 The assessor, John Vickery is here. Welcome, John. John, we're hoping you can talk for five or so minutes and answer any questions that counselors have. Welcome. Well, a budget is very similar to last year's budget. We are, this year we are focusing on our reevaluation, we've started. Images have been taken and some of our goals are to have the property data converted to the newer version of the Patriot Properties CAMA software, so that's gonna happen very soon. And then the reappraisal companies will be coming in and doing their work. And we're gonna be assisting them all the way through the project. And that's starting now. So there's not much change in the budget from last year. Although, out of the reappraisal budget, the Board of Finance approved just a few weeks ago for our office to hire two temporary folks during the reappraisal project, basically for the next two years. Thank you for that. We're working on that. And we will be bringing those positions back to the Board of Finance in a couple of weeks. I don't know if there's many questions about the budget, it's a pretty small budget. We're same staff levels and so forth regarding our general work that we do. I just had a quick question. There wasn't an org chart, but the org chart wouldn't have helped me so much. The temporary positions that we just approved. Yes. What's the relationship between, I mean, I know you, but who are they gonna be reporting to? Are they gonna be reporting to you or to? They're gonna report to Kim Kellington, the deputy assessor. Okay. He's gonna be overseeing them. Another budget, there was one other quick thing. The consultant component was professional and consultant services, contractual, is down this year. And I wasn't sure, I don't know, I mean, you didn't use any of it last year. And so I wasn't quite sure what it was, the purpose was. But my real concern was that this year with the reappraisal, would there be more need to reach out to a consultant to verify or confirm something? Well, the new valuations will be coming out on April, 2021. So that's basically two years out. So this coming year, we may have some peal works. That's put in the budget and it's only used if needed. And I think it's just wise to have it in the budget in case there's work, appeals that end up being litigated or we need a professional consultant to come in to do a reappraisal of a particular property. But we don't use it if we don't need it. So that's kind of how we've been doing it for the last couple of years. And we're not anticipating a big appeal for this next coming year. Thank you. Yep. President Wright. Do you have any early indications, John, of what reappraisal will look like in terms of whether there'll be a big shift from one sector to the other? Overall, our level of appraisal, if you break it out by category, categories, they're very similar. I mean, there's some categories where there'll be some shifting, such as apartments, again, they continue to appreciate in valuation. But I think if the shift is going to be overall, it's going to be pretty uniform, not completely uniform, but generally uniform. Will there be any effective operational savings as we phase out business personal property to your office as far as labor hours? Well, hopefully that we can just put more resources into real estate. We are, in my opinion, we could use more staff. So I would hope that we wouldn't be losing positions. It obviously takes time to do that. There is a budget for a temporary person that we use for about a month in the month of April that helps us do the data entry. That might be where we could save some $7 or $8,000. Well, right now we're about 75% of market. And so some properties are above that, some property types are above that and others are below that. But in general, the overall is about 75%. So most folks will see approximately 25% shift upward in value because we're below market. Yes, Paul. Thank you. This is the right time to bring up. I don't know if you feel like in the next week or so you might be able to have those rough figures on the basis. Yeah, I think for next week, I should be able to have them for you. Okay, yeah, all right. That'd be good. That was the, well, I think actually Max was probably the only one not on that email was sent to the board of finance. I had asked if we could try to figure out a way to increase the level of the exemption on the personal business and property tax. So right now it's 45. As we're phasing it out, can we increase that? And if we increased it by $5,000 or $10,000 increments, what would be that? What would be the loss? Yeah, what would be the loss of revenue? Yeah, that's a question. Yeah. Excellent. Any other questions for John? Anything else John, you wanna share? We will be keeping the council informed as the reappraisal progresses. Especially once some of the vendors come in, we'll have them come and meet the whole council and talk a little bit about what they're gonna do. And then there'll be progress reports. I think there's some, a lot of questions about where are we at and where are property types gonna land? What's the shift gonna be? And I think when we start diving into the data even more deeply, I think we'll have better understanding of that ahead of the notices of new valuations, okay? I have just one quick question or maybe a suggestion is going forward. It's often been asked why wouldn't we just kind of move along through time and assure that we're current as opposed to doing a, we haven't done one since 0405 I think is our last. So maybe you could not in a tonight but maybe a brief memo on what's the advantage of doing it the way we're doing it versus a more regular frequent periodic assessment that doesn't hit people quite so hard. Yeah, that method is done all around the country, not in every state or municipality or county. That's how assessing is done. But it is pretty popular and it seems to be the trend. We'd have to readjust our staff and there's a number of things we'd have to do but we could head in that direction in the future. Yeah, thank you. Next. Is there, one of the things I'm concerned about is this kind of sneaking up on people a little bit. So I'm wondering about publicity of this because this is gonna be a big thing where people are gonna get either way, they're not gonna be probably gonna be very happy with it but if they know that it's coming as opposed to if they find out at the last second. So I'm just, I'm wondering how you plan using this lead up to let people know that this is coming and that we're doing this and that this isn't coming out of nowhere. We've been playing this for a while. Yeah, talking to the, in front of the council, that's a public first. Talking in front of the MPAs, I think is a wise idea as well. The internet is, and we're also gonna be sending letters to folks telling them what we're doing and asking them for some information. We want the taxpayer to have a little buy in. So the letter will involve, here's what we're doing. Here's the company that's coming. Please take a look at your property data and let us know if there's some issues with your property data. And then we will examine that and sometimes that'll trigger an inspection and other times if it's just would be a correction made. But I think that that gives them information, it gives them buy in and then we'll put out letters of evaluations later. And all this information on each individual property is online. And I think most everybody knows that now we have very few visitors at our office because everyone goes online. So that information will be put in front of folks. So people know, people should know. Okay, can I just? Thank you very much. Yeah. Part of the contract with the consultants that are gonna be working with you on evaluations was to do some of this outreach too, right? Right. They do that some interviews and they have kind of processes. Yeah, they have, we'll do that for sure. Okay, great. We will close out the assessor part of the presentation. Thank you, John. And next up is Bronson City Arts. Welcome, Doreen and Sarah. Good evening. How's everybody? Good. Here we go. So we're not gonna repeat anything that we sent to you. Maybe just emphasize a few points and then take a few questions. So I think you know this has been a significant year for us with the addition of highlight to BCA. Very successful year one, an adventure, but done in a very short timeframe. Really took the mantle on in the fall and accomplished this in kind of unimaginable timeframe. But beloved by the city and by the artists community and creative community as it's become a very decentralized festival now and brings in fact we're out today to the community looking for proposals or RFPs hit the streets today. So this year we're gonna have a lot of time to bring new ideas forward and to work with various both venues and artists. So it's looking forward to this year, but it's definitely a challenge. It's bringing a new festival into the city. We certainly are thankful for the city's support, but it does rest significantly on the private sector to help support this and we'll see how well we do in year two and measure the sustainability and the impact on our staff of taking on such a major undertaking. It's very important to us that the way this festival is done is reflective of who we are as an organization which really puts the artist as someone who is to be respected and taken good care of and hospitality provided and give people an opportunity to realize their work and that nurturing of projects takes time and energy and we like to do that well. And as you know, you can see from our history of accomplishments of this year's and year's past that we push a lot out of BCA. So this is the year of sort of trying to understand our capacity to manage everything going forward. We also have been without a development director for almost two years now and we've put together a great internal team that's taken us to meet budget every year, but this is unsustainable and so we've been working with HR and we'll be coming forward to you with a proposal for reestablishing a higher salary for this position. The market analysis should be done in the next couple of weeks and hopefully having that individual will increase our effectiveness in the community. And then we've also learned to balance I think trying to listen to the new needs and concerns of the community as Burlington is a growing dynamic changing environment and how do we both continue all the program we do and meet the needs of a new and growing arts community and make Burlington a great place to live and work. Kay. Great. Thank you, Doreen. Excellent. Councilor Buscher. So, well, you know your budget best, but I couldn't figure out it was a line 7-7-3-0 for scholarships. Yes. And is that, are there other scholarships in this budget that I just can't find or that seems like new money that was never there before? And could you just speak to that? Yeah, we are changing our accounting practice for scholarships. In FY20, we've been working with the other cultural departments on some collaborative projects related to scholarship programming. And so we're following Parks and Recs accounting practices more in the past. Essentially what's happened with our scholarship fund is it showed up as a reduced income line. And in the future, what we're going to do is actually journal entry. It has an expense into the income line. So the income line will actually show the full participation of all participants. And then the scholarship line will show as an expense that it correlates with that. So it's not actually an added expense. It's just, or it's not, it's not a net increase. It's a wash, it's a better accounting practice. And it allows us to actually see the impact of every person that is in the program. So I just had a couple of other questions. I know donations still drive your budget a lot. And so this, when it says 2019 actual, what date is that in 2019? Whatever date is printed at the bottom of the piece of paper. So I think it was the 15th that I ran those? So the date on the bottom of the page, so 516, 2019. Okay, so thank you. So your board donations, do they, do you actually realize those and they're just late in the game or what happens? Yeah, we have two significant donations that are pledged for the end of the fiscal year. Okay, okay. And then one other comment, just generic comment. So, well, one other question. Under top three to five 2020 goals, complete percent for our ordinance draft? Yeah, that's a goal. Okay. Just, I mean, we have begun, we've begun talking about it internally in our department and with other departments that would be involved in any capital planning. Okay. But we have not advanced, highlight sort of got in the way of advancing that last year. So we would like to reinvigorate that process and bring forward a proposal for a percent for art ordinance for the city of Burlington. Currently, public art is essentially voluntary by the departments that are not voluntary, but it's part of the budgets, but it's not something that is really codified in the city's ordinance like it is in other cities. And for the future, that would be something that I think would be important for the city to protect for artist participation for the arts and culture and the positive experience of our streets. Thank you. You can make it 2% too, if you like. I just wanted to understand what it was first of all. Yes, okay. Yeah. I'm not stating any percent. I need to better understand this. The last thing is you started off with highlight and I'm glad you're willing to do it again. Thank you, thank you. But I felt that it was the best known secret in the city. People that I worked at the hospital and I felt like I personally ran around trying to tell 6,000 people about it and nobody knew about it. And so what I would say is that I think there's a great interest if they know about it in advance. You know how to do your business best. I think that it was not well known. And so people, some people didn't come because of that. And so I don't know what to anticipate this year if it's better known and going to occur. But anyways, that was a lot more time. We have a lot more time to put the marketing campaign together. And the partnerships. Like that was actually, we did try to connect with the hospital and just to reach out specifically to hospital staff, but the timing was too short. We just couldn't get that to work for them. So thank you. Councilor Tracy. With highlight, are you thinking of continuing to partner with? Who is it? Yeah, are you going to continue to partner with them for this year? Because I thought that they brought just a different creative lens. And I thought that that was really cool in a way that engaged people that may not have wanted to engage with the first night stuff before. So I would love to see that again. Yep, you're too. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, it's a great partnership. And there's a really nice integration with their team and our team. They work well together. