future meeting, we could have a sort of an outline of what specifically that money could go towards aside from the 50,000. Is that Yeah, because you've got, you know, this year, so we're going to get 1.1 million. So we've got another $700,000 coming in this fiscal year. So it's well beyond the 50,000. I think what Council Member Hurl was suggesting is we've got strategic planning coming up that might identify some projects that would make sense to put some money to. We know we could spend it all on delayed project. I mean, you know, we have one and a half years worth of funding in delayed projects, which we have committed to doing. So it's just how much of that we put towards this year, how much of it we put to next year, and then how much we want to have left over each year. Well, it makes sense to me to also wait till after that strategic planning meeting anyway, unless we want to, I mean, the check's not going to get here between now and and then. So any other thoughts on that? Yeah, go ahead, Dan. Yeah. And just to be clear, Bill, that the ARPA restoration list that was sent around in the packet represents the projects that we had initially planned for whether we formally approved it. I recall that we did at least give some sort of imprimatur of approval towards it, but that's the 1,040,000. Right. And then, but then there were some other equipment and things too. So those are the roadblocks. Right. So these are the items that had been approved in budgets in FY20 that we cut at the last quarter because of the financial shortfall and then had already been approved in the FY21 budget that we cut. And I think some of the other list was things that we had on it, and those are fuzzier because they never were approved. So then there's another list of things that would have been proposed in the FY22 budget that didn't even make it because we had a lower budget. So that's where other projects, whether it's radio, infrastructure, or anything else, you know, none of those have ever actually been vetted because they would ever present it. So there's that list too. But the commitment you made was to take the, not the personnel on some of the other costs, but to take the project and equipment, things that had been in and taken out, put those back in. Yeah. And we have a pretty solid list of that, and that still leaves a fair amount of money left for other things. Right. But in so in other words, I mean, I don't know if it makes sense. I mean, I don't think we would need, you would need to kick the can down the road on the things that have been approved by the budget that were taken out that are in that list. Those seem like the starting points. It's really the next phase that the council needs to debate. And you're right. But so I guess the question there though, it's policy question for you because that even that list of one million, it's okay. It may include the 330,000 that we've already approved, in which case that would basically spend all of this year's money. That basically is this year's allocation. So if we were to just say that do that list, then there would be nothing left for anything else that you wanted to talk about. So that, you know, that's a policy question. Yes. I think it makes sense that we will do everything on that list, but we might do it over two years as well as fund whatever we're going to fund for next year. Hopefully our budget will be back to normal when we don't know that yet. And we can go back to putting the $600,000 a year in for roads or whatever. Lauren, go ahead. Yeah. So I guess, you know, my, my preference would be for most of it wait until strategic planning so that we can do it in a more thought-in-the-way. My question for Bill is knowing that winter is coming and we have a certain construction season. Right. Are there things that waiting, what would essentially be at least three weeks, but by the time we would get through to getting it to get to, is there anything that we I'm not aware of that because, because we hadn't planned for the launch or some of the money. So, I mean, you would have, it would be something we'd have to gear up to get to go. So I can find, I can get that answer. Maybe there's even a sense of the council tonight of like projects where we could get something going and on the ground that we're on this list that we have approved that we plan to do and it's something we could get done this year that we front-load that versus, you know, something that might be able to the purchases of equipment or other things that we could decide it as part of the strategic planning process, but I guess I just don't want to like hold up work when we know the data. Well, I see Donna here. She may, she may be able to add some light to this, but, you know, just thinking about, for example, the Presentations Act just gave, you know, one easy way to get work done is, you know, we already have a paving contract where we just have them add paving to the work, which is great if we have projects that are just paving work. If there, if there's, you know, subsurface work or all these other things, you know, so I don't know as I sit here right now whether or not they're just, gee, we could add another, you know, $100,000 of paving money and get another half a mile or something like that done and we have half a mile of identified rows. If we do that, that's, that is something that probably could get done. So now Donna, Parla, Casey wants to weigh in. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I, I don't, we have not talked about that internally. So I'm sure we could come up with our priorities pretty quickly, but I don't have that information to share with you tonight about specifics. It seems to me we should just take this up again after the studio plan and move on for now. Is that okay, team? Okay. We'll know more after then. We're not going to probably spend that money between now and then. Did you have anything you want to say about this? Go ahead. Clarify something that Bill touched on is that the the public safety assessment has been delivered and you'll be hearing about it in a few meetings from the CDPSA and it describes a radio architecture which has not yet been engineered, but that needs to be more fully integrated with what the police department's asked was, because it talks about a multiple simulcast systems that work in umbrellas or combined mode or separate mode. And so it's complicated but I will make sure that, you know, I guess Donna will make sure everybody's got a printed, hopefully get some printed copies of that to the council and to the served municipals. But I want to also emphasize that the discussion around the homeless services, so far one trailer with showers and toilets is not going to be enough for the anticipated demand and yet there's no siting, there's no maintenance, there's no staffing, any of that provided for, but those decisions will need to be made sooner, especially if we decide to try to order some more of these type of hygiene facilities. And so I want to just stress that point that y'all may be missing a window of opportunity to kick this down the road even a month before you start making some decisions. And so far no one has served up an actionable plan. So I'm happy to try to refine that argument with Connor because he's been most involved in it, but I'm just cautioning you that you may need to make some rapid decisions in order to be prepared for the emergency that we're watching unfold before us. And also it's the direct relation to the COVID because the hotel vouchers and extensions were expiring at the same time as congregate shelters are not likely to be safe. Packing 34 people in the seminary street, which is not in our town and or 34 in January into, I talked with Rick today after the meeting of the homelessness task force, and he's planning double occupancy in those little rooms. And if it, if COVID persists, he may have to go to single, which means only 17 people. This is a very complex equation, but it's really the most impacted of most of the other things you're dealing with. So no one's arguing that it's not important. And I think, you know, in terms of the council, just for you all not arguing with Steve, you know, if you choose to put money towards homeless services, you can, you could