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, cool. Yeah, thank you. So, new city councilors. We welcome a deeper conversation with you and if you have additional questions. To all city councilors, if there's any additional questions, we'd love to talk about our programming or reflections, observations that you have and so it's not like just this time of year, like we're always, we love to engage in that way and take you on a tour. Yeah, because some of you haven't been down to 405 pine, correct? I haven't been down there. It would take any of you that would like, it would be a good thing to do to check out that space. Should have a meeting there. Councilor Pine and then Tracy. Now that you mentioned 405 pine, there's an ownership piece of that. Can you tell us a little bit more about that process and what you're thinking there? Because I saw that and I was like, ooh, that could be exciting. So currently, the city has a lease with the owner of that property. It's three years for three periods, so nine years in total. And with terms for the purchase of that property, bless you, better position for us in the first three years. So our foundation is doing the work with a feasibility team to figure out if we can purchase that property. We the foundation. We the foundation. So yeah, we've always a couple of weeks. Can purchase that property in the next number of months and do a capital campaign. We're working with the owner who is Skip Farrell and our board to look at the viability of that campaign. Yeah, we'll be coming back with some exciting news, I hope in a few months. Yeah, I mean, it would be amazing if this could happen. As you all know, the most important, I mean, besides the fact that it is the home to Burlington City Arts Studios and this is where we serve the greatest number of members of our community with arts and education programs. But additionally, there's space in that building that would be beyond BCA's use. So it's really about being able to buy this property so we can protect future affordability for artists. Our concept of moving forward includes building some art of studios in the space. There is no community gathering space in the south end of Burlington like there is in the north end and downtown. And so the concept which really grew out of plan BTV south end was the tremendous need for a community gathering room, have a kitchen attached to it. And we particularly reach out to the members of our community to learn in different styles. And so those are some of the pieces of our intention if we're able to be successful with this capital effort. And we see you as partners. Can we just go back to, I'm sorry, go ahead, Councillor Fein. A couple of questions. One is in looking at the purchase of the property, hopefully you'll be wide open about ownership structures because there are different ownership structures that allow you to bring in equity to the deal that don't rely on the local foundation, doesn't rely on local philanthropy. So new market tax credits is probably the most significant source. But to do that, the ownership structure has to be different. It's a very complicated structure, but it's usually worse that when 40 to 50% of your costs can be covered by equity that you don't pay back. So really think about, he's expert at that. Yeah, he's expert at that stuff. Great, great. And I did see a new thing, which is the use of the fund balance, and which we is that when we say fund balance? That's the foundation, or that's BCA? No, that's BCA. Okay. All right, so. Sorry, we're gonna find another word for, we'll just always start the sentence out with the foundation. And what is that fund balance amount total that 50 was taken as revenue from that? What is the total fund balance? So last year, this was an effort to fix the way we funded, highlight through city funds last year. It kind of came from a bunch of different sources and it came in as donations into the income line and it was very cumbersome and complicated accounting-wise. So Beth set up a $50,000 use of fund balance line item. So city fund balance going into the project. Okay, got it. And that's for highlight. The thing we did, okay, great. That's where that comes from. All right, I think that's it. I just wanna go back to the Councilor Bush's first question, because it is actually really, it's confusing the way it's shown here. The scholarships is broken over at least a couple lines. So if you look at line 7730, row 263, it looks like we only have 2,500 in scholarships. But then if you go to row 304, there's another 35,000. So I just wanted to speak to why it's done that way. Maybe we're trying to answer why it's done that way, but I did just wanna, if someone who just saw the 2,500, I wanna make it clear. I mean, the 35, this is, I think, significantly higher the level of scholarship than we've ever had before, right? And in, I mean, our assumption about what we're going to raise for scholarship funds this year is 50,000. So it's even larger than the number here. So it's broken out into two separate programs because two programs are going to be drawing scholarship funds to pay for paid programming. So the BCA Gallery has tours that have a fee associated with it. They're like $5 a student, so it's a very cheap fee. So the $2,500 is to cover scholarships for that program. And the $35,000 line item is specific to covering tickets or tuition to studio classes and programs at 405 Pine Street, which tend to be a little more expensive. I'm glad you clarified that. Yeah, I thank you for that, because... It wasn't clear. Yeah, it wasn't. And we talked about this a little bit for those of you here for the park's discussion, but not everyone was here and I think it's just worth repeating. So I mean, this, I'd say one of the clear, one of the things that came out of last year's focus of the BTV Stat effort on just sort of equity questions and equity metrics was this kind of flushing out of there being really different populations being served in the free programming versus programming that there was fees being paid for. So that has sort of sparked these cultural departments working together more and greater attention on trying to make sure we're serving all kids with these programs that are, you know, these free programs that are, yeah. And so the scholarships play a key role in that. It's not just the scholarships, so I would say. It's also, there's a change in greater attention to recruitment opportunities. We're, for example, now at the Palmer Lowe Holiday Party, which we've had for 35 years, we've got a whole bunch of kids this year into BCA and really parks classes this year and next year I want it to be more BCA classes too. Just by having sign up tables and the scholarships available right at that event, we're trying to get better about whatever the city's having events, whether it's a police barbecue or, you know, this arts evening that BCA has every year for fourth graders or for art students that we are proactively signing kids up. So some of the watch will have more conversations about it in the future, but. Yeah, the partnerships are great and we're, you know, learning a lot more about where there's other collaborations possible with the other departments through the BTB staff. That's one of the great. All right, any, any last questions for BCA? All right, excellent. Good job, guys. Thank you. Thanks. Up next is the Cherokee Marketplace. Welcome around. Hey, thank you. How are you? Excellent. So you ready? All right. A lot of you have seen this information before. I'm just gonna go through it very quickly. We keep track of retail sales. You can see these are statewide numbers. Burlington is the green, so about midway down. You can see that we had a little bit of a drop around 2017. That was the reduction of stores in Burlington town center. Let's go to the next slide, if you don't mind. And rooms and meals taxes for Burlington, they continue to go up. So that's a good trend. Let's go to the next slide. We just want to show you that what we're doing is we're trying to understand what's happening in the downtown district versus what's happening on Church Street and in Burlington. So with help from the Clerk Treasurer's office, we're actually breaking out the numbers of meals and alcohol, both for the DID and for Church Street to give us a better idea. We can look at events and activities by quarter and see how, you know, if things work, didn't work, and it can push this data out to our food and beverage businesses. The red line is Church Street. You can see that sales are a little bit more consistent. It just means that if you're on Church Street, things are a little more evened out. You know, you have good months and bad months, but versus the DID above, the blue line shows, you know, things get a little slim around November, December, and then they boost back up around June, July. So next slide. This is information that we keep a track of. This is all the data for D area in terms of police data. So we look at property crime, violent crime, drug and alcohol related crime. All on a downward trend, you know, we have a very active community policing program. One of the things this doesn't reflect is shoplifting. That's been an issue and the closing of Macy's and the closing of Burlington Town Center has helped to some degree because that was, those were the two areas that were prime targets. We're having our, we're having to teach our merchants primarily to use the private trespass. That's the way that they're addressing shoplifting. Just calling the police about a shoplifter really, there is no consequence for shoplifting right now. It's below $900. None at all? No. This just gives you an idea of, that's state law. So in other words, if you, it's a felony, if you, if you, over $900, if you steal, steal in one, at one period, over $900, that's deemed a felony. But anything under that amount is considered a misdemeanor. And there's very little consequence that's happening right now for people who are stealing. So the private trespass is helping. Someone just can't go back into a store. Composition for show street businesses, still primarily local, both in our food and beverage businesses and for retail. Next slide. And then some highlights for what's happening on Church Street. We have one vacancy right now, but you can see that we've had some new stores in the last year and a half. Free people, fat, face, both nationals, Try By Works is a local store. Poki Works, a national, anybody had a chance to try them. It's sushi on rice, burritos, noodles. It's amazing. Burlington Bagel Bakery joined us in February and Heli Hansen is gonna replace Nat Cosmetics. So next slide. And then our sales. In spite of losing Burlington Town Center and all those stores, in spite of the construction, we got a gift over the holidays. Our 2018 sales versus 2017, we were at 64% of our businesses were up. It's an amazing accomplishment. We had $50,000 provided to us by Brookfield to help us do advertising. I think that helped us a lot. We continue to work really closely with our retailers. Retail is challenging right now and we do a ton of promotions and we have very engaged and active our retail promotion meetings every month. So next slide. This just gets you an idea of kind of where we are in terms of retail sales. What this shows you, just look at Q4 and 56. It tells you that the number one quarter for the majority of our retailers is the fourth quarter. That's a good sign. What it tells you is that we're still predominantly, and again I'm knocking on wood here, locally focused. When you have, when your holiday season is your biggest time, that is usually an indication that you're doing well with your locals. And that's, thank God that's there because you, if you're relying too much on your tourists and when gas prices go up or there's recession, then it puts you in a bad place. So we still have a fairly good balance of Vermonters, Burlington residents, Chittenden County residents, and then tourists. So next slide. And this is just our annual customer service survey. We do this every year. We've done it every year since 2005. So this gives our retailers and restaurateurs a chance to rate us. It's our report card. It's a way that we can get feedback and go to the next slide. And this just shows you, overall, we have about 90 doors on Church Street. So we get a fairly good response rate. We'll go to the next slide. And then we really break it down in quite a lot of detail. And we push this back out to our businesses to show them how we're doing. We also use this as a way to measure ourselves and to look at where we're not performing and then try to work on those areas where we may be needing a little help. And then next slide. All right, so I think everybody knows how we fund the marketplace. The majority of our funding comes from our common area fee. The challenge there is for 38 years, we've had the same grand list. So Church Street doesn't grow in terms of property. So our common area fee is about 70% of our revenues. And since 2017, we haven't raised the common area fee. We've felt that with the construction at City Place, with all the changes happening, raising the fee is not good. So what we're doing now is instead of that old strategy of more with less, we are making efforts to try to raise our corporate donations, but we're finding ways to make our budget more efficient. We have the smallest number of staff we've ever had in the 20 years that I've been on Church Street. We're doing our best. And so the next slide. So realities for us, no increase in the common area fee. The Marketplace Commission continues to really push back with the city about the indirect fees that it's charged. All enterprise funds pay indirect fees. If you're not in the general fund, you pay fees for human resources, IT, legal, et cetera. And whether you're the water department, traffic, airports, Marketplace, the fees are the fees. And I think the commission feels that those fees, one or two hives, about $65,000 for us, it's a high percentage of the budget. And that they, every year I think they work really closely with the mayor's office and the mayor has, and his administration has made Herculean efforts to try to help the Marketplace, the confines or the restrictions of the charter, really hamstring the city's ability to help the Marketplace. We're not able to use tax dollars for our operating budget. But we have found all kinds of ways to try to help the Marketplace. And this year has been no exception. So the next budget you'll see, let's pop to the next slide. So this just shows you every year our commission, they create a budget that shows about a 50% cut in indirect fees. And that's not realistic. But they come to you and say, okay, this is the budget that we want. We don't believe we should pay all these fees. And they sort of cut them in half. And the administration, we try to find ways to sort of write that ship. But again, this is the commission's budget for FY20 and the mayor's recommended budget. Still get the same. The mayor's recommended budget yet. Okay. The CAO is directed. Okay. But I just want to make the point that this is an area that they continue to be concerned with. And I think that efforts are made in earnest to try to make this work for the Marketplace. And it's hard. I don't know about the other. Yeah, I mean, I think we've decreased them a bit this year for some. We've increased what we're paying for snow clearing to make sure we're fairly compensating for efforts. So in the last five years, the administration has found ways to reduce our electoral budget. They've found ways to help us get access to capital. And they've done things that just, everything they possibly can. But again, the charter really puts a lot of restrictions on the marketplace's ability to both do capital improvements and also for some of our operating costs. And the direct fees are calculated based on real costs. It's not like we're not marking up, but it's for IT, it's for the insurances. And liability insurance is added. It's too cost. That's our ball. Thank you for your presentation. The first thing I wanted to ask was I, you had said that there's only one storefront that is vacant. Okay. The other one that was where there's one right across the street from city hall that also says that is empty. It's two default. I can't tell you who it is, but it's. Okay. All right, so that's why there's only one. All right. And then I was curious to know the, in 2018, there were advertised in, actually in 2017, 18, and 19, there were advertising revenues that came in. $50,000 in 19. And I just wondered why it was zero this year. So in that category, that's a good question. In this category, we used to do the banners on Shulpin Road and Main Street, and it became tough for us to do, that it was costing us more in terms of, the cost of putting the banners up. So we passed it to our friends at Parks and Rec, and they found a way to do it much more efficiently than we have. The $50,000 increase in 2019 came from Brookfield. That they sent, they provided to us to help us promote the holidays for the entire downtown during the holiday season. I mean, it wasn't a $50,000 increase. It was, it was, well, it was 13.5, the first in 18, and then it was 50. So it's, yeah, I mean, it was 37. And then the other question I had was just simply, it appears as though you feel, either you feel or you're just budgeting for no seasonal or temporary employees. Is that right? So we are budgeting for seasonal employees. You say under salaries and wages for seasonal and temporary, you have zero for this year, and you've had a number for the other years. And that's an admin. So we, personnel, we have three categories. Yeah, personnel services, yes. The three categories, there's admin, public relations, and general maintenance. So we do have a temporary budget both for public relations and for general maintenance. Oh yeah, you have 30,000 for personnel services for public relations, I see. If you go further down, there's a fairly substantial budget for temporaries for maintenance department. I missed that. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. I got a prisoner of right, then Councillor Bushard and Councillor Pine. Thank you, Ron. In the past we've heard passionate pleas from people like the owner of Money Waters, and I've talked to other business owners in the downtown area well about aggressive people causing myriad of problems downtown, including they're very concerned about hurting their business. Is that problem getting better, the same, or worse? That's a great question. I'll answer it by saying there's more people involved in addressing the situation. I would say that behavior, if I were to compare the level of behavior in 1998 when I got here and to where it is today, things are much better. And if you talk to police officers who've been around, it's definitely better. But that's all relative for people that haven't been around, their perspective might be different. What I will say is there's more mechanisms in place today where people like Market Money Waters can go to to try to address problems. There aren't a lot of ways, there aren't a lot of tools in the police department's tool bag to be able to address some of this behavior. So we have to get really creative and we have to find ways to work with our social service agencies, to work with our merchants, it takes a lot of work. And we meet every week for a safety security meeting where we bring the police department, social services together along with merchants. And if a merchant has an issue, they can come to that meeting and we can problem solve with them and so we use a lot of problem solving community development type strategies to try to help individual merchants with individual problems. I know I'm not giving you a really clear answer, but I'll just say that we've got more people involved and trying to work through a solution than we've had in the past. So it continues to be a significant concern because I talked to a number of business owners who have told me about the concern and what I see with my eyes is it seems to me a growing problem. Yeah, we keep, we keep, you know, and I think it's really important to, the glasses have full here and I think this is a downtown, this is an urban area and if you look at other cities across the country, they're facing far greater problems and far challenges than we have. You know, and we have to keep that in perspective. I know that we have very high expectations for our downtown. We aspire for it to be great and we should have those aspirations. But the reality is, you know, we have the laws that we have from the state. We have, we've got what we've got and we've got to make the best of it and I continue to feel optimistic because I know people are willing to come together. You know, we have good relations with the peace department, good relations with our social service agencies. We work really hard and we actually know the people that are having problems. We know them by first and last name. We know what their issues are. We're a small community, so we can really focus and there are some people who are very service resistant and there are some who are real miracles. You know, we're able to get them to a place that's very positive. So I'm gonna give you a really hopeful message. You know, I know that you probably hear some negative but I continue to be optimistic and positive. So. Okay, great. So we are five minutes over already on this just so everyone's aware. Let's keep going with the questions but let's try to move forward as quickly as we can. Councilor Buescher. So one question I'll ask you outside of this meeting. Okay, okay. But the other, the question for you or for the CAO is got to do with line 6-3-5-0 under general operating or whatever. And it has to do with advertising which has been cut by $33,000 which I thought was odd to cut advertising at this critical time. So I wasn't quite sure why that happened. And it might be another scenario where there's another advertising that has makes it whole but you and you did. So what was budgeted was 121,000 and you spent 116,000 and this year it's 88,000. And I'm concerned. Yeah, and as you should be, I would be too. But what's great is we had $50,000 that came from Brookfield last year which we didn't, I don't think we'll receive this year. So that we will still have a good substantial budget for advertising because you have to look at FY17, 18 and 19, if you look at FY17 budget we're actually gonna be spending, does that make sense? Yes, and I understand what you just said. I'm still concerned that the numbers you showed were good numbers, I mean, considering what's going on downtown. But I think it took all of that advertising to generate, I may be wrong, but so I'm concerned that we aren't gonna have that same level of advertising. I'm just identifying that as something that I think needs a careful eyeball. Thank you. So one way to address that is we're looking at a digital advertising program and we're pulling some money from other areas to do that just that very thing because we agree with you. The $50,000 was great to have, we may not get it, we're gonna try to find ways to compensate for it. But I think you absolutely should get it from them since they've delayed the project, period. Right on, I'm with you, okay. Yeah, the capital improvements is virtually non-existent in your budget and I know that that's a big struggle. Rather than debate the recreation of the downtown improvement district again, what about bringing forward a proposal to deal with that part of our charter limitation that says basically we can't use, right? We can't use general fund dollars to support the infrastructure capital improvement needs. So that would certainly be a narrow request to the public, I think to the voters maybe next March or something we should think about as a way to get this because having zero in capital improvements is definitely for a five block, six block, four block, but it feels like six blocks. But still it is, it's definitely our core, one of our core assets and I think we should find a way to support it in a bigger way in terms of capital improvements. I think there are a number of possible things under consideration, but good point and that should be on the list. Councilor Tracey. Just wanted to know what kinds of conversations are happening with Brookfield around further contributions because I really, I agree with Councilor Bushard that they should be kicking in more and I think that that should extend beyond the holiday season and that it may, the lump sum is nice, but I think that it would be better to have it sort of like depending upon how much delay takes place that that's an ongoing support that we receive because the delay is not just constricted to the holiday season and it's impact, so I don't know if you can speak to that or wrong, but. Well, of course, certain things they have continued to pay and pay more because of the delay. They six figure additional payments on the incumbrancy of easements because they're taking that public right away. They continue to pay our additional unanticipated legal fees and Jeff Glassburg fees. And they have accelerated their payment for the Tocito of the $100,000 for business assistance, which was supposed to be over two years. They paid that all at once, so we've been focused on, if they get, I think what everyone wants is for them to get things moving on the timeline that I've talked about and that's really been the focus of the conversations. If somehow we have to acknowledge further delays, that's a whole, that'll be among a whole bunch of things we want to talk to them about is making additional payments. The question of whether, even if things are, I mean, if construction is underway, of course, there will be more activity going into the downtown. You'll have hundreds, more people coming in and that will be just the act of construction. We'll add some activity of vibrancy to the downtown. I hear the council's rest that we talk about the upcoming holiday season as well. I understand you're saying something different, too, so they're not, I think that character, that's the full current conversations going on with them, but I hear your point. Thanks, everyone. All right, thank you, Ron. Great. Next up, historic moment. First time ever at the Department of Perming and Inspections. It's proposing an FY20 budget. I don't know if we, also we did get word yesterday, I believe it was, or last few days, some point that the legislature has signed off on the church, so we simply, the governor's signature in this department can actually, and then I think a few further actions from you, like passing a budget, the department will actually exist, so we're getting closer. Welcome, Bill. Brian Lowe's here as well, who's been instrumental in this. Go for it. Great, thank you. I wanted to start out the presentation with a key component. This was a photo that was in the presentation that you received, but this was the lean training that we did a few months ago. At 645 Pine Street in the conference room, it was when we got all the staff members together, the people that will be the permitting inspections department, it was the zoning team, the trades team, and our code enforcement team. And the key part of that is that we're not just going to be co-locating, the mayor has pressed to make sure that we're working on process improvements We've tried to be true to that word. This was part of that, looking at both the current and future state for this department. This was a process that was put together by VMAC, Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center, did the training with us, but these slides were based on the work that they did with our staff. So the information came from the current process that we're using. This was a small addition for a homeowner. Projects that we looked at were 2015, because those were projects that were closed out already. An existing home where they're doing a small addition, about roughly $50,000 worth of work. And they were not DRB approved, these were administratively approved permits. So these were not the most complicated ones, but as you can see, this looks like a fairly complicated process, and that's frankly because it is. I won't go through every detail, but just to quickly highlight, it works from left to right when we get the requests from the pre-application to the person submitting it, to the planner actually reviewing it, and potentially moving it forward or sending it back for more information. 15-day waiting period, getting the construction permits, then those permits getting closed out, and then the UCO request that our team does with a final inspection. Along the way, you've got those yellow areas where they need some improvement. And you have the red, which is the highest improvement. There's some pretty significant problems there. Many of these are actually things that the homeowner does, but we can do a better job helping them. I think that's where, for example, on the intake process, there's a 33% error rate, but that's strictly errors that the homeowners are making. Some of these are not that complicated. We think in a relatively short time, we can drop that down to a 10% error rate on their part just by making the information simpler and queuing the applicant into the things that we find that are mistakes most frequently and checking for those before we actually accept the permit. Some of the other big improvements that you'll see in the next step are joining some of those phases. So I hope this looks a little bit more simplified to you, but to give you a quick explanation that the first two boxes show you that the error rate drops to 20% on that down from 33, and then when it gets to the planner, it drops from 10 to 5%. This is a one-year target. And during that permit check period, the 15-day waiting period, we're working on a process. Now the process is essentially represented not by that hourglass, really it should be more of a tombstone because it's dead for 15 days, nothing happens. We are working on a process to get the applicant in, work with our trades team during that time so that when someone comes back with their permit to sign for their zoning permit, they're ready to go at the same time with the building and other trades permits if they want to. They can get that work done in advance. One of the biggest steps at the end of this process would be when the work gets done. Currently we have an extra step at the end for the homeowner and the staff and I agree that that process can be turned from a customer-required step into a staff-required step with some better communication, both through the IT assistance that we can get, but also with some better communication. We'll be in the same team. There'll be a signature up front from the property owner that gives us permission to close out the property, but the trades inspector can turn it over to us instead of requiring, as we do now, the homeowner coming in at the end of the process to see our staff and close it out when the trades permit's closed. So that error rate that we have now is 50% when people come in. They're really not ready for that final step because most people don't fully understand the process. We are streamlining this significantly in a relatively short time, but I say with a fairly strong amount of confidence that I don't think it'll be as complicated as it might sound. And I know it's only going to a 68% success rate, but when you look at those numbers on the slide before, that represents a 22% success rate. When a customer comes in, they're likely to only be 22% of the time successful. That's a big failure rate. So within a year, hoping to move that from the 22 to a 68% success rate with these changes. And again, lean is not just a one-time do it and be done. This is a process of constant improvement. So we will continue to be working on that, but this is the key during this first year for the permitting department, for that aspect of what we do. So this performance metrics slide is basically boiling down all of that information into a very pointed piece about where people make the mistakes, what our target is, the closure rate, which we know is 50%, people come in