do that in a way that was pretty flexible in terms of not having every little decision coming to the city council to make decisions. So you could simply say, we're providing $50,000 or $100,000 to, you know, allocating it for homeless services to include XYZ and the manager will report to us on how it's spent. And that's kind of so, so we could respond quickly if you chose to do that. Great. Just checking in again, anybody else online have anything they would like to say about the ARPA funds? Okay. So we'll revisit this probably later in September is my guess. So we're going to move on to, actually, I see Dan Dickerson is on. So let's actually jump to the encampment response policy discussion. This was an added agenda item for which I don't anticipate taking a vote if that's okay, your team, but discussion is fine. Am I turning this over to Bill or to Dan? So I'm only going to say that you, you know, we had this discussion last week, you tabled it till this week. Dan Richardson drafted, kindly last night, a take on some language to address the conversation that was had and circulated it today to Dan Dickerson. So certainly the Parks Commission as a whole and other groups haven't had a chance to review it. But given that this is council member Richardson's last meeting, a certain chance for him to propose what he's proposing and to get some feedback from the council and then get hear from the other groups and have it on for further discussion. Okay. So what I did was based on the conversation we had last week, I think we had expressed and I had specifically expressed a desire to sort of take a cut at this. And this is my cut for better or for worse. What I did primarily was remove the language that identified specific city properties as high sensitivity areas and instead changed, you know, kept a lot of the language. You'll see there's a red line version that I created that basically takes the existing definitions and tries to use them as a criteria based determination for the city staff to use when they're approaching a homeless encampment in one of the city properties and really looking at three groups of criteria, public health factors, public safety factors, and environmental protection factors. And these being, you know, something like these and these were, most of these were criteria that had already existed in the prior draft. I just moved this up into, you know, how we would fund and what I'm trying to avoid is a JM golf type of situation where you have a standard list criteria. So we have a definition. So the way it's written now is you have a definition that describes a high sensitivity area. But then you have these criteria as a way of fleshing out that that meaning and that definition and giving specific standards for a city staff to say, oh, you know, there is the location of the encampment is on public land, where individuals have private easement or ownership interests, or where the city owes a duty to maintain said lands and perpetual care for the benefit or partial benefit of private individuals, i.e. city cemeteries. So it's a way of saying, okay, well, this this this inflict this conflicts with this other private right. So there's there is that concern there that translates to a public safety concern. And so once and the other big change is then to say, okay, we have this defining what a high sensitivity area is. And then I added a little bit of a definition or purpose of the designation. And it's to clarify that this isn't intended to penalize. This is not, you know, we're thinking about what this is and what where the discussion of this is gone. The idea is that this designation is is is likely not to be something that the general public would be aware of. It's not something where we're going to list and put a sign up high sensitivity area right here in this this meadow. It's more of a criteria for city staff. Because I'm looking at this, what I think I came to a conclusion is that its best function is to give city staff priorities so that, you know, if they come across an encampment in the middle of and using the prior example a city cemetery plot, a private plot, somebody set up a tent, that's a higher priority than somebody who's in the back of Hubbard Park that, you know, only if you go through the brambles would you find and it doesn't seem to really be either in some sort of ecological protection area or something like that. It's not saying that this camping is good or something that the city endorses. It's it's still illegal to camp on these grounds, but it's saying if you have these two situations, which is the higher priority, which one can you express more patience with which one do we have to as a city address in a more timely manner. And so that kind of language is intended for that purpose to define what this policy is intended to do. The high sensitivity area is just something that should rise to the higher level of the city's attention. And again, emphasizing too, it includes language I think is important that says, you know, this policy shall at all times be interpreted and implemented in a manner that affords dignity and care to the individual being asked to move or relocate. So, you know, it's really intended as we're trying to take somebody and I use the sort of hypothetical, the sort of bright line examples, if somebody set up a tent in the rotary circle or Main Street and Spring Street meet, that's a danger. That's a danger to traffic. That's a danger to the person camping there, you know, it would be a higher priority and that's something that would be identified through here. This is more for the more difficult issues and a more difficult type of situations and trying to identify that. Again, it's not, it's also making clear it's not to say, okay, let's let people camp but it says if they are, here's how we're going to sort of prioritize treating them. Most of the other changes really are, and it adds, you know, I think at the response of the Parks Commission, it adds an environmental protection criteria saying that, you know, public health and public safety are important but so are environmental protection factors. So, if somebody's camping on an erosion area, we want to, you know, make that a high sensitivity area that would prioritize for city staff to remove. And then towards the end, this just, the other big change was some of the timelines that we changed, I changed to reflect a longer period of time. So, for example, instead of a high sensitivity area being a 24 hour turnaround, three days instead of a non-high sensitivity area, five days, make it seven days. In response to, I think, some of the public feedback that we received. And then if the city stores it, store it for 90 days, because again, that was another piece of feedback, the 30 days wasn't enough, 90 days seemed much more reasonable. And so the real impact of this policy is that, you know, you would have to give the city staff clear guidance as to when they would prioritize the removal of a particular encampment if it was in fact something that they determined to be a high sensitivity area and it would shorten the period of time that they would take action based on the other parts of this policy where they would ask these people to move and, you know, present the card. And again, with the idea retaining the old policy ideas that this be something that is aimed to get people into housing, into shelters, into services so that, you know, this emergency situation can lead to some point of assistance through city intervention. So that's essentially it. I recognize that, you know, because of the short time and turnaround that the Parks Commission may want to take another cut, I tried to label out factors, but I may have missed some under environmental protection factors, or I may have overstated some. Wow, gosh, Dan, this is, I'm just, I mean, I'm very curious to hear how people are reacting, but my initial reaction is that this is great. Are you sure that you have to resign from the council? So actually to start, the, well, actually, initial other comments from the council and then I want to make sure that we intentionally go to Dan Dickerson, who is with us virtually, just curious for his input, but we'll just start with an sort of initial round of thoughts. Yeah, go