and they don't have the right document signed. They haven't done some of the work that they need to do. In some cases, they don't even have a building permit and they're coming in to close the zoning permit. We think with a relatively small amount of changes on the staff side, we can drop that error rate to 10%. Again, some of these things will not be, we're not going to ever probably be able to get it to zero because these are customer-based mistakes, but we think if we make the process simpler for the customer, they will make fewer mistakes. We'll move that first-time right from 22, as it says, and that bottom line to 68. And we'll be working on benchmarks, looking back in the last five years to create an average of that past five-year performance, but those are still in process. We clearly know that these are all not good marks. These are all red because they're in a danger zone for us. We try to move them quickly to a yellow and then green to make them successful. You've seen most of these things before in previous presentations, but these are the things that the housing or the traditional code enforcement department does. The next slide tells you the core functions of the permitting aspects, both from the zoning and the trades processes. Now, those are things you've seen from David's team at Planning and Zoning at the top and then Norm's team from DPW at the bottom. They're incorporated now into this department. The next slide has an organization chart that was not in your original presentation for a specific reason. We had had some negotiations with the union recently. We had proposed and considered a three-manager position. There was some pretty strong opposition to that. The team felt that it would better function if those four people remained separate from their separate division manager. We went round and round with a few different versions internally with Brian and I discussing different options. And we think this is the best way forward, given the staff's concerns and the union questions about it. This would give me eight direct reports as the manager, but it leaves Scott Gustin in charge of the zoning team. He has five direct reports in the zoning group, which includes Ted Miles, who's currently part of our code team, but he does zoning enforcement. So it naturally falls in the zoning team. And Charlene, who's the zoning administrative assistant that we have that currently is with code enforcement. And on the traditional code enforcement team, Patty is our case manager. She would be the housing manager in the new department. And her team is six direct reports strong. I do have a copy, Sharon. I saw you look. But I do have a copy of that if you're interested in the paper copy of that organization chart. So sure. So the goals, I thought it would be important just to quickly point out, one, that's the slide that I just talked to you about with the metrics. Goal number two, those were recycling improvements that move on from last year's, where we are still working on the enforcement side of the seven target streets that we worked on. But in this case, we're sort of raising the bar a little bit by making sure we do all the streets. And a key part of the challenge with the recycling toter requirement that was enacted over the last few years, it had a staged implementation. And so by September of last year, it should be enacted in every rental property with two or more units. But Department of Public Works ran short of the actual toters. So they were behind on the supply side. Before Rob Green left, he made sure that they had gotten the shipment in. They are in, so it's time for us to get that rally those forces that we can to make sure that we have as close to 100% by the end of this fiscal year. The targeting of 100% zoning permit closure on new permits that are expiring is something that will help us keep what's currently, we have a problem with older permits that we're trying to close out. What we're trying to do with this goal here is to, as these new permits that we've issued are starting to expire, try to get that down to zero. So we currently average about 85% closure for the zoning permits as they're expiring. We're going to be targeting that the expiration date to do advanced notification and more direct contact with property owners in the upcoming fiscal year to try to get that close to 100% on the new zoning permits as they're ready to expire. So again, the budget is set to help us preserve staffing. It keeps the division's expenses maintained where they were previously. So I had the great assistance from David White and from Norman Baldwin in putting together the division's budgets for the zoning team and for the trades team would have had a lot more trouble doing it on my own, but they were a great assistance. So that maintains where they were previously but moves them to this new permitting inspections department. And I feel very confident that as we are more efficient with the permit closure process, that will produce a consistent and a reliable revenue. It's somewhat irregular now because we don't know or can't predict necessarily when a property owner is going to close the permit out, but if we're the ones that are tracking them, I think in the future we'll be able to more closely predict what is going to be happening in the coming months and the coming years. So the fiscal changes are similar to what you've seen in my previous budgets. Most of what we're doing is based on that the staff members themselves, salaries, benefits for employees, and the drivers are the transition. You'll see 100% increase because some of these staff members were never a part of this department. So it's the transition. And there are some, you'll see in the next few weeks at a Board of Finance meeting, there are some salary increases with the change of status with some of the folks, some grade changes. And again, we have expanded department responsibilities. On the revenue side, we've got strong construction economy and I think what David and Norm have laid out in my projections, I feel confident with. The rental registration fees have continued to go up and I expect there, with new units being built, that that will be something that we can count on. I felt like I was conservative in my estimates for this coming year's revenue. And I think we can predict more zoning enforcement revenue. It's up this year and we've got a strong enforcement team with Ted, having taken over as the zoning specialist and Ted Miles working with Scott Gustin who's joining our team. I think we're gonna have a greater stabilized enforcement process. So the goals help us for the coming year. The one-stop shop model I think will be great, not just for the citizens, but for the staff. But it should make budgeting more predictable as I've mentioned. I think the rental market is improving and we've seen that revenue growth this year. We expect it again next year. And again, the zoning enforcement revenue will grow confident of it. You're just saying this more around, we're increasing the number of rental units every time we increase the number of units that generates revenue. Right, as a new property comes online, those units get billed for the upcoming year. We are, we're definitely gonna meet our target this year and I'm pretty confident we'll meet, we'll exceed next year's target. Councilor Pye and then President Wright. Yeah, the rental registration fee is one that I don't, I'll sound a little bit like a broken record, but I will say it over and over again, that it was really intended to fund the core service of rental housing safety to protect the tenants from the buildings they live in. And I just wanna be constantly reminding ourselves that it's not a revenue source for the department, it is a way to fund that key public safety function of the department. I just have to say it again because I worry that, it's a million dollars roughly, give or take, and it's, I wanna make sure that Burlington tenants are getting the benefit of that and it's not being essentially used to cross subsidize other activities in the department. Yep. I'll just quickly say, I can tell you with great confidence that that's not happening. We're not using it for some other source and I think we're working really hard to make sure that we have a good product for the tenants who live in the units but also for the landlords who pay the fees because the one through five star tracking, the five year COCs that we issue will have, that information is now available online for individual properties. I think that helps tenants a great deal with looking for properties for their future occupancy. I think it can tell you a lot about the property's history. I think there's a lot more that we can do with it but we're not done yet, Councilor Klein, trust me. And Patty, who's taking over on the housing manager side fully understands what I just explained to you and I feel that it will be true to that in the ordinance. The ordinance requires that and we will follow that. Okay, I appreciate it. She assured me of that but I just wanna make sure to say it out loud again. But yeah, the scoring or the breakdown of scores would be interesting to, if that's available, basically a breakdown of the one year, two year, three year, how many of our rental units, percentage-wise, fall into those different categories would be information I think would be very helpful. Maybe it's already been reported but... 94% of the rental units in the city fall in the three to five. Thank you, that's really helpful. And then lastly, tell us a little bit about the renovation project and how it's going. I heard a little bit that it may have either expanded scope or had some cost hiccups there that have resulted in a more expensive undertaking. Yeah, there were a few changes. I'll let Brian speak to the specific ones but I don't think it's unexpected really. It's a complicated building and finding new space, it was a little challenging because we need to be able to have more workspace so it required some moving of some existing personnel to another area within the building but all the staff members in the building now know. Yeah, and I think that's right. It's basically headed in a way that we thought it would from a permit reform perspective. There are other things that we're doing to the building at the same time so we can kind of have one intervention to make some changes in that building that expand beyond the scope of the permit reform where there are some capital dollars supporting that but that's enhancements that are needed within the building. So those would have happened regardless of this merger maybe or this merger made it possible or just been postponed? Yeah, I think these would have been issues at some point the fact that we were going into the building and making some of these changes made it probably more cost effective time to make these other changes at the same time. And some of them are creative. I mean, we had a lot of staff feedback that led to some interesting approaches for how to make some modest changes to that building both to better serve the community and to make it a better, more effective use of staff space. Ballpark cost of the renovation. It'll go out for bid either at the end of this month or shortly there. We'll know that, yeah. Okay. So we should know probably at the end of this one. Okay, thanks. Mr. Generator, you briefed the Council on update on the plan relatively recently, I believe, right? So it was to do the design so Martha had brought forward to have the text do that. Yeah, okay. Yes, there's a. I just want to, I don't believe anything, just in case, I think everything's consistent with where it was where we, when we briefed the Council on this summer weeks ago. Okay. It's not like this. The scope hasn't changed, okay. No, there was that decision that you guys signed off on of putting the, we are taking a small section. There's a small addition, essentially, of the conditioned space into the loading dock area that is going to allow that there's going to be, basically from the water department, right? That is going to. Effectively what it does is it allows us to, it creates more staff space in the northern garage space with the current northern garage space of the building that's going to allow us. So some of the water distribution operators to move back to Pine Street. And there's a substantial operational savings that result from that kind of coordination. That's not directly related to perma form, but it's an opportunity that perma form kind of opened. And so that is part of this scope then really, because it'll be done. Okay. Part of this, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you. President Wright and then Councilor Busher. Bill, you might be surprised to know that I'm excited about the one-stop shop happening and the rest of the permit reform. Can you just remind me the timeline on that? When do we expect to have that one-stop shop, zoning, building a code altogether? So we're looking to start the actual department for the start of the fiscal year with this budget. The co-location will take place as soon as we can get the construction bids in and we know, I mean, we expect it's going to take a few minutes, a few months of construction, but we're hoping we're shooting for the fall. Then the streamlining items that you mentioned. That's actually been in process over the last few months since we did that training in January. So part of it does require the staff working together. And so the things that we can do before we're physically located together, we will. And the things that we can do after, we'll get them all done by the fall or early winter. And will those streamlining efforts result in, I mean, the thing that I've heard from homeowners over the years many times is the different hoops they have to go through that sometimes seem unnecessary, as you mentioned, and expensive. Will this result in savings for homeowners when they're trying to improve their property? I think so. I mean, just the last step alone of not having to come down to get to request the CEO should effectively be in an automated process when we start that. That saves them an extra step either coming here and then having them send them to our department. But just in general, having one team working throughout from the city staff, I think we're bound to find a lot of efficiency in that and a lot of pleasure from the customer, not having to bounce between different groups. One more question on a different issue. As you know, there are some properties that have been problems consistently that you've had to deal with. I know many times, I know you're probably as frustrated as I am. And maybe not quite as frustrated as the neighbors are around there, but is there any changes that you think need to happen in terms of teeth in the ordinance in regard to that? Because I constantly neighbors come to me and say, why can't we do this? Why can't we do that? And I know that your department has worked very hard on some of those problem properties. But is there any changes you think need to happen to the system? No, not yet. I would say we're still working. We actually just met with a couple of the members of Eileen staff to talk about some of those issues and what we might do in the coming months for some of those problem properties. So that strategy has been sort of laid out. If that works well, I'm not sure there'll be any need for any changes, but we may learn from what we do over the next few months with the work and the help from the city attorney's office. But at this point, I'd say I would encourage you to look at those zoning enforcement like stipulation fees. That shows annually they're increasing because we're having better and better zoning enforcement. And also go to one of the presumptive methods for compliance in every regulation is voluntary compliance. That's the first step in everything. And so what you're talking about is for folks who are just completely, they won't even do a thing. But the good news is that most of the public, once they understand that there's a problem and what they need to do to comply, sometimes it takes a little bit longer, but those are the ones that we're working on now. But as we work through those, we do have more time for some of those folks who just thumb their nose at enforcement. And Kim and Nick will be taking additional enforcement through the court system for those folks in the coming months. Thank you. And once again, thanks to you and Brian, Dave, White and everybody else that collaborated and worked together on, I'll collaborate and work together on the same thing, I think, on making this happen. Because I know it was, for some people, it was giving up some things in there under their charge, too. So thank you. Thanks for your story. And just to make sure it was clear, July one, the vision is the new department exists. Everyone working under one organization, so that takes place even before the physical changes to the building which are projected for the fall. And really, like as that slide with the training shows, in many ways, the bill has already started the ethic of working together. I mean, that would have been very rare to have those people all assembled in one room before that, right? Exactly. I'm not sure it happened before. Yeah, so. Didn't happen in the nine years I've been here. It does feel like there's some benefits already starting to flow. There's still no thought to retirement either. No. Oh, God, no. You did just reappoint me as the town health officer last night. Not any time, I mean, not any time in the next many years, Stephen. Do I have to sign a contract? No, I don't. Although I did spend a week in Hilton Head and last week I may have thought about that a little bit, but no. The answer is no. All right, Councilor Buscher. This probably is for Beth more than you, but the employee benefit health insurance just reflects all the new employee. It's gone up quite a bit. So it's a composite of the larger department and the tracking of, no, that's, so what is that about? I mean, it's a lot more money. Yeah, we tend to budget it at the highest level in an organization, so now that all the staff is bringing in a lot more staff, so the cost is just moved with that staff. And if I was to, like next year, look at the budget, would I really understand that the money, the 1.5 million and the 400 and some odd thousand for, from zoning and then from the permit, whatever it is, the inspection services, would I be able to figure out that that was a transfer or from DPW and from zoning here? There's no way in our system for us to reflect that. You would have to look at the old, you would have to know how to look at old budgets and it's unfortunate. So you can't, so it's really, it looks like this money just dropped from the sky and yet it, all I can say is it's in our budget, I mean it's in our system, we have notes and we know how to track it, but there's no way for us to move it between. Okay, and then the last question is something for you maybe. So in all this reorg, and if indeed the revenue and expenses are accurate, you have a 1.4 million dollar surplus. This does not reflect, I'm sorry, this does not reflect the cost of real estate, utilities, IT, we don't charge that to general fund department so that would be particularly as the IT investment and this is going to be significant. So how would I know what the, I mean, so this balance sheet is misleading, obviously. For every general fund department. Okay, okay, but so how would I know if they were, how would I know what the true balance sheet was? We would have to change the way we do budgeting. I'm not arguing right or wrong. No, no, no, I know, I know. We could come back with some estimates on what that looks like for the kind of a similar model that we use for the enterprise funds. When we're creating a new department, I think it's somewhat different. So for me, it would be nice to know that you're in the black when all is said and done. You know, I mean, anticipated to be in the black. I'm not saying how it will turn out but anticipated. So it would be, this is more important to me than the other budgets where we have some history. So I think I would like to understand what those other additional costs would be, ultimately what you anticipate those to be. So anyways, thank you. Any other, any other questions? Councilor Powell. One of the intents in the resolution way back when on the five star, what became known as the five star system was to be able to use that data as one more tool available for landlord, not only landlord accountability, but for people who rent. That was one of the ideas behind it in the first place. And so I think at this point now, all properties, it took about three years, but all properties have now been gone through. There may be a few, maybe like a handful that are outstanding, but there were 10, a few months ago, a while, maybe a month or so ago. There's 231 that have gotten one star. There's 2884 that have gotten five. And then the others are all in between. I would still like to see that we carry through with the, really what it's like, the final step in the resolution, which is to list those by name. So that somebody can go on to a website and see what those addresses are that are doing an amazingly exceptional job and have a five star, and those that you might want to take a second look at and perhaps not rent from. Again, just as within the last month, that information, thanks to Brian's team, is visible in rental properties when you go to the permit history tab on every rental property. You've always been able to see the COC expiration, the certificate of compliance for rental housing, but now you can see if that expires next year, you can, it tells you it was a five year or a four year certificate, so that essentially gives you on an individual basis. I know it's not all of them in one place yet, but we've been working towards that and we're still, we're not done yet, but any property owner who knows about that or a tenant who wants to look at it or a property owner who wants to advertise that it got the five star rating, so to speak, that's visible on a permit history tab through the assessor's database. Yeah, I understand that and obviously for people who know how to look for that, it's great. That probably is relatively few people who really do that kind of research, which is understandable, most people don't do that. So I would just hope that between now and perhaps the end of the year that that list could be called so that you could literally go to a place that would have a, and that there would be something on the city's website page, on the first page, that would show how to be able to go onto that link and see what properties are in order, in numbers, five, four, three, two, and one. I would hope that that could be done by the end of the year. One other project we're working on, just that's voluntary organization, so if you lose a fifth of stars, it's on our side too, but we'd like to create an app that does that. I mean, this is publicly available information and they seem quite excited about it. The kind of guidelines we've been discussing is can we make this an app that is accessible to a non-English language speaker that would very easily indicate to you by address, if you're at this address and you're considering renting what is the rating that the city's giving this property? There are a lot of complications there in the address mapping system. It could be complicated, however, it's definitely something that I think could be valuable. Oh, I see, yeah, I would, yes, thank you. I got some. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I completely agree, and I think just one more thing to add onto that is once we do get to that point, it sounds like we're gonna make it more publicly accessible within the year, which is great news. I think that should be done, that should be rolled out in the most public way possible, whether it's a press release, front porch forum, just making sure, because sometimes these things kind of slide in, and insiders know about it and try to tell people, but if you don't have that initial splash and that big news story and that big launch, most of the public will miss that, and so I think that would be a critical component of it is going big and really pushing it out from day one. We'll tell you that all the property owners know about it, and we've used that as a tool to make sure they know, if they're a one, they know it, and they should not want to be a one, they should be looking to improve their property, so it's definitely a tool that helps tenants by improving properties quickly. Yeah, none. Good, for the right. Just a quick comment. I just want to be clear about what I was saying about retirement before is what I mean by that is everybody has done a great job, the entire team, and Bill, I don't think anybody could, I cannot think of anybody that could do a better job in your position of handling people in really difficult positions that are, you're gonna take somebody off one way or the other, and I think the way you conduct yourself is a model for everybody in terms of dealing with these difficult positions, situations, and just, I couldn't think of anybody that could do a better job, that's fine. Thank you, I really do appreciate that. Okay, I think you guys are off the pot seat here, thanks. That's even though you're a Red Sox fan. No. I'm sorry. All right, so we've arrived at what I'd like to think of as the most exciting parts of the four nights of budgeting. I could talk for a minute. We, David and I are gonna kind of tag team some of this because we're here to talk to you about really for the first time because we've been working on it. I think the council's been aware that really for a long period of time we've been just been a desire to, a sense that as great as CEDO is, it is not hitting on all cylinders for structural and funding reasons. And we have for a significant period of time, we had a reorg when Peter Owens was the director. I would, I think that reorg did some, address some issues, but ultimately, I think it wasn't, didn't fully address what was being the concerns at the time. During Noel's time, she also started a strategic planning and reorganization process maybe in part because of some of the issues we're trying to get to, ended up leaving, not getting this done and leaving before it was done. We brought in Neil for a six month period who further advanced the thinking around a reorganization and strategic planning. But as you also know, left without that being complete, David and I in the months since Neil has left have tried to keep the advancing the ball with the reorganization. And I think at this point, what we have concluded is that we still believe in a reorganization, we think it needs to happen in two phases. And we think an important first step can happen as part of the budgeting process here and address some of the most acute issues, sort of structural issues within CEDO's budget. I think the new director when they arrive will have the job of phase two essentially. Let's, you want to say anything else to kind of kick things off or is that? Now we'll circle right back to this. Great. So I want to spend in the bulk of our time on, so you guys have basically, the budget that you have is sort of the stable state like pre-reorg as if we're just sort of continuing forward CEDO as it is today. I think it's important if you guys follow me on this. The numbers that you have are essentially status quo. The presentation that we have tonight that I love, I think would be valuable to start getting, talking with you about and getting some feedback on is new information, not in the big budget sheets. It's an additional financial analysis that would represent really the change in this first phase of the reorganization. So Dave, did you want to go through some sort of overarching information first? I'm going to do the overarching slides first. Sure, why don't you do that and then we'll get into this. Where are we? This is the reorg piece. So should we just dive in right into that? Oh, I thought you meant this because it's an umbrella for me. Okay, I didn't know if you had like, you had photos and stuff and other, is there broader stuff about CEDO? What's CEDO? Absolutely. You want to talk about? If I can keep. So yes, just briefly, I've got a number of slides and I apologize for you getting this at the last minute and the fact that the cable wants to duck in and out on me, flash on and off. That'll just make it more interesting for all of us. So as the mayor mentioned, and as you're aware that CEDO has been undergoing an extensive revisioning process over the past couple of years and it's resulted in a new strategic plan. This is the vision statement that results from that strategic plan. This is the vision statement that results from that strategic plan. Megan has the same problem I've never had with one. Turn off that screen. The only solution I have to do it. So that this slide is the vision and this is how we go about doing our work through the missions and values that really guide us on a day to day basis. The 2019 strategic plan for CEDO is built around four themes that frame the work that we do within the context of both that mission and vision as an organization. And the work really fits into these four broad categories. Here is the current organizational chart. There are 30 full and part-time staff members that make up the CEDO team overall, 24, almost 25 full-time equivalents. And then we have a Mericor members and interns that compliment the work that we do in various programs. So, and it's appropriate kind of following the conversation with permitting and new permitting and inspections department, but through this organization, we've really been reorganization of both the planning and permitting and reimagining what CEDO might be. We're really trying to create something that allows us to more collectively advance the mission of all of these departments that are involved in the broader development process of the city. And through this restructuring, we see that there's an opportunity to build much closer bridges across departments and particularly with between planning and the CEDO department. So our proposed reorganization imagines these two departments, CEDO as we understand it and the Department of Planning working side-by-side with planning being relocated up to the third floor of City Hall, beginning again in the beginning of the new fiscal year where our zoning counterparts will move down the street to Pine Street beginning in the fall. So by being located on the same floor together, it allows us to really continue to build the bridges that we've worked together on over the last several years to provide both a policy and programmatic element to the delivery of services that is typically undertaken by CEDO. And just for kind of perspective purposes, you see here that currently CEDO is divided into three different divisions. This proposed reorganization as we begin to think it through would add a fourth division that is really related to projects or we refer to it as community works. And we'll talk more about that as time goes on but I wanted to give you a flavor of where we're trying to head with, both with CEDO and how planning and CEDO working together will function together. But today, CEDO's programs are divided into three different divisions. We have about a six and a half million dollar budget and it's really focused on delivering services