ahead, Connor. Yeah, no, I think huge credit to Dan on this. Obviously a lot of work went into it. And I think in many ways, it sort of brings it back to the original intent that Cameron had when she first drafted this policy. I think the, as I said last meeting, I think the public debate has gone a bit out of control on this. And it's sort of a charf battle, you know, where it's really focused on geography and the worry that, ah, we're rolling out the welcome map to the parks, or, you know, maybe we're being too restrictive, like, more than we have been with the status quo here. So I, you know, I think it's practical. I think it's compassionate. And it does what it's meant to do and give staff very clear direction on how to handle this. By the way, like we've been debating this for weeks. And, you know, unless Cameron and Bill want to correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think we've had major issues with, like, you know, interventions or places being overrun with tents or anything. At the end of the day, I think a lot of this is, you know, just a bit of hype, you know, getting out of control in response to a very, like, legitimate crisis. But, you know, it never did what we, you know, the worst fears of what we thought it would do here. So I, anyways, I think this is really great then. And I would be comfortable passing it as it is. But I think we did say last meeting, you know, we want to give parks. And I think people in the homelessness task force would probably like to take a closer look. So it's great we had Dan go through it. But maybe save the vote for another day here. Yeah, no, for sure. Any other, oh, Lauren, go ahead. Yeah, thanks. I mean, first of all, thank you, Dan, an incredible amount of work and really, I think taking the spirit that we had talked about last week and putting it on the paper. I guess my question is for staff, like, does this feel workable and like, like this, this implementable in the way that we would want it to be? I'm getting knotted heads. So yes, this is both. I'm nodding, but I can go and move. I can report Cameron is nodding. Do you want to, do you want to come in? Yeah, yeah. But my initial read of it is that it sticks very closely with the staff response part, which is obviously I think where a lot of my attention is on this at this point is actionable and fine and sticks with what we've been talking about as staff. I do believe that our department directors would also like some time to look at it and make sure that they're comfortable with it. You know, I never want to write a policy where someone isn't comfortable with any of our staff would be uncomfortable implementing that policy. So just checking in with staff, but to sort of speak to Connor's point real quick, no, we have seen a few additional campers. I won't say that we haven't, but we haven't had any issues and we haven't had to have more than one pretty routine intervention. So. Thank you. Okay. All right, I want to jump now if we can to Dan Dickerson. Yeah, thoughts, impressions, comments, suggestions. Well, thanks for giving me an opportunity to talk. And first, I just want to I want to apologize for last week. I sort of waited and waited and waited. And I kind of thought that there would be another opportunity for public comment. And then I, you know, stuck my hand up in the middle of a motion. So I apologize for that. But thank you for giving me the opportunity today. You know, I do, I think this is much better than it was. I do have a few concerns. You know, the first big concern I have, and I brought this up to Bill and Cameron earlier, is, you know, in the code, you know, in one of the chapters, the parks commission is given pretty clear authority to establish or to, to make exceptions to the existing curfew in the parks. And today we haven't done that. And that's not to say we won't, you know, we, we, we rushed a letter to the city council, you know, with, with the best, you know, with the time that we took, which was almost four meetings in thinking that, you know, this, this really needed to happen fast, where we said, we're not going to grant an exception to the curfew at this time. You know, I still think there's an opportunity for that to happen. But, you know, if it doesn't, I sort of raised to Bill, like, what does that mean if the council passes a policy that sort of runs contrary to the code. And then, you know, the other piece I looked at just a bit goes in title 24 of, of the Vermont statutes, you know, the parks commission has control of the parks. So there are two, you know, existing laws, both at the state level and the city level, that give the parks commission pretty clear authority over the parks. And this policy, you know, without the parks commission having taken action runs contrary to those authorities that we have. And so, you know, I get that, you know, we're, we're potentially facing a crisis. And so I, you know, I want us to be able to move quickly. But I think, you know, given the code and the statute, you know, we really, the parks commission has to have more time to, to just look at this and make a decision on whether or not to adjust our curfew. Now that being said, like I said, I think, you know, this, this policy is, you know, the criteria for natural resources is a lot better than, you know, the nothing that it was before. There are a few instances of the word substantial, though that, you know, cause me a little bit of consternation. You know, one of the, one of the sections under the natural resources criteria is if, if the encampment is substantially interfering with a park wilderness environment or wildlife habitat, that might be subject to intervention. And then I think the last one is evidence of substantial impairment of natural resources. And I think that really is the big concern for me is, I mean, when you get to the point of substantial impairment, that raises a lot of red flags for me. And I don't know if there's, if there's a better way of wording that so that we're not at the point where, you know, an area around an encampment is, you know, I don't know how it would look. And I don't want to create this sort of horror story picture because I don't know that it's going to happen. But, you know, I do think that, you know, getting to the point of substantial impairment is not where we want to be before we would intervene. And then also, who is, who is making that determination? You know, is that, is that going to be something that Alec and his staff are going to have to go and check day after day? That's a lot of his time. And, you know, and I appreciate that the city council has, has given us funding for additional staff, but I would like to, for the staff to be, you know, maintaining the parks and not having to constantly check on encampments to make sure that, you know, we're not reaching these criteria or, I guess, running contrary to the criteria. So those are the concerns that I just wanted to raise. You know, I think the parks commission will continue talking about this. You know, I can't speak for all of them, but I know it's, you know, I'm interested in finding a way for us to, to work with the city and with the council to, to make this work. But, you know, given the code, the statute, and a few of the concerns, you know, I would like to hold off. It sounds like you're not going to pass it tonight anyway. So I, you know, there's a time, but I don't think we meet until the third week of September. So we'd have to call another emergency meeting. You know, it's, for us, that's, that's a lot. You know, I know for you guys, you meet quite a bit, you're on subcommittees. For the parks commission, we've, we've spent a lot of time on this and, you know, I think we'll continue doing that. But I just want you to be aware that we don't work at quite the pace that the city council does. So, so thank you for giving me the time and I'm happy to take questions if anybody has them. Dan, I just wanted to let you know, I'm sorry, just procedurally, oops, I might, that the next meeting, this would likely be considered by the city council is on September 22nd. The next, the next meeting, our next regular meeting on September 8th is going to be devoted entirely to strategic planning and network. They have