to residents with a particular emphasis on the needs of the most vulnerable. The community housing and opportunity program known as CHOP is largely where a lot of the federally funded as well as other dedicated funding sources for housing sit and are managed. The sustainable housing and economic development division is where much more of the programmatic work is done in delivery of services around economic development and Brownfield remediation and redevelopment work in the city. And finally, the community justice center provides restorative justice, offender reentry, parallel justice and works with the schools to bring some of these concepts to the work that they work that they do in the school system and in the classroom on a more regular basis. There are a number of slides here that just provide highlights for work that's been done over the course of the last year or so. This slide highlights some of the work that the CJC has been involved in. I won't spend a lot of time on this because we want to get to the actual nugget of the budget conversation. These are more project related highlights and milestones and you see the list in some of the slides below. These highlights focus on housing and the use of the Housing Trust Fund and the lead program. The CDBG program, which again is a federally funded as an entitlement community provides housing and economic development and community development funding to both projects undertaken by the city as well as outside applicants. In a lot of the work that we do around advancing equity and community engagement across the city through the AmeriCorps program and the city internship program and my brother's keeper. So I want to jump right into the funding conversation around CEDO. CEDO's $6 million budget, as I said, comes from about 26 different funding sources, federal, state, local and some nonprofit philanthropy. On this slide, about 56% of that are federal sources and those are highlighted in blue and 33% are city sources that are highlighted in yellow. So while about 20% of CEDO's budget comes from the general fund, only about 11% of that budget is unrestricted general fund dollars that are used to support core programs and operations. It's about $660,000. The rest of that money is to get the general fund dollars is dedicated to match other funding sources or for TIF-funded redevelopment projects. Talk about that a little bit more. This underlies the principle and really a fiscal challenge for CEDO because our work is dominated by non-city funding sources it creates particular challenges in the work we do. About 67% of the overall budget of CEDO is non-city related and almost 90% of it is dedicated to restricted funding to support a specific program or the requirements of the source. So that means that the work that we're doing and 90% of the work we're doing is at the behest of some sort of other funding entity, whether it's a federal program, it's a state program or even our own dedicated funding programs. It's constrained in how we use that money for what purposes. Certainly reliance on outside funding from state and federal government partners is increasingly uncertain as those budgets change and anytime we're working with program restricted funding it comes with increasingly costly administrative requirements around reporting and documentation of that work. Of course that's good government to be sure that we're using the public's tax dollars in a responsible way and be able to demonstrate that but that also takes time and money in order to fulfill those requirements. Yet the community has much broader and more dynamic needs and expectations of what the city does and particularly in what their understanding of what CEDO does. That there's tremendous demand for supporting both existing and new businesses responding to requests for assistance, expanding housing choice, undertaking the complex redevelopment projects that you're most familiar with supporting our equity initiatives and youth services and on and on. Yet many of these tasks are not directly funded or CEDO is not directly funded to perform many of these tasks. If they fit within a bucket that we receive state or federal funding for or it's a TIF funded project, it works but if it falls outside of that it's extremely challenging to be able to meet that demand. Just to put a finer point on that I mentioned that there are 26 funding sources across 20, almost 25 different full-time equivalents. 12 different staff members within the CEDO team have between five and 13 different funding sources that they log their time to. Three people have more than 10. So that means that every day as they log their time or every day week as they log their time and I see Councillor Pine kind of shaking his head they have to account for where did they spend their time today and which of my funded buckets does that work into? When you're looking at just general fund supported FTEs there are a little more than seven of them FTE full-time equivalents but it's divided across 18 individual staff members and four of those 18 have less than 10% or four hours of their week supported by the general fund. The intention here is that when we have a department-wide staff meeting or there's a city-wide training requirement or something that a staff member can't ethically tag their time to some other funding source we have to have a place to go with that time and the general fund supports those kind of generalized functions. But when we look at the core of the city's housing, economic and community development programs and services they're really only a little bit less than one and a half FTEs that deliver that work outside of dedicated funding. So CEDO's increasingly narrow funding just doesn't align with the fundamental responsibilities to provide broad-based programs and services and really the agility necessary to be able to respond to ever-evolving needs and priorities. So our reorganization plan is really targeted at how do we address this issue? And we have, as the mayor said, we're proposing in our first phase an initial stab at improving the flexibility in the funding that CEDO staff, at least some CEDO staff members have to be able to do more of this broad-based work. So in FY20, you can see here that the funding sources in more general categories and I've identified those in how they're, that they are also constrained. So state and federal and unconstrained general fund versus TIF general funds that are constrained resources just so you can see how that funding breaks down. And the graph on the left are all of the expenses within the CEDO budget and the graph on the right are just the staff expenses so you can see there's a fairly similar proportion here as to how the staff expenses relate. When it comes to just general fund support, today unrestricted general fund dollars support one full-time position in parts of about 17 others. It largely supports the work we do on community outreach and engagement and support for the NPAs. There's some minimal support for core city programs and special projects like as I spoke to earlier provides funding for some interns, staff training, organizational support and the like. And you can see how that programming, general fund programming is allocated in the graph on the left. Again, the two areas that are largely unrestricted general fund dollars are highlighted in red. The general programs of administration and neighborhood engagement are two of the org sets within our budget. And as part of the budget handout I sent around, that is just the general fund part of the CEDO budget. It's all of the different organizational sets within the general fund that you see listed here. It doesn't include all of the entitlement grants in the home. So looking forward to FY20, these are just a highlight of some of the projects that we look forward to undertaking. Several of these are continuations of the work that we do under both federal grants and city funding. Several of these that are marked with an asterisk work that specifically is being undertaken in collaboration with the planning staff. And when we look at what's really new and different in FY20, there's about $100,000 of general fund dollars going into the department that allows us to make permanent a front desk position allows for some minor expansion of general fund support. To provide core housing and economic development programs in funding for strategic planning, grant writing, and additional professional development. I'll leave the conversation about the UDAG loan for an upcoming presentation while we're focused specifically on that, but to understand that this is part of our first phase reorganization to provide funding to allow us to create a new position to lead the community works division within CEDO and to increase the capacity and flexibility of CEDO staff in focusing on job creation and our housing challenges. And the last point I'll make on this slide, and this is again something that remains in a state of flux and we won't really know the bottom line until the state budget has been approved, but we're on the cusp of being able to sign on to a grant from the attorney general's office to provide pretrial and court diversion services across Chittenden County. This is a new initiative that the attorney general's offices has rolled out and we will become, if approved, we'll become one of six merged centers statewide to provide these wide range of services. But as I said, we don't have the final budget numbers from the state to know what our final budget looks like to plug this in. So we'll be coming back to the board of finance for approval to do that. So that's the end of the CEDO portion of my presentation. I have an overview of the UDAG money and how we propose to use that as well as the presentation for the planning department. So, Mary, do you have a, you wanna go to the UDAG department first? So, great, thanks. I was actually not clear you had done all that. That's great, very helpful presentation. Let's go to the, I would like to focus in a little bit on the key moving parts on the, what I think is, I think counselors, certainly counselors have been around for a long time. Well, I've heard a lot of that diagnosis of what is challenging about the CEDO budget and the CEDO organization for some time. I think what is exciting about tonight, I hope you find it exciting is we have a proposal for a solution that at least starts us to move towards addressing it. Again, I think there'll be a later phase two, but what we are kinda wanna kick around with you tonight about phase one would address some of those issues. So, the key priorities are in the second half of the slide here. That the priority number one in this phase is creating capacity of a senior CEDO management providing overall vision leadership program management by creating a new assistant director for community work. So, this is really, if nothing else happens, I hope a couple other things happen, but I think this is the essential answer to the question, why, how are we gonna succeed this time when the past reorganization didn't work out great? Our diagnosis is that the CEDO director, certainly every CEDO director I have worked with, Peter, Noel, and Neil have really had to spend a great, very significant part of their time on the high profile projects that gets a lot of public attention in which there are, as a result, quite a bit of, there's a lot of emerging issues that need to be dealt with in high stakes negotiations, everything from city place Burlington, to Moran, to Memorial Auditorium. These substantial special projects that the city takes on and that have dominated the time of all past CEDO directors. Our theory for how we free up capacity in the senior management for other things to happen is the creation of a new assistant director for community work. So basically a senior level position that would oversee and really take the lion's share of the management responsibilities away from the director for that area of work so that the director, who we hope as you know, to be hiring soon, and who we are bringing to you a candidate that does not have vast real estate or development experience, that that director can spend much more of their time than they've been able to in the past, supporting the other elements of CEDO, helping working on the other areas of CEDO that need management and interfacing with the public more broadly than the CEDO director has been able to in the past. Prior number two would basically partially address, put some money in the budget here in a almost sort of a placeholder situation, but we know that there are issues with, in particular, something what David described as staff that are chopped up, their time is chopped up so significantly that they can't be responsive to the public. We want to have some money in the budget to address that in the coming fiscal year. And then the prior number three is actually something that's been in the budget for years. And then in the budget for a long time, we'll remember discussions of a city urban designer or urban architect that has been since FY18 in the budget, but we have never actually created that position. This, we're proposing, we're at least having a discussion about the creation of that position now. Why don't we go to the next? So how are we doing this while making good on the notion that we've had out there that we're gonna have minimal new impact on the general fund? It's really a three-part strategy. One, we have this substantial UDAG loan. UDAG was this program, federal government program in the 70s and 80s, went out, no, I think the 89 was the end of the program, but Burlington got several large UDAG grants back in the 70s and 80s. And one of them has been repaid, this large loan has been repaid to the city that the city made to the, it was one of the downtown parking garages, right, Brian? You know this history better than I do. That $1.8 million was repaid and is available and it's quite flexible dollars now for CEDO to reinvest. We're proposing loaning that back in to help get this new era of CEDO kind of jump started. In the coming years, there will be available BCDC revenue. So the Burlington Community Development Corporation has been paying off other debts and liabilities for some time. There's some free cashflow coming free there that will also be flexible money. And then third, over time, and we don't wanna be overly aggressive about this because we gotta be realistic about how quickly this will materialize. We would see replacing the UDAG funding over time and even actually repaying the UDAG funding over time with new entrepreneurial the generated revenues flowing to CEDO. And this is the next slide sort of shows what this looks like in this first phase. So FY20, you see basically the two new positions plus some new flexibility for CEDO staff resulting in $281,000 of new investment. The bulk of that from this UDAG loan, the capital budget paying for a part of the urban designer given that the part of that urban designers they would be involved in every in all public facing city investments and they would help ensure quality for what the city builds it's appropriate to spend capital dollars on them. And then you see phasing down over time still some spending from the UDAG loan in the coming years, but this new source BCDC income replacing that as well as slowly a couple of years out starting to generate new revenue from the CEDO kind of entrepreneurial posture. And we can talk about what that might look like in more detail, but before I just, here's the concept and yeah, you wanna add anything to that David? No, that's really it. And just to, you know, from my own perspective as somebody who's kind of looked in, looked at CEDO from the outside for the last several years and gotten to know it quite intimately over the last six months, that the mayor's point about the need for somebody to really spearhead the redevelopment projects so that the director can really be a leader and a manager of the whole organization. That's just a critical need in helping CEDO to really be what it really wants to be and what we really need it to be. I just think that's a critical issue. And the only nuance here I would just highlight is that understand that there are two parts of this phase. One, the first group is a new position in CEDO and the expansion of capacity. And the second, that urban designer position would be a position that sits in the planning department. So that skill set both works on capital projects, CEDO is working on, but also some of the planning projects that we work on as well. Yes, Mike. So the, I wrote up before this started was that we need better alignment of CEDO's mission, operations and budget because we expect CEDO to deliver on multiple interrelated public policy objectives, but it's hindered its ability to do this with its current funding. That's what I was sort of planning to, and that's sort of what you've said, which is probably no surprise, but the, I want to make sure that the assistant director for community works that I understand how it fits within the organization, is it sort of at the same level as other assistant directors or is it more of a deputy director with a little more responsibility than that? Not a deputy director. It is another, when we have the, when we present the org chart to you, it will be, the vision is, and there's more stuff that's likely to go on and shifts in the org chart in the second phase, right? That we're not necessarily wedded to the current vision of CHOP and CED, and, but in the phase one, we would essentially be adding a new assistant director position that is, yeah, is a peer to the other assistant directors, although, you know, would be a competitively priced, I mean, you're projecting this as an expensive position in that I think this is a person that we need to hire someone with real estate and project experience. They will be, they will be representing, they will be overseeing that function, this would be the person that would be day to day supervising any consultants we have like Jeff Glasberg in the field, other project staff that are working on projects that would probably move into this new division and they would, you know, they would have substantial responsibility for the large projects, you know, multi-million dollar projects that CEDO handles. And then more of a technical question, but the total, I guess the UDAG loan is, we sort of put some of the previous expenses of CEDO on our credit card, if you will, back in the past, this is even before I think you joined, became mayor, and we said, well, we'll cover that when the UDAG loan gets repaid. So I think there's probably a net proceeds of somewhere a little over a million maybe after you factor in all the past sort of. We have, let me, you're saying that makes me, I wanna make sure I'm not being overly aggressive. We think it's a little higher than that, but it's certainly well higher than the 400, that thousand. Yeah. Okay. So somewhere between one and one and a half million that proceeds after. The total amount of the UDAG is like $1.8 million and so there, I don't know what proportion then was taken out of that, but that was the total amount. So I think safe to think of this as a million to a million and a half dollars. And so that would be, the rest of that would be preserved. And the idea is this 421 would literally be, would it truly be an amortizing loan? Not an amortizing loan, but the structure we're envisioning is actually that there would be a loan document and it would be a loan made with a 20 year term that the goal would be for that to be repaid for, so that for the next generation sort of innovative investment like this and that, and we've only shown you like a five year time horizon here, but I think as we get deeper into this conversation I think it's realistic to think that if we find it, I think we should find, and this, and I realize we don't really have the visualization up here to support this, but we've been doing a fair amount of work looking at what CEDO has been responsible for over the decades and the amount of new revenue that CEDO has generated, that CEDO projects that CEDO has had a significant role in bringing into existence has has generated millions, more than a million and a half of new revenue on an annual basis flowing to the city. I think on a go forward basis, we should find a way to credit CEDO for a small piece of the new revenue generated or in other ways find revenue streams that get targeted and dedicated towards CEDO to recognize the real value that it is creating if it's doing its job and incent CEDO to be focusing some of its, at least the kind of community works part of the CEDO package towards generating more of that. So it doesn't feel like a rating of the general fund every time we come to fund a CEDO project, but that there is sort of proper recognition and proper, I think it would be both proper recognition and like a good incentive being structured if we can craft that over time. So if you get that right, I think you actually could have the CEDO generated new revenue ultimately paying back the DAG loan. And I think that's important because all departments probably contribute in some way to growing our tax base and our grand list, but CEDO is specifically charged with doing that. So I think capturing some of that growth and using it to fund CEDO is really good. That's a good alignment right there. I think it's really important. It's charged with that and yet, but for the TIF revenues, we have really limited resources for putting that. We're always sort of scrambling to assemble those resources, you know. And then lastly, I'd love to spend more time on this. So if we could do some sort of a council work session going forward, I know we have deadlines with budget adoption for 2020, but I think this is critical work for our city, for our future. Great. I'm leaving that thinking. You're directionally interested in this direction. Great. Councilor Hanson and then Councilor Busher. So two questions. One, could you just explain a bit more about the city urban designer role, like what some examples of their work would be and what type of person we would seek, what type of expertise and the salary and just, I feel like I don't have a understanding. Yeah, sure. So the salary number that you see up there on the screen is kind of an all-in inclusive of benefits number. So it's not like that position pays $107,000, but we envision that as being a fairly high level of experienced person with specific design expertise and skills and graphic design skills to help us take both capital projects that say parks is working on or DPW is working on or even city art BCA is working on and help us make sure that those projects are the best that they can be from an urban design perspective, but also utilizing those skills in many of our planning initiatives when we're developing like we did in our development of the downtown master plan or the south end master plan, understanding kind of the relationships of the built form of new development to the streets and the properties around that and being able to illustrate what does that look like if we require buildings to be of a certain height or present themselves to the street in a certain way. Those urban design skills are really critical to carrying forward on those kinds of planning processes in helping to engage with the public around the possibilities. That's great, thanks. That first component of it that you mentioned, how is that kind of done currently? Like who's doing that work currently with parks or BCA or whoever has a project? Almost in every case, those projects hire their own outside expertise. They have consultants that they've hired on a project by project basis, but there's never really been anybody in-house with the occasion of here and there, we have a staff person that has that area of expertise to really try to help to manage these projects in a more comprehensive way. Mayor, is that characterizing? Yeah, so I think this is a big question and one that we probably can't give justice to fully tonight, but I appreciate your interest in it. And it's been a couple of years since we talked about this. We actually did have, I think when Peter Owens, when he was the CEO director, he actually did have an urban design background and I would argue one of the reasons that extension of Lake Street has become kind of one of the most beautiful appreciated parts of the city going by the skate park and with the landscaping along the road there is because Peter, that was a completely different design until Peter came in and reworked it with that urban design sensibility. And I do worry that we don't, since he's departed, we don't have anyone who is working for the city and has their interests fully aligned with the city that is worrying about, that really understands urban design and the quality design. And I think we make mistakes frequently when we're building things that would be avoided if we had someone who had, with that kind of skill set that was reviewing all sort of public-facing infrastructure. So I look at, for example, I don't know, like the wall we built on Cliff Street and I look at that as a wall that is unattractive, it's sort of overbuilt. It's kind of what you get when you have civil engineers designing our driving design. Civil engineers are awesome at a lot of things but they don't necessarily have that kind of design sensibility. I think I could give you many other examples of where I think we don't get the full value from our public investments because we don't have someone who has, who's both large and small, both on a kind of block level and on a kind of individual smaller project level. And I've long envisioned there being this, and many cities have these urban architect, urban designers or city architects. We don't really have that expertise and I think it hurts us. Oh yeah, it seems like you're great at it. So if we're currently, if departments are currently contracting that out, could there, and this kind of goes to Brian's point, but could there actually be a cost savings there of having this in-house? I would say it's unlikely that you will get design much in the way of project savings. You're always, this person is not gonna hold the pen and do the design, but what we will get is if there's someone who is working for the city who has our interests in mind and is reviewing that work, we will get more value. We will help the city properly manage those contracts, not just for, to make sure, when we manage those projects, I don't wanna suggest we don't manage them today. We manage them today and get good value out of them today for like a lot of the kind of functional elements of it, but the design and place-making elements, I think we struggle to manage those as well. So we might get a good outcome when we have a good designer involved, but even if there isn't, we don't, we should have that kind of in-house oversight. Which could shorten the design phase, which could make the project a little more cost-effective. There probably are financial savings, you're right. You're good, so much. That's great, that makes all the sense in the world to me. And then my other question, so it kind of speaks to a specific idea, but also opens up a broader question unrelated to the last one. So we have kind of these earmarked or restricted funds that direct a lot of the work. I'm wondering to what extent you can kind of piggyback either two different ones together or one of those with general work. So the specific example that I've heard raised before is around the lead program, and as we're going to departments doing this lead testing, we could also do some basic energy audits built into that. I'm wondering what, if there's obstacles to that, if that's possible to do something like that, because that funding is specific. Yeah. It's a great point, and I'm glad you raised it. Todd Rawlings here, one of our CEDOS assistant directors, he and I were just talking about this yesterday. When you've got a program that's going into the home, they're already doing going into the home. A lot of the paperwork in process is fairly similar. Are there opportunities to combine these where we're going in to do lead? Can we also do some safe home kind of work to provide access improvements or critical repairs? Is there an opportunity to provide energy efficiency improvements, whether we're collaborating with BED or CVOEO? Because you've already got somebody going in the door, what kinds of things can we wrap together to provide a more holistic set of services to that homeowner? We're not there yet in how we create such a program and think about particularly how it's organized and how it's funded, but it's a direction that we've talked about exploring further. All right, so I've sort of fallen down on my time management jobs here. We were doing pretty well for a while, but we're now basically a half hour behind schedule. Councilor Bush, there's gonna be more opportunities for discussing all this soon. I wanna ask a question, I'm sorry, but I do. I want a better understanding of the funding sources. I wanna know the UDAG loan. I wanna know how long it exists for and how often we can repay ourselves. I also wanna know about BCDC income, and once again, are we draining? My concern is that we are going after funding sources and we might deplete them and then they're not there anymore. And this is what this is about, the budget. And I'm concerned about that and I need more information before I sign off on anything. Thank you. Absolutely. No one's asking you to sign off on it tonight, just to be clear. Well, I understand, but I... I wanted to introduce the concept and... But I feel pretty strongly about the fact that I feel like I don't have enough information regarding these proposals, so thank you. Okay. We will close the CEDO section and David did a little bit of some of the planning but you've got more, right? I've got a little bit more. All right. We'll switch hats for a minute and in some ways it might've made sense to have this conversation right after bills. Because of course as we're looking at the reorganization and the creation of this new permitting and inspections department, there is an evolution of the city's planning department that happens as a result of that. David, I'm sorry, just to turn it for a second. To the end of more discussions, we don't have a board of finance meeting coming up next Monday because it's Memorial Day. I think it would be healthy for this and other reasons to have it. It's not currently scheduled, but a June 3rd board of finance meeting and I wanted to ask the board of finance members to take a look and let us know if that is gonna be possible for you. We'd also have one on the 10th. So we'd do it in a couple of weeks in a row there. And then I also wanted to interrupt just to apologize. I'm gonna let Beth run the rest of the meeting from here. I've double-booked on something I'm gonna go through, but David will finish off the planning and the tip that budges with that. It do. So here, this is the slides from the previous presentation relative to So this presentation focuses on the newly constituted department of planning. As I said, zoning will ultimately make its way down the street to Pine Street. So the planning department's work will continue to focus in its real core responsibilities, the comprehensive plans, topical plans, neighborhood planning initiatives that we've always done in the past. We have a significant component of work relative to information