an emergency meeting next week just to appoint a city council member. But that's it. So the next business meeting, so that is the third week in September. So hopefully you can not have to call an emergency meeting. Sure. I'll, you know, I mean, I'll reach out to, and yeah, I had to make sure I didn't make you myself. I'll reach out to the commission and just see if we can, you know, get that into our meeting in September. I think we had a few other things to talk about. One of which is, you know, I think would be of interest to the city council is Gertin Park, which we didn't know it was our responsibility. And now we kind of think it's our responsibility. And so we have to figure out what to do about that. But that's a different story. So yeah, we'll, we'll discuss and hopefully we'll come to some sort of decision by then, by the time you meet again and talk about this subject. Okay. Thank you, Dan. And we'll certainly be interested in hearing about that discussion. I also just want to make a note that I think we also ran the last draft by the Cemetery Commission. And I think we'd want to run this draft also by the Cemetery. Yes. Oh, you did. Okay, great. Excellent. Jack. Thank you. Thanks for coming down. I realized at the end of our meeting last time that it was the first night back where some people were wearing masks, some people were not wearing masks. And so I didn't even realize until that point, well, that's who that was with the mask on. So otherwise, I think I would have felt bad for us to have proceeded without the affirmatively asking for your input. And so apologies for that. I've been, I think that I appreciate the work that Dan Richardson has done on this. I definitely think we're moving in the right direction. I've been pondering since this came out, the question of where the lines of authority are between the Parks Commission and the City Council, because obviously the City Council or the Parks Commission has clear authority over the parks. And but as I think about the policy that we've been thinking about for a while, this is not a policy whereby the City Council is telling anyone what to do with the parks. I think it's a policy that says, in our role of directing the activities of the employees of various city departments, we're deciding what we will and will not have the Park City employees do in relation to circumstances that they come across. And so that may seem like a bit of judge whittical reasoning, but I do think that it is important to make sure that we're not reaching the authority of another of another elected voting. Go ahead, Dan. Sure. And I'll build on what Jack is saying, because I've thought about that as well. I mean, you know, if you think about this, this whole policy is in part an overlap of various county and city boards and elected officials. You know, you have the state's attorney starting a lot of this by saying, I won't prosecute any case involving an enforcement of, you know, vagrancy laws or campment laws. You know, don't look to me and my office, we're just going to reject them out of hand. And we can't control that because that's the state's attorney and that's his prerogative, that's prosecutorial discretion. And then I think the city council has general oversight over it. Jack's points out the staff as well as these type of city-wide policies. And I think it's important that we coordinate with the parks commission and with the cemetery commission that have direct oversight of specific areas of the city, whether it be the park or the cemetery. So, you know, there's nothing in this policy, as it's written, that would prevent the parks commission from enacting a curfew or enforcing a curfew except that the parks commission doesn't control the police or any other agency that would actually be called upon to enforce you know, a policy. It becomes a little bit like a court, which is a court can issue a judgment, but the court can't make you come in and pay. You know, the parks commission can set rules and can set controls for the park, but you know, it would be up to this, you know, the city council would have to say, okay, we're going to, you know, have the police and enforce this. And that's informed, of course, by something that we don't control, which is the state's attorney's office, who says, you know, you can have a curfew, and you can try and enforce it, but it's not, you know, there won't be any prosecution. So, you know, frustrate that purpose. And I think part of this is intended to get us all together on the same page. And so, you know, I certainly, some of what Dan is saying about the specifics about language like substantial, by all means, you know, there may be environmental concerns that you as park commissioners have. And I would, I would highly encourage that that language reflect your, your concerns as park commissioners, and, you know, your priorities for these environmentally sensitive areas, by all means, it should, and that's why I would support beyond simply the notice issues, you know, or the fact that we, you know, we put this on to the agenda, but we didn't. It wasn't on the first published agenda. It was tabled last meeting beyond those issues. I think it is important for the parks commission to take a look at this and to have a feeling like, yeah, this works with the way we see the parks working. And in, in some ways, it was intended, I think, to keep the pressure off of what I felt like the parks commission felt in that impossible task that it was initially assigned so that, you know, you have a workable set of criteria that you can, you can use to enforce and protect. So I, by all means, I mean, I think it should be, but, you know, I think the, the issue here is as far as lines of power and, I mean, they overlap. There's clear areas where, you know, the parks commission is given in our charter, you know, the charge of construction maintenance and control of all public parks within the city. And I interpret that as being able to set a lot of rules and policy within the city. This ultimately is a staff policy and how staff is to respond, which is under city council's control. But we should be aligned and the parks and the cemetery commission should, you know, this should work with them. And I think it's, it's more than fair to give them a new adequate opportunity to align, especially with the staff as well. You know, this, this should be something that should work and make sense. Otherwise, it shouldn't be a policy. Dan, go ahead. Yeah, I do just want to, you know, I understand perfectly what you're saying. And that was another, the staffing challenge was another thing that was brought up, you know, a number of times as we were talking about this and that, you know, if we took an action, which we ultimately did, of leaving the parks out of the equation and this, you know, we don't have any enforcement power to make sure that, you know, the curfew continues to be in place. But I will say, you know, another, I wouldn't call it hurdle, but, you know, another criteria for the parks commission to really be on board with, you know, bringing, or feel comfortable with bringing parks into the policy is that, you know, we need to know that the city, you know, beyond just the parks department, but the city is going to put either money, staffing resources towards making sure that, that our natural resources that are, you know, our park lands aren't impaired, you know, whether that's substantially or, you know, preferably in any way. But, you know, I think given the possibilities, I think there is going to be potentially some impairment. But I'd like to know that the city is, you know, sees that and says, we're going to, you know, provide a, I don't know, a social worker or somebody that can, you know, look or I mean, my knowledge of this issue is pretty minimal. But we just didn't, we didn't feel that level of comfort when we discussed this. We didn't know what the city was going to put forward to help defray any of the impacts on the parks. And so I think, you know, there are little pieces of language in the policy that I think we would want to adjust. But I think we need, you know, a good faith gesture from, you know, either the city, the city council or the city staff that, you know, if, if there are issues in the parks with regard to degradation of the natural resources or trash or human waste, that we'll, we'll put money if we need to towards mitigating that. Yeah, that's a great point. Thank you. And yeah, something that we should be thinking about. Any other thoughts or comments? I don't think we're going to do anything further with this tonight, but certainly very, very grateful. Go ahead, Stephen. I guess I want to, I mean, I applaud the work you put into this, Dan, but I really want to point out from, this is an issue I've spent years studying. And I've discussed this with a lot of the folks who are living out on the street, even in neighboring communities. And it's likely we're backing into this thing. This is, this is a, this is the outgrowth kind of a contorted policy proposal based on the fact that some of the underlying assumptions were the city's not in the business of providing social services or we don't want to designate. It's unsafe for its potential liability for the city to designate camping areas. And so you, you kind of approach it with two legs of a stool cutoff and you can only lean in one direction. And this policy is intrusive and invasive from the point of view of a camper. I mean, there's a guy here who starts work tomorrow at Aubuchon, full time, you know, at a good salary, but he hasn't had housing for a week. And I've had, I've helped him out with finding safe places. But my point is that we wouldn't need this policy if we had some designated spaces. We want to encourage folks and incentivize folks to, to camp if necessary, nearby where there's facilities. But if we don't provide the facilities, because we don't have the, that planning capacity, we create this mess. We know damn well that the parks department, nor the public works department has the extra staff to go around and search out these camps. And yet that's what this policy is based on. We're going to find everybody and report them to the police. And then we're going to bring in a team to invade and inspect and check off a criteria. It's all backwards. You need to find the most logical places for folks to camp. Some will stay within, you know, 50 feet and others will go 200 yards just for privacy and quiet sleeping. But this thing is backwards. The whole thing is, is, I mean, I can't I'm too upset about it because the amount of time that's spent, you know, trying to develop a policy from a backwards approach back and into it is wasted time because we've got an emergency and we need shelters. And in fact, all the enforcement that we're trying to shadow box from the Boise decision goes away if we provide even a soft shelter co-located with a bathroom. That means the shelter capacity and the free camping on any public lands doesn't is in trigger. So let's work on getting some soft shelters near some, you know, facilities and alleviate the demand, the push, the unpoliceable, impossible and degradation. We don't even police the people crapping in our alleys and on our river banks today, you know. So why are we pretending that it's good? We're all all of a sudden going to have the capacity to handle 100 people crapping everywhere else. Thank you, Steven. It's yeah, I think it's an important piece to keep in mind that like this is not the solution. I do think it is important part, but you know, it's not enough. That's that's fair. All right, any other comments before we move on? Okay, great. Thank you. So we'll probably take this again in September. And I think we're on to the strategic planning updates for the end of the year. Hey, with a eye to the time, I won't be crazy. So I think I need to share my screen first. Hold on. Did I just break it? I know. Great. Just great. Anytime now, computer. Y'all are watching me hit slideshow, right? I'm doing this. If you want to just present with this size, that's okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, so a lot of this isn't going to be thank you, John. A lot of this isn't going to be news to you. We have done a really good job, I think, sort of coming to the end of our fiscal year strategic plan, even in the face of COVID-19 budget cuts, staff furloughs, etc. We have, I'm going to sort of skip ahead here, already gotten to 74% progress, which I think is great. We've had a lot of pretty major disruptions that we could not get over because of budget impacts, because of some other things that we've been keeping you up to date on throughout this process. Things have been delayed and have had major disruptions, which has kept us from that 100%. But I truly believe that staff has gone above and beyond to get that 74, 75% completion for this plan. So we've done a lot of work in on this. And so just sort of taking a step back, reminding us of what your priorities were going into the fiscal year 21 strategic planning process. You know, I think we're going to talk about this a little bit later, but really thinking about what did we accomplish? Where are their red? Where are their yellow? What can we do to move those things forward going into our strategic planning process next meeting? So this sort of talks real quick about where we're at. So it might give you a better idea of where our projects are and what areas might need more focus heading into the next strategic planning process in our city manager's office projects, which were a lot of the COVID-19 related ones, we feel we're in a pretty good space. I hate even having to say that I feel almost used to putting out COVID-19 policies, but I think we're at a place where we've been working with it for long enough, where we understand what that means and we know where to go and we know where the resources are. So we feel pretty comfortable there. Finance is also working on quite a few things that we'll get into a little bit later, but they're also doing well and have had a lot of progress. I think when we get into public works and some of the other infrastructure processes, you'll see some of those major disruptions that we'll get into a little bit later and then it really just comes down to, I realize now I put that in twice, but it really comes down to public works and some of our larger infrastructure projects, like our recreation center. So I did want to just sort of walk us through where we're at with some of these larger scale goals and what we've done just so you're familiar. Again, none of this hopefully is new. If anything is new, please start screaming so we can talk about it. But looking at our budget process, we really are getting ready and gearing up for our fiscal year 23 budget process, which was a big component of Kelly's goal for community prosperity is making this a more transparent process, making sure you're getting quarterly updates, making sure that we've been very clear about our mitigation plans, which ties very closely into that COVID-19. And now that ARPA funding is something that is coming to us, making sure that we are as transparent as possible about our priorities and what y'all's priorities are. So I'm very excited about what comes out of the fiscal year 23 budget process. I think Kelly did a lot of work bringing that process up to speed through this goal and had a lot of initiatives around that she's accomplished. So again, I sort of talked briefly about COVID-19. We did have a very recent update for this where we still feel like we're in good track, but y'all even passed this last week a new ordinance or not ordinance, but a new emergency order asking folks to wear masks inside City Hall. And we are doing our best to track what the Delta variant means for our community. And we'll respond to that as things change. Something that is still doing well, but we'll need further conversation and it might be something we talk about in our strategic planning meeting is the economic development that goes sort of along with COVID-19 response. MDC was really a partner there, but they are dissolving. So what do we do next? So that was sort of bunched under COVID-19 because we had a bunch of partnerships at the beginning of this year. And you remember a lot of our goals and actions or around sort of economic development and helping our small businesses and not clear alive at MDC, we're real big partners in that. At the end of this year, we're looking at that being a completely