technology around E911 addressing geographic information system and management of the permit management system. Some of that may change, evolve a little bit over time, but that's in the budget as currently. We staffed two citizen boards and commissions. The planning commission primarily is our responsibility and we'll continue to work with the conservation board with some shared collaboration with the Permanent Inspection Department because some of the staff, zoning staff that's going down the street has traditionally been the staff to the conservation board. So you'll see through this presentation actually several references to tasks or initiatives that are undertaken in close collaboration with either CEDO or the Permitting Inspection Department. So just to put a finer point on this work, the Municipal Development Plan, you'll recall back in March, you adopted the city's new master plan. But you're also familiar with the area-specific plans like the downtown waterfront plan and the south end master plan or issue specific plans like the opens-based protection plan and the walk-by plan are all initiatives that we've either played a leading or supporting role in. Our staff plays a principal role in drafting amendments to the comprehensive development ordinance or zoning or subdivision regulations that pass to the Planning Commission before they come to the city council. In collaboration with permitting inspections, we administer the city's certified local government program which has to do with historic preservation planning. It's a grant-funded initiative. We undertake many special projects always in collaboration with other departments either as a leading role or as a supporting role in the work that they're undertaking. And I mentioned some of the other initiatives already. The work of the Planning Department really works hand in glove, particularly with DPW and Parks and CEDO in the overall planning and development work and planning and design work that the city does on an ongoing basis. As we've talked about with proposed funding, use of UDAG funding, our organizational chart proposes the addition of a new position for the urban designer. And we would anticipate working because we'll be co-located with CEDO sharing some very minor administrative support in order to carry out our kind of day-to-day functions. Here are our goals and priorities for FY20 and I'll highlight just some of the priorities. Really completing the transition with Bill and his team to helping to stand up the new permitting and inspections department and standing up the new permitting department. We're already working very closely with the mayor's office in CEDO in helping to launch the mayor's housing summit and we'll be working through that through the summer and into the fall to ultimately bring proposals to the council for your consideration. A new initiative we're looking to undertake beginning this year along with CEDO is creation of a city-wide economic development strategy. And you'll see later on in this presentation the request to use unassigned fund balance to begin that work in FY20 and carry it forward into FY21. I mentioned adoption of amendments to the comprehensive development ordinance and staff to the planning commission. Projects that we know that we need to begin focusing on and thinking about creation of a scope of work and a budget for a city-wide historic preservation plan and a Lake Champlain waterfront plan all in collaboration with other partners. Collaboration with CEDO and the Memorial Auditorium Project in the implementation of the Neighborhood Project and with DPW and Parks and the conceptual design work for Main Street. That is a continuation of the work that Megan was involved in on creation of the Great Streets design standards, the construction that's going on in St. Paul Street today and in City Hall Park. And then the next part of that focuses on Main Street. So planning in this budget, what's different from FY19? Planning's alone. The zoning component will have moved down the street. So the permit revenue projections that you used to seeing as part of our budget are no longer in our budget, they're housed in Bill's budget because that's where those permits will be generated. But we would anticipate that as it always has been that the permit fees that the city generates and go into the general fund really is part and parcel to supporting the work that we do but in the work that many other departments do like CEDO and the Eternity's Office and others. We're looking to establish some shared administrative support with CEDO on the order of two to three hours a week to help us with the administrative responsibilities we have in supporting the Planning Commission primarily. The request for use of fund balance for a total of about $150,000 over the course of two fiscal years in order to undertake a citywide economic development strategy. This project is really looking at defining both the vision and the strategies going forward to how the city undertakes economic development work, how is it actually undertaken by CEDO providing some direction to the city as to how we might do this differently in order to meet the economic development needs of the community, looking at both large businesses and small businesses, the neighborhood oriented businesses versus the citywide and regional businesses, really a soup to nuts set of priorities for economic development and how we undertake it and where we emphasize the work that we do. The new position for urban design is listed here and there are no audit findings. The general fund supports all of the work that we do and this graph shows the UDAG which is spelled wrong and the unassigned funds being sought to round out our department budget. We have no grants that are included in the budget at this time and typically we don't include speculative grants so we only put them in once we actually have them and have sought approval to receive them but I would anticipate us making applications for municipal planning grant that whose round comes up in the fall as well as the certified local government grant which is the historic preservation funding over the coming year but we'll be back if we're successful. As you can see, most of our expenses go directly towards the personnel costs and the remainder being operating and consultants and it's really critical to expanding the skills and supporting the skills and expertise of the staff in our office and really being in a position to meet the steadily evolving needs and expectations of the community and how we undertake planning processes, how we develop plans for the future of the city. We did a great thing when we undertook the plan BTV project for the downtown and waterfront and now every neighborhood wants one. So we have to be prepared to undertake some of that work. So looking ahead, again a lot of this is repetitive of being focused on policy work, expanding our collaborations with CEDO, looking to use outside funding and unanticipated revenues were possible to undertake planning initiatives and we would anticipate as we get into this additional staff capacity being necessary to really being able to accomplish our work as we look beyond 20. How's it going? Probably already know but the U.S. Economic Development Administration does fund comprehensive economic development strategies. Our unemployment rate is so low it may be hard to get one but we have some census tracts that are very low income and it's on a rolling basis so it's federal funding up to 300 grand that can be used for exactly what you're funding with unassigned fund balance. So if it's available may as well ask. And I know in the past our congressional delegation has been extremely supportive but also very frustrated at how little of that money comes to Vermont so maybe they'd be really excited about shaking that tree a little bit. Squeezing that lemon, seeing some juice flows. Councilor Breser. Just going back, I have a couple of things but on the, what is this? The slide that says municipal development plan, comprehensive development ordinance amendments, et cetera. So planning is gonna take this on and you said open space protection plan that was Scott before but you're going to take it on now. Well that's just an example of the kind of issue specific planning components that are part of the municipal plan. You'll recall we did the first open space protection plan in 2000, it was updated a couple, three years ago and Scott led that effort and kind of going forward when we, with the new configuration of departments we anticipate to continue that the work that Scott has done in supporting the conservation board and the work that Mary's done as part of the certified local government program that will continue to do that kind of work. It will continue. Okay I misunderstood what you said, that's why I wasn't sure about that but under special projects, something jumped out at me and I leaned over to President Wright. I can guess what that is. Ward redistricting, round two, what is this? Every 10 years. Every 10 years. It was 10 years ago that we went through that awfulness? It's as a result of the census. So by the time we get to it, it will be about, have been about 10 years. Okay so this is in the future. It's not in 2020. Okay, okay. It's a couple years later. It's a couple years later. It'll be 21 or 22 that we're undertaking. So see it says FY 2020 budget and then there it is and I was like, oh my God. I'm sorry to put that scare. Yes, okay. See it's just an example of those kinds of special projects. At least after 2020. Yes, the census will be taken on April 1st, 2020. In fact it's usually a couple years after. We won't even begin to get data from them until six or eight months. We wanted everyone to be awake. Okay, well anyways, yeah, that just woke me up. But Beth, can I ask him a question about a CEDO question? Because I was really surprised to see that you'd be contracting for strategic planning and grant writing. So because you continue to be funded by grants and Councillor Pine just identified another maybe source of revenue. That was a skill set that CEDO had, like they nailed it. And so is the intent to this year do this because you've got a new staff, et cetera, but you're gonna, is the intent to bring it in-house? I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out ultimately. The budget proposal doesn't necessarily bring it in-house. It's hiring somebody to do that. I understand that, but ultimately, I mean, what I just said was I imagine you might have those monies because you're re-orging and you've got a lot of new people. But ultimately is the, have you talked about the intent of bringing that in-house and have that skills in-house or not? As a milestone down the road, not as part of this year or maybe even in the coming year, but it's definitely a need in terms of how does CEDO fund itself and be more entrepreneurial. One of the challenges, of course, is that you've got to have capacity to seek and write those grants. And that means that the funding for that person doing that work has to have flexibility. They can't be otherwise dedicated to performing grant work at the same time they're- Okay, thank you. Searching for it. This is for you because in the past, departments sometimes wanted to lean on CEDO. I'm talking years ago, but I think Councilor Pine remembers this, would lean on CEDO because they didn't have that internal skill set. So it might be advantageous because I heard Parks and Rec talk about needing to get, to have a grant writer or- We've actually started some conversations about, we can see if we can actually maybe find an external resource who would do some grant searching and writing for us. Okay. And that they would be paid contingent on actually return, like, yeah, exactly. So we're early in those stages, but because nobody has a full-time need or very few departments really, like CEDO may be the closest, but I don't even know that you have a full-time need. So yes, we are aware of it. It just seems to make sense because I think by the time you contract out, you've lost some valuable time. Sometimes these grants, I mean, I feel like sometimes you could miss your opportunity. That's all. And I think we don't know, I'm sorry, what would be possible? Well, and I know that just this winter, we just didn't have the capacity to apply for an EPA grant. We tried really hard, but we just couldn't lift, but make that lift to make that application. And sorry, didn't I say that I think what you have in the F-1-20 that is for the lead grant, which traditionally we contract out that to be able to realize that three million or so dollars that we get for the lead program. Correct. And some additional money for an EPA grant, but yes. Thank you. That was it. Thank you. You have a new, but the printout is slightly different from what you picked up on Friday. So what I just left to your left is a slight change. Yes, yes. So TIF budgets, not really exciting. We have two TIF districts. They get the basically tax revenues that are collected in those districts as kept in the district shown up as revenue in each. We have debt voter approved projects that have projects that were voter approved for which we've taken on debt, which is paid using that increment that tax revenue in those districts. These just show what it looks like for this year. So the projected revenues from the taxes, the projected debt service. The debt service is pretty much locked in except for one piece, the Moran. We will be bonding for the re-envision. What is it? Frame. Frame, thank you, Moran frame. We'll be bonding probably in November for those monies. So we just did some estimates on what that debt service will cost. We will be coming probably just after the budget process with an update. We do about once a year, just an update on the TIF districts, projected revenues and expenses based upon what we know. So we can go into a lot more depth with that, but happy to answer any questions at this point. Just how much we have of unencumbered TIF revenue that's not already taken spoken for. Revenue or built up, like actually fund balance. Yeah, fund balance is not adjusted. We're updating those estimates from what we did last year and there have been some movement, there's been some movement in both of the districts. So I would ask for a couple of weeks to give you a final number, but we will be providing that for sure. And they both do have healthy balances. I'm neither one, do we need to be concerned? I think what we'll find is the downtown definitely has room. And that obviously has a longer life left. The waterfront we probably don't have as much authority as we thought or much on tapped increment as we thought last year, but probably still some potential to do some work. That's the one that sunsets anyway. Right, so we would have to basically get voter authorization by December because the bonding in that downtown, and then I'm sorry, in the waterfront has to be done by June of next year. When you make that presentation, you'll say what we originally anticipated the amount that we thought we would potentially want to draw down and because they all had a dollar amount and then we've drawn down this amount of. Yeah, so what we'll give you an update on what the expenses have bound, what the current balances are and what we're projecting the rest of the cash flows would be free. And when they sunset and both when you still can draw down on it, and then I think for the new counselors too, the payback system, the formula that is used to pay back the TIFT, I mean, I assume you, did you get that in orientation, all that? No, so I think that would be really good as a package. So people understand that, thank you. Great. Going over everybody. Thank you all for sitting.