different situation. So how do we work around economic development to not only take us out of COVID-19, but maybe make that a future goal? We also had environmental stewardship as a goal. We're doing, you just heard recently, your net zero report. So that is still doing fine and is an ongoing initiative for us. You just heard the updates on our stormwater master plan. That was Yella as of a couple hours ago, but I think we've now gotten a green light to move that forward. So that's another one of these things that were not completed that we would talk about continuing into your strategic plan for next year. More housing is also doing fine. The city has continued to issue first time home buyer awards and are building out the ADU program. So the housing task force feels very accomplished and didn't identify any issues moving forward with their strategic goals. Our lobbying subcommittee is also doing well. That changed, I think, a lot this year. I think that has been far more active and might be something you consider continuing into your next strategic plan. This is where you'll start seeing some of those infrastructure Yellas. The childcare option study is very closely tied to a recreation building redesign plan, since we don't have currently any locations that would pass any sort of licensor for infant care. So one of the things that we're looking at for any new facility proposals that we may bring to y'all, and we will be giving you an update on that soon, would need to include space for childcare. So that's sort of on hold because we're looking at other options for y'all to consider. But I do want to sort of plug that our current capital kids after school program is doing really well. We have had an increase in folks signing up for that. So we're really seeing that starting to take off. And this is a shameless bug for the community who might still be listening as we still have openings and we are the most affordable game in town. Also talking about our sustainable infrastructure, this does have some outstanding issues that are still considered disruptions and what is holding back some of our completion percentages on this plan, including the Granite Street sidewalk repair. We did just have an approved contractor procured and we are aiming to get construction done by the end of this year, but it's still an ongoing issue. And then there is a major disruption in our Grout Road Bridge project. We do not have funding for that. We did get a grant, which is a great first step, but there is substantial funding still needed. However, I will note that we got a majority of the large projects done. That is a very small percentage of things that are still being done that you identified as priorities. We finished crack ceiling, Chestnut Hill storm water improvements, cleared an avenue, both phases for the road reconstruction, the Taylor Street storm water and road construction, and we completed the 16 Main Street project, which is very exciting. And I do want to also say that the Arts Commission, I don't know if you've been told that, are putting up some temporary art spaces, art projects in that location, and we're very excited about that. So I just sort of wanted to take a moment to talk about what I would like to sort of ask you to have like homework assignment almost for the strategic planning process we're going into. So first I want to just sort of stop and take stock of anyone had any questions on what I just talked about. No, it's awesome. You all rock. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Yeah. So I'm excited about our strategic planning process that we've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes of staff to try to make sure that we are bringing to you the most holistic look at what plans we have floating around. I've been working very closely with Mike, who has the city plan that is slowly being developed with our committees and our community. And we really see that as the long term strategic plan for the city. And so how do we get us and your all's plan, your strategic initiatives tied into that, right? So how do they interplay with each other? So what I would like for y'all to do, I ask respectfully, is to sort of sit and brainstorm those large scale goals. Like what is included in the city plan? What are the large scale goals? If you had pie in the sky dreams for the city, which I know you all do, what are they? And let's stick them on the wall and see what fits. I really think at the beginning of this process, we're going to think really large. And then we're going to look at what that means and what is important to the city and what is important to your constituents and residents and our community at large. So what we'll also be doing is reconsidering our current goals. I sort of outlined them again here, but do any of them fall off? Do you feel not that they're not important, but do they rise to the degree that you want to include them on your strategic plan for the year, which is what we as staff will be using to guide our policies and our budget decisions because this is for us what we tie our work to. Take a look at the report, the long form report that was attached to your packet today and really see what you think is next for a lot of these projects. What I'll do between my hopefully tomorrow is send you the full report, which doesn't include just the things that are on your strategic plan, but everything that the city has been working on. As we sort of talked about it as an iceberg or an inverted triangle is y'all's priorities are top and what we work towards, but underneath it is all the day to day work that the city is doing. So I also want to give you the report on what that looks like and how we're doing with that as well. And so what didn't we finish that is still a priority for y'all? What do you want to see carried over? What do you want to see us focus on moving forward into the next year? And I really think that if we come into the conversation with some of those things fleshed out in your own minds, that it will help us with a general conversation. What I would like and what I'm looking for feedback on and what I hope to get out of the meeting, our strategic planning meeting is y'all's top priorities and some initiatives that you would like to see or goals you would like to see accomplish some of those. And so then staff can come back and sit down and we can talk about it. And what projects do we already have slated that would fit into that? What do we see as actionable solutions to get to the goals that you've identified? And then we can work together to sort of refine that. And so we have a real actionable plan for a year that guides not only our actions, but our budget choices and our policy decisions. So that was a lot. But I'm very excited about it. I think we ended this year in a really good place. And it's an exciting springboard for this next one, which will sort of bring us into budget, which will bring us into approving the city plan. So that that was my presentation, like I said, short and sweet. I have a couple other slides on here just for public consumption, just to make sure everyone knows we do put our updates to our strategic plan on the city's website. And so every time we go over this information with council, we then put it online for the public to look at and ask any questions that come up. So that's what I had. It's great. It's looking forward to the brainstorming part. That meeting that we have every year is always very exciting. It's kind of a highlight. That's a lot of pressure because last year it was on Zoom and it was very stressful. I'm very excited to actually speak in person about strategic planning. That's right. Well, we did kind of sticky notes up. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, cool. And I mean, I know I'm already working on my list. And I hope you're all working on yours. And so yeah, looking forward to that meeting in that process. Okay. Any other comments on that? Okay. I think we're the only ones on the Zoom now. So not so many public. All right. Well, we can turn the lights back. No questions about this at this point, team. Okay. Great. So that is the end of our regular business. Council reports. Donna, I'm going to start with you. Okay. Hey, I get the first to say best wishes, Dan. And thank you very much. It's really been a privilege to serve with you. And I wish you well in Burlington. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Hold your applause to the info. Every time. Yeah. I'll just second that. And you know, when I came onto the council and love other people, like there were a lot of ribbon cuttings and all that type of stuff, that Dan's known nothing but like stress. Right to a pandemic, but he's really like, you know, he's he's built head on into all the tough issues, like the street painting policy, you know, Dan took a stab at that in Cameron policy took another whack at that to like address concerns. So just the depth of knowledge he's brought to the council is going to be so missed here. So sorry to see you go there. Make me sound so violent, taking stabs and waxes. Dan, you'll be missed. I'll leave it at that. On a lot of levels. But we're glad, glad you're still a little across the street from me. Yeah. How can you miss him if you won't go away? Yeah, I could go on about your contributions as past a couple or a year and a half will be on that. But I think we all understand how much you've brought to just to the city and your years of service and and in so many different roles and on the council. And it's really been an honor to represent our district together. And you'll be missed. So I'll leave it at that. And then just sort of the annual obligatory school starts tomorrow. So give yourself a little more time. I'll leave it for your commute because there will be school buses stopping every other block and lots of kids on the roads. And so make sure you're being safe in your commute. And then just the the other thing that goes along with that and it seems like such a small thing, but I think it's always good to remind people as a dog owner, which I am, I have two dogs now that we have lots of kids using all of the fields in the city now as sports have started. So be a responsible owner and clean up after your dog river, the rep fields, the school properties themselves. I think that's really important. And it's had a really negative impact in the past. And it's such a simple thing. I think we can do better. So thanks. Yeah. Take my mask for this. I first of all, really appreciate having the opportunity to serve with all of you. As I said in my resignation letter to the mayor, you know, I think we all come at these issues from very different perspectives and different backgrounds. But what defines us as a council is our ability to listen to each other, to hear different points of view, to civilly discuss these issues and to work at all times in the best interest of the city. And, you know, I think Jack at one point said during a very heated discussion, look, I don't for a minute doubt that everyone on this council is as the best interest of the city at heart. And I think that's absolutely true. And that's rare. And you know, I've represented municipalities throughout my career. And I can tell you that it is rare and not a common occurrence to have a board composed like that of people who are committed to the best interests of the city. And it is a rare art and a dying art in some respects. And so I'm deeply disappointed not to be able to serve out my term, I fully expected to be able to do so before this opportunity arose. And it was too much of an opportunity to turn away. I'm very excited. And I'm very glad to have this opportunity to work with the city of Burlington. But at the same time, it's, it's, it's very bittersweet to be leaving this group that works so well. And with so many of these issues that feel like, you know, like the homelessness camping policy, we've worked really hard on it. And there's gonna be some more work continuing. And I think at the end of it will be a very good policy, because we thoughtfully crafted these things, we've borne it out of care and consideration, as opposed to anger and politics. And I think that's really an important way in which we conduct business as a, as an elected body. And I'm, I've enjoyed it. I've learned a lot from each of you being on this council. And I think we're lucky as a city to have that. And I think it shows, you know, I think we all have issues that need to be done better, you know, there are roads that are not in as good of a shape as we want them to be. And we hear about it from constituents. And we can only say, yeah, that really stinks. This road would be better served to be better. But, you know, never do we say, well, we're just not going to consider it, or we're not going to even think about it. Or we don't like you for having raised this issue. I think, as a body, we try and listen to our constituents and raise these issues and bring them forward. And that's really the heart and soul of this type of representative democracy to bring these issues forward. And so I certainly hope that my successor is in that same vein. And I'm deeply disappointed to not be here in a week to help with that, or actually more importantly, the week after that was strategic planning. It was very, it was hard to sit here and say, I'm not going to be a part of that. But at the same time, it's been a delight to be here. It's been an honor to serve with all of you. And I certainly hope that in the future, there'll be other opportunities. But who knows, this is politics. And there's always second and third acts. But it's also hard for the first time in 16 years, I won't be serving the city of Montpelier in some capacity. And that's been really, you know, I, growing up, I remember my first time going to a city council meeting for citizenship in the community merit badge. And it was really weird, because growing up in a city where my neighborhood didn't have city counselors, didn't have lawyers, didn't have people who belonged to country clubs, you know, it was mostly a working class community to go in there and watch how, how power was wielded. You know, because this is one of those, those old steel union towns. And it was just fascinating and probably sparked something. And so to be able to not wield power, but to just be a part of that community, be a part of helping people get permits for zoning or improve their design review elements so that they preserve historic features so that our, our city continues to look the way it does or, you know, to manage and steward the cemetery or, you know, ultimately to serve here on city council, you know, has really been, I couldn't imagine my life in Montpelier without this opportunity to serve. And I can only recommend it to others. So thank you all. Thank you. Well, luckily, you finally pulled your way up to the country club elite of Montpelier. Two non-Richardson comments to make first. One is that we heard tonight about the, the use of interns for, by the city. And I think that it certainly enriches the city and its efforts to be able to do so. But I am just interested in making sure that our policies regarding these employment of interns come, flies with the standards that one call for them to be paid and to the call for them to be actually get derived educational benefit from their activities. And so I don't know what our policies are for that, but it's, so I just want to flag that. Second, after our discussion of last week and continuing discussion about people taking shelter on public land, I'm curious about whether there's been any further, or any response from the Department of Building and General, Buildings and General Services about the state land. I see the manager shaking his head. That's disappointing that the state is not. Well, I'm going to check your email back and forth and I'll sit down for you next week. So great. It's given everything that's gone on in 2020 and 2021, it's really kind of hard to believe. I went through my emails and it was January 3rd, 2020, which is really not that long ago that I got an email from Dan saying, hey, I'm planning on running for one of the open seats on the council. Can we sit down and talk about it? And that's really, that's nothing. That's practically the blink of an eye ago. And yet we've had, we've done so much since then and Dan has become such a pivotal figure of the council and contributed so much. It's hard to believe, but it's also demonstrates what a contribution he has made. And congratulations on what you're doing. Sorry to see you go. I'll just pile on briefly. Yeah, Dan, just really it's been such a pleasure to work with you. I mean, your sense of humor, nobody's mentioned, but I really appreciate your bringing, you know, just an attitude of, you know, your sleeves literally rolled up and like ready for trying to, you know, figure out solutions and hearing out. As you said, everybody's different perspectives and just constantly like doing the hard work to put forward, okay, how do we get somewhere together knowing that everyone here and hearing from the public we're trying to just do the best for our community and just that spirit you brought to all the work. I mean, it's been such an asset and particularly during this really hard, like you kind of chosen and more, you're going to do any term, you know, let me just do just for a part of a pandemic. So great. So, you know, during a really hard time to come on and then just get to work and have a great attitude and productive and get a lot done. So just so grateful and it's been an honor to work with you and Burlington's lucky to have you for now, but hopefully we'll get you back and see you at some point. So good luck with what you're doing and thanks for, thanks for everything. Well, I'm also going to pile on here a little bit. Dan, I'm so grateful that we got to have you on the council. I'm so grateful that we got to serve together. I am grateful that this group is very functional. I keep coming back to this thought that like how lucky are we that you as a basically like a municipal law expert have been on the council. I mean, we have really benefited obviously from that from your insight there, but also like you have, I appreciate the questions that you ask. I appreciate especially the hard questions that you've asked and that you've brought a lot of energy to this position and enthusiasm and that beyond your expertise has really come through and we have, we have as a group as a city, we've benefited from that. And so I along with everyone else are certainly sad to see you go. But of course, we know that like that is Burlington's gain, of course, and they're lucky to have you. So thank you for your time here and I, you know, I also, you know, I hope for you that you find another different way to serve. I mean, perhaps you will, I don't know. But yeah, thank you for your time here. It's been great. Well, hard. It's been hard. It's also very grateful that you were a part of this group through this difficult time. I have one non Dan Richardson item, which is the Vermont League of Cities and Towns annual meeting is coming up in September. And we usually send a delegate to that. And in the past that has, I think, Donna, you've been that person. I'm a fan of this conference. They are great. I wish that I could go. I cannot. Is anybody planning on going hoping to go? That's Jack. Yes, potentially, I don't have it in front of me now. But when I got the notice, I thought, boy, there's some interesting stuff there. So, you know, given what's going on at work, I'm not certain, but I will make sure to take a look again. So can I weigh in on this as a board member of VLCT, as well as your city manager? You're all eligible to go. City will pay that, you know, in terms of the conference and education, it's not just one person and any number of city staff can and often do attend because it is a good training opportunity to meet people. So if anybody who would like to do that, we can, we do need, they do vote on the municipal policy. And that's where we're only allowed one voting representative per community. And we do have to designate that person. So it's always great when it can be a council member. I will be there. I have done it on behalf of the city in the past. If no one else was going. But it would be, it's really better if it's one of you all. Donna, did I see that you are also going? I will attend at least remotely, whether or not I'm a delegate. I mean, I usually attend part of it. So, I mean, Jack could be the delegate and I can be a substitute if he can't make it. Alternative. It could be the alternative. Neither of you could. Thank you. How do you, how do you feel about that, Jack? Let's, let me, let me look at it. Okay. But yeah. And we do have another meeting between now and then. So I just wanted to make sure it's on people's radar. That's in for me, John. Oh, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. Yeah, you're not getting out of this that easy. I'm going to test your crap out of you. Okay. Now, and I expect to be tested in, in turn, and I especially look forward to, oh, what, non-citizen voting, 2.0, see what you need to do to get over there. And I will mention just looking for the future that I expect I will be ready to run screaming from this job about the time you become a G. It has been a pleasure as always. Thank you. So there's not much happening this week, right? So let's see a couple of things. I will save my, my DN comments for the end. The bathroom committee, we've been unsuccessful in getting meeting time. So those of you, I know that the chief flusher is leaving the bathroom, but we will, we are trying to get a meeting together. So hopefully we can do that. I'd like to, we had Kurt Modica on earlier today, giving us a presentation on the things that he presented on. But I think you may recall that our wastewater treatment plant won the public works project of the year for the entire country. And he went to receive it and he got a personal letter from Senator Leahy, congratulating him and saying what a great asset he was to the community. And it was pretty, pretty special. So we want to make sure you all knew that and recognize that he really is one of our quiet, steady superstars. So we're lucky to have him. I've got a question about next week. We have a special, so I've been making fun that this was going to happen. And now it's going to happen because of me. The fire contract is ready to be approved. He was actually supposed to have been on the consent agenda tonight. And they've been very patient with me. So we had said there would be nothing else next week except council member appointment. So I'm asking your permission to put that on the consent agenda. But I didn't want to presume that. This is my goof up. So I'd like to make it up to them and do it as soon as possible. All good. And while we're while we're on that topic, I think police and public works will be right behind, especially public works is really a wording away. And please write one meeting. So that's all good. With regard to next week's council seat, remind you and the public that we have to Friday at noon to get your application form, a letter of interest and 25 signatures of registered voters in the district. We do have one application in, does not yet have the signatures, but we have the application. Good. Good to know. All right. It's noon. Sorry. Noon, yes. Well, just so we can get it on the agenda to go out. Right. For all of you to have time to think about it. And so Dan, yes, thank you. I will miss our Monday journeys of any topic that could possibly be talked about. Dan and I have covered on Mondays, occasionally touching about city government issues. Now it's been a great pleasure. You know, we have employees that come and go sometimes. And it's always sad to see good employees move on, but we're also happy for them if they're moving up to something they really want to do and particularly happy when they're staying or in this case, officially moving into municipal government. It's a small collegiality of colleagues. That's a bad way of saying that. It's a small group of colleagues and having good people serve in important roles in our state, municipal government is really essential. You know, Burlington is the biggest city we all look to Burlington for leadership a lot of time, and it is politically flawed. And so it gets me comfort to know that one of our leading cities will have such good advice in the city first. So thank you and good luck. Thank you. Now we can all clap your hands. Let's take your name plate. Oh yeah. Yeah, good momentum. All right. So we are at the end here, team. So without objection, I'm going to adjourn the meeting and there's a 1054. Thank you.